Go Tell it to the Olive Tree (4/4/2025 - Post Abandoned)

 

A living historical record: the olive tree of Vouves, Greece.

The Olive Tree - A Living Record

Oldest olive tree in the world is located in Crete

"The ancient Olive Tree of Vouves (Elia Vouvon) is located in the village of Ano Vouves on the island of Crete. It is believed to be the oldest olive tree in the world which still produces highly-prized olives.

Although its exact age cannot be verified using radioisotopes as the tree’s heartwood has been lost through the centuries, scientists from the University of Crete have estimated it to be 4,000 years old. It is presumed that the tree first appeared in 1100BC, in the sub-Minoan period of Cretan history." (2020, Andriana Simos of the Greek Herald)

Meet The 4,000-Year-Old Olive Tree That Saw The Rise And Fall Of Alexander The Great’s Empire—A Biologist Explains

"Deep in the heart of Crete, where myth intertwines with natural wonder, stands the legendary olive tree of Vouves. For millennia, this 2,000-year-old ancient sentinel has silently witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations, outlasting even some of Greece’s most famous historical figures.

Olive trees have long been revered not only for their fruit and oil but also for the resilience encoded in their DNA. These trees symbolize endurance, wisdom and continuity. In a landscape where nature’s secrets are often obscured by time, the olive tree of Vouves reminds us that life can sometimes persist against all odds."

- The Olive Tree of Vouves was my initial inspiration for this post. It is a protected historical monument in Greece and has possibly witnessed over 4000 years of human history.

Ironically, less than a week later, what should appear in new's headlines, but articles about a different historical tree.

White House to remove magnolia tree dating to Andrew Jackson

•

Historic tree planted nearly 200 years ago to be cut down at the White House

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One American Political Party Attempts to Censor Natural History, a Nation's History and the History of the World

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

- Excerpted from George Orwell's novel, "1984", and sourced from this sobering article.

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Trump targets 'anti-American ideology' at Smithsonian museums

"Trump has set out to radically reshape American culture, which he says has been contaminated by "woke" left-wing ideology. He has signed several orders that are intended to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programmes from the federal government - some of which led to legal challenges."

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Trump Executive Order Targets ‘Anti-American’ Content at Smithsonian

"President Donald Trump has signed an executive order on Thursday directing the Smithsonian, a federal consortium of cultural and research institutions, to eliminate “divisive” and “anti-American” content from its exhibitions and restore “monuments, memorials, statues, markers” that have been removed from public spaces since 2020.

The “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” order gives Vice President JD Vance the authority to determine what content is “improper” at the Smithsonian Institution. A fact sheet from the White House describes the order as opposed to “anti-American ideology.”

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Unabashed Fascism': Trump Executive Order Targets 'Improper Ideology' at Smithsonian

"First Trump removes any reference of diversity from the present—now he's trying to remove it from our history," wrote one Democratic lawmaker. "You cannot erase our past and you cannot stop us from fulfilling our future."

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US orders French companies to comply with Trump's diversity ban

"American interference in the inclusion policies of French companies, along with threats of unjustified tariffs, is unacceptable," France's Ministry of Foreign Trade said in a statement sent to Reuters.

"France and Europe will defend their businesses, their consumers, and also their values," the ministry, which is under the authority of the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, added."

______________________________________________

Aphroditus - Gender in the Ancient World

"There's also a statue of Venus on Cyprus, that's bearded, shaped and dressed like a woman, with scepter and male genitals, and they conceive her as both male and female. Aristophanes calls her Aphroditus, and Laevius says: Worshiping, then, the nurturing god Venus, whether she is male or female, just as the Moon is a nurturing goddess. In his Atthis Philochorus, too, states that she is the Moon and that men sacrifice to her in women's dress, women in men's, because she is held to be both male and female."

(Continued below the jump...)

"Da Vinci" and Other Codes - Part 2

Saviour of the World - 16th century, Giampietrino. Geometry: 2022, DS.

"In alchemy, the symbol for the perfected Great Work is the hermaphrodite - literally the god Hermes and the goddess Aphrodite blended in one person. Leonardo was fascinated with hermaphrodites, even going so far as to cover sheet after sheet of his sketchpad with drawings of them - some pornographic. And recent work on the world's most famous portrait - the enigmatically smirking Mona Lisa - has shown that 'she" was none other than Leonardo himself.

