Representation is how art and faith centralize and invert. Material institutions and offices meant to promote them come to stand in for them. And once cut off from the external Truth they were created to represent, they're easily corrupted. Part three in a look at centralization and secular transcendence in art and faith.
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The previous post took up the issue of centralized authority in the arts of the West [click for a link]. The foundations were laid in the Renaissance, making it a pivotal period - just not for the reasons the beast narrative lies about. In the big picture, the Renaissance begins the inversion of Western Christendom into the beast system we are trapped in today. We worked through this in earlier posts.
It's a metaphysical flattening. The only viable formula for the arts of the West that conforms to history and ontology - and isn't just a fancy word for picture - is the material realization of immaterial logos through human techne. Technical skill to realize some element of truth. We're keeping it general to accommodate the diversity of the West - distinct nationalities within a common spiritual and philosophical frame. Here's the graphic.
The important thing to note is the proper ontological placement. The artist's "logos" is their techne -culturally-specific craft skills they develop and perfect. These are applicable to any work they undertake - they aren't connected to content.
The truth of the image is external to the artist. They have to accommodate it to their comprehension, but they don't "make it up". It's an obective standard that they adhere to, and their success is subject to the eternal judgment of clients.
Put it another way, more directly. Because correctly classifying interactions across ontological gaps is a real obstacle for de-moralized victims of the beast system. Even smart ones.
Truth is externally & objectively preexisting
Representation is arbitrary and culturally determined
To generalize, the Renaissance began the process of inversion.
The earliest known image of the Madonna and Child other than some Adoration of the Magi scenes, Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome, early 3rd century.
Mary is shown nursing while a prophet - probably Balaam - points to a star in reference to Numbers 24:17.
I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.
Catacomb imagery is very symbolic, and the techne level isn't always the highest. It's hard to tell here because it's badly worn too. But a lot of truth is packed into this simple image, without made-up, post-facto embellishment. The human aspect of Jesus, the typological connection between Old and New Testaments, and the emphasis on Mary as vehicle are all here. What we don't have are obscene priests LARPing as emperors and claiming powers the Apostles didn't, pagan gods and entities as "symbols" of Christian doctrine, or erotica.
The arts of the West follow a loosely Platonic formula where the artist tries to realize materially a sense of truth in his mind. And since art is made for someone(s), the success of the representation depends on how it is received. The style and composition are arbitrary. The Truth is not. And the efficacy of the Art is the phronesis. How effectively they synergize to give you an impression of something you can't see directly.
Miniature Altarpiece with the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Crucifixion and Moses with the Brazen Serpent, early 16th century, wood, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Thirteen hundred years later, the art looks pretty different. But the typological message - the Incarnation and salvation of man - is the same. Here it's narratives instead of people - two Old Testament scenes that foretell the Crucifixion.
Different time and place, different techne but the same consistent Logos.
The inversion is that the truth to be represented is also arbitrary and man-made. This is a theoretical difference, since all abstracts are humanly known through material or mental representations. How do we know if it's external truth or arbitrary fiction?
The answer is another poser for beast huffers. Moral reasoning. We have to judge. In an entropic, subjective material reality that appears to us as a valley of shadow seen through a glass darkly. We judge imperfectly by the fruits - by the outcomes. Look at some more modern work.
Norton Bush, South American Landscape, 1879, oil on canvas, private
It isn't overtly religious, but is full of truth. It's a realistic portrayal of the topography with the feeling of a bright humid tropical day. The techne is excellent - the light colors in the water and hazy glare are skillful. And behind it all, the beauty of Creation shines through.
Henri Matisse, Landscape at Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, MoMA
Conversely, there's no truth or techne. Just a mentally ill man splattering paint and an atavistic beast system that weaponizes it against Truth and Beauty.
Two landscapes, neither overtly religious. But one draws our mind to supernal things, the other spirals downward into mindless solipsism. Remember - the ontological hierarchy includes the possibility of degenerating below the material level. When not clouded by beast nonsense, it’s easy to see.
What we see take place in the Renaissance doesn't require subtle moral reasoning to spot the problem. Like popes hiring artists to link Jesus to Osiris and aggrandize the family name. Or claim sibyls were granted Christian revelation...
Pinturicchio and assistants, Io/Isis with Moses and Hermes Trismegistus, 1493, fresco, Sala dei Santi, Appartamento Borgia, Vatican Palace
Or Mary and Isis, with fraud Hermes elevated to the same level as Moses - the Old Testament prophet and type for Christ. Confusing the Greek Io and Egyptian Isis - or the Greek god Hermes and the late antique fake sage - is typical of the blasphemous nature of the late medieval "Church".
