Prologue

The cosmos forged in 7 days
made by the Builder's Hand
Electron clouds to quasars vast
are moved by His Command
Whence the raw materials
or tools to shape these things?
Whence this Builder, grave and great
almighty King of kings?

Swarming, whirling, orbit dance
of all the outward part
The raging thrust of matter-stuff
around the Sacred Heart
Atom, cell, moon, planet, star
all guided 'round a focus
Whence the still and silent will
that binds them to their purpose?

The vortex whorls from zenith high
to nadir at the end
A gath'ring, all-compelling tide
in which all things descend
On tracks of formless, cosmic-code
move power, time, and space
Whence the latent, motive thought
that set these tracks in place?

Relentlessly evolving
ancient process of transition
Dust and stones and men and worlds
advance to their ambition
The ever-changing cosmos churns
as future falls to past
And long-enduring stars ferment
to elemental ash

Ghastly cosmic engine roars
a self-consuming beast
The universe itself, the flesh
upon which it will feast
Dragon's lust and fury burns
yet new life e'er will rise
The Fire-Thief defies
the beast to serve the Lotus Prize

The Grail-Seeker's art has wrought
these living, yearning gyres
E'er they fall to Chaos' Flame
yet Order e'er aspires
Whither goes His labors long
and wherefore was He sent?
Does e'en the Grail know the cause
of Parsival's Lament?

And yet, there is a deathless part
the never-changing laws
Eternal Beauty, Perfect Form
the First and Maiden Cause
The Lotus Throne e're waits below
the many Lords of Power
who know not they serve the Watcher's
deep, Immortal Flower

Hidden in the maelstrom
a dark tranquility
Annihilation, rapture, bliss
at Singularity
Immovable Nirvana, far
within the Grail Rings
O'er the last event horizon
where the LotusMaiden sings:

"The mighty hawk, aggressive, strong
and peaceful fost'ring dove
The burden of all suffering
and sweet embrace of love
The many lands to be explored
and frontiers e'er forbidden
The manifest that might be known
and secrets ever hidden

"The concrete forms of earth and sky
from dream idea grow
The body, just a slave savant
from mind, all freedoms flow
The ardent questions searching out
the answer beckons in
The restless seeds that venture forth
the womb that waits within

"So many things you children are
so like your parents too
He is hard and brutal Red
I am gentle Blue
Fear not all your torments, lost
in labyrinths alone
Seek your Joy, my precious ones
And find your way back home..."

The Mystery of Beauty
of harmony and rest
The Mystery of Longing
of gravity and quest
The Mystery of Nature
of life and death and pain
The Mystery of Woman
these things...are the same

Geometrodynamics

This is a dynamic image, with many elements involved in complex interaction. More complex still is the geometric landscape in which the action occurs. The large oval which contains the image is made of 4 different geometric motifs: the circle, the torus, the lotus, and a mysterious 4th form that dwells hidden within the others...

The circle is the most abundant of all forms in the cosmos; from the incomprehensibly vast (spherical galaxies, stars and worlds) to the incomprehensibly small (the atoms and perhaps the fundamental particles themselves), it is a zodiacal universe of interlocking clockwork wheels. The great ring of the horizon divides the world below from the heavens above. The circle is the most simple of all shapes - a radial line of rotation drawn around a single axis - and the shortest line that encloses the largest volume. It is simultaneously one-sided and infinitely-sided. A circle has no beginning, no ending; it is featureless and invariable, undivided and complete, timeless and perfect. It is the womb from which all geometry is born, the image of the transcendent.

The torus is a form of comparatively recent discovery. If a 2-dimensional circle is rotated around an axis that bisects its center, the result is a 3-dimensional sphere; if the circle is rotated instead around an axis upon its exterior edge, the result is a form called a torus - a hole-less doughnut-like shape that looks as if the north and south poles of a spherical balloon were pinched to meet at a tiny point in the center of the now-oblated spheroid. It is an uncommon form, sometimes used to describe the large-scale structure of 4-dimensional space-time: the 3 dimensions of space are represented by the circular expansion and contraction of the horizontal axis; the one dimension of time is represented by the circular path of the vertical axis. In this "finite but unbounded" model, the origin and fate of the universe, the beginning and ending of all space and time, are at the same infinitesimal speck of nothingness called a singularity. It is in this direction that gravity, present in every massive object everywhere, insistently beckons all things.

The lotus is associated with the mystery of creation in sacred stories across the orient - meaningful from ancient Egypt to modern Japan and everywhere in between. It is a structurally complex flower with a precise radial arrangement of petals, blooming at sunrise like a living incarnation of geometry and the eternal forms. Like the emergence of existence from non-existence, like the emergence of life from non-life, like the emergence of awareness and understanding from non-consciousness, the lotus rises from unknown depths of chaos below the waters, to open with luminous beauty in the manifest world of light and life. In ancient Egypt, where it withdrew every sunset only to re-bloom again with every sunrise, it signified the first life and eternal rebirth. In China, where the purity and texture-less perfection of its coloration was admired, it signified the potential to rise from the mud and escape the moral taint of desire - the image of Buddha-nature utterly untouched by the corruption of the world. In India, where they found meaning in its rise from darkness into sunlight, it signified spiritual fulfilment. It is the shape of the chakra energy centers through which we experience the world illusion, the mandala heart through which we might contemplate a vision beyond that illusion. It is the Lotus-Throne upon which sits Brahma the Creator. It is the first form from which all forms emerge, connected to the world by a phallic stalk which grows from the navel of Vishnu the preserver, Vishnu the defender, Vishnu the world-dreamer...

