Alchemy and art
Alchemy and art are completely intertwined. Alchemy is still a secret science, where the true alchemists erased their tracks and made an effort to draw small keys in a tangled set of signals and instructions, so complex and indecipherable that we can ignore that they did it that way on purpose.
An ancient legend says that after the universal flood, the Tower of Babel was created seeking to collect all the wisdom so that it would not be lost again, but seeing the possible disaster that was to come, a group of wise men separated from the Tower of Babel and agreed invent “art”.
Before the art was solid and clear, the keys of mathematics, astrology and the secrets of knowledge that man possessed, were included in the same art. There was no doubt that from Beethoven to Pythagoras, from Euricles to Velazquez, they knew the secrets of sacred geometry, ancient architecture, astrology, and like many others, they mixed this knowledge in their creations.
It is no coincidence that in almost all musical, pictorial, architectural, etc., and ancient works, we find the golden ratio, or strange symbols and keys that we still do not know today.
It seems that art was not mere entertainment, but a vehicle to hide the wisdom that could not be written in any book. In small irregularities, in small imbalances, in ornaments, details, pieces that apparently do not fit together in ancient works of art, we find authentic alchemist symbols.
And the same alchemy itself, alchemy texts, seem authentic challenges to logic and reason. No matter how we read them, they imply that whoever wrote it did not want anyone to understand it. And again we see the same symbols, keys, that are repeated, both in texts and in art.
So we synthesize those symbols, and we can get something, something beyond the incomprehensible.
Antonio García Calvente carried out an in-depth study of alchemy, from Jung to the ancient texts still in Latin. He devoted a large part of his life to this study, and collected a lot of information that he hardly shared with anyone.
Alchemical symbols
Alchemical symbols are keys to understanding a certain process of transformation. They are stellar, astrological, mathematical symbols.
Some of these symbols will help us understand a process. Speaking clearly of the phases of it.
Others will help us understand each of the elements, what it means, what it is.
Symbolic art
The abstraction of the symbols, the origin of each one of them and their path, have to be felt.
The symbols do not show a reality, they point to something, they are an indication. But not an indication of the conscious, but of the unconscious. Many symbols sleep in ancestral memory, they go beyond small human lives, many symbols, such as dream symbols, are universal and timeless. Working on these symbols awakens something, they evoke something, something out of control, ancient, internal, deep.
Mermaid and minotaur
Mermaid and minotaur are two key symbols for Antonio, they represent the Sun and the Moon, daylight and night light.
The mermaid is the measurer of worlds, she lives in the water and on the land, she lives in the depths of each one, she points out the secret, tempting, beautiful and dangerous.
The minotaur is the force, it is the sun, the will, but a wild and uncontrolled force, a bright but blinding light. They are desires, power and energy even without taming.
Both signal the beginning of change, of transformation, key aspects of our mind that have to be discovered and understood.