Aquarium of Vulcan

Inward Optics

2012-02-26T13:15:00.000Z

Behold thyself by inward Optics and the Crystalline of thy Soul. Strange it is that in the most perfect sense there should be so many fallacies, that we are fain to make a doctrine, and often to see by Art. But the greatest imperfection is in our inward sight, that is, to be Ghosts unto our own Eyes, and while we are so sharp-sighted as to look through others, to be invisible unto our selves; for the inward Eyes are more fallacious than the outward. The Vices we scoff at in others laugh at us within our selves. Avarice, Pride, Falsehood lay undiscerned and blindly in us, even to the Age of blindness: and therefore, to see our selves interiorly, we are fain to borrow other Men's Eyes; wherein true Friends are good Informers, and Censurers no bad Friends. - C.M.Part 3:15

If Sir Thomas Browne had only ever written Christian Morals (1st published posthumously 1716) his place in English literature would have been guaranteed. As it is, this late work remains the least-known of his literary oeuvre. But it would seem we are fortunate to even have Browne's Christian Morals at all for the preface to the work informs the reader that, 'The Reason why it was not Printed sooner is, because it was unhappily Lost, by being Mislay'd among Other MSS'. One shudders to think what else of Browne's writings may have been lost or mislaid due to haphazard literary executorship.

Written from the vantage-point of a life-time's experience as a doctor, the entire essay is an advisio on how to live a sound Christian life. Highly original optical imagery is employed in the essay along with many of the symbols and images which fascinated the Norwich physician throughout his life. Browne may well have had Luke 6:42 in mind - developing and expanding upon the scripture verse with typical profound psychological insight and artistry.

How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. - Luke 6:42

Nigredo

2012-02-25T23:51:00.000Z

Here's an image appropriate for a Saturn-day night for all Menschen ohne Frau and for those suffering from depression or the Blues. It's from the alchemical anthology Theatrum Chemicum (1602). As C.G. Jung first recognised, many alchemists were little more than embryonic psychologists who, not having the terminology of the modern-era, nevertheless attempted to describe the workings of the psyche. Here the adept is seen under the influence of the malefic planet Saturn, commonly associated with melancholy, the heavy metal of lead and blackness. The Nigredo or Blackness was often interpreted as the first phase of the alchemical opus. C.G. Jung describes the Nigredo thus -

'the Nigredo not only brought decay, suffering, death, and the torments of hell visibly before the eyes of the alchemist, it also cast the shadow of melancholy over his solitary soul. In the blackness of his despair he experienced.. grotesque images which reflect the conflict of opposites into which the researcher's curiosity had led him. His work began with a katabasis, a journey to the underworld as Dante also experienced it'. [1]

C.G. Jung was immersed in the collected writings of the Theatrum Chemicum so much that when he visited India in 1928 he travelled with a copy of the alchemical anthology. The Theatrum Chemicum contains the principal writings of the foremost protagonist of Paracelsian alchemy, Gerhard Dorn (c. 1530-1584). Indeed Gerhard Dorn is one of the most frequently quoted of all alchemical author's cited by C.G.Jung.

Sir Thomas Browne also owned a copy of the Theatrum Chemicum [2]. In all probability its from Browne's reading of Gerhard Dorn that he 'borrowed' the image of an 'Invisible Sun' alluded to at the apotheosis of Urn-Burial.

'Life is a pure flame, and we live by an Invisible Sun within us'.

In Urn-Burial the 'dark half' of the diptych discourses, Browne succinctly alludes to the Nigredo as - 'lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing.'

It's fascinating to discover that in all probability both Browne and Jung contemplated the image of the Nigredo reproduced in the Theatrum Chemicum.

Wiki-links - Nigredo - Gerhard Dorn - Theatrum Chemicum
[1] C.W. 14: 493

[2] Sales Catalogue page 25 no. 124

Iron makes a Nation Strong

2012-02-22T14:42:00.000Z

I've been hearing the sound of tons of metal continuously roaring through the stratosphere this morning. Even though the New Depression has resulted in a decline of living standards for millions in the United Kingdom, the UK as does America, persists in spending an astronomically high percentage of its GDP on military hardware. Indeed the export and sale of military weapons to whoever can pay the price, regardless of their human rights record, continues to be a big export industry worth billions to the British economy.

In many ways the domestic policies of the UK now differ little from those of pre-World War II Germany. Blaming and scape-goating the dispossessed for the Nation's economic woes, rampant xenophobia and hostility to all who question authority, are traits the UK now shares with pre-World War II Germany. Although the UK likes to imagine it possesses a higher moral stance, the recent proposal to make the unemployed engage in unpaid work for benefits, differs little from the policies of 'solving' unemployment as implemented in large-scale public works projects in 1930's Germany.

But it's not so much the domestic policies of the incumbent Right-wing in the UK which induce fear and trembling to any sane thinking mind, as much as its foreign policy. It's becoming glaring obvious for example, that intervention in Syria, ending the atrocities being committed there daily, will not happen, simply because Syria, unlike Libya, does not possess the coveted spoil of 'liquid gold', namely oil. Similarly, sabre-rattling towards Iran continues apace, with a 'window of opportunity' in September or October this year being publicly announced by the USA's White House, the UK's long-time ally in numerous wars. And one can look forward to lots of jingoistic nonsense 'celebrating' the 30th anniversary of the Falklands war soon. As ever, nations continue to be ignorant of their own atrocities, only ever seeing the speck in other's eyes without noticing the beam in their own eye. (Matthew 7 : 5)

The German artist John Heartfield (1891-1968) with his background in the Dadaist art movement, utilized the very latest in photographic imagery to denounce extreme right-wing propaganda. His photo-montage images continue to be influential. The British punk-rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees directly alluded to Heartfield's photo-montage in their song Mittageissen on their album The Scream released in November 1978 on the cusp of the West's lurch towards right-wing thinking in 1979. The other major world-event which continues to haunt the West is of course the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Because the British, like their American cousins, are in general little inclined to study and learn the language and cultures of others, its necessary to provide a translation of the caption above. Loosely translated it reads- 'Hurrah the butter is gone' followed by - 'Iron has always made a nation strong, butter and lard have only made the people fat'. Such propaganda statements are not-so-far removed from the polemic now being voiced by the UK government. For although the present-day UK government imagines itself far removed from such crude thinking, its worth remembering that the world economic crisis of the 1930's was eventually 'resolved' in a large part by an arms race between Britain and Germany which resulted in World War and genocide. Expediency, without moral compunction, parcelled-up in propaganda justification, remains the touch-stone of many nation's foreign policy.

Unless radical, humanitarian thinking is swiftly implemented for the benefit of the majority by Western governments, and not only for the privileged few, the present-day economic crisis may once more be 'resolved' by a military 'solution', in which Britain, with its delusional belief in its world-power status, sleep-walks into an Armageddon-like apocalypse. Such an Armageddon will doubtless be preluded by the shunting of military metal roaring daily through the sky.

Wiki-link - John Heartfield

Cupid's Dart

2012-02-14T07:56:00.000Z

And sure there is a music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

And therefore in reference unto Man, Cupid is said to be blind. Affection should not be too sharp-Eyed, and Love is not to be made by magnifying Glasses.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

There's worse events in life than love unrequited,

it happens all the time, all over the world;
But knowing this, little consoles a heart
pierced by Cupid's fiery-feathered Dart.

Notes

Quotations from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici and Christian Morals

One for the ear, the other for the eye, and a third for narcissistic catharsis. It's a curious coincidence that though the quotes on Cupid by Browne are from two different works both share the same reference. As for the ear and eye, I've often thought that Urn-Burial with its rolling stentorian passages and full organ-stops out phrasing appeals to the ear, while Cyrus is one long feast for the eye being visually orientated throughout.

R.M Part 2:Section 9 - Browne here in finest poetic flow, using imagery linking love and music to Cosmic Harmony, the music of the spheres and universal rhythm. (1643)

C.M. Part 2: Section 9 - Many passages in C.M. contain imagery of either optical or perspective which in turn are connected to observations on moral worth. The invisible and visible worlds, optics and morality, what things are and what they appear to be, especially as regards humans, are often juxtaposed in this last essay. (c.1670's)

Verse by K.M.F. - To J

As the Elephant laughed and Norfolk Minotaur

2012-02-07T17:10:00.000Z

As the Elephant laughed by Peter Rodulfo

Recently I had the pleasure of being introduced to the artist Peter Rodulfo. Modest and soft-spoken, Rodulfo is a gifted and prolific painter who is equally adept in portraiture as in fantasy as in landscape. His paintings are by turns graphic, witty and mystical.

One evening in conversation with the artist, over a bottle or twoof wine, in between reminiscing about 1970's Norwich, the setting of our youth, while listening to recent songsby Lou Reed and Kevin Ayers, Rodulfo insists there's astrong element of the charlatan within most artists. The public demand aconstant pulling-rabbits-out-of-a-hat conjuring act of the artist who isrequired to provide ready-made meanings and answers to all of life's questions. Some artists, more than others are willing to fulfil this roleof conjurer, compromising their artistic integrity sometimes with generous financialreward. Rodulfo's’s art however speaks strongly of independent creativity and is indebted to no-one other than the combusted energy of his own industriousness and imagination.

There’s more than a little of the rebellious and eccentric about Rodulfo who exhibits archetypal Aquarian characteristics in his personality and art. Reticent and even downright self-depreciating at times, a casual glance at his book-case reveals favourite authors such as Honore de Balzac, no mean physiognomist himself and the autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections by the seminal psychologist C.G.Jung. Almost all the available wall space at his home is given to a kaleidoscopic gallery of his art, recent work and older personal favourites are all mixed together - Tolkienesque landscapes, animated portraiture of sharply-observed character and dream-like imagery jostle for the viewer's attention. Such a cornucopia of paintings gives a strong impression of a life-time devoted to production and testimony to an industrious and disciplined creativity.

Although he’s travelled the globe, it’s the city of Norwichwhich Peter Rodulfo has chosen as home for decades. Here in an ancient, almost forgottencorner of the English psyche, the mysterious east of England, life moves at a Do Different pace. Many artists haveappreciated Norwich'srelative calm; its been the home to gifted artists throughout thecenturies, from the days of medieval stained-glass designers to nineteenthcentury 'Norwich School' artists, John Crome, John Sell Cotman and Joseph Stannard, who celebrated Norfolk’s ‘bootiful’landscape. Norwich has often quietly nurtured creative artists with it’s relativelystress-free urban living. The city is encircled byan expansive, yet intimate landscape; a not quite flat, but undulating rural county; which makes the city geographically remote and not easily accessible, to the delight and consternation of its inhabitants.

It’s easy for Rodulfo to give anod to the art of Paul Klee, Max Ernst and De Chirico for example, whileremaining very much his own man. Although his art utilizes some of the techniques and motifs associated with surrealism, more correctly, magical realism he retains his artistic integrity. Labels are often misguiding and Rodulfo wisely eschews any eager and simplistic labelling of his still evolving creativity. But although comparisons can be misleading, there is one British artist whose art is worthy of note in technique and imagination to Rodulfo's - that of the self-exiled British surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Like Carrington, Rodolfo acknowledges the role the unconscious psyche plays in his creativity. Like Carrington, Rodulfo's symbolism is home-grown and capable of striking a deep chord in its unconscious association. Finally, like Carrington, Rodulfo is equally adept at composing a layered field of perspective to showcase his artistic vision. His paintings, like the best of surrealist or magical realist painters can be a vivid encounter with the unconscious psyche or more correctly in Rodulfo's case, a polite enquiry into the relationship of the viewer to their own unconscious psyche.

Rodulfo's canvas As the Elephant laughed (top) exhibits a rich vocabulary of symbolism evoking a microcosm of life on earth. The relentless march of time is depicted by the eroding cliffs of the Norfolk coast framing the composition. Its detailed brushwork includes stars and the ocean, perhaps the most common of all symbols of the unconscious psyche. Proto-zoo marine-life, animals and ageing humans are depicted in a skillfully layered composition evoking the cosmic nature of time. It's a canvas lush in colouration which instantly transports the viewer to internal landscapes of the imagination where symbol and magic are mystically intertwined. As with the best of Rodulfo's art, imagery, technique and imagination alchemically coagulate to form an absorbing viewing experience.

Norfolk Minotaur by Peter Rodulfo

Another recent example of Rodulfo's highly original magical realism occurs in an hallucinatory canvas depicting a wide-awake night-mare or Taurean night terror. The viewer is subjectedto a full face encounter with a sullen pugilist Minotaur, weighing up his opposition, perhaps before a frenzied headlong charge. Set within an instantlyrecognisable as Norfolk landscape, bathed in luminous moonlight, theencounter is simultaneously comic and terrifying, evoking ancient world mythology and Pan-like terror within an otherwise calm rural setting. The viewer is left apprehensive as to whether mutant farm-yard animals are ever encountered in darkest Norfolk, or can escapefrom high-security compounds of genetic scientists to roam loose on moon-litnights.

Through decades of hard work Rodulfo, rather unwittingly one suspects, has become a grandmaster of magical realism in his art, even though his creativity has yet to reach its zenith. One cordially wishes that the artist will enjoy years more fulfilling his creativity to the delight of his growing number of admirers.

In January 2012 Peter Rodulfo released no less than twelve photographic images of new paintings to public view. I've chosen just two of his paintings from a total of over 60 in his facebook portfolio for 2011/12 alone. With such a varied and expansive back-catalogue and many paintings quite different in subject-matter but equal in terms of technical virtuosity, its well worth checking out more of Rodulfo's art-work.

See more of Peter Rodulfo's paintings here

Romeo and Juliet

2012-02-05T14:09:00.000Z

A scene from Moscow City Ballet performing Romeo and Juliet

Last night I attended a performance by the Moscow City Ballet of Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. Composed in 1935 during the dark days of Stalin's iron rule of Russia, the story of the tragic lovers of Verona is of course originally the subject of a play by William Shakespeare. The ballet Romeo and Juliet is the musical work which established Prokofiev's fame as a composer upon his return to Soviet Russia - its become firmly established in the ballet repertoire. Written for a large orchestra including 6 horns, mandolin, violin d'amore, piano, organ and an extensive 'kitchen-department' of percussion, an unusual aspect of the musical score is the addition of a tenor saxophone. This single instrument adds lush colouration to the orchestral timbre. Prokofiev was not averse from occasionally re-cycling earlier musical material, and in Act 2 of Romeo and Juliet inthe Bal lroom scene, the Gavotte of the Classical symphony (1917) is used to great effect.

Romeo and Juliet has been choreographed a number of times. When Kenneth MacMillian re-interpreted it for the Royal Ballet company in 1965 the leading roles were danced by Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev to great critical acclaim, re-launching and extending Fonteyn's dancing career. In 1977 Nureyev himself choreographed a new version of Romeo and Juliet for the London Festival Ballet company.

The Moscow City Ballet company was founded in 1988 by Russian choreographer Victor Smirnov-Golovanov. Their performance at the Theatre Royal Norwich, was marked with vitality and sensitivity. With lavish costumes and designs by Natalia Povago, the dance company added gaiety and humour to the essentially dark tale of tragic love. In particular the company's leading female dancer Oryekhova Liliya in the role of Juliet, and Kozhabayev Talgat as Romeo, carry the success of the night's performance. It's a fairly long ballet with the best pas de deux of the ill-fated lovers occurring in the last ten minutes of Act I. If there is a weakness to any choreographing of Romeo and Juliet, it occurs in Act III which demands a lot of scene changing and coming and going during night-time in the plot. Indeed I noticed the love of my life glancing at her wrist-watch more than once during this final act. One highly original aspect of Golovanov's choreography of Romeo and Juliet is its very beginning coinciding with its ending. The bodies of all three tragic deaths are presented to the audience carried in bier-fashion as if upon an upside-down cross.

In many ways the artistic demands of Natalia Ryshenko and Golovanov's choreography are tempered by a quite demanding touring schedule. The company completed an 8 week tour of the UK in late autumn 2011 and are now embarked upon a 12 week tour with performances almost daily in English cities from January until the end of March, before travelling onto Italy and France. The rigours of such a schedule necessitates one cannot expect too much flamboyance or excessive technical brilliance, as seen on filmed performances, and maybe the orchestral body was slightly thinner than the full music score requests. Nevertheless the Moscow company's modern production for modern times went down extremely well with the Norwich audience. And as if on cue the departing audience were greeted with the sight of a blanket of snow outdoors. The first snowfall of winter in England, direct from the Russian Steppes had arrived during the performance.

I remember when in Verona, the city of the feuding Montagues and Capulets of Renaissance Italy, one of the city's tourist attractions was the supposed balcony from which Juliet and Romeo meet for a love tryst. It was daily heavily over-subscribed with tourists from all over the world wanting to photograph the balcony and bronze statuette of Juliet in its court-yard.

There's even a tenuous Norwich connection to Romeo and Juliet because the second Quarto of 1599 of Shakespeare's plays names Will Kemp, instead of Peter in a line in Act five of the drama. Kemp, it will be remembered, was the actor in Shakespeare's company who jigged from London to Norwich, completing his 'nine days wonder' by leaping over the church-yard wall of Saint John, Maddermarket.

Golden Boy and Gherkin

2012-02-02T20:29:00.000Z

Today, a rare excursion to London, attending a conference. I saw this, with its inscription - This boy is in memory put up for the late FIRE of LONDON occasioned by the Sin of Gluttony 1666 and below - the 'Gherkin' tower, so-called because of its shape. Maybe it's an over-imaginative juxtaposition, but I can't help thinking the two monuments are related. But without doubt a certain seventeenth century Norwich physician and philosopher would have approved of Sir Norman Foster's quincuncial lozenge design in glass.

Wiki-links - Golden Boy of Pye Corner - London Gherkin

Philip Glass

2012-01-31T13:42:00.001Z

Today's the birthday of American composer Philip Glass (b.1937)

Ever since hearing the song-cycle Songs from Liquid Days (1986) in the year 1988 (it sometimes takes a year or two for American culture to filter through to British consciousness) I've followed with interest this most prolific composer's musical career. The three large-scale operas Einstein on the Beach (1976) Satyagraha (1978-9) and Akhnaten (1983) were for myself works which opened my eyes to Glass as a composer of unique vision. The ground-breaking 4 hour opera Einstein on the Beach is well-worth a fresh production (2012). It includes awe-inspiring ensemble singing and is as experimental today as when first performed in 1978. The last work in the trilogy of opera based upon Science and Religion, the dark and brooding Akhnaten (its dark orchestral colouring is achieved partially by the omission of violins) in particular the aria for counter-tenor Hymn to the Sun with its expounding of monotheism and plaintive coda chorus of Hebrew slaves is a personal favourite. The haunting Facades (1981) for saxophone and strings, is another relatively early work I enjoy hearing.

Philip Glass studied music under one of the most influential teachers of composition in the 20th century Nadia Boulanger (1887- 1979). He has integrated the hypnotic, rythmic patterns of Indian music with elements of pop and World-ethnic music to his classical training to formulate one of the most distinctive and instantly recognisable voices in modern music. It seems as if he has collaborated with nearly every big name in modern music - David Byrne, Paul Simon, Laurie Anderson, Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield and Mick Jagger for starters as well as Ravi Shankar, Brian Eno, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson and the Aphex Twins - testimony to the fact by all the evidence given, that he is no vain and difficult to work with prima donna, but of an easy-going nature and thoroughly professional in his music-making. Included among his many friends and artistic collaborators are the poets Allen Ginsburg (1926 - 1997) and Leonard Cohen (b. 1934) both of whom Glass has written a song-cycle based upon, Hydrogen Jukebox (1990) and Book of Longing (2006) respectively. The list of film directors, choreographers, theatre directors and musicians Glass has collaborated with is seemingly endless, nearly every big name in theatre, dance, film and pop seems to have worked with him at one time or another.

