The First of May

Fetal Venus & Her First Dove (sketch #1) - digital - 2024, DS.

I am sorry for the delay with posting. I must have totally revised the intended post several times this past month, but it is still stalled; it may never be published on this blog. Meanwhile, in the real world... well, let's face it, if it's not one existential crisis, it's another... or, perhaps, one on top of the other... a parfait of stress factors.

As I write, however, it is May Day... which means two very different things, depending upon who you are and where you live. For some it is International Worker's Day. For others its a banking holiday. But, for many of us, it's the daytime leg of the ancient Celtic holiday of Beltane/May Day... specifically those of us in the Northern hemisphere. In the Southern hemisphere, Samhain is celebrated, (if  I'm reading this correctly). And, this provides us with an interesting symmetry.

For some reason, things always seem a bit more peculiar around the April/May cusp for me, and I don't think it's an astrological phenomenon. Beltane and the Germanic Walpurgis Night (see St. Walpurga) are very much like Samhain (or Halloween) in that the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest; the difference being that the dead who walk on Beltane night are seeking rebirth. Perhaps, they're hoping they'll be conceived on May Day... a very Venus/Aphrodite day, due to the planet's astrological rulership over the sign of Taurus the Bull, and Aphrodite's role as fertility goddess. However, while May Day evokes chaplets of spring flowers and circling around maypoles, Beltane, the nocturnal leg of the holiday, is a fire festival. The following quote was sourced from James Frazier's classic, The Golden Bough:

"The people believed that on that evening and night the witches were abroad and busy casting spells on cattle and stealing cows’ milk. To counteract their machinations, pieces of rowan-tree and woodbine, but especially of rowan-tree, were placed over the doors of the cow-houses, and fires were kindled by every farmer and cottar. Old thatch, straw, furze, or broom was piled in a heap and set on fire a little after sunset. While some of the bystanders kept tossing the blazing mass, others hoisted portions of it on pitchforks or poles and ran hither and thither, holding them as high as they could. Meantime the young people danced round the fire or ran through the smoke shouting, 'Fire! blaze and burn the witches; fire! fire! burn the witches.' In some districts a large round cake of oat or barley meal was rolled through the ashes. When all the fuel was consumed, the people scattered the ashes far and wide, and till the night grew quite dark they continued to run through them, crying, 'Fire! burn the witches'."

Apparently, in the 18th century, the Beltane fires were meant to metaphorically burn witches. Possibly, in previous centuries Beltane fires literally did burn witches. It's not really clear to me. But, it is ironic that it is the Wiccans and "heathens" (of the future) who've essentially revived the bonfire tradition... and ran with it!

However, we've moved past the night into the prettier and more benign May Day. Wiki, in the Beltane entry, describes the traditional May Tree or May Bough as being a: " a small tree or branch - typically hawthorn, rowan, holly or sycamore - decorated with bright flowers, ribbons, painted shells or eggshells from Easter Sunday... The tree would either be decorated where it stood, or branches would be decorated and placed inside or outside the house... the tree would remain up until May 31st. The tree would also be decorated with candles or rushlights."

Lovely.

Enjoy your holiday!

***

Regarding the two images above - Fetal Venus With Her First Dove (above), and Fetal Dove with the Planet Venus (inset right) - both are sketches I made earlier this year when I possessed a more competent graphics program. I no longer do and am not sure when I will, so, these images will have to stand for the originals; I just wish they were the images I originally had in mind. (Note: Phi shells look as if they were designed for the embryonic; don't you think?)

What I failed to mention in this post, however, is that my "fetal" images had an actual precedent, and my original idea was to post my embryonic Venus images along with the image that inspired them (posted after the jump). It's interesting to juxtapose spiral images of Venus from various periods. And, considering she's been an artistic subject for almost 3000 years, there's a lot of images to cover; I may as well start now!

(Continued...)

A Child Seated in a Chariot Pulled by Doves as the Infant Venus,
1670, Dutch school, artist unknown. G - DS - 2024.

I was very excited to find the "Infant Venus" above. I had never seen Venus portrayed as an infant - although, in reality, the child is said to be portraying Venus - nor had I seen a Dutch painting portraying Venus from that period. The period, of course, is the Golden Age of Dutch painting, and although this painting arrived at the tail end, there is no doubt that it is golden. It has, in fact, a rotating or "dialing spiral" embedded in its design. The series is posted inset left and right, below.

It's a pity we can't know the artist - possibly a Bentvueghel (?) - or the story of the little girl. Although the image is quite adorable, there's something not quite right about the little girl's expression and/or the lack of one. How would one describe it? And, how can we interpret the dark clouds which surrounds her, or the putti, or the black cloak floating around her head? Is she a living child, or is the painting in memory of a deceased child?  And, if the child is dead, why portray her as Venus?

"Interestingly, Plutarch mentions a small statue at Delphi of Aphrodite Epitymbia (of tombs)... to which the spirits of the dead were summoned. The inconsistency of selling funeral requisites in the temple of Libitina, seeing that she is identified with Venus, is explained by him as indicating that one and the same goddess presides over birth and death; or the association of such things with the goddess of love and pleasure is intended to show that death is not a calamity, but rather a consummation to be desired."

- Quote sourced here. As I may have mentioned on this blog previously, Venus/Aphrodite had many epithets, that is, she was a multipurpose goddess. She came in many "flavors." Surprisingly, one of her roles was as a death goddess: Aphrodite Epitymbia or Venus Libitina. Venus of the Black Cloak. I think we once saw her once before.

"Her catacombs and mausoleums were known as ‘dovecotes’. The soul returning to the Goddess after death was conceived as a dove and from this idea, Christians believed that the souls of saints became white doves that flew out of their mouths at the moment of death. In the Catholic ceremony of canonization, white doves are still released from cages at the crucial moment of the ritual to this day."

- An interesting Aphrodite connection to Christianity is made in this article.

Anyway, regardless of the artist's identity or intent, it's a very nice spiral painting... and it inspired my Fetal Venus who, in the actual finished image would have had her spiral chariot drawn by 3 fetal doves. In any case, it seems I've brought a weird cohesion to this post... from May Day we've somehow arrived again at Beltane!

Chariot of Venus, 1622, Pietro da Cortona.

As for Fetal Venus, the question is, was I portraying her from the long past or her imminent future? Because, let me tell you, Venus/Aphrodite is amazingly present on the web these days, and not just on this blog! She almost seems to be constellating in the world at large... and I can think of no better time.