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The Secrets of the Odyssey (8): the Sirens, Scylla & Charybdis, and Thrinacia

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Symbol Reader

John William Waterhouse, “The Siren”

Reading the Odyssey in a superb translation of Robert Fitzgerald is like listening to the most delightful music. No interpretation can possibly replace the sheer pleasure of experiencing Homer’s talent. The opening lines of Book XII read:

“The ship sailed on, out of the Ocean Stream,

riding a long swell on the open sea

for the Island of Aiaia.

Summering Dawn

has dancing grounds there, and the Sun his rising;

but still by night we beached on a sand shelf

and waded in beyond the line of breakers

to fall asleep, awaiting the Day Star.”

On the island of Aiaia, Circe receives Odysseus and his companions, who have returned from Hades, with a lavish banquet. Later at night she tells Odysseus in great detail about his next adventures, what perils await him and what precautions he must take. It seems that at this moment Odysseus is endowed with a higher understanding by the Goddess. But although his mind is clear about the right course of action, for various reasons he will not be able to prevent the destiny from “devising ill,” as he himself puts it later. It seems that a clear awareness of what the future will bring cannot stop the events from unfolding. Circe advises Odysseus about the Sirens and then about the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. The following powerful exchange between them seems to be crucial to me for Odysseus’ spiritual development and gaining higher understanding:

“‘Only instruct me, goddess, if you will,

how, if possible, can I pass Kharybdis,

or fight off Skylla when she raids my crew?’

Swiftly that loveliest goddess answered me:

‘Must you have battle in your heart forever?

The bloody toil of combat? Old contender,

will you not yield to the immortal gods?

That nightmare cannot die, being eternal

evil itself—horror, and pain, and chaos;

there is no fighting her, no power can fight her,

all that avails is flight.”

She predicts that the monster will devour six of his companions but this knowledge of it will not prevent his heartache after this loss. The crucial lesson that Circe seems to be imparting to Odysseus is that we are powerless in the face of the archetypal godlike forces. Life is often like walking a narrow path between Scylla and Charybdis. Acknowledging the power of the gods and doing out uttermost to survive is often the only course of action left for mortals. I will speak of the monsters later, for now let the focus fall on the enchanting temptresses, the Sirens. Circe had warned Odysseus that “the Seirênês will sing his mind away on their sweet meadow lolling,“ and she had offered him a choice: he had to pour wax into his comrades’ ears to prevent them from hearing the Sirens but he could go either way: block his ears with wax or listen to the song of the Sirens while being tied to the mast so that he does not follow them to certain death. Knowing Odysseus’ ever curious character he surely chose the latter option, lying to his companions that Circe had ordered him to do so. The Sirens sang:

“Sweet coupled airs we sing.

No lonely seafarer

Holds clear of entering

Our green mirror.

Charmed out of time we see.

No life on earth can be

Hid from our dreaming.”

John William Waterhouse, “Ulysses and the Sirens”

In Homeric Moments, Eva Brann offers her interpretation of this episode:

“The Sirens offer to ensnare Odysseus by a flattering and seductive song of nostalgia, ‘return-ache.’ They claim that men who hear it sail away the wiser, but in fact no one gets away. He too will forget the Return that leads homeward to wife and child by changing the direction of his longing to the past. He will molder in pity for his lost comrades-in-arms and in self-pity for the glory gone, wallowing in veteran’s reminiscences, aching to turn back to Troy.”

I think that the Sirens personify the charming and seductive face of the sacred feminine energy, the beauty of poetry which sings of the glorious past. Their song is like a regressive pull of the eternal ocean – the realm of myth and dreams. As daughters of either Melpomene (Muse of tragedy) or Terpsichore (muse of choral song ad dancing), the Sirens embody the dark and sad energy on the one hand, and the trance-like oblivion on the other. During this part of Odysseus’ journey the Sun passes Libra and Scorpius. It is worth remembering that in antiquity the stars of Libra were an extension of the constellation of Scorpio and were called the Claws of Scorpius. We read in Homer’s Secret Odyssey by Kenneth and Florence Wood:

“As the sun leaves Virgo it passes through the Claws of Scorpius, where three stars alpha, beta and gamma Librae make an excellent ‘island’ home for the temptresses. The Sirens sit in a grassy meadow and the star Beta Librae is said to have a greenish tinge …”

Gustave Moreau, “The Sirens”

Scorpius links the Sirens with the death force (Thanatos) and darkness that pulls and sucks all creation into it. As Pablo Picasso put it, “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” Thanatos, the death drive, represents a push towards extinction and is a brother of Eros, the loving and creative force in the universe. With their alluring song, the Sirens bring ecstasy and death. The two forces are always present in every artistic endeavor. “Seeing out of time” denotes the Sirens’ ability to see the past, the present and the future. They are as mysterious as the Sphinx and almost as fascinating; no wonder they have stirred the imagination of countless readers of the Odyssey although the passage dedicated to them is surprisingly short, taking into account its cultural impact.

The next stage of the journey is extremely traumatic for Odysseus. The moon moves into its dark period and the hero has to pass through a narrow passage between two deadly monsters: Scylla and Charybdis. Meanwhile, the sun passes through the autumn equinox. The Woods point out that in Homer’s times the autumn equinoctial point lay between Libra and Scorpius. During the spring equinox six months before Odysseus had encountered Polyphemus also losing six of his travelling companions. Charybdis is a deadly whirlpool, a gigantic mouth engulfing anything that came near. A huge fig tree marks the dangerous spot where she resides:

“Like Scylla, she was once a beautiful sea nymph, a naiad, and helped her father Poseidon to increase his kingdom by flooding the land. But her uncle Zeus, the god of the earth and sky, was furious and turned her into a hideous mouthlike chasm. She was condemned to always be thirsty and to suck in seawater three times a day and regurgitate it with her thirst unsatisfied.”

