Thomas Browne and 'the Opium of Time'.

It was the literary critic Peter Green in 1959 who first speculated - ‘Did Browne possibly take laudanum? It seems very likely. He had free access to drugs, and used opiates in various experiments.'[1]

Green hypothesised that one possible reason why Sir Thomas Browne's prose is stylistically unlike any of his contemporaries may have been due to an empirical enquiry into the effects of drugs. He also noted that the two Discourses of 1658, Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus were penned by a Royalist who was under intense emotional and psychological distress during the Interregnum and Protectorate of Cromwell (1650-1660) and proposed that the rhapsodic fifth and final chapter of both Discourses may have been written in a trance-like condition.

It was during Browne's era, the seventeenth century, which saw the discovery of the tobacco-leaf and coffee-bean, drugs which, along with alcohol, continue to be acceptable and widely consumed throughout the world today. As a physician Browne was licensed to obtain opium, the only available pain-killer and tranquilliser in the medicine of his era. Widely in use since the sixteenth century, the Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) was amongst the earliest advocates of opium. Such was its widespread usage that by the seventeenth century Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624-89) the so-called 'Father of English medicine' whose books are well-represented in Browne’s vast library, declared- 

'Among the remedies which has pleased the Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.'

Opium was used in the seventeenth century to relieve a variety of medical conditions, including disorders such as dysentery and respiratory ailments. There can be little doubt that in the course of his career Browne had the opportunity to observe the physical and mental effects of opium. His commonplace notebooks even record various experiments of dosages of opium upon animals, a vital and necessary precaution before administering opium to his patients.  

'Three grains of opium works strongly upon a dog. Observe how much will take place with a horse....Fishes are quickly intoxicated with baits: in what quantity with opium ? What quantity will take, in birds and animals with little heads ? From two grains unto five we have given unto a cockerel, without any discernable sophition... four unto a crow without visible effect. Six and eight unto dogs making them dull not profoundly to sleep....Five grains we have also given unto turkeys without effect of sleep....Five grains unto a young kestrel, did seem the like vertiginous and a little more sleepy; not profoundly. Five unto a young heron did nothing. [2]

It's in Urn-Burial (1658) that Browne employs highly original medical-philosophical imagery, which must surely have been acquired from observing first-hand the psychological effects of opium,  declaring-

'There is no antidote against the Opium of Time which temporally considereth all things.' 

Browne also poetically links the botanical source of opium with his discourse’s theme of the unknowingness of the human condition when stating - 'The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her Poppy'; while also declaiming - 'Oblivion is not to be hired.'

Although the popular image of Browne is that of the orthodox physician, he was in fact one of the earliest of English doctor's to know of the hedonistic cocktail of sex and drugs, writing of such indulgences that - 

'the effect of eating Opium is not so much as to invigorate themselves in coition, as to prolong the Act, and spin out the motions of carnality.'  [3]

Throughout the history of alchemy and early chemistry there was a considerable knowledge of substances, minerals and drugs. Today, there are laws prohibiting the recreational usage of drugs, laws which continue to be as ineffective as those of America’s Prohibition era, laws which do little more than sponsor crime by creating a lucrative black market, exposing the vulnerable to adulterated and potentially hazardous substances, without either protecting or educating consumers to the possible consequences upon health, and unfairly criminalizing people, thus seriously damaging and wasting skills and life-opportunities.

No matter how much some may object to Peter Green’s hypothesis that the unique literary style of the discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus with their thematic progression of a 'soul journey' from the Grave to Garden may have originated from experimentation with drugs, it nevertheless remains a curious coincidence that in the nineteenth century Browne's literary works were 'rediscovered' and admired by the early Romantic figures of Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey and Coleridge; all of whom frequently indulged in laudanum, the alcohol-based tincture of opium, which was widely available in the nineteenth century. 

The idea that a major literary figure who was a moralist, devout Christian and respectable doctor may have written sections of his 'deep, stately, majestic' prose (De Quincey), with its slow, sombre contemplation upon Death and the afterlife, under the influence of Opium, would have been acceptable to the English essayist Thomas De Quincey, who, in his Confessions of an English Opium-eater (1821) before a visit to the opera while under the influence of opium stated- 

‘I do not recollect more than one thing said adequately on the subject of music in all literature: it is a passage in Religio Medici of Sir T. Brown; and, though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophical value; inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects.' 

But perhaps the greatest portrait of opium's effects in music occurs in De Quincey's contemporary, the French composer Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique (1830). 

Berlioz's five movement symphony introduced a radical and distinctly French approach to orchestration and melody, quite unlike the Viennese tradition, although also indebted to Beethoven's programmatic Pastoral symphony. In Berlioz's programmatic symphony, the romantic hero while under the influence of opium, conjures up a reverie of his beloved, catches a glimpse of her at a Ball, visits the countryside with her, and in a paroxysm of passion, murders her. He's sent to the guillotine for his crime, and in the symphony's 5th and final movement he dreams of attending a Witch's Sabbath,  in music with decidedly hallucinatory effects.

In complete contrast to Urn-Burial's 'vast undulations of sound' and declamatory 'full Organ-stop' baroque prose, Browne's discourse The Garden of Cyrus has predominately visual imagery. Frequently breathless and fractured in style, paragraph succeeds paragraph in a rapid procession of examples; firstly from gardens in antiquity, then art objects, followed by examples in nature in its long central chapter, and finally in mystical analogies involving astrology and the kabbalah. These examples in turn involve the inter-related symbols of the numbers five and ten, the quincunx pattern, along with its variants including lozenge-shape, the figure X, and criss-cross and network  patterns. All of which are all paraded before the reader as exemplary of  'how God geometrizes'. 

The distinguished Brunonian scholar and Dean Emeritus of Princeton University, USA, Jeremiah S. Finch (1910-2005) when examining a manuscript edition of The Garden of Cyrus described it as, 'a headlong scrawl, a quick hand and moving imagination, thinking quicker than his hand' with 'no less than 8 deletions occurring within 27 lines'. [4] Such uncharacteristic haste is suggestive of one who urgently wishes to impart a new insight. A fine example of Browne’s near stream-of-consciousness purple prose occurs in the paragraph -

In Chess-boards and Tables we yet find Pyramids and Squares, I wish we had their true and ancient description, far different from ours, or the Chet mat of the Persians, and might continue some elegant remarkables, as being an invention as High as Hermes the Secretary of Osyris, figuring the whole world, the motion of the Planets, with Eclipses of Sun and Moon.

One possible reason for the uncharacteristic composition of  The Garden of Cyrus may have been due to Browne's excitement at 'discovering' the quincunx pattern could be discerned throughout the universe. Such excitement is not dissimilar to those 'discovering' the meaning of life while under the influence of hallucinogens. Interestingly, the very word 'hallucination’ is recorded in the Oxford English dictionary as first used by Browne, one of hundred of words he introduced into the English language.

