Big Bang

PART I

THE COSMIC EGG

IMAGES OF CREATION MYTHS

“He grew into a turf, Became a reed-tussock.

The golden-eye, pretty bird, Flew, glided, Found a reed-grown island, Cast a copper nest, Laid a golden egg.”

Ancient Baltic song about the cosmic egg, in: Martin Puhvel, Songs of Creation, p. 6

Conscious of their place in the Universe, humans seek the first principle imbued with the energy and power to extract an ordered ‘something’ (for this is the meaning of the word cosmos) from ‘nothingness’ (chaos). These wonderful pre-creation stages employ concepts of potentiality, such as the natural elements of water and air, but also symbolic objects that are particularly well-suited to representing the moment of creation: the egg, for example.

Since prehistoric times, ovoid forms have appeared on rock paintings as a sign of regeneration, as decoration on stoneware and in the form of monoliths, for example, amongst the Navajo peoples. The egg, with its mysterious contents that hover between white slime and yellow elixir, has a place as a fertility symbol in the creation of the Universe itself. When the cosmologist and priest Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) was on the trail of what would later become known as the Big Bang, he also used the image of the cosmological egg to represent that one atom responsible for ‘The Event’: the ultimate greatness that emerges from the infinitesimally small.

The cosmic egg from which everything emerged appears in Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian, Persian, Finnish and Greek myths. The ancient Egyptians believed that the cosmic egg originated in a swampy ‘morass’. That egg, in turn, created the Sun and the Earth. In other versions, Thoth, the god of wisdom and the moon, laid an egg that brought forth the sun god Re, whose heat formed the world. The cosmogonic egg became the matrix of things. It swept away the chaos (the swamp) and spawned numerous other egg matrices.

In Indian narratives, we read how Hiranyagarbha, the cosmic egg, floated in the primordial waters of an empty void. From the splitting of this golden egg, the cosmos was born. Brahmanda, Sanskrit for ‘the unchanging essence of the Universe’, is derived from two words: Brahma, the Hindu god of creation, and the word for ‘one’, which also means ‘eggshaped’. In India, the interior of the egg is still thought to contain a golden embryo that, like the Sun, floats in a light-filled womb. The eggshell represents the celestial sky. In the iconography of Hinduism, we see this egg floating in a primordial sea of spermatozoa.

Occasionally, the egg is also compared to a testicle.

Certain Vedic hymns sing the praises of the purusha, a creature with a thousand arms, legs and heads, which sprang from the primordial egg the moment the beast separated earth from heaven. The multiheaded monster is Everything until the moment it sacrifices itself to make the rest of creation possible.

This means that the giant and newly arisen cosmic

“I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms. You, gods, since you are the ones who alter these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world’s first origins to my own time.

Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place.”

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I, vv. 1-9

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

22

IMAGES OF CREATION MYTHS

egg touched Everything and then disappeared for the benefit of man and his biotopes.

A similar cosmic egg exists in Chinese Taoism.

The creation myth of P’an-Ku tells how the world was once chaos (hun-tun), just like the inside of an egg in which he resided. After 18,000 years, the mass split: brightness for the sky, pitch black for the earth.

P’an-Ku supported the firmament with his head and stabilised the earth with his feet. The expansion lasted another 18,000 years and P’an-ku became 90,000 Li long (one third of a mile). P’an-ku, coincidentally, means ‘curled-up mass’, referring to the shapeless germ that we sometimes find in an egg yolk.

In Japan, it is believed that at the time when heaven and earth were still split, like yin and yang, the world was as chaotic as an egg. The heavens preceded the earth because they were lighter and more malleable than the dense and shrouded earth. Later, the earth hardened and a god was born in its core: the birth of the world.

A myth from Polynesia tells of Ta’aroa, the ancestor of all the gods. He is trapped in the endless space of the egg and lives in eternal darkness. Other Polynesian lore recounts that the mother goddess Varima-te-takere dwells deep in Avaiki, an underworld that resembles a giant hollow coconut. Coiled within this subterranean nut, she created Avatea, the god of light, who was half-man and half-fish. Avatea ascended to the world above and created the Sun and the Moon, as they can still be seen today, with his eyes.

Persian cosmogony is known through the Ninokhired manuscripts from the Sassanid dynasty (third to seventh centuries). In these accounts, the Universe was shaped like an egg and sculpted by the creator Ahura. The Earth floats in the Universe like a yolk within an egg. The egg universe is subject to the zodiac and had different manifestations under different constellations. In the first stage, the beings closest to Ahura enjoyed a light-filled existence. At this point, they were transcendent and in a state of purity, or mênok. But in the second stage, their transcendence became matter, or gêtah. There was no misfortune present in the Universe yet, although the evil spirit Ahriman was already lurking. In the third period, Ahriman awoke from his long hibernation and erupted in anger. He penetrated the world of light and the perfect form of the egg, causing death and destruction. Thus Ahriman defiled the Earth. Even today, people are plagued evil and innumerable diseases and dream of returning to the uncontaminated egg.

An egg creation myth that is sung in runes can still be found in present-day Finland. A giant goose flew across the Universe and looked for a place to nest. The sea god Väinämöinen raised his knee from the water and a fertile pinnacle of green peat emerged. On that mountain the goose made her nest, in which she laid six eggs. But Väinämöinen moved his knee and the eggs smashed on the surface of the sea. Väinämöinen then said, “Let the lower part of the eggs form the earth and the upper part the heavenly bodies, and let the yolk shine like the sun and the white like the moon.”

The cosmic egg also had an important place within Greek mythology, especially in the cult around Orpheus. Orpheus came into being during the sixth

23

PART I

THE COSMIC EGG

IMAGES OF CREATION MYTHS

“He grew into a turf, Became a reed-tussock.

The golden-eye, pretty bird, Flew, glided, Found a reed-grown island, Cast a copper nest, Laid a golden egg.”

Ancient Baltic song about the cosmic egg, in: Martin Puhvel, Songs of Creation, p. 6

Conscious of their place in the Universe, humans seek the first principle imbued with the energy and power to extract an ordered ‘something’ (for this is the meaning of the word cosmos) from ‘nothingness’ (chaos). These wonderful pre-creation stages employ concepts of potentiality, such as the natural elements of water and air, but also symbolic objects that are particularly well-suited to representing the moment of creation: the egg, for example.

Since prehistoric times, ovoid forms have appeared on rock paintings as a sign of regeneration, as decoration on stoneware and in the form of monoliths, for example, amongst the Navajo peoples. The egg, with its mysterious contents that hover between white slime and yellow elixir, has a place as a fertility symbol in the creation of the Universe itself. When the cosmologist and priest Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) was on the trail of what would later become known as the Big Bang, he also used the image of the cosmological egg to represent that one atom responsible for ‘The Event’: the ultimate greatness that emerges from the infinitesimally small.

The cosmic egg from which everything emerged appears in Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian, Persian, Finnish and Greek myths. The ancient Egyptians believed that the cosmic egg originated in a swampy ‘morass’. That egg, in turn, created the Sun and the Earth. In other versions, Thoth, the god of wisdom and the moon, laid an egg that brought forth the sun god Re, whose heat formed the world. The cosmogonic egg became the matrix of things. It swept away the chaos (the swamp) and spawned numerous other egg matrices.

In Indian narratives, we read how Hiranyagarbha, the cosmic egg, floated in the primordial waters of an empty void. From the splitting of this golden egg, the cosmos was born. Brahmanda, Sanskrit for ‘the unchanging essence of the Universe’, is derived from two words: Brahma, the Hindu god of creation, and the word for ‘one’, which also means ‘eggshaped’. In India, the interior of the egg is still thought to contain a golden embryo that, like the Sun, floats in a light-filled womb. The eggshell represents the celestial sky. In the iconography of Hinduism, we see this egg floating in a primordial sea of spermatozoa.

Occasionally, the egg is also compared to a testicle.

Certain Vedic hymns sing the praises of the purusha, a creature with a thousand arms, legs and heads, which sprang from the primordial egg the moment the beast separated earth from heaven. The multiheaded monster is Everything until the moment it sacrifices itself to make the rest of creation possible.

This means that the giant and newly arisen cosmic

“I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms. You, gods, since you are the ones who alter these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world’s first origins to my own time.

Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place.”

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I, vv. 1-9

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

22

IMAGES OF CREATION MYTHS

egg touched Everything and then disappeared for the benefit of man and his biotopes.

A similar cosmic egg exists in Chinese Taoism.

The creation myth of P’an-Ku tells how the world was once chaos (hun-tun), just like the inside of an egg in which he resided. After 18,000 years, the mass split: brightness for the sky, pitch black for the earth.

P’an-Ku supported the firmament with his head and stabilised the earth with his feet. The expansion lasted another 18,000 years and P’an-ku became 90,000 Li long (one third of a mile). P’an-ku, coincidentally, means ‘curled-up mass’, referring to the shapeless germ that we sometimes find in an egg yolk.

In Japan, it is believed that at the time when heaven and earth were still split, like yin and yang, the world was as chaotic as an egg. The heavens preceded the earth because they were lighter and more malleable than the dense and shrouded earth. Later, the earth hardened and a god was born in its core: the birth of the world.

A myth from Polynesia tells of Ta’aroa, the ancestor of all the gods. He is trapped in the endless space of the egg and lives in eternal darkness. Other Polynesian lore recounts that the mother goddess Varima-te-takere dwells deep in Avaiki, an underworld that resembles a giant hollow coconut. Coiled within this subterranean nut, she created Avatea, the god of light, who was half-man and half-fish. Avatea ascended to the world above and created the Sun and the Moon, as they can still be seen today, with his eyes.

Persian cosmogony is known through the Ninokhired manuscripts from the Sassanid dynasty (third to seventh centuries). In these accounts, the Universe was shaped like an egg and sculpted by the creator Ahura. The Earth floats in the Universe like a yolk within an egg. The egg universe is subject to the zodiac and had different manifestations under different constellations. In the first stage, the beings closest to Ahura enjoyed a light-filled existence. At this point, they were transcendent and in a state of purity, or mênok. But in the second stage, their transcendence became matter, or gêtah. There was no misfortune present in the Universe yet, although the evil spirit Ahriman was already lurking. In the third period, Ahriman awoke from his long hibernation and erupted in anger. He penetrated the world of light and the perfect form of the egg, causing death and destruction. Thus Ahriman defiled the Earth. Even today, people are plagued evil and innumerable diseases and dream of returning to the uncontaminated egg.

An egg creation myth that is sung in runes can still be found in present-day Finland. A giant goose flew across the Universe and looked for a place to nest. The sea god Väinämöinen raised his knee from the water and a fertile pinnacle of green peat emerged. On that mountain the goose made her nest, in which she laid six eggs. But Väinämöinen moved his knee and the eggs smashed on the surface of the sea. Väinämöinen then said, “Let the lower part of the eggs form the earth and the upper part the heavenly bodies, and let the yolk shine like the sun and the white like the moon.”

The cosmic egg also had an important place within Greek mythology, especially in the cult around Orpheus. Orpheus came into being during the sixth

23

century BC and became the embodiment of a multitude of mysteries and rituals that found their way into religion, poetry and tragedy. The rich spectrum of symbols associated with the cult had an enduring and far-reaching influence on Hellenistic culture. In the Orphic cosmogony, everything begins with Chronos.

From Chronos came Chaos and Aether. Chaos, however, gave birth to a beautiful, glistening, silvery egg.

