72

Fra Filippo Lippi suggests with his painting The Annunciation, 1450-1453, that God live in the Virgin Mary. The divine dove feels like he has to slow down with his divine message to her small bible and God appears to have done this via the artist by applying little clouds to his feet, human car brakes. The Virgin Mary is in the company of a divine angel who gives her a divan blessing. The semicircular canvas suggests a divan sphere from the divine spheres of celestial heavenly maps. We feel the golden ascension is worked out via one of these. A mathematical equation of God not commonly used. Instruments of service are communicating the blessing ceremony with plants and elements of God in the garden. The divine circles of the divine dove are complemented elsewhere, for example, the golden divine reference on the Virgin Mary's divine brow. The two representations from the divine of an earthly gracing appear to be premise, the artist and his wife maybe before their firstborn. Both have really sweet facing.

71

Pisanello gave us the Vision of St. Eustace, 1436-1438. We enter the garden of Christ through the vision of St. Eustace. God tested his family to see if they could support his beliefs. His barbaric funeral suggests mainly the times he lived in. Crucifying a man by nailing his hands and feet to a cross would be as barbaric as any public execution but to leave them there for the birds to peck at often before death would be straight barbarism. St. Eustace and his family were happening roasted alive. Often in the history of time and especially in Early Christian times of a uncertainty of philosophical beliefs, Saints and Christian martyrs were persecuted for their love of God. Pisanello on the other hand takes in the Christian garden to give us Gods love.

70

Piero della Francesca delights us with his The Baptism of Christ, c. 1450, this we can see with his usage of the mathematical equation of the inside of a church more commonly thought about as the golden section of Christ or where Christ's prayer hands are placed slightly left of centre or his heart. This understanding of a golden ascension of Christ was as familiar as the newspaper would be to the general populace in Piero della Francesca's day. Happening his audience would not be the general population but extremely well educated gentleman of the same intellectual class. These gentleman would all have had a really fair grounding in geometrical mathematics, sometimes called geometry. Most of this class of intellectual would appear like mad scientists of today. There education ranged from mathematics, to astrology, to cosmology, to chemistry and physics, to astronomy. Christ appears to be himself, St. John, the artist self, the three angels standing there like Rhine maidens, his inner goddess. His Christly self defies refraction without there being a reflection in the pool. The whole painting does suggest common golden section protocol. The Holy Sprit above would be the God within too and the landscape is ready Tuscan foliage. The small plants in the front foreground of the painting would only have special religious symbolism to talk about the inner Christ. The tree would symbolize the cross pattern of a protecting architrave or the inner crossbeams of a church and the Holy Christian altar. You do feel that Piero della Francesca would have lived in Florence at some point because of the influence of the patron.

   

69

The odyssey portrayed by Homer in his epic poem the Iliad and the Odyssey, is a journey of the human soul. Sometimes portrayed with a description of the macrocosm verse the microcosm or the gods divine journey with the human being. The gods drink honey or golden nectar of ambrosia to direct the dead to a Heavenly domain, the eternal or an immortal sphere. The first poem directs you to God by Jove and the heavenly messages of birds and lightening. Odysseus's journey is far more mystical, in the second epic and the gods send him on a long passage to find his soul or spiritual home. The gods are always eternally jealous of the love in his heart.

68

Faust is Goethe. The evil Mephistopheles is Satan. The journey of Goethe is one about the journey of most bachelor male scholars who would study, write and attend a university before marriage. Quite often for professional people marriage does not occur until well into the persons forties. The Gretchen character in Goethe's Faust is someone presented to Goethe who appears almost human. Happening, the kind of lifestyle of Goethe in his day, premise, Faust would be evil being a scholar and not have experienced God. It appears God became unfamiliar in Goethe's heart and the eternal love of God was not being found. The devil Mephistopheles had to appear to Goethe to persuade him to have a love affair with a younger woman. This is often missed and in some interpretations of the play you are made to feel eternal youth and regeneration can only be obtained by something evil. You feel love however won supreme as God would have to convince most Germans that their female goddess self was not intrinsically linked to their sexuality. You do wonder how their wives fit into this equation as the goddess would be them as well. God does win with divine love and eternal love is found.

67

We feel the pressure of Christ equalling God with Nikos Kazantzakis. The Last Temptation is somewhere not surprisingly blacklisted since 1954 by the Vatican. Like Hugo van der Goes painting of Adam and Eve being tempted, Nikos Kazantzakis, has a similar description of God equalling the devil, in the entire length of the novel, Christ is followed around by something half native marsupial and half amphibian male, with van der Goes, the beast is the colours of ascension and for Kazantzakis his God representative is almost comical in a tragicomical, clown like fashion. Christ also wears a belt of rusty nails pointing inwards something like current Christian nuns wear, although their small metal garter belt is to feel Christ through the uncomfortable feeling of being human. Although Mary Magdalene is thought of as being Christ's lover they did not consummate the love affair with lovemaking, only spiritual lovemaking. Instead Mary Magdalene took herself to the desert to reform her livelihood. The whole book is too human. You feel the love Christ died for on the cross so potently throughout the novel, it is no wonder that when made available in English the book was so successful.

66

Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide takes you on a journey to a pathway to God. You find the garden gate to the soul. This few people find through Gods love. God would not want to take the wrong people to this pathway where the entrance equals empathy. This garden gate like a Heavenly gateway to the heart could be something of a similar equation to going through the last door of Heaven where you meet Gods love. The transcendence to love when embraced this deeply would be like a death of the self, where the unconscious meets a consciousness of the love of God for the human being and where love equals death. The garden is the final resting place and God cannot take you any further while you are still living but this beautiful ascension would not be complete without love.