Cassandra Eason, “Fabulous Creatures, Mythical Monsters, and Animal Power Symbolism: A Handbook”

Scylla, a six-headed devouring monster with her “deep gullets of black death,” who resides in an underwater cave, is associated with the constellation of Scorpius by the Woods:

“As a metaphorical description of Scorpius, Homer’s imagery of Scylla’s head protruding menacingly out of her cave is reflected in the same proportions in which Scorpius seems to rise out of the Milky Way. …

“Scylla and Charybdis”, an Italian fresco (image Wikipedia)

As with the six men eaten by the Cyclops at the spring equinox, these six victims are important in balancing the days of the solar and lunar years … In the absence of Homer using fractions of numbers, Scylla’s six victims, as with those of Polyphemus, can be seen as the rounded-up five and a half days that the lunar calendar falls short of the solar calendar between one equinox and the next.”

According to myth, Scylla was once a nymph who was seduced by Poseidon. Her tale is that of bitter jealousy accompanied by murderous instincts. In her jealous rage, Poseidon’s wife Amphitrite filled Scylla’s bathing pool with poisonous herbs, which turned the nymph into a monster.

The unavoidable death of his six companions was extremely traumatic to Odysseus, as he relates:

“She ate them as they shrieked there, in her den,

in the dire grapple, reaching still for me—

and deathly pity ran me through

at that sight—far the worst I ever suffered,

questing the passes of the strange sea.”

Although he had been warned about this loss by Circe he could have done nothing to avoid it. In grim moods the travelers sailed on until the island of Thrinacia appeared. Again, the dire warnings of both Teiresias and Circe about not killing Helios’ cattle grazing on the island were to no avail. While Odysseus was distracted looking for alternative nourishment for his crew, they were too hungry to wait and they feasted on the forbidden meat. Odysseus’ men proved thus once again that they do not match his steady resolve and higher consciousness: again they have succumbed to their simple earthy desires. Eva Brann emphasizes how more alienated Odysseus was getting from his companions, the more awareness he gained:

“He is disciplined, hardy, and mystifying to his men in his hidden purpose to see, hear, experience, know, and apprehend, the world imaginatively. To them his leadership must look like aimless drifting into continual hazards. They have been falling away from him for quite a while now: They are urgent where he is dilatory, they are slack where he is impulsive. They depend on him but distrust him; he cares for them occasionally but not about them steadily.”

Helios’ cattle, image via https://sites.google.com/site/tayloryustportfolio/humn-3923h-game-design/landscape-thrinacia

Meanwhile, the Sun has moved into the sign of Sagittarius. Zeus, spurred by Helios, punishes Odysseus’ companions by causing a violent storm in which they all drown while Odysseus drifts in the ocean on what remained of his last ship. He will eventually reach the island of Calypso but not before he is drawn towards the deadly Charybdis again. This time he holds on to the fig tree, which saves his life. Interestingly, Barbara Walkers, the author of The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, says that the fig tree is a well-known symbol of the goddess.

The Goddess Hathor in a Sycamore fig tree

The Bodhi tree, under which Buddha reached the enlightenment, was in fact a species of a fig tree. Also Babylonian Ishtar took the form of the divine fig tree. Bereft of all his companions and earthy possessions, Odysseus is ready to meet the most mysterious goddess of all, the veiled High Priestess Calypso, who will offer him immortality. Unlike Buddha, he will reject this gift in favor of a life with his beloved Penelope on Ithaka, his home.

Scorpio and Libra drawn on a Mercator globe in the 1500’s, via http://hubpages.com/hub/the-constellation-libra

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The Secrets of the Odyssey (1)

The Secrets of the Odyssey (2): Elements of Time (the Muse and the Moon)

The Secrets of the Odyssey (3): Calypso and Phaecians

The Secrets of the Odyssey (4): A Tribute to Penelope

The Secrets of the Odyssey (5): Lotus-Eaters, Auriga and Polyphemus

The Secrets of the Odyssey (6): the God of Winds

The Secrets of the Odyssey (7): Circe and the Underworld

The Secrets of the Odyssey (9): Leucothea in the Sea of Space and Time

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The Secrets of the Odyssey (11): Death of Odysseus, Master of Land Ways and Sea Ways

Posted in The Odyssey | Tagged archetypes, astrology, Calypso, Charybdis, fig tree, Greek myth, Helios’ cattle, Homer, Libra, mythology, Odysseus, Odyssey, Scorpio, Scylla, sirens, symbolism, symbols, Thrinacia | 29 Comments

Your Golden Hair Margeurite: Hair as a Symbol

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Symbol Reader

Rapanzel, via http://haleys-comet.deviantart.com/art/Rapunzel-Let-Down-Your-Hair-110501671

In an old pagan ritual known as the Maypole dance, on the Eve of May Day, female dancers circled the pole the counter-clockwise direction, which is sacred to women and associated with the moon while male dancers danced in the other direction, that of the sun. In Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Barbara G. Walker summarizes that “the resulting braid represented interpenetration of masculine and feminine powers.” In Hindu mythology, ‘hairs, like the threads of a fabric, symbolize the ‘lines of force’ of the universe” (Cirlot, Dictionary of Symbols). Throughout the ages hair has appeared as a potent symbol in myth, literature, culture and religion. The maypole dance ritual suggests that it is significant equally for men and women. It is enough to think of the romantic rituals of exchanging talismans with locks of hair between lovers. The supernatural strength of the biblical Samson (Hebrew for “man of the sun”), the one who defeated lions but was lost because of a woman, followed from his abundant hair.

Léon Bonnat, “Samson’s Youth”

Hair like the mane of a lion was also extremely popular in France of Louis XIV, the Sun King. He was the one who propagated the bizarre fashion in Europe, channeling the Greek god Apollo celebrated for his golden locks, symbolic of the golden rays of the sun. In Indian mythology, as Walkers says:

“The Indian god Shiva, who is the personalized representation of the creative and sexual energy of the universe, is always represented as having a mass of long, tangled, piled-up hair on his head.“

Ganga flowing from Shiva’s hair

On female side of the symbolic history of hair, Berenice stands out, wife of the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy Soter III. She sacrificed her beautiful amber-coloured hair to ensure that her husband returns home safely. Her tresses were left on the altar of Aphrodite for the night and had been mysteriously gone by the morning. The gods had put them in the sky as a beautiful constellation Coma Berenices.

