An esoteric paradise in the heart of Madrid: el Jardín del Capricho

'There are other worlds but they are in this one'.
[Paul Elouard]

Speaking of a place as special as this, involves, at least, go back to a time and a history in which magic, esotericism and occultism were more than a passing trend among the wealthy people of a European society, privileged and mercantilist, who voluntarily isolated himself from that industrial revolution that was transforming the people, in the skin of whose inhabitants began to appreciate the ashen gray color of the dust that was given off by the smoke from the chimneys of the factories or the indelible mascara of the soot of the coal that was extracted from the bowels of the mines.

A time, in which the Napoleonic gale had passed and the modern era had just begun, romantic architects and visionaries, such as Viollet le Duc - an intuitive sage, who proclaimed with solvency that modern painters should study medieval art as a language, not only in the words but also in its grammar and its spirit-, and romantic writers like Victor Hugo, rescued from the ruin part of the brilliant and millenary magic of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, and in Madrid, between the station and the basilica, the wheels of the cars still passed over some stump, thorny type plant similar to esparto, which had given its name, likewise, to one of the most charismatic black virgins in the city: the Virgin of Atocha.

Times in which, in spite of widespread popular illiteracy-a legacy, undoubtedly, of a Middle Ages whose ranks extended beyond time-ritual, myth and tradition-in short, that primordial set of archetypes that Jung defined as the collective unconscious-they subsisted in happy conviviality -which Shakespirian wives of Windsor-, making distant pools of mud present at the time. Times in which, apart from the awakening of the workers' movements, the nationalist sentiments or the bloody din of the first anarchist bombs, the past, since the reign of terror of the Inquisition began to glimpse its decline in the confines of the horizon , reopened the Pandora's Box, latent in the darkness of the uterus of Proserpina, releasing embryos of heterodoxy, whose amniotic fluid nourished sects and groups that returned to show facing the sun, among others, columns and Masonic compasses in their aprons or the crosses kicked in the immaculate shoulder pads of their white cloaks.

Done millimeter at whim - hence its name, which defines the garden itself, as well as all its elements - by the Duchess of Osuna herself, Doña María Josefa Alonso Pimentel, is much more than just another historical-artistic complex, as He declared in 1934 - it is evident, that with all deservingness -, the Board for the Conservation and Protection of the Gardens of Spain, a body under the General Directorate of Fine Arts.

It's a garden, yes; It is historical, of course; and it's artistic, of course. But at the same time, according to one is lost by its picturesque corners, one has the impression, at least, that in reality, what the duchess personally directed with so many implied archetypal details, was something more than an elegant and luxurious space of leisure in which to spend long periods and with which to complete the boredom and boredom of their closest friends, regardless of whether these included artists and intellectuals of the time, some of whom had intervened in its execution: a specially designed garden as an initiatory place.

It could be the case, perfectly, that under the appearance of those luxurious parties in which there is nothing missing and which the popular proverb usually refers to as throwing the house out the window, the guests, with or without knowledge, were involved in a ludic but at the same time initiatory trip, that in small scale, of course, reproduced the sense of the great spiritual trips. A trip, in addition, conveniently indicated by the different archetypes marked in their itinerary - in the manner, for example, of the famous Game of the Goose -, no matter where the participants begin the journey.

In such a way, that there are lonely paths, shady and at some point dark, that remind us of that dark, rough and strong jungle with which Dante began the first verses of his Divine Comedy. There is also some clear, among the luxuriance of a heterogeneous trees, where a house, called the Old, reminds us of another deadly trap in which resided the wicked witch - another of the covert aspects of the Triple Goddess - the famous story of the Brothers Grimm, entitled Hansel and Gretel, which could represent, comparatively speaking, that prison from which it is difficult to leave and in which, in the aforementioned Game of the Goose, it would be necessary for another player to come and occupy our place.

Part of the thorns of the Camino: the unforeseen, the inconveniences, the excess of confidence. Following that same path, a hundred meters further on, another clearing discovers a curious building whose plant, in a polygonal shape, reminds us of that peculiar type of oriental architecture, brought, among others, by the Crusaders of the Holy Land.

