In a bleak wintry landscape with dead trees, a dark sun is setting behind a hill. On the frames are butterflies, caterpillars, snails, birds, frog, dragonfly. This represents the gold obscured in the earth, in nature, awaiting the alchemist. (Stephen Skinner's Splendor Solis commentary)
The Dark Sun vs The Nobody
Loss of energy, depression - "a turning inward often precedes a new conscious attitude or change in personality. The Dark Sun also symbolizes the fundamental inseparability of death and renewal in nature, including human nature. The absence of humans and other animals suggest that instinctual and intellectual activities have not fully revitalized in terms of action and will."
My drawing of the Nobody represents a longing to be somewhere else, or to be someone else. A person split off from their feelings and true self. That true self is the bird, obscured in the tree like the gold in nature. My drawing was inspired by the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, the story of an unassuming young man who's response to his wife leaving is to go down into a deep well in order to think about what happened. The drawing refers to the part where while in the well he starts to lose his mind and imagines himself as a bird flying over the city. The circle of white light in the top right corner looking like a moon is the opening of the well, with the bird's shadow escaping the well toward the light.
Note: the quotes in italic are from the book by J.L. Henderson and D.N. Sherwood, Transformation of the Psyche: The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis
