TIM BOUCHER RAW!

The human body is composed of matter, of “stuff.” This “stuff” of matter gives our bodies dimensionality, depth and form, like in a sculpture or a bas relief. Matter takes up space, and thus we find ourselves as objects within a physical world. Consequently, our experience of ourselves is (at least partly) rooted and organized according to our materiality, to our existence within a field of other physical objects co-habiting space.

If we, in our bodies studded with perceptual instruments, whirl around in a circle (as children do to make themselves dizzy), we sense other objects, other bodies existing with us in the field of space. We sense these other bodies as having spatial relationships with our body: close to, far from, in front of, in back of, etc. From these relationships arise a sense of directionality, a means whereby we can make sense of space. We explore space and our relationship with other bodies, we substantialize directionality through one of most basic functions of our bodies as physical beings: movement. Through the coordinated movement of our parts, the rearrangement of our constituent components – our arms, legs, heads, trunks, – we create locomotion. We propel ourselves through space.

Each individual human finds himself at the center of a sphere. That sphere is his or her perceptual field. When a man stands on the face of the earth and looks about himself in all directions, three-hundred and sixty degrees, we call that space he carves out through his act of perception the Horizon.

The horizon stands, then, for the outer limit of our perceptions, the bound beyond which we can not immediately experience without modifying our location in space. But when we move, the horizon, our limitations, move along with us. And what do the alchemists of old say? God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Vitruvian man’s limbs reach out from his center of balance, which he carries along with him wherever he goes.

Whatever the provenance of our physical bodies, they have an identifiable common shape. There is a front and a back to our bodies. There is a left hand, a right hand, a left foot, a right foot. There is a top to our heads and a bottom to our feet. And from these basic root points of physical reference extend outward lines of directionality which govern and organize our ability to move about.

Depending on our environment, we can move forward, backward, left, right, up, down – and endless subtle shades and variations between. An astronaut in outer space, not constrained by the gravity of the earth’s surface or the buoyancy of the human body in water, propels himself effortlessly in any direction whatsoever. To him, aside from the orientation inherent in his body’s composition, there really is no “right-side-up”, except in relation to his ship, its controls and instruments. If he can strap himself into a seat and pilot his vehicle, that is enough.

Similarly, a boat out at sea, adrift on the tides and the whims of moving air currents and away from visible landmarks on shore, has no fixed point of reference – nothing to measure its orientation against. Which is why mariners use a system of orientation wherein the vessel itself becomes the system of reference. It is a closed cosmos, a world unto itself by which the actions and life of its crew are measured. The bow may be considered the “front,” but the sailor knows motion may occur in any direction.

Likewise in the theatrical stage, we find a system of orientation and navigation in which the vessel of the space itself becomes its own frame of reference, it’s own cosmos. The ancient Greek theatre took place on hillsides in natural amphitheatres. Upstage, away from the audience, was literally up a hill. Modern theatres sometimes echo this receding elevation with raked or angled stages. The downstage edge of the stage delineates a ritual boundary between the sacred activities taking place upon the “altar”, and the “profane” or mundane audience assembled to witness the spectacle, the communal invocation of events, people and places (spirits) wholly ‘other’.

The realm of the audience, too, termed the “house” has its own mirror-image vocabulary of orientation paralleling that of the stage. Audience members closest to the stage are considered to be “down-house”, while “house-right” occurs on the same side of the theatre as “stage-left.” As you move away from the stage, “up-house” you also tend to ascend in space: most theatres have seating arranged in levels on risers so that audience members don’t have crane their heads to see past the person seated in front of them.

In the compass rose, the archetypal symbol of navigation, we see also delineated these principles of sacred space. The circle radiating from the center represents the horizon, with magnetic north acting as a fixed point of reference by which we might orient ourselves and chart a course of motion. The compass rose evolves directly out of the much older symbolism of the sun wheel, the medicine wheel, the circle divided into four quarters, the encircled cross: the intersection of horizontal and vertical, of heaven and earth.

Mythic-cartography.org describes it as the Wise Compass:

Every culture of place has some way of delineating and relating to the compass directions. Every people has experienced the sun rising in the east, standing high in the south, setting in the west, and the stars spinning around the axis of the north. Every culture, as humans, has a way of modeling these phenomena.

Some models we call “the Medicine Wheel”, some we call “the Mayan Calendar”, others “the Four Directions”, others “the Seven Directions”. If you look deeply, you will find the way any particular animist culture related to the spinning, cyclical world. A world that spins on cycles of day, month, year, and longer.

I call the set of these models, the class of descriptions of the directional phenomena, “the Wise Compass”, because each model does far more than simply point out directions. It hangs principles of wisdom on its axes. The models help the human bodymind, an organism that evolved under the influence of these phenomena, align itself in tune with the way the world works.

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In traditional symbolism, each of the directions has certain mythic associations, correspondences and attributes which lend order to the human experience, creating a cosmos out of chaos. Though listing all such associations across cultures would require its own dedicated research, we may highlight some modern associations to illustrate cultural influence reaching right down to the experience of our bodies as objects in space:

1. Front: being “forward” or aggressive, forging ahead, progress
2. Back: backing down, retreat, regression
3. Right: proper, correct, dexter
4. Left: sinister, left-hand path, southpaw

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At the center of the cross, the junction of the crossroads, these particular coordinates on the grid, we find ourselves crucified to the experience of our bodies: constellations of matter organized into finite shapes with a definite beginning and an end point along the axis of time, a birth and a death. Though the individual in this life can not experience it firsthand for herself, she hypothesizes that there is something which came before her, her ancestors, and something which will remain in existence within the field of perceivable space after she is gone, her descendents – whether they be blood of her blood or otherwise.

‘Before’ and ‘after’ occur not just on the grand scale of lifetimes, but also within the realm of everyday action. Thus, sequential ordering of motion – change over time – forms the other organizational axis of human perceptual experience. The ancients took as their measuring implements the relative position of heavenly bodies and their cyclical motions within a clockwork universe. Night follows day ad infinitum; the seasons turn and turn again, governing changes of forces, energies and entities within the sacred space of the environment and of the “stuff” of our human bodies.

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