The Secret Art - Introduction

[ The Secret Art is available from Amazon and your local bookseller. ]

Having worked as an artist most of my adult life, I became aware early on that there were fundamentally different approaches to making art. Some art forms are bought and sold like commodities. Other art is deemed “priceless” and resides in museums. Music and film compete as entertainment venues and massive sculptural commissions provide ornamentation for architecture and parks.

These familiar forms are only the surface of the art we know and enjoy. Behind the business and institutional world of art, other creative individuals struggle to know themselves through deep introspection, often at the expense of acclaim or financial reward, only seeking to project meaning and inspiration into the culture through their work.

There is an even more remote type of creativity that is all but forgotten by the contemporary art world: The ability that ancient and indigenous artists had to interact with Nature and Spirit to heal, promote agriculture, and articulate the sacred dimension of life.

To accomplish these tasks, the artist/shaman had to be able to understand and tap into natural forces. This process requires a unique capacity of consciousness, one able to manipulate energy and matter toward a desired end.

Today, we call this capacity directed intent. We understand how directed intent can be used to control machinery, computers, systems and organizations, but we do not understand much about how it can be used by our consciousness to mitigate the progression of a disease or the growth rate of a crop, or a host of other activities that fall under the rubric of shamanic processes.

The shamanic process required artistic embellishment through dance, fetish making, costuming, and ceremony. What is not so well understood is the energetic components that the shamanic rituals sought to influence.

Today we tend to look at the shamanic process in the same light as religious ceremony: as an elaborate metaphor for appealing to a higher power to intercede on our behalf. By contrast, as we will examine throughout this book, it is far more likely that shamanic individuals used artistic and technical methodologies employing intent to move energy and accomplish their objectives.

We can only guess how the various ancient peoples accomplished shamanic tasks. But we can look at our technical/industrial society and see if, within our own explorations, we may have uncovered similar techniques or approaches.

In fact, a robust process of creative adaptation employing both art and technology coupled with applied intent does appear on the radar of modern developments. It goes by different names: Occult Technology, Radiesthesia, Dowsing, Psychotronics, and Radionics, to name a few. For our purposes, we will use Radionics as a catchall phrase for any art/ technology system that employs consciousness through tools or art to move energy and do work. We will implore the reader to suspend judgment on their viability despite the fact that modern intellectuals consider these techniques non-scientific and spurious. What also must be considered is that little is known about what consciousness actually is and how it functions.

Empirical science has not given us the answers to fundamental questions like who we are, where we come from, what happens after death, or why some people spontaneously recover from a disease while others die. There are far too many unknowns when it comes to the power and potential of consciousness and directed intent in Nature to discard potential opportunities just because they are not understood or condoned by science.

This book will review tools and techniques that have been swept under the rug by a mechanistic and deterministic worldview. We will briefly look at the history of these tools and techniques with the notion of adding them to those already available to the creative process. My objective is to set forth and explain Radionic technology as a platform for understanding and artistically working with Nature in a novel and creative way.

There have been numerous problems in writing this book, one of which is a technical component to the discussion that doesn’t square with orthodox science. There is also a very long and complex history of individuals working in the area of what is referred to as “subtle energy” technology. Many valid contributions to understanding “subtle energy” and the tools that influence it are regrettably omitted. I have reduced the field mainly to a study of what is called Radionics. What follows is a historical definition of radionics as it is used for our purposes.

The basic assumption of radionics can be stated in three parts:

1. All matter emits radiations
2. The human body can be used to detect them
3. The mind can influence these radiations in extraordinary ways.

We are taught by our materialistic sciences that disciplines like radionics are both simplistic and impossible. To help overcome skepticism and to support and enhance an understanding of radionics, selective historical, technical, and procedural details are presented in a convincing but simplified manner.

This task also involves translating antiquated or cryptic terminology into modern, coherent language. The story of how mindbased devices have been evolving, like a lingering shadow for the last one hundred years in parallel with our familiar electromagnetic technology, is fascinating. Reading about it however, demands a degree of suspended disbelief from even the most generous reader. Introduction 3 Details of radionic design and construction will readily reveal their artistic and life-affirmative potential to the open-minded readers who consider their merit and potential.

