`The Great Serpent’ is possibly my first proper visionary / pagan art work..! I painted it sometime in 1995, water colours on A3 paper.. (the picture here is a photo of it, digitally enhanced to compensate for the faded colour).
It was possibly following some attendances to pagan wotkshops, and after me having a vivid dream about being bitten by a snake, that I had the idea for this painting – which features a Goddess-like female figure at the centre of the planet. Her top half is human, while bottom half is that of snake- whose tail wraps around her torso. She holds a crystal sphere in one hand and a black handled knife in the other (magical tool of a Witch, called an `Athame’). From her body emanates snakes that are `flowing’ to the bottom. The top part of the Earth (rocks) have a very slight hint of a dragon! It all shows the waters of life flowing!
I suppose in some ways there’s resonance of the Hindu deity Ganga Devi (goddess of the River Ganges…sacred to all Hindus)..who needed to flow from heavens onto the had of Lord Shiva, before flowing down to the Earth. She was also the deity who had 7 babies, 6 of which she drowned at birth for mystical reasons ..in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. [more on another blog].
-Mani Navasothy
Link
QuantumPhoenix 