Tattoos in Africa and the Middle East. Cover illustration: Yasmine Bergner

הפוסט The World Atlas of Tattoo | By Anna Felicity Friedman הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

הפוסט The Mother Wound | By Bethany Webster | Translated from English by Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

December 2017

To download a PDF file of the full article:

The One and Only Form – Yasmine Bergner

הפוסט The One and Only Form | The Science of Sacred Geometry | By Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Blood and Tattoos in the Work of Uri Katzenstein – by Yasmine Bergner

Originally published in the online magazine Erev Rav. 2018

Photos from the artist’s archive

Rarely does an artist succeed in building a tangible bridge between their art in the gallery space or private studio and the observer. in a way that allows the creation to accompany the viewer into their home and throughout their later life. This bridge preoccupied the multidisciplinary artist Uri Katzenstein (1951–2018), who recently passed away at the age of 67.

Katzenstein dealt with questions concerning human interaction and the long-term spiritual influence we have, as artists and as human beings, on our intimate and broader surroundings. His work stemmed from a longing for connection, transformation, and healing. This is no small matter in our society, where social, political, and conceptual art reign supreme. During his time in the U.S., Katzenstein was a student of the artist Chris Burden. Burden was also a total body artist—someone willing to get shot and to crucify himself on the roof of a car. Burden and American performance art had a formative influence on Katzenstein’s work and worldview. Katzenstein’s work was distinctly and uniquely body art since the 1980s, which he expressed through sculpture, video, performance, and music. Another significant layer of his work was the art of tattooing.

In the 1990s, Katzenstein created a fascinating artistic project at the Ein Hod Biennale: he offered people from the art world to tattoo an image from his body of work on their bodies—the figure of the “climbing” double. Many art figures accepted. “These people who agreed to tattoo my work on themselves are a kind of erotic messenger for me,” Katzenstein told me a few years ago, and I observed his arms, tattooed with the enigmatic symbols he had created. In this unique way, he created a hidden grid of his own self within those around him. “I gave you a museum, an exhibition, and now I am giving you my body,” Katzenstein quoted a famous curator who participated in the project.

Another of his works tattooed on the body was a sentence written in coded script: “I wanted to talk to you.” The sentence reveals Katzenstein’s engagement with exposure and concealment, with the limitations of language and communication, and with the longing to create an immediate connection between the artist and the active viewer.

Katzenstein’s climber figure, from the artist’s archive

Another unique element in Katzenstein’s work was the use of blood. Blood is a “meta-material” with properties of paint. Blood is the fluid of life, the vessel of the soul according to Judaism, containing our genetic signature and determining our identity. Blood, therefore, is equivalent to identity and essence. It can be said that a large part of Katzenstein’s work dealt with essence or its absence. In his performance from the 1990s, the blood fluid becomes a wall painting in a performative act where the eye follows the hand writing the phrase “Sur Name,” the anchor of genealogical belonging and our visage before the world. In another work, “Cards,” Katzenstein created a series of cards placed on a ping-pong table set for two players. On the cards, he painted botanical motifs in blood, combined with a single word: “Value.” Value. What legacy, what future will remain after our death—this was a weighty question for Katzenstein. Given that this article was written before his death, the query now carries a poignant weight.

In a conversation with Shani Litman in Haaretz (2015), Yigal Zalmona says: “The body was one of the interesting subjects, and there weren’t many Israeli artists back then who dealt with it. He wasn’t an Israeli artist in the accepted sense of the word. His preoccupation with sexually ambiguous definitions, his androgyny—all these were not very accepted and undermined the Israeli macho image […] He was a kind of alien. A combination of a sweet child with a certain type of violence. The impossibility of trapping him between niceness and threat and aggression is one of the most prominent things in his works. His works are nice, but also terrifying. A type of absent-minded professor whose art is connected to some New Age quality, an aesthetics of horror movies, dealing with blood in a very clean way. It was very much not ‘Dalut HaChomer’ (Poverty of Material). Even then, there were many contradictions in his work that were hard to grasp.”

Blood line

The term “Blood line” is used in the tattoo world to describe a line tattooed with water only, without pigment—a line usually used for marking that disappears immediately after healing. A temporary stamp. The concept of “Blood Line” has a double meaning: on the one hand, a “blood line” of a tangible tattoo, and on the other hand, “lineage.”

In Katzenstein’s work, the act of writing in blood suggests an engagement with strange ritual, a private “blood covenant,” and at the same time, the writing on the wall connects the private to the public, exposing blood usually hidden from the eye and raising questions about tribal rituals of impurity and purity. In her important book Purity and Danger, anthropologist Mary Douglas proposes an approach according to which a “defiled” thing is something taken out of its context and natural order. Thus, “mud,” which is not a “dirty” thing usually, becomes “dirty” when it is inside the house. In the same way, blood can be considered “impure” when it is drawn out of the body. Jewish laws of Niddah are based on the principles of impurity and purity. According to anthropological studies in the tribal world, bloodletting and tattooing are purification rituals.

Tattoo anthropologist Lars Krutak notes that initiation and tattooing rituals are closely related to magical perception. “In certain tribes in South America, women were tattooed at the beginning of the moon and during menstruation. This, despite the fact that the monthly cycle made them temporarily exposed to injury by evil spirits. Blood attracts evil, much like an animal smelling blood […] The tattoo and magical pigments were a kind of ‘trap,’ and the moment they were displayed on the skin, they offered permanent purification against future evil spirits, thereby strengthening the woman and the community against evil forever.”

Uri Katzenstein, from the artist’s archive

Katzenstein observed the individual’s relationship with the collective social structure out of contradictory feelings of isolation versus a desire for communication. He expressed a worldview that erupts from an internal center of gravity—radiating outward but also remaining secret and undeciphered. At the center of this melting pot, quantum processes occurred, which, upon reaching a critical point, created metamorphoses in a chain reaction, similar to the effect of a stone thrown into water creating ripples. This basic physical principle deals with the encounter between two pulses that create an interference phenomenon, the passage of a wave through material, in this case, water. As physical beings (made of at least 50% water), we affect each other similarly in a mental sense; our existential ripples meet and connect with the ripples of others at infinite interfaces.

The visual space in which Katzenstein’s figures moved is indeed an ocean. In his fascinating video works, he created surrealistic worlds (with various influences of sci-fi and esoterica), sometimes apocalyptic, but endowed with humor and ridicule. A strong sense of an idiosyncratic world full of inventions and hybrid chimeras arose from his works. In the work “Order of Cloned Brothers,” he undermined the archetype of family in its traditional sense and offered an alternative consisting of the splitting of the “self” and its reflection in its doubles; the whole world is reflections of the “multi-dimensional self.” His spaces are synthesized, archetypal, existing everywhere or nowhere. The figures move in a space that seems unreal, and sometimes the space is devoid of reality, as in his sculptural installations. The “detail” is that prototype that repeats itself, and only it serves as a mental “all-seeing eye” that connects all things.

Art critic and curator Galia Yahav, who is also no longer with us, was one of the women who wore Katzenstein’s “climbing double” tattoo. In a review she wrote on his exhibition “Backyard,” Yahav said at the time: “Intimacy according to Katzenstein is an impossible or dangerous category. Every nuance—syllable, material, expression, gesture, sound—echoes in a vacuum. But more than that, the entire hyper-action over void is a great show of disability.”

The video “Caretakers,” which Katzenstein created, is accompanied by a soundtrack created in collaboration with Ohad Fishof and Ishai Adar, and brings an intense experiential dimension to the emotionally alienated image and envelops it. Katzenstein sings in a trembling voice a beautiful existentialist lament that threatens to shatter the synthetic apocalyptic scene and dissolve the illusion of isolation. As if the sense of hearing (the high vibration) is trying to overcome the sense of sight (the low vibration) through an experience of true emotion via human voice and music.

Waves, it turns out, are “non-territorial beings.” They share the same space and medium. At one point in space, infinite waves can pass simultaneously. Could it be that Katzenstein searched, like that survivor from the movie “Waterworld,” or like Noah of the flood, for interaction and new life?

Uri Katzenstein, from the artist’s archive

Katzenstein probably would not have agreed with the claim that there is a shamanic quality in his work, as he told me in a conversation between us. It seems that his perspective always moved on the spectrum between inner knowledge and a lack of faith in the future of humanity. His electrification performances and tattoo rituals stemmed, he said, “from a desire to deal with a space that plastic art usually does not touch—the hypodermic space,” a space of sensation and skin through a shared experience of his and the audience’s.

In an interview with Shani Litman, Katzenstein said: “I am less interested in creating a conceptual boundary between me and the audience. It’s a kind of initiation ritual, very individual and exciting for me […] Many years ago I suggested to curator Naomi Aviv to get a tattoo of a climbing man, and then more people from the art world jumped at my offer and got tattooed, because it was the solution to some fantasy they had. The tattoos were the first time I made an intrusion into the hypodermic space, and I understood that this is what I am interested in doing.”

According to ancient tribal belief, only shamans and tattooists had the power to control human souls, therefore the tattooist was an active partner in a special socio-religious order where the body, ritual, and tattoo were connected to tribal cosmology and nature, to a place where moral obligations to gods and goddesses, to mothers and ancestors, to living spirits and the earth itself, were tied within a whole system. To a great extent, from this spiritual core, tribal life and the tattoo culture developed.

Initiation rituals help us move safely from one developmental stage to another and accept it with mental maturity. In Western culture of our time, there is insufficient understanding and internalization of rites of passage and initiation. This spiritual deficit largely expresses the existential separateness experienced by people today. Physical, mental, and spiritual transformations that we all experience during our lives happen to us without initiation, without sufficient spaces for healing trauma, and without community-serving leadership. To a large extent, Katzenstein’s performance actions, his tattooing, and his electrification shows were intended to create and distill a meaningful, authentic, and humorous moment between the artist and the active viewer; an intimate interaction aimed to be etched, to influence, and to heal, similar to rites of passage and initiation.

His works suggest that the most missing or absent element in the world is the connection between individuals. It is unclear if the deficit is in social skills or if it stems from a lack of ground and space to allow it. Perhaps the reason why Katzenstein’s ritualistic performance is experienced as an “opaque” or coded action is our distancing from this socio-spiritual cosmological order. We experience space as “void,” but every void is a bed that can fertilize new life.

Once, Katzenstein asked me to send him traditional tattoo songs that I know. Here is a song that seems appropriate here, a Micronesian folk tattoo song in my translation:

“Cease your wailing and your sighing, my friend,
This is not the pain of the sick man,
This is the pain of the student!
Relax your body in devotion,
Surrender, O leader!
Soon you will receive the chains of your beautiful ornaments,
But for now, they are still separate and unconnected.
The string is still interrupted and incomplete
Surrender, O leader!
Soon at the fall of evening
You will gaze upon your tattoo
Fresh as a Ti leaf
Surrender, O leader!
Ah, if it were a burden,
I would carry it for you in my love,
Oh, be silent and surrender.
I will cease with the ending of the tapping
Surrender, O leader!
Like the water flowing with the blood
I ache for your condition.
Surrender, O leader!
The chain will break, the thread will snap,
But the tattoo will remain.
This ornament will be eternal
And go with you beyond the grave.
Surrender, O leader!
Ah, you suffer under the tapping
Ah, until you fall asleep
And are no longer weary and tired of it!”

Yasmine Bergner is a spiritual guide through the art of tattoos,

multidisciplinary artist, art therapist and culture researcher.

הפוסט Blood and Tattoos in the Work of Uri Katzenstein | By Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

הפוסט Wetiko | The Greatest Epidemic Known to Humanity | By Paul Levy הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Opening Image:
Yasmine Bergner, Follow me out of Darkness, 2013, Photography: Jude Moskovitch

Many do not understand that the fundamental issue underlying women’s empowerment is the Mother Wound.

Difficulties and challenges between mothers and daughters are violent, unbridled, and widespread in society, yet they are rarely spoken about openly.

The taboo regarding speaking about the pain of the Mother Wound is what keeps it in place—hidden in the shadows, festering, and out of sight.

What exactly is the Mother Wound?

The Mother Wound is the wound of being a woman, passed down through generations of women in patriarchal societies.

It includes the dysfunctional coping mechanisms used to process that pain.

The Mother Wound includes:

Comparison: A feeling that I am not good enough

Shame: A constant background feeling that something is wrong with me

Diminishment: A feeling that I must stay small to remain loved

A constant sense of guilt for wanting more than what I have right now.

The Great Mother, Pencil on paper, 2016, Yasmine bergner

The Mother Wound can also manifest as:

Not experiencing your full self because I do not want to threaten others

Having a high tolerance for bad behavior from others

Emotional care-taking

Competitiveness with other women

Self-sabotage

Rigidity and over-dominance

Symptoms such as eating disorders, depression, and addictions

In our patriarchal male society, women are conditioned to think of themselves as less valuable than men, unworthy, or lacking in value. This sense of diminishment has been internalized and passed down through countless generations of women.

The social atmosphere of female oppression places the daughter in a double-bind conflict.

Simply put, if a daughter internalizes her mother’s unconscious beliefs (in a sense, a form of “I am not good enough”) then she has her mother’s approval, but in a way, she is betraying herself and her potential.

But if she does not internalize her mother’s unconscious beliefs about their limitations, but instead affirms her own power and potential, she is then aware that her mother may feel this unconsciously and view it as a personal rejection from the daughter.

The daughter does not want to risk losing her mother’s love and acceptance, so the internalization of these diminishing, unconscious beliefs is a form of “loyalty” and emotional survival for the daughter.

It may feel dangerous for women to realize their full potential because it risks some level of rejection from the mother.

This happens because, unconsciously, the daughter feels that fully empowering herself will trigger feelings of sadness or rage, due to parts of herself that the mother had to relinquish in her own life. Her compassion for her mother, the desire to please her, and the fear of conflict may cause her to convince herself that “it is better to shrink and be small.”

A common resistance to confronting the Mother Wound is the desire to “leave the past in the past.” But in reality, we can never truly escape or bury the past. If we avoid dealing with the pain inherent in one of the most ancient and fundamental relationships in our lives, we lack the critical opportunity to discover the truth of who we really are, and to live that truth with authenticity and joy.

Yasmine bergner, Follow me out of Darkness, 2013, Photography: Jude Moskovitch

Stereotypes that perpetuate the Mother Wound

“Look at all that your mother did for you!” (from other people)

“My mother sacrificed so much for me. It would be so selfish of me to do what she herself could not. I don’t want to make her feel bad.”

“I owe loyalty to my mother, no matter what. If I sadden/upset her, she will think that I do not appreciate her.”

The daughter may experience fears regarding the realization of her potential because she may worry about leaving the mother behind. The daughter may fear that the mother is threatened by her dreams and ambitions. She may feel uncomfortable emotions from her mother, such as envy or anger. All of this is very unconscious, not openly acknowledged, or spoken about at all.

We have all felt the pain that our mothers carry. And we all carry the fear that perhaps we are guilty or responsible for it to some extent. At the heart of this feeling lies guilt. All of this is logical when we understand the limitations of a child’s cognitive development, who sees herself as the cause of all things. If we do not address these unconscious beliefs in our adulthood, we may still carry them and limit ourselves as a result.

The truth is that no daughter can save her mother.

No sacrifice that a daughter will make for her mother will be enough to compensate for the high price that the mother may have had to pay for the losses she experienced in her life, just for being a woman and a mother in our society. And yet, this is what many women do for their mothers very early in their childhood: they make an unconscious decision not to abandon or betray their mother by becoming “too successful,” “too smart,” or “too adventurous.” This decision is made out of love, loyalty, and a real need for acceptance and emotional support from the mother.

Many of us confuse loyalty to the mother with being loyal to their wounds, and thus take an active part in our own oppression.

These dynamics are very unconscious and operate constantly. Even the healthiest relationship between mother and daughter can include this dynamic to some extent, just due to living as a woman in our culture. For daughters who have mothers suffering from serious issues (such as addictions, mental illness, etc.), the consequences can be very damaging and treacherous.

Yasmine bergner, Mother & Daugter, 2016, Photography: Jude Moskovitch

Mothers must take responsibility and process their own losses

Being a mother in our society is unimaginably difficult. Many women say that “no one prepares you for how hard it is” and “nothing prepares you for arriving home with a baby and realizing what is required of you.”

Our society, and especially in the USA, places a heavy burden on mothers, offers very little support, and many raise their children alone.

The non-verbal message of our society to women is:

“If motherhood is hard for you, then it is probably your fault”

“Shame on you if you are not a ‘super-woman'”

“There are ‘natural mothers’ for whom motherhood is easy. If you are not one of these mothers, something is probably wrong with you”

“You are supposed to be able to manage everything calmly, raise well-behaved children, be sexually attractive, be a successful career woman, and be in a stable marriage.”

For mothers who have indeed sacrificed so much for their children in our society, it can indeed be experienced as a rejection, if your children surpass the dreams you thought were possible for you. This can create a sense of debt, entitlement, and a desire for recognition that is projected onto your children—an unconscious emotion that can be very subtle but is a powerful control mechanism. This dynamic can cause the next generation of daughters to keep themselves very “small” in order to allow the mother to continue receiving validation that she is of value in her identity as a mother. An identity for which they sacrificed so much, but received so little support and recognition in return.

Mothers may unconsciously transmit deep rage toward their children in subliminal ways. In fact, the rage is not directed toward the children but is directed toward the patriarchal society that asks women to sacrifice and disappear themselves in order to be a mother to children.

For the daughter who needs her mother, sacrificing herself in order to help the mother cope with her pain is an unconscious decision that is made very early in life and is not discovered as the cause of many hidden problems until much later in adulthood.

