Thursday, September 25, 2008



How beautiful your sandalled feet, O prince's daughter! Your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of a craftsman's hands. Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies. Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. (Song of Songs 7:1-3)

The archetypal female form is exalted. She is soft, round, and supple.

The Hebrew is even moreso: Her graceful legs are turns/curves/rounds of your thighs.

Her navel is the bowl/basin/cup of the moon.

Her belly is a mound of threshed and winnowed wheat: all coarseness has been removed, almost a powder.

She is profoundly other. Compare her belly with his, described in chapter 5:14 as a polished block of ivory.

She dances the eternal circle, weaving Omega with her sandalled feet.

In Love hard and soft - round and straight - light and darkness are joined.

Above is from the Rothschild Canticle. Christ holds five souls in an encircling cloth and a small, gold-leaf sun shines on Christ's chest. In the lower register, Christ appears twice, leaning out of windows from a building in the center. On the right Christ wipes tears from the eyes of Virgins. On the left Christ introduces them to heaven.

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