celtic isis
30-07-2007, 08:03 PM
Hey everyone :)
I’m lucky enough where I live to be able to explore and see firsthand quite a bit of the work of the French artist, playright, poet and genius in general Jean Cocteau. Jean Cocteau is quite simply the French Picasso and in my opinion, surpasses Picasso’s work by light years, though they were in fact very close friends and collaborators in each other’s work over the years of their friendship. Unsurprisingly (to us) his work is vastly underestimated and isn’t even referred to in schools here let alone the rest of the world! Of course we know why that is don‘t we. When French people think of Jean Cocteau, they think « gay artist » , « eccentric » and that’s about it. Talk about the understatement of the century! It's worth mentioning that Micheal Tsarion is a big fan of Jean Cocteau. :)
Basically why I wanted to put together a thread on Cocteau on this forum is cause he’s the man with many of the answers we’re pondering over here! It’s all encoded in his work. Forget daVinci, though Cocteau was highly influenced by daVinci and saw him as his master and « fellow brother » in some kind of fellow cause or occult knowledge, more likely the latter…
Cocteau pulls together so many things - the esoteric knowledge, occultism, as Cocteau was one of the « in crowd » in occult circles around Paris, the place to be in Cocteau’s day. He is also of noble descent and was one of the « intiated » and this is shown throughout his work. He was also friends with everyone who was anyone, including Picasso, Erik Satie, Schwaller de Lubicz amongst others. His work also involves depictions, most strikingly a huge tapestry of « The age of Aquarius » or (L'age de Verseau en français) on numerous occasions, and also pendulum symbolism/phallic, and serpent/reptilian symbolism which I’ll highlight later. This guy has it all I’m telling ya and that's not even the half of it!
His work (in many frecoes he was commisioned to do in Jerusalem, London and in Villefranche-sur-mer) also depict the inner knowledge of Jesus and the whole Mary Magdelene saga, as well as Masonic type symbolism with many all seeing eyes etc and his skill at using sacred geometry throughout his work (depicting inverted pentagrams amongst many other occult symbols). He also was captivated by UFO’s and one painting in particular of his showing a person sleeping and a flying saucer just visible in the distance behind the sleeper’s shoulder is one which really caught our eye.
If you live near or in London you can go to visit the Chapel Notre Dame de Paris where Cocteau was invited to paint a very controversial fresco…it just shows how important he was cause how he was allowed to get away with painting and suggesting stuff like this let alone in a church is beyond me! (Links to this coming so you can see for yourselves what I mean). We visit the chapel of St Peter in Villefranche quite often and I’ll scan the postcards I have from there for you. His museum in Menton, just on the border of Italy is FANTASTIC. Villefranche (a tiny and very charming fishing village) was particularly adored by Cocteau and the chapel is dedicated to the fishermen, with Cocteau’s bust placed right by the sea on the left side of the chapel in honour of him, the village‘s mascot. The bust is complete with the pentagram Cocteau always used in his signature.
It was also through Jean Cocteau’s work that we came to discover the truth behind the faunus image painted so often in his work. The faunus was actually the keeper of the oracles, the holder of truth and guess what, the church stole this image, turned its meaning on its head and used it to portray the image of the devil in order to hide the esoteric truths from the masses. This worked well as the image of the devil, even to se it makes you want to turn away, we’re programmed to believe that just by looking at this image something bad will happen to us…of course, that’s rubbish but when you’re taught this from an early age it sticks like glue. The devil image so repulsed the masses that they just swallowed what the church said hook line and sinker and never looked beyond to see the image for what it really is - the faunus, a nautre deity, the keeper of truth. This was a huge revelation to us to finally realise the reason why so many god damn faunus’s everywhere and the whole time it was the truth behind a major lie we weren‘t even aware of until then! This is why I love Cocteau so much. As he once said "he is a liar who tells the truth".
I’m still more or less a novice when it comes to understanding his work but I know a little bit more now than when I first came across him, at least I hope I do!
I better mention here too that as he was gay and a bit of a rebel bearing in mind he was around during the 50‘s and 60‘s, some of his work does contain explicit « phallic worship of a different kind » if you get what I mean…J So maybe those are best well left right alone!
I also think he cold be of « shape shifting descent » cause he’s got the same « look » to him if you know what I mean but that’s another story!
celtic isis
30-07-2007, 08:07 PM
(taken from this fantastic site)
http://www.thevesselofgod.com/pilgrimage.html
Pilgrimage: A Visit to the Chapel of St. Pierre

http://aycu03.webshots.com/image/24282/2004424603009728143_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004424603009728143)
As I sit on the balcony of my hotel suite at Villefranche-sur-Mer, the sun is setting on the Cote d’Azur. Twilight lingers for hours, and gazing out upon the mist-shrouded bay, the sea seems to blur into the night sky. The visage is not unlike that of the sea in Jean Cocteau’s mural-covered Chapel of St. Peter, in which the sky and sea seem to literally to bleed into one another. Having just written an article about the mural in Cocteau’s chapel, and finding myself in the Southeast of France, I couldn’t resist making the pilgrimage to this small port town. I’d wanted to see the chapel for myself, test my hypotheses about it and see if there were any clues which had escaped my scrutiny.
This is not an easy place to get to. There are no exits for Villefranche-sur-Mer on the main highway. To reach it, one must drive to Monte Carlo and then turn back, taking a tiny road that snakes along the coastline. The village is nestled above a magnificent bay situated between Cannes and Monte Carlo. Cocteau spent a great deal of time here, much of it redecorating the estate of his patroness, Francine Weisweiller. From the west side of the bay, one can spot the lighthouse bordering his property - the one which figured so prominently in his film Testament of Orpheus. Interestingly, her property is not terribly far from an ancestral estate of the Rothschilds. As the twilight finally vanishes, the bay and night sky take on the appearance of a vast black abyss. I retire.
The next morning, my companions and I forego breakfast to go directly to the Chapel of St. Peter. We descend along narrow cobble-stoned streets towards the seaside. Along the way, we spot scenes from Testament of Orpheus, such as the Rue Obscure where Cocteau passed his own double. If this passage looked ancient in the 1963 film, it looked even more so now, almost half a century later. We ask directions of the locals, who tell us to go all the way to the sea. "Just before you fall into the ocean, you’ll see it. You can’t miss it." Indeed, as we reach the dock, there it is.
There’s a life-size bust of Cocteau on one side, complete with his signature and pentagram. It looks like a Giacometti, but it was in fact sculpted by a man named de la Patelliere. It’s bronze has turned green from decades of sea mist, and Cocteau is striking a familiar Masonic pose, with his arms crossed above his chest.
Even before entering the chapel I spot things of which I’d never read about. Atop the steeple was an equilateral sun cross composed of four fish, an emblem very much in keeping with the basic premise of my analysis. Inside, the chapel is much smaller than one would suspect; creating the effect of being in the midst of an overwhelming phantasmagoria of colour, lines and images. The scenes seem so close that it is difficult to take them in in their entirety. Everywhere you look there are details that might well have gone unnoticed in the published photographs. And to say that the photographs don’t do justice to the actual images is an understatement of the highest order. The contrast between the soft muted colours and the bold black outlines employed by Cocteau creates an effect that is both striking in its intensity and understated in its subtlety. Even Cocteau’s style of painting seems to evince a kind of Hermetic union of opposites.
http://aycu09.webshots.com/image/23448/2004347452680573633_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004347452680573633)

On either side of the entryway stand enamelled configurations that Cocteau dubbed "The Candlesticks of the Apocalypse." The candles are comprised of abstract elongated faces, with a single eye perched at the top, where the flame should be. This likely seems a reference to the Illuminated of All-Seeing Eye. Some maintain that this is the eye of God, while others claim that the symbolism is more specifically Luciferian. In this context, in which the eye is substituted for the flame, the latter explanation seems more feasible. But the All-Seeing Eye is usually depicted as a single eye, and here we have two. Could Cocteau be implying that the illuminated eye has a dual nature, that it might represent both God and Lucifer? These emblems, you’ll recall, are called the "Candlesticks of the Apocalypse." Though in modern usage the word "apocalypse" is synonymous with the end of the world, in the original Greek it meant simply revelation. Lucifer is the light-bringer, the fallen angel who imparted wisdom to man, and wisdom often comes from revelation.
Elsewhere are other depictions which appear to echo this theme. Amongst the angels that cover the ceiling are strange creatures that have human heads and bodies like serpents. Their faces look similar to those of the angels, and they too are bald, androgynous, and somewhat inhuman-looking. These creatures appear to be amongst the angels’ entourage, and would appear to support the idea that these angels are of a Luciferian rather than heavenly variety. In fact, not far from one of the serpents is an angel depicted upside down, clearly falling from the sky. The hypothesis, then, that these are fallen angels would seem to be borne out.