Empirical experimentation with drugs may have been the source of Browne's experiencing a 'Soul Journey' not unlike the legendary Hermes Trismegistus of Hermetic philosophy and his journey through the planetary spheres. Other 'Soul-journeys' of antiquity include Plato's Myth of Er and Cicero's 'Dream of Scipio', in which the cosmic voyager hears the heavenly music of the spheres. Alternatively, Browne may have read Iter Ecstaticum Kirceranium (1660) which describes how the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher (1602-80) after listening to three lute-players, was led by the spirit Cosmiel in an ecstatic journey through the planetary spheres. Browne owned several books by Plato and Cicero, as well as several by Kircher, including Iter Ecstaticum (ed. Gaspar Schott). [5] 

For the empiricist, as for the alchemist, the self and its sensory impressions were the bed-rock of all experimentation. Whether Browne’s empirical nature ever included experimentation with drugs will never be truly known, however he may done so either accidentally, or as part of his medical studies, or even as part of a misguided alchemical quest. But as the Swiss psychologist C.G.Jung (1875-1961) long before sixties drug culture, stated -

One only has to think what it means if in the misery and incertitude of a moral or philosophical dilemma one has a quinta essentia, a lapis or a panacea so to say in one's pocket ! We can understand this deus ex machina the more easily when we remember with what passion people today believe that psychological complications can be made magically to disappear by means of hormones, narcotics, insulin shocks and convulsion therapy. The alchemists were as little able to perceive the symbolical nature of their ideas of the arcarnum as we to realise that the belief in hormones and shocks is a symbol. [6]

Nor is it impossible that Browne may have known of the hallucinogenic properties of psilocybin mushrooms. He took an interest in fungi, and in a letter consisting of several paragraphs upon fungus to Christopher Merritt,  makes mention of the highly toxic Deadly Nightcap -  

The fungi Phalloides I found not very far from Norwich, large and very fetid......I have a part of one dried still by me. Fungus rotundus major I have found about ten inches in diameter, and have half a dried one by me. [7]

Sir Thomas Browne was also aware that contaminated rye bread can produce extraordinary psychological effects. When digested contaminated rye bread can produce effects similar to that of the entheogen LSD. Ergot itself does not contain lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) but it does contain its precursor, ergotamine. Browne is not always credited with familiarity with the medical condition of ergotism, however he did introduce the word ‘ergotism', as in meaning the effects of ergot poisoning, into English language, stating in his advisory work Christian Morals (circa 1675)

      

'Natural parts and good Judgement rule the World. States are not governed by ergotisms.' [8]

Ergot poisoning has several names. These include St. Anthony's fire and St. Vitus dance. According to Wikipedia - 'Human poisoning due to the consumption of contaminated rye bread made from ergot-infected grain was common in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. It occurred primarily in Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries and involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particular outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518. Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly understood, and remedies were based on guesswork. Generally, musicians accompanied dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more people to join in. [9]

Dancing is a spontaneous and natural expression of ecstasy. The citizens of Strasbourg and elsewhere in Europe during the Middle Ages however would not have known they were under the influence of food which had chemically altered and would have attributed their ecstasy to religious emotions. Modern society is not immune from similar outbreaks of crowd hysteria, technically known as mass psychogenic illness. The population of the United States of America in particular seems to be vulnerable to such outbreaks. In 1931 wide-spread panic occurred when it was believed aliens from outer space had invaded America, following a radio broadcast of H.G.Well's 'War of the Worlds'. And at the present-time of writing an outbreak of  a craze involving threatening and creepy clowns has occurred in the USA, resulting in public hysteria. 

In conclusion, together Browne's diptych discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus may be defined as a work of transcendent synthesis; together their thematic concerns, imagery and literary style share a number of characteristics associated with altered states of consciousness. These include - an awareness of the paradox of time and space, a profound sense of the sacredness of creation, a heightened consciousness of one's own and other's personality, an intense, absorbed contemplation of art, in particular colour and sound, and a near overwhelming awareness of one's place in nature and the cosmos, allegedly. 

In the final analysis it hardly matters whether or not Browne ever took drugs. The complex combination of his deep religiosity,  rigorous scientific enquiry, his capacious and retentive memory, in conjunction with his omnivorous reading habits, along with his highly developed aesthetic sensibility involving all the senses, (he enjoyed viewing paintings, listening to music, good food and sweet odours), while also possessing a rich and fertile artistic imagination, guarantees Sir Thomas Browne will forever be a perennial and paradoxical figure in the spheres of world literature, science and philosophy.

Possessing all the aforementioned gifts which he fully integrated in his spirituality, intellect, artistic imagination and character, there was hardly any need whatsoever for Sir Thomas Browne to take drugs !

Notes

[1]  Peter Green Writers and their Work no. 108 pub. Longmans and co. 1959

[2] The miscellaneous writings of Sir Thomas Browne ed. Geoffrey Keynes pub. Faber and Faber 1931

[3] Pseudodoxia Epidemica Book 8 Chapter 7

[4] Sir Thomas Browne: A Doctor's Life of Science and Faith by Jeremiah Finch New York 1950.

[5]  A Facsimile of the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of Sir Thomas Browne and his son Edward's Libraries. Introduction, notes and index by J.S. Finch (E.J. Brill: Leiden, 1986) page 30. no. 52

[6] Collected Works of C.G. Jung Volume 14 paragraph 680

[7] Letter to Dr. Merritt August 18 1668

[8] Christian Morals Part 2 Section 4.

[9] Extract from Dancing Mania Wikipedia.

See also

Mass psychogenic illness
Peruvian bark
Obituary of J.S. Finch

Essay dedicated to autodidact, intrepid psychonaut, voracious reader and bon viveur, Tom Bombadil of Ecuador.

Mark Burrell's 'The Homing Ground' - All aboard the British transcendent locomotion.

Mark Burrell’s painting The Homing Ground sees the artist giving full expression to his technical and draughtsmanship skills, at a peak in imagination, and delighting in 'home-grown’ imagery which fairly crackles with cognitive dissonances. 

Painted in 1993, when the artist sometimes devoted 3 or 4 months to complete a single canvas, often in painstaking detail, its inspiration was sparked when Burrell, while travelling on a train returning to Lowestoft, read a magazine article on the world’s oldest clock. However, not unlike when Dorothy realizes she's no longer in Kansas City, we're far, far away from Lowestoft when viewing this dream-like landscape.  

