"Geotron"
An Exegesis
ONE
Beginning from One, beginning from Big Bang bull’s-eyes spreading like ripples on a pond, cooling into the acid –bright spectrum of colors that are the palette for Geotron. The Primal Unity of Oneness is represented as slowly pulsating concentric rings of glowing color accompanied by prolonged one-note chanting. After progressing through a sequence of color chords, the centers of the circles cavitate into black voids, the throats of Divine Issuance. A Yin/Yang wheel begins to churn in the center circle flanked by a pair of Deity faces in orange neon. Whose face is this from The Beginning, from the time before faces, from the time before Time? Whose face is this in the unimaginable heat and vibration? And why should this face resemble our face except that this face is the icon of our knowing, the possibility of our knowing born with particles, light, Time, and the First Laws. Two faces. One becomes Two, at the Beginning of Time, the Beginning of Manifestation.
TWO
Then there emerges through the black cores of the three circles a set of symmetrical “ideograms” representing the chromosomal nucleus, the genetic code at the heart of the primordial germ cell. The ideograms are also the sacred seed syllables, the mantras of Primordial Energy which when sounded are conscious in and of themselves.
We see the nuclear code ideograms become enclosed by the containment casings of an occult device (the alchemical vessel restated in the vernacular of a 20th Century physics laboratory) where they are transected by a glowing laser beam. The graphic technopop designs in Geotron are expressions of the Dark Wizard science of our century in which man began to manifest his will in the Biosphere like a demiurge: splitting the atom, illuminating whole continents with electricity, smacking secrets from the heart of matter with huge research accelerators.
The laser beam stimulates a split and re-pairing of the chromosomal ideograms, an action symbolic of the process of oogenesis + spermatogenesis = the power to create a new individual from fertilization. And again the neon faces appear, now as part of the Chromosomal Ideograms, creating an abstract homunculus.
The circle (Unity) split into two (Duality) forms the classical geometric figure known as the vesica piscis, a shape that may be thought of as a birth portal formed by the overlap of circles. The components of the homuncular ideogram nest neatly into the three areas of the vesica geometry.
An alembic of increased complexity now contains the geometric figure of the vesica and it is rhythmically stimulated with criss-crossing vertical and horizontal beams, beams that also define and anticipate the matrix of the Four Cardinal Directions, the Quadrapolar Division of the Circle, a primordial division of space that can be observed in the art and ritual of human cultures from the beginning. A double Yin/Yang figure begins to whirl in the center chamber. The double Yin/Yang animations invoke in cross section the dynamic of the Torus, a roiling donut shape that absorbs from the bottom, flows upward along a vertical axis, then emits outward and downward at the top to fold over and recirculate. The Torus is an archetypal energy template that can be superimposed on the body plan of a tree, an apple, a vertebrate, and even the Earth itself with its magnetic domain patterns.
THREE
The face of the Goddess radiates the power of the birth portal, the ray of creation through the portal. Now the vectors of the Number Three are animated from the points of the first Triangle which is flanked by two truss arches displaying in bass relief this curious mathematical symmetry: 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 =
12345678987654321, a rubric of the Monad, One, pregnant and pulsing with life, breathing in the void. This is one of many enigmatic patterns that can be observed in simple arithmetic and in the properties of simple numbers seen with an eye open to the symbolic, metaphysical meanings that ancient geometers like Pythagoras saw in them. These arches are like the Sphinxes of ancient Egypt but in the language of early industrial monument architecture as if stationed at the entrance to the ruin of a Pythagorean theme park from the era of the Eiffel Tower, the Crystal Palace of 1851, the Galerie des Machines at the Paris Exhibition of 1889 at the Dawn of the 20th Century.
THREE’s multiples SIX and TWELVE
Declensions of triangles within the circle lead naturally from 1 to 3 to 6, from Monad to Triad to Hexad. Islamic patterns based on the Hexagon become components of architectural fantasies, suspended and celebrated within the criss-crossing of truss beams, the rhythmical chopping of diagonal trusses experienced driving north on the Bay Bridge, expecting to see in the strobing of sunlight and shadow some geometric epiphany suspended against the sky, a series of atomic mandalas, hexagons connecting the centers of six close-packed circles dancing around a seventh in the center. This figure of seven interlocking circles, known as the Seed of Life, is derived from a larger design of 19 circles known as the Flower of Life, a design found carved into the site of an ancient mystery school, the Osirion Temple Complex near Luxor, Egypt. Produced by the simplest of means with a compass, this figure provides the coordinates of the morphogenetic patterns for each of the 5 solids (tetrahedron, octahedron, hexahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron) described by Plato in the Timaeus. The 7-circle Seed of Life is the heart of the Flower of Life and may be read as a geometric symbol of the first expansions of consciousness from the space of a single sphere (ovum) into the primal volumes created by the first mitotic divisions.