While much of the focus will be on how these devices were invented and work, the underlying discussion is more about what they imply. Radionics is being used today not only to heal people, but also in veterinary medicine, to replace pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture, and for environmental detoxification and re-certification.

My hope is that the use of radionics will soon expand into music, art, and design. Radionic tools and techniques are deeply empowering. Understanding their use and application can be personally and professionally liberating. There are also dangers and responsibilities inherent in developing these skills. They can and probably are being misused. There are no laws currently governing the application of mind based technologies, though the danger is sufficiently recognized that initial legislation defining and limiting their use has been put forth before Congress.

More than anything else, the writer on radionics confronts the issue of believability. Does such a technology even exist, given the dominance of rational, mechanistic thought and the inevitable skepticism when contrasted with the scientific worldview? History abounds with fraudulent products with similar claims. Many of the most credible radionics inventors faced persecution and legal jeopardy. How does one explain why it works? When it does work, it is not always consistent. When successful, there is the impression more of art or luck at work than careful methodology.

Common forms of radionics exist that everyone can understand. We use them daily without realizing it. Everyone understands that the good cook imparts something into the food, which goes beyond the ingredients and mechanics of cooking. Whether we call it love or an extreme aesthetic sensitivity, the food takes on the character of the cook’s invested energy. We feel it immediately when we put it into our mouth. I would call this a radionic enhancement.

Can that quality be quantified? In a way, it can. People sitting around the table arrive at a consensus that the food is delicious. There is no empirical yardstick to measure how that food is actually better because subjective, aesthetic criteria are involved. We can agree that the qualities of the food, how they impact our senses, are wonderful. The evaluation is, in part, self-referential; subjectively we know the cook is brilliant. The proof lies in the consciousness of eating. Radionics works best when the mind is applied to a task of balancing ingredients to obtain a desired outcome.

Whether we are discussing a fine cook or artist, an expert gardener or someone else with a subtle gift, it goes without saying that each brings to their skill something beyond the ordinary, a capacity to insert a personal energy into the product of their labor. Radionics is a way to detect, describe and replicate that type of subtle emanation. Much arises from the world around us that eludes mechanistic, scientific interpretation. We don’t call love, pain or happiness illusions just because they are subjective impressions. They are all energetic and very real. They can’t be measured on instruments, but we do know they are calibrated; there is more or less of each in every instance. Radionics can also be generally understood as a way to calibrate and apply what cannot be otherwise measured, experiences that are often labeled as being composed of subtle energy.

The commonality that cooking, gardening, creative pursuits and other tasks share with radionics lies in how intent, directed through tools or instruments, produces an enhanced end product. In the same general sense, we can see that love and caring in any situation has the potential to improve the outcome. Radionics also benefits from the care, concern, and experience of the operator. In ordinary tasks, discrimination becomes a tuning mechanism to guide decision-making. Mental energy and careful reflection must be invested in improving the outcome. Radionics employs techniques to re-establish natural balance, allowing Nature to heal while we learn. The applications are endless.

I do not approach the task of writing about radionics particularly well equipped. Most of my career has been spent working in glass as an artist/businessman. Until recently, I had little knowledge of electricity or electronic design. I approached radionics as an art, and that is how I perceive and write about it here.

Radionics began life within the confines of the bizarre world of early Medical Electronics. It soon morphed into a completely nonscientific and self-referential methodology based upon the more empirical art of dowsing.

Today, quantum physics has scientifically demonstrated that the perception of events at the sub-atomic level can alter the outcome of those events. This discovery begs the obvious question, “What about here, at our perceptual level of reality?” For some researchers, the quantum field metaphor has thrown open a door into mind/matter dynamics. Such speculation has resulted in radionics undergoing a quasi-scientific revival in certain quarters. In the digital age, the field of radionics has acquired a whole new generation of instruments and potentialities. A more open minded and technologically savvy public has set the stage for a reappraisal of radionic technology.

[ The Secret Art is available from Amazon and your local bookseller. ]