Olga R. Ziangirova
 

Humane Body inside the Universal Space.
 

Computer games as usual are  containing humane or monstrous personages within their simulative spaces, and each game has its own environment, its own micro universe with it special inhabitants. 

In order to find, may be, some new solutions or the ways of the interrelations between the artificial space and a personage within it, could be interesting to discover and to describe some authentic patterns of an interrelation between an individual and the outer universe, or a humane body and the universal space. 

Vision of a humane body as a spatial universal Model is quite typical for the most of authentic and traditional cultures. "Cosmological" and creative functions of a symbolical primal body are mentioned in many scriptures and myths.

This "ideal" body functions, as the pattern, which contains within itself the fundamental principles of world creation. The general creative process is, first of all, oriented on these essential principles and not just on the body itself. This notion is based on the vision of the perfect basic structures within the material world and the humane body, as one of its elements.

On the basis of such structure the word is organized. 
As in the well known theory of self-organised systems, this structure works as the main principle of self modification of the world within the process of its creation.

It is well known, that in Vedas, for example, "cosmological" process or the processes of spatial organization is starting with putting together the parts of a body of the symbolical primal humane being and is finishing with its revitalization. 

Such "methods" of world creation are described in different mythologies, including Egyptian. In fact, these mythological notions are representing principles of self-organisation and ordering, which are common for material environments and objects. 

As it was mentioned before, according to latest computer based scientific researches, all the processes within the physical universe are being supported by these principles. Without following them, evolutionary and constructive processes within the matter and its existence wouldn't be possible. 

These essential structural principles, which in metaphorical ways are interpreted in different ways by different mythological systems, are seem to be common for any object within the self modified system of ideal universe, whether it is the humane body, part of the universe, or the universe itself. 

Later cultural traditions had included this vision into the principles of composition. In antic tradition architectural memorials and temples were constructed according to the same compositional rules and harmonic mathematical proportions, as the sculptures of antic gods and goddesses and were oriented on the "golden proportions" or so-called universal proportional "orders". 

In Indian and Tibetan traditional art proportional universal structures were especially important in the process of work of a sculptor or an artist at an iconographical image. 

These ideal structures were projected on the images of divine personages as some subtle skeletons or compositional axes during the creative work of an artist. It means, that, according to the tradition, "ideal" body naturally and originally includes in itself essential structural principles of the outer world and the universe as a whole.

In Iranian miniatures, as well, the whole composition and its proportions, the body of main personage were corresponded with the environmental construction of the whole piece. 

Both of the attitudes - projecting of an "ideal" humane body as a Model on the outer universe, or projecting of the ideal universe, as a structure over the space for creating the image of an ideal humane body, are the traces of a holistic world vision, that is still represented in traditional arts. 

In fact, most of traditional art works originally intended to put into a balance the relationships between individual being and the outer world and were, just the communicative, ordering actions, intending to harmonize it. On the other hand, they were oriented against the entropy, mythological primal chaotic forces, which existed before world creation, before human's birth - the creation of a body.

Due to this, motifs of cosmogony are quite typical for traditional dances and rituals. For example, in traditions of Siberian shamanism, during the ritual, the body of a dancer, being dressed into a special costume, was associated with a universal model.
This costume included different structural elements, which were able to transform  the primal chaos.

For this, shaman's costume usually is painted with the ornaments, which are symbolizing the main universal levels axes and the spatial rhythms. Sometimes they are including the images of "world tree“ - the most popular world symbolical model and its different inhabitants, mythological animals and birds. 

Such an ornamentation, according to the belief, is helping shaman in his "virtual" traveling across the world levels, in overcoming evil forces, or in putting them into the order.

After finishing ritual and achieving the aims of his symbolical actions, he is "coming back" from his travels to the normal "social" dimensions and conditions. After that, he or she removes his ritual dresses and attributes, along with the universal symbolical identifications of his/her own. 

 According to the tradition, ritual is as well, an interaction with the creative powers of Universe, with the beginning of Creation. 
The shaman's body, his or her dress and the attributes, their parts, are not the cultural signs or decorative symbols, but the temporal  symbolical mediums, instruments of such an interaction. 

During the ritual, shaman is experiencing him- or herself as a part of surrounding universal space. Each of his movements is meaningful and supposed to be inspired by the creative and harmonizing forces of nature and universe. 

In "Chet" tradition practitioner is temporary inwardly associates the parts of his body with different parts of landscape: a head with the sky, shoulders and hands with mountains, hair with the forests, essentially  interacting with the powers of nature, space, sky, stars, water, plants and Earth. 
It means, on the essential level, he is integrating himself or his ideal inner projections with the ideal structures of the environment.

As it was noted before, shamanist ritual, in its original form has the aim to put into a harmonious balance different universal powers, levels and dimensions. It is based on the idea, that each even the most chaotic power, in a result, is supposed to act according to an essential order, and in a substantial correspondence with the other powers and dimensions.

These even the most chaotic powers and dimensions are, on the essential level, organized into a kind of dynamical meta-system, which is existing and developing according to the general primal order behind or deeply within the whole universal system. 

This inner meta-system can be actualized through the awareness of an action or creative process, in order at the necessary moment, to put the whole system into a balance.