Things of Beauty - about your personal aestetics

Putting together ones life with the modern world.
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Soror O
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Things of Beauty - about your personal aestetics

Post by Soror O »

I was sitting on a train. There was this chubby girl with dreamy, curly hair and laid back appearance. She had worn out, dark nail polish. I sensed beauty in her - it was due to the story that her worn out nail polish told me. (Or maybe it was her hair. Or the way she looked. Or the way I looked. Or the all of it - which I don't even know of, consciously.)

A certain kind of mess is beautiful. Flower pedals on the table, unfinished books laying on tables, unmade bed after making love. Sperm mess. Blood in eloquent streams and drops.

I'm curious what others view as beautiful. What beauty is really? What is the relation between beauty and truth/ transendence? Does beauty refer to the secret, sacred order? If I remember correctly, it was Azazel who thought people the art of make-up and thus body modification (according The Book of Enoch).
If you want to reborn, let yourself die.
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Smaragd
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Re: Things of Beauty - about your personal aestetics

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Ave wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 11:45 am Does beauty refer to the secret, sacred order?
At this moment trying to inspect this, it seems things we see beauty in is mirroring the place on the path we are at the moment and thus perhaps indicating the sacred order of higher spheres filtered through our soul, or in another words our soul is in certain kind of relation to the unchanging plane and is visible to us in the things we are able to see beauty in. Ofcourse not in the sense that some appreciation of decadent imagery would necessary draw ones place in some early stage of the path as a whole, although it might refer the pits and falls that stink of corpses we might be near of in our necessary descend.

Retrospectively inspecting my own aesthetical appreciations it seems I have moved somewhat away from the dirt, flesh, forests, old rural architecture and obscure darkness I held as some of the most beautiful things visually, towards more organized things that still manage to express the bursting powers of the life force, but in a bit more clear way. I take this to reflect the age of mine which is within the ages where my relations towards atma is developing. Around the ages that theoretically are the turning point between buddhi and atma development, I had a brief interest towards very ”low”, decadent and pornographic works and aesthetics, and there was even a clear turning point in my life quite close to my birthday when I felt like different kind of beauty was calling me. I have noticed there’s been some positive repelling reactions trying to keep me on the straight path of these challenges of atma when coming accross aesthetics that would have been luring or sort of automaticly beautiful earlier in my life. Now some otherwise quite neutral beauty easily gives me a negative reaction reminding me of some frustrating demonic patterns of human behavior that seem the failures I’m in my current work actively overcoming.

I feel this might give somewhat inaccurate image of the specific nature we might experience beauty. It seems it varies by what we observe. One might have for example more exclusive criteria towards art and the beauty in it, and very inclusive and open towards seeing beauty in the world in general.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Nefastos
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Re: Things of Beauty - about your personal aestetics

Post by Nefastos »

Smaragd wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 8:51 pm
Ave wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 11:45 am Does beauty refer to the secret, sacred order?

At this moment trying to inspect this, it seems things we see beauty in is mirroring the place on the path we are at the moment and thus perhaps indicating the sacred order of higher spheres filtered through our soul, or in another words our soul is in certain kind of relation to the unchanging plane and is visible to us in the things we are able to see beauty in.

The classic "beauty" of the Platonics was symmetry. The beauty as Plato meant it is, according to my interpretation, the balanced whole of the both sides, left & right, up & down, this world & the next. As above, so below. This becomes the harmonic essence of beauty, nowadays often seen as antiquated.

I am actually an admirer of this classic, balanced & sublime beauty... but with a twist of exaggeration & escapism. This is opposite to the nowadays common thrill of the flawed: obscurity, obscenity or profane. If nature is allowed to my beautiful dream world, it must be the overgrown temple type of harmonic beauty – pure nature taking back what is its own. In other uses, I abhor things that are "natural", meaning the things that would in the older world named as base, low, or profane. The reason why I find human skull so fascinatingly beautiful, pure & assuring is that it has shaken off the painful blemish of flesh.

Ave wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 11:45 amIf I remember correctly, it was Azazel who thought people the art of make-up and thus body modification (according The Book of Enoch).

