The Fearful Mirror of Apollo The Fearful Mirror of Apollo Andrew Childs Between rationalism and mysticism there is … a certain complicity. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology A little poison now and then: that produces pleasant dreams. And a lot of poison at last, for a pleasant death. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra INTERSTICES 4 The Fearful Mirror of Apollo 1 Though it is not at all usual, I wish to step outside of the domain of critical research for one moment and into the realm of speculation (fig 1): It is late in the morning of August 27 1965. A man stands on the balcony of house E1027 at Roquebrune, Cap Martin. Looking at this man we know as Le Corbusier, he appears lonely, tired and embittered. His dreams are haunted by an aphorism, a casual sentence he once scribbled down from a book long forgotten: Many die too late and some die too early. Yet still the dictum may sound strange: Die at the right time.1 It is already too late. He makes a decision; walking back into the house he carefully selects several red coloured barbiturates prescribed for insomnia and adds benzodiazepines prescribed for depression. He swallows them as he walks down the steep path to the azure waters of the Mediterranean sea (fig 2). He has always been a strong swimmer, and this occasion is no different from any other. (fig 3) Le Corbusier’s accomplishments, particularly at Ronchamp, Chandigarh and La Tourette were the work of a complex spiritual visionary who combined an idealistic aesthetic philosophy with an ancient dualist theology. Born in La Chaux-de-Fonds on October 6 1887, Charles Edouard Jeanneret was raised a Calvinist Protestant. The Jeanneret family proudly traced their ancestry back to the Cathars, a heretical Christian sect which flourished in the southeast of France during the 12th and 13th centuries, and to the French Huguenots who fled to the Jura region following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. In Languedoc the Cathari were known as the Albigensians. Pope Innocent III, alarmed by the threat posed to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, ordered a crusade which was begun in 1209. This was the first of the so called Albigensian crusades (1209-1229), which effectively ended the spread of Catharism.2 The Cathari (derived from katharos, the Greek word meaning ‘pure’) followed a distinctly eastern Gnostic theology, the origins of which can be found in early dualistic heresies such as Manichaeism, in which is proposed an eternal conflict between light and darkness, good and evil. Like Manichaeism, Catharism entailed an explicit dualism. According to Cathar theology, creation is divided between the material world, governed by an evil principle (known as the demiurge), and the spiritual domain, ruled by the absolute good god. Within this dualistic cosmology, the goal of life was to achieve salvation by escaping from the cycle of reincarnation that binds the soul to the material world. The Cathar adherents were divided into the credentes, whose obligations were very light, and the perfecti (‘perfected ones’), who were expected to lead a life of extreme asceticism. Their one sacrament was the consolamentum and their final act of faith the endura or ritual suicide. The Cathar perfecti, believed that by choosing how and when to end their lives, they could break the cycle of transmigration, and thus free their spirit from the inherent evil of material form. The Cathari also believed in a doctrine of negative virtue, virtue that consisted of not doing wrong and which had as its reward peace of the soul. The Catharist legend had long been part of the culture of the Jura region. Albert Jeanneret in a personal conversation with Paul Turner spoke of the connection between the Jura and the Heretics. The Jeannerets, classified as inhabitants of Jura, came to France at the moment of the religious persecution of the Huguenots. I think the Huguenots, like their ancestors the Cathari, were disciples of Manes, living in the southeast of France, against whom the Pope unleashed the cruel Albigensian crusade3 (fig 4). INTERSTICES 4 The Fearful Mirror of Apollo 2 While there is little historical evidence to suggest that the early Calvinist Protestants, known as the Huguenots, followed a theology derived from Manichaeism, the Jura region did however receive a great number of exiles escaping the religious persecution in France which began in the early part of the 13th century and continued until the end of the 18th century (fig 5 ). According to Albert Jeanneret, his brother first became interested in la question Cathare at the age of sixteen or seventeen and he maintained this interest throughout his life, reading everything he could about Catharist history, doctrines and purported mysticism.4 Le Corbusier’s sketch-books contain several references to the Cathari. He mentions, for example, the routes followed by the exiles, the places where they sought refuge and the parallel experiences of the Jeannerets. Later in life Le Corbusier explicitly identified with the Cathar ‘Parfaits’ noting that: the Jeannerets, the Janret [family] = truly the “perfect ones” of Languedoc.5 Le Corbusier clearly considered himself to be descended from the Cathari and to have inherited their mystical spirit, as Paul Turner points out; “whether or not this really was true seems to be less significant than the fact that Le Corbusier believed it to be true.”6 Edouard Schuré’s 1889 book The Great Initiates: A study of the Secret History of Religions, was inscribed by L'Eplattenier as a farewell gift to Le Corbusier in 1907.7 Schuré was profoundly influenced by German Idealism. The necessity for a spiritual revival and the rejection of materialism together form the main underlying theme of The Great Initiates . Schuré held the extreme Platonic view that matter was merely an inferior reflection of spirit. His personal quest for the spirit traces the lives and exploits of the mystical prophets who transmigrate throughout the ages. Eight of the greatest prophets are examined: Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato and Jesus. Aside from the accomplishments of the prophets themselves, of specific interest in Schuré’s book is the notion of an elite – a chosen group of initiates who are privilege to know the profound mysteries of life. Schuré divided the initiates into four categories: the instinctive, the passionate, the intellectual and the archetypal man – the so-called great initiate – whose “will acquires an almost unlimited strength, an all-pervading, creative magic.”8 Schuré’s philosophy picks up on the Apollonian/Dionysiac duality (fig 6) that was popularised by Friedrich Nietzsche in the Birth of Tragedy. But rather than seeing Dionysus and Apollo as two opposing principles or forces, Schuré insists that they are in fact two different revelations of the same divinity. Dionysus represented esoteric truth, the heart and interior of things - accessible to the initiates alone. He held the mysteries of life, of past and future incarnations, of the relationships between soul and body, the heaven and earth. Apollo personified the same truth applied to terrestrial life and the social order. Inspirer of poetry, medicine, and law, he represented science through divination, beauty through art, the peace of peoples through justice and the harmony of soul and body through purification. In a word, for the initiate, Dionysus meant nothing less than the evolving divine spirit of the universe, and Apollo his manifestation to earthly man.9 Le Corbusier for his part was especially interested in the chapter on Pythagoras, heavily underlining and annotating passages, particularly descriptions of Pythagorean numerology and the principle of the four divine numbers – the Tetrad. According to Schuré, Pythagoras perceived in the Tetrad the synthesis of the Universal Triad with its totality, the Monad. The universal threefold law or the Triad was identified as the essential law of all things and the key to life, both human and divine. Just as the divine threefold law (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is contained within the one, i.e. God, so too the human threefold law (body, soul and spirit) is contained within the will which sums up the whole, ie. the consciousness of self. In this way Pythagoras conceived of threefoldness and unity (the three and the one) as symbolically constituting the sacred Tetrad.10 Pythagoras pursued the teaching of numbers still further. In each of them he defined a principle, a law, an active force of the universe. But he said that the basic principles are contained in the first four numbers, since in adding and multiplying them one finds all the others.11 Schuré's descriptions of Pythagorean numerology parallel Le Corbusier’s own numerical system, le Modular. In a typical passage taken from his book on the Modular, Le Corbusier proclaims that mathematics embraces both the absolute and the infinite, the understandable and the forever elusive … sometimes there is a door: one opens