On arriving at the beautiful estate, it’s not immediately clear where to start. A guy comes over, and offers to show us around. It seems like he’s the caretaker, though his role isn’t exactly clear.

He takes us on the most incredible journey, with the most incredible stories, all told with this low-key, extremely expansive understanding and curiosity for all aspects of performance – and what performance does.

The Project

The owner, a businessman from Java, has taken it on himself to preserve the traditional masks from the village performances in his own island. This grew to include other Islands in Indonesia.

Then, like collections do, it grew beyond Indonesian masks – Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, African, Northern and Southern European, and South American masks are all represented here; a global array of faces worn on top of faces, for all manner of performances, celebrations and rituals.

Many traditions, but, ultimately representing several general areas of concern – protecting people, culture and mythogenesis; bringing about good harvests or hunting; maintaining rapport or protection with the spirit world; popular entertainment with a throughline of cultural instruction and values. Core human concerns.

The scope of the mission – the preservation of a myriad of old methods of cultural storytelling, performance and festival is utterly inspiring – as is its masterful execution.

The best thing about the place is the lack of written explanation – the caretaker weaves explanations and examples about some of the many exhibits into his narrative, though for the rest, we’re left to make up our own minds about what things are, or just wonder. It’s remarkable how refreshing this is.

The empty eyes of the masks ask a very simple question, unspoken but clear:

“What story speaks through you? Or are you just another hungry ghost?”

The Puppets

In addition to masks, the museum has a collection of thousands of puppets. The core of the collection – that we see, at least – is of the traditional Indonesian shadow puppets.

In Indonesia, the art form of shadow puppetry has been an important channel of communication and news, as well as instruction in the myths and cultural stories. With the widespread availability of television, internet and mobile phones, the instances of traveling puppeteers delivering public health announcements or political commentary has decreased, but they still broadcast performances on state television ,and there are still frequent performances.

As with the other exhibits, this one has also grown – a world of puppets are on display, showing dazzling variation within a singular field of human activity.

The Buildings

All of the masks and puppets are housed in traditional buildings disassembled from Java, transported and reconstructed on the site.

Apparently, urban development, intensification and the desire for The New is pushing out these intricately-carved masterpieces. The old stuff is out of favour, so the museum finds them, buys them, and brings them here.

Among the many surprises Bali has is how enveloping the natural landscape is – though the place is only 20 years or so old, it looks as though the estate at the edge of the forest has been there for centuries. The air here is thick and sweet with spirit and story.

The location itself is a massive testament and masterclass case study in effective cultural preservation and transmission.

This remarkable place is holy ground – a deeply organic storehouse for deceptions that teach; barriers purposely put up to mediate and connect.

#travel

Beyond them, the Pyramid complex of Cheops, the Sphinx, and the desert. This is what we came here for.

Giza is hard work.

The food is not great, the people working in the tourist areas are pushy. Everyone gives earnest warnings about all the scammers in the area, then offers an upsell, unique experience, or special deal.

How the whole situation is managed is, as we come to expect of mostly everything in Egypt, both highly proscribed and wonderfully anarchic at the same time. The rules always apply, except sometimes, but there is always some sort of accommodation that can be reached.

As tourists, we’re apparently confined to a specific area, and warned to stay inside it, for our own safety. There are checkpoints with armed police, but they seem focused more on smoking and drinking beverages in little cups than us.

The streets are full of touts selling somewhat-satisfactory experiences to wide-eyed tourists (like us) seeking the romance and mystery of Old Egypt. A lot of history has happened since then, though.

Like, they’re predominantly Muslim, for starters. This is like asking an Italian Christian to give a complete and accurate retelling of the glories of the Pagan Roman religion, or a modern New Yorker about the worldview of the various Iroquois tribes. They’re different people, now.

All the guides are accredited, which also seems to come with a certain type of official narrative.

Our wonderful, patient guide (possibly a wizard)

Over the course of our adventures, our excellent but world-weary guide, Johnny, gets to know us. He cracks hilarious and ribald jokes and smokes.

