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THE ADORATION OF PAN
(1979)
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PRIMORDIAL
MOTHER
1985
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It has been noted that the word ‘matter’ used by Aristotle relates to ‘materia’ and ‘Mater’ - it is ‘the Mother’ of elements. With this realization, we return full circle, to Johfra’s image of the Primordial Mother - she who bears the spiralling cosmos in the matrix of her womb. The ‘matter’ that makes up the entire universe is nourished and brought forth from the body of the Primordial Mother. (Returning to ancient Greek terminology, some scientists and philosophers have come to think of matter and the earth as Gaia once more.)
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UNIO MYSTICA (1973)
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In Johfra’s triptych of the Unio Mystica we have a magnificent vision of the One and the Many - how the many symbols of different traditions may all arise from the same transcendent source - the Hermetic ‘One’. The emphasis is decidedly in favour of unity: Unio or ‘the One’. In The Adoration of Pan triptych, this vision of the One and the Many is manifest once more, except now, greater emphasis is placed on the Many, as the four elements and their swirling mass of figures who seek their centre in Pan, ‘the All’.
We are reminded, finally, of a fragment from Heraclitus. In one of his more mysterious utterances, he has said, “When you have listened, not to me, but to my utterance, it is wise to agree that All things are One.” (fragment 50) The final words in Greek are ‘En panta’ and can mean either ‘All are one’ or ‘the One is all’. The question has been debated for centuries.
In Johfra’s Hermetic image of ‘the One’ in Unio Mystica and his Pantheist image of ‘the All’ in The Adoration of Pan, we have two conflicting but equally magnificent expressions of this eternal enigma.
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END
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