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| "Demiurge With Map Egg" 2016 |
“In the Mysteries, the Universal Egg was likened to an egg which the Cosmic Goose had laid in space.”
— Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
“What the Greeks and Gnostics called the ‘Demiurge’ is a Universal Intelligence that fashions our world. One way to understand the Demiurge is to think of it as the World Soul.” — Tom Montalk
In many ways “Demiurge With Map Egg” is an introduction piece for my future series of stitched maps.
I refer to the egg form as a ‘map egg’ because each of the six delineated sections of the egg contain images that correspond to a separate map that will be in the new series. The egg works both as a specific metaphor - within it are the embryos of finished work - and as a more general symbol of Universal Egg, described in the book ‘The Secret Teachings of All Ages’: “in whose transparent depths creation exists…the perfect image of all terrestrial activity.”
The swing-set depicted in the central section also works on two levels. It will be one of the images in a map entitled ‘Memory Map’ and it refers to an actual swing-set from my childhood that evokes strong memories and associations. As a simple visual icon the swing-set, with its two side by side swings, also represents the duality of the manifest world: an individual ego identity and the named and defined world surrounding it.
In researching the Cosmic Egg, I came across the idea of the demiurge. Plato described it as a subordinate deity who fashions the sensible world in the light of eternal ideas. To the Gnostics, the demiurge is the immortal mortal, responsible for our physical existence (and the suffering we must go through in connection with it) by fabricating the world. Both of these definitions worked well with my intention for the figure in the piece to be a larger than life mythological character who’s inextricably linked with the egg form.