From this egg, which was patiently hatched by a snake – the serpent is the primeval reptile par excellence; the ouroboros of the Greeks lived below ground and is therefore chthonic in nature – Phanes emerged.

Phanes, also sometimes called Eros, was a hermaphrodite who brought order to the Universe. From that order, came Ananke. In Orphic mythology, this goddess of fate, in the form of a serpentine creature, is the inescapable exigency that not even the gods can fight. Nyx, the night, was formed alongside Ananke.

Egg cosmogony was also disseminated via the Indo-Iranian Persian Mithras cult (2000 BC).

Mithras, literally ‘mediator between good and evil’ and ‘he who has a contract with the sun’, was born from either a rock (petra genetrix) or an egg (Fig. 2).

Both are images of the firmament. In ancient Persian, the word asman means not only ‘sky’ but also ‘stone’ and ‘shell’. Richard Broxton Onians expands on the deeper associations relating to the cosmogonic egg in his unparalleled, erudite study of semantic and anthropological philosophy since the Graeco-Homeric period, The Origins of European Thought. Before Homer, the Universe was originally an egg that was carried by Oceanos, the shoreless dark waters. However, the egg already contained a life force: psyche (soul, anima). Coiled around the cosmic egg was a snake – the All – that squeezed it tight, like a belt.

That serpent is the pneuma (spirit, animus) of the Universe which supplants the breath of wind or sigh (nephesh, breath of life) and, according to the ancient Orphic myths, fertilises the cosmic egg. The phallic serpent that fertilised the female primal egg emerged from the darkest waters that were still formless and indeterminate. Ovid (43 BC-17 AD) describes this in Metamorphoses (Book I , vs. 417-420 and 430-440): “After the remaining moisture had warmed in the sun’s fire, the wet mud of the marshlands swelled with heat, and the fertile seeds of things, nourished by life-giving soil as if in a mother’s womb, grew, and in time acquired a nature. … In fact when heat and moisture are mixed they conceive, and from these two things the whole of life originates. And though fire and water fight each other, heat and moisture create everything, and this discordant union is suitable for growth. So when the earth muddied from the recent flood glowed again heated by the deep heaven-sent light of the sun she produced innumerable species, partly remaking previous forms, partly creating new monsters. Indeed, though she would not have desired to, she then gave birth to you, great Python, covering so great an area of the mountain slopes, a snake not known before, a terror to the new race of men.”

Onians’ study demonstrates that the ancient Greeks associated abstract notions such as viability, inspiration, breath and so on with actual bodily fluids. People and the Universe were connected through their ‘liquidity’, they were both constituent parts of the same creative ‘slime’, or all kinds of other excretions. The main fluids of the great cosmological principles were psyche, pneuma and nephesh. Mucous, for instance, contains the psyche, which manifests itself magically through the uncontrollability of this liquid excretion.

Pneuma manifests itself, among other things, in the prophetic powers that reside in the head. Blood is the conductor of nephesh and is therefore taboo, for it contains the fragile breath of life. *** At this point in our exploration, it is interesting to elaborate briefly on the proto-Indo-European roots of the egg as a creative force. The etymology covers three domains: the egg as receptacle, its relationship to the characteristics of the procreative body, and as a source of nourishment.

Martin Bernal departs from the Greek word kálathos [calathus], the characteristic basket with a narrow base and an open, chalice-like mouth.

Kálathos also means ‘receptacle’, ‘case’, ‘capital’ and ‘column’. Even further back, at the Indo-European origin of the word, there is a connection with ‘spinning’ and ‘turning’, as well as with < qrh≥t for ‘snake’, ‘snake’s head’ and ‘cobra’. The Coptic variant of kálathos is kalahe and means ‘breast’, ‘stomach’ and ‘womb’, after the compound kala < qrh≥t and he/, for ‘belly’. It is in Indo-European semantics, therefore, that we find the relationship between egg and serpent, as in the Orphic myths. Bernal also shows that this kind of basket was often represented adjacent to snake figures, a configuration with possible Egyptian iconographic prototypes. This brings us to a third term that is related to kálatho, namely kivsth, or ‘the mystical serpent coffin’.

An image of kivsth appears in numismatics, for example on the coins minted under Eumenes II (197-160), and may stem from the ancient Dionysus cult. The Romans translated kivsth into cista (box, chest), just as there is still an affinity between the English words ‘case’ and ‘chest’ and the old Etruscan kiste. A similar connection can be found in Indian and Sanskrit, where ‘memory’ and ‘shrine’ – cetiya and stupa – mean ‘memorial’ and ‘domed reliquary’ respectively. Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah has demonstrated that both terms move loosely back and forth between ‘seed’, ‘relics’, ‘remains’, ‘pregnancy’, ‘womb’ and, yes, the cosmic egg. The constant in this chain is the potential for procreation. In early Indian art, coincidentally, Buddha was not depicted anthropomorphically but as a dome-shaped or ovoid shell.

Erich Neumann also adds to this etymological chain the Germanic term Burg, for ‘castle’, ‘fortress’. The Burg is a cave, a mountain, and offers protection. It is Hohle (cave), hohl (hollow), related to Halle (hall), Helm (helmet), from the root hel (shelter, protection).

The mother goddess protects and lives in the mountain, from sich bergen, or ‘to hide’, ‘find shelter’ in Geborgenkeit.

FIG. 2

Roman relief with Aion/ Phanes inside the Zodiac, second quarter of the second century AD, Modena, Gallerie Estensi.

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

24

IMAGES OF CREATION MYTHS

A second etymological background connects the egg with intimate body parts. The genitals are semantically linked to ‘fig’, ‘cucumber’, ‘avocado’ and ‘egg’ via the Semitic-Arcadian root abal-. It is this association that lends these foods their obscene connotations.

Edgar H. Sturtevant sees similar relationships arising in Old Norse and Gothic for verbs that refer to ‘sucking’. An affinity is therefore established between ‘suck’, ‘nipple’ and ‘egg’ (Latin: ovum). A semantic relationship thus exists between the nourishment provided by both a mother’s nipple and eggs, the latter of which have been sucked raw since time immemorial. An egg is reminiscent of an embryo attached to a placenta (the yolk), swimming in amniotic fluid. It contains the final element in the symbolic food chain: the bean. The bean also has a curved, embryonic form. It shares the same primal shape as seeds, larva and eggs. Beans are fleshy and occasionally compared to testicles. They also have a skin and can be peeled, just like tiny bodies. It was once believed that they would sprout into female genitalia if kept too long in a jar. The Greeks also regarded beans as the abode of souls. For this reason, they were a dietary taboo. To consume beans would be to disturb the peace of the ancestors. Typical of all great mythical systems is the black-and-white aspect of the symbol: the world of darkness and the world of light in one form. The primordial goddess is always both fearsome and devouring, as well as abundant in the gift of new life. She both gives and takes. The bean, like the egg, is simultaneously a tomb and a pregnant belly. *** This chapter concludes with the praise heaped upon the egg by Erycius Puteanus (1574-1646), a humanist from Venlo. In his Ovi encomium (1615), a ‘paean to the egg’, he lauds it as the greatest of all miracles.

The egg is a divine treasure: esum, usum and lusum (for ‘food’, ‘use’ and ‘play’). People can marvel at a falling meteorite, a shooting star, an earthquake or a hermaphrodite’s birth, but the greatest of all wonders are much closer to home and part of everyday life: the spider’s web, the honeycomb, the ants’ nest. But even then, all this pales into insignificance when compared to the wondrous nature of the egg. Is not the egg the only thing that comes into the world unblemished? Is it not the only thing from which walking, crawling, swimming and flying creatures emerge?

On both land and in the sea, species exist that not only incubate eggs but are also hatched from them.

Therefore, the egg coincides with creation itself, to rule over Heaven and Earth. And is it not true that, according to ancient wisdom, Heaven and Earth were created in the Orphic egg? The egg, concludes the Dutch humanist, is therefore the only home of both gods and men!

25

century BC and became the embodiment of a multitude of mysteries and rituals that found their way into religion, poetry and tragedy. The rich spectrum of symbols associated with the cult had an enduring and far-reaching influence on Hellenistic culture. In the Orphic cosmogony, everything begins with Chronos.

From Chronos came Chaos and Aether. Chaos, however, gave birth to a beautiful, glistening, silvery egg.

From this egg, which was patiently hatched by a snake – the serpent is the primeval reptile par excellence; the ouroboros of the Greeks lived below ground and is therefore chthonic in nature – Phanes emerged.

Phanes, also sometimes called Eros, was a hermaphrodite who brought order to the Universe. From that order, came Ananke. In Orphic mythology, this goddess of fate, in the form of a serpentine creature, is the inescapable exigency that not even the gods can fight. Nyx, the night, was formed alongside Ananke.

Egg cosmogony was also disseminated via the Indo-Iranian Persian Mithras cult (2000 BC).

Mithras, literally ‘mediator between good and evil’ and ‘he who has a contract with the sun’, was born from either a rock (petra genetrix) or an egg (Fig. 2).

Both are images of the firmament. In ancient Persian, the word asman means not only ‘sky’ but also ‘stone’ and ‘shell’. Richard Broxton Onians expands on the deeper associations relating to the cosmogonic egg in his unparalleled, erudite study of semantic and anthropological philosophy since the Graeco-Homeric period, The Origins of European Thought. Before Homer, the Universe was originally an egg that was carried by Oceanos, the shoreless dark waters. However, the egg already contained a life force: psyche (soul, anima). Coiled around the cosmic egg was a snake – the All – that squeezed it tight, like a belt.

That serpent is the pneuma (spirit, animus) of the Universe which supplants the breath of wind or sigh (nephesh, breath of life) and, according to the ancient Orphic myths, fertilises the cosmic egg. The phallic serpent that fertilised the female primal egg emerged from the darkest waters that were still formless and indeterminate. Ovid (43 BC-17 AD) describes this in Metamorphoses (Book I , vs. 417-420 and 430-440): “After the remaining moisture had warmed in the sun’s fire, the wet mud of the marshlands swelled with heat, and the fertile seeds of things, nourished by life-giving soil as if in a mother’s womb, grew, and in time acquired a nature. … In fact when heat and moisture are mixed they conceive, and from these two things the whole of life originates. And though fire and water fight each other, heat and moisture create everything, and this discordant union is suitable for growth. So when the earth muddied from the recent flood glowed again heated by the deep heaven-sent light of the sun she produced innumerable species, partly remaking previous forms, partly creating new monsters. Indeed, though she would not have desired to, she then gave birth to you, great Python, covering so great an area of the mountain slopes, a snake not known before, a terror to the new race of men.”

Onians’ study demonstrates that the ancient Greeks associated abstract notions such as viability, inspiration, breath and so on with actual bodily fluids. People and the Universe were connected through their ‘liquidity’, they were both constituent parts of the same creative ‘slime’, or all kinds of other excretions. The main fluids of the great cosmological principles were psyche, pneuma and nephesh. Mucous, for instance, contains the psyche, which manifests itself magically through the uncontrollability of this liquid excretion.

Pneuma manifests itself, among other things, in the prophetic powers that reside in the head. Blood is the conductor of nephesh and is therefore taboo, for it contains the fragile breath of life. *** At this point in our exploration, it is interesting to elaborate briefly on the proto-Indo-European roots of the egg as a creative force. The etymology covers three domains: the egg as receptacle, its relationship to the characteristics of the procreative body, and as a source of nourishment.

Martin Bernal departs from the Greek word kálathos [calathus], the characteristic basket with a narrow base and an open, chalice-like mouth.