Measuring 36 x 25 inches and painted on board in the artist’s favoured medium of alkyd resin oils, The Homing Ground features a landscape in which a bizarre train consisting mostly of a staircase and wall trundles along a railway-track. At the bottom of the staircase an elderly gentleman sits in an arm-chair reading a newspaper. An androgynous-looking youth holding a candelabra sits half-way upstairs. An angel stands at the very top of the staircase. At the helm of this peculiar house or rail-carriage without either windows or roof, there’s a disproportionately large face contoured like a mask. On the left in the background there can be seen a landscape which has a junction, hinting of a landscape networked in rail-track. In the distant background a boy can be seen running towards, not from, a spooky-looking house. 

The background to The Homing Ground is fringed by a dark, wild woods, creating a tension by alluding to hidden, unknown contents. As often in Burrell's art, the sky is wholly alive and dramatically lit. Together sky and background provide a magical backdrop for the viewer to focus upon the main action. Meanwhile the passengers of Burrell's transcendent locomotion chug along oblivious to their oncoming destination, a quite literally, yawning tunnel. 

           

Burrell’s art encourages the viewer to look closely and look again. Its always best to see his paintings in the original and if given half the chance to do so, grab it ! Digital photography cannot be relied upon to faithfully reproduce the richness of an oil-painting in either detail, colouration or dimension. For example, it is only when attentive that one notices the gentleman sitting in an arm-chair reading a newspaper consists only of a head, and is body-less, seemingly sustained by various tubes feeding his skeletal frame.  

Interpretations are numerous, and ought to be always taken in a 'soft and flexible’ manner, without dogmatic insistence. Burrell’s gent who is sustained by tubes and wires could allude to either modern-day's relationship to medical science or prophetic of the close attachment millions now have to the computer network in their everyday lives. 

Another interesting association occurs in the depiction of a stair-case in The Homing-Ground. Like railway tracks, stairs are a construct which assist in transporting people to another space and dimension. One is encouraged in such an interpretation upon seeing at the top of Burrell's 'stairway to heaven' an angel who adds a spiritual mood to the scene. Ethereal and translucent she stands at the helm of Burrell’s transcendent locomotion sprinkling cut roses upon the track. Her presence reminds the viewer that every-day life is not always centred upon the material, or even always visible to the senses, and though often unacknowledged or denied, may include an unknown quantity of spiritual protection.   

The rail-track, along with its more archaic variants, the road and the river, may be viewed as a symbol of  life's journey and of Time, a prominent theme in The Homing-Ground.

One of the most frequently encountered of all artistic 'double symbols' in Renaissance and esoteric art used to symbolize Time occurs in representations of Youth and Aged. Technically known as Puer et Senex they are evident here in the form of a bald, and therefore presumably old man reading a newspaper, and a youthful character sitting on stairs wistfully holding a candelabra. 

Time-wise historically, the steam-engine and railway were important British technological inventions of the 19th century, and key components of the Industrial Revolution. By 1850 there was a network of over 7000 miles of rail-track covering the length and breath of England. The steam locomotion, along with rail-track, transformed every British town, city and village. Indeed, for those living at North Sea coastal towns such as Lowestoft, before the train, it was quicker and often more comfortable to travel via sea to English coastal towns or continental, main-land Europe than to London. The arrival of the railway in the mid-nineteenth century changed livelihoods too. It enabled the produce of fishing-towns to be transported swiftly to London and other urban centres. Fishing-towns such as Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft also became accessible destinations for holidays, health tourism and entertainment by a growing urban population with leisure-time.

The British love-affair with trains in the past and today can be seen in the popularity of Hornby model trains and children's animated characters such as Ivor the Engine and Thomas the Tank.

A fine example of Burrell's eye for exquisite detail and colouration can be seen in the tail-light of his transcendent locomotion. This extraordinary detail could almost stand alone and framed as a single work or art, being near Vermeer-like in its realization of light and detail. 

  

In an art-work delighting in cognitive dissonances, that is imagery which provokes unease and ambiguity through conjoined and improbable objects which never the less seemingly exist; the background of The Homing-Ground features a house which has a human face superimposed upon it and whose yawning mouth is also a tunnel. A bath with a sail is perched upon its chimney-top. The image is arresting, humorous and disturbing and also a superb example of the artist’s ability to create highly-original 'home-grown' imagery which induces cognitive dissonance. Such paradoxical and thought-provoking imagery is a hallmark of Burrell’s imaginative art.

As a symbol the tunnel has a number of  meanings. As a portal to the unknown it alludes to humanity’s deepest fear, namely death, but  also to transformation and change, as well as the narrow anatomical passage-way to birth. Tunnels are also a feature of sea-side fun-fairs including the Tunnel of Love and the Ghost-train, as well as the roller-coaster. 

Another example of cognitive dissonance occurs in the form of the home. The home is the one stable point in most lives. Nomadic life-styles apart it is usually a static location, providing stability in our daily comings and goings in the world around us, yet here it is seen, caravan-like, in motion and yet still seemingly in some kind of domestic tranquillity.

Incidentally, I cannot resist mention in a moment of roller-coaster association, of the historical figure of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) who was recently elected as honorary 'Great Grandfather’ of the art-movement known as North Sea Magical Realism, of which Mark Burrell is a leading member..

Thomas Browne not only introduced the words ‘locomotion’ and ‘network’ (as an artificial concept) into the English language, but also believed in the existence of angels [1]. Holding such seemingly contrary beliefs, namely scientific and religious, appears incompatible to modern-day sensibilities, but in Browne’s era it was possible to possess both an imaginative scientific mind which anticipated ‘locomotion’, as well as believing in the existence of angels. And in fact there’s no small similarity in the fantasy imagery of Burrell’s The Homing-Ground to an illustration originating in Sir Thomas Browne’s era. 

In an frontispiece illustration to a German 1618 manifesto believed to be by the elusive Rosicrucian fraternity, there can be seen another form of improbable transport  inducing a cognitive dissonance upon the viewer. A castle on wheels. Its improbability is heightened by two disproportionately large objects, a sword wielded by a giant arm, and an over-sized trumpet. Both Burrell's art and Theophilus Schweighardt's illustration are the products of deeply original imaginative minds. [2]

Long resident at England’s most easterly town, Lowestoft, there’s something quintessentially British about Burrell’s art, in humour, as well as its Spencer-like draughtsmanship and portraiture. Burrell himself berates those who mistakenly describe his favourite artist Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) as a parochial, Little Englander figure, (in all probability from a lack of familiarity with one of 20th century Britain's greatest painters) while totally misjudging the artistic stature of one who was ‘an outstanding draughtsman’ in Burrell’s view, amongst other accomplishments of Spencer’s art. [3]

Like Stanley Spencer, Burrell is an artist who does not shy from travelling less-travelled, often darker paths in his artistic observations upon human nature. This uncompromising ability to examine less-pleasant aspects of human nature can initially produce an uncomfortable viewing experience; and it is only when one acknowledges that life is not always sweetness and light, and that there remain taboo aspects of the human psyche that one begins to appreciate Burrell’s artistic integrity as he unflinchingly tackles the subject-matter of his art.

