//=time() ?>
SIRENS ! from a bookcase designed by William Burges, 1859-1862
Circe offering the cup to Ulysses, John William Waterhouse, 1891, personal photos
Heinrich Khunrath. Alchemist’s laboratory. From Ampitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, 1595
The whole painting is richly symbolic and repays deeper study, I am still trying to decode the meanings. Many of the details of the horses harness, shields, helmets and weapons were drawn from actual Bronze Age and Iron Age objects.
Witch invoking a spirit, a scene from Shakespeare’s King Henry the Sixth.
‘Patience, good lady, wizards know their times.
Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night…
The time when screech owls cry and ban-dogs howl,
And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves’
A sacrifice to PAN. Engraving by F.G. Aliamet, 1769, after Andrea Sacchi, 1599-1661.
A witch, raising her wand above a flaming cauldron, recites a spell. Her magical assistance has been sought by the young woman kneeling on the right. J.H. Mortimer, 1773.