Art as a tool for storing Mana
Illuminati Ganga has been using this term Mana for some centuries now, and we should probably talk about what it means publicly.
In the transversal year E௵∃ a large number of Agents were recruited from various parts of the time stream for a symposium to discuss the meaning, this document, cleansed of much of the academic infighting and removing the stranger interludes, the psychosis and the universe hopping high on LSD, is what remains:
On Art as a tool for storing Mana
Mana, a Polynesian concept related to a spiritual force or energy permeating the universe, a force that can be cultivated in people and objects, was first brought into the order of Illuminati Ganga by Agent 149
as a means for identifying the experiential value of art.
The Primary benefit… is that the creation exists afterwards, and is thus available as a form of mnemonic for the creator. They can revisit and re-experience that sensation of creation that would otherwise have been transitory.
You can relive having the thoughts as visions, although not as strong as revelatory as the original, but as time goes on the mnemonic is affected by that passage, new interpretations to the originating idea can be mixed in and strengthen the work. The artifact that is produced by the experience of creation offers a powerful benefit to the artist, and also to others who are able to experience second-hand what the artist experienced much closer.
To repeat: The artifact that is produced by the experience of creation offers a powerful benefit to the artist, and also to others who are able to experience second-hand what the artist experienced much closer.
The Experiential Allure of Art
The object that possesses Mana produces a form of mesmerizing allure to those who experience it. They are drawn to it and feel that it has some power; this is the primitive urge that brought people to worship strange formations of rocks or trees, that causes a child to pick a stone up and set it apart from other stones and bring it home with it because that stone is special.
The Ur-stage of Mana
The nascent feeling in the child that an object has great import, that will cause them to bring a particular stone home from the beach, to latch on to a favorite doll, to find meaning in the random is the ur-stage of Mana. It is the undeveloped and immature expression of the artistic feeling.
This feeling develops more in most cases as the child ages, and often things that would have caught and held the attention as a child does not do so as an adult, but other things replace the attention.
Properties of Objects that have Mana
Uniqueness
One of the primary properties of anything with Mana is a feeling of uniqueness. That one has never encountered something like this before, and therefore it is important. The uniqueness of the thing is a property that pulls you in to focus more closely, to attempt to understand more closely why the thing is unique.
An object that rewards the analysis, that is to say that you can think on it more and more and always find more in it, have a large amount of Mana on the personal level.
Aside from objects that have a large amount of Mana on the personal level there are of course objects that effect many people in the same way, and these can be said to have a large amount of Mana for the population at large.
Tradition
Objects that have been around for a long time, that have perhaps been passed down from generations, but maybe in some cases just objects that were first acquired for purely utilitarian purposes but by virtue of being well suited to their purpose have stuck around a long time and thereby become associated with memories.
Objects that have been around a long time in a person’s life — say a jacket that is 20 years old — will have a large amount of Mana on a personal level. The jacket is not unique and the wearer knows this- but it’s longevity has seemed to confer uniqueness.
But objects that have been around a long time from the viewpoint of a wider population will seem to have a large amount of Mana on a general level. The reverence we pay to these objects is the evidence of their Mana.
The longer they have stuck around, especially if they have had an unbroken existence through many generations, the more Mana they will have. An artwork that has been revered for many generations has more Mana than an axe-head of a Viking chief unearthed yesterday, however the more stories that can be attached to that axe-head and to the long dead chieftain the more Mana is felt by people to attach to the object.
Which is Greater — The New or The Traditional?
The new is often momentarily perceived as greater but that perception can wear out quickly and cause the perceived Mana to decrease equivalently.
That is, at least, how it goes for people who experience Mana as an external force. But what about those who experience Mana as an internal force, those who have Mana?
The People Who Have Mana
As a general rule the people who have Mana are creatives of some sort — artists, actors, musicians, writers — although it can also be found in other types of people as well. Some of the main classes of people that have Mana.
Politicians with Mana —
Mana for a politician is of course slightly different than charisma, a politician may be charismatic and draw people to them from this property, but they cannot naturally imbue an object with importance by their mere act of having been in contact with it. A politician who has Mana may however achieve this.
As a normal rule a politician with Mana is one who has achieved the following:
- They have led their nation or a large movement.
- The have led it during a very trying time, when all hope seemed lost, and overcome the trials of that time.
After this the politician becomes venerated and the objects they have touched derive Mana from that touch, even though those objects by themselves would not have Mana.
Because of the protective touch of the leader upon them these objects can last a long time, and as such they gain the extra Mana of antiquity.
The Notorious —
People who have done some especially awful things that have gotten them talked about will have, like politicians, imbued objects they have touched with Mana, especially if the objects had something to do with their actions. A knife used in a gruesome murder for example, but also more mundane objects they used.
Mana of the notorious is not felt by everyone however, and indeed for a large number of people the objects have no fascination to them whatsoever, but inspire rather than the feeling of great power and awe a feeling of disgust and desire to destroy the offending objects.
The Creatives —
The possession of artists of various sorts of Mana is in some ways easier to understand than that of non-creatives, while also being a more complicated process.
Those who create objects with Mana, especially those who succeed in doing so several times, become over time revered and thought to possess some Mana of their own, and to thereby pass that on to their objects. Thus there are works that would have no value of their own, except that they were created by a particular creator, and there are objects that the creative has touched that by virtue of being touched by them have Mana, the same way an object touched by a great leader does.
