Nicolas Bodet

kwaw

MaureenH said:
Great (though, kind of creepy) pictures. Some of the figures in the Koninkc look as though they're wearing masks, speaking of many faces. Were artists obligated to associate with the Bentveughels? Were they ostracized by the artistic community if they did not?

Interesting that the Vatican still maintains and displays the list of members in a side chapel.

No single glass of wine for inspiration? No wonder I'm not prolific. :)

Yes some of them do look masked, I agree. It was a popular society and had many members, but wasn't I think compulsory. I don't think the names are kept like in a book or scroll, I believe are like graffitti, scratched into the walls, but I am not sure about that. Of course, while some may have followed and been exponents of a genuine aesthetic theory of creative impulse in divine madness, at the other extreme the madman was the anti-hero for a group of dissolute and prodigale piss-heads sticking their fingers up to convention or merely out for a good time, and most members probably fell* somewhere between.

Kwaw

*...in a drunken stupor, natch:p
 

kwaw

Many faces, many heads, many masters and a tongue of fire

kwaw said:
VDB15.jpg

The polyfaced or many headed devil is like a body of many masters. The devil as a rhetorical trope, the figure of speech of many made faces is a legion of voices come forth in a flaming breath, upon a tongue of fire:

James 3:1
My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.

James 3:2
For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.

James 3:3
Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body.

James 3:4
Behold also the ships, which though so great, and driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.

James 3:5
Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!

James 3:6
And the tongue a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

James 3:7
For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind:

James 3:8
But the tongue can no man tame; an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

James 3:9
Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.

James 3:10
Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

James 3:11
Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet and bitter?

James 3:12
Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.

James 3:13
Who a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.

James 3:14
But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.

James 3:15
This wisdom descendeth not from above, but earthly, sensual, devilish.

James 3:16
For where envying and strife , there confusion and every evil work.

James 3:17
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

James 3:18
And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

An unbridled tongue is the chariot of the devil, wherein he rides in triumph. Edward Reyner (Rules for the Govenment of the tongue, 1658)
 

Bernice

Very helpful post kwaw - thank you. I needed something simple and direct re. Le Diable, you produced it! A christian/catholic image, yes?

Bee
 

MaureenH

Have you got your concordance by you? I was embarrassed to have someone ask me that once and unfortunately, I had not. I don't even have one! Still, many of James' words are worthwhile to ponder. Was Edward Reyner a puritan? That list seems a bit top heavy. :) Much evil has been perpetrated via silence, as well.

Well, the devil and pope certainly seem directly related to Christianity, but the images manage to trouble the waters in far distant lands where God was/is not so neatly separated and, in some ways, tamed/contained.
 

kwaw

MaureenH said:
... many of James' words are worthwhile to ponder.... Was Edward Reyner a puritan? Much evil has been perpetrated via silence, as well...

Reynor was a popular calvinis preacher, his sermons were well known not only at home but abroad, in America, Holland, Belgium; he was invited to be a preacher at Arnheim Church in 1634 but prefered to stay at Lincoln.

Many commentaries on James 3:1-18 concur the wicked tongue includes the silent tongue.
 

MaureenH

Maybe part of the impetus for the Bacchanalia was to counter the results of such powerful, dogmatic instruction that rendered people too mute. Not to mention spiritless. Maybe even the artists were fearful of expressing anything other than what they'd been told was acceptable. Could their consumption of so much spirit have been a kind of confession of their buy in to the idea that they could not have a personal spiritual experience? But then, there are enough people who claim a real chemically induced altered state (not referring to those looking for a general buzz to drown out their sorrows/stresses) that might negate that thought.

It looks like none of the faces on XV are looking behind or up. And it almost looks as though the top head is not the real face but a puffing out like animals do to threaten and frighten would-be attackers. The one at the neck level looks more like an ordinary guy who is hiding inside a costume. No wonder so many of us love Halloween. We can laugh and have fun at what we usually don't want to admit is happening on a daily basis. Look at that devil!
 

kwaw

Devil: Hieroglyphic personification of personification ~

kwaw said:
The Bodet version of the Bacvs pattern is very similar to the Vieville; while retaining a similar form our Vandenborre however has become what Kaplan describes as 'a patchwork of eyes and faces.' A phrase that brings to mind the trope of the face maker or by its technical rhetorical term Prosopopoeia:

From Greek prosōpopoiiā : prosōpon, face, mask, dramatic character (pros-, pros- + ōpon, face, from ōps, ōp-, eye) + poiein, to make...

... the Greek rhetorical term for a trope consisting either of the personification of some non‐human being or idea, or of the representation of an imaginary, dead, or absent person as alive and capable of speech and hearing, as in an apostrophe.*

Against the fourfold methods of interpretation of the Fathers and of considering biblical figures in terms of rhetorical tropes were (and are) those who advocate(d) scripture should be taken in a stritly literal sense only:

quote:
"Men mistake by turning plain literal words
into tropes and figures. By this kind of learning
they disembowel religion, and present us with the
gospel as hieroglyphical and as dead as
an Egyptian mummy. The gospel, as the Lord
Jesus left it, was a word quick and powerful and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing
even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit,
and of the joints and marrow, discerning the
thoughts and intents of the heart : that is to
say, it was a body of doctrine animated with grand
motives, with the dignity of its author, the horror
of its penalties, the united efforts of justice and
love, displayed in the death of the cross, and
the immediate bestowment of heaven after death.
But by the help of a certain art called Rhetoric,
this body is killed for the sake of being embalmed.
Jesus is a metaphorical God, hell is an eastern allegory,
the devil is a prosopopeia, the atonement
is a thing called a metonymy, the wicked are annihilated,
and the virtuous sleep without dreaming
till the heavens are no more. There can be no
better canon of interpretation, than that which an
amiable prelate has given us : scripture is to be
taken in that sense, in which the common people,
who heard it at first, took it. Assuredly the common
people neyer thought of these senses!

