I Too in Arcadia
Art, Magic, Religion and Science to Recover a Paradise Lost
Written by Sarolta Tatar
Ideas about normative behaviour and its various expressions through traditions, laws, ethics and morality arise because societies are in eternal flux.
Development at one point will mean regression at another point, in an eternal cycle of search for “the Good”. Questions about what constitutes “the Good” drives human consciousness, inventions, reforms, revolutions, wars and rituals.
Behind these surface phenomena of social functions and malfunctions lie a deeper and universal human experience, which we all share, regardless of culture, religion or developmental stage. This “background experience” of being human stems in our awareness and our ability to be conscious of the drive to eat, sleep, live and the necessity to die. And conscious of our need for love.
Yet every time we ask about love, we end up musing about death.
We die a little when we lose ourselves inside someone else.
The other is a mystery of foreign existence, which threatens our self-containment.
We die through sex, when our children, or the lack of them, reminds us of the pit we must rot in. We die through our work, which we must leave unfinished for future generations. How will they fare? How can we guide them?
Awareness does not work like a machine. It is a web of instincts, desires, longings and loneliness, that functions like a microcosmos, where all mental faculties depend organically on each other and the outside world. There is no greater threat to human existence than to have a working mind without anyone to talk to, and no one to listen to. But this mind is attached to a body with needs, and the mind wants to live, which it can only do through the body.
The spiritual musings that drive cultural development are ultimately connected to the physical need for survival, community and belonging.
The need for a family is connected to the need to eat.
The need to love is connected to the need to die.
Both are connected to the needs of war and peace.
Once we understand how spirituality, ethics, biological necessities and social development are interlinked, then we understand that all mortal questions go back to only two drives:
the love instincts and the death instincts.
We want to transcend ourselves, here and now through another person, and for all eternity. But how? How do we overcome the absoluteness of death and how do we know what part of ourselves and our labors can survive?
Love and death are the greatest mysteries of all, which can never be penetrated by any science, theology, philosophy or magic. And our society would stop developing and stagnate if we had all the answers. Because the questions touch upon something larger than the ego or the entire universe, and that is the essence of humanity itself:
Personhood.
The unity of mind and body, soul and matter, which is undividable, which does not cease until the person is dead, and which recreates the questions of existence with each birth and death.
Biblical spirituality and later theology teach that personhood deserves respect, even veneration. It reflects the Divine, being an image of it. And the Divine brings judgment on those who violate it.
We could answer every question by transforming ourselves into cyborgs and our society into a utopia. That would be the end of history. It would also be the end of art and ethical compunctions.
Would that be “the Greatest Good”? Or would it be a society of monsters and a dystopia of mechanical functionality that science fiction have warned us about?
Do we need God or science fiction authors at all, or should they be censored in the future end of history?
We never learn who is buried there, it seems to be the tomb of death itself, located at the crossroads like the tombs where Theocritus` young heroine works her strange love magic.
Dusk falls in the background. Soon the moon will rise.
It is the time of magic and blood rituals.
Et in Arcadia Ego — And I too am in Arcadia
Ars Moriendi — The Art of Dying
Once I noticed a woman carrying a small golden figurine around her neck, depicting a woman gazing at herself in the mirror. She had bought it from a European jeweler. I talked with her about the tradition of vanity depictions in European art, and how they are tied to Christian meditative practices on the subject of death and morality.
We never reflect on this while visiting museums, but most of European art has been created in a meditative and moralizing spirit since the early Dark Ages.
The most vivid images of beauty, the shocking depictions of sexuality and the amorous romanticism of most of our artistic heritage is a reflection on the transience of Life.
Hidden in many of these iconographic themes is the message that Death is present in all things, in Love, birth, splendor, victory and divine rapture.
And the underlying message of many of our most famous works of art hence is: — know that you will die, and act according to this knowledge.
Now what will you do?
My friend laughed a little at this notion. Not to mention that many Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Early Modern paintings of morbid eroticism were a little too much for her to take in. She got a little embarrassed when I showed her a 17th century Baroque engraving of a naked woman having sexual relations with skeletal Death, while a living man tried to tear her away from it. She was decked out in jewelry, as a sign of her self-absorbed vanity that pulls people into a living grave.
