The Communion Group
Here we come to the main group in the painting, that is, the metaphysical point of contact around which the entire work revolves.
The central group is not, however, at the exact center of the painting; that place of honor is reserved for Anthony’s face, which falls quite precisely in the center of the center panel. Because the scene depicts him successfully moving past his temptation and into a spiritually safe territory, the division of the painting between hell and heaven is placed just behind his shoulders, with with the top of his body having successfully crossed into the heavenly realms marked by the left-hand side of the tower containing Christ.
His lower parts remain on the other side; but we may be assured he will follow them.
There is much more to say about Anthony and his exact position, but first, let’s deal with the figures above and to his left, starting with the negress holding the plate with a peculiar egg-bearing homunculus on it. She wears a pearl studded veil; this represents a fabric of lies, but it is a fabric that one can see through. Lies, although present, can no longer conceal the truth. She holds a plate with a homunculus on it; and we should be reminded here of the figure with the egg in the Garden, simply because this central group of figures has so many elements (including the aforementioned musical instruments, and more to come) in common with that painting.
In Temptation, the figure is poised on the communion plate, triumphantly holding an egg above him. His unformed nature marks him as a homunculus, a small but fully formed human figure from which a fetus was thought to develop. The creature clearly represents the birth of a new man, and, given its obvious association with the act of communion, a spiritual rebirth. Compare this to the figure in Garden, for whom the egg — representing this same spiritual potential — is a terrible burden that he is nearly unable to carry. The egg here, by the way, does double duty as a communion wafer.
The question remains of why Bosch chose a negress as the woman holding the communion plate. The scene reminds me strongly of Emmanuel Swedenborg’s contention that the Negro races are favored more by God than other races: “Of non-Christians, the Africans are especially valued in heaven. They accept the good and true things of heaven more readily than others do.” (Emmanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell.)
There is no thing of heaven more good and true to a Christian than communion, and rebirth through the body of Christ; so no more appropriate race could be chosen to make this presentation. As I have pointed out in The Esoteric Bosch, Bosch’s paintings are not only revelational, in the same way that the Divine Comedy is a revelation, they also spring from the same sources of spiritual revelation as Swedenborg’s mystical journeys between heaven and hell. The fountain in the Garden of Earthly Delights is, after all, a physical representation of the divine inflow that Swedenborg describes; and, as we have already noted, Bosch’s entries to heaven involve the same tunnels of light described by Swedenborg.
These visions come from what Gurdjieff would have called influences see, that is, influences from a higher level — and must thus have common meanings. So in my own universe of Bosch meaning, we will place the African woman exactly where she belongs —in a place of honor unusual to any European sensibility in Bosch’s age — or, for that matter, in Swedenborg’s. the painting and bodies, in other words, a form of metaphysical egalitarianism which, although subtly presented, is both entirely correct and extraordinary for its place and time.
Excerpt from Bosch Decoded-The Esoteric Bosch, vol. II, by Lee van Laer
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