...During our travels to France, we repeatedly found that towns which had formerly been Templar property - such as Utelle in Provence and Alet-les Bains in Languedoc - subsequently became centres of alchemy. It is also significant that the alchemists, like the Templars, had a special veneration for John the Baptist."

- Two separate but related quotes from The Templar Revelation, 1997, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; a non-fiction documentation of many of the elements which surfaced in the Da Vinci Code, plus a few dozen more. This compilation of facts, speculations, and anecdotes is enough to make your head spin!

Images: Inset right is Da Vinci's St. John the Baptist with his hand pointing heavenward in what is actually a very common position in religious images during that period. He is dressed in animal skins in reference to time he spent as a hermit in the desert. While, at a quick glance, he might appear androgynous, in reality - and in a clearer reproduction - he simply appears to be a romantically handsome man. Doubtlessly, Leonardo thought so, too. The model was his lover, Salino Giacomo, also known as Salai (see Mon Salai).

"In Psychology, C.G. Jung used the term to denote "an archetypal pairing of contrasexual opposites, which symbolized the communication of the conscious and unconscious minds, the conjunction of two organisms without the loss of identity." He used syzygy to liken the alchemical term albedo with unconscious contrasexual soul images; the anima in men and animus in women.

In Gnosticism, syzygy is a divine active-passive, male-female pair of aeons, complementary to one another rather than oppositional; they comprise the divine realm of the Pleroma (the totality of God's powers), and in themselves characterize aspects of the unknowable Gnostic God."

- Via this Mythic Imagination Institute page. Inset right is an example of one of many medieval "penitent Magdalene" paintings - this one by Giampietrino. His version shows the Magdalene as a hermit in a desert (or, possibly, a cave in the wilderness) dressed down in what appears to be her overgrown hair. According to some sources, the hermit-in-the-desert scenario may actually be the result of a confusion with a different Mary: Mary of Egypt.

"In the system of Valentinus, as expounded by Irenaeus, the origin of things was traced to two eternal co-existent principles, a male and a female... The whole Aeonology of Valentinus was based on a theory of syzygies, or pairs of Aeons, each Aeon being provided with a consort; and the supposed need of the co-operation of a male and female principle for the generation of new ones, was common to Valentinus and some earlier Gnostic systems. But it was a disputed point in these systems whether the First Principle of all was thus twofold. There were those, both in earlier systems, and even among the Valentinians who held, that the origin of things was to be traced to a single Principle, which some described as hermaphrodite; others said was above all sex."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for Aeon (Gnosticism).

"The Borborites...were an early Christian Gnostic sect during the late fourth century who had numerous scriptures involving Mary Magdalene, including The Questions of Mary, The Greater Questions of Mary, The Lesser Questions of Mary, and The Birth of Mary. None of these texts have survived to the present, but they are mentioned by the early Christian heretic-hunter Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion. Epiphanius says that the Greater Questions of Mary contained an episode in which, during a post-resurrection appearance, Jesus took Mary to the top of a mountain, where he pulled a woman out of his side and engaged in sexual intercourse with her. Then, upon ejaculating, Jesus drank his own semen and told Mary, 'Thus we must do, that we may live.'"

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for Mary Magdalene. The Borborites were pretty outrageous... if Epiphanius the heretic-hunter is to be believed. (Probably not!) I must say though, that the odd scene with Christ, Magdalene and the semen sounds almost hermetic. Meanwhile, later in the entry, we are informed that  - according to St. Jerome - Mary Magdalene was actually married to John the Evangelist... which is often just another name for John the Apostle. It gets complicated.

***

I am not a conventionally religious person, but when I first lay my eyes on "Saviour of the World" (inset left and also introducing this post) by the 16th century Italian painter Giampietrino (See Part 1), I was very drawn to it. Unexpectedly, while one might assume that, for a painter of Christian images, the "Saviour" would resemble Christ, it seems Giampietrino was not envisioning Christ... at least not the archetypal Christ figure.* He was envisioning the quintessential youthful androgyny. It could be a boy. It could be the boy's twin sister. The expression on its face is gentle and, yet, guarded, inscrutable. It's as if it knows something - possibly everything - and it's testing us... challenging us. But, ultimately, its message is sub rosa and it may as well be an alchemical cryptogram. Perhaps, it is.

For example, instead of the expected crown or halo, there are three large, key-like structures surrounding the figure's head. They could be the upper portion of a cross placed in the background... or three embedded keys in a golden triangle (the horizontal type) array. Considering that the figure is positioned within a large GTS, we might choose the latter.

