This is my version of the Mother and Child Icon.
Around December 21st, at the low point of the turning year it’s the birth of the fragile sun and the birth of the heroic Christ child . In both cases that emerging energy will be enfolded by the recipient in a bond that is miraculous.
So in Newgrange Mound, near Dublin, for about five days, the feeble morning sun enters the passage and creeps slowly up to the womblike chamber where it hits the triple spiral marked on the back wall, as it has done for 5000 years ,the oldest record of its type, replicated all over the world in similar dated mid-winter monuments .
In their own way, the Christian icons of Mother and Child mark this same moment of hope and fruitfulness, traceable to an earlier Egyptian image of the boy king sitting on the lap or throne of the Goddess, Isis. This is her crowning moment as she enables him to life; birth of the sun child, the christ child.
Traditionally there are three prototypes for this Icon; firstly, the Virgin Orans, of the Sign, 4th century Rome, where the Mother‘s arms are raised around the child sitting in a sphere at her centre, cosmic and geometric; secondly ,the Virgin Hodigitria which shows the Mother as Theotokos, the god-bearer, holding her son in her left arm whilst pointing to him with her right hand.,Byzantine,5th century, a majestic investiture ; and thirdly, the Virgin Eleousa, which means merciful loving kindness where the mother proudly holds her son but the haunting expression in her face foretells his fate,Constantinople,11th century, personal and emotional .Its the Cretan variation of Eleousa that is represented in Catholic homes as Virgin of Vladimir, of the Passion or Perpetual Succour .It focuses on the relationship between Mother and Child as they embrace each other tenderly or playfully, and on the expression of the Mothers face as she expresses both love and sorrow. The Icon prototype develops from something general and schematic to something particular and intimate.
As Queen of Heaven, the three gold stars on the Mothers dark red life-blooded robe symbolize her triple aspect as a maiden, mother and crone, a triple aspect universally associated with Goddess figures, which appropriately brings us back full-circle to the triple spiral at Newgrange.
I suppose my icon belongs to the Eleousa type, though there are differences. The Mothers robe is green and her expression suggests the twist of contradictory emotions, exhilaration and horror .Likewise, the child is both miracle and monster since what seems one to some is another to others, and because the reality of birth is not an ideal, the ideal that male iconographers might paint with their abstract reasoning. Mother and child are encased in the blue background teardrop shape that suggests their destiny together.
There are no new stories, just a re-telling of the old ones in new languages, and this is my re-telling.Happy Christmas Solstice.
