Aldus sprak....

TedxUtrecht : talk about shocking images and art about death and the sacred

 

List of topics I can talk about…..

The ugly in art and image

Beauty

Crisis of beauty in art and imagery

Death in art and image : representations of death

Evil

The impossible in art and literature

The monstruous

Excitement, suspense and human relations : Hitchcock and Hopper

The inhuman in art and culture

The sublime

The abject (Kristeva, Bataille)

Erotism

Georges Bataille

David Lynch : Lost highway, madness and film noir

Transgression (G. Bataille) in culture, art and imagery

Voyeurism in culture, voyeurism and surveillance-society

The look and theatrical staging in western culture : the world as a theatre spectacle

The look and power

The look in western culture : genealogical approach (M. Foucault)

Death and the sacred through a comparative study of 'Death of Marat' (David) and photographs of Che Guevara (Alborta and Korda)

Disgust: In culture, art/aesthetics

Death

Symbols of death : skull, corpse, skeletons, photographs of ancestors

Memento mori and Vanitas : human vulnerability, frailty in art and imagery

Horror

The Corpse as an experience of death and as an element of art and popular culture

Cannibalism : anthropological and philosophical, in popular image (movies)

Violence and art/imagery

Holocaust and representation in art and popular culture

Genocide and art

Death and heroism in art: making sacred

The sacred in art : past and present

Religion and violence

The female nude from Renaissance to impressionism to Madame Edwarda (G. Bataille)

(Re)presentations of the body in art and popular culture

What is an image?

…………

…and a lot of other disturbing and alienating topics from a historical and philosophical point of view.

Can be brought in Dutch, English or French.

If you have a topic in mind that is not in this list but touches on some items in the list….you can always contact me and ask : [email protected]

Into the Dark Night of the Soul: Thoughts on the Dying of God and Death of God in Western Culture

Surely God died in more ways than one in our western culture. It would make a far too extensive obituary for me to consider all kinds of ‘ars moriendi’ here in the case of the Supreme Being. So I will focus this text on the ‘suicidal’ aspect that Christianity carries in its womb like a poisonous apple waiting to be bitten and that ultimately seamed to let the bell toll for the Christian God: negation, the negative.[1] I know that this text doesn’t give a full and complete account, maybe not even on my chosen perspective. But then again all texts are fundamentally incomplete.

What does this dying of God look like? It is in any case not a sudden, violent death. It appears in stages from this account (though it still remains but one possible account). First I will consider the spiritual turning away from the outer experience towards the inner experience in Christian thinking during the Middle Ages. Then I will focus more extensively on the turning point of the late Middle Ages where negative theology through nominalism and the popularity of mysticism, combined with the Black Death set the tone for the crisis of spiritual experience and religion in the later modern period (in Dutch: Moderne Tijden/Nieuwe Tijden). Next stop is a focus on this modern period and the working of the negative/negation from Protestantism to the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Finally this text wil consider the death of God. Nietzsche gave western man various perspectives on the death of God (like this text he claims that there is no one way of putting it…). I will contrast two perspectives on the death of God : Friedrich Nietzsche (who has by himself more than one view)  and Georges Bataille (who criticizes the Nietzschean perspective ).

1)      The problem of ‘emptiness’: avoiding the void

 In his book on evil R. Safranski points to the crucial role that disobedience and transgression play in the face of divine prohibition (story of Adam and Eve). The liberty of man begins with saying ‘no’. Like the ‘no’ of Caesar in the ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ means the beginning of the liberation of apes. And there is even more to it than that, he suggests. For man to comprehend the command to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, he needs to already have knowledge of the difference between good and bad in advance.  So if the God of Christianity wanted man to be free, he gave him the power of negation in advance to obtain freedom through acts of negation, transgression (i.e. negation of the command, prohibition or rule). Freedom has the appearance of a synthetic outcome of a Hegelian dialectic between the prohibition/rule (thesis) and its negation (antithesis) or transgression. This because both concepts (prohibition and transgression) are inherent in the notion of freedom and it fully depends on both notions.