Kálathos also means ‘receptacle’, ‘case’, ‘capital’ and ‘column’. Even further back, at the Indo-European origin of the word, there is a connection with ‘spinning’ and ‘turning’, as well as with < qrh≥t for ‘snake’, ‘snake’s head’ and ‘cobra’. The Coptic variant of kálathos is kalahe and means ‘breast’, ‘stomach’ and ‘womb’, after the compound kala < qrh≥t and he/, for ‘belly’. It is in Indo-European semantics, therefore, that we find the relationship between egg and serpent, as in the Orphic myths. Bernal also shows that this kind of basket was often represented adjacent to snake figures, a configuration with possible Egyptian iconographic prototypes. This brings us to a third term that is related to kálatho, namely kivsth, or ‘the mystical serpent coffin’.

An image of kivsth appears in numismatics, for example on the coins minted under Eumenes II (197-160), and may stem from the ancient Dionysus cult. The Romans translated kivsth into cista (box, chest), just as there is still an affinity between the English words ‘case’ and ‘chest’ and the old Etruscan kiste. A similar connection can be found in Indian and Sanskrit, where ‘memory’ and ‘shrine’ – cetiya and stupa – mean ‘memorial’ and ‘domed reliquary’ respectively. Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah has demonstrated that both terms move loosely back and forth between ‘seed’, ‘relics’, ‘remains’, ‘pregnancy’, ‘womb’ and, yes, the cosmic egg. The constant in this chain is the potential for procreation. In early Indian art, coincidentally, Buddha was not depicted anthropomorphically but as a dome-shaped or ovoid shell.

Erich Neumann also adds to this etymological chain the Germanic term Burg, for ‘castle’, ‘fortress’. The Burg is a cave, a mountain, and offers protection. It is Hohle (cave), hohl (hollow), related to Halle (hall), Helm (helmet), from the root hel (shelter, protection).

The mother goddess protects and lives in the mountain, from sich bergen, or ‘to hide’, ‘find shelter’ in Geborgenkeit.

FIG. 2

Roman relief with Aion/ Phanes inside the Zodiac, second quarter of the second century AD, Modena, Gallerie Estensi.

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

24

IMAGES OF CREATION MYTHS

A second etymological background connects the egg with intimate body parts. The genitals are semantically linked to ‘fig’, ‘cucumber’, ‘avocado’ and ‘egg’ via the Semitic-Arcadian root abal-. It is this association that lends these foods their obscene connotations.

Edgar H. Sturtevant sees similar relationships arising in Old Norse and Gothic for verbs that refer to ‘sucking’. An affinity is therefore established between ‘suck’, ‘nipple’ and ‘egg’ (Latin: ovum). A semantic relationship thus exists between the nourishment provided by both a mother’s nipple and eggs, the latter of which have been sucked raw since time immemorial. An egg is reminiscent of an embryo attached to a placenta (the yolk), swimming in amniotic fluid. It contains the final element in the symbolic food chain: the bean. The bean also has a curved, embryonic form. It shares the same primal shape as seeds, larva and eggs. Beans are fleshy and occasionally compared to testicles. They also have a skin and can be peeled, just like tiny bodies. It was once believed that they would sprout into female genitalia if kept too long in a jar. The Greeks also regarded beans as the abode of souls. For this reason, they were a dietary taboo. To consume beans would be to disturb the peace of the ancestors. Typical of all great mythical systems is the black-and-white aspect of the symbol: the world of darkness and the world of light in one form. The primordial goddess is always both fearsome and devouring, as well as abundant in the gift of new life. She both gives and takes. The bean, like the egg, is simultaneously a tomb and a pregnant belly. *** This chapter concludes with the praise heaped upon the egg by Erycius Puteanus (1574-1646), a humanist from Venlo. In his Ovi encomium (1615), a ‘paean to the egg’, he lauds it as the greatest of all miracles.

The egg is a divine treasure: esum, usum and lusum (for ‘food’, ‘use’ and ‘play’). People can marvel at a falling meteorite, a shooting star, an earthquake or a hermaphrodite’s birth, but the greatest of all wonders are much closer to home and part of everyday life: the spider’s web, the honeycomb, the ants’ nest. But even then, all this pales into insignificance when compared to the wondrous nature of the egg. Is not the egg the only thing that comes into the world unblemished? Is it not the only thing from which walking, crawling, swimming and flying creatures emerge?

On both land and in the sea, species exist that not only incubate eggs but are also hatched from them.

Therefore, the egg coincides with creation itself, to rule over Heaven and Earth. And is it not true that, according to ancient wisdom, Heaven and Earth were created in the Orphic egg? The egg, concludes the Dutch humanist, is therefore the only home of both gods and men!

25

*** “After these things I saw a huge form, rounded and shadowy, and shaped like an egg (Fig. 3); it was pointed at the top, wide in the middle and narrower at the bottom. Its outer layer consisted of an atmosphere of bright fire with a kind of dark membrane beneath it. And in that outer atmosphere there was a ball of red fire so large that all the huge form was lit up by it. Directly above the fireball was a vertical row of three lights which held it with their fire and energy and prevented it from falling.

At times the fireball rose upwards and was met by more fire, which caused it to shoot out great long flames. At times, however, the fireball moved downwards and encountered a region of great cold that caused it quickly to retract its flames. From the outer atmosphere of fire, a wind blew storms. And from the dark membrane beneath, another wind raged with further storms which moved out in all directions on the globe. The dark membrane contained also a dark fire of such horror that I was unable to perceive it properly. The horror buffeted the dark membrane with a massive impact of sounds and storms and sharp stones great and small. Whenever the noise arose it set in motion the layer of bright fire, winds and air, thus causing bolts of lightning to presage the sounds of thunder; for the fiery energy senses the first agitations of the thunder within it. Below the dark layer, however, was the purest of ether with no membrane beneath it.”

FIG. 3

Hildegard of Bingen, ‘Universe’, in: Scivias codex, c. 1165, Eibingen, Abbey of St Hildegard, fol. 14r.

(Hildegard of Bingen, Liber Scivias, third vision in part one)

GENESIS/COSMOS

FIG. 4

‘In principo creavit Deus celum et terram’, in: Pars Bibliorum (Lambeth Bible), 12th century, London, Lambeth Palace Library, ms. 3, fol. 6v.

“Only when things come into the world, when the world IS becoming an image, can it also be depicted.”

[Erst wenn die Dinge in die Welt kommen, wenn die Welt Bild geworden IST, kann sie auch abgebildet werden.]

Christiane Kruse, Wozu Menschen malen [Why Paint People], p. 155

In his contribution to the book De middeleeuwse ideeënwereld, 1000-1300 (The Medieval World of Ideas, 1000-1300), Arjo Vanderjagt writes (p. 154): “Creation, Paradise, Fall, Jerusalem, Crucifixion and the Renewed World coincide geographically and historically for the medievalists.” In this chapter, I focus on the biblical Genesis story on the one hand, and on the medieval iconography of cosmological understanding on the other. I wish to sensitise the reader to the insights from the field of natural sciences that, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onwards – first in a neo-Platonic wave, later in an Aristotelian one – entered the early Jewish biblical creation story.

Is a rapprochement possible on the visual level that is lacking on the textual level? Or did the iconographic traditions deviate?

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

26

IMAGES OF CREATION MYTHS

*** Genesis 1, 1-5 states: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’, and the darkness he called ‘night’. And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.” In the very first verses of the Bible, therefore, we note a reference to the concept of wind, or ruach in Hebrew.

“The Spirit of God (ruach) was hovering over the waters.” Even before the Creation, in the pre-cosmogonic state so to speak, the Earth was covered by a ‘primordial flood’ and chaos and darkness ruled.

God hovered above these waters. He was the air principle that would dominate the water principle.

The Hebrew narrative does not speak, therefore, of a creation ex nihilo [out of nothing]. The cosmos already existed – albeit chaotically – and God is presented as the sovereign power who can subdue the tumultuous waters. In Genesis 8:1, it is the wind sent by God that causes the waters to recede and, during the Deluge, to part. A similar allusion can be found in Exodus 15: “By the blast of your nostrils / the waters piled up. / The surging waters stood up like a wall; / the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea,” (verse 8). “But you blew with your breath, / and the sea covered them. / They sank like lead / in the mighty waters” (verse 10).

The Psalms also include configurations involving God and the menacing waters that, in every instance, are calmed by His sovereign power, the ruach.

It is not only God’s breath that brings order to the world, the Creation, but also His voice. His speech is the catalyst that sets everything in motion.

In Psalms 93, 3-4, it is sung: “The seas have lifted up, Lord, / the seas have lifted up their voice; / the seas have lifted up their pounding waves. / Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, / mightier than the breakers of the sea – the Lord on high is mighty.” Ruach is the primordial image of divine creative power.

Before the Earth could be created in its specific form and with its distinctive characteristics, God needed to quell the waters with the ‘wind of his voice’. The agency of the voice emanating from the wind is reinforced by the verse in which the wind of God ‘floats’ over the waters: ‘ruach elohim’ (Genesis 1, 2).

Let us now turn to how the Biblical story of the Creation has inspired the artistic imagination. *** Challenged by their chosen medium and material, artists have always approached the creation story in a highly inventive way. It led to the development of a specific model with miniature art, of which the twelfth-century Lambeth Bible is a fine example (Fig. 4). The folio illustrated here contains an excerpt from the book of Genesis, the opening line of which is illuminated in graceful letters: “In principio creavit Deus celum et terram”. To the left of the folio, the first letter, ‘I’, is elaborated in an impressive illuminated initial that runs the entire length of the margin.

The miniature details the six phases of Creation in

27

*** “After these things I saw a huge form, rounded and shadowy, and shaped like an egg (Fig. 3); it was pointed at the top, wide in the middle and narrower at the bottom. Its outer layer consisted of an atmosphere of bright fire with a kind of dark membrane beneath it. And in that outer atmosphere there was a ball of red fire so large that all the huge form was lit up by it. Directly above the fireball was a vertical row of three lights which held it with their fire and energy and prevented it from falling.

At times the fireball rose upwards and was met by more fire, which caused it to shoot out great long flames. At times, however, the fireball moved downwards and encountered a region of great cold that caused it quickly to retract its flames. From the outer atmosphere of fire, a wind blew storms. And from the dark membrane beneath, another wind raged with further storms which moved out in all directions on the globe. The dark membrane contained also a dark fire of such horror that I was unable to perceive it properly. The horror buffeted the dark membrane with a massive impact of sounds and storms and sharp stones great and small. Whenever the noise arose it set in motion the layer of bright fire, winds and air, thus causing bolts of lightning to presage the sounds of thunder; for the fiery energy senses the first agitations of the thunder within it. Below the dark layer, however, was the purest of ether with no membrane beneath it.”

FIG. 3

Hildegard of Bingen, ‘Universe’, in: Scivias codex, c. 1165, Eibingen, Abbey of St Hildegard, fol. 14r.

(Hildegard of Bingen, Liber Scivias, third vision in part one)

GENESIS/COSMOS

FIG. 4

‘In principo creavit Deus celum et terram’, in: Pars Bibliorum (Lambeth Bible), 12th century, London, Lambeth Palace Library, ms. 3, fol. 6v.

“Only when things come into the world, when the world IS becoming an image, can it also be depicted.”

[Erst wenn die Dinge in die Welt kommen, wenn die Welt Bild geworden IST, kann sie auch abgebildet werden.]

