symbolreader

Image via http://chronoperates.deviantart.com/art/Art-Nouveau-Peacock-272202614

I.“A Sufi legend, likely of Persian origin, suggests that god created spirit in the form of a peacock. Shown its own divine image in a mirror, the peacock was seized with awe and drops of sweat fell from which all other beings were created.“

Hope B. Wernes, The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in World Art, entry: Peacock

Catalina Estrada, “Pavos“

II.“The serene and starry sky and the shining sun are peacocks. The deep-blue firmament shining with a thousand brilliant eyes, and the sun rich with the colors of the rainbow, present the appearance of a peacock in all the splendour of its eye-bespangled feathers. When the sky of the thousand-rayed sun … is hidden by clouds … it again resembles the peacock, which, in the dark part of the year … sheds its beautiful plumage, and becomes drab and unadorned; the crow which had put on the peacock’s feathers then caws with the other crows in funereal concert. In winter the peacock-crow has nothing left to it except its shrill disagreeable cry, which is not dissimilar to that of the crow. It is commonly said of the peacock that it has an angel‘s feathers, a devil’s voice, and a thief’s walk.“

Angelo de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, quoted by C.G. Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis

Claude Monet, “Impression, Sunrise”

Herbert James Draper, “The Gates of Dawn“

At winter solstice, peaceful, regenerative darkness slowly gives way to the life-giving radiance of the sun. With the break of dawn, the alchemical period of nigredo (blackness) gradually and in stages gives way to a splendid display of the peacock’s tail. The peacock is predominantly (but not exclusively) a solar symbol – its cry greets the rising sun, its splendid tail, as Hope B. Wernes wrote in The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in World Art,“ fanned out in all its glory, shines like the sun.“ The symmetrical forms of light and colour on the peacock’s tail are symbolic of the expansion of consciousness occurring as a result of an encounter with the immaterial universal archetypal patterns (the peacock’s invisible aspect) and the material multiplicity of forms (the peacock’s visible aspect) present in the entire universe. In Mysterium Coniunctionis, C.G. Jung stated that the peacock stands for the unity of “all colors (i.e., the integration of all qualities).“ The peacock also symbolizes the “inner beauty and perfection of the soul.“ Jung extensively quotes from Khunrath’s alchemical work entitled Amphitheatrum sapientiae, where the peacock, as a symbol integrating all polarities, was called the “soul of the world, nature, the quintessence, which causes all things to bring forth.“

The Splendor Solis by Salomon Trismosin, Plate 16 Venus: Peacock’s Tail

Susan Seddon Boulet, “Hera the Queen of the Gods“

Alphonse Mucha, “Peacock Princess”

The predominant colour of the peacock’s tail is green, which connects it with Venus as a ruler of the sign Taurus, and thus with “life, procreation and resurrection“ as a bird associated with Hera (Juno), Mother Queen of the gods. Says Jung: “Just as the Queen Mother or the mother of the gods grants renewal, so the peacock annually renews his plumage, and therefore has a relation to all the changes in nature.“

Jessie Arms Botke, “Black Peacocks with Japanese Persimmons“

In Christianity, the peacock was likewise considered a bird of resurrection, a conviction which stemmed from the Aristotelian notion that the flesh of the peacock never putrifies.

Gerhard Dorn, another alchemist quoted by Jung, explicated the succession of alchemical stages of the opus in relation to colours and associated animal symbolism: “the ‘dead spiritual body‘ is ‘the bird without wings.‘ It ‘changes into the raven’s head and finally into the peacock’s tail, after which it attains the whitest plumage of the swan and, last of all, to the highest redness, the sign of its fiery nature.‘ This plainly alludes to the phoenix, which, like the peacock, plays a considerable role in alchemy as a symbol of renewal and resurrection, and more especially as a synonym for the lapis.“ The emergence of the peacock’s tail in the alchemical opus heralded the imminent successful end of the work and the attainment of its goal. It was believed by alchemists and in medieval lore that peacocks destroyed serpents and dragons, transforming their poison into the healing medicine.

Hieronymus Bosch, “The Garden of earthy Delights” (detail)

Although I chose the quote by Gubernatis as the second motto for my article, I am not in agrrement with him about the cry of the peacock. I do understand, though, how the peacock as the symbol of wholeness (and as the bird of Venus) also embraces the shadow associated with the seductiveness of beauty, vanity and pride. A few years ago, I had something short of a mystical experience while walking through the Bruno Weber park and hearing peacocks‘cries.

Artist Bruno Weber in his sculpture park, https://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/culture/sculpture-park

There is a magnificent poem by Wallace Stevens called “Domination of Black,“ which features the symbolism of the cry of the peacock:

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry — the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

On a website Poet Tree (http://billsigler.blogspot.ch/2011/07/stevens-textplication-6-domination-of.html), I have come across a good interpretation of this poem. The author says:

“Dramatically, the poem moves through an extended comparison of a flickering fireplace fire with first the autumn leaves literally reflected from the outside into the room, then to the colors of peacocks tails (and the encroaching night to the dark green of hemlock trees). Then the noise the fire makes is compared to the noises of both peacocks and hemlocks (with some questioning of who is talking and listening to whom), and finally the planets in the sky seem like the same turning of the leaves, the changing of the seasons, a holistic sense of relatedness that soon resolves both in the fireplace and outside to darkness. This encroachment of night scares the speaker, but he remembers the cry of the peacock and feels better.

… hemlocks are evergreen trees that never change with the seasons, while peacocks replace their feathers annually. Thus, it’s quite easy to see a contrast between the elegant and artistic peacock and her strange cry signaling a continuation of life and the hemlock (also the name of the elixir which suicided the great philosopher Socrates) signaling the “domination of black” – the constant presence of death in our lives due to its unresolvable mystery.“

Interestingly, as can be read on an excellent website dedicated to constellations (http://www.constellationsofwords.com/Constellations/Pavo.html), the words “peacock” and “paean,” i.e. ‘a hymn, a song joy and triumph’ are related. Other cognates of the peacock (pavo in Latin) are ‘pavor’ (dread which strikes the heart) and ‘pave,’ as in “pave the way.”  The cry of the peacock in the poem becomes a true “mystical call,“ a voice from beyond addressing directly our incorruptible essence – the Soul – and beckoning us to cross the threshold of awakening.