Meanwhile, the saviour holds the earth in its hand like a crystal ball it has just uncovered. What fleeting mysteries lie on its featureless surface? Once again, we are clueless...

"Da Vinci" and Other Codes - Part 1

Leda With Her Children (Leda con i loro figli)- 1520, Giampietrino. Geometry: 2022, DS.

 

"In Medieval and through to Renaissance works of painting, sculpture and literature, Saint John is often presented in an androgynous or feminized manner. Historians have related such portrayals to the circumstances of the believers for whom they were intended. For instance, John's feminine features are argued to have helped to make him more relatable to women. Likewise, Sarah McNamer argues that because of his status as an androgynous saint, John could function as an 'image of a third or mixed gender' and 'a crucial figure with whom to identify' for male believers who sought to cultivate an attitude of affective piety, a highly emotional style of devotion that, in late-medieval culture, was thought to be poorly compatible with masculinity. After the Middle Ages, feminizing portrayals of Saint John continued to be made..."

- Via the Wiki entry for John the Apostle. I don't necessarily agree with the above paragraph, but I thought I'd add it to the mix. Inset left is an utterly adorable young John painted by Fyodor Bruni (1801-1875). I don't know that women would identify with him, but little girls (and some little boys) might like to "jump his bones." Also appearing in the image is an eagle - one of John's symbols - which kind of looks like a griffin.

"The prevalence of these iconic displays of the beloved disciple resting on Jesus’ breast provided justification for same-sex male intimacy long before the contemporary search for a gay Jesus. Before the words gay or even homosexual were used to describe same-sex male relationships, those men whose sexual desires were oriented toward boys and other men pointed to this understanding of Jesus’ relationship with the beloved disciple. King James I of England (reigned 1603-1625), who was clearly homosexual, justified his sexual relationships with young men to his privy council by saying, 'Jesus had his John and I have my Peter.'"

- Via (Pastor) Frank Senn's web-page. Inset right is a statue from Germany (circa 1310) also found there.

  

***

In a previous post, I mentioned never having read The Da Vinci Code, which was true at the time, however, two weeks ago - and almost 20 years after it was written - I finally did get around to it! And, (surprise, surprise), it wasn't a half-bad story; a well-researched stew of speculation melding numerous, esoteric symbols - many of which have appeared on this blog - into one cohesive action-tale with enough suspense, espionage, counter-espionage and bloodshed to satiate the most demanding of audiences. And, yes, the hero gets the girl; what more could one ask for?

The thing is, the bulk of Brown's ingredients have been hashed and re-hashed by a number of (speculative) non-fiction authors in the past and will continue to bubble away on the back-burner. Alchemy, Freemasonry, the Rosicrucians, the Templar Knights, Rosslyn Chapel, the Cathars, the Black Madonnas, The Holy Grail, etc., are subjects that various researchers seem compelled to cobble together into one vaporous, homogenized form or another... as if all things of an esoteric nature must be intimately connected. Dan Brown attempted to accomplish the same feat with his fictional tale by adding several more symbols to the mix - the pentagram, the rose, the Fibonacci series, and the anomalous presence of (what appears to be) a female figure amid the disciples in Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper - all in support of the tale's major premise: the clandestine marriage of Christ and his "womb," Mary Magdalene, the alleged progenitors of the French Merovingian dynasty. And, to show his heart was in the right place (that is, the 21st century) Brown added a healthy pinch of Goddess-worship to the mix. In other words, even feminists could climb on board his train of thought.

The problem is, while Brown didn't actually invent his own symbolic definitions, he tailored the existing ones to fit his tale. While attempting to somewhat mitigate the (wrongfully) tarnished reputation of the pentagram - and it's about time someone did - he also referred to it as an exclusively pagan symbol which represented the Sacred Feminine. What he fails to mention is that it was an early Christian symbol as well, and, in a former incarnation, was (metaphorically) indicative of both genders (as was the triangle); in it's upright position it represented masculine (aggressive) qualities and forces and in its "inverted" position represented the feminine (passive) counterparts. Inset left (above) is the stunningly beautiful (north) rose window at Amien's cathedral in France featuring an inverted pentagram.

The larger problem, however, rests with the enigmatic feminine figure in Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper; a figure (shown below the jump) which a number of speculators assume is a woman and Mary Magdalene the logical choice. As for Brown, his novel's entire theme is hinged on the womanhood of this figure, all interpretations to the contrary are ignored...

Once Possessed - The "Madness" of Vaslav Nijinsky

Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky in his 1911 role as the "Rose Ghost"
from the ballet "Le Spectre de la Rose." (Also here, and another related article in French).
Click all images in this post to enlarge.