Coma Berenices (http://constellationsofwords.com/)

The symbolism of the Great Mother and witchcraft has always been closely intertwined with hair symbolism. Barbara G. Walker writes:

“An Egyptian found salvation by identifying himself with Osiris, for whom the Goddess made resurrection-magic with her hair: He is found with her hair spread over him; it is shaken out over his brow. When Isis put on mourning garments for Osiris, she cut a lock of her hair to preserve his soul. … When Isis restored vitality to the dead Osiris, entitled the Still Heart, she created his new life with her hair, made his heart beat again and his penis move so she could conceive his reincarnation, Horus. She produced warmth from her hair, she caused air to come …. She caused movement to take place in what was inert in the Still Heart, she drew essence (semen) from him, she made flesh and blood, she suckled her babe alone. She further protected her Divine Child by shaking out her hair over him.”

Witches were feared by the Grand Inquisitors, who always ordered to shave their hair off. Walkers adds: “Gypsies said a witch could be known by her hair, which grew straight for three or four inches, then began to wave, like a waterfall bouncing over rocks.”

Susan Seddon Boulet, “Osiris and Isis”

At the hour of death, The Great Mother’s hair will cast its shadow over our souls. This is why comets were believed to portend doom: it was Great Mother, the spinner and weaver of our fates, that reminded us of our mortality and the inevitable death of old forms. In Homer’s Odyssey, Circe’s braids signified her power over metempsychosis.

I thought of hair today on the eve of Solar Eclipse, as I have heard that we are about to “celebrate” the anniversary of the establishment of the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz (Oswiecim), Poland. I remembered my first visit to the museum where my attention was caught by mountains of human hair on display behind glass. So unbelievably poignant: children’s hair, women’s hair, hair of all colour, even a plait can be spotted like the one from w famous poem by Tadeusz Rozewicz. A famous last stanza of the poem “Pigtail” that every Polish child learns about at school says:

“In huge chests
clouds of dry hair
of those suffocated
and a faded plait
a pigtail with a ribbon
pulled at school
by naughty boys.”

The most moving poem on the Holocaust I have ever read, however, was written by Paul Celan, a Romanian poet, who wrote in German. He lost both of his parents in the Holocaust, himself surviving the camp. He never recovered from his mother’s death and his whole poetry was a cry of mourning for his loss. “The Death Fugue” is his most famous poem and one you simply cannot forget once you have read it. Note the symbolism of golden hair that becomes ashen hair. The title and the form of the poem is evocative of the habit of the Nazis to make the Jews play music at their own executions.

Death Fugue

(Translated by John Felstiner)

“Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won’t lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Marguerite
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling
he whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he orders us strike up and play for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margeurite
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won’t lie too cramped
He shouts jab this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margeurite
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you’ll rise then in smoke to the sky
you’ll have a grave then in the clouds there you won’t lie too cramped

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and daydreams
der Tod is ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith”

Paul Celan

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Posted in Hair | Tagged Apollo, archetypes, Auschwitz, Berenice, braids, Coma Berenices, Death Fugue, hair, holocaust, isis, Louis XIV, maypole, mythology, Osiris, Paul Celan, plaits, Samson, Shiva, symbolism, symbols, wigs | 23 Comments

Ninshubur

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Symbol Reader

Brickthology

Etymology: Queen of the East

Also known as: Ninshubar, Nincubura, Nincubur or Ninšubur

In Sumerian mythology, Ninshubur is a messenger of the gods. She is also known as Inanna’s sukkal or second-in-command; a position of great importance as a high-ranking government administrator. It has been pointed out, in an essay written by Diane Wolkstein, “Interpretations of Inanna¹s Stories and Hymns,” that a sukkal often has powers and abilities far superior then those of their Liege or Master. Not only does the sukkal have their own power and abilities, but they often have that power and authority combined with power and authority of whomever they serve.

Ninshubur is a goddess herself, whose name means: “’Queen of the East.” While she is often described as a virgin, Ninshubur is also mentioned as one of Inanna’s lovers. Ninshubur is associated with the element of Air and the planet Mercury.

In later Akkadian myths…

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Earth Day

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Symbol Reader

“The word ‘nature’ derives from natura, a philosophical term derived from the verb for birth, which was used as a translation for the earlier Ancient Greek term phusus which was derived from the verb for natural growth, for example that of a plant.”

Wikipedia

“Urban living has always tended to produce a sentimental view of nature. Nature is thought of as a garden, or a view framed by a window, or as an arena of freedom. Peasants, sailors, nomads have known better. Nature is energy and struggle. It is what exists without any promise. If it can be thought of by a man as an arena, a setting, it has to be thought of as one which lends itself as much to evil as to good. Its energy is fearsomely indifferent. The first necessity of life is shelter. Shelter against nature. The first prayer is for protection. The first sign of life is pain. If the Creation was purposeful, its purpose is a hidden one which can only be discovered intangibly within signs, never by the evidence of what happens.”

John Berger, “The Sense of Sight”

Having just found out it is international Earth Day Today, I thought it was a nice coincidence that I have seen the movie Noah today. It was extremely thought provoking to me. Thanks to James Lovelock, we now tend to personalize Earth as Gaia. I was not happy that although the Goddess was markedly present in the movie, she was never acknowledged by name. The giants, her progeny, were not called her sons. Female characters were shown as little more than passive receptacles for new life that must be protected by strong men, although they were beautifully portrayed by both Emma Watson and Jennifer Connelly. But there was raw honesty in such a depiction: I kept thinking that at the very basic level of survival, the first chakra, we maybe operate like this. On the other hand, I could not help thinking about Noah’s spiritual crisis at the end of the movie. I think he understood that if we operate at the basic instinct level, the earth indeed does not need us. We need to do two things as human species: acknowledge that we are not more evolved than animals (that we are essentially the same) and, having done that, having acknowledged our basic equality with the animal kingdom, step into the position of wise curators of all Creation.

