Related Art

An Investigation of Mars: A Cosmic Novel explores a wide variety of related phenomena such as UFOs and non-human intelligences, remote viewing and psychic abilities, the soul and human consciousness, reincarnation and ancient knowledge.

The author, CJ Dearlove, has been creating glass art on these and related topics for several years under the name Lady Edith Glass Arts. The following are some of the related pieces and their inspiration, created by the author and posted here for you to enjoy.

Trismegistus (the thrice-greatest!)

2023. 12” diameter and 8” diameter (stained glass, agate stone, iridized glass, glass nuggets set in brass rings)

A glass sculpture named after Hermes Trismegistus. It is said that Hermes Trismegistus was a contemporary of Moses, while others believe he was contemporary to Abraham. Hermes Trismegistus was a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, and author of the Hermetic texts. The name “Trismegistus” originated from an epithet at the Temple of Esna, "Thoth the great, the great, the great." Though HT was a Greek/Egyptian god, Hermes and the Hermetic Texts have influenced Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baháʼí. The Hermetica and Hermes Trismegistus are often regarded as the founder of astrology, medicine and pharmacology, alchemy, and magic.

I happened to be reading a little bit of a Hermetic text while making this, and the way this piece is made of two rings coming together to create three (thrice great) sections, it felt right.

“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…”

“Close your eyes and let the mind expand. Let no fear of death or darkness arrest its course. Allow the mind to merge with Mind. Let it flow out upon the great curve of consciousness. Let it soar on the wings of the great bird of duration, up to the very Circle of Eternity.”

~ Hermes Trismegistus

Celtic Shield

2023. (16” x 16”, stained glass, zinc frame)

The Celtic Knot consists of an interlacing pattern that dates back to the Middle Ages. Much like the infinity sign, the Celtic Knot has no beginning or end, as the monks believed the soul was infinite.

The origins of the Celtic knot are rooted in Paganism. The Pagans believed in and spoke of the infinite and cyclical nature of all living things. Before the Christian influence on the Celts in 450 AD, interwoven designs could be found in Celtic culture.

This specific knot is the Celtic Shield. The Celtic shield knot simply means protection. Often brought to the battlefield and planted to safeguard the fighting soldiers. The knot’s protective properties include warding off evil spirits, especially for the sick.

This knot has many variations. The commonality to all variations includes the four corners and a tight pattern showing an unbreakable barrier.

Bodhi Leaf

2023. (11.5” x 9”, stained glass)

The Bodhi tree, or Tree of Enlightenment, was a large and very old sacred fig tree (Ficus religiosa). It was at the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya. Siddhartha Gautama, the spiritual teacher and founder of Buddhism, achieved Bodhi (spiritual enlightenment) while sitting under the tree. According to Buddhist texts, the Buddha meditated without moving from his seat for 49 days under this tree.

Although the Bodhi tree was destroyed (several times), descendants of the tree have made their way around the world.

Years ago I was fortunate to travel to India, where I visited the Deer Park in Sarnath. Sarnath is famous as the site where Gautama Buddha first taught the Dharma, or where Buddha preached his first sermon. It is also the place where the original Sangha was formed. The last picture is one I took of a descendent of the Bodhi tree planted at Sarnath.

This Bodhi leaf is made using chakra colours and honours the spiritual gifts the teachings of Buddha provide us with today.

The Wheel of Dharma

2023. (12” diameter)

The dharmachakra or wheel of dharma is one of the most important symbols in Buddhism. The eight spokes represent the Eightfold Path (Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Actions, Right Occupation, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration). The colours at the centre represent the “Three Jewels” of Buddhism. These are the Buddha (the yellow jewel), the Dharma (the blue jewel), and the Sangha (the red jewel), while orange and white round out the colours of the Buddhist flag.

Buddhism has had a major influence on me, not only the beliefs and teachings, but having lived in a Buddhist country, the temples were my favourite place to spend time and learn. Made as a reminder to be thoughtful and intentional, of the connectedness of all things, and to embrace the mysteries and wonders of the universe as we move through this life.

“All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.”

— Buddha

Space Oddity

2023. (18” x 12”, stained and iridized glass)

From David Bowie’s Space Oddity:

“Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare
This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today
For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do
Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much she knows.”