"Ô toi qui de ma mort fus cause,

Sans que tu puisses le chasser

Toute la nuit mon spectre rose

A ton chevet viendra danser.

Mais ne crains rien, je ne réclame

Ni messe, ni De Profundis;

Ce léger parfum est mon âme

Et j’arrive du paradis."

("O you, who caused my death

Without the power to dispel,

All night long my fragrant specter

Will dance at your bedside.

But fear nothing, I require

Neither psalms nor sacred rites;

This delicate scent is my soul

And I’ve come from paradise.")

- From the poem Le Spectre de la Rose by Théophile Gautier which inspired Michel Fokine's ballet about a young woman haunted by the spirit of a rose she had received at her debut. Later that night, while she dozes in a chair, the spirit of the wilted rose visits her in a dream. (Note: So much tends to be lost in mere word translations of French poetry... specifically: the poetry! I've seen several translations of this particular stanza but found myself dissatisfied with all of them. So, I tweaked it. In other words, if this translation is also problematic, the fault is mine.)

The rose (inset right) is named for a man... as many roses are. Did you know that? It's name is Fantin Latour, named for the French artist who was known for his elegant paintings of flowers... especially his roses. More of his work can be found here. There might, in actuality, be a variety of rose named Nijinsky - well, there ought to be - but, if so, I haven't found it.

"His dancing has the unbroken quality of music, the balance of a great painting, the meaning of fine literature, and the emotion inherent in all these arts. There is something of transmutation in his performances; he becomes an alembic, transforming movement into a finely wrought and beautiful work of art. The dancing of Nijinsky is first an imaginative triumph, and the spectator, perhaps, should not be interested in further dissection of it..."

- From "The Russian Ballet and Nijinsky" by Carl van Vechten found in Nijinsky, an illustrated Monograph edited by Paul Magriel, 1946. Also found within the pages of the book are the 3 b/w photos of Nijinsky as the Rose found inset left, inset right (below) and below the jump.

"In December 1917, Vaslav Nijinsky, the most famous male dancer in the Western world, moved into a Swiss villa with his wife and three-year-old daughter and started to go insane. This diary, which he kept in four notebooks over six weeks, is the only sustained, on-the-spot account we have by a major artist of the experience of entering psychosis. Nijinsky's diary was first published in 1936, in a heavily bowdlerized version that omitted almost half of his text. The present edition, translated by Kyril FitzLyon, is the first complete version in English, and the first version in any language to include the fourth notebook, written at the very edge of psychosis. It contains Nijinsky's last lucid thoughts - on God, sex, war, and the nature of the universe, as well as on his own broken life."

- A description of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. The New York Times has archived a small portion of the newer translation of the diary here.

"Nijinsky's Diary was written during the six weeks he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum, combining elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate, and for vegetarianism and animal rights. Nijinsky writes of the importance of feeling, as opposed to reliance on reason and logic alone, and he denounces the practice of art criticism as being nothing more than a way for those who practice it to indulge their own egos rather than focusing on what the artist was trying to say. The diary also contains bitter and conflicted thoughts regarding his relationship with Diaghilev."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for Nijinsky.


"The man who is right is the one who feels but does not understand."

- A quote from Nijinsky's Diary found here.

***

A Less Common Kind of Guy

If someone had told me years ago that one day in the far future I would fall in love with a man dressed as a flower, I would've probably just figured they (or I) had inhaled one flower too many. And, yet, that's just what I did one recent Pandemic night, as I gazed at a photo of the Russian dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky. The photo was found in a slim red book with the name "Nijinsky" written in a thin, black script on its spine; a book I might have easily overlooked had it not fallen under my creative radar earlier in the day. And what to my wondering eyes did appear, as I opened the book to a random page, but a photograph of Nijinsky in his role from the ballet "Le Spectre de la Rose"... that is, the ghost or spirit of the rose, which I learned had been inspired by a French poem of the same name.

Lovely, lovely, exquisitely lovely. As it so happens, roses (and spirits) figure prominently in a current art project of mine - a project devoted to the mysteries of the power of love - and, well, I'd be the last one to ignore the quirky habits of fate. Unfortunately, as I began reading the book (into the wee hours of the morning) it became apparent that I had another tragic artist on my hands and, worse still, another misunderstood "mad" artist. At which point I realized Nijinsky would eventually have to make his way to Trans-D... the home of the misunderstood "mad" artist.

