The Dürer Files: 1b. Hendrick Goltzius & The Gods of the Golden Egg (Completed 9/14/24)

Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus (Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze),
1600-1603, Hendrick Goltzius. Geometry: 2024, DS.

"When Goltzius created this so-called "pen painting," which combines pen and ink and brush with oil color, it caused a sensation in Europe and was immediately purchased by Emperor Rudolf II for his collection in Prague. Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze, c. 1600-1603, marks the critical moment when Goltzius, the most famous draftsman and printmaker in Europe, turned to large-scale painting."

- Via the Philadelphia Museum of Art page: A Masterpiece in Focus, a short article describing the unusual painting featured above and inset left which the museum acquired in 1992. Apparently, after the Dutch artist, Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), completed it - and Goltzius was so secretive about his methods he never allowed anyone to see his work at an incomplete stage - it was snatched up by Emperor Rudolph, the "Mad Alchemist" of Prague. There's more to add to this post regarding Rudolph, but, suffice to say, he was also an avid collector of works by Albrecht Dürer. Meanwhile, Dürer was an artist that Goltzius felt motivated to "surpass," with the same competitive enthusiasm the old Master, himself, expressed regarding the Masters of his own time. 

So, did Goltzius surpass Dürer? Well, we shall investigate. But, before we go much further, allow me to mention that my first golden egg was found in Goltzius's odd Venus painting. Of the four golden eggs I've found, this appears to have the most perfect - albeit static - form. Interestingly, it is configured with the same arrangement of pentagrams as the former golden egg found in my previous file. But, note the star's differing orientation  (inset right).

The two ovoids are very similar; in some images they are almost interchangeable. The difference is shown inset right and below with phi-shells. I favor Ovoid 1 as superior in the Venus... image, but Ovoid 2 has a few things going for it, too.

So, which is the true ovoid in this painting?

Ovoids 1 & 2

In the last analysis, it doesn't matter. For Europeans living at the turn of the 16th/17th centuries, Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze caused "a sensation." It seemed to possess a kind of mojo. And one thing I'm going to be asking throughout this post - the bottom line - is whether or not the presence of phi in art, specifically via the pentagram, lends the work in question a certain kind of indelible magic... and why that might be. Keep in mind Dürer's iconic Melencolia I, Botticelli's Venus, Caravaggio's Amor, or that mysterious Italian lady painted by Leonardo da Vinci.*

Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze is a weird (but charming) image, but it might be helpful to know something about the gods involved in this oddly luminous, intimate scene... thereby, learning a few things about Goltzius (& Dürer) as well...

Swan Bones Theater Presents...

Forest Sleep - oil on panel - 2010, Kelly Louise Judd.
(Click to enlarge.)

Well, it's the witching season again and, in an effort to stay true to the spirit(s) of our various Days of the Dead, I thought I might feature a new artist whose work is unique, pleasantly spooky, darkly ethereal and the stuff of Old World dreams: the illustrations of Kansas City, Missouri artist, Kelly Louise Judd. (Inset right: Light of the Owls, 2012.)

"Swan Bones Theater" is the name she uses to describe the "fragile shadowland" from which her images emerge as well as the illustrations themselves. Which is perfect really - especially for today - because, if you've recall from the Swan People posts, the swan is the symbol of the psychopomp in many traditions. To repost a quote (found here):

"In the British Isles, Samhain is the time when we see the migratory swans returning for their winter break. Their arrival at their winter waters is far from shy. In full voice, the awesome, evocative sound of hundreds of powerful wings beating signals their presence. They have been guided by the stars of Cygnus, the swan constellation, the Northern Cross, that guards the gateway rift in the Milky Way. They represent the winged soul returning.

The swan is the psychopomp. She flies with the souls of the dead from the burial grounds, the charnel grounds, and the necropolis. She takes them, under the guidance of the Cailleach, to the realms of the spirits."

- Caroline Wise from The Swan, the Goddess, and Other Samhain Musings.

Inset left above is Three Swans (2015). All images in this post - including the one below - can be found on Judd's website.

The Mockingbird and the Hare - oil on panel - 2010, Kelly Louise Judd.

Blessed Be and have a (transdimensionally) magical day!

***

"All our times have come

Here but now they're gone

Seasons don't fear the reaper 

Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain; we can be like they are 

Come on baby, don't fear the reaper

Baby take my hand, don't fear the reaper

We'll be able to fly, don't fear the reaper

Baby I'm your man"

- First stanza of the love song, (Don't Fear) the Reaper, written by Donald Roeser

in 1976 and performed by the band, Blue Oyster Cult. (Lyrics) (Video)

The Starman and the Swan People (Part III): The Second Dream

The lid of a second (smaller) music box... (virtually) composed
of mother-of-pearl fragments inlaid into black stone, 2017, DS.

