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Maya Deren - The Divine Horsemen: Living Gods of Haiti

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Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1985) is a black-and-white documentary film about dance and possession in Haitian vodou that was shot by experimental filmmaker Maya Deren between 1947 and 1954. In 1981, twenty years after Deren's death, the film was completed by Deren's third husband Teiji Ito (1935-1982) and his wife Cherel Winett Ito (1947-1999). Most of the film consists of images of dancing and bodies in motion during rituals in Rada and Petro services. Deren had studied dance as well as photography and filmmaking. She originally went to Haiti with the funding from a Guggenheim fellowship and the stated intention of filming the dancing that forms a crucial part of the vodou ceremony. In 1953, Deren's book Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti, on the subject of vodou, was published by Vanguard Press. The film that resulted, however, reflected Deren's increasing personal engagement with vodou and its practitioners (Wilcken, 1986). While this ultimately resulted in Deren disregarding the guidelines of the fellowship, Deren was able to record scenes that probably would have been inaccessible to other filmmakers. Deren's original notes, film footage, and wire recordings are in the Maya Deren Collection at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and at Anthology Film Archives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Horsemen:_The_Living_Gods_of_Haiti 

Post-Nihilism?

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The following excerpts are from a lengthy unfinished and unpublished commentary I was writing on Might is Right, that will never be finished or published, written well before I fully encountered the works of Evola and Guénon, which were game-changing. Evola and "Ragnar Redbeard" are fundamentally irreconcilable. From the Evolian perspective, "Redbeard" is more or less a modernist and liberal humanist. "Humanist" as in "man being the measure of all things," and "liberal" as in retaining some vestigial idea of "progress" in the 19th century rationalist evolutionary sense. Most of the general outward descriptive contours remain standing. This is the Kali Yuga. But "humanism" is repulsive and erroneous. I am with Evola.

***
Pessimism is warranted – life is short, death is certain, misfortune is likely. Strife and friction are the conditions of life – problems are ubiquitous and constant. The history of life on earth, including human life, history, literature, art, every aspect of culture, is a pageant of turmoil and conflict, physical or psychological. The story of mankind is the story of man vs. nature, man vs. animal, man vs. man; individual vs. individual, individual vs. group, group vs. group, and group vs. individuals. The roots of the will-to-power are entrenched in the soil of conflict, its trunk and limbs grown strong through resistance against the hurricane winds of existential uncertainty and misfortune.... From the cataclysmic and slow-grinding processes that brought the cosmos into existence, to the warring bacteria within the primordial slime that birthed life on earth, from cell to gelatinous mass, from swimming to crawling thing, to the scaled slithering reptiles and fanged and clawed beasts that were our ancestor’s ancestors, from the sordid cannibalistic cavern-dwelling man-apes to the gross misshapen beast that first walked on two legs, to those who look like us, all lived by killing, gnawing, and eating every other living thing, man, animal, and plant, and warring to carve out its brief miserable existence in a hostile landscape, in drenching rain, against flooding waters, parched earth, freezing cold and searing sun. Life itself is Total War. Only the strong survive.

***
Man is just another predatory animal with no special standing in the greater universe. He is not an extraordinary creation of a supernatural god with a privileged seat at the table reserved for him in some supernatural heaven. The blind material forces of nature ride roughshod over his sentimental delusions and feeble existence with a cold, inanimate, and routine indifference. His prospects are severely constricted, bleak, and grim. His condition is terminal. His prognosis is poor. Few among this tribe of petty, vicious apes possess the fortitude to look into this black abyss without falling face-first into a bottomless pit of self-destructive despair. Those who possess the strength to confront the abyss find no comfort in cheap ideals, insipid “spiritual” consolation, counterfeit excuses, or consciousness-annihilating soporifics – those with the spine for it become addicted to the unvarnished brutal facts of life and take strength therefrom.