It is the Casino or Ballroom - another of the archetypes that has always accompanied most of humanity's rituals - and in each of its faces, a Greek-Latin allegory refers us to ancient pagan ceremonies.

Interestingly, to access it, the guests did it in small feluccas - remember Charon, the ferryman of the underworld -, who started from the so-called Casa de Cañas located on the pier of the lake, accessing the Casino through a small canal, at the end from which, and located in a small tunnel, awaited another archetypal figure: the Guardian of the Threshold.

The appearance of this one is striking: a wild boar lying on its hindquarters. Recall the importance that his figure had, especially in the Romanesque art, being, together with the deer, the main elements of medieval hunting symbolism.
But also, if we take a look at the great classics of medieval literature, we will observe, in the fascinating story of the fairy Melusina, that one of the greatest medieval lineages, that of the Lusignan, began, precisely, with an unfortunate accident when I was trying to hunt a boar.

The lake, although not very large, it is, however, intoxicating. Of circular form, it has a small island in its center - the circle and a point in the center, as it was represented by perfection and by default to God, also in the Middle Ages -, in which, above a small waterfall, a rectangular block of granite reminds us of the figure of the Duke of Osuna.

In the Casa de Cañas, located, as has been said, next to the wharf -in the interior part of this, a picture shows us a bucolic landscape in which a pagan temple stands out-, we find another primordial symbol: that Hebrew Yin-Yang known as the Star or Seal of Solomon, which refers us to the ancient Kabbalistic wisdom.

The beautiful palmípedas that evolve in the waters of the lake, although they are not geese, they are family of these: swans, ducks and ducks, animals with chthonic characteristics, that already figured in the decoration of the ancient nymphos, as evidenced by the Santa Eulalia de Bóveda. Next to the lake and the jetty, a star-shaped fort is located. And not far from these, almost hidden by vegetation and trees, a small hermitage is a great enigma.

Made in part with a technique already used by the great geniuses of the Renaissance, such as Michelangelo and Leonardo, the trompe l'oeil - one of the most famous and spectacular sites where Michelangelo put it into practice, was precisely the Sistine Chapel - called the Attention the entrance door, which reproduces another great archetypal symbol: the foot of a druid or pentagon or five-pointed star.

Also, among the symbols that can be seen on the floor, next to the door, one in particular stands out: the cross kick. But the great enigma of this small group, resides in the garden attached to the south side portico: a small granite pyramid that, apparently, is not only another archetypal symbol of perfection, but also the tomb of a mysterious and anonymous hermit, key figure in another monumental set of archetypes: the plates or letters of the Tarot.

Following the path and close to it, there is a small pond, shaped like a kidney, where a classic torso can be seen as a reference, at the base of whose support or column, another essential, barely perceptible archetype appears: the rose.

Back to the main esplanade, the one that leads to the palace or mansion, a small semi-spherical temple, in whose central part stands a bust of the duchess, the magic of numbers, together with the mythological archetypes, surprises us: eight they are the sphinxes that guard it.

Despite having several smaller and differently distributed in different corners of the 14 hectares that make up this monumental garden, the main Labyrinth, huge and grandiose in its design -mother of those others, such as the cathedral of Chartres- , represents, with its disturbing presence, not only one of the oldest archetypes that have accompanied this collective unconscious since the dawn of time, but also, one of the elements that generates more excitement among visitors, and in fact, as very well affirmed Mircea Eliade, also represents the Ulysses that we all carry inside and that Ithaca -center, navel or umbilical cord-, to which we all yearn to return.

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NOTICE: originally published on my blog ARTE, MITOS Y ARQUETIPOS. Both the text, as the photographs, and the video (except music, reproduced under a YouTube license), are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry, where you can check the authorship of juancar347, can be found at the following address: https://artemitosyarquetipos.blogspot.com/2016/10/el-capricho-un-paraiso-esoterico.html

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