The last American launched solo into space was Gordon Cooper in 1963. Georgey Beregovoy was the last solo Cosmonaut in 1968, and most recently Yang Liwei of China in 2003. Imagine hanging there in orbit, looking down and knowing that every living human is down there on Spaceship Earth. Imagine the solitude and perspective these people got to experience.

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

- Carl Sagan

I recently got a telescope to stare up at the heavens, and since every day has cloudy since I got it, I made my own solar system. And what a beautiful solar system we have. Maybe we should take care of it.

The Zeta Rediculi

2022. (18” X 13.5”) made with stained glass, iridized glass, and glass nugget

In 1961, Betty and Barney Hill, driving home at night in New Hampshire, came upon a light in the sky. Next thing they knew they were miles away and significant time had passed.

With a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right, they eventually went under psychoanalysis and hypnosis, recalling their abduction by aliens. This was the first major modern “abduction event”, and set the stage for many more in years to come.

While under hypnosis, Betty Hill drew points and lines from memory. Those with knowledge of astronomy lined these points up and declared that this was a “star map”, the view of the stars from a planet orbiting the Zeta Reticuli system. The editor of the fledgling Astronomy magazine penned an article about the star map…and within a few months was out of his job. The story almost sank the magazine, and became known as the Zeta Rediculi incident.

But Betty and Barney Hill’s tale lived on, with many books, documentaries, and podcasts covering one of the major events in ufology. There’s even a state historical marker at the abduction location (yes, on my bucket list). Like so many UFO events, your take on the incident depends on how much you believe the word of firsthand witnesses. I for one welcome our Zeta Reticulian overlords, so long as they come in peace.

The Pregnant Fairy

2022. So I was asked to make a pregnant fairy. And just as I started making it, I took the real Lady Edith to a fairy festival! Lots of inspiration.

Stories of fairies have been around for centuries (and likely longer) and come from Celtic, Germanic, English, Slavic, French, and other cultures. Sometimes fairies mean just the little flying beings, and sometimes it’s a term used for all small magical creatures like elves, hobgoblins, and dwarves. Though of course cultures worldwide have stories of small, often magical or spiritual creatures. It’s always interesting when unconnected cultures tell similar stories. And though fairies and similar beings are these days considered myths and legends, many people and cultures retain their beliefs. In a poll of Icelanders, 54% either believed in elves or believes they could exist!

This fairy is made using iridized glass, meaning that the colours will change depending on lighting, adding a little magic. The moon I found just at the right time to include in this piece! The moon is an agate crystal, agate having the meaning of harmony and rebalance.

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”
- William Butler Yeats

Stargate Project

2022. (18” x 12 inches): abstract using stained glass, iridized glass, bevels, and two agate stone slices

During the Cold War, US intelligence learned that the Soviets were investing heavily into “psychic spies.” Not to be outdone, the US Defence Intelligence began investing in remote viewing studies. These programs went by various names, but were eventually consolidated and named “Stargate Project.”

“Remote viewing” is just as its name sounds. The subject focuses their consciousness somewhere else in the world (or even time and space) to view a time and location and gather information. But wait, you say, psychics and ESP and all that isn’t real! Of course. And yet the DIA invested millions of dollars over decades into researching and operationalizing psychic spying.

After the program was ended in 1995, many of the documents were declassified, revealing a wide variety of interesting applications. During the Carter administration, a remote viewer was tasked with finding a downed aircraft in Africa. The viewer drew a map, and the crash was found in the Congo. In another, a remote viewer was able to spy on the construction of a new Soviet submarine, the biggest ever made. Defence officials said the RVer was wrong as no sub that size had ever been made. A few months later the Soviets launched the largest sub ever made.

Perhaps my favourite is a declassified document showing an RVer was tasked with visiting Mars. One million years ago. The RVer saw tall beings taking shelter in monolithic structures as the environment has no longer hospitable to them. Wild!

You might think, ‘well if they’re asked to go to Mars, of course they’re going to imagine something like that.’ In the process of remote viewing, the facilitator writes out coordinates for the subject and puts them in a sealed envelope. The RVer doesn’t see those coordinates until after their viewing, so that they are going into it without knowing the location.