***
Force or threat of force rules the world of man. “Rights” are inventions of man, only defined by man, and only enforced by man. Every contract and constitution of the world is nothing without a legion of armed thugs to enforce its statutes and stipulations, without the bludgeon or bullet, the paper is useless. Brute force is the gold standard of written constitutions, without it they are snot-rags, wallpaper, or fish wrappers.

JDS

Evola in Relation to the Traditionalist School

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In response to this paragraph from the Sophia Perennis website:

Baron Julius Evola was an Italian Traditionalist, a close associate of Rene Guenon, and a writer of many brilliant books on various aspects of traditional culture, religion, and esoterism, only a few of which have been translated into English. He was a bit more “Nietzschian” than the other Traditionalists, however, and entertained certain “hopes” for Mussolini and Hitler, though he also criticized them, and was never a member of the Fascist Party. (These hopes were ultimately disappointed.) Though he worked and wrote on a much higher level than most “occultists,” his practice of what he termed “magic” and his lack of personal commitment to a single revealed religion are among the things that led Frithjof Schuon, and most of his followers, to largely reject him. He nonetheless retains a large following in Europe, and is one of the philosophical ancestors of the “intellectual Goths.”

I could assemble a bullet-list of quotations from most of the leading names of the “Traditionalist School” (so-called, not a term Guénon or Evola were comfortable with), every bit as anti-democratic and almost as racially charged as anything culled from Evola. Where the substantial (in my opinion) controversy enters regarding the “Traditionalists” vs. Evola, aside from the question of the Kshatriya/Brahman hierarchical order, is in the evaluation of the survival of authentic initiatory circuits within any or all of the surviving religious traditions, east or west.

Schuon and his followers are the most “liberal” in advocating alignment with existing “traditional/revealed” religions, as such, with an awareness and application of their esoteric aspects, basically “making the best of it.” Guénon was more skeptical and “conservative” in his evaluation of the probability of any surviving initiatory circuits in the western traditions, conceding the possibility of vestigial survivals within traditional (lower-case 't') Catholicism, and some very specific orders of esoteric masonry, but ultimately pursuing his path in esoteric Islam. Most followers of Guénon and Schuon consider affiliation with one of the great exoteric religious traditions an imperative. Evola considered most of these traditions, all of them in the west, as decadent, essentially hollow shells devoid of any authentic initiatory content and entirely bourgeoisie in nature. For Evola, anyone of a genuinely rarified nature attuned to Tradition, affiliation with the empty forms of once-traditional spiritual currents would likely be more spiritually distractive if not regressive.

Regarding the Kshatriya/Brahman question, In Guénon’s lifetime, he and Evola diverged on the issue of Spiritual vs. Temporal power, or the hierarchical relation between Brahman and Kshatriya functions in the Traditional order. Evola was explicit in emphasizing his message was not for everyone, but for a very differentiated action-oriented Kshatriya-type, for whom the path of “bhakti” or contemplation such as advocated by Guénon and Schuon is completely inappropriate (or at least inadequate in itself). Evola’s assessment of the condition of the modern world determined an active approach to initiation more valid than a contemplative approach, thus his assessment of Tantra and Magic as valid spiritual disciplines for this type of person. Followers of Guénon and Schuon for the most part are inclined to elevate contemplation and prayer as the optimal orientation.

Paradoxically, being more “conservative” regarding the existence of authentic Tradition and initiatory circuits as and within existing religions, as well as questioning the Guénonian conception of strictly “bureaucratic” models of initiation, places Evola in the position of being “radical” or “experimental” by having to take the position that transcendence (initiation) is only available to a very specific differentiated type, born to the role, and forced more or less to reconstruct his own ladder of ascent from vestigial remnants of Tradition to be found, such as (in Evola’s case) the Hermetic Tradition, Tantra, and Magic (in Evola’s specific conception, more akin to Theurgy). I use the term "radical" here not only in the sense of "going to the root or origin" insofar as Evola agreed that the principals were anterior and superior to any specific manifestation, thus "going to the root or origin," but also "radical" in the sense of operating outside of specific formal “bureaucratic” manifestation of initiation (by circumstance or choice). Evola’s assertion of the differentiated “Kshatriya” path, of effecting alignment with God by becoming God rather than by “submission,” is what qualifies his way as the “Left Hand Path.” From the now-dominant perspective of the Schuon “school,” with its emphasis on attainment through contemplation/devotion/bhakti, this is very much “off the reservation.” Thus the controversy.