The heroic gesture of the bridge inspiring temple-like visions: the hexagram star, the Seal of Solomon, the Shield of David, the Mark of Vishnu, signifying the overlap and integration of energies from the Earth below met by energies from the sky and beyond. The power of 3 and 6 and 12 spreads out filling space with ordered structure.
FOUR
Within the alchemical vessel another number is being born, the number of material manifestation itself, the mandalic magic of Four. Luminous turquoise squares are held like glowing diamonds. Golden squares spin in quaternary rhythm on harmonic declension frames that maintain a root-two geometry of generation.
Then figures like communications satellites with four spiky tetrahedral antennae appear at the center of radial fans of circuit bifurcations going from 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 to 64 to 128 to 256, a geometric progression toward a hypothetically infinite number of branch points around the circumference of the mandalic disc. The painstakingly detailed sand mandalas of the Tibetan Buddhists are meant to broadcast a benign and protective influence from their center in the monastery out over the surrounding mountains and villages, even to the whole world. These sand mandalas are also the receivers of visiting ghosts, spirits, and deities, tuned as they were created by the ritual chanting of magic syllables. Geotron imagines a technical structure homologous to a Tibetan mandala receiving and broadcasting to the four corners of the Earth.
Information dances through circuits laid out on a regular square grid. It is a world of dancing dots, shifting clusters of light representing the technological mimicry of synaptic junctures in communication matrices, internet hubs, the information infrastructure of the technosphere. Hardwired and wireless, the air dense with signals, rays, particles, waves, coded messages from regions of romantically imagined higher intelligence.
In the desert, illuminated by moonlight, we see the ruins of three giant astronomy dishes, lonely outposts gathering for decades, even centuries, data from the cosmos, hoping to decipher a pattern, recognize a signal, somehow receive that
which is beyond what we know, that which is perhaps beyond our comprehension.
The effort, the undertaking spans lifetimes. The collected data is stored in spheres of cultured liquid crystal in symbiotic relationship to Class V retroviruses employed as liminal, semi-living design elements. These memory spheres are held magnetically suspended in lattice arrays in metal trees where periodically there are spontaneous electric discharges between clusters of spheres undergoing resonance affinities of memory content. This electric discharge between spheres involves also the affect of the immediately surrounding atmosphere, storm conditions, and dynamic currents in the Earth. There can be no hard-wired exit/entrance path or hard contact between memory spheres and the outside world. Information can only be retrieved by telepathic sensitives in precise ritual ceremonies.
FIVE
Data is also processed in octave groups of seven memory spheres that diminish in size according to the Fibonacci series and are held in spiral frames at the right angle junctures of a segmented Golden Spiral folding in on itself. The Golden
Spiral is generated from the powers of the number Five. Each step down the spiral, each jump to the next smaller sphere represents a movement into another world or cosmos in a nested set of cosmoses each with its own laws and peculiarities. The Spiral Frame is an abstract symbol of the Ray of Creation through scales of involutionary manifestation, and it is at the same time a symbol of evolutionary return to the source, of aspiration, and the higher puberties possible in man.
The contents of a Golden Spiral Octave Group of Memory Spheres are assimilated in ceremonies of somatic meditation and ecstatic dancing. Connecting currents cascade repeatedly and rhythmically down the spiral. The aspirant must feel the spin from within, the history of his/her own embryonic spiral unfolding, the memory of oneself as a conscious energy system whirling into configuration along spiral lines of force, along a spiral path of transformation. The music generated with Spiral Frames for ceremonial dances stimulates the cochlea, the spiral structure of the inner ear, in a unique way. Full instrumentation is a spatial cascade of ten Spiral Frames covering the ten octaves of human hearing. The ecstasy of the dance is produced by entrainment into higher vibrational states in which structures and energy systems above and below our scale of manifestation can be felt. It is a dancing to the heterodyne beat between the frequencies of the worlds.
Mirror pairs of Spiral Frames acknowledge the compulsion to find symmetry between the worlds: matter and anti-matter, electron and positron, hot and cold, hard and soft. Phase One of Geotron is an environment of pure geometry and color. Neither forms from Nature nor images of man are included in this phase of the world of Geotron even though the geometric code presented in Geotron’s architecture and icons are found throughout Nature, even in the rich broken symmetries of chaos. In the same way the geometric logic of a pentagram generates copies of itself on different scales, each small part of a turbulent system in Nature turns out to be a model of the whole and can be described mathematically by self-replicating formulas. Geotron is a temple for yantric meditation.
