There had to be a spot that contained magic, power, a place of such presence that all your senses start tingling, where you feel high, as if suddenly the volume has been turned up, inside you, outside you, everywhere.
-Mickey Hart
Curator, Linda Weintraub, of the 2012 Hudson Valley Artists exhibition at the Dorsky Museum, SUNY, New Paltz, invited artists to send a gift, to Dear Mother Nature expressing their relationship to and feelings about nature. My gift, an idea from 2010 sketched out in my notebook, is an earth healing treatment that utilizes techniques from Jin Shin Jyutsu, an ancient healing art developed to balance the body’s invisible energy system. JSJ uses the right and left polarity of hands on the body, to “jumper-cable” and direct energy flows into distinct pathways to unify and integrate the body.
The Main Central Vertical Flow in JSJ begins in the spine at the coccyx and moves up through the solar plexus, heart, throat, middle of eyebrows, to the crown. Using the Hudson River as a metaphor for the human spine, my earth healing treatment acupunctures the land in 12 separate locations, along the east and west sides of the river, aligning and balancing across these energy centers.
Drawing on the principle of batteries, copper rods wrapped with iron wire will be inserted into corresponding earth “chakras” representing the spine along the river.
The invisible network generated by human-made energy channels co-creates not only metaphor, but an actual physical and etheric connection to the planet.
"Human beings have a quite different kind of energy than they had 200 years ago, or 500 or 1000 years ago; that today the energies of freedom are emerging in us, and that this is exactly the point where one can speak to, a kind of science of freedom. Once the bottom line in our stocktaking of the world has been found then everything must orientate itself toward this new energy situation. This includes recognition of the fact that a new manifestation of energy is in the world, represented by the human being; and that this is also something new in human beings--leaving aside for the time being the extent to which it has spiritual links to other networks of forces individualized in the world. And although this is a given, it is still something that must actually be perceived, as well as practiced, taught and investigated."
-Joseph Beuys What is Art?
My project of inserting copper rods wrapped with iron wire into the earth at specific points along the Hudson River has inspired spontaneous dialogue and interest from both friends and strangers. Leaving from a doctor's appointment, I bumped into my neon artist friend, Rocky Pinciotti, who I hadn't seen in years. Hearing about my Hudson River Jin Shin Jyutsu project, he excitedly suggested I go global with it, track all the points with GPS coordinates, and create a website to sell the copper rods worldwide. That very same week, having lunch with a friend in New Paltz, a stranger sitting alone at the next table, overhearing my conversation introduced himself, Jonathan Pazer. A once-personal-injury-lawyer transformed into a paper-folding-origami-artist, he too, was enthusiastic about my idea and recommended geocaching as an added component to the project. Coincidences, chance meetings, dialogue--what happens to us every day, creates our own personal algorithms shared within our social environment. Using the Taoist concept of wu wei and allowing each location to appear spontaneously is to be my method.
As a result, the selected spine locations along the river unfold into its own strangely connected narrative and algorithm. This blog tells the story.
Coccyx(West) = Stony Point→John Cage→Al Loving
Coccyx(East) = Peekskill→Meteorite
Solar Plexus(West) = Newburgh→Thomas
Edison→Nikola
Tesla
Solar Plexus(East) = Beacon→John Cage→St.
Teresa of Avila→ Galileo
Heart (West) = New
Paltz→Emma Kunz→Albert
Einstein
Heart (East) = Poughkeepsie→Samuel
Morse→Billy
Name
What is it that draws us to a place? Landscape, economic opportunity, familiarity, the unknown..? My second earth acupuncture/needle insertion takes place in Peekskill, NY, on the east side of the Hudson River, representing the coccyx. I insert into the earth, copper spikes wrapped in iron wire, along several chosen locations up the river representing points of the human spine. I am giving the river a Jin Shin Jyutsu treatment called Main Central Vertical Flow.
Ink, pen, copper foil on paper
I look for specific places in these pre-chosen towns/cities,that feels like an attractor of energy to me, to insert my copper needles. Once I learned of the meteorite that landed on the trunk of a red Chevy Malibu in a suburban neighborhood in Peekskill, I knew I had to place my needle in close proximity.
Taken by S. Eichmiller of the Altoona Mirror from Mansion Park football stadium
On October 9, 1992, the meteorite entered the earth's atmosphere over Kentucky, exploded into fragments, and continued over West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania before it crashed into Wells Street, Peekskill. At least 16 people in several states were able to film the meteorite traveling through the sky that night.
