the one and the many

I found this in an old daily planner and it brought back to mind a few ideas at that time that I was working with. I was facinated with the symbol of a triangle with a circle on top ever since I saw the symbol carved on a side of a mountain outside of Petra, Jordan. I went for a climb and found myself at a fairly high point in the mountain. Then across to a parallel rock formation across a deep ridge was a large carving on a triangle with a circle above it. I looked at it in wonder for a while, trying to figure out how old this carving was and how it was placed there. I imagined some kind of floating alien with laser fingers drawing it into the mountain side (although obvisouly that would be pretty unlikely). As I climbed back down I found some local bedouins and asked them if they had ever seen it. It turns out that they hadn't and were very interested in it, and asked me to take them to the carving.

I saw something similar to this symbol as I watched the movie Stargate and recognized it again.


The image stuck with me for some time after that and I thought about it initially as a mountain with a sun above it. Of course the movie incorporates many Sci-Fi associations with it. However, later I came to think of it a little differently.

In various schools of yoga or yantra an upward facing triangle represents man on earth and his aspirations towards the divine. I thought of the symbol of the circle representing the "whole" or oneness -- seeing the circle as representing "the one" and the triangle representing man or "the many".

Visually this was also somehow translated as the triangle representing a classic "trinity" of human relationship and the sun serves as a unifying force.

In general I drew this shortly after the experience of the mountain and seeing the carving. I think this doodle attempts to decipher the symbol. But another influencing factor was that on November 9 2005, the day after the doodle there was a bombing attack of three hotels in Jordan. During that time I found the approach of people in reaction to the bombing very uplifting. Rather than fear and disillusionment taking over, demonstrations were held which showed an insistence on unity and resistance into falling into the perceptional trap of terror which antagonizes and separates people in pain. At that point the "message" in the sketch took on a larger significance for me.