Artnap IV: Selenomancy or Selenography

Selenomancy

 

Acrylic on Panel

24in x 18in 

Selenography: Moon mapping. Selenomancy: Divination through study of the patterns and motions of the moon. See Ars Memoria for an exploration of the idea of recording (memory) and imagining (mapping the future) as two sides of the same coin…

In Embracing the Wide Sky, Daniel Tammet writes,

“As a child, I learned and remembered many things using my imagination. Role-playing is a very effective way to encode new information, because it requires careful thought that derives from self-reflection: ‘How do I do this?’ and ‘How would others do this?” are useful questions to ask yourself when learning something new.”

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Imagination and memory are always intertwined. By using this method, you are also saying: ‘if my life were this way/if I were this person, then x would affect me in that way.’ ‘If I had grown up this way, and become this person, I would behave this way in this situation.’ You act it out. And if you use that persona regularly in your memory-making and actions, then you effectively re-code your personal story, your personal memory, and become that person, thus also effectively changing your future. This is “magic:” you’ve changed the future by changing the past. This is the practice of Ars Memoria.

In Artnap, the story, the woman has an inner conflict that disturbs her sleep and interferes with her waking life, as well. Here, by the light of the moon, her dreaming mind grapples with the problem, drawing together images and associations until it creates a possible solution, in the form of the detective (who has been hired in the waking world), giving him his tools and his doorway (the time-space clock which dissolves into a ‘tunnel’ between worlds) and his task.

In Selenography/ Selenomancy (Part of the Artnap Series), she is ‘mapping’ the moon by drawing forms its craters and textured surface appear similar to—much like people “learned” the interrelations of the stars for directional purposes in the past by connecting the lines to form figures from their mythology, by giving the stars patterns and meanings already familiar to them. This is a form of memory, but also, there is some inexplicable synchronicity in her way of seeing at this moment and the world around her. Is she foreseeing his approach? Or is she drawing him to her?

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