The Ginger House in Jew Town

Museums in India can be disappointing affairs that demonstrate more a lack of funding and archival expertise than they do the history and culture of the great lands and peoples of Hindoostan. Indians of a post-colonial mind often fume about artificats that have found a home in foreign museums, but when the same artifacts are returned to the bosom of Mother India they end up in shabby, poorly lit, dusty museums, wrongly labeled and deteriorating rapidly with the humidity and direct sunlight. Even the great collection that was once the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta, as the present writer discovered, is these days poorly presented with many displays unimproved since the 1950s. Moreover, the official museums often present tardy collections because the real jewels of Hindoostani history are pirated by a corrupt trade into private hands; the public museums are just so-so because the best pieces fall into private collections.

By far the most impressive collection of Indian artifacts that this writer has encountered during his long sojourn in the sub-continent was not in a museum but in an old warehouse in the back streets of Jew Town in Cochin. The warehouse is called the ‘Ginger House’ because, in former days, it was a store for the Dutch trade in ginger. It fronts directly onto the water and an area that was once a busy dock. Now it is an extensive series of large rooms brimful - overflowing! - with remarkable art objects, statues, idols, and other paraphernalia taken from old temples, churches, mosques and sundry holy places from throughout the length and breadth of India. It is the most extraordinary collection of such pieces imaginable.

It is a private collection with all items for sale. It is said to be “government approved” although it is uncertain exactly what this means. The present author was curious about the legitimacy of purchasing objects from there if they were to be taken out of India. Upon this inquiry a woman of earnest demeanor arrived reiterating that everything is “government approved” and testifying to the soundness of the mailing system. “But what if I buy this Ganesh statue for $10,000 only to find that it can’t be taken out of the country?” the author persisted. “No, no, sir,” she said. “It is packed in a secure crate and sent to your home address.” She explained that their clientele are wealthy collectors from far and wide.

Where does it all come from? It was explained that it had been collected from all over India for a period exceeding thirty years. (So, the author thought, this is where the artifacts pilfered from the temples of Tamil Nadu end up!)

In any case, it is far more extensive and comprehensive - and impressive! - than any public collection, by far. Upon walking in one is simply gobsmacked by the extent and the quality of the work for sale. There are literally entire temples, pillars and all, for sale. In one room there seems to be all the panels and icons and decorations from an entire Catholic church. 

There are signs throughout saying ‘Sorry, no photography’ and yet people were wandering through photographing it right in front of the staff. The photographs below give only an introductory impression of just how extensive, how vast - room upon room upon room, a wonderland, of religious artifacts - is the collection at the ‘Ginger House’ in Jew Town.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Pamela Colman Smith - A Savant With a Child's Heart

Anyone with even the slightest familiarity with the tarocci or “tarot” cards will be acquainted with the work of Miss Pamela Colman Smith, although they may be excused for not knowing her name. In the early years of the XXth century Miss Smith – an Anglo-American illustrator – was commissioned by the Masonic occultist Mr Arthur Waite to design a complete set of all seventy-eight cards of the traditional tarot deck. She completed this work in a remarkably short period of time between April and October 1909 and some time after this the cards were published by William Rider & Sons of London under the title ‘A Pictorial Key to the Tarot’. They have thereafter been known as the ‘Rider-Waite’ tarot and the name of the illustrator was not included in the title or on the box. This omission was then duplicated in 1971 when the American company US Games Inc. purchased the copyright to the cards and reissued them to the American market, making them the most well-known and popular tarot cards of the modern era. Today, the ‘Rider-Waite’ cards have become infused into popular culture to the extent that they may be regarded as prototypal; there are countless new sets on the market today, each with new illustrations on new themes, but the Rider-Waite cards are, as it were, a standard. It is a great pity then that the illustrator, the person most responsible for the indelible images of the cards, is not better known. It was an injustice she suffered in her own lifetime. Mr. Waite paid her only a token fee for her work and she received no royalties from sales. Born in 1878, she died penniless, debt-ridden and forgotten in 1951. 

