02/06/2026
Beyond the Event Horizon
Summer Day 1998: The Beginning of the Path
Long ago, back in 2009, for the online magazine "PROMETHEUS, Internet Bulletin – News, Politics, Art and Science. Nr. 150," belonging to the Order of Alexander the Great for Art and Science, I wrote an article about what happened in 1998, on a summer day in the land of Baden-Württemberg. I had set out for a walk. My route led back from Stuttgart in the direction of Ditzingen. The weather was beautiful, and I decided to go on foot to admire the picturesque landscapes of those places.
I stopped at a crossroads and asked a passerby for directions. He was an African (or an Afro-German?) — a young man, apparently a mailman. Smiling, he pointed his finger at the hills on the horizon, and I set off.
I remember walking along dirt roads winding through neat German fields. I saw several tractor drivers with red necks and thought that people of this profession look the same all over the world. The difference, perhaps, was in their eyes: here they appeared somehow excessively bright blue. It occurred to me that among Crimean farmers, their eyes have almost no colour… or if they do, it is the shade of rotten grapes.
I walked along the fields and suddenly realized I had lost my way. The sun had almost set, and it was beginning to get dark. I crossed several bridges over small forest streams, saw wonderful golf courses with Porsches parked nearby, as well as beautiful white and brown horses grazing in the meadows.
Encounter with the Eagle-Headed One
Dusk was approaching, and suddenly I felt someone catching up with me from the left, and doing so very energetically. I turned around to see who it was, and was stunned…
It was a completely naked human being of tall stature, grey in colour. It moved straight, mechanically, in the manner of poses from ancient Egyptian depictions, and was approaching me very quickly. Its legs were shrouded in grey road dust, and upon its athletic body rested a head… oh God! … the head of an eagle!
It was a shock. I started to pray. In my soul I cried out: Raphael!
Stiffened and unable to move, I had never seen anything like it before. Well, then I looked around – the vision had disappeared. But not far away, in the tall grass, I noticed a snail: it seemed ordinary, yet somehow a bit larger.
Soon I found myself at some local railway station… and there stood a man – also a young Afro-German.
Later I thought: where did they come from? In the German provinces in those years, it was not so easy to encounter people of African appearance.
Alexander and the First Attempt at Understanding
Then I called the man in Ditzingen with whom I was staying, and he quickly came in his car to give me a ride home. His name was Alexander – just like the Order supporting the arts, for whose magazine I was writing, years later, about this curious incident. Remarkably, he was a painting collector.
That evening, before going to sleep, I sat for a long time on my bed, half in shock, unable to believe what had happened. Perhaps I would never have told anyone about it – let alone written about it – had I not later discovered in this vision a strange and remarkably eloquent symbolism.
Searching for Analogies: Horus, Nisroch and Arno Breker
I searched specialised literature for descriptions of similar mystical manifestations of eagle-headed beings. All I managed to find was the famous Egyptian god Horus, as well as the Assyrian god Nisroch. But Horus is depicted with the head of a falcon, and Nisroch with the head of an eagle, albeit still clad in long robes.
The only thing that completely and unexpectedly coincided with my vision was the sculpture by Arno Breker, "Young Europa": it was not merely similar, it matched in every detail!
Breker was German, and my incident also occurred in Germany. But why Germany? For me, as a Russian person, after all our wars, Germany is a threat, a lair of the enemy. Yet Germany does not inspire fear (for the enemy is defeated), but rather a strange cultural interest. If one thinks deeply, our eternal conflict resembles more a kind of call. It is a call of eros in a yearning for unity, opposed by a certain obstacle, a certain leaden heaviness of relations in the opposition of worldviews. I think this enmity is providential, and it is, of course, the alchemical Nigredo. It was precisely such a place that was chosen for the beginning of the path of the process of transfiguration.
Furthermore, it was astonishing to learn that Ernst Fuchs, one of my mentors, was a friend of Arno Breker and a member of the "Golden Triangle" consisting of Dalí, Breker and Fuchs – a group of great mystical artists and also members and knights of the Order of Alexander the Great, for whose readers that article was written!
Psychopomps, Nigredo and Amun
Only years later was I able to decipher this strange experience.
The two Afro-Germans – at the beginning and at the end of the path – are "psychopomps", introducing one into a special reality, and also the guardians of Nigredo, the black stage of the Great Work (Opus Magnum). They mark the entrance to and exit from sacred space. Their black colour is not race, but a symbol: the prima materia, the darkness from which light is born. Carl Jung's student Marie-Louise von Franz likewise wrote about the Queen of Sheba.
