Art for beauty’s sake alone is shallow next to Art for the sake of bringing out Genius in both the creator and the viewer or audience. Yes, beauty is required for its captivating importance, as that brings us out of ourselves, so that we can then put our own Genius on display. And it is that Genius that then yokes the world to Divine Providence. But also, we need art in each generation, as it is incumbent on us in our own generation, to make our own, unique contact with the Divine.
Please see the sermon video below, and the notes used to deliver the sermon below that.
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Sermon Notes
Art Part 2
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay
1. The genius of humanity and its very being is revealed to us through history.
1A. the history of war, trade, innovation, art and literature. Also of religion and indeed all human endeavor must be recored into history, or there is no being for us.
1A1. And each part of history; each era has its own mark.
1A1a. So that we in our generation make our own mark.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“But the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day and nation, to convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. Thus the new in art is always formed out of the old. The Genius of the Hour sets his ineffaceable seal on the work, and gives it an inexpressible charm for the imagination. As far as the spiritual character of the period overpowers the artist, and finds expression in his work, so far it will retain a certain grandeur, and will represent to future beholders the Unknown, the Inevitable, the Divine.”
2. In moments of time, history can overwhelm us.
2A. The past gets canonized and lionized as the present dwells in its shadow and nostalgia becomes the decadent mark of history.
2A1. Biblical times don’t belong in the past, which is what the Holy Books of Thelema are all about.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company, our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist’s retort, in which we seek now only an economical use.”
3. Religion has traditionaly been our yoke to the Divine; in our culture and really, in all the cultures of the world, since time immemorial.
3A. Music and all the arts have been to service religion and indeed the expression of relgion has always been itself, a high art.
3A1. Our greatest religious artists ahve been our prophes and scribes; geniuses, the lot of them!
3A1a. Even Alchemy and Magick are referred to as art (and science).
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Therefore, each work of genius is the tyrant of the hour, and concentrates attention on itself. For the time, it is the only thing worth naming to do that,–be it a sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, of a campaign, or of a voyage of discovery.”
3A2. And our greatest artists have been revered as prophets.
3A2a. From looking for secret messages in Beatle albums to the raising of great, creative artists, to high levels of adoration.
4. The key to life and living found in its quest for meaning, is contained already in what we do.
4A. This is more apparent when we look to the arts, but can also be found in our sciences; that which was and will be the other side of the same coin.
4A1. Science had abandoned the White School of Magick, but is not returning–Age of Reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.”
4A2. Alchemy was once this, in that it brought philosophy into consideration.
4B. Essentially, our character comes through all that we do, and it is that we are always developing in the creation of the self.
4B1. This is discussed in our Doctrine of the 4 Yods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character,–a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.”
4B2. And also, the 8&90 Rules of Art that we can infer from Liber AL assists us in our approach to living.
4B2a. Cf. our article on our website; taking its insight from AL.
5. This creation of the self; found in how we live our life is the key to our Genius.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A great man is a new statue in every attitude and action. A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad. Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a romance.”
5A. “By the love of the Goddess, leading us onto the divine life…” from our Rosicrucian Mass.
5B. It is Nuit who says she is all pleasure, and that in our adoration, our whole devotion is for her.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“As soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or in stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction; an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all that can be formed; for the hand can never execute any thing higher than the character can inspire.”
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