The Mother Wound exists because there is no safe place for mothers to process their rage about the sacrifices they were forced to make due to society’s demands. And because daughters are still unconsciously anxious about rejection due to their choice not to make the same sacrifices that previous generations made.

In our society, there is no safe place for a mother to vent her rage, and therefore, the rage often erupts at the children unconsciously. A daughter is an easy target for the mother’s rage because the daughter has not yet had to give up her personality for her motherhood. The daughter can remind her mother of her own unfulfilled potential. And if the daughter feels valuable enough that she is willing to rebel against some of the patriarchal mandates that the mother was forced to swallow, the daughter may trigger the hidden rage in the mother.

She saw everything, Yasmine Bergner, Pencil on paper 2016

Of course, most mothers want the best for their daughters. However, if the mother has not confronted her own pain or come to terms with and processed the sacrifices she had to make, then her support for her daughter will be laced with conflicting messages that will instill shame, guilt, or obligation. These messages will emerge in seemingly innocent situations, usually through criticism or as words of praise that are reflected back to the mother herself. Usually, it is not the content of the statement but the energy with which it is saturated that embodies latent resentment.

The way for a mother to avoid directing her rage toward her daughter and passing the Mother Wound on to her is to do the work of processing the grief of her own losses. And to ensure she does not rely on her daughter as the main source of emotional support for herself.

Mothers must mourn what they had to give up, what they wanted but will never have. What their children will never be able to give them, and the injustice of their situation. And despite the injustice, however much it may be, it is not the daughter’s responsibility to compensate for it or to feel obligated to make sacrifices for her mother in the same way. It requires ultimate strength and integrity to do this, and mothers need support in the process.

Mothers liberate their daughters when they consciously process their own pain without turning it into their daughters’ problem. In this way, mothers release their daughters to pursue their dreams without guilt, shame, or a sense of obligation.

When mothers unconsciously cause their daughters to feel responsible for their losses and to share their pain, it creates confusion, chaos, and dysfunction, and reinforces the daughter’s perception that she is not worthy of her dreams. It also reinforces the daughter’s perception that she is somehow guilty of her mother’s pain. And this impairs the daughter in many ways:

For daughters growing up in a patriarchal society, there is a feeling that one must choose between “being empowered” and “being loved.”

Most daughters choose to be loved instead of being empowered due to the ominous feeling that full fulfillment and empowerment will cause a massive loss of love from important people in their lives, especially their mothers. Thus, women remain “small” and unfulfilled, unconsciously passing the Mother Wound to the next generation.

As a woman, there is a vague but powerful feeling that your power will harm your relationships, and women are conditioned to value relationships above all else. We hold on to every crumb of our relationships while our soul yearns for the fulfillment of our potential. But the truth is that our relationships alone can never be an adequate substitute for the hunger to live our lives fully.

The power dynamics underlying the mother-daughter relationship is a taboo subject and the main focus underlying the Mother Wound. Much of this goes underground because of taboos and stereotypes about mothers in our culture:

All mothers are always nurturing and loving

Mothers should never feel anger or resentment toward their daughter

Mothers and daughters are supposed to be best friends

The stereotype “all mothers are always nurturing and loving” strips women of their humanity. Because society does not give women permission to be full human beings, society justifies the lack of full support and resources for women.

The truth is that mothers are human, and all mothers experience “unloving” moments. And it is true that there are mothers who are simply “unloving” most of the time. Whether due to addiction, mental illness, or other struggles. Until we are willing to deal with these realities, the Mother Wound will remain in the shadows and will continue to be passed down through the generations.

Within all of us exists a certain “patriarchy.” We are required to digest it into ourselves in order to survive in our culture. When we are ready to confront it with our entire self, we encounter patriarchy also in others, including our mothers. This can be one of the most heartbreaking experiences we have to deal with. But unless we are willing to go there, to address the Mother Wound, we pay a very high price for the illusion of quiet and empowerment.

Holyland, Light and Shadow in the Holy Land, Pencil on paper, 2016, Yasmine Bergner

What is the price for not dealing with the Mother Wound?

The price for not dealing with the Mother Wound is to live your life endlessly with:

A vague and constant feeling that “something is wrong with me”

Never realizing your full potential due to fear of failure or lack of acceptance.

Weak boundaries with others and an unclear sense of self.

A sense of worthlessness and an inability to create what you truly desire.

Not feeling “allowed” to take up space and give a voice to your truth.

Organizing your life around “not rocking the boat.”

Self-sabotage when you are on the verge of a breakthrough.

A constant, subconscious expectation waiting for the mother’s approval and acceptance before taking sole responsibility for your life.

What is the connection between the Mother Wound and the Divine Feminine?

There is a broad discourse recently regarding “embodying the Divine Feminine” and becoming an “Awakened Woman.” But the truth is that we cannot be a container strong enough for the power of the Divine Feminine if we have not yet addressed the places within us where we were “expelled” and exiled from the Divine Feminine.

Let’s be honest: our first encounter with “the Goddess” was with our mothers. Until we have the courage to break the taboo and deal with the pain that we experience in the relationship with our mothers, “the Divine Feminine” is just another fairy tale, a fantasy about the mother who does not come to save us. This leaves us in spiritual immaturity. We must separate the flesh-and-blood mother from the archetype in order to become true conductors of this energy. We must dismantle the false structures within us before we can build new and stable structures that we can hold onto. Until we do that, we are stuck in limbo where our empowerment is short-lived and the only explanation for our embarrassing, difficult, and painful situation is to blame ourselves.

If we avoid acknowledging the full impact of the mother’s pain on our lives, we remain, to a large extent, children.

Coming into full power involves looking at our relationships with our mothers and finding the courage to separate our individual beliefs and values from theirs. It involves feeling the grief for the lack of choice to be a witness to the pain that our mothers were forced to suffer, to process our own private, legitimate pain that we suffered as a result. It is so challenging, but this is the beginning of true freedom.

Once we feel the pain, we can transform it and then it will cease to set obstacles in our lives.

Venus Stickers, Yasmine Bergner, Stickers on paper, 2013

So what happens when a woman heals the Mother Wound?

When we heal the Mother Wound, the power-relationship dynamic gradually fades and balances because women no longer ask each other to remain “small” in order to ease their pain. The pain involved in living in a patriarchal society ceases to be a taboo. We do not have to pretend and hide behind false masks that conceal our pain, under the facade of effortless strength. The pain can then be experienced as legitimate, contained, processed, integrated, and finally—transformed into deep wisdom and power.

Once women begin to gradually process the pain of the Mother Wound, we can create safe spaces for women to express the truth of their pain and receive the deeply needed support. Mothers and daughters can communicate with each other without fear that the truth of their feelings will destroy their relationship. The pain does not need to be hidden underground and inside the shadows, where it manifests as manipulations, competitiveness, and self-hatred. We can mourn our pain so that it can turn into love, love that can turn into fearless support for one another and deep self-acceptance, which will free us to be authentic, creative, and fulfilled in a bold and brave way.

When we heal the Mother Wound, we begin to understand the stunning impact of the mother on the well-being of the child’s life, especially in early infancy where the mother and the child are still one unit. Our mothers pour the foundation from which we develop. Our beliefs start as hers, our habits start as hers. Part of this is so unconscious and basic that it is barely grasped.

The Mother Wound ultimately does not focus on the mother, but is mainly related to learning to embrace and contain yourself and your gifts without guilt.

We address the Mother Wound because it is an important stage in self-realization and saying YES to being a strong and powerful woman, and this is the calling that we are asked to do. The healing focuses on acknowledging and honoring the foundation that our mothers gave to our lives, so that we can focus completely on creating the unique and authentic lives that we desire and know we can achieve.

Benefits of healing the Mother Wound:

We become much more skilled and articulate in managing our emotions. Viewing them as a source of wisdom and knowledge.

We create healthy boundaries that support the realization of our highest self.

We develop and create a stable “inner mother” that provides us with unconditional love, support, and comfort for our younger parts.

We learn to recognize ourselves as capable, competent, and that everything is possible. We are open to miracles and all good things.

We learn to be in constant contact with the inner goodness within us and our ability to bring this goodness into everything we choose to do.

We develop deep compassion toward ourselves and others.

We learn not to take ourselves too seriously, we do not need external validation to feel okay. We do not need to prove ourselves to others.

Learning to trust life to bring us what we need.

Learning to feel safe within our own skin and have the freedom to do what we want.

And much more…

Awakening – In her Savior’s Arms, still from a performance, Experimental Tools Festival 2012,

Artistic director and curator: Gil Alon, Curator: Carmit Blumensohn

Performance documentation: Jude Moskovitch

As we deepen more and more into the healing process, we slowly remove the screen of mist of projections that keeps us stuck, and then we can more clearly see, love, and appreciate ourselves. We no longer carry the burden of our mother’s pain and no longer keep ourselves “small.”

We can reveal ourselves with confidence into our lives, armed with energy and vitality to create what we truly want, without shame or guilt but with passion, power, joy, self-confidence, and love.

For every person, the initial, primordial wound, the primary heart wound was in the presence of the mother, in the presence of the feminine. And through the process of healing the wound, our hearts mature from a state of compromise, defensiveness, and fear, to a whole new level of love and power that connects us to the divine heart of life itself. And from this point on, we are connected to the collective heart archetype, which dwells in the essence of all that exists, and we become carriers and transmitters of compassion and true love that the world needs more than anything right now.

The Mother Wound is actually an opportunity and initiation into the Divine Feminine. This is the reason why it is so important for women to heal the Mother Wound: the personal healing and reconnection to the heart of life, through the feminine, affects the whole and supports our collective evolution.

All rights reserved to Bethany Webster 2014-2016

Translation from English: Yasmine Bergner

Link to the original article:

http://www.womboflight.com/about-the-mother-wound/

הפוסט Why It’s Critical for Women to Heal the Wound of Motherhood | By Bethany Webster | Translated by Yasmin Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

In human beings, there are innate “super-patterns” of thought and emotion are embedded, which Carl Gustav Jung termed “psychic archetypes.” These archetypes are part of the human hardware, and their traces can be found as products in all fields of human creation and activity. They can act in the consciousness as positive or destructive forces. They are creative when they are inspiring, and destructive when they become rigid and turn into prejudices.

According to the pioneering artist Joseph Beuys, the artist thinks and creates, and in their work, the world is created anew. The artist becomes a partner and continues the ceaseless cosmic unfolding. Through the reunification of the three branches—science, art, and religion—the existential and cognitive power will be created, capable of overcoming the duality between man and the world, between the individual and society, and the abyss currently yawning between vision and reality.

Unlike Western society, ancient and pre-modern societies are distinguished by a worldview that rebels against concrete, historical time, and is characterized by an affinity for a cyclical return to the mythical time of the beginning. According to their worldview, the history of the world is built of cosmic cycles. These two perceptions can be formally represented: the secular perception of linear time is a line, while the ancient perception of cyclical time is a circle.

The research of anthropologists Carl Schuster and Edmund Carpenter (in their monumental book Patterns that connect) reveals natural universal patterns of self-organization, which lie at the foundation of traditional arts. The primary role of memory in the preservation of traditional cultures lies in the production of formal patterns of organization, which are very ancient and stable over time. This is the reason why there is such a great similarity between religious doctrines, folklore, art, and architecture across the world.

Immense power lies in the geometric forms and symbols existing in the world, which constitute codes hidden deep within the human DNA. Through learning and visual connection to forms, it is possible to increase the range of information to the infinite possibilities and depths contained within it. Playing with the forms expands the brain’s ability to create renewed mental structures that break through the boundaries of our current reality.

The pantheon of ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses is an example of pagan perceptions embodying universal, awe-inspiring forces of nature. These forces are expressed in man as psychic forces, as archetypes of states of consciousness. The temple is a symbol of the universe, a communal meeting place to experience and meditate on the archetypes of the laws of the universe and embody them consciously in the soul. The temple also represents the divine principle, a living structure of a spiritual principle.

Studies around the world testify to the existence of psychic super-patterns embedded within us and to the importance of symbols for our soul life. We are still far from understanding the dynamics of the soul and their consequences, but it seems that these archetypes have a decisive influence on us. They shape our emotional makeup and our ethical and mental worldview, and influence our relationships and our wholeness of destiny. The archetypal symbols in the soul operate according to a holistic pattern, and a deep understanding of them can assist in healing.

Art seeks to dive into reality, into the forms of its becoming and its processes, into its infinite change. The act of art is an act of identifying the symbols, the archetypal forms in the world around us, and an attempt to find our place in it again through repeating the act of re-creation, an eternal return to the manner of the becoming of organic form.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said that “From the totality of nature’s forms, we learn of the one and only form.” Through the separate, the archetype is revealed, and following it, the essential needs common to humanity can also be revealed.

Psychic Super-Patterns

The elusive quality of the connection between art and the primordial is found within the dialogue with the symbol and the form in the process of creating art, making the act of art a rite of initiation, allowing us to be in contact with the sacred values of life. The process of creation is a testament to our emotional, psychic, and mental quality.

Jungian psychoanalyst Robert Moore says that “ordinary” people will not survive in the future, because they will not have the spiritual resources to survive. Healing comes through the numinous, the will of God within us, through a connection to the sacred.

Since forever, the myth has been present behind the scenes of every style and period in art. The recognition of the timeless quality of the myth points to the fact that something eternal, even if hidden, is always present and serves as a necessary component for the wholeness of life. Turning to the myth allows the receipt of psychic power from hidden forces that are beyond our understanding.

Since Western culture lost its mythical perception, its cosmology of the world, a deep hole has opened in the understanding of the cosmic structures of the universe, of man’s place within the cosmos, and of the human soul. This spiritual poverty brought about the emergence of psychology, an attempt to bridge the practical world and the mythical world. Psychology clearly demonstrates that the logic, heroes, and deeds of the myth live and exist even in the modern era. In the absence of a general living and recognized mythology in Western culture, each of us treasures within a private dream pantheon that receives no recognition, a pantheon that is most basic and yet holds hidden power.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

The forces of the unconscious echo not only in the clinic, but also in mythology, religion, art, and philosophy—in all fields of creation. The assumption is that in human beings, innate “super-patterns” of thought and emotion are embedded, which were termed by Carl Gustav Jung “psychic archetypes.” These archetypes are part of human hardware, and therefore it is natural that we find their traces as products in all fields of human creation and activity. Psychic archetypes can act in the consciousness as positive or destructive forces. They are creative when they are inspiring and destructive when they become rigid and turn into prejudices.

Rites of passage and initiation are the rafts upon which we sail as we pass through significant life experiences such as sexual maturation, marriage, status—class, social and professional—and the process of death. They help us transition to the next developmental stage.

Authentic rites of passage and initiation establish meaning on the personal path of each individual and on the collective human path, where the ultimate goal is to establish a meaningful life and create a psychic fusion between the inner male and female—the Jungian Anima and Animus. These rituals awaken dormant elements within us and harness them for our personal development. This is the reason for our need for myths. They are relevant for establishing meaning and a reason for our lives, for understanding and embodying the eternal basic needs common to every person as a person; to every community as it is.

Infinite Cosmic Becoming

Joseph Beuys saw himself as an artist-shaman. He was influenced by Anthroposophy, and in his body of work, a mythical narrative is found. He believed that we must connect to the driving force that turns life and creation into one piece, to see how within all our actions a new image of man and world operates as a living reality, and to reunite the three branches of spiritual life that were torn apart at the beginning of the modern era—science, art, and religion. As a result of the rift, humanity lost the unifying power of social life, which depends on the internal human wholeness of each individual.

According to Beuys’ perception, the artist thinks and creates, and in their work, the world is created anew. However, the laws of artistic language are revealed through the process of creation as the same laws that created the world in the first place. The artist becomes a partner and continues the ceaseless cosmic unfolding. Through the reunification of the three branches, the existential and cognitive power will be created, capable of overcoming the duality between man and the world, between the individual and society, and the abyss currently yawning between vision and reality.

A magical ritual is not an act of magic, but a psychic attunement. The best definition for the words “magic” and “sorcery” is “symbolic action with intent,” and this is the meaning of the ritual process. The word “action” is in the context of creative meaning. This is the act of art in its deepest original sense. Art becomes life, and life is a ritual and devotion to eternal life. They become a religion of the everyday, a new social being. This is art according to Beuys.

The scholar of religions Mircea Eliade speaks in his book The Myth of the Eternal Return about myths around the world, all expressing the same infinite return to the point of origin, to singularity, The First Time. According to him, Western philosophy risks provincialism by obsessively concentrating on its own tradition while ignoring the problems and solutions of Eastern thought and by insisting on not attributing importance to the experience of the indigenous person belonging to traditional societies. In his opinion, philosophical anthropology can learn a lot from the way the indigenous person valued his situation in the universe. Recognizing indigenous worldviews will refresh some basic assumptions in philosophy.

Eliade further claims that myth is the philosophy of history. Unlike Western society, archaic and pre-modern societies are distinguished by a worldview that rebels against concrete, historical time, and is characterized by an affinity for a cyclical return to the mythical time of the beginning. The rejection of linear, concrete time, and the resistance to any attempt at an autonomous “history” lacking an archetypal order are the result of a worldview according to which the world’s history is built of cosmic cycles, and within each cycle, the history we know exists.

These two perceptions can be formally represented—a line versus a circle. The secular perception of linear time is a line, while the ancient perception of cyclical time is a circle.

Living the Myth

For the indigenous person, “reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype.” Reality is granted by participating in the “symbolism of the center.” Cities, temples, and houses become real by being identified with the “center of the world”—the Omphalos stone at the Oracle of Delphi, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the monumental Moai statues on Easter Island, and more. Rituals and significant secular actions are significant because they intentionally repeat certain actions that were first done by the gods, the heroes, or the ancient fathers and mothers.