But if the Christian God has given man the power to be free, the following spectacle makes clear that this is according to Christianity itself a poisonous apple. The aspect of negation in its transgression of prohibitions lays bare an emptiness, a void. That wich Sartre would call a ‘néant’. Man can bring a ‘nothing’ into this world by saying ‘no’, by using the power of negation given to him. Apparently it scares the living daylights out of God for he throws Adam and Eve out of paradise. This learns that according to Christianity this gift of negation is no longer a blessing. Its gift is the fact that from now on man will be constantly chasing himself from paradises (ones given to him as well as created by him). No rest…perpetual homelessness. This aspect of man (negation, transgression) is forever the accursed share. ‘La part maudite’ as Georges Bataille put it. And from the beginning woman is blamed for opening up this void, this emptiness of negation in man. She is linked to transgression and exces . Setting her on a long journey through Christian thought of evil.

When we look closely at the religious practice and spiritual experience of the early Middle Ages we see a similar pattern. In the 4^th and 5^th century the phenomenon of hermits took flight. In the Egyptian desert they took shelter in caves to withdraw themselves from ordinary life. To live life without minding the useful, without the burden of everyday necessities and trivialities. Just contemplating their faith. This way ‘out of the world’ was considered too dangerous by one of those hermits: Benedictus (or is it Benedict?) of Nursia. He considered the dangers of shallowness of emptiness in ‘not doing anything’. So he wrote down rules for monks (hermits that lived together in ‘claustri’ as remote places) in cloisters. These rules are typical for the spiritual experience of the early Middle Ages. Faith and spiritual experience are things that need to be trained by outward experience (labour, reciting prayers,…). And the meaning of the act lies in the fulfilling of the act. Saying the prayer or doing the act is the worship. It is enough. When man is busy his thoughts can’t linger off into idleness. This trains the outward posture of the religious believer (‘habitus’). Soon the whole of Europe was covered with monasteries applying this rule of Benedictus.

2)      Religious experience in the Middle Ages: from inward experience to resurfacing of the void

A)     Inner religious experience

Around the 11^th century this outward orientated spiritual practice changed. The accent shifted from the outward practice to the inner ‘habitus’, the inner state of the soul. This shift is especially clear in the writings of Bernardus of Clairvaux. It was from now on not enough for the believer to perform the ritual. His thought had to find union with God, with his tender mercy and love. This gave rise to all sorts of mystical practices and writings in the later Middle Ages. Whereby the poignant hard times of the 14^th and 15^th century made people want to look for God on the inside, in their heart, and search unity with God in a sort of ecstatic state. This means that from the 11^th century on spiritual practice took on a much more emotional, inward form compared to the first part of the Middle Ages.

This evolution coincided with the plague of the Black Death in Europe. This was not only a social crisis, but also a religious and spiritual one. How could God be good and all powerful and the principle of creation if he unleashed this disease on all humanity? The result was a rethinking of God. This new position of God was exemplified in nominalism.

B)      Nominalism: the resurfacing of the negative

Nominalism revitalized the negative or negation by adjusting the position of God through negative theology. And here the negative arose once again from Christianity to let Christianity bite its own poisonous apple. For God, according to nominalism, was the Supreme Being. And it was for man impossible to know this Being its will. Unknowable, ungraspable, unpredictable….the only possible statements on God were the negative ones. So for the believer all that remained was a question of putting your faith and confidence in an unreachable God that remained quite a mystery for imperfect mankind. This ‘negation’ in theology put God on great distance of mankind. He was literally in absolute transcendence of mankind. This made the inward turn of the spiritual experience all the more pressing. Since God was a mystery and nature didn’t give a direct intelligible account of his presence and work, the best that people could do was to focus on the inner life and cultivate a posture that modeled itself on Christ (hence the popularity of Thomas a Kempis’ ‘Imitatio Christi’ in the late Middle Ages). People sought inner unity with God, sometimes through ecstatic mysticism that tried to elevate the soul to spiritual unity with God. God was becoming quite distant, certainly compared to the view before the Black Death that looked at creation as the trace of God in which he was very near to man. Since Gods plan with man became an increasingly complicated puzzle after the crisis of the Black Death, man started to turn towards the here and now. Emphasizing the need to ‘make the best of it’ in the here and now. This lay the foundation for the Renaissance and for utopian modern thought. The idea took form that man had to just bite the apple and shape for himself the paradise on earth from which he was chased by God for his disobedience, his capacity to open up the negative by saying ‘no’ to the law.

