Samhain, 2022; Leonora Carrington and the Philosophic Egg

The Chair, Daghda Tuatha de Danaan, 1955, Leonora Carrington.
Incidentally, the Internet Archive link presented here is a great source for
Carrington images, starting with this page.

"The “Ovum Philosophicum,” which can be translated as the Philosophical or Alchemical Egg, is the principal vessel used in alchemical operations. During the alchemical process, the material, Hermetically sealed in the Egg, is put through a symbolic death and rebirth. When the Egg is cracked, a new mystical substance emerges capable of improving any substance with which it comes in contact."

- An explanation of the Philosophic Egg found here.

"Rather than trying to use this painting to psychoanalyze the artist, it is more productive to see how many symbolic elements are combined within. There are alchemical elements including the large egg on the table, which represents the “Philosophic Egg,” or alchemical vessel. While this term is often used in alchemical texts, visual representations in alchemical texts of a large egg are less frequent. One exception is an engraving that first appeared in Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens of a soldier, representing the planet Mars, standing by a furnace about to attack a large egg on a square table with his sword. This illustration was reprinted in Seligmann’s History of Magic, as were two images of the alchemical rose, which in Carrington’s painting floats above, dripping milky white drops to the table below.  Throughout the painting Carrington incorporated the colors of black, white and red, which relate to the three major stages of the alchemical work. Grillot de Givry had included a color plate representing these three colors on hybrid creatures - black eagle/serpents and white eagle/lions or griffins - placed in a landscape below a small hill that contains a tree with red fruit."

"Many of these symbols lent their traditional esoteric meanings to her paintings, but the freedom with which she transformed and blended these symbols in her paintings reveal her very personal adaptations and combinations of found imagery. In her complex combinations of esoteric symbolism, her paintings reflect the structure of esoteric publications during the mid-twentieth century, which likewise presented a multitude of esoteric traditions, while pointing to deeper spiritual powers that could be unlocked through their contemplation. Her use of these symbols stemmed from her own ritual practices and reveal the power she infused into her work to activate the unconscious."

"Many things contributed to the changes in her work from the late 1940s and into the 1960s... Many new publications on esoteric subjects became available in those years. Earlier in Paris, she would have known E. A. Grillot de Givry’s Le Musée des sorciers, mages & alchimistes, a text that inspired many surrealists and was one of the first publications to reproduce images drawn from a myriad of occult paths, including scenes of monstrous devils, demons, witchcraft, alchemy, astrology, physiognomy, tarot, chiromancy or palmistry, divining rods and diagrams of talismans and magic circles."

- Three separate quotes from M. E. Warlick's excellent article: Leonora Carrington’s Esoteric Symbols and their Sources. the first quote cites Carrington's painting with the golden egg, Ab Eo Quod (1956) - inset right - but, thematically, the observations can also apply to The Chair... with the silver egg. Both feature a large egg on a table, a symbolic rose and a color palette of predominately white, black and red.

Inset left above is the enigmatic set of symbols - Carrington's E=MC2, 1969, found on this page. Directly below is Carrington's take on standard alchemical imagery; found at the afore-mentioned Internet Archive.

Black sun/ Sol Niger, 1975, Leonora Carrington.

"Sol niger (black sun) can refer to the first stage of the alchemical magnum opus, the nigredo (blackening). In a text ascribed to Marsilio Ficino three suns are described: black, white, and red, corresponding to the three most used alchemical color stages. Of the sol niger he writes:

The body must be dissolved in the subtlest middle air: The body is also dissolved by its own heat and humidity; where the soul, the middle nature holds the principality in the colour of blackness all in the glass: which blackness of Nature the ancient Philosophers called the crows head, or the black sun."

- Marsilius Ficinus, Liber de Arte Chemica

"Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington painted narrative scenes inhabited by mysterious people and spirits participating in curious rituals. Samhain Skin references the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, held on October 31 to celebrate summer’s end. Painting on an actual animal skin, Carrington presents animals, human hybrids, and reverse-handwritten references to tribes and deities from Gaelic history. The imagery also alludes to the Sidhe, fairy people from whom Carrington’s grandmother claimed their family had descended."

- Leonora Carrington created several Samhain paintings. The one cited - Samhain Skin (inset right)- can be found in the NMWA collection.

You'll note the central motif of a mermaid figure in the painting... the mermaid (or siren) appearing often in Carrington's work. An excellent example is this stunning triptych found here, which I have never seen before. Speaking of Carrington objects not-seen-before, here's an another outstanding collection.

