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The last post gathered observations from the art and thought of the ancient world and began a look at the transformation brought about by Christianity. We are continuing our look into the art and thought of the West as a background for the inversions of Modernism and as a way of connecting with our actual history and culture and move forward. As always, we started as generally as possible with the basic foundation of what we can know and how we can know it, which brought us back to Classical ontology. Greek thought is too diverse to sum up comprehensively, but there is a pattern that is easy to identify - a hierarchical arrangement from a material world that is uncertain but empirically knowable to an ultimate reality of absolute eternal truth that is beyond comprehension. The easiest way to conceive this necessary incomprehensibility is to think about finitude and infinity - no matter how big the finite vessel, it can't hold even a fraction of the infinite.
Monument to Antonio Canova, 1827, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice
The boundary between temporality and eternity is impermeable. Here, the sculptors can show us material reality in the form of figures. But transcendence can only be shown by an abstract symbol - the pyramid is an old reference for eternity - and a dark door. What the eternal "looks like" is beyond us.
This becomes a problem for morality for reasons that would be obvious were people not so invested in incoherent narratives. There are only two options when discussing moral codes - they are based on unchanging principles or they change with collective desire or subversion.
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Moses on Mount Sinai, 1895-1900, oil on canvas, private collection
Henri-Paul Motte, Napoleon at Charlemagne's Throne, late 19th-early 20th century, oil on canvas, private collection
Start with the relativism. This is the Postmodern position, since Postmodernists are incapable of distinguishing a symbol from an object. They correctly identify that absolute clarity of meaning is impossible with finite humans using man-made communication systems. But this should be self-evident, not a "paradigm shift". The imperfection of language is only troubling if you actually believed in the possibility of secular transcendence - that absolutes are knowable to subjective, context-determined, limited human minds. Or that infinite streams fit in buckets.
The Ancient of Days, 14th century, fresco, Ubisi, Georgia
We don't have to be able to see the thing in itself to know that it isn't the same thing as the representation.
For example, God doesn't actually look like this and we don't need to know what He looks like to grasp that.
Recognizing what is possible to know and how makes it easy to see where secular transcendence crashes into reality. It was the same problem the Greeks faced when they brought the transition from metaphysical to physical into the empirically-visible world. Once the model fails to match observations, either the whole system gets tossed (Copernicus) or the liars double down on their fake reality and drift further from truth-seeking into their own imaginations (modern cosmology).
This plays out over and over, in every aspect of the webs of lies and illusion that blanket the West. Two of the central fake faiths that were pushed to brainwash Americans were obviously empirically false from the jump: the myth of equalism and the absurd belief that an explicitly non-Christian constitution written by Enlightenment deists can defend American values. And as night follows day, insisting on internalizing beliefs that are empirically untrue leads to disastrous outcomes.
Timeless values...
There are retarded arguments on both "sides" that confuse abstract principles for their practical realization. The civnat consitutionists, lolbertarians, boomercons and the like believe words and ideas can change material reality. And the globalists, postmodernists, SJWs, and one world sociopaths believe demonstrating the falsehood of these myths disproves empirical reality. Were it funny, the substance of it all would look a bit like this:
Once we see how fundamental a category error secular transcendence is, it is easy to see why it fails so catastrophically wherever it appears. Switch ranges and consider an example - education vs. Education! There are strong arguments for scholarship and a literate, numerate population. But these are abstracts - identify a general ideal but say nothing about how to achieve it. Objectively, the failed model that we've tried has not just failed to meet the stated goals, the entire apparatus is structured to work against them from the top down. From Prussian cogs to SJW convergence, it's never been about seeking truth.
Consider the student debt crisis. Then consider that this graphic is already outdated. The vast inflation of the degree factory system was fueled by an almost unbelievable amount of money and the absurd credentialist lie that physically enrolling in an institution was the same thing as being intelligent and educated.
Look at the steps - telling young people in their formative years that education leads to success is a general, impersonal principle. Lying to them that certificates from institutions that literally don't educate is "education" is the secular transcendence. Encouraging them to incur inescapable debt - in their teens! - to attend is Satanic moral inversion. Now consider how many figures in authority of some kind - from parents to teachers to politicians - perpetuated the deception. Mouthing platitudinous ideals about the value of education, then telling them bloated globalist daycares will develop them intellectually.
Look at the steps - telling young people in their formative years that education leads to success is a general, impersonal principle. Lying to them that certificates from institutions that literally don't educate is "education" is the secular transcendence. Encouraging them to incur inescapable debt - in their teens! - to attend is Satanic moral inversion. Now consider how many figures in authority of some kind - from parents to teachers to politicians - perpetuated the deception. Mouthing platitudinous ideals about the value of education, then telling them bloated globalist daycares will develop them intellectually.
The surge in debt has been vacuumed up by institutions, larding the ivied halls with high paid bureaucrats and lavish facilities. But the credit is easy, everyone says this is education and education is necessary to get ahead.
An educated populace is an ideal. The practical application requires empirical evidence of success.Even before we get into content-less curricula and SJW inversion - just taking the programs of study at face value - there is little correlation between what people study and economic need. The idea of academic specialty developed for a small population of scholars. It doesn't scale to mass vocational training.
