Beyond the Construct
A colour reproduction of The Flammarion Engraving
The origins and original meaning of The Flammarion wood engraving are still the subject of debate. Rendered by an unknown artist, it is named after its first documented appearance in an 1888 text “L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire” by the French astronomer Camille Flammarion.
There are many theories of varying credibility about the engraving’s origins but the most likely conjecture is that it was based on Flammarian’s own drawings to illustrate a point. The engraving technique was developed in the late 18th century and Flammarion had studied it in Paris from a young age. Yet, the drawing upon which the engraving is based could predate it and the engraving is noticeably absent from an earlier edition of an identical text by Flammarion.
Flammarion uses the image to illustrate a false belief that the sky is a solid dome-shaped barrier that can be lifted to see the workings of the heavens beyond: “A naïve missionary of the Middle Ages even tells us that, in one of his voyages in search of the terrestrial paradise, he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met … and where, by stooping his shoulders, he passed under the roof of the heavens...”
The Flammarian Engraving as it first appeared in the 1988 text
Yet the rich imagery and symbolism of the engraving continues to capture imaginations beyond this simple use, making it one of the most studied and reproduced illustrations - in texts ranging from music, to physics, to esoterica - of man's quest for knowledge of the universe.
When I first saw this engraving - without knowing its context or history - I thought of it as a metaphor for seeing past constructs which are so ingrained that we forget to question them, much like Truman Burbank raising the curtain on his television-set life in the “Truman Show” or Neo taking the red pill which enabled him to see past the illusion created by the “Matrix”.
COOL FACT
A man wearing a long robe and carrying a staff lifts the curtain at the edge of Sky and Earth, discovering a wondrous realm beyond. In the landscape behind him, the focal tree is often interpreted as the Tree of Life while beyond the worldly realm, the wheels in the upper left corner of the engraving bear a strong resemblance to traditional representations of the “wheel in the middle of a wheel” described in the Book of Ezekiel and considered a symbol of “enduring connections between this world and the next, the power from above and below.”
(Image: traditional representation of “a wheel in the middle of a wheel” or the Merkabah)