***

Yes, the witching hours are almost upon us and who better to accompany us to the Land of the Dead then a true expert in the field, surrealist artist, Leonora Carrington, whom I have called on before... on just such a day as this.

This Halloween, however, a tricky time to be sure, we're closing in on one of the most life-affirming shapes there are in this world: the egg. Ah, yes... but, then - and, wouldn't you know it - Leonora Carrington was there before us.

Well, sort of... let us explore...

Raga For a Sunday Afternoon (Update: 2/14/23)

It's been an emotionally devastating week and I desperately needed something to transport me back to my comfort zone... that is, I had to touch base with myself again. Sometimes, in order to accomplish this, one has to travel even farther away from the tried & true to find that magical, alchemical ingredient which can allow ones spirit to heal and thrive once again in a world which is often antagonistic to truth, beauty, and all things eternal and incorporeal.

Some time ago, when I was able to embed small videos on the sidebar of this blog, I posted a small series of Indian artists: Anoushka Shankar, and the amazing classical vocalizations of the artist below, Nina Burmi.

The mesmerizing voices of Burmi and Kaushiki Chakraborty (the first artist) worked for me then and they work for me now. Maybe, every once in awhile, we need a little (sacred) breathing space.

Just found (2/14/23): Kaushiki Chakraborty, a master singer (and a force of nature) offers up another awesome classical performance: Raag Bhairavi.

Chasing Ancient Pentagrams Part I: the Roman Dodecahedra

A "Roman Dodecahedron" found in the UK by Brian Campbell in 1987.

 

The Gallo-Roman Dodecahedra

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(This post was originally intended to be the first of the pentagonal phi series, and much of it was written early last year. It has been revised, however, and will contain new material. It may also run into two parts.)

 

"One August day in 1987, Brian Campbell was refilling the hole left by a tree stump in his yard in Romford, East London, when his shovel struck something metal. He leaned down and pulled the object from the soil, wondering at its strange shape. The object was small—smaller than a tennis ball—and caked with heavy clay. 'My first impressions,' Campbell tells Mental Floss, 'were it was beautifully and skillfully made … probably by a blacksmith as a measuring tool of sorts.'

Campbell placed the artifact on his kitchen windowsill, where it sat for the next 10 or so years. Then, he visited the Roman fort and archaeological park in Saalburg, Germany—and there, in a glass display case, was an almost identical object. He realized that his garden surprise was a Roman dodecahedron: a 12-sided metal mystery that has baffled archaeologists for centuries. Although dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of explanations have been offered to account for the dodecahedrons, no one is certain just what they were used for."

- Via an excellent article on Mental Floss found here. Inset right (above) is a Roman Dodecahedron exhibited in the Württembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuggart, Germany, and found in this article.


"A Roman dodecahedron or Gallo-Roman Dodecahedron is a small hollow object made of copper alloy which has been cast into a dodecahedral shape: twelve flat pentagonal faces, each face having a circular hole of varying diameter in the middle, the holes connecting to the hollow center. Roman dodecahedra date from the 2nd to 4th centuries AD.

Since the first dodecahedron was found in 1739, at least 116 similar objects have been found[1] from Wales to Hungary and Spain and to the east of Italy, with most found in Germany and France. Ranging from 4 to 11 centimetres (1.6 to 4.3 in) in size. A Roman icosahedron has also come to light after having long been misclassified as a dodecahedron. This icosahedron was excavated near Arloff in Germany and is currently on display in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn.

No mention of them has been found in contemporary accounts or pictures of the time. Speculated uses include as a candlestick holder (wax was found inside two examples); dice; survey instruments for estimating distances to (or sizes of) distant objects; devices for determining the optimal sowing date for winter grain; gauges to calibrate water pipes, army standard bases, a coin measuring device for counterfeit detection. Use as a measuring instrument of any kind seems improbable since the dodecahedra were not standardized and come in many sizes and arrangements of their openings. It has also been suggested that they may have been religious artifacts, or even fortune-telling devices. This latter speculation is based on the fact that most of the examples have been found in Gallo-Roman sites. Several dodecahedra were found in coin hoards, providing evidence that their owners considered them valuable objects. Other suggestions include a knitting frame for creating gloves, supported by the fact that many are found in the northern range of the empire.

Smaller dodecahedra with the same features (holes and knobs) and made from gold have been found in South-East Asia along the Maritime Silk Road. They have been used for decorative purposes and the earliest items appear to be from the Roman epoch."

