Bull's Head
1980
Maple burl wood & iron
18" x 14" x 5"
In her work on images and symbols, Mircea Eliade—one of the most renowned expositors of the psychology of religion, mythology, and magic—shows that myth and symbol constitute a mode of thought that not only came before that of discursive and logical reasoning, but is still an essential function of human consciousness.
"...A domestic animal—such as a bull—is turned loose; some days
later it is searched for and sacrificed at the place where
it is found. Later the altar will be raised there and the
village will be built around the altar. In all these cases,
the sacrality of a place is revealed by animals. This is
as much as to say that men are not free to choose the
sacred site, that they only seek for it and find it by the
help of mysterious signs."
— Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion.