"Da Vinci" and Other Codes - Part 2

Saviour of the World - 16th century, Giampietrino. Geometry: 2022, DS.

"In alchemy, the symbol for the perfected Great Work is the hermaphrodite - literally the god Hermes and the goddess Aphrodite blended in one person. Leonardo was fascinated with hermaphrodites, even going so far as to cover sheet after sheet of his sketchpad with drawings of them - some pornographic. And recent work on the world's most famous portrait - the enigmatically smirking Mona Lisa - has shown that 'she" was none other than Leonardo himself.

...During our travels to France, we repeatedly found that towns which had formerly been Templar property - such as Utelle in Provence and Alet-les Bains in Languedoc - subsequently became centres of alchemy. It is also significant that the alchemists, like the Templars, had a special veneration for John the Baptist."

- Two separate but related quotes from The Templar Revelation, 1997, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; a non-fiction documentation of many of the elements which surfaced in the Da Vinci Code, plus a few dozen more. This compilation of facts, speculations, and anecdotes is enough to make your head spin!

Images: Inset right is Da Vinci's St. John the Baptist with his hand pointing heavenward in what is actually a very common position in religious images during that period. He is dressed in animal skins in reference to time he spent as a hermit in the desert. While, at a quick glance, he might appear androgynous, in reality - and in a clearer reproduction - he simply appears to be a romantically handsome man. Doubtlessly, Leonardo thought so, too. The model was his lover, Salino Giacomo, also known as Salai (see Mon Salai).

"In Psychology, C.G. Jung used the term to denote "an archetypal pairing of contrasexual opposites, which symbolized the communication of the conscious and unconscious minds, the conjunction of two organisms without the loss of identity." He used syzygy to liken the alchemical term albedo with unconscious contrasexual soul images; the anima in men and animus in women.

In Gnosticism, syzygy is a divine active-passive, male-female pair of aeons, complementary to one another rather than oppositional; they comprise the divine realm of the Pleroma (the totality of God's powers), and in themselves characterize aspects of the unknowable Gnostic God."

- Via this Mythic Imagination Institute page. Inset right is an example of one of many medieval "penitent Magdalene" paintings - this one by Giampietrino. His version shows the Magdalene as a hermit in a desert (or, possibly, a cave in the wilderness) dressed down in what appears to be her overgrown hair. According to some sources, the hermit-in-the-desert scenario may actually be the result of a confusion with a different Mary: Mary of Egypt.

"In the system of Valentinus, as expounded by Irenaeus, the origin of things was traced to two eternal co-existent principles, a male and a female... The whole Aeonology of Valentinus was based on a theory of syzygies, or pairs of Aeons, each Aeon being provided with a consort; and the supposed need of the co-operation of a male and female principle for the generation of new ones, was common to Valentinus and some earlier Gnostic systems. But it was a disputed point in these systems whether the First Principle of all was thus twofold. There were those, both in earlier systems, and even among the Valentinians who held, that the origin of things was to be traced to a single Principle, which some described as hermaphrodite; others said was above all sex."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for Aeon (Gnosticism).

"The Borborites...were an early Christian Gnostic sect during the late fourth century who had numerous scriptures involving Mary Magdalene, including The Questions of Mary, The Greater Questions of Mary, The Lesser Questions of Mary, and The Birth of Mary. None of these texts have survived to the present, but they are mentioned by the early Christian heretic-hunter Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion. Epiphanius says that the Greater Questions of Mary contained an episode in which, during a post-resurrection appearance, Jesus took Mary to the top of a mountain, where he pulled a woman out of his side and engaged in sexual intercourse with her. Then, upon ejaculating, Jesus drank his own semen and told Mary, 'Thus we must do, that we may live.'"

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for Mary Magdalene. The Borborites were pretty outrageous... if Epiphanius the heretic-hunter is to be believed. (Probably not!) I must say though, that the odd scene with Christ, Magdalene and the semen sounds almost hermetic. Meanwhile, later in the entry, we are informed that  - according to St. Jerome - Mary Magdalene was actually married to John the Evangelist... which is often just another name for John the Apostle. It gets complicated.

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I am not a conventionally religious person, but when I first lay my eyes on "Saviour of the World" (inset left and also introducing this post) by the 16th century Italian painter Giampietrino (See Part 1), I was very drawn to it. Unexpectedly, while one might assume that, for a painter of Christian images, the "Saviour" would resemble Christ, it seems Giampietrino was not envisioning Christ... at least not the archetypal Christ figure.* He was envisioning the quintessential youthful androgyny. It could be a boy. It could be the boy's twin sister. The expression on its face is gentle and, yet, guarded, inscrutable. It's as if it knows something - possibly everything - and it's testing us... challenging us. But, ultimately, its message is sub rosa and it may as well be an alchemical cryptogram. Perhaps, it is.

