As Above So Below is a piece of an outdoor interactive performance art commissioned to the Young Stovies for Nithraid 2015. The show created by the Mad Jackals, a group of young Dumfries artists, is loosely based on the ideas of Enlightment. It explores the esoteric correspondences of the ‘as above so below’ adage put forward by Hermes Trismegistus and re-worded by Isaac Newton:
[su_quote]Tis true without lying, certain and most true. That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing. And as all things have been and arose from one by the meditation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.[/su_quote]
After an intense collaborative effort and mighty non-linear thinking the jackals came up with a visually stunning piece that featured a platform with two metallic pyramids, a unicorn, rainbow smoke bombs, themselves clad in white as magi or officiants wearing sunglasses, a time capsule and a balloon release.
It is easy to assume that the result might be somewhat eclectic.
But as the figures moved in the wisps of coloured smoke, the transparent fabric of their capes swirled with them creating an illusion of a grand esoteric ceremony unfolding on the banks of the river Nith – the future meeting the past, the cosmic forces joining human spirit and the material echoing the ephemeral.
