The work celebrating cerebria is a set of eight folios that depict, in image and text, features and inhabitants of the imaginal realm of cerebria. I created the folios over a period of two years straddling two significant periods of covid lockdown. The folios trace an inquiry into this realm, holding the imaginal (as the word is understood by the French philosopher / mystic Henry Corbin) as paramount, developing as it does, and showing itself, in dreams and contemplations.
The genesis for celebrating cerebria was a visit to the Greek island of Kastellorizo, in December 2019, to attend my son’s wedding. I was strongly affected by the beauty of the island, and the sense that it held something very dear, outside of contemporary time and place. The first folio, postcards from cerebria, hopes to capture some of this exquisiteness as I experienced it on the island.
Why cerebria? I imagined a realm inhabited with folk who live from higher brain functions, using predominantly the cerebral cortex (in which sophisticated information processing generally occurs).
These are sea-faring folk. The sailors of this realm are both weathered men of the sea, and adepts at plumbing the wisdom of inner realms. To this end, they are coached and encouraged by a class of diviners, who come from ancient royal stock and are versed in heraldic wisdom and in methods for imparting their wisdom to these sailors.
Diviners use placards on which they write wise texts as a means of discourse with the sailors. You can see placards in some of the images.
The diviners in turn look to the three visiting voids for guidance. These voids appear at significant moments and places in the realm, and impart knowledge to the diviners. The three visiting voids (a.k.a the three dour siblings or the voids of valence) have ancient wisdom written in fine texts upon their skins. They teach mainly by subtle head movements.
Teachings in cerebria also come by way of fires and fishes, and there are folios that show some of the ways this occurs (see fires of cerebria, fishes of cerebria, and visions of the diviners).
Sailors, diviners and the three voids have from time to time spoken word pieces (poetics) and you can find some of these comingled with the images, as well as in my Kindle books a larger land and tastes of cerebria.
In the final folio (haunts of a romani master), an extraordinary peripatetic man passes through the realm, appearing and speaking in various places. Scriptural fragments penned by sailors, as well as oil paintings, are the traces of the significant affects his appearance had on the spiritual wealth of the realm.
I welcome you to cerebria, and hope you can find solace in this realm and in imaginal realms of your own making.
Finally, here is a clavis (a key) to some of the names and ideas of cerebria.
“tree of hurts”, from the visions of the diviners folio