In many ways Burrell’s humorous yet perplexing painting, which is not without a philosophical element, may be considered as having a kinship to imaginative worlds similar to those of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass or those portrayed in the pythonesque animation of Terry Gilliam (b. 1940). Indeed, after seeing the film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnasssus’ (2010) Burrell lauded Gilliam’s fantasy as ‘mesmerising’.

In summary, Burrell’s The Homing-Ground has a number of themes, these include Time and the human condition, childhood innocence and the sacred, along with death and the unknown. These are all enhanced and heightened in emotional intensity through the artist’s distinctive mood-inducing tonal palette, most often involving a palette somewhat reminiscent of the dark and vivid tones of a Gothic stained-glass window, but uniquely Burrell's.

Painted over twenty years ago, The Homing-Ground may be viewed as a coming-of-age art-work, marking the artist's early maturity as he explores and successfully develops, a personal artistic language in style, home-grown symbolism and thematic concerns. Burrell continues to develop further. The Homing-Ground remains a significant work in a fascinating and expansive portfolio. 

Notes

[1] Part 1 paragraph 33 of Religio Medici has a whole paragraph discussing Angels. It includes a footnote which states- Thereby is meant our good angel appointed us from our nativity.’

[2] The Rosicrucian Enlightenment  Dame Frances Yates pub. RKP 1972

[3]  Stanley Spencer at Burghclere George Behrend pub. Macdonald and Co. 1965

See Also

Mark Burrell -North Sea Magical Realist artist extraordinaire

Mark Burrelll -Wikipedia entry

Mark Burrell discusses his artistic development in a video. 

Vulcan in Art and Alchemy

Today (August 23rd) is the date of the festival of Vulcanalia, held in honor of the Roman god of fire and furnace in the ancient Roman world. Centuries later, during the Renaissance, Vulcan became both a popular subject for painters and synonymous with the art of alchemy, but before discussing the Roman god's symbolism in art and alchemy, its useful to remind ourselves of the original myth of Vulcan in the pantheon of Roman gods.

Vulcan was the son of Jupiter and Juno. As the son of the king and queen of the gods, he should have been handsome, but was ugly as a baby. His mother, Juno was horrified by him. She hurled the tiny baby off the top of Mount Olympus. Vulcan fell down from the sky for a whole day and night, eventually landing in the sea. One of his legs broke when he hit the water and never developed properly. He sank to the depths of the ocean, where the sea-nymph Thetis found him and took him to her underwater grotto, raising him as her own son.

Vulcan had a happy childhood playing with dolphins. When his adopted mother Thetis attended a dinner party held on Mount Olympus wearing a beautiful necklace of silver and sapphires which Vulcan had made for her, Juno asked where she could get such a necklace. Thetis became flustered, which caused Juno to become suspicious; and, at last, she discovered the truth, the baby she had rejected had now grown into a talented blacksmith.

Juno was furious and demanded that Vulcan return home, a demand that he refused. However, he sent her a beautifully constructed chair made of silver and gold. Juno was delighted with this gift but as soon as she sat in it her weight triggered hidden metal bands which sprung forth to hold her fast. The more she struggled the more firmly the mechanical throne gripped her. Juno sat fuming, trapped in Vulcan's chair for three days, unable to sleep or eat. Jupiter finally promised  Vulcan that if he released Juno he would give him a wife, Venus the goddess of love and beauty. Vulcan agreed, married Venus and later built a smithy under Mount Etna on the island of Sicily. It was said that whenever Venus was unfaithful, Vulcan grew angry and beat the red-hot metal with such a force that sparks and smoke rose up from the top of the mountain, creating a volcanic eruption. [1]

During the Renaissance, the subject of Vulcan working at his forge, delivering Achilles armour to Thetis or ensnaring the lovers Venus and Mars, were all popular subjects for artists including Velasquez, Tintoretto, Piero  di Cosimo and Rubens, among others, indeed, the Northern Mannerist artist Joachim Wtewael (1566 –1638) painted the dramatic moment of Venus and Mars surprised by Vulcan in no less than three differing versions.(below)

Artists interest in the myth of the lovers Venus and Mars surprised by Vulcan can be interpreted on at least two levels. Firstly, as a commentary upon taboo topics such as sexuality, temptation and adultery in the growing urban population of Europe and secondly, as symbolic of the 'fixing' and union of opposites in the 'Great  Work' of alchemy.

It was also during the Renaissance that the physician Paracelsus (1491-1540) introduced the mythological figure of Vulcan as the patron deity of alchemy. To the alchemist/physician Vulcan was synonymous with both the manipulation of fire, heating and distilling of nature's properties for medicine, and the transforming power and creative potential locked within the greater, invisible Man slumbering within; Paracelsus declared-

'Alchemy is an art and Vulcan (the governor of fire) is the artist in it. He who is Vulcan has the power of the art ... All things have been created in an unfinished state, nothing is finished, but Vulcan must bring all things to their completion. Everything is at first created in its prima materia, its original stuff; whereupon Vulcan comes, and develops it into its final substance ... God created iron but not that which is to be made of it. He enjoined fire, and Vulcan, who is the lord of fire, to do the rest ... From this it follows that iron must be cleansed of its dross before it can be forged. This process is alchemy; its founder is the smith Vulcan. What is accomplished by fire is alchemy - whether in the furnace or in the kitchen stove. And he who governs fire is Vulcan, even if he be a cook or a man who tends the stove'.

Elsewhere Paracelsus writes,

'Alchemy is a necessary, indispensable art ... It is an art, and Vulcan is its artist. He who is a Vulcan has mastered this art; he who is not a Vulcan can make no headway in it'. [2]

The British natural philosopher Francis Bacon however, was skeptical of the claims made by Paracelsian alchemists, indignantly exclaiming in his The Advancement of Learning (1605) -

'Abandoning Minerva and wisdom they play court to the sooty smith Vulcan and his pots and pans'.

Nevertheless, Paracelsian alchemists including the foremost promoter of Paracelsian alchemy Gerard Dorn, the early Belgian scientist Jan Baptist van Helmont, and Arthur Dee, the eldest son of the magus John Dee, all acknowledged the Roman god of forge and furnace as symbolic of their art. Arthur Dee in his Arca Arcarnum mysteriously stated -

'Though I am constrained to die and be buried nevertheless Vulcan carefully gives me birth'.

The Paracelsian ‘deity’ associated with alchemy features no less than three times in Sir Thomas Browne’s hermetic discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Firstly, in the very opening sentence of the discourse -

'That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana according to gentile theology in the work of the fourth day may pass for no blind apprehension of the creation of the Sun and Moon'.