it– enters–one is in an other realm, the realm of the gods, the room which holds the key to the great systems. These doors are the doors of miracles. Having gone through one, man is no longer the operative force, but rather it is his contact with the universe. In front of him unfolds and spreads out the fabulous fabric of numbers without end.12 Conceived as a comprehensive and harmonious proportioning system, the Modular is ostensibly based on the ideal man (oddly enough a six-foot tall English policeman), divided by a series of golden sections, known as the Fibonacci series. Beneath its superficially INTERSTICES 4 The Fearful Mirror of Apollo 3 rationalist justification lies Le Corbusier’s barely disguised conception of le Modular as a mathematically transcendental mystical system; that there exists universal formal principles capable of achieving perfect order within architectural form. Le Corbusier went to great lengths to prove that architectural exemplars such as the Hagia Sophia and the Parthenon conformed in precise detail to the dimensions of his Modular system.13 Throughout the eccentric and esoteric narrative of The Great Initiates Schuré highlights the strong links between the religions of divination and the solar cults. The cult of the sun, writes Schuré, “is the golden key to all mysteries” and, he adds, unfolds in the religion of Zoroaster, of which the cult of Mithras represents the esoteric part. Mithras is the male fire and Mitra the female light. In the crypts of Egypt the initiates look for this same sun under the name Osiris.14 The Solar cult, Mithraism, originated in pre-Zoroastrian Iran. Mithra, god of the sun, justice, contract, and war was the most important god in the Iranian pantheon. Known also as ‘the mediator,’ Mithra signified all the forms of communication among men. During the Achaemenid dynasty, king Darius I acknowledged the religion of Zoroaster as the official religion of Persia, and Mithraism was subsumed within the more dominant religion.15 Mithraism was revived as a mystery-cult by the Romans during the second and third centuries AD and given a wholly new Platonic interpretation which equated the sun god Mithras Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun) with the demiurge of the Timaeus (fig 7). Up until the reign of the emperor Constantine in the early 4th century AD, Roman Mithraism was a serious rival to Christianity. Contemporary with the Roman revival of Mithraism, the Persian Prophet Mani 16 began preaching a new syncretic Gnostic religion.17 Mani wished to found a universal religion, a synthesis of the teachings of Zoroaster, the Buddha and Jesus, all of whom he regarded as his forerunners. During the Middle Ages Mani’s doctrines were revived and transformed by the Armenian Paulicians, who directly influenced the neo- Manichaean sects of the Bogomili and the Cathari. So it is that the connection between the various cults becomes clear; Catharism developed from Manichaeism which in turn developed from Zoroastrianism, which contained within itself the basis of Mithraism. The creation of the world is central to Mithraic mythology, according to which the sun sent his messenger, the raven, to Mithra and ordered him to sacrifice a white bull (fig 8). Mithra was reluctant to perform the sacrifice but the raven prevailed upon him. At the moment of death a number of miracles occurred; the bull metamorphosed into the moon, the cloak of Mithra transformed into the vault of the sky, from the tail of the bull sprang grain and where blood had touched the ground grapevines appeared (fig 9). With the creation of the world, the struggle between Good and Evil had begun. Le Corbusier identified closely with the symbology of the raven, an image which continually recurred in his notebooks and painting. This identification with the image of the raven is in many ways tied to the manner in which Charles Edouard Jeanneret came to acquire the name Le Corbusier. One view contends that it comes from the name of a cousin, Lecorbezier, while another holds that it is a corruption of the French word Corbeau, meaning raven or crow (which also suggested the profile of le Corbusier's face). As a symbol of alchemy, the raven, avis hermetis, was closely associated with the original primal blackness, a state of putrefaction, dissolution or death out of which all matter must pass as it tended towards the quintessential white. According to legend, Corvus the raven (or crow) was sacred to the sibyls. These prophetesses were able to predict the future by interpreting the birds’ song. Their goddess was Coronis, who was worshipped in pre-Olympic Greece and whose name was later usurped by Athene. It was Coronis-Athene whom Apollo married in order to impose himself as an oracular god and in so doing inherited the raven as his symbol. It is also said that at one time the raven had been as white as a dove, but that Apollo changed its plumage to black as a punishment for its spitefulness. 