(Click to enlarge)

"I was visiting a strange city... and although I can't recollect having been there before, it wasn't totally unfamiliar to me. I was looking out a hotel window at the city lights and making plans to go out a bit later. David Bowie would be performing at a venue nearby and I planned on being there. The thing is, I was aware he had died the previous year, but somehow seeing him "live" in the present didn't seem unusual to me... it's as if it wasn't merely possible in this place I had come, but, to be expected.

The next thing I remember is that I was at an airport again... walking down a long sort of corridor from which passengers either board a plane or disembark. Suddenly, I thought I saw someone who looked like David Bowie moving towards me, but, he wasn't alone. Although I have no recollection of his companions, they seemed to be walking on either side of him and supporting him as he walked. He seemed unsteady and appeared to be in pain. His face - which was red as if sunburnt  - seemed somewhat distorted. In fact, my impression now is that he may possibly have been in the process shape-shifting, but, this didn't occur to me then, and, by the time we came face to face, he looked younger - in his thirties (?) - but perfectly normal.

We had a conversation then. I don't remember what it was about but DB was very charming and endearing, He came across as a kindred spirit but, ultimately, I felt somewhat sad and remorseful. I impulsively kissed and embraced him, saying "I'm so sorry I never met you while you were still alive."

At which point he looked at me and said: 'There are other lives.'

This so astounded me I woke up."

- The second dream recollection, February 10, 2017, DS. The lovely man with sax (inset left) can be found here.

“Being imbued with a vividly active imagination still, I have brilliantly Technicolor dreams. They’re very, very strong. The ‘what if?’ approach to life has always been such a part of my personal mythology, and it’s always been easy for me to fantasise a parallel existence with whatever’s going on. I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we’ve made of them, really. I’m quite Jungian about that. The dream state is a strong, active, potent force in our lives.

The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey. Combining the two, the place where the two worlds come together, has been important in some of the things I’ve written, yes.

That other life, that doppelganger life, is actually a dark thing for me. I don’t find a sense of freedom in dreams; they’re not an escape mechanism. In there, I’m usually, ‘Oh, I gotta get outta this place!’ The darker place. So that’s why I much, much prefer to stay awake.”

- David Bowie, from a 4-part 2013 interview: "I'm Hungry for Reality".
Inset left is Leonora Carrington's And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur, 1953. Note: All Carrington paintings used in the body of this post can be found on this page.

"Another dream-determinent that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams."

- Carl Jung from his 1974 publication: Dreams.

"The Chinese also developed interesting theories regarding how mental and psychic functioning depends upon different energy forms. They considered the dreamer's soul to be one of the principle agencies of dream production but made a distinction between the material soul or p'o, which regulated body functioning and ceased with its death, and the spiritual soul or hun, which left the body at death and carried the appearance of the body with it. It was the hun that was involved in dreams, because it could separate temporarily from the body for nighttime excursions to the land of the dead. There it would communicate with spirits or souls of the dead and return to the body with impressions from these visits."

- Excerpt from Our Dreaming Mind by Robert L. Van de Castle, Ph.D. (1927-2014). Inset right is the painting Dervault by Leonora Carrington.

"Reveal thyself to me

and let me behold a favorable dream.

May the dream that I dream be favorable;

may the dream that I dream be true.

May Makhir, the goddess of dreams, stand at my head;

let me enter the temple of the gods and the house of life."

- Prayer of a Mesopotamian "incubant" or dream-seeker.* Note: Dream incubation is the ancient ritual of going to sleep in a sacred place in anticipation of receiving a helpful or precognitive dream from a divine benefactor. It was common in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and amongst the earliest Christians.

***

Well, finally, after stalling for so long, I decided to cut-to-the-chase and post both the second dream and the new music box lid right at the beginning of Part III (the last part) of this series. I can only hope they were worth waiting for.

It's funny, but when I read over my dream recollection above, a track from Bowie's Low - A New Career in a New Town - started going through my head. Which was kind of appropriate. One (unmentioned) element of Bowie's performance in the strange city of my dream is that it was to take place in a small, intimate venue. And, you might say, that for Bowie to be performing in small, intimate venues would (indeed) be a "new career"...

