Presentation — A Marriage Made in Heaven: Cupid and Psyche

Dr C.A. Bartzokas · Secret Doctrine's Third Proposition Series · 25 slides

Twenty-five slides, and the only presentation held in this section. Its title slide reads A Marriage Made in Heaven, and the marriage in question is the one told in the story of Cupid and Psyche — Psyche being simply the Greek word for soul, which is why the story belongs in a section on the third proposition at all. Not a word of commentary appears on any slide; the whole of it is paintings and illustrations, arranged so that the story runs in order. The written treatment is "Proposition 3: Marriage Made in Heaven", held in this same section, and "Blavatsky on the Holy Union of High Occultists" bears on it too.

The largest single group of images is a cycle of flat, pale, decorative panels by Maurice Denis, and the presentation leans on them for the narrative: Psyche among her attendants, borne through the air by Zephyr to the island prepared for her, discovering by lamplight who her sleeping husband is, pursued by the vengeance of Venus, and at last received into the company of the gods in a long procession of figures against a blue sky. Around that framework are set paintings that take the same subject in quite different registers. Bouguereau supplies three — the two winged children embracing on a cloud, the grown pair rising with Psyche carried in Cupid's arms, and a young woman fending off the boy and his arrow. There is a black-and-white illustration of the lamp held over the sleeping figure, a nursery-book plate of a winged child and a woman in a rose-hung interior, and a bright decorative illustration of a kneeling suitor before a lady under fireworks. Waterhouse contributes two of the best-known treatments, Psyche at the threshold of the garden and Psyche opening the golden box. Botticelli's Birth of Venus and a tall Cranach Venus with Cupid stand for the older tradition, alongside a Pre-Raphaelite pair cheek to cheek, a classical judgement scene, a seaside gathering of Venus and her nymphs, and a Rackham-style illustration of a woman leaning from the branches of a gnarled tree. The last slide, in the balloons-and-confetti style of the title slide, reads Happy End — which is the presentation's own summary of the story's outcome, and the reason it was chosen.

View the presentation (PDF, 1.6 MB, 25 slides)