By virtue of the ‘Rider-Waite’ tarot, however, Miss Smith – she was generally known as “Pixie” – must be credited as having had a profound impact upon the visual imagination of the modern West. Her tarot cards, rendered in her simple, linear style with Art Nouveau influence, are her masterpiece. The remarkable thing is that she was able to translate the instructions of the verbose and tedious Mr. Waite into compelling images that arrest the imagination and, most importantly, impose themselves upon the memory. No other design of the tarot comes near to Miss Smith’s in this respect. Others are more beautiful and yet others are more symbolically exact, perhaps, but Miss Smith made the tarot her own. She entered into the spirit of the cards and conjured images of a strongly mnemonic concrete lyricism that truly captured something of the zeitgeist of the modern occult revival, a defining counter-modernist trend that shaped early XXth century. 

They bear comparison and contrst to the cards made by Lady Frieda Harris under the instruction of the sinister Aleister Crowley. Superficially, those of Lady Harris have a deeper artistic merit, and Mr. Crowley has packed the designs with Qabbalistic allusions, but finally, compared to the charming directness of the Pixie Smith designs, they are turgid and pretentious. Miss Smith understood one of the keys to the tarot: the images on the cards are essentially caricatures. This is so in the medieval designs and she has retained that medieval flavor. The Crowley or ‘Thoth’ deck is, in contrast, a modernist mess. The same can be said of other more recent designs. They are contrived by comparison. No one quite captures the spirit of the tarot, and renders it modern yet integral, like Miss Smith.

The actual processes by which the Waite-Smith collaboration took place are not certain, but it seems likely that Mr. Waite’s input was largely restricted to the twenty-two Major Arcana. Of the fifty-six pip cards – the Minor Arcana – it is likely that Miss Smith had a very free hand. They, therefore, are her creation, and it is there that we see her genius. Mr. Waite’s Major Trumps display elements of his eclectic and sometimes misleading mash of symbols. Miss Smith’s Minor Arcana is a playhouse of little dramas and quaint allegories that bring the much-neglected minor cards new vitality. The chief inspiration for the Major Arcana seems to have been the XVIIIth century Tarot of Marseilles, while for the Minor Marcana Miss Smith appears to have looked to the Sola Busca Tarot of the XVth century for her model. The illustrator has successfully retained the essence of those earlier decks and recreated them in a new pictorial vocabulary. This is no small achievement. It is an achievement that is too often underestimated by those who like to criticize this tarot and sing the virtues of newer designs that are full of reckless innovations and artistic egoism. Miss Smith’s designs are not technically accomplished, but at least she shows faultless judgment as to how and when to depart from her medieval models and there is no egoism to be seen in the least.

The present writer, in any case, is an outspoken enthusiast for what should rightly be called the ‘Pixie Smith’ Tarot, and more broadly for Miss Smith’s art in general. Her tarot – even where Arthur Waite imposed his cranky symbolism upon the Major cards - is simply unsurpassed. She made the form her own. Her designs define the tarot in this epoch. She was not, admittedly, a great artist by the usual standards, and she was certainly not a successful one in monetary terms or in terms of wide recognition. Had she not made tarot cards for Mr. Waites she might have disappeared into obscurity entirely. But her work is beautiful and distinctive by other standards, with a unique charm, a delightful sense of decorative whimsy, a lovely innocence, an enchanting sense of the fay. Stuart Kaplan, director of US Games Inc., once remarked that had she lived in his day he could have made her a millionaire.

Miss Smith designed bookplates, made illustrations for numerous books and at one stage edited and illustrated her own magazine, the ‘Green Sheath’ which claimed its own ‘school’ of fellow artists. She came into contact with Mr. Waites through the poet W. B. Yeats who employed her as an illustrator for his poems and who inducted her into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Despite this dalliance with the occult, however, she later converted to Catholicism and throughout her later years ran a boarding house for old priests in Cornwall. 