Christiane Kruse, Wozu Menschen malen [Why Paint People], p. 155

In his contribution to the book De middeleeuwse ideeënwereld, 1000-1300 (The Medieval World of Ideas, 1000-1300), Arjo Vanderjagt writes (p. 154): “Creation, Paradise, Fall, Jerusalem, Crucifixion and the Renewed World coincide geographically and historically for the medievalists.” In this chapter, I focus on the biblical Genesis story on the one hand, and on the medieval iconography of cosmological understanding on the other. I wish to sensitise the reader to the insights from the field of natural sciences that, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onwards – first in a neo-Platonic wave, later in an Aristotelian one – entered the early Jewish biblical creation story.

Is a rapprochement possible on the visual level that is lacking on the textual level? Or did the iconographic traditions deviate?

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

26

IMAGES OF CREATION MYTHS

*** Genesis 1, 1-5 states: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’, and the darkness he called ‘night’. And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.” In the very first verses of the Bible, therefore, we note a reference to the concept of wind, or ruach in Hebrew.

“The Spirit of God (ruach) was hovering over the waters.” Even before the Creation, in the pre-cosmogonic state so to speak, the Earth was covered by a ‘primordial flood’ and chaos and darkness ruled.

God hovered above these waters. He was the air principle that would dominate the water principle.

The Hebrew narrative does not speak, therefore, of a creation ex nihilo [out of nothing]. The cosmos already existed – albeit chaotically – and God is presented as the sovereign power who can subdue the tumultuous waters. In Genesis 8:1, it is the wind sent by God that causes the waters to recede and, during the Deluge, to part. A similar allusion can be found in Exodus 15: “By the blast of your nostrils / the waters piled up. / The surging waters stood up like a wall; / the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea,” (verse 8). “But you blew with your breath, / and the sea covered them. / They sank like lead / in the mighty waters” (verse 10).

The Psalms also include configurations involving God and the menacing waters that, in every instance, are calmed by His sovereign power, the ruach.

It is not only God’s breath that brings order to the world, the Creation, but also His voice. His speech is the catalyst that sets everything in motion.

In Psalms 93, 3-4, it is sung: “The seas have lifted up, Lord, / the seas have lifted up their voice; / the seas have lifted up their pounding waves. / Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, / mightier than the breakers of the sea – the Lord on high is mighty.” Ruach is the primordial image of divine creative power.

Before the Earth could be created in its specific form and with its distinctive characteristics, God needed to quell the waters with the ‘wind of his voice’. The agency of the voice emanating from the wind is reinforced by the verse in which the wind of God ‘floats’ over the waters: ‘ruach elohim’ (Genesis 1, 2).

Let us now turn to how the Biblical story of the Creation has inspired the artistic imagination. *** Challenged by their chosen medium and material, artists have always approached the creation story in a highly inventive way. It led to the development of a specific model with miniature art, of which the twelfth-century Lambeth Bible is a fine example (Fig. 4). The folio illustrated here contains an excerpt from the book of Genesis, the opening line of which is illuminated in graceful letters: “In principio creavit Deus celum et terram”. To the left of the folio, the first letter, ‘I’, is elaborated in an impressive illuminated initial that runs the entire length of the margin.

The miniature details the six phases of Creation in

27

PART 3

THE COSMIC EYE AND THE ICONIC GAZE

THE UPTURNED GAZE

“That look is so powerful that it wears down even the strongest man.

It is as powerful as the touch of a hand.”

Sándor Márai, Embers, p. 71

Legend has it that when the amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola (1831-1888) visited the Cave of Altamira on his estate in 1879, searching for fragments of prehistoric tools, there was nothing to be found. Sautuola was looking in the wrong place.

His eyes were trained on the ground. His eight-yearold daughter, who accompanied him, María Sanz de Sautuola (1871-1946), looked up. What came to light after all those millennia is well-known: an over 20-metre-long procession of close to life-sized bison and assorted animals. Prehistoric painting was a fact. A stampede, a herd, their hooves clattering on the rocky terrain. Prehistoric painting was merciless, stunning, not to mention virtuosic, liberated from its silence. The scholars of the day had little faith in the amateur. Yet Sautuola would eventually receive posthumous recognition, years after his death, because the paintings proved to date from between 11,000 and 19,000 BC. I am interested in the daughter, María. She was nothing like an archaeologist, for she was a child.

Spontaneously looking upwards. Just like the captivating prehistoric figurine pictured here (Fig. 21, see also catalogue p. 138). Probing the boundaries of space.

Sensing reassurance in the dark. Ascending, colliding with the firmament. María entered a room, her father stepped into a site. The truth-seeking amateur scientist was led astray by his bias, the child’s imagination became the truth of the cave.

“That day in November 1879, as Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola stood speechless below the painted ceiling of Altamira, was the first time we know of that an artist from the distant Stone Age touched the soul of a modern person.”

*** Readers of this essay will recognise the triangular ‘Eye of God’ pictures that have graced the living rooms of countless generations. Watched over by the Judge’s all-seeing eye, people are inspired to live exemplary lives. The divine eye scrutinising us from on high is, however, a far more ancient motif.

Humans feels ‘watched’ by the Universe. The cosmos possesses an all-encompassing eye, glaring like the Sun, introverted like the Moon. But when the cosmic eye looks at us, we return the gaze. Is there a space in which the cosmic eye meets our own? And how will we visualise that encounter, that wondrous optical copulation? What visual regimes has humankind developed so as to manage the kinetic collision with the enormous, cavernous pupil on high? What is the true nature of this fervent gaze on the vertical axis of the Universe? Is it subjecting humans to a devastating and unbearable form of scrutiny or celebrating them for their iconic and technical abilities?

In this third and final section, I will once again delve into humankind’s ability to visually master the Universe. But I will also explore how pre-scientific symbols relating to eyes and vision, not to mention the ever-advancing knowledge of optics, might be utilised as a gigantic lens that can be trained on the dazzling iris of the cosmos. We will note that it is the act of looking upwards – in bewilderment at all the occurrences in the ‘celestial sphere’ – that led to the development of descriptive, architectural and ritualistic forms of expression. The cosmic energies of galaxies, of alienating auroras and the reassuring, eternally observable alternation of Sun and Moon are recurring patterns in temporal models, in iconographic schemata and in prehistoric temples. In the Mexican state of Tabasco, archaeologists discovered what is possibly

FIG. 21

Sitting woman, Hamangia culture, c. 5000-4600 BC, found in Cernavodă, (Bucharest), National History Museum of Romania.

Gregory Curtis, The Cave Painters, p. 50

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

46

THE UPTURNED GAZE

47

PART 3

THE COSMIC EYE AND THE ICONIC GAZE

THE UPTURNED GAZE

“That look is so powerful that it wears down even the strongest man.

It is as powerful as the touch of a hand.”

Sándor Márai, Embers, p. 71

Legend has it that when the amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola (1831-1888) visited the Cave of Altamira on his estate in 1879, searching for fragments of prehistoric tools, there was nothing to be found. Sautuola was looking in the wrong place.

His eyes were trained on the ground. His eight-yearold daughter, who accompanied him, María Sanz de Sautuola (1871-1946), looked up. What came to light after all those millennia is well-known: an over 20-metre-long procession of close to life-sized bison and assorted animals. Prehistoric painting was a fact. A stampede, a herd, their hooves clattering on the rocky terrain. Prehistoric painting was merciless, stunning, not to mention virtuosic, liberated from its silence. The scholars of the day had little faith in the amateur. Yet Sautuola would eventually receive posthumous recognition, years after his death, because the paintings proved to date from between 11,000 and 19,000 BC. I am interested in the daughter, María. She was nothing like an archaeologist, for she was a child.

Spontaneously looking upwards. Just like the captivating prehistoric figurine pictured here (Fig. 21, see also catalogue p. 138). Probing the boundaries of space.

Sensing reassurance in the dark. Ascending, colliding with the firmament. María entered a room, her father stepped into a site. The truth-seeking amateur scientist was led astray by his bias, the child’s imagination became the truth of the cave.

“That day in November 1879, as Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola stood speechless below the painted ceiling of Altamira, was the first time we know of that an artist from the distant Stone Age touched the soul of a modern person.”

*** Readers of this essay will recognise the triangular ‘Eye of God’ pictures that have graced the living rooms of countless generations. Watched over by the Judge’s all-seeing eye, people are inspired to live exemplary lives. The divine eye scrutinising us from on high is, however, a far more ancient motif.

Humans feels ‘watched’ by the Universe. The cosmos possesses an all-encompassing eye, glaring like the Sun, introverted like the Moon. But when the cosmic eye looks at us, we return the gaze. Is there a space in which the cosmic eye meets our own? And how will we visualise that encounter, that wondrous optical copulation? What visual regimes has humankind developed so as to manage the kinetic collision with the enormous, cavernous pupil on high? What is the true nature of this fervent gaze on the vertical axis of the Universe? Is it subjecting humans to a devastating and unbearable form of scrutiny or celebrating them for their iconic and technical abilities?

In this third and final section, I will once again delve into humankind’s ability to visually master the Universe. But I will also explore how pre-scientific symbols relating to eyes and vision, not to mention the ever-advancing knowledge of optics, might be utilised as a gigantic lens that can be trained on the dazzling iris of the cosmos. We will note that it is the act of looking upwards – in bewilderment at all the occurrences in the ‘celestial sphere’ – that led to the development of descriptive, architectural and ritualistic forms of expression. The cosmic energies of galaxies, of alienating auroras and the reassuring, eternally observable alternation of Sun and Moon are recurring patterns in temporal models, in iconographic schemata and in prehistoric temples. In the Mexican state of Tabasco, archaeologists discovered what is possibly

FIG. 21

Sitting woman, Hamangia culture, c. 5000-4600 BC, found in Cernavodă, (Bucharest), National History Museum of Romania.

Gregory Curtis, The Cave Painters, p. 50

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

46

THE UPTURNED GAZE

47

the largest and oldest cosmic structure ever built by the Maya civilisation. This ceremonial complex was constructed between 1000 and 800 BC. and is aligned to the June and December solstices. The positioning of the platforms enabled the Maya to mark the seasons with absolute precision. In one of the earliest semantic linguistic groups, Proto-Indo-European, a word for sun, séhul, also means ‘eye’. In Old Irish, too, ‘sun’ and ‘eye’ are referred to by the same term: suil. In Proto-Indo-European, moon is méh-not, or ‘measure’, from the verb stem meh-, for ‘to measure’. This would suggest that the Moon has functioned as a temporal marker since time immemorial, as is evident today in the word ‘month’.

In his Images et symboles [Images and Symbols], Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) describes the fascination for the celestial bodies and their cosmic eye as “la terreur du temps” [the terror of time] (pp. 92-93). The cosmogony is perpetually experienced anew and must be allayed through rituals and ceremonies: the mysterium tremendum [awe-inspiring mystery] must be tempered. The Sun’s zenith represents the most dangerous tipping point. The eye is momentarily static: it starts as nunc stans [the now that stays] but cannot pivot into nunc fluens [the now that passes] without assistance. In this ceremonial space, of the temple, of the dolmen group, yes, this is where the most elevated eye-contact occurs.

I am not yet sure if the eye will traduce the ear. (In the last chapter, the Universe had suddenly become quieter.) Nor do I know whether I will draw closer to the third space or alienate myself from the astrophysicist. What I can say with certainty, however, is that the spiral will return in the boustrophedon. As will the dark half-light that gains ever greater clarity on its journey towards a pristine pupil: the telescope.

Who would have thought that Galileo Galilei (15641642) would be staring at the heavily bespectacled founder of iconology: Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968)?