I happen to agree with Evola on these points because I think he is correct about the present conditions, not because he is a "rock star" as seems to be the case with some of the would-be "traditionalist" journalists kicking around. Although in all fairness the personality cult surrounding Schuon probably dwarfs that surrounding Evola. Particular foibles of secondary human in-group/out-group psychology doesn't detract from the actual value of either of their works. 

These specific points aside, it is evident that Evola regarded the works of Schuon highly. He quotes from them with tacit approval in Ride the Tiger, The Path of Cinnabar, etc. Schuon may be second only to Guénon in the quality and quantity of his work on pure Traditionalist Metaphysics.

JDS

Ps. The above commentary is not an attack on the Sophia Perennis website or anyone writing for it, they provide an invaluable resource and are greatly appreciated.

Your world is dying and it deserves to die.

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In response to a partially confrontational but not entirely ignorant email questioning the shift in orientation toward Tradition, I will say this; anyone who has followed my previous writing, in public and private venues, will note that I have never expressed anything but contempt toward “Enlightenment” ideals of “equality” or pure, narrow rationalism. Even when subscribing to a species of “humanism” I usually qualified it as more akin to Renaissance humanism rather than that of the Enlightenment – basically a “humanism” that was Faustian in orientation, while being absolutely anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic in the extreme.  I acknowledge a shift in position to something I would describe as “upstream” in relation to human devolution. I no longer subscribe to even a qualified Renaissance-style humanism, ultimately at its nucleus the root of everything repellant about Enlightenment-style humanism, which is the root of everything repugnant about the liberalism, egalitarianism, democracy, and narrow rationalistic reductive materialism of our current (non/anti) “culture.” It should be clear that writings of Guénon and Evola were instrumental in this shift from a radical-aristocratic anti-egalitarian idealization of the “Renaissance” or “Faustian” man (which however stratified remains horizontal in essence and correspondingly flawed and vulnerable to “leveling” erosion), to a vertically oriented perspective that is only more deeply anti-reductive/rationalist/materialist, anti-egalitarian, and anti-humanist – the perspective of Tradition. The question implied a reversal of position where in reality the position is only shifted deeper into the original direction, liberated from false assumptions.

The assumed dichotomy of Immanent vs. Transcendent is a fallacy. “Consensus” is essentially a species of pernicious cognitive democracy, one that implies your inner experiences are not “real” unless capable of being understood and shared (“reproduced”) to the letter by your fellow humans, who are only assumed to be peers based on a dogma of common human equality, a dogma more far-fetched and absurd than any dogma ever imagined to be held by any “religion.” Criteria of “objectivity” in matters of an internal nature are ultimately constructs of the human mind itself, ultimately every bit as “subjective” as the matter under scrutiny, only restricting “truth” status to that which can be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Truth is not for everyone and never will be.

The philosophical orientation is expanded to include higher principles of reference. The political position is solidified and rendered only more extreme, as a vantage point from which there are no “good guys” or “winners” in the present scenario – only an ongoing descriptive narrative of the pathologies of decay and destruction. Your world is dying and it deserves to die.

I throw this in the pond because it continues to amaze and amuse me that anyone cares what I think about anything.

More later…

JDS

Jonathan Bowden on Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

Boëthius & Philosophy

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Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius' allegorical vision of Philosophy, from The Consolation of Philosophy:

While I was pondering thus in silence, and using my pen to set down so tearful a complaint, there appeared standing over my head a woman's form, whose countenance was full of majesty, whose eyes shone as with fire and in power of insight surpassed the eyes of men, whose colour was full of life, whose strength was yet intact though she was so full of years that none would ever think that she was subject to such age as ours. One could but doubt her varying stature, for at one moment she repressed it to the common measure of a man, at another she seemed to touch with her crown the very heavens: and when she had raised higher her head, it pierced even the sky and baffled the sight of those who would look upon it.


