MANDALA THEATRE

Both spirituality and creativity are often regarded as significant parts of human existence and have the potential to enhance one’s sense of wellbeing. One form of creativity is the expressive arts, which include dance, music, writing, and painting, and are utilized therapeutically to foster physical and psychological healing and enhance insight and wellbeing. This essay looks specifically at the expressive modalities of ritual, labyrinth, mandala, dance, and writing as having the potential to facilitate exploration of one’s spirituality, specifically that of rural midlife women.

The arts have traditionally served a wide range of social functions, from the utilitarian, political, and entertaining, to the sacred, ritualistic, and religious. As such, the arts have always been an integral vehicle of transpersonal development, by uncovering the unconscious and raising consciousness, preserving cultures, and propelling global transformation. Art as primary instinct activates all the senses, our visceral response and intellect; as a language, it compels participation and is often rich in tacit and explicit symbolism. Art forms the transition between nature and culture; it is life giving and life enhancing to individuals and societies (Jung, 1973). Ellen Dissanayake (e.g., 1979, 2003, 2013), an anthropologist and longtime researcher of art as a human behavior—an action rather than object—proposed that when physical survival is not at stake, humans engage in “shaping and embellishing the experienced, sensed, and imagined aspects of ordinary life to make them more-than-ordinary” (1979, p. 27). Dissanayake has coined the term Homo Aestheticus to denote this human predisposition: an orientation toward artification across the lifespan—accompanying child-play as well as elders spiritual ceremonies. Imaginative expression has been intrinsic to our species throughout the history of humanity, from cave paintings, ceremonial artifacts, indigenous rituals, and religious art, to street graffiti, art psychotherapy, art-based research, gallery exhibits, staged performances, and electronic media. This Special Topic Section of IJTS pays homage to the arts as vehicle and medium of consciousness in the gathering of 20 articles, including original research, philosophical pieces, images of artworks, poetry, and book reviews. The contributions are complied as if in conversation with one another, philosophy and expression meet formal research—a discourse that seems to echo a shared conviction among these transpersonal scholar-artists, expressing the importance of the arts as agents of personal and collective consciousness, transformation, and healing.

Perichoresis

The area where literature, art, music, religion, spirituality, and philosophy split off from, run parallel to each other, and merge again is like a delta. This essay explores the complex interrelations between art and spirituality on three levels. First on the level of spiritual experience, exemplified by experiences of the art of still life (the painter Morandi, the poet Kopland). On the second level, several questions about meaning are analyzed, beginning with the question of meaning posed by the work of art itself. Both art and spirituality presuppose an open and receptive attitude. In philosophical reflections on the meaning of art, some aim primarily at its relevance for our insight into the reality of things, people, and animals, while others are more concerned with its significance for human action. Thirdly, some problems on the level of research are discussed. Research invites us to come to a critical relativization of what we have seen, heard, or read and also allows us to ...

Creative expression through visual images and symbols has communicated the essence of the human spirit and affirmed art-making as an inherent human capacity since the beginning of humanity. Across cultures and throughout history, tools of divination, exploration and deeper connection offer seekers diverse vocabularies and symbols that promise alternative ways of understanding the mysteries of the universe and humanity’s place within it. The arts have always being integral to religion and spirituality. Sacred pictures, sacred symbols, sacred dances, chants, hymns and tunes have been used in rituals, in places of worship, and as aids to prayer and meditation in every religion. Its seem to be natural vehicles for expressing or connecting with the transcendent, with something beyond religion. In this paper I attempt to present the artist as a shaman of our contemporary world and art- making as the path of transformation in search for the meaning of life and its mystery. Are the arts searching for the spiritual in all of us? Keywords: art, spirituality, magic realism, creative expression

2008

The mystical mind as a divine artist: visions, artistic production, creation of images through empathy Call for papers: Descriptions of mystical experiences have been mostly analyzed to highlight the relation between visions and real images: in recounting their visions, in effect, mystics let their visual heritage emerge, that is, the images they love to use in their private meditation and the popular iconography of their territory: they see with their minds what they have already seen with their eyes. In this panel, however, we aim to investigate the figure of the mystic as an inspired artist, able to model and build his own work of art entering in empathy with his visual and intellectual heritage. Like a painter or a sculptor, the mystical mind selects literary sources and stylistic and iconographic models to build the mental image and create his work of art. Recently, in effect, such mystical experiences have been interpreted as the extreme outcome of an ability to look deep down, learned through practice, through a look educated in the use of images and a mind skilled in "inner visualization". Going beyond this perspective and analyzing the production of images through empathy, should be possible also to verify if and how the "embodied simulation" works not only in the fruition of a work of art, but also in the field of the production of images, originated from the mystical experience. Therefore, for this panel, we intend to collect papers that investigate the figure of the mystic as a "divine" artist, able to product effective mental images (often linked to real pictures), which are often described in reports of visions or in devotional writings. The themes and subjects for discussion could be:-visions and the visual arts-the meaning of the visions and mental images in hagiographic literature-transformation and censorship of works of art in visions-visions and vivification of works of art-visions and "inner visualization"-visions and mnemonic technique-visions, embodiment, embodied simulation-comparative studies on visions between different religious cultures

Motion: Transformation, eds. M. Faietti, G. Wolf, 2021

2003

Music Therapy, 1994