Pinturicchio and assistants, Hermes Trismegistus with the Zodiac, 1493, fresco, Sala delle Sibille, Appartamento Borgia, Vatican Palace, Rome
Hermes gets his own little panel too. It's easy to pretend he's a source of cosmic wisdom because he didn't exist. Like any imaginary friend, he has no character of his own. He can be whatever you pretend.
It's amusing that Christians rightfully condemn the idolatry and anti-Christian satanic inversions of "Pope Francis" without noting that costumed sinners have always tried to impose pagan idols on the righteous. And Christians have always risked life and limb to reject them. What changed over the last couple of millennia were the title and costume.
Masolino, St. Catherine Refusing to Worship Idols, 1425-31, fresco, San Clemente, Rome
Domenichino, St. Cecilia before the Judge, between 1612-15, fresco, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
Paintings of early Christians being martyred for refusing to worship idols were common. Here are two from fresco cycles on either side chronologically of the Pinturicchio paintings for Alexander VI.
The justifications for Christian art may or may not convince. But the issue is whether they qualify as idols if their subjects are accurate and they aren't venerated or worshipped. No one legitimate ever defended honoring pagan gods in Christian holy places.
Pictures condemning idolatry can seem ironic unless taken at face value. So let's do that - put aside internal theological debates between Christian factions and assume a distinction between Christian art and venerating idols. This would fall into two big areas - the subjects of the pictures and how they are used. In both of the above, a clear didactic message distinguishes visual communication from veneration or worship. From any active role in Christian ritual at all. An altarpiece gives the Mass a visual backdrop, but it plays no role in the proceedings. The doctrine of transubstantiation is not dependent on the adjacent decor.
Now Alexander. We don't know what he did with the images, so we can't say if he was committing formal idolatry as understood by the Church of his day. But the content is actively evil - a subversion of Christian Truth that undermines the message of salvation.
This is what makes the Hermetic inversion in the papal apartments so egregious. The images include Isis gathering the parts of Osiris' body so he can be brought back to life - the main reason deceivers try and confuse him and Jesus. The style makes it easy to overlook. All the figures have that 'more luxurious version of Perugino' quality that Pinturicchio has. But the feeling of wrongness comes through all the same.
Then there's the pyramid on the altar. It's not a condemnation scene like the pictures right above. It's an effort to assert compatibility between two things as utterly opposed morally and spiritually as the Heaven or Hell they lead into.
When "Pope Francis" and his cabal of satanic priests ensconce pagan idols in St. Peter's it's arguably worse than Alexander because it's in an actual church. There is clearly interaction of a ritual nature - both from the pose and configuration of the figures and their absurd costumes. Note the inclusion of the small priestess. By the fruits, it appears one can get around female clergy by recruiting pagan witches.
To be fair, Alexander was much more explicit in conflating demons with Jesus. A detailed series of pictures spells it out without plausible deniability.
Ethically, the two are akin in diametrically opposing even the most lenient legitimate Christian take on imagery. The difference seems to be whether the culture is debased enough to bring the demonology into the open.
So both the late medieval papacy and the "Pope Francis" junta are cut from the same blasphemous cloth in their rejections of the scriptural Christian account of Logos. Furthermore, they deny their own doctrinal history. Either popes can simply incorporate pagan gods into Catholic ontology however they want. Or the "popes" in question are inversive frauds. By the fruits.
Art is complicated by incorporating different levels in a single image that signifies like reality. The old saying "a picture is worth 1000 words" sells it short. One-dimensional modern atrocities like the Pope's Satanic Throne don't happen overnight. Pinturicchio's work for Alexander is good painting. Historically it's the final form of that 15th-century style epitomized by the Sistine Chapel walls that the High Renaissance replaced.
Pinturicchio, Resurrection with Alexander VI, 1492-1493, Borgia Apartments, Vatican Museums
For what it's worth, Alexander appeared to be Christian. Here he's worshipping the resurrected Christ. The Band isn't equating degree of wickedness - just the putting man-made fantasy over the message they were charged with.
This is what makes art so potentially subversive - you can still have a thread of truth and beauty but use secondary connotations to slip in lies. Look at the most famous of the Pinturicchio frescos - a big panel showing St. Catherine of Alexandria. Only here, the focus is decidedly not on idolatry. Not in the same way, anyhow. The nominal subject is Catherine's defeat of the pagan emperor's philosophers and her martyrdom. There is a persistent rumor that Catherine and the turbaned man behind her are Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia.
Pinturicchio, St. Catherine's Disputation, 1492, Hall of the Saints, Borgia Apartments, Vatican
Note the Roman triumphal arch in the background. It follows the Sistine Chapel walls in showing early Christian or Biblical history taking place in Rome. This makes a visual tie between the papacy as a Roman institution and the Christian past.