As a young dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky (March 12, 1889 – April 8, 1950) was beautiful, graceful, luminous, beloved by both men and women, and considered the greatest dancer and most innovative choreographer of his time. This was during the latter years of the Fin de Siècle when all sorts of dark romanticism, spiritualism - and debauchery - transpired. Tragically, his life - and (allegedly) his mind - began to unravel around the age of 29 (apparently the shelf-life of many a brilliant flame). He was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and was to spend his remaining 30 years in and out of mental institutions. Professionally, he would never dance again... reminding us (to our dismay), that, yes, for an artist, there are fates worse than death... and almost all of them are in some way related to institutions.

Nijinsky is and was most often referred to as gay: the stereotypical effeminate ballet dancer - and, while looking at his "Rose" photographs, you might've  thought so, too - as if grace and beauty (and some great eye-shadow) are exclusively found in feminine form. This a fairly modern misconception. The classical world entertained a broader, unbiased perspective, glorifying both their pretty boys and pretty girls equally in art and poetry. Then again, in ancient Greece and Rome, one's sexual orientation wasn't the socially definitive issue it became in the modern world. In fact, no precise Latin words for "homosexual" or "heterosexual" existed. As for Nijinsky, well, he married a woman, fathered two children and employed a number of female prostitutes, while his few documented relationships with men - specifically Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of the renowned Ballets Russes in which Nijinsky found his fame - seem to be based predominately on Nijinsky's artistic opportunism and his partner's egocentric, abusive indulgences. "Love" did not seem to have been the operative term in their relationship. But, for Nijinsky, love was all. And, his feeling was so strong, he believed he was love's personification. In a letter to Diaghilev, Nijinsky wrote:

"You are the one who wants death and destruction, although you are afraid of death.
I love love, but I am not the flesh and blood, I am the spirit, the soul. I am love..."

Ultimately, whether Nijinsky was gay, bi, straight - or some permutation thereof - doesn't really interest us here. I'm more inclined to agree with Dorothy Parker's remark:

“Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.”

 So, let's just accept that Nijinsky was a less common kind of guy and move on...

For the Angels - 3:03; the Passions of Angels (Part II)

Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour (Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss) - marble sculpture - 1793, Antonio Canova, housed in the Louvre.
(All images in this post can be clicked-on for larger views)

"And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it...

And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants."

- From the Book of Enoch, The Watchers, Chapters 6 & 7.

"For all forces are angels! How blind, how perniciously blind are the naive?! If you told someone who purports to be a sage of Israel that the Deity sends an angel who enters a woman's womb and there forms an embryo, he would think this a miracle and accept it as a mark of the majesty and power of the Deity, despite the fact that he believes an angel to be a body of fire one third the size of the entire world. All this, he thinks, is possible for God. But if you tell him that God placed in the sperm the power of forming and demarcating these organs, and that this is the angel, or that all forms are produced by the Active Intellect; that here is the angel, the "vice-regent of the world" constantly mentioned by the sages, then he will recoil."

- Excerpt from Guide for the Perplexed, written by Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher and scholar born around 1135 (and found here). Inset, left, is a pair of statues from the famous Staglieno cemetery found here.

"Reason dies in giving birth to ecstasy."

- Attributed to Richard of Saint Victor, a medieval Scottish philosopher and prior of the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris from 1162 until his death in 1173.

***

It was the ancient Celtic holiday of Beltane not long ago, and, for pagans, the night of April 30th is one of greatest celebration. They certainly don't cut corners across the pond - specifically in the UK - but honor the event in its fullest tradition... see Edinburgh's Beltane Fire Festival (a BBC page, where the photo of the devilish darling to your right was found). To my greatest surprise, there was even a celebration here in New Mexico, Beltane Southwest, but I was too late in discovering it. Well, maybe next year... if I'm still living here.

But, in any case, it's an appropriate time of year to be ending our discussion of angelic passions (see Part I), because, essentially, it is within the ancient, pre-Christian world the roots of preternatural and/or supernatural love can be found. It's a well known fact that, across the globe, the ancient gods were a randy bunch - and we love them for it - but when it comes to winged, supernatural entities, well, nobody did it better than the Greeks, and, of their pantheon, none could surpass the primordial love god, Eros...

For the Angels - 3:01; Three's the Charm (annotated)

Angel of Death Victorious - bronze (distressed) - 1923, Herman Matzen.
Also known as the "Haserot Angel," this monument is located in Lakeview Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio. Above is my B/W version of a photograph found here, credited to Steven Jupina.
(All images within this post can be clicked to enlarge)

"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?
Even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart,
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying."

"Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,
almost deadly birds of the soul, knowing about you.
Where are the days of Tobias, when one of you, veiling his radiance,
stood at the front door, slightly disguised for the journey, no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).
But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars took even one step down toward us
our own hearts, beating higher and higher, would beat us to death.
Who are you?"

- First stanzas from the First and Second Elegies of the Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien), by Rainer Maria Rilke, 1923. The full English translations by Stephen Mitchell of the first two Elegies can be found here. However, I can't hardily recommend any of the other translations found online. Ideally, it should be read the way Rilke wrote it: in its original German form. Incidentally, Rilke's question "where are the days of Tobias" refers to an enigmatic scripture of ancient origin which relates the story of the youth, Tobias. and the archangel Raphael (See the "A Brief History of Angels" section).

"I turned my sight back to the angel when, suddenly, I noticed his hands - particularly his right hand which was reaching out to me. In English, he said, “Come into my world.” I was wondering why he was speaking to me in English when, suddenly, I heard the translation: “Entre dans mon monde,” and even in German: “Komm in meinem Welt.”

Then, through the music and the angel, I entered into that other world, which exists inside the painting. The whole time, the figures had been calling me there.

The angel changed my appearance, and I became just like one of the little people in the painting. I received a long cape, and I was crowned with coral (just like the woman in profile with the elaborate headdress). It was like a ceremony, initiating me into paradise... I became an angel..."

- Excerpt from Un Autre Monde by Myrette St. Ange (possibly a fictional character) (?) "translated" by Visionary artist, L. Caruna. The painting referred to is an actual painting by Visionary artist Robert Venosa. (inset, above, is a detail from the painting.)


"For painter and philosopher Robert Venosa, art and spirituality were simultaneous. Venosa was a visionary in the most real sense of the word: much of his artistic expression was deeply connected to visions that he had of higher dimensional beings whom he perceived as angels, although a different sort of angel than you might see in popular religious art. At several crucial moments in Venosa's life he was visited by an entity that seemed transcendent of time and space, yet was partially visible in the third dimension. These experiences affected Robert deeply and he attempted for the rest of his life to paint them (example, inset left). Many of his well known works were inspired by these visions, including twin angels Castor and Pollux, and Seraphim."

"Spirit energy, like all universal energy, must manifest itself in form and texture at its own vibratory level. We, in our present stage of time-space evolution are unfortunately limited in our perception of these transcendent substances. But the visionary, in his creative expression, must overstep these limits if he is to resolve his task of bridging the gulf between accepted reality and spiritual postulation”."

- Two quoted paragraphs from Reality Sandwich's article on Robert Venosa {1936 - 2011}: Viva Venosa. The second quote is from the artist and was excerpted from his 1978 publication "Manas Manna." All three paintings posted here can be found on his website.

***

Sorry for the delay, comrades, but my mental engine decided to stall last week just at the crucial moment... possibly flooded by too much angelology! Then again, maybe I've just been wrestling with my own angels lately... or maybe I've been wrestling with yours; it's difficult to say. Understanding the Language of Angels is a little like understanding the Language of Birds - and maybe they're one and the same - but, one thing I've learned: it's impossible to pin down an angel. Moreover, angels are not always "nice."  But, whether you "believe" in them or not - and, very possibly, they couldn't care less -  it is always they who have the advantage. Like birds - up to an including Rilke's "deadly birds of the soul" - they can merely fly away. (Or, even worse, tamper with your mental engine!)

Of course, there are angels and then there are angels. For some people angels are guised as beneficent strangers; those enigmatic humans who seemingly come to us out of thin air (and just in the nick of time) to save the day. For an artist, the Muse is a kind of angel. For a child, a guardian angel is sensed as a protective force. And, as for mystics, well, they seem to be able to experience them firsthand.

As a matter of fact, it is often artists, mystics and children* who actually see angels. William Blake saw angels... especially as a child, and specifically in trees. The American artist Robert Venosa spent his lifetime attempting to represent the "higher dimensional entities" he saw (inset, right).** And, while the poet Rainer Maria Rilke devoted his Duino Elegies to angels, it is also said that his initial inspiration - and the first line of his poem - came from an angel whose voice was carried to him on the wind. The Swiss scientist (and mystic) Emanuel Swedenborg not only saw angels***, but wrote extensively about his conversations with them in a book entitled Heaven and Hell. He writes (found here):

"On the grounds of all my experience, which has lasted for several years now, I can say with full confidence that in their form, angels are completely human. They have faces, eyes, ears, chests, arms, hands, and feet. They see each other, hear each other, and talk to each other. In short, they lack nothing that belongs to humans except that they are not clothed with a material body."