The poor fit is clear in the outcomes. But as bad as this is, the worst part is that this debt is unique in that it is federally owned and not dischargable through bankruptcy. It is literally socialized indentured servitude. It would be morally repulsive anywhere, let alone an entire society engorged on truly unstainable debt.
The architects and promoters of this system are the same ones that wallowed in unpayable gouts of money borrowed against the future. But the only people indentured to this greed are those least worldly and most reliant on the advice of those in positions of "responsibility". The Band finds it difficult to maintain even a semblance of an even tone when discussing these grasping lotus-eaters.
Recognizing that the debt/Education! monster is an obscenity has no relevance to how you feel about the the value of a learned populace. They are fundamentally - ontologically - not the same thing. The greatest culpability falls on the institutions because they took money under the pretense of providing education and did the opposite. Call it the Clinton Haiti redevelopment model. Once you recognize the difference between the abstract principle and the actual application you can make the moral judgment. Were those advocating "reforming" this pile of rotting debris honest about their goals, they would be pushing for a complete tear-down. But they aren't. They want the same swill, just reset back to how it was in decade X.
The arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic comes to mind.
Which is why moral relativism = entropic decay. Everyone considers the problem from their personal experience and no one pays attention to the overall pattern. Or they just call it Progress!
Relativistic systems are doomed because they eliminate any check on human appetite. How did the constitution get jacked? How did education become a haven for parasitic degenerates that can literally retard the cognitive development of victims? And why did a generation of solipsistic, materialist, mindlessly gullible pigs just line up at the trough and support this, so long as the money is borrowed on the backs of their posterity? Wait... that question answered itself. There were no "principles" - just objectively false platitudes and incoherent lies that served selfish interests at the time. The combination of self-righteousness and grasping venal acquisitionism is disgusting.
Clemente Spera and Alessandro Magnasco, Bacchanalian Scene, 1710s, oil on canvas, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
To put it systematically, student debt is a symptom of a demoralized secular materialism based on stolen money - quick, when was the last year without a deficit? - but singled from among all the other thefts as a lifetime indemnity. The idea that that targets the next generation is of no consequence to parasites drunk on unearned largess, and trapping a generation at the outset benefits the enemies of the West. In the Band's terms, it is a philosophical bait and switch, or the promise of something timeless followed with something contingent and circumstantial. It goes like this...
Raphael, The School of Athens, 1509-1511, fresco, Vatican Museums
Thomas Couture, The Romans of the Decadence, 1847, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay
Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Desolation, 1836, oil on canvas, New-York Historical Society
Or if that interplay of pictures and texts is too complex, we can strip it down to basics. The virtue of an educated populace is a general value. This is an application in practice. They're not the same thing.
Which brings us back to the need for an external moral standards. Things like stealing from the future is wicked, no matter how badly you want that second car or cruise. Things that don't accomplish what they were sold to do should be scrapped completely. Or selling out your principles dosen't become acceptable because of what some non-entity might think. Empirical observation shows us that no matter how well your secular transcendence appears to work in theory, it doesn't work in practice. So where do the principles come from?
The Greeks used the idea of logos to describe how the metaphysical and physical actually relate conceptually, which is fundamental for any moral objectivity. Ultimate reality is where we find absolute certainty - here Good and Truth are synonymous - but understanding how they relate rationally doesn't provide practical guidance for human judgment.
Katie Kelly, Temporal Vs. Eternal, 2012
They knew the link was there but couldn't define it.
Christianity brought Old Testament theology to this conceptual pattern in a way that completed them both. The Old Testament dealt with this radical separation with religious law, from God, that told you what was moral.
Frederic Edwin Church, Moses Viewing the Promised Land, oil on cardboard (academy board), private collection
The problem here was that the laws appeared arbitrary and even irrational - there is no complex philosophizing to demonstrate their consonance with human experience of the world.
Jesus is God and logos - the authority of ultimate reality, the immanent reason behind Greek math and causality, and the link between human obedience to the Law and reason. It was the perfect integration of this system - increasing truth against decreasing clarity tied together by observation, logic, and faith that was the competitive advantage of the West.
With logos as a vertical axis hierarchically connecting the material and the divine, morality, science, and religion are just manifestations of the same thing on different ontological levels. Since all reflect ultimate reality in come way, all commensurably reflect the True/Good as well. At that level Good isn't a moral choice - it is what Is, what is True and vice versa. Therefore things that aim for truth are aiming for what Is on the appropriate level. Which is aiming for Good.
And truth becomes moral.
The last post also observed how Christian logos is consistent with an empirically observable sliding scale between brute materiality - what is perceivable directly to the senses - and the absolute transcendence of ultimate reality. The closer we come to conceptual absolutes like Truth, the less empirically evident they are to us. This was the relevant graphic with the Greek version for simplicity:
A rock has no logos, only material nature. A work of art is observable matter, but changed to convey a message that may or may not me truthful. Humans are observable matter but are self-directed and can align with truth. Mathematical principles are self-evidently true, but are immaterial - symbolic manipulations of material quantities. Logos has no material nature and can't be visualized - only conceived allegorically.