Her real qualifications for illustrating the tarot was her passion for folklore; wrote or co-wrote and illustrated several books on the subject, including one of Jamaican folklore entitled Annancy Stories. It sold poorly but it was the work that first attracted the attention of the Yeats family who were, at the time, looking for an artist to illustrate Gaelic tales. The father of W. B. Yeats, John, once described her work in an extant letter as follows: “Pamela,” he said…

“…is bringing out a book of Jamaica folklore. Her work, whether a drawing or telling of a piece of folklore, is very direct and sincere and therefore original - its originality being its naïveté. I should feel safe in getting her to illustrate anything. She does not draw well, but has the right feeling for line and expression and colour.”

Then he adds in summary:

“I don't think there is anything great or profound in her, or very emotional or practical. She has the simplicity and naïveté of an old dry-as-dust savant - a savant with a child's heart.”

This is a blunt assessment but also a very accurate account of her character and work - nothing great or profound but a savant with a child’s heart. This is the quality that Mr. Yeats recognized in her and that she brought to Mr. Waite’s tarot cards. It is the quality that makes her one of the most endearing of the supposedly lesser female artists of her time. We see this quality in all her work, samples of which are given below. It is her folkish lack of sophistication and her naïveté that made her the perfect vehicle for the spirit of the modern tarot. In the estimation of the present author, at least, Pamela Colman Smith – Pixie Smith – deserves far greater appreciation than she received in her lifetime or since and should be counted as an important artist in her own right. It is fashionable in some circles to disparage the ‘Rider-Waite’ tarot because it is now deemed ‘old fashioned’ or lacking in a contemporary aesthetic. This is a miscalculation of its worth. It is still the best tarot. The inspired naïveté of Pixie Smith lives still. The simplicity of the 'Rider-Waite' designs – the simplisticity of their illustrator – is an original and honest simplicity that taps deep into the medieval roots of the tarot and speaks directly to the modern Western consciousness. Her other work has the same charm and deserves to be celebrated in wider circles today. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Chariots of the Moon

The Moon Chariots of Udupi

The most unique feature of the Hindoo cultus to be found at the sacred town of Udupi on the west coast of the Indian sub-continent are elaborate rites in which cult objects – statues of deities – are placed in massive “chariots” and dragged by devotees around a fixed circuit. The present author was privileged to watch the entire procession from start to finish a few nights ago and has since been pondering the symbolism of the event. 

As always in India there are centuries and even millennia of overlays obscuring the original cultus – Hindooism is especially organic and relinquishes nothing to time – but the essentials of the rites have not changed and can be made out with careful observation and a discerning sense of the symbolic. There are always keys with which even the strangest and most opaque mysteries can be unlocked. Even if those who maintain the rites today have lost sight of their origins, they will usually preserve and guard the essentials – at least in an integral and living tradition such as Hindooism. 

In the case of the rites at Udupi there is a single and somewhat obvious key to what otherwise are peculiar but spectacular events. There are three temples at the site, each of a different age and a different layer of history. It is an ancient site, but it was expanded as recently as the XIIth century when it became one of the foremost centres for the veneration of the avatar Lord Krishna in all the lands of Hindoostan. Each evening – or at least on certain evenings, and certainly at festivals – the image of Lord Krishna, along with an image of Lord Shiva, is removed from its home in the temple and placed in massive four-wheeled wooden constructions which are designated as “chariots”. 

These vehicles are highly decorated, most notably with horse figurines, and function, in fact, as types of temples on wheels. Then they are lit up, blessed and dragged by thick ropes around an elongated pathway. The route is marked by two large guardians, namely men in over-sized costumes with each wielding a sword and a shield, who spin around in circles as they lead the procession. There are starts and stops and fireworks and candles along the way. When the chariots have completed the circumabulation the cult statues are removed and put back into their respective temples in the usual place having gone, it seems, for their nightly jaunt around the track. The photographs on this page illustrate the rites. 

