Camilla d'Errico (Edition 1/15) Photograph

Portrait of Camilla d'Errico The Dragon Stairway - Park Güell - 2019 High-resolution image on top-quality paper covered by a 3 mm methacrylate sheet with a dibond back frame, ready to hang. Each copy is numbered and signed on the back by hand. Certificate of Authenticity included. Camilla d’Errico is a Canadian illustrator from Italian origins but with a heavily manga-influenced style, she’s into comic, pop surrealism and toy design. She’s another of the artists I captured during the Five Points Festival in New York and, as usual, I looked for a more appropriate background for her once I was back in Barcelona. I wanted to find some setting that resembled a dreamlike palace from a fantasy tale for this symbiosis, so I decided to go to one of the most fantastical places I have ever seen: the Park Güell. I took many pictures there to try different options. Finally, I decided to place her on one of the most emblematic spots of the park: the Dragon Stairway. The symmetrical staircases create a nice frame for the portrait and even the name of the spot matches the dragons on her head, which represent the thought processes of the brain. With Mr Thoms we talked about the First Universal Law from the Hermetic Philosophy, the Law of Mentalism, which establishes that the universe is mental in its origin, everything starts in the mind before being manifested in the physical world. After that, with Eric Althin, we saw how your thoughts affect how you feel, how your mind can change your emotional state. With Camilla we are going to go one step forward and see how you can try to control your state of mind. Humans are the only beings on this planet capable of altering their feelings using their minds; but, instead of taking advantage of this gift by focusing on positive thinking, we become trapped in our own negative thoughts. It’s like having a piece of technology so advanced and powerful that we don’t even know how to use it properly. And we are only able to use any tool at its full capacity after we realize its full potential. We know that our thoughts are the origin of our actions, and our actions determine our future. All the ideas and projects we carry out start in our minds. That’s why we should pay a lot of attention to what we think. We are not aware of the importance of our way of thinking. As we only take into account physical reality, we forget about the importance of where this reality actually comes from. Let’s take a moment to consider this a little deeper and analyze its implications and consequences. If all starts in the mind and we have the capacity of deciding where to focus our thinking, this means we actually have the power of defining our own reality, we are the creators of our future. The place where we stand now is the result of all the decisions we took in our past, and our future depends on the decisions we take today. So deciding where to focus our attention is incredibly important, thoughts are not just empty invisible things, they are the origin of our future reality. The main problem we have is that negative thinking has become a habit for most people, something deeply ingrained in our brain. We talked about the way our brain creates new synaptic connections with Eric Althin, this means we can rewire our thought routines, as our brain is not a static processing machine, but an ever-changing interconnected network of millions of neurons at our service. We can rewire this network, we can educate our brain. But this is not an easy task, we are talking about an art studied and practised by the ancient masters. We are talking about fighting habits installed in our minds for decades. This is not a little software update, this is a full operating system formatting. We are talking about the ancient art of alchemy. The art of mind control has nothing to do with using some kind of mystical powers to control the outside world, but with your inner mental energy. And here we have another great misunderstanding of our times. In the same way the holographic principle does not mean we are actually living inside a 3D hologram, it’s just an analogy; alchemy was about “mental” and not “metal” transformation. It referred to transmuting lower mental vibrations into higher ones. The legend of the Philosopher Stone according to which this metal transformation was possible actually referred to the Hermetic Philosophy (Three Initiates, 1908, p. 7). Many analogies, metaphors, allegories, symbols and geometrical figures with occult meaning were used in ancient times to preserve knowledge through centuries, keeping it safe generation after generation from those who wanted to immerse humanity into darkness using fear and ignorance to control people and turning religions into systems of domination. In this way, only the initiates would be able to understand the true meaning of these references, while they remained a mystery for those not versed in the subject. Most of these allegories have been lost along the way, and the only thing that remains is a misunderstood metaphor, an analogy lost in history that only those capable of reading between the lines could understand centuries ago. Sacred writings are filled with these kinds of references which today are considered irrational beliefs or superstitions attributed to unevolved societies. While in fact the superiority complex and stupidity of our modern mentality is what doesn’t allow us to be able to correctly interpret and truly comprehend all this forgotten wisdom. Most of the teachings contained in the sacred texts, such as the Bible, the Kabbalah, and the Koran, are not understood today as we don’t know how to interpret them. Alchemy was not about turning copper into gold, it was about transforming your mental vibrations into higher ones by controlling your thoughts. So the ancients were not talking about some irrational belief, but about a process of enlightenment. As we saw with Joaquín Jara when we talked about the Third Universal Law, everything is vibration; not only what we perceive as physical matter formed by atoms vibrating in a constant flux, but also thoughts. This implies that everything is in a constant state of change, as vibrations can be lower or higher, denser or lighter. Matter is the densest form of vibration, change in the physical world is slow; while thought is a lighter kind of vibration, which allows a faster transmutation. That’s why there are two stairways behind Camilla that represent the process of ascension of the mind. They both lead to the center of the image where the clouds are white and gold, moving away from the red storm representing fire feelings. We can transform our thoughts to make them vibrate higher and change the way we see reality. It is your mind what actually determines how you see the world, that’s why Camilla is blinded by the dragon’s wing. There is no such thing as reality, if reality existed we would always agree on everything. But we constantly disagree because everyone processes reality in their own brain. We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. Our habits and our mood determine how we process information. Each one of the dragons on Camilla’s head represents a different way of thinking associated with a different element. The blue male dragon symbolizes negative fire thoughts, which generate emotions like hate, rage or anger towards others. This way of thinking is associated with an unbalanced excess of