Making a gateway

Evoking Authenticity: through polyhedral global configuration of local paradoxes (Part #11)

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Many myths and tales for children explore the nature of the magical doors to "another place". A TV series (Stargate) has popularized the function of a "stargate" worldwide. The movie Contact demonstrated the construction and operation of a dynamic gateway in 3D. Gateways feature in many science fiction novels.

Magic as a practice has long been concerned with construction of such doors to and from the "supernatural" worlds. A vast literature discourses on the appropriate use of pentacles and the various "entities" that may be contacted through them. As exercises and operations of the imagination, the associated symbolism has been of great interest to both poets (such as Yeats) and depth psychologists (Jung, Hillman). It has also been a focus for many secret societies.

Curiously "making a gateway" is intuitively understood by many -- to some degree. This knowledge is clearest in making a special occasion for another. A space is appropriately decorated and those involved are appropriately brought into it. It may be a birthday, a marriage, or part of a courtship or mating ritual. It may be an initiation into a peer group -- exemplified in secret societies from wiccans to freemasons -- and including joining of a religious order. It may include other "rites of passage". In each case careful attention is given to: dress, look, smell, nourishment, symbols, moves and context.

An effort to make such occasions "magically" and meaningfully transformative as gateways is evident in "opening ceremonies" -- exemplified on the largest scale at the Olympic Games. On a smaller scale it is evident in the attention devoted to the care and investment lavished on project and sales presentations.

Curiously the "gateway" concept is echoed in the use of pillared archways -- in the case of suitably draped prosceniums, recalling analogies explored between theatre proscenium design and female genitalia. It is through these that people enter into the moment of the "happening" and coming alive. As an "event", the transition may be compared to passage through and out of the birth canal -- being reborn in a new space as the culmination of a process analogous to a mating ritual. It is this that justifies explicit use of such symbolism in wicca and tantra.

These points emphasize the visible and tangible features of a gateway, although it is clearly how these create a transformative ambiance that is the issue. Without the tangibles -- and possibly of greater significance -- much may be achieved with conceptual frameworks suitably catalyzed. Such possibilities are explored elsewhere: speculatively (People as Stargates: an alternative perspective on human relations in space-time, 1996), in the light of some traditions (Patterning Archetypal Templates of Emergent Order: implications of diamond faceting for enlightening dialogue, 2002), and through the use of circlets of beads as a spiritual discipline (Designing Cultural Rosaries and Meaning Malas to Sustain Associations within the Pattern that Connects, 2000).

It is not however sufficient to configure a set of paradoxes. This is a necessary preliminary step. The challenge is how to "make" the configuration "work" as a gateway. This is the contrast between designing, describing, and observing a door -- as opposed to actually opening and going through it. It is very much a question of how the individual's awareness engages with the configuration to "unlock" it as a door. Making the door "work" involves issues explored by enactivism -- succinctly summarized by Francesco Varela in the phrase "laying down a path in walking". Is there a way in which one must become both the "door" and the "key" in order to be able to step through it?

The may be the challenge for for the species that will replace homo sapiens, as the Neanderthals were replaced by the Cro-Magnon (see Authentic Grokking: Emergence of Homo conjugens, 2003)

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