Furthermore, the angels in the primary mural would appear to be looking at & gesturing towards the serpents, and not (as I’d previously assumed) the sun. This, however, is not at all inconsistent with my overall conclusion, since the serpent was in ancient times a solar symbol. Since snakes shed their skin, they represented eternal life, and of course, the dead and resurrected god whose genesis was in the solar cult.
In connection to this idea we turn our attention to an icon that dominates the altar. Directly in front of the large crucifix is the figure of a bird constructed of metal. Metallic rods emanate from it, seemingly representative of rays of light. On its breast is a triangle. It looks, at first glance like an eagle, but clearly it is not. Nor is it a dove, the representation of which one might expect to find in a chapel such as this. Given Cocteau’s interest in phoenixology (the art of death and resurrection), it seems likely that the bird is in fact the mythical phoenix arising from the flames. Juxtaposed as it is with the image of a crucified Christ, it could be emblematic of his resurrection. Viewed in the context of this chapel, however, it’s undoubtedly an allusion to something far more profound than the stories of Christ or St. Peter.
http://aycu27.webshots.com/image/22466/2004380264270768931_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004380264270768931)

Beside the phoenix on the huge trapezoidal altar are priest’s vestments designed by Cocteau. They are made of red velvet embroidered with gold geometric patterns that seem to mimic those painted upon the walls. And the angles of the altar itself seem to coincide with those of the inverted pentagonal grid discussed in my other article about the chapel, Secret History and Sacred Geometry. If one were to construct a pentagram based upon the angles of the altar, and using the altar’s surface as the base of the internal pentagon thus created, the only figures to appear inside that pentagon would be David (the youth in the center of the painting) and the Poseidon mast on the ship.
In photographs, both of these figures seem tiny and insignificant. But photographs give a false impression of this mural. They show it in its totality, and it appears as one might see it painted on a flat surface. This is deceptive because the mural is in fact painted on a wall that is totally curvilinear. From the chapel’s north end, one cannot even make out the figures of Christ or St. Peter - they are painted high up on the archway of the ceiling. One only notices them as you draw nearer to the altar. It would appear as though there is but a single spot in the whole chapel from which to view the mural without the distortion inherent in its curved surface. It is from this vantage point that Cocteau’s deft use of geometry can be discerned. Stunningly, this point seems to be fixed by the inverted pentagram defined by the trapezoidal altar. The top four points of the pentagram are defined precisely by the width of the archway. The bottom-most point of the pentagram falls at a point in front of the altar - the very spot the viewer would have to stand for the geometry encoded in the mural to be discernable. A few feet closer or further away, or to one side or the other, and the perspective of the scene alters drastically.
The sheer depth of ingenuity exhibited here by Cocteau boggles the mind. His assertion that certain of his works rivaled the murals at Knossos may once have been dismissed as a braggartly conceit. In point of fact, it was more of a humble understatement. Indeed, it is the height of humility to create a work so complex, so rich in symbolism and content, and not even so much as hint that it might be more than merely decorative art. In the Chapel of St. Pierre, Jean Cocteau left behind a symbolic time bomb. He went calmly to his grave not knowing whether its secrets would be unravelled in ten years, twenty years, or even a century. A prediction: in the coming years the work of Jean Cocteau will be wholly reevaluated and viewed in a radically new light. At that time he will assume his rightful position alongside the great masters like Leonardo. And if you’re interested in a good investment, now would be a good time to pick up some Cocteau limited editions, while they’re still relatively affordable.
celtic isis
30-07-2007, 08:25 PM
(Taken from the same site as before - link above)
Secret History and Sacred Geometry
Cocteau’s Mural at the Chapel of St. Peter
http://aycu27.webshots.com/image/22466/2004394433566449790_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004394433566449790)

Cocteau’s most prominent mural at the Chapel of St. Peter at Villefranche-sur-Mer (entitled St. Peter Walking on Water) is one of the most interesting and intriguing works of his entire career. At first glance it appears a fairly strait-forward work of religious art, depicting Christ at the seaside. It appears that he may perhaps be in the process of raising Lazarus from the dead. Above him a flock of angels descend, while fishermen out in boats look on. Almost immediately however, one begins to notice the presence of strange elements that would be quite out of place in any common work of religious art.