In 2007 I had the pleasure of attending a performance of Glass's opera Satygraha at the Coliseum, London. Sung in Sanskrit, the opera celebrates the lives of those who have fought against racial prejudice in the 20th century.Each act of Satyagraha focuses on a major figure in the struggle against oppression, namely, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The demographics of the audience attendance of performances of this opera are worth noting. The London theatre discovered it was staging a performance attended by the highest percentage of people outside London who had booked tickets on-line and then travelled to the metropolis to hear the opera in its entire history. Some several years earlier I attended a performance of The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 based upon a Doris Lessing novella, also at the Coliseum (world premiere 1988) yet another early memory of hearing Glass's music. Some of the best themes and motifs of this work appear in the highly popular Violin concerto no. 1 (1987) which again I had the pleasure of hearing performed a few years ago in Norwich.

Throughout the decade of the 1990's Glass consolidated his status to the point of near over-exposure. There once seemed a time whenever one attended a cinema or turned on the TV one would encounter Glass's unique and hypnotic music, this is reflected in the fact that he has won awards for music for films such as Kundun (1997) Dracula (1999) performed by the Kronos Quartet and The Hours (2002). Wikipedia gives a long and comprehensive list of the many films Glass has written music for and in this context one cannot overlook mention of the trilogy of Qatsi films, Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance (1993) Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation (1998) and Naqoyatsi: Life as War ( 2002) all directed by Godfrey Reggio. Each of these three films were inspired by Glass's music and filmed specifically and primarily to showcase his music. They contain the essence of the composer's message - a deep concern for the ecological survival of our endangered planet, whether from over-population, pollution or war. Glass's 'message' often seems to be a reminder that we are sleep-walking into our own extinction as a species and according to Wikipedia the composer describes himself as 'a Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist'. He's been involved over the years in the campaign for Tibetan independence and is a friend of the Dalai Lama.

It's a few years ago now since the amazing coup by the organisers of the Norfolk and Norwich music Festival ( the oldest of its kind in the UK ) of booking Philip Glass to perform his piano music at the Theatre Royal. I really wanted as much to attend this recital, to meet the composer whose music has accompanied and inspired many moments of my listening for the last 20 plus years. I imagined quite wrongly, that after performing Glass would retire and rest up for the evening, but no, apparently and frustrating, taking advantage of a warm May evening, he visited the park adjacent to the Theatre to meet and encourage young musicians. I wonder how many of those young people realised they were in the presence of one of the world's most successful and popular composers of the late 20th century. I shall just have to content myself with playing recordings of his Dance No. 4 for Organ (1978) and a transcription for organ of the touching aria from the finale of Act IIII of Satyagraha in the church of Saint John Maddermarket occasionally for visitors.

Because his catalogue of compositions is vast, it is impossible to give a full resume of his works here, but rather continue mention of some of my favourite music by Glass - these include the early Dance no.3 and Dance no.5 (1979) both of which are real tour-de-force ensemble works involving dynamic keyboards, saxophones and voice - the highly accessible Aguas de Amazonia 1993/99) music written for the Brazilian band Utaki featuring South American percussion instruments, the two symphonies based upon themes from David Bowie's Low (1992) and Heroes (1996) 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (1998) and The Voyage (1990) an opera in 2 acts which juxtaposes Christopher Columbus's discovery of America with space travel. According to Wikipedia Philip glass's favourite composer is Franz Schubert a composer who coincidentally or not he shares his birth-date anniversary with. To celebrate his 75th birthday a recording of Glass's symphony no.9 is released today.

Americans really ought to be proud of such home-grown genius which embraces World cultures in music, a refreshing change from the sometimes insular, inward-looking, self-referencing of much American culture. The music of Philip Glass introduces various musical cultures to each other and strongly reminds the listener through the medium of music of the diversity and fragile existence of humanity.

As ever the collective endeavours of Wikipedia states it all far more comprehensively and objectively than I ever could - Philip Glass

European Ice-Skating Championship 2012

2012-01-30T17:20:00.000Z

The European Ice-skating championship was held in Sheffield, UK this year, not that TV coverage is exactly extensive these days. Long gone are the days of live coverage of each of the competitive events. As a sport ice-skating has lost some of its credibility, partially from blatantly biassed judging in the past. Nor is the sport quite so dominated by Russia any more as it once was. Anyway, here's a couple of pictures which covey some of the excitement and grace of the sport.

Above - Siobhan Heekin-Canedy and Dmitri Dun of the Ukraine

Below - Kiira Korpi of Finland.

Results include - Gold for Carolina Kostner of Italy who won the Ladies event for the 4th time and Gold for Evgeni Plushenko of Russia who won the Men's event for an unprecedented 7th time. Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat won Gold in the Ice-Dance for France for a 2nd time.

Augustus consulting the Tiburtine Sibyl

2012-01-29T16:10:00.000Z

Catering to popular interest here's a slightly later painting by Antoine Caron, Augustus consulting the Tiburtine Sibyl (c.1578).

Caron's painting exhibits notable characteristics associated with Northern Mannerist art including- a frequent recourse in subject-matter to allegory and mythology, animated figures and theatrical staging often heightened by an unusual perspective. Today the Sibylline oracle most likely to be consulted would be Wikipedia which informs that -

To the classical sibyls of the Greeks, the Romans added a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Etruscan town of Tibur (modern-day Tivoli). At the mythic meeting of Augustus with the Sibyl, Augustus inquired whether he should be worshipped as a god.

Whether the Roman Emperor Augustus ( 63 BCE - 14 CE) was ever guided to Christ as a spiritual teacher by an ancient Roman oracle pointing heavenwards towards Mother and Child is of course, highly improbable. Such re-casting of mythology in religion was however, a prime concern of early Church Fathers such as Saint Augustine (354 CE - 430 CE) and Eusebius of Caesarea (263CE - 339 CE) both of whom write of sibyls who 'prophecised' the coming of Christ. During the Renaissance philosophers such as Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Pico della Mirandola (1463 - 1493) as well as later Northern Mannerist artists such as Caron sought to re-integrate pagan antiquity by suggestion that it pre-figured and 'anticipated' Christianity.

Most striking in Antoine Caron's painting is the depth of field conveyed by its perspective which draws the eye deeper and further into a far distant infinity; an effect heightened by the placing of architecture at varied intervals to enhance its depth of space. It's an effect which reminds one of the early paintings of Italian pre-Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) which often feature desolate streets in shadowy cityscapes to create an unsettling effect.

As ever there's a Sir T. Browne connection to this post for he wrote a chapter entitled On the picture of the Sibyls in Pseudodoxia Epidemica in which he ponders why various ancient sources number and name different sibyls. With characteristic humour Browne discusses artistic licence along with revealing his access to reproductions of major western art-works stating -

Which duly perpended, the licentia pictoria is very large; with the same reason they may delineate old Nestor like Adonis, Hecuba with Helen's face, and time with Absolom's head. But this absurdity that eminent artist, Michael Angelo, hath avoided, in the pictures of the Cumean and Persian Sibyls, as they stand described from the printed sculptures of Adam Mantuanus.[1]

Michaelangelo's Cumean Sibyl

The veracity of pagan oracles must have been of particular interest to Browne for he's also the author of a miscellaneous writing entitled - Of the answers of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphos to Croesus, King of Lydia. (Tract XI.) .

Notes
[1] P.E. Bk 5 chapter 11
Wikilink - Sibyl - De Chirico

The Triumph of Winter

2012-01-27T10:20:00.000Z

January 27th is the birth anniversary of the immortal Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer of Don Giovanni, 27 sublime piano concerto's and many other monumental classical works. Its also the birth-date anniversary of Lewis Carroll, an Oxford professor, author of Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, author of Venus in Furs (1870). It is also World Holocaust Memorial Day. These are the main historical characters and events associated with my birthday.

Because this morning is frosty, with a return to real Winter temperatures, The Triumph of Winter (1568) by Antoine Caron (1521-1599) seems a fitting selection. Caron was a French painter of the Northern Mannerist school, an art movement sandwiched somewhere between the Renaissance and Baroque (c.1560-1610) which delighted in unusual perspectives, animated movement and scenes allegorical and mythological. The figure of Mercurius, a god closely associated with the art of alchemy, can be seen holding his Caduceus wand. Standing next to him is a dancing Bacchanalian violinist. Winter, sitting upon a chariot, drawn in procession by storks in harness, is Triumphant. Any of the four statuettes of the Layer monument would, dare I suggest it, not be incongruous or out of place in this decorative and theatrical winter scene.

World Indoor Bowls Championship 2012

2012-01-25T14:48:00.000Z

The World Indoor Bowls Championship is currently being contested. Broadcast by the BBC from the holiday resort of Hopton, a Norfolk coastal resort located mid-way between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, the 3 week festival is hosted by Potters Holidays, sponsors of the event to the tune of £3 million since first played in 1999. Decidedly a cosy set-up for spectators at the intimate arena of raked seating with an uninterrupted view of the blue carpeted surface (not unlike an 18th century skittle alley) to watch the action and gasp 'oooo' and 'aahh' at the excitement of it all.

Its TV spectator sport at it's very best with bird's-eye overhead-view cameras showing the full roll of the ball, super-imposed archery-style target graphics and zooming close-ups of each and every bowl's approach to the jack. It's all about delivery, line, approach, pace, needing an edge, blocking, run and angle. It's a kind of cerebral game of geometry played with giant marbles. The bowler who rolls his bowl closest to the yellow jack wins the most points. Ends and sets are played up and down a 30 metre plus carpet/playing surface. It gets quite exciting when players have to get on their hands and knees with their tape-measure to measure slender differences of inches closest to the jack. Cheap as chips winter day-time broadcasting. Watching this sport I feel my unemployment has now congealed into early retirement as it's a sport often associated with those of maturer years. Happy memories of watching bowls played on immaculate greens in the fresh air, during the bright, sunny days of summer in Norwich parks.

De Lapide Philosophorum

2012-01-22T16:25:00.000Z

De Lapide Philosophorum from Alchymia by Andreas Libavius

It was on a bright Spring morning in May 2011, when casually browsing through Adam Maclean's fascinating book, 'The Alchemical Mandala', that I noticed there were several striking similarities between Maclean's reproductions of De Lapide Philosophorum to the four statuettes of the Layer Monument.

It's recorded that Christopher Layer's youngest son erected the Layer Monument in memory of his father (d. 1600) and mother, Barbara (d.1604). Because the first edition of Alchymia (1596) by the German chemist Andreas Libavius (c.1555 -1616) does not apparently include any illustrations whatsoever, in all probability it's from a later edition of Alchymia that the Layer Monument's symbolism is developed. Although there are considerable differences between the top quaternity of figures in De Lapide Philosophorum to the quartet of statuettes of the Layer Monument nevertheless the two works share several corresponding motifs. In addition to shared solar and lunar imagery there is an allusion to the 'sacred wedding' or hieros gamos, often depicted in alchemy as Sol et Luna, and represented by Pax and Gloria in the Layer Monument - an inferior or 'Ethiopian' pair, represented by Vanitas and Labor in the Layer Monument - a figure with blackened feet standing upon a Rotundum (the Rotundum being a frequent motif in alchemical depictions of Mercurius) and the holding of a votive palm in both works. But what tips the balance against mere coincidence is the fact that the labels of Gloria and Labor occur in both works.

Before any further discussion I must stress that there are variations between versions two and three of De Lapide Philosophorum. Through the juxtaposition of versions two and three new interpretative insights on the Layer monument can be acquired. Nor can one overlook the medium of both art-works. The intriguing development of an illustration entitled the Philosopher's Stone quite literally transformed into the medium of stone in the form of carved marble is worth consideration.

NB: Pax and Gloria are situated above Vanitas and Labor on
the Layer Monument

The observations of Carl Gustav Jung greatly assist towards interpretative insight upon the Layer monument's complex symbolism. The second of the three versions of Libavius's extraordinarily densely-laden symbolic image is reproduced in C. G. Jung's 'Psychology and Religion' (1944). Jung is content to add yet one more intriguing image to his lavishly illustrated volume and merely remarks of version 2 of De Lapide Philosophorum (fig.142).

In an explicato locorum signatorum, Libavius gives the following "explanation" of the second of the three versions of this image.

RR: An Ethiopian man and woman,supporting two higher spheres. They sit on the big sphere and according represent the nigredo of the second operation in the second putrification.

All of this is reduced and transformed in the Layer Monument to the figures of Vanitas and Labor. The blackened feet of Vanitas standing upon a golden Rotundum may be an allusion to his original Ethiopian hue. But it also leaves little doubt that the Layer monument's lower pair of statuettes represents the inferior, Nigredo stage in the alchemical opus.

a - The king, clad in purple with a golden crown, has a golden lion beside him. He has a red lily in his hand, whereas the queen has a white lily.

b - The queen, crowned with a silver crown, strokes a white or silver eagle standing beside her.

In the Layer Monument both Pax and Gloria have golden hair but no crowns. In version 3 of De Lapide Philosophorum it's the Queen who holds a votive palm, which in the Layer Monument is held by the King. It's interesting to note in passing that Jung designates the palm as a symbol of the soul.

The allotting to the King and Queen in version 2 of De Lapide Philosophorum to the 'Regal' creatures of Lion and Eagle can be identified as representing two aspects of the Tetramorph, the most developed of all quaternity symbols in western religious symbolism. They are also the two creatures which are associated with the 'Fixed Cross' of astrology, namely Leo and Scorpio. Because the King and Queen in version 2 are associated with Leo and Scorpio who represent the elements of Fire and Water respectively, one can with confidence assert that Vanitas and Labor also represent two of the ancient world quaternity or four-fold division of the elements, that of Air and Earth. This is quite overt in their respective symbolism. (Vanitas is depicted making bubbles blowing air, Labor is seen digging earth).

In the Layer Monument Pax is not only the Christian Prince of Peace, but also a much deeper-rooted archetype in the human psyche. Utterly Solar in his symbolism and associated with the element of Fire, as well as the zodiac sign of Leo, representing one quarter of the 'Fixed Cross' of astrology, Pax as an archetype symbolises the 'wise Ruler' whose historical counterparts include - Alexander the Great, King Cyrus and the better of the Roman and Greek 'warrior' rulers' of antiquity.

In fact each of the four statuettes of the Layer monument are collectively archetypal in their symbolism. Individually they are 'the Wise Ruler', 'the Great Mother', 'the Child/Trickster' and 'the Old Man'. Together the four statuettes of the Layer Monument may quite appropriately be defined as an alchemical mandala of the western tradition, this is because they not only represent Christian moral values but also archetypal components of the psyche and its unity.

Since studying the symbolism associated with the Layer Monument and De Lapide Philosophorum one becomes aware one is not only commentating upon art, but in fact relating to complex symbols of psychological and spiritual depth.

Books consulted

C.G.Jung - Psychology and Religion 1944 CW 13 RKP

Adam Maclean -The Alchemical Mandala 1989 Phanes 2nd edition 2002

The Beatles at Norwich 1963

2012-01-18T18:04:00.001Z

This Blue Plaque spotted en route Prince of Wales Road. There are 39 succinct and informative Blue Plaques researched by Nick Williams in Norwich. Besides this plaque there's another Norwich-Beatles connection. Pablo Fanque who was born in Norwich in 1796 was the first Black Circus owner, an expert equestrian and a tightrope-walker. He is alluded to by John Lennon in 'Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite', a song on the mega-seminal pop album 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' of 1967.

The Hendersons will all be there

Late of Pablo Fanque's fair

But I just can't imagine today's music stars queuing up for chips with their fans.

Not lost, simply for a time mislaid

2012-01-12T15:42:00.000Z

And suddenly this surprising earth,
No longer clouded, was known again,
And all you had thought lost you found
Was simply for a time mislaid.

(from a poem by Brian Patten b.1946)

Sir Thomas Browne's Grand Conjunction

2012-01-04T12:14:00.002Z

Sometimes I get very indignant when my cultural heritage is misrepresented. I'm writing of course about the utterly erroneous act by New York Review of Books of their forthcoming 2012 publication of Sir Thomas Browne's Urn-Burial without accompaniment of its diptych companion The Garden of Cyrus. NYRB in collusion with Stephen Greenblatt, a distinguished Harvard professor no less, are in fact committing a publishing act totally against Sir Thomas Browne's artistic intentions, an act of ignorance which really ought not occur any longer. I will elucidate for the edification of the culprits concerned.

It is now fifty years since the American scholar Frank Huntley stressed the inter-relationship between Browne's discourses stating -

'the first essay cannot be read without the second for thetwo pieces are purposefully antithetical and correlative. The first is death;the second, life. The first is guess-work, the second science. The first isaccident; the second its opposite, design. The first is sad; the second filled with garden delights'.

Likewise the literary critic Peter Green also a full fifty years ago, recognised the discourse's relationship to each other -

'the two Discourses can no morebe separated than the voices in a fugue: taken together they form one of the deepest, most complex, most symbolicallypregnant statements upon the great double theme of mortality and eternity'.

When one acknowledges Sir Thomas Browne was a dedicated adherent of Hermetic philosophy then Stephen Greenblatt's error, in collusion with the publishers NYRB, becomes glaring obvious. It was in Browne's spiritual testament and psychological self-portrait Religio Medici that the Norwich-based physician and philosopher unequivocally declared-

'the severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes'.[1]

In this context the writings of the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung assist our understanding of Browne's artistic vision. In C.G. Jung's view the pair of opposites are one of the mostfruitful sources of psychic energy [2]. Jung also recognised that the union of the opposites plays a decisive role in thealchemical process stating-

'the "alchemystical"philosophers made the opposites and their union one of the chiefest objects oftheir work'. [3]

The 1650's decade in Britain saw a boom in the publication of esoteric literature, in fact the greatest volume of esoteric literature Britain has ever seen occurred during this decade. It was primarily due to a relaxing of licensing-laws under the Protectorate of Cromwell and also to a deep mood of Endzeitpsychosis, with the execution of King Charles I, that a deluge of Paracelsian, Cabbalistic, astrological and alchemical literature was printed. It is against this background that Browne's 1658 discourses were first published. Browne, an avid bibliophile could not possibly have been unaware of this reading trend. His discourses remain the most rewarding of all alchemical literature published during this decade. Incidentally, in the fourth edition of Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1658) the year of the 'twin' discourses first publication , they are appended to the encyclopaedia in this running order - firstly the dedicatory epistle of Urn-Burial followed by the dedicatory epistle of The Garden of Cyrus. Iincontrovertible evidence of Browne's artistic intentions. Browne's solitary hint of the relationship of his discourses occurs in the dedicatory epistle of The Garden of Cyrus-

'That we conjoin these parts of differentSubjects, or that this should succeed theother; Your judgement will admit withoutimpute of incongruity; Since the delightful World comes after death, andParadise succeeds the Grave . Since the verdant state is the Symbol of theResurrection, and to flourish in the state of Glory, we must first be sown incorruption'.

Although many readers may prefer the stylistically stronger discourse Urn-Burial, the human condition as the ancient Greeks realised, is not totally sombre and grave, but is also, as the discourse The Garden of Cyrus delineates, playful and delightful. Just because The Garden of Cyrus is in places stylistically weaker and includes a long difficult chapter of botanical observations does not justify the regrettable trait of 'dumbing-down' and its total omission by publishers. Urn-burial's counterpart may in fact be the obverse and not the reverse of the literary coin forged by Browne. The publication error of printing Urn-Burial without its companion The Garden of Cyrus which began with the stoical-minded Victorians need no longer occur with our fuller understanding of Browne's artistic vision.

I've written at great length upon the plexiformed relationship between Browne's 1658 discourses and shall in due course reveal hitherto undiscerned connections between the diptych discourses, but in the meantime, Professor Greenblatt and NYRB take heed and please desist in future from misrepresenting Browne's artistic vision !

Top: Frontispieces to Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus

[1] Religio Medici Part 1 Section 12
[2] C.W 8. 414
[3] C.W 14 Foreword
Bibliography
Green P. Sir Thomas Browne Longmans, Green & Co (Writers and Their Work, No.108 1959)
Huntley F. L. Sir Thomas Browne: A Biographical and Critical Study
Ann Arbour 1962
Jung C.G. Collected Works Routledge & Kegan Paul
Patrides C. A. ed. The Major Works of Sir Thomas Browne Penguin 1977

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year

2011-12-22T08:50:00.001Z

A very merry Xmas to all my followers and visitors; with thanks and best wishes to all for the New Year.

The development of the symbolism of Father Xmas/Santa Claus is a good example of how syncretism, that is, the over-lapping of symbolism occurs over time through the fusion of various myths, folk-lore and religion.

Wiki - Link - Father Christmas - Santa Claus

Crucified Santa ?!

23rd December This spotted while walking through Norwich suburbs. A real puzzle of comparative religion; simultaneously evoking elements of Christianity and pagan Nordic belief and a curious frisson of sacrilege and comedy. It could only, I thought, occur in Norwich, historically the only City ever to be ex-communicated. (1274). But in fact Santa crucified appears to be an American import and protest against the materialism of Xmas.

Peterborough & Cathedral

2011-12-14T17:55:00.000Z

Back in Fenland ! Once more travelling through the flat as a billiard-table landscape criss-crossed with drainage dykes, to visit Peterborough and its cathedral. East Anglia has several notable medieval cathedrals including the 'Ship of the Fens' of Ely, the lofty spire of Norwich cathedral and the unusual and dramatic architecture of Peterborough cathedral.

Peterborough cathedral is described as an example of Early English Gothic in style and is one of the most important 12th century buildings remaining intact in England. The three enormous and visually imposing arches of its western facade are apparently without architectural precedent and also without future reference in the history of architecture.

The day I visited Peterborough to view its cathedral was not-so lucky. A highly conscientious security official took one look at me and immediately debarred my admittance to the cathedral, stating a private engagement was about to occur and to come back at 4 p.m. So I had to content myself with being able to hear a jolly carol service sung by a voluminous-sounding choir accompanied by organ, while walking round the cathedral grounds, quite literally left out in the cold.

On the main pedestrian high street I heard an extraordinary number of languages spoken. According to Wikipedia in addition to having a high percentage of Polish immigrants, Peterborough is also home to one of the largest Italian communities in the UK. There have however been rising tension and violent incidents in recent years between differing racial and ethnic communities in the Cathedral City due to its rapid population growth.

Outside the Cathedral grounds there's the medieval church of Saint John the Baptist. I was quite excited to discover an example of a tetramorph carved upon its porch roof. The tetramorph is a religious symbol which frequently occurs in medieval churches and represents the four evangelists of the Gospels. Of particular interest is the curious fact that the tetramorph is also synonymous with the 'fixed cross' of the astrological zodiac. The figures of a lion, an eagle, an angel and a bull with Christ at the centre are unfortunately not-so easy to make out distinctly in this photo unless magnified considerably.

The best way to photograph this Tetramorph I decided was to lay down flat on the floor. Almost immediately a woman dashed up and asked whether I needed the kiss of life. I politely declined her offer while another lady pointed out that my wallet had dropped out of my pocket when getting up in haste. Such were the few memorable moments of my swift visit to the city of Peterborough.

Wiki-link - Peterborough - Peterborough Cathedral

Bad As Me

2011-12-07T16:16:00.000Z

The album of 2011? It just has to be Tom Waits Bad as Me (released October 21st). As the RollingStone review says, the timing of the release of Waits' new album is impeccable.

TomWaits (born Los Angeles, U.S.A. December 7th 1949) Happy Birthday Tom ! has for decades enacted persona from the underbellyof the American Dream, the dispossessed, down-and-outs, hard drinkers, lonesomedrifters and out-of-luck gamblers in the era of the Great Depression, such characterssurviving in dire straits come sharplyalive now in the New Depression.

Waits and his extraordinary voice has become a true American phenomenon and a world-wide star; utterly archetypal in his persona, his voice croons, bellows, growls, barks and snarls with characters walking straight out of the pages of a Damon Runyan short story with more than a nod to American literary giants such as William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac. The present state of Waits' voice is show-cased in Glitter and Doom (2009) recorded live at various venues on tour. A showman in the true sense of the word, Waits has also developed his acting career in several film roles, most recently as the sinister Mr. Nick in Terry Gilliam's metaphysical fantasy, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009).

Bad as Me is Tom Waits' 17th album no less, since his debut recording in 1973. Although essentially rooted in R ‘n’B music, Waits shifts from genre to genre with ease – from Cuban Salsa to Metal, from Beat poet Jazz monologues to Weimar Republic-style Cabaret, from Vaudeville to Gospel and Blues. His song-writing is a compendium of American music. I can't think of any other singer/song-writer who has recorded in such a wide spectrum of genres or another singer capable of comparable vocal gymnastics (his vocal range encompasses 7 octaves) with perhaps the exception of the East German opera-trained, one time Punk rocker, Nina Hagen. And indeed Waits performs a Nina Hagen-style number in German on Alice (2002) entitled Kommienienzuspadt.

Bad as Me sees Waits infine form. Co-written and produced with his long-time partner Kathleen Brennan,the album is the first new collection of songs by the talented singer-songwriter in 7 years. The standardand consistency of each track on the album is high, with fellow R’n’B old timerKeith Richards playing guitar on four songs. Waits’ finger is placed firmly onthe pulse of the current zeitgeist in the down-beat, soft-shoe shuffle track- Talking at the same time.

And all the news is bad

Is there any other kind?

Everyone’s talking at the same time……..

Well we bailed out the millionaires they got the fruit, we got therind.

While in the stark and harrowing Hell broke Luce, a psychotic GI shouts -That big fucking bomb made me deaf and angrily queries of the long ongoing war-

How is it that the only ones responsible for making this mess

Got their sorry asses stapled to a goddamn desk

Waits is not shy of making startlingly theological statements either. Rummaging through his extensive back-catalogue there are several original Gospel songs notably- Chocolate Jesus, Way down the Hole and Jesus gonna be here. When the producers of the HBO series The Wire selected Waits' song Way down the Hole they introduced the singer-songwriter's powerful and expressive voice to a world-wide TV audience. As the opening credits of each episode rolled, he wailed-

When you walk through the garden

you gotta watch your back

well I beg your pardon

walk the straight and narrow track

if you walk with Jesus he's gonna save your soul

you gotta keep the devil way down in the hole.

The title-track of Waits' new album is driven by moral indignation at hypocrisy and self-righteousness and is delivered with venom –

You’re the letter from Jesus on the bathroom wall

You’re mother superior in only a bra

You’re the same kind of bad as me

A useful repost of shared guilt. But Waits in fact, with true artistic temperament, is a bit of a chameleon in his beliefs. On his Glitter and Doom (2009) album, a tour de force in live performance, the gloomy sentiment of Dirt in the Ground (We’re all going to be), a song first recorded on Bone Machine (1992), can be heard.

There are also two tender love ballads on the album, Back in the Crowd and the utterly poignant Kiss Me. In addition there's a raunchy rocker number alluding to the Rolling Stones hit, Satisfaction (I can't get no). Waits, in ebullient mood on Satisfied declaring - Now Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards/ I will scratch where I've been itching. I will be satisfied.

But perhaps the most heart-wrenching of all the songs on this great album is Face to the Highway. Waits, singing in his high-register, using the persona of the lonesome drifter, in typically down-beat mood and with the strong prescence of death, strikes a deep chord. The song will surely become a Blues Classic. Awareness of mortality is also high on the agenda of the light guitar accompaniment of Last Leaf, a real dirge upon passing time with Richard's adding vocals.

Bad as Me is the perfect album for Xmas festivities, for the intimate romantic moment and for rueful brooding hangover's the morning after !

Glitter and Doom album cover

Wiki-Link - Tom Waits

Observer Review

Rolling Stone Review

Self-analysis: Nietzsche and Browne

2011-11-27T12:20:00.001Z

Man is very well defended against himself, against his own spying and sieges; usually he is able to make out no more of himself than his outer fortifications. The actual stronghold is inaccessible to him, even invisible, unless friends and enemies turn traitor and lead him there by a secret path. - Friedrich Nietzsche

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of our selves: for therein our inward Antagonists, not only like common Gladiators, with ordinary Weapons and down right Blows make at us, but also like Retiary and Laqueary Combatants, with Nets, Frauds, and Entanglements fall upon us. Weapons for such combats are not to be forged at Lipara: Vulcan's Art doth nothing in this internal Militia: wherein not the Armour of Achilles, but the Armature of St. Paul, gives the Glorious day. - Christian Morals Part 1:24

On first consideration, it would appear that the thoughts of the nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche have little in common with those of the seventeenth century English philosopher Sir Thomas Browne. Both however, were Classical philologists as well as profound, original thinkers. They also shared an awareness of the strong presence of self-deception within human nature. Both philosophers here likening the attainment of self-awareness to an internal battle of military-like combat.

Browne penned Christian Morals late in his life, primarily as an advisio for his children but applicable to humanity in general. The whole work is permeated by many short, perceptive aphorisms upon life. It's interesting to note that in his old age Browne advocates the supremacy of Christian faith over alchemy which was known as Vulcan's Art. His phrase, 'the Theatre of ourselves' in particular, is one of great insight and originality.

Curiously, Nietzsche shared with Browne an interest in the notion of eternal recurrence, that is the idea of Time and History being of a cyclical, repetitive nature. Probably the best novel in modern times which explores the concept of eternal recurrence is P.D. Ouspensky's The Strange tale of Ivan Osokin (1915) a novel written during an age of heightened interest in mystical ideas in Russian history. Browne's belief in eternal return is writ large at the apotheosis of his 1658 Discourse, The Garden of Cyrus.

All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again.

The big difference between the two philosophers here being that the concept of eternal return horrified Nietzsche but appealed to Browne's Christian mysticism.

Wiki-link - Eternal Return

Rudolf and the Rulands

2011-11-23T16:34:00.000Z

The Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) was an avid collector of art and a devotee of alchemy. When Rudolf II relocated the Habsburg court from Vienna to Prague he attracted many talents both scientific and artistic, including the Elizabethan mathematician John Dee, the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler and skilled painters such as Bartholomeus Spranger, Adrian de Vries and Giuseppe Archimboldo.

Among the most original of artists at Rudolf II's court was the Milan-born Giuseppe Archimboldo (1527-1593). Rudolph II commissioned Archimboldo to paint what are probably his best-known works, a series of Four Seasons using his 'double meaning' technique. Archimboldo even applied his 'double meaning' technique to a portrait of his patron, painting the Holy Roman Emperor as Autumn, rich with the abundance of the fruits of the harvest (Above). Often afflicted with profound depression, the solitary-inclined Rudolf must have had a strange but confident perception of himself to allow such an experimental portrait. Archimboldo's 'double meaning' technique was imitated centuries later by Surrealist artists, notably by Salvador Dali.

Although nowadays Emperor Rudolf II is credited as being a major patron of the arts, in particular of Northern Mannerist art (one suspects that the four intriguing statuettes of the Layer Monument with their hidden esoteric symbolism would have appealed to Rudolf's taste) it's also been argued that his life-long collecting of art combined with his complete disinterest in politics and diplomacy contributed towards the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and European political instability during the thirty years war (1618 -1648). A more positive interpretation of Rudolf II views him a major sponsor of the scientific revolution and an aspirant towards a united, polemic-free Europe.

Rudolf II also kept a menagerie of exotic animals, cultivated a botanical garden and collected a variety of curio's in what was to become Europe's most extensive 'cabinet of curiosities' or Kunstkammer. Rudolf's primary preoccupation however was the fabled philosophers stone of alchemy and he commissioned both scholars and alchemists in his quest. Foremost among scholars at the Prague court were the Paracelsian physician-alchemists Martin Rulands, the name of both father and son. Martin Ruland the elder (1532 -1602 ) compiled a dictionary of alchemical terminology, primarily orientated towards a Paracelsian and metallurgic nature. It must have been held in high esteem by Emperor Rudolf for he conferred the status of nobility upon Martin Ruland junior (1569-1611) in 1608. Martin Ruland's definition of meditatio is a good example of how devout Hermetic philosophers such as John Dee and Sir Thomas Browne augmented their Christian spirituality.

MEDITATIO - The name of an Internal Talk of one person with another who is invisible, as in the invocation of the Deity, or communion with one's self, or with one's good angel.

In Religio Medici (1643) Browne declared -

Therefore I am so far from denying their existence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole Countries, but particular persons have their Tutelary, and Guardian Angels: It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato; - R.M. Part 1:33

Incontrovertible evidence that Browne consulted Ruland's dictionary can be found in his allusion to Ruland's entry -

QUANDROS - a Stone or Jewel which is found in the brain and head of the Vulture, and is said to be a bright white colour. It fills the breasts with milk, and is said to be a safeguard against dangerous accidents.

In Museum Clausum, Browne's bizarre inventory of lost, imagined and rumoured books, pictures and objects there can be found -

A noble Quandros or Stone taken out of a Vulture's Head.

Although I've written on this before there's now the possibility of offering a link to the complete text of Rulands Dictionary of Alchemy.

Besides, I'd not noticed before the similarity of the very opening line of Rulands Dictionary (at least when translated from Latin) - In the deep consideration of the Hermetic and Paracelsian writings... to the opening line of Urn-Burial - In the deep discovery of the subterranean world.

Although Ruland's dictionary primarily concerns itself with chemicals and metals it also includes psychological observations, in particular Paracelsus's definition of imagination -

IMAGINATIO --- is the Star in Man, the Celestial or Supercelestial Body

PHANTASMATA - are Apparitions which haunt desert places and the seashore, and speak with imaginative people. They are not diabolical, though they frequently cause terror.They are born of imagination.

Ruland distinguishes between different kinds of magic and stresses his Christian faith, condemning all enquiries outside of Christianity.

MAGIA, or MAGIC --- is a Persian word; in Latin it is Sapientia, i.e., Wisdom. It is twofold. The first is natural and permissible, the mother of true medicine, the secret lore of nature, hidden and concealed in the very centre, and compared with which all human reason is sheer foolishness. It is truly the gift of God, displaying to us the knowledge of things supernatural, and not proceeding from the inspiration of demons, wherein is no perfection or instruction. The other magic is unlawful, superstitious, and forbidden by the whole Church of Christ. It has the name of Necromancy; it is accursed, and nowhere to be tolerated. Consequently Wisdom has hidden her head.

Sir Thomas Browne has another connection to Rudolf II. He not only consulted Martin Ruland's Dictionary but also heard about the alchemy-loving Emperor at first-hand from his Norwich friend Arthur Dee when recollecting his life-story. In correspondence to Elias Ashmole, Browne stated -

I was very well acquainted with Dr. Arthur Dee, and at some time or other he hath given me some account of the whole course of his life: he gave me a catalogue of what his father Dr. John Dee had writ, and what he intended to write, but I think I have seen the same in some printed books, and that catalogue he gave me in writing I cannot yet find.....

I have heard the Dr. say that he lived in Bohemia with his father, both at Prague and other parts of Bohemia. That Prince or Count Rosenberg was their great patron, who delighted much in alchymie; I have heard him affirm, and sometimes with oaths, that he had seen projection made and transmutation of pewter dishes and flagons into silver, which the goldsmiths at Prague bought of them. And that Count Rosenberg played at quoits with silver quoits made by projection as before; that this transmutation was made by a powder they had, which was found in some old place, and a book lying by it containing nothing but hieroglyphics, which book his father bestowed much time upon; but I could not hear that he could make it out.....

Dr. Dee was a young man when he saw this projection made in Bohemia, but he was so inflamed therewith, that he fell early upon that study and read not much all his life but books of that subject.

In a story of fathers and sons it should not come as too great a surprise that Browne's own eldest son, Edward Browne should be included here. Wherever Edward Browne travelled he acted as a herald and ambassador to his father's fame. Arriving in Vienna in 1668 on his travels through Europe, Edward was offered the opportunity to view Rudolf II's library of alchemical literature. According to Simon Wilkins, Browne's first editor -

Dr. Browne also received from Lambecius a curious catalogue of some hundreds of alchemical manuscripts, for the Royal Society, with the remarkably liberal permission to have any of them copied in Vienna, or even brought to England for transcription.

The status and understanding of alchemy has altered considerably throughout the centuries. From 19th and early 20th century editors of Browne's literary works such as Simon Wilkins and Geoffrey Keynes, both of whom possessed a poor, prejudiced view of alchemy as nothing more than a curious aberration in intellectual history, to C.G. Jung's seminal interpretation in the 20th century; it's earnestly hoped Sir Thomas Browne's relationship to alchemy in his laboratory enquiries and literary works is apprehended better by his editors in the 21st century.

Postscript: But what's this ? New York Review Books are to publish a critical edition by Stephen Greenblatt of Religio Medici and Urn-Burial in May 2012, without The Garden of Cyrus ! Browne's legacy continues to be misunderstood and edited against the wishes of his artistic integrity. Only when they are read together do the two 1658 diptych discourses make their full associative impact upon the reader. Looks as if there's no publishing provision against misrepresenting my cultural heritage !

Books

1711 Catalogue. ed. J.S.Finch - Page 22 no. 119 Ruland Lexicon Alchemia Frankfurt 1612
Peter Marshall -The Mercurial Emperor : the Magic Circle of Rudolf II in Renaisssance Prague 2007
Frances Yates - The Rosicrucian Enlightenment RKP 1972

Links - Ruland's dictionary of alchemy
Wiki-link - Rudolf II

Kauto Star

2011-11-19T19:03:00.001Z

With the National Hunt season firmly underway this November, today's result from Haydock Park was truly heart-warming. Kauto Star ridden by Ruby Walsh returned to form with a brilliant display of jumping prowess, bravery and determination to win the Grade 1 Betfair Chase by 8 lengths over his nearest rival and last years Gold Cup winner, Long Run.

The many fans and supporters attending Haydock Park wearing the same silk colours of Kauto Star are a clear sign that he's loved by the racing public, perhaps in a once-in-a-lifetime way not seen since Desert Orchid in the late 80's or Arkle of the 60's. There were emotional scenes as the winner returned to the ring to a hero's reception of loud cheers. Uniquely, Kauto Star, now aged 11, has been versatile as a chaser to be champion at different race-distances and the only horse to have ever regained the Cheltenham Gold Cup for owner Clive Smith. In a racing career now spanning over 5 years, he's also won the blue ribbon of the Xmas season, Kempton Park's King George VI chase, an unprecedented four consecutive times.

In an interview after the race his trainer Paul Nichols with typical attentiveness to the well-being of his veteran star mentioned about Kauto making a breathing noise last year in training, the year in which an unexplainable decline in his winning power occurred. Nicholls also stated-

"Him and Ruby are a match made in heaven. He's great for racing, and I hope those who said he should have been retired will apologise. To beat a Gold Cup winner at his age is amazing. I'll never forget today. If things had gone wrong my neck was on the line, but I had a feeling he'd run a massive race."

The proverbial phrase 'jumped like a stag' conveys little meaning until seeing the equestrian athleticism of National hunt racing horses, where stamina and courage along with an ability to jump stiff fences is demanded. The above photo goes some way towards conveying these equestrian skills and the big difference between Flat and National hunt racing.

Wiki-links Kauto Star - Paul Nicholls - Ruby Walsh

Postscript December 26th - Kauto Star wins the 3 mile King George VI chase at Kempton Park for an unprecedented 5th time !

I'm All Right Jack

2011-11-16T18:44:00.000Z

John and Roy Boulting's I'm All Right Jack (1959) is a hilarious satire on society and industrial relations in post-war Britain. With a script full of witty dialogue and with consummate skill, the Boulting brothers portray all levels of a once rigid British society, greatly assisted by the cream of British actors of the time. The star-studded cast of I'm All Right Jack includes Ian Carmichael, Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas, Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price, Margaret Rutherford, Irene Handl, John Le Mesurier and Liz Fraser.

The comedy begins when affable but naive upper-class Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael, above) is finally obliged to embark upon a career. His uncle finds him employment in a missile factory where he meets pseudo-Bolshevik trade Union leader Mr. Kite (Peter Sellers). Stanley quickly accepts Mr. Kite's offer of accommodation upon sighting his glamorous daughter (Liz Fraser, above) who works at the ammunition factory as a so-called 'spindle-polisher'.