The postman at the beginning shows the way – he leads into another dimension, he speaks of a message, a certain "letter" that I must read. The second one, at the station, meets me on my return – he confirms that the message has been delivered and the great straight path begins.
The grey body of the eagle-headed one is a transitional state between black Nigredo and white Albedo. He is neither black nor white; he is the threshold, or even the process of transformation itself. And his eagle head and naked body leave no doubt: this is the Egyptian god, a symbol of the rising sun, the conquering power, the resurrected son. Although, it is said that Arno Breker himself believed that this was not so much Horus as Zeus himself, which indicates the Self.
Interestingly, in those days I was not thinking about Egypt at all. I was reading the Orthodox book by Abbot Chariton about the Jesus Prayer, which I had brought with me. But the Logos, to whom I was turning, evidently used those tropes that He needed, and not those I could consciously choose from my "Orthodox menu" of images. The ancient Egyptian archetype entered my Orthodox practice from the collective unconscious, precisely because it was necessary – as a powerful, almost shocking conductor of transfiguration.
My whisper, "Raphael!" was likewise a reaction from the sphere of the Unconscious, expressed in the invocation of Him who in the Apocalypse called Himself Amen. Such actions, I would now classify as belonging to the realm of the superconscious, more to the realm of ontology than psychology. Layers of the soul were engaged that are clearly not manageable within the framework of discourse.
Erich Neumann: The Osirification of Horus
Nonetheless, the psychologist Erich Neumann, a student of Carl Jung, in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness (in the part dedicated to the mythological stages of the evolution of consciousness, in the section "Transformation, or Osiris"), writes:"The Osirification of Horus, the transformation of the son into the father, is the central event of the Egyptian myth of salvation. Horus, in vanquishing Seth, does not merely ascend the throne; first he must descend into the underworld, be mummified, become Osiris and rise again. This death and rebirth constitute the 'creation of the soul' and serve as the archetypal pattern of all initiation. Only through his own osirification does Horus attain spiritual vision and become the true ruler, uniting the upper and lower worlds."
What is being spoken of here? Horus is the living heir, the hero who must pass through death to attain authentic wholeness. But in Egyptian tradition, Horus is inseparable from the sun: he is known as Ra-Horakhty, "Ra – Horus of the Horizons." In this image, daytime activity and life-giving light merge. Horus is the falcon, the form in which solar power appears, while Ra is the very soul of this light. Therefore, when we speak of the solar deity that shines by day and descends into the Duat by night, we speak precisely of Horus-Ra, a single entity where Horus gives the form and Ra fills it with radiance.
As the sun declines towards sunset, its visible light fades, and Horus-Ra descends into the underworld. There he must undergo that very osirification. In the depths of the Duat, the daytime personality dies: Horus-Ra willingly identifies with Osiris, becomes a mummy, accepts death completely. But Osiris is not alone here – within him already dwells the secret, hidden essence of Amun, "the Hidden One." Amun is the invisible soul of creation, while Osiris is the body of resurrection. In the night's darkness, they merge into a single deity which later texts call Amun-Ra-Osiris. Thus Horus-Ra, dying as a separate hero, transforms into this night god, uniting within himself the concealed breath of Amun and the reviving flesh of Osiris.
In this mystery lies the transition through death: the daylight temporarily vanishes in order to absorb all the power of the underworld. And at dawn, from the union of Osiris and Amun, Khepri is born – the scarab god, rolling the solar disc from darkness into the sky. Khepri is "He who comes into being," a symbol of self-regeneration. Through him, Horus-Ra returns to the world no longer as the former hero, but as one transfigured, having passed through nocturnal wholeness and attained eternal renewal.
Thus the great circle is closed: the daytime Horus-Ra dies in Osiris-Amun and is resurrected as Khepri. According to Erich Neumann, the "transformation of the Son into the Father" occurs, and in this movement lies the promise that all death is merely a transition to a new dawn.
Amun, Zeus and the Syncretic Image
The "Unknown God" Amun (also the biblical Amen – not in a dogmatic sense, of course, but attested in late antique papyri, Gnostic and Hermetic texts) – as the incomprehensible Self. Breker, depicting the Egyptian god (originally with a falcon's head) and replacing it with a Greek eagle's head, could be hinting at Horus as the ego and Zeus as the Self.