Secondly, within the context of Classical  myth in which Vulcan constructs and casts an invisible network ensnaring the lovers Venus and Mars caught in bed inflagrante delicato  -

'As for that famous network of Vulcan, which enclosed 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'.

Lastly,  at the apotheosis of his literary-alchemical opus, Browne specifies the three factors necessary for determining truth, namely authority, reason and experience; Vulcan  here representing the "higher man" who, not unlike the Gnostic, "Man of Light," uses his craftsmanship and skills to aid, enlighten and liberate the Spiritual Man within.

'Flat and Flexible truths are beat out by every hammer, but Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out  Achilles his armour'.

In his late work Christian Morals which was written as a parental 'advisio' for his grown-up children, Sir Thomas Browne alludes a further three times to Vulcan, and just as the Belgian scientist Van Helmont (1580-1644) before him defined alchemy as Vulcan's art.  In a passage which perceptively describes the human psyche as 'the theatre of ourselves', Browne somewhat critically stated-

'Vulcan's Art doth nothing doth nothing in this internal militia; wherein not the armour of Achilles, but the armature of St. Paul, gives the glorious day'.

In modern times the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung interpreted Vulcan as one who:

'kindles the fiery wheel of the essence in the soul when it 'breaks off' from God; whence come desire and sin, which are the "wrath of God." [3]

The alchemists adoption of the mythical figure of Vulcan may be interpreted on several levels. At the lowest scale of interpretation Vulcan represents the cunning amoral demi-urge who blindly gains power over Nature without integrity; this mundane level anticipates the nascent Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. The activities of  extracting coal from mines to fuel colossal furnaces to manufacture steel and iron on a gigantic scale, and the subsequent development of the railroad and train throughout Europe and North America are distinctly Vulcan-like activities; as is the general "busyness" of the Protestant work-ethic of industrialised Western society also strongly reflected in this archetypal figure.

The transformative power of Vulcan the "higher man" and anthropos figure of the alchemists has today devolved into the negative aspects of a demi-urge figure; none other than modern technological man, who, divorced from God, forges his own destiny, independent of Religion, Divine Love or theological considerations, towards a brave new world or utopia. This is reflected in the fact that today the name of Vulcan is best known as either the name of a bomber plane or as the extra-terrestrial semi-human species as represented by Mr. Spock in the American science-fiction TV and film series 'Star-Trek'.

At a higher level of interpretation however, Vulcan is transformed to become an inspired visionary who is capable of releasing Mankind from the bonds of unknowingness and darkness; which is how alchemists such as Paracelsus and followers such as Van Helmont, Arthur Dee and Sir Thomas Browne interpreted the symbolism of Vulcan.

Author’s note

This article was originally written for Wikipedia in 2003 and subsequently duplicated in various places elsewhere on-line before its eventual deletion.
I assert the right to be identified as the original author of this short essay.
Other on-line writings encountered on thus subject of Vulcan and his relationship to alchemy are mirror duplication from the Wikipedia original, and the product of copy and paste scholarship.

As Sir Thomas Browne once stated -

'Men are still content to plume themselves in other’s feathers’.[4]

Art-work (top) Vulcan at forge by Chris  Appel
Next -  One of three canvases painted by the Northern Mannerist artist, Joachim Wtewael of Venus and Mars surprised by Vulcan
Last- Tintoretto - Venus and Mars surprised by Vulcan

Notes

[1] Abridged from Wikipedia
[2]  Paracelsus Selected writings ed. Jolandi Jacobi Princeton 1951
[3] CW 12 215
[4] Christian Morals Part II Section 9  pub. post. 1716

Peter Rodulfo's 'As the Elephant Laughed'. A Panorama of Evolution

Amongst the varied proliferation of paintings by the artist Peter Rodulfo As the Elephant Laughed is exemplary of stylistic characteristics encountered in his art. These include- sophisticated draughtsmanship and polished brush-work in conjunction with an industrious creativity and an exuberant imagination; all of which harmoniously unite in Laughing Elephant to produce a key-signature work, richly rewarding to view, and well worthy of in-depth analysis. 

Painted in oils on canvas during the winter of 2011/12, and one of his last art-works before relocating studio and home from Norwich to the coastal resort of Great Yarmouth, the foreground of Laughing Elephant (ease of reference title) features titular elephant facing a fox. Above the horizon the brilliant luminosity of a star casts its light upon a vast ocean where a large floating sea-shell supports a youth who stands in an enigmatic pose. The entire centre field of the canvas is dominated by two large, spiral-like waves which swirl and bubble with protozoan life. Two grass-tufted cliffs with homes perched precariously perched upon them frame the canvas on its left and right. The ghostly remains of a church tower, a dinosaur, along with trees caught in a breeze can also be seen, as well as an elderly woman sitting upon a sea-view bench, reflectively looking out to sea.

First impressions include a well-balanced and coordinated tonal spectrum, recollecting the saturated colours of a 1960‘s magic lantern celluloid slide, with a predominance of vivid hues of blue, a colour often linked with spirituality for its association with the sky and heaven.

The element of water in various forms is also often encountered in Rodulfo’s art, perhaps from the artist’s familiarity with the world’s seas and oceans as a well-seasoned traveller.

A good example of the artist’s meticulous attention to detail can be seen in the finely-worked detail of a nautilus-shell (top left) as well as in star-light reflected in water.

Detail  - Nautilus shell (top left)

The artist’s ability to create a multi-layered perspective is also evident, through a technical device which not only juxtaposes differing views, in this case both landscape and seascape, but also in conjunction with the paradox of day-light and night-sky appearing simultaneously.

Like much of Rodulfo’s art, the overall 'mood-music’ of  Laughing Elephant is essentially up-beat, good-humoured and optimistic, yet not without a philosophical dimension, for although measuring only 60 x 82 centimetres its jumbo-sized in artistic expression and interpretive dimension.

With its depiction of a variety of life-forms, marine and mammal, trees, flowers, stars and dinosaur, along with humankind, all seemingly caught in a swirling vortex of life, a receptive viewer is stimulated towards an awareness of their own, as well as humanity’s  relationship to Time and Space, Nature and the Universe.

The centre-field of Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant is dominated by two large waves which whisk and swirl with protozoan life. According to the psychologist Carl Jung, the spiral is an archetypal symbol representing cosmic force and symbolic of the spiritual journey. The spiral pattern is also considered to represent the evolutionary process of learning and growing, it can be found in structures as small as the double helix of DNA and as large as a galaxy. At Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland, solar aligned tombs can be seen with complex spiral patterns. Dating from around 3000-2500 BC, these patterns decorate structures which are earlier in time than either Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids.

