Folding Ideas

The Transcendental Practice of Origami

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Folding Ideas

Written by Gálvez Caballero

“For a thousand men who can speak, there is only one who can think; for a thousand men who can think, there is only one who can see.”

-anonymous

Two years ago, I came across a thread in /po/(4chan’s Papercraft and Origami board), centered sharing their figures with others. It was a pretty broad question in a very old thread, /po/ being one of 4chan’s slowest boards, and so anons had come out in the hundreds to answer this question. In that thread, anons recounted their experiences sharing their creations with others, the ways they’d gone about transmitting their bringing a hobby shrouded in Oriental Mysticism to, for lack of a better term, the masses. As your typical atomized youth, it was this promise of communal exchange that sparked my interest in Origami. Japanese Papercraft is the practice of folding paper in extremely fine and precise ways, and I had to teach myself this art via a multitude of pirated magazines (like the Spanish magazine cuatro esquinas). It was transformative, I think, for the better. 

That Origami became my is no coincidence; it follows from the four things I seek most in art and life: beauty, honor, community, and prosperity. It was the papercraft community that first awakened this love in me, and in order to bring this thing I love before others, I feel that it’s necessary to extend the marvelous art to all who would come and hear me. 

In terms of beauty, Origami wants for nothing. One needs only to see the harmony in symmetry of the axis, the patterns on the folds, and appreciate how every step, every single fold neatly begets the other. Admire the final work, stroke each ear of your rabbit. Once you’ve finished, see how this process has given birth to a precious figure, an original work, made with your own hands. 

You don’t have to scry to see the honorable aspects in Folding Paper; not only in the work of the Origamist, but often also in the technique of the one making the folds. See the pride that each folder takes in his work. Whoever undergoes the work of folding paper, taking these “four corners” and creating art of the blank page, sees that his work gives fruit, and also comes to have a hobby (based in reality: this is, that brings the digital world of the anonymous forum to the real world) with a high skill ceiling. An honorable vibe exists in such abundance that it begins to approach divinity. I’m not unique in feeling this, the allure of mathematics is evinced by the scores of Engineers and Mathematicians that pursue the craft. As Masons derive their theses from working the stones, you can summon Order from Chaos through papercraft, a trait man shares with God, an ability kept even from the Angels. 

As a bulwark against alienation, Origami allows you to find legions of quiet and productive people. For every man or woman who is a paying Member of National Associations and frequently attends conventions in real life, there is a shadow community of ten times as many in servers, anonymous messaging boards, and oriental channels where they share PDFs that may or may not be illegally acquired. We become all of us teachers, encouraging novices to take up this hobby trade.

There’s also a great, personal joy to be found in origami, a joy that can arrive only after a time spent raging. It’s real work, work with your hands, work that is intricate and asks a lot from you, in ways that you are unaccustomed to if you don’t use your fine motor skills often. This isn’t a flimsy, digital thing in a word processor. Ted Kaczynski was right, A real hobby, a concrete practice, trumps over a more abstract one. 

And what is a hobby that cannot enrich the hobbyist? A cynical thought, but even for cynics, Origami can open many doors. Once you’ve rendered that thing in your head 1:1 with your folding paper, it can become a gift, an item for sale, you are the little God-King of your paper horses and cranes. 

So, how can one began in the art of Papercraft? Simple, do a bit of everything. Include all life and thing on existence, everything can be replicated, simulated. This is, of course, not a distillation of the entire essence of Origami, because to me Origami is self-complete. Papercrafts are representations that place into doubt which is the real thing, and what is only an image, it is an art of suggestion, of subtlety.