By revolving around its exterior boundary, the circle generates the torus. Twelve contiguous spheres of equal size arranged in omnidirectional balance, enclose an equal master sphere in the center; for this reason, 12 is seen as the number of circumferential limit, the celestial totality of the universe. Like the Olympians around Zeus, like the Apostles around Christ, like the Knights around Arthur, like the Namshans around the Dalai Lama, like the Councilors around Odin, twelve symbolizes the revolutions of action and change, held in orbit by the gravity of an eternal truth in the center. Twelve is the journey up from initial awakening to final descent into sleep. Like the constellations of the Zodiac, twelve are the Regions of Space; like the months of the year, twelve are the Ages of Time. And so, as a map-like projection of space-time (and chaos incognita beyond), this toroidal hypersphere has 12 longitudinal and 12 latitudinal divisions. By connecting the vertices of these 12 vertical and 12 horizontal circles along the diagonals, the torus generates the lotus. This many- petalled pattern is seen in the crown-like projection emerging upward from singularity. But as symmetry in the forces of the universe breaks shortly after creation, and one unified "super-force" separates into four, so too does symmetry vanish in the torus-generated lotus; one axis of diagonals fades away, leaving only a clockwise-spiraling pattern of stars representing the dynamic geometry of space-time. The lotus generates the vortex.

This painting is a representation of creation and evolution, of challenge and struggle in the arduous quest for purpose and destiny, of things rising up with great ambition out of nothing, only to descend back down and finally disappear into blackness. It is a history and biography, telling the life- story of the universe, of worlds and civilizations, and of one small lifetime only. At every scale of observation the narrative is the same: there is a climbing out of some nameless deep that ever seeks to again embrace its vagabond progeny, there is a long journey towards the golden treasure of great purpose that ever recedes away, there is horrific violence and ravening chaos beyond (and within) that ever consumes a finite resource of will, and there is a final withering collapse down into the abyss from which nothing ever escapes...

The Dance of the Rollers

Arabia: the name conjures images of parched, arid desolation. It is home of the Rub ‘al Kali - the empty quarter - one of the driest and most desolate places on earth. But in the western highlands, along the red sea coast, there is a comparatively lush region. This unexpected oasis on the frontier of the desert peninsula is home to the Arabian Roller, a magnificent looking bird of iridescent blue and green. Rollers have a truly amazing mating ritual, a spellbinding ballet that has an operatic, even mythological dimension. Their poetic dance is not merely the fleeting congress of male and female, but somehow also a union of universal principles.

Two rollers meet. She waits silently, and will not move; her part in this drama is in the center, the focus around which all activity revolves. She continues to wait, a silent invitation in repose. An eligible male flies by, notices her, and quickly flies down to introduce himself. As is common among birds, the male is ostentatious and vivid with pulsating color, compared to the rather static and unornamented simplicity of the practical female (an appropriately inconspicuous demeanor, however, for the vulnerable keeper and caretaker of the future). The male shuffles along the branch to get close to the object of his affections, ruffles his spectacular plumage, and seemingly expects coos of approval and submission. This he does not receive, and he must feel a certain avian corollary to ego-deflation when she merely sniffs dismissively at him. He is an extraordinary looking fellow, but appearance - a passive, inherited quality - is of only secondary interest to her. She requires him to act, to change and evolve towards a distant ambition. He must aspire to achieve her affections, earn the privilege of her gift, become worthy of the timeless perfection of her prize. Like a knight of the round table, he must actively seek to win the Grail: the Vessel of Eternal Life that can only beckon and wait...

So the amorous Roller flies straight up into the sky, and turns suddenly into a vertical dive. He will accelerate toward the earth at a prodigious velocity, reaching speeds in excess of 100 mph. Just a few short feet above the ground he will swoop into level flight at fantastic speed and "roll" back and forth in a dangerous swaying motion that will bring the plane of his wings perpendicular to the ground. He must stop beating his wings to accomplish this act of rocking left and right, and each rolling motion brings him closer to bone-breaking impact with the ground. Many less-competent Rollers must surely have met their fate in this fashion.

He flies back to the branch looking for some approval of this daredevil gesture; he finds none. Back into the sky he flies, even higher this time, to begin the death-defying dance again. He will roll even closer to the earth on the second run, his wings violently jerking backwards as they graze along the ground at high speed. He may have to repeat this acrobatic display of aerial prowess several times, but he will succeed in his ambitions. Having proven his worth - the magnitude of his ability, the depth of his commitment - she who waits will surrender the prize: his genes and hers shall inseparably join in the sacred union of a new generation. Time will pass, and - as is the way with the world - it will come to pass that the female will act, and the male will not. But in that fleeting, but paradoxically timeless, moment of ideal perfection, the adventuring seed that ventures forth becomes one with the beckoning womb which waits to receive. And all the things of the cosmos are the swirling ballet of these 2 mysterious archetypes.

