Shesha the Five Headed Cobra, Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Madison, WI. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I held at least one sculpture photograph back from my Saturday post. This is Figure 1. Also in the Thai Pavillion of the Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison is this wonderful five headed cobra.  This is the first perspective that I photographed it from and it only shows four of the five heads.  I took several other images slowly progressing to full frontal with all heads shown.  But in the end I found that I liked the drama of first perspective best.

And exactly what is this an allusion to?  We have in the mythologies of the world many multiheaded beasts. There is Cerberus the usually three headed dog that guarded the gates of Hades, the underworld in Greek and Roman mythology.  Then we have the Whore of Babylon who rides the seven headed beast at the time of the Christian Last Judgment. But this, I believe, is the Hindu Shesha, (see also the Buddhist nāga) also known as Sheshanaga, who holds the universe on his hoods and constantly from all his mouths exclaims the glory of Vishnu. And most beautifully, it is said that his uncoiling is the creative event that causes time to move forward but when he recoils the universe ceases to exist.

This I think explains why there is serenity not terror in this wonderful sculpture.  The quality of stone, particularly the speckles is to me amazing. It serves to animate the serpent as it emerges from a galaxy of stars. Both in its relationship with the origin and meaning of time and its connection with stellar evolution, the Shesha seems, in my mind, to merge ancient and modern concepts of cosmogony.