CAMP '24 – The Firmament Portal
Built for the 2024 Calling All Magical People (CAMP!) Festival in Darlington, MD.
There is a portal on the lake. An illuminated pyramid made of pyramids. A marriage of light and material, of creativity and mathematics. It is a source of great energy: fiery energy with the potential to loosen our grip from the surly bonds of earth so we might soar through the heavenly elements of water and air.
Will you pause here for a moment? Inhale and feel yourself exchanging breath with the trees surrounding you? Press your feet into the earth where decay and growth reside together? Will you press the skin of your hand against the skin of a fellow traveler and marvel at each other as alchemical creations?
You are a creature of nature, a creature of the material world. You can touch it and smell it and hear it. Each day, your body navigates the stuff of the world around it.
But who has not used their eyes to imagine themselves amongst the stars?
Who hasn’t wondered what else lays beyond what we can touch?
For centuries, people gazed into the sprinkled abyss of the night sky and saw the walls of a vast container. Like glitter affixed to the interior of a bowl placed over the known cosmos. The natural philosophers of the west called this boundary the firmament.
Most toiled and lived without paying this much mind. But many - perhaps like you - wondered what lay beyond the firmament. Their wonder was not idle. They - perhaps also like you - believed that the tremendous truths of the universe beyond the material world might be gained by seeking knowledge about oneself and nature.
No physical body could ever reach the firmament, much less go beyond it. Instead, it was a place that could only be accessed through expanding the tools of the mind.
This was called Enlightenment.
Wait, traveler. Just a moment more. Will you? Your journey has been long. You have felt pain, sought understanding, experienced transcendent joy, and found connection. You have worked hard to arrive at the shores of Enlightenment.
There is a portal on the lake. An illuminated pyramid made of pyramids. A marriage of light and material, of creativity and mathematics. It is a source of great energy: fiery energy with the potential to loosen our grip from the surly bonds of earth so we might soar through the heavenly elements of water and air.
Pass through the firmament into the fifth element: aether, the quintessence. Breathe in the air of the gods.
Come to the chapel on the shore. Have you not spent your life working to arrive at this moment?