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Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory from his Childhood
Some new speculative history
by Dave Shafer
Leonardo wrote
extensively about the
world around him in his
voluminous notebooks,
but almost never about
himself. In particular
there is just one reference
by him to his childhood
and because of that Freud
considered the content of
this memory highly
significant. His 1923 book
analyzed that memory
and drew conclusions
about Leonardo’s
personality.
In the history of the immense body of Sanskrit literature there are essentially no
personal childhood memories recounted. That is a very remarkable fact and it
clearly says something quite significant about Indian culture. Freud was right to
seize on Leonardo’s sole mention of a childhood memory as being very significant,
as well as the actual details of the memory. Unfortunately Freud was led astray by
a single word mistranslated from Italian into German. Here I give a new analysis.
Freud was reading Leonardo’s writings (in Italian) in a
German translation. Unfortunately the word that Freud read
as “vulture” should have been translated as “kite” – a quite
different bird. This set Freud off on a false trail that we will
not go into here, where he attached much significance to the
distinctive characteristics of vultures, like eating carrion and
being associated with death. The kite is a much smaller bird,
extensively studied by Leonardo.
Here is Leonardo’s childhood
memory and Freud’s initial comment
on it, taken from Freud’s 1923 book..
Leonardo was fascinated by flight and designed
many flying machines based on his very careful
studies of how birds do it. He specifically studied a
lot the kite bird native to where he lived.
So Leonardo’s memory/phantasy
about his experience in the cradle is
of a kite, which “opened my mouth
with its tail and struck me many
times with its tail against my lips” -
and not a vulture.
As Freud points out this is
a very bizarre image and it
cries out for an explanation.
Here I will give a new one.
The ancient Greek Herodotus
(484-425 B.C.) was the “father
of history” and tried to make
history a rigorous discipline.
His famous writings about
history were known and
studied throughout the ancient
world. Leonardo Da Vinci, like
most well educated people of
his day, knew about Herodotus
and his history writings.
Leonardo made sketches and built a model of a
machine described (but not shown) by Herodotus
that he said Egyptians used in building the pyramids
So from Leonardo’s
sketches (similar to
what is shown here) -
based on a description
by Herodotus - we
know that Leonardo
had read Herodotus.
Around 450 B.C.
Herodotus visited
Egypt and talked with
the priests there
about many aspects of
Egyptian culture.
Herodotus learned about various aspects of Egyptian religions and a section of
his “Histories” book is devoted to discussing what he learned in Egypt. For
example, he describes in some detail the Egyptian practice of mummification of
the dead. Leonardo would have known about this due to reading Herodotus.
Herodotus was told about and maybe shown
key aspects of the mummification process,
which he then put into his history book, and
which Leonardo would have known about.
Herodotus did not include
any details in his book about
a very important religious
ceremony done at the end of
the mummification of a
pharaoh. He may have
known about it but it is just
not in his book. Today we
know much about this
ceremony because of the
decipherment of Egyptian
hieroglyphics, about 2,300
years after Herodotus.If Leonardo did know about this
ceremony, about to be described, it did
not come from Herodotus.
The religious rite is called “the opening of the mouth ceremony” and is shown
in many tomb decorations. Because of rigor mortis the mummy’s mouth would
be frozen shut. The Egyptians thought that the dead pharaoh would not be able
to speak or eat in the afterlife unless his mouth was forced open. Certain ritual
tools were used for this task.
Recent research has shown
that this ceremony was not a
simple matter of prying open
the dead pharaoh’s mouth.
Instead a lot of force was
needed to overcome the rigor
mortis and in the process it
was common for several teeth
to be broken off.
The asp – sacred to the pharaoh –
was a shape that became one of
the tools used.
The goddess Isis often
appeared in the form
of her sacred raptor –
the falcon or Egyptian
kite.
So what do we make of this? – Leonardo has a
memory/phantasy of a bird – specifically a kite –
striking his mouth, as a baby, and “opened my
mouth with its tail, and struck me many times with
its tail against my lips”. Sounds like the Egyptian
Opening of the Mouth ceremony – in which a kite
was sometimes shown next to the mummy.
Leonardo could not know about this from
Herodotus, whose writings about the Egyptian
mummies he would have read, because Herodotus
does not mention the ceremony.
Is there any other way that Leonardo might
have known about this? And what would it have
meant to him, to be the one childhood memory he
ever wrote about?