The key? Clearly, the entire event is an enactment of the movement of celestial bodies around the circuit of the heavens. All the details of the rites become explicable in light of this fact. Specifically, one “chariot” – painted gold, as it happens – represents the Sun, and another – balloon-like - represents the Moon. The circuit, which is oriented exactly east-west, represents the ecliptic. The array of torches, fireworks and candles around the pathway represent the background of the stars. The whirling guardians armed with swords and shields represent the nodes that define the limits of the ecliptic. We can be sure of this key since the very name of the town, Udupi, means “Lord of the Stars” and the myths and legends concerning the founding of the site are all cosmological in nature. Moreover, as the present author noted in a previous post, the town is a veritable centre of the astrological sciences; the Hindoo religion takes a particular astrological form here. The entire history of the place has to do with the stars and stellar religion. 

The thing that obscures this key to the symbolism of the Udupi complex is the association of Krishna with the site. Udupi is now known as a centre of devotion to Lord Krishna, and in this sense there is no obvious and direct stellar dimension to that cultus. Indeed, the usual explanation given for the nightly rounds of the chariot is that Krishna was a charioteer, most famously in the Bhagavad Gita. Why is the cult statue of Krishna taken from its temple, placed in a chariot and dragged around its circuit every night? There is a mythological reason: it enacts the scenes of the Gita in which Krishna rides in his chariot. 

But, in fact, this is the most recent layer of symbolism – an overlay on top of the older rites. Before Krishna, the site was sacred to Shiva, and specifically to Shiva as a Moon god. This is plain if one ventures into the sanctuary of the oldest Shiva temple on the site, the Chandramauleshvara Temple. There Shiva is represented, not by the usual lingam, but by an image consisting of a bright round silver face. Chandramauleshvara means, literally, Moon-crowned, or Moon-faced. Shiva, then, was the original passenger in the celestial chariot, the chariot of the Moon. The Krishna cult is a late arrival. Krishna has been added to the temple complex in the XIIth century on the basis of the simple association of chariots. Since this was already a place featuring sacred chariots, the cult of Lord Krishna, the charioteer, found a ready home here. But one needs to look beyond the associations with Krishna to the earlier Shaivite layer of rites in order to understand them correctly. 

Many other strange details of the rites become clear once one applies the key. The whole complex, in fact, its history and its rituals, deserves a thorough study – more thorough and comprehensive than can be offered here. In each of the temples in the complex there are further stellar motifs. The more time one spends there, the more the cosmological character of the cultus becomes clear. 

* * *

As an aside, the structure, purpose and symbolism of the lunar chariots of Udupi invite comparison with the Chariot Trump in the Tarot cards of western esotericism. The resemblance is striking. The present author has long noted that while most occidental literary references to celestial chariots have a solar symbolism - Phaethon's chariot in Greek mythology, for instance - the Chariot Trump of the Tarot is, even in the earliest designs, lunar. The author has had the problem of explaining this lunar chariot symbolism. The problem is resolved in Udupi. Here we have lunar chariots, and they take a form that is strongly reminiscent of the Tarot Trump. 

See the design of the A.E. Waite deck below. Ignoring the pseudo-Egyptian sphinx motif, note the lunar and celestial symbolism throughout. It is exactly this chariot that one encounters in the great temple of Udupi in western India. Most remarkable is the winged (phallic) device in the centre of the card. In the large lunar chariots used in the sacred parades in Udupi, exactly this motif is displayed during the period that the chariot is on the move. Thus, not only is there a general similarity, there is a consonance of details. Note also, if readers care to look closely, how the chariot-riders belt is the celestial ecliptic. The conclusion is inescapable: this Tarot design refers to the very same traditions that are given expression in the rites of Udupi. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Udupi - Notes on the Symbolism of the Number 108

Vast and variegated, the great lands of Hindoostan are a rich patchwork of local traditions even though, together, they accumulate into a single edifice of belief and practice that may reasonably be designated by the term ‘Hindooism’, especially as seen from the outside (things being less clear when standing in its midst.) From north to south, east to west, local traditions, flavours and colourings vary, yet somehow they converge into a single stream, a unified tradition. Do not expect consistency or system, though. There is no Pope of the Hindoos to bring the swarming variations into a coherent orthodoxy. Very wisely, the Hindoo cherishes variation and tolerates a very wide range of religious expression. This fact has become very noticeable to the present writer in his current sojourn across the Indian sub-continent. Any expectation of consistency or system is foiled at every turn. Just when he thinks he has a handle on some aspect of Hindoo religious life, he moves on to a new town, a new location, and there different traditions and ways prevail, even though they are in some way entirely apiece with the whole. Reflecting on Hindooism is an object lesson on the problem of the one and the many.