In this chapter, I first consider cosmic eye and how it darts between evil and its antithesis, the animating power of ‘sight’. I will then isolate two spaces in which the iconic gaze of humankind meets the cosmic gaze of the Universe: the famous Mappa Mundi in Hereford, UK (c. 1300) and the Genesis cycle in the atrium dome of St Mark’s Basilica, Venice (thirteenth century). Two unique wormholes through which we can tumble together into the emptiness of the firmament. *** One of the first sculptures ever made by human hands was an owl, discovered on 18 December 1994

by Jean-Marie Chauvet in the prehistoric caves of the Ardèche, and modelled over 30,000 years ago (Fig. 22). In Christian Trans’ documentary for Arte, Les génies de la grotte Chauvet (2014) [The Geniuses of the Chauvet Cave], which chronicles an ambitious plan to construct a replica of the cavern, the Catalan painter Miquel Barceló discusses the technical and artistic merits of the murals. Barceló also wants to master the owl. The painter practises and practises but cannot unlock its secret. Until he realises that the owl was made in just a few seconds, quickly and with the synchronicity of four fingertips: hop, now

the body, hop, now the wings, hop, now the eyes, the latter made by two thumbs pressing against the rock wall. What virtuoso simplicity and what a brilliant genesis of the plastic arts, as such. Fingertips and rock. Nothing more is needed. Fingers create contours, thumbs make depressions. Of this gently watchful, silent, listening owl, Barceló says: “Tout est déjà là [Everything is already there].

The eyes of the owl penetrate the dark, opaque night. The bird has the courage to conquer the terrifyingly dense void with its piercing pupil and thus symbolises the vanquishing of human fears. The owl is apotropaic and comforts those who, in all vulnerability, bare themselves to the bewildering silence and profound darkness that we call the ‘cosmos’.

The antithesis of the owl’s nocturnal eye is that of the falcon, which blazes like the Sun. Blisteringly hot, it has the power to generate life from the icy, amorphous waters. The falcon possesses the eye that incorporates the chaotic primordial sea into a creative order. The falcon possesses the light and, as with the Sun, people entered into a vital relationship with the luminescence. Together with the Moon, the Sun is the most important celestial body that the Universe has bequeathed to humankind.

The third cosmic ‘eye animal’ is the snake. It is impossible to escape this primordial reptile in this essay: guardian of the world egg, slithering avatar of the spiral, and a ritualistic fetish associated with lightning and doom for Native Americans. But the eyes of snakes are exceptional. They have a membrane but no eyelid. The snake sees through this membrane, which the Greeks called the amnion. The amnion is also the membrane that surrounds the child in the womb and is the bowl for collecting sacrificial blood (Isaiah 53, 7-8). The membrane-eye connects the cosmic serpent with the birthing capacity of the mother goddess. The egg, too, has a firm membrane beneath its shell. The serpent stares without blinking and thus possesses the unique power to ward off evil, like the Pharaoh’s cobra eye. Thanks to its universal watchfulness, the snake partially transcends the march of time and is thus returned to the primordial phase of the Universe: to point zero. In its circular and spiral form, the snake is also a graphic representation, therefore, of the point of origin (Fig. 23). But there is more. When the snake sheds its skin – an image of the world’s cyclic rebirth – the eye is also part of the process, acquiring a milky, opaque blue radiance, as if the reptile is retreating into itself and, from that meditative state, is able to access the secret: wisdom, the riddle, gnosis [knowledge]. And finally, the snake is phallic in form.

The phallus is an image of the creative impulse: quick, sudden and obsessive. The serpent is metaphorically charged with the thunderbolt of the spermatozoon, and it guards the centre of the world, the Omphalos of Delphi. In Dionysian cosmogonic rites, coincidentally, the glans is a shining, all-penetrating cyclopean eye.

In her book Le Symbolisme du corps humain [The Symbolism of the Human Body], the French-Jewish theologian Annick de Souzenelle delves into the semantic origin of our organs and limbs. The eye is a vital cosmic mirror. In Hebrew, the word for ‘eye’ is ayin. Ayin is also the sixteenth letter and means ‘divine vision’. In Latin and Cyrillic script, it became

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

FIG. 22

Prehistoric engraved owl, petroglyph, c. 30,000 BC, Ardèche, Grotte ChauvetPont d’Arc.

FIG. 23

Tantric snake as a spiral shape, gouache on paper, 18th century, India, Punjab.

48

THE UPTURNED GAZE

the letter ‘O’, which contains the pictogram of the eye. Ayin carries the mystical number 70, which in the Kabbalah stands for ‘to die in order to rise’. Ayin is related to zayin, the letter associated with the value 7 and the ideogram of an arrow piercing an animal skin.

The eye too, like an arrow, perforates the visible world to reach a higher level of perception. Ayin is also linked to the divinity that allows itself to be opened to the light, as Job experienced: “but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42, 5). Interestingly, ‘ayin’ also means ‘source’: vision thus comes from the depths. The eye is both contemplative and introspective. It is precisely this inner eye that introduces a final archaic ‘eye animal’: the fish. This organ of sight belongs to the dark primordial waters. Light glistens from the depths.

Paul Klee described the glistening of a fish’s eye as follows: “From the uncertain / a something shines, not from here, not from me, but from God” (Félix Klee [ed.], The Diaries of Paul Klee, p. 312). In an Old Testament story (Tobit 11, 10-15), Tobias places a fish gall on the eyes of his blind father. The latter’s sight is restored, and a white skin emerges from his eyes, like that of an egg. This is the birth of the divine ground, which leads to the fundamental vision: seeing with the third eye.

Earlier in this journey, we associated the power of creation with speech and breath. But the eye also has a creative capacity. In Genesis 1, 31, we read: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

The visual approval noted in the Bible is linked to a much deeper power of the eye: it is both air-pneumatic and a fire spark. In his phenomenal The Origin of European Thought, Richard Onians explains the Homeric roots of our interaction with the Universe and shows that breath is an elixir of life. One that is not only associated with the mouth and the lungs, but also, curiously enough, the eyes. This is predicated upon an alternative view of cranial anatomy. Our skull is riddled with chambers and passages that provide exits and entrances for the elixir of air: the nostrils, the cochlea, the mouth, but also the eyes.

In Homeric thought, seeing meant ‘taking something in’ through the eyes, like inhalation and exhalation.

I see you, so I ‘breathe’ you, in and out. The eye thus transcends the mono-directional traffic of the ear. The eye can out-perform the ear as the latter is merely a receptor. In a Homeric hymn to Demeter, the breath that escaped from her eyes is revered. The ocular breath is also expressed through the ancient topos of the intoxicating scent, also an element of air. But the eyes of Demeter also possess a sparkle, the light that accompanies the inhalation and exhalation. Onians recognises a trace of this Homeric principle in the Latin word aura, which represents the glowing halos around eyes and objects.

The spark, the glimmer, escapes the eye. The spark is the tiniest yet most dangerous particle of the fire, the cause of many an inferno. According to its Indo-European etymology, the spark is related to the eye on the one hand, and to sex on the other. It has a spermatozoid quality. The phallus is also dazzling and fast. In the Song of Songs, the bride wounds (stabs) with one of her eyes. “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart, with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace”

49

the largest and oldest cosmic structure ever built by the Maya civilisation. This ceremonial complex was constructed between 1000 and 800 BC. and is aligned to the June and December solstices. The positioning of the platforms enabled the Maya to mark the seasons with absolute precision. In one of the earliest semantic linguistic groups, Proto-Indo-European, a word for sun, séhul, also means ‘eye’. In Old Irish, too, ‘sun’ and ‘eye’ are referred to by the same term: suil. In Proto-Indo-European, moon is méh-not, or ‘measure’, from the verb stem meh-, for ‘to measure’. This would suggest that the Moon has functioned as a temporal marker since time immemorial, as is evident today in the word ‘month’.

In his Images et symboles [Images and Symbols], Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) describes the fascination for the celestial bodies and their cosmic eye as “la terreur du temps” [the terror of time] (pp. 92-93). The cosmogony is perpetually experienced anew and must be allayed through rituals and ceremonies: the mysterium tremendum [awe-inspiring mystery] must be tempered. The Sun’s zenith represents the most dangerous tipping point. The eye is momentarily static: it starts as nunc stans [the now that stays] but cannot pivot into nunc fluens [the now that passes] without assistance. In this ceremonial space, of the temple, of the dolmen group, yes, this is where the most elevated eye-contact occurs.

I am not yet sure if the eye will traduce the ear. (In the last chapter, the Universe had suddenly become quieter.) Nor do I know whether I will draw closer to the third space or alienate myself from the astrophysicist. What I can say with certainty, however, is that the spiral will return in the boustrophedon. As will the dark half-light that gains ever greater clarity on its journey towards a pristine pupil: the telescope.

Who would have thought that Galileo Galilei (15641642) would be staring at the heavily bespectacled founder of iconology: Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968)?

In this chapter, I first consider cosmic eye and how it darts between evil and its antithesis, the animating power of ‘sight’. I will then isolate two spaces in which the iconic gaze of humankind meets the cosmic gaze of the Universe: the famous Mappa Mundi in Hereford, UK (c. 1300) and the Genesis cycle in the atrium dome of St Mark’s Basilica, Venice (thirteenth century). Two unique wormholes through which we can tumble together into the emptiness of the firmament. *** One of the first sculptures ever made by human hands was an owl, discovered on 18 December 1994

by Jean-Marie Chauvet in the prehistoric caves of the Ardèche, and modelled over 30,000 years ago (Fig. 22). In Christian Trans’ documentary for Arte, Les génies de la grotte Chauvet (2014) [The Geniuses of the Chauvet Cave], which chronicles an ambitious plan to construct a replica of the cavern, the Catalan painter Miquel Barceló discusses the technical and artistic merits of the murals. Barceló also wants to master the owl. The painter practises and practises but cannot unlock its secret. Until he realises that the owl was made in just a few seconds, quickly and with the synchronicity of four fingertips: hop, now

the body, hop, now the wings, hop, now the eyes, the latter made by two thumbs pressing against the rock wall. What virtuoso simplicity and what a brilliant genesis of the plastic arts, as such. Fingertips and rock. Nothing more is needed. Fingers create contours, thumbs make depressions. Of this gently watchful, silent, listening owl, Barceló says: “Tout est déjà là [Everything is already there].

The eyes of the owl penetrate the dark, opaque night. The bird has the courage to conquer the terrifyingly dense void with its piercing pupil and thus symbolises the vanquishing of human fears. The owl is apotropaic and comforts those who, in all vulnerability, bare themselves to the bewildering silence and profound darkness that we call the ‘cosmos’.

The antithesis of the owl’s nocturnal eye is that of the falcon, which blazes like the Sun. Blisteringly hot, it has the power to generate life from the icy, amorphous waters. The falcon possesses the eye that incorporates the chaotic primordial sea into a creative order. The falcon possesses the light and, as with the Sun, people entered into a vital relationship with the luminescence. Together with the Moon, the Sun is the most important celestial body that the Universe has bequeathed to humankind.