While the DIA ended the program in 1995, remote viewers are still used by intelligence, as well as for corporate espionage.

This all goes to remind us that we live in a wacky, weird, and wonderful universe. Perhaps as Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Moon Shift

2022. This piece uses a unique glass that is aptly called “Van Gogh Glass.” This glass has metallic texture with clear glass on top, and is one sided, meaning this is meant for a wall hanging rather than a window hanging.

The moon is my favourite celestial body. Did you know that some 62+ years ago humans travelled there? What a thing that must have been to witness.

Cosmology of Philip K Dick

2021. 12”x12” stained glass and agate stone.

Philip K Dick from this 1977 speech, “If you think this word is bad, you should see some of the others”:

“I, in my stories and novels, often write about counterfeit worlds. Some are real worlds, as well as deranged private worlds, inhabited often by just one person. While mean time, the other characters either remain in their own worlds throughout, or are somehow drawn into one of the peculiar ones.

This theme occurs in the corpus of my 27 years of writing. At no time did I have a theoretical or conscious explanation for my preoccupation with these pluriform pseudo worlds. But now I think I understand.

What I was sensing was the manifold of partially actualized realities, lying tangent to what evidently is the most actualized one. The one which the majority of us, by consensus gentium, agree on.

Later that day, back home again, but still deeply under the influence of the sodium pentathol, I had a short acute flash of recovered memory. Then in mid march, month later, the total body of memories, in tact, and entire, began to return.

You are free to believe me, or to disbelieve, but please take my word on it that I am not joking, this is very serious, a matter of importance. At that time I had no idea what I was seeing. It resembled nothing that I had ever heard described. It resembled plasmic energy, it had colors, it moved fast, it collected and then dispersed. But what it was, what he was, I am not sure even now.

In other words, it's a common theme in my writing that a dark haired girl shows up at the door of the protagonist, and tells him that his world is delusional, that there is something false about it. Well, this did finally happen to me. I even knew that her hair would be black. I had an actual, complete sense of what she would look like, and what she would say. She did appear, she was a total stranger, and she did inform me of this fact. That some of my fictional works were, in a literal sense, true.

I wrote out these dreams in novel after novel, story after story. To name two in which this prior ugly present obtained most clearly I cite: The Man in the High Castle, and my 1974 novel about the US as a police state called Flow My Tears the Police Man Said.

I'm going to be very candid with you, I wrote both novels based on fragmentary residual memories of such a horrid slave state world. People claim to remember past lives, I claim to remember a different, very different present life. I know of no one who has ever made this claim before, but I rather suspect that my experience is not unique. What perhaps is unique is that I am willing to talk about.

We are living in a computer programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed and some alteration in our reality occurs. We would have the overwhelming impression that we are reliving the present, deja vu. Perhaps in precisely the same way, hearing the same words, saying the same words; I submit that these impressions are valid and significant. And I will even say this, such an impression is a clue that at some past time point a variable was changed, reprogrammed as it were, and that because of this an alternative world branched off.”

The 8 Chakras of the Asogian (E.T.)

2021. Stained glass framed with zinc. 21"x15".

This nod to pop culture and the forces within are perfect for your meditation or yoga room, to create a calming and healing presence in your window, and provides a great anecdote on your next intergalactic vacation. With decorative soldering around the Chakras, our lovable extraterrestrial friend E.T. reveals to us the seven human chakras plus the Asogian 8th healing chakra. A one of a kind insight into our intergalactic friends!

I Want to Believe

2021. I've been a UFO nerd since I was a wee. I eat up stories about UFO encounters, I've seen all the documentaries and back episodes of Unsolved Mysteries. With #UFOs (sorry, #UAPs now) back in the news, and the UAP Task Force report due to the US Senate in June, I was in the mood to create a little UFO tribute..

I think even Scully would approve.

Contact

2020. Inspired by the cosmos. 16" diameter made with the copper foil method. Featuring a large slice of agate rock - a beautiful, naturally occurring product of our Earth - along with art glass, bevels, and glass nuggets.

"You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other." ~ Carl Sagan