The western coast of India is very different to the north and one encounters there, sure enough, a different assembly of myths and legends and accompanying practices. The author arrived in the temple town of Udupi several days ago and since then has been observing the local religious life, especially as it is centred on the great Krishna temple complex that makes the town a centre of pilgrimage. A full description of the rites and mysteries of this temple will have to be postponed until a later post: they are very complex and very profound and would require a long and detailed exposition.

Instead, the purpose of this current post is simply to record an observation concerning the symbolic powers of the celebrated number one hundred and eight (108). The meaning of the number – or at least something of its essential symbolism – has become obvious to this writer since arriving in Udupi and becoming immersed in the local traditions of the place. A group of connections have come together. A particular order of symbolism has become plain. The purpose of this post is just to make note of that symbolism. How it fits into the greater symbolism evident in Udupi and its surrounds is another matter and must wait for another time.

* * *

The author has long observed the special character of the number 108 in certain religious contexts. It is an important number with symbolic import. Most notably, there is the fact that the rosary beads – or japa beads (japa mala) – commonly employed by both Hindoos and Boodhists consist of 108 stones or seeds or peas strung on a string which are then counted with the fingers. Thus, in any cycle of prayer the Hindoo or Boodhist makes 108 utterances or mantras of some sacred name or phrase. The author, indeed, has purchased a set of the said beads at the store in the Udupi temple where they hang on wracks in great profusion. Everywhere about, one can see Hindoos fingering their beads and muttering their mantras – one of the most common and easiest forms of devotion. There are no Boodhists to be seen in Udupi but elsewhere they use the rosary of 108 beads as well. (The Mahometan tesbe is different since it consists of 99 beads – a decimal rosary, as it were – being based on the literal – and quite mistaken – reading of a certain hadeeth in which the Prophet declares that God has ninety-nine names. This is just an instance of semitic hyperbole and it means that God has a large or indefinite number of names, but Mahometans, stupidly, draw up a litany of ninety-nine names, even though there are clearly more than that number given in the Holy Koran.)

Nor, however, is 108 only a preferred number in oriental symbolism. The author, being a student of the Greeks, knows also that in Homeric myth the number of suitors of Penelope is very specifically 108. And it is found in many other contexts besides. It is a auspicious number which occurs in certain symbolically significant contexts in traditions east and west.

But why 108? Why this particular number? What particular symbolism is attached to this number? What are its traditional powers?

The answer to this presents itself in Udupi. The name of the town is said to come from two roots signifying the idea “Lord + Stars” = “Lord of the Stars”. A local myth relates that, once upon a time, the “twenty-seven stars” were dimmed by decree of a certain king. Thereupon, the “Lord of the Stars” – that is, the Moon – appealed to Lord Shiva to restore their brightness, and Lord Shiva looked favourably upon this request and did so. Consequently, Shiva came to be worshipped locally and the place became known as Udupi – the land of the Lord of Stars, which is to say a land of the Moon. Shiva, of course, is himself a lunar deity and wears the lunar crescent as a crown. It is one of his chief emblems. He is essentially a time god, and the Moon, in this context, is the marker of time. Thus, in the Udupi temple complex the oldest temple, called ‘Chandramauleshvara’ belongs to the Moon-crowned Shiva (Chandra = Moon). The restoration of the twenty-seven stars for the Lord of the Stars is celebrated in this temple in this town.

Moreover, a second myth told in this same region concerns the axe-wielding avatar Parashurama who, it is said, severed the land from the sea. The whole coast of western India – Goa, Konkan, Karnataka, Kerela – is collectively known as the Land of Parashurama. He split the land from the sea with his axe, and then – it is said – he established 108 statues of Shiva throughout the land. Indeed, these 108 statues or linga – Shiva shrines - still exist today, distributed along the coastal lands with the shrines in Udupi being prominent among them. Now, the axe of Parashurama is without question itself a symbol of the crescent Moon – the crescent shaped axe is lunar wherever it is found - and so once again in this myth we have a lunar motif associated with Udupi and with the lunar deity Shiva, and the number 108 is explicitly given in this context.