The collective British work-force are depicted in I'm All Right Jack as intent upon doing as little work as possible and ever eager upon the slightest pre-text to strike. The humour is subtle but effective. When on strike, after a morning of playing cards and darts, the lunch-bell sounds. "Blimey, it's all go today, mate" declares one worker. The power of the Trade unions, led by the fanatical and ideologically-blinkered trade union leader Mr.Kite is shown in a most unfavourable light. In a role which won Peter Sellers a British Academy Best Actors award, Mr. Kite's rigid adherence to supposed Bolshevik principles is fatally flawed. He's never travelled to Russia and is ignorant of the true human cost of the 'Glorious Revolution' and its consequences under Stalin. When Kite's wife herself decides to go on strike, withdrawing all home labour, leaving him to live alone, he soon sinks into utter domestic squalor. In the meantime, Kite's one-time lodger Stanley Windrush refuses to strike and continues attending work. The media applaud his strike-breaking and crowds throng outside the home of his aunt Dolly, (Margaret Rutherford) calling out his name and hailing him a National hero. The film's denouement occurs at a live TV debate hosted by Malcolm Muggeridge. With his eyes finally open to international business corruption within his family, Stanley Windrush declares money to be the only source of interest and motivation to all concerned. Opening a suitcase full of bribery money he casts handfuls of bank-notes into the air. A mad scramble among members of the TV studio audience ensues.

Although it's a film over 50 years old, Roy and John Boulting's social satire retains its relevance. Indeed such was the film's success that its title lives on in common parlance as a cheeky quip of self- interest and complacent indifference to the circumstances of others. I'm All Right Jack also questions dubious aspects of British culture and morality; the Boulting brothers primary target being the notorious ineptitude of British management which is portrayed as corrupt at all levels. At the heart of the film lies the under-stated question about the moral integrity of manufacturing and export of military weapons, an export which effectively contributes no small percentage towards Britain's GDP today. Filmed after the Suez crisis of 1956 which demoted Britain's place in the world, the character of Mr. Mohammed, a Fez-wearing diplomat engaged in acquiring a large shipment of missiles, takes on a more than stereotypical role in the comedy, hinting that Britain even sells weapons to its enemies, as indeed it does. The rise of the media and its power, along with youth culture in the form of a skiffle-based theme music and the vacuous intellect of matinee glamour girl Cynthia (Liz Fraser) are also featured. But above all else, as with all good satire, the Boulting brother's film clearly highlights moral decline, in particular the relatively new trend of self-interest in British society.

Fifty years after I'm All Right Jack was first screened, the less privileged members of British society, that is, the vast majority, are now suffering the consequences of corruption and greed in high places as humorously depicted in I'm All Right Jack. Nevertheless although its hard to imagine there's much of a joke or comedy to be made from the present-day economic crisis facing Europe, its worth remembering that humour and laughter are good medicine for difficult times.

Wiki-Link - Boulting brothers

Boston Stump

2011-11-08T16:20:00.002Z

Although Noel Coward once wittily declared, 'Very Flat Norfolk', in fact large tracts of Norfolk are slightly undulating in landscape and even downright hilly in places. Surely the much-loved Norwich poet and performer Timothy Sillence (1944-2003) conveyed a much deeper understanding of the intimate and mystical nature of the Norfolk landscape when humorously writing-

Norfolk

is a flat land

within easy reach
of the Himalayas.

Recently on a rare excursion out of the county of 'bootiful Norfolk', I had the pleasure to travel through the Fens, the geographical region of England which is definitely 'Very Flat'. The Fens are a vast expanse of fertile agricultural land situated predominately in the counties of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. Travelling through the many square miles of low-laying land effectively drained and reclaimed from the sea by Dutch engineering in the seventeenth century, one senses how much the Fen landscape with its huge domed skies must have affected the psychology of its inhabitants. This thought is reinforced once arriving at Boston in Lincolnshire and viewing the enormous tower of Saint Botolph's. Long known as Boston Stump or just The Stump, the medieval architects of the extraordinary Perpendicular style tower utilized the flat landscape of Lincolnshire to make their House of God into a bold, enduring statement. Like the so-called 'Ship of the Fens', Ely Cathedral, Boston Stump dominated the landscape during the Middle Ages and was visible from great distance.

The 202 steps and 83 metres which lead up the Boston Stump collectively and discreetly enquire upon one's assumed fitness, but the views are well worth the effort !

The windmill (centre) was working with its sails rotating. Its said that from Boston Stump with good visibility and powerful binoculars one can see the back of one's head ! ( Actually it's claimed one can see over thirty miles from the tower).

The river Haven stretches into the distance. Boston was a thriving sea-port during the Middle Ages until access to the port silted-up over the centuries. As with much of Fenland, Boston is home to a network of rivers, canals and inter-connecting drainage conduits.

Wiki -link St. Botolph's Church Boston

Norfolk Chalk Reef

2011-11-02T19:28:00.001Z

Photo:Rob Spray

The ancient coast-line of East Anglia, once the furthest extent of retreating glaciers during the last Ice Age, continues to reveal astounding evidence of early man's activities and prehistoric nature. The North Norfolk coast-line in particular is a rich source of geological and archaeological wonders. These include the Cromer Ridge, a terminal glacial moraine formed during the last Ice Age; the discovery of a fossilised skeleton of a steppe mammoth approximately 600,000 years old in the cliffs of West Runton in 1990, and a circular arrangement of over fifty split oak tree trunks, an early man-made ritual monument named Seahenge, dated circa 2100 BCE, which was first exposed at Holme-next-the-Sea in 1998.

It's recently been announced that the world's longest chalk reef, over 20 miles in length, stretching from Cley to Trimingham along the Norfolk coast, complete with massive two metre high arches and deep gullies has been discovered. So far three species never recorded before have been found in the Chalk reef including the Leopard Spotted Goby, two rare anemones and an obscure purple-coloured sponge. The Chalk Reef was the subject of a BBC regional TV programme which was spectacular in viewing. Here's the link for a 3 minute filmed dive through the Norfolk chalk Reef . The discovery of the Chalk reef was made by Rob Spray who runs the Marine Conservation Society survey project with a team of volunteers.

Even during my hedonistic and ecstatic summers of youth, swimming, sunbathing and reading on the beach, I never dreamed of a submarine world some 300 million years old just half a mile out from the shore and just eight metres below the surface of the North sea.

However, the seventeenth century doctor and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne did dream of submarine worlds. His miscellaneous tract Museum Clausum or Bibliotheca Abscondita identified by W.G. Sebald in his Rings of Saturn (1998) as a curious minor masterpiece of the imagination, includes among its inventory of lost, rumoured or imagined books, pictures and objects-

9. A Sub Marine Herbal describing the several Vegetables found on the Rocks, hills, Valleys, Meadows at the bottom of the Sea, with many sorts of Alga, Fucus, Quercus, Polygonum, Gramens and others not yet described.

The world of the submarine must have been of great interest to Browne as included in his miscellaneous tract under the entries of pictures, one reads the worthy doctor dreaming of -

3. Large Submarine Pieces, well delineating the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, the Prairie or large Sea-meadow upon the Coast of Provence, the Coral Fishing, the gathering of Sponges, the Mountains, Valleys and Deserts, the Subterraneous Vents and Passages at the bottom of that Sea ;

Royal Mail Coach

2011-10-25T20:20:00.001+01:00

To celebrate the centenary of their inauguration, the Norfolk and Norwich Philatelist Society have arranged for the display of a Royal Mail Coach in the atrium of the Forum, outside the Millennium Library. Only a few mail coaches have survived the corrosion of time. The Norwich N205, found in a dilapidated condition in Cardiff in 1966, has been lovingly restored.

The mail service from Norwich to London operated from the years 1785 to 1846. With the introduction of the Railway, it was last route to be withdrawn. Actually one reason why Norwich is sometimes viewed as idiosyncratic in its cultural heritage could be because until the introduction of the railway, it was often quicker to travel to Amsterdam than to London. Norwich to London involved marsh, forest, and the possibility of highway robbery; although the royal Mail coach delivered mail to London in 13 hours, an achievement made by frequent change of horses. Coach travel for individuals however often involved an overnight stop at a post-house hostel. In contrast the journey from Norwich to Amsterdam by the waterways of river, sea and canal from the Middle Ages until the advent of the railway, was often as quick to travel as to London.

A Cryptogram deciphered

2011-10-19T08:57:00.000+01:00

The opening sentence of Thomas Browne's Urn-Burial challenges the reader to look beyond mere surface appearances towards the unseen and hidden.

In the deep discovery of the subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers.

An ardent enquirer questing for fresh insight into Browne's esoteric creativity would do well to cast their eye upon the curious word which heads Browne's discourse - HYDRIOTAPHIA and ponder awhile.The six syllable word has a touch of theatricality about it, its sonority arrests the ear as if a magician's abracadabra or medical mantra. Although its a word which is commonly assumed to be an alternative title to Urn-Burial in fact it defies any dictionary definition, being an invented word; nor is there any suggestion by the author that it is an alternative title, it is not followed by the word 'or' as with Browne's various alternative titles to his 1658 diptych Discourses and its often printed with a differing letter size and/or font in most modern publications as in the original frontispiece.

It's just possible that the word HYDRIOTAPHIA is an anagram. Browne's era was one in which all manner of word-play flourished, including the devising of anagrams. Such word-play occurred not only among literate academic circles, but also in the spheres of military and political communication. During the English civil war coded writing, as in the form of a cryptogram, was of extreme importance in maintaining military security when defeat or victory could be decided by the deciphering of the enemy's communications. However the construction of secret codes was not exclusive to the military, Anne Geneva noted of the wide-spread engagement in word-play throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

'the seventeenth century was able to draw upon a long tradition of cryptography, dozens of ciphers surviving from the sixteenth century alone, although Sir T.B. was the first to use the word in English'.[1]

Browne was one of many learned and leisured gentlemen throughout seventeenth century Europe who took an interest in secret codes, ciphers and anagrams. Of greater import Anne Geneva also recognised crucially that- 'Alchemy in particular seems to have thrived upon anagrams.'

With his penchant for the secretive, along with his deep-rooted interest in the esoteric, Sir Thomas Browne is a prime candidate for having anagrammatic inclinations; he not only possessed almost every major esoteric author associated with coded writing, including those by the Abbot Trithemius, the Italian polymath Della Porta and the Frenchman Blaise de Vignere [1] but also knew that both the Polish alchemist Michel Sendivogius [2] and the Oxford antiquarian Elias Ashmole had published alchemical literature under anagrammatic pseudonyms.[3]

In many ways Browne is the archetypal alchemist, he possessed an 'elaboratory' where he conducted numerous experiments, many of which are recorded in his encyclopaedia, including an experiment in which he suspended a magnetic pendulum above a circular table with an alphabet marked out around its circumference. He also experimented with various acids including Vitriol and was doubtlessly familiar with the near commonplace advisory derived from the initial letters of the word V.I.T.R.I.O.L. - Visita Interiorem Terrae Rectificandoque Invenies Occultum Lapidem which can loosely be translated as advice to -

Visit the interior of the earth and rectifying, you will find the hidden stone.

an aphorism which bears close comparison to the opening sentence of Urn-Burial.

By rising to the challenge of the cryptic and acknowledging that the hidden world beyond appearances was a vital preoccupation of Hermetic philosophers such as Browne, essential clues can be acquired assisting deciphering the cryptogram HYDRIOTAPHIA; when deciphered it not only highlights fundamental themes of the diptych discourses, namely death and birth, but also reveals a rare utterance from Browne's alter-ego persona.

If one heeds the literary critic Peter Green's observation that, 'Sir Thomas is his own most fascinating subject of study, and knows it’ one may with confidence extract the letter I , the most frequently used word in the English language, to begin constructing a full sentence. Having identified our subject we next need an active word such as a verb or adverb.

The opening dedicatory address in Urn-Burial to his patron, the Norfolk landowner Thomas le Gros, provides further clues to deciphering the second word of the anagram. Remembering that it was the discovery and unearthing of several burial urns at Walsingham, North Norfolk, which was the inspiration for the composition of the Discourse, the critic Joan Bennett described the physician's excitement at this 'hit of fate' and archaeological discovery which fired his imagination, scholarship and creativity thus -

'he must have rejoiced when, ten years after he had completed his magnum opus, the discovery of the Urns at Old Walsingham offered him a subject so appropriate to his interest and gifts'.[4]

Browne describes the archaeological find as a 'hit of fate' and considered the unearthing of the Saxon-era urns to be opportune, prompting him to contemplate time and antiquity. The initial spark of an archaeological discovery kindled Browne's imagination and fired-up the full force of his literary creativity to write upon the themes of time, mortality and eternity.

Consulting Browne's contemporary, the seventeenth century lexicographer and dictionary-compilerHenry Blount's Glossographia assists ones enquiry further. Blount includes the words 'seasonable', 'opportune', 'appropriate' 'timely' and'tidy' to describe a singular, lucky orunlucky event . Indeed, a miniature Dictionary published circa 1900 in the author's possession has under the entryTidy, the definitions seasonable, clever, neat, spruce. Althoughthe English language has altered considerably in three and a half centuries,the word 'tidy' retains its original 'hit of fate' meaning as in the phrase, 'a tidy sum of money'. Placing our ‘hit of fate', adverb as descriptive of Browne's own 'hit of fate' we now have an opening sentence of ' I tidy.........'

The remaining letters in theword Hydriotaphia form a word utterly pertinent and central to the 'twin' Discourse's themes of death andrebirth - PHARAOH .

In Urn-Burial Browne condemns all monuments to the dead as vain-glory including those built by the Egyptian Pharaoh's. The Pyramid is however one of the primary 'conjoining' symbols of the Discourses, for in The Garden of Cyrus the Pyramid is alluded to on several occasions as an example of the eternal, Platonic shapes and evidence of intelligent design in art and nature. The Garden of Cyrus also attempts to define several archetypes, 'the wise ruler' notably in its titular hero but also Augustus, Alexander the Great, Moses and many others are cited as examples of this archetype, including the earliest 'wise ruler' of all, the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, who despite their folly of building pyramid mausoleums for themselves were also 'thrice-great' rulers of Egyptian society, holding the combined office of High Priest, Military leader and Law-giver.

Thesignificance of the hidden sentence within the word Hydriotaphia in context of the welter of esoteric literature published during the Protectorateof Cromwell cannot be ignored. Browne was a devoted Bibliophile who keptwell-abreast of the latest in book publications. He was both a modest and self -effacing physician who knew himself to also be a colossus of knowledge of European stature with the fame of his Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Observing the plethora ofesoteric literature published in thedecade of the Protectorate, Browne may well in his intellectual pride believed himself to be the opportune or 'tidy' Pharaoh of all those who purported to beprivy to Hermetic wisdom.

Thehidden anagram sentence - 'I, tidyPharaoh' - may have been inspired by Browne's knowledge that theantiquarian Elias Ashmole had published his Norwich acquaintance ArthurDee's alchemical collection Fasiculus Chemicus in 1650 under the anagram pseudonym ofJames Hassole (by subsitution of the letter J which is non-existent in Latinfor I). The frontispiece of Fasiculus Chemicus announced thatAshmole elected himself as 'the EnglishMercurius' and perhaps either as a gentle, playful rejoinder to Ashmole, or ina rare outburst of alter-ego, Browne proclaimed his own status in the Hermeticart under cover of an anagrammatic retort.

But perhaps in the final analysis it's the relationship between those who invent anagrams to their subject which is the most revealing to study. The ingenuity of devising phrases to describe someone from an exterior arrangement of alphabet letters.There certainly are some remarkable examples of anagrams made from famous names and Wikipedia offers an interesting history of the anagram and many amusing examples.

Browne himself was made the subject of an anagram, 'made and sent to me by my ever honoured friend Sir Philip Wodehouse'. Sir Philip Wodehouse ingeniously extracted from the latin of the name Doctor Thomas Brouenis the phrase, Ter Cordatus bonus homo which roughly translates as - 'the three-fold great man'.

Wodehouse's anagram is a brilliant allusion to alchemy's 'thrice-greatest' founding sage, Hermes Trismegistus, connecting the Norwich physician to Hermetic philosophy as well as illustrating the high esteem in which his contemporaries held him.

Of course, we'll never know absolutely for sure whether or not Browne coined the word Hydriotaphia as an anagram. Unless of course new evidence should surface. Nevertheless it's possible to extract a three word sentence from this curious word which makes allusion to a favourite study of Browne's, namely ancient Egypt and to fundamental themes of the discourses namely death and birth. It is also a bold statement made with characteristic humour of an alter-ego alias .

HYDRIOTAPHIA or I TIDY PHARAOH

Although this proposed deciphering of an anagram can never be fully proven, one is none the less reminded ofBrowne's observation-

'The Hand of Providence writes often by Abbreviatures, Hieroglyphics or short Characters, which...are not to be made out but by a Hint or Key from that Spirit which indited them'. [6]

Notes
[1] Anne Geneva - Astrology and the seventeenth century mind Manchester University Press 1995
[2] Examples of coded writing author's in Browne's library include Trithemius Polygraphia S.C. p.30 no. 17 and Blaise de Vigenere Tract du Feu & du Sal S.C. page 32 no.22
[3] 'Another kind of verticity, is that which Angelus doce mihi jua. alias Michael Sundevogius, in a Tract De Sulphure, discovereth in Vegetables...' Browne in Bk 2 chapter 3 of P.E.
[4] When Elias Ashmole published the alchemical writings of Browne's Norwich acquaintance, Arthur Dee, son of the elizabethan magus John Dee, he wrote under the anagrammatic pseudonym of James Hasholle (by substition of the inter-changability of the letters I/J )
[5] Joan Bennett Sir Thomas Browne Cambridge University Press 1962
[6] Christian Morals Part I Section 25

October

2011-10-09T14:17:00.000+01:00

Giovan Pietro Birago (c.1450-1513 ) was born in Milan. In 1490 he entered the service of the leading Venetian family, the Sforza. While illustrating a Book of Hours for the Sforza, his work was stolen. October is only one of three leaves which survived the theft. In 2004 the British Library acquired October for £191,000 adding it to their collection of illuminated miniatures by Birago.

October, a calendar leaf from the Sfzora Book of Hours dating from circa 1490, is a work of tempera and gold on parchment measuring 11 x 9 centimetres. In the medieval tradition of portraying the labours associated with each month it depicts peasants making wine in the background. Its foreground is dominated by horse-riding nobility engaged in hunting, accompanied by their servants, hounds and falcons.

Thomas Morley

2011-10-05T15:34:00.000+01:00

Music can draw the hearer in chains of gold to the consideration of holy things. - Thomas Morley

The 1711 Sales Catalogue of the library of Sir Thomas Browne records a copy of Thomas Morley's A Plaine and easie way to make Musicke (1597) as once resting on a book-shelf at the Norwich physician and philosopher's home. Morley's book remained in print for over 200 years and is a valuable document upon the music-making of his era.

From his humble background as the son of a Norwich brewer, Thomas Morley (1557-1602) rose to the heights of organist at Saint Paul's cathedral and was privileged to study music under William Byrd. Morley's era, the second half of the sixteenth century, saw a surge in music-making in England, in particular a near craze for the accomplishment of skilled lute-playing among gentlemen, especially courtiers. Morley's era also witnessed the popularity of secular verse sung to complex harmonies known as madrigals, of which he was a prominent composer. Morley's musical skills also catered for instrumental music-making when in 1599 he published The first book of Consort Lessons, arrangements of his and various other composer's music for broken consort; the six instruments of the broken consort consisting of lute, flute, bandora, cittern and two viols, bass and treble. The viol family of string instruments are precursors to the violin family. To modern ears a viol consort of three to five players, can sound slightly and deliciously 'creaky' with their wide compass of enharmonic overtones. Elizabethan music-making also included performances of the masque, an elaborate form of early theatre from which ballet and opera evolved. Masques were often performed at the Royal Court and involved singers and instruments. Lavishly produced, they featured spectacular costumes and stage-effects.

