Three Riders on Black, Red and White Lions
The Lion as the central motif, with the Crown and the Serpent and the Dragon in a secondary part. From The Flamel figures.
What is happening
Apocalypse 6:1 “And I saw that the Lamb had opened one of the seven seals: and I heard one of the four living creatures, as it were the voice of thunder, saying: Come and see.”
Apocalypse 6:8 “And power was given to him over the four parts of the earth, to kill with sword, with famine and with death and with the beasts of the earth.”
Key · 3 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 2
The picture
Three armed riders on a black, a red and a white lion charge across the clouds under the sun and the moon; below them figures fall or lie on the ground and a beast crouches at the left; the Lion as the central motif, by eye. By eye
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 composition, the picture read whole in our own words, comes with the entry.
No entry yet for this motif. The wall gathers every work that carries it.
By eye The central motif, the three beasts, black, red and white, carrying their riders through the sky.
Apocalypse 6:2 “And I saw: and behold a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow”
Apocalypse 6:4 “And there went out another horse that was red. And to him that sat thereon, it was given that he should take peace from the earth: and that they should kill one another. And a great sword was given to him.”
Symbolica The sixth chapter puts these riders on horses, black, red and white. The painter has put them on lions of the same three colours, and the crowned rider with the bow and the rider with the great sword are the ones the text describes. What the third rider holds is not the pair of scales the black horse carries in the chapter, so that reading is not given.
Completion, and in the Kabbalistic reading the first sephirah, the point at which the work is no longer yours.
By eye A secondary motif, the crown on the rider who carries the bow.
Apocalypse 6:2 “there was a crown given him”
No entry yet for this motif. The wall gathers every work that carries it.
By eye A secondary motif, the green beast breathing fire across the middle of the sheet.
Symbolica No beast breathes fire in the sixth chapter. Observed on the sheet, and left unread rather than guessed.
Also carrying the Lion
6 works, 1 with it as the central motif. The symbol.
Also carrying the Crown
10 works. The symbol.
Also carrying the Serpent and the Dragon
11 works. The symbol.
In the same series
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