As he comes to accept we’re sincere seekers of great truths, or at least, greater understanding, he gives us a more academic and info-rich account of the many monuments and artifacts we are ushered past. The incredible Pyramid complex, the Sphinx, the many breathtaking items at the Cairo Museum.

Still, he’ll not entertain any of our wilder speculations or lines of questioning. Not a bar of of it.

Neither the Pharaohs nor the Egyptian Pantheon were aliens. The pyramid builders used manpower, rollers, pulleys, block and tackle, not magical harmonic resonance to move the massive stones. The structures were monumental tombs for kings, not some kind of trans-temporal or teleportation gateways to other lands or dimensions. Mention of Atlantis gets a shrug.

The souls of the Pharaohs, transformed into birds with human faces, were not eternally flying around in the desert, hungry, homeless and enraged, after their magically-warded bodies and gold death masks had been removed and sold or stored in museums.

Through all, Johnny brackets the archeological and historical storytelling with warnings to be careful of the many scammers who would not hesitate to take all our money.

We still got caught, though. We tell him the ticket-check guy inside the great pyramid of Cheops took us through a “ritual” to draw on the power of the ancient stones to make wishes come true (for a tip; even the staff are running a hustle).

Our exasperated guide looks at the group, then dramatically draws deeply on his cigarette, and adopts the look of an inscrutable occult researcher. The mood darkens. He asks us all if we were sure that our souls had not been trapped and bound by the dark magicks of forgotten Pharaonic necrotechnology. He performs this with a masterful intensity. It was a great move.

I get the sense he knows far more than he tells. He has a very impressive and detailed knowledge and recollection. I begin framing up how to ask if had been involved in these events himself; perhaps due to alchemical life-extension techniques, or deep initiation into secret Orphidian mystery cults, but decide against it. We’ve got a long drive back and this could make things awkward.

Giza is hard work, and probably made harder by the centuries-long procession of idiot foreigners turning the local culture into a service centre to access dreams of a lost, deeper, more mystical past.

It’s not to say unsolved mysteries are not there, and it’s not a worthwhile place to visit. But, like any trip into the Desert, be prepared.

#travel

Going through the Old World has recapitulated so many parts of my own development. All the facts learned in the classical studies classroom are attached to memories of growing up on a far edge of the world.

Athens, the famed city of the philosophers, and so much history, lends itself to these sorts of wankish ruminations.

Walking paths up the hills of the Acropolis for the first time, recognising the names of the shrines and turns, because they were a part of me. Education gave me an escape from a not-great youth, and this has escape led, eventually, here.

In the National Archeological Museum, facing the deathmask of Agamemnon, so called at least – an artifact signifying the point where myth and actual, material history meet. This was a myth, until it wasn't: Heinrich Schielman uncovered it as part of the funeral hoard in Mycenae, in 1876.

Facing the mask of a mighty, mythically cucked king, whose wife's elopement triggered the reckoning of Troy. The details don't exactly match, but they don't always need to when spinning a yarn this epic.

So, if this is real, or real enough, what else is?

Closing loops opened by a Classical education

So much of this trip felt like closing some sort of esoteric loop, built of time and text.

Shards of memory, polished smooth as they were handed down from impassioned high school teachers to eager students. No-one had seen what they were talking about, but all were invested in the majesty and thumotic vitality of these stories.

These lessons were a gift that opened up this world of old, cold stone and metal, decades later.

Through them, I could appreciate the form and function of the selection of kraters, the large vessels for mixing wine with water; ancient Greek proto-punchbowls.

Or entertain possible implications and intentions for metal votive figurines and other objects recovered from temple sites.

Or note the aesthetic development in particular sculptures I had only seen in scratchy reproductions.

Or admire the gear from Neoplatonic sage Proclus' home altar, in the end game of that phase of Greek paganism. The knife he used to sacrifice a pig; the mugs the celebrants chucked into the pit, after they shared wine and drank to the gods.

As something of an appreciator of both this line of thinking and of drinking parties with my friends, there was an immediate trans-temporal fistbump moment.