The third cosmic ‘eye animal’ is the snake. It is impossible to escape this primordial reptile in this essay: guardian of the world egg, slithering avatar of the spiral, and a ritualistic fetish associated with lightning and doom for Native Americans. But the eyes of snakes are exceptional. They have a membrane but no eyelid. The snake sees through this membrane, which the Greeks called the amnion. The amnion is also the membrane that surrounds the child in the womb and is the bowl for collecting sacrificial blood (Isaiah 53, 7-8). The membrane-eye connects the cosmic serpent with the birthing capacity of the mother goddess. The egg, too, has a firm membrane beneath its shell. The serpent stares without blinking and thus possesses the unique power to ward off evil, like the Pharaoh’s cobra eye. Thanks to its universal watchfulness, the snake partially transcends the march of time and is thus returned to the primordial phase of the Universe: to point zero. In its circular and spiral form, the snake is also a graphic representation, therefore, of the point of origin (Fig. 23). But there is more. When the snake sheds its skin – an image of the world’s cyclic rebirth – the eye is also part of the process, acquiring a milky, opaque blue radiance, as if the reptile is retreating into itself and, from that meditative state, is able to access the secret: wisdom, the riddle, gnosis [knowledge]. And finally, the snake is phallic in form.

The phallus is an image of the creative impulse: quick, sudden and obsessive. The serpent is metaphorically charged with the thunderbolt of the spermatozoon, and it guards the centre of the world, the Omphalos of Delphi. In Dionysian cosmogonic rites, coincidentally, the glans is a shining, all-penetrating cyclopean eye.

In her book Le Symbolisme du corps humain [The Symbolism of the Human Body], the French-Jewish theologian Annick de Souzenelle delves into the semantic origin of our organs and limbs. The eye is a vital cosmic mirror. In Hebrew, the word for ‘eye’ is ayin. Ayin is also the sixteenth letter and means ‘divine vision’. In Latin and Cyrillic script, it became

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

FIG. 22

Prehistoric engraved owl, petroglyph, c. 30,000 BC, Ardèche, Grotte ChauvetPont d’Arc.

FIG. 23

Tantric snake as a spiral shape, gouache on paper, 18th century, India, Punjab.

48

THE UPTURNED GAZE

the letter ‘O’, which contains the pictogram of the eye. Ayin carries the mystical number 70, which in the Kabbalah stands for ‘to die in order to rise’. Ayin is related to zayin, the letter associated with the value 7 and the ideogram of an arrow piercing an animal skin.

The eye too, like an arrow, perforates the visible world to reach a higher level of perception. Ayin is also linked to the divinity that allows itself to be opened to the light, as Job experienced: “but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42, 5). Interestingly, ‘ayin’ also means ‘source’: vision thus comes from the depths. The eye is both contemplative and introspective. It is precisely this inner eye that introduces a final archaic ‘eye animal’: the fish. This organ of sight belongs to the dark primordial waters. Light glistens from the depths.

Paul Klee described the glistening of a fish’s eye as follows: “From the uncertain / a something shines, not from here, not from me, but from God” (Félix Klee [ed.], The Diaries of Paul Klee, p. 312). In an Old Testament story (Tobit 11, 10-15), Tobias places a fish gall on the eyes of his blind father. The latter’s sight is restored, and a white skin emerges from his eyes, like that of an egg. This is the birth of the divine ground, which leads to the fundamental vision: seeing with the third eye.

Earlier in this journey, we associated the power of creation with speech and breath. But the eye also has a creative capacity. In Genesis 1, 31, we read: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

The visual approval noted in the Bible is linked to a much deeper power of the eye: it is both air-pneumatic and a fire spark. In his phenomenal The Origin of European Thought, Richard Onians explains the Homeric roots of our interaction with the Universe and shows that breath is an elixir of life. One that is not only associated with the mouth and the lungs, but also, curiously enough, the eyes. This is predicated upon an alternative view of cranial anatomy. Our skull is riddled with chambers and passages that provide exits and entrances for the elixir of air: the nostrils, the cochlea, the mouth, but also the eyes.

In Homeric thought, seeing meant ‘taking something in’ through the eyes, like inhalation and exhalation.

I see you, so I ‘breathe’ you, in and out. The eye thus transcends the mono-directional traffic of the ear. The eye can out-perform the ear as the latter is merely a receptor. In a Homeric hymn to Demeter, the breath that escaped from her eyes is revered. The ocular breath is also expressed through the ancient topos of the intoxicating scent, also an element of air. But the eyes of Demeter also possess a sparkle, the light that accompanies the inhalation and exhalation. Onians recognises a trace of this Homeric principle in the Latin word aura, which represents the glowing halos around eyes and objects.

The spark, the glimmer, escapes the eye. The spark is the tiniest yet most dangerous particle of the fire, the cause of many an inferno. According to its Indo-European etymology, the spark is related to the eye on the one hand, and to sex on the other. It has a spermatozoid quality. The phallus is also dazzling and fast. In the Song of Songs, the bride wounds (stabs) with one of her eyes. “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart, with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace”

49

(Song of Songs 4, 9). In Greek, the word for spark is derived from spargao: swelling, taming, rupturing and erupting, like the sprouting of plants from the ground.

In the Germanic and Indian origin myths, the spark as a cosmogonic image is related to the axe or anvil, to the blacksmith as creator. Finally, there is the cosmic spark of the comet that strikes the earth and seals the marriage between lightning and the ground.

Hildegard of Bingen refers to the spark of creation in Book II of her aforementioned Liber Scivias: “And I, a person not glowing with the strength of strong lions or taught by their inspiration, but a tender and fragile rib imbued with a mystical breath, saw a blazing fire, incomprehensible, inextinguishable, wholly living and wholly Life, with a flame in it the colour of the sky, which burned ardently with a gentle breath, and which was as inseparably within the blazing fire as the viscera are within a human being.

And I saw that the flame sparked and blazed up. And behold! The atmosphere suddenly rose up in a dark sphere of great magnitude, and that flame hovered over it and gave it one blow after another, which struck sparks from it, until that atmosphere was perfected and so Heaven and earth stood fully formed and resplendent. Then the same flame was in that fire, and that burning extended itself to a little clod of mud which lay at the bottom of the atmosphere, and warmed it so that it was made flesh and blood, and blew upon it until it rose up a living human. When

this was done, the blazing fire, by means of that flame which burned ardently with a gentle breath, offered to the human a white flower, which hung in that flame as dew hangs on the grass. Its scent came to the human’s nostrils, but he did not taste it with his mouth or touch it with his hands.”

The accompanying miniature shows the creative orb-like eye with golden spheres and, in the middle, the waters from which a spark, like a giant extended tongue, cleaves the still-dark mass and facilitates creation (Fig. 24). The tip of the ‘sparking tongue’ touches the human head, which ‘swells’ like a plant from the red clay, like a fragrant lily. Man smells and remembers creation, the sweet breath of all beginnings that unites fire and wind and retains a miraculous affinity to the Homeric archetypes. But also in the Gnostic tradition, it is stated that Adam was allowed to smell a branch from the Tree of Life before he died. By this comforting gesture, he regained universal knowledge. Perhaps also the origin of the Universe. Adam took this gnosis with him to the grave.

Hildegard of Bingen condenses the dual gaze into textual and pictorial space. The cosmic eye tilts in the iconic gaze and this, in turn, extends into cosmic synaesthesia. The ancient boustrophedon is installed and defies gravity. Once again, we tip in unison and ascend to the dizzying heights of the Universe.

FIG. 24

Hildegard of Bingen, ‘Creative eye with golden spheres’, in: Scivias codex, c. 1165, Eibingen, Abbey of St Hildegard, fol. 41v.

FIG. 25

Richard of Haldingham and Lafford (Richard de Bello), Hereford Mappa Mundi, c. 1300, Hereford Cathedral.

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

50

THE UPTURNED GAZE

*** In her book Art and Optics in the Hereford Map, Marcia Kupfer, an expert on the Mappa Mundi, sheds new light on the meaning and function of the world-famous chart from c. 1300 (Fig. 25). The Hereford Mappa Mundi is situated within the Beatus of Liébana (c. 730-c. 800) cartographic tradition and resembles the Ebstorf Mappa Mundi (1234). The Hereford example is unique, however, as it is the only T-O map of this size (163 × 137 cm). On a T-O map, the O, or circle, represents the ocean that surrounds the Earth, while the T divides the world into the three continents that were known at the time: Asia, Europe, and Africa. The map was originally kept in a niche of the cathedral and was equipped with two doors that,

51

(Song of Songs 4, 9). In Greek, the word for spark is derived from spargao: swelling, taming, rupturing and erupting, like the sprouting of plants from the ground.

In the Germanic and Indian origin myths, the spark as a cosmogonic image is related to the axe or anvil, to the blacksmith as creator. Finally, there is the cosmic spark of the comet that strikes the earth and seals the marriage between lightning and the ground.

Hildegard of Bingen refers to the spark of creation in Book II of her aforementioned Liber Scivias: “And I, a person not glowing with the strength of strong lions or taught by their inspiration, but a tender and fragile rib imbued with a mystical breath, saw a blazing fire, incomprehensible, inextinguishable, wholly living and wholly Life, with a flame in it the colour of the sky, which burned ardently with a gentle breath, and which was as inseparably within the blazing fire as the viscera are within a human being.

And I saw that the flame sparked and blazed up. And behold! The atmosphere suddenly rose up in a dark sphere of great magnitude, and that flame hovered over it and gave it one blow after another, which struck sparks from it, until that atmosphere was perfected and so Heaven and earth stood fully formed and resplendent. Then the same flame was in that fire, and that burning extended itself to a little clod of mud which lay at the bottom of the atmosphere, and warmed it so that it was made flesh and blood, and blew upon it until it rose up a living human. When

this was done, the blazing fire, by means of that flame which burned ardently with a gentle breath, offered to the human a white flower, which hung in that flame as dew hangs on the grass. Its scent came to the human’s nostrils, but he did not taste it with his mouth or touch it with his hands.”

The accompanying miniature shows the creative orb-like eye with golden spheres and, in the middle, the waters from which a spark, like a giant extended tongue, cleaves the still-dark mass and facilitates creation (Fig. 24). The tip of the ‘sparking tongue’ touches the human head, which ‘swells’ like a plant from the red clay, like a fragrant lily. Man smells and remembers creation, the sweet breath of all beginnings that unites fire and wind and retains a miraculous affinity to the Homeric archetypes. But also in the Gnostic tradition, it is stated that Adam was allowed to smell a branch from the Tree of Life before he died. By this comforting gesture, he regained universal knowledge. Perhaps also the origin of the Universe. Adam took this gnosis with him to the grave.

Hildegard of Bingen condenses the dual gaze into textual and pictorial space. The cosmic eye tilts in the iconic gaze and this, in turn, extends into cosmic synaesthesia. The ancient boustrophedon is installed and defies gravity. Once again, we tip in unison and ascend to the dizzying heights of the Universe.

FIG. 24

Hildegard of Bingen, ‘Creative eye with golden spheres’, in: Scivias codex, c. 1165, Eibingen, Abbey of St Hildegard, fol. 41v.

FIG. 25

Richard of Haldingham and Lafford (Richard de Bello), Hereford Mappa Mundi, c. 1300, Hereford Cathedral.

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE

50

THE UPTURNED GAZE

*** In her book Art and Optics in the Hereford Map, Marcia Kupfer, an expert on the Mappa Mundi, sheds new light on the meaning and function of the world-famous chart from c. 1300 (Fig. 25). The Hereford Mappa Mundi is situated within the Beatus of Liébana (c. 730-c. 800) cartographic tradition and resembles the Ebstorf Mappa Mundi (1234). The Hereford example is unique, however, as it is the only T-O map of this size (163 × 137 cm). On a T-O map, the O, or circle, represents the ocean that surrounds the Earth, while the T divides the world into the three continents that were known at the time: Asia, Europe, and Africa. The map was originally kept in a niche of the cathedral and was equipped with two doors that,

51

The Universe is not too big for humankind, it does not exceed the reach of science or the capacity of the human spirit.

