Fundamentals
of Symbolism
Part
II
From the Renaissance to Modern Times
by
Before examining the changes in symbolic expression evoked by Renaissance thought, some historical background is required. While the Catholic symbolism described at the close of the first part of this study remained largely intact within Western culture, the introduction of divergent cosmologies wrought some subtle and not so subtle changes.
There is little consensus among historians as to
when or how the so-called Renaissance came about, but most would agree that an
affirmation of the dignity of man was the result. While the Church had always
insisted that man was made "in the image and likeness of God" and therefore
worthy of the highest respect, his status as a creature was strictly
maintained. Man, to reach his proper end, the beatific vision, needed
Sanctifying Grace supplied through the sacraments of the Church. Renaissance
thought, at first subtly and then openly, challenged this view. Between 1437
and 1439 Nicholas of Cusa started the process when he wrote his De docta
ignorantia based on a private illumination he received while crossing the
sea between
Pico had no open desire to break with the
Christian faith, but according to his concept of unlimited human potential, the
advent of Christ, the Word Incarnate, did not inaugurate a new supernatural
order embodied in the Church, but stimulated, a rebirth of natural man and
human potential. In the words of Walter Ulmam, "Through [Baptism] there
was a rebirth of natural man; through this restoration into his natural state,
cosmological perspectives came to be opened up which were hitherto barely
perceived ... Natural man was awakened from the slumber of the centuries: he
was reactivated." 3
The Renaissance concept of the dignity of man did
not draw on a new secularization of culture as is generally taught, but rather
on a synthesis of ancient esoteric religious and philosophical ideas enumerated
by Pico in his Oration. These ideas, mostly of oriental origin, had
inundated
Key to the doctrine of
Neo-Platonism, was Plotinus' idea that the universe was not created ex
nihilo as the Church insisted, but that both the cosmos and man were
emanations, or "overflowings" of the Divine substance. 5 Thus Ficino and his contemporaries
conceptualized the entire universe or "Macrocosm" as a "Divine
Animal" divinum animal, animated by a "Cosmic Mind" mens
mundana connected to God, and a "Cosmic Soul" anima mundi, which
though spiritual, is connected to matter. "An uninterrupted current
of supernatural energy flows from above to below and reverts from below to
above, thus forming a circuitus spiritualis." 6 Analogically,
Man, the "Microcosm" has a
"lower soul" anima secunda connected to the material world and
a "higher soul" intellectus or mens that is connected
to and even participates in the Divine Mind, intellectus divinus. 7 The illustration to the left depicts man
the "microcosm" superimposed over the "macrocosm." In it we
see both the cosmos and man as matter suffused with divinity centered on the
generative principle. Man the "microcosm" is also the subject matter
of the image to the right, "Vitruvian Man," drawn by Leonardo
da Vinci c. 1510. In this image, man qua man rather than the unique
person of Jesus Christ, true God - true man, is depicted as the embodiment of
the perfect union of the spiritual heavens - the circle- and the material earth
- the square-.
The
Renaissance "Humanists" (Those who believed in divine human
potential) also, as enunciated by Pico, based much of their theology on the
eclectic writings of a supposed pre-Mosaic Egyptian sage named Hermes
Trismegistus translated into Latin by Ficino in 1463. His monistic definition
of God and the cosmos as: "Deus est sphaera infinita cuijus centrum est
ubique nusquam circumferentiae"(God is an infinite sphere whose center
is everywhere but whose circumference is nowhere) was fundamentally identical
to that of the Neo-Platonists but he stressed man's innate divine nature even
more. In the, Pimander, supposedly written by Trismegistus, it is
stated, "He who knows himself goes toward himself...You are light and
life, like God the Father of whom man is born." "If therefore you
learn to know yourself as made of light and life... you will return to
life." 8 As Elaine Pagels
points out in her book The Gnostic Gospels, the doctrine of a secret
knowledge of man's innate divinity is the central doctrine of the
"Gnosticism" that began its battle against Christianity as far back
as the second century AD. 9 Most
people think of Gnosticism in terms of its Manechean, or dualist manifestation
calling for the release of the soul trapped in matter, however, as A. J.
Fustigiere, has explained, the Hermetic writings actually contained two
distinct types of divine "gnosis," namely pessimist gnosis, and
optimist gnosis. For the pessimist (or dualist) Gnostic, the material world,
heavily impregnated with the fatal influence of the stars is in itself evil; it
must be escaped from by an ascetic way of life which avoids as much as possible
all contact with matter, until the lightened soul rises up through the spheres
of the planets, casting off their evil influences as it ascends, to its true home
in the immaterial divine world. For the optimist Gnostic, however, matter is
impregnated with the divine life, the earth lives, moves, with divine life, the
stars are living divine animals, the sun burns with divine power, there is no
part of nature which is not good for all are parts of God. 10 ( see: Appendix_three Gnosis)
Unlike
Gallileo some two hundred years later, the great Polish churchman and
mathematician, Nicholas Copernicus, credited with the discovery of the helio-centric
nature of the Cosmos relied more on Neo-Platonism and the Hermetica for his
position than on scientific observation of the actual Solar System. In his De
Rrevolutionibus Orbium Coelestum, written in 1453, he has the following to
say, "In the middle of all sits the Sun enthroned. In this most beautiful
temple, could we place this luminary in any better position from which he can
illuminate the whole at once? He is rightly called the Lamp, the Mind,, the
Ruler of the Universe: Hermes Trismegistus names him the Visible God, Sophecles
Electra calls him the All-Seeing. So the Sun sits upon a royal throne, ruling
his children, the planets which circle around him."11
It must be remembered that for the
Neo-Platonists, the planets and stars, as well as the sun were "divine
living animals." (Ficino and his followers practiced sympathetic magic and
chanted Orphic hymns to obtain the beneficial influences of these "star
demons.") 12
Along
with Hermeticism and Neoplatonism the third major influence on the times, cited
by Pico, is the Jewish theosophical Kabbalah, or Cabala in its latinate form.