This clarifies our epistemology graphic that appeared in an early post and has turned up in different forms from time to time. Heres's the original:
We observed that empirical and Christian perspectives on knowledge were materially and rationally compatible on the most fundamental level. The key difference was metaphysical - Christian faith provided the anchoring ontological knowledge that is outside empirical limits.
But this was extremely general - Postmodernism fails on such a primal conceptual basis that simply pointing out what can be known and how causes it to self-immolate.
We didn't get into ontological hierarchies because we the point was to isolate the finite/absolute distinction and show just how nonsensical secular transcendence is, even as a concept. So what it didn't do was show how the metaphysical knowledge that Christians know on faith clarifies the relationships between the things we can know empirically. Now let's adapt the epistemology graphic to fit the subject of more recent posts and bring morality, art or phronesis, and Satanic inversion into it.
At this distance, we see that the overlap between the Christian and empirical breaks down. Both can trust reason and evidence to provide a conditional understanding of material reality, but part ways when it comes to applying that to human behavior or communication. This is because empirical observation is subjective - it is made by someone, with a certain frame of reference, in a certain time, at a certain place. As noted in the last post, there is no standard to check moral drift and subversion.
Fyodor Bronnikov, Quaestor Reading the Death Sentence to Senator Thrasea Paetus, before 1873, oil on canvas, Radishchev Art Museum, Saratov, Russia
Henryk Siemiradzki, Following the Example of the Gods, 1899, oil on canvas, Lviv National Art Gallery
Henryk Siemiradzki, Orgy of the Times of Tiberius on Capri, 1881, oil on canvas, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
At it's best, secular empiricism can aspire to Classical morality - the logical necessity of a creator that can account for immanent reason in material and conceptual reality without a clear bridge over the ontological gulf between subjectivity and Truth.
Empirically, we know that there will always be malice and the will to dominate, and there will always be a need for a measure of stability. So there will always be the powerful. And the powerful always shape social reality to their desires.
Henryk Siemiradzki, The Girl or the Vase?, 1887, oil on canvas, private collection
The only positive outcome is for those desires to be moral, and the only thing that constrain the appetites of the powerful is an external, objective moral truth.
The empiricist can draw conclusions from observing the world around them. He can even logically determine the need for a first cause/ultimate reality. But the nature of that ultimate reality - theology - is what is known by faith.
Henryk Siemiradzki, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1886, oil on canvas
Christian logos seamlessly harmonizes moral law with empirical observation and logic as paths to knowledge. We now have a standard against which to weigh competing moral claims.
Now let's get rid of the Satanists for clarity's sake since they have nothing positive to contribute to discussions about truth and epistemology. Then if we bring our expanded epistemology graphic together with our logos one, we can see how the whole thing just falls together. It's the opposite of entropy. It's creative order. It's logos.
Christian faith and empirical reality align so well ontologically because logos is a vertical concept. This allows it to manifest in the appropriate way at the appropriate place - connecting the material world, abstract reasoning, and ultimate reality while preserving the essential differences between. Secular transcendence is avoided because absolutes are correctly placed outside direct human comprehension. Secularism fails because it crushes ontology into a single plane then expects abstractions to operate clearly in the material world. See the difference:
Material reality is empirically clear - we can see, describe, and measure it. But it is unclear and imperfect. All measurements have uncertainty, no history finds the beginning, all structures decay, nothing lives forever, all judgments are contingent, all information fields incomplete.
We can concieve of things that aren't limited in these ways, but they aren't materially real. Mathematical precision as opposed to the reality of cutting and measuring. The math is closer to absolute truth because absolutes are conceptually possible while the carpenter imperfectly translates this into material form.
"Perfection" is an abstraction. In the imperfect material world, we operate in shades of gray...
...but shades of gray can still convey truthful information. Imperfect alignment with the truth is still more truthful then no alignment. And the more closely we align with the truth, the more functionally and aesthetically effective the outcome.
Put it another way. Two imperfect representations of Pythagorean geometry. But only one attempts to align with higher truth and order:
See the difference logos makes?
Christian faith and empirical reality align so well because logos is a vertical concept. This lets it manifest in the appropriate way at the appropriate ontological level and connect the material world, abstract reasoning, and ultimate reality, while preserving the essential differences between. Logic applies higher principles to material circumstances through moral reasoning. And the vanity of secular transcendence is avoided because absolutes are correctly placed outside direct human comprehension.
Recognizing that logos is a vertical concept clarifies the transition from Classical to Christian concepts of art, and brings us closer to an understanding of what art means to the West. Approach it systematically: ancient art is a subset of mimesis which is a subset of representation. The Band has addressed representation in a general way - there are some early posts dealing with semiotics and more recently we've used allegory as a way to think about the difference between a form of representation and the type of information it can communicate.
Christ as the Alpha and Omega in the Calendar Window at Chartres Cathedral, early 13th century
This is an incredibly deep area of study and far outside the scope of a post. For now, we'll keep it simple and make a basic distinction between the two most important forms of representation to the formation of Christian art and Western culture in general - words and pictures.
We're leaving out music for now, because it's an abstract medium with minimal discursive information content unless it has lyrics - that is, words.