- Via the Wiki entry for Roman or Gallo-Roman dodecahedron. Inset left is a museum photograph of 2 Roman dodecahedrons and the icosahedron mentioned in the quote. In my eyes, the icosahedron, although a polyhedron and similar in size to the dodecahedrons, does not seem to be in the same family of objects as the former.

***

Did you know there is a geometry in running water... or that small objects of equal mass - specifically small and lightweight - tend to fall into groups of three? Regarding the latter, at one point this year, I noticed this so often during my waking hours that I began to document these geometrical events, snapping photos with my cell phone whenever they occurred. Is this madness? Precisely. But it's a sort of "magical" madness involving a particular phenomenon which very likely spawned numerous oracles in the past; everything from casting knuckle bones, dice, sticks, coins, tea leaves, etc. for the purposes of divining or interpreting the resulting patterns as a narrative of the future.

In reality, small objects very often fall into rudimentary geometric patterns or figures - a little understood phenomena Jungian psychologist, Marie-Louise von Franz, 1915–1998, once described as a form of synchronicity or "meaningful chance" especially in regards to divination and the role of natural numbers.

Inset right is one example I shot with my cell-phone September 8, 2020; an interesting triangle formed by the random distribution of red pepper seeds scattered during the course of making a salad! I didn't see the figure at first; the pattern had formed on the far side of the table on which I was working. It was during clean-up that I came across it, and I swear I felt like some mystified farmer who discovers a crop circle in his field one day; it was eerie.

The X-file factor of this event was that the triangle bore a strong resemblance to the triangle I'd been working with over a year (and you've been encountering on this blog for months): the pentagonal golden triangle. Had it fallen out of my head and imprinted itself on the table? Who can say? But, I saw it as an affirmation of an artist's journey well taken. And, for an artist who faithfully follows the muse down one rabbit hole after another, affirmation is a much coveted thing... because, what is a "rabbit hole" other than some strange anomaly stumbled across during an intellectual excursion which might potentially lead one to the greatest of epiphanies or the most confounding of delusions?

But, while it may have ended that way, my journey down this particular rabbit hole did not begin with a random distribution of pepper seeds. It began with an online article regarding that unusual metal object currently staring at you from the top of this post... its empty cyclopean eye revealing just about everything we know regarding its existence...which is pretty much nada.

Now, the general opinion among experts (and one must always use this term loosely) is that a lot is known - and verified - about the past. Even the long past. But, don't be fooled. The past is as elusive (and illusive) as the future. New discoveries keep popping up each day with the potential to completely overturn all previous determinations. There are, after all, numerous newsworthy items. And, no, I 'm not referring to those well-documented abominations of the world's daily affairs. I'm talking about those little, weird tangible things - the products of human ingenuity - which emerged in the days before "artificial intelligence" was even a bad dream in somebody's head. This is not so say that the days of which I speak - and, no, none of us witnessed those days in any memorable way - were benign or utopian, but, intriguingly enough, ancient humans were admirably capable of flummoxing the oh-so-sophisticated humans of the future (us),  producing artifacts that we - with all of our modern expertise... and some highly sophisticated calculators - are unable to identify.

Which brings us back to that cyclopean object resting above - the subject of this section - the Roman dodecahedron inset left. No one seems to have a precise explanation for its presence on the earth - although the general drift is towards some practical, utilitarian instrument (such as a candle holder or knitting device) or complicated measuring device (such as a military range-finder) - and, yet, at least a few ancient folk across a number of countries - and all living in the earlier centuries AD - created these objects for reasons of which we can only speculate. Over a hundred of them have been dug up in parts of Europe and one imagines more may be found. I find this oddly exhilarating; there are still things the experts, admittedly, can't explain. In any case, I'm sure that all intuitive readers have realized by now that this mysterious little artifact is quintessential rabbit-hole material... and, yes, it most surely was!

In any case, "Cyclops" is actually believed to have been created around 200 AD... somewhere within the vast Roman Empire. Which is how it got its name: The Roman dodecahedron. The thing is,  despite archaeologists finding more than a hundred of them, no written reference to them has ever been discovered. And this might be a our most important clue: perhaps the objects had no practical use whatsoever and were never intended for the general public.

What's more, the object is an early example of a polyhedron - and the dodecahedron is the most complex of the Platonic solids - artifacts which we rarely see in the ancient world (despite the contributions of Pythagoras and Plato). As it so happens, this blogger loves polyhedra - even documenting a set of my very own (inset right, above: the dodecahedron, the icosahedron, and the pentakis dodecahedron). Not very long ago, I posted about some unusual Scottish sundials (example below the jump)...