The Witch of Babylon

some interesting speculation about Michelangelo’s meaning here.”

“You mean the pop analysis,” Laurel said. “It’s not about God creating Adam at all but the reverse. Adam, who stands for mankind, imagining God in his own image.”

“Yes.” Phillip gave her a smile that verged on a leer. “But I believe that’s too simplistic. An American doctor, Frank Meshberger, said Michelangelo had, through the shape of God’s image and his swirling robes, meant to depict the labyrinthine spirals of the human brain. Renaissance painters knew what the brain looked like because they dissected cadavers. God’s head is presented to us from the left profile, and the left hemisphere is the active speech center. His head is juxtaposed over the arcuate fasciculus, or the locus of speech in the human brain.” He gestured dramatically toward the ceiling.

I had to stifle a laugh.

“So here’s my theory,” he continued. “While appearing to faithfully depict the Old Testament fairy tale about creation, Michelangelo’s seditious brush was really saying that the sacred ability of man to speak, to imagine, to think in symbols and abstract concepts, represented his emergence from the profane— the animal world. And because of this, divinity lies within humans, not outside them. Adam is reaching out for the power of the word, not to a mythical god.”

When he took a pause Laurel broke in. “Would a sixteenth-century sculptor have known something like that—where the center of speech was located?”

“Perhaps we don’t give the artist enough credit.” Phillip rubbed his fingers absentmindedly over his chin, warming up to the subject. “A jolly old subversive, that’s what I call Michelangelo.”

“That’s a stretch, Phillip,” I said. “All you have to do is look at the art. Adam’s figure is flaccid, languorous, as if he’s just coming alive. All the energy and force are in the portrayal of God. Michelangelo had his differences with the religious hierarchy, but he was still devout.”

“Look at the rest of the ceiling, then,” Phillip persisted. “What are pagan soothsayers doing in the midst of what is arguably the most famous Christian work of art? The Oracles. Astounding, really. A Libyan sibyl is placed next to the Creation panel. He’s put pagan priestesses on equal footing with Old Testament prophets.”

“You’re saying Michelangelo promoted paganism?” Laurel said.

“Precisely. The church ruthlessly attacked pagans, but ironically they’re still celebrated at the very heart of the church through the genius of Michelangelo.”

I’d had enough of his pontificating. “Listen, Phillip, Laurel and I have been discussing Durer’s woodcut— Melencolia 1. Can you shed some light on it for us? You’re the expert here.”

I’d struck the right nerve. He preened like a strutting peacock. “Ah, Melencolia 1, one of the three Meisterstiche—his master drawings. I’ve always felt Durer rivaled Leonardo. He was a remarkable painter as well, and mathematician. He wrote two books on geometry. In order to appreciate his work, you must see the man in his cultural context.”

Here we go again. Could he not just get to the point?

“Durer was tutored at the knee of his father, an acclaimed goldsmith, and became the foremost artist of woodcuts and copper-plate engraving. Six hundred years later no one has bested him. His father moved to Nuremberg in 1455.” He raised an eyebrow. “Stop me if you’ve heard all this; I do tend to run on.”

I motioned for him to continue.

“I said we need to be aware of the context. It’s not possible to fully appreciate Renaissance art without understanding Hermeticism, a Greek and Egyptian philosophy from Alexandria in the first century.”

Don’t tell me we’ll have to listen to two thousand years of history just to get some answers.

“Alexandria burst with life; it was, overwhelmingly, the beating heart of world scholarship. Cross-currents of many philosophies, religions, beliefs swirled through the city.”

He rubbed his hands as he gave us his little lecture. “Egyptian soothsayers, Jewish mystics, and Greek Platonists all gathered there. The priests of Cybele, who castrated themselves in honor of their goddess, paraded through the streets in bright orange cloaks, jewels, and long hair, clashing their cymbals and drums. Hermeticism first flourished in that city.”