Pico received his indoctrination from a Spanish Jew living in
Given the essentially
monistic nature of Renaissance thought as seen above, it is symbolically
represented as an Eastern "Mandala" rather than as a dyadic
relationship between God and creation and/or Christ and His Church seen in the
Byzantine and medieval iconography covered in the first part of this treatise.
While the Church maintained her doctrine of Original sin and the necessity of
Redemption, the humanists, in general, rejected it. Following Nicholas of
Cusa's doctrine of Coincidentia oppositorum 16 and the kabbalist's tikkun to produce apokatastasis
or resolution of al negations ultimately in the unity of God, the iconography
changed, or reverted to, images of balance between the opposing cosmic forces.
Erasmus,
for example, denied
In light of the above observations as to Renaissance thought, it is interesting to look at some of the greatest art produced during this period for Humanist patrons. They will be studied not so much for their superb quality as works of genius, but to discern the iconography and symbolism to be found within them.
According to oft quoted authority, Irwin
Panofsky, in his Studies in Iconology, Humanist Themes in Art of the
Renaissance, art works may be analyzed from three separate points of view.
The first is the formalistic, that is, how the lines, shapes, and colors
are arranged in an orderly and harmonies fashion to be enjoyed sensibly by the
viewer. Second is the subject matter, that is whom or what does the
picture represent, and third is the meaning, or "iconography in its
deepest sense." Panofsky goes on to say that this "meaning" is
apprehended by ascertaining those underlying principles which reveal the basic
attitude of a nation, period class, a religious or philosophical persuasion -
unconsciously qualified by one personality and condensed into one work.
Panofsky also points out that the artist himself most often does not fully
comprehend the depth of his message. 17
Following are interpretations of three famous paintings that can be examined
from all three perspectives, keeping in mind, however, the words of another
Renaissance scholar, Edgar Wind, writing in his seminal book, Pagan
Mysteries in the Renaissance. "They were designed for
initiates; hence they require an initiation." 18
In
1492, at the death of Lorenzo de Medici, patron of both the arts and the
Platonic Academy, an inventory was made of his belongings and among them was a
circular painting, tondo, depicting the adoration of the Christ Child
hanging in the main entrance hall of his palace. This painting begun in 1455 by
the Dominican monk Giovanni da Fiesole (Fra Angelico), the year of his death,
was finished by Carmelite brother, Filppo Lippi. The painting now hangs in the
National Gallery of Art in
As a Humanist icon, it is first of all presented in a circular or mandala format representative of the enclosed cosmos. Above, on the roof, a peacock, symbol of eternal life and the immortal soul since the time of the catacombs stands stage right. A pair of mating pheasants, creatures of the wild, are shown stage left. This follows the standard iconographical formula and represents the spiritual (m) and carnal (f) aspects of the cosmos as under stood in the Neo Platonic cosmology.
Central
to the theme of the picture is the seated Madonna and Christ Child, known to
have been painted by Fra Angelico receiving the homage of virtually all mankind
as well as the beasts. In the image, however, the Baby Jesus is not looking at
the figure kneeling before him in adoration, but downward onto a small round
object on his left thigh. This object, obviously painted in afterwards, either
by Fra Filippo or some other hand, has an eye and menacing teeth. From an
orthodox Catholic perspective it is symbolically out of place. Following the
Neo-platonist theory explained above regarding the coincidentia oppositorum
and the Kabbalistic notion that "God", the Ayn Sof, is the
source of both good and evil, it makes perfect sense. It thus may be presumed
that this little circular figure represents the incarnation of the sitra
ahra or left hand "evil - restrictive" aspect of the divinity
united in Christ, the archetype of all humanity. If this is, in fact, the case,
a Humanist "initiate" would immediately recognize the message; both
the macrocosm and the microcosm are ultimately formed by a harmonious
fusion of all opposites.
