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El Otro Reloj (The Other Timepiece) - 1957, Remedios Varos. Note that the figure's
head is a pentagram. The strange spirals are her own. |
(I apologize for missing Halloween this year, but the powers-that-be were working against me. Specifically, that power known as Wi-Fi. I haven't had enough of it in the past 2 weeks to accomplish much of anything. And, upon WiFi's return, although I scrambled to put up several unfinished posts in the past 48 hours, more and more information distracted me as well as an onslaught of my usual daily distractions.
But, in my favor, although Halloween (Samhain) has passed, along with the first day of the Celtic New Year, the first Day of the Dead and the (Catholic) All Saints Day, this sequence of holidays has not, yet, come to an end. Today is All Souls' Day, or the final Day of the Dead.
That being said, when it comes to this blog and the witching season, my go-to artists have often been my two favorite Patron Saints: surrealists Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varos. And why not? When it came to painting, each was a sorceress conjuring up some of the weirdest images the world has ever known; images that in many respects were so similar, they seemed as if they emerged like branches from a single tree.)
Inset right is
El Encuentro (The Encounter), 1962, by Remedios Varo.
"The dream world and the real world are the same.” - Spanish Surrealist
Remedios Varo (1908-1963), found in this
article.
"To the ancient Celts, the year had two 'hinges'. These were Beltaine (the first of May) and Samhain, or Samhuinn, (the first of November), which is also the traditional Celtic New Year. And these two days were the most magical, and often frightening times of the whole year."
- An excerpt from the Samhain
page at Druidry.org. The photograph of Remedios
inset left was found in this excellent series of articles about her life beginning
here.
***
All Souls' Day, when intoned, has a dolorous ring to it... reminding me of "for whom the bell tolls," an often quoted line by the English poet,
John Donne.
"Any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
For Whom the Bell Tolls was, of course, also the title of the 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway which was based on his experiences as a reporter during the Spanish Civil War.
Coincidentally, Remedios Varo, born in Catalonia - as was her fellow Surrealist, Salvador Dali and architect Antoni Gaudí - fled Barcelona during that war and moved to Paris with her lover, French poet, Benjamin Péret.
Three years later, France, along with Great Britain, entered WWII. The good news is that Varo, after stopping off in New York, emigrated to Mexico, where her alchemical relationship with Surrealist Leonora Carrington would intensify, and "the two women would collaborate in attempting to develop a new pictorial language that spoke more directly to their own needs."
María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was born in the province of Girona with its medieval, walled towns. It was place she loathed to leave and she carried it for the rest of her life in the form of a small black and white photograph. Sometimes Girona appears in her images. (Inset right is a photo of Girona.)
The province of Girona borders France and has a very interesting history and an important Jewish heritage. In the 12th century one of the most important Kabbalistic schools in Europe was built there. The unique Santa Maria de Girona was featured in the television series
Game of Thrones.
One noteworthy element found in Varo's Wiki biography is that she was given the named of Remedios in honor of the Virgen de los Remedios ("Virgin of Remedies"). Varo became the 'remedy' for her (
Basque) mother's grief after the loss of a first daughter. This gave Varo her first ghost... the older sister she never knew but remained unconsciously tied to.
Remedios Varo, herself, died in 1963. She may have become Leonora Carrington's first ghost... and as Carrington lived till 2011; they may have had a lot of strange years together. Inset left is a photograph of Carrington and her cat seated in front of her painting The Temptation of St. Anthony, (1945). Both photo and painting were sourced from the wonderful article The Surrealist Magical Mystery of Leonora Carrington by Cecile Paul.
But, while they both lived, the two friends were no strangers to the occult world and it's many esoteric subdivisions, and this includes some innovations of their own. In Part 1 of Mara Marietta's
Women Surrealists and the Hermetic Tradition, she mentions that the two women shared
"dreams, stories, and magic potions." Certainly they were also well-versed in myth and folklore. I don't doubt they were psychic. I don't doubt they had their "magic" rituals... practices that all makers and all dreamers can, in some way, (secretly) relate to. But, I really believe that both Carrington and Varo were right on the threshold of a unique knowledge or understanding. A knowledge scientists strive for but which is unlikely to be found in the expected places or in the traditional ways.
Inset right is a photo of Varo with one of her many cats found here.
I suspect it is this unique, hermetically sealed knowledge Varo was referring to with her enigmatic owl hybrids; a deeper wisdom... so deeply embedded it may as well be an alien thought process of a different species.
But, then again...
(GIF source: Tenor.)
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(Continued below the jump...)