Thomas Morley

Morley's era was one in which the so-called 'Golden Age' of English music flourished. From roughly the 1560's until Purcell's death in 1695, English music developed and established a distinctive voice, a 'Golden Age' of musical talent which would not occur in England again until the second half of the 20th century. Besides Thomas Morley, other Elizabethan composers of note include 'the father of English music' William Byrd (1540-1623), the melancholic lutenist John Dowland (1563-1626) and the keyboard player Thomas Tomkins (1572 -1656) who incidentally, owned a signed copy of Morley's Plaine and easie way to make Musicke. Of the later Jacobean era, William Lawes (1602-43) and the industrious and pious John Jenkins (1592-1678) who may have been acquainted with Sir Thomas Browne when resident in Norfolk, are all rewarding to listen to. Today, with the revival of interest in music which pre-dates J.S. Bach, the early music composers of England are frequently recorded and performed. There's much in the catalogue of early English music well worth hearing, including Morley's madrigals along with his First book of Consort Lessons.

One wonders whether Morley played any part in the music-making festivities when Queen Elizabeth I visited Norwich in 1578. A contemporary reported of her visit -

Herewith she passed under the gate.....and the musicians within the gate, upon their soft instruments, used broken musick...The next night...there was an excellent princely mask brought before her after supper, by Master Goldingham, in the Privie Chamber; it was of gods and goddesses, both strangely and richly apparelled...Then entered a consort of musicke; viz. six musicians, all in long vestures of white scarcenet girded about them, and garlands on their heads, playing very cunningly.

Queen Elizabeth's 'Royal Progress' to Norwich in 1578 is included in the English composer Benjamin Britten's opera Gloriana which was written in the year of Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation in 1953. Act Two of Britten's opera is set against the back-drop of the Guildhall at Norwich. Elizabeth I is welcomed by the City Recorder and then a masque is performed which she and the Royal court watch. Six dances, including a Morris dance are performed. Personifications of Time and Concord are among the principle characters in the masque who, accompanied by a chorus of rustic country maids and fishermen conclude the entertainment with a homage to the Queen.

It was a neat device of Benjamin Britten's to include a visit to Norwich by 'good Queen Bess' in his opera Gloriana. It must be nearly 40 years ago now, when a teen-age school-boy, if I remember rightly, that our rehearsal of Noye's Fludde, a medieval mystery play set to music by Benjamin Britten was interrupted. It was the composer himself, who dropped in to thank the boys and girls for all their hard work rehearsing his work. Britten's cantata for mixed ensemble of amateurs was first performed in Orford church in June 1958, the composer insisting that no future performances were to be made in a theatre, but only ever in churches or Halls.

Its worth noting that Browne's edition of Morley's primer on music (Sales Catalogue Page 45 number 47) is a first edition when in fact a modern edition could have been easily acquired, evidence of Browne being the consummate bibliophile and collector of rare books. One cannot resist noting that the frontispiece illustration to Morley's book (pictured above) depicts not only the various muses associated with music and learning, but also the sun and moon as deities. Finally, also at the very bottom of the frontispiece illustration holding a staff-like caduceus, there can be seen the elusive god of travel and communication, ruler of traders and thieves alike and patron of alchemy, Mercurius.

Robin

2011-09-29T17:47:00.000+01:00

Enjoying the late return of Summer for several cloudless days now, with the temperature touching 27 degrees Celsius, I spotted a Robin in my garden. They really are exceptionally tame birds. For a full 20 minutes he hopped back and forth from fence to ground in search of food, occasionally singing, curious at my watching him. The secret to observing nature's wonders is quite simply stillness and silence, two commodities in increasingly short supply in the world today.

William Lawes

2011-09-24T09:35:00.002+01:00

Today (September 24th) is the anniversary of the death of the English composer William Lawes (1602-43). William Lawes was composer in residence to King Charles I and during the English civil war he enlisted in the Royal army; however in 1643 he was shot and killed during the siege of Chester, aged just 41. Lawes death prompted King Charles I to declare a period of mourning and to honour him with the title of 'Father of Musick'. William Lawes is chiefly remembered today for his Viol Consort Setts for 5 & 6 viols, his music being characterized by lyricism, a wide variety of keys, experimental harmonies and varied moods.

One of Lawes last works was a fantasy on a penitential psalm entitled, 'I am weary of my groaning'. With William Lawes death English music lost potentially one its greatest composers. However his Consort Setts are today frequently recorded and performed, notably by Fretwork, the foremost musicians associated with the revival of music for viols.

Go to itunes to hear a recommended sample of William Lawes, from Sett no. 1 the Paven in G minor (7' 05") as performed by Fretwork .

Michael Jarvis

2011-09-20T19:17:00.000+01:00

Today the sad news that Michael Jarvis, one of Newmarket's top race-horse trainers for 40 years has died aged 73 of cancer. The master of Kremlin House Stables began training race-horses way back in 1968; his major wins include Eswarah winning the Oaks in 2005, Ameerat winning the 1000 Guineas in 2001, Holding Court winning the French Derby in 2000, Rakti winning the Prince of Wales Stakes and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and Carroll House winning Europe's most prestigious race, the Prix de l' Arc de Triumphe in 1989. He also won big Group 1 races in Italy, Germany, France and the Topkapi Cup in Istanbul, Turkey.

Michael Jarvis was first and foremost a real gentleman, modest and soft-spoken. I had the pleasure of congratulating him at Yarmouth race-track in August 2007, with the first time out win of Ancien Regime, a 2 year old owned by Sheikh Mohammed. Jarvis belongs to a generation of true sportsmen, highly successful as a race-horse trainer for decades and much respected in the Flat horse-racing world.

Here's a photo of Jarvis with his long-serving 'in-house' jockey Philip Robinson in the parade ring at Yarmouth race-track on a cold April day in 2008.

Vitruvian Man

2011-09-19T19:27:00.000+01:00

Recently, when speculating upon whether the German mystic Hildegard von Bingen's manuscript illustration of Universal Man is in any way related to the Italian artist Leonardo Da Vinci's well-known image of Vitruvian man, I found that Sir Thomas Browne once owned a book entitled L'Architettura di Vitruvio (Venice 1641) complete with a commentary by the Italian humanist Daniele Barbaro (1514-1570) [1]. But in fact its highly improbable that the writings of Vitruvius could have been re-discovered in Germany in the 12th century, the rediscovery of Vitruvius usually being credited to the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini in 1414. It was Vitruvius who noted of the proportions of the human body that-

Just so the parts of Temples should correspond with each other, and with the whole. The navel is naturally placed in the centre of the human body, and, if in a man lying with his face upward, and his hands and feet extended, from his navel as the centre, a circle be described, it will touch his fingers and toes. It is not alone by a circle, that the human body is thus circumscribed, as may be seen by placing it within a square. For measuring from the feet to the crown of the head, and then across the arms fully extended, we find the latter measure equal to the former; so that lines at right angles to each other, enclosing the figure, will form a square. [2]

It's quite possible that Browne also once owned books by Italian Renaissance painters, including those of Da Vinci. The 1711 Sales Catalogue advertises Books of Sculpture and Painting with choice manuscripts for sale, but as the American scholar and editor J.S. Finch noted, no such books arrived at the auction-house having mysteriously disappeared.

It's in Plato's philosophical discourse the Symposium that the idea of an original, androgynous, double-natured man can be found -

The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word "Androgynous" is only preserved as a term of reproach. In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast. Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;-and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and round: like their parents.

while in Sir Thomas Browne's discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) one reads-

Nor is the same observable only in some parts, but in the whole body of man, which upon the extension of arms and legges, doth make out a square, whose intersection is at the genitals. To omit the phantastical Quincunx, in Plato of the first Hermaphrodite or double man, united at the Loynes, which Jupiter after divided.

Plato's Original Man bears some resemblance to the Biblical account in Genesis in which God, taking a rib from Adam when asleep, forms a companion for him, naming her Eve. (Gen.2: 21-22)

Nevertheless an interesting correpondence between the geometrical design of Hildegard's Universal Man and Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man is evident; while Sir Thomas Browne's own highly original interpretation of the Platonic archetypes can be detected throughout The Garden of Cyrus

[1] 1711 Sales Catalogue page 39 no.18
[2] Vitruvius - On Architecture Book 3, i, 3

Hildegard von Bingen

2011-09-17T09:30:00.000+01:00

Today (September 17th) is the feast day of the German Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen (1098 -1197 ) who not only wrote music but was also a poetess, theologian, a Benedictine Abbess and all round polymath. The Sibyl of the Rhine as she was known, was consulted by princes, popes and emperors for her prophetic insight. Like Julian of Norwich, Hildegard experienced serious illness before receiving her visions.

It was the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung who remarked -

The creative mystic was ever a cross for the church, but it is to him that we owe what is best in humanity.

Jung might have added and her as far as Christian mystics are concerned for many notable women mystics are recorded throughout the history of Christianity. Recently, feminist interest in Hildegard has also grown, as has her place in 'New Age' philosophies for her holistic approach to life.

The above picture entitled Motherhood from the Spirit and the Water dates from 1165. It's an extremely intriguing quaternity of images conveying a certain numinous quality of Hildgard's mystical experiences and shares in my view, an affinity with the Layer Monument quaternity.

The other image worth pondering upon in Hildegard's art is her Universal Man, an illumination from her Liber Divinorum Operum (1165). To my mind its an image which strongly suggests that perhaps Hildegard had the opportunity to read of the so-called Vitruvian man of antiquity, the human proportional representation which Leonardo Da Vinci based his own famous image upon. Essentially a vision of the Anthropos, or Greater Man within, of which Christ remains the most potent living symbol of; Hildegard can be seen in the bottom left corner, receiving and writing her vision.

But with mystics one can never be too confident there was ever a previous vision to the original one presented. However, universal and cosmic, Hildegard von Bingen and her Christian faith has endured, nine centuries on, to speak deeply of the spiritual life. The mystic, as ever, has the last word on the soul.

There's been a renaissance in recordings of Hildegard's music in the past two decades, I particularly like Richard Souther's pop music interpretation Vision (1995) with Emily van Evera singing. Hildegard's music has been considerably modernized on this recording, complete with multi-tracking and synthesizers but nevertheless its a very inexpensive buy on Amazon and a great introduction and reinterpretation. I used some of its tracks as interludes when first acting as Sir Thomas Browne in the church of Saint John the Baptist, Maddermarket in December 1996.

A more traditional approach to Hildegard's music is A Feather on the Breath of God with Emma Kirkby and Gothic Voices (Hyperion 2000). But there's a bewildering range of recording available in the catalogue at present, a veritable mine-field of good and uninspired interpretations of Hildegard's music.

Here's the link to the Wikipedia entry on Hildegard von Bingen

Joseph Stannard

2011-09-13T17:40:00.001+01:00

Today is the birth-date of Joseph Stannard, the Norwich artist who died tragically young of tuberculosis aged just 33. Joseph Stannard ( Sept. 13th 1797- Dec. 5th 1830) was one of the most gifted artists who exhibited collectively under the banner of Norwich School from 1803 to 1833, the city being the home of the first regional art movement in British art. Such was the precocious development of the young Joseph that he began exhibiting his paintings aged 14 in 1811. He looks confident and aware of his talents in his teacher Robert Ladbrooke's portrait of him.

Joseph Stannard is exemplary of the romantic notion of a struggling artist. Living in the turbulent era of the early nineteenth century, he was often in financial difficulties and in poor health. In addition to his artistic skills Stannard was, like his younger brother Alfred, a strong rower. He was also an accomplished ice-skater who entertained the locals with his skill during cold winters. Stannard's era was also that of the Napoleonic wars which were prohibitive to travel in mainland Europe. When stability returned to Europe, Stannard took the opportunity to visit Holland. In Amsterdam in 1821 he viewed paintings by seventeenth century Dutch landscape masters Ruisdael, Berchem and Hobbema which deepened his interest in marine and seascape subjects. He married in 1822 and in 1824 his fortune changed when the Norwich manufacturer John Harvey commissioned him to paint what is his master-work, Thorpe Water Frolic, Afternoon. Harvey's agenda was to establish Norwich as a sea-port for the export of his merchandise. After visiting Venice and witnessing festivities held on the water there he organised a similar event for Norwich society which promoted his idea of Norwich returning to its sea-port status.

In many ways Stannard's Thorpe Water Frolic is an important social document of a rare day off work for Norwich's textile workers who are depicted upon the right bank of the river Yare. The growing middle-class, civic dignitaries and aristocracy of Georgian England are located on the opposite river-bank.

Joseph Stannard has used a fair amount of poetic licence in his capturing the mood of the event, complete with musicians playing Schubert, courting couples, naval officers, rugged seamen and city loom workers all enjoying a work-free day on the river. Particular attention to weather conditions and a vigorous cloudscape frames the lively water-event.

Stannard's own boat the Cytherea is on the extreme right of the canvas. Joseph can be seen shielding his brow with his hand looking toward his patron Harvey standing in a gondola. He certainly entered into the spirit of the event which attracted 20,000 people in 1824, his boat is described thus-

'its colour is purple; the inside is adorned with an elegant gilt scroll, which completely encircles it; on the back-board where the coxswain sits, is a beautiful and spirited sea-piece, representing a stiff breeze at sea, with vessels sailing in various directions, painted in oils, and the spoons of the oars are neatly covered with gilt dolphins'.

There's an interesting inter-play between Stannard the sailor who depicted the rigging and canvas sails of boats with every rope in its correct place and the medium of canvas on which he painted. Thorpe Water Frolic, Afternoon is dominated by a canvas sail catching the breeze. The large-scale oil on canvas painting itself measures 108 x 172 cms and is a jewel in the crown of the Crome and Cotman galleries in Norwich Castle Museum.

Although the artists of the Norwich School had the inspiration and natural beauty of the Norfolk landscape and its waterways upon their door-step, the tragedy many artists suffered from was a distinct lack of local patronage, obliging many talented members to engage in much drudging, teaching work in order to make a living, such was J.J.Cotman's frequent fate; worse still, it also suffered from an intense rivalry between leading families. Ever since the young Joseph Stannard had enquired about lessons from the founding father of the Norwich School 'Old Crome' John Crome (1768-1821) a bitter hostility existed between the two families. Crome quoted an extortionate sum which was in effect a snub to the Stannard family. The hostility between the Crome and Stannard families seems to have raged throughout the nineteenth century, even to the grandchildren of the two masters of 'Old Crome' and Stannard, both families producing several generations of artists.

In some respects Joseph Stannard's biography comes across as the consumptive poet of romanticism not unlike Keats, and in his finest paintings, Stannard like a Romantic poet in artistic expression, bursts beyond the confines of restrained Classicism into a lyrical, early Romanticism.There's an equal balance between landscape and realistic portraiture of people who are active and integral to the landscape in Stannard's painting, unlike Crome's landscapes in which people are often incidental or present only for emphasis of scale and perspective .

Throughout the 1820's Stannard had intermittent bouts of poor health and resided at various Norfolk coastal resorts in order to recuperate. His later works include several highly original beach scenes which include activities of working fishermen. However in December of 1830 he died of tuberculosis aged 33. A memorial stone commemorating Joseph Stannard can be seen in the church of Saint John Maddermarket, Norwich.

Wikipedia has a page on Joseph Stannard which links to a number of his paintings.

Ascension

2011-09-12T14:06:00.000+01:00

Living in a city which has more medieval churches anywhere north of the Alps and rich in other cultural treasures, it's easy to overlook some art-work in Norwich's churches. It's not all entirely medieval here in Norwich, at the church of Saint Margaret for example, there's an east window commissioned in the 1960's and utterly 60's in style, depicting the Ascension of Christ. A refreshing change from the garish colours of Victorian stained-glass in many churches.

The Norwich organisation HEART (Heritage Economic Regeneration Trust) a charitable body, promoted four 'Open Days' from September 8 -11 to celebrate the City's extraordinary rich cultural heritage. Held every September the 'Open Days' make accessible some historic buildings not always open to the general public. HEART's annual event grows in popularity each year, as I and a small army of volunteers will testify, after a hectic four days of meeting and greeting literally hundreds of visitors.

It's time to take stock of Norwich's cultural heritage. The public support and interest in the city's cultural heritage is strong and enthusiastic. However this support can never be matched economically in full by public donation alone. Really not until government or local council designates a greater value and percentage of tax or rates towards regional heritage will the future of many historical buildings in Norwich be guaranteed. Although the whole world cannot thrive upon the growing tourist industry, Norfolk and Norwich in particular could gain enormously if highlighted as a tourist destination, including the creation of new jobs. The shortage of hotel space for visitors which Norwich once suffered from has now been remedied by several new large hotels while HEART's recent 'twinning' with the city of Ghent could well provide further insights into how to effectively develop a tourist economy.

The problem in reality is one which not only haunts Norwich but England as a whole, as the recent riots demonstrated. It's one of identity and self-confidence, who we are, how we address the world and how we wish the world to view us. Norwich is a city rich in tourist attractions and mellow in atmosphere, but which cannot at present either decide or is lacking funding between the following - a faster and more efficient travel connection to London, which is feared will somehow erode the city's character - the construction of a new Northern bypass causing some serious local ecological damage - or the development and expansion of routes from its airport, enhancing its continental connections. Its not seen as possible to have both a Northern by-pass and extended runways for a larger airport. Each of these projects, delayed or otherwise, impact considerably upon the city's future. Norwich's geographical location, as much of its cultural past indicates, lays very much towards the North-sea board of Europe, its historic past is intimately connected with the Baltic ports, the Benelux coast-line and even remoter parts of Europe. These geographic locations may ultimately be the source of Norwich's future economic well-being. Governments however, especially the present-day Euro-sceptic's, may influence the future otherwise. Norwich's true, radical identity is revealed by it's motto, which is Do Different. Whether the city will live up to its motto in the future is another matter.

For myself the Heritage week-end gave me the chance to create a few of my own modest events including the opportunity to talk on the Layer Monument and a demonstration of the marvellous acoustical properties of the church of Saint John Maddermarket. Connecting my ipod to an amplifier which in turn was connected to two 75 watt PA horn speakers placed high up in the organ gallery, when playing recordings of organ music by Pachelbel, Jehan Alain and Arvo Part, some visitors believed they were hearing a newly restored church organ!

I met many interesting people throughout the four open days and was amazed at the knowledge displayed by many on Norwich's cultural history. I also slowly began to realise as the four days progressed, that in many ways the greater part of Norwich's cultural heritage is to be found not so much in its stone and art-work but in its people, both living and deceased.

P.S. Extensively restored at great cost in 2007, the 17th century Berney Monument remains as elusive as ever to view. I've lived in Norwich my entire life and have yet to see it. Although advertised as viewable from 10-4 p.m. on Saturday the church of Saint Peter Parmentergate was locked up by 1 p.m. !

The Berney monument is of particular interest having like the Layer Monument, a quaternity of statuettes in this case allegorical figures of Faith, Hope, Charity and a winged Father Time.

Links to -

Norwich HEART

Norfolk Stained Glass

Saint John Maddermarket

Mushroom

2011-09-04T16:11:00.002+01:00

Evidence that the seasons are early and that the past two months have been wet with sunshine hours below average has now surfaced in my garden. As with everything else in nature, mushrooms are early in season this year. They need quite specific humidity and warmth in order to grow. Mushrooms, like human-beings consist approximately of 90% water. It's only however, the surfacing fruit of the mushroom which is visible. Vast networks of mycelium spores can grow underground spreading dozens of acres and living for centuries; the entire network can have more inter-connections in total than the cells and synapses of a human brain.

As every observer of the British weather knows, this year's weather has been a story of two halves. An incredibly warm, dry and often cloudless April and May followed by an often wet, cloudy and cool June, July and August. Meteorological statistics now reveal the summer of 2011 to be the coolest summer in 19 years, since 1992.

What happened to the mushroom ? Well, after two days it grew into a 5" in diameter pan-shape, an uncanny signature of its final destiny, the frying-pan. Accompanied by onion and egg, it was delicious!

La Strada

2011-08-31T20:45:00.010+01:00

La Strada by the Italian film-director Federico Fellini (1920-93) is the story of the relationship between strong-man performer Zampano (Anthony Quinn) and his assistant Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina). It's the film which won the first ever Oscar for Best Foreign Language in 1954 and in which Fellini subtly side-steps the agenda of Italian Neo-realism to develop his own unique perspective upon human nature.

