Medical Museum
Art That Heals: The Image as Medicine
in Ethiopia
Interpretation of Talismans
| Although the figurative images on the scrolls are sometimes based on legends, the talismans themselves--abstract motifs containing faces and eyes--almost never are, even when they appear alongside legend-based portraits. This certainly attests to their lack of a didactic or commemorative purpose. But is this mutism due to the secret alone? Or do they have a meaning that has been lost? What do the scholars say about these images? |
13. "Talisman of Cyprian, Syrian priest, to free the virgin Justine." Protective scroll, nineteenth century, parchment, 24 x 17.6 cm. Private collection. Photo courtesy of Guy Vivien |
The theme of the divine face surrounded by cherubim appears fairly often in clerics' explanations of the talismans, especially in cases of a central face framed by four eyes or four faces. (Doesn't a prayer say that "the vision of his Face and the hearing of his Names" undoes spells?) God is represented in Ethiopian spiritual painting, then, as surrounded by four bearers, who have the faces of a lion, a man, a bull, and an eagle, all "full of eyes." The interpretation of the eyes as the eyes of the cherubim is thus doubly justified. The recitation of the invocation puts vision and speech not in an illustrational relationship but in parallel: both compete for the cure.
No talisman has a canonical interpretation. In the eight-pointed star, the cleric in Shire might see a "face of man;" others see the seal of Solomon, or the Cross, a face in light, or a symbol of the four directions of the compass. A number of clerics would offer no interpretation at all. |
| When a cleric gives a colleague a talisman, he indicates its application, the prayer associated with it, its method of use, the master from whom he obtained it, and his own experience with it--that is, how many people he has cured with it. The talisman's name and its symbolism are not indispensable. Asked about the meaning of a talisman, a skillful cleric can recount it while reading prayers. Professors of poetry (qene) are best at this game, for they have at their disposal an immense base of oral traditions in which the symbols are no less important than the character themselves. |
14. This talisman wards off spirits that make business enterprises go bad. Solomon's seal by Gera, 1947, ball-point pen and marker on paper, 20.5 x 16 cm. Collection: Musee National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Oceanie, Paris. Gift of Jacques Mercier. Photo courtesy of Guy Vivien |
Text courtesy of Mercier, Jacques. Art That Heals: the Image as Medicine in Ethiopia. New York: Prestel Books and The Museum For African Art, 1997.
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