What's different here is the golden calf bull on top - a combined symbol of Alexander and Osiris in the paintings. Yes, it can be "explained". It's still totally inverted as a symbol of Christian authority. Given the historical and traditional meaning of those symbols in that context.
That's the thing deceivers always gloss over. Art is neither "autonomous" not "natural". It's a representation. And like any representation, it uses conventionalized references. Symbolic elements will have primary and secondary associations. These will mix and match differently for different viewers. Some will go unnoticed by most. The point is that it is a contrived statement - as much as any text. This isn't like a photo that captures things as they appeared. This is historical fiction - a totally imaginary take on a past event "written" for present-day ideological reasons.
The logos is in the subject - the virtue and sanctity of Catherine of Alexandria. The techne is in Pinturicchio.
Pinturicchio, Adoration of the Christ Child, around 1490, oil on wood, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
Pinturicchio is a fine painter - especially if you like that earlier Renaissance style. Here he uses that more elegant version of Perugino and some ancient Roman inspired decoration around the arch.
Note the Italian town in the background. Situating Biblical scenes in familiar surroundings was a common way to help people connect the stories to their own existence. On this level, the triumphal arch in the Borgia apartments was normal. Easy to explain away. The golden bull is the twist.
Alexander's component is the not-Christian part...
Art is an excellent Trojan Horse because it can slip inverted messages in with truth and beauty. Like a little bit of urine in the wine, it may pass unnoticed at first, but the drink is impure. Keep adding more and it will become foul. Remember the change vs. meaningful change distinction.
Extrapolate forward - the centralized authority is inverted, then there is nothing to prevent the thread of truth from being phased out completely.
This is the full inversion. The possibility of beauty is lost then as well.
Redefining "art" as an arbitrary, rule-based discourse was a necessary precondition of the Trojan Horse. It's not subjective techne chasing objective truth - even in theory. Not that abstracts can manifest materially qua abstracts - art as phronesis was derived from Aristotle, so a hylomorphic formation is not surprising. But logos as the content ideal allows truth and beauty to serve as external measures. If the techne and the content are just arbitrary theory - if the logos part is just the theory de jour - then it isn't art in any meaningful sense.
Art as arbitrary, rule-based techne or form to represent
objective truth or content.
becomes
Art as an arbitrary rule-based discourse that
determines form and content.
In declaring "art" theoretically objective on a material level it becomes secular transcendence. It may be inadvertently truthful - lingering cultural momentum, an individually moral artist, etc. But there is nothing to stop it from not being. So Osiris or whatever.
The logical next question is why the self-proclaimed arbitrator between man and Logos is visualizing false doctrines in the institutional heart of Christendom?
Joseph Marie Vien, Pope St. Gregory the Great, 1766, oil on canvas Fabre Museum
This is a different debate from extra-Biblical dogmas that are accepted as articles of faith and don't overtly contradict scriptural metaphysics. The office of "pope" as institutionally defined is a post-Biblical development that is at least compatible with how Jesus singles Peter out in scripture. One can argue if the exact form of the position as it evolved was biblically necessitated. But it isn't ruled out by it either.
Contrast legitimating a man-made position with Matthew 16:16 to justifying one with appeals to Osiris or Pachamama. One is a dispute over Christian interpretation, the other is an overt satanic inversion.
The centralization and corruption of the medieval Church follows the same broad pattern as the arts of the West. The specifics are obviously completely different. Historical development and structures and metaphysical implications are nothing alike. But on a pattern level, both express the same dangerous impossible necessity – the need to embody ontological abstraction in material expression.
Impossible because metaphysical abstractions by definition transcend entropic temporality.
We are born into pre-existing Creation and learn progressively. We can discover abstract relations inductively, but there's an inexorable ontological priority order.
In reality, the subset cannot subsume the superset. Only representations can entertain self-generating images and temporal or ontological Mobius loops. And representations are themselves post-facto reactions to reality. Writing that out might make it sound tricky. Here's what it looks like...
Gerrit Dou, Man Writing by an Wasel, c. 1631-1632, oil on panel, private; Page with a diagram of the sun, moon, earth and planets from Bede's De temporibus, around 1244, British Museum, Egerton MS 3088 f. 17v
So we don't encounter actual timeless abstractions within our material reality, because they are ontologically incompatible with entropic temporal existence. What we do encounter are material references to them that aren't them.
But representation is also necessary because as fallen entropic material creatures, we have no direct perception of abstract reality. All that we can know must be expressible through materially-derived, time sequenced, material reference.
François Lemoyne, Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy, 1737, oil on canvas, Wallace Collection, London
The premise behind this allegory is that the truth comes out in time - literally the naked truth. This is not necessarily the case, but that doesn't matter. These are material representations of abstract things used to assert a relation that may or may not conform to the thing represented - the subject.
