DRACO non moritur, nisi cum fratre & sorore sua interficiatur, qui sunt Sol & Luna

Michael Maier, 1618 “DRACO non moritur, nisi cum fratre & sorore sua interficiatur, qui sunt Sol & Luna.” Atalanta Fugiens, Emblema XXV, page 109, the motto printed over the engraving.

Symbolica, 2026 Maier’s Latin, put into English here: The dragon does not die unless killed with his brother and sister, who are the Sun and the Moon.

Michael Maier, 1618 “Exiguae est non artis opus, stravisse Draconem
Funere, ne serpat mox redivivus humo.
Frater & ipsa soror juncti simul illius ora
Fuste premunt, nec res fert aliena necem.
Phoebus ei frater, soror est at Cynthia, Python
Illa, ast Orion hac cecidere manu.” Atalanta Fugiens, Epigramma XXV, page 109, the six lines printed under the engraving.

Symbolica, 2026 Maier’s epigram, put into English here: It is no small work of art to lay the Dragon low in death, so that he does not soon creep the ground alive again. Brother and sister together press down his jaws with a club, and no foreign thing brings about his death. Phoebus is his brother and Cynthia his sister; Python fell by the one hand and Orion by the other.

Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.

1. Primary motif
2. 1The Dragonthe dragon on the ground between the two who club it
3. Secondary motifs · 1
4. 2The Sun and the Moonthe man with the sun for a head and the woman with the crescent, each with a club raised

The serpent between the sun-headed and moon-headed figures, each raising a weapon. By eye

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.

Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.