In ancient Egyptian mythology the goddess Isis took the form of a bird - the kite -
in order to resurrect the dead. Was there any other source possible for Leonardo
to learn about that sort of thing? One idea is the Corpus Hermeticum.
The Corpus Hermeticum was a
collection of assorted esoteric “secret
knowledge” (like alchemy) and sacred
texts that was mostly written in Greek
and dated to a span that may go back to
600 B.C. in Egypt up to about 200 AD.
Most were lost to Europe during the
Middle Ages but were rediscovered later
in Byzantine copies and had a big
influence during the Renaissance. Da
Vinci (1452 – 1519) was 19 when this
was first translated into Latin in 1471
and made available to intellectuals of
Leonardo’s day in Italy.
First Latin edition, of 1471
The contents of this collection of esoteric writings made a
sensation in the intellectual circles that Leonardo moved in. It
generated much interest in ancient Egypt. But people could not
yet read the hieroglyphics, as in the Egyptian Book of the Dead,
and there were few sources of information. Visitors to ancient
Egypt, like Herodotus, could learn much as well as see tomb
decorations that showed the Opening of the Mouth ceremony,
but unless they wrote it down somewhere and it survived to
Leonardo’s time it was lost forever.
It turns out there is nothing in the Corpus Hermeticum about
the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. But there were other
hermetic texts circulating around Leonardo and some were
probably lost to us now. Some were just rediscovered in 1945.
So there is no hard evidence that we have now to show that
Leonardo knew about the Egyptian Opening of the Mouth
ceremony. Some far fetched ideas include the Freemasons,
which started around 1425, and Freemasonry has ties to
Egyptian mystery schools and their initiation rites.
Freemasons make
much of knowing ancient
Egyptian “secrets”.
We may never know for sure if Leonardo Da Vinci was a Freemason or connected to other
fringe groups, some very shadowy. And we may never know if he had some source of
information about the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. But what if he did – what could
this have led to this very odd memory/phantasy that he mentioned in his notebooks, so
close in form to the ancient Egyptian ceremony? What could it have symbolized for him?
It may have represented him unconsciously phantasising about how his start in life as the
genius he was as an adult required a sort of divine intervention – of opening his mouth as a
baby and thereby opening him up to the world. The kite was his much-studied and sketched
bird/mouth opener.

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Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory from his Childhood.

  • 1. Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory from his Childhood Some new speculative history by Dave Shafer
  • 2. Leonardo wrote extensively about the world around him in his voluminous notebooks, but almost never about himself. In particular there is just one reference by him to his childhood and because of that Freud considered the content of this memory highly significant. His 1923 book analyzed that memory and drew conclusions about Leonardo’s personality.
  • 3. In the history of the immense body of Sanskrit literature there are essentially no personal childhood memories recounted. That is a very remarkable fact and it clearly says something quite significant about Indian culture. Freud was right to seize on Leonardo’s sole mention of a childhood memory as being very significant, as well as the actual details of the memory. Unfortunately Freud was led astray by a single word mistranslated from Italian into German. Here I give a new analysis.
  • 4. Freud was reading Leonardo’s writings (in Italian) in a German translation. Unfortunately the word that Freud read as “vulture” should have been translated as “kite” – a quite different bird. This set Freud off on a false trail that we will not go into here, where he attached much significance to the distinctive characteristics of vultures, like eating carrion and being associated with death. The kite is a much smaller bird, extensively studied by Leonardo.
  • 5. Here is Leonardo’s childhood memory and Freud’s initial comment on it, taken from Freud’s 1923 book..
  • 6. Leonardo was fascinated by flight and designed many flying machines based on his very careful studies of how birds do it. He specifically studied a lot the kite bird native to where he lived.
  • 7. So Leonardo’s memory/phantasy about his experience in the cradle is of a kite, which “opened my mouth with its tail and struck me many times with its tail against my lips” - and not a vulture. As Freud points out this is a very bizarre image and it cries out for an explanation. Here I will give a new one.
  • 8. The ancient Greek Herodotus (484-425 B.C.) was the “father of history” and tried to make history a rigorous discipline. His famous writings about history were known and studied throughout the ancient world. Leonardo Da Vinci, like most well educated people of his day, knew about Herodotus and his history writings. Leonardo made sketches and built a model of a machine described (but not shown) by Herodotus that he said Egyptians used in building the pyramids
  • 9. So from Leonardo’s sketches (similar to what is shown here) - based on a description by Herodotus - we know that Leonardo had read Herodotus. Around 450 B.C. Herodotus visited Egypt and talked with the priests there about many aspects of Egyptian culture.
