Consciousness bears a special relationship to life out of which it in fact emerges. This is not an 'emergence' because there is a special commonality or overlap of essence, from its inherent striving towards light and freedom to its self-focus and self-creation, to its problematic relation to death, sometimes opposed, sometimes allied, to its affinity with beauty and excess, its boundlessness and ubiquity, its weird wisdom and crystalline archetypes. So much so that it is a question which comes first, or whether there is no difference at all.