We think of shock art as a modern phenomenon, when in fact artistic moralization has depended on shock effects since medieval times, at least in our part of the world.
The most spontaneous laughter came when I showed them something not even remotely shocking (you would think…. :
Speaking of Arcadia, the remote part of ancient Greece that preserved an archaic shepherd lifestyle and ancient form of Hellenic religion that seemed different from Athens or other developed city states, we came to touch on the idea of purity and innocence.
These were the notions that pagan Greeks and Romans associated with Arcadia — the land of joy and a primitive life close to nature. It was the pagan Paradise, that many a poet tried to escape into, and that rich Romans tried to recreate in splendid villa gardens.
Arcadia became an inspiration of late Hellenistic sarcophagi carvings of Paradise, depicting deer hunts, dances and endless feasts.
Arcadia is the dream of the idyllic.
I showed her a painting by Poussin, depicting Arcadian shepherds. It looks innocuous enough, with classically draped figures standing around, pointing at some monument.
Never would we have guessed that this painting is another reference to death, until the title was explained: I too am in Arcadia, says the inscription they are pointing at, carved into a simple, block-like sarcophagus. Who is in Arcadia with the singing shepherds and dancing shepherdesses?
Arcadia has always been associated with Love, as in The Idylls by the Greek poet Theocritus (3rd c. B.C.):
As this puppet melts for me before Hecat, so melt with love, e’en
so speedily, Delphis of Myndus. And as this wheel of brass turns
by grace of Aphrodite, so turn he and turn again before my threshold.
(Idyll 2, line 28)
In this monologue poem, a Coan girl named Simaetha works love magic on her unfaithful lover, the athlete Delphis, by pouring offerings on tombstones by a crossroad at nighttime. Poison shall prevent her beloved Delphis from wandering off again.
The scene was meant to send shivers down the spine, even three hundred years before Christ when this poem was most likely written. Simaetha is working dark and ancient love magic, dedicated to the Underworld moon goddess Hecate, who accepted blood offerings. Far from being an untouched piece of pagan paradise, Arcadia was believed to be the home of the most ancient and primitive magical rituals the Greeks knew of. Not a place for Eleusian rebirth through the mysteries of Demeter, but of a darkness best remembered in their most ancient myths of ritual death and morbid love. As expressed in the Athenian tragedies.
Simaetha breaks into a prayer to the celestial Moon goddess Selene, whom Hecate is mirroring in the Underworld:
So shine me fair, sweet Moon; for to thee, still Goddess, is my
song, to thee and that Hecat infernal who makes e’en the whelps
to shiver on her goings to and fro where these tombs be and the
red blood lies. All hail to thee, dread and awful Hecat! I prithee so
bear me company that this medicine of my making prove potent
as any of Circe’s or Medea’s or Perimed’s of the golden hair.
(Idyll 2, line 10)
Guercino underlined his message by placing the underworldly figures of a mouse and a blowfly on a cippus = milestone. Such milestones were also used as funeral monuments in keeping with the ancient tradition of burying the dead by roads and crossroads.Hecate`s altars would normally be placed by a crossroad, which is why Simaetha works her love magic there.
The “Arcadian traditions” in Graeco-Roman poetry and Hellenistic art was passed down to Christian Europe. Mixed with the Dionysian mysteries in the late Hellenistic period, Arcadia became a precursor to Christian depictions of Paradise, a place of beautiful flowers, animals and naked or draped innocent souls.
The link between imagining death, love and beauty as existing simultaneously in an interlinked cycle of existence thus belongs to one of the most ancient traditions of Europe. It is a mental chain that no traditional European thinker, artist, politician or religious visionary could completely tear themselves away from.
Especially since the Bible itself gives very sparse information on Paradise, and Jewish mysticism developed more towards emphasizing resurrection and miraculous escapes from death, and themes not touched upon in the story of Eden.
Paradise itself was not the Afterlife originally, but the Garden where Life began and death first entered. It was located near the rivers Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia, which means that the Bible gave it a specific geographical location.