Another
examples of Renaissance art wherein the meaning and symbolic structure may be
of more interest than the splendid technique is the well known drawing by
Leonardo Da Vinci titled The Virgin and Child with St. Ann. Executed in
1498-9 as a cartoon (preparatory sketch) for a larger commissioned work. It is
one of the most enigmatic pictures in art history and has been the object of
multitudinous critiques, commentaries and evaluations. In his 1939 biography of
Leonardo, Kenneth Clark took the then prevailing formalist view, and
described this picture as, "the contrast of interlocking rhythms enclosed
within a single shape." While
stating that the overall desired shape sought by Leonardo is the pyramid, Lord
Clark wondered out loud why the two female heads at the top are in equilibrium
rather than the aesthetically more correct ascending order. On the whole,
however, Clark brushes off any inconsistencies within his own preconceived
notion of what the picture is about and equates the picture to a masterpiece by
Bach were one may always find: " ...new facilities of movement and
harmony, growing more and more intricate, yet subordinate to the whole." 20 In the 1967 edition of this same book,
Lord Clark modified his aesthetic critique of Leonardo's work by saying that he
had tried too hard to separate Leonardo the artist from Leonardo the man, in
regard to this picture. He then added what he called a profound and beautiful
interpretation by Sigmund Freud. According to Freud, Leonardo spent the first
years of his life with his natural mother, the peasant Caterina. Leonardo's
father, Ser Piero, however, after his marriage a year later to another woman,
which turned out to be fruitless, eventually brought his love child to be reared
by his lawful wife. Thus, according to Freud, Leonardo had two mothers, both of
whom he loved, and hence the equilibrium of the two female heads at the top of
this composition. Leonardo has, again according to Freud, unconsciously
produced two mysteriously smiling faces of approximately the same age emerging
from what strangely appears to be one body. 21
Without questioning the integrity of Lord Clark or Sigmund Freud, for that matter, I invite the reader to carefully study this picture for its visual content and then consider once again its title. In this picture there are at the top the two smiling female heads as witnessed by Dr. Freud, and they do, in fact, appear to emerge from a single mass or body. There are also two semi naked children who not only appear to be of the same age, but who bear a striking resemblance to each other. They could almost be identical twins except that the one on the left has shorter hair, a broad forehead and a more intense expression. In contrast, the child fully to stage left with his massive curls, leaning languidly on his elbow, has a more passive sentimental posture and look. Between the two children, closer to the child at stage left, a hand with index finger extended points heavenward. This hand visually links the female head toward stage left (St. Anne?), to the child at stage left.(John the Baptist?) Now think of the title, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. According to Christian tradition, St. Anne was historically the mother of the Virgin Mary and should therefore be rendered at least fifteen years her senior. One may, of course, accept Freud's theory but it does not explain the children. If Freud is right and there are unconscious sublimations contained in this picture, who does the child at stage left represent and why is he there? According to the title one assumes he is John the Baptist. Why, however, would the ascetic John the Baptist be represented, even as a child, as a baleful languid twin of the Christ Child? Leonardo was well acquainted with the biblical traditions and certainly had the technical ability to portray what so ever he wished to portray.
If
the pictorial content does not appear to coincide with the official title given
the picture by the painter himself, what then is this picture all about?
Regarding the two heads emerging from the one body, look again at these faces.
The face on the left, (stage right) theoretically Mary, is all sweetness and
light. The one, toward stage left, theoretically Mary's mother, not only
appears the same age but, in fact, is physically a mirror image of Mary. She
has, however, a dark and sinister mien. She smiles but it is not the gentle
smile of motherly goodness; it is a quizzical, almost threatening smile.
This single bodied but double natured woman, appears as both good and evil, the mother of life but also the destroyer, like the Hindu goddess Kali, who gives birth to all, but also drinks the blood of her victims from their own skulls. Does she not represent here Mother Nature, the macrocosm, in which all opposites exist?
And the children? Instead of Jesus and John, could they not just as well be identified with Castor and Pollux, the twins born of Zeus and Leda the fruit of unnatural lust in the pagan myth (equally well known to Leonardo) or, perhaps, the Gemini, the twins of astrological lore who represent the fundamental duality of the cosmos?
The one to stage right,
with his composure and Apollonian reason appears to be blessing the unruly left
hand, or Dionesiac twin side of his very own nature. As neither Leonardo nor
his contemporaries have left us written explanations, the answer is, of course,
a matter of speculation. However, given an understanding of Renaissance
theology explained above, and the basic right-left, up-down form of symbolic
expression we have previously examined, it would appear that the woman toward
stage left with her "facia nigra" as representative of the
dark "occult" forces, is pointing upward to tell the initiated viewer
that both the light and dark, or good and evil forces of nature, the macrocosm,
come from God and that through the coincidentia oppositorum or
the resolution of opposites, man, the microcosm, will return thence - (apokatastasis)-.
