The Artist as Creative God
The idea within esoteric Christianity that God is our innermost self, the universal self that we all share, has inspired many Western artists over the centuries to depict themselves as God in the process of creation. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is the most obvious example and is explained as such in my 3-part essay Michelangelo’s Art Through Michelangelo’s Eyes. Yesterday’s entry on Titian’s Danae is another. Unfortunately the Roman Catholic Church has been so successful at demonizing esoteric Christian ideas as heretical, destroying their gospels and spreading untruths that today few Christians are aware of how important this tradition has been to Christian artists, novelists, composers and other creative minds. It was so little known in the 1960’s that a mystical tradition existed within Christianity that the Beatles and their followers went eastwards in search of spiritual truth when they could have stayed at home in their own tradition. What they searched for was in essence the same as the secret teachings that Jesus taught his disciples. Knowledge of them, that we ourselves are divine, can be dangerous for those who are not spiritually ready so Jesus, like many prophets, taught on an allegorical level for his disciples and on a narrative level for the common people who needed only to believe what they were told. Those like the disciples must interpret the teachings allegorically and think inwards. This is how Matthew puts it, Chapter 13: “And the disciples came and said unto him: “Why speakest to them in parables?” He answered and said unto them: “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.….Therefore I speak unto them in parables because they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.” God, Jesus told the disciples, cannot be seen or heard by ordinary people deaf to their innermost being.
Yet however strange it may sound to a modern-day Christian to hear that the artist is God, it would not sound odd to a Hindu. Hinduism was formed from diverse traditions with no single founder but is instead the product of a philosophical evolution spread over several centuries and has been described as “the culmination of the human thought process.” Esoteric Christianity is part of that tradition, sharing a common link with the esoteric side of many of the world’s religions. In Hindu idol worship the worshippers themselves become God while the statue in front of them stands symbolically for the whole process of creation. The forms and ideas that the worshippers find were already in the World Soul but the worshippers bring them to life by pouring their devotion and thought energies into the statue. The statue is, of course, inert matter like stone or even plastic but in their minds the devotees can derive inspiration and guidance from it. It becomes alive in their thoughts and dreams. Thus deep in the Hindu worshipper’s inner world the practitioner becomes a creator, God himself.1 Man, the Christian Bible also says, was made in the image of God and thus, like the Hindu, is divine.
It can be very difficult for some people to accept the esoteric interpretation of the Bible and of Christ’s life but it is important to try if you are an art lover whether you are religious or not. Just as art historians have been unable to see Titian’s image in some of his most important compositions, so you too can fail to understand art’s meaning without an esoteric understanding of Christianity. Once you know how you yourself are both creative and divine, your aesthetic satisfaction on looking at art will bloom and your eyes will open.
1. Daulat Rajawat, Hinduism: Indian Rituals, Customs and Traditions (Jaipur: Delta Publications) n.d.
Posted 09 Feb 2012: MichelangeloTitianInner TraditionReligionTheoryVisual Perception
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