:: 2012 :: 100cm x 100cm in four 50cm panels :: Acrylics, Inks & Markers on Canvas ::
From within the ineffable fire of the Anaktorn emerges Thea, Goddess as Visionary Event, the culmination of the Eleusinian experience. Simultaneously Demeter and Persephone combined as Kore, she also bears the marks of Brimo 'Terrifying' and Saisara 'the Grinning One', Thracian and Helladic epithets respectively of Persephone at Eleusis.
At the crescendo of the Holy Night, when the initiates had fasted, danced and performed rituals for nine days - and we daresay had drunk of the kykeon several times since crossing the threshold of the Propylaia - the Hierophant lit the beacon fire and sounded out the gong, its deafening sound confounding the initiates' senses yet further until the flames become her body, the sound waves become her numinous Underworld attendants dancing around her fertile form.
And the cry is heard: "Behold! The Mistress has brought forth a Holy Boy! Brimo has given birth to Brimos, namely the Strong One to the Strong One!" -
In this moment, in the minds of the initiates, all the shapeshifting, all that is aporrheton, unrepeatable, all the experience of the last nine days collapses...
into a pristine moment of One...
with She...
A wordless jewelled moment, she floats before.
A worldless jewel, she grants life beyond.
We see then Thea as both Brimo and Saisara, awesome Life-Giver and terrifying Death-Brigner enfolded as one visionary event which breaks all boundaries in the minds of the initiates. In her left hand she bears Brimos, simultaneously and numinously experienced as Iacchos-Dionysos-Hermes-Pl outon-Triptolemos. Her right hand is raised in a gesture of no fear, even as the wild snakes of her hair reach out to clasp her fingers. Her vagina is displayed openly, in uncompromising sexuality, but the form of her body is little more than a portal into the arrheton, the sacred unifying experience and moment of rebirth for the initiate, for which no veil of secrecy was needed, for no words and no images exist to explicate the Godhead...
