In the natural sciences, the ultimate source of light is the Sun. From this celestial body, all light emanates. There is no darkness which can overtake it completely. Even during a solar eclipse, when the Sun, Moon, and Earth align to block out the Sun’s light from the vantage point of Earth, there is still a small shimmer of the Sun’s light left. This is the solar corona, or the Sun’s “crown.” Incidentally, this shimmering “crown” of light is always there, but can only be seen when the main field of the Sun’s light is blocked.

In the Hindu Vedic Astrological system, Ketu is the entity in the celestial system responsible for this darkening of the Sun during a solar eclipse. An abstract point, rather than an actual celestial body, Ketu exists only in relation to other objects, as the southern nodal point of the Moon. Ketu, as represented in the Vedic system, is a headless serpent without eyes or vision, and points to our capacity for detachment from everything that is maya, or illusion. During a solar eclipse, the Sun is “eaten” by Ketu. If we take the Sun as the representative of Divine Truth, as it is in many religious systems, a certain nature of Truth, then, can only be made visible only when its most nakedly visible form is blotted out. Ketu, or our capacity for detachment, allows us to see this Truth.

Every planet, as well as the two lunar nodes, are assigned a color in the Vedic astrological system. These colors are meant to be used as a sort of color therapy, a spiritual remedial measure to “lift” the energy of that planetary or nodal ray that may be causing affliction to a person in order to realign its energies in the body. The colors associated with Ketu are infrared, the lower colors beyond the visible spectrum, as well as chartreuse yellow, similar to that of the cat’s eye stone, Ketu’s stone. Rahu, Ketu’s opposite, is associated with ultraviolet, the higher colors above the visible spectrum. Rahu is the body-less serpent; the head to Ketu’s body. Both Rahu’s and Ketu’s influences are all around us. And while they are the most “unseen” by the naked eye as compared to the other colors of the planetary rays, they are believed to be most responsible for our greatest compulsions. In fact, many Vedic astrologers state we currently live in a Rahu age. Rather than an age of detachment, we live in an age of intense attachment and materialism, the energies governed by Rahu. The strongest energetic antidote to Rahu’s dominance will always lie in its polar opposite, Ketu. Ketu energies promote spiritualization through intense self-negation to transcend physical reality.

Modern technology has developed many ways to capture infrared light and make the “unseen seen.” Infrared photography uses special filters and processing techniques to capture infrared light and translate it to film. Another method, infrared thermography, converts infrared energy emitted from object to temperature, and then displays this information as an image of temperature distribution. A color is assigned to a certain degree Fahrenheit or Celsius, a pixel is shaded accordingly, and as by a paint-by-numbers grid, the hottest points are made white, then descend in temperature gradient by yellow, then orange, red, green, blue, and finally, violet.

Religious art uses a similar process, but with mystical information. Artists may come to know, perceive, or experience a divine revelation, or be tasked with its representation by others, and a certain iconography is constructed; an image of divine distribution represented by a ready-made grid of symbols and colors carried out by the artist. But religious art can often be too reliant on emotional interpretation, leading to the saccharine. The saints often talk about the “Science of the Cross.” What if we viewed salvation scientifically? 

Here, we have attempted to construct a divine distribution of color, sound, and word, stripped back of emotional interpretation, by way of infrared photography, painting, and language. We have chosen Mary Magdalene as our subject. Why? Whichever form of biblical hermeneutics used to interpret her appearance in the Gospel (and which “Mary” she actually is), we can safely land on one spot about her: Mary Magdalene is a figure of Divine Witness, and her route there was different from the other Apostles. If Mary Magdalene is the woman“possessed of seven devils” in the Gospel of Luke, then she is a figure overrun with the materialism of Rahu who has lost her self-sovereignty, her connection to her solar will. If Mary Magdalene is the woman sinner who single-mindedly tracks Jesus to the house of the Pharisees to wash his feet with her tears and anoint them with expensive ointment, then she is the figure of voluntary Ketu-like detachment who gives up all material security in moment of extravagant and reckless love to earn her sovereignty back. If she is the figure who walks beside Christ towards his crucifixion, is there at his burial, and is first to witness his resurrection, she is a figure whose powers of perception are no longer rooted in the illusion of the material world—her eyes, her mind, and her heart are driven by something outside of this world, something more Ketu-like, and for this she is rewarded with true sight. Her path to Divine Witness, Divine Grace, and redemption is through voluntary self-negation.

This site charts the trajectory of Mary Magdalene’s path through 14 moments of her life—14 stations of her cross—which map her journey through detachment, loss, and Divine Grace, in our modern world; the poems through the written word, the photographs through infrared light. This is the science of Mary Magdalene’s cross, the shimmering corona of her divine “heat,” the path of her redemption, and the color of her grace, as it could be experienced now.