RK

Gustav Klimt: Death and Life (1910)

Gustav Klimt’s large painting Death and Life, created in 1910, features not a personal death but rather merely an allegorical Grim Reaper who gazes at “life” with a malicious grin. This “life” is comprised of all generations: every age group is represented, from the baby to the grandmother, in this depiction of the never-ending circle of life. Death may be able to swipe individuals from life, but life itself, humanity as a whole, will always elude his grasp. The circle of life likewise repeats itself in the diverse, wonderful, pastel-coloured circular ornaments which adorn life like a garland.

Gustav Klimt described this painting, which was honoured with a first prize at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome, as his most important figurative work. Even so, he seems to suddenly no longer have been satisfied with this version in 1915, for he then began making changes to the painting—which had by that time long since been framed. The background, reportedly once gold-coloured, was made grey, and both death and life were given further ornaments. Standing before the original and examining the left interior edge of Josef Hoffmann’s frame for the painting, one can still discern traces of the subsequent over-painting, which was done by Klimt himself.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (via jhellden)

Este es el espejo que no te engaña (This is the mirror that does not deceive you)

Mexican painter Tomás Mondragón’s Alegoría de la Muerte (Allegory of Death) from 1856.

Anna Gardell-Ericson, Soluppgång över landskap med vatten, ca. 1870-1939

George MacDonald (via pathofregeneration)

Johfra Bosschart, The Vision of Hermes Trismegistus (1972)

* * *

“If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grow to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time, and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and every science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God. But if you shut up your soul in your body, and abase yourself, and say, ‘I know nothing, I can do nothing, I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount to heaven: I know not what I was, nor what I shall be’; then, what have you to do with God? Your thought can grasp nothing beautiful and good, if you cleave to the body, and are evil.”

— Corpus Hermeticum XI

John Pitre, In Contemplation of the Universe (1990)

* * *

“Whatever is produced is my spectacle, produced while I am silent, a spectacle naturally produced; and that I, who spring from a certain contemplation of this kind, possess a nature desirous of beholding: hence that which retains in me the office of a speculative power, produces a spectacle or theorem, in the same manner as the geometrician, from speculating on his science, describes a variety of figures, yet the lines of bodies emanate from hence, not by my engraving them in matter, but drop, as it were, from the energy of my contemplation  . . . And as he who diligently surveys the heavens, and contemplates the splendour of the stars, should immediately think upon and search after their artificer, so it is requisite that he who beholds and admires the intelligible world, should diligently inquire after its author, investigating who he is, where he resides, and how he produced such an offspring as intellect, a son beautiful and pure, and full of his ineffable sire.”

— Plotinus, Ennead III

Herbert James Draper, Day and the Dawnstar (1906)

* * *

“After the intelligent mind is added—although at first this intelligence is latent—then the Soul of Man, in its dual aspect, is added to that body and lower mind, together with all the body’s other principles, and under the patient guidance of the Soul, the Higher Mind slowly awakens during its millions of years of earthly incarnations, until at last it becomes one with the Soul. From Shadow to luminous Angel they evolve, each according to his own colour and kind. And when at last they have become the highest of the Dhyân Chohans they can but bow in ignorance before the awful mystery of Absolute Being. Nevertheless, the process of evolution does not stop there, and final liberation, or merging with Absolute Being is the end of the ascent from simplicity to complexity, ending in the simplicity of the One Life—when the Actual is reached and the real Work commences in the Body of Night which is the Body of the Great Day! That Day is surrounded with a ring which none have ever passed, except the ‘Recorders’, the great Deities of the Kosmos who have the destinies of all within their hands; for this ‘Ring-pass-not’ is the Boundary that separates the Finite—however infinite in man’s sight—from the truly Infinite. And this is the ultimate Goal of ALL!!”

— Jean Michaud, The Golden Star

x

🌻 snap: alinebond 🌻