Green Candle 3      July 14 08

 

Ireland…. St Patrick chromatograph… VoodooFlags… glass beads, sequins.

 

Dan Bala Wedo and wife Ayida Wedo – depicted as intertwined serpents or serpent and rainbow…. St Patrick …Eggs, trees, water… white and silver

 

Gran Bwa – tall, asymmetrical figure… half man, half tree

St Sebastian… flowers, leaves, herbal remedies… verdant colours of forest.

 

Also Loko… vegetation, initiation of priests…temple and centre poles…guardian of crossroads…gates between sacred and mundane… silk, cotton trees, branches… straw bags.

 

                                                         European?

 green and brown – psychological status as ‘unmixed’. (Gage ref)

 

Absinthe and Crème de Menthe… Manet barmaid’s bottles and his green balcony

Green Christ – Gauguin

 

Green and anxiety

 

Green symbolism in medieval Europe:

green gemstones powdered as eye ointment.

Hunters clothe in green because ‘bestes loveth the grene colours’ (from Gage)

 

                                             Alchemy:

 

The ‘Green Lion’ seems to symbolise the process of transmutation

 The inbetween of lead to gold?

 

 “The Green Lion”

 

O blessed viridity, whereby all things germinate!

Learn, O theosopher, to contemplate the Viridity…

O Cabbalist, the green line which is the whirling Universe;

And Nature thou, O Magus….

 And thou, O physico-chemist…

 The Green Lion, … the Quintessence.

 

                                              (Khunrath-Amphitheatrum 15 C -from Grillot de Givry p368)

 also…

Long did I journey, and to those whom I believed to have knowledge of anything did I make my way. From one I had the universal Green Lion of God and the Blood of the Lion- that is, Gold –not the Gold of the Philosophers.

I saw it with my own eyes; touched it with my own hands; I tasted it with my own tongue; I smelt it with my own nostrils.

 

(The scent of the candle?)

 

 

 

                                                 “The Toad is Gold”

 

(George Ripley’s ‘Vision’ from Klossowski De Rola p 24 Plate 20)

 

Green Lion eats Sol                    ( from Rosarium)

 

Green Lion’s Blood is Mercury…..( ? referred to by Khunrath as Gold… but not the Gold of the Philosophers)

 

Green Matter is primordial state … (pea soup? primal swamp?)

 

Sun is Sulphur.

 

                                      “The Root of all Things is Green

 

…Unripe but ready for Progress.”

 

(Arab alchemist/ philosopher, Haly)

 

(there is an image of beaker or vase… of poppies? … Bottom half green upper sky blue…

Seven bulbous poppies hover above).

 

18-7-08

 

So far

Colours  GREEN literally : Green and its mutations, Black, Grey

 

Numbers:7…. !3, 0? What about multiples 14, squares 49 etc? Subtractions?

 

Materials/substances: Lead, Copper, ….and surface?… Hemp?

 

Light…heat.. illumination and extermination?

Bachelard- Psychoanalysis of Fire,

Raw and Cooked?... Levi S

Descartes on Wax untransformed by the flame … wax stays wax… wood becomes  charcoal….

That’s somewhere in Discourse Method…

Wax is implicit?

 I bought a green candle yesterday… dripped onto canvas board… easily achieves a colour and surface like a frog.