The Starman & The Swan People (Part II)

"Some Sanskrit mystics locate seven planes of being, the seven spiritual lokas
or worlds within the body of Kala Hamsa, the Swan out of Time and Space..."
- From The Voice of the Silence by H. P. Blavatsky.
(Link to the image above has been lost.)
(All images in this post can be clicked-on for original size.)

"While scientists are still in heated debates about what exactly consciousness is, the University of Arizona’s Stuart Hameroff and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose conclude that it is information stored at a quantum level. Penrose and his team have found evidence that 'protein-based microtubules - a structural component of human cells - carry quantum information - information stored at a sub-atomic level.'

Penrose argues that if a person temporarily dies, this quantum information is released from the microtubules and into the universe. However, if they are resuscitated the quantum information is channeled back into the microtubules and that is what sparks a near death experience. 'If they’re not revived, and the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.'"

- Excerpt from the August 13, 2017 article: Life After Death? - Physicists Says "It's Quantum Information that Transcends from One World to Another." (Inset left: a Penrose tiling)

***

I never could wrap my head around the idea of death; even as a child. Most especially as a child. My first "dead" person was, in fact, my mother's mother. I never really understood why everyone was so dismal when Grandma died. I was, after all, quite convinced she still existed; I could feel she was still there somewhere. In my mind - my primary reality - she just, well, went away. In other words, she went elsewhere, leaving her sick body behind; which was sad (for us) but certainly not tragic (for her). And, really, if she managed to find a better place and feel well again, that was a good thing, wasn't it?

And, to this day, part of me - the part that never "grew up" - still feels the same way. The adult part, on the other hand, is unsure and doesn't know what to think. The adult part mourns. The adult part can't handle death. So, when David Bowie - our Starman - set sail, the adult was devastated and perplexed. Then, one morning - about a month later - I had a strange dream (described in Part I). Or, perhaps, my inner child had the dream. In any case, in the dream the Starman did not die; he "left with the Swan People"... which, in terms of a child's imagination, is not really an odd thing for a Starman to do. Hardly more odd than, let's say, imagining a flock of swans might carry a person to the moon. But, in 1638, Francis Godwin imagined just exactly that...  and wrote about it (inset right). More importantly, nobody even thought he was cracked; some people (Edgar Allen Poe, for one) thought he was ingenious.

(Very obviously) a young swan.

Now, had my adult self merely accepted the dream and moved on, this post would not have been necessary. Instead, "self" felt compelled to google "Swan People," forgetting that, when researching on the web, one invariably gets sucked down a rabbit hole. Call it "obsessive research disorder," a syndrome peculiar to cyberspace where information is (too) easily accessible, and what begins as innocently clicking on a link leads to a dizzying minefield of other links, each a tiny rabbit-hole all in itself.

So, the Starman and the Swan People - originally intended to be merely one (fairly short) post - somehow morphed into three separate posts. Sorry about that, but I can't seem to wrap things up in a lesser number. Could it be a Tesla kind of thing, that is, the Rule of Three? Maybe. Not that it did Tesla any good...

The Starman & The Swan People: A Dream

Swanstar - Prismacolor drawing on Bristol Board - 1976, DS
(Currently in the collection of a friend.)
(All images in this post can be clicked-on for original size.)

"I've been dreaming of David Bowie for the past few nights; they're the first dreams I've had of him since his death in January. Unfortunately, they were so vague and elusive I can hardly remember them. The only one which actually stuck is the one I woke up from early this morning, and DB wasn't even present in it. It was a short dream and different from the others in that it had this peculiar realistic quality about it similar to a lucid dream. At the same time, I felt like a sleep-walker throughout the dream; one who has suddenly woken up in a very strange place with no rational reason for being there.

In the beginning, I seemed to be milling about with a number of people in what resembled an airport type of structure. We had all gathered there for a common purpose, although - initially - I had no idea what the purpose was. At some point, we arrived outside of a glass-enclosed room which might've possibly been some variety of control center... or maybe a television news production studio... with rows of seated people gazing at glowing monitors in the semi-darkness. Suddenly, an announcement was made, and I immediately realized that this was the information that I and the others had been waiting for. Although I don't remember any physically audible broadcast, the news was somehow conveyed to all present... and it went something like this:

"It is now official. We have just learned that David Bowie has left with the Swan People."

And, that was it: the end. I woke up with the words "swan people" reverberating in my head and it seemed imperative that I remember those words."

- A dream recollection, DS, February 4, 2016.