Miscellaneous works of Robert Robinson: 1807
 

MaureenH

Sorry to make you repeat yourself, kwaw, but thank you for re-emphasizing that point.

I am trying to look at how other cultures have wrestled with this idea of devil/evil/destruction. My view just feels lopsided without knowing that. Though, once the elements or characters are separated and dissected into neat tropes, as it were, it takes some skill to put it all back together. Maybe that is a challenge all of us do have in common.

Regarding Robertson's points, maybe it is important to recall Jesus spoke in parables about sowers, pearls of great price, tossing out moneychangers and poorly dressed guests from the wedding hall. Could be my denseness, but I still struggle with what he meant every time I hear/read one of the parables.

Not familiar with the fourfold methods of interpretation (I'll look it up), but I am a mother so I have a few methods of my own! :) The first thing I think of and would've asked him, (after wondering if I've got your point about Robertson's work straight in my mind) is what of the importance and reverberation of the symbol ICTHYS for Xians down through time? What of stained glass windows and the very symbol of the cross? Maybe those are Gods private joke about the inadequacies of the interpretive skills of those learned prelates! ;)

Also, I don't know who Robert Robertson was. Did he think the actual risen Christ was somehow threatened or would be undermined by a trope in 1800? What gospel that the Lord Jesus left us does he refer to? His spoken words (none too plain) recalled (none too quickly) by apostles decades after being spoken?

Moses (purportedly) said "the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it." What did he mean by a word in one's heart? I suspect he knew there would be a re-working in each and every person by the very soul and probably through conversation..."in your mouth." Maybe part of the evil impact of the faces and masks of the Devil Tarot card is that they have no voice. The word is not in it's mouth. The faces just stare blankly ahead. Yet, there is something in that blankness, too that is necessary.
 

eugim

LE DIABLE:Many faces...

Hello Kwaw and the others comrades here...
With regard to XV card Belgian pattern,i just think that depict the Matter which compose the whole Universe as the body of God.
So this Matter in its ultimate essence is intelligent.
Here I copied what I posted on another thread,just for be more clear.

I think must be say I feel that the whole sequence of LE MAT + the rest 21
cards of Tarot of Marseilles talks about an Alchemical Work inside Us and on
the Universe (As the body of God) at Once I mean at the same time.
Both are returning to the One Spirit,the Central Fire.
But no less is the work do by LE BATELEVR than for example the card XIIII
after XIII work and XVII after XVI Rubedo stage of the Opus Alchemicum.
For me the first mixing looking for harmonize our duality and XVII returning
the energy transmutated to the common source of the Water of Life.
The Soul,our Soul is the agent who link Spirit and Matter and the purpose
for me is become Matter more conscious.
So the whole Universe is returning to the Divine Intelligence who created
it.
But which Matter?.
The matter of our body,the matter of our emotions and the matter of our
thoughts.All are just only matter and that s why we can reach yet the
Divine.
They are the future body of the Soul when it could be ready to be fill with
the fire of the Spirit.
It s stage is impossible before this work is done,because our matter
(physic,emotional and mental) will be surely disintegrated by the
electricity (I mean literally) of the Spirit.
So that s for me the patience and gradual work of ours Soul.
Here I think we have a connection with XII card and the topic of
Gravitation.
After many too many distillations of our inner matter,our body matter become
more and more light in a very real sense so not tied to the Earth.
That s drives us to levitation.
As H. P. Blavatsky said " Spirit is Matter in its lowest stage and Matter is
Spirit in its highest ".
That s for me the Alchemic Work in Us and in the Universe at Once.
The encounter between Matter and Spirit with the Soul (Ours or the Anima
Mundi on a macrocosmic level) as the Alchemist agent,ends in Conscience as a
result.
Now I think on a link between VIII and VIIII.
The first with her work of weigh our matter and determine if we are ready so
able,for meet VIIII as an intercessory (and teacher also) with our Soul.
If the Alchemic work is well done then we will reach XII card.

BTW / A Bass Ale fresh,but not cold is welcomed along with disagreements of course...

Eugim
 

MaureenH

Returning to the One Spirit/Central Fire describes a powerful dream I had about 15 years ago. Where does that idea come from? It really felt, and still feels to me like we all return there no matter what.

In my dream, what I've come to think of as my soul, as I did not have a body, was travelling through dark outer space toward a very bright, clean light much larger than our sun but I was aware it would not destroy me but absorb me. All cares fell away. It felt completely blissful. It felt like God. I've never had that dream again, but I remember it clearly and it remains very important to me.

Where does the idea of XV depicting matter and the body of God come from? I like thinking about that. My printer recently broke or I'd print that out to re-read that post for a while.