A Hermetic Vision

I revisited this picture in 2023, twelve years after taking it, to make a second version. I noticed that in an out-take the clouds above mirrored the curve of the amphitheatre below. This reminded me of the famous dictum “As above, so below”, from The Emerald Tablet, a Hermetic text dating from the ninth century AD, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus whose portrait is found inlaid in the floor of Siena cathedral. To an Etruscan Augur in Tuscany three thousand years ago, the flight of birds was meaningful for human affairs. We still use the ancient Etruscan word in to augur well (or badly), and inauguration.

The earlier version This Autumn Evening

Location: Pitigliano, Tuscany