That which moves and That which does not

Such abstract and ethereal qualities are not something material you can hold in your hands; they are Archetypes (from the Greek - the beginning or principal idea, the unseen quality that applies universally). It can be difficult to understand how they relate to the real world, and yet, they define all the concrete, tangible qualities of the material universe, which are known as Phenotypes (from the Greek - the shown or demonstrated form, the seen quality that applies specifically). My first encounter with the concept of archetypes happened long ago, when I was a little boy of 4 or 5. I observed an unfriendly neighborhood dog, who made a habit of chasing the neighborhood cats. That was a profound mystery to me. My mother had already explained to me how babies are made (compelled into early revelation by a kindergarten teacher who had informed me that God is where babies come from), and armed with that knowledge, this dog-chasing-cat phenomena was deeply troubling to my understanding of the world. "Mom," I asked, "why do dogs chase cats up trees?" "Because cats and dogs don't like each other very much," she said. "But if they don't like each other," I persisted, "how do they get together to make little cats and dogs?"

My Mom probably thought I had run into a few too many tables, but cats and dogs were always around the neighborhood together, and kittens and puppies were obviously coming from somewhere. Dogs are bigger, stronger, shaggier, noisier, more friendly when they like you, and more aggressive when they don't. Cats are smaller, prettier, tidier, quieter, and more reserved and aloof in all social situations. Dogs are rambunctious; cats are peaceful. I was sure that dogs were boys and cats were girls. I had perceived distinguishable characteristics in those animals, and those qualities extend far beyond the neighborhood fauna.

The idea of a universe created by the interpenetration of 2 equal but opposite principles finds its most complete expression in Chinese thought. In the well-known symbol of Yin and Yang (the T'ai chi T'u - diagram of the Supreme Ultimate), a circle is divided into 2 equal forms by a sigmoid line; each shape created by, and only existing in relation to, the other. One form is light, the other is shadow, and within each is a small circular seed of the other - indicating that within any particular form, or within any class of forms, there is the germinating potential for its antithesis. Yang is the active masculine principle; it is a positive, linear energy, pushing upward to the zenith, outward to the horizon. Yin is the passive feminine principle; it is a negative, cyclical energy, pulling downward to the earth, inward to the center. Yang is power and the searching question; Yin is beauty and the waiting answer. Hot and cold, dry and moist, hard and soft, brutal and gentle, evolution and involution, expansion and contraction, eros and logos. The rhythm of their dance is the breath and living heartbeat of all things.

Paradoxically, these contradictory orientations and opposing modalities do not negate each other, for they are not in conflict; they are, rather, harmoniously interdependent, each one coming into being as the inevitable consequence of the other. The apparent separation is an illusion. It is like the 2 aspects of an apple: not the indistinguishable left and right parts, but rather the interior reproductive part, and the exterior protective part. The exterior part exists to provide a delivery mechanism for the interior part; it is expendable and has no other purpose than to sacrifice itself for a distant interest. The interior part exists to ensure there will be others of its kind in the future, and will exploit every resource available to ensure this objective. Like the opposing polarities of an electro-magnetic field, the existence of the whole emerges only from the flowing current between the two. And the shape of an electro-magnetic field is strangely relevant...

Universal Dynamo

Fundamental particles of matter possess a mysterious quality known as charge, a kind of orientation of energy that reacts with oppositely-oriented energy: particles or bodies of matter with like charge repel each other; those with unlike charge attract. Between regions of positive and negative charge there exists a potential for exchange. If a conductive pathway is established between the oppositely charged regions, a flow of electric current will occur. Along and around this current are lines of force that manifest as another mysterious phenomena. A field is a region, an ethereal force- filled sphere of influence, in which an object is able to interact at a distance with another object, doing so by virtue of certain innate properties which each object possesses, properties that extend out into the space around them. The electro-magnetic field permeates the universe. It is a composite phenomena, consisting of 2 aspects. Each aspect is bound to, and generated by, the other: an electric current creates a magnetic field, and a changing magnetic field creates an electric current.

The electro-magnetic field - swirling around atoms and molecules, minerals and people, worlds, stars, and galaxies - has a shape. Lines of force emerge from one pole of a central axis, rising and expanding like a hyperbolic funnel circling around in all directions in arcs that can extend for great distances; the lines of force curve all the way around and re-enter the opposing pole at the other end of the axis. The north pole is pushing outward and the south pole is pulling inward, a self-sustaining communication of differential exchange, creating the form of a many-layered torus - the hyperspherical shape of the cosmos itself.

In this painting there is a prominent vertical axis, a positive energy at the north pole, a negative energy at the south pole, and a potential for exchange between the 2. This axis is spinning, and a magnetic field is also generated by spin. The rotating field generates a flow of energy. And along and around this current is the clockwise-spinning electro-magnetic field (following Ampere's "right-hand- screw" rule). The positively-charged current-flow of expanding space-time, emerging and advancing away from the lotus crown, sweeps in a great swirling arc of universal rotation. This universal rotation is seen in the celestial Coriolis effect, where the vast galactic currents of the heavens - like the currents of Caribbean winds - are deflected by the larger environment into rotation themselves. And so the spiraling space-time dynamo spins, dragging the very fabric of the cosmos into an enormous vortex ever downward- coiled like a great serpent winding around creation from beginning to end, and against which nothing can stand, and live...

