Chronicles d'Anu: Ancient Magic

 

Many years ago I created a series of Apophysis fractal images with short stories attached. Fantasias..I called them the Chronicles d'Anu. I have decided to blog them. This is the first:

Ancient Magic

 

We had walked many hot, dry days through the snaking, steep Kimberley gorges. Then, late one afternoon, way high above the sighing pools, we followed shelving tracks into a side canyon and found a cave under a ledge.

Strange dancing figures, bizarre ancient images, curiously elegant, like nothing we'd ever seen before in Aboriginal art, were etched on the sides of the entrance.  [link]

As we ventured further in over the broken boulders through a narrow tunnel, we were amazed as the cave opened into a huge domed cathedral-sized space.

All around in a wide circle we saw what seemed to be the tumbled ruins of Stonehenge-like standing stones. An ancient temple.

 Exhausted, we sat and looked around the ruins in wonder as the late afternoon light streamed in from the one hole high in the domed cavern roof. The last piercing rays of the setting sun suddenly shafted to the central altar stone where, as we watched, a golden orb materialised, hovering, scintillating, filling the cavern with an extraordinary glow.

From afar the sounds of the distant gorge's sighing pools intensified, filling the cavern with a haunting lament.

As the sun shafting ray withdrew the orb disappeared...all became dark and so very, very silent.

Chronicles d'Anu - Kimberly Botanical Journals

http://zweezwyy.deviantart.com/art/Ancient-Magic-by-zweeZwyy-85724841

Latest Apophysis

Here are a few of my latest fractals made with Apophysis.
You can see them larger size & read details of their creation
here on deviantART

Dugong Habitat - where seagrass sways

Sing Ho! for the Life of a Droid

T-Time

Cosmos

Created by tao-armonia using a selection of my Apophysis and Incendia fractals combined with the music of Vangelis, his presentation takes you artfully on that primal spiritual journey that resonates in all our souls.

Follow this link http://www.tao-armonia.com/
for the free download
and view Cosmos for yourself.

Enjoy with love from Georges and Anu to all

BLUESKY

BLUESKY OVER WALL STREET

Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin' a song
Nothin' but bluebirds all day long

Irving Berlin lyrics

It seems the global financial crisis is turning the corner into better times ahead. Well here's hoping. My latest Apophysis Escher-esq piece above echoes that sentiment. Maybe the leaders are just talking it up, maybe the unemployed are still suffering and maybe things still don't look as rosy as they could, but hope feels good.

Here we've had one of the best winters. Not too cold, good rains, and now endless blue sky days as we go through our usual end of July - start of August calm sunny dry days I call our "champagne weather". Each breath feels like "soma", recharging and reinvigorating every cell & fiber of the being.

Spring is very close, it usually comes arrives here in next couple of weeks. Already the Jasmine and Peach blossom are in abundance, heralding the warm days to come.

My life is Apophysis, as it has been for 2 years now. The complexities and intricacies of chaos tamed into meaningful art is so all-absorbing, so hypnotic. I am an addict now. How I love this addiction. The rewards for slavery to this machine, ephemeral tho they may be and only available thru it, fill my waking hours with delight and obsess my dreams as well.

PC addiction is often looked on as a problem. I can certainly see the problems of computer, IT & gaming addiction if the associated behaviors affect our survival. But at my age I don't think those concerns apply, as long as I maintain my health & safety. If I am hurting no-one, staying happy and producing a minimal ecological footprint with it, I do not see the harm. You can check out my work by following the links on side-bar and make your own judgments, remembering that I am a lame old woman and cannot function as that riparian botanist I once was. It is a rewarding way to pass the days of my dotage.

Swine flu is spreading exponentially throughout Australia. People are dying every day from it. The news today is that it has been found in pigs in a NSW piggery. Bellingen hospital staff & beds have been reduced by one-third by it after a swine flu patient was treated there and they are sending new patients to other hospitals. Yet still people are saying it is just the normal winter flu toll. OK, no panic, but surely it is better to face reality and embrace what is really happening, rather than live in delusions of what we would prefer to think.

The Grey shrike thrush has just landed in studio in front of me as I type this. It hops across to mirror and lets forth with its excruciatingly delicious piping melodious harmonic call. Go to the link to hear its' call. How can anything feel bad when the day is so magnificent and my visitor brings such rich gifts. What is happening on our planet is disturbing, but here all is peace and I am in bliss.

TATHATA

WINTER SOLSTICE OFFERINGS

Here are two offerings to celebrate the
Winter Solstice, 2008.


*Chronicles d'Anu
A fractal fantasia.

*Anu Fractal Style
Have I created a "New Style" of fractal?
You be the judge.

