Mundus

I have a poetic sensibility such that I find certain words and phrases to be highly evocative, and I often wish that I could create an artwork, poem or story to illustrate them. Such was the case with mundus, which in Latin means ‘world,’ though it is also an origin of the word ‘mound’ (the Middle English form of which—‘mounde’—also meant ‘world’). 

The word came to my attention in Barbara C. Walker’s Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets as related to the Greek abaton, a subterranean ‘pit’ in pagan temples which people entered ‘to “incubate,” or to sleep overnight in magical imitation of the incubatory sleep of the womb …’ (p. 2). The ‘incubus’ or spirit who visited people in their dark, underworld sleep brought dreams that would afterwards be interpreted for healing or prophesy.

The abaton was the human-made equivalent of the natural caves and crevices that people originally saw as the womb(s) of Mother Earth. Megalithic tombs and barrow-mounds were built upon the same principle—the mound representing the pregnant belly of the Goddess, where the dead could be laid to rest in preparation for rebirth. In the Neolithic period both temples and tombs were often built in the shape of the belly or whole body of the Goddess. Thus we have ‘womb-temples’ and ‘womb-tombs’. Walker even states that ‘tomb’ and ‘womb’ are linguistically related (p. 1092), and that mundus meant both ‘earth’ and ‘womb’ (p. 154), though I am not entirely sure if this is etymologically correct. 

However, ‘tomb’ is certainly related to words that mean ‘earth-hill,’ such as the Latin tumulus, which may also have links to a proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘to swell’—just like a pregnant belly—and so it does bring us full circle back to the womb, and the mound, once more.

So, in my mind at least, I can connect these words thusly:

mundus

mound

tomb

womb

world

As is often the case with my work, the inspiration for the image itself came from a number of sources, most notably the circles within an arch in The Alchemist by Rima Staines, a print of which I recently framed. (She reminds me that the creative process is indeed an alchemical one.) 

Rima Staines – The Alchemist (2012)

I also referred to a number of images by the late Meinrad Craighead, whose enigmatic work is frequently provoking new visions. Sacred Hearts, a core influence for Our Lady of the Seeds, with mound-body, moon and orbs, is still haunting me; and the broad-featured face is loosely based on Hagia Sophia.

Sacred Hearts (1990)

Hagia Sophia (1987)

As I’ve been looking at a lot of prehistoric imagery over the past couple of years, the shapes and symbols of numerous menhirs, orthostats and petroglyphs have also seeped into my consciousness. 

I have even referenced my own art. The leaf- or flame-like shapes that sprout from the mound are the same as those in Fluency, which I described as ‘lines of connection, or emanations of energy—little jewels of life and sensation’. Here though, I can more definitely call them leaves, the topmost of which sprouts from the head of the figure, whose headwear started off more like the veils of a nun before elongating into a seed-like form. The vertical nature of it links the above world with the deep below—a recurring theme in my art.

It interests me how I keep returning to the same motifs: full and crescent moons, circles and mounds, triangles and vertical movement. I like the repetition and echo of forms, the circles within circles, the sacred geometry, one thing held within another.

It is not easy, and it can come so sporadically and with such difficulty that I am in constant dialogue with doubt. Yet I feel as if I am finally making the kind of art I always wanted to make.

I shall leave the last word to Marija Gimbutas: ‘Burial in the womb is analogous to a seed being planted in the earth, and it was therefore natural to expect new life to emerge from the old’ (The Language of the Goddess, p. 151).

Mundus, felt tip pen, ink, watercolour, gouache, gold acrylic and gold pen (2020)