The best book on Visionary Art 'Drinking Lightening- Art, Creativity & Transformation

me with Phil's book 'Drinking Lightening- Art, Creativity & Transformation'

I received it at last, by ocean freight, Philip Rubinov Jacobson 's book Drinking Lightning: Art, Creativity and Transformation Where he accounts his own journey into and discovery of the art and artists, of 'the invisible tribe' of Visionary Artists. A linage that tracks far back through the ages and across the globe. An historically important, a now steadily re- connecting tribe, who's existence still remains largely ignored and
denied by the art establishment today.

My painting: Cup of Abundance is finished

 Its my first one that is in the new technique of oil/egg tempera of the Old Masters. A technique I learnt from Prof. Philip Rubinov Jacobson at the workshop in Vienna this year. Its on canvas and the size is 24X30 inches:






Cup of Abundance -by Stephanie Tihanyi
 

This is my painting, The Cup of Abundance is finished  In the  painting, the Peacock Colored Angel hold the Holy Grail to all who can sees spiritual light, traversing from afar into the realm of the Kingdom of Nature, where the laws of life and death are set in place, Souls, like moths flock around, drawn by the light and heat, desiring to be consumed by the flame of eternal love and carried to realm of softer, higher vibrations.

After reading The Conference of the Birds or Speech of the Birds, Written in 1177, in Persian by the poet Farid ud-Din Attar, who is commonly known as Attar of Nishapur.  It is a poem about the king of the birds (souls) leading them to enlightenment. I became interested with the symbol and tradition of the Pheonix.
 In Persian its known as Simurgh (/ˌsɪˈmərɡ/; Persian: سیمرغ sɪmorγ), also spelled simorgh, simurg, simoorg or simourv, is a benevolent, mythical flying creature. It is sometimes equated with other mythological birds such as Arabic Anqā (عنقا) or Persian Homā (Persian: هما‎). The figure can be found in all periods of Greater Iranian art and literature and is also evident in the iconography of medieval Armenia .  The mythical bird is also found in the mythology of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and is called Kerkés, Semrug, Semurg, Samran, and Samruk.^[3][4] The word was also borrowed into Armenian as siramarg ‘peacock’.

Life on the edge of Ego disintegration

Cosmic Strings & the Human Heart - by Stephanie Tihanyi
(all copyrights held by the artist)

Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,

And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:

Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide

Return and back into your Sun subside

The Conference of the Birds- Farid ud-Din Attar

My painting above is organized in what is known as a Mandala. At the time I constructed the painting I was not thinking consciously on making a mandala painting, in fact I did not research mandalas until much later when I came across some psychology texts claiming that mandalas utilized in art therapy, had been found useful in helping schizophrenic patients deal with overwhelming feelings disintegration and ego loss. The focusing on a center helped to focus and calm such patients.

I did recognize that this is exactly the same reason I had been compelled to paint this painting. One does not have to be a schizophrenic to be suffering from overwhelming feelings of "coming apart". It happens in many disorders (anxiety) , throughout the history of human kind. Though in some conditions, it can be experienced more intensely and more frequently.
For me, its one of the worst feelings imaginable, worse than the fear of death. In actual death you die and leave behind a body that once was. At least something is left behind, signifying you were actually there, existed, even though now your not.

But this is a feeling that you are disappearing, taking with it the reality that you ever existed!. The words "coming apart" are felt literally, as if it were real. Its like every thing, all of your substance, identity and being, is slowly disintegrating out of existence. All of your very atoms are separating and drifting apart leaving a faint thinning vaporous haze, like what you can imaging happening to you if you went over the event horizon into a black hole. Its that vivid.

Also note that in ego weakening, the boundaries between inner and outer worlds merge. The self associates outward reality (physical universe, atoms, space, black holes, gravity) with the inner psychological experience. Some speak of this as a sign of illness but I think it is a tool and can aid self re-structuring.

What could possibly remedy such an awful experience. There have been self therapies, from times before the 11th century Sufi mystics, to the present day through the use of the arts, meditation, poetry, ti chi, martial arts and mystic wisdom.

I believe the drive to re-organize the psyche after painful experiences is instinctual and somehow blue printed into the human mind. A self re-organizing gift. But from where?. To find that answer, that's the quest of a spiritual Way. The whole thing may also be part of a developmental process. How many times can I die?. as many times it takes to be reborn comes the answer, from somewhere inside me.

As I tried to address the distress I felt, the first thing I did was create the elements around me to contain my poor dissolving self. Earth, Air, Fire and Water. I kind of felt like a magician or shaman doing some kind of magical operation, I don't know what I felt like most the time. I didn't think, I just worked in an unconscious way, doing what felt right, without knowing why.
With the elements and their symbols in place, I worked on the Space beyond the Earth outside. About this time I had been reading about String Theory in a science magazine. Hey, I am no mathematician but I kind of gleaned some images in my head from the article, even though I could not explain it in words.
Around the Space, containing the space, is a tube or string. The picture now becomes like a cross section of a string, like a spaghetti that is seemingly infinite in depth. The skin of this string is Time, as indicated by the encircling snake or Ouroboros, with the infinity sign on its head. So now both the Time and the Space within it, are infinitely long. As one moves along the String, so one moves in Time and Space. The center is my Self, its still unknown to me. But I imagined in it, a Way, to the light source of multiple colors, a place of warmth and golden light, like the Sun. The Gate to the Sun is a flower, a Rose whose petals, (red, passion) are in the shape of a glowing Heart.

