Prehistoric Rock Art

The most inspiring moments in this project are when our little prototypes take form, bursting out from our dreams into this shared reality on planet earth. And that’s what happened yesterday, when we had our first Art Monastery Symposium.

Gyrus, expert in ancient rock art and archaeology of consciousness, led the first in a series of symposium-style lectures and discussions. His richly visual presentation mixed scholarly archaeology with very personal engagement.

He showed us images of cup-and-ring art dating 3000 to 6000 years ago, from the Bronze to Neolithic ages. Apparently the same sorts of images show up on flat rocks in open plains across northwest Europe. The images are striking and it’s easy to imagine devoting years of research to studying them.

Gyrus led us through a discussion of “passage graves” used for communing with dead via rituals and trance states. He drew connections between some of these abstract patterns, especially spirals, with the first phase of entering into a trance-like state. He related the spiral to the journey toward death, as well as the birth process. The image below shows the entrance to one of these passage graves in Newgrange, Ireland.

Gyrus told us about David Lewis-Williams’ theory of Paleolithic cave art, presenting the surface of a rock as a permeable membrane between this world and otherworld. Perhaps these images are not meant to depict a temple or a path or a breast or an eye, but are meant to point out an unnoticed liminality.

Water over rock carvings.

Water over water.

Afterward, we sat around and discussed the relationship between art and archeaology, the difficulties and liberties that come with each approach, and the sort of expectations one carries from each of these disciplines.

Our discussion benefitted from the presence of the keynote speaker of our next symposium (November 22), Finnian. A fantastically warm and experienced archeaologist turned journalist and artist, Finnian brought to the discussion an additional layer of knowledge and stimulating questions. I’m so glad she could join us and am psyched to hear what she has to say in November.

Also visit Gyrus’s blog: dreamflesh.com.The most inspiring moments in this project are when our little prototypes take form, bursting out from our dreams into this shared reality on planet earth. And that’s what happened yesterday, when we had our first Art Monastery Symposium.

Gyrus, expert in ancient rock art and archaeology of consciousness, led the first in a series of symposium-style lectures and discussions. His richly visual presentation mixed scholarly archaeology with very personal engagement.

He showed us images of cup-and-ring art dating 3000 to 6000 years ago, from the Bronze to Neolithic ages. Apparently the same sorts of images show up on flat rocks in open plains across northwest Europe. The images are striking and it’s easy to imagine devoting years of research to studying them.

Gyrus led us through a discussion of “passage graves” used for communing with dead via rituals and trance states. He drew connections between some of these abstract patterns, especially spirals, with the first phase of entering into a trance-like state. He related the spiral to the journey toward death, as well as the birth process. The image below shows the entrance to one of these passage graves in Newgrange, Ireland.

Gyrus told us about David Lewis-Williams’ theory of Paleolithic cave art, presenting the surface of a rock as a permeable membrane between this world and otherworld. Perhaps these images are not meant to depict a temple or a path or a breast or an eye, but are meant to point out an unnoticed liminality.

Water over rock carvings.

Water over water.

Afterward, we sat around and discussed the relationship between art and archeaology, the difficulties and liberties that come with each approach, and the sort of expectations one carries from each of these disciplines.

Our discussion benefitted from the presence of the keynote speaker of our next symposium (November 22), Finnian. A fantastically warm and experienced archeaologist turned journalist and artist, Finnian brought to the discussion an additional layer of knowledge and stimulating questions. I’m so glad she could join us and am psyched to hear what she has to say in November.

Also visit Gyrus’s blog: dreamflesh.com.