Georges Lemaître (1894-1966)

Ovidius (Romeinse Rijk, 1ste eeuw)

The Universe is not too big for humankind, it does not exceed the reach of science or the capacity of the human spirit.

Georges Lemaître (1894-1966)

Ovidius (Romeinse Rijk, 1ste eeuw)

INTRODUCTION

Who are we, what is the cosmos, how did the world come into being, why are we present here on Earth, what will the future bring, and what is our place in the Universe? From the beginning, human beings have been moved by fundamental questions. For thousands of years, we have projected those questions onto the starry sky. Mythology, religion, arts and sciences offer the most diverse answers. Each formulation of the Universe seeks to connect us to the unfathomable. Each attempt at explanation seeks first and foremost to create a sense of certainty and order out of chaos. But the deep sense of our futility within the infinity of the cosmos prevails each time.

What remains unchanged is the eternal sense of wonder. Our feet are firmly planted on the ground, yet we long to unravel the mysteries of the Universe.

The catalogue presented here seizes that wonder in the act. The artworks and artifacts presented in this book are part of the exhibitions ‘Imagining the Universe’ at M Leuven and ‘To the Edge of Time’ at the University Library of Leuven. The masterpieces shown here are not presented according to the chronology or themes in either exhibition. This book allows us to engage in confrontations across various periods of time and spanning several cultures.

The exhibition ‘Imagining the Universe’ explores how Western Europe and the Middle East visually responded to questions surrounding the cosmos, and in what way this thinking took hold in the visual arts and intellectual thought until the eighteenth century. It is precisely this strong link between perception and imagination that enables people to formulate questions and answers. The connecting factor in each case is wonder. The result is an ode to the arts and sciences.

Via the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, the imagining of the Universe within the Western European Christian world relies on the Jewish tradition.

Genesis opens with a story that immediately confronts the reader with the Universe: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. It is not an historical narrative which naively explains how the Universe and life came to be. We see the story today as a literary and poetic image that narrates the structuring of the chaotic cosmos. This liturgical-sounding text was written over six centuries before the Christian era began. It engages with the surrounding Mesopotamian religions by depriving the heavenly bodies of their divine status. At the same time, the story places humans at the centre of the Universe as the “image and likeness of God”. The Christian representation of the Universe, however, is also indebted to the pictorial tradition of classical Graeco-Roman culture. The Salvator Mundi, Latin for “saviour of the world”, depicts Christ making the sign of the cross with his right hand, and holding an orb in his left, or occasionally at his feet, sometimes accompanied by a cross. Literally “holding the Universe in one’s hand” was already a symbol of power in ancient times. With the spread of Christianity, this image symbolised Christ’s rule over the world.

Greek and Roman Antiquity narrate and describe the creation and representation of the Universe in numerous and ubiquitous myths. A pantheon of

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE: ETERNAL WONDER Jan Van der Stock curator ‘imagining the universe’

m leuven, on behalf of the team of illuminare

–

centre for medieval and renaissance art [ku leuven]

Hannah Redler Hawes and Thomas Hertog curators ‘to the edge of time’ university library leuven

Annelies Vogels exhibition officer ku leuven

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE: ETERNAL WONDER

104

gods and goddesses who regulate the ethical order and life on Earth populate the cosmos. These ancient stories were an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists well into the seventeenth century.

It was the Greek astronomer Ptolemy of Alexandria who, around 150 AD, and partly on the authority of predecessors such as Aristotle in the fourth century BC, established the geocentric model of the Universe.

In his study The Almagest, the Earth is a sphere located at the centre of the cosmos. The Moon, the planets, the Sun, and the stars revolve around it in circles. This was the basic concept of the European and Arab imagination of the Universe that persisted for more than 1,500 years, well into the sixteenth century. The geocentric imagination of the Universe found support in the Christian conception of creation and was handed down from generation to generation. Arab astronomers and mathematicians translated and disseminated the insights of the Greek scholars almost a thousand years ago. In addition, the Arabs provided new knowledge by carefully observing the movements of the heavenly bodies and correcting Greek astronomy. In turn, they were of great significance to Western science. Islamic astronomy came to Europe through Byzantium, Spain, and southern Italy, thanks to several texts that were translated into Latin.

The idea that macrocosm and microcosm are intimately connected has already been articulated and depicted in Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek Antiquity. The idea is based on the central place of Man in the Universe. The individual human being is the “little world” (microcosm) and reflects the “big world” or Universe (macrocosm). The cosmos signifies the harmonious arrangement or coherence of the parts that make up an organic system. Events and phenomena observed in the macrocosm consequently affect the microcosm. Astrologers saw omens of events that would take place on Earth in the position of the heavenly bodies. They related solar and lunar eclipses and the position of planets to the specific fate of an area or an individual.

In 1543, the Polish homo universalis Nicolaus Copernicus established the first mathematical model in which the Earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun in circular orbits. The Sun is at the centre of the solar system. Some Greek astronomers had already proposed this idea in Classical Antiquity.

The German astronomer and astrologer Johannes Kepler refined the model in 1609, and through the observations of the Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei, Copernicus’ theory was confirmed for the first time in 1610. Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity in 1687 cleared up the last objections to the heliocentric model of the solar system. Newton’s predecessors had already described what happens but gave no explanations for it. Newton, one of the most influential scientists of all time, established that celestial bodies attract each other. Without the test of observation through Galileo’s telescope and Newton’s mathematical formulation of gravity, Copernicus’ theory was just a hypothetical construct. ‘Imagining the Universe’ tells the story of people who, somewhere in a distant corner of the vast Universe, look up at the stars in wonder and formulate answers to their own pivotal questions.

105

INTRODUCTION

Who are we, what is the cosmos, how did the world come into being, why are we present here on Earth, what will the future bring, and what is our place in the Universe? From the beginning, human beings have been moved by fundamental questions. For thousands of years, we have projected those questions onto the starry sky. Mythology, religion, arts and sciences offer the most diverse answers. Each formulation of the Universe seeks to connect us to the unfathomable. Each attempt at explanation seeks first and foremost to create a sense of certainty and order out of chaos. But the deep sense of our futility within the infinity of the cosmos prevails each time.

What remains unchanged is the eternal sense of wonder. Our feet are firmly planted on the ground, yet we long to unravel the mysteries of the Universe.

The catalogue presented here seizes that wonder in the act. The artworks and artifacts presented in this book are part of the exhibitions ‘Imagining the Universe’ at M Leuven and ‘To the Edge of Time’ at the University Library of Leuven. The masterpieces shown here are not presented according to the chronology or themes in either exhibition. This book allows us to engage in confrontations across various periods of time and spanning several cultures.

The exhibition ‘Imagining the Universe’ explores how Western Europe and the Middle East visually responded to questions surrounding the cosmos, and in what way this thinking took hold in the visual arts and intellectual thought until the eighteenth century. It is precisely this strong link between perception and imagination that enables people to formulate questions and answers. The connecting factor in each case is wonder. The result is an ode to the arts and sciences.

Via the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, the imagining of the Universe within the Western European Christian world relies on the Jewish tradition.

Genesis opens with a story that immediately confronts the reader with the Universe: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. It is not an historical narrative which naively explains how the Universe and life came to be. We see the story today as a literary and poetic image that narrates the structuring of the chaotic cosmos. This liturgical-sounding text was written over six centuries before the Christian era began. It engages with the surrounding Mesopotamian religions by depriving the heavenly bodies of their divine status. At the same time, the story places humans at the centre of the Universe as the “image and likeness of God”. The Christian representation of the Universe, however, is also indebted to the pictorial tradition of classical Graeco-Roman culture. The Salvator Mundi, Latin for “saviour of the world”, depicts Christ making the sign of the cross with his right hand, and holding an orb in his left, or occasionally at his feet, sometimes accompanied by a cross. Literally “holding the Universe in one’s hand” was already a symbol of power in ancient times. With the spread of Christianity, this image symbolised Christ’s rule over the world.

Greek and Roman Antiquity narrate and describe the creation and representation of the Universe in numerous and ubiquitous myths. A pantheon of

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE: ETERNAL WONDER Jan Van der Stock curator ‘imagining the universe’

m leuven, on behalf of the team of illuminare

–

centre for medieval and renaissance art [ku leuven]

Hannah Redler Hawes and Thomas Hertog curators ‘to the edge of time’ university library leuven

Annelies Vogels exhibition officer ku leuven

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE: ETERNAL WONDER

104

gods and goddesses who regulate the ethical order and life on Earth populate the cosmos. These ancient stories were an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists well into the seventeenth century.

It was the Greek astronomer Ptolemy of Alexandria who, around 150 AD, and partly on the authority of predecessors such as Aristotle in the fourth century BC, established the geocentric model of the Universe.

In his study The Almagest, the Earth is a sphere located at the centre of the cosmos. The Moon, the planets, the Sun, and the stars revolve around it in circles. This was the basic concept of the European and Arab imagination of the Universe that persisted for more than 1,500 years, well into the sixteenth century. The geocentric imagination of the Universe found support in the Christian conception of creation and was handed down from generation to generation. Arab astronomers and mathematicians translated and disseminated the insights of the Greek scholars almost a thousand years ago. In addition, the Arabs provided new knowledge by carefully observing the movements of the heavenly bodies and correcting Greek astronomy. In turn, they were of great significance to Western science. Islamic astronomy came to Europe through Byzantium, Spain, and southern Italy, thanks to several texts that were translated into Latin.

The idea that macrocosm and microcosm are intimately connected has already been articulated and depicted in Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek Antiquity. The idea is based on the central place of Man in the Universe. The individual human being is the “little world” (microcosm) and reflects the “big world” or Universe (macrocosm). The cosmos signifies the harmonious arrangement or coherence of the parts that make up an organic system. Events and phenomena observed in the macrocosm consequently affect the microcosm. Astrologers saw omens of events that would take place on Earth in the position of the heavenly bodies. They related solar and lunar eclipses and the position of planets to the specific fate of an area or an individual.

In 1543, the Polish homo universalis Nicolaus Copernicus established the first mathematical model in which the Earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun in circular orbits. The Sun is at the centre of the solar system. Some Greek astronomers had already proposed this idea in Classical Antiquity.

The German astronomer and astrologer Johannes Kepler refined the model in 1609, and through the observations of the Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei, Copernicus’ theory was confirmed for the first time in 1610. Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity in 1687 cleared up the last objections to the heliocentric model of the solar system. Newton’s predecessors had already described what happens but gave no explanations for it. Newton, one of the most influential scientists of all time, established that celestial bodies attract each other. Without the test of observation through Galileo’s telescope and Newton’s mathematical formulation of gravity, Copernicus’ theory was just a hypothetical construct. ‘Imagining the Universe’ tells the story of people who, somewhere in a distant corner of the vast Universe, look up at the stars in wonder and formulate answers to their own pivotal questions.

105

The exhibition ‘To the Edge of Time’ at the University Library of Leuven elaborates on the story told at M Leuven and reflects on the Universe from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present day.

Unique scientific objects and works by international artists focus on the story of the Big Bang, one of the biggest scientific revolutions of the twentieth century.