Her clothing was wrought of the finest thread by subtle workmanship brought to an indivisible piece. This had she woven with her own hands, as I afterwards did learn by her own shewing. Their beauty was somewhat dimmed by the dulness of long neglect, as is seen in the smoke-grimed masks of our ancestors. On the border below was inwoven the symbol Π, on that above was to be read a Θ. And between the two letters there could be marked degrees, by which, as by the rungs of a ladder, ascent might be made from the lower principle to the higher. Yet the hands of rough men had torn this garment and snatched such morsels as they could therefrom. In her right hand she carried books, in her left was a sceptre brandished.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius

The Art of Mitchell Nolte

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From Burtatti Fine Arts Gallery: A group show of contemporary work inspired by Aleister Crowley's Chamber of Nightmares:

 "Holy Power, walking in the ways of Purity, can safely dispose of the Evil Brute personally which man is compelled to carry."

Aleister Crowley, Cefalu: Four Monks Carrying a Black Goat Across the Snow to Nowhere, 2012
mixed media and digital graphic on cotton rag paper
59 x 43cm

 "Love is ready to travel to every part of the world, and stand supreme there."
Aleister Crowley, Cefalu

The Scarlet Woman in Bokhara, 2012
mixed media and digital graphic on cotton rag paper
80 x 60cm

Interesting Street Art

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I would like to know the location and back-story of this:




A little disappointing, but mystery solved: http://www.hcientouno.com/street.html
Kudos to DCrB.
More here: http://barcelonagraffitibailandoconlobos.blogspot.com/
Kudos to T.B.

John Canavesio: The Suicide of Judas, c.1492

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John Canavesio (1450 - 1500) The Suicide of Judas, ca. 1492 A fresco painting from the Chapel of Notre Dame des Fontaine, France. Part of: 'Passion of Jesus Christ' by Giovanni Canavesio.

The Corpses of the Brothers De Witt, c.1672-1702

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"The corpses of the brothers De Witt, on the Groene Zoodje at the Lange Vijverberg in The Hague, 20 August 1672", 1672-1702 Oil on canvas. 69.5 × 56 cm. Attributed to Jan de Baen Gallery: Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Cornelis de Witt was a member of the old Dutch patrician family De Witt. He was born on 15 June 1623 in Dordrecht, Holland, Dutch Republic. He was the son of Jacob de Witt and the older brother of Johan. He associated himself closely with his greater brother, the Grand Pensionary, and supported him throughout his career with great ability and vigour. In 1667 he was the deputy chosen by the States of Holland to accompany Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter in his famous raid on the Medway. Cornelis de Witt on this occasion distinguished himself greatly by his coolness and intrepidity. He again accompanied De Ruyter in 1672 and took an honorable part in the great battle of Solebay against the united English and French fleets. Compelled by illness to leave the fleet, he found on his return to Dort that the Orange party were in the ascendant, and he and his brother were the objects of popular suspicion and hatred. He was arrested on false accusations of treason, but did not confess despite heavy torture and was ultimately unlawfully condemned to be banished. He was assassinated by the same carefully organised lynch mob that killed his brother on the day he was to be released, victim of a conspiracy by the Orangists Johan Kievit and Lieutenant-Admiral Cornelis Tromp. Both their bodies were horribly mutilated and their hearts were carved out to be exhibited as trophies. Today this is seen by the Dutch as the most shameful event in the history of Dutch politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelis_de_Witt

 During 1672, which the Dutch refer to as the "year of disaster" or rampjaar, France and England attacked the Republic during the Franco-Dutch War and the Orangists took power by force and deposed de Witt. Recovering from an earlier attempt on his life in June, he was lynched by an organized mob after visiting his brother Cornelis in prison. After the arrival of Johan de Witt, the city guard was sent away on a pretext to stop farmers who were supposedly engaged in pilfering. Without any protection against the assembled mob, the brothers were dragged out of the prison and killed next to a nearby scaffold. Immediately after their deaths, the bodies were mutilated and fingers, toes, and other parts of their bodies were cut off. Other parts of their bodies were eaten by the mob (or taken elsewhere, cooked and then eaten). The heart of Cornelis de Witt was exhibited for many years next to his brother's by one of the ringleaders, the silversmith Hendrik Verhoeff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_de_Witt

New Translation of Book One of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy

ορθοδοξία ή θάνατος

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Glad to see our friends are still in action...




