Visionary Eco-Art part three

Land Art And Orgonite

the Statement of Devin Devine continues...

Disclaimer: please take all stated facts presented here with at least a grain of salt. The present author encourages you that all statements contained herein should in fact be treated with utmost skepticism and handled with utter caution.

Doctor Wilhelm Reich was a scientist working in Germany back when Germany was a bad place to be. He wrote the Psychology of Fascism, a psychological and social treatise that certain fascist parties did not appreciate overmuch, and hence our good doctor got out of dodge and made his way to Switzerland. Man, it was kind of hot there too, so he headed to the good ol’ US of A.

In the 1950’s, American authorities placed Doctor Wilhelm Reich in jail and burned all of his research. Yeah, this is the story of how one researcher escaped persecution in Nazi Germany, only to face a book burning in America. I wasn’t there myself, but I read something about it, and that’s the story as I understand it.

His work….was and is controversial. Mystical hogwash. The guy was a total quack. But, hey, then again…maybe the universe is cooler than normal science is able to figure.

Wilhelm developed some work all about that mysterious energy that permeates our world. Chi, or the the Force, or the Holy Ghost, or Good Vibes. That stuff. He called it orgone.

No, he had nothing to do with Reiki, although the term “reiki” does sound a lot like his last name.

In his work, he discovered….or hallucinated, or just made up, that when one builds a container comprised of alternating layers of cork and steel, that the chamber would fill up with this life energy, which he called Orgone. He developed Orgone shooters, wand-like instruments that could collect, focus, and shoot this energy at, say an ailing person, right where it hurts. Apparently, he got some results.

It is not the purpose of this article to debate the validity of said results.

In the good doctors work, he noted that strong electromagnetic fields could have an undesired effect on Orgone Accumulation. Power lines, micro-wave ovens, microwave radio towers, nuclear power plants–apparently, you really don’t want to build an Orgone Accumulator anywhere near these things, for surely you will not collect good healthy Orgone (which is the color of a crisp blue sky and is associated with good health, happiness and healthy sexual expression) but instead, an orgone accumulator situated near such powerful electromagnetic fields will accumulate Deadly Orgone Radiation (gasp!) aka DOR, which is associated with oppression, depression, repression and cancer. Aint nobody got time for that.

But as the atomic age wore on, these electromagnetic powerhouses became widespread, indeed, a nuke in every kitchen. Thus, research into Orgonomy dwindled.

Until!

That is, until someone discovered Orgonite.

Orgonite replaces the layers of steel and wood with bits of metal shavings mixed in with an epoxy resin, with a piece of quartz embedded within. Orgone Accumulators were all about organic and non-organic materials layered. With orgonite, you have organic and inorganic matter mixed together, and apparently a similar effect is achieved.

The addition of the quartz, under the pressure of the epoxy, being surrounded and squeezed on all sides by the epoxy, the quartz then produces an electro-piezo type effect. Similar to how a watch works then, right?…the quartz, under pressure pulses. What this does, in the context of orgonite, is that it reliably (ahem, apparently….) generates Orgone, takes the ambient energies around it and transmutes them into positive life energy. As such, orgonite has been used to ward off the unhealthy energetic effects of living near a powerplant, or having neighbors who own a microwave, and all of that.

This is orgonite as I understand it. I’ve held pieces of orgonite many times….I’m not always sensitive to the energy of items, I’ll grant you, and with orgonite I certainly am not sensitive.  I must apologize–sorry, True Believers in Orgonite, but personally I don’t think I ever sensed anything from a piece of orgonite. They look pretty though and just cause this guy can’t sense it, well, this guy does not know or sense everything.

Most often orgonite is made with epoxy resin. Two part, liquid stuff.  Some people have been developing other types of orgonite, natural material orgonite, using beeswax, or pine sap, in place of the epoxy.

I do not count myself qualified to comment any further about the making of, or usefulness of orgonite.

But, if you’ve gotten this far into the article, then I can share with you something about my Stacked Stone Sculptures: I consider (some of) them a sort of  orgonite. I would say “natural material orgonite”, but I must be honest and admit that many of my newer pieces do use a bit of man-made glue. But the glue is really unnecessary–the work stands just fine without the glue and there already is paper, providing an organic matrix . Well, maybe paper alone is not enough of an organic matrix, so the glue may help in that regard too….(reason I started using glue is because of customers fear of vandalism/concerns about ultimate longevity.)

Stacked Stone Orgonite

A natural material orgonite of a different kind.  Perhaps the term orgonite is not really needed. Anyway, what I do is this: I stack my sculpture, one stone at a time.  Each morning, I start my day off with some sort of devotion or intention setting. Hey, this is a personal thing. I don’t do it the same everyday, and well, I don’t need to describe it in full detail. It involves writing out an intention. A prayer, of sorts, even. Each day, one sheet of paper is embedded into the structure. Pieces of quartz are also embedded into the structure. Pulsing out the messages into the cosmos.

There, I just admitted it. Also, I often work barefoot and sometimes dance. It’s my jobsite, I’ll do it how I want.

The layers of stone, and pieces of paper are like unto Wilhelm’s old layers of cork and steel. The quartz is under pressure from the stacked stones…honestly, I really do not know much about this alleged piezo electric pulse effect that happens when quartz is placed under pressure. Does it need to be squeezed from all sides, like epoxy does? How does it work in a watch? Well, I do not know. I also don’t know about those electrons and protons, little itty bitty things that no-one’s ever really seen. Sure, they exist. Probably.

Please do understand that the fact of whether or not orgonite actually works is entirely irrelevant to me, to this discussion, and to this work being discussed.  Believe or disbelieve whatever you want.

The messages upon paper writ, are fairly general stuff. Nothing too personal, or nothing selfish. More universal stuff.  Help me to love everyone. Help me to be humble. May this work put smiles on peoples faces. May humanity learn how to live sustainably upon this planet.

I don’t do this every day, or for every single project that I work on. Just the Stacked Stone Sculptures and especially the spheres.  These works take a lot of energy from me, I get focused, and powerful emotions come to the surface. Painful and joyful and cathartic. A birth process.

I want this work to be good for humanity and good for our world.

That’s the story of Visionary Eco Art, so far……

*any historical data about doctor Reich is told entirely from memory. Mostly, stuff I’ve read in books by Robert Anton Wilson.

**all scientific data contained in this article should likewise be treated with utmost skepticism.