Parsival the Red

Red is the color of blood, the color of the passions inflamed; it is rage and killing, lust and love. It is action, ambition, appetite. It is birth and death. It is the living experience of a sensual and brutal world. Red is the color of a task bestowed and a challenge accepted. It is the banner of all those who would deny their fear and endeavor for great purpose...

Parsival, the Red Knight, is one of the central figures in the Arthurian legends and medieval romances about the Knights of the Round Table and their quest for the Holy Grail. (The untraditional spelling of Parsival used here - a combination of Wolfram von Eschenbach's literary Parzival and Richard Wagner's operatic Parsifal - declares an intent to take the old myth into new symbolic territory.) The Grail has been described as a dish or a stone, but it is most commonly seen as the sacred chalice which received the blood of Christ at the crucifixion. The holy artifact, the Vessel of Eternal Life, was thereafter brought to Britain from Judea by Joseph of Arimathea, but was subsequently lost and disappeared from all knowledge. Men of Great Virtue dedicated their lives to its recovery. This is the Grail Quest: a search for the Eternal in the here and now.

Parsival (which means, "pierce the valley", or "the way between") was born of a widowed mother, Herzeloyde, who had been a Welsh queen before she retreated to the wild forests of North Wales to grieve in solitude after the death of Parsival's father, the great warrior, Gahmuret. He was far away indeed from the civilized center of Camelot, and grew up entirely ignorant of the chivalrous ways - the established social conventions - of Arthur's Court. A chance, violent encounter with the first Red Knight left Parsival in possession of the blazing, scarlet armor no longer needed by the former owner, and so he set off to trained in the proper ways of the world by the Knights of the Round Table. Parsival's inexperience and naivete lead him to many failures, including a disastrous first encounter at the Grail Castle, where the maimed Fisher-King was left to suffer many long years more for Parsival's incompetence. But the Red Knight searched on, and as years passed he slowly gained wisdom and insight. Eventually he again found the Castle, liberated the King from his suffering, re-united with his lonely wife Condwiramurs the White, and became the Grail King himself - the caretaker of the sacred heart of a profane world.

Who is Parsival? He is resurrected Horus, he who has returned from the underworld of death to stand against the life-negating machinations of Set. He is mighty Thor grappling with Jormungand at the threshold of Ragnarok. He is Gilgamesh, diving to the bottomless depths of the cosmic sea to find the Watercress of Immortality, only to loose it to an avaricious little serpent, whose tireless hunger lives on unsated ever after. He is Vishnu the preserver, the defender, standing in cosmic counter- balance to the all-consuming aspect of Shiva the destroyer. He is Hercules struggling through his 12 labors to assuage the 12 constellated governors of the cosmos, the Olympians; he has one task for each cosmic hour between celestial sunrise and sunset. He is Prometheus, stealing fire from the greatest power in the universe so that Man might one day be greater than the vengeful gods, and enduring eternal torment for his defiance. He is Alexander, subduing the armies of the known world to shine the beacon of Helenism across it, only to be felled by the tiniest soldier. He is Einstein disappearing into his study in 1905, and in the unknown caverns of the mind stealing past the hungry dragon who guards the Treasure of Great Knowledge, to victoriously return with his boon 10 years later - an aged man long before his time.

Who is Parsival? He is an incarnation of the dynamic universe, the action of matter and energy in the field of space and time. He is the cosmic builder, the tireless process gathering fundamental materials into the atomic and molecular forms of the world. He is the ambition of cosmic evolution, assembling those many simple forms into a astounding edifice of ever-increasing complexity and sophistication: galaxies, stars, worlds, life, consciousness. He is the conscious will of the self- organizing principle that stands against the dragons of chaos that ever seek to annihilate his achievements.

Who is Parsival? He is an incarnation of advancing civilization, a visionary soldier of progress ever marching toward some distant ideal of justice, peace, and prosperity. He is the vagabond spirit of freedom that wanders the globe in search of the foresight, good will, and optimism that binds the disparate abilities of many to a common goal in the future. He is the confidence that expands into unknown frontiers, ever looking for potential not yet imagined. He is the security ensured by rule of law that makes development and new opportunities possible, the vigilant sentry that stands against the dragons of chaos that find no benefit in this artificial sheltering environment of our own design and ever seeks to drag us back to the primitive barbarism we left behind.

Who is Parsival? He is us, born with great promise into the world entirely without the understanding we need to survive and prosper here, fumbling through ignorance, humiliation, and failure. He is the hope we have to participate in the larger drama around us and make some important contribution to the process. He is our ambition to shape the world to our own design, and the resolve to accept the world as it is. He is the combination of strength and pride, knowledge and wisdom, and fear and desire that struggles against the terrible, gathering inertia that threatens to immobilize us, allowing the dragons of chaos to consume us from within.

Who is Parsival? He is the image of the self-made cosmos, standing alone against the relentless, all-consuming vortex, staggered by the appalling horror of its fury: the cosmos is an engine and blood is the fuel it burns...

