The Dance of Life
I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.
I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly, since
then I do not have to be pushed in order to move. Now I am nimble, now
I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances with me.
Nietzsche
The following body of work is based on the Edvard Munch painting of the
same title, 'The Dance of Life' 1899-1900, more in concept than appearance.
... What Munch planned to do was make a symbolic presentation of his life
experience, embodied in various archetypes. Among the chosen subjects
were The Dance of Life, The Cry, The Vampire, Madonna, Death and the
Maiden...
Symbolist Art by Edward Lucie-Smith
My series however, attempts to embody the spirit with God or the archetype
of the self. And in essence is about the third phase of the conjunction. It is as
though the third phase follows the curve of Uroboros back down into the
unconscious again.
In a psychological sense Mercurius represents the unconscious, for this
is to all appearances that "spirit" which comes closest to organic matter
and has all the paradoxical qualities attributed to Mercurius. In the unconscious
are hidden those "sparks of light" (scintillae), the archetypes, from which a
higher meaning can be "extracted". The "magnet" that attracts the hidden thing
is the self, or in this case the "theoria" or the symbol representing it, which the
adept uses as an instrument. The extractio is depicted figuratively in an
illustration in Reusner's Pandora: a crowned figure, with a halo, raising a
winged, fish-tailed, snake-armed creature (the spirit), likewise crowned with
a halo, out of a lump of earth. This monster represents the spiritus mercurialis,
the soul of the world or matter freed from its fetters; the filus macrocosmi,
the child of the sun and the moon born in the earth, the hermaphroditic
homunculus, etc. Basically all these synonyms describe the inner man
as a parallel or complement of Christ.
Christ is the inner man who is reached by the path to self-knowledge,
"the kingdom of heaven within you".
As the Anthropos he corresponds to what is empirically the most important
archetype and, as judge of the living and the dead and king of glory, to the
real organizing principle of the unconscious, the quaternity, or the squared
circle of the self.
We conclude that meditative philosophy consists in the overcoming of the
body by mental union (unio mentalis). This first union does not as yet make
the wise man, but only the mental disciple of wisdom. The second union of
the mind with the body shows forth the wise man, hoping for and expecting
that blessed third union with the first unity (i.e. the unus mundus, the latent
unity of the world). May Almighty God grant that all men be made such, and
may He be one and All.
C.G. Jung
The sculptures are painted with the seven colours to correspond with the planets
and have the seven eyes of God.
The stages of the work are marked by seven colours which are associated
with the planets. This accounts for the relation of the colours of astrology, and
also to psychology, since the planets correspond to individual character
components. The Aurora Consurgens relates the colours to the soul.
The fire is caused by the "primum mobile" and is kindled by the influence of
the stars. It never ceases its universal motion and is continually lit through the
"influence of celestial forces".
C.G. Jung (Aion and Mysterium Coniunctionis)
Whereas previously, in Melbourne, I had been using steel mesh, hessian and
industrial wax, all thumped, trodden, squashed, spun and danced together, the
current work uses steel rod as its underlying structure similarly danced into
form. Reading Homer at the time, I called a Melbourne series "Clotho" (1999),
after one of the three fates who spins the threads of fate and I was also influenced
by the Camille Claudel sculpture of the same title, where and old woman spins
the threads of fate with her hair.
And to souls that descend into generation and are occupied in corporeal
energies, what symbol can be more appropriate than those instruments
pertaining to weaving? Hence, also, the poet ventures to say, "that on these,
the nymphs weave purple webs, admirable to view." For the formation of
flesh is on and about the bones, which in the bodies of animals resemble
stones. Hence these instruments of weaving consist of stone, and not of
any other matter. But the purple webs will evidently be the flesh which is
woven from the blood. For purple woollen garments are tinged from blood,
and the wool is dyed from animal juice. The generation of flesh, also, is
through and from blood. Add, too, that the body is a garment with which the
soul is invested, a thing wonderful to sight, whether this refers to the composition
of the soul, or contributes to the colligation of the soul (to the whole of a visible
essence).Thus, also, Proserpine, who is the inspective guardian of everything
produced from seed, is represented by Orpheus as weaving a web, and the
heavens are called by the ancients a veil, in consequence of being, as it were,
the vestment of the celestial Gods.
The theological meaning of this Orphic fiction is beautifully unfolded by Proclus
as follows: " Orpheus says that the vivific cause of partible natures,
(i.e., Proserpine), while she remained on high, weaving the order of celestials,
was a nymph, as being undefiled; and in consequence of this connected with
Jupiter and abiding in her appropriate manners; but that, proceeding from her
proper habitation, she left her webs unfinished, was ravished; having been
ravished, was married; and that being married, she generated in order that she
might animate things which have an adventitious life. For the unfinished state
of her webs indicates, I think, that the universe is imperfect or unfinished, as far
as to perpetual animals (i.e., the universe would be imperfect if nothing inferior
to the celestial Gods was produced). Hence Plato says, that the one Demiurgus
calls on many Demiurgi to weave together the mortal and immortal natures;
after a manner reminding us, that the addition of the mortal genera is the
perfection of the textorial life of the universe, and also exciting our recollection
of the divine orphic fable, and affording us interpretative causes of the
unfinished webs of Proserpine.
On The Cave Of The Nymphs In The 13th Book Of The Odyssey
by Porphyry