Posted in Earth | Tagged Aronofsky, Earth Day, ecology, Gaia, Lovelock, nature, Noah | 21 Comments

The Art of Resurrection

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Symbol Reader

Today my thoughts were directed to the phenomenon of Greek “abaton”:

“Also called a mundus or earth-womb, the abaton was a real pit, standard equipment in a pagan temple. Those who entered it to ‘incubate,’ or to sleep overnight in magical imitation of the incubatory sleep in the womb, were thought to be visited by an ‘incubus’ or spirit who brought prophetic dreams. Novice priests went down into the pit for longer periods of incubation, pantomiming death, burial, and rebirth from the womb of Mother Earth. …

The Old Testament Joseph earned his oneiromantic talent by incubation in a Pit. The ‘brothers’ who put him there seem to have been fellow priests. He could interpret Pharaoh’s dreams only after he had submitted to the ritual. Assyrian priests derived similar powers from a sojourn in the Pit. They then assumed the priestly coat of many colors, signifying communion with the Goddess under her oneiromantic name of Nanshe, ‘Interpreter of Dreams.'”

Barbara G. Walker, “The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets”

Incubation in the pit may be equaled to a “lesser death” while today we are celebrating the magic descent and rebirth through overcoming of even greater forces of darkness. I have been looking closely at painting of the Resurrection this morning and I came across this website with various depictions of the theme:

http://www.jesus-story.net/painting_resurrection.htm

My attention was caught by a few wondrous paintings:

1.Nikolay Gay, “Harbingers of the Resurrection”

Sometimes, when the whole world is still in darkness but if we are attentive we notice a brightly shining harbinger of hope announcing the good news. In his magnificent poem “Patmos,” Friedrich Hölderlin (frequently quoted by C.G. Jung) wrote: “The god Is near, and hard to grasp. / But where there is danger, /A rescuing element grows as well.”

2. Peter Paul Rubens, “Christ Risen”

What I adore about this is the fleshiness of the body of Christ. There are no traces of death, no emaciation or death pallor. He is strong, powerful but also very human.

3. Rembrandt van Rijn, “The Resurrection”

I find this painting breathtaking. Unlike Rubens, he focuses on the divinity of Christ and the sheer numinosity of the moment. There is an enormous out of this world quality about the scene. Rembrandt was a master painter of supernatural light.

4. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “The Resurrection”

You can barely see Christ here hovering over the figure of the angel. Where do I start? Paintings bathed in gold have always been my favorite. I am fascinated also by the tumult among the people faced with this miracle.

5. William Blake, “Angels Rolling away the Stone from the Sepulchre”

This is another depiction of “the moment before.” I am especially enchanted by the composition.

6. Michel Ciry, “The Risen Christ”

This very modern image struck me particularly. On the one hand, I thought that it shows the inherent divinity in every human being. On the other hand, I thought of the suffering of the Holocaust victim although I am not sure whether the artist intended for such a reception.

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Posted in Painting | Tagged abaton, art, Blake, Bruegel, Christ, Christianity, Ciry, Easter, Gay, incubation, painting, rebirth, Rembrandt, resurrection, rising from the dead, Rubens | 15 Comments

The Flowers

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Symbol Reader

Goddess Flora

“The Flowers” by Stéphane Mallarmé

(translated by Henry Weinfield)

“From golden showers of the ancient skies,

On the first day, and the eternal snow of stars,

You once unfastened giant calyxes

For the young earth still innocent of scars:

Young gladioli with the necks of swans,

Laurels divine, of exiled souls the dream,

Vermilion as the modesty of dawns

Trod by the footsteps of the seraphim;

The hyacinth, the myrtle gleaming bright,

And, like the flesh of woman, the cruel rose,

Hérodiade blooming in the garden light,

She that from wild and radiant blood arose!

And made the sobbing whiteness of the lily

That skims a sea of sighs, and as it wends

Through the blue incense of horizons, palely

Toward the weeping moon in dreams ascends!

Hosanna on the lute and in the censers,

Lady, and of our purgatorial groves!

Through heavenly evenings let the echoes answer,

Sparkling haloes, glances of rapturous love!

Mother, who in your strong and righteous bosom,

Formed calyxes balancing the future flask,

Capacious flowers with the deadly balsam

For the weary poet withering on the husk.”

Albrecht Dürer, “Daffodils and Other Flowers”

Hasegawa Kyuzo, “Cherry Blossoms”

Hayami Gyoshu, “Spring Evening”

(last two images via http://through-the-sapphire-sky.blogspot.ch/2010/03/sakura-cherry-blossoms-in-bloom.html)

Posted in Poetry | Tagged archetypes, art, Flora, Flowers, Mallarme, poem, poetry, spring, symbolism, symbols | 7 Comments

The Secrets of the Odyssey (7): Circe and the Underworld

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Symbol Reader

J.W. Waterhouse, “Circe Invidiosa”

As his journey progresses, Odysseus gradually loses all his ships and companions, all of his spoils of war, until he becomes solitary at the very end of the epic. Right after the disaster with contrary winds, he loses eleven out of his twelve ships in the encounter with Laestrygonians, man-eating giants. Broken and in mourning, while the moon is still in her dark period, he arrives at Aiaia, Circe’s island. The Sun has now entered Leo and the Midsummer is approaching. Odysseus is about to meet the solar goddess queen Circe, daughter of the sun god Helios. But before that he decides to feed his crew by killing a giant stag and carrying it back to the ship:

“In describing the killing of the stag Homer establishes important times not only in the day but also in the solar year and the 19-year cycle. The stag’s death-blow comes from a bronze-tipped spear, a metaphor for the sun and one that is repeated at the climax of the Odyssey. The spear strikes halfway down the line of the beast’s spine, which metaphorically places the sun on the ecliptic below the ‘back’ of Leo. It is now just halfway through the solar year. It is also the mid-point of the 19-year cycle and there are a further nine and a half years to go before Odysseus will be reunited with Penelope. Odysseus carries a giant stag back to his ship at the halfway point of the 19-year cycle with the sun in the stars of Leo. The stag’s golden horns represent the rays of the sun.”

Florence and Kenneth Wood, “Homer’s Secret Odyssey”

The name Circe means “circling hawk” or “Encircler” and her island lies in the centre of the starry seas of the universe. The encircling horizon of the island is the Sun’s ecliptic. Odysseus notices the smoke from Circe’s chimney, which is the focal point of the island around which heavens seem to rotate. The constellation of Leo represents Circe’s enchanted palace. While the Moon is still dark, Odysseus sends a scouting mission to the palace, himself prudently staying behind:

“In the wild wood they found an open glade,

around a smooth stone house—the hall of Kirkê—

and wolves and mountain lions lay there, mild

in her soft spell, fed on her drug of evil.