3)      The birth of the Modern Age: individualism and science as burials of the negative, of the void

Martin Luther was absolutely terrified by the posture of a strict, judging God that was omnipresent in his days. One of the most widely spread themes of painting in the late Middle Ages was the Final Judgment. This, combined with travelling preachers of penitence that passed from town to town created a climate wherein anxiety for the soul could flourish. Martin Luther turned inward to find a personal relation with God. A God that he conceived in terms of late medieval nominalism. Each individual believer needs only to believe to be redeemed (Pauls letter to the Romans) in a God that is beyond comprehension of man. God is in this way a mystery to the mind of man. So the view of the distant God was now increasingly becoming combined with upcoming modern individualism.

This individualism, combined with the growing attention for the improvability of the ‘here and now’ (since Gods creationplan looked quite a mystery or puzzle) fueled the aspirations and ascent of the sciences. Creating a scientific revolution in the 17^th century (Galilei, Newton). Thus bringing the utopian thought to greater hights. ‘Paradise now’ seemed attainable, especially in the ‘New World’ of the Americas where man could start from scratch to fill the ‘empty’ space with thoughts of paradisiacal civilization. When we look at these utopian constructions they betray the same anxiety of the emptiness that man can open up. Labour, calculation, use, possession,….all elements central to utopian construction, took on the secular form of avoiding the void. They are mans attempts for a negation of the negative, inspired by Christian thoughts on the dangers of idleness.

4) The retirement of the old God of Christianity

But just when things were going so well scientifically for man, the thought crept in that this far away and unknowable God whose work in the creation can’t clearly be grasped or understood wasn’t really needed any more. Deism stated that God was the Supreme Being and Creator, but has now retired from work. Leaving his creation for man to handle. This was a new transformation of the negative inherent in Christianity. The apple had fallen from the Godtree and had rolled pretty far from its root. From this position on it was a small step to take to abolish God from the universe completely. To wipe the slate clean with a sponge entirely. No more focal point for man. From then on atheism surfaced as Christianity’s ultimate negation. But it is an atheism that could only surface over time by the evolution of the negative principle that was inherent in Christianity’s conception of creation and man from the beginning and so in Christianity as a whole.

Though the first atheïst thoughts began to emerge during the 18th century, it was only during the 19th century that atheïsm started to obtain more succes in society. During the French Revolution another interesting phenomenon occured. When dismissing with religion and the traditional God of Christianity, Maximilian Robespierre tried to fill in the gap, the void with a replacement. There was the creation of 'la Déesse Raison' (the goddess of Reason) to which a grand ceremony was held in Paris. All this to close the empty space that God had left, once abolished. Western culture again confirmed its 'horror vacui' (anxiety or horror for the empty space).

Only at the end of the 19th century Friedrich Nietzsche staged the 'death of God' in various settings/perspectives. Christianity's own negative force/principle seemed to turn against itself in a decisive manner.