Dragons of Chaos

The dragon is many things to many people. Chaos and violence, consumption and decay, suffering and death. A penetrating insight into the symbol of the dragon can be found in the Ouroboros - the self-consuming serpent. A snake sloughs its skin and consumes the protein-rich remains; that is, the old and decaying is made young and vivified by the act of eating itself. This is the image of nature: the living world endures through a constant act of self-consumption. Life lives by eating other life. Nature is perpetually digesting itself. Civilization is largely an attempt to disguise this hideous truth and inure us to the reality of this place. The attempt is rather successful, and we do indeed get to enjoy a protected existence here in our technological cocoon. In our artificially manufactured innocence, we gasp at nature films where the crocodile explodes with unrestrained ferocity from the river's edge and drags the thrashing wildebeest to his doom. Such mortal violence is unknown to most of us. We are thankful to be so safe. But the relentless dragons from whom we have taken refuge are everywhere...

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states simply that heat flows from a hot body to a cold body, and not the other way around. This means that you can't get more energy out of an exchange than you put in, because some energy is always lost in the form of heat. And if there is always ever less available energy, the system must degenerate from an initial state of maximum order to a final state of maximum disorder. Some systems may temporarily experience an apparent increase in order at the expense of great heat-loss, but in any closed system (a laboratory experiment, a power station, or even a life-sustaining world) the entropy (the amount of disorder) must always increase until a state of thermodynamic equilibrium is reached and no further ordered or meaningful exchange (of heat or information) can occur. Everything in the universe will eventually decay into a featureless mash of chaos. Those temporary confluences of order, accretions of pattern, structure, and complexity, are the regularities we see in the natural forms and processes of the world. They do not last. The universe has been churning for about 15 billion years now, and may endure in more or less it current form for some billions of years to come. But the dragon grows fatter every passing moment, and the finite amount of energy available to perform useful tasks is ever vanishing down the inexorably approaching throat at the end of the universe.

But that is very far indeed from here. However, the galaxies themselves are not always the inviting homes we suppose they are. It is still unclear exactly how these large scale structures of the cosmos were formed. When we look out into the deep heavens, we are looking at the remote past. Light travels very fast, but if the journey is from the boundaries of the observable universe, it may take 12 billion years to reach us. And in that remote past we see amazing objects called quasars that seem to shine with the light of billions of galaxies. We don't know what they are, but they may be involved somehow with the formation of galaxies; we do not see them in regions of the universe at a later stage of development. Some people think these galactic blast furnaces settle down into super-massive black holes (regions of infinite gravitational collapse) that dwell still in the hearts of modern galaxies. And sometimes it seems those immense black-hole hearts (with the mass of perhaps billions of stars) develop a bit of a flutter - perhaps as the result of a collision with some other super-dense object. We can look out into the heavens and see swirling agglomerations of 100 billion stars all dying at the same time as gamma ray bursts erupt from the galactic core sterilizing everything within a radius of millions of light years. After the big bang, these are the largest events in the universe, which, for a fleeting moment, shine with an intensity greater than all the rest of the cosmos combined. Galactic neighbors who live too close to the "little big bang" meltdown will suffer a similar fate, as the dragon's prodigious flames seer out across the intergalactic wastes.

But that is very far indeed from here; there is good reason to believe that such events happened only in the young universe, and that galaxies, even when in collision, are comparatively stable places to build a pleasant solar neighborhood. However, the stars themselves are not always the inviting homes we suppose they are. Nobody expects things to last forever, and so stars come into being, live a stellar life-time appropriate to their size (fat stars always die young), and then expire - usually with considerable violence. Next-door neighbors do not usually survive such events. But old stars advertise their age, giving plenty of notice that the time to move on is approaching. The real nuisances are the stars that get sudden indigestion. Like proto-galaxies, stars too can mysteriously become gamma-ray bursters, caused by a rare form of simultaneous gravitational collapse and supernova, or perhaps by the collision of neutron stars. When such events happen, a radius of hundreds to thousands of light years is waylaid by a toxic storm of gamma and cosmic rays. The process, which may be periodic, is not well understood, but there seems to be no way of knowing which stars are contemplating things they shouldn't, no way of predicting when the dragon's breath might howl over the interstellar sea, reducing every world in its path to inert, lifeless ash.

But that is very far indeed from here; the stars in our little corner of the galaxy do not seem to be at all threatening. However, the peace of our quiet solar neighborhood is intermittently disturbed by marauding gangs of meteors, asteroids, comets, and various other vagabond bombs. It is common knowledge now that the dinosaurs were probably killed off by the impact of some celestial object about 65 million years ago; the Permian Event is a mass-extinction that occurred about 245 million years ago which killed 95% of all life on earth at that time. When the largest chunk of the Shoemaker-Levy cometary fragments recently struck Jupiter, the resulting fireball was larger than the earth. Unfortunately for us, these are not isolated incidents; the completely obliterated surface of the moon testifies to the grim fact that bombardment from the heavens is the rule, not the exception - the geologically-active earth just has a better clean-up crew. The self-erasing geological record of such impacts is somewhat vague, but there is good reason to believe that these events are periodic, happening with clockwork predictability. One hypothesis suggests that our solar system, orbiting the galactic core upon one of the outer spiral arms every 200 million years or so, actually bobs up and down as it revolves, encountering a greater density of interstellar flotsam as it passes through the galactic ecliptic. Regardless, we know that the cosmos is permeated with countless mountain-sized hammers careening through the depths at 30,000 miles an hour, oblivious to any planetary anvils that might block their path. A merciless, world-crushing wrecking ball is already swinging towards us, and the dragon does not wait for straggling residents to find alternative accommodations before it strikes.