It was only during the Hellenistic period that Paradise or Eden and the Arcadia of Dionysian mysteries were first conflated in early gnostic Judaism or the ancient Christian church.
Hellenistic believers often followed diverse and synthetic
religious ideas, such as Dionysian and Eleusian mystery cults, various Gnostic sectarian ideas, borrowings from Zoroastrianism, Mesopotamian astrology and Egyptian magic, and mixed it with traditional Graeco-Roman mythology, local rituals and Neo-platonic philosophy. The aristocratic initiates of various cults often hoped to continue their luxurious escapades of the here-and-now in a dream-like afterlife of never-ending hunts and orgies.
Since Judaism was an aniconic religion, that forbade the depiction of God and people, there had been no need to depict the Afterlife.
But Christianity broke with the Law against images, and began first depicting praying figures in the catacombs, then Christ himself. As the need for Christian art developed amongst the believers, classically trained artists took inspiration from — or continued following — the pagan artistic traditions they were surrounded by. Yet the Church also reformulated old depictions, and imbued depictions of Paradise with Biblical themes and the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles.
Arcadia had been Christianized, and largely forgotten until the rediscovery of pagan Antiquity during the Renaissance. Hence the themes of Love, Death and Beauty re-entered European iconography, but this time in a secular context.
Among many other things that paved the way for the Enlightenment, arcadic images reminded the audience that Beauty and Love are the greatest of all, but you will Die someday.
Now what will you do?
Grieve, without a necessary religious connotation, without going into a church, just in the temple of Nature, which is soaked in a nameless Divinity.
Lament as the Arcadians:
When Daphnis died the foxes wailed and the wolves they wailed full sore,
The lion from the greenward wept when Daphnis was no more.
(Idyll 1, line 71).
The Desire to Recover the Lost Arcadia
The rediscovery of Arcadian themes happened at the same time as moral investigations took a new turn, God became the target of criticism, traditions the subject of historical questioning and moral investigations led further down the path to Humanism — expressing the need for a universal moral attitude independent of local traditions and local laws.
The Age of Discoveries had shown us that the world was more complex than we thought, and that moral realizations are not universal, instead they are culturally particular. But the transcendental problems of Life, Death, Beauty and Love remain eternally. Our philosophers began seeking a way to answer these existential problems that are re-created by each generation. And they felt that local Christian moral was too particular to give universal answers. There were two ways out of this dilemma — either examine foreign customs and decide that morality is particular and transient, or examine foreign customs and decide that Biblical morality is universal and eternal.
The Renaissance and Enlightenment was also a time for a magical re-awakening. An unparallelled period of alchemical and astrological activity eventually led to the development of natural sciences, which dropped the spiritual exercises that went with magical practices. In the present day, we mostly equate magic with medieval darkness, although it`s Golden Age came from the same source as the Enlightenment. Like the Arcadians, the new seekers of Truth tried to control forces of nature and the psyche through secret rituals.
Their main objective was to gain control over the soul, both the magicians` own soul or his subjects/victims’ souls. Magic offered a spiritual ladder of enlightenment that moved on irrational paths of symbolism to experience the Divine directly and harnessing its power. This caused the Church to object, but some ecclesiastic princes were not above alchemical experiments either.
Gaining power over another soul was a remake of Simaetha`s sacrifice — she wanted the love of Delphis at the cost of overriding his independent will. This is what every spellcaster hopes to achieve.
Another objective was to gain control over life and death by either raising the dead or creating an artificial humanoid from scratch (homunculus or gholem). This theme is the basis for Mary Shelley`s Frankenstein, about a doctor who overcomes death by creating life from dead carcasses and electro-chemical reactions. Dr. Frankensteins` inspiration was Renaissance alchemy and magic. Shelley`s sci-fi dystopia now has a new relevance in the age of cyber-medicine and post-humanism.
Alchemy led to the discovery of many early chemical formulas. It had a great impact on the development of natural sciences. Astrology would develop into astronomy and physics.