Gospel of St John 1, King James Bible, published by Robert Barker, London, 1611, British Library
Western languages combine abstract graphemes - letters - into lexical chains capable of communicating endless descriptive detail and complex speculative thought. It can be mimetic in the Aristotelian sense because it can describe events and tell stories that represent recognizable human activity. You can picture it. But it can't make you see exactly what the description really looks like, no matter how exact.
Ivan Aivazovsky, Walking on Water, 1888, oil on canvas, private collection
Western art represents its subjects by visual mimesis - conventionalized techniques and materials to be sure, but arranged to show the audience something suggestive enough of real-world things and object relations to be recognizable. A degree of discursive content can be added by symbols, elements with multiple connotations, siting, and formal arrangements, but nothing approaching the specificity and versitility of language.
This is a simplified contrast - there are words that have pictorial elements and pictures that include text. What is important to understand is that words and pictures are central to Western representation and that they communicate differently. One by mimetic association and the other by denotative symbols. Or what Peirce would have called icons and symbols.
Christian art is a visual medium but is defined by the textual standards of Christianity. It comes from the same ancient roots as Christian ontology - Old Testament theology and Greco-Roman culture brought together into a higher fulfillment. Note once again the term fulfillment, and not balance. The roots aren't "balanced" into fake relativism between arbitrary categories but superseded to move closer to truth. The difference between the two is vertical - ontology is an abstract concept while representation involves material processes like forming sentences and making paintings.
Christ as the Alpha and Omega in the Calendar Window at Chartres Cathedral, early 13th century
This is an incredibly deep area of study and far outside the scope of a post. For now, we'll keep it simple and make a basic distinction between the two most important forms of representation to the formation of Christian art and Western culture in general - words and pictures.
We're leaving out music for now, because it's an abstract medium with minimal discursive information content unless it has lyrics - that is, words.
Gospel of St John 1, King James Bible, published by Robert Barker, London, 1611, British Library
Western languages combine abstract graphemes - letters - into lexical chains capable of communicating endless descriptive detail and complex speculative thought. It can be mimetic in the Aristotelian sense because it can describe events and tell stories that represent recognizable human activity. You can picture it. But it can't make you see exactly what the description really looks like, no matter how exact.
Ivan Aivazovsky, Walking on Water, 1888, oil on canvas, private collection
Western art represents its subjects by visual mimesis - conventionalized techniques and materials to be sure, but arranged to show the audience something suggestive enough of real-world things and object relations to be recognizable. A degree of discursive content can be added by symbols, elements with multiple connotations, siting, and formal arrangements, but nothing approaching the specificity and versitility of language.
This is a simplified contrast - there are words that have pictorial elements and pictures that include text. What is important to understand is that words and pictures are central to Western representation and that they communicate differently. One by mimetic association and the other by denotative symbols. Or what Peirce would have called icons and symbols.
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This is a graphic from an early post breaking down 19th century American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic categories. Here is the link if you are interested.
It's all connected.
It's all connected.
Christian art is a visual medium but is defined by the textual standards of Christianity. It comes from the same ancient roots as Christian ontology - Old Testament theology and Greco-Roman culture brought together into a higher fulfillment. Note once again the term fulfillment, and not balance. The roots aren't "balanced" into fake relativism between arbitrary categories but superseded to move closer to truth. The difference between the two is vertical - ontology is an abstract concept while representation involves material processes like forming sentences and making paintings.
Old Testament theology and Classical ontology present images in opposite lights, for reasons that can be visualized with our ontology graphics from the last post. The Greco-Roman perspective was based around the hierarchical concept of logos we've spent a lot of time on. The visual arts were central to their culture and religious since analogies of resemblance were a way to represent metaphysical realities in material forms. The Old Testament perspective was that ultimate reality was radically split from the material world with the Fall, and is only bridged by God's direct action.
Gustave Doré, Moses Showing the Ten Commandments,1865, engraving
The religion of the Old Testament is a verbal one - laws and prophecies are spoken or written and Bible is Greek for Books. Images are viewed negatively, most clearly in the 2nd Commandment. The Band is aware that there are different versions of the Commandments, but finds theological wrangling between denominational viewpoints utterly uninteresting and uncomfortably close to secular transcendence in the form of idolizing the words of men.
To avoid this, we will just use the passage from Exodus in its entirety:
The religion of the Old Testament is a verbal one - laws and prophecies are spoken or written and Bible is Greek for Books. Images are viewed negatively, most clearly in the 2nd Commandment. The Band is aware that there are different versions of the Commandments, but finds theological wrangling between denominational viewpoints utterly uninteresting and uncomfortably close to secular transcendence in the form of idolizing the words of men.
To avoid this, we will just use the passage from Exodus in its entirety:
Jen Norton, The Ten Commandments, 2015
There are a number of interpretations of this passage. It refers to idolatry, and idolatry been taken as anything from the specific act of worshiping statues - literally graven images - to making worldly attachments the center of attention. The Band tends to favor the broader interpretation - anything that takes the place of God as the object of worship - but since our topic is Christian art, we will stick to the implications for pictures and leave other fixations aside.
Aron de Chaves, Moses and Aaron with the 10 Commandments, 1674-1675, Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, London
The form of the 2nd Commandment is consistent with the ontological divide between God and Man in the Old Testament. It is firmly stated in spare language without argument or explanation. In the world sub lege, direct commands are the only way to align material existence with Truth.
