Brief notes on peering, gazing and scrying

May 24th, 2010

My searching out of the subtle gossamer of spider webs involves a kind of peering, a gazing and glazing of the eyes onto planes of nothingthereness, onto thin air; it asks a for a scrying of planes of space, a light visual touching and glancing, gleaning for invisible threads. Photons bouncing off the lines creating appearances and disappearances of silvery threads, and for my eyes to see them they have to almost feel, to relax and not focus on objects but to occupy another seeing, almost feeling out the vibratory strings of cobbe webbed space and knitted architecture with scanning gaze.Scrying is normally associated with seeking out other forms of the invisible and clairvoyant (clear vision) by gazing onto surfaces like mirrors, water, crystals, to descry and to catch sight of layering of vision that belie the everyday optic. Scrying a black obsidian mirror now housed in the British Museum, Edward Kelly seered and communicated the angelic conferences of Enochian magical workings to John Dee. When I first learnt of the mirror I was in thrawl to the glamour and esoterica of Dee and Kelly and the obtuse sigils of Enoch’s angelic scripts. I visited the museum and gazed through the display cabinet glassiness and tried to gaze onto the black obsidian, but it was awkwardly placed and of course I saw nothing. The Enochian alphabet reminds me of Cigninota, the practice of swan beak marking by swan breeders from the times when swans were central to any great feast and were almost eaten into extinction. The marks guarded the swan and would become more prominant as the swan aged.My descrying occurs during walking and bicycling but walking is best.. Gait and gaze move into rhythm in streets and parks and gardens. Corners and angles give practical and partial holds for attaching and fixing, from which to span and arch and spin out dynamic lines. But this is the peering and gazing of no horizons, it’s not a linear looking, or a perspective based measuring, it is diffuse and lateral and proprioceptive. The eyes move back, widen, the back brain settles as the the front brain relaxes. It is less grabbing, more receptive and the body borders feel less guarded and defined, interwoven and implicated into the fabric of the exterior world. Webs are felt on skin, barely and yet tellingly there. Like slight hair strands. Pressure felt and pressed onto the tensile drag lines are sensed with the acutest of nervy skin tact. Fingers and eyes, Eva Haywards ‘fingery eyes’ or peering fingering.

Entry Filed under: skin, walking, textile, tactile, spider webs, webs, Biocraft & Edge Practices, spider, spidersilk, silk, Biocraft