The Buried Stone, the Castle and the Beasts
Death and the Skull as the central motif, with the Pillar, the Serpent and the Dragon, the Lion, and the Sun and the Moon in a secondary part. From The Ripley Scroll.
Key · 5 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 4
The picture
Two shrouded figures lie on patterned beds, each attended by a winged figure with a vessel, under a Latin banner; a column with four naked climbers stands in a walled enclosure with eight watchmen on its turrets and a red dragon under the battlements; two rearing beasts flank a white font with a red column in it; a winged lion sits on a plinth between a small sun and a small moon; a large moon face and a large sun face stand at the foot. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
The other half of this pair carries almost no writing, and what it does carry is in Latin and sits under two people lying down. Read that banner first, because it is the only statement the sheet makes: “Est lapis Occultus Secreto fonte Sepultus.” There is a hidden stone, buried in a secret spring.
Above it, twice over, a figure lies on a patterned bed in a shroud and hood with a winged attendant leaning in. The first angel holds out a shallow oval dish. The second holds something round and red. Neither figure on the bed is doing anything, and the word underneath them is buried.
Then the sheet stops explaining itself. A walled enclosure with eight small watchmen posted on its turrets, and inside it one column with a crocketed capital, up which four naked figures are climbing, the topmost hanging head down. Nothing here is lettered. A maker who wrote names beside his lions on the companion sheet wrote nothing beside this.
A red dragon sits inside the same enclosure, under the battlements, wings raised. The wall is around it rather than against it, which is worth noticing before anyone reads the castle as a defence.
Lower down, two rearing beasts, one red and one tawny, flank a white font with a red column standing in it. Below them a winged lion sits alone on a plinth with a small sun at one shoulder and a small moon at the other, the only figure on the sheet holding both.
And at the foot the two faces, drawn large: a moon as a crescent laid over a full disc, and a sun as a plain disc with straight rays, one at each side of a stem hung with four small suns, a bird and a black sun. Everything on this half is legible as drawing and silent as text. Turn to the left-hand sheet and the same hand will not stop talking.
Not yet decoded: the motifs are marked, but most of the marks carry no reading yet and say so. The sourced notes come with the entry.
An office, not an ending. Note what Death is holding and who is being made to look at it.
In plain words The banner under the second bed is the one place on this sheet where the maker names what is happening, and the word he uses is buried. A hidden stone, buried in a secret spring. The two figures are lying under it in shrouds with angels bringing them something, one an oval dish, one a red round thing.
The plate “Est lapis Occultus Secreto fonte Sepultus armentum bariat lapidem qui cauta colorat”
Symbolica The plate's Latin, put into English here for the first line only: There is a hidden stone, buried in a secret spring. The second line is legible letter by letter at this size and does not resolve into Latin that can be translated with confidence, so the archive prints it as written and leaves it.
Two columns, and the thing that matters is between them. Note what stands there, and whether the pillars are told apart.
In plain words A single column stands in the middle of a walled enclosure with eight little watchmen on its turrets, and four naked figures are climbing the shaft, one upside down at the top. The sheet letters everything it cares about and letters none of this.
Symbolica Nothing on the sheet names the column, the climbers or the watchmen. The archive marks the group and leaves it unread.
A single creature doing two opposite jobs. Note whether it is bound, killed, or eating itself.
In plain words The dragon is inside the enclosure, not besieging it. Whatever is being guarded here, the wall is around the dragon rather than against it.
Symbolica Unlettered on the sheet, and the banners above it name only the buried stone.
Usually not an animal but one face of a set of four. Count the other three before reading it alone.
In plain words Two lion groups on one sheet and they are doing different jobs. The upper pair rear at a white font with a red column standing in it. The lower one is winged, alone, on a plinth, with a small sun on one side and a small moon on the other, which is the only figure here given both luminaries at once.
Symbolica Neither group is lettered. Both are marked by eye and left unread.
Gold, the perfected metal, and the illuminated intellect. The most overloaded symbol in the tradition.
In plain words Both are drawn as faces, the moon a crescent laid over a full disc and the sun a plain disc with straight rays, and they sit on either side of a stem carrying four small suns, a bird and a black sun. The scale is the thing to notice: these two are the biggest objects on the lower half of the sheet.
Symbolica Unlettered. The lettering on this sheet is confined to the two scrolls at the head.
Also carrying Death and the Skull
13 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
Death (XIII)
Knight, Death, and the Devil
Si de quattuor unum Occidas, subitò mortuus omnis erit
Adonis ab apro occiditur, cui Venus accurrens tinxit Rosas sanguine
Dolo Typhon Osyridem trucidat, artúsque illius Hinc inde dissipat, sed hos collegit Isis inclyta
The Weeping Virgin, the Broken Column and Time
Where the detail is the subject
the Pillar · the Serpent and the Dragon · the Lion · the Sun and the Moon
Each of these is in the picture without being what it is about. Below, one work that is about each.
In the same series
Record
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