18 Finally it is worth noting that the raven (Latin Corax) was the first of the seven Mithraic grades of initiation.19 Between 1952 and 1957 Corbusier completed fifteen paintings of what were to become known as the Taureaux, or Bull series ( figs 10, 11, 12). Symbolically, the Bull series appears to represent an abstracted self portraiture as the mediating link between opposing forces – the sun and the moon, the spiritual and the material. This was a theme which continued to develop in importance and sublety until Le Corbusier’s death. Nor was his use of spiritual symbolism limited to Le Corbusier’s paintings. The Sun and the Moon, numerically represented by the Triad and the Tetrad, figure throughout Ronchamp as does their sum, seven, which according to Pythagoras represented the union of man and divinity.20 If one examines the plan of Ronchamp from south to north, the outline of a human head looking east is discernible (fig 13), but orient the plan north to south, and the roof line of the southern facade produces the unmistakable horn motif of the Taurus paintings (fig 14). Perhaps Le Corbusier meant us to discover this for INTERSTICES 4 The Fearful Mirror of Apollo 4 ourselves when he wrote in his commentary on Ronchamp: Counterpoint, and fugue – music – grand music, undertake to look at the image upside down, or turn them a quarter angle. You will discover the game.21 In ancient times Carnival fell under the sign of Taurus. In ours it falls under Pisces. Carnival is the thirteenth, the unprecedented month. Its hero is a brazen Don Juan, who enters his mother’s bed and is subsequently caught and sacrificed to the Father. He is impaled at the spring equinox ( fig 15). Initially the zodiacal progression was presented as the tragedy of the Sun, a handsome gallant, who boldly impregnated the Moon during each of its twelve aspects, and arrived at the Carnival exhausted and decrepit. Rejuvenated by the blood, the Sun can make the leap beyond the thirteenth month, beyond the circle of death, and thus transform himself into the first month of the new year. The zodiacal progression is represented in the cult of Mithras by the sacrifice of the celestial bull (fig 16). Mithras, dressed in Persian clothes, kneels on the back of the bull holding the nose tightly with the one hand and plunging a sword into its neck with the other. Underneath the animal there extends a long serpent; a dog licks the blood that flows from the wound, a scorpion attacks the bull’s testicles, and stalks of grain sprout from the tail. Mithras is flanked by the two divine torch bearers, Hesperus and Phosphorus, while above is the moon and the sun with its messenger, the raven.22 The sacrifice of the bull (Taurus) occurs over Hydra, the aquatic serpent, and the celestial horizon. The dog is the star Sirius in the constellation Canis Major, and the raven is the star group Corvus, situated above Hydra. Hesperus and Phosphorus represent the evening and morning aspects of the planet Venus, while the stalks of grain are the Pleiades.23 This Tauromachy is believed to refer to a time as far back as 2000 BC when the new year (signalled by the spring equinox) began with the rising of the sun in the constellation of Taurus. On this occasion the king performed the single most important rite of the calendar, the sacrifice of the bull, whose blood was collected and sprinkled over the furrows to fertilise the fields. The ritual required the king to lie with the chief priestess of the temple on a recently ploughed field. The Tauromachy occurs in cultures throughout the Mediterranean, from the ancient cults of Mithras and the myth of the Minotaur in Crete to the Spanish bull fight of the present day.24 Also connected with the Tauromachy is the sparagmos (Gk. tearing to pieces), the dismemberment of victims, as practiced by worshippers of Dionysus. In Dionysiac ritual the sacrifice was ideally a bull, perhaps seen as a manifestation of Dionysus himself. (The famous hymn of the women of Elis, quoted by Plutarch, identifies the bull with Dionysus). The eating of the bull’s flesh was a symbol of