But that is very far indeed from here - one hopes - and so we strive to enjoy the tranquility of this little planetary oasis in the solar archipelago. However, the earth itself is not always the archetype of stability it seems. Volcanic explosions that hurl 35 cubic miles of ejecta into the atmosphere, great rivers of molten rock that scour the landscape of any previous feature. Earthquakes that heave up the very surface of the earth and shake it like a dusty carpet, tidal waves that race across the ocean at 600 miles an hour and leap to heights of more than 200 feet before crashing through the shore. Windstorms 500 miles across that blow almost 200 miles an hour, wind vortexes that blow at more than 300 miles an hour, splintering everything in their path. Tectonic forces that tear trillion-ton continents apart and collide them together. And ever the frost-giants who sleep at the poles threaten to awaken hungry and avaricious, and slither out over the temperate regions of the globe, burying them under a 3-mile blanket of ice.

But such things might possibly be still far in the future, and so we ignore the pitiless destruction of nature all around us and enjoy the tiny dome of security created by this insulated, artificial nature we invented called civilization. However, the dragons of history provide little respite. In my lifetime I have seen on the evening news 1 million dead in Burundi and Rwanda during the tribal violence of the mid-90's, 1 million dead in the Iran-Iraq war, 4 million dead in southeast Asia during the Vietnam war, and a ghastly parade of other bloodbaths too numerous to easily recall. In the last century or so we have suffered 20 million dead in the Chinese cultural revolution, 50 million dead in the second world war, 20 million dead in the Soviet gulag, 10 million dead in the first world war, 25 million dead in the Chinese T'ai-p'ing rebellion. It would require volumes to catalog the list of human rapacity; the pattern of slaughter is endless.

If I should be so fortunate as to survive exploding galaxies, exploding stars, exploding worlds, and exploding civilizations, then I can prepare for assault from within. The smaller dragons swimming through my blood have a truly impressive array of lethal weapons: viral, fungal, bacterial, and protozoan infection, cancer, disease, genetic disorders, etc., etc., etc. And in the end, of course, they must win: cellular integrity diminishes with every duplication, and the dragon-breath acids of time slowly dissolve us into the constituents parts of which we were made - the dust of the earth...

My Encounters with the Dragon

I once lent a pen to someone I disliked in high-school, and he was not inclined to return it in a hurry. It was a small matter, but I allowed it to fester in my mind over a period of some weeks. The disagreement came to a head one day when I noticed he had a pen - my pen - hanging out of his mouth. I walked up to him, pulled the pen from his mouth, snapped it in half, and tossed the pieces to the floor at his feet. I turned and walked away. This fellow was understandably upset with such insolence, and he jumped me from behind. I turned and met a furious volley of punches, most of which went wide or were blocked. This persisted for a few moments, him throwing punches and me blocking them. I don't recall having any feeling about the fight at that time; I was still shocked at the sudden attack, and was merely defending myself dispassionately. And then he landed a good punch on my jaw. Something in my head took over. I was still there in my brain, aware of myself as a distinct entity, but I was no longer the operator of my body machinery. The new captain of the ship threw the other boy to the ground and began striking him in the face with ruthless ferocity; I was still there in my head wondering why I felt no anger, and how long the other would continue. A teacher and a few students pulled me off shortly thereafter, and so I was not required to mutiny - if such a thing is possible. But that encounter troubled me for a long time: I knew that the thing that battered that boy so viciously did not intend to stop - ever. Bad dragon.

I once witnessed a beating in progress. As I slowed to a stop at a red light, 2 men from a car in the lane beside me leapt from their vehicle and attacked 2 men in a convertible in front of me. Then the other came back. I quickly jumped out of my car and ran to the altercation, situating myself between the attackers and the attacked. The aggressors dodged and crowded angrily, trying very hard to reach over and around me to continue their attack, but they did not punch or otherwise re-direct their considerable anger at me - despite the fact that I was indeed physically restraining them, and doing so with confident efficiency. We wrestled in the street for 10 or 15 seconds, the light turned green, and the convertible sped off - closely followed by the attackers' car. I did not know if the occupants of the convertible deserved to be beaten. I did not know if the attackers were gun-wielding madmen. The agent who made the decision to intervene did not care about such things. I did care, however, and when he retreated to wherever it is that such things go when they are not awake, I began to shake so badly I could not drive my car. Foolish dragon.

