Theos-Talk Archives (October 2001 Message tt00185)

Tuesday, October 09, 2001

Dear Friends:


Re: Art and Perspectives:


I believe that evidence of ancient engineering can be found in
projects of building and hydro-culture all over the world. Some
evidence beneath the ocean seems to show that the ancient
builders had to be familiar with perspective as a tool used in
designing their works.

In engineering the representation of a future project had to be
visualized -- usually by sketches and renderings that conveyed a
concept of what a finished project would look like. Engineering
drawings would have to use geometrical perspective as a guide.

Its use in art is another matter, and we seem to have a very
short time list of art depictions to refer to -- perhaps most are
only up to 5,000 years ago.

But when we move to consider antique engineering works of great
magnitude, then the time scale may expand to several hundreds of
thousands, if not millions of years. Both ISIS UNVEILED and The
SECRET DOCTRINE catalog a number of these.

In the orient the rice paddies and the great river basins that
have been irrigated in the remote past attest to the use of
perspective to coordinate their building. In the forests of the
Amazon satellite surveys have discovered that much of that huge
basin shows signs of being cultivated and hydro-irrigated -- much
as are the paddies of Thailand, or China, or the Philippines and
India were.

Cyclopean and other ancient buildings of Atlanto-Lemurian
building are still found in the Mediterranean basin, and Pyramids
dot the surface of the earth to an amazing extent. One can see
them in Egypt, Turkey, China, Cambodia, North, Central and South
America, Africa, and many are reputed to have been submerged at
the time of the several cataclysms, earth plate submergences,
floods and deluges that destroyed Atlantis over the past million
years. [ Se details in SECRET DOCTRINE Vol. II and in ISIS
UNVEILED ]

It is perfectly true that one can trace the evolution of
perspective in art as described, but that does not imply an
ignorance of the art in antiquity.

We can only say we have few if any evidences of truly ancient
art, architecture and sculpture that seem to use our present
criteria of geometrical perspective. It does not mean that did
not exist.

Best wishes,

Dallas

==============================

-----Original Message-----
From: E----n B----r
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 1:06 AM
To:
Subject: Re: Memories of Past Lives ART and PERSPECTIVE

Talking about the evolution of human consciousness and its
attributes, it is
interesting to note, that only till a few hundreds of years ago,
we didn't
see perspectives. See art pictures till 400-500 years ago. No
perspectives.
Even in ancient Egypt. Something has been happening to us the
past few
hundred years , and I think more things yet to come. Etzion

CUT
---------------------------------------------
The word "Art "today is confusing to us when looked at as having so many 
meanings mostly ephemeral.
Art meaning skill is still the major meaning,
now , skill as a topic may easily and readily accomodate spiritual practices 
in our minds today but "Art"? doesn't conjure up much except for pictorial 
representations of physical objects or states of emotions or sensations put 
together as fantasies to be viewed with a critical disdain and calling that 
disdain "critique".
What does it mean to have spiritual "skill" ?
H.P.B. points out repeatedly in the Secret Doctrine that in our distant past 
the concentration was devoted to the spiritual path in most all cultures.(a 
clue)
Wherefore was "Art"?
It wasn't , at least in the european sense of the term which has worked its 
way into our current western civilization.
All the productions one seems to find before "Art" came into being were 
materialized representations meant for teaching the spiritual path to others.
Therefore structurally one could criticize to no end the seeming lack of 
"perspective" in a majority of works that pre-dated the time of the Greeks 
but to what avail?
As man gradually lost his focus in the Spiritual realm concentration on the 
forms increased substantially and therefore decreasing the spiritual greatly.
And now great attention is paid to recent artists who want to go back to that 
time in their presentations by "showing" the spiritual by showing the purely 
material (such as Andy Warhol's picture of a soda can) Doncha get it?
But at any rate art wasn't always art but skill was always skill.
Theosophy presents skill at its highest inception with a Universal basis and 
therefore it will always light up manas until the day comes when manas is 
lit up equally to match it ,THEN
Wherefore Theosophy?