Rodulfo’s imagery is worth exploring, in particular the two pairs of contrasting mammals in his painting, namely an elephant and fox, along with the human figures of a male youth and an elderly woman.

Detail from Rodulfo's As the Elephant Laughed

With a friendly, all-knowing eye and grinning chops, Rodulfo’s elephant raises its proboscis trunk aloft, as if trumpeting in laughter, perhaps at human folly.

Almost all symbolism relating to elephants originates from the Indian sub-continent, where Rodulfo spent a portion of his childhood. In Asian cultures, the elephant is a symbol of good luck, happiness and longevity; its also famed for its memory, wisdom and  psychic qualities. In modern times, the Irish novelist John Banville remarked of elephants-

‘what amazing beasts they are, a direct link surely to a time long before our time, when behemoths even bigger than they roared and rampaged though forest and swamp. In a manner they are melancholy and yet seem covertly amused, at us, apparently...... If one set out to seek among our fellow-creatures, the land-bound ones, at least,  for our very opposite, one would surely need look no further than the elephants.  [5]

Detail from As the Elephant Laughed'

With its gorgeous russet-red fur, standing alert and looking sly facing titular elephant, the fox is invariably portrayed in world mythology and folk-lore as a cunning trickster-figure, a transgressor who breaks the rules, being at odds with humankind and living upon its wits. Yet in fact the fox shares some characteristics which are associated with humanity being- 

Independent, yet liking company, busy and inventive, yet destructive, too; bold but cowardly, alert and cunning but equally careless, the fox embodies the contradictions inherent in human nature’.[6]

Detail from  As the Elephant Laughed' 

Centre-stage in Rodulfo’s vision of evolution a mysterious youth stands astride a floating sea-shell. He’s engaged in a complex pose which involves one hand on the back of his head and another stretched out, as if shielding his eyes from being dazzled, his palm seemingly feeling the spiralling energy-field above him.

In almost all alchemical iconography the enigmatic figure of Mercurius is invariably portrayed as either mirthful and at play, or in the role of messenger and psychopomp to the gods of antiquity. Rodulfo's sea-shell figure is also a sophisticated variant upon the Renaissance artist Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus.

Botticelli -The Birth of Venus (c. 1486).

In stark polarity to this enigmatic, youthful figure there is an elderly woman with grey hair sitting upon a sea-view bench. She’s gazing out to sea, perhaps reminiscing memories from her past. Rodulfo here acknowledges the longevity of woman, along with the often unacknowledged power of matriarchy and of woman as the true vessel of ancestral memory.

In the German polymath Johann Goethe’s drama Faust the hero descends to the "realm of the mothers" — variously described as either the depths of the psyche or the cosmic womb.

Detail from  As the Elephant Laughed'

This pairing of figures, youth and age are identifiable  as variants upon the symbolism of puer et senex, (their technical art term), a pairing frequently encountered in Mannerist art and alchemical iconography representing Youth and Age. Together they symbolize the human life-span and Time in general.   

With its depiction of a wide variety of life-forms, manipulation of perspective in order to create depth of field, evocation of movement, featuring a complex pose, as well as inclination towards symbolism, Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant may loosely be defined as Neo-Mannerist, for each and every one of the forenamed techniques, themes and artistic concerns associated with the art-movement of Mannerism, can also be seen in his art. Other paintings by Rodulfo which may also be defined as Neo-Mannerist in style and content include his - The Klagenfurt Altar, Across the Bay and The Visitor. 

Characteristics of the art movement of Mannerism include variety and multiplicity, unusual perspective, staged and complex poses and utilization of mythological and esoteric concepts. Mannerist art is now recognised as being highly influential upon the twentieth century art movement of Surrealism. Indeed, the early Mannerist artist Arcimboldo (1527-1593) who used fruit and flowers to create bizarre portrait paintings, was described as the “father of Surrealism” by Salvador Dali. Rodulfo also creates his own quite unique ‘double-imagery’ as well as being familiar with Mannerist art in general. In his painting Hide and Seek an elephant is featured as part of a complex 'double-image'.

Peter Rodulfo's Hide and Seek  Oils on canvas 40 x 52 cms. (2015)

A fruitful comparison in technique, imagery and overall imagination to Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant  can be found in the Dutch Northern Mannerist artist Joachin Wtewal’s Perseus and Andromeda (1611). Painted near exact 400 years earlier than Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant, Wtewal’s masterpiece is inspired by the ancient Greek myth of the hero Perseus rescuing Andromeda from a dragon; it also exhibits variety, a strongly developed technique, a sense of movement and vastness, unusual perspective, along with featuring a complex, almost contorted pose. 

Joachin Wtewal's Perseus and Andromeda 

A closer analogy to the thematic concerns and style to Rodulfo’s art in general can be found in the paintings of the twentieth century German artist Max Ernst (1891-1976) and the British artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Briefly lovers at the onset of World War II, Ernst and Carrington utilized highly-developed techniques and artistic devices similar to those associated with Mannerist art.  Both artists also occasionally allude to esoteric and alchemical concepts in their respective paintings; and although Rodulfo himself eschews any credence whatsoever to esoteric arcarna, nevertheless casual allusions to esoteric concepts can be discerned in his art, both conscious and unconscious.  

If however any esoteric themes or imagery can be detected in Rodulfo’s art, in all probability its simply because archetypal imagery is often embedded at an unconscious level in the psyche, and therefore the artist’s own encounter with such imagery may paradoxically and simultaneously be both conscious from familiarity and also unconscious in realization.

Crucially, although Rodulfo has on occasions found Classical mythology inspiring, more often his imagery is harvested from his own, home-grown plantation of symbols, producing a rich, allusive language, capable of expressing profound psychological statements. Its an imagery language which in the case of Laughing Elephant, engages in transcendental synthesis, that is, the total sum of its parts hints of a greater vision, one of evolution and humanity’s place within it. Its also a stark reminder in essence, with its depiction of dinosaur and abundant protozoan life, that humanity is only one of nature’s innumerable life-forms alive on Earth, in the past, present and future.

Just as Mannerist art was a product of Renaissance humanism and therefore inclined towards emphasis upon  the relationship between humanity and nature - so too Neo-Mannerist art such as Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant, expresses the same message. 

Although enjoyable purely as a colourful and fun decorative art-work, the central ‘message’ of Rodulfo’s panorama of life seems to be - all life is involved and inter-connected in evolution, from flower and tree to star and human,  individually and collectively; and as such its ‘message’ is of importance to those alive in the world today.

Part 2

As the Elephant Laughed      Click to enlarge

An increasing interest, acceptance and understanding of alchemical concepts and symbols now permits esoteric concepts to be applied, not unlike the famous melting watches of Salvador Dali, in a, ‘soft and flexible’ way, that is, without any fixed or dictator-like attitude, to works of art, including Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant. One fruitful avenue of enquiry worthwhile strolling down in discourse upon Laughing Elephant can be found in the lyrics of the multi-media artist David Bowie (1946 - 2016). 