None would attack—oh, it was strange, I tell you—

but switching their long tails they faced our men

like hounds, who look up when their master comes

with tidbits for them—as he will—from table.

Humbly those wolves and lions with mighty paws

fawned on our men—who met their yellow eyes

and feared them.

Low she sang

in her beguiling voice, while on her loom

she wove ambrosial fabric sheer and bright,

by that craft known to the goddesses of heaven.”

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald)

What ensues is probably the most famous episode of the Odyssey: Circe turns Odysseus’ companions into pigs while their minds remain human. When Odysseus finds out what has happened, he sets about rescuing his companions, encountering Hermes on the way, who instructs him how to resist the spell of the goddess by means of the moly flower and a sword. A very deep symbolic message is encoded in that part of the Odyssey. Roger Sworder, in his book Science and Religion in Ancient Greece, restores Circe’s true power lost throughout the ages of patriarchal discourse. Before I summarize his musings, I would like to stop for a moment and ponder on the above passage from the Odyssey. She appears as a powerful Lady of the Beasts in it, a tamer of wild animals (wild instincts), a bringer of order to the universe. She is portrayed as the ultimate goddess from whose body the universe was formed, yet she is also the chaos that universe will eventually return to. She acts as a powerful and crucial initiator for Odysseus. In The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Barbara G. Walker writes that the word “kirkos” (falcon) comes from the same root as the Latin circus, which was originally an enclosure for funerary games. The falcon is a fitting totem for her because in symbolism it is both a solar bird and a death-bird. Walker also calls Circe a fate-spinner, “weaver of the destinies of men,” who manipulates forces of creation and destruction. What is more, Pliny wrote that Circe “commanded all the lights of heaven.”

J.W. Waterhouse, “Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus”

Roger Sworder gives an amazing analysis of the role of Circe in the Odyssey. She is the only one who calls Odysseus a “hero” in the whole epic and he is the only one who was able to resist her attempts to bewitch him. She was able to recognize his exceptionality instantly. Also Plato was of the opinion that Odysseus was very wise. Sworder summarizes Plato’s “Myth of Er,” (a legend which concludes his Republic), which contains references to the Circe episode. He remarks:

“Towards the end of the myth, the souls who are about to be born again choose the next lives which they will lead, and there is a general metamorphosis as the souls who were once people become other animals and those who were animals become people. This passage is certainly comparable to Homer’s account of Circe….”

Edward Burne Jones, “Circe”

Sworder calls the transformation into pigs “a descent into a lower form of life” and “an incarnation in a lower body.” He adds that “in Circe’s sties we are given an uncanny sense of the interchangeability of human and animal bodies….” Like Plato’s goddess Necessity, Circe seems to know Odysseus’ destiny and she helps him do what the gods and the task of soul making require him to do. She gives him detailed instructions how to get to the Underworld, where he needs to consult the blind soothsayer Teiresias. Sworder says she wields three crucial powers: “the power of metamorphosis over other beings; access to the realm of the dead; knowledge of the passage over the heavenly circuits represented by the Sirens, Scylla, Charybdis and Thrinacie.” He adds that “Circe’s palace is our whole world of physical nature. She is not primarily the goddess of metamorphosis; she precipitates people into their earthly embodiment.” Before Odysseus leaves her island, she gives him detailed instructions about the journey ahead of him. He is under the aegis of Circe from now on; also he is one of the precious few humans who have mated with goddesses. Circe gives Odysseus a son, Telegonus, who in the distant future back on Ithaca will accidentally kill his father, not having recognized who he really is.

But how was Odysseus able to resist Circe’s spell? He used two props to achieve that end: the moly flower given to him by Hermes and a sword. Sworder writes of the moly herb:

“…the plant comes with its root. It has been plucked from the ground entire, not picked, and its flower is the very opposite color from its root, milk-white against black.

…

And just as the eastern lotus represents the evolved soul which has reached bliss from its root in the world of illusion, so the Moly may symbolize the double nature of the human being whose base black root yields the lovely flower of compassion.

…

This is the symbol of the human being who is liberated or enlightened while still living. The entire physical organism remains but it is no longer attached to the realm in which it developed and from which it grew.

…

She cannot debase him because he is uprooted and detached.”

Annibale Carracci, “Hermes Protects Odysseus”

Odysseus had already been uprooted and detached in the Cyclop episode, where he called himself No one. While his companions still wallowed in the mud, Circe bathed Odysseus in a hall of glowing gold, silver and bronze. But as the lotus flower grows over and beyond the mud of the world, so do Odysseus’ companions get turned back again into human form. It turns out the experience has transformed them: they look younger, taller and more radiant.

As the Sun leaves Leo and enters Virgo, Odysseus and the rest of his crew set off towards Hades. Visiting Hades is a pivotal point in the Odyssey and Odysseus’ most important adventure. Circe tells him that lifeless shadows of the dead crave blood because they desire embodiment. Odysseus needs to pour blood of a sacrificial black ram in order to give the shades their voice and be able to speak to them. Like many mythological figures before him, Odysseus descends to the underworld to bring up his soul. Talking to the blind Teiresias is part of his mission which does not seem to be the most crucial one. The real crux of the matter is giving a say and listening to countless voices of all the famous dead men and women, the superheroes, superheroins and myth makers that lived before him. He speaks, among others, to: Ajax, Agamemnon, Minos, Orion, Tartarus, Sisyphus, Heracles, and twenty-nine famous mythical women such as Phaedra, Ariadne and Leda. It is a poignant episode, especially when he meets his mother who had died before his return, out of grief for not seeing him. She cannot clasp him while he tries to embrace her corporeal nothing in vain.