***

It's been well over a year and a half since the Starman left us, and almost as long since I had the Swan People dream (above), so, it probably seems strange to be posting about it now. I intended to post about it last year - as evidenced by my original Music Box series menu - but, after my last Music Box post in May of 2016, the series was stalled by a number of real-time misfortunes, and, as for the "alchemy of love," well, cats and kitties, I just wasn't feelin' it.

But then, in February of this year - almost a year to the day of the Swan People dream - I dreamt about DB again. The Swan People were not in evidence, but, this time the Starman was. And, he said something in the dream that's stuck with me for months - which I'll reveal later on in the post* - but, it wasn't until I throughly researched swans (and Swan People) that I found a link between the two dreams... and some renewed inspiration!

So, in part, this post is about the mysteries of dream symbolism - specifically the swan symbol - but, it's also a tribute to the mysterious Starman himself; a tribute long overdue.


* I (optimistically) assumed I'd be able to finish this post in one part. The second dream will now appear in Part II... Part III.

___________________________________

In Search of the Swan People

The Lid of the Music Box

"As swan people, these dreamers must have been able to envision the bands as groups of swans flying together along a trail of the seasons. From my knowledge of this and the other empowering stories of Dunne-za medicines, the swan people seem to be the only ones given the vision required to direct the communal hunt. If any of the medicines are to empower the communal hunt, it must be that of Swan. People with "swan power" could look ahead and see events beginning to materialize beyond the imagination of others. They saw in the events of one season omens of seasons to come."

- Excerpted from: Changes of Mind: Dunne-za Resistance to Empire (download), Robin Ridington. Inset right: a vase - Swan Maiden - by sculptor A. G. Quinn.

” Naachin or “Dreamers,” according to Ridington, “are people who have experienced the Trail to Heaven in person. They have known the experience of dying and going to heaven. Unlike ordinary people, who die once and do not return to the same body, Dreamers leave their bodies, grab hold of a song that carries them forward, and then return to earth on the trail of that same song.”

- Another reference to the Dane-zaa from The Dane-Zaa Indians and the Vision Quest (.pdf) by David Martinez.

"The vision has this power over individuals and communities because they believe in the relevance of dreams. Unlike the western intellectual tradition that often feels like it knows more the more it debunks or demystifies things, Indigenous cultures are certain that they have a more profound appreciation for the world by presupposing that the world is ultimately mysterious, in the sense of being sacred and thereby beyond the realm of philosophic reason. Yet, dreams are a source of knowledge. More specifically, they constitute an existential encounter with an alternate mode of awareness.This awareness for the developed dreamer enables him to experience the transformation of his lived world into something mythic and superordinate...

...Because of the fundamental nature of the visionary experience, one cannot satisfactorily interpret dreams because they contain both the known and the mysterious. The visionary landscape and the lived landscape are enfolded into one another... To enter the dream world means, in this sense, to alter consciousness and enter into an implicit dreaming order—the unfolded, psychic potential of the visionary realm— that has a structural, morphological effect on consciousness.” 

- Excerpted from Stories of the Vision Quest Among Dunne-za Women, 1983, Robin Ridington. The wonderful image (inset left) is one of two featured in this post by alchemical artist Karena Karras. The other can be found in the Alchemical Swan section (Part II).

"Did you know that the beautiful Swan is one of the Native American Totems? Sister Swan gives a message of Grace.  She teaches us to surrender to the grace of the rhythm of the universe and to slip away from our physical bodies to enter the Dreamtime. Swan people have the ability to see the future as they surrender to the power of Great Spirit. They are accepting of the healing and transformation of their lives when that surrender takes place."

- From this Native American Totem page.

***

As you may have suspected, I take dreaming very seriously, but - and, as I've probably said in the past - dreams are tricksy things. The most we can say for sure about them is that they emerge from the unconscious mind and often utilize a language based on symbols. Sometimes they seem informed by recent conscious experiences. For instance, as it was, immediately previous to the Swan People dream, I had just finished (digitally) creating the Music Box panels, the lid of which (above) - although it consciously escaped me at the time - very much resembles a pair of swans making a heart-shape with their necks, as they often do in reality (inset right).

Then again, the dream was in reference to our (beloved) Starman. As It was, it was his unexpected loss to a large degree that propelled me to begin composing my Music Box series to begin with. And, predictably, not long after his fateful day, journalists often referred to his last album, Blackstar, as his "swan song." So, either occurrence may have filtered into my brain triggering the dream. But, somehow, I never really thought so, and now - after further research and a second dream - I suspect something else might have been at work...