• In total there are 34 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 34 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Engage in conversations about worldwide religions, cults, philosophy, atheism, freethought, critical thinking, and skepticism in this forum.
Forum rules
Do not promote books in this forum. Instead, promote your books in either Authors: Tell us about your FICTION book! or Authors: Tell us about your NON-FICTION book!.

All other Community Rules apply in this and all other forums.
User avatar
stahrwe

1I - PLATINUM CONTIBUTOR
pets endangered by possible book avalanche
Posts: 4898
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 9:26 am
14
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 166 times
Been thanked: 315 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Interesting that FO'C is a favorite but an appreciation of fiction and the ability to write same is a plus on this thread.
n=Infinity
Sum n = -1/12
n=1

where n are natural numbers.
User avatar
Movie Nerd
Intelligent
Posts: 560
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 9:36 am
9
Location: Virginia
Has thanked: 30 times
Been thanked: 178 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Flannery O'Conner is excellent Geo. My personal favorite female writer is Eudora Welty. I just love her dry wit.
I am just your typical movie nerd, postcard collector and aspiring writer.
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6498
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2661 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Movie Nerd wrote:While it is true that an artist can have any number of intentions, messages or symbols within a single piece of art, that does not give unlimited license to presuppose any particular intention, even in cases where the intention seems blatantly obvious to the reader.
Movie Nerd, thank you for this comment, I appreciate it. It presents a useful basis for me to help explain why the explanation I have provided of Leonardo’s composition method for The Last Supper is not a case of license or presupposition.

People these days are not very familiar with the visible stars of the sky. Those who are familiar with looking up at night can see that the shapes visible along the path of the sun are the same patterns and order as the shapes of the figures in The Last Supper. This is what Max May immediately saw when he read this thread and used it to make his video. It is that simple, but you have to be aware of the star patterns, something most people these days are ignorant of.
Movie Nerd wrote: Allow me to illustrate: Say an author wrote as the first sentence of a story, "The walls were blue." A literary critic comes in to talk to the author on a news program, and says to the man, "I love how this opening sentence decries your neo-sexual depression, how you reject the norms of your inner world, and how you may or may not want to change."
Thanks for the comparison, as it helps to indicate degrees of iconicity. As I mentioned earlier, if a painting has a saintly man holding a bunch of keys, and even better if he is holding a sword and has a rooster on his shoulder, we can be pretty sure it is intended to depict Saint Peter. Using your example, if a figure in the painting is wearing blue, that is going to tell us little or nothing in iconic terms, unless it is associated with other features such as the Blessed Virgin Mary who usually got about in blue and white. There is also the association between blue and blues, which you seem to allude to regarding depression. But blue or some other colour is more a vague indicator of mood or tone than a direct symbolic icon.

Now let’s look at The Last Supper and the zodiac. The zodiac has twelve groups of stars with iconic shapes roughly like this: __/ Vo Π Y ? <> X ζ Д Δ Γ Λ. These are the shapes of the stars behind the sun in chronological order for each of the twelve months. The beginning point is now about April 18, but due to precession at the time of Christ the beginning point for these twelve shapes was the March equinox.

I have just chosen from word twelve symbols that are fairly close to the actual visible star shapes. The star shapes are almost exactly the same now as they have been for thousands of years, which is why Plato regarded the stars as the symbol of eternity.

You can see that all twelve shapes I chose are different from each other. If you look at the video you will see the actual star shapes. I have simplified the actual sky star patterns for these symbols. You can see more detail at this 2MB pdf

These same twelve shapes appear in order in The Last Supper. This continues an age-old tradition of linking the twelve apostles to the twelve signs of the zodiac. There is motive, method and opportunity. Leonardo’s innovation was to use the actual stars as his template. It really is very simple.

It is nothing like a vague colour which can be interpreted any which way. Rather, it is a precise natural iconic set of symbols, with order and reason and motive.
Movie Nerd wrote: "You know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!" (I believe this to be jacked from Freud, and of course serving as a deviation of another glib statement made about roses.) As a writer myself, I understand perfectly well just how many intentions and ideas can go into a particular story, poem, teleplay, etc. However, it is sometimes tricky for the reader to go to certain lengths in guessing what they are, unless they know intimately what's inside the author's own head. Of course, that's just my opinion--I could be wrong.

Well yes of course in this case you are wrong, but I appreciate your constructive interested curious approach. Freudian phallic symbolism is far vaguer than the precise encoding of unchanging natural observation of the cosmos that we see in The Last Supper.

So I remain intrigued by the inability of people to understand this basic simple observation. I am not talking about anything as vague as ‘blue’ or ‘cigar’, but a specific code
__/ Vo Π Y ? <> X ζ Д Δ Γ Λ
that appears both in the annual star path of the sun and in The Last Supper. It is obvious that Leonardo got this code by looking at the night sky with his own eyes, just as he looked at botanic specimens and drew them with scientific accuracy. And it is obvious that just as Leonardo said man is a reflection of the earth, so too he depicted the central scene of history as a reflection of the great unchanging eternal visible pattern of nature.
User avatar
Movie Nerd
Intelligent
Posts: 560
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 9:36 am
9
Location: Virginia
Has thanked: 30 times
Been thanked: 178 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Robert Tulip wrote: Well yes of course in this case you are wrong, but I appreciate your constructive interested curious approach. Freudian phallic symbolism is far vaguer than the precise encoding of unchanging natural observation of the cosmos that we see in The Last Supper.

