A Face Before Him, and a Face Behind: Part 2, Exposing What is Hidden

Emblem IV, Book 3 of George Wither’s, A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (1635)

     George Wither was an Englishman and therefore wrote these lengthier more poetic epigrams in the English of his day rather than Latin. Despite being in English it can still be a bit difficult to read in its original printed version since some word spellings are different and the use of the f  (long s) character for some of the s’s. I’ve transcribed the text as best I can here for ease of reading.

That Head, which in his Temple, heretofore,
The well-known figure of old Ianus bore;
Retained the form, which pictured here you find;
A Face before him, and a Face behind.
And this old Hieroglyphic doth comprise
A multitude of Heathenish Mysteries;
Which, we omitting, will insist on what
This Emblem’s, Motto, chiefly pointeth at.            
     In true Divinity, ‘tis God alone,
To whom, all hidden things are truly known.
He, only, is that ever-present-being,
Who, by the virtue of his power all-seeing,
Beholds, at one aspect, all things that are,
That ever shall be, and that ever were.            
     But, in a moral-sense, we may apply
This double-face, that man to signify,
Who (whatfore he undertakes to do)
Looks, both before him, and behind him, too.
For, he shall never fruitfully forcast
Affairs to come, who minds not what is past:
And, such as do not, oft, before them look,
May lose the labor, that’s already took.
By, sometimes, looking backward, we behold
Those things, which have been done in times of old;
By looking wisely forward, we foresee
Such matters, as in future-times will be:
And, thus, we do not only fruits receive
From that short space of time, in which we live;            
     But, by this means, we likewise have a share, 
     In times to come, and, times that passed are.

     You’ll also notice around the circular image is a border with more text which reads Pando Recondita, translated from the Latin to something like, “exposing what is hidden” or “revealing secrets”. In this motto is a good portion of meaning behind Janus and the door his bifron likeness stands before.

     Doors are amazing things when you think of them as symbols. They are devices intentionally created and placed to separate two areas, and unlike an open gateway or portal, doors serve as a barrier to those without proper authority or access should the door be locked. A door can hide and protect things—mundane things or secret ones; it keeps certain things in and others out. The doorway is a transition point, what is sometimes referred to as a liminal space where you are neither here nor there, but in some undefined region in between. Despite how ordinary the places are on either side of a doorway might be, it is a transition nonetheless to move from one area to the other.

     In addition to being the god of doors and transitions, Janus also ruled over beginnings and endings. Fittingly, the bifron (two-faced) image looks backwards and forwards to the beginning of things and then to the end; an aspect ultimately relating to the past and future. It is this looking to the past and future which provides the requisite knowledge to find the hidden things the emblem is directing us towards. We cannot pass through a closed door, reach the end on the other side, or be transformed by looking in only one direction. Janus is the janitor—keeper of the keys—who allows us to traverse and gain access to secrets. In other words, looking to the past and the future, like the motto Pando Recondita says, reveals what is hidden, presumably in the present.

     Wither is right to point out, in the middle portion of the text, that God alone is perfect in the respect of knowing; and to the true omniscient and eternal God, Janus is vastly inferior. The power of seeing/imagining the future and the past, to the extent man has the ability to do, is bound by time. There remain mysteries not within time, undisclosed even to those with exact knowledge of what came before and after. The text says, “He, only, is that ever-present-being…Beholds, at one aspect, all things that are, That ever shall be, and that ever were.” Here Wither establishes God as outside of time as an eternal being, like the author of a book who knows all aspects of the story and can flip to any page He wants. To God there is no beginning or end, just the eternal now from which all things are visible and known to Him, like that of the open book.

     Unfortunately or fortunately for us, we are characters in the story, as is Janus. He may hold the keys within the narrative to see how the story might begin and end, but there is a heavy door shut behind which even he cannot penetrate. Maybe this is a humbling reminder to us and a foreshadowing of what’s to come in the next entry of this analysis. There are limits in this world; no matter how great we might believe our predictive talents through science or the historical investigations of the past might be there are always unknowns hidden behind doors we can never open.