In addition to being a highly original song-writer and a versatile performer who was gifted enough to work in diverse musical genres for decades, David Bowie was also a voracious reader. Throughout his long, front-running career in music, Bowie found recreation in reading spiritual and esoteric literature including Christian Gnosticism, Alistair Crowley, the Kabbalah and the writings of the psychologist Carl Jung, subjects which he sometimes alluded to in his strikingly original lyrics. [7]

Like David Bowie, Peter Rodulfo’s an artist who thrives upon rapid stylistic changes, as well as being erudite whilst maintaining his independence in creative aesthetic. He is also familiar with esoteric concepts, in particular the ideas and writings of Alistair Crowley (1875-1947), a major figure in British esotericism whose present-day reputation Rodulfo accurately assesses as one of character-assassination through the prudery, prejudices and misinformation of the British tabloid press of Crowley’s day. 

David Bowie’s allusion to the ideas of C.G. Jung can be found on the  album with its word-play title, Aladdin Sane, (1973) in the song Drive-in Saturday  in the line - ‘Jung the foreman prayed at work’, a word-play allusion to Jung’s fixation upon the number four or quaternity as the number which he believed symbolizes totality and wholeness best, citing the four points of the compass, the four seasons, four elements and the Christian tetramorph among numerous examples, as expressions of totality.

Whether intentional or not, Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant features no less than four mammals - an elephant and a fox, a youth and an elderly woman. Together the polarised figures of elephant and fox may be considered as having a relationship to the youthful figure astride a sea-shell and the elderly woman contemplating the sea, that of anthropomorphic aspects of the human psyche. All four mammals in totality form a Jungian quaternity no less; for once the polarity of the figures of youth and elderly woman are identified as symbols representing Youth and Age, (technically known as puer et senex in both Mannerist art and alchemical iconography and commonly associated with the planetary symbolism of Mercurius ei Saturnus), then the pairing of the utterly antithetical fox and elephant may also hint of planetary symbolism when explored through the prism of comparative religion and mythology. 

In Hindu mythology the elephant's thick, grey skin is likened to the latent and hidden power and strength of the sun when occulted by thick and heavy grey cloud [8]. Such symbolism is highly suggestive of the elephant's s association with the solar.

In almost all world mythology and folk-lore the fox with its nocturnal activities and changeable nature is associated with the feminine and the moon. The fox’s feminine and deceptive qualities are reflected in the anima projections of  rock-music lyrics such as Jimmy Hendrix’s ‘Foxy Lady’ and Jim Morrison’s song ‘20th century Fox’ .  More recently lyrics by the brothers Mael of Sparks in their 2008 song This is the Renaissance in which there are Paintings filled with foxy women. Thus its possible to extract from Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant a planetary quaternity consisting of Sol et Luna in conjunction with the pairing of puer et senex (Youth and Age) which are invariably represented by the planetary opposites Mercurius et Saturnus. This planetary quaternity of two luminaries and two planetary opposites, is identical to those named in the German alchemist Michael Maier’s book of Mannerist styled emblems Atalanta Fugiens (1617). The very same quartet of planetary symbolism is allude to by the quartet of statuettes found upon the funerary monument known as the Layer monument (c. 1600, Norwich).  

Yet even in the ecstatic rubedo moment depicted, there’s a hint of a curtain ready to fall and in an instant black-out Rodulfo’s vision of the inter-connection of life, and for a cyclical return from rubedo revelation to a nigredo state of darkness, gloom and unknowingness. This return to a nigredo state is hinted by a spectral church, perhaps an allusion to the death-throes of Christianity in the 21st century, to houses perched precariously upon cliffs, and above all, by a raven seen entering in full-flight intruding into the frame. (top-right). 

Birds and avian symbolism in general often occur in the surrealist art of Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington, as well as in alchemical iconography where the black raven, dove, eagle, white swan, peacock, pelican, phoenix and vulture among others, are frequently encountered. Birds can also be seen in several of Rodulfo’s paintings, sometimes making a nuisance of themselves by playfully intruding into the frame of a well-ordered composition, quizzically eye-balling the viewer.

In the early 17th century alchemical anthology the Theatrum Chemicum  a black raven settles upon a melancholic adept under the influence of  the malefic planet, Saturn.

An Elephant in the Garden

Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant has a remarkable affinity with another great art-work which also expresses itself in a lighthearted, optimistic and idiosyncratic, yet visionary manner, and which likewise delights in multiplicity and variety, as well as concerning itself with evolution and the inter-connectivity of life on earth, namely Sir Thomas Browne’s Discourse The Garden of Cyrus . 

Although differing in form, Browne’s hermetic discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) shares the same geographical place of origin to Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant, namely the city of Norwich. Not only does it make specific reference to a wide variety of life, including those depicted in Laughing Elephant such as trees, star-fish and seas, but also elephants, Browne giving example of the quincunx pattern when used as a battle-formation which effectively 'defeated the mischief intended by the  elephants’. 

Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant like Browne’s Garden of Cyrus, is in essence an idiosyncratic vision of the inter-connection of the cosmos. Although separated by centuries, both works of art delineate nature’s multiplicity and variety throughout the macrocosm. Crucially, both creative artists possess the necessary technical skills of their respective craft in order to construct a communicative frame-work for their vision of evolution. Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant  like Browne’s discourse The Garden of Cyrus is a work of art which expresses an awareness and sense of wonder of the artist’s own unique place in the world, as an individual and as artist. Ultimately, both works of art engage in transcendent synthesis, that is, the total sum of their imagery and symbolism multiplies into a greater vision, one of evolution and humanity’s place within it.

Conclusion

Not only are all four elements represented in Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant  via fish and bird, tree and star, but also imagery allusive to the Microcosm and Macrocosm, with its depiction of  the small world of humanity represented by a mercurial youth and a matriarchal senex, as well as the large and cosmic, the Macrocosm; thus it may be be interpreted as a mandala, that is, a work of art which invites contemplation, reminding and refreshing the individual of their place in the cosmos. Together, microcosm and macrocosm, in conjunction with the metaphysical framework of Space and Time, the basic template of all mandala art, can be discerned within the canvas.

The art-historian Arnold Hauser defined Mannerist art as, ‘a vision of a new spiritual content in life, with a tinge of the bizarre and the abstruse’ [8].

Hauser’s definition is applicable to Browne’s Garden of Cyrus as much as Rodulfo's Aquarian-tinted vision of evolution. Indeed, visionary art, such as both Browne's and Rodulfo's invites a receptive viewer to a cosmic ‘soul-journey’ of the imagination. As such Rodulfo’s Laughing Elephant is a canvas which is capable of producing a transcendent or numinous moment by transporting a receptive viewer from the ordinary and mundane, to a place where imagination is unconfined and to where future possibilities and unrevealed relationships are found.