The necessity - how would you communicate about truth, time, lies, etc. without word, pictures, or something else that isn't the abstract absolutes in themselves? You can't even define them.
The critical implication is that we can conceptualize things that don't or can’t materially exist. This isn't a new revelation - it's implicit in the nature of Logos that ties the ontological hierarchy together. Logic abstracts from empirical observation, and faith rises above that. Historically, this was presented as the composite nature of the soul, with animal material and intellectual abstract aspects in one. Of course, animals exhibit basic inferential reasoning as well - though not to the same degree. The gradients and distinctions are more complex than simple categories assume.
Is “consciousness” supernatural?
Who cares. All we can know must be expressible through materially-derived time sequencing. What happens afterward is temporally subsequent.
Dangerous because it’s a short fall into claiming the material representation is the same as the subject. This is an inherent limitation of the dependence of consciousness on representation for input. The problem is that representations are creations that reference something else and independent things with their own properties. They start by denoting or standing for things that are materially real then quickly spread to things that aren't. In our truth painting, the symbolic elements are all based on real forms but the message is intangible and not necessarily correct.
Being able to think or represent something is insufficient to determine whether it is materially real or not.
Consider - all representations express something that the representation isn't. Numbers, words, pictures all refer to an absent subject. So all representation is linked in some way to what it represents. But they are also things-in-themselves. Even if only marks on a page. In order to work - to represent - they develop their own internal systematic logics and consistencies. The rules that allow them to make sense as meanings. But the rules and internal logic are of the representation - they're totally independent of the subjects that the representations are representing.
This means representation qua representation can't have the same properties as the thing represented qua the thing represented.
They're related but different and function differently.
This is the representation vs. reality problem that even the smartest historical figures can just fly over.
Historically, there have been two forms of binary idiocy around representation. That it's completely transparent and can be treated conceptually as the same as the thing represented. Or completely opaque and can be treated conceptually as entirely different from the thing represented. Absolute transparent equivalence or Postmodern retard inversion where the mediation masquerades as the reference. Put plainly, it should surprise no one with even a thimble full of IQ points that both are true and must be accounted for.
Representation is a filter – like the glass in through a glass darkly or the shadow in the valley of shadow. Imperfect accommodation of something else that nevertheless offers the possibility of understanding.
It's complex - this simple parable is a spoken allegorical representation of the nature of the Kingdom put into written words in the Bible then reprinted and visualized in many forms. None of which are the actual metaphysical content of the meaning.
This is what made Pierce so useful to our earlier posts. His model identified the role of the perceiver in navigating this interplay of same and different. Because the perceiver is the one who decodes the message based on their understanding of the signs being used. Meaning forms when they can identify the difference between representation and subject and call to mind the latter. Whether they are correct raises further complications, but we're sticking to basic mechanisms here. Click for a link to the post this from.
Occultists, postmodernists, liars, and other filth of that nature claim representation controls reality. These deceptions build of the interplay of sameness and difference in any representation but in a way that inverts reality.
"Okay, I'm a bat, too. Abracadabra!"
Representations refer to something other than themselves. Referential links are needed to posit a connection between sign and signified in the first place. If there is no tie between them, there can be no connection for one to control the other. It's a funny bit, but both forms conform to the representational denotations of the word "bat".
Ben Garrison cartoon, 22nd June 2021
But the representations also have to be different from the reality they claim to represent or there is no capacity for independent manipulation of the sign. The liar has to be able to make claims with the representation that are not properties of the subject so the recipient - you - react as if the lies were real & not the truth.
The point is that representations can convey information that is false or even completely disconnected from reality. Hence the danger - that which we use to communicate truthful information has no internal mechanism to prevent fabrication and deception. So impossible, necessary, and dangerous. And as with everything in this fallen world, the truth-value - the moral value - depends on the character of the individual using it. By the fruits.
The next thing to deal with is the role of representation in human existence. It is omnipresent.
We think of representation as semiotics or organized sign systems. Letters, numbers, symbols, art conventions, video – media used to record and transmit information.
But the representational process is much more fundamental. Anything that materially expresses or is meaningfully associated with – connotatively or denotatively – something else is operating representatively.
This one is harder to spot because there isn’t a single identifiable medium at work. It’s a mess of things – buildings, institutions, theories, stakeholders, media of all kinds. Whatever network of socio-cultural entities becomes associated with the abstract concepts it services in some way.
They’re all different – but what they have in common is the broad representation coming to take the place of the thing it represents.
Like the Met as a nice place to display art becoming synonymous with or exerting control over art as a concept. The Met doesn't embody, define, or have any necessary ontological link to the marriage of Logos + Techne. It's a storehouse.
If it promotes Logos + Techne, then it's promoting art. If it doesn't, it isn't. By the fruits.
