When you see your matter going black, rejoice, you are at the beginning of the work.
Rosarium Philosophorum
Nigredo is the dark state, and is considered the most difficult and negative operation of the alchemical process. It is the shadow of the sun. Putrefactio, and Mortificatio are two different aspects of the Nigredo. Putreficatio means rotting, and Mortificatio means killing, hence it is associated with death. In dreams figures like the dismembered Osiris usher in a rebirth. In all religions associated with agricultural renewal, the rotting and death comes first. The dead king may be buried in the fields to promote furtility.
Nigredo
1981
Colored pencil on paper on canvas
101 by 64 ½ inches
This series of work on the subject of the underworld was a breakthrough, and my first figurative work after the years of underwater landscapes. It all began with a dream:
I was in the underworld in a land of the Bogomils, a Medieval Gnostic cult. The Bogomils were dualists in that they believed the world was created not by the God of Abraham, but by the Devil. There were hanging corpses everywhere. In the story The King and the Corpse, Heinrich Zimmer says corpses hanging around in dreams are complexes we must clear out, that have not decomposed. In a long series of dreams, I was clearing out a veritable mortuary of complexes, and the like. The Bogomils were heretics, this was for me a reference to my alchemical studies.
Nekyia
1980
Pencil on paper on canvas
9 by 14 ft.
Moving these complex and corpses, became a major work of my unconscious and analytical work. The work Daemon est Dues Inversus, comes from a line in Yeats which refers to this reverse side of God.
Daemon est Deus Inversus
1980
Pencil on paper on canvas
8 ft. by 5 ft.
In my unconscious, underworld and underwater had merged. I began a series of lithographs that terrified the collector who financed them.
The Underworld
1980
Lithograph, hand colored
41 ½ by 30
Edition of 100
The Death of the King is a theme that I am still working with in my fairy tales. The king represents the ruling consciousness that must die and be replaced by the new, in the form of his son. I first drew the king on a barque in the underworld as a rotting corpse. Here there is a movement out of the Nigredo and the Putrefactio, as the king begins a voyage through the underworld to be reborn like Osiris.
Vessel for Bobby Sands
1981
Pencil on paper on canvas
101 ½ by 129 inches