In Hellenistic Egypt, Horus acquired an iconography with an eagle's head due to a direct identification with Zeus. The Greeks, seeing in Horus the supreme heavenly ruler and living king, compared him with their own king of the gods. The falcon for the Egyptians and the eagle for the Greeks played the same symbolic role – denoting supreme celestial power, omniscience, and invincibility. To make this identity clear to the mixed population, artists replaced Horus's traditional falcon head with an eagle's head – a bird that unmistakably indicated Zeus to a Greek or Roman. Thus was born the image of Horus-Zeus, the single heavenly king whose gaze is the sun, whose wings are the firmament, and whose power extends over the whole world. Later, this syncretic image became common on magical gems and votive statuettes of the Roman era.
Intuitively or discursively, Breker in his sculpture could be showing the image of the transformation of Horus into Zeus – that is, the ego into the Self – which is equivalent to Neumann's Osirification (or Amunification) of Horus.
Amun, whose name means "Hidden" or "Transcendent," is the perfect archetypal symbol of the Self in its incomprehensible, potential aspect. It is that very centre of wholeness, the "creative realm of nothingness" of which Neumann wrote. The Self as the sum of all potential is initially hidden from the Ego; it is an ineffable mystery.
Osiris – as the realised Self in the process of individuation. This is not a hidden potential, but a Self that experiences the "death" of old ego-structures, the dismemberment of habitual identifications, and the subsequent rebirth in a new, more whole quality. His path is a model of transmutation, where the end of the Ego becomes the beginning of being on a higher level of the spiral of evolution.
The Role of Raphael and the Snail as Ammonite
I invoked the Christian angel of healing and guidance (about whom I had apparently been thinking earlier, having lost my way) – and Horus disappeared. Not because he was an "evil spirit," but because he had fulfilled his role. He manifested himself, initiated the process, and then yielded to higher guidance. Raphael did not destroy him – he "Osirified-Amunified" him, that is, transcended him. He accepted him in the phenomenal world and led him beyond the horizon into the noumenal reality, to return him transfigured.
The snail in the centre of the path is an ammonite. Its name comes from the "horns of Amun". Amun is the "Hidden One," the Unknown God, the eternal source. The spiral of the ammonite is not a return in circles, but a spiral development: each turn leads to a new level. It is a sign from Amun that the process is proceeding as the Logos demands: like the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci numbers in the snail's whorl. As slowly as the snail crawls, but as inexorably as the movement of the Sun.
The Recurring Vision: The Blue Boy (Harpocrates)
Around 2008 or 2009, the vision recurred while I was simply lying on the sofa. Again, there was the eagle-headed one, but now beside him was a blue boy with curly hair, slightly reminiscent of the horns of a young lamb or the curls of its wool. The boy was luminescent, brightly illuminated against a background of darkness. But the main thing was his eyes. They seemed to float, focusing on nothing in particular.
In Egyptian culture, the colour blue was a sign of divinity, the sky, primordial water and the abyss, and of rebirth. The name Amun means "Hidden," and he was depicted with blue skin precisely to indicate his invisible, omnipresent nature. The appearance of the "blue boy" is precisely the moment of encounter with this numinous essence, lying beyond all forms.
The image of the young god also directly refers to the child Horus, or Harpocrates. In Hellenistic Egypt, he was called the "Infant in the Blue Egg." Notably, Harpocrates is the god of silence, mystery, and hope. In this vision, carrying Egyptian iconography, alchemical transformation, and eschatological expectation from the Apocalypse, he symbolises the silent, secret birth of a new, higher state of consciousness.
Both the boy and the eagle-headed one, holding with their left hands, raised their right hands in what seemed like a greeting. It was clearly not quite a greeting, but a gesture of an oath. It was Amen. He synchronously sealed their unity in the motif of the Osirification-Amunification of Horus according to Erich Neumann: "Just as the sun rises and sets, making its way across the sky, so consciousness develops in each individual during life, and individuation is the goal of his daytime arc. Metamorphosis at the stage of Horus = sun = ego is under the sign of Osiris, 'the first of the gods of the West.' With the onset of death at the end of the solar path, Osiris, the Self, accepts and 'Osirisifies' it = Horus = son, transforming him into the Self. The mythology and rituals adopted in Egypt for the pharaohs contain numerous information about the paradoxical relationship between the ego and the Self, Horus and Osiris. The Secret of Secrets: 'I and the Father are one' also dominates this final stage of transformation, called individuation…"
Synchronicity: Alexander, the Order, the Pink Granite
The Logos speaks to us when we are ready to hear, and this is the language of synchronicity.
