NEPSIS CYCLE I: Letter to a Bishop
CYCLES II & III: THE ORACLE OF XIBALBA
(NEPSIS)
By
THE PILGRIM
(Of the Nepsis Foundation)
A Black Dragon’s History of the World
126 [31] ARTIFICER
Oil on Canvas 5′ x 3′ 1987
One who creates and recreates… the one who searches between worlds… Such a shaman/artist/priest/poet/(warrior) explored here is a primordial figure whose personality and cultural function attempts mediation of the affairs of this world with the intentions of the divine spirit or non-temporalworld. This figure fights the battle for sentient being.
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“…Yoga teaching rejects all fantasy contents and we do the same, but the East does it on quite different grounds. In the East, conceptions and teaching prevail which express the creative fantasy in richest measure; in fact, protection is required against the excess of fantasy. We, on the other hand, look upon fantasy as valueless, subjective day-dreaming. Naturally the figures of the unconscious do not appear as abstractions stripped of all imaginative trappings; on the contrary, they are embedded and interwoven in a web of fantasies of extraordinary variety and bewildering abundance. The East can reject these fantasies because long ago it extracted their essence and condensed it in profound teachings.”
C. Jung
THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER
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“…it takes a priest to see the problem, it takes a sorcerer to solve it.”
I CHING
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NEPSIS
is a 21th Century guide to consciousness. It is a personal encounter with: Shamanism, Buddhism (Yoga), the Hesychasm (Christianity), Contemporary Critical Thought– (Ph. D. dissertation, Berkeley)… …and with interstate Hitchhikers in an age of Free Agent, Business Warriors riding their steeds along the precipice of eternity. Rock shards fly, also free, as the war party passes–sparked blithely, we slip clueless into the Abyss.
Part I
records the original and spontaneous, sometimes paranormal, pacific rim experiences that set this project in motion. Here flows the kindness of god and the adventure of the road. This record is in the form of a letter from a priest to his bishop, explaining why the bishop should not suspend him.
Part II
records a series of aesthetic experiments trying to better espress the surprising contents of Part I.
Part III
of NEPSIS: LETTER TO A BISHOP continues the account of the original experiences referred to in Part I. Though the experience itself continues in violence and darkness -working its way–”to a light that casts no shadow”–The WAYS of Light, so modestly, authentically, and honestly have somehow failed to save us from our arrival at this viciously dangerous, historical moment!
Yet, perhaps there is still a way between…
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The Oracle of Xibalba
165 [94] “Who Told You You Were Naked?”
Theopoeisis
A New Innocence
Oil on Canvas 12′ x 8′ 1996-99When Adam and Eve are found hiding from God in the Garden of Eden, God replies to Adam’s complaint about being naked with the above query. “Who told you you were naked?” Before the Resurrection and after the creation of Adam and Eve, this question might be the most important moment described in the Bible. How do we lose our innocence, i.e. our natural relationship with the divine spirit… and everything else? This painting in combination with #93, #43, (and #84-88), comment upon the ‘answer’ to the problem of the Fall in Genesis–The Christos, or ourchristic identity—or as Panikkar would have it, a “New Innocence.” The old innocence is lost. It cannot be reclaimed by modernity. But there is the possibility of a “new” state that comes from the influence all the “wisdom traditions” of the past and the altruistic intentions of our own secular age. In relationship to the “New Innocence” is the ancient Church teaching about Theopoeisis, the Rhythm of God, or the movement of the divine spirit in creation. This refers to an early, predominant teaching, or spiritual method, in the Church concerning how such original innocence is rediscovered in one’s life. To live life according to the Rhythm of God, is to discover one’s true identity, and holiness as the completion of nature.
The “horns of light”, yellow shapes around the central figure are a reference to mandala themes. See #[84-88], or dissertation appendix.
This painting is the seventh in a series of male nudes at first overtly sexual in the practice of sex magic—the most powerful and dangerous of magics. Working through issues of sexual identity, one comes to a NEW INNOCENCE, with sexuality a discreet mystery—even abstinent, certainly chaste. See also: #s [48, 49. 71, 93, 93c, 158]…
THE NEPSIS FOUNDATION AND THE ORACLE OF XIBALBAPresents the LETTER TO A BISHOP in CYCLE I- the ORACLE is suggested in CYCLE II- leaving CYCLE III free to find resolution forNon-fiction LETTER, Fiction INDIAN WITCHES, and Poetically Artesian-ORACLE-The Xibalba Bible.
CONTENTS- CYCLES, BOOKS, PARTS, SECTIONS, CHAPTERS TO THE RIGHT ABOVE
