Thoth iconography - Hanged Man

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Nemia
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Thoth iconography - Hanged Man

Post by Nemia »

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In order to see where in my opinion inspiration for this image came from, we have to turn the Hanged Man around. Sorry for the sacrilege.

You all know the Vitruvian Man in one version, Leonardo da Vinci's. But quite a lot of artists have illustrated the principle explained by Vitruvius. One of them is the Italian painter Cesariano.

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I think there can be no doubt that Harris took a good look at this illustration when she created the Hanged Man. Let's see them side by side.

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The geometrical grids fit together. Even the half circles appear in Harris' composition; she moved them to the top and bottom.

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Cesariano separated the different positions of the "human in square" and "human in circle" that make up Vitruvius' theory into two illustrations. Harris may have taken the arms from one picture, the legs and grid from the other.

I made some years ago a little experiment and overlaid one image with the other.

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The famous "weird foot" of the Hanged Man is another indication that Harris worked here from a model and ran into problems when she changed the position of the foot. It doesn't really fit the rest of the image.

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Serpentwand
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Re: Thoth iconography - Hanged Man

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Drawn regarding the enjoyment of sensual / sexual pleasure without climax - I’m currently concerned with how to increase my happiness without burning out.

It looks like very good advice - do the opposite of what people normally do, arrange for some form of external stimulation then just relax and surrender to it, let the energy flow as it will without resistance.

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Re: Thoth iconography - Hanged Man

Post by Serpentwand »

That idea is working nicely so far but I’ve just drawn the card for another question. I’m planning to start reading my 6 volume book The Gallery of Geography from 1889 so it provided a good excuse to draw a card. :icon_e_wink: In this case the phrase “You see the world with other eyes” jumps out - it was a very different world back then and one I find more exotic and interesting than what we have now. :icon_cool:

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Re: Thoth iconography - Hanged Man

Post by Serpentwand »

Maybe the eyes of Peter McGlashan who wrote his name and house name in the book. I’ve just found the house he lived in on the web, now a luxury 10 bedroom hotel, and had a good look inside as it’s been for sale since January. It would have been a lovely house to sit and read the book in looking out at the forested hills. :thumbup:

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