Shifting to a Christian perspective evolves from Law to Logos, and lets us consider the prohibition of images across the ontological hierarchy. There is an appropriate case to be made against representing God at each level.
But logos also provides the counter-argument by breaking the radical ontological barrier between man and God and complicating the complete separation. First we'll consider the Old Testament case against from the perspective of logos as a vertical unifying axis.
Carl Bloch, The Sermon on the Mount, 1877, oil on canvas, Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen
At the level of Logos, Jesus affirms the Commandments.
At the level of Abstract logic - small l logos - a transcendent entity can't be shown in a mimetic representation without fundamentally misrepresenting its nature. It's the infinite stream in the finite bucket problem.
Francisco Goya, La Gloria, 1771-1772, oil on canvas, Museo Camón Aznar, Zaragoza, Spain
The abstract Trinitiarian symbolism of the triangle represents relationships - three-sided, upward pointing - but does not attempt to show what the things being related might look like. It is schematic rather than mimetic likeness - between Peirce's symbol and icon with elements of both.
Pierre Mignard, God the Father, after 1664, il on canvas, 47 x 60 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
Logically, trying to depict the God of the Old Testament is irrational. All a material likeness can show you is what He doesn't look like. The impulse is to represent some aspect of God by putting it in human terms, but this makes it more symbolic - like the abstract triangle rather than a mimetic likeness.
Fridolin Leiber, Pater Noster, before 1900, chromolithograph, "Our Father" prayer with central Trinity and symbolic scenes
He doesn't look like this either. The picture is showing you a symbolic relationship rather than a portrait. But the iconic nature creates a relatable, humanized picture in your mind in a way that the abstract schematics don't. This can easily be deceptive if you don't remain aware that this is purely symbolic because human figures, gestures, and expressions are so natural and familiar to us. The idea is to convey age, experience, authority, not a portrait, but it is easy to start conceiving of God as an old man, with all the limitations of that human identity.
A word is the opposite - an abstract symbol that makes no claim of likeness or visual analogy at all - not even a relationship between parts. It's just a label - one can state that God walked in the Garden with Adam without making any claim about what it was like to see Him.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jeroboam Offering Sacrifice for the Idol, 1752, oil on canvas, École nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris
Pictures can have a truthful message, but don't have to. Their power comes from pathos - emotional appeal - independent or reason. Logically any picture of God uses pathetic engagement to draw you away from truth.
Bovine deities were common in the world of the Old Testament
Arturo Di Modica, Charging Bull, 1987-1989, bronze, New York City
They remain popular among idolators, even when the form of idolatry has shifted to fetishizing materialism. The bull is a monument to Wall Street excess - the greed-driven inverse of a morality based on higher Truth. Open blood sacrifice is replaced by a illusory debt-driven demoralized system that has elevated sacrifice to the cultural level.
Unchecked materialism goes hand in hand with other forms of distorted hedonism - the ritual caressing of the testicles ties this together nicely. The dark genius of modern deception is that with the right idols, the lost skip merrily to their own debasement.
Kristen Visbal, Fearless Girl, 2017, bronze sculpture, in front of the New York Stock Exchange
There's layers to this. Consider Fearless Girl, a statue installed in front of Charging Bull the day before International Women's Day by State Street, an index fund with "gender-diverse" companies. It was originally put in front of the Charging Bull until being moved when artist Di Modica complained, but there are footprint marks left behind to mark her former presence. Like an ascendant Buddha, if the Siddhartha had been a privileged liar...
The statue is obnoxious in the typical "progressive" way - a show of cheeky "defiance" that is only imaginable with the armed power of the state behind it, and oddly freakish physically, with a weird, adult-seeming head that resembles Obama.
.
As a bit of viral marketing from a global giant it was a success. The soulless parasites orbiting "the financial world" took to it as meaning something. But the symbolism is weird - do female Wall St. execs really identify with deformed children?
Perhaps the random placement of a symbol of adult genitalia on child's head is clue...
Look closer.
The liars in the media like to refer to Fearless Girl as facing off with or facing down the Charging Bull as some sort of reason-less allegory of something feminine overcoming something masculine through existing.
But when you set aside the lies, you see something else. Put aside all the hot air about female power and look at the actual figures.
See it now?
Lars Justinen, Through the Fire
That's it. Moloch was a Canaanite god that's been mentioned here before that was connected Biblically and archaeologically to child sacrifice. It is likely the origin of Carthage's Baal-Hammon, and has been associated with the Roman Saturn who devoured his children. The bull-headed bronze holocaust was another Old Testament bovine idol.
Offering to Molech, 1897, illustration from Charles Foster, Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us, 1897
The ultimate moral inversion is to get people to walk blindly into their own destruction. Like sassy girl power in the face of the globalist beast.
The Canaanites thought they'd buy supernatural favor. Alone, the Charging Bull is more an idol of Mammon - the love of wealth over all else - though that wasn't an Old Testament deity. Fearless victim adds an element of Moloch - like words forming a sentence. The sacrifice of children to the hunger of money and "success" is a perfect summary of our morally inverted materialism. Only the modern idolatry is socio-cultural and the sacrifice society wide.