Classics and bold innovation

Nearby, at a bar I didn't catch the name of, some madmen and women have seized on and adapted another mystery tradition, replete with secret recipes, mythic tales and journeys, somehow in permanent, soft focus twilight: Tiki cocktails.

They've remixed tiki drinks and made them Greek ingredients. While initially highly skeptical, I can't go past a zombie.

It's one of the classic recipes of the genre, a potent mix of several rums, exotic ingredients like falernum, absinthe and grapefruit juice. It takes serious balls to mess with this – let alone substitute in and rebalance it to include ouzo.

But, the way they did it, it actually works, and is delicious. Not the same, but a solid homage, certainly.

Sometimes, you can remix the classics. But you have to know where you're coming from.

Mad, bad and dangerous to know

A few blocks away is a statue erected to the Byron as a warrior poet who came to aid the Greeks in their war for independence against the Turks in the 1820s. He died in Greece – of fever and not in battle – and is honoured as a hero here.

Seeing the monument to this notorious adventurer closed another loop I did not know was open – his was one of the first books of poetry I got, during my fumbling self-education; he seemed like a badass who scored a lot of chicks, and this was a strong recommendation at the time.

Personal experience is hard, and necessary

Travel like this is hard; shattering the comfortable context of safe everyday life, shaking it to pieces. Being surprised at the distance between what you think you know and what these places are actually like.

Also: handling the attendant hypervigilance, mood swings and untethered ideas this all provokes. As a wise and well-travelled old head (now dead) once said, reality checks don't bounce.

It's humbling, freeing and tough to replace old, comfortable hand-me-downs with new, very personal experiences.

But, ultimately, trials like these are what forge souls and make them shine bright, reflected through time.

Our potential, and how we reify this, is all we have, and what we are measured by.

#travel #myth

The sensuous curve of the long waterfront is a delightful walk; not even the starving, fornicating stray cats or the constant pestering horse-and-cart touts detract overly from this lovely seaside stroll.

The place does feel different from the more inland parts of Egypt, somehow – whether the gentle Mediterranean breezes, or the faint echoes of its legendary founding and subsequent cosmopolitanism seems unclear.

A Temple of Knowledge

The Library – Bibliotheca Alexandrina – is a magnificent building, and one of the architectural highlights. Something about the place feels deeply Archeofuturist, and not in a shitty low-resolution “despise sports, love wheatfields” kind of way. The structure realises a purity of vision. This is rare these days.

Inside – the hundreds of thousand of books, in a wide range of languages. The reading room is incredible, also, and features a series of steps leading downwards, into a well, providing progressively quieter and more secreted spots for deep thinking and inquiry.

In the more open areas, there are literacy-related treasures on display – printing presses and calendaring machines of historical or technological note; tapestries embroidered with scriptures, and calligraphy; mastheads and assorted notebooks from famous local publishing houses.

The Internet Archive has servers there, too – banks upon banks of servers on display, guarding the memory of the internet. It was a wonderful thing to see this seamless integration into this newest information age, in this special place.

Ancient Rituals

A day later, preparing to leave this city, in a moment of quiet reflection, I perform the Rite of the Headless One.

I like the early form of the ritual from The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: PGM V. 96-172, otherwise called The Stele of Jeu the hieroglyphist. A key figure in the grimoire revival, Jake Stratton Kent, called it “the single most important ritual in modern magic”, in his provocative and useful chapbook The Headless One.

Performing this short ritual here seems fitting – it was from this place, and, though in translation, the intent is there and the words still have power. The familiar feeling of momentous connection grows, as I say these beautiful words, but it hits even harder and deeper somehow.

I flap around for a while afterwards, enjoying the dis-integration and return to familiar awareness, slipping back into the usual clown costume I live in, with all its ridiculous, earnest concerns.

The Uber driver arrives – we found taking Egyptian Ubers between cities is the easiest and least-complicated way of getting around – and we begin our drive back to Cairo.

Egyptian drivers are exceptional, and have a mechanical proprioception attuned to a degree I’ve never seen before. They also drive fast, especially on the broad, straight desert roads connecting the cities.

