The name Blixa is related to several cognates that go back to the Proto-Germanic *bl?kan?, from Proto-Indo-European *b?ley?-. In Swedish Blixt and Blixtra are derived from Blixa, in old-English blican is used, and the forms are related to the Dutch verb bliksemen, or noun bliksem, and the German blitzen, all meaning lighting flash.

Lightning is a natural phenomenon consisting of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions. One or both regions are within the atmosphere, with the second region sometimes occurring on the ground. Following the lightning, the regions become partially or wholly electrically neutralized.

Lightning involves a near-instantaneous release of energy on a massive scale (between 200 megajoules and 7 gigajoules). The air around a lightning flash (30,000°C, 54,000 °F or 30,273.15 Kelvin) rapidly heats to temperatures of about five times hotter than the surface of the sun (5,500°C, 9,900°F or 5,800 Kelvin). An emission of electromagnetic radiation across a wide range of wavelengths occurs, some visible as a bright flash. Lightning also causes thunder, a sound from the shock wave which develops as heated gases in the vicinity of the discharge experience a sudden increase in pressure.

Blixa Bargeld is a German musician who has been the lead singer of the band Einstürzende Neubauten since its formation in 1980. Bargeld was also a founding member of the Australian rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, from 1983 until 2003. What’s most interesting about Bargeld as an artist is his deeply intellectual interpretation of art and the organic experience of his performances, combining the deconstructive, mystic ideas of total theater and Dadaistic happenings of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), the nihilist, pessimistic, decaying views (to be or not to be/being there or not being there) of Romanian philosopher E.M. Cioran (!911-1995) and the mystic rational views of German Jewish Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), to break down not only the walls between artist and spectator, but place the temporal and ephemeral of creation so at the center that destruction is the nirvana state and mechanism of creation. These Schopenhaueran and Nietzschean ideas are deeply rooted in post-modern European existentialism, and it’s a perspective on life that I grew up in and determined my experiences in life. To disrupt becomes the essence of creation, like a lighting shift emission.

The logo of the band Einstürzende Neubauten goes back to a Monadic symbol also found in John Dee’s “Monas Hieroglyphica” (1564) and “The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz” (1616), the best known of the three anonymous manifestos of the Rosicrucians.

The most ancient depiction of the “Monad” was originally conceived by the “Pythagoreans“, in the form of a circled dot, represents the first metaphysical being, the Monad or the totality of all things. The circle symbolizes the infinite, while the center dot is the initial point from which all creation expands outward.

John Dee’s glyph is broken into the following parts:

1. On top is a crescent shape, the moon or “Luna exaltatio”,
2. The sun represented by the Pythagorean Monad with the central circle with a dot, just below the moon,
3. A foundational Christian cross represents the four material elements or “Elementa”,
4. Two interlocking semicircles at the base represent the zodiac sign of Aries, represented by the Ram and transformative element of fire.

The Monadic symbol is derived from the Jewish Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The Tree of Life’s division geometry divides unity into 10 fundamental spheres of existence (Sephiroth) connected by 22 mathematical pathways, and represents the unfolding of consciousness and the universe from an infinite source of energy into finite reality. The tree divides the universe into three vertical columns: the left pillar of severity, the middle pillar of mildness, and the right pillar of mercy. Three horizontal pathways – fire, air and water – govern the divine, intellectual and emotions realms respectively. Four overlaying circles represent the cosmic states of Emanation (Divine Will), Creation, Formation and Action.

The premise of Bargeld’s artistic life is that creating a state in art, creation itself ends necessarily as it reaches its state, so to reach a state of creating you must disrupt the state that most artists seem to realize. This disruptive idea of “collapsing building” is a metaphore used by Antonin Artaud in his “Theater of Cruelty” to describe the pure creative force that remains after the descruction of the artificial and superficial constructs of modern society and theater, as Artaud aims to destroy the bourgeois complacency of Western art.

When lightning strikes sandy ground, the quartz grains in the sand become so hot that they melt. Upon cooling, they fuse to form branched tubes of natural glass; in this way, the lightning becomes fossilized. The colorless glass of such a fulgurite is an amorphous (non-crystalline) form of silica known as lechatelierite. A “fulgurite” is commonly known as fossilized lightning, its name originating from the Latin word “fulgur”, meaning lightning.

Like the monadic Tree of Life (Sefirot) maps out the process of creation and the ascent of the human soul, so strikes the lightning te sandy ground, fossilizes as a fulgurite in the soil, transforming both the crystals in the sand as its own electric force. So is the lightning bolt (keraunus) the weapon of Zeus, forged by the Cyclopes to maintain cosmic order.