Zampano, arriving at a remote coastal hovel, offers 10,000 lira to Gelsomina's impoverished mother to take her daughter away with him. Together Zampano and Gelsomina traverse Italy on a motor-cycle caravan making a meagre living by Zampano's performing a strong-man act in which, expanding his chest he breaks apart the links of an iron chain. However Zampano is also an unfeeling bully who, although training Gelsomina as his assistant, treats her little better, if not worse than a dog, speaking little and expressing no feelings towards her. Yet Gelsomina endures her cruel treatment, having no other person, home or income. When she and Zampano join the Circus troop of one Senior Giraffa, the real tragedy begins to unfold; soon during their brief time as circus performers, they encounter the Fool, a daring tight-rope walker with an unexplained antipathy toward Zampano. The Fool admits that he himself does not know the reason behind his dislike of Zampano and with a frequently irritating giggle needlessly taunts and ridicules him. The Fool's teasing of Zampano leads to tragic consequences upon the lives and destiny of all three central characters.

It's been suggested that the character of the Fool is a voice-piece for Fellini who experienced a serious clinical depression during the production of La Strada, in particular the romantic heart-to-heart moment when the Fool confesses to Gelsomina -

Everything has a purpose. I don’t know the purpose of this stone, I’d have to be God to know that. But it has one. Because if it’s useless all is useless, even the stars.

In contrast to the Fool's sensitivity and understanding of human nature (except his own) the brutish Zampano when finally pressed by Gelsomina about the contents of his inner life boorishly declares - there's nothing to think about.

Fellini’s La Strada (The Road) is unusual in its casting of two American actors, starring Anthony Quinn (1915-2001) as the bomber jacket clad, motor-biking strong-man Zampano and Richard Basehart (1914-84) as the enigmatic Fool. But it is the Italian actress Giulietta Masina (1921-1994) as the innocent dreamer Gelsomina who steals the limelight. Masina's rapid, highly expressive and fluent facial features speak swifter than words throughout the film. As the unloved and maltreated Gelsomina, Giulietta Masina, with a nod towards Charlie Chaplin's world-famous tramp, creates her own clown-like pathos. Masina who was Fellini's wife for fifty years, spoke of the English-born comic genius and Hollywood's first superstar thus -

‘Chaplin deeply moves me. My husband and I cannot watch any of his films in it entirety. We are always so stirred that we have to leave the theatre before the end of the projection. He’s a great artist. He saw our film in England and declared during a press conference that Gelsomina was his spiritual daughter’.

The back-drop to La Strada includes shots not only of Italy's varied landscape but also of the numerous modern apartment blocks springing up in new suburbs throughout Italy at the time. It's against the back-drop of a desolate mezzo-montano landscape that Zampano finally abandons Gemolina to her fate, even though she is seriously mentally traumatized by events. For many years after making La Strada both Federico Fellini and his wife Guiletta Masina would regularly receive fan-mail from women who declared their lives and destinies were similar to those of Gelsomina or of being trapped in a loveless relationship with a Zampano-like person.

The soundtrack to La Strada is composed by Fellini's life-time musical collaborator, Nino Rota (1911-1979) who also composed the soundtrack to The Godfather. Nino's score is not merely incidental, but integral to the film and features some very modern-sounding Mambo-style music in a cafe scene, in which Zampano abandons Gelsomina for a one-night affair, collecting her from the street the next morning without a word of explanation for his behaviour. It's the Fool who teaches Gelsomina to play a slightly melancholy melody upon the trumpet. Not wanting to state spoilers, Gelsomina's poignant trumpet tune lives on to become a sharp prick upon Zampano's conscience, haunting him when hearing it several years later. The importance of this melodic theme for the actress Gulietta Masina can be gauged by the fact that when Fellini died at the age of 73, a day after their fiftieth wedding anniversary, she requested the theme music of La Strada entitled Improvviso dell'Angelo by Nino Rota to be played during her husband's funeral ceremony held in Rome.

Shortly after making La Strada Fellini became fascinated with his own inner world of dream imagery which subsequently became a rich fuel for his creativity. He also began to take an interest in parapsychology and the psychology of Carl Jung, reading his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963). Fellini once stated-

In dreams there is nothing without significance. Every image therefore also has significance in the film. There is no such thing as coincidence, there is nothing unwanted, extraneous in a dream. Nothing is without significance. Each colour, each picture means something, nothing has been put there in order to resemble reality, or in order to copy something pre-existent. This is the thing that gives film its heraldic, aristocratic identity, which puts it on a level with all other forms of art.

Along with a growing interest in dreams, parapsychology and the psychology of C.G. Jung, Fellini in 1964, under the supervision of his analyst, experimented with the drug LSD. For many years he was reserved about what happened to him one Sunday afternoon after ingesting LSD, however in 1992 a year before his death, Fellini spoke of his experience thus-

'objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself, the hell of forms and figures devoid of human emotion and detached from the reality of my unreal environment. I was an instrument in a virtual world that constantly renewed its own meaningless image in a living world that was itself perceived outside of nature. And since the appearance of things was no longer definitive but limitless, this paradisical awareness freed me from the reality external to my self. The fire and the rose, as it were, became one.

The leisurely pace of La Strada, surely one of the earliest of all 'Road-Movies', allows Fellini to introduce curious scenarios and settings which anticipate his predilection for dream-imagery, the surreal and even the grotesque in his later films. Examples of Fellini's 'dream-imagery' are abundant throughout 8½ (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Satyricon (1969) and in Roma (1972). The near-obsessive excesses of Fellini's dream-imagery are manifest in less critically acclaimed films such as his homage to Casanova (1976).

Fellini's La Strada goes beyond the constraints of Italian neo-realist cinema with its insistence upon realistic depiction of the lives of ordinary, working-class Italians struggling in the economic conditions of post-war Italy. Fellini's portrait of the socio-path Zampano and the weak and indecisive Gelsomina, shifts far from the rigid agenda of Italian neo-realism into the realm of psychological portraiture and motivations of the psyche. But above all else La Strada besides including a sometimes disturbing pathology of a man who is unable to express his feelings, explores the mystery of love and the deep need inside the human soul to both give and receive love.

The Maias

2011-08-21T17:40:00.010+01:00

The Portuguese novelist Eca de Queiroz's vast novel The Maias (Episodes from Romantic Life) first published in 1888, chronicles the life and fortunes of one of Portugal’s most distinguished families, the Maias. As such it offers a portrait of upper-class Portuguese society from circa 1820 to 1887, centering specifically upon the life and times of its protagonist, Carlos da Maia.

Carlos da Maia is lovingly nutured by his grandfather Afonso da Maia. Upon coming of age he leads the life of a privileged Portuguese aristocrat. Crucial to the story is the fact that Carlos is the last in lineage of the ancient family of da Maia. Admired by his good-looks, his fine English thoroughbred horses and impeccable taste, Carlos da Maia eventually chooses to study medicine in order to become a doctor, however he is invariably distracted from advancing himself in his profession by love, social events, his many friends and his essentially weak nature.

Much of the novel’s broad canvas of 700 pages is a near seamless procession of glittering balls, poetry recitals, nights at the theatre and opera house, dinner parties and evening soirées which Carlos gaily attends. There's also a great deal of drinking - Port, Champagne, Cognac and wine flow in abundance as well as much fine cuisine and dining throughout the novel. More often than not Carlos is pre-occupied with a love-affair and in finding accommodation, selecting furniture and interior decoration suitable for a tasteful boudoir for romantic trysts with his mistress. It's only towards the novel’s conclusion that a devastating revelation occurs shattering the lives of both Carlos and Afonso da Maia. The ramifications and aftermath of this revelation profoundly alters the lives of both Da Maia's and brings the novel to its tragic conclusion.

Counterbalancing the essentially tragic tale there's a strain of quite subtle humour coursing through The Maias. The novel also includes a revealing chapter which describes the events of a horse-race meeting in which the love–hate relationship of the Portuguese towards the English is explored. De Queiroz makes cultural comparative humour about both Portugal and England thus-

The Maquis….. continued to inveigh against Portugal. ..'This is a country fit only for picnics and funfairs. Horse-races, like many other civilized pastimes, they enjoy abroad, require, first and foremost, an educated public. Basically, we’re nothing but thugs ! What we like is cheap wine, a bit of guitar music, a good brawl, and plenty of back-slapping bonhomie afterwards ! That’s how it is !'

* * * * *

‘… the national anthem is the musical definition of a nation’s character. The rhythm of a country’s national anthem is, he says, the moral rhythm of the nation… The “Marseilles” marches forth like an unsheathed sword. “God save the Queen” advances, dragging a royal train…’

‘And ours?’

‘Ours minces along in a tailcoat’.

* * * *

‘And tell me something else,’ Senhor Sousa Neto went on, full of interest and curiousity . ‘In England, do they have the same pleasing literature we have here, writers of serials and important poets?’

Carlos placed the stub of his cigar in the ashtray and replied shamelessly:

‘No, no, there’s none of that.’

‘I thought as much,’ said Sousa Neto. ‘They’re all businessmen over there, I suppose’.

Eca de Queiroz (1845-1900) began writing The Maias in 1878 while resident in England when living in Bristol and took over ten years to complete it. An English translation of his masterpiece was not published until 1965. Margaret Jull Costa's acclaimed translation of De Queiroz's great novel highlights its full stature as a work of world literature and captures well the witty dialogue, eccentric characters and social foibles of Portuguese upper-class as described by Queiroz.

The Maias is a portrait not only of the moral decline of its protagonist, Carlos da Maia, but also by implication, in its depiction of inept politicians, petty bureaucrats and dilettantism in high places, the moral decline of nineteenth century Portugal itself. Not unlike Querioz's novel The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers (unpublished in his life-time) The Maias offers the reader a portrait of upper-class Portuguese society with a back-drop of a passionate love-affair, only to deliver a devastating revelation late in the novel, which colours and shapes its tragic conclusion.

Eca de Querioz has been compared to Balzac for his sharp eye on human nature, to Marcel Proust for his description of the prejudices of upper-class society, and to Flaubert for his realism. In fact Queiroz greatly admired Flaubert for his development of Naturalism in writing. Yet, as Margaret Jull Costa points out in her excellent introduction to the 2007 Daedlus edition of Querioz’s masterpiece, The Maias fluctuates between sympathy and stern judgement towards its protagonist and floats ambiguously between Naturalism and Romanticism in style and content. Its this undefinable stance, somewhere between a harsh portrait of the cruel reality of life and romantic idealism which imbues The Maias with a quite unique sensibility.

Eca de Queroz’s masterpiece is a novel which deserves to be much better-known, and it probably shall in time, due to Costa's decisive translation which showcases De Queiroz as a literary figure equal to his contemporaries, Tolstoy and Dickens. The real tragedy is no longer the moral decline of Portugal, but the neglect by western readers, translators and publishers alike, of a major nineteenth century novelist.

* * * *

Post top picture - The front cover of the Dedalus paperback edition of The Maias (2007) reproduces a portrait of an aristocratic French woman by the French painter Ingres. Closer in geography, unable to find a striking Portuguese portrait, but having enjoyed viewing it at Dublin National Gallery, this post is headed by a portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate, an actress painted by Goya cica 1805.

Stargazer Lily and Sonnet

2011-08-10T16:12:00.002+01:00

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in ordour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell.
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Sir Joseph Paine Monument

2011-08-07T16:12:00.010+01:00

Located in the church of Saint Gregory's, Norwich, there's an extraordinary late 17th century monument consisting of black limestone and alabaster which is adorned with high relief carvings.

The monument commemorates the life of Joseph Paine (1605-73) who was a staunch Royalist during the English civil war. Upon the Restoration of Monarchy in 1660 Joseph Paine, on behalf of the citizens of Norwich, presented £1000 in gold to King Charles II. He was immediately knighted and made Colonel of the City Regiment.

Paine's monument is quite unique in its depiction of various military accoutrements, all of which are carved in deep relief including- armoury, sword, stirrups, trumpet and drum, gunpowder kegs, cannon-balls and cannon. Each of these images allude to Paine's military position as Colonel of the City regiment.

One gains a better perspective of the relief-depth of the monument's carvings when close and looking upwards.

At the base of the monument is a winged and crowned skull symbolizing Death's victory over all human endeavour and Immortality.

Mats Ek's Swan Lake

2011-08-02T11:30:00.007+01:00

The Swedish choreographer Mats Ek's radical reinterpretation of Swan Lake places an emphasis upon the male dancer Prince Siegfried in a Hamlet-like role. Mats Ek (b. 1945) became the artistic director of the Cullberg Dance company in 1985, succeeding his mother, Brigid Cullberg. Mats Ek's great re-working of ballet classics include Giselle (1982) Swan Lake (1987) and Carmen (1992). The opening sequence in Ek's Swan Lake showcases the brilliant talent of the Cullenberg's male lead dancer in what must be one of the most astounding male dance sequences ever choreographed, but the entire work itself is a fusion of highly original modern dance with traditional ballet.

Eks' Swan Lake was broadcast on the BBC in the early 1990's I believe; after possessing a videotape copy lovingly transferred onto DVD disc many years later, I still can't work-out why the Cullberg company's highly original and often amusing ballet, a landmark in modern dance, is not available on DVD.

Aquarium of Dance
Wiki- links - Mats Ek

Swan Lake

Frankel

2011-07-27T16:41:00.006+01:00

Ridden by Tom Queally, trained by Sir Henry Cecil and owned by Prince Khalid Abdullah, Frankel wins the Sussex Stakes at Goodwood, making a strike rate of 8 wins from 8 races ! Frankel's other big wins include - the Juddmonte (aged 2 in 2010) and this year the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket and the Saint James Palace Stakes at Ascot. After Frankel's win Sir Henry Cecil stated on camera that he was probably the best horse he had ever trained. Frankel is now being compared to racing legends such as Shergar and Sea the Stars.

Postscript: Nine out of nine as Frankel wins the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot on October 15th 2011.

Goodwood Races

2011-07-27T12:00:00.006+01:00

Racehorses owned by the Duke of Richmond exercising at Goodwood 1759

Because of its setting, Goodwood race-course is often described as the most scenic of all race-courses; from the Grandstand there is a superb view of the rolling Sussex Downs landscape. Day two of the five day Glorious Goodwood meeting includes the much anticipated match between two horses at the peak of their powers, 'Frankel', trained by the recently knighted Sir Henry Cecil and 'Canford Cliffs', trained by Richard Hannon. Although the weather forecast is none too brilliant I'm sure that the meeting will be awash with classy fashion, Pimms and the tradition of free strawberries. As ever the meeting is being broadcast by the excellent team of Channel 4 Racing.

As stated before, in many ways horse-racing was until the advent of football in the 20th century, the true national sport of England. For centuries the best thoroughbred horse-racing in the world was held in England, ever since the introduction of three Arabian stallions in 1759.

British horse-racing remains greatly indebted to three major Arabian sponsors, namely Sheikh Mohammed, his brother Hamdan-Al-Maktoum and Prince Khalid Abdullah. Without their patronage for over 30 years now, horse-racing in England would have been a much less exciting affair, with smaller, inferior quality fields. It's in no way guaranteed that these wealthy Arabian horse owners will continue to send their very best horses to England for training. The high quality horse-racing which the English public enjoy throughout both the Flat and National Hunt season is seriously threatened. Because of poor management, weak sponsorship and prize money, along with a sometimes indifferent to all but profit betting industry, horse-racing in England is in serious decline. Other nations continue to develop blood-lines and breeding stock to match those of English stud-breeding. Other sports compete with horse-racing for gambling and spectator participation. As with life itself, there is no absolute guarantee that the present-day status quo will continue especially during the present-day economic depression. Even though attendances continue to rise at race-meetings, the industry continues to decline because of the aforementioned factors.

The sport of horse-racing is highly conscious of its public image and at present the spotlight is on the jockey's whip and whether its use should continue. There are already strict rules about how frequently the whip may be used. With video-recording every aspect of a jockey's ride can be analysed and judged by the stewards. Those who accuse the sport of animal cruelty have little idea of the loving care and attention each and every horse in training receives from stable-staff, trainer and jockey. As ever its a case of wanting to score a point in political correctness, or in this case, animal welfare, without any real understanding of the high quality of care and enthusiasm of the sport throughout the horse-racing industry.

View of Sussex Downs at Goodwood

Evening Cloudscape

2011-07-25T14:20:00.001+01:00

He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow
Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-piled,
The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west,
Like herded elephants; nor felt,nor pressed
Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumbrous air;

from John Keats (1795-1821) Endymion Book 1 lines 285-290

The Man in the Moon

2011-07-21T16:30:00.012+01:00

The man in the moon came tumbling down

And asked his way to Norwich;

He went by the south and burnt his mouth

With supping cold pease porridge.

It's quite surprising these days just how many Norvicensians are unfamiliar with this medieval 'Mother Goose' nursery rhyme. But what's far more interesting is the fact that the 15th century 'Norwich School' stained glass at the Norfolk church of St Mary at Burnham Deep, (above) is one of the oldest representations of 'the man in the moon' extant in the world. The glass [1] was in all probability painted by a skilled member of the 'Norwich school' who may well have known of the nursery rhyme. In any event its quite an androgynous, heavy-lidded and sleepy-looking moon face. It's also believed that originally this quite unique depiction of 'the man in the moon' would have been accompanied by a crucifixion scene together with a sun representing a face.

The man in the moon is puzzled over by the poet John Lyly (1553-1606) in the prologue to his Endymion (1591) who stated- There liveth none under the sunne, that knows what to make of the man in the moone.

From the invention and use of the telescope by Galileo (1562 -1642) among others, speculation in the 17th century upon whether the moon was inhabited and the mapping of its surface, rocketed astronomically. Sometime in the 1620's Bishop Francis Godwin (1566-1633) wrote a book entitled The Man in the Moon which argued how a voyage to the moon is no more fantastic than a voyage to America was once earlier. Godwin proposed that the earth is magnetic and that only an initial push would be necessary to escape its magnetic attraction. When on the moon Godwin discovers it to be inhabited by tall Christians living in a pastoral paradise. Godwin's book influenced John Wilkins (1614-72) to pen his A Discovery of a new world in the Moon (1638). But its to the credit of the Dutch astronomer Johannes Hevelius (1611-87) that the first scientific mapping of the moon's surface was made in his Selenographia (1647).

Sir Thomas Browne in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646-72) queried -

The sun and moon are usually described with human faces: whether herein there be not a pagan imitation, and those visages at first implied Apollo and Diana, we may make some doubt. [2]

Browne's vivid imagination noted of an egg sent to him-

The egg you sent with this notable signature of the figure of a duck so fully detail'd as to the body, head, eye & bill somewhat open'd from the shell, all in a... colour, was a point greatly remarkable & one, not made out by phancy butt apprehended by every eye, is a present greatly remarkable. In stones we find trees & often in common flints: in agates sometimes arise figures beyond all help of imagination & in such pit stones we have found screws, snakes, darts, cockles &c.

The like I had not formerly seen though have very intentively looked upon the goose egg in Aldrvandus with man's head & hair sped fury-like & terminating in some shape of geese heads.Though not meeting with any discourse thereon, I suspected much made out by fancy in that description.[3]

Once defined by the psychologist C.G.Jung as the alchemist's 'active imagination', today all such seeing of faces in phenomena such as clouds, egg-shells, or the moon's surface are now defined as a product of pareidolia. According to Wikipedia, pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon which involves vague and random stimulus such as patterns and markings found in nature being perceived as significant to the viewer. What was until quite recently known simply as plain imagination is now defined as a psychological aberration !

Just as stained glass was a source of wonder to the medieval spectator, so too the viewing of motion pictures were an equal marvel for early 20th century spectators. In the pioneering cinematography of George Méliès' (1861-1938) the creator of A trip to the Moon (1902), the man in the moon, far from being a remote or mysterious figure, is hit in the eye by a spaceship! Méliès' famous image is an innocent farewell to belief in 'the man in the moon' and a handsome anticipation, not only of man's great achievement of 1969, but also of his cavalier exploitation of a new and pristine environment.

[1] Saint Mary's south porch west window, Burnham Deepdale, Norfolk.
[2] P.E. Book 5 chapter 22
[3] On Eggs in miscellaneous writings
Wikilink - Man in the Moon

Dance of Death

2011-07-18T13:19:00.028+01:00

At present there's a season of films by the Swedish film-director Ingmar Bergman being broadcast on Channel 4. Included in the season is Bergman's classic film, 'The Seventh Seal' (1957). Early in the film one of the most iconic images of cinema is depicted, the figures of Death and a Knight playing a game of Chess by the sea. 'The Seventh Seal' makes several such references to the 'Dance of Death', a frequently-worked theme by the medieval artist.

It was during the Medieval era that the Black Death occurred. The pandemic reached its peak in the years 1348-50 and is believed to have devastated Europe's population by an estimated 40-60%. In addition, high infant mortality, poor sanitary conditions, crop failure, war and famine resulted in a short life for many. Because death was ever-present in the lives of all strata of medieval society, the 'Dance of Death' became a frequently-worked morality genre for artists, featuring in mystery plays and printed wood-cuts; however the sole surviving medieval stained glass depicting the 'Dance of Death' in England can be found at Norwich, in the church of Saint Andrew's.

The city of Norwich was once famous for the artistry of it stained-glass. In fact the city had a flourishing and distinctive school of glass painting during the 15th century. Characteristics of 'Norwich School' stained glass include excellence of drawing and colouring, motifs of ears of barley and patterns using seaweed and chequers. The Saint Andrew's glass uses the chequer pattern allegorically, perhaps as an allusion to the game of chess. According to the expert Christopher Woodforde the fifteenth century glass craftsmen of Norwich - avoided the suggestions of sweetness and sentimentality which mars some contemporary work….there is a bracing strength and vigour which well accords with the Norfolk climate and character.

Throughout the county of Norfolk and in several Norwich churches superb examples of medieval stained glass can still be viewed. In Saint Andrew's stained glass window dated circa 1510, the figure of Death is seen leading a bishop by hand to his death. The message of medieval 'Dance of Death' imagery being that all levels of society, whether pawn-like peasant, knight or bishop, are under the rule of Death.

Wall mural north of Stockholm circa 1480

Wikilinks
Dance of Death
Black Death
The Seventh Seal
and Norfolk Stained Glass

John Dee

2011-07-13T12:04:00.001+01:00

On this date (July 13th) in 1527 the mathematician, astrologer, alchemist and occasional tutor and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, John Dee was born. Dee was one of the most learned men in Europe and highly influenced by the Neo-Platonic, Pythagorean philosophy inaugurated by the Italian scholar Marsilio Ficino (1433-99). Curiously, John Dee's eldest son, Arthur Dee was also born on July 13th in 1579. From these dates it can be calculated that John Dee became a father for the very first time on his 52nd birthday !

Time and inclination don't permit elaboration upon the many influences that John Dee's esoteric inclinations have emanated throughout the centuries, many others have done so. Shakespeare for example, may have modelled the character of Prospero in his drama The Tempest upon John Dee. It is however worth noting that the author Peter French stated of Dee's eldest son, Arthur that -

'Little is known of this son of Dee's; one cannot help but wonder however, how much he may have influenced Browne, who was one of the seventeenth century's greatest literary exponents of the type of occult philosophy in which both the Dee's were immersed'.

Books - Peter French - John Dee 1972
Peter Ackroyd - The House of Doctor Dee 1993
Gustav Meyrinck - The Angel of the Western Window 1927
Wikilinks - John Dee
Correspondence by Sir Thomas Browne - On John and Arthur Dee

Neptune

2011-07-12T17:08:00.002+01:00

Today the planet Neptune completes one full revolution of the Sun since its discovery in 1846. Neptune has of course been orbiting the Sun for millions of years, taking 165 years to orbit our nearest star, but its only since 1846 that its existence has been known by humans. It was the first planet to be discovered by mathematical calculation, being not visible except by telescope.

In mythology Neptune was the ruler of seas and oceans and this is reflected in its designated symbol of a Triton. Neptune is also associated with the horse, the god often being depicted riding a shell-shaped chariot drawn by horses.

Roman Mosaic 2/3 century CE

Astrologically Neptune is the ruler of the Zodiac sign of Pisces as well as hospitals, prisons, mental institutions and monasteries; in fact all places which involve a withdrawal from society are believed to be under the rule of Neptune as well as psychic phenomena such as dreams, hypnotism, extra-sensory perception, illusion and deception in general. Alcohol and drug-taking, especially hallucinogenic mushrooms, along with melodrama and cinema are all classic examples of Neptunian influence. Neptune is also associated with humility and spiritual illumination.

Neptune was a popular subject for Renaissance and baroque fountains in Italy, in particular Berni's Trevi fountain in Rome. The Roman god of the seas influence in popular culture continues in the curious ritual of paying homage to Neptune when crossing the equator, especially upon cruises.

Sooty

2011-07-11T14:18:00.005+01:00

In a world full of troubles and suffering, it's cheering to read today that the naughty bear Sooty is to return to British Television.

The much-loved puppet was first seen on British television in 1952 with his creator Harry Corbett. His son Matthew Corbett took over the show in 1978. It has recently been announced that Sooty will star in a new 26 part production. The new Sooty Show has been updated to satisfy modern sensibilities and political correctness; Sooty however remains mute to the audience, communicating only by whispering into the ear of his operator and will continue to perform upon the xylophone, play tricks with his water pistol and wave his magic wand to the accompaniment of his catch-phrase- "Izzy wizzy, let's get busy".

In essence the hand-puppet Sooty and his friends Sweep the dog and Soo the panda bear are a highly original variant upon Punch and Judy, complete with much of the slap-stick comedy of the sea-side booth performers but without any of the inherent misogyny and violence associated with Punch and Judy. Sooty celebrated his 60th birthday on 19 July 2008 and because his birthday was close to Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday, he sent him a birthday message. When Harry Corbett received an O.B.E. for his charitable work Sooty responded by squirting Prince Philip with his water-pistol !

A very early appearance of Sooty on British T.V. accompanied by his creator, Harry Corbett

Link to Sooty's Official Web page

Venus and Mars

2011-07-06T12:58:00.009+01:00

As for the famous network of Vulcan, which inclosed Mars and Venus, and caused that inextinguishable laugh in heaven; since the gods themselves could not discern it, we shall not pry into it; Although why Vulcan bound them, Neptune loosed them, and Apollo should first discover them, might afford no vulgar mythology.

Thus does Sir Thomas Browne allude to the union of the goddess of love with the god of war and their subsequent entanglement, caught inflagrante delicto by Vulcan with his cunning network, in the Discourse, The Garden of Cyrus. However, the Classical myth of Venus, the goddess of love, taming Mars, the god of war, was first elaborated upon by the Renaissance Hermetic scholars Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) as symbolic of the victory of love over war and the supremacy of Harmony over strife.

Indeed the planet Earth itself orbits between the planets Venus and Mars, symbolically intermediate between peace and war. The Classical myth was also a lesser representation of the coniunctio of the alchemists and more frequently alluded to as the union of Sol et Luna, Sun and Moon, it was also alluded to as the astrological phenomenon of the Eclipse, an event which continues to exert a fascination upon humanity.

For the alchemist the uniting of the opposites was the primary objective of the 'Great Work' or magnum opus. And it's interesting to note in passing that C.G. Jung's deepest and final writing on alchemy is entitled Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955-56).

Paintings - Mars and Venus captured by Vulcan - Luca Giordano 1670's
Below- Mars and Venus united by Love - Paulo Veronese c.1578
See Also - Vulcan

American Corrections

2011-07-04T19:54:00.020+01:00

Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the Idea's of Plato, falls upon one himself.

How Sir Thomas Browne would have loved the internet! But as a conscientious scholar he'd probably also quickly recognise its potential as a powerful, instantaneous source and distributor of much false information. His vast encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646-72) devotes a whole book upon the causes of error. Adherence to authority and antiquity, the unreliability of human memory, exaggeration, poetic licence and artistic imagination are each examined and cited as causes of error. But for Browne the devout Christian, the principal agent of error was none other than the Devil. And indeed it's interesting to note that even today the colloquial phrase still exists that, 'the Devil's in the detail'.

Just how amused or frustrated Browne was from false statements attributed to him can be gleaned from the official publication of his Religio Medici. Following several years of pirated editions which conflated and interpolated his thoughts with those of others and as if with a game of Chinese whispers played on the internet in mind, Browne describes how the pirated edition of his private meditations degenerated-

which being communicated unto one, it became common unto many, and was by transcription successively corrupted untill it arrived in a most depraved copy at the press. He that shall peruse that worke, and shall take notice of sundry particularities and personall expressions therein, will easily discern the intention was not publik: and being a private exercise directed to my self, what is delivered therein was rather a memoriall unto me then an example or rule unto any other:

Aware of conflation infiltrating pirated editions and the powerlessness of the author to redress the effects of error, Browne had little option than to issue an official edition of Religio Medici in 1643.

But because things evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth most falsly set forth; in this latter I could not but think my selfe engaged: for though we have no power to redresse the former, yet in the other the reparation being within our selves, I have at present represented unto the world a full and intended copy of that Piece which was most imperfectly and surreptitiously published before.

In modern times Browne has himself frequently been the subject of error. The two most frequent errors currently available online both involve him in cases of mistaken authorship.American authoress Madeleine L'Enge (1918-88) mistakenly named Sir Thomas Browne as the author of a poem whose opening line begins, 'If thou could'st empty all thyself of self'. L'Enge's error of mistaken authorship has now travelled the globe far and wide, courtesy of internet bloggers. However, James Eason, webmaster of the wonderful online resource of Sir Thomas Browne's major works, in true detective style, identifies the poem's real author. Madeleine L'Engle's simple mistake, attributing the verse of T.Brown, a 19th century minor poet, to Sir Thomas Browne was an innocent error and the likelihood of Sir Thomas Browne being the author of a poem chosen by her is discussed by James Eason at False.

What's more worrying in the internet age is the sheer proliferation and dissemination of error world-wide. There's also this quotation which is currently attributed to Sir Thomas Browne doing the rounds among cut and paste scholars who never stop to question their sources.

No-one should approach the Temple of Science with the soul of a money-lender.

The source of this mistaken attribution is believed to be from American author Dwight J. Ingle, in his book entitled - 'Principles of Research in Biology and Medicine'. [1] However, although Browne is credited with the first usage of the word scientificall in his writings, [2] he would never have employed such an idolatrous phrase as 'the temple of science' as Science in the 17th century was more often known as Natural Philosophy; while the pecuniary notion of exploiting science in order to acquire a quick dollar is a decidedly Anglo-American inclination of later origination than the 17th century scientific revolution.

To be fair to both authors Madeleine L'Enge and Dwight Ingle, neither quotation really violates or misrepresents Browne's intellectual preoccupations, Science and the psyche being two dominant spheres of interest to the enigmatic 17th century polymath. Nor can it be forgotten that in fact, by far the greatest scholarship on Browne throughout the 20th century originated from America, including literary criticism by William Dunn, Norman Endicott, J.S.Finch, Frank Huntley and Leonard Nathanson for starters.

Digressing ever so slightly, in contrast to a golden age of Victorian literary criticism on Browne, in the 20th century the silence of British literary criticism upon Browne, is near deafening. After Edmund Gosse's vitriolic character assassination of 1905, Sir Thomas Browne was in effect largely shunned by all except the most broad-minded and independent of British writers. The Bloomsbury novelist Virginia Woolf however recognised the genius of his literary style and thought, as did the painter Paul Nash. They held and passed on Browne's flame in the inter-war years. Myself and many others were introduced to Browne's writings by C.A. Patrides in his 1977 Penguin edition of the major works. Refreshingly, C.A.Patrides pays more than a casual nod of acceptance and understanding of Browne's hermetic inclinations.

At the current time of writing the author most likely to introduce the enquiring reader to Sir Thomas Browne is the German-born author W.G.Sebald (1944 -2001). Although it may be questioned just how much grasp Max Sebald had upon the stylistic niceties and elaborations of Browne's baroque prose ( he himself wrote in German, a treasure-trove of work for future translators) what cannot be questioned is Sebald's deep interest and appreciation of Browne, especially in The Rings of Saturn (1998). Indeed Sebald's hybrid work The Rings of Saturn, part autobiography, part history and geography lesson, part musing upon time and decline is not unlike Religio Medici, both being literary works which indulge in philosophical excursions and rambling meditations.

An apprehensive Brunonian scholar, or indeed, choose any one of your own favourite authors reader, might well fret that statements utterly uncharacteristic and even defamatory can now be widely disseminated instantaneously on the world wide web. But in truth, the internet invariably weeds out much error and serves truth with more vigour. The success of Wikipedia, with all its caveats, proves this. To argue otherwise would place the printing-press along with the book in court and judged as guilty in aiding and colluding with error more than truth. The internet, along with the book, is merely a tool of human communication. It's how such tools are used which is of greater significance. But a sharp discerner observing our internet age, might equally question the reliance of storing vital information and knowledge upon a hard drive or disc in the eventuality of a system crashing or even a cut electricity supply.

Actually the word electricity is one of Browne's numerous neologisms as well as computer (as in the verb to compute) check them out in the OED. There's also his first ever recorded usage of the word Network, meaning an artificial connection to consider. The word occurs firstly in the long running title of his 1658 Discourse The Garden of Cyrus or the Quincunciall Lozenge or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Naturally, Artificially, Mystically considered. And indeed throughout the discourse Browne elaborates concisely and elegantly upon networks discerned in art and nature, sometimes displaying a frame of mind not unlike what Jung once described as the alchemist's 'active imagination'.

Browne's coining of words such as electricity, computer and network along with his love of knowledge and awareness of the ever-present factor of error in every-day life, as any computer user is well aware, place him firmly as a scientist who anticipated much of the modern-day internet age.

My plea to fellow bloggers globally, is to stop and think, whenever encountering any orphaned and unsourced profound or archaic sounding quotation, before claiming it was written by Sir Thomas Browne !

Header quote - A great example of Browne's humour Religio Medici Part 2:15
[1] published in 1958. Philadelphia: JB Lippincott Co. p.19
[2] Pseudodoxia Epidemica Book1, chapter 7
See also Browne on America

Wild Strawberries

2011-06-29T17:47:00.005+01:00

When I remember to tend a particular corner of my garden the results can be surprising. Apparently the phrase 'wild strawberries' in colloquial Swedish alludes to an underrated gem of a place of personal or sentimental value.

Swedish film-director Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) features Victor Sjöström in his last screen appearance as retired Doctor Izak Borg, who travels from Stockholm to Lund accompanied by his daughter-in-law Marianne, (Ingrid Thulin) to be awarded a life-time honorary doctorate.

In some ways Wild Strawberries is an early road movie, the story centring upon a journey both external and internal. En route Dr. Borg has experiences which remind him of his past. He offers a lift to three hitch-hikers, the pert and vivacious Sara, (Bibi Andersson) with her two competitive lovers, and to an argumentative married couple who he soons asks to get out of his car for the sake of the young people. But by far the most memorable moments in the film occur when Bergman conjures up surreal settings and imagery to portray Dr. Borg's unsettling dream world. Reviewed by critics as one of Bergman's warmer and more accessible films, Wild Strawberries nevertheless hovers in the shadowy world of life self-assessment with its regrets and past loves.

Wikilink - Ingmar Bergman

The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman

2011-06-25T16:33:00.019+01:00

The big highlight of this year's Los Angeles Film Festival is the world-premiere (June 25) of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman. Commissioned by Swedish National Radio, the experimental chamber operetta for radio, written by Ron Mael stars him along with his brother Russell Mael, also of Sparks. They will be joined on stage by Maddin, Finnish actor Peter Franzen as Bergman, Sjöwall reprising her role as a Hollywood starlet, and Ann Magnusun as Greta Garbo. It's being performed at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre and showcased to attract investor interest in the film project of the work.

Remembering that the brothers were once resident here in England, back in the early 1970's as part of the glam-rock scene, Sparks first tasted success in GB before returning home to L.A. in 1976. It was a very different music industry way back in the 1970's; they've been more than survivors but quirky innovators in pop music for the best part of forty years now, always one step ahead of the field.

It's a wonderful thing Ron has done writing for the silver-screen goddess Greta Garbo (1905-90). I just love this utterly in character song from the apotheosis of the musical. Garbo appears and advises Ingmar Bergman who is faced with the dilemma of choosing between filming in Hollywood or returning to Sweden. All the best tonight to Ron and Russell, wish I was there !

Thunder and Lightning

2011-06-22T19:49:00.007+01:00

The first summer storm of the year. Thunder and lightning are invariably associated with God by most religions. In ancient Greek mythology lightning is a weapon of Zeus which is forged by the Cyclops. In Norse mythology the god Thor (Thursday) is a god of thunder, its sound was believed to come from the chariot Thor rode across the sky, lightning was believed to emanate from his hammer, Mjölnir. In the Hebrew book of Psalms (77: v.17-18) one reads-

The clouds poured out water; the skies sent out a sound:

thine arrows also went abroad.

The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven : the earth trembled and shook.

I've written on the symbolism of lightning in the Tarot in a previous post entitled The Tower. A detailed account of a violent thunderstorm at Norwich in June 1665 involving fireballs by Sir Thomas Browne can be found here.

Carl Jung and Sir Thomas Browne

2011-06-19T16:00:00.036+01:00

'Then think strange things are come to light,
Whereof but few have had a foresight.'

Earlier this month (June 6th) it was the 50th anniversary of the death of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). The occasion sparked debate as to whether Jung's psychology is relevant nowadays in a world which is increasingly literal-minded and skeptical towards symbolism, mythology and the interpretation of dreams. For myself the occasion reminded me once again of the many curious connections which Jung shares with the English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82).

Both Jung and Browne were doctors who held a deep interest in humanity, both engaged in intense self-analysis, including analysis of their own dreams, both studied comparative religion and read alchemical literature closely, sharing an interest in the writings of Gerard Dorn (c.1530 –1584) and both were interested in unusual psychic phenomena such as coincidence or synchronicity as Jung termed it.

It's not known whether or not Carl Jung was familiar with Browne's Religio Medici, which was translated into German in 1746; however Jung used the phrase Religio Medici several times, unwittingly connecting Browne's spiritual testament to the art of alchemy when stating -

'For the educated person of those days, who studied the philosophy of alchemy as part of his general equipment, - it was a real Religio Medici'.[1]

Jung also linked Browne's Religio Medici albeit unconsciously to the Swiss alchemist, Paracelsus (1493 -1541) when he stated-

but that other pivot of Paracelsus's teaching, his belief in 'the light of nature' allow us to surmise other conjectures of his Religio Medica. [2]

And in fact the central chapter of Browne's The Garden of Cyrus is a fine literary example of a Paracelsian physician busily engaged, 'seeking truth in the light of Nature' in the field of botany.

Jung may even have been familiar with the contents of Religio Medici from hearsay for he accurately lists the attributes of Browne’s psychological self-portrait, but mistakenly places an old head upon young shoulders when writing of a colleagues work-

it was a real Religio Medici, a complete survey of all the religious conclusions an old doctor might draw from his innumerable experiences of suffering and death and from the inexorable realities of life's reverses.[3]

C.G. Jung helpfully listed much of the subject-matter of Browne's Religio Medici when he defined the original Latin meaning of the word religio as-

a careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors, understood to be 'powers', spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals or whatever name man has given to such factors as he has found in his world powerful, dangerous, or helpful enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful and meaningful enough to be devoutly adored and loved. [4]

Browne's Religio Medici (1642) is very much a product of Renaissance thinking. Along with the self-reflective Essais of Montaigne (1533-92) and Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) it exhibits a Renaissance spirit of enquiry into the psyche and is also a celebration of individuality and the mystery of personality.

From the early 19th century the mystery and cult of personality found an outlet in the Romantic movement. The poet Coleridge, an enthusiast reader of Browne, wrote a short note-book verse in admiration of the Norwich physician. By the most curious of coincidences the self-same verse was selected by Jung's secretary, Anelia Jaffe to preface the Swiss physician's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963).

He looked at his own Soul,

With a Telescope.

What seemed all irregular, he saw

and shewed to be beautiful constellations.

And he added to the Consciousness,

Hidden Worlds within Worlds.

