The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors

Founded by the psychedelic painter Alex Grey, and his wife, the painter Allyson Grey, the chapel is a curious, over-the-top combination of art gallery, New Age temple and Coney Island sideshow. The main attraction is an installation of allegorical neo-Surrealist paintings by Mr. Grey that, in the context of a carefully orchestrated theatrical environment, is designed to transport paying visitors into states of ecstatic reverence for life, love and universal interconnectedness.


The Sacred Mirrors may be used as a tool to visualize and focus healing energy on particular parts of the physical and subtle bodies.
The series of twenty-one paintings divides into three sections of body, mind and spirit. The entire progression of the series from Material World to Spiritual World visually describes a process of transformation from body awareness through sociopolitical awareness to spiritual awareness.
Surrounding each image is a 5 x 10.5 foot arched frame specifically designed for the Sacred Mirrors. The frames feature a brief "history of the universe", and provide a philosophical framework in which to view the Sacred Mirrors.
The Sacred Mirrors present a multi-dimensional search for the Self. The Self is recognized as that which underlies, unites, and directs the many physical systems and the spectrum of consciousness. The purpose of the Sacred Mirrors is to reflect on and appreciate the sacredness of the individual, one's unity with other people and cultures, and one's connectedness with the earth and cosmos.



The Sacred Mirrors have a power and authenticity that can only spring from a soul who has plunged into the darker realms and come out whole. In his introduction to Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey, Carlo McCormick compares Grey's creative journey to a shaman who travels at great peril to the lower realms to emerge with healing teachings for the tribe.


Each painting has a faux-bronze frame carved with small symbols representing different stages of enlightenment and punctuated at the top by a round, electrically illuminated stained-glass image of an eye in the tip of a pyramid. Five golden arches in the hall are anchored by 10 “archangels”: gold-painted, cast-resin figures resembling ancient Assyrian sculptures, each with three faces, a convex mirror in its chest and wings wrapped around its columnar body.


One of his most striking pictures shows a life-size semitransparent couple making love as incandescent wave patterns swirl around and through them. It is at once sexy, repulsive and hair-raising.



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