Birds sowed love in autumn I Kept it through the winter I To bloom in spring

The soul drifts away I Sacred blooms rise from the break I The divine exchange

Seven Siamese rest I Lazy in the warm sun I Was it a vision?

My connection to Japan isn’t just about aesthetics; it seems like something is coming “from the beginning”. As a child, I literally ate every book, every movie, every picture coming from Japan. To my yang mind, these stories and visuals felt more than foreign, they felt “extra terrestrial”, like from the world that understood a frequency I was only just beginning to tune into.

Goethe’s Homunculus is travelling to the sea to find a way to truly exist (to get the body). But he is so captivated by the beauty of the sea nymph Galatea, that he shatters his glass vessel against the seashell chariot of Galatea, his spirit dissolves in the waves, merges with the sea, turning entire waters into a glowing field of life, thus finally starting his own biological “life”. Remember? In the flask he was just a pure spirit and super mind.

In alchemy homunculus was not just a myth but a pursuit of “artificial life”. The most famous recipe comes from the 16th century Swiss alchemist Paracelsus, who claimed that a human could be created through a process of “putrefaction”. You just need to seal human semen in a glass retort/flask and bury it in horse manure for 40 days. The manure provided needed conditions for semen to develop into human. So, after 40 days, a transparent, human-like shape would begin to move. The alchemist would then “feed” the creature with the Arcanum of human blood for 40 weeks while keeping it at constant temperature.

Modern critics often point the Goethe’s Homunculus as one of the first “AI” characters in literature - a mind created by human. It knows everything but lacks a soul or body, just a kind of “idiot savant” (in not offensive way:)

Some brainstorming lines about my favourite concept of “Anima Vegetativa” (Vegetative Soul).

In ancient alchemy and philosophy, the Vegetative Soul is the lowest but most essential level of the soul: the part that connects humans to plants and stones.

In K. Jung’s Alchemical Studies, we find “The Philosophical Tree”. He discusses how the human psyche often projects itself onto the growth of trees and stones.

No doubt, it gives me a creative spark and impulse to explore more.

In the process of creation, there was a moment where I felt that the Tulpa’s signals received from the “other plane” becoming too high and distorted. She was beginning to lose her own signal, slipping away from the tangible world and dropping into 19 Hz void - the liminal space, where the psyche dissolves into dread and static. To balance her state, I introduced the symbolical cigarette - like an alchemical Ignis, producing familiar, rhythmic frequency that “tunes” the Tulpa back from the “fog”, letting her stay “connected”. However, she is still in the loop, her signal is never secured. In the Theatre of Matter, the metamorphosis is never static, and the Viewer is always left to wonder… It’s a dream-logic, I don’t fully understand myself…

POV: the stage light shifts from the cold blue of the Coralia’s seashore to the goldish silver bronze. The Silent Observer stands tall, her neck elongated, rising out of the vessel. A single metallic rose - a petrified bloom of wisdom - clings to her base. The Cat: “ Look at my ears - they are not for hearing the noise of the world, but for catching the frequency of the stars. I inhabit the vessel not as a prisoner, but as a bloom. I am the Cat that walks between the worlds of “Matter” and “Spirit”. I do not blink, I do not react. I simply am the distance between who you were and who you are becoming. I am not a vessel for water, I am a vessel for the “Vegetative Soul” that can not be contained by a single form. I am the Cat that sat on writer’s Jurga desk, and now I know that if you want to truly see, you first need to close your eyes”.

Coralia is the homunculus of the sea. She appears after storm standing as silent witness to the transformation of chaotic water into sacred stone

“Aphrodite: the Vas Hermeticum”. Aphrodite for me is not just a myth or beauty, but rather a vessel for transformation. It’s like Vas Hermeticum - the sacred alchemical sealed vessel where the Prima Materia is distilled. My Aphrodite is distilling our collective chaotic and heavy prima materia - “weight of self”: our burdens, sorrows, unspoken hopes, all rawest parts of human psyche. So, this piece is study of “weight of self” and “self creation”. The weight of self is continuously consumed by the vessel in order to be transformed by the heat of experience and finally “bloom” like an “integrated self”.

Ouroboros in alchemy typically represents cyclicality, renewal, unity of all things. It also has specific role in contemporary psychology and neuroscience. My “artistic” Ouroboros represents the “weight of self-creation” : loops, tensions, possible distortions…