The Passage Temple - Gnipahellir
An enduring feature of ancient mysticism is that of the passage temple. Traditionally a structure in which a supplicant takes part in some mystic experience and emerges transformed or initiated. Sweat lodges and tribal “walk about” and likely even more arcane and lost practices preceded stone architecture. The construct of state and established temples as the site of temporary worship has reduced the concept of transformation to a fleeting experience. There is expected to be little enduring life change in most modern expressions of spirituality. But we find evidence of more intense experiences to be had in the earliest mystery cults. The Greeks referenced Eleusinian Mystery practices. The temple and its theatrical trappings remained at the core of the transformative process. Later Orphic literature discusses the Bacchic rites. Ecstatic and decadent practices meant to bring about permanent spiritual change (or perhaps social and psychological rewiring) to the participants. The Egyptian Serapis and the secretive rites to both he and his consort Isis are another even older example of transformative ritual.
This is echoed in the later usage of the Labyrinth. Most currently adopted by the Christian church as a meditative and controlled walk to achieve some kind of inner reflection, the labyrinth (particularly in spiral form) was at its earliest a form of passage temple. Perhaps a safer recollection of the earlier woodland trial/walk-about type initiation? The spiral labyrinth motif is repeated nearly the world over on both temples and tombs.
In all of these cases there is a blurring of reality – through the distortion of light and often the overload of sound – to create an altered state. While it is assumed that this was meant to elevate the soul to an ecstatic level, the associated records indicate that in many cases the intent was to bring the participant to a state between life and death. The border of our physical world and the realm of the ancestor/spirit is always tenuous. But in our earliest history, that barrier was even more thin. It is no accident that beyond the temples of mystery cults – a much older form of Passage Temple is widely evident. That would be the literal burial chamber.
Our ancestral cultures – from Egypt to the Halstatt– took extreme pains to bury their dead in a ritual fashion… Often extravagantly. The markings used to consecrate or empower these tombs are reminiscent of those that appeared, and would continue to appear, on the metaphorical transformative spaces.
The tombs and burial structures are always visible and accessible to the living. They are constant reminders of mortality. But they are also a way, through the use of light and symbolic imagery (often lattices, rose like icons such as those that would appear on cathedrals, and the again appearing spiral pattern) that the living could enter these spaces and (we assume) commune with the ancestors. And perhaps even achieve some kind of immaterial transformation.
Light and shadow, sound and sound were carefully developed devices within these spaces. Consider the caves of the Delphic Oracles. It was assumed that people were not simply going there to have their fortunes told. But to engage in a ritual in which the divine dead could be accessed. Sources indicate that there was often music – bells, buzzing drone instruments, and flutes – that accompanied these rituals. The sound of water could be heard from streams deep within the earth. Additionally the caves were often perfumed with chthonic gasses from nearby fissures. Sometimes scented water was placed around to enhance the sense of a ritual space. The light was dim and something that became greater than a person would spout song in riddle and strange tongues.
Gnipahellir takes its name from the cave of the dead in Norse lore. It is the antechamber to Helsheim, the underworld. It is guarded by a wolf like beast deep within a forest. A river flows into it. It is another resonance of the woodlands being a way to the crossing point.
The sounds and video within are all recorded at ancient places in the hills of southern Germany, near the seat of the old and elaborate Halstatt grave finds. These woods have many hidden wells and streams that go deep into the earth. Roman and Celtic civilization remnants stand side by side. The only light is video, which was shot at one such grave mound now secreted in the woods there. The instruments are all historic and primitive. The droning of the bowed lyre in particular was thought to be an instrument of the underworld.
Around the space are reconstructed monuments. Stones that are not distinctly placed in a specific culture – but inspired by the tomb monuments of Avebury, Native American and Polynesian petroglyphs, and of course the obelisks of Egypt and Greece.
On the structures are continued the abstract symbols found in the Glyphs component of the show. It is implied that our source for these universal symbols is not coincidentally found frequently on burial sites.
The work reflects a personal thesis that the universal symbolic language – that which appears on structures over the entire world - is sourced. Perhaps these symbols are the things that exist in our mind’s eye between dream and reality: hypnagogic forms which often appear as geometric patterns across a broad survey of those reporting them. They seem to be apparitions impregnated within our DNA from an ancestral source. This reflects the legendary Well of Urd – the font of universal knowledge. The water of fate that springs up from the underworld. The images become the link between the living woods and the cave of the dead. This is the universal implication in the recurrence of this art across cultures, where it is found at both natural places of worship and burial sites.
Gnipahellir is meant to be a meditative space. Direction is implied by the structures but then distorted by the sounds. Strange aromas evoke something old and forbidden. The light of the green woods seems to offer a way to move back to the world of the living.: a literal escape or metaphoric reincarnation. But instead the space could just be a window looking into the now unattainable realm of grass, trees and sunlight.
