Berçem Gözde Ölmez
Translated by Zeynep Nur Ayanoğlu
"Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius, et quod inferius est sicut quod est superius."1
Witches, wizards, wise women and oracles have been regarded with fear and hatred rather than respect since ancient times. The power they wielded was often nothing more than a curse compared to the situation they were in. Although the assumption of witchcraft as a malevolent image is attributed to medieval continental Europe, the real origin of the witch is actually derived from the Antiquity. In Ancient Greece, the adjective magea comes from the root of the word magic and it has gradually taken on malicious meanings.2 New magicians began to emerge as the public curiosity and necessity for magic increased. Were witches helping people or were they doing evil? In ancient times, deeds that we now regard as evil were in deed not totally good or bad in themselves, they simply acted in accordance with their nature. Also, nature had volatile characteristics, just like humans did.
The concept of the fantastic emerges precisely as a result of this contradiction. Phantasy, which is the field of phenomena created by human mind’s imagery, is derived from the same root as fantasticum and fhantasein and it resembles phantom, which means ghost. The reflection of the imagery is similar to phantasmagoria.3 We project silhouettes from our minds, reflected from a reality that is greater than our own, which gives us the answers to the questions we always ask. The ancients valued this mysterious power, the power of vision and prophecy.
The earliest phenomenon encountered in divination readings is the endeavor to make sense of the dark and elusive demands of the almighty through every possible sign.4 The observation of the movements of birds,5 the interpretation of observations about lightning and ominous signs are referred to as natural divination. In prophecies in which some rituals such as fortune-telling, clairvoyance and inner vision are applied, there are messages delivered to the person by the power who is endowed with the ability of vision. The power of fortune-telling and clairvoyance becoming malignant over time in line with the demonization of the deities of antiquity gradually began to target women who were different from the society. Stereotypical images of witches were created for this purpose, definitive judgements were made and the gender of the witch was assigned to be female. Even if they were not genuinely related to magic and sorcery, it was always women who were asked to heal animals and people, to find lost or stolen items, to make amulets and potions, to foretell the future. In time, the lines between the sorcerer, the healer and the soothsayer became transparent and all were reduced to a single image of the witch. The patriarchal way of thinking that constructed the image of the witch has not gone beyond imagining the female as a servant of the devil, who is also understood to be a male creature. What is the greatest tragedy here? To be deemed a witch per se or to fail to be deemed an individual even in a rebellious imagination?
The Silhouette of Power depicts a witch’s process reflected in the light of prophetic imagery, takes us into the magical world and into realms where fantasy is the reality itself. Ancient prophecies begin with the movements of birds, which are received and interpreted as divine messages. The exhibition welcomes us with Ace Tarot divination cards accompanied by an altar, interpreting and transmitting to us what comes from the sublime through the oracle.6 The first series of the Minor Arcana7, where the artist has designed the Heart, Sword, Wand and Talisman aces, takes us to the origins of both alchemy and occultism. Ace Tarot cards, which are also thought to symbolize the elements, are the heart of their suits. They represent and reflect the brightest, highest energy. They also convey the consciousness of the human being in that the Ace of Hearts symbolizes feelings, the Ace of Swords symbolizes thoughts, the Ace of Wands symbolizes passions and the Ace of Talismans symbolizes needs.
Gizem Akkoyunoğlu leads us into the witch’s consciousness with tarot cards so that we witness her prophecies and accompany her journey and visions through oracle portals. She leaves us alone with the first vision, the crystal, which displays itself as an unprocessed and pure stone. The ancients believed in the sanctity of the unprocessed stone that matured in the belly of the earth, which they considered to be the Mother Goddess. She thus confronts us with the whole memory of the stone, which has been a talisman for ages. Used in rituals to increase magical energy, the stone offers us half-blurred visions of the past and the future.
Since our earliest ancestors began to question the meaning of birth and death, the eternal cycle of nature has been the oldest rule of esotericism. We encounter Witch-Kings of The Carrion Sky as a fundamental vision of this cycle. This image that shows a number of vultures together symbolizes one of the images of prophecy in Rome and makes us question the meaning of these birds, now considered grotesque. Beyond its frightening appearance, the vulture is a symbol of the eternal cycle and renewal, and has also been seen as the protective symbol of goddesses.
Prophecies are as much a punishment as they are a blessing; the future can change, become uncertain and be reshaped by a smallest factor. In alchemy the cycle of life and death is given to us by the equality of what is above and below. Yet it is most difficult for the oracle to see death, even if they know its necessity. The rock under water is one of those omens. At the height of the witch-hunting frenzy, hunters devised various methods of identifying witches; the water test being one of them. If the water test is defined as a reverse baptism, the belief that the pure, namely the water, would reject the witch was the basis of this test. Sinking to the bottom proved innocence, the witch who sank was left to die, believing that her soul would pass to the other world in a purified state. Methods were developed and books were written to prove the witchcraft of women who were subjected to countless tortures like this. For witches, who were believed to be unable to cry due to the “nature of their elements”, tortures were justified by saying that their tears were like those of crocodiles.
Akkoyunoğlu deepens this crocodile metaphor used by witch hunters for witch women with other metaphors that remind us of the similarity between humans and crocodiles. Some primitive beliefs8 that crocodiles only hunt the victims handed over to them by drowning them and tell the sun, moon and stars that the water committed the murder represent one of the layers of this picture. Like the crocodile that convinces its prey that it is not responsible for the murder, witch hunters do not see themselves as responsible. Because in their eyes, the witch is the evil itself. In primitive times when nature and man were one, there were no strict distinctions between humans and animals. In ancient times, when it was widely believed that crocodiles were intuitive creatures with the power of magic and vision, the crocodile was both the prey and predator. The work named Mirror Lake is the last prophecy, the last ring of visions that brings together different narratives and unites them with an ancient narrative.
Gizem Akkoyunoğlu, who leads us to follow the witch’s traces step by step with black visions, takes the audience on a journey full of symbols, to a dark, esoteric realm through the eyes of a witch.
1 Lat. “Whatever is below is similar to that which is above. Through this the marvels of the work of one thing are procured and perfected.” From the translation of the Emerald Tablets of Hermes.
2 In the Late Classical period, witches were called by different names such as saga (fortune teller), sortilega (soothsayer), venefica (sorceress), strix (a mythological bird that feeds on human flesh and blood) and Lamia (female demon in Greek mythology that kills children).
3 The word phantasmagoria can be defined as illusory images and imaginary space created by optical illusion. The concept of phantasmagoria mentioned by Walter Benjamin in his work Passages was used to describe the deceptive image fields created by capitalism.
4 In ancient Rome, divinatio (clairvoyance, vision, prophecy) derives from divinus, which is related to the words deus and divus (god and divine). It means of the nature of God, that which is divine. Divinus, on the other hand, is used directly in the sense of oracle.
5 Divination through birds is called auspicium in Rome.
6 Oracle is derived from the Latin verb õrãre, meaning to speak. In a broad sense, oracle is the name given to the place where divination happens. The oracle is more commonly thought to be portals through which the gods speak directly to humans.
7 Believed to have originated in Europe in the mid-15th century, the tarot deck of oracle cards consists of 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana cards. Minor Arcana is also considered to be the ancestor of card decks.
8 According to Southeast Asian and African beliefs.
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