Desert Rains

We’re out in the desert when the rain begins. Torrential – the heaviest we’ve encountered anywhere in our travels so far, and in the middle of the Egyptian desert, of all places.

Part of me questions our driver’s wet-weather driving experience. Another part immediately offers reassurance: we wanted proof, experience, knowledge. A story. You’ve got it.

The particular line from the third part of the ritual I performed earlier is booming, repeating over and over now. This is when the Magician joins with, and is empowered by, the Headless One. These words, now heavy with cosmic importance, are absolutely obvious, natural, inescapable:

“My sweat falls upon the Earth as Rain, that it may inseminate it.”

This magic is as real as it gets. And it is beautiful.

#travel #myth #ritual

So: we’re looking for the palace of the Doge, to prepare for a trip the next day.

Venice is a disorienting braid of fascinating streets packed with fascinating distractions; when moving down lanes running between medieval buildings. This is a subtle city, and it’s easy to get lost.

Most of the places that are open in the off-season sell near-identical items – touristic brick-a-brac for livelaughlovers hunting souvenirs: carnival masks, the same Murano glass objects, teeshirts with the city's winged lion on it. Also many types of feather quills and engravable stamps for sealing letters, for some reason. I’m not sure anyone ever needed these things in the available quantities.

Occasionally though – there is a really unique store or exhibit that leaves a mark.

We find the Doge's Palace just after dusk. My wife is not overly impressed. I think it's OK, though more for the momentous conversations that took place inside it, then its architectural grandeur. Beside it, an advertising pull-up, with words that trigger imagination – malefica, inquisition, stregheria, torture. The vibe intensifies; it is so immaculate, it almost has its own ominous theme music.

We go inside.

On the second floor of this ancient building, we find the former facilities that housed the Night Lords of Venice – the secret court that prosecuted witches, apostates, heretics and atheists. The museum oddly focuses on torturing witches.

The first thing I notice is some of the gear from this supposedly historic and educational exhibition is still used today, in some of the spicier BDSM scenes. The exhibits say they’re replicas of the originals.

Secrets of Solomon: A Witch’s Handbook

The day before finding this place, I’d been rereading Secrets of Solomon or The Art Rabidmadar (Clavicula Salomonis de Secretis), Joseph H. Peterson’s excellent critical edition of this curious grimoire. Allegedly belonging to Leonardo Longo and Francesco Viola, and discussed during their interrogation in these same rooms, it features the spirit families of the mighty Grimorium Verum, and detailed guidance on talisman production. It also features a series of experiments of cosmic scope: the means of contacting the star demons known as the Almathai.

It’s a powerful work, and one worth exploring in detail – a thought shared by Witchfather Gerald Gardner, whose library provided one of the manuscripts that went into Peterson’s edition.

Back in Venice, in the rooms that Longo and Violo may have appealed, argued and pleaded for their freedom and lives. The meeting hall is on the second floor. Upstairs, on the third floor, there are dungeons. Curious to find upstairs dungeons – though I guess the Night Lords were old boys, who perhaps didn't like climbing the stairs when they didn't have to.

We're pushing on closing time, so move perhaps too quickly; it feels damp, dark and tortured here. We burst into a cell with a bed in it, and little else but the plastinated body of a woman, with a short summary “Female witch awaiting sentencing” (or something to this effect).

Plastination is a process of using resins to preserve corpses. The room has a cloying cold feeling, and both of us feel sick almost immediately, and don't linger.

This one seemed incongruous – like it was included purely to display the broken body of a tortured witch awaiting capital punishment.

She was quite an attractive woman, too, from the brief glimpse I stole, before realising what was before me, and the visceral reaction to the spectacle taking hold.

I left that room rapidly. Everyone who could left rapidly. It was a bit to take in, and the walls seemed stained with the residue left by the drama of the interrogations.

Not a great time, but a remarkable one, and one worth remembering. Made more so by the serendipitous stumbling across the actual site where these men, Longo and Violo, and many others, were investigated and tried.

It is their path, and in their footsteps, we tread, in a tricksy half-light – the hero’s path, of curiosity, adventure, unsanctioned spiritual inquiries and the burning desire to learn and know more, whatever the cost.