5) The Death of God: Friedrich Nietzsche versus Georges Bataille

Nietzsche staged various scènes of the death of God and his dying in western culture. It would take this text to far to discuss them all. But in general he considered the death of God as the beginning of nihilism in Christianity. The death of God left a vacuum in Christianity. The place of God was now empty. The 'higher people' (phrase used in 'Thus spoke Zarathustra') morn the loss of God. They still cling to the remnants of their religion. They search for the shadows of God in the caves. This is for Nietzsche not the way to overcome nihilism. For Nietzsche nihilism must be overcome by the 'Übermensch'. This is the type of man that is capable of saying 'yes' to his destiny. He lives by 'amor fati' (love of destiny) and takes the world as it is, as his playground for the spectacle of life. To Bataille Nietzsche filled the void that the death of God opened up with the 'Übermensch' as a kind of ideal. Georges Bataille stated that he wrote his texts partially to keep open the void that the death of God left behind in western culture. The death of God for Nietzsche and Bataille refers to the death of the old God. But is also means an attempt to regain the sacred from reason. So the death of God is in a sense also a sacrifice of reason. It is the last sacred cruelty that man inflicts on himself: sacrifizing himself as God to the emptiness and nothingness. To Georges Bataille with the death of God man enters not a humanist universe, but an empty space. An empty space in which he can no longer find or trust in God. But he can no longer find or trust in man neither. Like the mystic, man is in a 'dark night of the soul'. Bataille noticed in this void or emptiness that was opened up by the death of God a new, modern form of the sacred. But Bataille goes even further. It is not we that killed of God. God exists in the form of a sacrifice, an unconditional gift of himself. He is 'nothing'. He says 'nothing'. He is absent. Because in this sense God is nothing more than emptiness as a borderexperience, God is lowered down and becomes human. God and man share the lowness, a state of being scandalized, of loss of self. This is the true communication of the sacred according to Bataille. A revealing and rethinking of the force of the negation and negative from the root of Christianity and the Christian God itself.

 

---

[1] I draw inspiration from the readings on the subject of ‘evil’ with a readinggroup of pupils in high school, my own readings on the evolution of Christian thought, my readings of the work of Georges Bataille (who also devotes attention to mysticism and John of the Cross and is, to me, the most radical thinker of emptiness and void) and Friedrich Nietzsche, from the reading of Derrida in a phd-readinggroup.

 

The sacred and the cupola: 'déchirure'

A very interesting text on the relation between the sacred and place is found in the work 'Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes' (Martin Heidegger). It is the part in which he discusses the appearing and appearance of the Greek temple. He tells us that a Greek temple depicts nothing. It just stands there, in the valley among the rocks. It hides and shows the deity at the same time. It does this by enclosing a space as the space wherein the deity is present. But it not only encloses this deity, not only locks this deity in an area, it lets this deity stand out in the surrounding society. The temple structures life and meaning in society as a central building to roads, relations of birth and death.

This way, in my eyes, a crucial aspect of the sacred is revealed and spelled out by Heidegger. The sacred is an aspect that comes into being by a 'setting apart', cutting it off from ordinary life and has, by this setting apart, an effect or impact on ordinary life. It becomes something untouchable, unreachable....and may be terrifying.....in a sense something sublime. The symbol of this 'setting apart' in art (the temple, a portrait,....) becomes the object of worship or an object of power and horror. It is this work of art that lets the sacred 'stand out' (ex-stare). In a sense this work of art becomes the embodiment of the sacred and in this sense participates in the sacred.

This 'setting apart' as a characteristic of the sacred is maybe very similar to the characterization of the image as 'le distinct' by Jean-Luc Nancy in his work 'Au fond des images'. The performance of the image is strongly linked by 'setting something apart'. It lets something shine through that lifts it out of the ordinary. In this way Nancy, like Didi-Huberman, speaks of the 'déchirure' (the crack) of the image though which a sacred ground shines through. (The 'déchirure'-theme has according to me something to do with Georges Batailles use of the word 'déchirure'. Although I am not yet certain in which way. Bataille uses the concept of 'déchirure' in the sense of an opening up of the profane, everyday life to the breaking in of the sacred order through the act of transgression)

If we now, according to these analysis, consider the sacred as a working process of something (space, person,....) that stands out and breaks in on our ordinary, profane lives....lets consider from a phenomenological aspect the experiencing of the cupola in churches (I discussed this earlier in my masterdissertation in philosophy: in the chapter "Scientific arenas and 'windows on the world' ").

                                                                                                                        Cupola of the Pantheon (Rome)

As well for the Romans (cupola of the Pantheon) as for the churches of the renaissance and baroque, cupolas formed an opening on the divine, the sacred. In modern churches of the renaissance and the baroqueperiod, this is symbolized by the metaphor of the heaven. Many churches and cupolas in these times decorated their cupola and ceiling with presentations of saints and celestial spectacles.

Lighted by the light that comes from the lantern on top, this easily associated this natural light to divine, sacred, celestial light. The inspiration obviously came from the cupola of the Pantheon (Rome).
The opening in the cupola was called 'oculus' and the opening in the cupolas of the renaissance and baroque took on the same name.

This pinned down the spectator in a position of being looked at by a divine, sacred light emanating from a sacred, divine 'oculus' or eye. It is a giving eye and light that, like the sun, spends his energy without expecting something back. This giving and expenditure of energy is on an anthropological level associated with the sacred in contrast to the accumulation, saving and capitalization of the profane order, according to Georges Bataille. The divine gives away....it does not pass his time with saving energy. It pins the spectator down on the floor of the church by unfolding an unbreachable distance between the spectator and the divine, sacred eye that looks back at the spectator from the divine, celestial place. It leaves, in this way, the spectator behind on the floor. Confronting him with his embodiment and with mortality, linked with that embodiment. But the gaze of the spectator is not only left behind, down on the floor. It is lifted, and especially baroque art does this, to the area of the sacred, transcendent light. This spectators gaze is fascinated by 'being-there'...where the transcendent, divine and sacred light originates from. It is the perception of a distance and the desire to abide as far and as long as possible in this distance. The desire to stand on the threshold of this divine, sacred light as a kind of Dionysian 'mask' of the sacred mystery is strong in the spectator. It is a gaze that wants to achieve a 'de-distancing' (M. Heidegger) of the distance that is given in any gaze. This corresponds to the decoration of the vault and the cupola. It is not just coloured or painted....it is painted over. By this I mean that it is the unfolding of a spectacle that is presentend towards the eye of the spectator. By watching this spectacle the viewer is lifted towards and in the sacred area. But still....for this effect to take place....he needs to be in a certain spot (especially in the church of San Ignazio in Rome this is made clear by defining the places from which the 'trompe l'oeil' can really have effect). It is a perpective effect that has its base in a specific placement of the spectator.

                                      Cupola of San Andrea della Valle (Rome)

So...in the end...it remains a dynamic of fascination and repulsion at the same time (in terms of place and in terms of content of the spectacle) of something that exceeds our comprehension in its magnitude, omnipotence...typical for the experience of the sublime.

            Cupola of San Pietro (Rome)

 

How does this phenomenological approach to the cupola come to terms with the analysis of the sacred by M. Heidegger and J.-L. Nancy? The natural light of the cupola is 'set apart' by giving it the context -offered by the decorations and the structure of the cupola- of 'divine' and 'sacred' light. This is what we could call the 'glissement du signifié' (Lacan, Derrida) where what indicates natural light comes to indicate divine light by a shifting of signifiers surrounding this light in ordinary circumstances. The light that is in this way 'set apart' becomes sacred light.We find Heideggers analysis of the enclosure and standing out of the sacred or divine in this cupola-experience too. We only see the light and the painted vault as Apollynian symbols of the sacred/divine. The Dionysian force and potential of the sacred only appears veiled to the spectator down on the floor. But on the other hand the light and the painted vault help the sacred to stand out. To 'shine' down to the spectators place on the floor...as an invitation to lift him from the ground to the celestial spere. It is a 'déchirure' or crack in the normal, profane order through which the sacred shines through as a sublime force that uses the image to 'set apart' things that otherwise wouldn't be seen as 'sacred'. The sacred must be thought of as a relationship in which the image plays a crucial part.