Just a block from the crash site, I found an outcropping of rocks, which might have made for a better landing site. The Chevy Malibu and meteorite sold at auction for $100,000 and toured the world on display in a glass box.
Blue Mountain Reservation, Peekskill, NY
Peekskill Copper
41º 17' 2" N, 73º 54' 53" W
A severe thunder and lightening storm was taking place as we drove to the Peekskill site. My friend accompanying me,Claire Lofrese, suggested we do it another day but I thought not. Somehow the crackling light and roar in the sky felt ritualistic and perfect, as though the act itself and the copper material were summoning the skies and atmosphere. And as fate would have it, the rain stopped briefly so I was able to scramble up the wet rocks to hammer the needle into the ground.
With very wet shoes and a bit shaken from the severe weather, we sought refuge in nearby Cold Spring for a glass of merlot and Claire, so generously tells the tale below.
"I expect to photograph thoughts... I am convinced that a definite image formed in thought, must by reflex-action, produce a corresponding image on the retina, which might be read by a suitable apparatus... with the optic nerve being a part of earth."
-Nikola Tesla, 1933
What is it that draws us to a place, or person or an idea? A feeling, a moment of some kind of recognition? My third earth acupuncture/needle insertion takes place in Newburgh, NY, on the west side of the Hudson River, representing the solar plexus. I am inserting into the earth, copper spikes wrapped in iron wire, along several chosen locations up the river representing acupuncture meridian points of the human spine. I am giving the Hudson River a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy-healing treatment called Main Central Vertical Flow (see first post).
My selection process of where to place the needles develops into an historical tour of the Hudson Valley, and of place finding me, drawing me to it, by its sheer nature of energetic interest...and its ability to hold onto to something that draws attention and people to it. And so I discover in Newburgh the place where Thomas Edison's very successful Electric Illuminating Company opened in 1884. Imagine electrifying and lighting up an entire city for the very first time.
The building then....
Edison Electric Illuminating Co., Newburgh, NY 1884
Now.....
Edison Electric Illuminating Co., Newburgh, NY 2012
On this abandoned, boarded-up site, I set out to find a location to hammer my copper acupuncture spike/needle into the earth, without causing too much notice. I need soft earth and find my way to the back of the building.
I like the quiet, somewhat anonymous aspect of this project, creating an invisible network of copper needles in the earth; transmitting energy, thought, intention...all those conditions I hear and read so much about regarding mindfulness and quantum healing. I think of my copper spikes as "nerves being a part of the earth."
Newburgh Copper 41º 30' 14" N, 74º 0' 29" W
It is impossible referencing Edison without an understanding of Tesla, and their well-known intellectual and commercial debate over AC/DC. Tesla won but died broke and alone. And Edison, known as the inventor of the light bulb, did not invent the light bulb. He improved upon a 50-year-old-idea with a more practical light bulb, using lower current electricity and a carbonized filament.
Edison did invent the phonograph using tin foil. He noticed when playing the tape of a telegraph machine at high speeds, it resembled the sound of spoken words and this caused him to wonder if he could record sound. The ability to record sounds was by the gramophone, invented by Emile Berliner, and actually the first record player as we know it.
Inventions and ideas about sound bring me back to John Cage, to his term non-intention, and his idea of allowing chance and indeterminacy to develop a plan of action..."to diminish that kind of activity of the ego and to increase the activity that accepts the rest of creation." It was by chance, and paying attention to weird unknown sounds, that drove and inspired Edison to end up holding a world record of 1093 patents.
"Alchemy is not merely an art or science to teach metallic transmutation, so much as a true and solid science that teaches how to know the center of all things, which in the divine language is called the Spirit of Life."
Pierre-Jean Fabre, Les Secrets chymiques, 1636
Hermetic philosophy teaches seven principles that define the functions of the universe and the self:
1. Mentalism: all is mind.
2. Correspondence: as above so below.
3. Vibration: nothing rests, everything moves.
4. Polarity: everything has its pair of opposites.
5. Rhythm: everything flows, out and in.
6. Cause and effect: everything happens according to Law.
7. Gender: everything has its masculine and feminine principle
My translation of these principles defines all things, people and actions as being interconnected in non-material form; energy, spirit, intuition, God...it goes by many names. Our bodies act as major antenna systems with the chakras and acupuncture points acting as an advanced radar system.