As a post-modern Western society, we have suppressed the fact that anthropology, the study of universal cultures, is the complete story and human heritage that belongs to us all. The anthropological narrative surrounds us on all sides, and every culture is a single thread in a colorful fabric. Only if we understand this will we understand the multi-dimensionality and richness of the human experience.

Anthropologists Carl Schuster and Edmund Carpenter in their foundational book Patterns that connect research the existence of universal formal patterns, psychic archetypes that are translated into formal archetypes appearing in different cultures around the world since the dawn of humanity. Their research reveals universal patterns of organization found at the basis of traditional arts.

Linear worldview and historical education stand at the foundation of Western culture since its rise. The primary role of memory in the commemoration of traditional cultures lies in the production of formal patterns of organization that are very ancient and stable over time. This is the reason why there is such a great similarity between religious doctrines, folklore, art, and architecture across the world.

From the book: “Indigenous arts offer us an important means to penetrate certain areas of ancient art—Terra Incognita. Schematic art from prehistoric periods will remain a subject of unanswered speculation if we do not observe and compare it to indigenous design and contemporary modern design. The concept behind this comparison is simple—art begets art. If we wish to study the cradle of traditional art, we must dig deep.”

Alongside life in the materialistic Western society, a global trend of virtual and physical, social, ecological, and artistic communities interested in cognitive and spiritual development and working to create alternatives of sustainability is also evident. This developing global spiritual movement emphasizes how through ancient and new modes of expression, the trinity merges: myth – ritual – the sacred, in a manner reflecting a parallel era of developing consciousness that returns the myth to everyday life.

The art belonging to this spiritual renaissance of mythical art, to neo-tribalism, seeks to express the artist’s private myth, so that it will guide the personal path and provide the keys to crack themselves. This artistic trend shows that it is possible to live the myth and your longing. This new-ancient art brings the artistic persona to the public space, where it is seen by others and creates interaction with the community.

Art in the Fullest Sense

The most primordial religious structure is animism—which sees a soul in everything, in which nature is the religion and the earth is the temple. In this context, mountains, rivers, cities, and temples are a concrete expression of archetypal forces in the universe. The material world is a “pattern” or “double” existing on a cosmic level, and thus meaning is granted to the concept of duality in the world of reality.

Myth scholar Mircea Eliade speaks of territories as archetypes, of “wild” areas versus “cultivated” ones. Civilized territories are linked to the “higher” cosmic level, while unknown “virgin” areas are attributed to chaos—to undifferentiated existence lacking form before creation. The territorial conquest of a virgin area is accompanied by rituals that transfer a process of renewed creation, a symbolic repetition of the act of creation. Man always builds according to archetypes. The model always precedes earthly architecture and is found in an ideal zone of eternity.

Deep observation of indigenous cultures’ arts reveals profound intelligence and intuition, a cohesive spiritual worldview, artistic virtuosity, and the ability of abstraction. The stunning abstract designs stem from observation of nature. The indigenous person is a scientist learning from the nature in which he is located. Ceramics, carving, textiles, and indigenous tattooing are a tribute to deep observation of nature and recognition of the forces operating and sustaining us on the earth, in the inter-generational connections with the ancient fathers and mothers.

Usually, the symbols are chosen from the language of symbols and forms of the tribal heritage. Thus, designs of a symbolic character are created, drawing inspiration from phenomena of the natural world such as biology, botany, celestial bodies, and the human body, and become archetypal formal and geometric patterns.

The sacred person becomes an artist in the full sense of the word. He creates a new world of connections and relationships. He seeks conscious action, metamorphosis, and the abolition of the opposites in the actual reality. It is not the world’s fault that it appears to us as an object lacking life and soul, because the source of separation is found in a certain form of our thought and life. We must seek the key to its abolition solely in man.

Anthropologist of art Ellen Dissanayake argues that “In modern culture, the important and the significant—no longer interests anyone.” Is the confusing and unsatisfactory state of art in our world related to the fact that significant things are no longer important to us? In our hedonistic and impressionable society, spiritual aspirations lose their validity and relevance. Our experiences of the extraordinary are diverted toward experiences of capitalist consumer culture, of violence, and of ecological irresponsibility.

Dissanayake argues that creation is an evolutionary drive embedded in Homo sapiens, and calls us by the name “Homo Aestheticus.” In pre-modern and prehistoric cultures, art was created for personal and community rites of passage and initiation in a multi-sensory context—within a framework of plastic art, music and dance, body decoration, and tattooing, as a holistic process. It was important that all members of the community participate and not just those considered to have talent. The goal was healing and transformation through the stages of passage and initiation. The practice allowed the community to learn and experience the world around it in an unmediated way. Pre-modern architecture, tattooing, and textile art, ceramics, and wood are one language.

Language of Light and Creation

Immense power lies in the geometric forms and symbols existing in the world, which constitute codes hidden deep within the human DNA. Through learning and visual connection to forms, it is possible to increase the range of information beyond what exists in us, to the infinite possibilities and depths contained within it. Slowly and gradually we remember knowledge because the symbols exist within us and are familiar to the cells of the body. Every symbol contains within it infinite information that is far beyond the boundaries of the knowledge existing in our conscious mind at the moment.

Playing with the forms expands the brain’s ability to create renewed mental structures that break through the boundaries of our current reality. “Working with the symbols awakens the soul’s knowledge lying deep within us and allows us to move in life in a wavy, spiral, pleasant, and creative flow, while connecting to a primordial frequency, connecting us to love and infinite light that exists in the universe and within us,” says Talia Toker, a researcher of Mayan culture.

Sacred geometry is a universal language expressing the laws of the universe and the forces operating within it. It is an expression of both observable reality and hidden reality. The hidden architecture, standing at the foundation of all that exists and demonstrating the dynamics in which it is created, unfolds, and exists in everything in the intelligent cosmos.

The Flower of Life pattern, for example, is a geometric infrastructure created from spheres, circles, only, and from within it all forms, patterns, and wave fields known to us are created. From a physical perspective, this is the language of light, wave motion, and gravity, the language of infinite creation. The new unified physics adds a layer to this understanding through the concept of plasma universe, and quantum entanglement. Studies on the subject of sacred geometry lead us to the recognition that we live in an intelligent, connected, and full-of-life universe.

According to the holographic universe idea, everything is “one” across different scales from the micro to the macro, like a spider web on which countless dewdrops lie. Each dewdrop reflects the information about every other drop, and thus the information is exchanged through the dimensions of the universe in a reciprocal relationship. An infinite loop of feedback, with the spiritual and the material held together as a whole and as a synergistic dynamic.

Sacred geometry is a universal language of fundamental geometric forms and super-patterns through which the universe and all that is within it unfold. The word “sacred” is a value without which one cannot be. Everything in the universe unfolds by identical geometric principles. There is a super-pattern that creates the universe—God, creation, or an intelligent cosmos. The understanding that there is a super-pattern creating the universe awakens a need to conduct a re-examination of our understanding of the universe, our role in it, and the responsibility placed upon us as human beings.

Everything in the universe unfolds through spiral movement in a multi-dimensional space. Swirling is a dominant law influencing the hidden dynamics of our world. We notice this movement in nature—in shells, flowers, pinecones, in DNA, and in the rotation of distant galaxies. All that exists in the universe are swirling wave fields, vibrations vibrating in different states of gravity and geometry, creating the world of matter. These basic geometric forms are the hidden architecture of our world.

A central idea shared by almost all beliefs is that the universe is a living entity possessing consciousness. This super-intelligence has woven together the threads of space, time, energy, matter, biology, and consciousness in its image. Despite the enormous size of the universe, it seems that we are all personally connected to that sublime identity and will continue to live long after the death of our physical body.

Understanding the Forces of the World

The word “Tantra” means in Sanskrit “to expand,” and it hints at wide bodies of knowledge. Thanks to Tantra, we understand the chakra system. Man alone will no longer be able to be the yardstick of the universe. He is woven integrally with all that exists and in everything he seeks the foundational essence called in the language of Tantra “the subtle world,” “Shastras.”

When thinking about abstract art, usually one thinks in terms of space and time. Tantra art moves beyond that and brings concepts of sound and light, and for this, there is no equivalent in Western art. In this spiritual process, a new sign language symbolizing the human-universe relationship is revealed and becomes accessible and useful. Tantric art can be considered, for example, one of the basic essential forms of Yoga.

In view of the limitations of language, art turns to abstract symbolism of horizontal and vertical lines, points, and circles. In contrast, Tantric art always searches for basic and essential values, forms that connect into architectural and geometric patterns. These are the formal archetypes.

The basic formal archetypes—circle, spiral, and line, echo within us on different levels. In the world of reality, the archetype meets the principle of duality—female and male, empty and full, disturbance and fusion, depth and flattening, stability and shifting, movement and static, balance and flow, symmetry and asymmetry, private and universal, accidental and intentional, fleeting and timeless.

Symbols and Tantric forms are a vast reservoir of knowledge about which very little is known. They illuminate form and color and make spiritual development accessible. Knowing the cosmic order leads the Tantric student to make himself part of the mystery. In the ancient era, this is what revealed the truth to the Tantric artist, opening a door to a new understanding of the forces of the world. Now contemporary artists try to express, see, know, discover, and enjoy these functions or forces.

The ability to see the truth depends on the ability of the consciousness to be quiet and still in order to receive it. Truth can be experienced only intensely. Therefore, Tantric artists dedicate themselves to the task of merging and integrating their visions. In India, these tasks were considered a branch of Yoga and included, like any other spiritual activity, discipline and ritual.

Tantric texts emphasize the importance of visualization and the hidden meaning of things. The vision allows the artist to see and experience reality in a superior form of concentration and focus that is higher than just images. Through ritual, the believer recites a mantra describing the celestial entity and creates a parallel mental image. His prayers are answered in a way that relates to the imagined form, and to that “focus” offerings are brought.

High States of Consciousness

A wealth of archaeological, astronomical, mathematical, geological, and cartographic research points to parallels and direct affinities between ancient archaeological structures and stellar constellations. Monuments such as Machu Picchu in Peru, the three pyramids complex in Giza, Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia, and the Nazca lines in Peru contain encoded information and within it advanced scientific knowledge in various fields such as astronomy, trigonometry, geometry, architecture, and sound.

In the field of contemporary archaeology, much evidence is accumulating, establishing the possibility that the ancient Egyptians understood and implemented the principles of sacred geometry well. Egyptologist Schwaller de Lubicz researched the art and monuments in ancient Egypt and sees in them a sacred science based on symbolism, harmonic proportions, and sacred geometry; deep intelligence encoded within the hieroglyphs, monuments, temples, and ancient Egyptian art. Interpreting the hieroglyphs as carriers of a Hermetic message, de Lubicz discovered in Egypt the earliest evidence of a sacred science, which became the basis of the perennial philosophy, fragments of which were preserved to this day by Gnostics, Sufis, Kabbalists, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons, but mainly by enlightened spiritual teachers and seers of the hidden.

The Egyptian symbolic tools were intended to allow an immediate intuitive understanding rather than the transfer of information. They were a means to escape the shackles of matter, which limits human intelligence, and to connect to higher and more sublime states of consciousness. The Egyptians did not distinguish between high states of consciousness and the physical body. On the contrary, this distinction is a mental illusion. Everything in the universe was for them different degrees of states of consciousness.

During the 15 years he lived in Egypt, de Lubicz discovered that the temple complex at Luxor contains “global lessons.” Every temple is a chapter of a specific theme within which this sacred science develops. Every temple “speaks” through its overall plan, the basic foundational orientation of its design, its choice of materials, and the openings in its walls.

In the Luxor temple, de Lubicz discovered what is probably the only monument effectively representing the architectural simulation of man. The temple contains esoteric knowledge such as the location of endocrine glands, Hindu energy centers, the chakras, and acupuncture points. He discovered that the astronomical orientation of the temple, the geometry of its structure, the simulations, and the inscriptions are a symbolic expression of the human body and precise locations physiologically.

The human body is a living synthesis of the essential vital functions of the universe. Within the temple occurs the primordial struggle between light and darkness, between yin and yang, between gravity and levitation, between the god and the goddess, between male and female, and between king and queen. This is a temple that man must refine and distill through the incarnations until the creation of a replica of the cosmic man.

For de Lubicz, the temple also represents cosmic and celestial measures and correspondences with the movement of celestial bodies and with specific astronomical eras. The integrations between the relationships and affinities between stars, planets, metals, colors, and sounds, as well as between types of plants, animals, and organs in the body are revealed through a complete science of numbers.

The pantheon of ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, called Netjer, is similar in its perception to the ancient Titans and other pagan perceptions, embodying universal, awe-inspiring forces of nature. These forces are expressed in man as psychic forces, as archetypes of states of consciousness. The temple is a symbol of the universe, a communal meeting place to experience and meditate on the archetypes of the laws of the universe and embody them consciously in the soul. The temple represents the God and the principle, a living structure of a spiritual principle.

When the scientist tries to reach the unknown without truly decoding it, the metaphysician reminds him that it is impossible to research the truth, only to know intuitively or through vision. As Joseph Campbell said, the myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the universe flow to be expressed in human culture. Religions, worldviews, arts, the social conventions of ancient man and historical man, the discoveries of science, technology, and our dreams, all bubble and rise from the same base.

“The symbols of the myth cannot be ordered, nor can they be permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous products of the soul. In each of them lies, in its wholeness, the seed of the power of the source from which it flowed.”

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Bibliographic Sources

Rudolf Steiner, “Aesthetics of the Future – Fruit of Goethe’s Spirit,” Michael Publishing, translation: Ilan Wig, 1985-1971.

Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon, “Homage to Joseph Beuys,” article, Kav 8, magazine, 1988.

Mircea Eliade, “The Myth of the Eternal Return – Archetypes and Repetition,” from French: Yotam Reuveni, Carmel Publishing, Jerusalem, 2000.

Carl Schuster & Edmund Carpenter, “Patterns that connect – Social Symbolism in ancient and tribal art”, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York.

Yasmine Bergner, “The Great Rite of Passage,” article, “Erev Rav”—online magazine for culture and art, 2013.

Ellen Dissanayake, “Homo Aestheticus – Where art comes from and why”, University of Washington Press, Seattle & London, 1995.

www.mayazone.co.il

David Wilcock, “The Source Field Investigations—The Hidden Science and Lost Civilizations Behind the 2012 Prophecies,” Maram Publishing, 2015, from English: Ofer Mashiah.

“The symbolic aspect of form”, Alice Bonner, 1949

John Anthony West, “Serpent in the sky – the high wisdom of ancient Egypt”, Quest books, theosophical publishing house, Wheaton IL. USA

Joseph Campbell, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” Babel Publishing, translation: Shlomit Kanaan, 2013 (published in 1949).

הפוסט The One and Only Form | The Science of Sacred Geometry | By Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Wearable Technology

In 2015, the first version of the ARK crystal resonance technology was released from Nassim Haramein’s laboratory: lab-grown crystals that can be worn on the body. The crystals are designed and structured geometrically to create a molecular structure that has the ability to resonate with the quantum field. This wearable technology creates harmonic synchronization with the unified field and amplifies the energetic efficiency we can receive from it. The results show that exposing water to them increases the resonance of the water. For example, if we water plants with water exposed to such crystals, the plant will grow 300 percent faster, and the quality of seeds is increased by about ten percent.

“In other words, the resonance created by these synthetic crystals has a beneficial effect on biology. Since we are made primarily of water, I wanted to create crystals that could be worn on the body, to restructure the water within it, and receive health-promoting and beneficial effects for the body and soul. The mother technology that produces the crystals is in development, with the goal of providing the world with gravity-control technology and releasing free energy.”

ARK crystals restructure atoms and water molecules, empowering them and making them more vital. This allows our bodies and our agricultural and ecological systems to produce healthier growth and cellular activity, and to create the conditions suitable for balance and biological integrity. This is just a glimpse of the potential changes that can occur when the basic principles of unified physics are applied. At the same time, changes in our internal values become a natural part of progress as we adopt a more holistic and integral worldview.

How did the idea to create ARK crystal technology begin?

Getty Images
Nassim: ARK crystal technology is the more esoteric side of my research in physics, so it is important to me that the context in which it is done is understood. For several decades, I have been dissatisfied with the Standard Model in physics. I began to create my own theories and correct errors in the standard physics model, specifically where the model split or reached a dead end. In addition to research in physics, I felt deeply that much can be learned from ancient cultures, as they survived for thousands of years and thought about the same issues that modern physics deals with: what is the nature of reality, what is the nature of existence, and the universe. I had a feeling that I might find something there that modern science is missing.

Working with geometry turned out to be a significant factor for me, and I noticed that in modern conceptual physics and mathematics, there is insufficient reference to geometry. Albert Einstein created the geometry of space-time within the framework of his General Theory of Relativity, using very high-level conceptual mathematics. Therefore, I began to study the Pythagorean school, Plato, and the esoteric research of Newton. Not many know that Newton was an alchemist who dealt with esoteric mathematics and physics and researched the First Temple. He studied and wrote much about the ancient Hebrew script. Newton believed that if we deeply understood the structure of the First Temple, we could understand the principles of gravity control (anti-gravity).

According to belief, the First Temple was built for the purpose of housing the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. It is fascinating to me that the Hebrew, Muslim, and Christian traditions meet in the context of the Ark of the Covenant. The Foundation Stone (Even HaShetiya) on the Temple Mount is the holiest site for Muslims—which, according to belief, was inside the Holy of Holies in the First Temple and the place from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended. The Ark of the Covenant is one of the most central subjects in Judaism.