Perhaps the most interesting symbolic
portrayal of the Renaissance ideal of coincidentia oppositorum, is
Giorgione's Tempesta or storm. Little is known of the provenance or
early history of this picture other than that it was painted some time after
1504. First documented in 1530 as a landscape with a tempest, a gypsy and a
soldier, it is probably the most discussed and analyzed paintings of the
Renaissance. A nineteenth century inventory lists it as an allegory of Mercury
(Hermes ) and
From
a simple iconographical point of view, this painting is truly archetypal and
follows the standard: left-right; above-below analysis to perfection. The male
with an enlarged codpiece and the staff (baton de commandemant) stands
stage right surmounted by a stone edifice (man the builder). The female with
her head covered by a veil (symbol of mystery) is seated stage left beneath the
leafy trees (woman, nature, nurturer). It should be noted that the veil, or
mystery, which covers the woman's head comes up from below. She and her power
are of the earth. Above is the natural element of lightning associated with
celestial power and therefore masculine. Below is the natural feminine
principle of water. Central to the painting are two truncated columns. These
columns or pillars, as we have seen since Solomon's
The Council of Trent (1545 - 1563), while
generally remembered for its stance against the Protestant Reformation,
officially renounced the Humanist ideology as well, and subsequently placed
many of the writings of its proponents including Pico, Reuchlin and Erasmus on
the Index of forbidden books. The writings of
The visual arts that
proceeded from the Council of Trent are known to those art historians enamored
of the Classical norm, as Baroque, a derogatory term derived from the
Portuguese word for an imperfect pearl. However, following the Thomistic
doctrine that nature is not destroyed, but transformed by grace, they evoke a
hierarchical vision of engraced souls leading upward and opening into the
transcendental realm of the Beatific Vision. The image at the left is of the
The
"Humanists," however, having lost official recognition by the
Catholic authorities continued to flourish in Protestant lands as secret
brotherhoods such as the Rosicrucians who first appeared to the public through
such publications as the Fama and the Confessio in
In the Protestant countries,
the symbolism of the Rosicrucians was openly similar to that of the Humanist
initiates of the Renaissance seen above as in the Tempesta of Giorgione;
a fusion of the natural male (active) and female principles (passive) in
polarity. In the anonymous German,
John Dee, necromancer, court astrologer and
magician of Queen Elizabeth I of
Symbolically, here
again are seen the two columns associated with the (male) sun and (female) moon
standing stage left and right respectively. Between the columns is what can
only be described as the "Orphic" egg. According to the Orphic
tradition (Rhapsodies), at the beginning of time the cosmic egg was
formed in which Eros - Phanes, the god of love and light, mated with his
daughter Nux, night - darkness, to bring forth Uranos the sky and
Gaia the earth. This cosmogony is represented in
It is, in fact, under the broad umbrella of Freemasonry where all of the above "Humanist" values can be found to this day. While the ostensible goals of Freemasonry are philanthropy and human development, the true goal is philosophic and ultimately religious. The index of any of the best known Masonic encyclopedias, i.e., Mackey, Pike, Waite, list the same spiritual influences (Neo-Platonism, Orphism, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, etc.) upon which the Craft is based, curiously similar to those pronounced by Pico della Mirandola in 1469. 29 See: Freemasonry also www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/venzifr.html It is also within Freemasonry where the twin pillars are most widely exhibited and explained. Albert Pike, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite, in his Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry, identifies them as follows:
"You
enter[ed] the Lodge between two columns... The pillar or column on the right,
or in the south, was named, as the Hebrew word is rendered in our translation
of the Bible, JACHIN: and that on the left BOAZ. Our translators say that the
first word means, "He shall establish;" and the second, "In
it is strength."...The former word also means he will establish, or
plant in an erect position- from the (Hebrew) verb Kun, he stood erect.
It probably meant active and vivifying Energy and Force; and Boaz, Stability,
Permanence, in the passive sense." 30
In explaining "The Royal Secret"
of these pillars, Pike goes on to posit the inner duality or bi-sexuality of
the Godhead itself. Man, according to Pike exists as both Male and Female as
symbolic of the intrinsic divine duality: " [God]...the Ineffable Name,
and dividing it, it becomes bi-sexual ...and discloses its meaning ...The
highest of which the Columns Jachin and Boaz are the symbol. 'In the image of
Deity,' we are told, 'God created the Man; Male and Female.'"31
Pike not only posits the existence of the dual
existence of male and female within the Godhead, but the existence of good and
evil as well: "The Evil is the shadow of the Good and inseparable from it.
The Divine Wisdom limits by equipoise the Omnipotence of the Divine Will or
Power, and the result is Beauty or Harmony. The arch rests not on a single
column, but springs from one on either side." 32
This
concept of harmony is at the core of the image shown to the left. Included in a
variety of Masonic texts and periodicals, it is, in fact, an "icon"
of the Masonic faith and represents, "The religions of the world."
Among these religions one finds, for example, Mithraism in the lower
left corner, Judaism at the center with the seven branched Menorah
beneath a sacrificial lamb, a Muslim imam, Persian fire worshipers, and the
Egyptian cult of Hathor, among others. (The Crucifix is conspicuous by
its absence.). The most important element of all, however, is the object of
worship of these devotees. Riding the clouds at the top are a woman (stage
right) crowned with six stars and a tiny crescent moon on her head and a
serpent at her feet. There is a young man to her left, blessing with his left
hand. The Zodiac arches above them in an enclosing circle. (One might think
that the woman is perhaps the Virgin Mary as she often appears crowned with
twelve stars while treading the serpent in Catholic art. Catholics, however, do
not worship Mary_as a divinity. This image simply
represents the dual natured "Complete God" worshipped by Masons as
described above by Albert Pike.
[For the Freemason, the "Complete God,"
is comprised of both good and evil personified principles, however, the
traditional roles are reversed. The "good" God is the natural (f)
emancipator who offers freedom, and the "evil" one is the
transcendental (m)God of restriction, as seen by the following quote by
Pike. " The pavement, alternately black and white, symbolize the Good and
Evil Principles of the Egyptian and Persian creed. It is the battle between the
forces of light and shadow; Day and Night; Freedom and Despotism; Religious
Liberty and the Arbitrary Dogmas of a Church that thinks for its votaries, and
whose Pontiff claims to be in fallible, and the decretals of its Councils to
constitute a gospel." 34 – ("Lucifer Quote" ) ]
Thus, the feminine figure seen above represents
the Gnostic divinization of the feminine principle (Isis,
For
many of the Neoplatonists, the very vision of God was the contemplation of
divine beauty in a state of erotic trance. This mystical vision was complete
when, although still in this life, one received the Kabbalistic "mors
osculi" or "kiss of death" from the Venus Celeste source
of all beauty and wisdom 35 Whereas the Venus Celeste or Celestial
Venus and the Venus Vulgare or Earthly Venus were theoretically distinct
in the writings of Marcilio Ficino, for Bocaccio in his Questo Amoroso Fuoco
the two are clearly linked.
