Visionary Artist Exploration Paper
In this essay, I will be writing about Alex Grey’s visualization journeys, which we have performed in class. These visualizations taught me that you can only create if you allow yourself to create. I will begin by broadly discussing shamanism. According to Merriam-Webster, shamanism is “a religion practiced by indigenous peoples of far northern Europe and Siberia that is characterized by belief in an unseen world of gods, demons, and ancestral spirits responsive only to the shamans”. In shamanism, followers attempt to reach altered states of consciousness, in order to interact with spirits and gods. Some of their rituals include dancing and singing, which helps shamans enter the Axis Mundi, a trance that involves
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This was definitely my favourite visualization and I found it extremely interesting. First, we entered a lower realm of unconscious; this brought me to a forest. I knew the exact location of the forest, which was in a town called South Royalton, Vermont. I never had the intention of choosing that location, but that is where my creative inner eye brought me. I felt like I had very little control over my brain during this visualization. The teacher would guide my peers and I throughout the visualization and I would just follow. I spent a month in camp in South Royalton, Vermont a few years ago, but I was very surprised that it came up during my journey. The location was filled with animals, such as deer, coyotes, wolves, squirrels, moose and bears. The environment was also filled with trees, water, rocks and other greenery. After the journey I felt very alive and wrote in my notebook, “at first my power animal was a grizzly bear. It somehow rejected me by swiping its paw and instantly, a coyote accepted me. The coyote was wise and knew how to get what it wanted. The coyote was fast, yet subtle. It had a big impact on its surroundings and on the wildlife around it, although others did not realize it. The coyote does not harm others, but people and animals think it is wild and dangerous. The coyote ran very quickly with me through the forest, although there were so many obstacles”. This visualization showed me that my creative process must come naturally