For example, instead of the expected crown or halo, there are three large, key-like structures surrounding the figure's head. They could be the upper portion of a cross placed in the background... or three embedded keys in a golden triangle (the horizontal type) array. Considering that the figure is positioned within a large GTS, we might choose the latter.

Meanwhile, the saviour holds the earth in its hand like a crystal ball it has just uncovered. What fleeting mysteries lie on its featureless surface? Once again, we are clueless...

"Da Vinci" and Other Codes - Part 1

Leda With Her Children (Leda con i loro figli)- 1520, Giampietrino. Geometry: 2022, DS.

 

"In Medieval and through to Renaissance works of painting, sculpture and literature, Saint John is often presented in an androgynous or feminized manner. Historians have related such portrayals to the circumstances of the believers for whom they were intended. For instance, John's feminine features are argued to have helped to make him more relatable to women. Likewise, Sarah McNamer argues that because of his status as an androgynous saint, John could function as an 'image of a third or mixed gender' and 'a crucial figure with whom to identify' for male believers who sought to cultivate an attitude of affective piety, a highly emotional style of devotion that, in late-medieval culture, was thought to be poorly compatible with masculinity. After the Middle Ages, feminizing portrayals of Saint John continued to be made..."

- Via the Wiki entry for John the Apostle. I don't necessarily agree with the above paragraph, but I thought I'd add it to the mix. Inset left is an utterly adorable young John painted by Fyodor Bruni (1801-1875). I don't know that women would identify with him, but little girls (and some little boys) might like to "jump his bones." Also appearing in the image is an eagle - one of John's symbols - which kind of looks like a griffin.

"The prevalence of these iconic displays of the beloved disciple resting on Jesus’ breast provided justification for same-sex male intimacy long before the contemporary search for a gay Jesus. Before the words gay or even homosexual were used to describe same-sex male relationships, those men whose sexual desires were oriented toward boys and other men pointed to this understanding of Jesus’ relationship with the beloved disciple. King James I of England (reigned 1603-1625), who was clearly homosexual, justified his sexual relationships with young men to his privy council by saying, 'Jesus had his John and I have my Peter.'"

- Via (Pastor) Frank Senn's web-page. Inset right is a statue from Germany (circa 1310) also found there.

  

***

In a previous post, I mentioned never having read The Da Vinci Code, which was true at the time, however, two weeks ago - and almost 20 years after it was written - I finally did get around to it! And, (surprise, surprise), it wasn't a half-bad story; a well-researched stew of speculation melding numerous, esoteric symbols - many of which have appeared on this blog - into one cohesive action-tale with enough suspense, espionage, counter-espionage and bloodshed to satiate the most demanding of audiences. And, yes, the hero gets the girl; what more could one ask for?

The thing is, the bulk of Brown's ingredients have been hashed and re-hashed by a number of (speculative) non-fiction authors in the past and will continue to bubble away on the back-burner. Alchemy, Freemasonry, the Rosicrucians, the Templar Knights, Rosslyn Chapel, the Cathars, the Black Madonnas, The Holy Grail, etc., are subjects that various researchers seem compelled to cobble together into one vaporous, homogenized form or another... as if all things of an esoteric nature must be intimately connected. Dan Brown attempted to accomplish the same feat with his fictional tale by adding several more symbols to the mix - the pentagram, the rose, the Fibonacci series, and the anomalous presence of (what appears to be) a female figure amid the disciples in Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper - all in support of the tale's major premise: the clandestine marriage of Christ and his "womb," Mary Magdalene, the alleged progenitors of the French Merovingian dynasty. And, to show his heart was in the right place (that is, the 21st century) Brown added a healthy pinch of Goddess-worship to the mix. In other words, even feminists could climb on board his train of thought.

The problem is, while Brown didn't actually invent his own symbolic definitions, he tailored the existing ones to fit his tale. While attempting to somewhat mitigate the (wrongfully) tarnished reputation of the pentagram - and it's about time someone did - he also referred to it as an exclusively pagan symbol which represented the Sacred Feminine. What he fails to mention is that it was an early Christian symbol as well, and, in a former incarnation, was (metaphorically) indicative of both genders (as was the triangle); in it's upright position it represented masculine (aggressive) qualities and forces and in its "inverted" position represented the feminine (passive) counterparts. Inset left (above) is the stunningly beautiful (north) rose window at Amien's cathedral in France featuring an inverted pentagram.

The larger problem, however, rests with the enigmatic feminine figure in Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper; a figure (shown below the jump) which a number of speculators assume is a woman and Mary Magdalene the logical choice. As for Brown, his novel's entire theme is hinged on the womanhood of this figure, all interpretations to the contrary are ignored...