Guanyin holds a particular fascination in the West as an Asian Virgin Mary. Like Mary, she is a goddess of mercy and compassion (and also fertility and vegetarianism among other things). Originally, in India, Guanyin was a “male” bodhisattva (named Avalokiteśvara), who became a Buddha, then stepped down to stay

Saint Dominic's experience drinking the Virgin Mary's breast milk made its way into alchemical illustrated manuscripts like the Aurora Consurgens ("Dawn Rising"), from the 1420's. This is one of the most unusual works I come across. Once attributed to Thomas Aquinas, now

* 150 Protoevangelium of James (Gospel of James) * 325 First Council of Nicaea * 330 Foundation of the city of Constantinople * 410 Rome sacked by the Visigoths (and St. Augustine begins The City of God) * 430 Death of St. Augustine of Hippo * 431 Council of Ephesus (Nestorius exiled 4 years later) * 451

The Cathars inspire rapturous histories nowadays and some of it is deserved. Why shouldn't reincarnation be more meaningful than eternal damnation and Original Sin? But the reality is: they have left no churches, no monuments, no writings. The most striking memento they have left us is their wonderful

Diva collides the images of Greek mythology with Paris in the 80s, filtered through American film styles. A world in which Classical Greek and Catholic symbolism co-exist in its blue dreamscapes. Below are the messenger boy Jules and Alba. I love this movie. In the story, two audio cassettes become

A dead man comes back to life and his mother remains a virgin... Two miracles! Add to that the astonishing idea that God had a child... Is this Egypt? It has been said that Horus was born posthumously and in a virgin birth to his mother Isis. Of course, it

Hermes (the Roman Mercury) was the messenger of the gods, the bringer of dreams and the final journey to death. As the patron saint of art and commerce, he was worshipped by athletes and herdsmen, magicians and mystics, poets, travelers, liars and thieves. And he was associated with sex... Above

Roman legions may have marched under their Eagles, but for Byzantine armies and navies it was the icons of the Virgin Mary that inspired them. They took two main forms. Hodegetria refers to icons of the Virgin Mary pointing to the Christ child (it literally means "She who shows

There is a growing literature about the cycles women go through in life, from maiden to mother to crone, just like the waxing of the moon, to the full moon, to the waning moon. Secular feminism has reached back to embrace pagan thinking, pointing out how Monotheism has sidelined women.

Not to take anything away from Dylan, but the lyrics of Jimi Hendrix always inspired me more - he had an intuitive understanding of alchemical symbols and astrology (he believed in both). Like all great poets he could project a private space somehow outside of time. Curiously, I read later

* 1095 Pope Urban II preaches the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont (the massacre of Jews in Mainz and other cities follows...) * 1099 Capture of Jerusalem and massacre of its Muslim inhabitants * 1140-44 St. Denis Cathedral * 1147 Second Crusade begins (till 1149) * 1153 Death of St. Bernard of Clairvaux

The Gospel of James (written around 150-175 AD) revealed details about the Virgin Mary's life, such as her childhood and Jesus' conception, for the first time (protoevangelium means "first gospel."). It drove many of the early church fathers like Jerome crazy, but it ended up

Sacred Geometry is the notion that the divine can be found in art, music, landscapes, pretty much anything. In architecture and astronomy the metaphors are usually horizontal or numerical in nature, often reflecting the idea that the earth below could reflect the heavens above: pagan circles (the Sun and Moon)

Arguably the most brilliant poem ever written about aging, W.B. Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium (written 1926-27) is about sailing off into eternity. Yeats died in 1939. I deliberately chose the image below not from Byzantium itself, because Byzantium is a state of mind. To attempt to identify its

Dalí was surely the greatest painter of dreams. The image below was one of his studies for Hitchcock's Spellbound in 1944. Is blue the color of dreams? To see how it was used in the film, click here and look at the back of the image. Up top

Renaissance alchemists experimented with semen and menstrual blood in the hopes of producing the Philosopher's Stone. Three of the most famous certainly did: Nicholas Flamel (1330-1418) in France and John Dee (1527-1608) and Edward Kelley (1555-1597) in England relied on their wives for the raw materials. It had

The Church of St Mary of Blachernae (Panagia Blachernitissa) was the most important sanctuary of the Virgin Mary (the Theotokos) in Byzantine times. It was built by the Virgin Empress Pulcheria in the 450’s on the site of a sacred spring. Justinian expanded and remodeled it. Inside, it may

The Virgin Mary assumed many of the attributes once assigned to Aphrodite and the ancient pagan goddesses - not the nudity or the sexuality of course, but the idea of being borne in the sea foam. Around the year 400 St. Jerome wrote that Mary was "stilla maris,"

The branding, the symbol of shame, which resembles the anti-Semitism and homophobia of the Nazis, the Scarlet Letter of Hawthorne's adultress... Former and repentant Cathars and even those related to them were forced by the Inquisition to wear the Yellow Cross to acknowledge their heresy, for the Cathars

To paraphrase Voltaire, if the Virgin Mary had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent her, to compensate for Christianity’s male bias. Her house - shown above - was "found" at Ephesus, Turkey (Efes in Turkish) late in the 19th century, but it's

There are hundreds of Dark Madonnas (Virgin Marys) all over Catholic Europe, from Portugal to Poland, and a debate rages to this day about why they are so clearly Black. Some see them as echoes of a pre-Christian and pagan era, as if she is an incarnation of the Egyptian

If religious architecture evokes the pathway to and from Heaven, or down to Hell, there are lots of stories and paintings about it too: Jacob's Ladder, angels visiting earth (Genesis 28), praying monks climbing a ladder toward Jesus and the light (here), distant clouds in the sky seen

The Emerald Tablet (or Tabula Smaragdina) is the alchemists' Bible and, brief though it is, it is allusive and magical. No wonder it inspired medieval alchemists... I will tell you a thing that is without falsehood and most certain. That which is above is like that which is below,

The Philosopher's Stone entered western European alchemy from the Arab and Islamic world, where the Black Stone of Mecca was held sacred. The Philosopher's Stone seems like a secular attempt to find spiritual values in precious stones in much the same way the Church encouraged relics