GENESIS

in The Hunt of the Unicorn

Fantasized cosmogony and anthropogony

 

Unicorn

=

God

 

(when the horn
touches
something)

 

Creation of Cosmos

(from Chaos)

 

 

Creation of Eve

(from Adam)

 

 

Annunciation
(the" creation " of Jésus)

(from Mary)


Unicorn

=

Jesus Christ

 

Baptism

 

 

Passion

 

 

Resurrection

 

 

"Genesis" is both the origin
and
all forms and elements
contributing to this creation.

 

Genesis

 

The Hunt of the Unicorn is the pedagogical and methodological "Great Book" of a theogony, a cosmogony, an anthropogony and a Christian eschatology.

This is the "World Wide Web" (in seven tapestries) of the early Renaissance to present to the eyes of those to whom it was intended all the knowledge of those years.

It allows also to present, for the artist, via the The Passion of the Christ's his "alchemical initiation" in the search of the Light like all the "Initiates", legendary or real : Enoch, Abraham Noah, Zoroaster, Moses, Hermes Trismegistus, the Brahmins, the Druids, David, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, the Sibyls ...

The representation of the purification by the scapegoat which is Christ (tapestries 2-7) and the creation of the world by God (Tapestry 2) allows us to assert the belief in the regeneration of the world and of the life by repetition (woven here) of the Cosmogony. Six tapestries to evoke the Hexameron or six days of creation and the seventh for the Sunday rest !

 

 

By touching the water with its horn(raw material that contains all the forms in power : everywhere, the water symbolize the chaos, the matrix informed all the potentialities), the unicorn (the Logos, the Word) directs the original Chaos and built the Cosmos that the round shape of the fountain represents (the Greek word "kosmos" means "order").

"The theme of the primordial waters, imagined as a whole both cosmic and divine, is quite common in the archaic cosmogonies. In this case too, the water mass is identified with The Original Mother who begat, by parthenogenesis, the first couple : the Sky (An) and the Earth (Ki), embodying the masculine and feminine principles. This first couple was united and mingled in the Hieros Gamos. "

Mircea ELIADE, History of the beliefs and religious ideas, T1, p.700

 

 

Go verify, yourself, up close !


http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html

Click and drag the mouse around the screen for a walk across the Sistine Chapel.
And zoom using the + / - bottom left.

http://djaipi-nedgaleries.blogspot.com/2007/05/mandalas-1.html

 

 

Models for the whole Creation are created ...

The artist, demiurge, in turn, "universal mind", sets out by four worlds :

— The point : the "nothing", the infinite
— The line (from one point to another point)
— The surface (delimited by four lines) : the soul
The volume (surface displacement in space) : here for Jean Perréal (?), the seven tapestries of The Hunt (and The Lady with the Unicorn)


The Trinity to read perhaps in :

The nodal point of the "lacs d'amour" of the letters : God
The unicorn : the Son
The light at the tip of the spear : the Holy Spirit

 

 

Thus each of the 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions of the Torah receives a cosmic meaning. The human being, created with 248 members and 365 veins, reflects in his own structure the work of God (the Cosmos) and His revelation (the Law).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments

 

 

 

Letters

 

There are 10 "human" visible eyes among the 12 characters. They correspond to the 10 Sephiroth of the Kabbalah which are the ten manifestations of God or the 10 names of God the most common and which consist in their entirety, His Great Unique Name.

 

The 4 elements

represented by the Cross of Solomon :

water (in the basin) - fire (torch tip of the spear) - earth (soil) - air (birds - perhaps a nightjar near the fountain)

a nightjar ?

 

and the fifth-essence that the focus is the representation

or the Philosophical Stone represented by the Unicorn

 

Numbers

This tapestry lists the first numbers up to 12. Thus can be counted (some proposals may be wrong) :
1 God : a unicorn = the Logos
2 rabbits ; hunting horns
3 people not capped
4 lion heads carved on the fountain
5 wild mammals (bottom) ; 5 times the letters "A-3"
6 water jets ; legs ; strings
7 spears ; dog collars
8 birds ; carved acanthus leaves
9 capped characters ; quadrupeds (outside dogs) ; points, dots, on the tips of spears
10 hats
11 dogs ; dog eyes
12 men
13 roses
14 knots of leather or cloth attach clothing, weapons...
15 deer antlers ; loops of the cords of the letters AE
16
medlars on the left
17 visible hands
18 visible arms
19 holes in the castle (without the door)
20 quadrupeds
21 oranges
22 visible eyes (for 12 characters)

22 :
Numbers and letters (cosmogony) that God has given to Adam (anthropogony)
The number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters which are at the same time numbers and mysteries.
In the Kabbalah, the number of paths included in the Tree of Life : 22 ways lead to the 10 Sephirot
The Tarot : 22 Major Arcana
The number of civilization according to Plato ?
Cicero has written that Hermes Trismegistus has given the laws and the numbers to the Egyptians

 

 

The ideas of the Forms

- the circle

- the compass

 

- the square

 

 

 

 

18 is 2 x 9, a highly symbolic number.
The Ennead or 9 is the last of the series of numbers, he announces both an end and a new beginning, a transposition on a new plan : new birth and germination, at the same time : the death.