Perhaps the greatest exposition of this line of
thought, however, emerged in the writings of Giordano Bruno who was condemned
and burnt for heresy in 1600. Antedating Freud by some 300 years, Bruno set
forth the doctrine in his De Vinculis in Genere that, "
[erotic] love rules the world, the strongest chain is that of Venus. Eros is
lord of the world: he pushes directs and appeases every one. All other bonds
are reduced to that one, as we see in the animal kingdom where no female and no
male tolerate rivals, even forgetting to eat and drink, even at the risk of
life itself." 35 He
maintained, however, that this drive could and ought to be contained and
willfully directed. For Bruno the Eroici Furori, the Heroic Fury of the
poets and artists was the distillation of erotic furor and an assault on
heaven. Through Eros man could, indeed, become god. 38
The watershed work
embodying the Erotic nature of the Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Kabbalistic
Renaissance thinkers was Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera or Springtime
painted in 1477. Not only does the painting portray a bucolic scene from the
pagan past with nostalgia, it contains within its very core an imaginative
portrayal of the erotic nature of Renaissance thought. "Primavera"
was most probably painted for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, a Neoplatonic
enthusiast and cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent. There is little doubt that it
reflects an allegorical expression as well as artistic achievement. According
to Renaissance scholar, Edgar Wind, the key to this painting lies in the words
of Pico della Mirandola, that "the unity of Venus unfolds in the trinity
of the graces" and that this simile pervades the totality of universal
pagan myth. 37 In Primavera,
following Plotinus and Pico, there are nine figures which form an Ennead,
that is to say an emanation in multiples of three. Central to the painting,
although somewhat to our right, is the goddess [Venus, Isis] herself. On our
right hand (stage left), [female or nature side] is the triad of Zephyr or
West wind, Chloris the innocent earth nymph, and Flora, the
resplendent herald of Spring. On our left hand (stage right) [male or God side]
is, from the center outward, the group depicting the three graces Pulchritude
or beauty, Castitas Chastity and Voluptas pleasure, and to
the farthest left and separate from them, Mercury the divine mystagogue 39 with his caduceus (entwined
serpent staff) dispelling the clouds from the upper left hand corner. At the
top center is blind Cupid or Eros firing his love dart at the
figure of Chastity.
The
first triad, then is that of Zephyr, Chloris, and Flora,
pictured here on the right. In this scene, which follows the Fasti of
Ovid, Zephyr the soft breeze of spring [incipient erotic desire]
caresses the fleeing innocent nymph Chloris who, spewing flowers on her
breath, is thus turned through a metamorphoses into Flora. Flora as
harbinger of spring is the culmination of natural beauty and is depicted as
fully formed erotic woman. As such she is the source and also the fruition of
earthly desire, Venus Vulgare. Flora stands self consciously
erect in the knowledge that she is the highest manifestation of nature. She
occupies the dominant position stage left to the eternal feminine manifestation
Venus Celeste, Isis, Ishtar, Astarte, the great
goddess, at the center.
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Stage right (God or
Spirit side) to the great goddess are her emanations, the three Graces, who dance
in a spiritual sublimation of erotic desire. In the center of these is Castitas
or Chastity, neatly coifed shy and melancholy. To her left is the sensuous Voluptas
or pleasure. To her right is the decorous figure of haughty Pulchretudo or
Beauty. They, in fact, form a trinity of purpose. All three have their hands
tightly united above and below in what Horace called the "segnesque
nodum solvere Gratiae" or knot of the Graces. 40 The final and most important triad in
this Ennead, however, is made up of the prime movers of the whole scene Eros
(male) above, Venus (the eternal feminine) below, and Mecurius (the
divine fusion of opposites) reaching upward at stage right. Once human passion
has been awakened as depicted in the scene of Zephyr, Chloris and
Flora the stage is set for the erotic fulfillment of man through the
desire embodied in Pulchretudo, Castitas and Voluptas. From his
position above, blind (desire devoid of rational judgement) Eros fires
his dart at Castitas. Castitas’ diaphanous garment falls from her
left shoulder as desire enters her heart. She looks longingly at Mercurius while
Voluptas looks knowingly at her. The spark of divine rapture, of
ecstasy, has been enkindled. The "heroic Fury" of the poet to convert
desire to fruition is achieved by Mercurius. It is he, who with his Caduceus
(entwined male and female serpents) reaches beyond the golden apples of earthly
desire. It is he, Mercurius Duplex, the concordia discors or
fusion of opposites [spirit and matter] who draws back the clouds of mystery
(upper corner, stage right) to reveal the divine form. It is the Mors Osculi
or Kiss of death that awaits.
Following
are two paintings, Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods painted in 1514,
and Nicholas Pousin’s Kingdom of Flora painted in 1631. While painted a hundred
years apart and depicting different pagan myths share a consistent iconography.
Ostensibly Bellini’s painting simply shows a bucolic scene in which gods and
goddesses as well as nymphs and satyrs indulge themselves without inhibition.
