On Earth as It Is in Heaven
Most Art is seen. True Art is entered.
“Beauty will Save the World” — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Three figures sit around a table, their bodies inclined toward one another, in communion around a shared cup. At first glance, the work feels flat. It is painted in reverse perspective, and thus, all lines converge, not at the horizon, but, instead, they point to you, the viewer. The longer you look, the less it feels like you are observing a scene and the more it feels like you are being drawn into it. Its stillness is not static but inviting; expectant. Then you notice the negative space between the three figures — it forms the outline of a chalice: The trio is the cup.
And suddenly, you realize you are the fourth person at the table and are being invited to drink from this sacred cup of Divine Love and Beauty. You are being invited to commune with the Holy Trinity — invited to sit at the table, as an equal, and drink.
This is the Trinity Icon, often called the greatest icon ever painted, and it was never meant to be merely seen because, unlike an image, an icon contains power. An icon empowers us to transport ourselves into a deeper reality — it bestows us with the power to leave the shadowlands of outer darkness and enter the true reality of inner light.
Images can be seen, but icons are known. Seeing may be believing, but beliefs are often false; beliefs are limiting. Knowing is always true and unlimited.
If you have an image on your computer’s desktop, you can click it all you want, but it will never be more than an image. However, if you click an icon on your desktop, what happens?
It turns out that the icon isn’t just an image but is instead a wondrous doorway that opens up into a deeper reality of a full application, a rich experience that allows you to use your creativity to accomplish something, to experience something, or to enter another world.
Beauty does that for us in the real world, transporting us to the more real kingdom of The Mystery that hides in plain sight behind all. And every true work of Art – art that depicts beauty – has the power to serve as an icon.
There are many mystery schools and mystic traditions in the world that share esoteric knowledge and practices with initiates — once the initiate has properly prepared himself. These practices point the way to dissolving the false self and entering into the true reality of The Mystery. Art, through Beauty, represents what I call The Mystery School of the Aesthetic.
When you enter into the “heavenly mysteries,” you, as an artist, are called to come back and express what you’ve experienced. True Art honors the first rule of the Mystery schools: As above, so below; on earth as it is in heaven.
Natural creation, under the hand of The Divine, expresses certain “heavenly” elements of beauty at all scales: The Fibonacci sequence of numbers where each number is the sum of the previous two numbers. The Golden Ratio, phi, which is approximately 1.618 and is related in interesting ways to the Fibonacci sequence. We find pi (~22/7) appearing again and again throughout nature. This is not mere coincidence. Simply observing nature, we see symmetry, balance, proportion, spirals, fractals. We see order. We see complexity. We see the logos. We see beauty. And, importantly, as the universe evolves, these beautiful truths are increasing.
Through these, and other, repeating elements of beauty, nature whispers something of the Heavenly mysteries and these elements tell us something about the nature of creation. Nature points to heaven. It is called nature because it reflects heaven’s nature. And the nature of heaven is also the nature of our soul. So too, should our Art reflect these beautiful, mysterious Truths. Our Art contributes to the charge, given around another table with a shared cup — a charge to build the new earth: on earth as it is in heaven.
Beauty reveals the ultimate Truth because Beauty is the ultimate Truth. And your Art is part of it.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. — Keats
The themes in this piece are the same ideas I explore in my forthcoming book, The Sovereign Artist. If that is of interest to you, please click here to join the waitlist.
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