 

9 is the number of the germination : his stylized form is the form of the fetus germ .

 

In the Bible, the number 9 represents spiritual wholeness. 9 is the full of the three worlds (heaven, earth, hell). The number three is innovative, its square is universality.

 

 

 

the symbol of the Sun and Gold

The Kabbalists conceived the Universe divided into 'the three worlds' : the elemental world or terrestrial, the heavenly world or world of the stars, and the world supracelestial.

A continuum of influences linked these three worlds.

This concept of 'the three worlds' is found in Neoplatonism, Christian or pseudo-Dionysian mysticism.


A fourth 'world' would be reserved for the divine immensity.

The Universal Temple, that is to say the Nature, is divided into three parts : earthly and heavenly surcéleste. Thus, the artist has given three levels to the enclosure.

In the Masonic ritual, the apprentice candidate makes three trips, that is to say three times around a temple drawn in the middle of the Lodge.

-------------------------------

FIAT LUX

On the enclosure, these letters can be read from left to right
but also from right to left

 

The Light of Fiat Lux that communicates the Commandment of Life !

(Genesis 1.3) : But what about the primordial cry that could accompany the original Light ?

The "breath" that animates the clay of Adam in the "second genesis" is it a substitute for the expected cry ?

(Genesis 2.7) :! Newborn babies are confronted to the light and throw their cry at their first "initiation" !

 

The Light in tapestry 1

The Moon

The Sunrise

Walking to the East

 

The Light in tapestry 2

 

The fire given by Prometheus

 

The horn of the unicorn sends its light
to the white cross that is drawn.

 

The Light in tapestry 7

The sky as blue collar
Punctuated by seven circles representing the planets and their orbits

 

The Three Kings

 

The pommel of the sword seems to be a gold coin.
The left hand is stretched as an invitation to move forward or as an offering.

 

 

 

 

For the Kabbalah, one can not touch God, one can be closer to Him but not touch Him.

God creates moving away. This is called the tzimtzum (phenomenon of contraction, retraction, decrease). Michelangelo paints this.

 

Anthropogony

 

These are the reasons that recall of Michelangelo's fresco in the Sistine Chapel :

— The unicorn touches the dog (God touches Adam's hand to give him a soul)

— The eyes of the dog to the unicorn (Adam opens his eyes to his Creator)

— The unicorn wounds the dog to the button and the dog above touches the unicorn with his snout (Eve, born from a rib of Adam, smiling and loving, embraces his Creator)

— The dog's scrotum is visible (as in Michelangelo's) (God created man first and human beings will be able to reproduce by seed). Under the dog, four reeds can evoke an erected sexe ! The artist drew reeds only in this particular part of the tapestry !

 

— The space between the unicorn and the dog draws a brain (God is Spirit)

 

 

 

Genesis 2.19-20

 

Adam names animals

 

 

 

Androgyny of the primordial man, the mythical ancestor : both unity and totality ?

 

God created Eve ... (Genesis 2.20-25)

 

... who thanked her Creator with a kiss !

 


"Adam has found Eve coming out of a dream : that's why women are so beautiful."
Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams

 

 

 

Eve

From the Hebrew "hawwâ" ; the popular etymology is attached to the verb "live" : Hebrew : "hâyâ", "The Alive", "the Mother of living beings."

The New Testament retains only seduction which she was the victim.

The Temptation of Eve- c. 1130
cathédrale Saint Lazare - Autun

" I have chosen to represent the woman with the features of Eve, a figure from the Romanesque north portal of the cathedral of Autun (XII century), one of the masterpieces of medieval art that attracts me and upsets me the most.

Of course, Eve is the temptress as the medieval church offers and the stigmatizes her, but she is a woman of astonishing modernity, she is curious, restless and coquettish ; for the man, she is better than tempting, she is tempting, fascinating, a "vamp" of the twelfth century.

This Eve, one want to say that she symbolizes "the eternal feminine."

This woman that we will find alone in the late Middle Ages,let us look her at first In a relationship, with Adam or husbands more terrestrial, and further, in the features of the Virgin Mary. "

Jacques le Goff, A Middle Age in pictures, Hazan, 2000

 

Here is Eve, woman, temptress in her posture, his gaze and her red dress. She stretches his hand towards one of the fruits of the tree on her left.

The Fall : Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise

 

Saint Michael in the upper left (the place of Heaven) chasing Adam and Eve with his sword out of its holster (the only one), and with the gesture of his hand, he seems to push out Adam and Eve.

 

 

The struggle of the angels against Lucifer

The Apocalypse

(the armies of Good against Evil ones)

— Down, right, on the bridge : Lucifer and the rebel angels
— Top left : Saint Michael and the angels loyal to God

 

 

 

 

Jade

 

JADE, Great Goddess, with the Chaos of his colors, is organizing a Cosmos where all life is created : from the galaxies, pregnant of stars, to the human beings for whom the Aventure begins ...

JADE, demiurge, patiently builts her world and gives it to contemplate.

In the path of her drawings and her paintings, JADE finds perhaps in their same succession, the different moments in the history of the Universe and of the human beings?

