solutio Guildford Cathedral, Surrey, 19 - 23 March 2007, 11am & 3pm This sound installation explores the symbolism of the sevenfold system of antiquity and alchemical cosmology. Seven speakers located within the cathedral represent each of the visible heavenly bodies that determined this geocentric model. Within this ancient system each 'planet' has an affiliate metal: Moon/silver, Mercury/ quicksilver, Venus/copper, the Sun/ gold, Mars/ iron, Jupiter/tin, and finally Saturn/lead. The seven tones, constructed from recordings of Guildford Cathedral's twelve bells, mirror the hierarchy of these metals in pitch and in number of repetitions during the installation's twenty-one minute cycle. From least heard and lowest lead, the most 'base' and inert to most heard and highest silver, 'noble' and refined. Alchemical symbolism extends into the way the tones can be heard, at times, to merge and combine such that their variations are lost in the cathedral-vessel and meet within a harmonic unity. This generatively produced composition is as much about the experience and sensation of 'silence' as it is the manufactured sounds. Complementing its slow movement through time the installation is a spatial exploration of the cathedral's acoustic, and visitors are encouraged to listen from different points within the cathedral. M J Sansom, January 2007 --- Saturn, whose orbit is the widest from the point of view of the earth, corresponds to intelligence, or more exactly, to the intellect, while the moon, whose orbit is nearest to the earth-centre, is analogous to the 'vital-spirit'which binds soul and body to each other. These are the two outermost poles of the soul's capacity, for the vital spirit, which governs the involuntary activities of the body, such as growth and digestion, and which for this reason has an 'existential' rather than a 'rational' character, is in a certain sense opposed to the intellect. Between these two poles, the other faculties of the soul are arranged. These are variously designated and related to the planets, depending on whether the side of 'knowledge' or of 'will' is taken the more into account. In every case the sun corresponds to a faculty which lies midway between the two poles and in a sense unites them. [...] The sun is thus the prototype of the life of the 'sensory soul'. According to another and more profound view of things [...] the sun is analogous to the heart, the organ of intuitive, unitive knowledge, which completely transcends all other faculties of the soul. Just as the sun gives the planets their light, so the heart (seat of the spirit or intellect) illumines all other faculties of the soul. [...] The hierarchy of the planets is descending, and that of the corresponding metals, ascending. The former are active, the later passive. As inert material, metal cannot be the symbol either of a 'cognitive' or a 'volatile' faculty. Thus, because of its static and unformed nature, it is the expression of a similar static state of consciousness, that is to say, of an inward consciousness not bound to mental forms. This is none other than the inward consciousness of the individual body. It is its 'soul-form'. From this 'metal' the alchemist must extract the 'metallic soul' and the 'metallic spirit'. The chaotic and 'opaque' bodily consciousness, encumbered with passions and habits, is 'base' metal. In it soul and spirit seem suffocated, darkened, mixed with earth. On the other hand, 'illumined' bodily consciousness ('noble' metal), is itself a spiritual mode of existence. The soul must first be extracted from base metal, the alchemists say. The remaining body is to be purified and burnt until it is no more than ashes. Then the soul is to be reunited with it. When the body is thus 'dissolved' in the soul [ solutio ], so that both constitute a pure materia , the Spirit acts on the soul and confers on it an incorruptible form. That is to say, it transmutes individual bodily consciousness back into its own purely spiritual possibility, where, in all its fullness and according to its own essence, it remains motionless and indivisible. Basilius Valentinus compares this state with the 'glorious body' of the resurrected. Titus Burckhardt Alchemy: science of the cosmos, science of the soul (Fons Vitae: 1997), p. 84, 85, 87
|