The research I conducted led me to believe that the power of the Ark of the Covenant stemmed from its being a technological power source of gravity control. I believe this is a technology that was created within the pyramids, brought from Egypt by Moses, who held a high status in Egypt and had access to this technology. The Bible clearly describes Moses leading the tribe of Israel from Egypt toward the Red Sea, with a pillar of light standing by night before the camp and a pillar of smoke during the day, which today we can interpret as a type of vortex.

I believe this is an advanced technology, much older than the Jewish or Egyptian cultures. Likely a culture that existed before the last Ice Age and the cataclysmic event of the Flood. Archaeologists around the world, and especially in the field of ancient Egypt research, are becoming more unanimous that the ancient structures we see around the world in ancient Egypt, in the Mayan and Inca cultures, are remnants of much older civilizations that preceded them before the last Ice Age.

I believe that these ancient cultures possessed advanced technologies of gravity control. The ancient monuments we find around the world are built of massive stones weighing thousands of tons that can barely be moved even with the advanced technology of our day. These massive stones were moved distances of hundreds of kilometers in some cases. With the technology at our disposal today, we can move such stones no more than a hundred meters, but not such vast distances along rivers and dunes.

I am conducting research into the advanced ARK gravity-control technology—which is actually a merging of advanced unified field physics with ancient forms that I believe were representations of this power source and technology—technology that manages to connect to the structure of space-time itself. The physics I wrote in this context has reached significant achievements. I succeeded in predicting the scale of the atomic nucleus, the proton, and the electron, and all the electrons of the periodic table in a much more accurate way than any other contemporary theory that exists.

The standard model in physics deviates from the radius of the proton by about 4%, which is not insignificant in terms of quantum physics. My theory is within the error margin of the experiment, which is considered a very high level of accuracy. Therefore, it is important for me to emphasize to the readers that these ideas do not come only from philosophy and esoteric knowledge, but from very well-founded contemporary theories in advanced physics—physics that has the ability to predict and foresee what we see in the world of phenomena. At a later stage, I started experiments in experimental physics with the aim of creating this technology in the laboratory. I believe that now, at this current stage in the evolution of the human species, we are given the ability to decipher and rediscover this knowledge so that eventually we can become part of the galactic community and allow ourselves to explore outer space. In fact, we have no choice. Planets are unstable and ecological and cataclysmic changes occur all the time. We must understand the principle of gravity control in order to expand beyond the borders of the planet.

Yasmine: Stephen Mehler, an independent Egyptologist from the Great Pyramid of Giza Research Association in Cairo, wrote two books on the ancient Egyptian wisdom passed on to Abd’el Hakim Awyan, an Egyptian archaeologist and wisdom keeper.

According to indigenous understanding, the ancient pyramids were structures of initiation and stationary technology for transforming water and stone and creating solar energy. They were never used for the burial of pharaohs as is commonly thought. In the original language: PER NETER — House of Energy or House of the Universal Principle: they were a geometric structure intended to create resonant transformation between natural water sources and the earth and bedrock that were near them.

Nassim: The ancient information emerging today from Egypt is amazing. I spent a considerable amount of time with the Khemetology School (founded by the Awyan family) last October at the first annual conference of my institute. They gave us guided tours of sacred sites all over Egypt.

Yasmine: Would you like to tell us about the Resonance Foundation conference that was recently held in Egypt? How was it and what insights did you gain from the conference?

Nassim: These were three amazing weeks. I have been studying the culture of ancient Egypt, its architecture, and megaliths for 25 years, but it is one thing to study from books and a completely different story to be there and witness this miracle with your own eyes. The people who take part in the Emissary program are such intelligent people with amazing abilities. Our guides were excellent, knowledgeable in both traditional and alternative Egyptology, what is known today as Khemetology. Therefore, they can bridge the gaps between the schools of thought. We conducted in-depth field research. Being in the place and seeing the precise cutting of the stones, the sophisticated angles, and understanding that it is impossible to create such structures and hard materials using copper chisels—which is what is commonly thought to have been the tools in the Bronze Age—is mind-boggling. Direct observation hits you and makes you realize that their achievements were created using technology much more advanced than what is commonly thought. In addition to that, the energy in Egypt is extremely powerful. It is hard to describe how transformative the experience was for everyone and changed us forever. And I am already very excited about the second annual conference that will be held in Peru.

Yasmine: Do you have anything to say to the Israeli public that is considering traveling to Egypt but is afraid because of the sensitive political situation?

Nassim: I think there are so many levels to the conflict and political situation, and I believe it is an energetic conflict at its core. The conflict is not necessarily between the people or between religious worldviews, but between political and economic forces. The conflict is produced by governmental economic agendas that have something to gain from keeping the Middle East in a state of instability. I believe that if the economic agendas of the world’s governing powers were not pushing and encouraging the conflict, Jews and Muslims would find a way to live in peace. You have shared roots; you are brothers and sisters. The Quran refers to Moses and the Jewish tradition is embedded within it. The instability in the region is produced and perpetuated by military and industrial organizations for their own profit.

At this point, it is possible that my work on the subject can help. Because everything returns to that same event of the Exodus and the technology that may have been in the possession of the Israelites that was held in the Ark of the Covenant. This is a point that has not yet been properly understood, which I believe connects the three major religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

The connection between Jesus, the Ark of the Covenant, and the First Temple is not well understood, in my opinion. In the New Testament, Jesus is called the “Living Ark of the Covenant,” and as part of his journey, he goes to the Temple in an attempt to re-establish the Ark of the Covenant in the Second Temple. I believe that the Ark of the Covenant was taken out of the Temple long before the birth of Jesus and brought to the Essene community as part of a “Plan B” by the priests in case the Temple was attacked. After all, underground tunnels have been found leading from the Temple to the city. I believe that the Dead Sea Scrolls, and especially the Copper Scroll, describe the arrival of the Ark of the Covenant to the Essene community in Qumran. I speculate that the Ark of the Covenant was in the possession of the Essene community by the Dead Sea for quite some time, at least until the first century CE, until the occurrence of the events linked to the historical figure of Jesus.

Yasmine: Today it is accepted among scholars that the people of Qumran were the Essenes. In the middle of the Second Temple period, in the period when they were exiled from the Temple during the dispute with the Hasmoneans, the prevailing hypothesis is that these were various priestly circles that were prevented from serving in the Holy place following exile, destruction, or withdrawal from the Temple. They held independent doctrines and philosophy. Many of the many writings found in the Qumran caves and studied by the Community of the Unity of Qumran (as they probably called themselves) were unknown to us before their discovery at this site. The Community of the Unity maintained an extensive library containing spiritual and intellectual assets of immense value, and its members engaged in study, contemplation, writing, and translation. The essence of the group is highly controversial, and in some places, it is described as an ideal, peace-loving, and separatist community. It is not known who the writers were, and it is likely that there were about 500 writers in different periods. There is an interesting assumption that the Qumran scrolls represent the totality of written Jewish creation before the process of canonization and were brought to the Dead Sea caves before the Great Revolt.

Archaeologist Vendyl Jones (on whom the character of Indiana Jones is based) found remains that match what is described in the Copper Scroll in a cave near Qumran. I am raising a theory that Jesus was born into the Essene community. The special powers attributed to Jesus, such as healing the sick, may have been a phenomenon of amplifying the resonance of the water molecules. And walking on water may have been an effect of gravity control, since he learned to use the power that was inside the Ark of the Covenant. The New Testament tells that at age 32, Jesus went to the Temple with the goal of returning the Ark to the Temple. When he arrives there, he realizes that the Temple has been desecrated and idols have been brought into it, which causes him emotional turmoil. The High Priest does not want to give up his position of power and therefore convinces the Romans to execute Jesus. I believe that Jesus did not die on the cross but was healed through the power of the Ark. So through this perception, we see that Christians, Muslims, and Jews all meet in the story of the Ark of the Covenant.

Nassim and Vendyl Jones are not the only ones to speculate that the Ark of the Covenant was brought to the Essene community in Qumran. In her book “Jesus and the Essenes,” the pioneering American hypnotherapist Dolores Cannon says that the historical figure of Jesus indeed lived in Qumran. Cannon reports this through a patient in deep hypnosis. Under hypnosis, the patient experienced, she claimed in a past life, being a teacher of Jesus in Qumran.

Yasmine: At Masada, which is near Qumran, there is a beautiful floor mosaic in a Greco-Roman style, and even though it is almost completely destroyed, one can see the remains of a Flower of Life in its center. This is very rare archaeological evidence. It is very rare to find archaeological remains of sacred geometry in the Land of Israel, and no one gives them an explanation (see the following photo).

Nassim: Ossuaries found in a cave in Talpiot, Jerusalem, currently in the Israel Museum, are claimed to have contained Jesus and his family members. On the sides of the ossuaries, dated to the first century CE, are carved very large seeds of life.

Two seeds of life are carved on an ossuary found in an ancient burial cave, Talpiot, Jerusalem. On the ossuary, the name “Yeshua bar Yosef” (Jesus son of Joseph) is carved. It is likely that the geometric engraving is much older than the later text engraving (Y.B).

Yasmine: It is interesting to learn how Judaism integrated sacred geometry into its spiritual studies and its worldview.

Nassim: Part of my work was the understanding that the Kabbalistic Tree of Life has a tetrahedral structure, and then I realized that doubling 8 Trees of Life creates the complex tetrahedral structure which is the geometric archetype of the universe. Also, the Star of David (Magen David) has a tetrahedral structure, and it is very possible that it represented the power that was inside the Ark of the Covenant. And therefore it is found on the flag of Israel. Today we know that the Star of David in its three-dimensional form is the fundamental structure of the cosmic field. It is the skeleton of the torus dynamic and zero-point energy. The spheres of the Tree of Life are actually spheres representing the Flower of Life. The infinite fractal structure of the universe is represented by the 10 spheres. And within each sphere, there are 10 spheres, and so on to infinity.

Yasmine: It is amazing how these myths influence us today, thousands of years later. On the politics in the Middle East. The myth of Jewish slavery, the Exodus. It is fascinating to try to understand why these myths have taken such deep root and what we must do to free ourselves from them.

Nassim: I think the true story should come to light. What really happened, and what is the true identity of the tribe of Israel and the true affinities that exist between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That everyone meets in the myth of the Ark of the Covenant. And perhaps if a true understanding is created, it will open the way to reconciliation between the cultures and between the peoples. It can help us develop compassion for one another. After all, everyone wants the same thing—to raise their children, to get an answer to our basic needs, to be fed and feel safe, and to love and feel loved. No one is born with hatred; it only happens through states of distress when people feel they have no other choice.

Naturally, people are born as wonderful creatures of purity and love. It is so important that we develop a connected worldview, with the understanding that we all need to thrive together. I believe that the political and military power mechanisms are also changing for the better. The development of free-energy technologies will eliminate the necessity to fight over oil resources, and therefore will eliminate most territorial conflicts.

So there is much hope, but we must roll up our sleeves and hurry to make the changes on every possible front.

Yasmine Bergner is a multidisciplinary artist, spiritual companion through tattooing, and researcher.

Nassim Haramein is a scientist, physicist, and sacred geometry researcher.

The article was originally published in Hayim Aherim (Other Lives) magazine, 2018.

הפוסט The Field Child | Interview with Nassim Haramein #2 | Interviewer: Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

“Modern science’s refusal to search for higher order slows humanity’s development and severely harms the ecosystems upon which we depend to survive and thrive. The implications and applications of the connected worldview provide us with a clear vision of our potential to evolve. Humanity is heading in this direction, but we must reach the destination in time, and this advanced technology must be released as soon as possible.”

— Nassim Haramein

“Humanity must adopt unified field physics and learn to control gravitational fields in order to free itself from the necessity of living on the surface of a planet and become part of a galactic community that has access to almost infinite energy sources. We are very close to a breakthrough. This time it is particularly critical, because if we do not succeed, we may not survive.”

“High-level resonance is billions of times smaller than subatomic particles; therefore, it is a quantum activity of which we have no direct experience, but the structure of consciousness is likely made of it, as is all the matter around us. Much like a fish swimming in water, unaware of its existence, we too are ‘swimming’ in a fluid-like plasma field and do not notice its existence.”

“If we recognize that we are in an intelligent field that interacts with us and creates our reality, we will feed into the field what we want to happen, and thus we will begin to receive beneficial and positive results for ourselves and for all of humanity,” says scientist and researcher Nassim Haramein, who works in sacred geometry, unified field theory, and resonance technology, in an interview. “The universe is like a hard drive, a system of infinite active memory.”

Nassim Haramein was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1962. For the last 30 years, he has researched the connections between physics, mathematics, geometry, cosmology, quantum mechanics, biology, chemistry, anthropology, and ancient civilizations. These studies have led Haramein to groundbreaking theories, papers, inventions, and patents in unified physics, which are now gaining recognition and respect worldwide.

Today, it is clear that we are in the midst of a radical development of expansive technologies—brain research, heart research, alternative energy, global information systems, robotics, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, geo-engineering, and electromagnetic manipulation of the Earth’s ionosphere. These advanced technologies affect us and our environment. We are on a fast track of a massive experiment, for better or for worse.

Haramein believes that the contemporary worldview poses dangers to us.

“We hold an incomplete model of reality that affects the economy, government, technology, and media. As a global society, we suffer from a severe failure of values, which causes us to ignore systemic violence, racism, scarcity, and environmental destruction. Over the past few centuries, science has acquired an influential role, shaping our values, beliefs, and spiritual perceptions. The principles and values that guide us will profoundly affect humanity and all life on Earth and will resonate for generations to come.”

The Small Rudder

In 2004, Haramein founded the Resonance Science Foundation for the research and development of unified physics principles. He is also the director and creator of Torus Tech, LLC—a private laboratory for the research and development of clean, inexhaustible energy technologies and for safe, sustainable space exploration. In 2014, Haramein’s research foundation established the Envoys Program (the Delegate Program), the first online educational program of its kind in the field of unified physics and sacred geometry, which educates thousands of students from over 90 countries worldwide.

We all feel the tremors of the transition from old paradigms to the new ones emerging in the modern era. The question is whether humanity, in its destructive behavior, will bring the world to its end, or succeed in passing its adolescence, developing spiritually, and maturing into something new and beneficial. The Resonance Science Foundation, the Resonance Project Academy, and the Hawaii Institute for Unified Physics are attempting to change the worldview and assist in creating a more beneficial humanity. The Envoys Program defines the paradigm shift in our world as a transition from a disconnected worldview to a connected one.

“The principle of spin is a fundamental principle that has been neglected or misunderstood in modern physics, in the sense that it is a fundamental principle of organization. The spin principle allows the organization of the entire universe and creates coherence. This is why the Earth, the solar system, the other galaxies, and the entire universe are spinning. We find this in sacred geometry everywhere.”

“The unified field is a resonance field at the quantum level. It is the source of matter, mass, and gravity, but also the source of consciousness. The dynamics of the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field create an infinite feedback loop—the outgoing feedback is the electromagnetic field radiating outward, and the feedback returning is the gravitational field returning inward. This is a compressed information field, where every Planck unit is a compressed spark of information.”

The prevailing worldview in science today is a disconnected worldview, which interprets the universe as a lifeless “machine” that can be broken down into its components, believing that nature and matter are devoid of consciousness and intelligence. This perception denies the existence of a holistic pattern connecting everything that exists. Evolution is accidental, and the universe is moving from a state of creation and order toward entropy and disorder. The vacuum that fills space is empty and devoid of energy.

“Modern science’s refusal to search for higher order slows humanity’s development and severely harms the ecosystems upon which we depend to survive and thrive,” says Haramein.

In contrast, the connected worldview defined in the Envoys Program interprets the universe as a holistic system full of life and intelligence. It sees it as a field of infinite potential with a fractal and synergetic structure. Sacred geometry and unified physics identify these basic patterns and connect everything that exists, from the micro to the macro.

The universe is an intelligent and lively field that learns about itself and evolves to infinity in a system of feedback. The direction of developing systems contains a balance between decreasing order and increasing order. The space between particles of matter is full of information and tremendous potential energy, which secretly connects all things.

“Changing the worldviews and values of the entire human family is a challenging task that requires time,” says Haramein. “It is like trying to change an ocean current against a strong opposing current. In order to change direction, we must turn the ‘small rudder’ before we turn the ‘large rudder’ of the ship. By turning the small rudder, we will exert mild pressure within the water, which will gradually intensify until it becomes possible to turn the large rudder and the ship in the other direction.”

“I believe the implications and applications of the connected worldview provide us with a clear vision of our capabilities to evolve in the fields of society, technology, and spirituality. The Envoys Program and the development of the unified field physics it researches are probably the ‘small rudder’ that will turn the direction in which our humanity moves as a whole. If we can envision it, we can create it. A ‘crazy’ idea of today can become the norm of tomorrow.

“For example, in the last 150 years, we went from horse and carriage to airplanes. This is an idea that was once considered insane and illogical, but a few generations later, it is the norm. So why, in a few generations, couldn’t humans fly outside the solar system and explore the galaxy using space vehicles powered by gravity engines? Perhaps it is not such a crazy idea.

“I believe humanity is heading in this direction, but we must reach the destination in time. We are under significant constraints at the current time, and our ability to survive as a human species is being highly challenged. Therefore, this level of advanced technology must be released as soon as possible.”

Right: Nikola Tesla, Left: Walter Russell

Inspirations

Just about half a century ago, researchers such as Walter Russell and Nikola Tesla offered humanity a vision and technological knowledge that had tremendous potential to change life on Earth, but they did not live to see their vision fulfilled. They were extraordinary figures of spirit and science.