This more general sort of representation necessarily falls into inversion when it becomes wrongfully treated as synonymous with its subject. This isn't rhetoric - it's ontological priority order. That is, the basic layout of reality. Mistaking the representational networks for the thing they were to represent pretends a contingent material expression is the antecedent abstract it was created to express.
It's ubiquitous.
Here's a familiar non-art example.
The apparatus of representational government was created to express the interests and desires of a polity.
But it became a self-perpetuating tyrannical oligarchy that imposes its own interests and desires on a polity.
It’s just another way to phrase the old Philosophical Bait and Switch. And you can easily see how the connection and difference inherent in any representation comes into play.
Start with a representation of what "the arts of the West" is.
Art expresses Logos through visual applications of techne.
Logos + Techne for short.
Now consider the development of representational networks - first to service this, then replacing it.
Over time, socio-cultural formations develop to
analyze, teach, and disseminate Logos + Techne.
becomes
Over time, socio-cultural formations declare
themselves “art” and replace Logos + Techne
Ontologically, this is impossible. A material “representation” that accommodates a metaphysical abstract can’t be the abstraction. But semiotically, it’s easy. A representation doesn’t have to be truthful. There is nothing inherent to stop it from stating whatever it wants. But then it is no longer representing what it was created to and still professes represent. It’s why we use Art! to distinguish the lies of the beast system from Logos + techne. That is, art.
Centralization is necessary for this.
Peder Mørk Mønsted, Spring, early 20th century, oil on canvas, private; Maurice Vlaminck, Banks of the Seine at Chatou, 1905-6, oil on canvas, Musée d’art moderne de Paris)
While the mental defectives called "Fauves" were splattering paint for gibbering atavists, artists were making art. They just weren't doing it in the old places because the old places were expressing something else.
Without centralization, some of the old places might still be promoting Logos + Techne. Imagine if the idiot masses who accept institutions in lieu of real things were given choices within their little mental shoeboxes?
You only get the totally preposterous inverted lies - like demented smears as art or genetic toxins as "medicine" - when effective alternatives within the broad representational network are turned off. That's centralization. At which point, the intelligent and perceptive abandon the network to seek the thing it no longer represents.
Centralization doesn’t even have to have a legally binding structure, though it can. Art! is more based on money, gatekeeping, and informal ties. Democracy! has full control of the judiciary and organized use of force. But official, unofficial, or both, centralized networks of institutions and entities that manage to take over for what they were intended to represent enforce rigid ideological orthodoxy.
Take Frank Gehry's Bilbao eyesore - erected at the cost of close to $100 million in 1990s dollars. The cost, endless promotion, and bizarre appearance make it impossible to ignore. It's clearly presented as a material representation of "what art is today". It's even tied into Basque identity politics as a tourist attraction and "proof" of some sort of cultural something.
The building is eye-catching, but ugly and without lasting appeal after the initial impact. Not aging so well, either.
The pile of alien rubble has no organic connection to its natural setting, community, or local culture. What sort of message does this representation represent?
The impression is some sort of invasive mutate or salient, depending if taken as biological or man-made. From first glance it's fake definition of art is the inverse of any form of logos or culturally-meaningful techne. It's a perfect representation of what Art! is. The utter irrelevance to art is equally clear. Atavistic garbage like this will be acclaimed for its salvage value in the world to come.
Interior scenes with accumulated junk by Eduardo Chillida (top) and Richard Serra's Snake of 2005 (bottom).
Degenerate trash is collected on the interior as well, but in a more orderly arrangement. And one of Serra's ugly hulks of rusting metal brought indoors rather than fouling a public space.
No art, but a form of engagement that soul-dead materialists can take as an "experience". Stupid people are engaged by simple contrasts and brutish, dark-colored lumps stand out against the smooth, white backdrops.
That's it.
The rigid ideological orthodoxy represented here? Anything but logos or techne. Full inversion as the outcome of the dangerous, impossible necessity of embodying abstract truths in material representations. Here's a not-rhetorical question - if you care about your art or culture, why would you set foot in this charnel house?
Ontological priority order gets so easily confused because the representation is what evokes the subject in the mind. It's how we think of it. You can't see "Logos+Techne" or "the will of a people" without a material expression. But you can see museums and art books or a government building. So one becomes interchangeable with the other in the mind's eye. But one is a representation and one exists. They aren't the same. They don't even have to have anything in common.
And remember - representations can represent things that are unreal or don't exist. Just as our imaginations can picture falsehoods and out logical faculties grasp immaterial abstractions.
Material reality is irrelevant to whether or not a subject can be represented - internally or externally.
The ability to conceive of things that are unreal or real but immaterial is a two edged sword. It is the source of our incredible creativity, our highest values, our connection with God. It also makes us susceptible to lies, delusions, and terrible decisions. This has been long known - the ancients saw phantasia as having psychological and metaphysical aspects. Aristotle's capacity for imaginative thought between sensation and mind and part of an immaterial soul within a material body.
