Once upon a time, there was a snake in a garden ...(or so the story goes). eyes
The symbolism of the snake has often been seen as representing knowledge.
In light some have seen the snake as a positive, primeval force representing rebirth and fertility; eyes up
in shadow it has been seen as representing sin. Eyes down
When the opposites of light and shadow converge and the snake swallows its own tale, it is known as the Ouroboros.
According to Carl Jung :
“The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This ‘feedback’ process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which [...] unquestionably stems from man’s unconscious.”
The journey to the underworld and confronting the shadow self is a common theme in many myths throughout the world.
... Early western mythology often had the female taking the journey - from Ishtar to Persephone to Isis.
Breath With the advent of monotheism came the downfall of the feminine in many spiritual practices. The idea of the goddess, once a positive symbol often related to fertility, became associated with sin - as Eve (along with the serpent) became synonymous with the fall of man. The Demonisation of women and nature beginning with the snake in the garden.
This concept allowed for the moral imperative to control and subjugate women, while simultaneously gaining authority over the power to create life. ...An imbalance occurs where the male deity becomes dominant and the female takes on the inferior role. ...By insinuating a ‘good’ and ‘evil’ with fertility, came a righteousness to control women’s reproductive rights.
So the fertility goddess becomes the ‘whore’, and the ‘virgin’ becomes the idealized woman. …
By elevating the “virgin” in a religious context, and condemning the ‘whore’, sex comes under the control of the whims of the man, confined to the context of marriage where inheritance can be guareenteed through the male line.
Camille Paglia p. 22 - “The female body’s unbearable hiddenness applies to all aspects men’s dealings with women. What does it look like in there? Did she have an orgasm? Is it really my child? Who was my real father? Mystery surrounds women’s sexuality. This mystery is the main reason for the imprisonment man has imposed on women. Only by confining his wife in a locked harem guarded by eunuchs could he be certain that her son was also his.”
From the Western perspective, Mary represented an impossible ideal, one that in order to create life woman is denied embodying.
According to Carl Jung
“Since [in the middle ages] the psychic relation to woman was expressed in the collective worship of Mary, the image of woman lost a value to which human beings had a natural right. This value could find its natural expression only through individual choice, and it sank into the unconscious when the individual form of expression was replaced by a collective one. In the unconscious the image of woman received an energy charge that activated the archaic and infantile dominants. And since all unconscious contents, when activated buy dissociated libido, are projected upon the external object, the devaluation of the real woman was compensated by daemonic features, She no longer appeared as an object of love, but as a persecutor or witch. The consequence of increasing Mariolatry was the witch hunt., that indelible blot on the later Middle Ages.”
These may sound like archaic concepts, but the shadow continues through today. You see this now in the recent anti-abortion issues.
Present day portrayals of women are so often littered with images of victims and negative female archetypes. The virgin/whore dichotomy is still reflected in contemporary pop culture and media. Even if the ‘cult of the virgin’ is outdated it is still implied by the fetishization of the female victim.
Turn on any tv series, murder mystery or horror movie and you will see it is usually about women being brutally raped and murdered. What does this say about our ‘advanced’ society? Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?
This power dynamic is often referred to as submission of the female to the male partner. But in modern usage, the word submission takes on a different meaning given the context of choice and consent, the consent that can be withdrawn. But this is often not respected.
Women are wanted as sex objects but disrespected as whores, and if you are a virgin after puberty society often looks at you as a prude. Being submissive, kind, or womanly is seen as weak.
In countering these varying aspects, I think about the concept of ‘Cognitive Dissonance’, and integration and acceptance of the shadow self in relation to the virgin/whore dichotomy.
Wikipedia In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. This discomfort is triggered by a situation in which a person’s belief clashes with new evidence perceived by the person.
F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes. The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
Fantasy and art can serve as a mask, a mirror, a doorway which can shield us or open us more gently into the repressed issues we are afraid to confront in ourselves or in society.
I want to offer the opportunity for the viewer alternative views of our perceived reality. Observations of art can often be similar to mirrored images of our own psyche. The work holds my thoughts, but also exists in a larger context in relation to others. Like that of an inkblot, art can serve as a method of exploration of our own personal unconscious thoughts. For me, the ideas often unravel themselves through the process of making. The meanings come like interpreting a dream after one wakes up.
― Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
“The dream has a very striking way of dealing with the category of opposites and contradictions. This is simply disregarded. To the dream 'No' does not seem to exist. In particular, it prefers to draw opposites together into a unity or to represent them as one. Indeed, it also takes the liberty of representing some random element by its wished-for opposite, so that at first one cannot tell which of the possible poles is meant positively or negatively in the dream-thoughts.”
Perception/Objectification - I’m trying to understand where it came from and how did we get here. How do we breath and how do we not become consumption while maintaining our identity. The shadow is a part of ourselves we refuse to recognize. To understand ourselves we must confront the shadow, accept it. From the inside out, as well as the outside in. Microcosm/Macrocosm
― Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths
“In its confounding of the logic that maintains terms like high and low, or base and sacred as polar opposites, it is this play of the contradictory that allows one to think the truth that Bataille never tired of demonstrating: that violence has historically been lodged at the heart of the sacred; that to be genuine, the very thought of the creative must simultaneously be an experience of death; and that it is impossible for any moment of true intensity to exist apart from a cruelty that is equally extreme.”
I see in each piece a multiplicity of meaning. Interwoven are myths and fairytales, subconscious recollections. A lot of these combined mythologies are present in my work. Like the Seraphim, every individual may have their own unique perception of a work, as everyone has their own perception of life.
In this work I use imagery of myth, of the snake, the virgin, and the shadow as ways of exploring these themes. I am thinking about rewriting the sacred space, putting it back in balance. The temple serves as a place to revere the shadows of our consciousness, the virgin and the whore, the sacred and the profane, the goddess whose duality may exist simultaneously.
The ouroboros shows time as an endless cycle. I think of my artwork as a conduit. The rope representing an unconscious unravelling, like the snake shedding it’s skin. By releasing the bonds that tie us to these disturbing self perceptions, and by acknowledging the shadow, maybe we can find the way to self knowledge, like the snake in the garden.
The END (and the Beginning)