“Russell was an amazing man, and many are not aware of his work,” says Haramein. “He was a self-taught sculptor and architect. As a scientist, he contributed significantly to modern science. He identified many of the elements in the periodic table and predicted their existence long before they were discovered in laboratory experiments. He studied physics and sacred geometry and identified the basic spin dynamics of physics. He also built advanced resonance equipment in his laboratory.

“Russell and Tesla were in personal contact, and Tesla recommended that Russell keep his work archived for a thousand years because humanity was not yet ready in terms of consciousness for this technology. In those days, Tesla had already learned a bitter lesson given the reaction of the scientific community and the power mechanisms of the time to his work. Tesla’s understanding of free energy sources and the wireless transmission of energy sources anywhere in the world unfortunately became problematic for the dominant economic corporations and the wealthy. His research and technological experimentation were maliciously suppressed and halted by the prevention of research funding.”

“Although modern society is based on Russell’s technological developments, he was almost completely erased from history books. He spent the rest of his life in solitude and died destitute, ostracized by the scientific community. 30 years ago, when I started lecturing, most electronics engineers and physicists didn’t even know who Russell and Tesla were. I believe these two great scientists were ahead of their time. They prepared humanity for the evolutionary stage we are in now and for the new paradigm.

“Amazingly, Russell developed a technology very similar to the technology I am developing today. Some of the research that Russell locked in a safe to open in a thousand years was leaked. I received one of them, and it is similar to what I am building myself. When I was exposed to Russell’s material, I had already written my innovations in unified physics and mathematics, but it was a deep and inspiring confirmation for me. Even today, I still sometimes receive dismissive and mocking responses to my research, which illustrates how difficult it was for Russell and Tesla to offer such radical ideas in the late and mid-20th century.”

Walter Russell: Right: From his electromagnetic sketches, Portrait, and his famous book “A New Concept of the Universe” (1950)

Haramein hopes that this time we will succeed in doing so.

“This time it is particularly critical because if we do not succeed, we may not survive. Humanity must adopt unified field physics and learn to control gravitational fields in order to free itself from the necessity of living on the surface of a planet and become part of a galactic community that has access to almost infinite energy sources. This may sound far-fetched, but I promise that we are very close to a breakthrough.”

Paradigm Shift

In the Envoys Program, Haramein says that the challenges currently afflicting humanity may be a vital and natural part of the development of a society. The fact that we are on the verge of extinction will bring us to an awakening because life is more powerful than anything else.

“The pressure of being on the verge of extinction moves us from our comfort zone, to wake up to the consequences of our actions, and to move toward a holistic perception that will allow us more power and positive influence. We must allow the change to happen.”

“It is funny, but change is the only constant in the universe. Science loses its validity when we try to hold on to previous ideas. We must always examine new ideas and see how they integrate with previous ones. New ideas are always based on the continuity of previous ones, but sometimes breakthroughs occur in thinking, for example, the leap from Newtonian thinking to Albert Einstein’s ideas.

“Einstein’s Theory of Relativity completely changed our thinking regarding space-time dimensions, mass, and matter, and the way we perceive the world. Einstein was lucky to have the support of Max Planck and others to be heard within the scientific community. Even if Einstein had tried to publish his Theory of Relativity today, he would have encountered quite a few difficulties. Even today, it is very difficult to deviate from the status quo, and this is very unfortunate. A society that does not encourage revolutionary thinking is a society that prevents itself from creativity and new information. If we cannot move forward, we will be forced into extinction.”

It seems that humanity has become everything that is the opposite of a true civilization, the opposite of the behaviors implied by the word “culture”: not to kill others, not to control others, and not to consume without giving anything back. However, despite the massive negativity, there is also a positive movement in the other direction—social, ecological, spiritual, and virtual movements attempting to create positive change, awareness, and community.

Your important contribution to the field of science and consciousness elegantly ties together the loose ends that Tesla, Russell, and Einstein left behind. Recently, you even won the Albert Einstein Award.

“Yes, I feel enthusiasm and optimism and feel that humanity is heading in the right direction. The status quo is being disrupted in all areas of life—in the economy, military, and politics. Society is changing before our eyes rapidly. I only hope, as mentioned, that it happens at a speed that will allow our society to survive the ecological, economic, and social challenges. Anyone who evolves, who wakes up, is significant to the paradigm shift.”

Holofractographic Universe

Haramein conceived the Holofractographic Universe theory, which explores the fundamental geometry of space that connects us all—from the quantum and molecular scale to the scale of cosmological objects in the universe. The innovation that unified physics brings compared to classical physics is the principle that the cosmos is a unified field.

The idea that the universe is holographic was first proposed in the 1950s by physicists Karl Pribram and David Bohm. They argued that information is transmitted and exchanged through all parts of the universe simultaneously and non-locally.

The perception of the universe as a fractal was first proposed in the 1970s by Benoit Mandelbrot. Fractals are self-similar patterns that repeat at all levels of existence, from the micro to the macro. The concept says that there are infinite dimensions residing within an infinite number of scales of unified boundary conditions within the whole. There is extensive mathematics in the field of fractals that provides us with a useful model explaining the principles of regularity and self-similarity among complex systems, such as clouds, coastlines, landscape contours, and more.

One of Haramein’s important contributions to the field of unified physics is a solution to Einstein’s General Relativity equations, which he devised with his colleague Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher. This is a solution that has a more solid foundation than any other theoretical framework that exists today. An experiment performed in 2013 by a group of researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute confirmed Haramein’s scientific hypothesis. Their solution finds a unifying mathematical pattern among all that exists and posits the existence of a “unified field” in which we all exist and interact.

At the quantum level, subatomic particles, such as electrons, flicker and disappear at a very high frequency that is not visible to the eye. Electrons appear within the visible dimension and return back to the hidden. These two dimensions of reality, the visible and the hidden, create a dynamic that physicist David Bohm called a “reciprocal relationship.” This is a dynamic where each dimension shapes and influences the other in an ongoing process of emergence and embodiment.

This process is called oscillation or “high-vibration oscillation.” For example, a metal spring—when we stretch it, it will return to us. However, in reality, this is not just moving backward and forward like a simple spring, but a movement of spin that folds and unfolds back and forth in a dynamic called “torsion.”

“The complexity of the universe demands feedback,” says Haramein. “The classical physics community insists on a definition of randomness in the universe because if it were to recognize the fact that nothing in the universe is a result of randomness, it would be forced to recognize aspects of spirituality. I believe that all that exists participates actively within what we call the ‘Unified Field,’ which connects everything that exists.”

It seems that “little bangs” happen at the quantum level all the time. We must abandon the notion that a Big Bang happened somewhere in history, because it is happening constantly with every breath.

For most people, it is difficult to understand the concept of resonance.

“True. The spin principle is a fundamental principle that has been neglected or misunderstood in modern physics, in the sense that it is a fundamental principle of organization. The spin principle allows the organization of the entire universe and creates coherence. This is why the Earth, the solar system, the other galaxies, and the entire universe are spinning. We find this in sacred geometry everywhere.”

ARK pendants – wearable resonance technology – Hawaii Resonance Science Foundation

Wearable Technology

Last year, the first version of the ARK resonance technology developed by Haramein was released to the market, which consists of crystals produced in his laboratory that can be worn on the body. The crystals are geometrically designed and structured, creating a molecular structure that has the ability to resonate with the quantum field. This wearable technology creates harmonic synchronization with the unified field and amplifies the energetic efficiency we can receive from it.

“We have tested these crystals in thousands of laboratory tests. The results show that exposing water to them increases the resonance of the water. For example, if we water plants with water exposed to such crystals, the plant will grow 300 percent faster, and the quality of seeds is increased by about ten percent. In other words, the resonance created by these synthetic crystals has a beneficial effect on biology. Since we are made primarily of water, I wanted to create crystals that could be worn on the body, to restructure the water within it, and receive health-promoting and beneficial effects for the body and soul.

“The crystals can positively influence agriculture and biology on a large scale. Everything biological exposed to them—human, animal, plant, or seed—is enhanced in its resonance and pH. The mother technology that produces the crystals is in development, and I hope it will provide the world with gravity-control technology and release free energy to it.”

Haramein adds that “ARK crystals restructure atoms and water molecules, empowering them and making them more vital. This allows our bodies and our agricultural and ecological systems to produce healthier growth and cellular activity and to create the conditions suitable for balance and biological integrity. This is just a glimpse of the potential changes that can occur when the basic principles of unified physics are applied. At the same time, changes in our internal values become a natural part of progress as we adopt a more holistic and integral worldview.”

Nassim Haramein’s Resonance Academy and Hawaii Resonance Science Foundation program on an expedition to Egypt, 2018

“Unified Field Theory shows that we can control the gravitational field. It offers a more diverse and safer potential for transport within the Earth’s environment, and later, interstellar travel can become a relevant possibility. Our current society is based on our ability to control magnetic and electromagnetic fields. The next stage in our evolution is the ability to control gravitational fields. It should be noted that this is not a new technology, but an ancient technology that has archaeological evidence all over the world.”

“Vacuum resonance at the quantum level has a very short wavelength, which creates very high energy within an extremely tiny space. If we manage to connect to this energy source, if we manage to draw even a tenth of a percent of the energy that exists in a Planck unit, a unit of space, we will have enough energy to operate the entire world for thousands of years.

“According to my theory, this is the energy source of everything we see in observable reality; of all matter, mass, and the physical forces known to us. Creating devices that can synchronize with vacuum energy could be the key to human survival.”

Source of Consciousness

“The unified field is a resonance field at the quantum level,” explains Haramein. “It is the source of matter, mass, and gravity, but also the source of consciousness. The dynamics of the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field create an infinite feedback loop—the outgoing feedback is the electromagnetic field radiating outward, and the feedback returning is the gravitational field returning inward.

“One can imagine this compressed information field, where every Planck unit is a compressed spark of information, like a highly compressed hard drive. The information is fluid-like and floats in space, similar to water composed of molecules that float together. When this plasma field floats outward, it is called an ‘electromagnetic field,’ and when it floats inward, it is called a ‘gravitational field.’ One can learn to blend these lenses—to use an electromagnetic field to create a gravitational field and vice versa. This is a valid proposal for experimental physics if one understands these dynamics and basic principles.”

The dynamics of vacuum resonance, the torus model connected to it, and the spin principle are among the most fascinating topics in the field. It is an intuitive, scientific, and rational subject.

“True. I believe that what we call ‘spiritual’ is the physics that has not yet been understood by us, and therefore I started writing papers in biophysics, for example, a paper I published last year containing a new model for defining consciousness.”

From Walter Russell’s sketches

Your paper The Source of Spin helped me understand the dynamics of torsion force, which spins in an infinite spin within a fractal field.

“True. In the fractal field, infinite dimensions, scales, and densities exist between the micro and the macro. The relationship between expansion and contraction is between the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field. When we observe matter, we are observing the structure of the quantum vacuum, which exists at extremely high resonance and frequency.”

“Many ask, ‘Why can I not feel or see this field?’ We must understand that this high resonance is billions of times smaller than subatomic particles; therefore, it is a quantum activity of which we have no direct experience, but the structure of consciousness is likely made of it, as is all the matter around us. Much like a fish swimming in water, unaware of its existence, we too are ‘swimming’ in a fluid-like plasma field and do not notice its existence. Where can this lead us? To understand the universe as a hard drive, as a system of infinite active memory.”

Results in the Field

Haramein adds, regarding the Law of Attraction, which he calls “vacuum engineering,” that “when we recognize that we are in an intelligent field that interacts with us and creates our reality, and that what we feed into the field returns in the feedback system, we begin to be careful to feed into the field what we want and dream to happen, and not imagine what we do not want to happen. This is how we begin to receive results that are consistent with what we experience as beneficial and positive for ourselves and for all of humanity. Anyone who understands this can exert more influence on the morphogenetic field and become a leader and an agent of change for others.”

As someone who believes in education, how do you think it is possible to turn complex ideas, such as torus dynamics, torsion force, and resonance, into simple devices that will demonstrate this to children and young people? This will help the younger generation offer radical ideas for humanity’s development and its salvation.

“Everyone can be an undiscovered Einstein, but the current global education system deeply suppresses the creativity and original thinking of children and youth. Their intelligence is underestimated, and they are forced into many hours of study of subjects that do not contribute to them. This is a very harmful process that distances them from learning what really excites them.”

“This is the reason I founded the Resonance Academy and the Envoys Program—to offer an alternative to the existing education system and create a new narrative. To give space for a different history of science and the history of humanity as a whole, and of course, to offer a new holistic science that we are in the process of developing.”

“We are also working on collaborations with educational foundations to distribute the study material. This way, more and more people will be able to understand the paradigm shift in our world and contribute to the change personally.”

End of Part 1 (See continuation: The Field Child 2)

Yasmine Bergner is a multidisciplinary artist, spiritual companion through tattooing, and researcher.

Nassim Haramein is a scientist, physicist, and sacred geometry researcher.

The article was originally published in Hayim Aherim (Other Lives) magazine, 2018.

הפוסט The Field Child | Interview with Nassim Haramein #1 | Interviewer: Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Tattoos in 21st Century Israel – A Late Blooming

Expert from “Tattoos – The Human Body as a work of Art” Exhibition book

Curator & researcher: Yasmine Bergner

In recent years, we have been witnessing an exciting process of tattoo revival in our region, albeit belatedly. Why is the tattoo renaissance arriving in Israel with a delay of about two decades relative to the U.S., Europe, and the rest of the world? Friedman (2015) notes that the tattoo revival trends observed in other parts of the world, such as the Pacific Islands, have not yet penetrated Africa and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the globalization process has left its mark on Africa and the Middle East, and a tattoo art form rich in styles and influences imported from both East and West is flourishing. Tattoo art is thriving primarily in major urban areas, particularly in North Africa and Israel. The artistic influences of tattoo artists in our region are not indigenous, but global [1]. An underground tattoo scene is also sprouting around us. In Cairo, several tattoo studios operate through a combination of local tattooists and traveling artists from around the world, and in 2015, the first tattoo convention in Cairo was held. A local and international tattoo scene is also beginning to flourish in Lebanon, Jordan, and Dubai.

Vintage tattoo books, courtesy of David Mosko, the Tattooed Sailor

Until the late 1970s, the art of tattooing in Israel suffered from a negative image for several reasons:

Stigma and Prejudices: Most tattoos seen on Israeli streets until the early 80s were done amateurishly and were associated with crime, lack of education, and fringe culture [2]. The tattoo phenomenon was small in scale, and it was rare to see tattooed people in public spaces.

The Jewish Prohibition: The prevailing approach among the public is that Judaism categorically opposes tattoos. Until recently, this argument was a heavy element that led to a cultural attitude viewing tattoos as a “taboo.” Today, new studies and interpretations are entering the public discourse, acknowledging the possibility of the existence of an ancient Jewish tattoo culture (see the articles of Meir Bar-Ilan).

The Holocaust: The marking of millions of Jews in the Holocaust made the act of being tattooed itself abhorrent and impossible for many Israelis, especially those of the first and second generations of the Holocaust. In the collective memory, the act of tattooing was identified directly with coercion, slavery, and the dehumanization of masses of people for the purposes of a murderous and inhumane regime, rather than as an art form with beauty and meaning [3].

Tight Social Control over the Individual: Until the 1980s, the model of parental authority, the education system, and the military in Israel held significant weight within the intimate and familial sphere of the State of Israel. “The sanction for deviating from the collective standard, and especially for highlighting the self, was harsh and painful until the 1970s, deterring many young people from rebelling against Zionist conventions […] Proletarian and resource-poor Israel of the first two decades rejected expressions of aesthetic refinement and glorified a modest, ascetic, and frugal lifestyle, which found its expression, among other things, in the avoidance of external ostentation.”[4]

Undeveloped Nautical Tradition: “Israelis are not known for having produced adventurous explorers or tough admirals. The Israeli Navy has always been a tiny force within the IDF, and the merchant fleet was quite small and employed quite a few foreign crew members.”[5] In this context, it is interesting that the first Israeli tattooist, David Mosko, was a sailor by profession and drew his inspiration from global tattoo culture during his travels at sea.

A lack of information and professional literature in Hebrew on the subject of tattoo anthropology and history led to a fixation on this perception in Israel for many long years.

Images courtesy of David Moskovich (Mosko) the Tattooed Sailor

The first (unofficial) tattoo anthropologist in Israel

Tattoo Culture as a Mirror of the Israeli Existential Condition

Every society encourages a certain body and suppresses another. The meaning given to the body is also determined by society. One can call the body that society encourages to create the “Chosen Body.” We will deal with the Chosen Body in Israeli society. The supervision of society’s boundaries follows us from Jewish tradition and religion.

Art scholar Gideon Ofrat notes a stunning fact: the word “guf” (body) does not appear at all in the Bible and appears for the first time in our sources in the Talmud (in Arabic: jifa). In contrast, the word “body” returns 92 times in the New Testament, usually referring to the body of Jesus. The Bible only knows the word “gufah,” in the meaning of a corpse: “And they carried the corpse of Saul and the corpses of his sons” (1 Chronicles 10:12). In the Hebrew language, the word “guf” signifies the essence of a matter: “to the body of the matter” (to the point). The “I” (self) is identified in Hebrew with a body: “first person” (first body), “second person” (second body), etc. “However, there is no connection whatsoever between all these ‘bodies’ and the body of flesh-and-blood-impulse. The body of Hebrew is devoid of Eros.”[6]

Throughout history, Jews have identified themselves as persecuted by external factors. Judaism has strict laws for preserving the body—laws of kashrut, purity, and more. Halakhic laws are clear regarding the shape of the Jewish body (circumcised, whole for burial), and they distinguish between the Jew and the stranger. The figure of the pioneer (Halutz) and the Sabra constitute the ethos of the Israeli figure, to which Arabs do not belong. Israeli society exists in a state of constant war and a state of fluid national borders that create a constant threat to its “gufah” (corpse/body), whether the feeling is real or constructed by the body politic. Pegis argues for the “existence of a hierarchy of bodies in Israeli society, at the head of which stands the ‘Chosen Body.’ This body is a Jewish, masculine, Ashkenazi, healthy, whole, and perfect body. The design of this body began with the Zionist revolution, which was also a physical revolution—a people of the spirit becoming a people of the earth—and continues to this day”[7].

