Heroes Not Zombies

Stirling, Scotland, where I was born is dominated by a beautiful Castle.

I saw a news item on the BBC recently which announced the hanging, in the Chapel Royal within the Castle, of the latest tapestry in the series “The Hunting of the Unicorn”, so I decided to go and see the unicorn for myself. As part of a project to restore the Palace in the Castle, Historic Scotland has commissioned the weaving of a series of tapestries depicting a unicorn. James VI and I’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots, and her mother Marie of Guise were known to have such tapestries hanging in the Palace but the originals have long since disappeared. To give visitors an impression of life in the Castle in the 16th and 17th centuries, a team of weavers are making copies of a famous set of unicorn tapestries from that period. The original medieval set, known as “The Hunting of the Unicorn”, can be seen in the Cloisters in New York.

The new tapestries are hung in the Chapel Royal for now, while the Palace is restored (all the tapestries should be complete by the time the Palace refurbishment in complete in 2011).

Unicorns are very familiar creatures to Scots. King Robert III was the first to use the unicorn in the Royal insignia, and the Stuart kings developed the motif further using both rampant unicorns on heraldic emblems and producing silver coins with the unicorn stamped on them. It was James VI and I who brought together the Scottish unicorn and the English lion when he became king of both countries. So it’s not hard to find unicorns in Scotland. They’re on flags, stone carvings, painted insignia, they stand proud on the tops of buildings and adorn many monuments.

Let me tell you a little of what I’ve discovered about the mythology and the symbolism of the unicorn, and, in particular, of the unicorn stories represented in the tapestries.

The unicorn was believed to be so wild that it could not be hunted and captured, except by using a maiden, or virgin. To capture a unicorn you’d bring a maiden into the forest and the unicorn would come and lay its head on her lap and fall asleep. Only then could you capture it. “The Hunting of the Unicorn” series depicts the unicorn like a stag being hunted, but strangely ends with the last one I’ve photographed above where the unicorn is alive, its wounds seemingly not to have harmed it, enclosed in a garden and chained by a golden chain to a pomegranate tree. There are two common readings of this story. The first claims that the story represents the Passion of Christ from his birth to his cruxifixion, and the second claims that the unicorn is the lover, the hunters are love and the maiden is the beloved. In this latter interpretation, the lover is wounded by love (but the wounds, like Cupid’s arrows, don’t kill), and is captured by his beloved to whom he is then married (the symbol of the pomegranate tree). This second interpretation is, I think, especially interesting. It tells us about the wild, free, passionate one, becoming captured and tamed by (bound to) the maiden (who as the Virgin, or Madonna, represents unconditional love).

If you take these interpretations of the tapestries, then look at another unicorn tapestry series which is in the Musee de Cluny in Paris – “La Dame a la Licorne” – which depicts the maiden with a unicorn in six tapestries, one each representing a sense, taste, sight, touch, smell, hearing and the sixth entitled “A Mon Seul Desir” (where the maiden places her necklace in a casket), I think the overall effect is really very interesting.

Could these tapestries be telling us something about psychology? You could easily see the unicorn as wild passion, especially when placed next to each of the five senses. In fact, if you look at the panel “Touch” in the Cluny series, it’s not difficult to see the unicorn’s horn from a Freudian perspective! Does the unicorn represent the libidinous ID? And is the Virgin, the source and symbol of unconditional love, the Superego? If so, and if we accept Saint-Exupery’s use of the term “taming” in his “Little Prince” which is about forming a bond, then the final panel in “The Hunt” really shows us the potential of a healthy, realistic ego – the union of the passions with love.

OK, so that last paragraph is what woke me up at 5am this morning, and I’m not entirely sure what I think about it yet, but there is it is. I thought I’d share it with you. If these wonderful works of art and craft teach us that our goal should be to live a life of passion and unconditional love then I’d recommend we all go unicorn hunting!