Dear Don,

Yes, We had been wandering the moors… when have we ever been at Ilkley without me chomping at the bit to get up there? And I think we’d just come in from a wander in the moonlight too… though we would have stuck to the edges, unlike the first time I went back there after years of absence and was called up there in the dark…

The knots with which Loki is tied struck me… my first thought was the Knot of Isis, though that can have nothing to do with the image apart from its symbolic nature.

The ill-defined features on most of these early depictions make me wonder if they are only there to define the function of the senses, rather than to give an indication of personality, which is a human trait rather than a godly one, after all. We tell the tales of the gods, their stories couched in human form to aid our understanding, after all, not because we believe the Powers That Be really do behave like lecherous old men or spoiled brats.

And look how much grief has been caused by planting the seeds of misunderstanding by portraying divinities ‘out of character’. The image of the fair-skinned, long-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, wearing flowing robes contradicts the archaeological evidence for a man of his era and origins, for example. And how many times have we seen representations of Him as a mediaeval noble?

Continue reading at France & Vincent