...........................................................................................................

CHRONICLES D'ANU

Recently I've created a fantasia - a series of fractal images with attached brief fictions that link as the Chronicles d'Anu. Fantasy imaginings based on various episodes of my life's journey.

I posted the series on deviantART and some images are also on Flickr.


Chronicles d'Anu

SECRETS IN THE CAVE


ANCIENT MAGIC


WILDE EYE


MOONFLOWER


SCARLET PASSIONFLOWER


SPELLBOUND






SWAMP SECRETS


Hope like what you find as you browse these old Journals.

..................................................................................................


ANU STYLE OF FRACTAL

DeviantART's cmptrwhz recently posted an Apophysis tutorial for the Julian Chain. I played with it and came up with heaps of images & posted the ones you see below. He calls them a new style of fractal. Read about all that here.

The below are the "new Style" fractal images.

What do you think?

Witchy Brew

Caldron of Troubled Bubbles

Are these below also included in the "New Style" category?

Buddha Bowl

The Cherry Bowl

Cmptrwhz says not, the "New Style" having the brew in the bowl being the difference.

What do you think?

Enjoy,

Anu.

PEAK OIL

Living in Interesting Times.

Image created by me in Apophysis

PEAK OIL

It's here, right now, and we are all faced with
Titanic-scale consequences.
Just how will it all play out?

Powerlessness.
An interesting concept.

We should have acted in the 70-80's,
but maybe nobody really believed
this scenario would come to pass.

The sudden awakening of the 00's
to the reality of the tsunami nature of the catastrophes
of over-population, inappropriate technology, profligate consumerism, greed,
power-hungry rulers who fiddle while Rome burns,
biosphere breakdown,
climate change, gross pollution on all levels,
(etc. etc., you know the litany),
is just too late.

Spaceship Earth has too many passengers,
is powered by polluting technologies
controlled by power mongers with agendas
that somehow don't include
the well-being of the passengers and crew.

But of course I/you/we know all this.

Now we reap the whirlwind.

Incoming!

Hold tight, it's going to be a bumpy ride folks.
Prepare for colateral damage.

FANTASTIC DIVERSIONS

RECENT DIVERSIONS IN APOPHYSIS

Ancient Magic

Migaloo Singing

Secrets of the Cave

Full Moonrise over Rainbow Falls

All the above can be seen, with production details and, in some cases, a bit of prose poetry, in my deviantArt Gallery


I have been so sad. The disasters of the past weeks in Myanmar and China have been so appalling I haven't been able to stop crying at what I've been seeing on the news. So I have been diverting my mind creating fantasy art in Apophysis. Feeling so helpless, unable to do a thing to help, what else can I do except try to occupy my mind with the beauty within and without. There is enough being said about it all by others, so I'm not going into either horror here.

So I give you my art.

Ancient Magic was created in response to ideviant's extraordinary recent works, Sanctum Sanctorum and Illuminati Tablet , evoking old stones and fantasy myths. Unfortunately my attempts lacks the expertise of his works, but I was able to express something of my own fantasy myths, based on the Bradshaws, which would horrify my old Prehistory Rock Art prof no doubt! All done in the spirit of fantasy Michael I assure you. No, I don't believe in that twaddle, science is science, but I can have a bit of fun fantasising, can't I?

Meanwhile the champagne weather of late Autumn here is giving us endless beautiful clear sunny days reaching the mid 20's round middle of day, but crisply chilly in mornings and nights. The full moon in the cold crystalline air fills me with the joy of being alive, thankfully happy to be safe here in my mountain idyll in this wonderful Land of Oz, as I gaze into the universe and ponder It All.

MANDELMANIA

While exploring an Apophysis tutorial for creating Wires and Tubes Fractals I found how to create the classic Mandelbrot in Apophysis 2.06c beta 3D Hack.

Here are a few:

MANDELMANIA

HOT MANDELBROT

CLASSIC MANDELBROT

The below was created with the same Wires & Tubes tutorial.

COOKING WITH GAS

Finding how to create these fractals has given me a lot of joy. Feel like I'm taking Apophysis fractals away from the types of images usually associated with this program, opening new possibilities. Keep wondering what will be the next amazement this extraordinary program will reveal as I continue this journey of discovery.

Life is Jesta Bowl of Cheeries

Latest Apophysis fractals

THE CHERRY BOWL

CROCHET

TROPICAL FISH

Playing around on Apophysis is a fun & productive way of passing my last days.

The endless rain persists, but last week has seen champagne Autumn coolness kick in with showers early, giving spectacular misty dawns, followed by glorious mornings of sunshine before the clouds move in to bring more showers later & into the night. Gentle soft rain. Couldn't be better, for wet season weather.