Alexander, who gave me a ride home. Alexander the Great, proclaimed son of Amun. The Order of Alexander the Great, for which I wrote the article and in which the "Golden Triangle" of Dalí, Fuchs and Breker, creator of the eagle-headed sculpture, was present – all bear the same name. The red evening sun of the alchemical cycle of perfection, Rubedo, in whose last rays this story occurred, was symbolised in ancient Egypt by the pink granite of Aswan, from which the sanctuaries of Amun were made, including the "Column of Alexandria".
According to a proposed hypothesis, this column was originally part of the temenos of a temple built under Alexander the Great himself, and is dedicated to him as the divine son of Amun. Only later was it re-dedicated to Diocletian. Today it stands in the ruins of the Serapeum – the temple of the syncretic god Serapis. Studies of the column's foundation have shown that it rests on the remains of a much older temple from the time of Pharaoh Seti I, whose cartouches were found on the granite blocks in the foundation. Obelisks originally stood next to the column, later taken to London and New York. Sources assert that they were brought to Alexandria to adorn the city on the express orders of Alexander.
Thus, it is more likely that the pink granite column was originally part of Alexander's grandiose project, who conceived Alexandria as the capital of his world empire, and marked the sacred centre of the city, dedicated to his divine father Amun.
"The Spirit Breathes Where It Wills": Alexander the Great on Orthodox Cathedrals
"The Spirit breathes where it wills," and He is free in His choice of forms. My case of encountering the image of a man with an eagle's head is far from unique.
Alexander the Great was a pagan, son of Amun (Zeus), ignorant of Christ. From the point of view of strict canonicity, his image should not be present on an Orthodox cathedral. Nevertheless, in Russia, the Cathedral of St. Demetrius in Vladimir (12th century) and the Cathedral of St. George in Yuryev-Polsky (13th century) contain a relief of the "Ascension of Alexander the Great". This image cannot be explained by direct hagiography or the sanctity of Alexander. Consequently, its appearance there has a symbolic meaning, permissible within the framework of pedagogical necessity, the transmission of knowledge, and the demonstration of divine freedom not limited by the canons created by humans.
The plot of the depicted myth, in which the motif of the Amunification of Horus again appears, is as follows: Alexander wishes to see the earth from a height. He builds a light basket, tying to it two huge hungry eagles (in other versions, griffins). To the ends of two spears he holds in his hands, pieces of meat are attached. Smelling the meat, the birds rose into the air and flew higher and higher. Soon Alexander felt the cold caused by the flapping of the birds' wings. He was met by a humanoid bird, which said to him: "Not knowing the earthly, how can you know the heavenly?"
Usually this is interpreted as a reproach to Alexander, or a warning about the limits of knowledge. It is not mentioned that this is a metaphor for an epistrophic anabasis and, in fact, an inversion of topography (according to Corbin). Alexander saw the whole world and the sea around it, after which he descended to earth not at the same place from which he had taken off. That is, in his movement he made not a circle, but a spiral of the horns of Amun, whose son he was. Thus, returning to a different place, "seven days' journey" from the take-off point, he was transfigured. Alchemists always encoded their knowledge.
The name Alexander means "defender of people." And further on, I think we will understand whom Alexander defends and to what the "unknown god" calls us through him.
Postmodernism as Nigredo and the Withdrawal of Sacred Art
All this indicated that my walk was not a private episode. It is an image of what is happening to the world and to art as a whole.
Horus is the manifested, solar, initiatory art that shone for centuries: from Egyptian temples to icons, from Byzantine mosaics to the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. It had a sacred centre, hierarchy, faith. But darkness fell, and the sun went beyond the horizon. And here we are in the era of postmodernism. This is a new stage of Nigredo: the black night, decomposition, deconstruction, irony, the denial of all metanarratives. Once, iconoclasts could not bear the image of God, venerating only the emperor. Today's "emperor of postmodernism" is a false identity, the "I" that considers itself the only "icon". It is a war against the sun, against Horus, against the very principle of the sacred christological image.
