The sources behind the Reality Temple meme

Unless you're very new to this blog, you'll be very familiar with this meme by now. We're not through with it yet.

As discussed in "Taking inventory of Reality Temple syncs" (November 2023), the foreground image of a shirtless Arnold Schwarzenegger running is taken from his 1970 film debut, Hercules in New York.

The background image, the Reality Temple itself, is (as Kevin McCall discovered) the first in a series of 22 drawings by Laurie Lipton, commissioned by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam. These were reworkings of the original 22 illustrations in Splendor Solis, a 16th-century alchemical text attributed to Salomon Trismosin. Here is Lipton's drawing, as seen in the meme:

And here is the Splendor Solis illustration on which it is based:

The picture is called Arma Artis -- "the arms of the art." As far as I know, arma typically means "weapons," while the usual Latin for a coat of arms is insigne; but here arma is pretty clearly being used in the latter sense. While the coat of arms is clearly the central focus both of the original illustration and of Lipton's adaptation, in the meme neither the coat of arms nor the title Arma Artis is clearly visible. The focus is instead on the building in which it is housed -- the "Reality Temple" -- which is Lipton's own creation, having almost nothing in common with the Splendor Solis original.

Where did the original Splendor Solis image come from. According to art historian Jörg Völlnagel, 

Although the opening pages of hand-illuminated manuscripts typically bear the heraldry of their commissioners, in this case the family coat of arms was supplanted by an imaginary emblem dedicating the codex to the sun. Indeed, as has been noted, the coat of arms is a meticulous copy of the opening miniature contained in the alchemical manuscript Aurora Consurgens. However, the motif was expanded for the Splendor Solis to take in the architectural surrounds as well. Here, the painter turned to a copper engraving by Hans Sebald Beham for inspiration.

Aurora Consurgens is attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas. This descripton of figures from the Aurora Consurgens confirms the connection:

1. A coat of arms is shown against a reddish purple background. A crowned metallic grey helmet with blue wreaths of stylised leaves, is set above a blue shield bearing the image of a yellow solar face. Above the helmet another sun is seen shining its beams upon the scene below.

This is a description of the Glasgow manuscript. The only one I have been able to find online is the Zürich manuscript, which doesn't include the coat of arms. It does have another potentially relevant illustration, though (I've included a modern redrawing, too, since the details are easier to see):

The griffin rider has a blue shield charged with a yellow sun with a face, like the shield in the Arma Artis. The lion rider has a shield charged with three crescents, like the three crescents above the crowned helmet in the Arma Artis. Why they have these shields is unclear. The lion is a solar symbol, and the rider has a sun for a head, but he has a lunar shield. The other rider is female and seems to have a moon for a head, and yet she is the one with the solar shield. I suppose it is just an example of the "unification of opposites" concept which is a major theme of that work.

As for Völlnagel's statement that the architectural elements in Arma Artis were inspired by Sebald Beham, no particular engraving of Beham's looks particularly similar to what we see in Arma Artis, so the inspiration must have been of a general sort. The arches on the left side of this picture of Mercury might be the sort of thing Völlnagel has in mind.

In any case, the architecture in the Splendor Solis illustration is not directly relevant to the Reality Temple meme, since Laurie Lipton redesigned it completely. Her version of Arma Artis shows an open, gazebo-like structure supported by pillars. Atop the pillars is a sort of balcony above which are shelves of books. There are ladders allowing  people on the balcony to reach the upper shelves, but no visible way of reaching the balcony from the ground. Lipton's most interesting addition, given recent syncs, is a sort of altar under the shield with an enormous red book open on it.

One of the pages to which the book is open has yet another sun on it, perhaps connecting this book with the "Gospel of Luke" (i.e., of Light) in the syncs.

The sun on the shield, which is the same both in the Splendor Solis and in Lipton's adaptation, has eyes and mouth each of which is a complete face. I can only guess what this meant to the alchemists who first came up with the image, but what it suggests to me is the language in 2 Nephi 3 about a "seer" (eye-person) and "spokesman" (mouth-person). Theirs is the sun-like role of bringing "out of darkness unto light," and of course it is associated with a book.