Astrology was a form of divination which also gave astrologers hope that they could break the Platonic mysteries of Heavenly layers and singing stars, to understand and achieve the soul`s ascendance after death. Again, the Church objected, since God`s Judgment is what is supposed to get you moving up. Yet many ecclesiastical leaders were not beyond employing their own astrologers.
The purpose of astrology is to be able to choose among available options right here and now, and to define the best dates for an action. This is not based on star signs in Western astrology, but on Sun Houses, which are segments of the sky the sun moves through. They are named after star signs that are slowly moving out of their respective houses, which means that you may not be born in the sign you think is your own. You are born in a house named after it. The signs and houses are believed to have correlated ca. 5000 years ago, and already Ptolemy was aware that the signs were just names for sun houses, since he knew that “the skies were moving.”
In other words, many astrologists mistakenly talk about star signs having effect on you. If there is an effect hidden here, then it is due to the position of the sun at a given time of the Earth`s annual orbit around the Sun. (If you want a star sign reading, then Indian astrology follows the movement of star signs, instead of the sun).
Modern astrology has sunk to the level of magazine entertainment. It has abandoned life and death issues in favor of dating and money. You will no longer get advice on how to prepare for death and work magic after you have expired your last breath, so that your soul can push through the gate of the Moon and rise through the hierarchies of Heaven.
Gone is the faith in God who orders cosmos in harmonious beauty, which was a prerequisite for this transcendent magic. And magazine astrologers could not give this advice if they wanted to anymore, since it takes an individual reading knowing much more than your star sign. It requires knowing the positions of every star and sign at the place of your birth and preferably your birth time to the hour, so they can reconstruct Heaven at that longitude. And they would have to realize that star sign references are mostly meaningless.
Ptolemy and Renaissance astrologers knew this.
Tarot cards originated in 14th century Italy (and not in Egypt, as is commonly believed). Original Tarot designs had a strong traditional symbolism, most apparent in the Great Arcana (the Minor Arcana was lifted in from ordinary gambling cards, then redesigned in modern times). Their purpose is not divination of the future, but to uncover the possibilities that a person has here and now. This is destiny carried in the soul-body unity, but the mind can choose which path to take.
Modern chakra enthusiasts are very fond of Tarot, since they believe the cards resonate with chakra energies. It follows that since Tarot was among the practices officially dropped by the Church, and picked up by the esoteric underground, they cannot be supportive of the original Christian symbolism and viewpoint in the Great Arcana. So, they redesign the cards to fit a more alternative audience. Seems like a new tarot deck design is published each year. Some stay within European magical traditions. But most designers completely depart from it.
The Christian elements of pre-modern magic has become an embarrassment to both the Church and the New Age esoterica which carry on with these practices, without fully understanding them. Magic used to be a spiritual exercise carrying real spiritual dangers which magicians warned each other about. There were possibly stages of initiation for some. Even the 19th century father of modern Satanism, Éliphas Lévi, believed he had conjured genuine demons during some experiments. He describes entities touching his hands, with a touch that felt abnormally cold and terrifying. He issued warnings to other practitioners.
Questions
Who is issuing warnings now?
The spiritual development through magic, which began with Arcadia, has ended with Catholic exorcisms and a bunch of wannabe warlocks who seem oblivious to their own craft.
The history of magic raises important questions about spirituality and ethics, factual knowledge and superstition, rationality and irrationality.
Is it right to raise the spirit by by-passing God`s justice?
Is it right to override another person`s will in order to achieve your own ends?
Is it right to kill in the name of healing, whether medicinal, political or spiritual?
Magic is an ethical question, because the practice arises out of Mankind`s awareness of our mortality and our need for Love or social success.
This has greater actuality now than ever, since dr. Frankenstein was a prophecy about the modern age of science. His gholem monsters are coming.
Psychoanalysis
The Freudian and Jungian interpretation for decision-making, behavior, society and the question of ethics.
Flectere si nequeo Superos, Acheronta
movebo
— Freud`s motto taken from Vergil`s Aeneid (VII.312):
“If I cannot bend the higher powers, I
will move the infernal regions,”
… appeals Juno, Queen of Heaven to the Furies of Hell. These female demons will help the queen win her war, after the council of gods has rejected her.