 Don't ask me if I an trying to illustrate String Theory, I know little of that, or if I am trying to do magic, again, I know little of that. All I know is making this art, helped me restore my inner compass and pull myself together. I died in my soul and came back. I will die again and again but each time I come back I find I have grown more as an individual, as a person. I added onto myself, I was not lost and if I did lose something, it was the painful shedding of something false about me that I no longer need.

Inner Self Helper, Higher Self, continued

From Out of the Stone - by Stephanie Tihanyi
(all copyrights held by the artist)

The poem I wrote around  1986-9, I cannot remember the exact year. I am sure I had moved to Luton (my birth town) from Bristol. However I know the formations of the poem took hold in my mind, as early as 1984-5, while living in Bristol. It started out as a inner thought or feeling that I had slowly become aware of and that was emerging, A need to find who I really was, my thoughts about myself, feelings, perceptions, opinions about trying to define and have a cohesive and less nebulous concept about my identity. At that time my sense of self was ill defined, if it existent at all. Constantly shifting, contradictory, changing and shifting, intangible like spiraling smoke. I related and operated in the world like someone on auto pilot, stoned, dazed, unconscious, like someone in shell shock, numbed out and distant but super sensitive at the same time.
The poem starts with an observer walking past a derelict structure, a house? a crumbled derelict ruined house. They stop to watch a magical entity or being slowly emerge and take form from the cracks, stains  and shapes in the crumbling plaster and bricks. Years later, I understand the Jungian interpretation of house in dreams and the unconscious, is the self, the personality. Mine felt ruined and neglected, but now out of it, something marvelous and magical was emerging, something like an Angel. I say Angel, which is strange because I consider myself in no way religious at all. This alien being comes through silently, without word, unannounced, no birth cry, its not being born, its emerging, like it was always there, always existed, hidden, never manifested (to the conscious, the conscious self) before. What was happening is something quite beautiful, mysterious and sublime. The twelve stars about the head strangely alludes to some sort of biblical reference, also is, "the woman clothed with the sun" in Revelations. I was mystified over the Christian imagery, as I consider myself pretty much an non-believer or at least agnostic, least that's what I tell myself. Never baptized, neither parents ever went to church. I always have thought and felt myself more comfortable with  scientific and logical thought than anything else, with a big distrust of religion. Yet I live unaware or un- acknowledging of this deeply spiritual side.  Clearly, this experience demonstrates an existence of a higher self or higher power that somehow I am connected to. For the first time, I got a glimpse that there was something divine in me, some spark, I was not a ruined old shell of a person, there WAS something valuable in side me, even though I may not  always be aware of it, not feel it, or it may be hidden from me most of the time but I have seen it and it has shown me, that I should fight for myself, that I was something worth fighting for.

(The image is a detail from a small tempera painting on wood panel I did at the time)

The Emergence of the Inner Self Helper

The Aspects of the Self

From the Stone - Stephanie Tihanyi
(copyright held by artist)

The Spirit stepped forth from the Stone,

Emerging slowly, without sound, save for a chiming and tinkerling,

Like small glass bells or birdsong in quartz, echoing,

Small sparking notes tumbled and cascaded and pushed ahead into hard won spaces.

The queen of Sedition put Logic to flight,

in an empty lot of rubble and weeds, a derilict stone site.

Ripping aside the fabric of boundries, upon the infinite Mirror of God,

Altered forces stepped through.

Her many parts, reflections
A multiplicity of bright forms... and winged!,
Concisting of many elements,
both part and seperate.Golden skin was silver sheened,

The aspect of the face, alien yet familliar,

The crowned head sprung twelve spining galaxies,

Bright suns.




Demeter-Sketch by Stephanie Tihanyi
(copyright held by artist)

I have often wondered what this poem I wrote meant. So here I have tried to analize my own poem. I realise I am writing this is in a detached intellectual mode, but thats all I got right now as these things dont all come together when you want them.

Any infomation is better than nothing I say, who knows I may get something in the future. So here goes.

The aspect (alter, covert or hidden undeveloped part of the personality), emerged from the stone (a frozen or arrested part of the personality).

Emerging slowly, without sound (unbidden, unexpected, without any prior knowledge of, unannounced as of course a split off part of the self would do).

The Queen of Sedition (a female authority archetype that has come to overthrow and upsurp, aided by the unconcious, the false conciouseness)

The fabric of boundries. ( a break in the partitions and intra-psychic walls of dissociation). Mirror of God, (not a pathology but a natural operation).

Her many parts, reflections, a multiplicity of bright forms- and winged, Concisting of many elements, both part and seperate, (Subselves, alters, self-states)

The aspect of the face alien yet familliar, ( the yet unrecognised and co-concious parts of the self)