participation in the life of the god himself. By this act of union with the god, the worshipper became entheos, filled with divinity, and could attain immortality. Dionysus, the dismembered god was associated with others who suffered similarly, such as the Cretan Zagreus and the Arcadian Orpheus.25 Sign of the Carnival, Son of the Sun who attempts to enter the lunar Mother’s bed and is subsequently sacrificed to the Father. Hence the immolation of the celestial bull by Mithras, the rite of fertility, giver of new life, the necessary sacrifice. Guardian of the Labyrinth, guardian of the mysteries of life. Personification of the encephalitic god whose ritual dismemberment brings the promise of reincarnate life. Le Corbusier’s enduring obsession with the symbology of the bull may derive from far more than a tenuous link with Catharism. On the great enamel door of the assembly building at Chandigarh, the mythology of the sacrificial bull is represented more thoroughly than in any of Corbusier’s other work. On the inside face of the door the ancient and feminine tripartite year is represented (fig 17 ). The outside door mural celebrates the male solar cult, the Tetrad, but the older lunar order, the Triad, is also evident ( fig 18). The symbolism doesn’t stop at the door. The roof portico in profile again represents the upturned Taurus horns (fig 19). The triad is signified by the triangular pyramid and by the three roof elements; the truncated hypoboloid which forms the Assembly Chamber, the skewed pyramid of the Council Chamber, and the stairway tower. In elevation the truncated roof of the Assembly Chamber suggests an arkite composition. The upturned crescent form, interpreted as Noah’s ark, sits poised upon the rocky arch of Mount Ararat, enclosed within an encircling solar disk. Together the Taurus profile of the portico, the skewed pyramid and the truncated tower align to the north and south (north is given prominence by the fact that both the pyramid and the tower are angled in that direction).26 Le Corbusier’s symbolism, represented at its finest in the Assembly building, comprises four cardinal signs that form the foundations of his cosmology. These four cardinal signs, which are present throughout all his mature work, can be summarised as: the Triad – female Moon goddess, fertility and material form; the Tetrad which represents the male Sun god as well as the Spirit; The Taurus or Ark – signs of the deluge – representing the promise of life and creation through destruction; and finally, the circle or oval which signifies the Absolute, the unity of Form with the Spirit, and the finished creation. INTERSTICES 4 The Fearful Mirror of Apollo 5 Through his life Le Corbusier developed a growing sense of predestination and a firm belief that he was one of the chosen elite, an initiate. Ultimately, his ceaseless quest for the ‘truth’ would culminate in the manifestation of the spiritual Idea in both his art and his architecture. The first year, the first appearance of things (events, men, ideas, etc). Twenty years later, one has stepped back, the silhouette, the curve of intensity etc.: The breasts have softened, the chain of mountains shows up better. Forty years later. Distance has been acquired, the silhouette of the mountains is henceforth sharp: One sees the highest peak, the highest idea, the eminent man.27 Jeanneret had acquired Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra in 1908, inscribing it with his (then) Paris address. Towards the end of his life Le Corbusier took this same book with him to the south of France When he re-read it he wrote a second inscription on the half-title page: Cap Martin, 1 August 1961. I have not read this book since 1908 = 53 years = my life as a man. Today having profited from these pages I glimpse situations, facts, decisions, destinations that are the stuff of men’s doing. I have decided to annotate these pages.28 The page marks, underlined passages and occasional annotation all date from the second reading in 1961. As a polemic young artist Le Corbusier was perhaps most influenced by Nietzsche’s concept of the Superman, the poet hero who embodies the future, rejects the past and suffers the present. Nietzsche likened mankind to a rope, fastened between beast and the Superman – a rope that bridges over an abyss. Nietzsche wrote of the need to “prepare the way for the future by destroying the past.” In his view, creation was only possible through destruction and “Man is something that must be overcome.” These were also the catch