#travel #witchcraft #grimoires

Initially, the Minoans built and used this same facility; then the Egyptians. The Venetians expanded and developed it further, as the tides of empire and the Mandate of Heaven shifted to the ones most worthy to bear it. Now, It has a a number of excellent restaurants and a marina with pleasure boats gently testing their moorings.

We ordered breakfast. My lovely wife, more reasonable and sensible in eating than I, got a generous meal of eggs and bacon. It came with a side of avocado and an elegant and edible fruit garnish; what constitutes a good cafe breakfast and a digestible amount of food pretty much anywhere in the world. What a normal human would eat for the first meal of a new day.

I ordered the “Cretan Breakfast”.

I should have known a people who historically vaulted bulls as an apparent demonstration of vitality and domination of nature, invented writing and built mazes to contain cursed and monstrous members of their royal family would apply the “fuck around, find out” rule.

Our meals arrive, delivered by a waitress who was one of those arrestingly attractive, smart, cool people that abound in the areas surrounding the Mediterranean sea. The Argonautica was an accurate travelogue, if you look at things with the right attitude.

The arrival of meal drew states and doubtful looks from the nearby tables.

Three tiers of local delicacies, in massive portions. Slabs of cheese, bowls of honey, some sort of frittata. Overflowing fruit. Near half a litre of yoghurt. Eggs, bacon, fish. Some sort of caramel coffee cake. Slabs of bread.

I get a beer and another coffee. It's going to be a minute, to get through this.

I start working my way through this – tactically, carefully; saving the heavy, bland carbs til last, as learned from a master of competitive eating, the guy from YouTube channel Beard vs Food.

It's hard going. There is a lot of food.

During this, my wife comments to another waiter, another one of those improbably attractive people, apparently a waiter.

He's jacked, broad and muscular, tastefully tattooed. Sharply barbered to accentuate a great bone structure.

Basically, he looks like a male model with a double bodyweight bench, and a rakish boredom that seems at odds with the indignity of waiting tables. He didn't actually seem to do any work, just hang out in an apron and perfectly-fitting capris and a tight white shirt and lure in passing tourists.

He seemed out of time, if not out of place; more the type who would jump out of a trireme to storm a city, or join a mercenary army on some desperate and ill-starred venture, and return to tell the tale.

His response to my wife was perfect.

“It's a lot of food. Most people can't finish it.”

Then, a devastating pause. The tumult recedes. A singular moment blooms, and we're in the Mythic, outside the circles of time.

“I can eat it, no problem.”

The harbour stills, as the Challenge is given.

It is noted by the Gods, daemons and spirits. The genii loci and the dead, hungry and restless and heroic both.

There is only one Challenge; the only difference is the intensity.

This was on the lighter end of the scale, but still, the rituals must be observed.

I steel myself and pick up my fork for a renewed assault. In time, the three levels of the tower of Crete, conquered.

I can eat this, no problem, too.

A sizable tip left, for ritual services performed and illumination received.

We walk, slowly, out onto the flagstones of the ancient harbour that has received so many adventurers, and proceed out to the lighthouse, and on with the sightseeing.

It's a hot day, but we can take it.

After the stupid story, the tangential point

That the Age of Heroes has passed and is over is the first lie they sold us.

The vector of heroic action is always available.

Anyone can become a hero, by pursuing heroic action. We can all steal the fire from Heaven, though most will not in any meaningful or memorable sense.

A true challenge – given and received – is a transcendental experience. It contacts Potential, and (if successfully negotiated) reconfigures Pattern.

It's not a real challenge if you can't fail.

Heroism is a form of soul building. As such, this could confer a means of immortality.

Several ancient Greek sources relay that the souls of the Glorious Dead – of heroes – shine bright and distinct in the underworld, while those of the nameless and unremarkable dead are flirting, indistinct, of no consequence.

The inference is clear: what you do in this life matters. You become someone worth remembering, or you're a mote of dust in the Hellrealm.

#travel

This delighted her (and I) no end.

