duality.

5 minute read.

gemini season is at its end, and i’ve been thinking about duality for the past few weeks.

duality, and the sparks created by the collision of two opposing ideas.

Quetzalcoatl is the perfect embodiment of duality. the feathered serpent literally shouldn’t exist. it’s a flying snake. as terrifying as that can be, i like to think about the metaphorical and philosophical implications of ancestral stories.

i don’t really care for aesthetic accuracy. i think what is important about myths is the message they are trying to get across. that is the importance of oral tradition, especially in pre-print societies. i don’t think the visual elements are meant to be rigid. they are left to the audience’s imagination so they can mix with the abstraction already present in one’s mind. after all, gods are masks we put on concepts that are almost impossible for us to grasp, so we bookmark them with a face.

any time i paint Quetzalcoatl, i think about the push and pull of its duality. an animal that is meant to crawl on the earth transcends its “nature” and flies. maybe i’m reading too much into it, but i love the idea of transcendence. in all of the stories i can find, this dude was that guy: wise, artistic, just. he was the embodiment of the Übermensch (ha, Nietzsche thinks he’s so fucking original).

anyway, Quetzalcoatl is the perfect balance of humanity and divinity, a concept that us westerners should be really familiar with because of our good old pal Jesus. um, Christ, to be clear.

as i paint, i think about how Yeshua’s story is often interpreted as a bridge between humanity and divinity. we can transcend.

i think about the yin and the yang that represent the Tao. their motion. the push and the pull. the tides of an ocean moving back and forth, never staying still.

from there, i start thinking about godhood.

across almost every mythology, there seems to be a recurring theme: someone struggling toward godhood. Hercules performs impossible labors. heroes are tested. prophets wander deserts. enlightenment is earned. transcendence is pursued.

and then there are the opposite stories.

Lucifer, divine as he was, falls because of pride, a manifestation of ego.

it’s funny. no matter the culture, the story always seems familiar. something is trying to rise, and something is trying to pull it back down.

that’s how i often experience being human.

a constant battle between ego and spirit.

as Kendrick put it: “wickedness or weakness, are we gonna live or die?”

which brings me back to duality.

there is internal duality and external duality.

Quetzalcoatl represents both.

internally, he is the feathered serpent, a contradiction made whole. a creature of the earth that reaches for the sky. something bound to crawl that somehow learns to fly.

externally, his story is filled with opposing forces. he constantly finds himself at odds with Tezcatlipoca, a deity who often feels like his foil. where one pulls, the other pushes. where one builds, the other disrupts.

one of my favorite images in Mesoamerican mythology is Quetzalcoatl and Mictlantecuhtli. whenever i see them together, i think about life and death. creation and destruction. are we gonna live or die?

finding duality in everything.

in divinity and humanity.

in ego and spirit.

in life and death.

in chaos and order.

i think about a quote from the Hogfather movie. (yes, i know it’s from a book, and yes, i saw the movie instead, so don’t judge me.)

“humans are where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”

that line has lived rent-free in my head for years because it captures exactly what Quetzalcoatl makes me feel.

when i paint him, i’m not really concerned with perfect historical accuracy. i’m trying to paint an idea.

the place where opposites meet.

the place where chaos and order collide and somehow create balance.

and maybe that’s the point of duality.

not to eliminate one side in favor of the other, but to find the balance between them.

i can’t remember if it was Aristotle or one of those other ancient dudes who talked about the golden mean, but the idea has always stuck with me. virtue exists somewhere between excess and deficiency. not too much. not too little.

balance.

every day we are balancing dozens of invisible variables. sacrifice and desire. discipline and freedom. reason and emotion. self-interest and service.

if identity were a graph, it would be a thousand moving lines crossing over each other at once.

and somehow we are expected to juggle all of it.

that juggling act is what i think being human is.

so when i paint Quetzalcoatl, these are the kinds of things i think about.

just notes scribbled into a notebook while paint dries.

thoughts about duality.

thoughts about balance.

thoughts about what it means to be the creature caught between earth and sky.

i suppose that’s what being a Gemini feels like.

-mudman