The Chaos
Pleasure to play with the colors, the objects, the tools, and discover the pleasure of her own nascent power.
The World is organized by degrees : growing power of the mind, intelligence, expertise, mastery on self and on the outside world.
The Cosmos is organized : the galaxies are born, populated with stars. Thought that another world exists, far and organized.

 

The Spheres take shape.
One Earth exists, a changing sky covers and protects it. Other worlds are possible.
The world around is now squared, listed, organized that a sun sheds light and warmth. In the upper left corner, a mother and a father have their place carefully.
Adam emerges from the ground ...
'I' exists, smiling and eyes open, firm footing on his legs, his arms touching every inch of the world. Affirmation of his 'I', of his body, of his possibilities.

And then Eve, out of a rib...
Jade designates herself by her initial view like in a mirror ;
she is 'moving',
her right arm designates her fate.

Go, my grand-daughter !

 

 

 

The hierogamy : divine union of the god and the goddess (by a ceremonial and ritual union , of the king and the queen)

The world is regenerated each time the hierogamy is imitated by a matrimonial union : fertility, wealth and happiness is assured.

 

The renewal of the King is assured :

— by the death of previous sovereign (here : the unicorn)

—The birth of the son, 'the regenerator' : for the alchemists, the "fixation" is the final operation where the red color appears. This is represented by a newborn child or a "young king crowned" or dressed in the royal coat enclosed in the "philosophical egg". This child is the symbol of the "Philosophical Stone", the "elixir".

The body, mind and spirit just make one and the alchemist-pilgrim became a man spiritually realized.

 

 

the "philosophical egg"

A brown egg seems to have been drawn
by the horse's neck and left arm of the Queen

 

 

 

 

The seal of Solomon determines 13 "points of light"

1 - Primary Light : FIAT LUX, the Holy Spirit

2 - Wood (for construction)

3 - The hand of Saint Jacques touching the shell = the sun

4 - The Law as represented by the raised finger and the object to write (or the heart of Hermes Trismegistus)

5 - The Square

6 - The hand of Saint John : The Light comes from his Apocalypse

7 - The Center : The Father : God the Creator (the Philosophical Stone)

8 - The "tongues of fire" of Pentecost (the gold leaves)? or string at 13 nodes used by architects and builders

9 - The Compass

10 - 12 Roses

11 - The eye of the deer : The Light passes through the King and illuminates him

12 - The Golden Fruits (oranges)

13 - The unicorn and the white cross, the Son : Christ
(the 13 stars on the notes of the United States are disposed in this arrangement)


 

 

 

This tapestry lists 'the points of light' :

 

— The creation of the Cosmos : FIAT LUX (the expression can be read from right to left and from left to right on the elements of the enclosure)

— The birth of Jesus (the enclosure is the creche, the unicorn seems to rise up)

— Christ's resurrection

— the Second Advent of Christ on earth for the Last Judgement

 

 

 

 

Grenades surmounted by a crown

The pomegranate symbolizes charity (many seeds), humility (seeds under the bark), the union of Christians in the Church (tight grain), fecundity of generation and wealth, the vulva (if open ), sexuality (in the ancient esoteric of Babylon, Greece, Syria, in the Indian Tantric lunar cults).

The grenade was taken over by Freemasonry, "the seeds embedded in a transparent flesh" means the Masons united by a common ideal.

The root bark is toxic, "the Masons, from a wicked world in essence, amount to a state of Excelsior."

 

Hopi Pantheon

Legends and Myths of the Hopi

 

“The legends and myths are to the Hopi what Scripture, science, history, and literature are to us ; and they are frequently related for both instruction and entertainment.”

TALAYESVA, Don C., et al. “Appendix B: Legends and Myths of the Hopi.” Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian, Second Edition, Edited by Leo W. Simmons, Yale University Press, 1970, p. 430–450.

https://books.google.fr/books?id=3dg_AQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Navajo Pantheon

 

The Sky Father and the Earth Mother

http://mythologica.fr/amerindien/util/pantheon_americ.pdf


Hosteen Klah (1867-1937)
Museum of Northern Arizona - Flagstaff
tapestry "the Nightway " from a sand painting : " painting of the sweating"

 

The Navajo pantheon reflects the strong connection between the Navajo and "Mother Earth".

http://navajopeople.org/navajo-sand-painting.htm

http://nativeamerican-art.com/index.html

Fred Stevens - Great Thunder

 

"We prefer to be called the Dinéh because this word is more human, more personal than Navajo"

We say "Hozhogo nasha" which means "With the beauty, I walk."
The concept of hozgo is applied to a society that puts higher than all equilibrium, harmony and beauty.

The sand paintings are not "destroyed" at the end of the day which has seen their achievement. They are applied and consumed, their beauty and their order were absorbed by the bodies and the souls of those who seek healing.

 

Franc Johnson Newcomb's sandpaintings

 

"Let us say it insistently : Human undoubtedly has a unique origine, tropical and African. before becoming Europeans, Asians or Americans, we were undoubtedly all Africans."

Yves COPPENS, The Present of the past, Odile Jacob, 2009, p. 32.

 

 

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