The Autumn rains (Water) dissolve the remains of this amalgam in a way that resembles the alchemical operation – Nigredo.
This introductory step of the Great Opera manipulates the water in order to create the putrefaction of the matter. This stage is often related to the black phase or depression but is also an important step to the process of self- understanding.
The Hybris at the bottom represents the Pride and illusion of power, typical human and also ephemeral.
This head as a trophy is not a symbol of our superiority but to remember how tiny and insignificant we are.
If you ever read Les Chants de Maldoror you probably find some visual references here.
“A man, a stone, or a tree is going to begin this fourth song (…)I am filthy. (…)an enormous, mushroom with umbelliferous stalks is growing on my
nape, as on a dunghill. (…) My feet have taken root in the ground; up to my belly, they form a sort of tenacious vegetation, full of filthy parasites; this vegetation no longer has anything in common with other plants, nor is it flesh. And yet my heart beats. “
We also need to refer how the Swamp Thing comics inspired us in this particular work. The green elemental and the vegetal-human amalgam is a common thematic on our visual mythology and I think we own a lot to this comic series.
“(…) Those plants eat him. They eat him as if he were a planarian worm, or a cannibal wise man, or a genius on rye! They eat him…and they become infected by a powerful consciousness that does not realize it is no longer alive!” – Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing #21