Directly behind Christ is the figure of Poseidon (Dagon) holding a trident, who forms the mast on a black-colored boat. The fishermen are also holding tridents, though it is readily evident that they are fishing with nets and not spear fishing. A man in the foreground appears to be glaring at Christ, and points one finger of his left hand skyward (like the John the Baptist hand signal.) He appears at first glance to be pointing at St. Peter, but closer examination reveals that he’s not pointing at any of the figures in the painting, but seemingly at something outside of the mural's border. Strangely, most of the other figures in the painting (angels, fishermen, etc.) seem to be looking at the same thing. No one is looking at Christ. Though he appears to be one of the central figures in this painting, the few people who at first appear to be looking at him are actually looking beyond him. A man immersed in the sea to his shoulders is staring straight up into the sky - and such figures show up repeatedly in Cocteau’s work. Christ appears to be gesturing towards this man.
Another noteworthy thing is that all of the fish depicted in the scene seem to be swimming through the air. The angels swirling about amidst these flying fish look oddly androgynous, and most are depicted as both faceless and bald. The Poseidon/Dagon masthead is also sans (without) face and hair. The single angel whose facial features can clearly be seen still appears sexless.
The subject of this painting is religious, centered on Christ. The subtext of this painting seems to be about a religion beyond Christ, perhaps an older tradition whom which his own descended, as suggested by the descending angels which surround him.
SOLAR RELIGON ???
Many academics tell us that the symbolism of Christianity comes from earlier solar religions, yet they are very vague with the details they provide connecting the two. They tell us that the ancient tale of a dying and resurrected god is based on the myth of Osiris, but not a whole lot more. While the similarities of this symbolism are obvious and undeniable, there is not a great deal of Christian doctrine that would identify it as having originated from a solar cult. However, while compiling and translating a list of early Sumerian king titles, a connection seemed to present itself. Virtually all the titles of early gods and kings in this culture seems to have a strange dual meaning. And a good many of the combined meanings pertained to both the sun and the sea, or fire and water. For instance, "AKU" could be both AK-U (meaning "shining sun" or "fire of the sun"), and A-KU (meaning "son of the fish.") "Muru" is a conjunction of "Mur" (the sea) and U (the sun.) We see the same combining of imagery retained in the much later Roman god Mercury ("mer" meaning sea", and "Kur" meaning sun.) There are countless other examples of such titles, but for our present purposes, we’ll limit the examples to these few.
Initially, this appears to be perhaps the earliest symbolic means of communicating an essentially Hermetic idea. The imagery of sun and sea, or fire and water, represent (respectively) the masculine and feminine principles which govern the universe, and their union is emblematic of the reconciliation and transcendence of these seemingly opposed forces. This would certainly explain why gods reputed to be solar deities often times had their lower bodies depicted as fish. While this thesis is altogether a satisfactory one, an even more straight-forward explanation exists.
As it turns out, the modern word "fish" is identical to the same word in ancient Sumeria, and likewise has the same meaning. But the Sumerian "fish" has two additional meanings: "god of the waters" and "the sun." Here, then, may be the key which explicitly reveals the hidden continuity between the ancient solar cults and Christianity (as well as its attendant fish symbolism.) The ancient peoples who worshipped the sun viewed it as a dying and resurrected god. It would be born each day, rising out of the sea, and die each night, sinking back into the sea. For these peoples, the sea into which the sun sank was the underworld, and the sky wasn’t merely the sky, but a vast celestial sea. it’s easy to see how they could have equated the sun with a fish: it came out of the ocean, moved across the celestial sea, and then returned to the waters from which it had come. This goes a long way towards explaining the mythology associated with Dagon, who reportedly came out of the sea each day to teach men his wisdom, always returning to the waters each night. It also explains two meanings of the title "Dagon." The "ON" aspect of the title means both "fish and "day." So his is the "Lord fish" and "Lord of the Day." The ancient pictogram for "Dag" is a representation of the rising sun. The word "dag" also meant "day" in such languages as ancient Briton, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Norwegian, and German, where it is the root or their word for "day", "tag."
This identification of the fish with the sun would seem to shed some light on the true identity of the mysterious Fisher King of the Grail lore. He is not the fisher king so much as the fish king, the sun king. He is the dying god of the ancient solar cult whose kingdom can only be restored by the power of the Grail. The names of many ancient deities translate into "Sun King", "Sun Lord", "Son of the Sun", and so on. When Louis XIV of France learned the secrets of the Grail, he adopted the title of "Sun King" as well. When Christ called himself the "Son of Man", he could have also meant the "Sun of Man." He was undoubtedly aware of the tradition of which he was a descendant, and from all appearances, it looks as though he were trying to harness and embody the symbolism attendant to the myth.
