PASKUNDJI TRANSMUTATIONS

Vessel 369

Voice: ma8iam__
Guitar, electronics: Progenol
Drums: Irakli Choladze
Keyboard, electronics: Bgerosani
Illustrator: Irakli Chkhartishvili
Cameraman: Zviad Gamsachurdia
Film actor: Irakli Chkhartishvili
Video: Animatek, Vanessa Fernandez, Progenol

 

A production by Demetre Gamsachurdia

“Paskundji Transmutations" is a musical event where sound, rhythm, word, and image merge into a unified experience. The synthesis of video projection, stage elements, spoken text, and live music performance aims to take the audience on a journey through those hyper-realistic inner spaces known in mythology as the Underworld and the Higher Realms. What is the Paskundji? It is a spiritual bird from Georgian mythology. In ancient Georgia, it was believed that the Paskundji carries humans who have fallen into the underworld back up to the sunlight realm (Samzeo).

The inseparable opponent of the Paskundji is the Gveleshapi, a mythical serpent. Their shared dwelling place is the Tree of Life: at the top, the Paskundji builds its nest and raises its chicks, while coiled at the base of the tree, its enemy—the Gveleshapi—waits, devouring the chicks one by one. Human being, who is in distress himself, comes to the troubled Paskundji's aid. The human defeats the Gveleshapi, slits open its belly, and returns the chicks to the Paskundji.

Grateful, the Paskundji places the human on its back and flies towards the Higher Realms. Along the journey, the human feeds the hungry bird with flesh from his own thigh; however, upon reaching the sunlight realm, the Paskundji heals these wounds with its spit. A human's journey begins by descending into the seven spheres of the underworld. Afterward, with the help of the Paskundji, human being may ascend into the seven spheres of the Higher Realms. One of these realms is Tsorano. What is Tsorano? It is the dimension to which the Paskundji carries human being after passing Chirano. Unlike Chirano—the first of the Higher Realms, where the mysterious, transparent glow of the moon flows like waves —Tsorano is a faster, more dynamic place. Associated with Juma (Mercury), Tsorano, the second of the Higher Realms, is in a state of constant transformation. Its radiant, piercing light consists of living thought-constructs. Here, the very mechanisms of thinking and regeneration hold sway. The underworld demands more from a human than simply defeating the Gveleshapi. The condition of the underworld eventually results in the destruction of all traits that do not align with the light of the Higher Realms; these traits shed from the human like a serpent's skin. It is this transformation that gives the Paskundji the strength to lift up the human into the Higher Realms.

The journey of the Paskundji and of the human being is a journey of consciousness itself. It is the archetype of inner evolution, calling us to transmute the forces of death and experience the victory of renewed life—both in the world around us and within ourselves.
 

 

Age:14+