Christa Giles

138
maddened by desire, crazed by a fever of the
flesh?
Perhaps, too, in arming his enigmatic
goddess with the revered lotus-blossom, the
painter had been thinking of the dancer, the
mortal woman, the soi1ed vessel, ultimate
cause of every sin and every crime; perhaps
he had remembered the sepulchral rites of
ancient Egypt, the solemn ceremonies of
embalmment, when practictioners and priests
lay out the dead woman’s body on a slab of
jasper, then with curved needles extract her
brains through the nostrils, her entrails
through an opening made in the left side, and
finally, before gilding her nails and her teeth,
before anointing the corpse with oils and
spices, insert into her sexual parts, to purify
them, the chaste petals of the divine flower. 374
Art and dreams were perceived as hieroglyphs which
evoke intellectual and emotional associations. This
perception resulted in works which were both suggestive
and tended to be subtle and complex, containing layers of
meaning. Not only objects (as in the example cited above)
but colour, form and line, etc. were considered to be part
of a mysterious vocabulary, an equivalence for ideas, as
well as a way of creating mood. 375 Moreover, art became a