Courtesy of David Moskovich [Mosko], from the exhibition:

Tattoos – The Human Body as a Work of Art, Curator: Yasmine Bergner

It seems that youth in Israel live in a multi-faceted and changing existential state. The IDF is the most powerful agent of the body politic. In it, priority is given to a strong and flawless body. The family and Israeli society cooperate unconsciously with the “prestige” of the body politic. We are witnessing the modification and commodification of the body. The body of the combat soldier becomes the body politic and the Chosen Body. The personal goal and the social goal unite. The body politic through the IDF, which also engages in educational functions, creates docile bodies (Michel Foucault). The Institute of Forensic Medicine reflects the body politic. At this station in the life cycle of the body, there is complete control of the body politic over the individual body, expressed in the circumcision of uncircumcised Jews and (in the past) the removal of tattoos.

“Israeli society is a collective society with clear boundaries and a hierarchy of body, at the head of which stands the perfect combat soldier’s body. In Israeli society, there is a direct link between ideology and politics to body images. Israeli society is special in that although it is a complex society, it is still collective, and the transition to the individualism common in Western societies is unclear and not unequivocal […] The article constitutes a strong subversive call against the perceptions taken for granted in Israeli society” [8].

The complex patterns of Israeli youth can only be understood through the prism of the Israeli existential situation and its implications for the younger generation. Israeli society is very family-oriented. Familiality is a supreme value in Israeli culture, formulated primarily as mutual dependence and intimacy between family members, support, shared destiny, and agreement with family values [9] (Rappaport et al. 1995 in Jacobson and Luzzatto).

Some say that Israeli youth do not develop patterns of protest because of the individual’s immense identification with the ideology of the collective. This helps explain why Israeli youth (almost) did not develop counter-cultures, and especially today we are witnessing the emergence of social protests that are in the stage of a “revolution that has not yet been completed.” One of the prominent characteristics of Israeli youth is its centrality. Youth are considered a security asset to the state. While young people are in the transition stages between childhood and adulthood, they are expected to be future soldiers, and most boys are expected to be combat soldiers. For this reason, youth receive a lot of respect and consideration even at very young ages and are given a platform to express themselves on certain issues. Youth in Israel are aware of the possibility of death on a daily basis—whether their own death or that of their friends or relatives. It was found that awareness of death among Israeli children develops at an earlier age compared to other Western countries [10].

Courtesy of Dan Belilty and Malkiela Ben Shabat

From the exhibition “Representations of Tattoos in Contemporary Art”

Ben-Gurion University, Curators: Yasmine Bergner and Haim Maor

The flourishing of tattoo culture in Israel in recent decades

registers several important aspects:

Mass culture and a decrease in social control: Tattoo culture in the 1980s is characterized by symbols and codes that characterize a young subculture, as part of a popular culture and not as a protest or expression of a private position. Since MTV first launched in 1982, music stars have become a leading authority in various fields of fashion. The MTV style influenced popular media culture as a whole, which absorbs and mixes everything and turns alternative cultural forms like hip-hop and grunge into leading alternative fashion and advertising.

These processes bring about a gradual decrease in social control; the margins are approaching the center, and the boundaries of social tolerance are being constantly expanded. The young culture generation of the 1990s and 2000s differs from its predecessor in that it lives in a better economic situation than the generation of the 1960s and 1970s, and indeed, the increasing consumer culture encourages self-cultivation, engagement with appearance and fashion. But to understand the phenomenon deeply, it is worth recognizing the psychological, mental, and spiritual aspects of cultivating the “self” as an empowering means of expression for personal definition. In every cultural trend, there is a fluctuation between fashionability and fleeting superficiality and significant, long-term conscious development.

The tattoo as a strategy of reclaiming ownership over the self that was enslaved by post-modernist capitalist dictates: Decorating the body with tattoos symbolically expresses the yearning to take back the control that was expropriated from the individual within the framework of capitalist culture and within the educational frameworks of children and youth (schools and boarding schools, the army, and youth detention mechanisms). Military service is by its very definition total and oppressive, and a high degree of control over the individual is exercised within it.

In this context, the tattoo can become part of the process of reclaiming ownership of the self, when young people are intensely immersed in these institutions and situations in which they experience an undermining of personal freedom and self-identity (Benson 2000, Douglas 1970, Kingwell 1996, in Jacobson and Luzzatto) [11]. These situations create fluctuations between conformity and protest: sometimes this protest is directed against the establishment exerting pressure, but it is mostly directed against an oppressive existential situation that is considered inevitable and difficult to endure because of the forced uniformity within it.

Decorating the body as a means of social protest against the establishment or the previous generation: Tattoos as expressing a position or identification with aspects of oppression and enslavement in society. The use of a tattoo can constitute an expression of a position directed toward adults, and its central meaning is taking responsibility. The permanence of the tattoo as an irreversible act. In the context of intergenerational discourse, tattoos can express protest against the world and the values of the previous generation; they express negotiation and bargaining regarding the boundaries of their self-expression within the boundaries of conformity with the parent figure. Parents participate in the negotiation, and sometimes even support the tattoo.

Some even get tattooed themselves. This is consistent with the centrality of the family, which is one of the ultimate values of Israeli society, which is strengthened even more when the country is in a state of war. This discourse not only involves the degree of legitimate parental control over the symbolic freedom of choice of young people but may also serve as a bridge between the different existential situations of the generations. The language of tattoos and piercing is multi-faceted. Different symbolic meanings are emphasized according to the context and express a fluctuation between conformity on one hand, and individualism or protest on the other [12].

In Israel, it is reported that the demographic curve is leveling out over time, meaning the tattoo is gradually becoming a fashion that crosses age and class strata. The socio-economic status of those getting tattooed is becoming increasingly diverse. If in the past (until the 1970s) the vast majority were men from the less-educated stratum and the lower class, since the 1980s, the socio-economic status of tattoo culture has been steadily rising and includes the middle and upper class—among them a variety of people in liberal professions [13]. This process parallels the demographic changes in the U.S.

Tattoo researcher Margot DeMello [14] notes that tattoo culture in the U.S. is undergoing a gradual process of sociological and demographic change. From the beginning of the last century, tattoos were associated with fringe people, sailors, prostitution, and delinquency—that is, the lower class. From the 80s onwards, tattoos are observed among the middle class, and from the 90s onwards, tattoos are also associated with members of the upper class.

In the photo: My beloved tattoo clients: Shani, Oren, and Dave, Kinneret, 2022

The extensive backpacker culture and Israeli tourism in the world find themselves influenced by indigenous iconographies and tattoo cultures in the distant places they visit and even get tattooed in. From the beginning of the 2000s until today, tattoo culture is no longer just “young culture” but is also present among older people aged 40-50 and up.

The first decade of the 2000s was very fruitful in the field of tattoo culture in Israel. In 2002, the first museum exhibition in Israel on the subject of tattoos was presented, “Line on Body” at the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem (curator Renna Sivan). The exhibition displayed collectibles borrowed from the Dutch tattooist, collector, and tattoo researcher Henk Schiffmacher, who tattooed well-known musicians like Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and more. Schiffmacher established the Tattoo Museum in Amsterdam, which displays tattoo tools from around the world, as well as tattoo machines designed by the Israeli Tattooed Sailor, Mosko David, tattoo posters, stamps, historical photographs, and special objects.

Since then, additional exhibitions have been held in Israel on the subject of tattoo culture and art [15], and articles have explored the connection between art, culture, and tattoos [16]. Public discourse around tattoo culture has intensified drastically. Intimate blog writing like that of “Tabula Rasa” [17] (since 2010) documents the tattoo culture in Israel and the world in photography and text. The sensitive writing describes with empathy and curiosity full of respect its tattooed subjects:

“The human body fascinates me. The body in motion, the body disguised, the body naked, the body wounded. Through tattoos, I encounter every time this fetishistic idea of the body as a text. Perhaps the first time (but not really) that I encountered this idea was when I watched Peter Greenaway’s film ‘The Pillow Book,’ which describes the story of a woman who was painted on ceremonially from her childhood. The girl grows up to be a writer who wants to publish her books, but the dubious publisher rejects her books again and again. And then, she gets an idea: she will seduce him with young and beautiful men, who are favorites of his, and on their bodies, she will write her books. As she continues the project, the content of the books appears on the body as a form. The Book of Secrets is written in the hidden corners of the body. The Book of Silence is written on the mute tongue. The meaning becomes more mysterious, more coded.”

Since 2013, annual tattoo conventions have been held in Tel Aviv, in which dozens of tattooists from Israel and abroad participate, and thousands of tattooed and curious people visit.

Gender Changes

Gender differences in tattoo selection in Israel during the 1970s to 2000 are consistent with findings of studies showing that body cultivation is emphasized more in women, who are subjected to tighter social control regarding their external appearance (Silverstein et al. 1986, Stein and Nemeroff 1995, Udry and Eckland 1984, in Jacobson and Luzzatto) [18]. In their study from the beginning of the 2000s, they find prominent differences between women and men. Young women (of all ages) tend to attribute a symbolic meaning to their choice that connects to relationships and positive emotions like friendship, gentleness, love, and the search for beauty.

Furthermore, feminine choices versus masculine ones are consistent with gender construction in Israeli society, where women are educated to be dependent on emotional relationships, to demonstrate refined behavior, and to avoid aggression, while men are expected to demonstrate assertiveness and aggression and to be warriors. This limited freedom symbolizes the situation of women in society. In contrast, men tend to prefer larger tattoos (birds of prey and wild animals) (symbolizing control and physical strength), among other things, to prove masculinity, courage, and the ability to withstand physical pain. Sometimes male sexuality is expressed by decorating the body in erogenous areas.

Until the beginning of the 2000s, tattoos in Israel were done mainly by men. Until a decade ago, the number of professional female tattooists in Israel was very small, but today, Israeli tattoo culture is undergoing significant transformations in this area. There are already several dozen professional female tattooists. Numerically, the situation is still far from being equivalent to men, but it is becoming balanced. As mentioned, it seems that the choice of a tattoo among young Israelis at the beginning of the 2000s is related to the Israeli existential gender situation, which causes a high degree of conformity among members of the same sex and highlights the difference between the genders.

At very young ages (13-14) there is less difference between the genders, because boys and girls tend to choose cartoon characters. Prominent differences are registered at ages 15-17 when boys choose more powerful motifs (monsters or wild animals); it seems that military service reinforces gender differences even more. Today, such gender differences are becoming balanced, in the world and also in Israel. The tattoo is taking up a wider part of the skin of those getting tattooed, and the styles are already unisex in their essence, although not always.

Revital and Gil

Fleeting Fashion or Significant Cultural Development?

Contemporary Israeli tattoo culture is a mixture of cross-cultural influences. It is difficult to point to homogeneous lines for the figure of the average Israeli tattooee, and this is probably a combination of personal preferences and social influences. Global tattoo culture is seeping rapidly into Israeli society more than ever. Tattoo subjects in Israel are influenced mainly by tattoo cultures imported from around the world. The borrowing and artistic and value-based inspiration they provide become significant and layered and establish themselves more and more within the local culture. Tattoo art in Israel is also developing as a profession. More and more, it is possible to find tattooists who specialize in a specific style with great virtuosity.

Following the discussion on the subject of the “Chosen Body” in Israeli culture, the body as an object operated, designed, and tamed by power mechanisms. In this context, tattoo subjects who turn their bodies into an extensive and multi-year tattoo project represent a reverse process that strives to free the individual from the patterns of the “docile body.” The body that was subdued and exploited by the dictates of social, religious, political, and capitalist power mechanisms—reinvents itself and frees itself.

Methods of discipline existed for a long time (in monasteries, armies, detention facilities, hospitals, and workshops) and gradually became of a militaristic disciplinary nature that reached its peak in post-modern factories. In the 17th and 18th centuries, general formulas of rule were made that led to the construction of deep patterns of obedience and efficiency, which are at the heart of capitalist culture. “The historical moment of disciplines is that in which an art of the human body is born, which is directed not only to the growth of its skills and no longer to the burden of its enslavement, but to the creation of a relationship that in the same mechanism itself makes it more obedient the more useful it is and vice versa. Then a politics of coercions is consolidated that are work on the body, a calculated operation of its elements, of its gestures, of its behaviors. The human body enters into an array of power mechanisms that digs into it, disassembles it, and reassembles it, a ‘political anatomy'” [19].

Contemporary sociological studies show that the body is returning to the forefront of the social sciences. Since the late 70s, the study of the body has been enriched with a collection of cultural, relational, and political approaches. Issues related to the body have risen to the top of the social research agenda. Weiss [20] notes that the study of the body as a social phenomenon has undergone several changes that can be examined on a continuum moving from the physical body, through the social body, to the body politic. The social body, its origin is in the anthropology of Mary Douglas, and it is defined as the way we use the body as a symbol, as a concept through which we understand society, nature, and culture. The body as a site of self-definition and social definition, a mirror reflecting the relationship between the individual and themselves and between themselves and the society in which they live. In this context, the language of tattoos and carrying symbols on the body forever function as social networks that communicate with each other [21].

“Our perception of the body, and how it should be and look, is influenced by social control. Social control over the body exists in all human societies. In simple societies, it is direct and open control, disobedience to which leads to punishment by the community. Also in modern society, there is control over the body [22], but in an indirect and more disguised way, so that the individual is most of the time under the illusion as if he or she are supervising themselves and of their own free will over their body and determining their external appearance. But in fact, also in modern society, there exist and operate various and diverse control mechanisms over the body, according to the dictate of society and culture, class, and fashion” [23].

Effi and Liel

The body is always in the process of becoming. Or as musician Ani DiFranco says, “We are a work in progress.” This is a way to express the gap between the personal body and the social body and the process of integration between them. In the post-modern era, the body is an “unfinished project,” we are “working on the body,” and this work never ends. The body is characterized by a constant lack, and in an attempt to fill this lack, the individual can approach the ideal of the whole body. People who have chosen to cover their bodies with tattoos use this tool to approach their private ideal externally and internally.

The tattooed body is a performance, a statement that we wish to etch into our consciousness and into the consciousness of the observer. The symbol tattooed on your body gives it a public status and therefore again political. The tattoo is both an internal essence and an action in time and space. In my opinion, the main goal of tattoo subjects around the world and in Israel today is ultimately mainly empowerment and personal and social expression.

Summary

In summary, it seems that in Israel 2016 (when this article was written) tattoo art has captured our hearts and is here to stay. The idea of a tattoo as a symbol of individuation and personal expression, as a rite of passage and personal initiation, is gradually seeping into consciousness. Many Israelis say that every tattoo marks significant periods in life; many relate to the tattoo as a kind of amulet. They develop long-term relationships with their body. They change and design it gradually until it becomes a “Chosen Body” of a new, more authentic type. The tattooed body as a personal body diary, reminding us where we came from and where we are going, is experienced more and more in the Israeli public as a deep internal and spiritual process. “There is something empowering in physical pain, in the knowledge that you choose it and that it is not necessarily a negative thing, but a part of life. The tattoo has the ability to produce a creation from the pain. The tattoos connect me to this place in me and to the internal forces that I have. It’s like wearing my beliefs on my body” [24].

“A tattoo does not cross the skin barrier and yet it has a special ability to connect body and soul, between one person and another, and between the individual and the culture in which they exist. If in the past tattoos were considered an expression of rebelliousness and non-conformism, today they represent more than anything our freedom of choice. Tattoos are an illustration of our ability to change and be changed. Through them, a person can take ownership of their body and turn it into a temple, a canvas, or a private billboard” [25].

Bibliography:

[1] Anna Felicity Friedman, World Atlas of Tattoo, Yale Univ. press, 2015
[2] David Mosko, “World of Tattoos, Secrets from the Forbidden Art,” self-published, 1980
[3] Yasmine Bergner “Bodily Ownership of the Symbol,” article, Erev Rav, online magazine for culture and art 2013.
[4] Oz Almog, Tattoos in Secular Society in Israel, article. Anashim-Israel-The Guide to Israeli Society, Samuel Neaman Institute, National Policy Institute, p. 12 2008
[5] Ibid p. 12
[6] “The Body is Political,” Hadas Ofrat, Gideon Ofrat, Dror Harari, Uri Drummer, Journal: Dance Now, Issue 13, December 2005, pp. 32-34
[7] “Anthropology of the Body – Analysis of the Chosen Body Thesis,” article, Michal Pegis
[8] Ibid p. 7
[9] Diana Luzzatto, Yehuda Jacobson, Israeli youth body adornments- Between protest & conformity, Young- Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 2004
[10] Ibid p. 157
[11] Ibid p. 157
[12] Ibid p. 160
[13] Oz Almog, Tattoos in Secular Society in Israel, article. Anashim-Israel-The Guide to Israeli Society, Samuel Neaman Institute, National Policy Institute, 2008
[14] Bodies of Inscription- A cultural history of the modern tattoo community, Duke University Press, Durham & London 2000
[15] (“Ancestors,” Benjamin Gallery, Tel Aviv, July 2013, Curators: Yasmine Bergner and “Tattoos- Representations of Tattoos in Contemporary Art,” Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Curators: Yasmine Bergner and Prof. Haim Maor, October 2013.)
[16] Yasmine Bergner Archive, Erev-Rav, online magazine for culture and art, 2012-2014
[17] http://tabularasa.haoneg.com/page/2
[18] Diana Luzzatto, Yehuda Jacobson, Israeli youth body adornments- Between protest & conformity, Young- Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 2004
[19] “Discipline and Punish,” Michel Foucault, Resling, 2015, from French: Daniela Yoel p. 172
[20] Weiss, Meira (2002) The Chosen Body. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
[21] Makiko Kuwahara, Tattoo- An anthropology, Berg, Oxford International Publishers LTD, 2005
[22] “Discipline and Punish,” Michel Foucault, Resling, from French: Daniela Yoel 2015
[23] Weiss, Meira (2002) The Chosen Body. Stanford: Stanford University Press. P. 1
[24] “Tattoos of Our Character,” article, “Hayim Aherim” magazine, Oriana Shapi, 2016 (p. 40)
[25] Ibid, p. 43

Research and writing: Yasmine Bergner

Artist, tattooer, art therapist & culture researcher

הפוסט The History of Tattoo Culture in Israel | By Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Participating artists include: Ron Amir, Rona Yefman, David Adika, Guy Briller, Raya Bruckenthal, Vardi Kahana, Meir Gal, Esther Cohen Skin, Lars Krutak, Assi Meshullam, Arik Weiss, Daniel Cohen Diner, and others.