The idea of the Son of God is not unique in the least. It goes back to the earliest deified kings whose solar cults viewed the sun as the living God himself. The kings were seen to be the earthly living manifestations of God, and the virtual sons of God, or sons of the sun. This is a concept going back to Sumer, and is most well-known as having been practiced in Egypt. In life, Pharaohs were seen as being living incarnations of Horus, the son of Osiris. In death, they became one with Osiris. The king was the son of God, who in death became God.
Was Christ trying to revive this primordial idea of the king as the son of God? If so, he both succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, and missed the mark completely. While his mythos is suffused with solar symbolism, the religion that bears his name shows nary a trace of the ideas which such a notion embodied. The "Icthys" fish symbol associated with Christ is (next to the cross) the most recognized Christian symbol in the word, and yet it is doubtful that a single living Christian understands its meaning, or has any inkling of its origin. The tradition of the deified king ended with Christ, and he was a king without a throne.
Though Christ’s true doctrine was either misunderstood in his own lifetime, or consciously misinterpreted after his death, the tradition of which he was an inheritor has nonetheless been preserved and passed down. Witness the Jean Cocteau mural previously described. The imagery which in the context of orthodox Christianity seems so obscure becomes glaringly straightforward in the light of the more ancient traditions we’ve discussed. The fish that seem to be swimming through the air represent the idea of the sun-fish. Trace several lines between them and they form a perfect equilateral triangle, an emblem of God as unity and totality. The figures who are looking, pointing or gesturing beyond Christ toward something outside our field of vision are all indicating the same thing: the sun.
The figure whose eye is a fish seems to represents a more ancient culture (perhaps Egyptian.) He sneers at Christ and point toward the sun with his left hand. This gesture, so reminiscent of the John the Baptist hand signal, may be more than just a reference to either the Sun or to Baptist. It may indicate the Hermetic doctrine of unity, or "oneness", implied in the symbolism of the solar cult. As we’ve demonstrated, solar theology was, contrary to popular misconception, not a superstitious cult of "sun worship." It involved an appreciation of sophisticated occult concepts; ideas which formed the bases for the traditions of alchemy and the cabala, and indeed the entire corpus of Hermetic thought.
Perhaps our interpretation of this figure gesturing skyward represents the very reason why Leonardo da Vinci painted John the Baptist in this trademark pose to begin with. Christ, meanwhile, gestures downward with his right hand, using two fingers. Does this signify that the "right-hand path" , as typified by orthodox Christianity, has been the harbinger of a dualistic, self-divided worldview? That it has caused the downfall of the most ancient, more spiritual religious doctrines of our ancestors? Perhaps. But the "original doctrine" was a long bygone memory by the time of Christ, and if indications are correct, he was making a serious attempt to revive it.

At first glance, it appears that Christ is reaching towards St. Peter to help him across the water, like in the Biblical narrative found in Matthew 14:28. But clearly he is not. His arm is rigid, and makes no effort to reach out towards the hand just inches away. Instead he seems to be gesturing towards the figure shoulder-deep in the water. This figure is unique in that he seems to be one of the mural’s focal points, and the depiction of his face is far more specific in its rendering. While most of those depicted in the mural seem little more than emblematic characters (and fully half have no faces whatsoever), the man in the water is the only one rendered in the style of classical art. And indeed he resembles a well-known figure from classical art: he looks remarkably like Michelangelo's David. Is Christ indicating his ancestral heritage, derived from the solar cult of the fish and King David of Judah? It would certainly appear so.
The David figure’s left hand gestures up towards the Poseidon mast, seeming to indicate his descent from the older god-king. Even this gesture, the upraised left hand, seems significant. In Sumeria the pictograph of an upraised hand symbolized the tile of "Kad", and meant both "god" and "king." An alternate rendering of "Kad" was a double-barred cross - the Cross of Lorraine. In due course we will discover that this symbol too is encoded into the painting.
The representation of Poseidon on the mast of the boat is at one the most specific symbol in the painting, and the most seemingly out of place in what is supposed to be the Sea of Galilee. But Poseidon, if you will recall, was said to have been a king of Atlantis. We have hypothesized that Christ was a descendant of the Atlantean kings, and the inclusion of Poseidon along with this depiction of Christ seems to support that thesis. At the apex of the mural is an odd-looking island which clearly resembles Tyre. The angels seem to be issuing forth from this island. In a previous Dagobert’s Revenge article (in Volume 4#1), we speculated that Tyre was built by King Hiram as a symbolic recreation of Atlantis, the ancestral homeland of his race. Does Cocteau’s island represent the same thing, both Tyre and Atlantis? Such an explanation would certainly explain the unusual presence of Poseidon representation.