You do remember correctly. Thank you for this enlightening conclusion – making possible to add also the aesthetic surgery to the aspects of Azazel – which I hadn't thought of before. The idea of the fallen angels being grafted into humankind makes quite logical that the idea of all kind of grafting of the different things into each other as a form of enhancement fall into their aspectual category. In this kind of thought, the uncanny valley also starts looming fast: something that peaks the beauty also quickly comes to the verge of becoming monstrous.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Smaragd
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Re: Things of Beauty - about your personal aestetics

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To me it seems the classic view of beauty might have become antiquated because it has become seen too rigidly in form, while the balance between the low and the high is in the the eye of the beholder, for the low is always limited by the subjective, as beauty is said to be. This allows us to see the beauty in decadence etc. But the classic sense of beauty is a real thing also, where the balance comes from the weight (that is meaning) of that which is high being equal in the low, thus filling the reality to be immensely meaningful and wholesome in its beauty. In this sense, I’m not sure if there is a difference to these views of beauty. The appreciation of the decadent aesthetic haven’t always felt so piercingly meaningful, it’s more of a fascination in the sense that questions rise why I sense beauty in this and why it calls onself to sink in to such emptiness. The call of the void. If it will not come to this place of fear emanating from the void, but stays in the lousiness of smaller demons, it doesn’t penetrate fully through the planes and thus balance of the planes is not there, the weight of the high is not present. I guess I get it now.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Nefastos
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Re: Things of Beauty - about your personal aestetics

Post by Nefastos »

Smaragd wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 11:24 pmTo me it seems the classic view of beauty might have become antiquated because it has become seen too rigidly in form, while the balance between the low and the high is in the the eye of the beholder, for the low is always limited by the subjective, as beauty is said to be.

You are right; the trend to move away from the symmetric, classical beauty, is based on personal individualism. The idea of the "broken beauty" rose in the nineties, when the world was opening to that global internet unity which created both the need & the cultural tools for expressing emphasized individualism also in form. At that time the hero archetype turned to the anti-hero archetype. This same phenomenon has much to do with our recent Satanic possibilities. Satan is, after all, the innermost example of the broken symmetry, or the "flaw that makes perfect".

Smaragd wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 11:24 pmThe appreciation of the decadent aesthetic haven’t always felt so piercingly meaningful, it’s more of a fascination [---]

I also think that there is an important difference between beauty & fascination. They are like the Right & the Left Hand Paths, coming together & operating with the same psychic substance, but yet having the different routes to take. And it is also very natural to bring the both together, with whatever emphasis we personally might have. Fascination might be said to be the form of a kâmic beauty.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
Kavi
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Re: Things of Beauty - about your personal aestetics

Post by Kavi »

Because the topic is about personal aesthetics I'd like to bring my thoughts about arts and especially music, yet this
topic which is Beauty should never be seen only through one set of idea, but by seeing through one theme - it's possible to view or compare to other themes and form more holistic view on topic.


I have thought that in mundane meaning and understanding beauty is exclusionary yet symmetrical and classic beauty aesthetics are very close to me as well. Although rhyming is not seen as hip nowadays I have understood that actually rhyming can create meaningful parallels that increase poems or musics meaning.
I can confess as a listener of quran recitation and one of the main reasons is this symmetrical way how it's build. Each line has it's rhyming part and sometimes repeated words.

But I think regarding to musical aesthetics jazz is somehow a music that can balance between afore mentioned fascination and beauty.
Albert Ayler - The Wizard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsdEHrqikeU

or hell... Thelonious Monk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLopWusx-ZU
epistrophe
/ɪˈpɪstrəfi,ɛˈpɪstrəfi/
noun
the repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses or sentences.


Some say Monk's playing sounds like elephant stomping on piano keys and maybe even as ugly. I can definitely see this..
Yet his playing not only contains fascinating elements but I tend to see his music as beautiful.

In his essay about Monk Giorgio Gaslini states that Monk can be seen as a composer who makes circular chord progressions in his music. Starting from one point and going around circle of fifths and returning to the start.
He was also known to have a nickname "Sphere". This name becomes "nomen est omen" in Gaslini's essay where this kind of circulating or whirling motion is seen in many religious traditions or in a symbol of a ring or circle, according to Gaslini this symbolism is a way to balance the spirit.
Gaslini states that Monk's corpus- the songs he composed consists of 72 different songs.
Yet it's fascinating to see Monk's playing almost like trying to escape all the notes in his playing but this circle keeps him always returning to it's gravity.
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