I had the opportunity to travel when I was 26, intending to cross Eurasia by land from London to Hong Kong. I did not complete the journey. The adventure was intoxicating, and I became increasingly reckless as I progressed across Europe. By the time I arrived in Turkey - a wonderful place I must say - I had quite lost all perspective and was doing things far in excess of my abilities. It was only a matter of time before something bad happened - and it did, in a little place called Anamur. There is a 12th century crusader castle there, crumbling into ruin by the sea. I decided I should scale the exterior wall - and let us not discuss the reasons for such action or the unfortunate symbolism therein. I had done some rock-climbing before, but my confidence was far greater than my skill. Despite my lack of skill, I had always enjoyed good fortune in my climbs, but in that remote location (8 hours from the nearest hospital, I later learned to my dismay) my luck ran out. I climbed up perhaps 30 - 35 feet, and reached an impasse: 800 years of exposure to wind and salt had compromised the stone, and 5 feet from the top the rock was to crumbly to continue; it simply wouldn't support my weight. It was then I realized that I had never learned how to climb down. So I clung there to the wall of that castle, hopelessly trapped. I became frightened; directly below me was an unpleasant pile of jagged stones that had fallen from the walls, which extended out to a distance of about 10 feet. I was going to fall and it was going to hurt - a lot. My knees began to shake and I felt a profound shame that my immanent demise should be so undignified. I had no plan, no intention, other than to wait for the inevitable. The stone crumbled in my hands, I lost my grip, and fell. And then he came back. In the tiniest fraction of an instant that he had to act, he was able to leap away from the wall, propelled backwards out beyond the rock pile; as he fell he was able to orient his body slightly forwards to see where he was falling and finesse the landing to the extent it was possible. He hit the flat ground beyond the rocks, sat up and inspected his wounds: head fine, back fine, working arm fine, other arm broken, right leg fine, left leg badly broken (which cost me almost an inch of tibia). His job finished, he laid back down, went to sleep, and left me thereafter to clean up the pieces. Good dragon.

My experience with the dragon is comparatively mild, but such encounters with human instinct are common; our history is unending lament of inter-tribal slaughter, a grizzly testament to the latent carnage lurking below the surface of consciousness. We have lived with the dragon in our collective basement a long time, but it is still disconcerting to know that such murderous potential hides within us, slumbering peacefully until awoken. We live our peaceful, rational lives, familiar with who we are and what we can do, and all the while the dragon waits - merciless and implacable. And yet, the brutish, primal instincts that incline us to violent self-consumption, are the same instincts that have allowed us to survive the monstrous vicissitudes of nature and endure through countless ages. That is the dragon, alive in the natural processes of the heavens and all the worlds therein, alive in the processes of history and in all the people therein. It is the eternal hunger of the primitive forms upon which the fragile superstructure of more developed forms has been assembled. It is the immortal threat of consumption, compelling us into action against it; the dragon's wrath provides the motive force of the cosmos...

The Big Bang

About 15 billion years ago, the universe came into being: all space and time, all matter and energy, emerged into existence from a dimensionless point of nothingness. The new-born universe grew rapidly, according to laws and geometry inherent to its nature. For the first few infinitesimal moments of existence the eternal Forces of Nature were unified and symmetrical, like the symmetry of the eternal geometric forms in the Lotus-Crown expanding up from the singularity. But brief instants later they broke apart into separate forces - gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force. We see the symmetry break in this image; the counter-clockwise axis in the crown evaporates and the lotus-vortex thus acquires chirality (or "handedness"): the universe unwinds in a clockwise manner. This chirality permeates the painting, an echo of the cosmic- scale shape of space-time, and is indicated by a whirling vortex of stars.

The early universe continued to grow ever larger and cooler; matter congealed out of energy, and about 300,00 years later the density of the matter-radiation soup became dilute and transparent. In about 1 billion years the first stars and galaxies appear. Ordinarily we don't expect to see little clusters of order growing in the debris hurtling away from an explosion, but this is what happened. Some mysterious process of nature, working in the blast-wave of the big bang, began to assemble matter into the large-scale structures of the cosmos - building order from chaos. In this image the early transparent epoch of the universe is seen just above the glowing halo of the Lotus-Crown; there, an ancient dragon of chaos is well along in the process of collapsing in upon himself, swirling into - and generating other - orderly spiral forms of stars: galaxies. Below that we see another dragon just beginning the process of contraction - more dragon-like than galaxy-like. And below that we see the agent responsible for this mysterious rise of pattern and structure: the Celestial Builder, liberating order by slaying chaos. Even as the third dragon perishes, he is already contracting, already coiling up into the orderly spiral of stars he will become. And the Builder slays the dragon with a spear-like sceptre that is crowned by a strange Amulet. The Amulet has 12 circumferential Jewels, one for each dragon between Him and the Grail. Three of the Jewels are glowing incandescent - one for each obstacle removed. The Builder is mining chaos, harvesting dragon-flame, charging the Lotus Jewels with the Essence of Creation, to fashion a great Key for some distant purpose...

But 9 of the 12 dragons remain to wreak their unholy wrath upon the cosmos. One dragon lurks within the Builder himself, swimming through his veins like lethargy and despair; a little piece of that serpent flows from the thigh-wound inflicted by dragon 3. The other dragons, great and small, stand between the Builder and His destiny, and one by one He must steal their fire to energize and activate the Key. These labors will take the lifetime of the universe to complete.

The universe continues to cool, as the geometry of space-time curves around; time is running out. The stars lose their energy, become cold, and slowly extinguish. The universe is smaller now, and much darker. The Builder is old and weary, and has one final Amulet Jewel to illuminate, one final guardian destroyer, greater than all the others, to slay at the event horizon of the cosmic night...

