Garden Scene with Eve and Earth Angel
Created as a cover for my Sexuality and the Religious Imagination (2008) with a charming Eve barrowed from Cranach this work is surmounted by a fiery ibis, originally the Egyptian Thoth and forebear of the avis hermeticum of alchemy who morphs perpetually twixt bird and serpent. He carries a starry microcosm with Sun and Moon. The Syzygy theme is echoed by a Bosch couple in utero and a child born of a matronly dinosaur behind the black Earth Angel lower left. Above, Lord Shiva sits in lotus with his trident as devotees opposite bless the god’s genitals with red paste. A shaman prods a ‘Jung-lizard’ with a magic phallus rear. Jung was so terrified by his childhood dream of a cyclopic phallus that he spoke of it only fifty years later!