Opening image: Malkiella Benchabat and Dan Bellilty

Research: Yasmine Bergner

Curators: Yasmine Bergner and Haim Maor

5/11/13 at 18:00 until 14/1/14, The Senate Gallery at the George Soros Visitor Center, the Samuel and Milda Ayerton University Center, Department of the Arts, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Dafna Shapira Hasson and Shunit Gal in a special performance for the exhibition

From the exhibition catalog:

In Indigenous cultures, the art of tattooing was always an inseparable part of the culture. Until the end of the 19th century, in Western culture, the art of tattooing was almost completely ignored and was perceived as an “inferior” and “decadent” genre, linked to the pseudo – diagnoses of criminal tendencies.

In recent decades, Western society has been opening up to the art of tattooing. Its status as an independent artistic genre is increasingly becoming established after being labeled for centuries as an “inferior” fringe culture. Today, a new social trend is budding, warmly embracing the tattoo genre and recognizing its importance.

What is the impulse that leads to the engraving of a “message” on the skin, to a “marriage” or a “covenant” between body and ideology?

The personal body and its relationship with the “Social Body”—a term coined by Michel Foucault in 1977 – is the focus of observation when we come to examine the universal phenomenon of tattooing. The body constitutes the source of our personal identity and the foundation from which we identify ourselves as a separate entity. The body is the medium through which the self communicates with the ‘other’. We create personal identities, upon which social relationships are based. The modification and manipulation of the body through tattooing can be interpreted as an active engagement with self-identity and with positioning ourselves within our social relationships.

Various social revolutions and post-modern life have defined and are redefining values of “individualism,” “subject,” and the “private body.”

Vardi Kahana

Culture and gender researcher Elizabeth Grosz argues that the “authentic” body, in contrast to the “docile body” defined by Foucault, does not surrender to external dictates of regulation, surveillance, and restriction, but rather to empowered internal dictates, to self-management and self-control. The body does not obey out of respect for authority, but out of dedication to will, desire, and consciousness. Post-modernist perceptions that have recently reached maturity manage to formulate in a complex and clear way a feminist philosophical discourse that does justice to the terms “body” and representations of the “self.” In recent years, feminist discourse has managed to relate to the woman’s body in terms of “wonder, pleasure, and desire” rather than in terms of “supervision and control.”

A tattoo produces social definitions and labels such as “pagan,” “primitive,” “capitalist,” “Western,” “exotic,” “feminist,” “masculine,” and so on. It manifests patterns of belonging and rebellion, of recognition of status, and creates representations of belonging and borders of exclusion.

Since the dawn of history, there have been tattoo cultures around the world that are charged with different ideologies. People’s beliefs and worldviews influence their judgment and attitude toward tattooing. Different belief systems of cosmology, religion, aesthetics, and politics, and the ways in which they relate to the body, influence the perception of tattoo culture. Local tattoo cultures have changed their meaning throughout history due to shifts in political power relations and social evolution. Contemporary life allows us a renewed observation of tattoo cultures in the past and present, the adoption and appropriation of foreign cultures, and their integration into one another within the framework of modernization and globalization processes. “Body identity” in personal and collective terms is a concept whose meaning changes frequently from culture to culture and from period to period.

Dan Belilty and Malkiela Ben Shabat

Political regimes, cultural and religious conventions, and organizational and educational systems shape and discipline the appearance and custom of the “social body.” Although our identity is not composed only of social influences, it is never disconnected from the social context. The tattooed body is not a “naturalistic” body because it is the result of “marking” by human beings. Moreover, its very marking makes it, in addition to its existence in the physical dimension, a metaphorical body existing in a spiritual dimension. Inscription relates to the body as a tool, as a medium, upon which messages are inscribed. “Messages” and “texts” produced by various tattooing means create bodies of “social networks” that communicate with each other.

As an integral part of the art world, the art of tattooing corresponds with “primitive” art, classical art, modern art, and contemporary art. It creates connections between “high” and “low” art and dissolves hierarchies. It is pluralistic in its essence, curious, and strives to learn from the ‘other’ by the existence of multiculturalism as a social agenda. In this way, a classical drawing tradition can stand alongside a contemporary drawing, and digital graphic design, comics, manga, and graffiti find their way into tattoos in new, fresh, and revolutionary genres in their perception.

Arik Weiss

Within every local tattoo culture, pieces of history and sociology of primary importance are encoded, alongside anthropological narratives, socio-religious orders, social trends, and deep artistic expressions.

Throughout history, tattoo cultures have undergone changes in meaning, parallel to socio-political changes: sometimes they were given deep and sacred meaning, and sometimes they were used in an oppressive, derogatory, and freedom-robbing way (such as slave tattoos in antiquity or the tattooing of prisoners’ arms in Nazi concentration camps).

It can be discovered that the developments and changes in the status of tattoo culture throughout Western history were parallel to the social and political changes that occurred at that time. In fact, they are their expression. Unlike Western culture, in non-Western cultures (Japan, East Asia, Polynesian islands, Central and South America, and the Arctic), tattooing constitutes a central act within shamanic ritual and a tribal worldview where rites of passage and initiation are an integral part of human existence.

Various cultures around the world carry mythologies, contents, symbols, and archetypes with great similarity (Mircea Eliade) and create universal patterns and symbols (Edmund Carpenter).

In these cultures, tattooing is actually a developmental catalyst. Images and symbols that appeared in tattoos have been studied in the relationship between the private and the collective: in Carl Gustav Jung regarding the “collective unconscious,” and in Noam Chomsky regarding “universal grammar.”

Didier Anzieu’s studies on the consciousness of the “skin-ego” help in understanding the psychological and emotional significance of the act of tattooing, which is shaped in infancy and early childhood as a mirror of the body-mind experience. The initial touch and the quality of the sensory experience between mother and child shape his security and mental health.

Jenny Barst

The skin is the largest organ in the body and is connected to the nervous system. It functions as the gatekeeper of the body’s boundaries and the distinction between internal and external. The skin has a role of reception and internalization, as well as transmission and emission. A person’s primary sense of identity is solidified by the consciousness of a “skin-ego”—a psychological envelope through which the world is experienced.

In this context, creating a tattoo on the skin is a powerful sensory experience.

“In turning my attention to the skin as a primary datum, at once organic and imagined, a defense mechanism for the individual and at the same time a tool and a primary space of exchange with the other” (Anzieu, in his book “The Skin Ego”).

The act of tattooing manifests psychic materials in a formal way. An abstract idea stemming from the depths of the tattooee’s soul becomes, through the tattoo, a daily, simple presence, and this allows for a purifying observation. Artists and tattooees perform an action that can be compared to “framing.” This is a focused archetype that receives value as a “visual signifier” of an infantile psychic experience.

Undoubtedly, tattoo culture allows for an unconventional look at all areas of life and a re-examination of worldviews.

In conclusion, on a personal note, this exhibition began following an independent research project I conducted, out of curiosity to better understand my beloved profession—the profession of a tattoo artist—and it became a source of inspiration, creation, and endless livelihood for me. Over the years, I developed the method of spiritual guidance through tattoos©. By dedicating my time and energy to learning symbols, archetypes, and the history of global tattoo culture, I have become a more professional, high-quality, and useful tattoo artist for my clients. My curiosity and love for the profession of tattooing led my life into a wonderful adventure of ongoing inquiry and discovery. I am fascinated by this profession and feel fortunate to be part of a special community with a fascinating history that allows one to penetrate the depths of a human soul. A vocation that allows me to help others discover, define, and shape themselves creatively, as a positive transformative lever for them.

My thanks go to all the researchers and the many sources from which I drew for the writing of this research.

The exhibition Tattoo Representations in Contemporary Art presents a fascinating variety of artworks by artists from Israel and abroad who address the act of tattooing in various ways and reveal the range of internal motives for getting a tattoo within the contexts of defining personal, national, gender, social, cognitive, and spiritual identity.

Yasmine Bergner is a multidisciplinary artist, tattoo artist, and tattoo culture researcher.

To download the full exhibition catalog

Tattoo Catalog – Ben-Gurion University

הפוסט Tattoo Representations in Contemporary Art | Ben-Gurion University Gallery | Curators: Yasmine Bergner and Haim Maor הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Curator: Yasmine Bergner

Cover image: Max Harris

The body is the medium through which we communicate with “the other” and the environment. We create personal and social identities through which we establish “human social networks” via the body. Changing and manipulating the body through tattooing is interpreted here as an active pursuit through which people engage in self-identity and in positioning themselves within their social relationships.

The exhibition focuses on the ancestral aspect of the tattoo, as it arises both concretely and metaphorically. The participating artists address, through the act of tattooing, the legacy of ancestors living within us, influencing and shaping our world.

An inscription on the skin allows us to commemorate memory, to reveal and illuminate a hidden layer, to affiliate ourselves with positions and concepts, and to keep them close to our hearts.

A tattoo is an act of change, fixation, and transformation. An expression of the eternal in a transient world.

A tattoo is a “secret revealed,” embodied on the surface from the skin into the light.

The art of tattooing is inherently linked to rites of passage and initiation in shamanic traditions in non-Western tribal cultures.

In Western culture, until the end of the 19th century, the art of tattooing was considered an “inferior” and decadent genre, and tattoos were even used as a tool for diagnosing criminal tendencies.

The art of tattooing receives empowering treatment in contemporary culture. Its status as an independent artistic genre is increasingly becoming established after hundreds of years in which it was labeled as a fringe phenomenon.

Today, a new social trend is flourishing, warmly embracing the genre and recognizing its importance and multicultural uniqueness.

Research and Curating: Yasmine Bergner

Participants: Esther Cohen Skin, Dafna Shapira Hasson, Shunit Gal, Rani Pardes, Max Harris, Malkiella Benchabat, Lilach Madar, Amalia Zand, Galia Pasternak, Arik Weiss, Eyal Fried, Ron Amir, Lars Krutak, Ajarn Matthieu, Nimrod Reuveni, Jude Moskovich, Yasmine Bergner, Haim Maor, Shimon Pinto, Um Kultuv, Yulia Freidin

Binyamin Gallery: 11/7-3/8, 28 Chelnov St., Tel Aviv

Opening: 11/7 Thursday at 20:00

Live performance: “Bone Marrow” (Premiere)

By Dafna Shapira Hasson and Shunit Gal, 20:30

Yasmine Bergner

Amalia and Almagor Zand against the background of a work by Yasmine Bergner and Ajarn Matthieu

Yasmine Bergner (With tattoo artist Amalia Zand, (AKA Big Dipper)

Photography: Jude Moskovich

Right: Eyal Fried, Left: Haim Maor

Eyal Fried

Performance by Dafna Shapira Hasson and Shunit Gal

Dafna Shapira Hasson and Shunit Gal

Amalia Zand (AKA Big Dipper) against the background of her work “Bloodline”

Amalia Zand (AKA Big Dipper)

From right to left: Shimon Pinto, UmKultuv, Ron Amir, Yulia Freidin, Nimrod Reuveni, Rani Pardes

Ajarn Matthieu

From right to left: Galia Pasternak, Yasmine Bergner, Haim Maor

Right: Arik Weiss, Left: Shimon Pinto

Arik Weiss

Haim Maor

Rani Pardes

Yulia Freidin

Lars Krutak

Nimrod Reuveni

Yasmine Bergner

Photography: Jude Moskovich

Shimon Pinto

Lilach Madar and Malkiella Benchabat

To download the full exhibition catalog

Design: Shunit Gal

Ancestors Catalog

הפוסט Ancestors | Group Exhibition | Binyamin Gallery Tel Aviv | Curator: Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Opening: 10/11/2016 Closing: 10/11/2017

Eretz Israel Museum [MUZA] – Tel Aviv

Since the dawn of history, the tattooed body has been a way to glorify and define the individual and the collective. The art of tattooing originates in shamanic rites of passage and initiation traditions in indigenous cultures. Every tattoo work around the world contains pieces of culture and history and embodies personal, social, ecological, and spiritual values.

The exhibition deals with the history of tattooing and reveals a variety of contemporary artistic trends in Israel and around the world. It also presents the works of the American photographer and tattoo anthropologist Dr. Lars Krutak, whose books and travels document traditional and contemporary tribal tattoo cultures around the globe. A significant place in the exhibition is dedicated to contemporary tattooing and the Israeli tattoo community, as documented through the camera lens of “Tattoo Project” (Featured image: Alex Tilkin and Stas Weinstein). A place of honor is also given to the tradition of pilgrimage tattooing in Jerusalem (the Razzouk family), to David Mosko, the “Tattooed Sailor,” alongside the works of other tattoo artists and photographers from Israel and the world, films, rare items, and colorful documentation.

Today, more than ever, global tattoo culture is an intercultural celebration that connects the ends of the earth, between the past and contemporary reality. Tattoo cultures around the globe contain fascinating pieces of culture and history that simultaneously embody personal, social, and spiritual values.

Global tattoo culture is currently undergoing a historical re-examination in the wake of modernization and globalization processes. A new global social trend is emerging, embracing tattoo art and recognizing its importance and multicultural uniqueness. This global trend reflects cultural diversity and presents a revival of ancient customs of body decoration and tattooing alongside contemporary and groundbreaking practices, arriving today from the four corners of the earth. This fascinating cultural trend expresses a cross-border cultural mosaic of the human experience through tattoos—a living and breathing art on our bodies.

It seems that after thousands of years of tradition, tattoo art has captured our hearts again and is here to stay. If in the past tattoos were considered an expression of rebellion and non-conformism, today they represent, more than anything, freedom of choice. The tattooed body is a personal body diary, reminding us where we came from and where we would like to go, and is experienced more and more by the Israeli public as a deep internal and spiritual process.

The tattoo has a special ability to connect body and soul, between one person and another, and between the individual and the culture in which they exist. Tattoos are an illustration of our ability to change and be changed. Through them, a person can take ownership of their body and turn it into a temple, a canvas, or a private billboard. In my tattoo research over the last decade, I aim to expose the Israeli public to a variety of contemporary artistic tattoo trends in Israel and abroad, and to teach the history of tattooing as a world-encompassing artistic-spiritual practice since the dawn of history.

Text: Yasmine Bergner, from the exhibition book (to download the exhibition book in PDF, scroll to the bottom)

Exhibition documentation: Leonid Padrul

Courtesy of Eretz Israel Museum

Photography: Leonid Padrul, courtesy of Eretz Israel Museum

The International Tattoo Symposium that accompanied the exhibition:

Participants:

Dr. Lars Krutak, Mordechai Levy, Alexander Tilkin, Malkiela Ben Shabat, Prof. Meir Bar-Ilan, and Yasmine Bergner.

Tattoos of the Future // Yasmine Bergner

Research in the field of futurism examines the possibility that the world of tattoos will undergo an evolution in design, style, and technology in the coming decades; this is similar to the transformations that tattoo culture has experienced throughout history. We will examine how evolutionary and technological development can influence the way we decorate our bodies in the future.

Yasmine Bergner is the exhibition curator and a spiritual mentor through tattoos. She researches the history of tattooing and sacred geometry.

Indigenous Tattoo Heritage // Dr. Lars Krutak

The tattooed indigenous body is a tool of development and change, encoding within itself the ancient personal, social, ecological, and spiritual worldview, and existing over generations of tribal belief through a wealth of visual symbols (lecture in English).

Dr. Lars Krutak is a tattoo anthropologist, photographer, and researcher. He is famous for his research and books on the history and culture of the tattooed indigenous body. He produced and hosted the Discovery Channel documentary television series “Tattoo Hunter,” which documented vanishing tattoo cultures around the world. A variety of his works are presented in the exhibition.

Writing the Lord’s Name on the Body: A Religious, Mystical, and Magical Experience // Prof. Meir Bar-Ilan

In ancient times, Jews used to write God’s name on the body in ink, and they did so within a religious, mystical, and magical framework. The lecture will review a selection of evidence for these ancient and forgotten customs and how they can be understood in the contemporary era.

Prof. Meir Bar-Ilan is a researcher of Jewish society and culture who teaches in the Department of Talmud and the Department of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University.

Bar-Ilan researches a very wide range of sources in Judaism in antiquity. Through interdisciplinary research methods, he examines the Bible, external literature, Talmud, prayer, Hekhalot literature, mysticism, magic, numerology, astrology, and tattoos.

Tattooed Models: Representations of Femininity in the Digital Age // Malkiella Benchabat

The lecture seeks to examine the self-identity representations of models in digital media from a feminist perspective through their tattooed bodies.