  • 10. Herodotus learned about various aspects of Egyptian religions and a section of his “Histories” book is devoted to discussing what he learned in Egypt. For example, he describes in some detail the Egyptian practice of mummification of the dead. Leonardo would have known about this due to reading Herodotus.
  • 11. Herodotus was told about and maybe shown key aspects of the mummification process, which he then put into his history book, and which Leonardo would have known about.
  • 12. Herodotus did not include any details in his book about a very important religious ceremony done at the end of the mummification of a pharaoh. He may have known about it but it is just not in his book. Today we know much about this ceremony because of the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics, about 2,300 years after Herodotus.If Leonardo did know about this ceremony, about to be described, it did not come from Herodotus.
  • 13. The religious rite is called “the opening of the mouth ceremony” and is shown in many tomb decorations. Because of rigor mortis the mummy’s mouth would be frozen shut. The Egyptians thought that the dead pharaoh would not be able to speak or eat in the afterlife unless his mouth was forced open. Certain ritual tools were used for this task.
  • 14. Recent research has shown that this ceremony was not a simple matter of prying open the dead pharaoh’s mouth. Instead a lot of force was needed to overcome the rigor mortis and in the process it was common for several teeth to be broken off. The asp – sacred to the pharaoh – was a shape that became one of the tools used.
  • 15. The goddess Isis often appeared in the form of her sacred raptor – the falcon or Egyptian kite.
  • 16. So what do we make of this? – Leonardo has a memory/phantasy of a bird – specifically a kite – striking his mouth, as a baby, and “opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me many times with its tail against my lips”. Sounds like the Egyptian Opening of the Mouth ceremony – in which a kite was sometimes shown next to the mummy. Leonardo could not know about this from Herodotus, whose writings about the Egyptian mummies he would have read, because Herodotus does not mention the ceremony. Is there any other way that Leonardo might have known about this? And what would it have meant to him, to be the one childhood memory he ever wrote about?
  • 17. In ancient Egyptian mythology the goddess Isis took the form of a bird - the kite - in order to resurrect the dead. Was there any other source possible for Leonardo to learn about that sort of thing? One idea is the Corpus Hermeticum.
  • 18. The Corpus Hermeticum was a collection of assorted esoteric “secret knowledge” (like alchemy) and sacred texts that was mostly written in Greek and dated to a span that may go back to 600 B.C. in Egypt up to about 200 AD. Most were lost to Europe during the Middle Ages but were rediscovered later in Byzantine copies and had a big influence during the Renaissance. Da Vinci (1452 – 1519) was 19 when this was first translated into Latin in 1471 and made available to intellectuals of Leonardo’s day in Italy. First Latin edition, of 1471
  • 19. The contents of this collection of esoteric writings made a sensation in the intellectual circles that Leonardo moved in. It generated much interest in ancient Egypt. But people could not yet read the hieroglyphics, as in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and there were few sources of information. Visitors to ancient Egypt, like Herodotus, could learn much as well as see tomb decorations that showed the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, but unless they wrote it down somewhere and it survived to Leonardo’s time it was lost forever. It turns out there is nothing in the Corpus Hermeticum about the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. But there were other hermetic texts circulating around Leonardo and some were probably lost to us now. Some were just rediscovered in 1945. So there is no hard evidence that we have now to show that Leonardo knew about the Egyptian Opening of the Mouth ceremony. Some far fetched ideas include the Freemasons, which started around 1425, and Freemasonry has ties to Egyptian mystery schools and their initiation rites. Freemasons make much of knowing ancient Egyptian “secrets”.
  • 20. We may never know for sure if Leonardo Da Vinci was a Freemason or connected to other fringe groups, some very shadowy. And we may never know if he had some source of information about the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. But what if he did – what could this have led to this very odd memory/phantasy that he mentioned in his notebooks, so close in form to the ancient Egyptian ceremony? What could it have symbolized for him? It may have represented him unconsciously phantasising about how his start in life as the genius he was as an adult required a sort of divine intervention – of opening his mouth as a baby and thereby opening him up to the world. The kite was his much-studied and sketched bird/mouth opener.