Louis Janmot, Poem of the Soul, The Angel and the Mother, 1854, oil on canvas, Musee des Beaux Arts Lyon
Different but connected levels of reality within us – however defined.
From a Christian sense, it’s how we can align with Logos
The occult relies on our ability to conceptualize the not materially real when it inverts ontological priority. Anterior representations as constitutive of what they represent because that's how we thing and communicate. Pure projected solipsism. There's never a credible argument because there can be none. Any illusion of metaphysical “power” has nothing to do with magic words and everything to do with the metaphysical forces that surround us. The servants of the prince of this world and whatever unclean spirits are cluttering the aether.
Things that may have an abstract origin, but can offer no path out of this reality.
Luis Ricardo Falero, Faust’s Vision (detail), 1880, oil on canvas, private
Not that the Father of Lies is likely to come clean...
Just know that if what you think you are doing is ontologically impossible, it isn’t really what you’re doing.
Conversely, Jesus is never presented as something we can all aspire to be. Imitate, emulate, learn from, try to live up to, call upon... there are all kinds of real connections between him and humanity. It's just that neither "Son of Man" nor "Son of God" are applicable to anyone else. Nor can anyone else do all the things he does. The Transfiguration alone marks him as singular.
Carl Bloch, Transfiguration of Jesus, around 1865, oil on canvas
Back at the beginning, the Band has mentioned the unique nature of Jesus as a religious figure. He isn’t a “representation” – even in the broadly defined sense of this post – because he is what he references. Son of God and Son of Man in one figure. Physical and metaphysical natures conjoined.
The human aspect makes him personally relatable to us. We can attempt to emulate his manner and conduct, and through that access the metaphysical aspects of the Logos. But only he can connect us to those metaphysical aspects
There's the distinction - he is what he represents. Jesus is utterly unique in that he doesn't just evoke or call to mind an absent transcendent abstraction with a material form. In his singular case, the ontological prior actually is instantiated in a temporally-contingent physical body. That this is materially "impossible" is irrelevant to the ultimate Creator that set these rules in the first place. Why do it this way? Who knows? The purely ontologically prior isn't determined by the reasoning processes of temporal, fallen, antecedent subjectivities. Our thought-pictures are inadequate to account for ultimate reality. If there is something we don't understand, the limitation is with us.
We call them limits of discernment, but those are just representations. It's the content that matters.
Antonio da Correggio, Noli me tangere, 1525, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid
The nature of Christ is known by faith, although the implications are compatible with logical and empirical analysis. So once his nature is accepted, the rest of Christian metaphysics and morality follow. It’s how we can judge by the fruits. Jesus lays out a consistent alternative vision to the fallen world that once initially accepted, becomes universally applicable.
The occult inversion would have us be our own gods - to "ascend" or whatever through our own powers and knowledge. Plus some crappy old woodcut prints and published secret magic words. No need for the Logos as a singular conduit between the fallen world and God if we impel our own ascents. Jesus is at most a template that we fully realize in self-divinizing. Of course, if what you think you are doing is ontologically impossible, it isn’t really what you’re doing.
Contrast Jesus' prayer at he end of Matthew 26:39 and a well-known satanic mantra. We generally dislike Bible snippits, but brevity makes sense here for the sake of comparison.
Heinrich Hofmann, Christ in Gethsemane, 1886, oil on canvas, Riverside Church, New York
...not as I will, but as thou wilt
vs.
Do what thou wilt
The first recognizes the ontological constraints on temporal material creations. Regardless of the precise nature of Jesus' divinity, he is also human. And as such, also subject to the consequences of ontic existence. The second isn't really going where they think it does...
This is where the ability to combine and remember multiple complex things comes in. Consider the following...
Reality is complex and multi-level.
Everything we know is filtered through material representations.
Complex things can't be simplified past a point or they become something else.
Any practical metaphysics has to be widely accessible to be useful.
Representations don't have to be truthful.
Stay basic. Any viable notion of Christianity - whatever the individual variations in interpretation - has to make Christ's Good News available to people who weren't there. That's the starting point. If we are to judge by the fruits, how well it facilitates getting and implementing the message of salvation is the crop. To the point where a "church" that impedes the message is definitionally "not Christian".
God Creates Sun, Moon and Stars, 1180s, Byzantine mosaic in Monreale Cathedral, Sicily
Reality is complex and multi-level. Since Christianity addresses faith-based knowledge of ultimate reality, this means Christian metaphysics are also complex and multi-level.
Consider the role of logos in binding together the ontological hierarchy. Manifesting in the appropriate continuous-yet-divided form on each level. Knowable through ancient scripture of uncanny alignment with reality as we perceive it.
