I started this painting just a few days before the explosive 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. It was originally just supposed to be a study regarding an old ideogram of mine, "Pantsoff Christ". Pantsoff Christ was a symbol consisting of an 8 year old boy with a long, hard eight inch cock who went around naked and prophecizing despite the fact of his mother running after him constantly, telling him to put some clothes on. I sort of related it the Nordic myth of Loki when he has Thor's hammer and he also had parallels to the Fool in tarot decks. Pantsoff Christ was just a whimsical, fun-loving prophet who, despite his age possessed alot of wisdom and gnosis which was symbolized by his adult penis. I suppose I was also sort of joining in while poking fun at the ubiquitous cliche of the "child prophet" or adolescent preacher you often see in movies.

Anyway, I started getting this idea of "castrifixion". If the vertical and horizontal lines of the cross represent the interesection of the penis into the vagina, and if the ideogram of Christ represents the orgasm, the death of sperm, then wouldn't it be nice to symbolize the FUSION of death and life which causes the mythological ReSuRReCtIoN in a new, exciting way? So I imagined what it would be like to castrate someone while they are being crucified, not literally, of course, but as an artistic, metaphorical way of exressing a mystical idea. If the "death" in the center of the cross where the two points meet represents the sperm, then how could that be if no sperm can be conjured by the testicles because, while the "Christ" (sacrificial goat or lamb, offering into the "temple of the vagina," etc) is being crucified, while he hangs on the cross, while the cock is being pushed in and out of the vagina, HE IS BEING CASTRATED? Putting it simply it is just a way to further, more subtly express the paradoxical nature of a God/man overcoming death.

And to further express this juxtaposition of seemingly paradoxical opposites, I made the "Castrifixion of Pantsoff" symbol to include both a cross and a pentagram, joined with sexual iconography and also connected it to my preseason 2001 NFL football playoff predictions which are shown in brackets at the top. As you can see I correctly predicted the New England Patriots to win the AFC. There are many other things I could say about this, I guess. When 9/11 occured right after I made the castrifixion symbol I began to look at it and thought that maybe the Two Towers of the World Trade Center somehow were related to the Castrifixion, that they were actually another representation of it, and that, while making this symbol I was receiving intuitive divinations-- as I'm sure many people did-- telling me what was to soon occur. So to document this possibility I peppered the painting with a bunch of 9/11 imagery that popped up on the news in the first week or two after. I'm not saying I predicted 9/11 or anything ridiculous like that but am just musing over the latent, psychic ability to intuitively see "beneath the veil" which I think all or at least most of us have, and that it can be triggered by artistic endeavors, among other things.