Beyond The Veil

This image is an edit of the “Flammarion Engraving” (ca. 1888). In the original, the red-clad wanderer pierces the veil of this world to find an incomprehensible and divine cosmology beyond it. In contrast, the edit presents the man with a land of neon signs: Exxon-Mobil, McDonalds and Shell shinning amidst tangled power lines, roads and passing cars. What was the height of divinity and truth in the original is replaced with the base, ugliness of modern civilisation.

One interpretation of the image is found in the contrast between versions. The original is a representation of humanity’s search for the axioms of the universe beyond our physical, corporeal world through reason. Replacing these higher truths with an image of capitalist excess could be a commentary on the destination of the scientific revolution: Humanity went looking for truth and found, instead, the technology with which to gorge ourselves on pleasure and convenience.

In the fever on consumption, we realise there were never any eternal truths to find, only the reflection of ourselves in the unholy things we make.

On a personal level, I project onto this image a story of my struggle to reconcile my fundamentalist Christian upbringing and the carnal world I find myself living in. To me, the storybook world of shining sun and stars represents the spiritual way I was raised and the often fantastical aspects of evangelical eschatology and literal biblical interpretation. As I’ve grown up, poked my head outside the veil, so to speak, the world I find is entirely ordinary, joyful and drab and horrifying and beautiful, but devoid of any cosmic, spiritual underpinnings.

Just like the red-clad wanderer, I am caught between worlds. My family, my wife and the version of myself I always thought I would be are at odds with the insurmountable simplicity of just no longer believing.

I worry I will be consumed by the incongruous tension of continuing to pretend. Yet, to truly let go of my faith is to disappoint so many people I love and who love me in return.