phrases of the avant-gardes to which Le Corbusier had once belonged and eventually rejected. At the end of his life all that Le Corbusier could identify with in the Nietzschean Zarathustra was vilification and sacrifice. As Corbusier once wrote when on a plane to India: Flying over the Jura, I contend that it was for me, a land of exile and contrition. Consider the degrees of my revolt against the “pine-tree” folklore of L’Eplattenier – [consider] My desire to seek the source.29 But this was many years before he chose to end his life. In the battered old copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, highlighted by Le Corbusier, was the following sentence; A great weariness has overcome me, whither shall I climb now with my longing? I look out from every mountain for the homeland. But nowhere have I found a home; I am an exile in every city and I turn away from every gate.30 There was, I suggest, a definite point in his life when Le Corbusier reflected upon the mirror of Apollo. Looking into that fearful mirror, what did he see? The capricious Dionysus? The dreaded gorgon? The wild and fabulous chimera, perhaps? I think he saw none of these things. What Corbusier saw reflected in his old copy of Zarathustra in 1961 was not his own image but an appalling mis-en-abyme, the endless reflection of the reflection diminishing towards infinity, a horror too vast to comprehend. Post Script (fig 20). Little is known about Le Corbusier’s last days. The sketchbook that he had with him at Cap Martin, in which he undoubtedly wrote down his last thoughts, was never found.31 In July 1965, one month before he died, Le Corbusier wrote the following words: when we all parted, I said to Tobito, who was considering visiting me the following year: “Yes, in Paris or on another planet,” and I said to myself: "Well, no doubt, from time to time they will have a kind thought for old Père Corbu." When I was alone once more, I recalled that admirable line from the Apocalypse: "And in the heavens all was still for a time.” Yes, nothing is transmissible except thought, the crown of our labour. This thought may or may not become a victory over fate in the hereafter and perhaps assume a different, unforeseeable dimension.32 NOTES 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (London: Dent, 1933), p. 97. 2 Sanctioned by Pope Innocent III, this was a crusade in the true sense of the word. The rewards were the same as for the crusaders in Palestine and Syria: absolution of all sins, a place in heaven and all that they could plunder. Following the fall of the city of Béziers, an officer enquired of the pope’s representative, Arnold-Amaury, abbot of Cîteaux, how they might distinguish between heretics and true believers. The Abbot is reputed to have replied, “Kill them all. God will recognise his own.” Between 15,000 and 20,000 men, women and children, both Cathars and Catholics were slaughtered. While this story may well be apocryphal, it is conservatively estimated that more than half a million people were killed during the Albigensian crusades. Chas S. Clifton, Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics (Santa Barbara: ABC- INTERSTICES 4 The Fearful Mirror of Apollo 6 CLIO, 1992), p. 10. 3 Paul Venerable Turner, The Education of Le Corbusier (New York: Garland Publishing, 1977), p. 203. n. 48. 4 “To this Jura, whose backdrop is the forest and the mountains it is necessary to add, to place Le Corbusier exactly, the Languedoc of the ‘Parfaits’ of Cathar origin. Corbu was very proud of these Jurassian and Mediterranean roots, even if he did perhaps lay claim to the second [of these] more strongly.” Jean Petit, Le Corbusier parle (Paris, 1967), p. 12. 5 Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier Sketchbooks (1954-1957) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1982). Sketchbook P26 v. 3, p. 318. Note also on the same page; “[the] burning of the Church at Le Locle in 1300 … archives of the Jeanneret family end here.” 6 Turner, The Education of Le Corbusier p. 202. n. 48. 7 Edouard Schuré, The Great Initiates: A Study of the Secret History of Religions (New York: Steiner Books, 1992). For details of the inscription see Turner, The Education of Le Corbusier pp. 24, 202, n. 43. 8 Schuré, The Great Initiates p. 352. 9 Schuré, The Great Initiates pp. 285-286. 