Edvard Munch, The Sun, 1909
On a recent trip to Scandinavia, Norway’s modernist master Edvard Munch came onto my radar in an extraordinary way. Now we all know The Scream as one of his most compelling and reproduced works. We resonate with this image in moments when the macrocosm of the world is just too much for our relatively tiny bodies to manage, terror and overwhelm running rampant inside of us. We realize that all is uncertain as we struggle within the unpredictable forces of the universe and observe the movement towards violence the collective often chooses to drown in.
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893
But on this journey, another work rose to my awareness with so much brilliance that I was stunned by its light. The Sun is a 27 foot mural commissioned by the University of Oslo in 1909. When Munch created it, he had recently been released from an extended hospitalization for a mental breakdown brought on by depression and the effects of alcohol abuse. He himself stated that the breakdown had occurred because he had been overwhelmed with resentment and betrayal.[1]
As humans, we’re constantly called to navigate the duality of this world. Most of us consciously perceive ourselves as good and sincere. When darkness comes, it can appear in the form of disappointments, an unexpected illness, or the death of a loved one. None of us are exempt from devastating loss and the confusion that comes forth amid these challenges. Our inner darkness can be veiled in incidents that occur in the outer world, often unexpected and out of our control to make it better or different.
For those of us who are mystics and healers, we know that the searing intensity of inner illumination brings all our shadow into the light, so we use our time in the darkness to empty ourselves. Hellish memories and thought patterns, seeing ourselves as victimized or rejected, suffering for the pain we may have caused others may come forth in an overwhelming darkness…so we purge and let it all go…to make space and fully feel that new openness inside ourselves, and from this spaciousness, we receive the absolute richness and nourishment of the light. We are no longer adding to, or hiding from, layers of fear and pain. We’ve been emptied out, so the light burns bright, free of obstruction. Surely Munch received this luminosity after his own emptying. We can saturate ourselves with the radiance emanating from his spectacular mural The Sun.
The purpose of my journey to Northern Norway was to experience the phenomenon of the Midnight Sun during the summer solstice. In the summer months above the Arctic Circle, the sun will set, then immediately rise, so that place on earth feels the sun’s rays 24 hours per day. At midnight, when the earth is normally enveloped with darkness, the sun shines with all its heat and splendor. At sunset, the sun hovers at the horizon line as though about to take a refreshing dip before rising again in full glory. Feeling the sun’s light throughout the night, strong and bold, is strange and somewhat eerie, like there’s no way to hide from these blinding revelatory rays. There was such a vulnerable communication between my human self and the power that sustains all life on this planet. The energy of the sun generates oxygen through the greening plants that nourish all human life in the process of photosynthesis. Our own breath, spiritus in Latin, is birthed through the sun.
Image by Ana Estrada, Midnight Sun, Tromsø, Norway, June 2022
Visionary artists have purposefully depicted the sun’s expressions throughout time. We are now seeing a surge of light encoded works created within the context of powerful paradigm shifts and the expansion of consciousness in our contemporary world. Some visionary artists work with what they identify as Solar Codes, claiming that these codes are now accessible through the light of the sun, and may be received visually and somatically through the artwork. The codes are absorbed into the human energy field through color, sound frequencies and number sequences that activate the light body and dormant spiritual gifts. The human vessel of the body can then integrate, contain, and emanate higher frequencies of light in a sustainable way. Throughout the process, the density of the body is purged and purified. Imprints or negative tendencies that create suffering, also known as karma in the yoga tradition, are burned away and the initiate is free to forge a new path or timeline that is founded in freedom and choice.
Image by Bella Rose via https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076672954606
Light encoded works have specific qualities that we can identify. The first would be the appearance of a sequence of symbols or sigils that are known to be visual transmissions of light language and sound frequencies. Highly saturated color depicts heightened states of awareness and ways of seeing that are beyond what was normally visible to the human eye before light body activation. The fractalization of forms and resulting geometric patterns express the process of cellular expansion in nature and matter.
Image by Yukia Azorah Sandara (yukiasandara.com) via https://www.facebook.com/Yukia.Elizabete
I’ll be writing in more depth about these qualities and other aspects of visionary art in future blogs. I’ll also be reviewing visionary art exhibitions and interviewing contemporary artists that work with land, light and sound in mystical ways.
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[1] Harris JC. The Sun. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2004;61(2):116. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.61.2.116
