The Sistine Secrets (26 page)

The infant under God’s left hand is most likely the
soul
of Adam, about to be transmitted into Adam. Notice that the infant’s body position is imitating that of Adam. It is about to be infused into Adam through Adam’s left hand. According to tradition, the left hand is the one through which we receive blessings and benedictions, since its blood vessels lead directly to the heart. Even today, countless people around the world wear the red string of the matriarch Rachel’s blessing—on their
left
wrist. Michelangelo knew that his talents, too, were a blessing received from God. Is it only a coincidence that the artist, who depicted Adam receiving his soul from the Creator through his left hand, was also himself left-handed?

The other questions—about why God’s image is so complicated in this panel, with so many seemingly superfluous figures, a cape, and a hanging cloth—were solved by chance in the year 1975. A Jewish surgeon from Indiana, Dr. Frank Mershberger, entered the Sistine, looked up at the great fresco, and was suddenly struck not only by a sense of awe, but also by a sense of…strange familiarity. What the American surgeon noticed in the
Creation
panel was the distinctive shape of the cape and the dangling scrap of cloth. He mentally blocked out the colors and the mass of adjacent figures. And then he found himself picturing the diagrams he had studied in his Anatomy 101 textbook back in medical school. The cerebrum, the cerebellum, the occipital lobe, the cortex, the brain stem…of course. They were all there. What Michelangelo had hidden in the painting was a perfect cross-section of the human brain. But—why?

Again, he was showing to others “in the know” what he had learned surreptitiously through illegal dissections. The only people who might have recognized the hidden internal organs in the ceiling would have been other seekers of knowledge who had pursued the same forbidden activities. Those who knew the secret kept silent, and so for many generations the secret was lost or forgotten. It is a testament to Michelangelo’s anatomical expertise—and his subtle way of disguising his messages—that it took a professional surgeon to rediscover it in the twentieth century.

Michelangelo concealed this forbidden evidence of anatomical studies to convey the concept of creation rooted in wisdom; the “brain” of God, so to speak, is the source of humankind’s appearance on earth. It is yet another illustration of an idea stressed in the Kabbalah—the brain is the organ mystically linked to the
s’firah
of Chochmah/Wisdom. Incredibly, Michelangelo was aware of an even deeper truth, noted long ago in Kabbalistic thought: it is not the entire brain that is linked to Chochmah/Wisdom but only its right hemisphere,
exactly the part that Michelangelo painted in this panel.
The artist found a way to echo visually the ancient Jewish prayer proclaiming that God created Adam with Chochmah, the right side of the divine brain.

Some experts think that the extra interlocking figures surrounding God are the major brain centers and the ganglia (intersections of the “highway” of the nervous system). However, there is also a far more fascinating mystical explanation. According to Talmud, Midrash, and Kabbalah, the drop of semen that impregnates the womb of the woman does not originate in the male reproductive system but comes from within the man’s
brain
instead. According to this interpretation, all those figures surrounding the Creator are us, the future descendants of Adam and Eve, waiting to be conceived. That makes all of us direct descendants of God, awaiting birth from his brain—a powerful universalistic concept.

There is still more. Since we know that Michelangelo studied Kabbalah, he was surely aware of the concept of Mochah Stima’ah, the hidden brain. This is a mysterious facet of God, concealed behind and between the
s’firot
on the Tree of Life. It represents the Almighty’s purpose and reasoning behind seemingly meaningless occurrences and commandments. When people of faith say “The ways of the Lord are mysterious,” they are implying a belief in this Mochah Stima’ah, God’s camouflaged rationale, or divine plan, behind everything that transcends the understanding of our finite mortal minds. Even the word
mysterious
has its root in the Hebrew word
nistar,
which means “that which is hidden.” The Mochah Stima’ah is also the unknown purpose behind the will to create. This “hidden brain” (also known as “concealed wisdom”) inspires in human beings the will to create, to build, to design, and yes—to sculpt and paint. It is the source of our drive to imitate the Creator and to infuse the world with meaning and purpose. It is transfused into us, according to the Kabbalah, by both sets of emotions emanating from the Tree of Life. The upper emotions—those that are spiritual, transcendent, and self-controlled—are called
Yisrael Saba,
or the Israel the Elder.
*
The lower emotions—those that are material, ego-centered, and impulsive—are called
Yisrael Zuta,
or the Israel the Little One. In a highly passionate creative genius like Michelangelo, driven by the ceaseless will to create, both of these emotions—the upper and lower—definitely came into play. Small wonder, then, that he painted Wisdom/Chochmah in the female guise of Sofia, flanked by the now-classic figure of the white-bearded God representing Yisrael Saba, and the infant representing Yisrael Zuta, all enclosed inside the right hemisphere of the human brain, blessing the Man’s left hand with the talent and the will to create. Seen in this light, hidden inside this world-famous scene is nothing less than a forbidden anatomy lesson, a journey into the depths of Kabbalah, and a secret self-portrait of Michelangelo as Adam—not by way of the artist’s physical appearance but rather of his very
soul.

THE CREATION OF EVE

Even in the smaller, simpler panel of the creation of woman, we can find a deep, hidden Judaic message. According to Christian translation and tradition, the Almighty created Eve, the mother of us all, from Adam’s rib. However, the biblical Hebrew does not say that; the word used there is
ha-tzelah, the side
of Adam. The rabbinic sages explained that she was not made from Adam’s head, which could have made her feel conceited and above her mate, and not from his foot, which could have made her feel downtrodden and want to run away, but from his side, to be his
equal partner
in life. For that very reason, in the next verse after Eve is created and named, we read: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). In almost every non-Jewish depiction of the birth of Eve, she is shown as rising out of one rib of Adam. Here, on the Sistine ceiling, however, she is shown following Judaic tradition, stepping out of the entire side of Adam.

THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT

The Forbidden Fruit section of the ceiling also holds secrets. It is a
diptych,
a painting made of two equal parts. On the left, we see Adam and Eve, still innocent, about to eat the forbidden fruit. The crafty serpent is in the middle, wrapped about the tree, tempting them into sin. On the right, we see them being exiled from the Garden of Eden, ashamed and already showing signs of the natural aging process, since part of their punishment was to lose their immortality and their eternal youthfulness. At first glance, this seems like a typical rendition of the story of what the Church calls the Original Sin, or the Fall from Paradise. However, looking deeper, we find many surprising and subversive elements, even in the format chosen for this panel.

First of all, let’s look at the forbidden fruit itself. As we have previously pointed out, according to most traditions, it was an apple. In fact, in medieval Latin, the word for apple is
malum,
which in other cases becomes
male
and
mala,
synonymous with evil, as in the words
malicious
and
maleficent.
In modern Italian, the vowels have been reversed, making
mela
the word for apple. If you look at almost any other painting or fresco in Western art that depicts the forbidden fruit, you will find the standard image of the apple.

There was only one exception to this commonly held belief: the Jewish tradition. The Talmud (in Tractate Brachot, 40a) discusses the views of the rabbis and offers a strikingly different belief. The sages base their conclusion on a mystical principle that God never presents us with a difficulty unless he has already created its solution within the very problem itself. Therefore, they propose that the Tree of Knowledge was a fig tree. After all, when the immediate result of Adam and Eve’s transgression was shame, occasioned by their new awareness of their nudity, the Bible tells us that their recourse was to cover themselves with fig leaves. A compassionate God provided the cure for the consequence of the sin from the selfsame object that caused it.

It is hard to imagine many Christians being aware of this in Michelangelo’s era, or even today. Only someone who had studied Talmud would have known such a thing. Yet, sure enough, there in the panel of the
Original Sin,
Michelangelo’s Forbidden Tree of Knowledge is a fig tree. If you look closely, you will see that the fruits dangling from the serpent’s hand, which Adam and Eve are about to pick, are all juicy green figs. Remarkably, Michelangelo chose a rabbinical interpretation of the biblical story over the one accepted by his Christian contemporaries.

Michelangelo also chose a unique way to show their innocence before eating the fruit. If you look at Adam’s stance as he reaches into the tree for a fig, it is difficult
not
to notice that his sexual organ is positioned almost in Eve’s face. If she were to turn her head even slightly in his direction, we would have an X-rated ceiling. The Church was not unaware of this, and so prohibited any reproductions of this one panel all the way up to the late nineteenth century.

There is still more Judaic teaching to be found here. Another shocking change from the standard imagery is that Adam himself is plucking the forbidden fruit off the tree, instead of the stereotype of the “evil temptress Woman” handing him the deadly apple and seducing him into eating it. This is to show that Adam shared as much responsibility in the sin as Eve. Why? The Almighty tells him that they are allowed to eat freely from all the trees in the Garden of Eden, except for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:16–17). However, only a few verses later, at the beginning of Genesis 3, when the serpent is tempting Eve, we hear a different story:

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Has God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. (Genesis 3:1–3)

This is
not
what God had commanded Adam. The Almighty specified the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, not the “tree in the midst of the garden.” That is a different tree, the Tree of Life. Furthermore, nothing had been said about not touching the tree. What did the ancient rabbis derive from this?
Adam had not faithfully passed on the true words of God.
He did not specify the right tree, and he embroidered God’s prohibition with an extra one of his own invention about not even touching the tree. This transgression on Adam’s part made Eve an easy prey to the serpent’s lies. When the Almighty confronted a frightened Adam after the sin, the Man tried to lay all the blame on the Woman. When God confronted Eve, she was far more truthful and simply said: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Notice that she did not say “tempted me” but actually said “deceived me.” How was she deceived? The sages of over two thousand years ago developed this midrash, which explains everything: As the serpent enticed Eve to approach the forbidden tree, he gave her a shove that made her touch the tree. When no bad consequence ensued, she was easily convinced that God had lied to them. In fact, it was not the tree situated exactly in the middle of the garden—that was the other mystical tree, the Tree of Life—but because of Adam’s careless transmission of God’s words, Eve did not know the true prohibition. In this way, she was deceived and not merely tempted. So, Michelangelo decided to show Adam sharing equally in the guilt—something not seen in any other Western representation of the Original Sin.

In yet one more way Michelangelo chose to follow Jewish tradition. Only the Midrash described the serpent as originally having both arms and legs. In the mainstream imagery of the Garden, the serpent is usually shown as a huge snake looking much as we know snakes today. Sometimes, the serpent will have a human head, but that is it. Here, on the Sistine ceiling, Michelangelo again follows the Judaic teachings, giving his unique serpent arms and legs.

Next to the serpent, on the right side of this two-part panel, we see the angel with the sword banishing Adam and Eve from Paradise forever. Here we discover the last great hidden message of this scene.
The righteous angel is an exact twin of the evil serpent.
Even their gestures and body positions are mirror images of each other. Their bodies together form a sort of human heart. Michelangelo is returning to the subject of his earlier poem and the
Battle of the Centaurs
—the struggle of the two inclinations. According to Jewish philosophy, you might recall, each of us has a lifelong internal conflict, a “tug of war,” between the
Yetzer ha-Tov
(inclination toward doing good) and the
Yetzer ha-Ra
(inclination toward doing evil). Notice that the twin inclinations—symbolized by the serpent and the angel—are on the two sides of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, since it is at this very spot that humanity learns the difference for the first time. What the artist is illustrating here differs from the standard Church concept of Original Sin—a concept foreign to Judaism. Rather, his rendering stresses the human potential for free choice and free will.