Everything we know is filtered through material representations. It has to be since we can’t access abstract realities directly. This makes Christianity the belief system and all its socio-cultural manifestations representations of the message of salvation through the New Covenant proclaimed and taught by Jesus. If we accept his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection as the price of the Fall, then his teaching is the path to the Kingdom. The Bible is accepted on faith as having a divine truth value. Churches grow and develop to unite believers in communion and protect the integrity of the message.
Christian metaphysics are conceptually difficult. But have to be widely accessible to be practically useful. This means they have to be presentable in formulas that are simplified without losing the meaning.
Sir James Thornhill, Paul Preaching in the Areopagus (after Raphael), 1729-31, oil on canvas, Royal Academy of Arts, London
This is the core purpose of a church - to present Christian truth in a way that is accurate and understandable.
The representation/reality problem comes in on two levels. The first is when the dim treat the simplified representational formulas as magic spells and not guides to behavior and attitude. That's churchianity - the replacement of Jesus with the church as primary focus. It's a subset of the replacement of a subject by its representation that this post has been addressing. In this case, the organization that turns from serving the immaterial purpose it was created to represent materially to becoming the end in itself. Defining its mission by whatever arbitrary and subjective priorities it favors at the time.
One might counter by saying it's that's not significant. The representative institution was created to realize abstract values - however it plans its mission, it will be representing those in some way. Except... Representations don't have to be truthful.
Art is a good process analogy because it exists to bridge material and abstract realities but falls victim to material centralization and inversion. Material reference of immaterial truth becomes Material object that claims to be its own truth. The distinction between sign and signified or subjectivity and objectivity magically vanishes. Because representations don't have to be truthful. Since our material existence is defined by our subjectivities, we can cheerfully tell ourselves that whims and desires are objective truth. And we traipse into Flatland, where ontological distinctions are wished away. Unfortunately this doesn’t change reality. It only leaves us trapped in self-erasing error.
Why reiterate this? Because we want to be crystal clear on the pattern whereby practical changes within material accommodation of abstraction becomes inversion. Where claimed ontological continuity becomes deception.
Art is Logos + Techne [L+T] but somehow becomes the monstrous inversion Art! [click for a post on what makes inversion satanic]. Despite claiming smooth continuity it morphs into it’s opposite.
The systemic “representational” discourse no longer channels L+T, but the exact opposite.
So Art! and L+T are complete opposites despite occupying the same socio-political representational apparatus – theories, schools, critics, institutions, etc. It's actually easy to see when you know what to look for. L+T is a practice – a whole set of methods for visualizing truths with technical skills. Where and by who are irrelevant to that.
Art isn’t defined by a person or place, it’s defined by what it is. The fruits.
Conversely, where and who is all Art! is. Without any truth or skill, there is no measure other than the temporal, arbitrary, fallen subjectivities that make up the material representations broadly defined. The mummers in their gilded tombs that no longer deliver the abstract message they were built to. Their names and appearances can still delude the vain, foolish, or those evacuated NPCs no longer able to recognize truth or beauty. But it is utterly irrelevant to L+T as a process. And consequently has nothing to do with art.
The good news is that modernism doesn’t “destroy art”.
Clyde Aspevig, Point Lobos Seascape, 21st century, oil on linen
It literally can’t.
But it does mean that anyone who serves the truth or faces reality has to let go of the imprimaturs and fake authorities - the representations - that modernism created or corrupted. And we need to be aware that the inversive process of replacing reality with representation isn't only a modern thing. It's been going on since the first venal manipulator met the first representational structure.
The one thing all manifestations of secular transcendence share – besides being inherently false – are clear historical motivations. False ontologies always stink of whatever contemporary myopia was mumming as "timeless" at the time.
Consider the apse of the famous early Byzantine church of S. Vitale in Ravenna.
S. Vitale was started in 526 when Ravenna was under Ostrogothic rule but completed in 547 after the Byzantine reconquest. Note the depiction of Christ and the emperor below and on the left.
Jesus is dressed in imperial purple and sits on the world like an emperor. The saints and angels surround him like a court in a heavenly garden.
Justinian likewise appears in imperial purple, surrounded his court. While Jesus wears a jeweled cruciform halo, Justinian wears a jeweled crown inside a halo. The attempt to make a visual connection between Christ as "emperor" of heaven and Justinian as his Neoplatonic counterpart on earth is clear.
The centralization to inversion process began in the medieval Church before the Middle Ages were really even underway. In the Gospels, Jesus delineates a clear distinction between political orders and the kingdom of heaven. Committing to the material world is diametrically opposite to commitment to God. One makes entanglement in this world something to detangle and escape, the other makes it an end in itself. The Band has already considered the fundamental diversion expressed in the famous "Render unto Caesar" passages, but the ontological opposition of worldly pand divine runs throughout the Gospels.
