Commentaries from Jonathan Waterlow
Image 30
One of the most intriguingly enigmatic images which appears repeatedly in Azazello’s notebooks is the ‘lantern-head’. These heads appear in different forms, with a pole of some kind extended from their foreheads, from which is suspended a shining lantern.
There is no lantern-head on this page, but instead we find a clue as to what Azazello was trying to capture when he drew that peculiar image. On this page, we see a ‘yogi’ in profile, facing left, and from his head extends the familiar pole. But here we find not a lantern, but a tiny meditating figure, perhaps even the Buddha himself. The rest of the page is significantly taken up with other ‘yogi’ figures in various poses, and there is a reference to karma on the opposite page, so it seems clear Azazello was continuing to reflect on Buddhism or Eastern Mysticism more generally when he made these sketches (N.B. the vast majority of notebook Az03 is taken up with his studies of Buddhism).
In this context, it becomes clearer what the lanterns represent: a search for enlightenment. Like the Buddha figure, the lanterns are suspended right in front of the eyes, so perhaps Azazello saw the possibility of enlightenment – of a deep, tranquil understanding – as a carrot hung always just out of reach. This hints at his own struggles to find an understanding of himself and of the world which he could hold on to.
On the other hand, it would be more in accord with Buddhist teachings if we understood these suspended symbols as guides illuminating the path towards enlightenment. We can go deeper still and notice that these ‘guides’ physically stem from within the head or mind of the person seeking them. The Buddha taught that enlightenment already lies in each of us – we already have Buddha nature, but our challenge is to recognise it. As such, enlightenment is more a process of burning away false beliefs and self-imposed limitations than it is about adding anything from outside. Azazello would have known this from the expansive reading and reflection he did on Buddhism – reading which likely brought him into contact with the concept of the Third Eye, which also makes an appearance on this page.
The yogi’s forehead is covered with concentric circles, at the centre of which lies the Third Eye space (and the second, briefly sketched profile beneath this face also has a symbolic mark in that area). The Third Eye is a spiritual or mystical concept which suggests we have another, invisible eye that can see beyond the material world. It’s associated with higher levels of consciousness and enlightenment and was a popular motif and idea in New Age spirituality, as well as holding a prominent place in far older spiritual traditions. Whether Azazello encountered this notion in his mystical reading materials, or through connections to the broader wave of New Age spirituality, it clearly held his attention and he connected it explicitly with illumination (from the lanterns) and, as we can see more clearly in Az14, p.19, with his use of opium.
If the dating of this and Azazello’s Buddhism-centric notebook are accurate, it seems that his interest in this spiritual tradition only deepened across the 1980s. Given his strong tendency towards melancholy, it seems fair to suggest that although he knew that enlightenment lay within, he nevertheless often felt that it was also held before his eyes, always tantalisingly, distressingly, out of reach.
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Image 37
On the left-hand page, we discover a complex and dynamic window into Azazello’s thought on spirituality and religion. As ever, there’s a strong psychedelic edge to this drawing (and even more so to the more enigmatic cornucopia of imagery on the opposite page, which could easily have been a Beatles album cover during the height of their LSD days).
We see a naked figure reaching for an apple from the tree of good and evil, with snakes slithering nearby, one of which is explicitly labelled ‘devil-serpent’. There is also a much larger apple, sitting on a cloud next to a large eye which gazes upwards; a winged angel holds an arrow and points downwards with it – perhaps this is an apple from the other tree in Eden, the tree of life.
The gates to Heaven are sardonically Sovietised – the word ‘Heaven’ (рай) has been turned into an acronym of some kind (Р.А.Й.), adding to the plethora of acronyms littering the Soviet world. The rather ominous, barred gateway also carries the inscription ‘Entry with a pass signed by St Peter – The Administration’, which is another wry jab at Soviet bureaucracy. In a playful and simple form, Azazello seems to satirise the Soviet promise of paradise being always just beyond the horizon and guarded by apparatchiks, but this is closely connected to his personal search for meaning and sense of place in the world, as we can see elsewhere on this page.
To the left of the heavily-barred pearly gates, we see a path winding over the waters to India, labelled ‘Adam’s Bridge’, which seems to imply there is another way for Adam to get back into paradise. ‘Adam’s Bridge’ is also a name given by Westerners to ‘Rama’s Bridge’, an ancient land connection between India and Sri Lanka. In the ancient epic Indian poem Ramayana, the divine prince Rama sets out to rescue his wife Sita from a demon king, building the bridge (which is actually a chain of limestone shoals) as part of his quest. Azazello likely read of the legend while exploring Eastern Mysticism, and decided to incorporate it into his vision of a pathway for Adam to escape the Fall (or the Soviet world), combining the biblical resonance of ‘Adam’ with the geographical reality of the bridge stretching from the island (which he labels ‘I[sland] of Ceylon’) and into India, the heartland of Buddhism.
Although rich with spiritual imagery, there is no specific vision or religious agenda set out here; instead, what we see is Azazello doodling and toying with different aspects of spirituality. Heaven or paradise seems to be inaccessible – something he ties to the frustrations of Soviet life. The naked, hippie-like figures have been thrown out of paradise, exiled ‘to the continent’, which is where the bridge in the foreground leads – perhaps leading to the daily reality of life on Earth.
But there are hints of hope. The floating apple in the sky seems connected to vision (a sense of clearer seeing and understanding) – the eye symbol and its close association with opium and the inner world of the imagination is a theme Azazello endlessly returns to in his journals. And there is Adam’s Bridge – which seems to be the alternative for humanity, a route which leads to the mountains and mysticism of India, which appears to have fascinated him for at least a decade, as notebook Az03 bears testament.
Amidst the action and symbology, on this page we can also feel a sense of Azazello’s inner world: that he was searching for something – a sense of meaning and belonging – and that this was a search often riven by conflict, confusion and frustration. But he remains playful, his imagination irrepressible, and his sense of humour (if sardonic) still very much intact.