The purpose of this interconnectedness or evolutionary energy, is a transmutation into a higher inner-being or consciousness, in order to forward the evolution of the human species and with it, the planet. William Tiller, one of the world's leading scientiests on the structure of matter, furthers the idea in his book, Science and Human Transformation, stating, "Thought energy is one important category of subliminal energy capable of triggering the cosmic computer system, which, when properly focused is quite capable of altering the vibration of water into that of wine or triggering even more impressive phenomena that currently fit into the category of miracles."
With this in mind, I continue my project of inserting conductive copper and iron rods into the earth, with the metaphysical idea of creating a network of, if you will, earth acupuncture points along the east and west sides of the Hudson River, based on a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy healing pattern, the Main Central Vertical flow. Forwarding the idea of material matter in a place and settling on a location/site to insert each needle, becomes the intersection between mind and place, or spirit and matter. The location begins large, as in the city of Troy, and then narrows down to a singular point, in this case, the Materials Engineering building at RPI, a place of intense and focussed study of meta-materials.
Materials Engineering at RPI
I become a dowser of sorts, the place to insert the needle takes on a life of its own and draws me in. A somewhere that becomes irrationally captured and viewed for its metaphoric significance. The location vibrates largely because I allow myself to wander into it. "You must travel at random...you risk getting lost in the thickets, but that is the only way to make art," according to Robert Smithson.
Troy copper 42º 43' 43"N, 73º 40' 53 W
The needles act as anonymous radionic detectors picking out waves in the atmosphere enhancing subtle energy levels, like an invocation.
"As you perceive something, you give birth to a thought, and this thought now thinks. Now that it exists, now that it has been conjured, now that it has been focused, now it vibrates. Now, by law of attraction, other thoughts that are vibrationally same will come to it."
-Abraham Hicks
I continue my project of inserting conductive copper and iron rods into the earth, with the metaphysical idea of creating a network of, if you will, earth acupuncture points along the east and west sides of the Hudson River, based on a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy healing pattern, the Main Central Vertical flow. Forwarding the idea of material matter in a place and settling on a location/site to insert each needle, becomes the intersection between mind and place, or spirit and matter.
In choosing a place, eleven of the twelve locations came smoothly to me, as in a dream. Within the radius of my chosen cities, I intuitively knew by looking at maps and googling sites, where to begin; in the outer boundaries of a place allowing myself to be led to a specific point on the earth's surface. For some unknown reason, Albany escaped my wandering process. This was the final needle in this project and feeling lost in this open-ended process, I consulted dancer/healer/dowser Susan Osberg. Her dowsing method using a map of Albany yielded a response to one specific area that focused as a starting point.
Susan Osberg dowsing
Interestingly, the area most activated by her dowsing tool turned out to be not only an early pre-historic site, but the place where Henry Hudson settled a trading agreement with the Algonquian Indian tribes. My wandering process of zeroing in on a specific site continued to elude me as I searched the many historical places in the area. Not clearly understanding why the process was taking more time for me to grasp the intuitive feeling of knowing where to begin, I finally discovered the reason why.
An arsenal, the oldest continuously active arsenal of the United States army occupying 142 acres of land was the area identified by the energetic movement of the dowser . The Watervliet Arsenal produces the most advanced, high tech, high powered weaponry for tank and mortar systems. The place yields such a frequency that I could not find my way without the help of another healer.
My last earth acupuncture needle, representing the crown chakra, was up against some major frequency disturbance.
Watervliet Arsenal Albany, NY
The site barbed-wired and fenced off with cameras positioned everywhere was an obstacle to the intuitive process of communion with place. Allowing oneself to wander, in Robert Smithson's words, to get lost in the thickets to make art, didn't seem like an option. Just a short distance away, on a hill, I saw the electrical power towers that fed current into this massive war endeavor. I knew instantly this was the final place for the last earth acupuncture needle in this experimental project of amplifying matter into spirit.
Albany copper 42º 32' 18"N, 73º 43' 3"W
For an atom as a transmitter, the channel that limits the communication is generally the air or atmosphere between the atom and a detecting instrument. For a person as a transmitter, the channel that limits the communication is generally the human being themselves. The scientist, William Tiller proposes the following steps in the path of human transformation to increase the communication bandwidth.