As we passed the bench where Robin Williams gave that homily on direct experience to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting (it has become a bit of a hotspot; the lake was empty, with work underway to renovate it for next spring, but the seat was there. There is some sort of abstruse metaphor here).

She was able to call squirrels, and they came. It was the most remarkable thing. I’m not sure if anyone can do this; no one else we saw was trying. Some other dude nearby was waving a leaf in one hand, and aiming his camera with the other, but the squirrel clearly saw him for an ill-intentioned hack, so was appropriately wary.

Whether these delightful little creatures are largely tame and do this for everyone didn’t change the fact that she called and they came.

So, among the many things we learned while on our adventure: my wife can talk to squirrels.

#travel

It's an affecting site – especially when you look slightly more into the story. Further details that have since emerged that the allegations, trials and murders showed once again, the motives were more upon the earth, rather than under it.

One young accuser, Ann Putnam, accused over 60 people. Her father would buy their land at cut-rate prices; the veritable fire sale.

It highlights the error of attributing to devils what people are perfectly capable of doing for, or to, themselves.

This memorial stands in stark contrast to the mid-century, highly affected gropings towards some “witchiness”; that weird American expression that gets tangled up with feminism, social issues and various flavours of New Thought. This is fine, as far as it goes – but you have to ask where the other bits are; the flying ointments, Sabbats, shapeshifting, the arrangements with tutelary spirits. All the actual magical bits, where things go bump in the night.

Beyond this, what is most curious about this is just how sexless, safe and neutered the end result is. It all seems very ... confected.

A wild quest; illicit love, pirate gold and lost history

A few minutes away, near the Salem seaside, there’s a museum bearing testament to something that seems too outrageous to be true – and the hoard of pirate treasure to prove it.

An underwater archeologist and treasure-hunter named Barry Clifford weathered ridicule for years, hunting for a rumoured lost pirate ship he heard about as a boy: the Wydah.

Clifford was possessed by the story of the captured slave-transport ship, which had been turned to the pursuit of extra-legal income gathering activities by a gathering of rogues and rapscallions in the early 1700s.

The ship, as a so-called republic of the sea, was governed by the egalitarian, libertarian values of “the articles”, the code which each sailor would swear to uphold. The ship was captained by the dashing Sam Bellamy, who turned to piracy for love – specifically, the love of Maria Hallett.

After a stellar career as a pirate captain, Bellamy was apparently heading around the Massachusetts coastline.

About this time, Maria was branded “the Witch of Wellfleet”, apparently due to being seen howling, pleading and cursing on the beach.

The god-fearing locals thought she was communicating with the devils of storm and sea; they did not know that her pirate love, and his crew of free men, were sailing through ship-wrecking seas to meet her. They also did not know she was with child.

Bellamy’s ship, laden with a legendary horde of reallocated Spanish gold, was lost that night; those who didn’t drown were captured and hung. The body of Sam Bellamy was never found. Maria Hallett apparently gave birth to a boy, though never revealed who the father was.

Sometime after, she and the child also disappeared. Another mystery – no one knows where she went, or what happened next. There is a theory he survived, and they were reunited, and lived out their lives together – though this is just a tale; do the stories of pirates and witches get happy endings?

Three hundred years later, after a decades-long treasure hunt, Barry Clifford found the wreck, with 200,000 catalogued items – among which – in a story almost too fantastic, the hoard of the actual pirate treasure.

The exhibition deftly placed piracy in the context of the time, and tells these stories. It’s all there, including the treasure. It’s a wonderful, exciting place to visit, and so well done.

So, on the face of it, it seems Salem’s history of witchcraft is largely fabrication, misapprehension, and wilful ignorance, capitalised on with an evocative and high-valence PR exercise. Meanwhile, other stories, no less compelling, remain largely underexposed.

#travel #witchcraft #myth

The Medici Chapel in Florence reinforces this perspective: a magnificent structure to memorialise this most incredible bloodline.

The Hall of the Princes is magnificent, and well worth seeking out. It is personally challenging for the sheer audacity, of the balls of these guys. Truly, this is a place of the Glorious Dead.

