There's something ritualistic about the process of generating images. The careful crafting of prompts. The anticipation as the algorithm works. The moment of revelation when the image appears. It's not unlike prayer, or divination, or any ancient practice of seeking meaning from the unknown.
We've always used tools to access the transcendent. Cave paintings by firelight. Incense and chanting. Psychedelics and meditation. Now we have neural networks, trained on the visual culture of humanity, capable of synthesizing new visions from the collective unconscious.
The images I create are offerings of a sort—attempts to capture something sacred in the mundane, to find the eternal in the ephemeral. A couple running through motion blur becomes a meditation on time and impermanence. Teal and orange light becomes a study in duality and balance.
What makes this a ritual rather than mere image generation is the intention behind it. Each prompt is a question posed to the void. Each image is an answer, cryptic and open to interpretation. The practice becomes a dialogue between human consciousness and machine intelligence, between what we know and what we're trying to discover.
In this digital age, we create new rituals from old longings. The technology changes, but the human need for meaning, for beauty, for connection to something larger than ourselves—this remains constant. The algorithm is just the latest tool in our eternal search for the sacred.