The paradox and problems of libertinism : John Wilmot (2nd Earl of Rochester) and the marquis de Sade

Libertinism is the conviction that one has to be liberated from moral restraints in order to be truly free. If one is to be a sovereign man one has to avoid being subjected to constraints, moral codes of any kind. This philosophical position gained much influence in the 17th and 18th century. I want to focus first on two important libertines and then sketch the paradox and problems of libertinism starting from those two examples.

John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), was a debauched man. In 1667 he married Elizabeth Mallet. Two years earlier he had tried to abduct her.

 

(opening of 'The Libertine': film on the life of  John Wilmot, played by J. Depp)

Charles II Stuart banned him from the court after he had written a satire on Charles II. This is the full text of his satire:

In th' isle of Britain, long since famous grown
For breeding the best cunts in Christendom,
There reigns, and oh! long may he reign and thrive,
The easiest King and best-bred man alive.
Him no ambition moves to get renown [5]
Like the French fool, that wanders up and down
Starving his people, hazarding his crown.
Peace is his aim, his gentleness is such,
And love he loves, for he loves fucking much.

    Nor are his high desires above his strength: [10]
His scepter and his prick are of a length;
And she may sway the one who plays with th' other,
And make him little wiser than his brother.
Poor Prince! thy prick, like thy buffoons at Court,
Will govern thee because it makes thee sport. [15]
'Tis sure the sauciest prick that e'er did swive,
The proudest, peremptoriest prick alive.
Though safety, law, religion, life lay on 't,
'Twould break through all to make its way to cunt.
Restless he rolls about from whore to whore, [20]
A merry monarch, scandalous and poor.

    To Carwell, the most dear of all his dears,
The best relief of his declining years,
Oft he bewails his fortune, and her fate:
To love so well, and be beloved so late. [25]
For though in her he settles well his tarse,
Yet his dull, graceless bollocks hang an arse.
This you'd believe, had I but time to tell ye
The pains it costs to poor, laborious Nelly,
Whilst she employs hands, fingers, mouth, and thighs, [30]
Ere she can raise the member she enjoys.
    All monarchs I hate, and the thrones they sit on,
    From the hector of France to the cully of Britain.

Although after a while his social position was restored, he fell in disfavor again later because of his lack of obedience to moral codes in his poetry and theatre plays.  Here a short view of 'Signor Dildo' from the movie 'The Libertine' (with Johnny Depp as John Wilmot). In this scene Charles II is played by John Malkovich.

 

He continued his life of debauchery staging as a quack physician 'doctor Bendo'. He 'specialized' in treating the infertility of his female patients, from his own supply as sperm donor. In the end syphilis caught up with him and ended his life at the age of 33.

 

The story of the marquis de Sade goes even further.....

 

(Quills: film on the marquis de Sade)

According to Georges Bataille, who wrote two studies in his book 'Eroticism' on the marquis de Sade, de Sade set out to create an ideal of a sovereign man that has no bounds or limitations in moral life. It is an ideal of absolute negation of others in order to fulfil ones own desires. This ideal, Bataille claims, has at its most extreme the negation and destruction of the self. The marquis strives for the lust to destroy, but not to be dependent on this lust. The ideal is to commit crimes against others as a total negation of the others and to do this in complete apathy. The apathy is necessary to avoid dependency of lust. From this point of view followed literary writings such as: 'Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu', 'Les Cent-Vingt journées de Sodome ou l'école du libertinage', 'la Philosophie dans le boudoir'.... 

So why is this project of libertinism so problematic, be it in the form of John Wilmot or the more violent version of de Sade? When we consider both forms, in the line of Georges Bataille, as transgressions of the moral order -which in a sense they definitely are-, then they can't reach their ideal fully. They will always be frustrated in as hegelian sense of the word. This because a transgression of the moral order will always be dependent on the existence of the moral code or order it tries to violate. In this way the libertine can never be fully free or liberated. He or she needs a moral code as an opposition. Each transgression can only be real in opposition to a world of normality which it nevers fully wants to destroy. For if it does this, it loses his reason of being. A negation, which every transgression in a sense is, is always a negation of something.