The Latin text reads Acheron, instead of “infernal regions”. The Acheron is a river in the Epirus region of Greece that was believed to be one of the rivers of the Underworld, were souls were ferried across by Charon. It was considered the water of sorrow, but also of healing.
The basic premise of psychoanalysis is that there are hidden motivations behind human behavior, which are unconscious, meaning that not even the subject fully understands what drives them.
These hidden motivations bubble up in dreams and hallucinations, resulting in madness or religious behavior. Freud and Jung are approaching strange human phenomena, such as sexual perversions or repressions, religious rites and self-harming rituals, cultural “superstitions” and strange individual experiences from the viewpoint that there are mechanisms working like a machine in the background of the soul, with the goal of helping an individual through life. The psychoanalysts tried to identify these mechanisms through dream analysis and by observing and treating early mental patients.
Later they moved on the observe large-scale social behaviors and communal developments by applying the methodology they had developed. Freud broke new ground (within a community of like-minded doctors who are less famous) by developing a method for dream analysis and speech therapy. His interest was already moving towards religion and mythology, as somehow being the collective manifestation of the same psychological processes as dreams and hysteria.
They envisioned the Self as a three-story building, consisting of the subconscious Id, the conscious Ego and the higher moral and communal consciousness referred to as the Super-ego.
Sigmund Freud developed a theory of personality development reminiscent of social hierarchic organization, where the higher structures of the Self constantly builds on the lower.
In his system, Christian faith becomes a projection of fatherhood into Heaven, a kind of universal “daddy issue”.
He also introduced the concept of “life instincts” and “death instincts”, but had no adequate theory to explain why people would self-destruct.
In keeping with the Enlightenment project to make people happier through Reason, he aimed to integrate the unconscious Id into the ordinary Ego, and then make the Ego more conscious of its moral and normative projections into the Super-ego, which will be less punishing, if it becomes more rational. Freud believed that a belief in God would become superfluous if all people had the right harmony in their psyche.
Carl Gustav Jung took this further by building his own therapy methods and investigative projects on analysis of mythology, fairy tales, alchemy and religion.
Jung developed a theory of personality development based on mythical archetypes, meaning a kind of emotional abstractions from our first and deepest relationships — mother, father, child, teacher, etc. He believed that mythologies expressed human psychological states where archetypes represented experiences so deeply rooted within us, that we perceive them as “divine”. Their subconscious force is so strong, that we can believe we are under divine possession at times, when we seem to “lose control over ourselves”.
Erich Fromm developed the idea of “life instincts” and “death instincts” further, and claimed that they are connected to the need to be loved, unconditionally. If love is missing or if a person feels fundamentally unlovable, then they might self-destruct as a form of self-hating punishment. In its most radical form, suicide will remove the unlovable from the community that rejected him.
Psychoanalysis and psychiatry have complicated the question of guilt and innocence, sometimes obscuring it so that criminals get off the hook lightly, and sometimes muddling it, so that sufferers of negative experiences will be double victims of psychiatric abuse and surgery in an effort to heal their emotional pain.
The spiritual magic of the Renaissance has been reborn in modern medicine, where the raising of the soul to a kind of Heavenly health, love and beauty is the ultimate goal. Medical magicians will happily override the individual will of their targets “because love potions are better for you.”
And they will ultimately try to exterminate death and suffering from society, like dr. Frankenstein tried, by taking a detour around God and divine justice.
The greatest mystery of alchemy is the transformation of matter and spirit through the integration of opposite forces — of electricity, sex, gender and other dualities.
The alchemical adept achieves “spiritual hermaphroditism” and this is the “spiritual gold”. The alchemical rituals of laboratory experiments — and the “philosopher’s stone” — are magical rituals that enable the soul to overcome chaos and harmonize energies.
These ideas have found powerful rebirth in Gender Theory, that now finds a willing ally in surgery.
The end-goal is still to rewind time — history and the culture of biology itself — in an effort to reach a primitive idyllic state, something imagined, but fanatically believed in.
And still Death is ubiquitous. Victorious.