The mirror pairs of Spiral Frames open upon Pentagram Towers holding five memory spheres and emblazoned with two Star Pentagrams. Beyond is a powerful declension of Pentagons and Star Pentagrams.
SIX
From the dynamic, self-replicating gestures of Five to the regular, orderly space-filling structure of six. From the five to the six pointed star. Overlapping, interlacing circles intersect at hexagon points. Six-pointed stars whirl off space-
filling Islamic zigzags. Two triangles, one from below and one from above, meet and overlap. Above meets below, creating a zone of integration. Integration is expressed on the center screen by a scintillating, twelve-division mandala set with hexagonal gems.
While pentagonal symmetry is found only in living systems, the power of Six carries across kingdoms, linking organic and inorganic. It arranges the close packing of molecules in crystals, bloodcells, and the structure of honeycombs. Carbon, the key element of life, is composed of six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons and was assembled in the centers of stars.
The Kingdoms are a mystical continuum; organic arises from inorganic. The boundaries are not sharp but overlapping. The consciousness that sings in us disappears downward into the sentient depths of matter and opens outward to the vast structures of the cosmos. Revelation occurs at the overlapping boundary between worlds.
SEVEN
Now appears the Dark Tower of Longing to Return. In the same desert where earlier we saw the ruins of giant radio dishes gathering data into memory spheres, we now see another mythic, techno-architectural form in the vernacular of Geotron, a tower with seven raised “arms”. (See footnote #1) The upraised arrays suggest technically an antenna or the kind of lighting arrays at the head of airport runways that bring pilots in, giving them a clear visualization of the path and point of contact.
Seven pairs of signal beams travel upward from the Earth toward the Heavens. The upward-expanding ripple of energy through the seven transmitter arms of the tower mimics the movement of energy and awareness through the seven subtle energy centers (chakras) of the human body-mind in the process of sadhana or self-transcendence.
As the ray arms continue to ripple, the Dark Tower transforms into a descending expansion of circles with vesica overlaps, a geometric construction that creates spatially the intervals of Pythagoras’ Dorian music scale. The musical intervals for Pythagoras were mathematical archetypes and expressions of the harmony of the cosmos, the “music of the spheres.” In Geotron, the intervals become an array that is broadcast first upward, then after the architecture has undergone a replication-transformation, broadcast outward to the left and right horizontally over the Earth. Twin arrays firing outward over land and sea like the flashing beacon of a lighthouse or an avionics transponder.
EIGHT
Now appears a set of geometric herms, pillars surmounted with seen-on-end octahedron heads. Trail markers at the edge of the horizon. Eight marks the end of an octave and the beginning of a new octave. From Do through Re, Mi,
Fa, So, La, Si to Do again: the same, but different. Eight signifies the Law of Octaves as the number of periodic renewal. From Do…to Do…to Do…One, Two, Four, Eight, the doubling effect, a relationship that can be found in the Periodic Table of Elements and in the structure of the human body. For example, twice around the base of the thumb = once around the wrist and twice around the wrist = once around the neck and twice around the neck = once around the waist. A cell divides into two cells by the eighth stage of mitosis. Eight also signifies the seed to seed generational rhythm of the life of species.
As a child taking piano lessons I used to sometimes sit at the grand piano in the quiet of the special room where it was kept and play from C to C to C…from one end of the keyboard to the other. Then I would play from D to D to D…and so on just feeling the power of this relationship within my body, not knowing why it fascinated me. We know our senses only perceive a narrow band of the electro-magnetic spectrum, a mere octave of light and a few octaves of sound from 20Hz to 20kHz, but something in us seeks to see, to hear, to imagine the octaves that are beyond this physical manifestation so that we look outward to the vast reaches of galactic space and inward upon the realm of small, smaller than the cellular structure of our bodies to the molecular, atomic, and subatomic “galaxies.” We appear to be situated in the middle of a “keyboard” that goes toward the tight, crystalline high vibrations of the atomic in one direction and toward the long, bassys, big-space vibrations in the other direction. Our mind naturally wants to bend this continuum into a circle—an alchemical opus circulatorium—so that the largest imaginable swallows the smallest imaginable in its mouth like the Uroboric Snake swallowing its tail in its mouth.
NINE
There appears on the Horizon of Nine an elegant and complex geometric symbol known as the Enneagram. The Enneagram is constructed upon a circle, symbol of the Monad, of Oneness, wholeness, and the flow of time in an eternally returning, cyclic process. Mythologically the circle may be thought of as Brahma, the Creator.
