Book Discussion Seeking Resources: God Forms in Color

[a3ct]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for a comprehensive book or resource covering all the god forms associated with the Golden Dawn (or any other occult orders with a similar structure). Specifically, I'm looking for something that presents these god forms in color. I'm hoping this will enhance my visualization practice and deepen my understanding of the associated symbolism.

If anyone knows of a good resource—a book, website, or even a collection of illustrations—I'd greatly appreciate your recommendations.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[HoldAll]

What stands out in my memory is of course the

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of Samuel MacGregor Mathers and his wife Moina in Paris; Florence Farr was very much taken with Ancient Egypt, too. If I were you, I'd go looking for non-magical scholarly books on Ancient Egypt art (we have an

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in the Libary as well) as to avoid those idealized airbrushed NewAgey depictions some magical books feature. However, I can imagine that there was no real mandatory colour code for gods (unlike in Tibetan buddhism where the images of every single buddha are strictly standardized), so every artist might have had their own ideas, and given all the changes Kemetic mythology went through over the millenia, there are bound to be huge variations. The fastest way of researching would probably be a Google image search using "Kemetic" or "Egyptian frescos" because the colour on statues would have worn off long ago.

The GD probably used the Greek and Roman gods in their teaching as well because they were familiar to everyone with a higher education but I'm not aware of any godform assumption operations in this respect. MacGregor Mathers and Yeats were interested in Celtic mythology, that I know, but I don't believe it was incorporated into regular GD work.

What it probably boils down to is that the (colour) image of gods can only ever spring from the artist's imagination, so for example if you feel that the fresco of Anubis in excavated temple X looks kinda anaemic while the one in temple Y simply radiates raw underworld power, Anubis from temple Y is the definitive version for you.

Edit: This is the Book Discussion and Reviews section, so I took a quick look in the Egypt book collection - all the photos in those books seem to be black & white, so the kind of book to go for are probably huge expensive coffee table tomes (which are hopefully available for free somewhere) by art historians.

 

[a3ct]

What stands out in my memory is of course the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

of Samuel MacGregor Mathers and his wife Moina in Paris; Florence Farr was very much taken with Ancient Egypt, too. If I were you, I'd go looking for non-magical scholarly books on Ancient Egypt art (we have an

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

in the Libary as well) as to avoid those idealized airbrushed NewAgey depictions some magical books feature. However, I can imagine that there was no real mandatory colour code for gods (unlike in Tibetan buddhism where the images of every single buddha are strictly standardized), so every artist might have had their own ideas, and given all the changes Kemetic mythology went through over the millenia, there are bound to be huge variations. The fastest way of researching would probably be a Google image search using "Kemetic" or "Egyptian frescos" because the colour on statues would have worn off long ago.

The GD probably used the Greek and Roman gods in their teaching as well because they were familiar to everyone with a higher education but I'm not aware of any godform assumption operations in this respect. MacGregor Mathers and Yeats were interested in Celtic mythology, that I know, but I don't believe it was incorporated into regular GD work.

What it probably boils down to is that the (colour) image of gods can only ever spring from the artist's imagination, so for example if you feel that the fresco of Anubis in excavated temple X looks kinda anaemic while the one in temple Y simply radiates raw underworld power, Anubis from temple Y is the definitive version for you.

Edit: This is the Book Discussion and Reviews section, so I took a quick look in the Egypt book collection - all the photos in those books seem to be black & white, so the kind of book to go for are probably huge expensive coffee table tomes (which are hopefully available for free somewhere) by art historians.

Thanks for the thorough reply. I found The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt in the recommended collection, which looks perfect for what I need. Separately, I found a

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that has some surprisingly useful content for visualization.