As for the Christian mystics, Saint Francesca comes to mind. She even convinced Church authorities that her guardian angel was a true, substantial entity. In fact, she was formally declared the Patron Saint of Automobile Drivers, because her alleged angel was said to appear with a lantern to guide her whenever she travelled.

And, then there's the matter of Saint Teresa (of Ávila) - not to be confused with Thérèse of Lisieux - and her "ecstasy," but that's so juicy, I'm saving it for later...

For the Love of Old Books (Part 3): Wuthering Heights (updated September 16, 2016)

Title page of Wuthering Heights, (1847) by Emily Brontë - 1943 American Edition with woodcuts by Fritz Eichenberg. (All images can be clicked on to enlarge.)

Wuthering Heights

"At noon, Emily was worse; she could only whisper in gasps. With her last audible words she said to Charlotte, "If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now" but it was too late. She died that same day at about two in the afternoon while sitting on the sofa at Haworth Parsonage. It was less than three months since Branwell's death, which led a housemaid to declare that "Miss Emily died of a broken heart for love of her brother". Emily had grown so thin that her coffin measured only 16 inches wide. The carpenter said he had never made a narrower one for an adult. She was interred in the Church of St Michael and All Angels family capsule, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England. Emily Brontë never knew the extent of fame she achieved with her one and only novel, Wuthering Heights, as she died a year after its publication, aged 30."

- Quote found in the Wiki entry for Emily Brontë, (July 31, 1818 - December 19, 1848).  

"The first reviewers were mystified and puzzled by the strangeness and savagery of Wuthering Heights, although nearly all recognized the seductive power of the novel and the original vision of its author...  However, the critic who perhaps most perceptively synthesized the poetic and fictional halves of Emily's creative aptitude wrote at the end of the nineteenth century. A fellow poet, Algernon Swinburne, referred to Wuthering Heights in a 16 June 1883 article as "essentially and definitely a poem in the fullest and most positive sense of the term."

- From the Poetry Foundation's Emily Brontë page.

"An overwhelming sense of the presence of a larger reality moved Rudolph Otto to call Wutheirng Heights a supreme example of "the daemonic" in literature. Otto was concerned with identifying the non-rational mystery behind all religion and all religious experiences; he called this basic element or mystery the numinous. The numinous grips or stirs the mind so powerfully that one of the responses it produces is numinous dread, which consists of awe or awe-fullness. Numinous dread implies three qualities of the numinous: its absolute unapproachability, its power, and. its urgency or energy.

... It has been suggested that Gothic fiction originated primarily as a quest for numinous dread, which Otto also calls the mysterium tremendum."

- Excerpt from a CUNY (City University of New York) article about Wuthering Heights.

(Note: Mysterium tremendum et fascinans is a metaphysical mystery which is regarded with both fear and fascination.)

"The love which devours life itself, which devastates the present and desolates the future with unquenchable and raging fire, has nothing less pure in it than flame or sunlight... As was the author's life, so is her book in all things; troubled and taintless, with little of rest in it, and nothing of reproach. It may be true that not many will ever take it to their hearts; it is certain that those who do like it will like nothing very much better in the whole world of poetry or prose."

- Algernon Charles Swinburne in reference to Wuthering Heights, from his essay "Emily Brontë" (1883). A link to Swinburne's poetry.

"Emily Brontë died in 1848, aged 30, leaving only one published book and some poems. That book, of course, is "Wuthering Heights" (recently issued in new editions, by Penguin and HarperCollins), a novel so strange and powerful that it sinks into the reader's DNA."

- Quote from Richard Raynor, found here.

***

For my last "interlude" post (featuring bits of my book collection), I couldn't resist posting an edition of one of my favorite novels of all time: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I think the first time I read it was around the age of 13, an age when the mind is most open to new experiences, and when experience itself has its most indelible impact. I've forgotten a lot of novels I've read in the intervening years, but the effect of Wuthering Heights stayed with me, and as Swineburne so wisely predicted: I never once met its match.

