A Sinister Mystery

Posted: July 27, 2009 
Filed under: Floral
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This is a macro photograph of the single deep scarlet floret of a Queen Anne’s Lace flower, which is the top, flat bundle of small white florets resting atop a nest of three-pronged, stiff leaves of the Wild Carrot plant that grows all summer long in dry areas.  I took this using my Sigma 70-300mm zoom lens at full zoom and my Nikon 6T close-up filter as closest focusing distance at f/5.6 and 1/60 shutter speed on Kodak Elitechrome 100 ISO slide film.

The single, blood coloured floret alludes to a sinister mystery (hence the name), such as the one at the beginning of the intensely tragic tale of Orpheus.  Orpheus was one of the few great Greek heroes of antiquity who travelled to the realm of Death and returned (like Theseus, Herakles, Aeneas, and Odysseus).  His music was so beautiful it could tame all nature, and entrance any who listened, even the King and Queen of the Underworld, of Hades (named so after its god, Hades, who kidnapped his niece, Persephone, from a flower laden field and through trickery made her his bride).  Orpheus’ great love was Eurydice.  But, one day, shortly before they were to be wed, Eurydice was walking with her maidens in a field and was bitten by snake on the heel.  She succumbed to her wound, and left who would eventually become the progenitor of the idea of Heaven to the terrible afflictions of bereavement.  For what purpose the snake bit sweet Eurydice’s ankle is the mystery, and I think of this crimson floret as that poisoned drop of blood which flittered out of the punctured heel as she tried, at long last in vain, to run back to her love before the end, which begat one of the greatest journeys in all of the world’s mythologies.