Black Time

The universe is able to make a object so heavy it cannot lift it. When too much matter is compressed into an insufficient volume, the fabric of space-time will not support the object and, in extreme cases, it "drops" right out of the universe. When a massive star burns up its fuel supply, it can no longer generate enough expanding heat to counter-balance the contracting tendency of all that matter, and so it will start to collapse. If the star is fat enough, the gravitational collapse will occur with such ferocity that space-time itself will turn "inside-out," leaving nothing behind but a spherical region of infinite space-time curvature. The diameter of this spherical region will have a fixed size - the distance from one side to the other might be 10 miles or 10 million miles - but its radius will always be infinite. Such a place is a hole in the universe so fathomlessly dark and so bottomlessly deep that nothing, not even light, ever escapes. It is a place where matter and energy, space and time, are crushed to a dimensionless point of nothingness; it is the end of everything.

Modern reckoning suggests that the universe is filled with countless billions of these things. If space-time is flat, then each black hole corresponds to an independent terminus, and the cosmos would thus have billions and billions of endings. If, on the other hand, space-time is a hyperspherical torus, then each black hole is oriented, in 4 dimensions, at the same central focus - the one and only singularity at the heart of every black hole everywhere, a dimensionless point of nothingness between the rise and fall of the universe.

This is the Black Goddess Kali, and Her terrible cloak is the swirling vortex of space-time, gathering the entire universe into an infinite emptiness that can never be filled - the boundless black silence of Eternity that is the inevitable destiny of all things great and small. In the very Heart of the limitless abyss dwells the thirsty 12-petaled blossom of the Lock of the World Lotus. It is here at the point of singularity that the nameless magic of transformation and creation occurs, here at the junction of the opposing energies of the Outward and the Inward - in conflict everywhere else except in this harmonious orientation - that action is brought to Her eternal stillness, that change is brought to that which, in its absolute perfection, never changes.

We see, in the trailing coils of the last dragon lurking at the end of space-time as it collapses back into the singularity from which it emerged, the unseen will behind the manifold machinations of chaos: the dragon's tail grows from the geometry of space-time - it is an extension of the eternal forms. The dragon is a projection of shakti, the energizing principle of the Goddess that dwells in the motionless center of the revolving universe. Shakti is the incarnation of purpose that motivates the evolving universe to aspiration and transformation. It is the primary impulse to action that guides the aim of all ambition. Beyond the final boundary of annihilation - the jaws of fear which are nothing more than a projection of our own collective ego - is Eternal Nirvana and the Voice of the GrailSong. She sings an invitation to discovery, an inspiration to the Quest, an imploration to the Task, a promise that all this suffering is for some Great Purpose. The Lock of the World Lotus beckons and waits. And so it comes to pass that He is triumphant and crosses the boundary of no return, thus bringing to Her the Key of the World Lotus, throbbing with the Essence of Creation stolen from the serpents of chaos. This essence, upon which the dragons have grown fat and furious, is entropy.

Every process, from the atomic to the galactic, deletes from an ever-diminishing pool of available energy and contributes to an ever-growing reservoir of entropy. Every action, no matter how small, is bound to a corresponding block of entropy. It very much seems like a record of events, a document of all that has happened in the life of the universe. It is a History of the Cosmos, to which all forms - living and otherwise - contribute in the process of their existence, and into which they disappear when the last of their energy is spent. This jewel of infinite entropy is the Essence of Creation for which the Goddess waits.

We saw within the inter-flowing symbol-forms of Yin and Yang a contrapuntal seed of energizing opposition, a principle we also see in this painting. The ever-changing universe is a manifest process of Order into Chaos, one aspect slowly consumed by the other. The never- changing Codex of Eternal Law is a mysterious state of magical transformation - Chaos into Order - where sorrow becomes joy, pain becomes bliss, death becomes life. The Builder of Order labors to construct the 12 Spheres of the Cosmic Temple, ever dreading the shadow-form Dragon of Chaos. The Keeper of Order waits for the destruction of the Imperishable Absolute, ever yearning for the lumi-form Warrior of Chaos - the possibility for transformation from which creation emerges, the necessary agent of corruption by which the infinite perfection of eternal idea becomes the agonizing process of realization. The All-Powerful Key of the World Lotus is the insemination of burning time into the frozen womb of eternity.

The Lock of the World Lotus receives the Key and opens in a blinding 1000-petaled blossom of new creation. This is the Goddess Devi - an All-Beautiful efflorescence giving birth to all things - filled with sorrow for the countless times He has suffered and died, filled with joy because He is ever reborn in new form to venture forward and build anew...

Fingerprints

The universe is made of atoms, each one the collaboration of opposing charges. Every atom in the universe has an electromagnetic field, a many-layered nimbus around the nucleus, shaped very much like the torus in this painting. A dynamic periphery around the still center: like a cell around the nucleus, like an organism around the heart, like sensory awareness around conscious identity, like a civilization around the guiding philosophy of a catalyzing idea, like a world around a molten core revolving around a sun revolving around a galaxy revolving around...unknown dimensions of existence without end. And, finally, this all-pervasive image of orbital entrapment is most like a marauding army of tiny sperm soldiers encircling the Great Sphere of Creation; after a long and dangerous journey to She Who Waits, each one seeks nothing more than to be the one chosen for annihilation in the creation of something far greater.

The repetition of these simple forms, in the very big and the very small, are like the shards of a broken hologram in which can be found a complete picture of the unbroken original; these forms are the image of the source, a lover's portrait of the Creators. I wonder if that quivering, fragile thread between love and hate, that one we little humans know so well, is similarly pervasive?

© 2003, Jonathon Earl Bowser - Artist