The Fool on the Hill: Repression and the Anonymous Candelabra

On the 30th of July, the Anonymous Candelabra and I made an image. Our friend Delilah photographed it, but we made it. And although it's in many ways imperfect, I'm enormously pleased with it: there is so much semiotic content in it in so many layers, and it says so much of what I wanted it to say.

The first thing is a bit meta, and you can't immediately see it in the image (although when I tell you about it you will probably pick out the signs). It is this: the image is a fake. I prepared for this photograph in a hurry, because the people who could help me with it were present; and consequently, I didn't tidy up the room carefully enough. In the photograph as it was taken, there's a very noticeable cat bowl immediately to the right of the Candelabra's head, and a very noticeable log basket immediately to my left.

More significantly, in the brief moment between my lighting the candle and sitting down in the seat, the candle had fallen squint. So the image as you see it is quite heavily edited — "photoshopped," in common parlance, although the tool used was actually The Gimp.

Next, I needed a large and impressive book to read. It represents a Bible, of course, and I have several Bibles, including a black bound King James' Version, which you'd think would be perfect. But the book I'm reading is actually my father's copy of Snorre Sturlasson's Heimskringla. Heimskringla itself is not a pagan text, but Sturlasson is the man who first wrote down the Prose Edda, which is the key text of Scandinavian and broader Germanic paganism.

I chose the Heimskringla for its size, not its content; but still, the choice of book, while not intentional, represents that very strong ambivalence to Christianity (and, explicitly to Protestantism) which, like the book itself, I inherited from my father.

The middle finger of my left hand is bandaged. I had slipped on a pile of loose stone the previous day, and, in falling, caught my finger on barbed wire. This references the injured smith — Weyland in Germanic paganism, Hephaestus in Greek, but actually going much further back in mythology (Ilmarinen, the smith of the Kalevala, may be related).

The photograph was taken by available light, from that one, single candle. That meant, of course, that like proper Victorians, we had to keep very still during a long exposure. That enforced, frozen, stillness is also, it seems to me, a note in the symbolic symphony.

Finally, the Candelabra's actual, real life, personal name literally means 'light', and that, actually, is the core of the whole image.

So that's meta-symbolism, if you like; symbolism that is present in the image, but neither intentional nor immediately apparent; that's the meta-symbolism which I didn't intend, but looking at it after the event, saw in the image. But there's more meta-symbolism that I didn't see, and I'm grateful to Reiver Scott for pointing these next two elements out.

Firstly, high in the apex of my roof, over my bed, is a carving in oak of the Green Man, an explicitly male forest god and fertility deity, which, though clearly pagan, is often found in medieval Christian churches. I inherited the carving from my mother, who practiced a fairly devout mystical Christianity throughout her life, and chose to die a Catholic. The Green Man is not immediately visible in the image, but he is there, right in the centre at the very top, looking down on the scene.

But secondly, the sheet which I hung behind the Candelabra to provide a relatively neutral backdrop can be interpreted as a shroud, a symbol of death.

So, to what you can see, what I planned that you should see: the image shows a man — played by me — dressed in dark, formal clothes, and with his hair scraped back, reading a book by candle light in a darkened room.

In order to be able to read, he turns his back on the light, literally putting it behind him.

The light — life, truth, joy, knowledge, enlightenment — streams from the woman: she is giving birth to it, literally from her cunt. And he (I) turns his (my) back on her, turns his back on her soft, glowing, warm, beautiful, willing flesh to read instead from a cold dusty tome.

This is fear and rejection. It is fear and rejection of experience, of direct interaction with the beauty and colour and warmth and messiness of the world for the dark geometric shapes of cold black letters on the white page.

All that he seeks — the miracle of creation itself, the creation of life, warmth, joy, companionship, love — is there within reach of his arm. And the man turns his back on it, rejects it, preferring ancient, dusty knowledge. Because he fears joy.

Interpreted as tarot, there are two major symbols here: the Magician, and the Maiden. The maiden is inverted. I am not a student of the tarot, but I'd be interested to know from those who are how they would interpret it.

There are a number of other pictures from this session which are also precious to me. There's a picture which xDelilah took while we were preparing, in which we are not standing still, and consequently appear in the available light photography as ephemeral, ghostly presences; there's a picture taken in which I'm out of the frame, showing just the Candelabra, her candle already lit; there's a picture in which I'm tying the Candelabra's second foot to the beam, while she stands on her hands with a characteristically comical look on her face; there's one taken using the camera's flash.

What I love about all these pictures, beyond the iconography, is that they all show how extraordinarily beautiful my muse is; beauty I always see, and that I'm not always sure that she does. Beauty in form, of course, but also beauty in spirit; in courage, in generosity, in mischief. It shines out of her, always, as in the picture.

Finally, there's this very fine sonnet which my friend Líusaidh wrote about the picture, which I feel captures what I was trying to achieve perfectly.

The Parson reads from Peter or from Paul Or is it Knox a soundin' his alarum Women are bad apples, one and all So sayeth the Book of Malus Malificarum But never Latin puns would pass his lips For Papists kneel at Jezebel's fair throne— Rather, he takes in parsimonious sips His Holy Writ in form of tooth or tome.

What faith or feeling rises from a gospel —cold as shrouds on which he stains projection? Ware the purist, Lust's faithful, true apostle The graven image is his faith's erection. What bathes his study with illumination? Only the Goddess. The hole of all creation.


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