Our full desire

There are two major tapestry cycles which feature unicorns, one currently hangs in the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, USA. The other hands in the Musée de Cluny, Paris, France. This cycle is rich in symbolism, pulling at symbolic language which has surrounded the unicorn since ancient Sumer. There is the grove of trees, and a lion, ancient mystical symbols, which in combination of the presence of the unicorn portent mighty things.

In this case, there seem to be multiple levels of meaning portrayed. In the context of the entire tapestry cycle, you may see the story of Joan of Arc laid out for those who can read the complex symbolic language. Read the brilliant analysis here by Yuki Fukazawa http://www.ladyandtheunicorn.com/ This particular tapestry shows the lady either setting aside her deepest desire, or taking it out of its case, supported by the lion and the unicorn, which were in opposition to each other in other tapestries in the cycle.

What is your true desire?

Learn more about the unicorn in my forthcoming release: On the Reality, Mythology, and Fantasies of Unicorns, available from Dragonwell Publishing September 2021.

Unicorns in Ancient Africa

The unicorn above comes from an ancient Coptic Christian manuscript from an African Coptic community. If you look at it closely, you can see that the drawing of the unicorn gives it the claws and the legs of a lion, and a head of a goat. This is mostly symbolic of how dangerous the unicorn was understood to be, and how it was associated with demonic forces. There is an ancient Coptic Christian folk tale of how, they day Jesus died, a unicorn went to the tomb where his body was laid to rest to bring his soul to the underworld. When the unicorn observed Jesus was alive, the unicorn fled in terror. That the unicorn would be associated with the underworld might be from early Christianity’s close contact with Assyrian mythology, where the unicorn was associated with the two daughters of the moon, one of whom was the goddess Erishkigal, queen of the underworld.

Fun announcement!

I just got a delightful surprise which I’ll be able to share with you soon! Yes, it is writing related, and amazingly it involves unicorns (who would have thought?) More soon!

The endless battle between the lion and the unicorn

In Book II, Canto V of the Faerie Queene, the great English poet Edmund Spenser wrote:

Like as a Lion, whose imperial Power
A proud rebellious Unicorn defies,
T’ avoid the rash Assault and wrathful Stower
Of his fierce Foe, him to a Tree applies,
And when him running in full Course he spies,
He slips aside; the whiles that furious Beast
His precious Horn, sought of his Enemies,
Strikes in the Stock, ne thence can be releast,
But to the mighty Victor yields a bounteous Feast.

Others would write of the “never ending” battle between the lion and the unicorn. Perhaps most amusingly, Lewis Carol had the two break from their endless battle to have some tea and cake with Alice before resuming the fight. Images of the lion and unicorn are found together throughout the ancient world, from a lion playing against a unicorn in a board game

to both represented on one of the most ancient game boards found in the Sumerian city of Ur.

There are scholars who think the battle represents the changes of the seasons as represented in constellations, but we know little of astrology when Ur was inhabited. There are other scholars who think the unicorn represents the moon and the lion the sun and the battle is that of night and day, and the periodic eclipse of the sun by the moon. If so, having the lion always win out would be reassuring to people.

What is known is that the unicorn is associated with the two daughters of the moon in ancient Sumerian myth: Inanna and Erishkigal. I go into this in depth in my book, The reality, mythology, and fantasies of Unicorns, available from Dragonwell Publishing later this year.

To catch a unicorn

Betye Saar’s To Catch a Unicorn was painted with a deliberate nod to both mysticism and mythology. As I layout in my forthcoming book, On The Reality, Mythology, and Fantasies of Unicorns, (Dragowell Publishing later in 2021) the unicorn is very closely associated in mythology with the moon, as well as with trees. These associations go all the way back to ancient Sumer, where the unicorn is associated with both the grove near the entrance to the underworld and with the two daughters of the moon.

Saar paints herself as the strong and confident woman whose captivating presence has drawn a unicorn to her side. This delightful print is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.