A second objection to the libertinism as philosophical stance is that the idea of a sovereign man, not bounded by law or moral codes, is a fiction. It is an exercise of reasoning by de Sade, according to Bataille, which may never be real. For if a sovereign man along the lines of de Sade's thinking would exist, he could not possibly claim for himself a kind of servitude by will. Hence he can't really be absolutely sovereign and in this sense free. This is the position of Bataille towards de Sade.

I would add to this criticism that libertinism gets caught up in a kind of social paradox. It claims in a sense that man can only be free if man loses all sense of law and moral order. But maybe it is just this package of laws and moral order that creates a space where man can be really free.

So libertinism seems to bring us in trouble. Maybe only being debauched is a possibility, one that Georges Bataille thought and lived through. Because being debauched admits the dependence on moral codes and lawful standards that can and sometimes must be breached.

 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: a small trip into iconology

This week me and my eldest daughter visited the new Harry Potter-movie: 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1'. In this movie there was a tale in the tale that sparked my attention.

Three brothers try to cross a river. To cross it safely they build a bridge. Death, who most of the time takes advantage of passengers drowning, is not pleased with this. He appears on the bridge and acts as if he is delighted. He asks the brothers to name a gift and he will provide this to them. The oldest is given a wand that can not be defeated in battle (the elder wand), the second brother asks for a way to bring someone back from the dead. He is given the resurrection stone. The third, more modest brother, just wants to stay out of Death's claws. So he asks for a cloak that makes its wearer invisible. This will help him to hide from Death himself. The story doesn't end well for the two oldest brothers. But the youngest can stay clear of Death until he has reached a fine,old age. Then he reveals himself by handing the cloak to his son and Death finds him. Together these three objects form the 'Deathly Hallows'. The person that possesses them will be the 'Master of Death'.

It really is a nice story that suddenly popped up in this movie (I didn't read the book). But this is not what sparked my attention. The sign of the 'Deathly Hallows' got me thinking of icons in western culture....

The symbol represents the three objects: the wand (vertical line), the resurrection stone (circle) and the cloak of invisibility (triangle). Why these three objects and why these specific abilities? That was the question that came to mind. Now I don't know if the following will make sense and have somewhat the status of an explanation, but I do think that it is not just a wild guess. There may be some truth in it and even some insight in our anthropological situation.

What do these three elements stand for in the story?

The wand represents absolute power

The resurrection stone represents immortality

The cloak represents invisibility and a kind of presence in absence

These three things seem to me attributes of God (omnipotent, immortal and an omnipresent absence).

Now some people may think: "What is he babbling about?" But this symbol (triangle of divinity) has a long history in western culture.

To begin with, it is an equilateral triangle. The kind of the tetraktys of the Greek mathematicians and philosophers. We find traces of its divine nature according to the Greeks in the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato (Timaeus...if I'm not mistaken). According to the Greeks the dimensions of reality could be mirrored in this tetraktys. You need the numbers 1,2,3 and 4 to draw this kind of triangle. But the number one stands for the point, the number two stands for the segment, the number three stand for the mathematical face, the number four indicates the volume. So....every aspect or dimension of reality is represented. This is why the Pythagoreans thought that the sum of all these numbers (1+2+3+4=10) delivered a sacred number that embodied the total harmony of the universe.

But that is not all.....

This tetraktys popped up in christan symbolism as the allseeing eye of God. It became a very popular theme in the 17th and the 18th century. 

It even became the symbol of the enlightened American revolutionary state with the Eye of Providence on top of the pyramid in a equilateral triangle.        

                                                                                    
So when this Harry Potter-movie introduced this symbol...it made sense. Because being godlike is the most exalting dream that humanity caresses. We all want a piece of the godlike status so we can continue this discontinue life that we have to spend separated from others in the constant reminder of the frailty of our human bodies. It goes deep down into the dreams and desires of human nature.