Celtic isis note: This « island » is in fact said to represent the fortress situated above the village of Villefranche. As you can see as with most of the south everything is built into the hills, on different graduating levels, therefore the way Cocteau has painted the fortress it can appear to be an island. In my opinion I think this is a bit of a misinterpretation on the author’s part.
So too would the presence of one of the most recurrent symbols in Cocteau’s work: a strange X-shaped symbol turned on its side and closed at either end. It resembles an overturned hourglass, or perhaps a squared-off infinity symbol. In fact, it is a well-known character of the Runic alphabet (albeit not that well-known outside of certain esoteric circles.) It might seem far-fetched to imagine that Cocteau was employing this emblem in its Runic sense, or that he may even have been conversant with the rune, were it not for the symbol’s name and meaning. This particular tune was called "Dagaz" (Dag-As), and would seem to have the same intrinsic meaning as Dagon - "Lord of the Day", "Lord Fish", and "Lord of the Mountain." It’s esoteric meaning has to do with the equilibrium between light and darkness, the day and the night. Such a meaning is in perfect accord with Dagon’s title of "Lord of the Day", and ties in neatly with his symbolic role as the solar fish, or solar serpent. It would appear, then, that Cocteau was consciously using this rune, and that he not only knew full well its esoteric meaning, but employed it as an emblem of Dagon. It is not only encrypted into the mural itself, it is painted repeatedly on the archway bordering the mural. And again, it is one of the most persistent symbols to recur in Cocteau's visual art from throughout his entire career.
The mural in question is St. Peter Walking on Water, in the "Chapel of St. Peter" in Villefranche sur-Mer, dedicated to the patron saint of that region’s fishermen. St. Peter is associated with fishermen because, of course, he himself was a fisherman, and Peter is represented in Catholic iconography by the "Barque of Peter", a fishing boat which itself represents the Catholic church. St Peter is considered by the Catholic Church to be the father of their institution, and refer to him as the first Pope. But a man of Cocteau’s bent would have chosen to represent Peter in much more esoteric terms. "Peter, as many of you probably know, means "stone." (pierre = stone in French/St Pierre…). So a reference to the "Rock of Sion would seem a fairly natural explanation. The English version of the name "Peter" sounds remarkably like "Pater", a word meaning "father", or "patriarch." Of course, the chapel which Cocteau painted was titled with the French version of Peter’s name, "Pierre." Strangely, the name "Pierre" is much like the French word "pere", which also means "father." Taken collectively, all these explanations seem to work, and seem to allude to a single idea: a primordial patriarch who was the Rock of Sion. Interestingly, the root word "dag" (in "Dagon" and "Dagaz"), besides meaning both "fish" and "day", also means "stone."
So in the most simple terms, this mural relates a dual history. The first is that of Christ’s genealogy: his descent from David, and David’s descent from Atlantean kings (Dagon and the fallen angels.) The depiction of angels both emanating from and gesturing towards an island kingdom clearly seems to be an allusion to their antediluvian origins on Atlantis, an idea reinforced by the representation of Dagon/Poseidon. The second theme would seem to be the history of the Catholic Church, and its origins in an ancient Hermetic solar monotheism; one which extolled the union of the sun and the sea, the heavens and the Earth, the father and the son (or the Sun and the Son of the Sun.) Ultimately, both of these histories are the same history. Both are ultimately interconnected, and both have a shared genesis in the antediluvian world.
Despite the multiplicity of meaning found hidden in this strange scene, it represents only the first and most obvious layer of meaning. Though the symbolism employed is both complex and arcane, the narrative told is fairly straightforward. But where the exoteric story leaves off, the esoteric story begins.