Furthermore, as this present writer notes in a casual observation that turns out to be relevant, Udupi is a thriving centre for Hindoo astrology, particularly in its lunar mode. There are astrologers on every street corner, and many astrologers have set up practice in the confines of the temple complex itself. It might seem that there are more astrologers in Udupi than in the rest of India combined. The signs and shops throughout make it clear that it is nothing less than an astrological centre. Pilgrims who come to Udupi to make observances at the temple also take the opportunity to have an astrological reading since here, as elsewhere in India, astrology is indeed regarded as a sacred art and an important feature of the Hindoo religion. As it is practiced, it is based upon the twenty-seven lunar mansions (nakshatra) and the sub-division of those mansions into astral regions known as pada. Typically, the Hindoo takes a name from the pada in which he was born. (Typically, also, astrologers inform inquirers that this was done in error and that the error can only be corrected by prayers and generous donations to the temple – such being the way of seers.)

* * *

Let us now string all of these factors together. Udupi is a charming town and the temple is a place of remarkable fascination. There is much that can be said but, again, it will need to wait for another post. What is important at this time is that in Udupi, and its local myths, the nature and import of the number 108 becomes obvious. Even in this there is much to say, but for now it suffices to point to what is plain.

Most crucially, let us note that 27 x 4 = 108. That is, there are 27 lunar mansions each divided into four parts. This is essential to Hindoo astrology. This makes the number 108 symbolic of the lunar zodiac. It is a number that represents the whole cosmic cycle considered by its lunar delineations. It is a lunar, not a solar number. Many numbers measure time (cycles) by solar measures – the number 360, for example. But the number 108 is resoundingly lunar in its essential meanings. In the foundation myth of Udupi, the “twenty-seven stars” dimmed by the evil king and restored by “Moon-crowned” Shiva are the twenty-seven lunar mansions. When, in the other myth, the axe-wielding Parashurama separates the land and the sea and establishes the 108 Shiva shrines, we have the finer division of the pada. The rosary of 108 beads, then, represents the year, and by extension the cosmic cycle (since an annual year is a reflection of the Great Year.) The Moon, in this scheme, is the measurer of time – a function of Lord Shiva – and so it is with lunar time reckonings, great and small, that we are concerned. The beads (japa mala) is a device symbolic of the full lunar cycle. To prayer the japa is to be united with and contextualized by that cycle.

The same significance prevails, surely, in Homer. Penelope’s weaving and unweaving as she awaits the return of Odysseus in the epic poem is, surely, itself a lunar motif. This has been widely observed from ancient times to modern. Just as the moon waxes and wanes, so Penelope weaves and unweaves. But now we can understand why there are 108 suitors seeking her hand. The number is the number of the lunar cycle (and it is furthermore no accident that the total journey of Odysseus is nineteen years, the number of the metonic or lunar eclipse cycle.) Penelope will not submit to any particular division of the small cycle. Odysseus himself, and his journey, signifies the greater cycle. Let us also note, in a Greek context, that 108 is a number relevant to the Platonic Nuptial Number, the calculation of the Great Year given in the Republic: the figures are 12,960,000 = 108 x 120,000.

In any case, 108 is the number of the lunar cycle. Wherever it is found it is likely to have this significance. It features in Udupi because Udupi is the land of the “Lord of Stars” i.e. the Moon. This is an old layer of symbolism in the Udupi temple. The associations of the temple with Krishna are much more recent – medieval rather than ancient. The oldest layers of the Udupi cultus go back beyond this association to Shiva as “Moon-crowned” or “Moon-faced”. It is a cultus that is particularly cosmological and in which an ancient cosmological symbolism has been well preserved. A more detailed description will be given some other time. For now, it is enough to note that 108 is a lunar number – the number of the cosmic cycle in its lunar mode.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black