Alchemical Theme of the Week
Vile Figura/Despicable Face
"If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing."
—Matt Haig
Have you ever noticed that some of the most aesthetically pleasing faces belong to people who are so concerned with the onset of ugliness that they feel they must spend hours of daily energy and thousands of dollars to offset anything that would seem imperfect?
This cultural obsession we have over our faces and bodies, trying to match an impossible and ever-changing standard points to something deep and shameful in the psyche, that within us, just under the skin, is something despicable and disgusting. This is the archetypal "Vili Figura:" something essentially shameful in our feeling towards our physical selves in some way or another, having to do with how we might present ourselves visually to the world. There is the great Venusian idea that beauty heals and redeems the soul in an otherwise ugly world, and so somehow the shame of carrying the opposite force within us drives us to hide behind a mask before we have even faced it.
How many years has it taken to accept the body you are in? How long can you look in the mirror and hold your own gaze, to recognize the OTHER that is in you, that has always been there and always will be? Some cultures see this as an invisible twin, the Daemon who is always with you, or even a sort of Guardian Angel. Perhaps our fear of our own ugliness just keeps us from knowing a powerful side of ourselves, that rises up because it wants to be known too. What is ugliness anyway? What authority has decided that for us?
Aesthetic beauty and ugliness may be the prime material you are called to work with now. How can you sit with this idea a little longer and see what magic comes through? Playing with self-portraiture through the medium of drawing, photography, or sculpture can provide an active inquiry to bring you further in tune with a repressed part of the soul that wants to emerge. You are not alone in this, it is just another angle of being a fascinating human being.
The interview on this theme will be published this week. Watch out for it! In the meantime, I would love to hear your personal interpretations of this “vile figura” concept.
