First there was the Monad, alone, filling all space and time. The Monad divided itself in two, and became the Dyad. The Dyad would divide again, and again, an infinite number of times. Eventually creating the whole material universe we see now.
This is, basically, the creation story the Pythagoreans tell, and it seems like a good one to me. One singularity, filled with potential, exploding outward and becoming everything. It sounds pretty similar to the Big Bang to me. But instead of a fiery explosion, I personally tend to think of it more in biological terms… a good metaphor might be a single cell dividing itself over and over again to eventually become a larger organism. A larger universe?
This was on my mind when I created my newest artwork, shown at the top of this post. But I suppose I had more on my mind too…
I was also thinking of the Hindu god Brahman. Brahman contains everything: creation and destruction, male and female, good and evil, movement and stillness. Brahman is in you, and in me (in the individual, Brahman is called the Atman), and also in everything we can see. Brahman is everything, but is also known as the Trimurti, moving through the universe wearing one of three cosmic forms. Those three forms are Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer.
I suppose I was also thinking about sounds and words. In many many creation stories, the very first universal event was a sound. A word. This sound has always made me think of wavelength… a sound vibration which creates geometry, a.k.a. cymatics. And I can’t say or write wavelength without thinking about the subatomic particles which create the geometry of the material world. Maybe that seems like a stretch, but it makes sense to my mind and imagination, and that is also why I added the sort of script-type-shapes into my artwork here as well.
And all of that together is the Ninth World.