masculine energy, and can lead to aggressive actions. When fire thinking is dominant in our brain, we blame others for all the things that happen to us. The yellow female dragon represents negative water thoughts, which are linked to emotions like melancholy, sadness or worrying about people we think we should take care of. This way of thinking is associated with an unbalanced excess of femenine energy, and can lead to depression. When water thinking is dominant in our brain, we blame ourselves for all the bad things that happen to us. At this point it is important to remember something we learned with Horrible Adorables: Male and female energy have nothing to do with gender, a woman can have an excess of male energy in the same way a man can have an excess of female energy. The point is to find the balance between them. An excess of male energy will make us worry only about our own needs without taking into account other people, while excessive female energy can make us care only about others without taking into account our own needs. Only by finding balance we can care about ourselves while also taking others into account. Fire and water thinking can be positive when we find balance. If we are balanced, fire thoughts will generate active actions with clear initiative and objectives, while water thoughts will generate feelings of compassion and tenderness towards others. The combination of the male and female dragons gives birth to the young green dragon, water puts out the fire and creates positive thinking. The butterflies represent different thoughts flying around our heads until they are caught by one of the dragons. The young dragon is the only one that has caught a butterfly. This symbolizes the need of trying to “catch” positive thoughts, those that generate positive feelings. This may sound simple but it is incredibly hard. There is a very simple exercise with which one can easily see how difficult it is to control your mind: stop complaining for a week. When a negative thought comes to your brain, don’t express it and move on to a different thought. It sounds easy but you will find out if you try it that it is not. Every time you complain about anything, like the weather being too hot, or too cold, you have to restart the timer. You will realize that it is nearly impossible to spend just a single day without complaining. You will discover that you are constantly complaining about everything. If you manage to spend a whole week without complaining and moving away from negative thoughts, you will see how your life starts to change, as you are starting to discover what the ancient art of alchemy was about. You are transforming your thoughts, turning low-vibration dense thinking into higher vibration lighter thinking, you are transmuting your mental energy, sublimating your ideas, making them golden and noble. This is the true meaning of alchemy. But this is just the first step of the process. Those who know how to control their thoughts have great power, as they can change their emotional state when they are alone. But they are still under the influence of others. You may know how to control your own way of thinking, but what others think about you can still affect you. When others express their thoughts about you, they have the power of altering your mood. And you should be the only one with such power, defining the way you feel is a privilege that you should keep to yourself, and yourself only. Here we enter the second stage of the mastery of alchemy. Those who truly master the art of alchemy are not affected by what others think or say about them. As long as the words of others define your actions you will be at their mercy. At this point we must establish a key concept which is essential to be able to free yourself from the control of others. When other people generate negative emotions in you, such as making you feel you are not strong or not good enough, they are trying to manipulate you. In psychology this is called “emotional blackmail,” and it is used to make someone act in a certain way, to obtain what somebody else wants from you. This may be done consciously or subconsciously. Some people even think they are doing it for your own good, like a father telling his son he must be stronger to be a “real man,” just because that’s what his own father used to tell him. We tend to repeat our “education” patterns and transmit traumas from generation to generation. There is a really big difference between friendly advice and manipulation, and you can detect it with a really simple exercise: Ask yourself if those words make you feel good or bad, if they trigger positive or negative emotions in you. If they make you feel strong or empowered, if they make difficult emotions easier to deal with, those are words of advice from a friend. When they make you feel you are weak or bad, when they make you think there is something wrong with you, those are words of someone who is trying to manipulate you. You are constantly surrounded by people trying to define your actions, even those who call themselves friends do so. People are constantly making comments about you or the way you act and carefully checking your reaction, observing if they get the desired effect. When your reaction to those provocations is complete indifference, the message they receive is you cannot be manipulated. You are immutable, you transmit an image of high self-esteem and self-control. Only when you have emotions based on confrontation and aggression inside you you will be affected by those same emotions coming from the outside world. Those thoughts will resonate in you only if they find a feeling with the same vibration; otherwise, you will feel totally indifferent to them. The true alchemist is totally unaffected by the outside world, as he or she has found balance in the inner world, and by refining their mental energy alchemists have the power of altering the way the see reality, as it is constructed in our brain and therefore different for each one of us. True alchemists can be insulted without showing any kind of reaction, as they don’t look for themselves in the eyes of others, they don’t try to find the way they are in the reflection of other people. Now we can finally see the true meaning of alchemy and the power it gives to those who know how to work with it. Only when you are able to control your own thoughts to move away from negativity and not be affected by what others think or say about you, you can call yourself a true master of the art of alchemy. It is a long and challenging journey, a process of self-control and empowerment, but one that is worth it, as it gives you the true power of defining the way you feel and it allows you to cut the strings others use to control you. It is essential to focus this process on positive thinking. When a negative thought comes to your mind, just move away from it, don’t punish yourself every time negative thinking appears. Keep in mind that you are fighting against really old habits. Once you become a true alchemist, you will be the creator of your reality, the architect of your future, and the owner of your own destiny. Only those who control both the inner energy of their minds and the outer vibrations coming from others are worthy of being called alchemists.

Photography:Digital on Other

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:15

Size:32.5 W x 21.7 H x 0.4 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.