The Oculists- process

Hi, Steemit brother and sisters!
I've wanted to share with you the process of doing a drawing that I've finished recently. it was inspired by a youtube video that I came across on my recommendation list. it tells a story of a cryptic cipher dating back hundreds of years, that have passed through the hands of many cryptographic experts who tried to decode with no success. until a young researcher of ancient languages cracks the code with the help of a computer algorithm software. the story of the discovery was published in 2012 in Wired magazine.

full size- here

The encrypted manuscript was written in a baffling mixture of accented and plain Latin and Cyrillic letters with symbols and numbers. the unveiling of the content revealed details pertaining to an 18th-century real secret society that was based in Germany and was called " the Honorable Society of Oculists".

Oculist in the dated name for a profession of eye doctors- the modern day ophthalmologist.
While in Berlin, a language expert was given the manuscript from a colleague. he handed her the magazine as a parting gift, as she was soon to move to Uppsala University in Sweden for a new position. he told her that the gift would give her something to do on the cold winter nights in Sweden. it was 1998.

_{pages 16-17 of the manuscript, scaled source- Wikimedia commons}

She has spent a decade trying to decipher the code but failed to make progress until a new technology became available for her use which is machine translation algorithms. in fact, those algorithms were already employed by commercial companies and clandestine agencies, and they are used to power popular services such as Google translate.
Cristine teemed up with a group of experts to help her decode the text. one of them was Kevin Knight of the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute.

The first clue for the manuscript not being a carefully crafted hoax was that the text seemed to follow a pattern. elaborate fabrications often contain a word salad or a completely unrelated set of signs and don't point at a possible key. soon after translating the first few sentences, it was found that the original language of the text was transcribed from was German.

previous academics in Germany were able to date the encryption to the time between 1760 and 1784. it was the eve of the French revolution and the American revolution - events the were greatly driven and influenced by the secret society known as the Free Masons. a couple of decades prior to that, in 1738, the Vatican issued a papal bull titled "IN EMINENTI APOSTOLATUS" which sought to greatly diminish the power and reach of secret societies. the bull criminalized secret societies and put its members under threat of excommunication from the Catholic faith, criminal prosecution and even death. the Freemasons, by fear of the pope, started to go underground and splintered off to many groups under various names in order to deceive the Church.

_{seal of the Great Enlightened Society of Oculists, with the two cats, featured on the original wired.com article page}

The first few pages describe an initiation rite one as to go through when he is introduced to the organization. this involves taking an eyesight exam during which the initiate is asked to repeat out loud a piece of paper presented to him by the ritual master after being given a pair of glasses. the initiate inevitably fails the task- because the page is blank. this is then explained to him to be the consequence of a vision impairment. but- the ritual master reassures him- this can be corrected with surgery. the ritual master proceeds to conduct a mock surgery in which the only action taken is a plucking of a hair of the initiate's eyebrow. this is a symbolic action, emboldening the oculists status as being the guardians of vision. the blank page is replaced with a written one, which contains instructions for the initiate.
personally, I cannot imagine the amount of sheer terror that must grip a helpless individual in this situation. this psychological trickery is one of the ways that secret societies propagate their influence.

Unlike other groups emerging from the time, who publicized their existence and some of their practices - only keeping their initiated activities under wraps- this secret society of "oculists" actively pursued secrecy. the group uses the metaphor of eye medicine for the ability to obtain hidden knowledge. there is no definitive proof that the initiated member themselves were physicians but isn't the eye doctor's metaphor really fit for describing the power of secrecy. as the oculists proclaim of themselves- we are the real eye doctors, we will help you SEE". like the authority figures the wield the power of secrets, the oculists situate themselves as the mediators: between blindness (or ignorance) and the ability to see- meaning to perceive the world as it is truely. the Oculists serve, in this manner, as the GATEWAY TO PERCEPTION. this goes hand in hand with the traditional association of sight with knowledge, in the way that perception itself is mediated by a bias of preconceptions and prejudice; and that understanding involves seeing a thing for what it really is- i.e. without prejudice. this was achieved, as many philosophers have suggested, by education.

In fact, Dr. Jordan Peterson, who popularised the notion of the "all-seeing eye" (or the "eye of providence) as a symbol for ascension above ignorance, explains that the eye whos often depicted above a pyramid symbolized the ability of a "seer" to transcend social dominance hierarchies. he does that by having the knowledge, acquired through observation, that can be applied to and across different hierarchical structures- so he is not bound by any one of them. this is an alternative to the known Masonic symbol of the eye over the pyramid, that appears on the Great Seal of the United States. the accepted interpretation of it is a nation that is yet uncomplete, unfinished. Peterson's explanation seem (to me) more plausible because the eye symbol is almost ubiquitous in human civilization and has deep cultural roots.

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I'd like to highlight my process: I used, as usual, a black ink rapidograph of two sizes. 0.5 mm and 2 mm calligraphic tip.
the drawing was done on the plainest blank notebook with 60 gr. pages.
I used an artist posing reference tool available on the android play store. the name of the app is magic power. get it here: https://magicposer.com/.
It was really usuful because it saved me the effort of searching exact reference photos for my figures and not having to search different images for each figure. it allowed me to block down my composition quickly.
here are my poses:

I also used the blender mannequin, as I've demonstrated in a previous post https://steemit.com/art/@uv10/blender-as-a-reference-tool-for-artists

First, I laid down my composition with a technical pencil .5mm.

I drew the background in a lower value key, compressing the dark values together.
I've been looking at illustrations by Gustave Doré, as I've been trying to follow his work in my own work. he's still considered one of, if not the best, illustrators of all times.

Thank you so much for supporting me through Steemit and taking the time to read my content. I hope you enjoyed it, and feel free to comment on any issue you have or suggestion for the post.
Have a great weekend and Steem on!