But, despite the fact that the sun of spiritual art has gone beyond the "event horizon", it has not perished – it has withdrawn into hidden action, into the mundus imaginalis, to alchemically transmute there, in the depths, to meet Amun and be transfigured. Just as in my vision Horus yielded to Raphael and hid beyond the horizon, but left a sign – the snail-ammonite, the promise of a spiral return.
The sacred art of symbolism has also not perished; it exists today in various hypostases, albeit in a difficult, marginalised state for itself.
The "Golden Triangle", Fuchs, Dalí and "The Morning of the Magicians"
It is known that Arno Breker was a member of the aforementioned Order of Alexander the Great and a participant in the Golden Triangle, in which Ernst Fuchs – the founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism – also resided. The works of the still-young Fuchs were published by the journal "Planète", published by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier. They also organised exhibitions of Fantastic Realist artists. And in 1960, Pauwels and Bergier released the book The Morning of the Magicians – a manifesto of "fantastic realism" as a synthesis of science, mythology and occultism.
In this book was the story of Fulcanelli – the mysterious alchemist whom Bergier met in 1937. Fulcanelli warned of the nuclear danger, describing the principle of the atomic reactor eight years before Hiroshima. He said: "Will you permit me to warn you? The work you are engaged in, you and those like you, is frighteningly dangerous, dangerous for all humanity. Achieving the release of nuclear energy is easier than you think. And the artificial radioactivity caused by it could, in a few years, poison the atmosphere of the entire planet. Furthermore, atomic explosives, which can be extracted from just a few grams of metal, are capable of destroying entire cities. I tell you directly: alchemists have known this for a long time."
Fulcanelli is the living Philosopher's Stone, the realised alchemist who appeared in the last moment of a passing era. His warning about nuclear weapons is an indication of the danger of a life "against nature" (according to St. Maximus the Confessor: "evil is a life against nature"), whose rules consist in the harmonious flow described in the Neoplatonic circle of the One: transition into the Many, return to the One (Epistrophe – Mone – Proodos).
I think Fulcanelli meant that a nuclear explosion is, in effect, a forced epistrophe, a return to the One, which can occur if it is not sustained by those who are called. It is a forced return of matter to energy, to the source, but without love, without preparation, without a transfiguration of consciousness. It is the apocalypse as catastrophe, not as revelation. It is the destruction of S***m and Gomorrah.
But there is also a non-violent epistrophe – that which mystics must create, as priests of the Temple of the Spirit and Truth. When a person, through prayer, contemplation and transfiguration, voluntarily returns himself to the Logos, he does not destroy the world, but alchemically transmutes it. He translates it into a higher register, into the "intelligible cosmos" of Good-Being. And then nuclear weapons need not be used – because the very nature of reality evolves epistrophically in a natural way.
In fact, he explained that to save the world as an object, one must change the subject itself:"The principle of relativity and the principle of uncertainty show to what extent observed phenomena depend on the intervention of the observer. And here is the secret of alchemy: there exists a way of transforming matter and energy such that what modern scientists call a 'force field' arises. This force field acts upon the observer and places him in a privileged position before the world. From this privileged point, he has access to that reality which time and space, matter and energy usually conceal from us. This is what we call the Great Work.
– But the Philosopher's Stone? The making of gold?
– Those are only applied special cases. The essence of the matter is not the transmutation of metals, but the transmutation of the experimenter himself. This is the ancient secret that many people re-discover from century to century.
– And what then happens to them?
– Someday, I may find that out."
Fulcanelli is the red ray of the sunset of an epoch, the pink granite of the obelisks of Amun, the stage of perfection, Rubedo, corresponding to the sunset of the day (the moment of my return from Stuttgart), as well as the action of his solar archetype. Epistrophe translates as "turn" or "return", and alchemy itself was proclaimed the "art of eternal return". This message of the "defender of people" Alexander the Great, son of the "hidden god", whose appearance and warning about nuclear danger is as relevant today as ever!
It is believed that Fulcanelli did not die, but disappeared. But after such a meeting, the question arises: did Alexander himself die?
Modernism, Postmodernism and the Attempt to Save Art
The era of the great Modernism began as Albedo (the white radiance of the personality, free from the dictatorship of the corrupt political and financial hierarchy, as well as the political church). It passed through Citrinitas (the golden age of the individual's free creativity) and ended with a bright flash of Rubedo (the purple of outstanding geniuses) before plunging into the Nigredo of Postmodernism.
