As part of The Great Void: From Sound to Image, a major exhibition at the MAO dedicated to Buddhist cosmologies of emptiness and transformation, Marcos Lutyens presented Blue Lion Induction, a large-scale hypnotic performance staged within the historic Mazzonis Hall. At the heart of the exhibition stood a 15th-century Tibetan thangka depicting Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future — a sacred image approached only after visitors traversed a sound-saturated journey that “cleansed” perception and prepared the senses for states of expanded awareness.
In this context, Lutyens developed a ritual environment centered around an ancient Mañjuśrī sculpture, the bodhisattva of prajñā (wisdom). Around the sculpture, he arranged a psychomagic array of ritual objects and created a white circular field of fine red sand on the floor — a ground for symbolic gestures and sigils drawn during the induction. Visitors were invited to lie in a ring surrounding the sand, supported by cushions and yoga mats, as incense rose into the vaulted space and Yi-Ping’s voice carried the Mañjuśrī chant oṃ a ra pa tsa na dhīḥ.
The performance unfolded as a collective hypnotic journey, guided by Lutyens’s voice and designed to usher participants beyond the structures of language into the domain of intuitive seeing — the “Universal Sight” associated with Mañjuśrī and the Blue Lion, the mythic being who tames the conscious mind. The induction corresponded especially to the syllable “na,” considered a portal into the essential nature behind all names and forms.
As the journey progressed, Lutyens inscribed marks, symbols, and pathways in the red sand, mapping a subconscious itinerary for the group. Participants remained in a meditative state after the induction concluded, allowing the experience to settle inwardly before quietly departing. Later, the red sand was ceremonially gathered and offered to the Po River, symbolically releasing the traces of the collective experience.
Presented within a broader exhibition that explored impermanence, interdependence, and the transcendent openness of the Buddhist void, Blue Lion Induction offered visitors a direct, embodied encounter with these themes — a moment of stillness and inner expansion framed by sound, scent, light, and cosmological imagery.