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There is a lot more accessible information concerning Michelangelo and the Sistine frescoes (as well as the Renaissance and the Popes) than there is concerning Traquair.
During the Renaissance there was an increasing interest in the art, literature, and philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Cosimo de' Medici, of the great banking family and ruler of Florence, and his intellectual circle were fascinated with Greco-Roman culture and thought and began an earnest translation and study of classical texts. He also began a serious collection of Greco-Roman art... even financing archaeological digs. Michelangelo attended the Humanist academy which the Lorenzo de' Medici (Cosimo's grandson) had founded along Neo Platonic lines. At the academy, Michelangelo was influenced by many of the leading Neo-Platonic philosophers and writers of the day including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano, as well as exposed to original examples of classical-era art.
The Roman Catholic Church and Rome itself during Michelangelo's youth were rather weak and ineffective in contrast to wealthy and powerful city-states such as Florence, Venice, and Milan, to say nothing of France. A great deal of the reasoning behind the Church's embrace of Neo-Platonism and their interest in Greco-Roman culture was due to the desire to legitimize the Church... and Rome... as the rightful heir of the Roman Empire and classical Greece.
I didn’t think about Traquair when I mentioned Popes and bishops. I know that Medici hired M. Ficino, renaissance magician and occultist to translate Corpus Hermeticum. Ficino’s work was an inspiration for G. Bruno, occultist and magician to study occult. Bruno’s De vinculis in genere is considered a cornerstone of modern political thought. In fact, many Anglo Saxon and Middle European historians and intellectuals consider De vinculis in genere modernity’s most intelligent and insightful political work.
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From the earliest days of Christian art there was a link between Apollo and Christ. The first Christian artists needed to create an entire new iconography to convey the Christian narratives. As such, they often built upon Greco-Roman examples. There were many links between Christ and Apollo.
Of course, there are connections. Greek/Roman cults or the cults of Isis and Serapis were a part of religious practices for centuries. Roman Empire couldn’t change the state religion overnight. We may see on many paintings connections with mythology. One of the example is the Crucifixion of the Christ and god Apollo with his chariot and goddess Diana on the top of the paintings or the head of Apollo and Diana we may see below.
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VOL. 2, PAGE 233 HOLY SATAN.
The true esoteric view about “Satan,” the opinion held on this subject by the whole philosophic antiquity, is admirably brought out in an appendix, entitled “The Secret of Satan,” to the second edition of Dr. A. Kingsford’s “Perfect Way.” No better and clearer indication of the truth could be offered to the intelligent reader, and it is therefore quoted here at some length: —
“1. And on the seventh day (seventh creation of the Hindus),* there went forth from the presence of God a mighty Angel, full of wrath and consuming, and God gave him the dominion of the outermost sphere.†
2. “Eternity brought forth Time; the Boundless gave birth to Limit; Being descended into generation.”‡
4. “Among the Gods is none like unto him, into whose hands are committed the kingdoms, the power and the glory of the worlds:”
5. “Thrones and empires, the dynasties of kings,§ the fall of nations, the birth of churches, the triumph of Time.”
For, as is said in Hermes, “Satan is the door-keeper of the Temple of the King; he standeth in Solomon’s porch; he holdeth the key of the Sanctuary, that no man enter therein, save the Anointed having the arcanum of Hermes” (v. 20 and 21).
These suggestive and majestic verses had reference with the ancient Egyptians and other civilized peoples of antiquity to the creative and generative light of the Logos (Horus, Brahma, Ahura-Mazda, etc., etc., as primeval manifestations of the ever-unmanifested Principle, e.g., Ain-Soph, Parabrahm, or ZeruanaAkerne — Boundless Time — Kala)
VOL. 2, PAGE 234 THE SECRET DOCTRINE
33. “Satan is the minister of God, Lord of the seven mansions of Hades” . . . .
The seven or Saptaloka of the Earth with the Hindus; for Hades, or the Limbo of Illusion, of which theology makes a region bordering on Hell, is simply our globe, the Earth, and thus Satan is called —
33 “. . . . the angel of the manifest Worlds.”
It is “Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god,” and this without any allusive metaphor to its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos, “the first son, eldest of the gods,” in the order.