Russell Flint, “Odysseus in Hades”

What he returns to the surface with is immaterial but incredibly substantial: it is the stuff that dreams are made of, namely all the myths of Greece. In Homeric Moments, Eva Brann calls Hades “the safe-depository of tales, the treasure house of myth.” The ghosts are like “gibbering phantasms” but the story teller such as Homer or Odysseus infuses them with life and blood through his gift of poetry. Odysseus drinks from the source of Mnemosyne: the collective Greek memory. He is the last mythical hero, for after him begins a historical era, as Roberto Calasso wrote in his Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony:

“Partly because he is so near the boundary, so near the point where the circle closes, Odysseus is the hero who most often tells stories. …last among the heroes to return from Troy, Odysseus is also the one who right up to the end maintains his contact – and what an intimate contact it was – with the primordial powers who appeared in the first phases of the cycle. His wanderings were partly a compendium, a roll call, of all those beings and places that were already growing confused in many a memory, already being removed to the realm of the fabulous. … After his return to Ithaca, man’s approach to primordial beings and places could only take place through literature.”

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The Secrets of the Odyssey (1)

The Secrets of the Odyssey (2): Elements of Time (the Muse and the Moon)

The Secrets of the Odyssey (3): Calypso and Phaecians

The Secrets of the Odyssey (4): A Tribute to Penelope

The Secrets of the Odyssey (5): Lotus-Eaters, Auriga and Polyphemus

The Secrets of the Odyssey (6): the God of Winds

The Secrets of the Odyssey (8): the Sirens, Scylla & Charybdis, and Thrinacia

The Secrets of the Odyssey (9): Leucothea in the Sea of Space and Time

https://symbolreader.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/the-secrets-of-the-odyssey-10-return-to-ithaca-through-the-cave-of-the-nymphs/?preview=true

The Secrets of the Odyssey (11): Death of Odysseus, Master of Land Ways and Sea Ways

Posted in The Odyssey | Tagged astrology, Circe, goddess, Greek mythology, Hades, Homer, Ishtar, lady of the beasts, Leo, Odysseus, Odyssey, Soul, the underworld | 16 Comments

The Secrets of the Odyssey (6): the God of Winds

Posted on April 12, 2014 by Symbol Reader

In the fourth month of his journey, Odysseus, guided by friendly winds, reaches the kingdom of Aeolia, where the god of winds Aeolus resides with his family: wife and twelve children. Homer depicts it as a rectangular island, which brings to mind the constellation of Gemini. Indeed, the Sun is in Gemini during this adventure.

“The rectangular island can also be perceived as the bed in which Aeolus and his wife and family of 12 children sleep warm and snug under the blanket of the Milky Way.”

Kenneth and Florence Wood, Homer’s Secret Odyssey

The constellation of Gemini has an old connection with windy and stormy weather. The two twins, Castor and Pollux, were put in heavens as a reward for protecting the ship Argo from violent storms during the quest for the Golden Fleece. In ancient Greece, the twins were believed to bring good luck to sailors. This is how Odysseus retells this adventure:

“He kept me

one full month to hear the tale of Troy,

the ships and the return of the Akhaians,

all which I told him point by point in order.

When in return I asked his leave to sail

and asked provisioning, he stinted nothing,

adding a bull’s hide sewn from neck to tail

into a mighty bag, bottling storm winds;

for Zeus had long ago made Aiolos

warden of winds, to rouse or calm at will.

He wedged this bag under my afterdeck,

lashing the neck with shining silver wire

so not a breath go through; only the west wind

he lofted for me in a quartering breeze

to take my squadron spanking home.”

(transl. Robert Fitzgerald)

The whole stay on the island was very auspicious and pleasant for Odysseus and his crew. Why would the god of winds go out of his way to help Odysseus? Why would he give him a sack containing all the contrary winds except for Zephyr, a gentle western wind which will guide the hero to Ithaca? I think this short episode offers important clues regarding Odysseus’ personality. The symbolism of the sign Gemini is heavily pronounced in this part: Odysseus spends the whole month talking to Aeolus about his adventures, the whole island is not fixed but keeps moving, being a floating island. Winds are naturally connected with the element air, and the airy sign of Gemini, ruled by Mercury, is associated with short journeys, movement, communication, conversation and intelligence. The quick-witted, easily-lying Odysseus, the cleverest trickster, the smartest strategist is, at least the way I see him, an epitome of Gemini. His endless curiosity spurs him on and on, making him lose his cautiousness to look in every cave, every nook of each island he visits to satisfy his endless quest for new vistas and new experience. It takes one to know one, and Aelous recognized these qualities in Odysseus, making him a guest of honour on Aeolia. Dane Rudhyar, in his book Zodiac as the Universal Matrix, says this about the sign Gemini:

“The scatteredness of the Gemini type has often been over-emphasized. It is scatteredness only if the person does not succeed in finding the synthesizing factor, the God-seed, the guru, the “program” – through which his seemingly roundabout flight finds a direction and a purpose. … Without it, his stirrings become aimless wanderings. … The axis must be either rooted an old and secure tradition which the Gemini person fulfills (as was Dante – a strong Gemini type); or else it must be the all-powerful pull of an envisioned goal drawing the mind, as the strong vacuum at the centre of the tornado or twister draws all that is found on its path (Walt Whitman path).

At any rate it is essential for the person born with the Sun in Gemini to realize that his life normally progresses in a spiral motion. He must learn to understand cycles and to go over and over again the same things; but actually the repetition should be each time at a higher or deeper level. Gemini energy is associative energy – energy generated by relationship, by finding new ways of relating things and principles. … At the same time, the Gemini force moves one to seek escape from earth-bondage … and at times from normal biological instincts.”

Aeolus hid the winds he gifted Odysseus in a bull’s hide, alluding to the previous phase of the Zodiac, Taurus and neatly transiting to the sign of Gemini, which is associated with the winds. Odysseus and his companions sailed peacefully towards Ithaca, which appeared on the horizon at the moment when the Sun entered Cancer, the sign associated with home, among its other meanings. Unfortunately, the relieved Odysseus fell asleep at this point and his companions, who had not been informed about the contents of the bag, opened it because they suspected it contained a treasure. A violent storm ensued and blew their ships far, far away from Ithaca. When Odysseus awoke he was in such deep despair that he pondered suicide. But he endured, covered himself and lay down on the bottom of his ship in quiet despair.

“Here are his most marked traits of character and his odyssean modus vivendi in capsule form: endurance and hiding.”

Eva Brann, Homeric Moments

There is more to Odysseus than just endurance and hiding. These qualities are means to a much more important end, which will be revealed in the next crucial part dedicated to the goddess Circe and Odysseus’ visit in the Underworld. These two episodes are pivotal for the Odyssey, for they endow our hero with the program, direction and purpose of his quest, for Odysseus was indeed like Dante to the Greeks.