Of course the insects are in full abundance, sandflies especially.
I've had a couple of scary spider bites that have made me very sick for a few days.

The flock pigeons have arrived, but their numbers so few it makes me weep.
Once the noise of hundreds, thousands, darkening the sun, was like a low F1-11 passing over treetops. Yesterday the flock numbered less than 20 birds.

The depletion of wildlife as our numbers increase and invade the last wild places is past critical, Researchers keep giving us the facts, but it's all fait accompli.

Like the coming climate change events, like our uncontrolled numbers impacting on the life support systems, unstoppable.

So we put it down to biosphere evolution. This is what happens. Watch and learn.
Doing anything is a shoulda, coulda. Back then, when we first became aware.
But few listened and those who shoulda & coulda didn't.
Fact is we didn't & now it is too late.

How do we stop the icecaps melting?
How do we stop the ocean conveyor belt currents changing?
How do we stop the populations expanding?
How do we control Mammon, pollution?

Oh yes, there are/were ways and all hands to the pumps, but, drat, too little, too late.

It coulda worked

It shoulda worked

But it ain't gunna work because the process is in motion.

Prepare for the culling.

The northern spring flowers and we in the south eat the fruits of autumn.

Enjoy the cherries.

CRYSTAL WHORLS

This animation was created in Apophysis 2.06c 3D Hack.
Production details can be seen here on original flame.

LAST DAZE BEFORE CLIMATE CHANGE RAVE PARTY

EVENT IN THE HATCHERY

............................



ANOTHER RANTING RAVE
FOR SUE

&
YOU

if you can bear it

!!

I'm afraid you wouldn't like me very much if I told you what I do with strays, but I do live on a wildlife reserve and domestic escapees wreak havoc. The wildlife has been seriously decimated by feral animals in the time I've lived here.

I grew up with a dog called AspadelladouchByTheSea (Aspy for short), 2 cats called Pinkle & Purr & later another called Black Magic. Later I bred myself an Arab stallion called Banzai (from Banjo out of Ayesha). I came from that kind of 'normal'.

But my travels showed me our impacts on ecosystems and when I came here I dedicated my life to conservation and righting the land-use wrongs, as this land had been ravaged by logging, bananas, cattle, pigs & goats by various different owners over 150 years since Euro settlement.

Feral animals were abundant. A big management problem as being close to a National Park which some people seem to think is the place to dump unwanted pets, plus having a next door so-called Wildlife Reserve, which then had caged animals, both native and exotic, so it was actually a zoo in effect. The captives frequently escaped.

Worst of all were the packs of hounds the local dairy farmers fed milk slops to after the milking and then let loose to roam the mountains in marauding packs.The idea was the hounds became tick-infested as they moved thru the bush and they developed immunity (or died horribly). When they returned for their milk slops they were milked for serum which was then sold to vets who used it to save their client's tick-affected pets.

Obviously a pack of hungry dogs hunting in the wilderness ate any animals they could, including the koalas, wallabies, possums & etc etc etc.

Fortunately those practices ceased n 90's when environmental groups lobbied and prohibitive laws were finally passed that recognized the values of native ecosystems conservation. But much damage had been done by then.

The wild dogs, descendants of those packs and dumped pets, came around after my scraps and howl in packs, very unnerving. They have been known to attack people so I keep my doors closed at night. Fortunately they are fewer these days.

Every now & again well-meaning neighbors, or the Parks Service, put down 1080 poisons baits & that gets a few of them. A horrible death I also have to endure as they don't always die quietly & tidily in distant unseen places.

Then carrion eaters dispose of the carcass. So the quolls, bandicoots, possums, skinks & other native wildlife that eat carrion die too. And the poison goes all they way down to the dung beetles & worms.

Cats are as much of a problem and much harder to eradicate. I saw a feral cat here a few weeks ago that was the size of a bobcat, very scarey. That was no sweet pretty kitty can tell you.

Once there were possums, quolls, bandicoots, pademelons, skinks, frogs, koalas, echidnas, snakes and the full array of inhabitants one would find in a healthy wet to dry sclerophyll forests & rainforest montaine ecosystem.

In the wet we just had I saw ONE frog. In the 80's the roar of their mating numbers around the ephemeral pools made it impossible to sleep some nights.

Then came the cane toads.

Then went the frogs, the snakes, the skinks, the bandicoots & all that used to predate on frogs & ate canetoads instead. Deadly poisonous creatures. I have one frozen in my freezer as speak. The only way to dispose of them is to burn them they are so toxic.