One of the geniuses of Modernism – Salvador Dalí – was friends with Louis Pauwels, the co-author of The Morning of the Magicians who wrote about Fulcanelli. Their conversations formed the basis of Pauwels' book The Passions of Dalí (1968), where Salvador ("Saviour", as he called himself), also dreaming of saving art, declared:"Now, at the age of forty-five, I want to paint a masterpiece and save Modern Art from chaos and laziness… This book is dedicated to this crusade."
He criticised abstraction as "exemplary mental backwardness". He said: "When you believe in nothing, you end up painting almost nothing."
Ernst Fuchs, whose works, even during his time in Paris, were published by the authors of The Morning of the Magicians in their magazine Planète, spent 20 years painting the Chapel of the Apocalypse in Klagenfurt, creating a space of total visionary synthesis and tradition. At the same time, he managed to overcome Catholic dogmatism and worked as a free genius, turning not only to the letter but also to the living Spirit.
I had the honour of helping him with the creation of this fresco and learning much from him there in 2004. I remember I brought him a gift, a goblet made of green semi-precious stone, possibly nephrite, bought on Andreevsky Descent in Kiev, and said: "This is the Grail that the knight obtained for the king." Ernst, in the presence of the priest of this church, Monsignor Mairitsch, himself poured red wine into it and drank. An ouroboric gesture, which I also later understood: the master himself became both priest and sacrifice; twenty years of colossal, unpaid work on the mural painting in the chapel also became his sacrifice. It was the same Amunification/Osirification of Horus, at the Chapel of the Apocalypse, of revelation, the removal of veils, the opening of the Self of the One, albeit a process, I think, likewise superconscious.
"The ego is retained only by the one who believes in his separation from the Abyss" – yet Ernst, being a successful and famous artist possessing a huge ego, nevertheless sacrificed it to the Abyss, thereby uniting with it.
The Apocalypse as Epistrophe and the Rock Album
The Apocalypse is not the end of the world. It is not a catastrophe, but an epistrophe, that is, a return to the One. It is a repentance for profane ignorance and oblivion: "for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!"
Synchronicity manifested itself again when, in 2010, a certain rock band suddenly approached me with a request to use my work for the visual design of their musical album Revelation & Mystery – that is, "Revelation" (or Apocalypse) and "Mystery". It turned out to be the German (surprised?) psychedelic band Samsara Blues Experiment. In the song from this album, "Flipside Apocalypse", it was sung:"Salvation will be found, the answer's locked within ourselves."
Flipside Apocalypse. The other side of the Apocalypse is the opening of the inner, the inversion of topography according to Corbin, where heaven and earth are not divided, where time has ceased to be chronos and has become kairos.
The painting used for the cover was my work "Peresvet, Oslyabya, Divine Gloom", which I painted in 2006. The Divine Gloom is the apophatic radiance of the unknowable "Unknown God" of the Apostle Paul, described by St. Dionysius the Areopagite: a darkness that is ineffable light, Amen-Christ.
According to the Apocalypse, in the coming Kingdom there will be no need for the sun or the moon, "for the glory of God lightened it, and the Lamb is its light" (Rev. 21:23). The Lord God Himself will become the sole source of light, which is the "unapproachable light" (1 Tim. 6:16), known from apophatic theology. This is not merely light that replaces the sun; God Himself is Light and Glory.
Thus, the image of the Divine Gloom, Nigredo, which is true Rubedo, entered the world through rock culture – yet another unexpected trope of the Logos's free action.
What Must Be Saved? Henry Corbin and the Inversion of Topography
Although both Fuchs and Dalí were close to those who personally knew Fulcanelli, they wanted to save art itself, rather than the subject who forms the world through his microcosm.
I think Fulcanelli would say that alchemically transfigured consciousness manifests itself together with the physical reality of an ontologically different world, and art does not create it but reflects it and, in its highest forms, transmits Providence through it. It is not art, as a mirror of the world, that must be saved, nor even the world (which, according to the Sufis, "is pure representation (mutawahham), in which there is no substantial being"), but life and consciousness that goes "against nature" must be transfigured, the distorted tropes of being must be corrected, bringing them into harmony with the logoi.
