Myths of Creation and Destruction Part II
Temple of the Sun God
1990
The door is the Angel of Death, an upright stone panel divided into two equal sections and bifurcating into equidistant points from the center. Passing straight down the middle and projecting beyond the inverted triangle at the upper end is a slender and elegant bronze spear, Shiva's weapon of distruction.
...one arrives at the epicenter of the shrine itself and comes upon a loving couple, a mithuana, drawn from the Konarak temple sculptures at Orissa.
This is a small replica of a shallow underwater nuclear explosion at the Bikini atoll. Its pedestal is a livecast tree-stump with light articulations corresponding to the height of the knees, as well as the bas-relief of a screaming face, just below the rim topped by a fiery orb, the cloud of atomic fission.
The hungry ghost of medieval Japan stands guard at the Temple. In Japanese Buddhism, gaki are spirits of jealous or greedy people who in punishment by the gods have been cursed with insatiable hunger for particular substances or objects.
The Gaki lingers beside this seven-foot phallus-shaped column of skulls and bones closely embedded together.
...posessing an acephalic squatting figure with large pendant breasts and legs wide apart, her yoni awaiting puja (worship) and her breasts replete with milk, the Toad Goddess is one of the broadest universal symbols of life...
Eighteen masks of Shiva the Lord of destruction line the wall. Made of cold-cast marble, each one beams an artificial eye at the center. In identical forms, they were cast from the carapace of a big horseshoe crab, with tiny feelers under the shell.
Leading to the central shrine, the Army consists of two columns of seven "phallic worshippers" each. They are identical at the back but individually distinguishable in front, with the figures on the left column called Phallics while those on the right are Iambes. The two categories in pairs may correspond to "circumcised" and "uncircumcised".
Fire-Scarred Wall I and II / cold-cast marble / Diam: 152.5 cm Depth 6 cm.
