Mantic Visions

‘Vision is through the veil, and inescapably so.’ – Ibn ‘Arabi

Mantic visions and the subtle eye of matter

Esoteric or occult knowledge is revealed in revelatory episodes, in mantic visions that are felt to descend on us when we are engodded, or, when dreaming or enraptured, we are transported to a visionary realm.

If the living body is, as phenomenology understands, the basis of being and knowing, then all forms of knowing, including the visionary, should be considered in terms of the flesh. In this talk I will explore visionary states in relation to embodiment and animate life, showing the visionary as grounded in corporeality, in the physiology of the living body.

It is through the mediation of the body that the invisible makes itself known to us.

I consider the dark senses of touch and kinesthesia and their synaesthetic involvement with vision, how the tactile kinaesthetic awareness of the living body is in continual conversation with the visual.

I propose that we think of a continuum of embodied states between incarnation and excarnation, from out of body and near death experiences to the weakly embodied dreaming and psychedelic states to the immersive deep embodiment of possession and performance. To each of these states belong distinctive modes of seeing and consciousness.

These perspectives are drawn from my experience of creating dance; working with dream and visionary states to support movement explorations throughout the choreographic process, and in the translation and transfiguration of images into flesh in performance.

Presentation by Alkistis Dimech for Trans- States: The Art of Revelation, at the University of Northampton on 14 November 2019.

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