Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Griffin McAllister

Corpus of Elemental Lights

Corpus of Elemental Lights is an abstraction of the Hermetic Tree of Life.

“Corpus of Elemental Lights, the slightly longer mylar painting, is an abstraction of the Tree of Life. Blocks of colour and scrawling text appear where either Sephiroth or Sephiroth connecting pathways occur. The symbols, letters and text embedded within the linework of this piece are also placed corresponding to the general location of their path on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. The cross within circle occurring in the upper middle is based on the system of self-initiation found in John Michael Greer’s The Celtic Golden Dawn. In this system, the aspirant crafts a circle and an equal-sided cross and places them on their altar with the cross either above, below or on top of the circle depending on which of the three grades they are practicing. The goal of much of my work is a type of equalizing which occurs here by including all three forms. However, the circle with cross is far deeper than this single text and can represent the quarters of the Sun within the day and the year. The human body is subject to these cycles and they occur within us, thus the work is simultaneously a map of the outer and the anatomy of the inner.”