All Souls Day

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 Wi-Fi'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, 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 nol? 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 two branches from a single tree.)

"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.

***

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 left is a photo of Girona.)

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 must have had a lot of strange years together.

But, while they both lived, the two friends were no strangers to the occult world and it's many esoteric  subdivisions. Most certainly they were 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.

 Which is very likely what Varo meant by her enigmatic owl hybrids...  a deeper wisdom... so deeply embedded it may as well be an alien thought process of a different species.

And then again...

(This post is still in progress...

Links, images, and footnotes to come.)