Another level of meaning present in the mural has to do with sacred geometry. This painting abounds with geometry. Even the most casual perusal of these images reveals that they appear to be constructed according to a series of grids. The mural is intersected by vertical and horizontal lines which meet in the center. Two other lines crisscross at angles, also intersecting at the same precise point. Again, this is no mere coincidence, but part of a carefully contrived design. While on the surface, Cocteau is relating a fairly simple (albeit highly subtle) narrative, beneath the surface he’s revealing a depth of knowledge which demonstrates in no uncertain terms that he knows of what he speaks. And that which lies beneath the surface seems to have been a preoccupation of Cocteau's. His ongoing references to subterranean themes (the Underworld, Orpheus, etc.) are all thematic signposts that should direct us to look deeper, beneath the surface. And beneath the surface of this mural can be found a kaleidoscopic geometrical web of grids, so complex in their order and so perfect in their symmetry that the mere contemplation of them seems to noticeably impact the consciousness of the observer. One of the functions of sacred geometry was to bring one into accord with the mind of God. In due course we will elaborate on this notion. But first things first.
http://aycu29.webshots.com/image/23908/2004319794651466897_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004319794651466897)

Looking in the mural for patterns relating to our research took very little effort. It was easy to spot angles that suggested pentagrams, hexagrams, and so on. Tracing lines from the points implied readily produced results. This mural is literally packed with these symbols - big ones, small ones, perfectly symmetrical ones, and strange asymmetrical examples. A gigantic pentagram was found that spanned the whole mural, and an equally gigantic inverted pentagram. There were small seals of Solomon, and huge seals of Solomon. There were hexagrams superimposed over pentagrams which shared key planes with one another. The resultant configuration looked organically geometrical, but like nothing ever seen before. And again, these construction were clearly meant to be defined by specific details encoded in he painting. It is plainly evident that these shapes were consciously placed there, and that the mural is not just some Rorschach test upon which any conceivable image could be projected. Yet, the geometric grid seemed to encompass almost any and every conceivable shape.
At one point, it occurred to this author that the angle of the large upright pentagram mimicked the shape of a Masonic compass. The accompanying Masonic square was easily found, right in the expected position. Had Cocteau consciously placed this symbol here, or had he managed to create a series of grids so complex and all-encompassing that it was indeed possible to discern anything within them? Both possibilities seemed equally compelling. If he had placed the compass and square in this depiction of Christ, what was he trying to imply?
There is an ongoing debate as to what the letter "G" within the Masonic square and compass signifies. Some say "God", others say "Geometry." Some assert that it stands for "Great Architect of the Universe." Each point of view seems valid, and yet - could not all three possibilities be correct? If the "G" represents "God" or "Great Architect", then the compass and square framing it seem to equate with the "Geometry" explanation. The notion that the workings of God can be glimpsed of comprehended in certain aspects of geometry is not a new one. But the sheer complexity of the geometry manifested in the Cocteau grid prompted this author to contemplate the notion anew. Here was a geometry of totality: lines, angles, and superimposed patterns containing within them an infinity of possibilities and potentialities.
Man did not invent geometry. At best, he came to recognize its presence in the world, and came to understand its underlying principles. In the world of man, as in the organic world, geometry is omnipresent. It exists everywhere. Its presence precedes every material thing that comes into being. All of organic life conforms to a pre-existing pattern, and is an emanation of a sacred geometric principle, which is itself a manifestation of the force that shapes and defines nature, and life itself. Man, recognizing the divine harmony demonstrated by this principle, sought to incorporate it into his own creations: art, architecture, landscaping, and so on. He made of it a sacred science, a secret science, known only to the initiated. Thus sacred geometry became part of the secret gnosis of the "Underground Stream"; a gnosis said to have been passed down by figures such as Pythagoras, Hermes, and Enoch. It was a knowledge of the previously mentioned force, the life principle which shapes and defines all things, and which lives in and through all things. Some call this force "God", and this, perhaps, may constitute the reason why certain secret societies (and, it would seem, Jean Cocteau) hint at an interconnectedness between geometry and God. Geometry, like God, exists before existence, and is manifest before creation. This idea seems implicit in the Cocteau grid in St. Peter Walking on Water, all the more so because it is not visible to the naked eye.
This configuration, although complex, starts off with the most basic possible foundation: a simple grid composed of vertical and horizontal lines. Superimposed upon this is a pentagonal grid, a series of five sets of lines crossing the image at angles reflecting a perfect pentagram. Over this is a hexagonal grid, whose sets of lines crisscross the image at angles congruent with those of a hexagram. Thus we see a union of the geometry inherent in two of the fundamental emblems of sacred geometry and the esoteric tradition: the pentagram and the Seal of Solomon. Needless to say, these are also the two symbols most central to the Grail tradition and the mysteries which surround it. Furthermore, they are symbols which seem to have had a profound significance to Jean Cocteau. As a younger man, Cocteau always signed his signature with a pentagram. In his later years, he drew a glyph beneath his name composed of three intersecting lines forming a sort of star pattern. Laying these lines out as three sets of grids will produce a pattern which is made up of a series of hexagrams of every conceivable size. Place this same star symbol in the hexagonal interior of a Seal of Solomon, and its bars define the shape of the hexagon.
