16 February 2011

Molten images

The Scriptural prohibition against molten images of divine rule could be about how to manifest wholeness. 
Molten images require the prior, material manifestation of the whole image (albeit in negative form) as a pre-fabricated mold into which the molten metal is poured. Images that are beaten achieve their wholeness out of the conception of the artisan in the process of working the material into its final, whole form. In the one case the wholeness is a pre-fabricated pre-condition of the image; in the other case the wholeness emerges in dialogue between artisan and material. 
The beaten image respects the integrity of the material in a way the molten image does not. Consciousness could emerge from an intutive process where the sense of wholeness, of being, results from the successive refinements of a pre-cognitive, right hemispheric sensibility that eventually resides quietly just below our awareness. Consciousness could, alternatively, be seen as something that comes to us wholely formed as an object that conceals the ingredients and the processes by which it came into being. 
The one is the beaten metal image; the other is the molten metal image. 

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