Henri Meyer, Le Veau d'or (The Golden Calf), allegory of the Panama scandal, Le Petit Journal, 110, 31 December, 1892.
The Band isn't the first to make the connection.
That should clarify the morality level.
Pierre Mignard, God the Father, after 1664, il on canvas, 47 x 60 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
Logically, trying to depict the God of the Old Testament is irrational. All a material likeness can show you is what He doesn't look like. The impulse is to represent some aspect of God by putting it in human terms, but this makes it more symbolic - like the abstract triangle rather than a mimetic likeness.
Fridolin Leiber, Pater Noster, before 1900, chromolithograph, "Our Father" prayer with central Trinity and symbolic scenes
He doesn't look like this either. The picture is showing you a symbolic relationship rather than a portrait. But the iconic nature creates a relatable, humanized picture in your mind in a way that the abstract schematics don't. This can easily be deceptive if you don't remain aware that this is purely symbolic because human figures, gestures, and expressions are so natural and familiar to us. The idea is to convey age, experience, authority, not a portrait, but it is easy to start conceiving of God as an old man, with all the limitations of that human identity.
A word is the opposite - an abstract symbol that makes no claim of likeness or visual analogy at all - not even a relationship between parts. It's just a label - one can state that God walked in the Garden with Adam without making any claim about what it was like to see Him.
Esteban March, The Golden Calf, between 1610 and 1668, oil on canvas, Fundación Banco Santander
At the moral level, the ontological difference between God and the idol means that the idolater is directs their attention in the wrong direction. They follow the wrong guides.
Kevin Best, Still Life - Infinite Vanitas, 2010
This resembles Plato's critique of art in the Republic. Material images are at the opposite end of the ontological spectrum from ultimate reality/God/Truth. If virtue is movement towards Good, then focusing on images aims you away from that into the material world of uncertainty and deception.
Pictures can have a truthful message, but don't have to. Their power comes from pathos - emotional appeal - independent or reason. Logically any picture of God uses pathetic engagement to draw you away from truth.
Bovine deities were common in the world of the Old Testament
Arturo Di Modica, Charging Bull, 1987-1989, bronze, New York City
They remain popular among idolators, even when the form of idolatry has shifted to fetishizing materialism. The bull is a monument to Wall Street excess - the greed-driven inverse of a morality based on higher Truth. Open blood sacrifice is replaced by a illusory debt-driven demoralized system that has elevated sacrifice to the cultural level.
Unchecked materialism goes hand in hand with other forms of distorted hedonism - the ritual caressing of the testicles ties this together nicely. The dark genius of modern deception is that with the right idols, the lost skip merrily to their own debasement.
Kristen Visbal, Fearless Girl, 2017, bronze sculpture, in front of the New York Stock Exchange
There's layers to this. Consider Fearless Girl, a statue installed in front of Charging Bull the day before International Women's Day by State Street, an index fund with "gender-diverse" companies. It was originally put in front of the Charging Bull until being moved when artist Di Modica complained, but there are footprint marks left behind to mark her former presence. Like an ascendant Buddha, if the Siddhartha had been a privileged liar...
The statue is obnoxious in the typical "progressive" way - a show of cheeky "defiance" that is only imaginable with the armed power of the state behind it, and oddly freakish physically, with a weird, adult-seeming head that resembles Obama.
.
As a bit of viral marketing from a global giant it was a success. The soulless parasites orbiting "the financial world" took to it as meaning something. But the symbolism is weird - do female Wall St. execs really identify with deformed children?
Perhaps the random placement of a symbol of adult genitalia on child's head is clue...
Look closer.
The liars in the media like to refer to Fearless Girl as facing off with or facing down the Charging Bull as some sort of reason-less allegory of something feminine overcoming something masculine through existing.
But when you set aside the lies, you see something else. Put aside all the hot air about female power and look at the actual figures.
See it now?
Lars Justinen, Through the Fire
That's it. Moloch was a Canaanite god that's been mentioned here before that was connected Biblically and archaeologically to child sacrifice. It is likely the origin of Carthage's Baal-Hammon, and has been associated with the Roman Saturn who devoured his children. The bull-headed bronze holocaust was another Old Testament bovine idol.
Offering to Molech, 1897, illustration from Charles Foster, Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us, 1897
The ultimate moral inversion is to get people to walk blindly into their own destruction. Like sassy girl power in the face of the globalist beast.
The Canaanites thought they'd buy supernatural favor. Alone, the Charging Bull is more an idol of Mammon - the love of wealth over all else - though that wasn't an Old Testament deity. Fearless victim adds an element of Moloch - like words forming a sentence. The sacrifice of children to the hunger of money and "success" is a perfect summary of our morally inverted materialism. Only the modern idolatry is socio-cultural and the sacrifice society wide.
Henri Meyer, Le Veau d'or (The Golden Calf), allegory of the Panama scandal, Le Petit Journal, 110, 31 December, 1892.
The Band isn't the first to make the connection.
That should clarify the morality level.
Idolatry with Baal-peor; Numbers 25:1-8, from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations, Leicester, England
On a material level, we have to consider the Old Testament in its historical context. The people of the Covenant are distinguished from the rest of antiquity by their text-based monotheistic belief system..