Iconographically, however, the picture is laid out in the universal right (m) –
left (f), above – below presentation and contains what Panofsky called meaning,
or "iconography in its deepest sense." It should be remembered that
this concept of "meaning" as used by Panofsky, as explained above,
refers to a distilled presentation of cultural, religious, or philosophical
values that define a an age yet may not be fully understood, if at all, by the
artist. The scene is a shaded earthly glade while in the background (perhaps
painted by Titian), Mount Parnassus ascends to the heavens. Stage right,
Mars the quintessential violent male god of war, surrounded by a debauched male
entourage looks longingly at a bare-breasted Venus with her female attendants who
is being awakened by a male rustic. Between the two ‘celestial’ figures, sits a
rustic or peasant couple with the man’s hand groping the woman’s crotch.
This painting is not meant to be pornographic, but esoteric. It follows the Emerald
Table of Hermes Trismegistus, "The below is as the above, and the
above is as below." The awakening of lust below awakens desire between the
gods above and vice-versa. The Venus Vulgare and the Venus Celeste
are one and the same and, as in Boticelli’s Primavera, the beatific
vision is but rarefied lust.
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Pousin’s Kingdom of
Flora, again, has the same classic right – left, above – below layout.
Ostensibly the theme is taken from a tale in Ovid’s Metamorphosis that
recounts how various heroes and demigods were turned to flowers at their death.
Once again, stage right is the figure of a male Herm, or erect column
statue of Priapus, god of male fertility. Beneath him is Ajax,
who falls on his own sword after being denied the armor of Achilles. Hyacinths
were said to have grown from his blood that spilled on the ground. Stage
left, the lovers Krokos and Smilax erotically recline. According to Ovid, they
were accordingly turned into saffron. All the male figures at stage left are
curiously androgynous.
In the center, above is Apollo, the sun god and below is Flora dispensing her magic upon Narcissus and Echo, who skrie the future from the waters of the urn. Iconographically, again in its deepest unconscious sense, this painting speaks of the death of the male principle, (Patriarchal authority) here seen as Ajax, (stage right) and the triumph of the feminine or earthly principle of erotic fulfillment symbolized by Flora and the androgynous group (stage left). These are the first stirrings of the "Romantic" full divinization of "The Eternal Feminine" which will be found especially in the writings of Wolgang Frederich Von Goethe.
In his 1782 treatise Die Natur, Goethe
wrote "Nature! We are surrounded and enveloped by her – unable to step
outside her, unable to get into her more deeply. Un-asked and unwarned, she
takes us up into the circle of her dance and carries us along till we are
wearied and fall from her arms…Men are all in her and she in all…Even the most
unnatural is Nature , even the crudest pedantry still has at touch of her
genius…Life is her fairest invention, death but her artifice whereby to have
much life… All is there in her always. She knows not past nor future. Present
is her eternity. And she is good and I praise her in all her works." 41
This theme of "
Divine Nature" caught on among the intelligentsia and was picked up in the
early nineteenth century by such artists as William Blake, David Friederich,
and Philip Otto Runge, among others. Rung expressed his experience of the
immanent divinity of Nature as "…the feeling of the whole universe with
us; this united chord which in its vibration touches every string of our
heart;…here is the highest that we divine- God"42
To
the right of the page is Runge’s 1809 painting titled: "The Times of Day,
Morning" designed as a sacred picture for a chapel dedicated to the new religion
of nature. At the center of the painting is the figure of Nature herself in the
guise of
Thus, rather than the heavenly kingdom promised by Our Lord, Jesus Christ, to which all are called, European man turned his attention to either finding or rebuilding “Paradise lost.”
The belief in this promised “New Age,” or return to “paradise” had been growing in the minds of the poets and philosophers since the Renaissance. It flowered in the late seventeenth century with John Locke’s philosophical speculations in his Two Treatises on Government while the poet John Dryden would write, “I am as free as Nature first made man…/ When wild in the woods the noble savage ran.” and came into full bloom with the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau such as his Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality, in the eighteenth century.
In the late nineteenth century the writings of
both the British and French explorers of the South Pacific, James Cook and
Louis Bougainville respectively, the myth of
Fascinated by this lure of an earthy paradise,
the brilliant but eccentric French painter Paul Gauguin visited
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While the frank
eroticism of the reclining female figure is indeed alluring, the black dog, a
near universal diabolical symbol, lurks malevolently in the background |
The title of
this painting, “Words of the Devil” suffices to uncover the hidden mystery
underlying the delights of this seeming paradise |
This last
painting of the same period is titled ‘The spirit of death watches” Somehow
Gauguin knew, from his Christian upbringing that there was something very
unsettling going on in “paradise.” |
Be that as it may, the image of God as eternal transcendental “Father” has all but disappeared from modern iconology and has been replaced by the “Eternal Feminine” of immanent earthly pleasure and fulfillment
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“Alchemical” depiction of the “male principle”
being overthrown, from the |
The great Romantic
Sculptor, Antonio Canova, carved the “Three Graces” as a feminine Trinity of
lesbian erotica in 1815 |
In fact,
the image of the chaste and holy Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redeemer,
that reigned supreme throughout Christendom has been replaced by “Marianne,” the Mother of the
Revolution. “The Revolution” as explained by James H. Bilington, in his seminal
classic on the subject, Fire in the Minds of Men is not so much a
rebellion against an established order,” … but a Copernican circular return to
an original position. Interpreted politically, the revolution is, in its most
violent form, the forceful implementation of a return to that idyllic
antiauthoritarian ‘State of
In the words of “Bolshevik” Prince, Peter Kropotkin (1842-1941) The Revolution is nothing less than., “The ongoing struggle for the rational, progressive liberation from all restrictive authority.” 43a.
The new, earthly, feminine image is, in fact, the
central icon of all revolutionary art aimed at the overthrow of the patriarchy
of God and the hierarchical order. The
most famous of these is the 1830 painting by Delacroix of “
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Diego Rivera’s 1928 mural., to the left, La Tierra Liberada, El Paraiso Reconquistado, ( The liberated Land, Paradise Re-conquered ) in Chapingo, Mexico, is a further example of a "Revolutionary Icon" dedicated to Nature as Great Goddess. Her naked figure fills the heavens as recipient of the "spirit." Just beneath her is a "Mandala" symbol with its "bindu" at the center (as formed by a windmill) connecting the earthly and heavenly realms. With her right hand she offers a life form to the woman below to stage right, while Promethius, stage left, offers the stolen fire to the man. The "divine child," of the new emancipated humanity, touches wires together setting off sparks that will set progress in motion. Once again, this is the complete antithesis of the traditional Christian iconography shown in part one of this treatise.. The mural to the right by Jose Orozco, Omnesciencia painted at the same period is another example of the deposition and replacement of Christ with the "Feminine Principle" at the heart of Mexican Revolutionary art. |
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The image of the voluptuous
“Marianne,” astride the word wearing her Phrygian cap, holding a rose
(symbol of eartly perfection) remains the symbol of World Revolution, as seen
in this cover drawing of the 1997 book , To the Other Shore: The Russuian Jewish
Intellectuals Who Came to
Again, as explained in, Fire in the Minds of Men, “ a new earthly religion based on the myth of Prometheus stealing the fire from the gods for the use of man, began to form [in the 18th century] when “…some European aristocrats transferred their lighted candles from the Christian altars to Masonic lodges. The flame of the occult alchemists which had promised to turn dross into gold reappeared at the center of new ‘circles’ seeking to recreate a golden age.” 45. [ emphasis added] The diagrams below are visual presentations of the traditional Catholic world view (on the left) where order stems from God the transcendental Father downward in the form of a pyramid with a hierarchical set of relationships of mutual reciprocity, i.e. all members of society, both spiritual and temporal, have interlocking rights and responsibilities in regard to all those above and below in the hierarchy.
The Masonic pyramid (on the right), on the contrary,
represents the evolutionary ascent of man from (Mother Earth) below through a
revolutionary dialectical conflict of thesis and antithesis, light and dark,
left and right, male and female, capital and labor, good and evil to produce
the apotheosis or deification of man -"Man is a God in the Making",
Manly P.Hall, 33° The Lost Keys of Free Masonry-. At
the top of the Masonic pyramid are two “divine” men holding the Masonic symbol
depicting the square and the compass intertwined as emblem of ultimate
resolution and fusion of opposites heaven ( m ) and
earth ( f ) united as “The complete “God.,” the ultimate coincidentia
opositorum. - "In one instance
we have the interlaced triangles, one black, the other white, the white
triangle has its point up; the black triangle points down... The interlaced
black and white triangles represent the forces of darkness and light, error and
truth, ignorance and wisdom and good and
evil; when properly placed they
represent balance and harmony." Wes Cook 32° Vigniettes in Masonry from the Royal Arch
Masonry Magazine (emphasis added)
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Image
based on Caroll Quigley1955 Lecture, |
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Image from Oct. 8, 1956 issue of Life Magazine |
In 1882, German philosopher, Friederich
Nietzsche, prophetically proclaimed to modern man the sate of affairs in his
book, The Joyful Science where he
has a theoretically “mad” character
proclaim, “Whither is God?... We have killed him – you and I. All of us
are his murderers…God is dead. And we have killed him.” Having
proclaimed the death of God. Nietzsche’s character continues, “What
festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the
greatness of this deed to great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to
appear worthy of it?
The paradigm shift from
the Judeo-Christian acknowledgment and worship of the transcendent patriarchal
God to the immanent feminine, “Divine Mother Nature,” is reflected as well in the
two following "icons." To the left of the page is "The High
Priestess" from A.E. Waite’s 1910 The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, and to
the right, Christy
Swid’s Belthane, from the1986 cover of Pathways a "New
Age" health journal. They are two versions of the same theme, the emergent
power of the "feminine principle." In Waite’s Tarot card, the
traditional columns, Jachin and Boaz have been reversed, and in
Swid’s rendition they have not only been reversed but changed into trees to
emphasize the polarity within nature itself.
The permanence of these perennial symbols, “Jachin” and “Boaz,”as well as their reversal, is significant. In order to produce the immanent perfection of Man and Mother Nature, a dialectical process must be followed according to the Gnostic – Hermetic- Masonic model as described above. At present it may be expressed in such theses and antitheses as “Individualism” vs. “Collectivism,” as represented by so called Right and Left political parties, or the global “Green” movement vs. the “Military Industrial Complex,” or “back to nature” vs. Scientific progress,” etc. always leading toward a utopian synthesis beyond “male” and “female,” (androgyny) “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “evil” where all contradictions are resolved and “divine man” and ‘divine nature achieve total harmony. This model entered the main stream of Western philosophy with the writings of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) who was an adept of these occult traditions. (See below, Appendix 8 – Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition) Marxism was, and to an extent remains, an attempt to implement the Hegelian dialectic in the political economic order.