An enduring feature of ancient mysticism is that of the passage temple. Traditionally a structure in which a supplicant takes part in some mystic experience and emerges transformed or initiated. Sweat lodges and tribal “walk about” and likely even more arcane and lost practices preceded stone architecture. The construct of state and established temples as the site of temporary worship has reduced the concept of transformation to a fleeting experience. There is expected to be little enduring life change in most modern expressions of spirituality. But we find evidence of more intense experiences to be had in the earliest mystery cults. The Greeks referenced Eleusinian Mystery practices. The temple and its theatrical trappings remained at the core of the transformative process. Later Orphic literature discusses the Bacchic rites. Ecstatic and decadent practices meant to bring about permanent spiritual change (or perhaps social and psychological rewiring) to the participants. The Egyptian Serapis and the secretive rites to both he and his consort Isis are another even older example of transformative ritual.
This is echoed in the later usage of the Labyrinth. Most currently adopted by the Christian church as a meditative and controlled walk to achieve some kind of inner reflection, the labyrinth (particularly in spiral form) was at its earliest a form of passage temple. Perhaps a safer recollection of the earlier woodland trial/walk-about type initiation? The spiral labyrinth motif is repeated nearly the world over on both temples and tombs.
In all of these cases there is a blurring of reality – through the distortion of light and often the overload of sound – to create an altered state. While it is assumed that this was meant to elevate the soul to an ecstatic level, the associated records indicate that in many cases the intent was to bring the participant to a state between life and death. The border of our physical world and the realm of the ancestor/spirit is always tenuous. But in our earliest history, that barrier was even more thin. It is no accident that beyond the temples of mystery cults – a much older form of Passage Temple is widely evident. That would be the literal burial chamber.
Our ancestral cultures – from Egypt to the Halstatt– took extreme pains to bury their dead in a ritual fashion… Often extravagantly. The markings used to consecrate or empower these tombs are reminiscent of those that appeared, and would continue to appear, on the metaphorical transformative spaces.
The tombs and burial structures are always visible and accessible to the living. They are constant reminders of mortality. But they are also a way, through the use of light and symbolic imagery (often lattices, rose like icons such as those that would appear on cathedrals, and the again appearing spiral pattern) that the living could enter these spaces and (we assume) commune with the ancestors. And perhaps even achieve some kind of immaterial transformation.
Light and shadow, sound and sound were carefully developed devices within these spaces. Consider the caves of the Delphic Oracles. It was assumed that people were not simply going there to have their fortunes told. But to engage in a ritual in which the divine dead could be accessed. Sources indicate that there was often music – bells, buzzing drone instruments, and flutes – that accompanied these rituals. The sound of water could be heard from streams deep within the earth. Additionally the caves were often perfumed with chthonic gasses from nearby fissures. Sometimes scented water was placed around to enhance the sense of a ritual space. The light was dim and something that became greater than a person would spout song in riddle and strange tongues.
Gnipahellir takes its name from the cave of the dead in Norse lore. It is the antechamber to Helsheim, the underworld. It is guarded by a wolf like beast deep within a forest. A river flows into it. It is another resonance of the woodlands being a way to the crossing point.
The sounds and video within are all recorded at ancient places in the hills of southern Germany, near the seat of the old and elaborate Halstatt grave finds. These woods have many hidden wells and streams that go deep into the earth. Roman and Celtic civilization remnants stand side by side. The only light is video, which was shot at one such grave mound now secreted in the woods there. The instruments are all historic and primitive. The droning of the bowed lyre in particular was thought to be an instrument of the underworld.
Around the space are reconstructed monuments. Stones that are not distinctly placed in a specific culture – but inspired by the tomb monuments of Avebury, Native American and Polynesian petroglyphs, and of course the obelisks of Egypt and Greece.
On the structures are continued the abstract symbols found in the Glyphs component of the show. It is implied that our source for these universal symbols is not coincidentally found frequently on burial sites.
The work reflects a personal thesis that the universal symbolic language – that which appears on structures over the entire world - is sourced. Perhaps these symbols are the things that exist in our mind’s eye between dream and reality: hypnagogic forms which often appear as geometric patterns across a broad survey of those reporting them. They seem to be apparitions impregnated within our DNA from an ancestral source. This reflects the legendary Well of Urd – the font of universal knowledge. The water of fate that springs up from the underworld. The images become the link between the living woods and the cave of the dead. This is the universal implication in the recurrence of this art across cultures, where it is found at both natural places of worship and burial sites.
Gnipahellir is meant to be a meditative space. Direction is implied by the structures but then distorted by the sounds. Strange aromas evoke something old and forbidden. The light of the green woods seems to offer a way to move back to the world of the living.: a literal escape or metaphoric reincarnation. But instead the space could just be a window looking into the now unattainable realm of grass, trees and sunlight.