So it would seem that this mural, Cocteau’s last, was both the final culmination of a lifelong preoccupation with these symbols and their meanings, as well as a final revelation. This may well constitute Cocteau’s most explicit testament as to the nature of the secret tradition to which he was an heir - a tradition rooted in a secret history, and the sacred science that formed an integral part of it.
The syllable has a number of other connotations.
See the article Sleeping Beauty and the Sacred Mountain elsewhere on this website.
celtic isis
02-08-2007, 09:32 PM
http://web.artprice.com/classifieds/fineart/details.aspx?id=272333#
http://aycu22.webshots.com/image/24381/2005228111503568612_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2005228111503568612)
This is very different to the usual depiction of the age of aquarius but i just can't find one online!
Great blog on cocteau:
http://tracyrtwyman.com/blog/?page_id=26
The Divine Light of Lucifer...
It is true that the “red serpent” in the Le Serpent Rouge poem could be seen to parallel in certain ways the red dragon of Revelation, among many other things. And Cocteau painted something called “the Candlesticks of the Apocalypse” inside the front door of the Chapel of Saint Peter. Also, the word “Rosemary” encoded in the Notre Dame mural could just as easily apply to the mother of the Antichrist as it could to Mary Magdalene. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Priory of Sion have been accused by certain conspiracy theorists of playing a leading role in what they see as an impending Apocalypse, and they believe that the Merovingians are not the spawn of Christ, but of Lucifer. But the Merovingians may in fact consider themselves to be the descendants of both Christ and Lucifer.
This is an idea that is perhaps illustrated in Cocteau’s painting, The Temptation on the Mountain, portraying Christ’s temptation by Lucifer. Here, Lucifer appears to be blessing Christ, as a halo of light issues from the place where his hand touches Christ’s head. The veins in his arms are emphasized, and appear to be filled with blue blood that is flowing towards Christ. Unlike the biblical description, they are shown seated at a table, taking wine together, like a couple of old friends - or relatives - and Christ appears to have been served some type of (perhaps forbidden?) fruit.
Given this, it would be valuable to quote a letter from one of Cocteau’s friends, Jean Bourgoint (a monk also know as “Brother Pascal”) to another of Cocteau’s friends, Madame Jeannette Kandaouroff, apparently in response to a letter she had written him after Cocteau’s death in 1963. He wrote:
“… I want to correct your mistake concerning Cocteau’s death, which - quite the opposite of what you think, touched me profoundly… One thing I should like to clear up at once is the word Satan, which you think you remember and which I do not remember having used concerning him. Isn’t there confusion here? Didn’t I speak of Lucifer, bright name of the ‘most beautiful of the Angels’ before his fall? (In fact. don’t you have a magnificent photograph of him, part of my ‘estate’ signed by him with that name?)”
Perhaps this identification with Lucifer is the source of what William Emboden calls, “Cocteau’s preoccupation with angels, and the belief that all persons are angels in borrowed costume.” An angel in the form of a human would be, necessarily, a fallen angel. Cocteau also repeatedly drew a figure called the “angel of flaming cheek”, which could easily be identified with Lucifer. And of course, we should consider Cocteau’s signature, with which he always included that perpetual symbol of Lucifer, the pentagram, complete with a little dot in the middle. Cocteau’s explanation of his use of this star was that it represented a head wound that Apollinaire had received during the World War II. This may be a lie, but it represents an interesting metaphor: that of the divine ray of Lucifer entering into the brain of one who has just become enlightened.
Henry Lincoln has pointed out that there is a geometrically implied pentagram in the mural at Notre Dame de France which radiates from the center of Cocteau’s forehead. If we were to draw in the dot that Cocteau always placed in the middle of his signature pentagram, it would land right in the location of Cocteau’s third eye, or pineal body, the place where divine revelation first enters the mind. A similar geometric pentagram radiates from the forehead of the shepherdess in Nicolas Poussin’s The Shepherds of Arcadia. In Cocteau’s Frontpiece for Dessins, there is an arrow pointing towards the same spot on the forehead of a figure that looks somewhat like Cocteau himself. And in his Head of Orpheus, there are lines pointing to the same spot on the forehead of one of the busts.[/B][/COLOR]