Presentation 3 — Man Is a Shadow's Dream

Dr C.A. Bartzokas · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 10 slides

Ten slides built on a single line of Greek poetry. The title slide gives it in both languages — A shadow's dream is man, and beneath it σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωπος — which is Pindar's phrase from the eighth Pythian ode. Everything after it is a photograph, and the illustration chosen is the one the phrase most naturally suggests: the puppet theatre, where the figures the audience watches are not the figures themselves but their shadows thrown on a lit screen.

Most of the images come from the Greek shadow theatre of Karagiozis. There is a tall many-headed and many-armed painted figure, an openwork red and gold palace or serai cut in profile, a pair of bearded characters in green and red, a European gentleman in a check coat facing a lady in green and gold, and a painted poster advertising a Karagiozis theatre, its Greek lettering naming the company and its players ranged across the front of the booth. The presentation then crosses to England for the same idea in a different tradition: a Victorian print of a Punch and Judy booth with a crowd of children and adults gathered around it, and a stage view of the two characters mid-quarrel. The last photograph before the end card is a modern shadow performance seen from behind the audience, the heads of the watchers dark in the foreground and the figures on the lit screen beyond them — which is, in one picture, the whole point of the presentation. The closing slide reads End.

View the presentation (PDF, 0.7 MB, 10 slides)