The Singer of Amun Nany's Funerary Papyrus, around 1050 BC, Dynasty 21, paint on papyrus, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The monotheism/polytheism distinction is a lot more than how many gods are listed on the temple roster. It's basic ontology. Both see human existence as ruled by divine forces, but place those forces on different levels of the hierarchy. The gods have a different relationship to reality.
Head of Zeus-Ammon, Roman Imperial, around 120-160 AD, private collection
Creation myths vary, but the polytheistic gods all exist within creation and correspond to different forces. Defining ancient cultural "religions" is really speculative since primary evidence is limited to a few texts, and there is considerable overlap in gods and beliefs over time. The ancient Greeks even introduced the idea that different pantheons were manifestations of the same thing and could be conflated, giving us hybrids like Zeus-Ammon.
This head recently went for over $3.5 million - laundering an old idol into the new.
Baal-Hammon on a throne, 1st century, terra cotta, Bardo National Museum, Tunis
Ba'al in the Bible seems to derive from a generic term for various Levantine deities, although there is also evidence that he was worshiped as a distinct entity. The chief deity of Carthage - Ba'al Hammon - is often likened to the Canaanite god Moloch for the common practice of child sacrifice. The reality is that they likely were the same historically - Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians, iron age descendants of the bronze age region known as Canaan in the Bible and the Phoenician gods were of Canaanite origin.
Ancient polytheism lacked sacred texts like the Bible to provide internal consistency, so there was no check on the spread of variations, and when the cults died out, the details were lost.
Creation, around 1275-1300, illumination on parchment, New York, Morgan Library
The Old Testament God is ultimate reality. He precedes all that is and all that is comes from Him. Since reality is an extension of His will, His commandments are pure Truth, limited only by the inherent imprecision of language. Compared to this, the deities of the ancient world are interchangeable Ba'als - at best fake, at worst demons, and in any case a path away from Truth.
Rob Leinweber, Moses and the Tablets of Law, vintage postcard
Socio-culturally, rejecting idols kept the Old Testament religion distinct from the neighboring polytheistic cultures.
Rob Leinweber, Moses and the Tablets of Law, vintage postcard
Socio-culturally, rejecting idols kept the Old Testament religion distinct from the neighboring polytheistic cultures.
This brings us to art. One of the problems with official history is that it is demoralized. It accepts Enlightenment Rationalism as an article of fake faith and overlooks connections between "superstitious" spiritual factors and palatable materialist ones. The Band has followed this pattern when looking at the Classical roots of Western art theory. We've looked at it in secular ways - historically as the beginning of art as a topic of reflection, and philosophically as a material expression of immaterial logos. But the religious implications of Greek statues were far more important an influence on Christian attitudes than the aesthetic musings of Polykleitos.
One of the great misconceptions of Classical art is that is was uncolored. Even people who don't know anything about art pictures pure white marble figures when the hear "Greek statue". The reality is that the Greeks and Romans painted their statues and buildings to make them easier to identify and to ratchet up the pathos. Painted figures were more realistic and the intense colors fascinate. The white marble aesthetic was an artifact of the Renaissance, where the rational aspects of Classical culture were pedestalized and the inconvenient irrational ones memory holed.
Here is a reasonable article on the analytic techniques being used to recreate ancient pigments.
Iktinos and Callicrates, sculpture by Phidias, Parthenon, 447-432 BC, Athens
Consider the famous Parthenon in Athens - a model of the harmony and logos of the Classical Doric order.
Here are some recreations of the not-so logical colors. Greek religion was highly irrational and mystical, with Dionysian rituals, mystery cults, secret initiations, animal sacrifice, oracles and divination...
Alan LeQuire, Athena Parthenos, completed, 1990, gypsum, fiberglass, gold over aluminum and steel, copy after original by Phidias, begun 447 BC; Varvakeion Athena, 200-250 AD, Roman copy of the Athena Parthenos, National Archaeological Museum of Athens
...and cult statues. All the major polytheistic traditions used statues in their ritual in some form or another.
The Athena Parthenos was gigantic cult statue that was celebrated for its artistry and the dazzling impact of its shining chryselephantine - gold and ivory - form. This replica is found in the copy of the Parthenon in Nashville. The inset is a Roman copy of the Parthenos type.
Idol, Ishtar or Ashtoreth, alabaster, gold, terracotta, 3rd century BC-3rd century AD, Louvre
Cult statues performed different functions, but generally relied on resemblance to bring the worshipper closer to the god in some way. A temple statue like the Parthenos was an ersatz body for an immaterial entity to inhabit and hear the prayers of the supplicant. A small figurine like this is portable and might draw divine interest and by extension favor or protection. It is basically sympathetic magic, and it was based on the notion that the gods, as created beings, have material forms for art to resemble. This obviously doesn't apply to the God of the Old Testament.
Look past the relatively modest level of techne and you'll see the typical proportions of a late antique female nude. But the main purpose of the image is religious. This is the split between thinking in strictly secular terms and actually considering how different frames of reference interact.
Sculpture from Khorsabad, capital of Assyrian King Sargon II, 8th century BC, Louvre, Paris
Statues on or around important structures likewise invoked blessings and protective forces.