Malkiella Benchabat holds a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from Tel Aviv University. Malkiella is a performer, photographer, and an independent researcher focusing on the intersection of tattoo culture, representations of femininity, and feminist theory. The “Tattoos” exhibition presents “Girls,” a series of photographic works by Malkiella Benchabat and photographer Dan Bellilty.

Tattoo Project // Alexander Tilkin

Alexander Tilkin and Stas Weinstein have been documenting contemporary Israeli tattoo culture in photography as a significant, large-scale phenomenon since 2011. The project strives to give expression in cultural discourse to a phenomenon that has approached the center from the margins in giant steps and has become in the last decade a significant and present component in culture and art in Israel and the world.

The lecturer Alexander Tilkin holds a Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering, a Master’s degree in Computer Science, and is a student of Business Administration at Tel Aviv University.

Jerusalem Under the Skin: On the History of the Jerusalem Tattoo // Mordechai Levy

The history of the pilgrimage tattoo, which is a tradition unique to the Land of Israel: an ancient custom since the Middle Ages of pilgrims to Jerusalem who used to tattoo themselves as a memento of their journey.

This tradition is continued by the Jerusalemite Razzouk family, the oldest tattoo family in the world, which is presented in the exhibition.

Mordechai Levy joined the Foreign Service in 1975. He served as a special advisor for Christian and Muslim affairs to the Mayor of Jerusalem (2004–2008).

Before his retirement from the diplomatic service, he served as Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See (2008–2012). He specialized in issues of pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages and the history of tattoos in Western culture.

The opening: A moment of satisfaction with Dr. Lars Krutak and Wassim Razzouk

Opening evening: Video art by Chaim Mahlev, tattoo artist. Projection on the museum wall

A moment of satisfaction at the official opening

In the photo: The museum management, Dr. Lars Krutak, Alex Tilkin, Yasmine Bergner

Yasmine Bergner is a multidisciplinary artist, tattoo artist, and tattoo culture researcher.

הפוסט Tattoos | The Human Body as a Work of Art | Eretz Israel Museum | Curator: Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Curator: Dafna Shapira-Hasson

Participating Artists:

Yasmine Bergner, Batya Hashkin, Shunit Gal, Sivan Zarifi, Anati Toker, Ayelet Tarlovsky, Mirei Shanan, Bell Shapir, Dafna Shapira-Hasson.

Sara Arman Gallery, Tel Aviv 2019

“We curate memories in our bodies, we curate passion and heartbreak. We curate joy, moments of celestial peace. If we want to have access to them, if we want to move into them and through them, we must enter into our bodies… Our body tells stories.”

The Right to Write / Julia Cameron

“The ‘Histories: Installation/Performance’ exhibition refers to the concept of ‘history’—literally translated from English as ‘His-story’—but in its feminist reversal to ‘Herstory,’ meaning a personal female perspective on history as a personal story.

In the early 1970s in the United States, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro began teaching art courses for women. They initiated workshops where they asked women to write about their personal lives as motivation for a personal process and for creating art. Part of the project was ‘WomanHouse’ (1972, California), a house they renovated together, with each artist addressing a specific space in the house.

The ‘Histories: Installation/Performance’ exhibition attempts to point to a personal story woven within a work of art when the female body is a part of it, as a continuation of contents related to feminist art, and as a private story woven between the body and the objects it produces (she produces).

In the exhibition, 9 women present installations, objects, and performances simultaneously. At scheduled times, 9 performances will take place in relation to and with the objects in the exhibition, performed by each of the artists. The fact that the gallery where the exhibition is presented exists within an active home places the performances as part of the daily activity of a house, as a meeting place between actions, objects, and a personal story.”

From the exhibition text:

Curation & Text: Dafna Shapira-Hasson

To download the full catalog:

Design: Shunit Gal

Installation-Performance 2019

הפוסט Histories | Sarah Erman Gallery | Group exhibition with Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Meshuna Gallery, 112 Herzl St., Tel Aviv, 2012

The myth has always been present behind the scenes of every style and era in art. The recognition of the timeless quality of the myth does not indicate a sentimental or utopian longing, but rather points, in a sober and measured manner, to the fact that something eternal is always present, even if hidden, and allows it to be an inseparable part of the visual and mental richness of contemporary art. This is a direct statement, free of nostalgia or bias.

The Exhibition:

We must lend an ear, respond, and recognize the importance and vitality of the myth’s constant presence. The human cultural infrastructure changes frequently; it is a flexible space based on our memories and our private and collective consciousness. Culture always looks simultaneously at the past and the future and influences us as individuals and as groups. The artists seek to create private and interpersonal connections to the myth, the symbol, and the archetype, to the histories etched genetically and consciously into our collective memory, and to pour new and relevant content into them.

The authentic or false faces of history change and dissolve in the broad perspective of thousands and millions of years. Political poles blur, and what remains is the symbol and the archetype acting as a key.

The artists seek to use these raw materials as a playground, each in their own unique way, in order to turn them into a discourse present in the “here and now.” We seek to dismantle the master narratives that have been passed down to us throughout the ages.

We seek to question and investigate visual representations, the meanings and implications of changing cultures. To understand our different personal experiences in relation to them, and the influences of memory or cultural amnesia that have piled up one upon another throughout history. To listen, decode, and respond to the personal call awakened in us by the primal.

May 2014

Yasmine Bergner

Yasmine Bergner is an artist, tattooist, curator, and researcher of tattoo cultures. The various media in which she works are drawing, sculpture, performance, and tattooing, which today stands out as an independent artistic field. The diverse media influence and bleed into one another, creating a discourse that longs to connect and bridge cultures and languages, the primitive and the modern, the intellectual and the spiritual.

Her training as a tattoo-artist led her simultaneously to specialize in drawing and woodcarving, and to years of independent research and writing on tattoo cultures and sacred geometry. In non-Western cultures, tribal artists were (and sometimes still are) accustomed to carving their tattoo stamps and tribal totems in wood. The close connection between tattooing and carving gained synchronic meaning and relevance for Bergner through the independent research she conducted in parallel with her artistic work. Outside of the West, woodcarving is considered a traditional art reserved for men. The artist takes ownership of this creative field, and under her hands, it becomes an act of personal freedom, a connection to the power latent in the tough physical act of carving—a connection between femininity and masculinity.

In performance, she strives to contain timeless symbolism, spiritual processes embodied in an iconic bodily image. Does the body hold the image, or vice versa? For her, this is an action that strives to awaken mythical forces and anchor them in our lives with the goal of empowering them and filling a missing spiritual void.

Installation view, Photos: Sigal Colton

Yasmine Bergner, Staircase Totem, Nimrod’s Mother, and drawings, installation view

Yasmine Bergner, Zohar and Seleni in the Holy Land, pencil on paper, 2014

Yasmine Bergner, She has seen it all, pencil on paper, 2014

Yasmine Bergner, Our Reflection, pencil on paper, 2013

Yasmine Bergner, Staircase Totem, Nimrod’s Mother, carved pine wood, 2013-2014

Yasmine Bergner

Yasmine Bergner, Harp Mandala, Carved musical instrument, Wood & mixed media

Yasmine Bergner, Harp Mandala, Carved musical instrument, Wood & mixed media

All Photos by: Sigal Colton

Harp Mandala, amplified musical instrument, carving – Yasmine Bergner

Musical planning and implementation – Amit Tiefenbrunn, Director of the Barrocade Orchestra Israel

Esther Cohen-Sakin

Is a multidisciplinary artist working in the media of digital drawing, embroidery, sculpture, and text. In her complex work processes, impressions, symbols, and texts documenting a life period and state of mind solidify into a whole. The images and texts are rich in unique contexts that become personal archetypes for the creator.

Cohen-Skin strives to create new lyrical connections between symbols, thus changing their meaning into a new narrative, a new language, which stirs within a wide artistic field of action, calling on the viewer to decode a world of states, sensations, and thoughts with internal logic and poetics. Her series of painting/embroidery works reveal an engagement in a meditative action usually associated with traditional female labor. Images made with analytical precision that draws from digital language emerge, out of a striving for pure and accurate aesthetics, the “line” as a value, as a path. The unique medium transforms the works; the enigmatic images evoke a desire for tracing and searching, and reflect their metaphysical conductivity precisely through the “craft” quality of the works and the tangible presence of the hand.

Installation view, Photos: Esther Cohen-Sakin

Untitled, mixed media, 2014

Untitled, embroidery on fabric, 2013

Untitled, embroidery on fabric, 2014

Assi Meshullam

Assi Meshullam’s works deal with the space between personal and collective identity, the creation of personal rituals, and the soul of the person seen in all its beauty and ugliness through their own self-observation. His paintings, sculptures, text works, and performances strive to dismantle cultural taboos and paradigms. A new myth is built out of his unique perspective. Meshullam creates subversive inversions and transitions between impurity and purity, between darkness and light, and between reason and ignorance. His gaze is a penetrating social mirror of the human condition.

His imaginative creations exist simultaneously in different spiritual dimensions, between the high and enlightened and the low and base, and create a unique state of consciousness that strives to embody, connect, and redefine meanings of “good” and “bad,” spiritual and secular, sacred and profane. His work “Ro’ekhem” (Your Shepherd) is a fascinating and broad textual work of art that strives to create a fictional religious text, drawing inspiration from existing religious texts, adopting their archaic metaphorical style to create a poetic, subversive, and critical text.

Untitled, mixed media, 2013

Untitled, mixed media, 2013

Untitled, mixed media, 2013

Untitled, mixed media, 2013

Untitled, mixed media, 2013

Untitled, mixed media, 2013

From the opening night

Assi Meshulam

Work processes

Installing the Totem Pole with Oren Fisher

הפוסט Ov | Meshuna Gallery Tel Aviv | Group exhibition with Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.

Originally published in: Habama – Online Magazine for Art and Culture 2018

“It took me ten years to decide on my first tattoo, and fifteen minutes for the third. The permanence of the format meant I needed a long time to understand what expresses me so correctly that it will remain right forever; but the moment I knew how to phrase it, it was easy to identify the symbols that speak me precisely.”

This is likely the foundation for one of the most interesting sessions awaiting you at the “Hebrew Language Conference – Rishon LeZion” held at the Rishon LeZion Culture Hall for its 11th year. This time, the conference marks the 70th anniversary of the state and countless languages, because everything we do tells a story about us, and every such story has a language.

“Tattoos are like social networks communicating with each other, whether through genres or different tattooing practices. Sometimes it’s a message I want people to know about me, and I essentially turn myself into a work of art, a performance. It also breaks and disrupts the boundaries of normality, of the ‘matrix’ we were all born into. It’s as if I am creating my own body.”

Yasmine Bergner, Photo: Jude Moskovitz

Symbols, Words, and Messages

Over four days, from February 7 to 10, dozens of artists, singers, intellectuals, actors, lecturers, researchers, writers, and poets—(and for the sake of full disclosure, as someone for whom words are her favorite tools, I will also participate this year for the first time in one of the conference sessions)—will touch upon our various languages: from the language of the Bible to the language of the periphery, from children’s language to the language of fashion, from the language of cinema to, yes, the language of tattoos, which will be the focus of the “Tattoo of a Story” session to be held on Thursday, February 8, at 18:00.

“When people marry a symbol forever, they take physical ownership of that specific symbol and say something, either to themselves or to their environment,” says Yasmine Bergner, the session editor, one of the leading tattoo artists in the country, and the only one engaged in spiritual therapy and guidance through body art. “It’s a type of message. Tattoos are like social networks communicating with each other, whether through genres or different tattooing practices. Sometimes it’s a message I want people to know about me, and I essentially turn myself into a work of art, into a performance. It also breaks and disrupts the boundaries of normality, of the ‘matrix’ we were all born into. It’s as if I am creating my own body. It emphasizes the fact that we are a work in progress. We are constantly changing and evolving, and the body becomes a kind of life diary that changes with us.”

And the language of tattoos?

“Tattoos are a language in every sense. A tattoo is information; it essentially encodes information. Tattoos are one of the oldest arts in existence. Since the dawn of history, since ancient times, people have tattooed themselves for various reasons: as decoration and glorification of the body, as a symbol of belonging and tribal or class status, and as a tool for expressing personal and social identity.”

Which has greatly intensified in our society in recent decades, as tattooing has become almost mainstream.

“Yes, very much so in the last ten years. In the last 20–30 years, there has been a global phenomenon called the ‘Tattoo Renaissance.’ They have become an art genre in their own right, very virtuoso. Serious tattoo artists literally digest the entire history of art and ‘vomit’ them out as new genres on the body, drawing inspiration from everything possible—from etchings, classical art, design, expressionist art, everything. Also from tribal art, which is seeing a great revival worldwide, and it all merges. There is no East or West. The world is a global village.”

Photo: Dr. Lars Krutak, Hamar tribe scarification, Ethiopia

“Since the dawn of history, people have also tattooed themselves as a way to pass knowledge from generation to generation—of the tribal worldview, beliefs, the way tribal people perceived themselves within reality, and as a way to connect to ancient ancestors, to the hidden reality, and to guides or benevolent spirits that are actually here all the time and communicate with us. Tattoos also served as a medicinal tool, for healing the body and soul through empowering symbols, totems, and also as a type of ancient acupuncture. For instance, there are ancient mummies found with tattoos that aren’t for beauty but for healing. They correspond to acupuncture points in the body and treat various rheumatic pains.”

Tattoo Culture in Judaism

As part of the panel at the 2018 “Hebrew Language Conference,” Bergner will present the various roles of tattooing from ancient cultures to the present day, alongside Prof. Haim Maor, an expert in Talmud and the history of the Land of Israel, and Judaica artist Erik Weiss, shattering the myth that tattooing is strictly forbidden in Judaism.

“I am going to lecture on various contexts of tattoo culture within Biblical Judaism. Allegedly, we have the prohibition on tattoos in Judaism, and there is a common opinion that Jews do not get tattooed,” says Bergner, “but various studies show us that this was likely not true, and Jews in ancient times used to tattoo the names of God on themselves as part of religious worship.
“Even in the Kabbalah, there are amazing descriptions of angels who have the Torah engraved on their bodies in various places—they call them seals—and there are many mentions of writing on the body. Whether it was temporary writing or actual permanent ink, we don’t fully know, but there is a tradition of writing on the body. Even the word itself, ‘Ka’akua’ (tattoo), which is an onomatopoeia—a word whose sound reflects its meaning—links to the fact that it was an existing practice. The word is actually the sound of the tapping produced by the tattooing process with sticks hitting each other: ‘ka, ka, ka, ka.'”

“So, I will talk about various such examples. Erik Weiss, a visual graphic artist and contemporary Judaica artist whose work shows a great love for body writing and tattoos, will talk about his art, and Haim Maor, a curator and one of the veteran artists in Israel who deals in his works with his father’s Holocaust number, will lecture on the subject.”

 Arik Weiss, 2015

The Spiritual and Therapeutic Side

What path led you to define yourself as a spiritual guide through tattoos?

“A spiritual guide through tattoos is, in fact, a profession I developed over the years that combines all the things I know how to do best: art—I am a multidisciplinary artist; art therapy—in which I have a master’s degree and a therapeutic background; and tattoos. I went a long way from ‘Bezalel,’ through ‘Lesley College’ for art therapy studies, and then I became fascinated by tattoos. Many years later, I decided to abandon my therapeutic profession and learn to tattoo.

“After two years, because I was always drawn to spirituality and psychology, I started getting bored with just giving people tattoos without understanding who they are and without asking why they want to get that specific tattoo. I began to be a more attentive and interested tattoo artist.”

So, I also began researching the history of tattooing, thinking it would help me be a better tattoo artist, and I discovered there is an entire field of the anthropology of tattoos. For me, it was an explosion. A ‘BIG BANG,’ so to speak. I fell in love with it, and the penny dropped. I realized that this is an art so significant, so important, so close to home and close to the bone, rooted so deep in history, and that its meanings are so profound for a person—much more than some passing trend. It then became my agenda to spread this message and show people its meaning.

“I started writing articles about it and working with a therapeutic orientation. Over time, I developed my own way where I first meet the person coming to get a tattoo and try to understand what brings them to want this specific tattoo at this time in their life, how it relates to other things they are going through in other areas of life, and what they would like to receive from the tattoo on an empowerment level. Then we start designing it together, seeing which stylistic world we are drawing from, researching, and understanding the contexts so we don’t do something we don’t understand. We learn everything necessary about the tattoo, and then it truly becomes a talisman that has an impact on reality.”

Which of your tattoos do you love most?

“The last ones I did. Two Egyptian-style bracelets on my wrists, because I am very connected to Egyptian culture, researching them and studying it deeply—mainly because they dealt extensively with sacred geometry, and their art was the most amazing thing in the world. After about two years as a tattoo artist, I also started two independent fields of research that I integrate into my work: one is the history of tattoos, and the second is sacred geometry.”

Am I mistaken, or does that concept lead me to the “Merkabah” shape?

“Exactly. Sacred geometry is essentially a universal path of shapes and master-patterns that create the universe, showing us that everything in the universe emerges and comes into existence through those same geometric shapes and patterns. These patterns are the result of vibrations, sound. In fact, everything is sound, and sound has a geometric shape.”

How many tattoos did you have when you started thinking of tattooing as a profession?

“I had one tattoo then, really not too many.”

And today?

“Today, it’s not expected to end.”

The 11th Hebrew Language Conference, “Lashon Rishon,” will take place on February 7–10, 2018, in Rishon LeZion.

Interview: Tal Gordon

הפוסט Hebrew Language Conference | Tattoos in Judaism | Lecture by Yasmine Bergner הופיע לראשונה ב-גיאומטריה מקודשת.