So I remain intrigued by the inability of people to understand this basic simple observation. I am not talking about anything as vague as ‘blue’ or ‘cigar’, but a specific code
__/ Vo Π Y ? <> X ζ Д Δ Γ Λ
that appears both in the annual star path of the sun and in The Last Supper. It is obvious that Leonardo got this code by looking at the night sky with his own eyes, just as he looked at botanic specimens and drew them with scientific accuracy. And it is obvious that just as Leonardo said man is a reflection of the earth, so too he depicted the central scene of history as a reflection of the great unchanging eternal visible pattern of nature.
I think you missed my point about the cigar. I was further illustrating the author's intentions versus the reader's interpretations, and how much we, to use a pun, read so much into a piece of art. And of course I wasn't attemtping to critique your symbolistic observations on the painting, but rather a comment left by another poster. Unless of course we're talking abotu totally something different.

I actually find your zodiac comparisons intriguing, and might be inclined to explore them further at a later date.
I am just your typical movie nerd, postcard collector and aspiring writer.
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6498
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2661 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Movie Nerd wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote: I am not talking about anything as vague as ‘blue’ or ‘cigar’, but a specific code
__/ Vo Π Y ? <> X ζ Д Δ Γ Λ
that appears both in the annual star path of the sun and in The Last Supper.
I think you missed my point about the cigar. I was further illustrating the author's intentions versus the reader's interpretations, and how much we, to use a pun, read so much into a piece of art. And of course I wasn't attemtping to critique your symbolistic observations on the painting, but rather a comment left by another poster. Unless of course we're talking abotu totally something different.

I actually find your zodiac comparisons intriguing, and might be inclined to explore them further at a later date.
Thanks Movie Nerd. You might not intend your comments as a critique, but that is what they are objectively. I am saying the apostles are not just apostles, but symbols of the visible cosmos. And the precision of the code, shown above, is such that this cannot be random coincidence since the same code is visible in the sky and the painting. It is not something I am ‘reading in’ as you put it, but something there objectively.

Freud’s famous apocryphal remark about cigars carries the direct implication here that ‘sometimes an apostle is just an apostle’. But that is not true for The Last Supper. The apostles are objective symbols of the stars. They are not just apostles. By contrast, Freud smoked twenty cigars a day, and symbolic analysis of this habit would most definitely involve reading things in that were not intended when he lit up.

You might find this cigar aficionado article on Freud of some interest, although I should say don’t try this at home http://www.cigaraficionado.com/webfeatu ... Cigar_6051

I should note, it is best to ignore the creationists on this thread as they are incapable of scientific analysis and are focused just on shoring up magical faith. But it can be useful to discuss their comments, as long as we don’t just whet the appetite for goats and trout.
User avatar
Movie Nerd
Intelligent
Posts: 560
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 9:36 am
9
Location: Virginia
Has thanked: 30 times
Been thanked: 178 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

I think you're still mising the cigar point. Once again, I wasn't addressing your interpretations on the painting, but rather a point someone else made about author's intentions on the whole.
I am just your typical movie nerd, postcard collector and aspiring writer.
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6498
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2661 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Movie Nerd wrote:I think you're still mising the cigar point. Once again, I wasn't addressing your interpretations on the painting, but rather a point someone else made about author's intentions on the whole.
Well thank you for caveating your point. Yes there are examples where people make up interpretations that are not intended by the author, but that is not the case here. Given that at least three or four creationists in this thread have made a similar point in providing airheaded input as a direct critique here, it is important to clarify that uncertainty regarding some interpretation does not mean all interpretation is uncertain.

I discussed the cigar example as it is relevant to this thread, which is as a critique of the suggestion that Leonardo used Christ and the apostles as symbols of observable nature and time.

Lets imagine we were talking about Peter, and we had no evidence that Rubens anywhere stated this painting was of Saint Peter
Image
The weight of tradition is so strong, and the political meaning of the keys is so powerful, that if anyone said 'sometime keys are just keys' as a way to argue this might not be Peter they would just get laughed at. Of course the symbol is direct and clear.

The difference with the visible stars is that they sit under a weight of cultural hostility in our society, as the Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing ably explains in her wonderful book Shikasta. People are conditioned to be incapable of looking up at the sky, as the Bible and Leonardo enjoin us to do. If people could actually look carefully, they would see the code I describe in the sky and the painting. It is really very simple.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Thu Nov 13, 2014 3:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

What evidence would you actually accept as falsifying this hypothesis of yours, Robert?

I'm guessing nothing would change your mind short of Leonardo rising from his grave to tell you, "Guess what? I was commissioned to paint a portrait of the Last Supper - and that's all I really did"

But lets hear it from you.
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Robert wrote:
he alignment of Leonardo's work with Hermetic philosophy is abundant and compelling. Leonardo was a leader of the intellectual scene in Florence where the major rediscovery of Hermetic texts occurred in his life time. He explicitly states in his extant writings “Hermes the Philosopher”
Leonardo was not part of the public intellectual scene.
Toward the end of his career, he came forward to speak on the prominence of the artist. To my knowledge, there is no documentation of LDV publicly or privately espousing "hermetic PHILOSOPHY"
Show me evidence that I am wrong, please.

I'm honestly confused here, Robert.
Are you saying Leonardo da Vinci wrote a work titled "Hermes the Philosopher"?
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

.
Last edited by ant on Thu Nov 13, 2014 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Post Reply

Return to “Religion & Philosophy”