“Hermeticism. That’s related to alchemy and transmutation, isn’t it?” I hoped this would give him a gentle nudge to move on to the topic we really wanted to hear about.

The man literally looked down his nose at me, his glasses sliding awkwardly to rest on its tip. “John, why is it you have such a penchant for reducing everything to the lowest common denominator? Alchemy is like an applied science, only one aspect of Hermeticism, and certainly not the most important.”

He pushed his glasses back and threw another indulgent smile Laurel’s way, then carried on. “One phrase is central to Hermetic thought: ‘That which is below is as that which is above, and that which is above is as that which is below, to perform the miracles of the one thing.’ That’s a translation of a key line in a tablet, The Secret of Hermes, from which all succeeding Hermetic works draw reference. The tablet was attributed to the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, but it’s thought now that it’s apocryphal. Like the Bible, it had numerous authors whose names may be fictitious. As above so below, as it came to be known, meant that all elements of reality were related and in harmony. The material and the spiritual were one. Patterns seen on earth mirrored those in the sky. Modern physics supports this view by showing us that the solar system is configured the same way as an atom. You’re familiar with the five-pointed star, the witch’s pentagram?”

“Sure.”

“In the upright position it signifies good, but when it’s turned upside down with its two apexes pointing skyward, the pentagram is considered the sign of the devil. But take either the Mesopotamian eight-pointed star or the six-point Seal of Solomon. Both look the same whether they’re turned upside down or not. They symbolize the phrase I just mentioned and stand for the harmony of all things.”

I’d had no idea Phillip was so knowledgeable on the subject. We’d veered a long way from Durer, but his knowledge of hermetic thought caught my attention. I toyed with the idea that he might actually be the unscrupulous American dealer Samuel had suspected, but that seemed a stretch.

Laurel, picking up on my discomfort, jumped in again. “Christianity separated the material world, the dark and sinful flesh, from the spiritual realm.”

Phillip patted her shoulder. “Yes, their goal was not to know nature but to transcend it. To make room for the Christian church, pagan beliefs had to be either subsumed or crushed. As the church gathered strength, Alexandria, the seat of ancient paganism, crumbled.”

He stopped rather abruptly and turned again to Laurel. “Mesopotamians enter the picture here.”

“You mean Harran?”

“Just so.” He beamed at Laurel as if she were his prize student. “The flow of people and ideas gravitated there. When Harran declined, scholars migrated to Baghdad, the supreme center of learning in the eighth century A.D. There, Sufischools greatly added to the body of Hermetic knowledge. One man in particular, Jabir ibn Hayyan, earned himself the title of father of chemistry because his accomplishments were so brilliant. He perfected distillation, invented the alembic still and the processes used to make hydrochloric and nitric acid.”

Phillip turned his watery gaze on me. “And here’s where your alchemy comes into it, at least as it concerns the poppycock of turning base metals into gold. An eminent Sufimystic in Baghdad of that time made the claim ‘It is we who through our glance turn the dust of the path into gold.’”

The insults to me were certainly piling up.

“Scholars focus entirely on Egyptian sources, but it could easily be argued that Mesopotamia gave birth to alchemy. The knowledge incubated in Harran and Baghdad spread to Cordoba under Moorish rule. When Europeans took a pause from the looting and massacres of the Crusades, they brought many texts and Hermetic concepts home. As a humorous aside, our own King John of England was so enamored of these ideas that he secretly petitioned to become a Muslim, with the intention of turning his kingdom over to Islam. And can you believe it, they denied him the honor!”

“Fascinating, Phillip. But I wanted to know about the Durer print, Melencholia 1.”

His voice floated on as if I hadn’t said anything. “Hermetic thought and practice re-emerged in the great academies and secret societies of Florence under the Medici. When the Medici empire fell, Hermeticism took root in Venice. There, a gentleman named Manutius, one of the first publishers, produced Hermetic texts. In 1503 he