Holy bones, in pretty boxes

It also houses and displays a mighty collection of bejeweled vessels, and their precious and macabre contents: a wide assortment of sainted finger, hip and arm bones. Seeing these relics of the all-too-human beholders of extreme spiritual insight was both humbling and challenging.

How do we remember our saints, now? Do we even have saints anymore? Does our culture have the vitality, commitment and belief in itself to produce them?

A sketchy scenario: Medici transhumanism?

Throughout, I couldn't help but notice the insistence the Medici line was extinct. It had the hallmarks of doth protesting too much; the official statement is given frequently, on almost every sign. I know enough about how messages are made true, or true enough; repetition legitimises, as YouTube odd-time-signature music magus Adam Neely often says.

Against better judgment, I do sometimes indulge in the filthy yoga of conspiratorial wrongthink; a habit picked up in wilder, more marginal days. Are the Medici extinct? Did they just… move, and open up under a different name? Or was something more twilight and curious taking place?

Basically: Did they find a way to radically sustain their lifespans? Clearly they were masters of the laws of the Iron Triangle, of time, resource and quality; as any project manager knows, it starts with you; the first project you manage is yourself.

These people were geniuses at bringing together the right elements to make apparently impossible things happen.

The pursuit of radical life extension has strong precedent; sages and princes have been working on this forever. Especially during the Renaissance, with the resurgence of Neoplatonism, developments in alchemy, and increased flow of texts and technologies between East and West.

One adjacent example is presented in Peter Mark Adams’ provocative work The Game of Saturn. He recasts the recently-resurfaced Sola Busca tarot as a coded initiatic tradition for directed metempsychosis, and suggests this was used for this purpose by the Venetian and Milanese elite about the same time.

It seems highly unlikely that the Medici – a family with a vast global network of intelligenciers and informers; those whose members recovered the works of Plato and Hermes Trismegistus; who revolutionised money and information transfer; who ignited a golden age of creativity and innovation – would be ignorant or uninterested in this or similar technologies, however conditional and sketchy they may be.

Or – perhaps the last in line were unable to keep up with the terms of their deal, or found a better one. Anna Maria Luisa de Medici was survived by no children, but did plan for the completion of the memorial to her glorious clan, as well as keeping their treasures within this most magnificent city.

A place of power: dream bigger

At any rate, the Medici Chapel is a testament as real and cold as the artfully worked stone, to the glory of these mighty princes.

It stands, a place of power that expands the spirit, and lifts the line of sight up, out and beyond. You can’t enter this place and not leave with an augmented sense of human potential. It calls you out: dream bigger.

#travel

Perhaps foremost of these – at least for me – it's a temple to the development of symbolic and representative realism.

This slammed into my awareness on actually seeing the things, with that rending force particular to occult insight: reality changed when Europeans learned to accurately represent three dimensions on a two-dimensional plane.

The explosive and transgressive nature of this cannot be understated.

I specifically noticed this, looking at the fingers of the paintings of Saints, mirroring their poses. I wanted to see if I could communicate with the powerful and evolved post-human entities accessed through their hagiographs, and draw on their power and guidance in exploring this city.

On trying to do this, I saw how the painter had attempted to paint closed hands, or pointing fingers.

Instead, another insight exploded, so utterly prosaic and “so what” now, in our global society of the image. Foreshortening was a development in seeing that permitted a whole new expression of idealism, and aesthetics – high fidelity, “as-if” visions, scenes that put you there, as a participant-observer.

Before this, someone had to tell you, or you had to read it (out loud – silent reading didn't become commonplace until much later, much less widespread literacy, or access to texts).

With this, anyone could see for themselves. When you can see for yourself, you create your own relationship, and interpretation.

Further, perspective permitted representational realism, and a grammar for this. From “as if” to “if/then”.

Creating a whole new domain to explore, develop, communicate and inhabit – one we're still exploring, and teaching our beautiful silicon golem-children to explore, too.

Summoning all manner of sublime force into an imaginal triangle: the Artist, the Artwork, and the Techniques by which it is created.

Pure, symbolic, visionary magic.

#travel