To
the left of the page is a schematic diagram of the Kabalistic, Hegelian,
Marxist dialectic and its pursuit of ultimate harmony and synthesis.through the
process of Tikum Olam (The
restoration of the original harmony before the supposed separation of “good”
and “evil.” To the right is a “Masonic” icon depicting the two opposing forces,
active male “stage right” represented by the rhinoceros with horn pointing up
and the passive feminine, “stage left” by the anteater with nose pointing down. The male forces are also represented by the Greek
warrior and man in armor and the feminine by the female encased mummy. The
central figures are locked in struggle until enlightenment and true creativity
are achieved as shown by the figure of the harmonious Buddha and the works of
art on either side. All proceed from the mind of “Mother Nature.”
An interesting variant is seen in Vincent Desiderio’s 2002 triptych titled "Pantocrator" from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art collection. The naked woman in the shower represents the active (sentient) feminine principle as dominant at stage right and the Florentine Baptistry where Brunelleschi is said to have discovered analytic "perspective" is placed as the passive (intellectual) male principle at stage left. At the center of this obvious reversal of the traditional order is the "Panocrator" (Lord of all) the Byzantine title for Christ, save in this case it is a "flying saucer." This painting represents a bizarre “mystery of faith” where presumably "alien" masters of a higher intelligence will guide humanity to Utopian fulfillment, of the “New Age” heedless of the Transcendent Creator and His Divine Son, Jesus Christ, unique mediator between Heaven and earth.
At
the present time, in fact, New Age icons abound. Many are represented as
classic oriental Mandalas. The1991 painting at the left by Bev Doolittle
was offered in the Smithsonian Magazine as the "Spirit of the Earth"
and places the Bindu, or point of contact with the divine, on the Native
American rider at the center. The picture at the right is taken from a 1993
advertisement in the Washington Times. It was a call for essays regarding the
subject of democracy, a noble topic, which is unfortunately represented,
however, as a classic oriental T’ai-Chi image of equal black and white yin-yang
hemispheres representing humanity as the antinomian fusion of opposites in an
impersonal cosmic order.
Regretfully
mandala imagery has crept into the iconography of the Roman Catholic
Church. The image at the left is the logo of the Jubilee Year in Rome marking
2000 years of Christianity. At the center of the mandala is the
"divine" bindu a nebulous light surrounded by five (Kabalistic
number for man) doves – representing the diverse spiritualities of man? They
are joined together by what Carl Jung referred to as a "solar"
"cross of equilibrium."44
The words within the circle say Christus, Heri, Hodie, Semper (Christ,
yesterday, today, always). But, what Christ? Which
Christianity?
By the time of the Second Vatican Council, two divergent ideologies regarding the "image of God" in man came into conflict. They have yet to be resolved. The first ideology is the traditional view as put forward in the Creeds (Christ is the unique Son of God) and reaffirmed at the Council of Trent. It is most simply explained by St. Thomas Aquinas. "The image of a thing may be found in something in two ways. In one way, it is found in something of the same specific nature; as the image of the king is found in his son. In another way, it is found in something of a different nature, as the king’s image on a coin. In the first sense the Son is Image of the Father; in the second sense, man is called the image of God." ST, 1, 35, R3. The true "image of God" in man is achieved only by Baptism into Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, whereby we become sons "by adoption."
The second ideology is the modernist view that "God is immanent in man and the cosmos." This erroneous view was denounced by St. Pius X in his encyclical letter Pascendi dominici gregis,: esp. The Modernist as Theologian #19. It is based on the Neo-Platonic, Kabalistic, Hermetic, Renaissance theology as well as the19th century, especially French, Masonic occultism described above, (as enunciated in the afterward by Hans Urs Von Balthasar to the anonymous Meditations on the Tarot, 45) as well as by the German Romanticism, also described above, which culminates in the writings of Friedrich Schleiermacher:
"The essential difference between the Redeemer and the redeemed
consists in the prototypal dominance of the God-consciousness in the
Redeemer, into whose fellowship the believer may be admitted by a process
substantially analogous to the formation of a human society around a
charismatic leader, who unites them by his vision of their future state." 46 (emphasis
added)
See: Modernists
Much,
if not most, of the late twentieth century iconography is based on the latter.
The picture to the left is the cover piece of the Fall 2003 publication of the CMMB (Catholic Medical Missions board). This particular issue dedicated to the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa. In and of itself, it is tender rendering of an African mother and child with two doves looking on. Two barely visible transparent arms come down from the doves (spirits) and gently embrace the mother. The child holds an eight-petaled sunflower on which he fixes his gaze. At the center of the flower, (enlarged image to the right) however there is a classic Hindu eight-spoked wheel of life mandala, complete with bindu point, thus rendering the painting a religious icon of the monistic (God is nature – nature is God) one world religion variety.
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Another example of the inroads of “revolutionary” faith in “Catholic” art and architecture is Mark Rothko’s 1971 fourteen, almost pure black, “Stations of the Cross” inside the Chapel designed for the Basilian Fathers in Houston Texas (Picture on the right). According to the patroness of the project, Dominique De Menil, “the chapel represents the womb and the “Broken Obelisk” sculpted by Barnett Newman, represents virility.” (Picture on the left). The simple fact that the obelisk is “broken” – consciously or unconsciously – testifies to the emasculation (of God the Father) and the black images within testify to the “Culture of Death” and despair in a Godless universe. Mark Rothko committed suicide shortly after finishing this project. |
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The
image shown here to the left is taken from a 1992 publication of The
Secretariat for