A miserable pile of secrets!

Or, this picture here.

Full View Recommended. Although I don't have to tell you that.

Like all my other works with this amount of detail, I am of course going to write a lengthy explanation of it. So here we go:

In my drawing class, for our final assignment, we had to use wikipedia. Our first step was to choose either the color red or the color yellow and look one of them up on wikipedia. From the main article, we needed to click on ten links deviating from the article. For example: I chose red, I clicked the link “fire.” Then on the page for fire, I clicked on the link “Humorism”, and so on. These were my ten articles I chose:

Fire
Humorism (aka the four humors)
Eucrasia
Dyscrasia
Yin and Yang
Cosmos
Nondualism
Illusion
Gestalt
Person

I saw Dyscrasia and immediately danced in joy because I actually have an avatar by that name. (see: [link] ).

Ah but where do I start with this picture? Well, the basic concept here answers the question “what is a man?”. One of the concepts I want to portray in my comic Greyline is that there is no true “good” or “evil”—these are just illusions created in our minds to explain things around us. To say that a person is bad or good is all a matter of perception, and in reality, we have possibilities within us to create or destroy, be kind or be cruel, etc. We are not inherently good, nor evil. We are everything and nothing at all. At least that’s the way I see it. I like neutrality.

So let’s start with fire. Many people, (except for my fire-loving pal , who has told me of this concept many a time,) immediately associate fire with destruction. But fire has many uses—it can heal a forest, it can be used to make a campfire to create warmth or cook food, etc. So it can be both destructive and creative, it just depends on the scenario.

Fire in this picture is represented by flames in parts of the border, but the main representation of it is the alchemical symbol for fire, a triangle, seen in the center of the Ouroboros dragon with an eye above it. The eye represents the all-seeing divinity, whatever the hell you want to call it—god, the universe, whatever you want to believe created humans. The latin on the left side of the triangle says: “in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni,” (it’s a palindrome), or, “We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire” (originally written to describe the behavior of moths.) On the right it says: “igne natura renovatur integra,” or, “Through fire, nature is reborn whole.”

The circular dragon is an Ouroboros, an ancient symbol of infinity or eternity, and creation and destruction, as the dragon devours itself to provide its own nourishment and continue to grow/live. The name of the Ouroboros is Eucrasia, (who has become one of my four most important avatars,) who represents perfection. And lookit! He is blind. Haha. I think it’s amusing. Anyway, the dragon passing through the Ouroboros and the giant triangle is also an Ouro, but a messed up one—(see the description of the original concept of him at [link] .) He represents imperfection. As he passes through the divine triangle, he takes with him the “divine spark” from the myth of Prometheus—the flame of creation that was stolen from the gods which gives us humans our ability to create and imagine, etc. etc. Romantics love that concept, and I had been studying some Romantic literature in one of my other classes, so I went with it.

This is going to be kind of out of order but whatever.

So, Eucrasia is that circular dragon, who represents infinity and purity, (hence his name, which is taken from the word that means a stability in the body/mind), and Dyscrasia is the other fellow who represents the finite and corruption, (and, as a result, his name is taken from the greek concept which is the opposite of eucrasia—instability of the body which causes sickness.)

Humorism: Back in the day, the Greeks had a concept of “the Four Humors”; four basic fluids in our bodies which, if imbalanced, were responsible for sickness. (See: Dyscrasia.) The four humors were: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. (And I colored the four circles with the creatures in them which surround Dyscrasia according to what colors I thought worked best.) There’s a nifty chart at: [link] if you scroll down enough, but each of the four humors has a representative element of air, earth, fire, and water, respectively. To represent this, I put symbols around each of the circles which represent the four humors. I put the three corresponding astrological signs (the cosmos part of this pic,) of each element, along with the alchemical symbol, the cabbalist symbol, and the heathen symbol (actually I can’t remember what EXACTLY I got the other symbol from, but I know that it was some typical ancient symbol or another, I have to look it all up again) of each of the elements.

The greek in each circle says the greek name of each of the humors. And, as an aside, in the circles, I couldn’t resist paying tribute to my four doodles I draw all the time. For melancholic, I put Johshoh the Hoohah, the little chubby winged dragon thing which I draw on whatever I can whenever I get the chance; for Phlegmatic, I put Bob the Fishmouse, one of my older doodles I used to draw all the time; for Choleric, I put Matchstick and Torchboy, two newer doodles of mine; and for Sanguine I put a bird, because I draw birds and winged things all the time.

Yin and Yang Yin and Yang would need a lengthy description in itself, so I suggest looking it up on Wikipedia. Basically though there’s light and dark, good and bad, yada yada—the opposites—but they are contained in one, they are dependant on each other—the smaller the yin, the bigger the yang, and the bigger the yin, the smaller the yang. But the basic thing I wanted to take from this is the opposites in a whole, which can’t exist without the other.

Nondualism is pretty much the same—it’s opposites, but they don’t really exist—all things dual are actually two in one. Good and evil are one thing, etc., etc. I’d also suggest looking this up, it’s fun.

Illusion in this pic is represented by the mask that Dyscrasia is wearing, (which is kind of reminiscent of a Yin-Yang,) and stands for the illusion that things come in black and white, when in reality they are just blended shades of gray. Not a new concept, but I most definitely looooove it.

Gestalt is originally a German word, but our English meaning of it is “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” All the things, all the opposites, which compose a human being, are all together in one being, which is the greater whole. The whole is both good and bad, but neither one nor the other.

And finally, the last word, Person, which is what this picture sums up, answering the original question—“What is a man?”—which is written in Latin at the bottom of the picture as “quis est vir” (this MIGHT be wrong, but I had someone who knows Latin translate it for me, so I’m hoping it’s right. If not, whatever.)

Some final details:
The other Latin found in the picture—

“Utraque unum”—“Both into one,” or “that the two may be one.”
“Sum quod eris”—“I am what you will be.”
“Ab aeterno”—“From Eternity.”
“Noster nostri”—“Our hearts beat as one.”

Around the picture in the border are various representations of opposites together. The death in a desert is surrounded by life-giving sun, and the living tree in the opposite side panel is surrounded in cold darkness and the moon. So opposites exist together. And the candle represents a calmness of fire, and the super-flamey bowl of fire thing represents the destructive qualities. And then there are some pillars cause I needed something to fill the space and they looked nifty, (haha go me), and a feather and a poorly-drawn antler to represent peace and war. Or softness and hardness. Whatever you want.


There are some other various details in the picture, but that’s about it. I apologize this explanation has been so long, but I put a lot of work into both the drawing itself and the concepts behind it, so I feel it’s necessary to explain it. I generally put a ton of meaning into my pictures, but I leave it up to the audience to figure them out, or I keep them secret because they are more personal to me, but this is one exception I’ll make, because I don’t want any bit of it to be lost.

Thank you for your time and patience with this lengthy explanation if you read it. I greatly appreciate it.