Coleridge's early usage of the word, 'consciousness' was in all probability introduced to him from his association with the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) . The Oxford Dictionary dictionary credits the first usage of the word 'consciousness' to Wordsworth in 1804.

The workings of the unconscious psyche were often revealed to romantic poets and alchemist-physicians alike in their experience of dreaming. Both Jung and Browne were fascinated with dreams, especially their own. Jung describes in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, a series of life-changing dreams, including one in which he became trapped in the golden age of alchemy, the seventeenth century, his life-changing dream inaugurated a life-long study of alchemy.

Browne in turn, was in fact a lucid dreamer. This ability, in conjunction with his wide-ranging reading matter and fertile imagination provided him with a rich fuel for his artistic creativity. Browne's ability to lucid dream is the source of much of his so-called 'dream-imagery' and 'mystical symbolism'. He confessed of his ability in Religio Medici thus-

Yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is fruitful I would chose never to study but in my dreams. [5]

Browne never elaborated upon the psyche in a fraction as much as Jung, however he did write a short tract upon dreams, even theorizing upon the possibility of their interpretation thus-

Many dreams are made out by sagacious exposition and from the signature of their subjects; carrying their interpretation in their fundamental sense and mystery of similitude, whereby he that understands upon what natural fundamental every notional dependeth, may by symbolical adaption hold a ready way to read the characters of Morpheus. [6 ]

Browne's proposal of a 'symbolical adaptation ...to read the characters of Morpheus' that is, a belief in the ability to interpret the psyche's symbols in order to understand the meaning of dreams, his deep interest in the mystery of individuality, his utilizing of concepts and symbols from the alchemical tradition, especially his diptych Discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus, earns him a place in the embryological beginnings of modern psychology. Indeed, among Browne's many neologisms, those of a medical nature such as 'pathology' and 'hallucination' are concrete evidence of his contribution to the development of psychology.

At the heart of much of Jung's own interest in dreams and alchemy there's a deep study of the varied and ever-changing symbols which the psyche produces in art, dreams and alchemical literature. Jung's great discovery was that the mystical language of the alchemist-physicians and their bizarre symbolism attempted to describe the psyche's contents.

It's perhaps worthwhile reminding ourselves of the distinction between words and symbols. Unlike a sign or word, a symbol can never be fully explained, its protean-like nature revitalizing itself whenever of value to the psyche to describe a spiritual or religious content. Browne's near exact contemporary Athanasius Kircher (1602-80) a favourite read of the Norwich physician, as the catalogued contents of his library reveal, defines the function of a symbol as being-

to lead our minds by means of certain similarities, to the understanding of things vastly different from the things that are offered to our external senses... Symbols cannot be translated by words, but only expressed by marks, characters and figures. [7]

For C.G.Jung the terms symbolic and psychological were synonymous. In his view-

the language of the alchemists is at first sight very different from our psychological terminology and way of thinking. But if we treat their symbols in the same way as we treat modern fantasies, they yield a meaning - even in the Middle Ages confessed alchemists interpreted their symbols in a moral and philosophical sense, their "philosophy" was, indeed, nothing but projected psychology. [8]

The predominant symbol and expression of the religious values of western civilization for the past two millennium, the Christian Cross, is itself ultimately an undefinable symbol, despite the attempts of mystics throughout the ages. A modern symbol which provokes strong conscious and unconscious affects upon viewing, is that of the swastika. In direct antithesis to the Christian Cross, the swastika symbolizes the darker nature within humankind; it also cannot be fully defined.

Throughout the history of alchemy, symbols are employed in a bewildering proliferation and variance. Writing almost as if with Browne’s most difficult work, The Garden of Cyrus in mind, Jung stated-

Intellectual responsibility seems always to have been the alchemists weak spot... The less respect they showed for the bowed shoulders of the sweating reader, the greater was their debt to the unconscious...The alchemists were so steeped in their inner experiences, that their whole concern was to devise fitting images and expressions regardless whether they were intelligible or not. They performed the inestimable service of having constructed a phenomenology of the unconscious long before the advent of psychology..The alchemists did not really know what they were writing about. Whether we know today seems to me not altogether sure. [9]

Browne and other theologically inclined alchemists lacked a precise terminology to describe the psyche's contents. Each developed an often highly idiosyncratic symbolism to describe the psyche's contents, succinctly described by Browne as, 'the theatre of ourselves'. In Browne and other alchemically inclined European writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries however there can be discerned an Ur-psychologie which Jung identified as none other than the rudimentary beginnings of modern-day psychology.

Jung provided the scholar of hermetic philosophy, alchemy and esoterica in general with new tools, his understanding of alchemy remains extremely rewarding. Once acknowledging Sir Thomas Browne's diptych Discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus as literary works highly influenced by the tenants of Hermetic philosophy, new light can be thrown upon their theme, imagery, symbolism and relationship to each other and light cast upon the cloudy obscurities of their text. For example, the source of Browne's famous image in Urn-Burial-

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.

can be identified from a close reading of Jung. Using Paracelsian 'astral imagery' for his own purposes the foremost protagonist of Paracelsian alchemy, Gerhard Dorn (1530-84 ). Dorn claimed that there was in man an 'invisible sun' that is, a life-giving force equivalent to the imago Dei or image of God in man. In his essay Speculativa philosophia, which was reprinted in the anthology, Theatrum Chemicum (vol. 1) a work which Jung valued sufficiently enough to take with him when traveling in India and which was also in the library of Sir Thomas Browne, Dorn declared-

The sun is invisible in men, but visible in the world, yet both are of one and the same sun.

In Carl Jung's magnum opus on alchemy Mysterium Coniunctius (1955-56) one reads-

In Dorn's view there is in man an 'invisible sun', which he identifies with the Archeus. This sun is identical with the 'sun in the earth'. The invisible sun enkindles an elemental fire which consumes man's substance and reduces his body to the prima materia. [10]

Throughout the history of literary criticism there have been solitary voices who have provided insights into understanding the obscurities of Browne's symbolism. As early as 1958 the literary critic Peter Green observed that Browne,

'packs his prose with as much concentrated symbolic meaning as it will stand' ....... 'Mystical symbolism is woven throughout the texture of Browne's work, adding, often subconsciously, to its associative power of impact'.

The primary symbols of Browne's diptych discourses, the Urn and the Quincunx pattern share an intimate relationship to each other. Green recognised the psychological import of Browne's highly original symbolism stating -

by concentrating, almost like a hypnotist, on this pair of unfamiliar symbols, to paradoxically release the reader's mind into an infinite number of associative levels of awareness, without preconception to give shape and substance to quite literally cosmic generalizations.

Green also firmly classified the two Discourses as one organic whole, united in theme, imagery and symbolism, stating-

The two works are interlinked by a dualistic pattern of opposed symbols -death and life, body and soul, substance and form, accident and design, time and space, darkness and light, earth and heaven. They can no more be separated than the voices in a fugue;taken together they form one of the deepest,most complex, most symbolically pregnant statements ever composed on the great double theme of mortality and eternity.

Densely-laden with 'dream imagery' and original proper-name and place symbolism, together the diptych Discourses attempt to portray fundamental elements of the psyche, namely consciousness and unconsciousness. Urn-Burial with its multiplicity of imagery of darkness, the unknowing nature of the human condition and the irrational, is a discourse which not only is a hymn upon the antiquity of time, mortality and death, but also attempts to portray the unconscious psyche. In complete contradistinction The Garden of Cyrus with its abundant imagery of Light, considerations upon germination, growth and the botanical adept busy, 'seeking truth in the light of Nature', is Browne's delineation of consciousness itself and exemplary of the 'active imagination' of the alchemist, no less.

The union of the opposites was as C.G.Jung recognised, the main quest of the alchemical opus. In many ways Browne's diptych Discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus are an exemplary literary work which symbolize the union of opposites. They are also his major contribution to the embryonic science of psychology. Sadly however both readers and publishers lazily continue to imagine they are informed upon Browne's artistic and scientific sensibilities having read Urn-Burial without consulting its companion, The Garden of Cyrus a work which may well be the Obverse and not the Reverse of Browne's alchemically forged coin. Together Browne's Garden-Grave discourses, half solemn, half playful, are an embryonic portrait of the human psyche which anticipate a key concept of Jungian psychology, namely the archetypes.

Not only does one of the very earliest usages of the very word 'archetype' occur in The Garden of Cyrus but also Browne's Ur-Psychologie attempts to describe the archetypes. Many proper-names associated with the archetypal figure of ‘the wise ruler’ such as Moses, Alexander the Great, Solomon and the Emperor Augustus as well as the titular Persian Shah, King Cyrus are named in the Discourse. Browne's proper-name symbolism also alludes to the archetypal figure of the ‘Great Mother' as a symbol of fertility and fruitfulness can be discerned in the Discourse with mention of Sarah, Isis, Juno, Cleopatra and Venus. At the apotheosis of the Discourse Browne summons up the foremost archetype of western civilization, namely the hero, in the form of the Greek Achilles, while the elusive trickster figure of Mercurius in the form of Proteus and Hermaphrodite is also fleetingly alluded to in The Garden of Cyrus.

At the apotheosis of The Garden of Cyrus the worthy physician boldly declares -

A large field is yet left to sharper discerners, to enlarge upon this order, to search out the quaternio's and figured draughts of this nature.

Centuries later, Browne's exhortation to his reader to search out the quaternio’s was earnestly heeded by C.G. Jung as the Quaternity and the number four were a corner-stone of the Swiss psychologist's mapping of the psyche's structure. Jung's predilection for the Quaternity structure and its importance is explained by him thus -

The quarternity is an organizing schema par excellence, something like the crossed threads in a telescope. It is a system of coordinates that is used almost instinctively for diving up the visible surface of the earth, the course of the year, or the collection of individuals into groups, the phases of the moon, the temperaments, elements, alchemical colours, and so on. [11 ]

Incidentally, a superb sculptural representation of the archetypes in a quaternity form can be seen in the Layer Monument located in the church of Saint John Maddermarket, Norwich.

Jung’s writings are also of great interpretative value in understanding Browne’s preoccupation with the Quincunx symbol alluded to throughout The Garden of Cyrus. He noted of Browne's distinctly home-made symbol of individuation that-

The quinarius or Quinio (in the form of 4 + 1 i.e. Quincunx ) does occur as a symbol of wholeness ( in China and occasionally in alchemy) but relatively rarely. [12]

Again the question must be asked how well Jung was acquainted with Browne's writings for somewhat astoundingly he identified the Quincunx pattern as none other than - a symbol of the quinta essentia which is identical with the Philosopher's Stone. [13]

Finally, as for the subject of coincidence or synchronicity, a subject which fascinated both Jung and Browne, just yesterday while nearly completing this post I was kindly donated a copy of Edgar Wind's The Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (1948) by a fellow scholar. Wind's single reference to C.G. Jung occurs when commentating on Browne's statement -

The smattering I have of the Philosopher's Stone (which is something more than the perfect exaltation of Gold) hath taught me a great deal of Divinity. [14]

Edgar Wind adds this foot-note upon Browne's highly revealing hermetic statement -

On pastoral edification through alchemy see ........ raised to a system by C.G.Jung, Psychologie und Alchemie (1944). [15]

Wind's quaint, yet perceptive observation upon alchemy and Jung's psychology as a system with all its adherent dangers, is the only example of the names of Jung and Browne being mentioned together I've ever encountered in 35 years of reading Jung and 15 years of reading Browne. However I hope I have provided sufficient evidence of Browne's quite extraordinary relationship to Carl Jung. Separated by centuries, yet united in many of their observations upon the psyche, the two physicians share a curious elective affinity.

In the final analysis, whether Jung’s psychology is of relevance today hinges upon whether one believes oneself to be a random, genetic force of nature of a strictly material origin, in which case Jung's writings are of little value. Alternately if one believes in a Creator and possessing a soul, Jung's psychology remains highly relevant to individual and collective development.

Books consulted

C.G. Jung Collected Works vol 9. 10. 13. 14. 16. 18.
C.G.Jung Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963)

Browne -The Major Works ed. C.A. Patrides Penguin (1977)

Edgar Wind - Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance Faber and Faber (1958)

Green, P. Sir Thomas Browne Longmans, Green & Co Writers and Their Work, No.108 ( 1959)

Notes

Header quote sir T.B. Miscellaneous Tract XII

[1] C. W. 10 : 727, [2] C.W. 13:161, [3] Cw 18:1465, [4] Into CW 11,
[5] R.M. Part 2:11,
[6] Tract 'On Dreams' , [7] Obeliscus Pamphilus 1650, [8] C.W. 14:737, [9] C.W.16:497,
[10] CW 14:49 [11] C.W. 9ii: 381 [12] C.W. 18:1602, [13] C.W. 10:737 [14] R.M.Part 1:39,
[15] Wind in Chapter entitled 'Pan and Proteus'

Part of this post is developed from from a paper I delivered in 2002 at a conference held by the Wellcome Institute at UEA .

War and Corpses

2011-06-18T10:30:00.003+01:00

I am far from the first to state this - the present-day British government are behaving quite callously by deliberately targeting those least able to fight back, namely the poor, the disabled, the sick and the elderly, in order to protect their supporters, the rich. In fact the distribution of wealth between the rich and poor has actually increased during this Recession.

The belief that a fascist government could never come to power here in Britian is quite simply a delusion, for as the photomontage artist John Heartfield (1891-1968) realized, one reason why the Nazi party were able to come to power in Germany was a direct consequence of the Great Depression, along with the self-preserving desire of those with wealth and without any social conscience, to hold onto their wealth at the expense of the poor.

Propaganda then as now, manipulates the thinking of the great majority, who unable to think for themselves, lazily believe all they are told by the Media; such as, for example, that it's not the Bankers who are to blame, but the previous British government who were responsible for the World-wide recession. However, strangely enough, there's always sufficient funds in the coffers to finance yet another war, except the present-day involvement in the Libyan conflict, now in its fourth month, is not really a war, but merely assistance to the rebels against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi. As ever, black liquid gold lays at the heart of British military involvement. Under the smoke-screen of establishing democracy the democratic rights of other nations are more important to the present-day British government than the rights of its own people.

Wikilink - John Heartfield

Drought

2011-06-10T15:18:00.008+01:00

After one of the driest Springs recorded, the drought in five English counties, all in the east of England has now been made official. I would suggest however that this current drought, and the severe shortage of rain which farmers and food-growers are experiencing, goes much deeper. There's a serious and wide-spread drought and thirst throughout many regions of the world for a fairer distribution of wealth and resources, moral integrity, compassion, leadership and spiritual vision. These droughts can't begin to be remedied until humanity acknowledges, as drought along with volcanic eruption, earthquake, hurricane, flood, famine and war, painfully reminds those suffering, that humanity isn't as much in control of its destiny as it imagines, and the words of the Prince of Peace are heeded-

Whoever drinks water shall be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I give shall not thirst; for the water I give shall be a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

Sparks

2011-06-09T17:59:00.034+01:00

I've been intending to post on Sparks for some time when I stumbled upon a discussion between two American ladies who were wondering where on earth the 1970's pop-music duo had disappeared to. That shared query was impetus and motivation enough to merrily tap away at the keyboard today.

The brothers Ron Mael (b.1945) and Russell Mael (b.1948) are long-time residents of Los Angeles, California USA. They released their 22nd album in 2009, the experimental operetta, The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman. In 2010 they achieved the unique act of performing in chronological sequence one of their 20 albums every night for 20 nights at the Islington Academy and Shepherd's Bush Empire, London. They may have performed their last ever live gig in America on December 1, 2010 at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. Although there's been occasional years of hiatus between album releases, Sparks have effectively been in the music business for over 40 years .

Ron and Russell Mael first cut their teeth and found fame during the early 1970's when resident in England. Their big hit in England was This town ain't big enough for the both of us (1974). The hit introduced the world to Russell's hall-mark falsetto voice and quirky lyrics and Ron's dead-pan yet scary, facial posturing.With the poetic, teen-age sensibility of a Holden Caulfield (of The Catcher in the Rye), Russell has retained a unique and beautiful voice. His more reserved elder brother Russell, a 1920's Igor Stravinsky look-a-like, has developed a powerful rhythmic drive and unique melodic line on keyboards to accompany his brother. Incidentally its mostly older brother Ron who writes their music, while Russell supplies and sings the quirky lyrics.

Doggedly ignoring all musical trends, styles, fashions and crazes, Ron and Russell Mael have carved their own idiosyncratic style, a kind of 70's techno-vaudeville, suitable to accompany a Buster Keaton adventure comedy, a true hybrid of American and British pop. According to Wikipedia Sparks have created their own unique musical universe; that's debatable but the brothers Mael have been enjoying a Renaissance in the first decade of the 21 st century. Indeed the 21st century has seen a distinct new creative drive by Sparks and growing critical acclaim with each new album release Their last few albums have built upon the style and success of each previous release. The realm of light opera in often comic has been a fertile arena for their creativity. Abandoning their Giorgio Moroder techo-style of the 80's and 90's, ever since the arrival of L'il Beethoven in 2002 their new operatic style has gathered new fans world-wide. There's no opportunity to demonstrate their music here other than to enthuse over it, but their lyrics are worth quoting for his often acerbic and off-the-wall word-play, witticisms and social observations . Their humour is up there with the odd-ball wit of the Marx brothers -

How do I get to Carnegie Hall ? Practice man, practice.

Sparks' distinctive humorous album art-work includes one cover depicting a recent after-math, a light plane crash landed in a back-yard; in another the brothers are seen hands bound in an out-of-control motor-boat, in yet another, Russell lays prone having hit the deck in a boxing-ring. in the other corner Ron, wearing boxing gloves, raises his arms in triumph. The brothers like to express their decades long working relationship in their art-work.Other long-term sibling or male duo artists which immediately spring to mind include the British artists Gilbert and George and the film-makers the Brothers Quay, directors of the wonderful Piano Tuner of Earthquakes.

If you grew up during the golden decade of 1970's pop music, when the world was a slightly more innocent place, or simply enjoy hearing great 70's style pop music, then Sparks music often frantic and intense yet funny, rhythmically inclined with gorgeous harmonies especially the last four or five albums this century, are well worth hearing. Young listeners may also enjoy. Lovingly and painstakingly recorded in sophisticated layered production, well worth hearing ! Pass me my Space-hopper ! What is there left for the American Grandmasters of Pop, Ron and Russell to achieve with 21 albums to their credit ? However they do like to defy and surprise expectations !

Exotic Creatures of the Deep (2008)

* Strange Animal - "What a strange animal we are".

Anyone who seriously contemplates the species arrives at this conclusion quite swiftly.

* (She got me) Pregnant - So how would a fragile male ego cope with finding after a one-night stand that they were pregnant ?

"And then you learn that though she is several thousand miles away/ there is a part of you she's given you and now you have to deal with it."

* Lighten up Morrisey - Sound advice to some sometime famous Brit. pop star who the Mael brothers admire.

"She won't go out with me 'cos my intellect's paper-thin/ She won't have sex with me unless it's done with a pseudonym".

* This is the Renaissance - "If you like to read, man you are in luck/ Gutenberg is cranking up a Bible with a centre-fold...Science is here , nothing left to fear"

* Photoshop - There's some very dramatic multi-track vocals going on here

"Baldness or aloofness removed without a trace. Photoshop me out of your life".

* I can't believe that you would fall for all the crap in this song.

More lampooning of the music industry.

Hello Young Lovers (2006)

* Perfume -Russell names and sings the names of dozens of perfume brands.

* (Baby, Baby) Can I invade your Country - A bold statement on Foreign policy.

* Metaphor - a track with superb multi-track harmonies by Russell.

"Chicks dig D -I -G metaphors, use them wisely, use them well and you'll never know the hell of loneliness".

* As I sit down to play the organ at Notre-Dame Cathedral - A track which allows Ron to show-case his keyboard virtuosity, he must be playing at least five keyboards here.

" I got Faith, I got a deep abiding Faith, that in this Sea of faces, this sea of believing faces, there's always one face that's here to escape the rain".

On June 25, 2011 as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival, Sparks will present the World Premiere live performance of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman.

Wikilink

Sparks