Sothis Medias

When the multimedia artist engages with the powers and beings of multidimensional reality vast power is unleashed. Creating a work that exists in a multiplicity of formats and facets allows the invoked energies to flow outwards to the eight directions, as well as the spaces between, within, and without. 

My approach to multidimensional art stems from my lifelong interest in the arts, but more specifically through my study of the working methods of groups like Negativland, Coil, Nurse With Wound, and Current 93. It comes from studying the work of multimedia artists like DJ Spooky, but thinking of how the kind of projects he does might translate into a magickal context. It comes from my practice of Active Dreaming as taught by Robert Moss. And it stems from correspondence and conversations with Nigel Ayers, Oryelle Defenestrate-Bascule and countless peers. My voluminous reading in myriad subjects has also shaped the approach I am now taking.

In that respect recent reads like the aforementioned DJ Spooky’s Rhythm Science, Nigel Ayer’s The Bodmin Moor Zodiac and his related works have given me much good compost to sprinkle on my garden. Oryelle’s Telequadrivium Bookweb and the rising ubiquity of digital books have caused me to rethink what books are and can be in general. Nadia Choucha’s Surrealism and the Occult: Shamanism, Magic and Alchemy in the Birth of an Artistic Movement and Stewart Home’s The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrism to Class War are excellent histories on what are otherwise more obscure aspects of the art movements which shaped the 20th century. The list goes on and is too long to fully annotate all the inputs I’ve had to digest. (I’ve worked in a library for over ten years. Excessive reading is an occupational hazhard.)

The Mnemosyne Working as a whole will be made up of a series of magickal practices, writings, musick, radio broadcasts, visual art, performances and whatever other mediums inspiration and vision lead me to do this work in. Much emphasis will be placed on the Ars Memoria or Art of Memory and the building of a Memory Palace that is also an Internal Library. Memory is the theme that will run through all of the work, though other themes will emerge as they relate to Memory’s children.

Mnemosyne, or Memory, is Mother of the Nine Muses. As such, the Mnemosyne Working seeks to engage each of the Nine Muses in a creative union. As mentioned above there will be a radio broadcast dedicated to Mnemosyne, and one each for Calliope, Euterpe, Terpsichore, Urania, Clio, Polyhymnia, Erato, Melpomene, and Thalia. I already have a poem and some music written for Calliope, and a historical poem inspired by Clio. More is underway.

And though the Work is already begun, a launch of sorts will be my talk at the Esoteric Book Conference this year. Formally my talk is about Harahel, the Libray Angel, one of the 72 angels of the Shemhamphorasch. However much of my talk is also about Librarys in general, about Multidimensional Libraries that exist on the astral and imaginal planes and how these can serve as a Memory Palaces or Memory Libraries for the enterprising mage, and how libraries themselves represent the memories of mankind.

The idea of working with Mnemosyne and her children came from a dream I had in the fall of 2010. It was part of a group dream experiment where everyone in Robert Moss’s online dream forum incubated a dream for the following intention on the same night: “How can we bring the Sacred Feminie back into our daily lives?” This is the dream I received:

The Muses of Thermopylae

I am an observer. I am looking at a female painters model, and a painter who is making a portrait of her. She has read hair and is standing in front of a hedge. In her left hand she is holding the Earth. I think of her as Gaia, but also as one of the Muses. I then see the painter start to brush strokes on his canvas. He is going to paint the image as a tarot card, and I think it will be used as a kind of door.

Then I am scanning a list of the nine Muses on Wikipedia looking for a name. I read the name “Thermopylae”. The entry next to it says she is the Muse of Gates and Doors and the Opener of Doors.

I layed in bed for a little bit after the dream attempting to slip back into it, but found myself inside the library where a library women was pointing out some graffitti in the stacks.

I awoke feeling pleased. I know a few painters, but didn’t recognize the guys face only his back. The dream itself looked like a painting. The women I didn’t recognize, except as Gaia.

I had some research to do on the word Thermopylae. It turns out it is a place, most well known for the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. However I was most interested in what I learned when I looked up the Greek word Thermopylae in my trusty copy of The Oxford Classical Dictionary. The word means “Hot Gates” from its sulfur springs (Wikipedia told me that this is derived from the myth that Heracles had jumped into the river there in an attempt to wash off the Hydra poison infused in the cloak that he could not take off. The river was said to have turned hot and stayed that way ever since). It was the meeting place of the famous Amphictiony. The Amphictionies were “dwellers round about” and was a name for various leagues connected with temples and the maintenance of their cults. The Oxford Classical Dictionary says, “most important was the Amphictionic League organized around the temple of Demeter at Anthela near Thermopylae and later associated with that of Apollo at Delphi. In the earliest known form the league consisted of twelve tribes. The League, in cooperation with Delphi, administered the Temple of Apollo and conducted the Pythian Games.” Then it goes on to explain how the League was governed by hieromemnons, a type of religious official and judge. It then says, “the League was not without political importance. An old Amphictionic oath forbade destroying cities within the League or cutting off their water supply. Later Panhellenic legislation included decrees concerning Dionysiac guilds and currency.”

It turns out the word Hieromemnon means “one of sacred memory”. Robert Moss thought this would be a good title for a male who is wedded to the cause of the Goddess. After sending some emails about all this to Hermaphroditic ChaOrder of the Silver Dusk and the Horus-Maat Lodge, Oryelle declared me Hieromemnon of the Silver Dusk.

Soon thereafter I constructed and performed a ritual invocation of Mnemosyne, dedicating myself to her service in the process.

In working on my talk about the Library Angel for the Esoteric Book Conference I hadn’t given much thought to Mnemosyne until the end of putting my amassed material together. It was then that I realized, in speaking so much about books, libraries, archives, and the need to preserve documents relating to esoteric history that I was doing the work of Memory, Mother of the Muses.

May it continue.