On a purely material social level, the 2nd Commandment distinguished the Covenant people from their idol-using polytheistic neighbors.
So on every level of the vertical hierarchy - theological, logical, moral, material - the Old Testament presents a united opposition to image use. This is because God is utterly transcendent. There is no vertical axis of increasing visibility and decreasing truth to connect Him to the material world. Obviously cult statues and idols are out, but the theoretical notion of idealizing nature in art is likewise impossible.
Anubis, Roman, 1st-2nd century AD, Parian marble, Museo Gregoriano Egizio, Vatican Museums
Classical idealism was based on the idea that a flawless appearence and perfect proportions was a material expression of abstract principles through physical analogy. If there is no ontological axis, there is nothing to analogize. Wherever a statue may lead you, it isn't towards God.
Classical idealism was based on the idea that a flawless appearence and perfect proportions was a material expression of abstract principles through physical analogy. If there is no ontological axis, there is nothing to analogize. Wherever a statue may lead you, it isn't towards God.
The idea of Christian art is based on the same premise as Christian ontology - Christ the Logos is mortal man and absolute transcendence in a single hierarchical arrangement. This lets allows reason to orient towards Truth and engage in moral reasoning. Extend the expression further down the hierarchy to techne, and there is no logical reason that logos can't appear in a level-specific manifestation here as well.
Unknown Master, Altarpiece with the Mercy Seat, central panel, 1260-70, tempera on oak panel, 71 x 120 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
The Shroud of Turin: modern photo and digitally processed image, linen, Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, Turin
This means that the God the Son could be seen directly
Or as St. John put it: the Word was made flesh:
Switching to Word from Logos is deliberate. Logos is still the more complete translation of the original Greek and as we have seen, nicely describes what is going on in the Incarnation. But Word is the common term, and it is worth going back to it to clarify a relationship between Jesus, text, and visual images.
The translation issues around λόγος are another place where secular transcendence leads astray. The last post likened the materialist perspective to Flatland, the two-dimensional world where the 3D visitor is only seen as a contact polygon. Secular transcendence happens because the materialist has to crush everything into a material frame of reference - they're trapped on the ground floor of the ontological hierarchy, no matter what they're dealing with. They're aware of more abstract subjects - most have wondered about where we come from at some point - but are blind to the third dimension opening out of their materialist prison. The inversion is complete when those who see through the charade are viewed critically for their disinterest in beads and trinkets. The blend of arrogance and ignorance can be taxing.
But if you can't grasp that a concept can coexist on different levels at once, then you can't grasp the differences in meaning that are level-specific. Everything gets smashed together - observation, inference, logic, metaphysics - into one material frame of reference, despite that frame being literally unable to even address them. From this perspective, "In the beginning was the Word" or "the Word made flesh" just seems like a metaphor for Jesus superseding the written law of the Old Testament, which is a sound interpretation on that level.
Luca Giordano, The Annunciation, 1672, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
But it isn't words, it's Word - capital and singular. That means we need to look upwards.
Remember that Word and Logos are both translations of Λόγος - the confusion comes from the massive vocabulary that English has. This gives it different words for things that other languages would express with the same word differentiated by context. This makes it very precise, but loses the layerings of meaning in a single expression. Whichever one we use says Λόγος., just emphasizing one aspect or another.
What is important is the capital "Λ" - Word not words - that makes it a proper noun. And if Λόγος is vertical, the singular proper noun IS the higher metaphysical reality that the plural lower-case "w" versions can only represent in a symbolic way. The relationship is essentially Platonic, with Word as the Form that words faintly hint at. Now the Form, the Nous, the Logos, the Λόγος, the Word is flesh - embodied in a material human form in the fallen world. That which could previously only be read in abstract words can now be seen empirically. The Incarnation isn't an idol. It is what Logos objectively looks like. Or as He put it:
That's the basic theological justification for images - they are representations of the material form of the Incarnate God that He chose to assume. It'd obviously way more complicated than that, but the various disputes over art throughout the history of Christianity revolve around the friction between Old Testament iconoclasm and the visible Logos.
Augustus as Jupiter Capitolinus, 45-50 AD, head by Filippo Tagliolini, late 18th century, Naples, National Archaeological Museum
Setting that aside for the moment, there is another, practical problem as well. Christianity spread in a Greco-Roman world filled with visual art, but the Classical concept of the idealized figure as analogy for higher order doesn't work. Jesus isn't a generalized allegory. He is a specific individual - in fact it is the specific nature of His humanity that lets Him bridge the ontological gap in a real way. In fact, the Classical fixation on nude bodies - pleasures of the flesh in general - were a problem for Christian ethics, at least until the Renaissance.
Christian art began with the question of how to represent Jesus, but that's a question for next time. This has been a long one, but hopefully clears up the transition from Classical to Christian thinking. It is important to understand how this fit together - what we can know and how we can know it - to understand the transition from the ancient world to the West. Next time we'll get into the art.
Christ as Sol Invictus, mid 3rd century mosaic from the Tomb of the Julii under St. Peter's, Vatican
Jesus as the Good Shepherd, 3rd century, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome
Traditio Legis (Christ as Law Giver), Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus d. 359, Museo Storico del Tesoro della Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican
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