Hermetic Chaos Syndrome

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From the entry on "Hermeticism" in The Dictionary of The History of Ideas:

The unorthodoxy of Hermetic thought is often over-looked by scholars who detour the dark esotery of pre-twentieth-century thought by insisting that symbols of darkness and chaos, serpents, monsters, and the like, were readily Christianized (Walker, 1953). If this were so, Renaissance art, for example, would differ little from medieval art. Evidence indicates, however, that in a number of Renaissance works the powers of darkness frequently suggest, not destruction, but fruitfulness, joy, and energy. One may say, in fact, that the bloodstream of art, paling at the close of the medieval and then the neo-classical and Victorian periods, is revitalized by a transfusion from sources of the ancient Near East....

In substance, the Hermetica shares a number of unorthodox features with ancient cosmogonies of Egypt, Babylonia or Chaldea, Persia, and the early gnostic sects. Compiled from the ancient cosmogonies, a list of nine such unorthodox features can be used now to show the nature of the “chaos syndrome”:

(1) Creation is the result of a cataclysmic or sexual encounter between at least two major forces. The world is created from preexisting chaos.

(2) Creation includes elements of the grotesque and the irrational.

(3) Mutability, darkness, mud are life-producing.

(4) Serpent and hybrid creatures, symbols of energy, are often deified.

(5) Eternal Recurrence: Creation is an ever-renewing process. As a living body, the world is perpetually renewing itself.

(6) “As above, so below”: the doctrine of corre spondence: the divine descends to participate in human affairs, alternating with humans as civilizing agents, involved in wandering, lamentation, and suffering as part of the creative process.

(7) Superbia: Man is exalted to the level of divinity.

(8) The Valuable Descent: a descent into the depths, an encounter with monsters, provides the revitalizing experience sought by men and gods.

(9) Stylistically, “chaos” writings are lavish as well as confusing.

In contrast, the orthodox view sees chaos as a force of evil only. Its God, without partner or helper, creates from absolutely nothing, in a smooth and orderly manner. Energy symbols are discredited, and the world, created just once, is headed for ultimate dissolution. Separated from God, man is essentially worthless, limited as an artist to imitating what he sees, and warned to strive for rhetorical bareness. Such ideas predominate, not only in church fathers like Tertullian and Augustine, and in Renaissance poets like Drayton, Thomas Heywood, and Jonson, but in modern religious leaders and non-Christian thinkers as well. For, despite the decline of Christianity today, a negative attitude towards chaos continues to dismiss disorder and mystery as evil and, in the name of order and truth, encourages a chronic dread of dissenting groups and strange ways of thought.

Time and Death c.1727

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Time and Death, c. 1727
Coloured and moulded wax diorama
Caterina de Julianis
Formerly attributed to the wax sculptor Gaetano Giulio Zumbo (1656-1701)

Highlights from My Bible Collection

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It may amuse or entertain some COSMODROMIUM readers to learn that I have a fairly extensive collection of interesting and rare Bibles. Here are a few recent acquisitions.

1. Geneva Bible, London, 1589:










2. Book of Common Prayer & Holy Bible, 1715.












3. New Testament. 2 vols. London, 1722.



4. Oxford University Printers Bible, 1706.



 5. Small leather bible. 1649.




More later....
JDS.

