Project

Unshine: Karn of Burnings

• Graphic design
• Illustration
• Music video script and animation
• Website

The visual art and design of the druid metal band Unshine’s album Karn of Burnings has been the most fulfilling project in quite some time, not only because of the album’s themes closely aligning with my personal projects and interest in occult symbolism, but also for all the artistic freedom and trust. 

Client

Unshine
2024

Website

unshine.com

 

Symbolism index

☉

Sun; the cycle of life, an endless loop, finite and infinite, the Universe, consciousness, omphalos, millstone, eye

+

cross; as above—so below, four seasons and the four elements

🜨

sun cross; Sun worship, and all the overlapping meanings with the Sun and the cross symbolism

웃

human; a vessel, a seer, a dualistic being

꩜

cone; the pineal gland, consciousness, symmetry, dualism, perfection, fibonacci, sacred geometry, the Universe, connection with nature, anima mundi

🜂

fire; a force of life that purges, destroys, renews and illuminates, an element contributing to the ever reccurring cycle of life

 

 

Hjul

The first single is Hjul, ’wheel’ in Swedish, a song about the ancient celebrations and life revolving around the Sun in connection with the nature. A pine cone burning in the painful bliss of truly seeing was my choice to symbolise the subject.

The pineal gland is the seat of the soul, said philosopher René Descartes. It’s a pine cone shaped melatonin producing organ located at the center of our brain. It’s been referred to as the gate to higher consciousness by philosophers and in several spiritual traditions. It’s the third eye, the Eye of Horus, the eye of the shaman seer—looking both ways, inward and out. In the end all these different metaphors refer to the same metaphysical structures and tendencies of the human mind seeking a broader perception of existence, trying to understand its own role and the interconnectedness of all things, finding balance in the recurring fractal structures of nature and life. It’s about the dualistic far ends of one in relation to all, taking a higher view of the oscillation between the two, that then reveals itself to be a big wheel of dukkha that’s never still, travelling a full circle from the beginning to the imminent end. The cycle of life, the nature, the universe, the net of being, channelled through an eye wide open.

 

 

Maa jälkeen ihmisen

The second single Maa jälkeen ihmisen paints a picture of a post-apocalyptic world that’s replanting its roots in harmony after man-made imbalance, slowly purging itself of pollution in the wasteland of ignored causality. For this subject I revisited an old illustration about the correlation of death and beginning, and the end seen as the light shed to the path of rediscovering balance as the ego faces the inevitable entropy. The mind and the soul, released by the chaos of our perishing body, all turning into nothing, returning to the All. Death invites that which is separate back into unity, the solitary fountainhead we all call home.

 

 

Aettarfylgja — music video