Among those who understood this, I believe, are not only Saint Maximus the Confessor (the author of these terms) and not only Fulcanelli, who warned of the threat of a forced epistrophe by nuclear weapons, but also Henry Corbin – the French Iranologist, expert on Sufism, who introduced the concept of the Mundus Imaginalis – an objectively existing intermediate world of archetypal images. He also described intussusception, the inversion of the world's topography, ensuring the salvific transfiguration of life: "From now on, the place – the 'ubi' – resides in the soul; it is the bodily substance that resides in the spiritual substance; it is the soul that contains and carries the body. Its ubi is ubique – 'everywhere.'"
This is a necessary ontological change in the structure of being, whereby the person ceases to be a point within space and becomes a container of space – physical laws cease to dominate. Distance is measured not in kilometres, but by the state of the soul. Time ceases to be chronological, it becomes the time of meaning, kairos. It is of this same inversion of topography that the depictions of Alexander the Great flying on eagles, seeing the whole earth from above, speak.
Pilgrimages: Alexandria, Ephesus, Smyrna
In 2023, I stood in Ephesus, at the place where, according to tradition, the Apostle John the Theologian, the very author of the Revelation, lived and was taken up to heaven. I understood: this is not a pilgrimage to a tomb. John did not die – he passed over. Just as Fulcanelli did not die – he disappeared, transmuting his body into a "body of glory". Just as the Apocalypse itself describes not a destruction, but a transition – from an old reality to a new one.
By providence, I visited Smyrna and Ephesus – cities of two of the seven churches of the Apocalypse. This was preceded by my pilgrimage to Alexandria in 2022, to the city of Alexander the Great, mentioned above.
Conclusion: The Event Horizon as a Transition
My entire path – from the walk to the pilgrimage, from the vision of Horus to the apparition of the Blue Lamb, from the Chapel of the Apocalypse to the apocalyptic rock album and the churches of Revelation – has formed into an algorithm in which the Logos acts within His own Law and Providence. This is undoubtedly inspiring.
Horus-Sun goes beyond the horizon, yet does not die. Night falls, but soon it will be morning.
In an era of the dominance of counter-initiatory consciousness and art, postmodernist "cancel culture", the marginalisation of the spiritual, the sacred, the symbolic, transmutation is taking place. This is not defeat. It is contraction and concealment: a new Nigredo at the macro level – a necessary phase of Amunification. The Logos takes away external forms so that the artist can move to a deeper level, find his fulcrum, his point of support in the abyss.
It is the time of the Lamb-Amen, not of Horus the warrior. One must learn to bear the mission in conditions of weakness, rejection and "immolation". And here, the teaching of Saint Maximus provides a precise strategy: natural contemplation, the gathering of scattered logoi, and the change of tropos – the mode of existence. Not to fight for a place on the exhibition squares and museums of postmodernism, but to build the Imago Templi – the Image of the Temple – inside oneself and in a small, living circle, thereby transfiguring the world itself.
Initiatory art is not dead. It has gone beyond the "event horizon" to be transfigured. What is happening in Nigredo cannot be perceived by an external gaze and appears as an absence of action. Horus did not perish – he was Osirified and Amunified, he becomes the god Khepri – the christological "morning star", the scarab, rolling the sun of a new day.
In the Great Work (Opus Magnum), the black stage precedes the white radiance of Albedo and the yellow energy of Citrinitas, which lead to the true Rubedo of perfection. As they sang in the album Revelation & Mystery, "salvation is within" – in the ability to perform an "inversion of topography", to turn the world inside out, "like a glove" (according to Corbin), to become the container, not the content of space, thereby creating a physically new world which is not threatened by nuclear weapons.
The new initiatory art will be the art of a new sacred time – not of linear chronos, but of kairos, a cross-spatial, non-sequential time of meaning. It will not copy the past, and perhaps it will be seen only by those who match its vibration, its frequency, perceptible outside the influence of ordinary time and space. It will be actualised in that field of potential which remains relevant, and de-actualised where the field lacks transcendent nourishment and the attention of the higher Spectator. It will be born from the experience of intussusception, when "the sky will be rolled up like a scroll", from the inner transfiguration of being. It will be a cross-sacred art, expressing the Logos "all in all."
And now, looking back, I understand: that walk of mine — from Stuttgart to Ditzingen, the Africans, the manifestation and disappearance of the eagle-headed one at the prayer to Raphael, the snail, Alexander who gave me a ride home — all of it was not merely an episode. It was a condensed symbolic matrix of what later unfolded: in my soul, in art, in the very movement of the world and consciousness, which I decided to communicate by publishing this long essay.
By Oleg Korolev