The Game of Kings: Medieval Ivory Chessmen from the Isle of Lewis

Essays in Satanism: Soon to be Discontinued

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As stated previously, the hardcover ed. of Essays in Satanism will be taken off the market on Walpurgisnacht (April 30) 2013. The paperback will be available until at least then or until I put another book out, at which time it will be taken off the market. I am still working on more than one project, none of which will be in the same vein. I am no longer interested in writing on the subject or in being constrained to relate everything back to the same set of ideas or philosophical positions, many of which have been abandoned at this point.

When I see photos of my book on peoples personal bookshelves next to books by Ayn Rand, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, The Amazing Randi, etc. I know I have done something wrong that needs to be corrected. I am not with that program at all.

For the time being both versions of the book are still available here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=342137

JDS

RE/Search: Effete West Coast Counterculture non-Nostalgia

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I first read RE/Search "Industrial Culture Handbook" when the slick version came out in the mid-late 1980's. I was already familiar with most of the artists in it from "The Some Bizarre Show" which originally aired on NIGHT FLIGHT in the early 1980's as a replacement for "New Wave Theater" after the host Peter Ivers was murdered. The aesthetics of "Industrial Culture Handbook" were and are interesting. But then you read the interviews and realize the "artists" are just another predictable subspecies of vapid counterculture posers and faggots (re "vapid counterculture posers and faggots" see diagram of Boyd Rice and Genesis P-Orridge.), essentially a "Who's Who" of people who buy books for the titles to impress their friends.

I recall being briefly amused by Boyd Rice after reading RE/Search "Pranks" and "Incredibly Strange Films" in the 1980's, until I saw him interviewed (re "Pranks") around the same time and realized what a mind-numbingly boring blowhard he is. In all honesty I never listened to any of his audio material aside from the "People" song which is as mildly amusing and as easily forgettable as anything from the Dr. Demento show. His post-CoS spiel reminded me of a sad coffehouse impersonation of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, only less interesting.

 JDS

Le Vaisseau du Grand Oeuvre by Julien Champagne (1910)

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Julien Champagne's most famous painting, Le Vaisseau du Grand Oeuvre (Vessel of the Great Work), was completed in the year 1910. The painting was a great favorite among the Parisian occultists during the first third of the 20th Century. The voluptuous model for the painting was purported to be the young female alchemist, Louise Barbe (ca. 1879-1919); she was the wife of the infamous Russian "monkey gland" surgeon, Serge Voronoff (1866-1951). Louise was a member of the occult circle which gathered at the salon of the de Lesseps family (children of the great Ferdinand de Lesseps) in Paris. Of course, the "Great Work" is Alchemy, and the painting is filled with alchemical symbolism. The nude female figure is a personification of the philosopher's stone; she stands within a glass flask and is surrounded by myriad blazing flames. Off the right shoulder of the young woman is the word "POTERE" meaning "power" in English; off of her left shoulder is the word "AVDERE" meaning "to dare" in English. The background on the left and right sides of the flask contain the names of certain philosophers and alchemists written in Latin letters. The names on the left side are as follows: Artephius, Albert le Grand, Synesius, Th. d'Aquin, R. Lulle, Flamel, Rhazes, and Geber. The names on the right side are as follows: Roger Bacon, A. de Villeneuve, Basile Valentin, Van Helmont, Paracelse, Philalethe, Trevisan, and Ripley. In the darkened sky behind the female figure are depictions of the Moon and four planets that are visible to the naked eye: above her right shoulder are Saturn and Jupiter; on her lower right side is a crescent Venus (Morning Star); above her left shoulder is a crescent Moon; and to her lower left is the planet Mars. On her forehead the woman wears a sparkling diamond of the Queen of Heaven, Isis, the Goddess of magic and the occult arts. The diamond represents the "Great Eye," which Isis is purported to have stolen from Ra, the supreme God of Pharaonic Egypt. Eugène Canseliet used a representation of this painting as the frontispiece in the 1979 reprint of his book entitled Deux logis alchimiques, en marge de la science et de l'histoire (originally published in 1945).
SOURCE.

The MacKinney Collection of Medieval Medical Illustration

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