The Lightning Path has its philosophical roots in a contemporary consciousness movement intended to expand human awareness through a return to sacred order. How one makes such a journey is entirely up to each individual. For my own part, committed one-to-one relationships have played a big part in this and my relationship with Teresa Wild has been especially fruitful in this regard.

Almost two years ago, Teresa and I made the following public commitment: “To enter into spontaneous ritual at each New Moon over a period of 20 Moons. Our intention is to open to and explore in depth, the 20 Mayan hieroglyphs at the core of The Lightning Path. During each New Moon ritual, we plan to meditatively "channel" images and translate them into a series of paintings done jointly.” It is my great honor and pleasure to have completely fulfilled that commitment with her in such a passionate and creative way, documentation of which is found both here and on our Lightning Path website (www.lightning path.net).


With every New Moon, a whole new world of possibility opens up and for the moment, it feels appropriate for Teresa and I to carry on our New Moon rituals independently, each of us exploring new and different media to express the spirit of The Lightning Path. This is in keeping with the overall collaborative spirit that has united us with several other artists including Lightning Path tribe members Sunomi and Leia. We are especially excited to know that visionary artists Alex and Allyson Grey are also ritually collaborating with other artists at the time of the New Moon. May we all continue to thrive in the fullest expression of our deepest artistic callings!


The following section titled INVENTING TRADITION includes the full text of the commitment Teresa and I made to each other. I share it with you here because it says a lot about the task of inventing a tradition of New Moon co-creativity in attunement to The Lightning Path, a task that has really only just begun. Please consider helping us turn such attunement into a contemporary, ecstatic, artistic tradition, wherever in the world you are!

Ho!

Dwayne Edward Rourke
September 1, 2006
Lightning Path Moon: EIGHT MEN

INVENTING TRADITION

We, Dwayne Edward Rourke and Teresa Wild, have embarked on a journey of rediscovery of what we understand to be the "Primordial Tradition". By being open and receptive to the influences of diverse worldviews, we hope to artistically amplify the harmonic resonance of essential commonalities, those things that bring us together as a people, rather than split us apart. We envision a synthesis that will unite us all.

Humans have been inventing tradition since the beginning of time. Behaviors that assisted in our survival in the natural world were tried and tested, passed down if successful, and often elaborately ritualized. Beliefs and customs developed into cultural elements, were elaborated on through repetition, and became definitions of how to be human. When groups of people became insular, often these beliefs and customs resisted change and became imbedded in the collective unconscious as myth. Traditions became established as cultural imperatives and were handed down through generations. Inventing tradition fell into the hands of certain inspired individuals who had the power and charisma to convince the general populations that the time had come to change.

In these modern days, many traditions are being changed or left behind as we find ourselves influenced by other cultures. Since travel has become widely available to more and more people, a global culture has begun to emerge. Many of us have found ourselves in a place where, when we stop and reflect on it, we really have very little culture left that we can truly call our own. If we want to have something meaningful to pass down to our descendants, we must regain the original inspiration that humans were moved by. If we are to attain a harmonious global community we must first respect and encourage individual cultural expression and second, we need to help each other return to the common primordial roots of consciousness.

We see huge benefit in returning to the roots of human spirituality by honoring the most basic cycles of the Sun, Moon and Earth. This will naturally lead us to a sense of wholeness and belonging to the family of beings with whom we share this planet. We undertake this journey of spiritual awakening in the hope that it will be a healing for all concerned.

As multi-media artists we are currently exploring several elements of an emerging synthesis we call The Lightning Path. With its roots in an ancient Mesoamerican calendar tradition, The Lightning Path reveals twenty temples of the cosmic imagination, highly integrative maps of consciousness applicable on many levels at once. Each map unites hieroglyphs and numbers into a seven-leveled pyramid of time. This pyramid of time is common to all twenty temples on The Lightning Path and is directly aligned to the universal human light body known as the chakra system.

In conscious alignment to The Lightning Path, our commitment is to enter into spontaneous ritual at each New Moon over a period of 20 Moons. Our intention is to open to and explore in depth, the 20 Mayan hieroglyphs at the core of The Lightning Path. During each New Moon ritual, we plan to meditatively "channel" images and translate them into a series of paintings done jointly. By creating our paintings in such a purposeful way, we understand that we are inventing a tradition of collaboration for ourselves that could, on a larger scale, be used as a source of inspiration to others.

The Mayan sacred calendar is only a template we have chosen to support the creative process of the proposed pieces. We fully expect, because of our combined passions for myth and symbolism from many cultural perspectives, that we will evoke an all-inclusive, global and transcendent message in this body of work. It is our intention to use our creative talents to help birth the new human consciousness we feel is gestating at this time.