Over and over Jesus pitches his message as a radical rejection of the current order in favor of God's. He affirms the Law of the prophets, but castigates those who claim to uphold it - the material representations of the intangible subject - but don't. What does he judge? Actions and intentions - fruits and heart. Without those, organizational status is irrelevant and pursuit of worldly power satanic.
The satanic inversion of the Pharisees - the institutional "religious" authority of Jesus' time - is their placement of worldly things above heavenly ones. Going through man-made motions and concocting clever phrasings are irrelevant. This is obvious with a logically coherent look at ontology and it's explicitly stated here - to be taken on faith. Replacing the metaphysical reality with the representation simply severs the representation from whatever it was supposed to mean and converts it to projected dishonest vanity.
But we don't have to rely on extrapolating the render unto Caesar passage alone. Consider Jesus' opponents when he rejects the hollow rules of men for the actual will of God...
The Pharisees claim religious authority for their self-serving Godless regime. The Herodians claim political authority for their self-serving Godless regime. The two camps oppose each other because both are struggling for the same worldly prize. And the one thing that can make them allies of convenience is God's actual message to disregard all the lying worldly potentiates.
Of course, the exact opposite happened in late antiquity, when "Christian" emperors actively promoted the idea that their worldly tyranny was a really a manifestation of God/Jesus' place in heaven. That is, a total inversion of political ontology in the Bible for personal gain.
Barberini Ivory, early 6th-century diptych with a triumphant emperor, likely Justinian, ivory Louvre
It's a high-level ivory, possibly half of a diptych. Four of the original five pieces survive. The lower panels contain standard propaganda of imperial power. But the addition of the beardless Christ between angels that imitate Roman victory allegories transforms the message into a self-deifying inversion of the Kingdom that Christ described in the Gospels.
It's a skillful carving - Justinian was a major patron of the arts. The secondary figures communicate the message. On the left, a defeated barbarian accepts Justinian's rule. On the upper right, an angel or winged victory crowns him. On the lower left, Tellus - the Roman earth goddess - caresses his foot to show his domination of the earth.
The hybrid angel-victories are signs of imperial appropriation of Christian imagery to invert Jesus' message and legitimate their rule. Flanking Christ with these victory-angels completely reverses the scriptural message that worldly power is incompatible with salvation. In this blasphemous inversion, Caesar and Christ are the same thing on different ontological levels!
The perverse misrepresentation of Jesus is complemented by the tribute-bearing barbarian captives from east and west bearing tribute below. Spoils, captives, and obedient tribute are more old Roman symbols of imperial conquest. Combined the message is that Caesar is really the divine image of Christ who conquers and slaughters his way to earthly power and rule as Jesus commanded...
Here's the simplified form. There is obviously nothing Biblically Christian about this at all. It's actually the total inversion of Jesus' teachings about the kingdom.
The underlying problem is the fallen nature of man. Greed, lust, venality, wrath, pride - the list goes on - are all aspects of worldly attachment. And when "the Church" was jacked by emperors and their lust for domination, the structure claimed representational status, but falsely. Just as the lying filth on the imperial throne pretends to represent the opposite of what he actually is.
Obviously a king can be a Christian. And Constantine's transformation of the status of Christianity in the empire freed Christians from persecution by the wicked and facilitated the spread the good news. Society needs some sort of ruling order to function. Likewise, Christianity had to develop some central organizing structures to preserve message integrity - especially after Jesus' Ascension.
This is not the same as plugging Christ into the old fake roman
ideology of "divinized emperors"
Jean Fouquet, Coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III from the Grandes Chroniques de France, 1455-1460, Paris, BnF Français 6465, fol. 89v
So when the imperial papacy was feuding with the emperor over who was the real arbiter over the divine right of kingship, the answer was none of them.
There is no "divine right of kingship" because there is only one divine "King".
Worldly, power-drunk, centralizing freaks have sought to use representations associated with Jesus' message to subvert it almost from the beginning. Jesus himself foretold this and provided a means to separate the liars from Christian leadership.
When you actually look at the inverters in context, their fake ontological claims always serve naked contemporary interest. That is the value of studying history for metaphysical critique. Historical texts can deceive - all representations can. But there is always a confluence of interests – physical or metaphysical – between inverters and their inversions that you aren’t supposed to notice. Simply consider how every medieval papal claim enhanced papal power and wealth.
The next post will look at the fruits of the imperial medieval Church and whether the organic development of these material representative structures reach the point where they invert the Gospel message. Osiris, Pachamama, and the Sibyls aren't in the New Testament or the communion of believers, so we have to account for them somehow.
School of Raphael, The Donation of Constantine, 1520–1524, fresco, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City