ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 Cy Twombly, Bacchus Series, 2003 The Spiracle in Alchemy and Art Diane Fremont This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 1 ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 “There is but one world, only there are many worlds within it, for it exists in more than one way at once; and these different ways cannot be translated into one another.” (from John Crowley’s novel, “The Translator”) The problem of “translating the untranslatable” was addressed by the 16th century alchemist Gerhard Dorn, with the notion of what he called the spiracle – in Latin, the Spiraculum Eternitatis, the window or breathing hole into eternity, which Jung writes about extensively as the conjunction of opposites in Mysterium Coniunctionis. The spiracle is described as a hole or passageway in the field of consciousness that allows the “autonomous dynamism of the collective unconscious” to break through into the realm of the personal unconscious. In this joining, it can, to some degree, be worked and translated into living, material reality, whether through word, image, other expressive means, or through lived life itself. (von Franz, 1980) I will explore the concept of the spiracle in alchemy and in relation to the creative process, as exemplified in the work of the artist Cy Twombly, who moved back and forth between Lexington, Virginia and his adopted Southern Italy. Twombly’s work also traversed the liminal space between ancient and modern, between literature and visual art and between writing, drawing, painting, photography, collage and sculpture, embodying the idea and operations of the spiracle by linking and overlapping these disparate genres. In the studio, the inspiration of the artist, along with the tools, materials and medium, all co-create the protected space in which this passage and translation between worlds can This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 2 ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 take place. They show us ways in and ways out, ways through and ways between – giving entrée to the hidden, the unknown and the not-yet-manifest. Cy Twombly’s studio in Gaeta, Italy The studio, as we see here, provides a multilayered temenos or precinct in which to have this encounter with the Other, while containing and grounding the process in symbolically protected space. The studio, as a space the artist creates and inhabits, becomes an extension of the painting, and vice versa: “The This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 3 ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 crumbling, plastery walls have already got paintings in them.” The artist just needs to be receptive, and the paintings begin to make themselves. (Sicilia, p. 408) Once created, the work of art is, in itself, a symbolic spiracle, opening up the viewer to that sacred encounter with other realms, or higher knowledge and experience. The work of art carries the traces and evidence of this journey in its very being, and acts as a spiracle by giving the viewer secondary access to the experience of that passage and congress with the invisible realm. A spiracle is most simply defined as an opening by which a confined space has communication with the outer air, literally or metaphorically, and is derived from the Latin spirare, which simply means to breathe. In nature, the spiracle is a breathing hole found in insects, as well as in some fish and mammals– even the blow-hole of a whale is a kind of spiracle. In geology, the spiracle is a kind of breathing hole for the earth, formed by the explosive transition of gases which carry bits of lava as they work their way up to the surface from subterranean cavities, forming tubular out-croppings. This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 4 ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 The hypothetical wormhole (of Einstein’s physics) is also a spiracle, a shortcut bridging two disparate points in spacetime, extremely far distances or different universes. This also suggests the metaphorical rabbit hole, as we see at the bottom of this alchemical illustration above. The rabbit hole leads the blindfolded adept into the inner reaches of the hermetically sealed alchemical mountain, which contains the laboratory in its inner sanctum. It also encompasses all the steps or stages of transformation leading toward the realization of the goal of healing and wholeness, while protectively surrounded by the 7 planets and 12 astrological signs, which influence the process. This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 5 ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 Dorn conceived of the spiracle as a window to eternity, a mysterious center pre-existent in us, linking us to the cosmos, while opening up and bridging the different levels of body, soul and spirit. Through the spiracle one may journey across the threshold in between the above and below, and bring traces of one world into the other and back again – a kind of conception and cross-fertilization between inconsonant realms. The spiracle links and joins these different levels, rendering it possible to reconcile incommensurable opposites through finding a third – a new space or medium which is neither one nor the other, but both. (CW 14 ¶ 705) This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 6 ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 In this illustration, the pilgrim pokes his head through the “window of eternity” and gazes into the “world of timeless order,” leaving ordinary space- time behind. The double wheel, in the upper left corner, demonstrates the nature of the relationship between the two incommensurable worlds, intersecting impossibly at contiguous angles, yet still sharing a common center or hinge- point. Entering into relation with the forces of this mysterious pivot opens up a sphere of seeming miracles, which requires a corresponding attitude of adventurous openness to the unknown. This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 7 ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 This attitude is akin to the state of imaginative reverie in pregnancy, personified here in the image of the pregnant alchemist in her laboratory, nurturing in her womb that which she works upon in the alchemical vessel, demonstrating how the inner work of the alchemist was projected outward onto the material. The open window behind her allows the spirit to enter the process, stoking the fire to a blazing heat and creating the billowing folds of smoke into which she gazes in reverie. This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 8 ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898 This conception between realms is often depicted in paintings of the Annunciation. In Henry Tanner’s depiction, the spirit breaks through from an otherworldly realm into Mary’s humble everyday world. She receives this presence with reluctance, trepidation, humility and wonder. Young Mary’s ear is cocked towards the apparition, as the Angel’s announcement of her fate penetrates her body through the spiracle of her ear, just as her womb is being implanted with the spiritual seed. The multiple tubular folds in the various draperies seem to depict numerous passageways through which the spirit will suffuse her being. In the room surrounding her, the baked earth floor and simple white curving arches, along with the vivid red fabric, emphasize the protective enclosure needed to keep her grounded in the earthly realm and to contain this infusion of spirit. On her left, the blue mantle lies draped, already forming itself into a kind of lap. The This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 9 ARAS Connections Issue 3, 2017 mantle’s blue paint was often ground from precious lapis lazuli – the paradoxically celestial stone referred to by the alchemists – representing the materialization of the heavenly spirit. In the Middle Ages the Virgin Mary was extolled as the “window of enlightenment” or “window of escape” from this world. Jung considered the spiracle as the experience of the self, which enables the individual to touch the collective unconscious, escape from the prison of a one-sided view of life and move towards wholeness. (von Franz, 261) At the same time the eternal can reach into our time-bound world in the form of synchronistic events. The alchemist in his laboratory, as well as the artist in the studio, laboriously set the conditions for these miraculous encounters to happen. (CW14 ¶757) The alchemists felt that the This paper is strictly for educational use and is protected by United States copyright laws. Unauthorized use will result in criminal and civil penalties. 10