ABSTRACT

This dissertation is an exploration of the ground of being through a study of dialogue between various modes of being and forms of knowledge.
The modes of being are represented by landscapes, individuals who interpret the philosophical and imagistic significance of these landscapes and the interpretative communities in relation to which these individuals are responding. The individuals and the landscapes they interpret are represented by the Oshun Forest in Nigeria and Susanne Wenger and her collaborators who work on and in relation to the landscape. They are also constituted by the Glastonbury landscape in its reconception by Katherine Maltwood and Mary Caine.
The forms of knowledge consist primarily in the imaginative interpretation of spatial forms. The central demonstration of this is in the sculptural, architectural and ideational reconstruction of the Oshun Forest in Nigeria and the cartographic and ideational reinterpretation of the Glastonbury landscape by Katherine Maltwood and Mary Caine.
The forms of knowledge are also represented by our adaptation of divinatory epistemology as exemplified primarily by the Ifa system of divination, in conjunction with insights derived from other divinatory forms such as the Chinese I Ching and Western astrology. We also adapt conceptions of forms of mind developed within Hermeticism and Western neo-Paganism, particularly as these are developed in the work of the Hermetic theorist Dion Fortune. We argue that the epistemic forms realized by the divinatory, Hermetic and neo-Pagan perspectives embody metaphysical ideas and epistemological processes that are central to an exploration of our subject matter. The ideas and modes of expression they actualize are transposed into the idiom embodied by the dominant epistemic frameworks of modern Western discourse. This transposition is also effected in relation to the effort to dramatise those aspects of their conceptions that can not be embodied in terms of modern Western discourse but which could represent possibilities of expansion of the metaphysical and epistemic fields currently central to the Western episteme.
This process of transposing the ideas of what constitutes marginalised discourses in relation to the Western episteme is facilitated through a dialogue between the marginalised and dominant discourses. This dialogue between discursive forms is developed in terms of an effort to examine the central questions of the existence and nature of the ground of being as mediated through dialogue between modes of being. The central dominant discursive forms explored, complementing philosophical explorations of space, are philosophy and the visual and verbal arts.
The study of these artistic and theoretical constructions proceeds in relation to the exploration of questions of relationships between modes of being. These explorations are conducted in terms of a dialogue between various forms of knowledge. We adapt here the understanding of “forms of knowledge” as primary structuring forms developed by the human mind in its effort to interpret existence, as developed by Paul Hirst.
Our focus in adapting this conception is to examine critically, in relation to our exploration of cognitive interfaces, the interface between the genealogy of the notion of the structuring of existence in terms of metaphysical or epistemological matrices from its origin in Plato's Forms as structuring archetypes of being, to Hirst's conception of structuring forms of human knowledge. We examine the distinctions and relationships between the Platonic concept which depicts the Forms as predating and transcendent of the human mind and Hirst's notion of the Forms he discusses as constructions of the mind which embody distinct but interrelated epistemic procedures.
This analysis is correlative with our exploration of relationships between cognitive agents-the knowing subject; cognitive forms-that which is known, the object of knowledge; cognitive processes-the procedures through which knowledge is gained; and cognitive instruments,-the tools, whether material or non-material, ideational, for example, which act as facilitators and catalysts and in the process of gaining understanding.
The relationships between the various conceptual frames at play in the dissertation are dramatised by the following diagram:

This diagram suggests the constitution of the various disciplinary frames in relation to the question of the ground of being. This ground is constituted/ cognized through the integration between the various disciplines. This suggests the effort to explore the central research question through a mediatory, dialogical relationship between the various disciplinary frames.
The notion of the ground of being as cognized and or constituted through the interplay between various disciplines do not have the same meaning. The notion of constitution implies that this metaphysical ground is a creation of the interpretive processes of the researcher as they examine the questions and issues that they explore. The ground of being is therefore understood as a creation of the mind as realized in the researchers’ critical and imaginative processes. It therefore exits purely as a mental construction and has no reality apart from the particular epistemological frame through which it is realised by the researcher’s investigations. This conception is perhaps similar to certain strands in Western thought, as represented perhaps by Kant’s notion of the manner in which the mind structures its cognition of phenomenal forms and to Feyarabend’s exploration of intellectual strategies in Against Method. The Kantian examples, certainly, and possibly, that of Feyarabend, are more complex than this brief note suggests, but this note is meant to indicate lines of enquiry we shall pursue in detail in the body of the dissertation. The notion of the ground of being as cognized through the dialogue between disciplines, on the other hand, implies the idea that the ground of being exists independently of the mind and is grasped through the critical and imaginative activity of the exploring mind. It is possible, of course, to correlate these two conceptions of the relationship between the mind and the ground of being, as seems to be done in Zen Buddhism and in Tibetan Buddhism, perhaps inspired by the non-dual philosophy of Nagarjuna. That possibility, along with that represented by the binary oppositions described in the body of this note, will be explored in the course of our investigations.
The question of constitution of phenomena as opposed to or in unity with that of the cognition of phenomena is central to this dissertation in terms of our central investigative strategy. This consist in the exploration of the question of the degree to which the artists cognise or constitute through their imaginative and interpretive activity the phenomena they explore. This examination of the cognitive activity of the artists leads us into our exploration of the relationship of such questions to human relationship to the universe, as this is realized in terms of the question of the existence and nature of a ground of being. May such a ground be realized in terms of perceptual relationships between phenomena? Even if such relationships are one sided as as currently constituted in the dominant forms represented by mainstream Western discourse? May this relationship be understood metaphorically in terms of the indirect influence of the various modes of being extant on earth in shaping human conceptions of the possibilities of existence in terms of the biological, geological and psychological characteristics that constitute existence, either on earth or even in the cosmos as is evident from the range heretofore achieved in human investigations of the cosmos? Or in relation to non-Western cultures, could we understand nonhuman and non-animal forms as constitutive of the human perception in terms of their own participation in forms of mind? Data from a range of accounts of encounters in relationships of sacred spaces suggest that the human experience of sacred space transgresses conventional understandings of the non-agency of landscape forms and suggests the need to conceive of such spaces less more in terms of a non-metaphorical and literal interpretation of Ivahkifi’s characterisation of what he describes as the nonhuman life of these landscapes which manifests itself in a pageant of place names and myths. Ivhakif’s conception could be understood in metaphorical terms, in which the landscapes would be understood as possessing agency in the sense of operating as forms that impinge upon human consciousness in ways that facilitate particular responses from the human self, and this mode of impinging grasped as primarily material and at best atmospheric, as in Hardy’s powerful description of Egdon Heath at the opening of the Return of the Native. This mode of impinging could also be understood as manifesting a character reminiscent of the extension of notions of atmospheric influence, of topographic influence into conceptions of active agency, or even of certain numinous qualities which are difficult to categorise but which some respondents have been compelled to characterise in terms of personification of these spaces.
How do we develop methods of thinking through the range of ideas that move from the metaphorical to the literal conception of agency in relation to landscape? We propose here to adapt an approach that is inspired by the systems that could enable us navigate this range of interpretations. These systems are represented primarily by the divinatory epistemology of Ifa and the conception of forms of mind developed by Fortune in relation to Hermetic and neo Pagan thought.