The science and art strands weave in and out of each other, sometimes intimately connected, at others more tangential. Somewhat ironically for an exhibition questioning the existence of time, the scientific narrative is chronological. It takes us from the radical ideas at the turn of the twentieth century, now essentially accepted as fact, to the outlandish, more speculative twenty-first century hypotheses, which seem closer to science fiction. The artworks play with the formal materials of cosmology – light, space, time and matter – extracting the poetic and challenging the assumptions of science.

The Big Bang theory bridges the work of three of the twentieth century’s greatest European scientists: German physicist Albert Einstein, Belgian cleric and astronomer Georges Lemaître and the British cosmologist Stephen Hawking. Objects from their lives and archives open up their specific processes and ideas alongside artworks by modern masters and contemporary artists from across the globe. The exhibition begins with a direct encounter with the history of solar eclipses. Katie Paterson brings together nearly every solar eclipse documented by humankind across the glittering facets of a suspended mirror ball.

Included is a representation of the 1919 photograph taken by British astronomer Arthur Eddington, which supplied important evidence in favour of Einstein’s theory of gravity over long-held Newtonian beliefs.

A copy joins other world-first science objects in the show, including the exquisite graphs Lemaître drew to describe his bold proposal for the Big Bang, and Hawking’s blackboard, which may even hold the last chalk-marks made by his own hand.

Einstein brought our conception of the Universe from myth into science with a single equation.

Modern thinking about cosmology is based on his 1915 theory of relativity. It revolutionised our understanding of time and space as physical entities that warp, bend, stretch and squeeze. It opened the door to strange objects such as black holes and gravitational waves, but even Einstein struggled to accept one of his own theory’s natural conclusions: the Universe is expanding. In perceiving this, Lemaître, who is recognised as the first “post-Newtonian” physicist, again revolutionised thinking in 1931 with his suggestion that the entire universe began as a tiny “primeval atom” or “cosmic egg”, from which space, time and matter emerged. The Big Bang was born. Later, Stephen Hawking raised further questions, arguing that the Universe did not originate in pre-existing time but originated at the same time as “time”.

‘To the Edge of Time’ also considers visionary physicist John Wheeler’s assertion that in a quantum universe our observations today give reality to the Universe “back then”. We are not mere spectators of the Universe but participators in shaping reality. The exhibition concludes by outlining how leading cosmologists now think of the Universe as a hologram.

Accepting this theory calls on us to revisit our mental construct of space and time, possibly even doing away with one of these dimensions entirely.

The ebb and flow of this narrative provides rich pickings for artists. Themes move between observation, hypothesis and evidence, from speculation to existential questions, encompassing individual, social and political relationships with the cosmos, the Earth and each other. Some artists collaborate with scientists or work with the tools and processes of science. Others enact new forms of observation, conducting thought experiments which would never pass scientific peer review but which nevertheless result in breathtaking revelations and provocative, often very funny, new perspectives. A number of works evoke or extend into the sublime, immersing us in the fearsome, awe-inspiring pleasures of the unknown, the imperceptible and the uncharted. We see light captured and kept alive within a sculpture, an allegorical imagining of the downfall of Newton, impossible time spans, a suggestion that the act of describing may also be an act of eternal discovery. Contemporary photographers and filmmakers revisit the images and icons of science, interrogating the circumstances of their creation and their meaning beyond informative function. We find out that pictures of deep space often blend raw observations, data, conjecture and subjective interpretation. Our slippery relationship with reality is explored through Surrealism, shadows and a history of animated cartoons, while other works raise questions about our ability to disrupt our utopian ideals with our dystopian tendencies.

In selecting works we also looked for serendipitous connections between art history and the Big Bang story, curious to identify a sense of cultural Zeitgeist. Two years before Einstein published his theory of gravity, in 1913, Russian painter Kazimir Malevich suddenly and deliberately abandoned representation in favour of what he would later call Suprematism – the first art movement of pure abstraction and ‘pure feeling’. Fuelled by dreams of what was then impossible space travel, works such as his 1915 painting Black Square, created the same year as Einstein’s equation, spoke to ideals of escaping the structures of Earthbound thinking to a new era in gravityless space.

We are fortunate to be able to include a rare later drawing, Suprematist Composition (Mixed Feelings, 1916) in the show. We do not know if, in the 1920s, as the father of modern sculpture Constantin Brâncuși crafted the pared-back ovoid objects which dominate his The Beginning of the World series, he was at all aware of giving form to Lemaître’s “cosmic egg” proposal from the same period, but it is more likely that they arrived at similar visual metaphors in parallel. Equally, when Stephen Hawking outlined his “no boundary” hypothesis in 1983, he was not thought have come across the work of British conceptual pioneer John Latham who had evolved his own personal cosmological theory known as Event Structure. In Latham’s theory the most basic component of reality is not the particle, but the ‘least event’, or the shortest departure from the state of nothing. Quite different to Hawking’s work their different approaches to grappling with the origin of time and nothingness are nevertheless striking in their similarity of purpose.

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE: ETERNAL WONDER

As a combined narrative, ‘To the Edge of Time’ reveals the powerful arc that binds generations of scientists and artists, wondering, searching and working towards an ever-deeper conceptualisation of the cosmos. A running theme is the reminder that we are not external observers but, together with our home planet, an integral part of this immeasurable system. Many of the artworks consider our perspective from Earth in that vein. Phoebe Boswell’s portrait Mum’s Feet, Grounded of an East African mother’s grounded feet is a powerful symbol of our collective beginnings. It speaks to a sense of eternity, timelessness and a universal sublime. Born of stars and of flesh, we are here.

We exist within the Universe and it exists within the stories we create, be they framed as art or science. We create the Universe as much as it creates us.

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The exhibition ‘To the Edge of Time’ at the University Library of Leuven elaborates on the story told at M Leuven and reflects on the Universe from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present day.

Unique scientific objects and works by international artists focus on the story of the Big Bang, one of the biggest scientific revolutions of the twentieth century.

The science and art strands weave in and out of each other, sometimes intimately connected, at others more tangential. Somewhat ironically for an exhibition questioning the existence of time, the scientific narrative is chronological. It takes us from the radical ideas at the turn of the twentieth century, now essentially accepted as fact, to the outlandish, more speculative twenty-first century hypotheses, which seem closer to science fiction. The artworks play with the formal materials of cosmology – light, space, time and matter – extracting the poetic and challenging the assumptions of science.

The Big Bang theory bridges the work of three of the twentieth century’s greatest European scientists: German physicist Albert Einstein, Belgian cleric and astronomer Georges Lemaître and the British cosmologist Stephen Hawking. Objects from their lives and archives open up their specific processes and ideas alongside artworks by modern masters and contemporary artists from across the globe. The exhibition begins with a direct encounter with the history of solar eclipses. Katie Paterson brings together nearly every solar eclipse documented by humankind across the glittering facets of a suspended mirror ball.

Included is a representation of the 1919 photograph taken by British astronomer Arthur Eddington, which supplied important evidence in favour of Einstein’s theory of gravity over long-held Newtonian beliefs.

A copy joins other world-first science objects in the show, including the exquisite graphs Lemaître drew to describe his bold proposal for the Big Bang, and Hawking’s blackboard, which may even hold the last chalk-marks made by his own hand.

Einstein brought our conception of the Universe from myth into science with a single equation.

Modern thinking about cosmology is based on his 1915 theory of relativity. It revolutionised our understanding of time and space as physical entities that warp, bend, stretch and squeeze. It opened the door to strange objects such as black holes and gravitational waves, but even Einstein struggled to accept one of his own theory’s natural conclusions: the Universe is expanding. In perceiving this, Lemaître, who is recognised as the first “post-Newtonian” physicist, again revolutionised thinking in 1931 with his suggestion that the entire universe began as a tiny “primeval atom” or “cosmic egg”, from which space, time and matter emerged. The Big Bang was born. Later, Stephen Hawking raised further questions, arguing that the Universe did not originate in pre-existing time but originated at the same time as “time”.

‘To the Edge of Time’ also considers visionary physicist John Wheeler’s assertion that in a quantum universe our observations today give reality to the Universe “back then”. We are not mere spectators of the Universe but participators in shaping reality. The exhibition concludes by outlining how leading cosmologists now think of the Universe as a hologram.

Accepting this theory calls on us to revisit our mental construct of space and time, possibly even doing away with one of these dimensions entirely.

The ebb and flow of this narrative provides rich pickings for artists. Themes move between observation, hypothesis and evidence, from speculation to existential questions, encompassing individual, social and political relationships with the cosmos, the Earth and each other. Some artists collaborate with scientists or work with the tools and processes of science. Others enact new forms of observation, conducting thought experiments which would never pass scientific peer review but which nevertheless result in breathtaking revelations and provocative, often very funny, new perspectives. A number of works evoke or extend into the sublime, immersing us in the fearsome, awe-inspiring pleasures of the unknown, the imperceptible and the uncharted. We see light captured and kept alive within a sculpture, an allegorical imagining of the downfall of Newton, impossible time spans, a suggestion that the act of describing may also be an act of eternal discovery. Contemporary photographers and filmmakers revisit the images and icons of science, interrogating the circumstances of their creation and their meaning beyond informative function. We find out that pictures of deep space often blend raw observations, data, conjecture and subjective interpretation. Our slippery relationship with reality is explored through Surrealism, shadows and a history of animated cartoons, while other works raise questions about our ability to disrupt our utopian ideals with our dystopian tendencies.

In selecting works we also looked for serendipitous connections between art history and the Big Bang story, curious to identify a sense of cultural Zeitgeist. Two years before Einstein published his theory of gravity, in 1913, Russian painter Kazimir Malevich suddenly and deliberately abandoned representation in favour of what he would later call Suprematism – the first art movement of pure abstraction and ‘pure feeling’. Fuelled by dreams of what was then impossible space travel, works such as his 1915 painting Black Square, created the same year as Einstein’s equation, spoke to ideals of escaping the structures of Earthbound thinking to a new era in gravityless space.

We are fortunate to be able to include a rare later drawing, Suprematist Composition (Mixed Feelings, 1916) in the show. We do not know if, in the 1920s, as the father of modern sculpture Constantin Brâncuși crafted the pared-back ovoid objects which dominate his The Beginning of the World series, he was at all aware of giving form to Lemaître’s “cosmic egg” proposal from the same period, but it is more likely that they arrived at similar visual metaphors in parallel. Equally, when Stephen Hawking outlined his “no boundary” hypothesis in 1983, he was not thought have come across the work of British conceptual pioneer John Latham who had evolved his own personal cosmological theory known as Event Structure. In Latham’s theory the most basic component of reality is not the particle, but the ‘least event’, or the shortest departure from the state of nothing. Quite different to Hawking’s work their different approaches to grappling with the origin of time and nothingness are nevertheless striking in their similarity of purpose.

IMAGINING THE UNIVERSE: ETERNAL WONDER

As a combined narrative, ‘To the Edge of Time’ reveals the powerful arc that binds generations of scientists and artists, wondering, searching and working towards an ever-deeper conceptualisation of the cosmos. A running theme is the reminder that we are not external observers but, together with our home planet, an integral part of this immeasurable system. Many of the artworks consider our perspective from Earth in that vein. Phoebe Boswell’s portrait Mum’s Feet, Grounded of an East African mother’s grounded feet is a powerful symbol of our collective beginnings. It speaks to a sense of eternity, timelessness and a universal sublime. Born of stars and of flesh, we are here.

We exist within the Universe and it exists within the stories we create, be they framed as art or science. We create the Universe as much as it creates us.

106

107

THUTOAH, video installation at FACT, Liverpool, UK 2018

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THUTOAH, video installation at FACT, Liverpool, UK 2018

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