Power of Words NFT Manifesto

Iliad Terra
7 min readDec 8, 2021

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.”

John 1:1

Your Words.

Every time I read the phrase “in the beginning was the Word” I shudder at the profundity of its meaning. What does it mean to say that the beginning of everything we know was the Word, spoken or “…written”?

How do you come to terms with the knowledge that every word you hear and speak is connected back to the deep source? How do you feel knowing that the words you have come to use can ensnare you or set you free, impoverish you, or lay before you the bounties of paradise? Our words come from a place deeper than we know, each word formed in the distant beginnings of the cosmos, formed with, and carried aloft the frequency of pulsars and neutrinos vibrating and culminating in the quantum manifestation of you at this very moment, uttering the words ‘I love you’ spoken long ago, long before you were born unto flesh.

We have all been touched by the power of songs, or the intimate and piercing impact of certain poems that touch us to our cores. We have all been moved by orations of great leaders and stirred to action by false prophets who told fables too dark to fathom.

From the words of Kabbala to the Hindu Om, to the choirs aspiring out through the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, and events like the recent Travis Scott concert, and the prevalence of disinformation through our media channels, spoken words resonate creatively and destructively.

On a recent journey in Dubai, I had the unique privilege to witness the shimmering city from the outlying sand dunes one early morning before the first light of veiling the language of the starry night so that our conscious mind may better interact with the material matrix of the mundane world. At the intersection of the two realms of our being, at dawn’s break, I was caught by surprise and was moved immensely as the calls to prayer rang across the distant city through the minarets that pierced the lower profile of the city. One by one, the calls rose to the heavens.

This is not new. Ancient civilizations have long called out and connected with the divine through words, chants, prayers, and scripts… The roots and etymology of words run deep into our personal and collective unconscious, and in many ways tap into the Greater Mind of All That Is and has ever been.

So it is with this understanding that one starts going deeper into the rabbit hole that unfolds the mystery and power of words. Robert Burton once wrote, “…from this it is clear how much crueler the pen may be than the sword.” Indeed, we all grew up hearing or uttering in the school playground that resilient rhyme, “…sticks and stones may break my bones, but words shall never hurt me.”

The truth of the matter is that words are mightier than the sword, and indeed able to break bones and much more. But words can also liberate, empower, set free, and create worlds both imagined and real. Woven the very fabric of our language are words imbued with karmic and Saturnian talismans and other words that break the spell and cast asunder the chains that imprison and limit us. Certainly, those who have mastered the spellcraft of words know well how to bind and how to shield with words that break our spirit and imprison that which is most precious in all of us, our freedom, our free will, and our rights to love and live in a world of our choosing, sovereign and divine under the laws of nature.

Philosophy.

Although much has been written on this subject, I have taken it upon myself to create art that reveals this power and lifts the veil off the mystery of words we take for granted. As the world stands at the precipice of transformation, with the age of Aquarius upon us, it is urgently important for us to revisit the words we listen to, the words we speak and write, and the words with which we have been enslaved to.

Defi and Blockchain technology is poised to revolutionize our world. As modern technology allows us to explore new frontiers, the age-old drama yet again unfolds and stresses the tension and compression between the structures that govern our world. Cryptocurrency is one such battleground, NFT’s yet another. The push and pull between those who control and those who yearn to break free is playing its latest iteration along the time tracks.

The mission of this project, and yes, there is a mission associated with this series, is to illuminate and shed light on the mystery hidden in words. Wrestling words from the grip of those who control its dissemination, such as the tastemakers of old, the gatekeepers, the occult guardians lurking in the shadows should be our collective priority.

The prevalence of mental illness, over drugged and sedated souls, those who aimlessly wander the streets of decaying cities like drifting tumbleweed seeking an anchor with drugs, and most of us seeking solace with endless consumption, and enter-tainment, lay to waste the purpose and potential of our Dharmic journey through this life.

Most of us pass our days as so-called NPC’s in our own stories, relegating our essence and sovereignty with consent to masters who see no value in us but the labour we toil and the suffering we bear.

It has often amazed me why and how our school systems fail to teach us the true power of language, its power to destroy and to create.

Mission/Tactics.

The Power of Word series is a visual essay rendered one word at a time, illustrated, etymologically dissected, investigated, and examined in a format that departs from the usual interface of words, and harks back into the original linage of illuminated words, as sigils, occult symbols, semiotic fractals and semantic gymnastics interwoven across realms and eras.

Illustrated words displace them from their familiar context and thus disrupting the automatic assimilation of their cult-ural interpretation. This disruption is necessary to shift perspective on a deeper understanding of words. And through this deeper knowledge, we may begin to better understand John 1:1 as he opened the greatest story ever told.

What I find compelling is to interlace the English language with the work of Claude Shannon and distill the purity of communication through binary information digits streaming across the tablet as I construct the designs with a mix of digital applications and analogue processes. What happens when the visual words, created as architectural sigils evoke ancient sounds, cryptic calls from our deep conscious mind, or the Mind of Uni-Verse.

The ultimate and highly relevant platform to jump into the mud with this project is NFTs. Only a radical and free community that is defiant of the old covetous and secrete paradigm that has ensnared our minds through deceitful words can truly do justice to the mission of liberating our minds and souls and restoring the sanctity of words back to the grace to which they belong. Where noble men and women utter words in the language of God, Universe, and Divine.

I create each piece in a state of trance and activated meditation, allowing the words to unfold before me and guide me. In many ways I am a passenger on the current of resonant words, drifting along their electromagnetic frequencies, occasionally dipping my hand in the stream, and pulling out a gem to quench my thirst.

This is the beginning of the journey for me. Yet, I have known this river, and it courses through my veins longer than my memory can hold. Along this path I one chanced, if it can be called chance, to the suburbs of Tokyo where I was given a book written by Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory. It changed my life. As I read the pages of the book flying back home over the Pacific Ocean I vowed to go deeper.

So here I am, pouring digital pain and layering screens and prints to create nonfungible tokens as gateways to freedom.

These are core mission objectives I would like to realize with this project. Of course, the list goes on, and some of these are aspirational goals and perhaps idealistic, but hey, we start somewhere. Every word counts:

· Empower you to free yourself from word spells
· Foster Freedom, promote peace and justice
· Shape policy and inspire new leaders
· Celebrate the spirit within us
· Create new realms and explore hidden worlds…

Community.

Words are a legacy that binds us in the ocean of consciousness, an island in the vast infinite with which we name our real, and write our destiny, crafter from the black ink of the Uni-Verse, we create light with which we see, and see each other, and see ourselves as All That We Are.

One word at a time, one sentence at a time, we write a new story for the world we live in.

I have created the Power of Word series to revolutionize how we look at words. The first token is dedicated to Freedom, and it is my gift to you, to all of you who stand for freedom, your personal and community’s freedom.

There is something extraordinary imbued in the word freedom. It belongs to all of us, each and every one of us, granted us by the Grace of the Divine such that we may wield it with honour and dignity in this life and in legacy.

Follow up on Twitter & Instagram and send us your wallet address for your Freedom NFT:
Twitter
: www.twitter.com/powerofwordsnft
Instagram: www.instagram.com/powerofwordsnft
Website: www.powerofwords.io
Support My Work: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/iliadterra

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Iliad Terra

To Be, To See, To Create…Visionary Artist Exploring Pathways to the Unseen. SEE YOURSELF.