The Secrets of the Odyssey (1)

The Secrets of the Odyssey (2): Elements of Time (the Muse and the Moon)

The Secrets of the Odyssey (3): Calypso and Phaecians

The Secrets of the Odyssey (4): A Tribute to Penelope

The Secrets of the Odyssey (5): Lotus-Eaters, Auriga and Polyphemus

The Secrets of the Odyssey (7): Circe and the Underworld

The Secrets of the Odyssey (8): the Sirens, Scylla & Charybdis, and Thrinacia

The Secrets of the Odyssey (9): Leucothea in the Sea of Space and Time

https://symbolreader.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/the-secrets-of-the-odyssey-10-return-to-ithaca-through-the-cave-of-the-nymphs/?preview=true

The Secrets of the Odyssey (11): Death of Odysseus, Master of Land Ways and Sea Ways

Posted in The Odyssey | Tagged Aeolus, astrology, constellations, Gemini, Greek myth, Greek mythology, Homer, Odysseus, Odyssey, Rudhyar | 17 Comments

Life’s Prose and Love’s Poetry: On Various Types of Relationships

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Symbol Reader

“Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays, Second Series

Johfra Bosschart, “Animus and Anima”

Today the planet Venus will move into the sign of Pisces. Here is a short quote from Dane Rudhyar’s Zodiac as Universal Matrix about Venus in Pisces:

“In Pisces, Venus operates primarily with memories, with the essence of things now vanishing, with fantasies and transcendent ideals. For this very reason it is so full of charm and mystery. Venus in Pisces is the dream-lover, the mystic Beloved, Dante’s Beatrice, the ‘redeeming woman’ of the Romantics. It often gives to a person a disarming kind of fascination which can hardly be defined. Yet no one should trust too much such a person in emotional matters. Her love is usually based on the projection of some complex, and it lacks either freshness or the constructive power of emotional maturity.”

Dante Gabriel Rosetti, “Salutation of Beatrice”

Having read the words of Rudhyar, I started to ruminate. First of all, I think the projection he mentions in the last sentence is definitely something that colours everybody’s experience of relationships in our culture. In a romantic projection, reality recedes into the background while we continue to spin illusions that veil the real world. If the end product of such an illusion is a masterwork similar to the Divine Comedy, then perhaps we may see that the way Dante perceived Beatrice was not entirely false, since “Beauty is Truth,” as the poet said.

Gustave Doré, “Beatrice and Dante”

However, it always helps to see through our own, more run-of-the-mill romantic projections. In his book Healing the Soul: Pluto, Uranus and Lunar Nodes, Mark Jones talks about how romantic projections can bring about our undoing:

“Many relationships never evolve beyond the meeting of the need in mutual projection. We meet someone who fits our image of the perfect partner and we are fortunate that we meet their image of the perfect mate and we then become glued by the fit of imagery. This is necessary glue it could be argued, a tool for bonding. However, if this is all there is, it is sticky!

…
It is hard to underestimate the extent to which human beings want the word, and other people in the world, to conform to their expectations. Acknowledging this T.S. Eliot writes in Four Quartets, ‘Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality.’ To bear the reality of another human carries the potential of loving them for who they actually are versus engaging with them in a superficial kind of psychic mutual masturbation.”

Mark Jones was a student of Jeffrey Wolf Green, the founder of the School of Evolutionary Astrology, who has fascinating things to say about relationships, which he divides into five types:

“(1) co-dependent
(2) counselor/counselee
(3) student/teacher
(4) sado/masochistic
(5) self-reliant”

He also offers his unique understanding of the concepts of soul mates, karma mates and twin souls. For a complete discussion, you can look here. I will talk about various types selectively. This is what he says about co-dependent relationships:

“The co-dependent relationship is a relationship in which both people are dependent on one another for their lives to be sustained. In this condition each person will project their needs upon the other in such a way as to expect each other to perpetually meet those needs. This then becomes the basis of mutual projection wherein each person ‘out pictures’ their inner reality upon one another, this out picturing and projection of inner realities upon one another creating a situation wherein neither person can see clearly, if at all, the actual reality of one another.”

“Pleasantville”

In a co-dependent relationship, people cannot live without one another and cannot picture themselves outside of the relationship.

Moving on to the sadomasochistic type, I found a lot of Green’s statements very striking. He speaks of unconscious thought patterns which “condition, control and create the circumstantial realities of the masochistic type of person.” These are:

“(1) I deserve pain, punishment, crisis, suffering, humility (to be humiliated), and denial and I do not know why. …
(2) For my needs to be met, I must hurt first.
(3) I am essentially worthless, while intellectually knowing better.”

According to Green, masochists frequently attract the type that he calls “emotional wounded birds.” These people always need to be fixed emotionally and psychologically. The needs of the masochistic partner within such a dynamic remain unacknowledged:
“In this situation, the masochistic person does almost all the giving, and is constantly putting out the emotional brush fires that the ‘wounded bird’ is creating. It is as if the masochistic partner might as well walk around the house with a white uniform on, red cross on the shoulder, and a name tag on the breast!”

Sadists, who can be both men and women, operate guided by the unconscious “fear or feeling that the opposite gender will disempower, undermine, capture, enslave, or in some undefined way destroy oneself. Consequently, the sadistic pathology will desire to hurt another first, to attack first, to destroy first, to ‘get even’ first, before it allows itself to get hurt.” It is interesting that both partners feel punished or fear punishment, but the masochist feels that he/she deserves it, while the sadist is angry and vindictive. Both these individuals are driven by subconscious feeling of guilt. Green points out that the sadomasochistic dynamic permeates our culture. Women are still not equal to men, he argues:

“Again, can it not be seen in the man and women doing the same job and the women makes less ? Can it not be seen in a man or a women who withholds their emotional or sexual attention from their partner as a form of punishment ? Can it not be seen in various forms of perpetual criticism from one partner to another; or both. This form can also be linked with “teasing” when that teasing has a motivation of humiliation.
Can it not be seen in the man who expects the women to be merely a vicarious extension of his reality whose only purpose is to SERVE his needs ? That the women is inferior to him: a second class citizens at best. Is this not a form of dominance and submission?
Or, more commonly, the situation of a man who can be emotional and placating to the women in order to have sex with her, and then when the act of sex is over he is suddenly emotionally remote or overtly/covertly disdainful of the women; sometimes even angry at her. Why? He has given in to the temptation! If you can understand this, then you will understand why women has to be PURE, and why women feel that they must be pure for their men: atonement linked with the original guilt generates the need to be clean: pure.”