10 Schuré, The Great Initiates p. 318. “Pythagoras stood up. His fascinated gaze fixed itself upon the Doric facade of the temple. The severe building seemed transfigured beneath the chaste rays of Diana. He thought he saw the ideal image of the world and the solution he was seeking. For the base, columns, architrave and triangular pediment suddenly represented for him the threefold nature of man and universe, of microcosm and macrocosm, crowned with divine unity, which is itself a trinity. Cosmos, dominated and penetrated by God, formed the holy tetrad, vast and pure symbol, origin of nature and model of the gods.” p. 275. 11 Schuré, The Great Initiates p. 319. Le Corbusier also transcribed a passage from Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel which dealt at length with the secret meaning imbued within the combinatory aspect of the first four numbers. Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier Sketchbooks (1954- 1957) (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981), Sketchbook H32, v. 3, p. 32. 12 Le Corbusier, The Modulor (London: Faber & Faber, 1954), p. 71. 13 Le Corbusier, The Modular pp. 191-225. 14 Schuré, The Great Initiates p. 289. 15 Zoroastrianism was the dualistic religion founded by the Persian prophet Zoroaster in the 7th or early 6th century BC and set forth in the sacred writings of the Zend- Avesta. It is based on the concept of a continuous struggle between the god of creation, light and goodness, Ormazd, and his arch enemy, Ahriman, the spirit of evil and darkness. 16 Mani, the founder of the Manichaean sect, was born in Babylonia in AD 216. He was flayed to death, skinned and decapitated in AD 277 after incurring the hostility of the Zoroastrian priesthood. 17 Until recently known only through the testimony of its enemies, such as St Augustine, Manichaeism was based on the doctrine of the two roots which are the opposite, eternal principles of God and matter, (or light and darkness). The mixture of light and dark created man and the material things. The separation of the mixture, the true object of Manichaean ethics, could only be achieved by complete asceticism. The Manichaean ‘Elect,’ in order to achieve redemption and deliverance from transmigration, had to abstain from sexual intercourse, meat, wine and property, as these were regarded as binding the soul to matter (darkness). The Elect were supported by their disciples, a more worldly order called ‘Hearers,’ who by keeping simple moral rules hoped to be reincarnated as one of the Elect. 18 Coronis, while pregnant with Apollo’s child, had an affair with Ischys, an Arcadian. Apollo learned this from the raven which brought word to Delphi. In his anger Apollo had Artemis kill Coronis. But when she was on the funeral pyre, he took the unborn child, Asclepius, from her womb and gave him to Chiron to foster. Afterwards Apollo turned the raven from white to black for bearing the bad news. 19 Early Christian writers record the seven grades of Mithariac initiation as Corax (Raven), Nymphus (Bride), Miles (Soldier), Leo (Lion), Perses (Persian), Heliodromus (Courier of the Sun), and Pater (Father). 20 See Richard A. Moore, Le Corbusier: Myth and Meta- Architecture (Atlanta: Georgia State University, 1977). 21 Le Corbusier, The Chapel at Ronchamp (London: Architectural Press, 1957), p. 47. 22 Interestingly, this symbolism reproduces the ancient Sumerian myth of the slaying of the celestial Taurus by Gilgamesh (Orion): two constellations that set when the sign of Scorpio rises, giving the impression that it causes their disappearance. 23 Giuseppe M. Sesti, The Glorious Constellations (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), pp. 62-63. 24 Sesti, The Glorious Constellations p. 450. 25 Elisabeth Henry, Orpheus with his Lute (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1992), p. 155. 26 For a complete description of the symbolism found in Le INTERSTICES 4 The Fearful Mirror of Apollo 7 Corbusier’s late works see Richard A. Moore, Le Corbusier and the Mecanique Spirituelle: Part III (1948-65) The Late Period (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1979), pp. 287-359. 27 Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier Sketchbooks Sketchbook M53, v. 3, p. 133. 28 Turner, The Education of Le Corbusier p. 56. 29 Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier Sketchbooks Sketchbook P26, v. 3, p. 315. 30 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra p. 144. 31 There is indisputable evidence that this sketchbook existed, Le Corbusier explicitly referred to it in Sketchbook number 70. 32 C. E. Jeanneret-Gris, Le Corbusier Last Works ed. Willy Boesiger (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), p. 177.