Now I feed the kookaburra so she can breed, because her food chain is severed. I don't like feeding wildlife, but must say when she turned up with 2 emergent nestlings last week I nearly cried with relief. But now what will THEY eat? They are a species of giant kingfisher & rely on streams for fish & amphibians & snakes,lizards & skinks to survive.The streams have been depleted thru kids throwing stones & turning over the rocks & taking whatever they fancy might be fun in a bottle, till it dies. Plus pollution from Park visitor impacts & increased settlement impacts on the riparian zones.

My grass used to be grazed by a herd of about 20 macropds of various species, wallabies & pademelons mostly. Now ONE pademelon timidly grazes, keeping right close to the edges near the surrounding bush.

Now I have to employ a man to cut the grass. That means machinery and the noise disturbs what other creatures there are, plus inadvertently killing the odd legless lizard, of which very few are left.I haven't seen a skink in several years and I used to have about 20 scooting around the studio & outside, very friendly,. They controlled the insect that wanted to live with me too..

Possums are now totally absent...gone...I used to have about 20 of about 4 different species.

Quolls are GONE, haven't seen one or heard one in 10 years.

I now have ONE koala where in 80's there were 20+, in the 90's there were 8 or so... now only ONE!! I heard it crying the other night, so sad, no reply to it's mating call this year when normally the screams of ecstasy would make yr hair stand on end for hours at a time. I called this place Koala Mountain Sanctuary & dedicated it to the conservation of the core population of koalas it then supported. It seems it will be a sad epitaph, not a statement of success. There will be no new generations. The dogs got them all except this last solitary male.

All this because of people letting their cats & dogs stray or dumping them.
It's not the animal's fault. It's people.

So I'm afraid I'm seriously unsentimental when I see the plight of these uncontrolled domestic ex-pets. Cats and dogs are very efficient hunters and because Australia's major large carnivorous predator is the introduced dingo, which only arrived around 4,000 years ago, most of the wildlife species don't have that necessary instinct to combat them, so they are just sitting ducks, so to speak.

I had a friend who worked in Diplomatic Corps & had just come back from a stint in Martinique,some years back now. She told me the wildlife on those Caribbean islands has been so decimated as to be reduced to very few species. It is the same world over.

Wherever we go with our baggage & friends, we destroy the very base of the systems that have evolved only by the full compliment of their native inhabitants. Take links from the chain and it all falls apart. We are a very uncomfortable species to be a part of.

I thought I was part of the solution, but find I am a very definite part of the problem.

So, sorry to rain on yr parade, but it would be hypocritical of me to nod, smile & wave when I feel so very much otherwise on this issue of saving strays.

Please don't take it personally, because I respect you and where you are coming from. I thought if I spelled out clearly what has happened here you could understand why I am of that opinion.

My brand of green is very deep ecology green.

I am beyond being aghast at what we do and have done, so now I just try to live as lightly on the planet as I possibly can and watch the movie.
I can't combat The Greater, the damage is done and we are now reaping the consequences of our mass stupidity.

Maybe we should write messages on the cave walls now...

Control our numbers,

Respect the life supporting resource base & its component working parts

Use appropriate non-polluting technology

So if there are any survivors they can at least have a few guidelines to a more successful sustainable management plan for our species' survival in its' next manifestation.

The weather has suddenly become full-blown beautiful diamond days summer.

Butterflies everywhere. At least they are still in abundance. Maybe because there are fewer birds to eat them!

I will try not to think of these things and return to fractalising to divert my mind in the creation of useless ephemeral images that are total self indulgence so I can post them on DA & Flickr & have 3 or 4 Commenters say cool or WOW or some such ego booster.

Ho Hum

STARSHIP HANGAR

Readying for the Voyage to next Goldilocks Planet

as

if

..............

THE GIFT OF WATER

Flooded in as 16 weeks of grey wetness culminates in a cloudburst that dumps 185 mm (mostly in 2 hours). Roaring rushing waters surround me in this studio as I write.The gift of life. Very frightening tho, as the storm was in the middle of the night and lightning crashing far too close followed by deafening and numbing thunderclaps that left me stiff with shock. Petrified of landslides in such deluges, as I live on a scree slope which turns to one big waterfall after a couple of inches. House sized boulders perch uphill from studio. They rocked when I climbed them (years ago) so they are not exactly embedded & secure.

The following fractals, created in Apophysis, as per, have been inspired by all this water coming to us at last after such a long drought.

THE BIG SPLASH

WATER WORLD

WEB PORTAL

TWISTED TUBE STAR

All the above evolved from the one Tube-star-Twist script. Go here for all the production details.