He was wrong about one thing though; it seems that a very great many people took it to their hearts and continue to do so. If you google it, or Emily Brontë, you'll find masses of people still have something to say about the young woman's singular novel written over 150 years ago. As recently as 2007, in a British (UKTV Drama) poll, it was voted the number 1 love story of all time. Imagine that. Or, maybe this article: Copy of Wuthering Heights sells for six figures.

So, just exactly what is it about the novel that moves men and women to such a degree? To this very day, critics and academics still discuss it as if it only recently hit the best seller list. You would think that somewhere along the line someone would've finally solved the mystery of the novel's tremendous popularity, its symbolism, and its peculiar author's life. Happily, for Emily Brontë at least, the particulars of her private life will never be revealed. She left no diaries or records... and what little survives of her memory amounts to no more than the second-hand recollections of those who professed to know her, up to and including those accounts offered by her older sister Charlotte...

For the Love of Old Books (Part 2) - The Poètes Maudits & an Artiste Maudit

(From left to right) Das törichte Herz - Vier Erzählungen (The Foolish Heart - A Collection of Essays) by Paul Zech, paperback,1925; Une Saison en Enfer  (A Season in Hell) by Arthur Rimbaud - galley proof (uncut), 1944; Les Fleurs Du Mal - Les Épaves (The Flowers of Evil - The Scraps) by Charles Baudelaire - galley proof (uncut), illustrated by Maurice Mixi-Bérel, 1945.
(All images in this post can be clicked-on for enlarged views.)

"Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name "symbolist" itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, who invented the term to distinguish the symbolists from the related decadents of literature and of art.

Distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism of art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism."

- Introduction for the Wiki entry regarding the Symbolists.

"If there is one central tenet held by Symbolist artists, it is that life is fundamentally mysterious, and the artist must respect and preserve this mystery. Thus they insisted on suggestion rather than explicitness, symbols or equivalents rather than description, in both painting and poetry. Choosing music as their model, Symbolists found the creation of a mood to be as important as the transmission of information, and sought to engage the entire mind and personality of the viewer by appealing to the viewer's emotions and unconscious mind as well as intellect. The recognition that there was a major portion of mental activity that is closed to the conscious mind confirmed the Symbolists conviction that there was more to life than could be explained through positivist science."

- Excerpt from the New World Encyclopedia regarding the Symbolist philosophy.


"In terms of specific subject matter, the Symbolists combined religious mysticism, the perverse, the erotic, and the decadent. Symbolist subject matter is typically characterized by an interest in the occult, the morbid, the dream world, melancholy, evil, and death."

- Excerpt found on the following Art Story "Symbolist" page. For information about Symbolist literature in Spain, Germany and America try here (in English only).


"My originality consists in bringing to life, in a human way, improbable beings and making them live according to the laws of probability, by putting - as far as possible - the logic of the visible world at the service of the invisible."

- Quote attributed to French Symbolist painter, Odilon Redon.

Coquille - pastel - 1912, Odilon Redon (Musée d'Orsay)

***

It's been hot and humid in New Mexico for over a week now, but without a drop of rain in my general vicinity. While there may have been flooding elsewhere on the planet in recent months (including the States), in the American southwest the threat is fire - uncontrollable fires. Happily, my neighborhood has not had to evacuate, but if the dryness continues... well.

But, I can clearly remember the summer's day I bought the three paperbacks shown above. It was a sunny day, possibly in June, but much cooler. I was, after all, still living in New England at the time, and had just been bitten by the antiquated-book-collecting bug. So, when I heard about a book sale being sponsored by a nearby retirement community, well, it was a no-brainer; off I went. 

The books were sitting in a small box on the ground under a tent with other books in foreign languages... dejectedly, as if they were considered less desirable than the American titles lined up on the folding tables above them. I think the first title I saw was Les Fleurs Du Mal, and my heart skipped a beat; Baudelaire (inset, right), Godfather of the Symbolist poètes maudits! And, lying right beside the work of the master, was an inconspicuous (and fragile) little paperback by Rimbaud - the younger of the "accursed" poets - who would have been honored to have his Une Saison en Enfer side by side with Les Fleurs Du Mal. It was too magical; I couldn't believe my luck.  Because, as it was, my first, and most sacred influences as a young artist (and, secretly, a poet) were the Symbolist artists and writers of the turn of the (last) century.

I was yet to realize the books were galley proofs; I just grabbed them, along with a few others - including a German paperback with a bold red and black graphic on the jacket - paid for my treasures, and left. Cradling the books in my arms as I walked to my car was an almost religious experience. Imagine finding such foreign treasures under a tent in Connecticut on a summer day! I drove home in a daze...