The circumference of the circle is marked into nine points. A triangle, formed by connecting points 3, 6, and 9, derives from the powers of the number 3 (1/3 = 0.333, 2/3 = 0.666, and 3/3 = 0.999). The Triangle within the circle of the Enneagram is an image of the Logos at work in the apparent completeness of each organism, each plant, and each cosmos. Mythologically the Triangle may be thought of as Shiva the Destroyer who makes the new possible.
Another figure within the Enneagram circle is formed by connecting the remaining points in the order of 142857, a sequence derived from the powers of the number 7 (1/7 = 142857142857…). The periodic dance of the inner lines is a process of assimilation, control, computation, and integration. Mythologically the figure of the inner lines may be thought of a Vishnu the Preserver who dreams and weaves in the eternal present cohesions of memories and anticipations.
Progressing around the circle represents movement through an octave of development with the points of the Triangle at 3 and 6 representing “shock points” where the contained cycle of development is open to influences from without, to another process, to higher intelligence. The Triangle “drives” the wheel through great octaves of development as well as the innumerable wheels within wheels that are part of a great development.
New octaves of development initiated at shock points overlay the older octaves. Each new octave arises out of and builds on the previous octave although the development in successive octaves is of a different kind and order. The structure of the Enneagram models the dynamic of complex and layered world processes and events that encompass our own lives and actions. This includes the whole ecology of digestive and metabolic processes, the exchanges of material, energy, and information. The symbol of the Enneagram becomes a way to approach the mystery of where we came from and where we are going.
Thus we may contemplate three great octaves of development: the Biosphere, the Technoshpere, and the Noosphere. The first octave, the Biosphere, the arising of organic life and the development of various biomes began at least 3.8 billion years before man appeared. The first shock point at 3 marks the beginning of the rise of technology within the biosphere, the development of the second octave of the Technosphere. The material and energy generated by the biosphere becomes increasingly diverted into the human realm, bypassing the recycling loops that keep complex ecosystems alive. Many species have been eliminated and crisis approaches.
The Enneagram offers a third octave of development, the Noosphere, as the beginning of a harmonious resolution by the appearance beyond point 6 of a new type of knowledgeable mind open to higher intelligence and the maturation of the planet into a Conscious Being.
No verbal explication of the symbol of the Enneagram can exhaust its meaning and if it is reduced completely to verbal explanation, it ceases to function as a symbol. Because the symbol is a tool for contemplation of a mystery, the mystery of a process that is vast but includes our world, our individual lives, this moment and all moments with the openings, the hazards of decision, the uncertainties that are part of the dance between symmetry and the broken symmetries of chaos.
The Enneagram symbol and the progression of geometric symbols leading up to it are not colorless illustrations of intellectual concepts. In fact, the intensity of color in Geotron is vital to its felt transmission; the chords of color are Geotron’s visual music, one link between the concepts of number and sensation. I believe as the artist/Theosophist Kandinsky did that a philosophical system must be transmitted through the senses.
The final image of the Enneagram in Geotron is a kind of hyper-Enneagram in which the Triangle of the Logos emerges through a declension of triangles and the outer circle seems to radiate a limitless number of octaves of development.
TEN
Geotron progresses from the hyper-Enneagram to a mandalic, multi-dimensional Tree of Life, an arrangement of circles representing the “words” or Sefirot, the “potencies” by which the Divine manifests in visible form. The traditional Tree of Life, an arrangement of 10 circles, is the principle geometric symbol of the Cabala, the ancient system of mystical Judaism. The Unknowable God can only be known by these 10 lights or emanations, the configuring manifestations that are the cosmic creating process. The 32 paths or branches connecting the circles correspond to the 32 letters of the ancient Hebrew alphabet. 32 paths of descent + 32 paths of ascent = 64 stages of transformation (corresponding to the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching and the 64, 6-part codons or genetic “words” of the DNA genetic code. Students of the Cabala through deep contemplation of the 10 numbers and the alphabet would come to know the world and our deeper self, both at one with the Divine Source.
The Tree of Life is flanked by two pairs of upraised palms displaying 10 digits, a traditional symbol of the cosmos in its entirety, including man and the very individual whose palms are upraised in this Gnostic gesture. The patterns of lines on an individual’s palms are as unique to that individual as the whorls of fingerprints. The art of palmistry identifies the characteristic lines and intersection points. In Geotron, a web of lines are drawn through selected palmistry points and extended out of the frame to continue their journey through the immensities of space. One might imagine that if space were curved, the ends of these lines would eventually meet, or failing to meet, would continue to spin the mysterious form of the Cosmos. Rhythmically shifting patterns of cosmic lines intersect the palm points, an affirmation of the identity between the body of man and the body of the cosmos.
The final set of lines converges toward a 10-pointed star between the palms as all images slowly fade to black.
Will Cloughley