K.Faulkner 2012-2016

In Memorium  David Bowie (Jan 8th 1946 - Jan 10th 2016)

Starman singer and song-writer, actor and multi-media performer.

With thanks to Krzysztof Fijalkowski

Notes

[1]  Religio Medici (1643) Part 1 Section 15
[2] Pseudodoxia Epidemica  (1646) book 7 chapter 15
[3]  Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) book 3 chapter 1
[4]  Miscellaneous Tract 13 Museum Clausum pictues Item 13

[5]  John Banville ‘The Sea’  pub. Picador 2010

[6] Dictionary of Symbols ed.Chevalier and Gheerbrant Penguin 1996

[7] http://tanjastark.com/2015/06/22/crashing-out-with-sylvian-david-bowie-carl-jung-and-the-unconscious/

[8]  De Gubernatis, Angelo - Zoological Mythology (Volume II)  1872. 

[9] Arnold Hauser -  Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art 1964 

Bibliography

Mannerism - John Shearman Penguin 1967

The Alchemy of Paint  - Spike Bucklow pub. Marion Boyars 2009 reprinted 2010 and 2012.

Arcanum 17 - Andre Breton 1945 pub. Sun and Moon 1999

See Also

Rudolfu's Mandala of Loving-Kindness

Paracelsus on the interpretation of dreams

The alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) is credited as the first to advocate chemical processes in order to obtain new medicines to alleviate diseases and illnesses. He remains a controversial and little-understood figure in intellectual history however.  It was during his life-time, the Renaissance, that new discoveries in almost every branch of the arts and sciences occurred, including the 'discovery' of the psyche.

Orthodox Christian theology did not always possess a clear-cut view or answer to the new spiritual and psychological concerns experienced by many during the Renaissance age of transition. The effects of urbanization for example increased interaction between widely differing social, cultural, moral and religious perspectives as well as awareness of sexuality. From their close understanding of the human condition and dissatisfied with Christian dogma alchemist-physicians  as diverse as Paracelsus, John Dee, Van Helmont, Jerome Cardan and Thomas Browne augmented concepts originating from the western esoteric traditions or coined home-grown neologisms and their own symbols in order to describe their understanding of the psyche.  Each of these aforenamed alchemist-physicians took their own dreams far more seriously than any in contemporary society today, recognizing their dream-lives to be of great importance to their self-development or the individuation process in Jungian terms. From alchemist-physicians immersion and analysis of their dreams there emerged the beginnings of the modern science of psychology. These rudimentary and tentative understanding of the self and the unconscious psyche by alchemist-physicians, several of whom C.G. Jung  studied and closely based his psychology upon, were, as the Swiss psychologist recognized, the fruits of the Renaissance spirit of enquiry into nature, which includes human nature. 

The rich and complex symbolism of alchemy contributed to the Renaissance 'discovery' of the psyche and the embryonic origins of modern-day psychology no less, although it was not until the early 20th century that the unconscious was identified and named as such by Freud. The hitherto hidden workings of the unconscious psyche could be revealed, Freud proposed and demonstrated, through an in-depth analysis of an individual's dreams. 

The English alchemist-physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) was a critical follower of Paracelsus who held a deep interest in dreams and the workings of the psyche. In his short tract on dreams Browne expressed a highly-evolved theory of dream interpretation which anticipates Jungian psychology-

"Many dreams are made out by sagacious exposition from the signature of their subjects; carrying their interpretation in their fundamental sense & mystery of similitude, whereby he that understands upon what natural fundamental every notional depends, may by symbolical adaptation hold a ready way to read the characters of Morpheus." [1]

Both Paracelsus and Sir Thomas Browne can justifiably be identified as Ur-psychologists who anticipated the analytical methodology of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Paracelsus, like Freud centuries later, considered dreams and their interpretation to be the 'Royal road' to understanding of the psyche. He also recognised the supernatural element of dreams and that their interpretation is endorsed in the Biblical stories such as Joseph who successfully interpreted the Egyptian Pharaoh's dreams. 

Paracelsus wrote the following extracts on dreams and their interpretation -

"The interpretation of dreams is a great art. Dreams are not without meaning wherever they may come from - from fantasy, from the elements, or from another inspiration.One can find something supernatural in them. For the spirit is never idle. If the earth gives us an inspiration - one of her gifts - and if she confers it upon us through her spirit, then the vision has a meaning. 

"Anyone who wants to take his dream seriously, interpret it, and be guided by it, must be endowed with "sidereal knowledge" and the light of nature, and must not engage in absurd fantasies, nor look upon his dreams from the heights of his arrogance; for in this way nothing can be done with them. dreams must be heeded and accepted. for a great many of them come true.

"For the most part presentiments appear in man in so unimpressive  a form that they are ignored. And yet Joseph discovered in his sleep who Mary was and by whom she was with child. And because dreams are not sufficiently heeded, no faith is put in their revelations, although they are nothing other than prophecies.......

"The wise man must not neglect them, but recall that Christ too appeared in invisible form and was ridiculed. If he understands that inconspicuous things must not be ridiculed but judged with wisdom, he will also know Christ. The scoffers have no understanding, but the wise possess the knowledge that God has conferred upon them.

"The dreams which reveal the supernatural are promises and messages that God sends us directly; they are nothing but his angels. His ministering spirits, who usually appear to us when we are in a great predicament......Of such apparitions we must know how they take place and how they come to us; when we are in great need, we can obtain them from God's kindness if our prayer pours in true faith from a truthful mouth and heart. Then God sends us such a messenger who appears to us in spirit, warns us, consoles us, teaches us, and brings us His good tidings.

"From time immemorial artistic insights have been revealed to artists in their sleep and in dreams, so that at all times they ardently desired them. Then their imagination could work wonders upon wonders and invoke the shade of philosophers, who would instruct them in their art. today this still happens again and again, but most of what transpires is forgotten. how often does a man say as he wakes in the morning,  " I had a wonderful dream last night," and relate how Mercury or this or that philosopher appeared to him in person and taught him this or that art. but then the dream escapes him and he cannot remember it. However, anyone to whom this happens should not leave his room upon awakening, should speak to no-one, but remain alone and sober until everything comes back to him, and he recalls his dream. [2]

Notes

[1]    Sir Thomas Browne on Dreams

[2] Paracelsus Selected Writings edited with an introduction by Jolande Jacobi Princeton University Press 1951 

See also

Paracelsus and Sir Thomas Browne

Wikipedia on Paracelsus  (This entry - begun by a Wikipedia contributor who has also been active for over 13 years, has on average 700-900 views daily)