Medieval painting of a witch preparing a love philter – Flemish School (image source. http://www.luxnoxhex.org/LNXMUS-sabbath-7.html)

Because the above themes correlate astrologically with the signs Virgo and Pisces, Venus entering Pisces can make us think of these issues on a collective and personal level. So much injustice, so many imbalances are currently coming into our global conscious awareness. In this climate, seeking retribution, being stuck in victim mentality is not easy to avoid. What we can choose to do instead is to create a new world and a new reality for ourselves in which these conflicts will be outgrown. This will take years but is a necessary evolutionary step for humanity.

The highest and most sublime form of the sign Pisces or its modern ruler Neptune manifesting itself in relationships is in the so-called soul mate relationships. The Internet is full of idealistic articles about this kind of a blissful union; I think it may be interesting to see how Jeff Green sees it:

“Soul Mates are two people who have independently acted upon their desires to embrace a spiritual or transcendent reality, and the real purpose of the union with one another is to continue their individual spiritual development BECAUSE OF AND THROUGH THE RELATIONSHIP. …
A subtyping within Soul Mates is the phenomena of the same Soul. What this means is that in certain states of advanced evolution, the spiritual state defined earlier, a Soul can manifest itself in more than one body/personality/ego at a time. In essence, the Soul, in order to accelerate its evolution through the progressive elimination of all separating desires, can manifest itself in what appears to be different people who exist at the same time and place, at the same time in different places, or both. …
The classical or archetypal feeling in each of the ego’s or personalities that the Soul has created in order to accelerate its evolution in this way, is one in which there is a deep, permeating sense of not being complete; that there is a great inner existential void. Even when everything else in their life is so full, including a rich and experiential spiritual life, the different “individuals” who emanate from the same Soul have this inner feeling of something missing: it haunts their conscious sense of self. This feeling is registered in the ego’s of the different personalities (people) that the Soul has created. Archetypically, there is a reason for this feeling. And the reason is that, at some point, the Soul who has splintered itself in these ways must merge back into itself the different components of itself that took on the FORM of distinct and separate people.
…
In the beginning of this reunion, the different people who meet can manifest a resistance to one another. The reason for this is : the ego in each person has defined itself as a separate individual. This is a reflection of the separating desire inherent to the Soul. Thus, for the ego to let go of itself, to merge back to the Soul that created it, is to simultaneously ignite the fear of personal dissolution. So, in the beginning of such a dynamic, there is attraction and repulsion. Over time, such fears will subside. As they do so, the different people that the Soul has created will become ever closer to one another. The last stages of this process will manifest in such a way that the different people will finally commit to one another in a marriage type of dynamic. When this occurs, it will be a relationship within the specialty typing called Soul Mates. When this evolutionary process culminates, the manifestation of the different people will no longer exist. The merging of the Soul’s different components, reflected in antithetical desires as the different people, has occurred. Thus, the Soul is now fully integrated, and ready to begin the conscious merging of itself back to its own Source: God.”

Gustave Dore, “Heavenly Host” (Having reached the Ninth Heaven Dante and his guide Beatrice look at the circles of the heavenly host. After reaching the summit of Purgatory, Dante got a new guide to the afterworld: Beatrice, his Divine Love, who took over after Virgil.)

Posted in Eros and Psyche | Tagged archetypes, astrology, Beatrice, Dane Rudhyar, Dante, Divine Comedy, evolutionary astrology, Jeffrey Wolf Green, love, Mark Jones, relationship, sadomasochism, Soul, soul mates, symbolism, symbols, twin flames, twin souls, Venus, Venus in Pisces | 25 Comments

The Art of Sight

Posted on March 29, 2014 by Symbol Reader

Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, “Allegory of Sight”

“We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things,” wrote Henri Amiel in his journal. The psyche presents itself most directly through images. The world we look at is like a cabinet of curiosities: the collection my eyes see is different to what your eyes see. I love the wonderful plethora of objects huddled in this painting: looking at it, I feel dizzy but also excited about discovering an unclassified world of wonders. I believe the true seeing comes from within and what we see reflects the degree of our attunement with the soul. In an extraordinary novel by Jose Saramago called Blindness, the inhabitants of the whole city, except for one woman, become blind. She becomes the soul of the book, the only one who able to see, nurture others and save them.

Like John Berger, a celebrated art critic, I believe that seeing comes first, before words and thoughts. “When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match…,” wrote Berger in his book Ways of Seeing, which I am reading now with great pleasure. It is only when we are in love that we feel what it really means to see and be seen.

Beautiful images have always exerted a very seductive influence on me. In our digital era, we all have equal access to beautiful images. In the painting featured above, we see a collection of objects that once belonged to a rich aristocratic couple. “For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us in the same was as a language surrounds us,” says Berger in the same book. But as we are bombarded by millions of images every day, is our gift of seeing becoming sharper? If all images come to us from without, do we still make the effort to imagine out of the depths of our souls? I want to regain my sense of sight. This is why I am going to work my way through John Berger and his Ways of Seeing and another book by him, under the title The Sense of Sight. In the latter book he meditates on visibility, presenting looking as a profound form of meditation:

“Visibility is a quality of light. Colours are the faces of light. This is why looking is to recognize, enter a whole. … The fact is visibility (inseparable from light) is greater than its categories of measurement (small, big, distant, near, dark, light, blue, yellow, etc.). To look is to rediscover, over and beyond these measurements, the primacy of visibility itself.
…
The eye intercepts the continual intercourse between light and the surfaces which reflect and absorb it. Separate objects are like isolated words. Meaning is only to be found in the relation between them. What is the meaning to be found in the visible? A form of energy, continually transforming itself.
…
To look:
At everything which overflows the outline, the contour, the category, the name of what it is.”