The artistic object that has Mana has it because of the experience the art offers to those who interact with it.
The artifact that is produced by the experience of creation offers a powerful benefit to the artist, and also to others who are able to experience second-hand what the artist experienced much closer.
As a normal rule someone has Mana for the same reason that objects have Mana, they stand out as being somehow unique. But of all these people who have Mana the creatives are the most important because they can create Mana seemingly out of nothing.
Mana as the Mnemonic of Experience
In the Theory as to Why Art is Created article linked earlier the following is said
the creation exists afterwards, and is thus available as a form of mnemonic for the creator. They can revisit and re-experience that sensation of creation that would otherwise have been transitory.
This mnemonic function is a common one of objects with Mana, as we interact with the object we build up memories of all our thoughts and attractions to that object, which in every subsequent interaction get recalled — strengthening the bonds of Mana that we feel.
In the case of a creator the object is itself a link to the Mana inside them, from which the object was drawn.
Mana and Narrative
Narrative does not have Mana in the way a painting or a poem does. Thus the narrative of a book does not in itself have Mana, although the physical object of a book does.
This is not because only physical objects can have Mana, although it is close to this.
In this article
it was said
This internal and external imposition of narrative is a force that is in constant tension in arguments as to which is the ‘greatest’ of the arts.
The argument for the literary arts in this battle is that they are on top because they allow for the more complex narratives to be created.
The argument for the non-literary arts is that they have a more direct primal connection to the human mind and as such are more foundational.
Mana is the concentration of this feeling of power and is present in things that can be taken in all at once. So also in short lyric poetry, parts of longer narratives have Mana and will be extracted and placed separate to better focus on their power by the admirers of the narrative.
This is actually one of the benefits of Narrative, in that it can string together bits of text possessed of Mana in such a way that the various parts can inform and enhance each other.
By a long narrative I mean something that cannot be fit on a single page of text ( in film something that takes more than 5 minutes maybe, although we do not have any exact measurements of Mana transferal involved in cinematic media), in audio media about the same, hence the general shortness of hit songs, because a longer song loses the focus of its Mana.
In such a way a longer narrative, for example a novel, will not have Mana (in that a person cannot sit down and open the book and understand the power of the whole novel), because of our relation to works that take time to apprehend they exist as a memetic structure in our mind. That structure will probably elicit certain feelings similar to that of an object with Mana, but as there is no object for the attention to be drawn to it is not quite the same.
For creatives these memetic structures can be used as springboards to create other works with Mana.
As in this essay
where the two important facets an artist must consider when considering other works of art are
1. Things that I can use in making what I want
2. Things that I must go against in making what I want
More will have to be written about these subjects in later articles regarding the ability to wield Mana, and to control the minds of men and women alike via Narrative magic.
The Disappearance of Mana
Because of the uniqueness requirement of Mana, and the restriction of objects to be comprehensible in their entirety within a short time in order to possess Mana the experience of Mana is becoming less and less widely distributed.
Mass Production destroys Mana
The modern world is design rich and art poor. That is to say that with the introduction of mass production it became possible to distribute everywhere items that in previous eras would have been seen as full of Mana, but now, not unique — they have none.
Thus as. a general rule painting and various arts that would be comprehensible in a short time can have the experiences they impart automated, glutting the human senses and thus rendering the many beautiful and nicely made products we all have access to be without Mana. This is sometimes described as being “soulless”
In order to compete with mass production works of art use various tools, in the case of the graphical arts one tool is that of scale, to make a painting or sculpture so large that it is impractical to mass produce it, another is to mix multiple properties together that make automation of the finished product difficult and so forth. In these various ways uniqueness can be maintained and there are still many projects full of Mana in the modern world, but as digital fabrication makes inroads it becomes likely at some point that things which were one time unreproducible will become commonplace.
At the same time the high quality of those graphical objects that at one point might be thought to have been full of Mana but now have lost their power makes it difficult to feel a measure of uniqueness in the case of objects that are not easily reproducible.
Remember the properties of uniqueness or tradition are by themselves not sufficient for an object to have Mana — although they are necessary. Thus there can be large structures, not easily replaced that strike those who see them with boredom and distaste — many corporate sculptures gracing the outside of large mundane skyscrapers are unique by virtue of having a budget and material usage outside the reach of most artists while still having absolutely nothing of interest to most of the humans whose misfortune it is to see them day in and day out.
Framing as a tool for taming Mana
Aside from the ubiquity of high quality aesthetic effects throughout our society making it difficult to find objects that have a great deal of Mana that cause them to stand out from other things, the tradition of museums and putting a large number of objects that would otherwise possess a great deal of Mana serves to deaden the experience of individual objects.
They cease to be felt as unique when put in close proximity to so many other objects that are supposed to have great value.
Thus by putting the objects with Mana in a great collection of such we assert our mastery over them.
Destruction of Mana is harming Human Psychology
One of the more interesting conclusions of the vast multiversal congress was the conclusion that these forces causing the loss of Mana in modern life were extremely problematic.
Humans evolved surrounded by objects that had great mystical significance, and our psychology is wired to search for these, when it becomes more difficult to experience this feeling of the supernaturally powerful object we become more urgent about finding a replacement, any replacement, in the same way that a starving person will search out food and in extremities of desperation eat poison berries.
The article was written by IG Agents 18, 77 and 86 as a helpful condensation for scholars of the much vaster 10382 page long document of the Multiverse Congress.
Of other interest in regards to this document
