Vassago 3rd Spirit in The Lesser Key of Solomon

Before representing Vassago in sculptural form I looked at his imagery and read everything I could get my hands on.  After meditating and visualising him in my minds eye for over a period of time images began to evolve in order to begin to contemplate the making process. 

The image that came through clearly was in a dessert. His crocodile was like a ship and dressed with echos of his sigil. The crocodile was surrounded by whirling dervishes, 26, each one containing one of Vassago’s legions. Vassago was royalty and Janus in aspect, which I understood to be past and future, and he was good natured of face. He held a key that I understood to mean the opening of the future and the closing of the past and the ankh symbolising the complexities of life on all levels. Most images of Vassago show him with a Goshawk, but I saw two, presumably foreshadowing Vassago’s Janus aspect in order for the hawks to fulfil their masters goals. They (goshawks) symbolise honesty, and an ability to sniff out lies, and they also act as protection; checking the road ahead and behind. I’ve chosen to inscribe them with elements of his sigil.  The skulls hanging from his ship are a representation of treasures found (and also act to strengthen the sigils representation), the futile and leftover cost of mankind’s obsession with transient riches. As Vassago knows both future and past, he sees this more clearly than anyone.

He is created in black stoneware clay, fired at temperature that are much higher than a volcanoes lava flow, and glazed in bronze and underglazes. The clay absorbs a large proportion of the glazes into its body giving the piece a very aged look, like hes a relic dug from the ground. There are small traces of the bronze left on the piece, but most of it has been absorbed to give the piece a subtle metallic sheen that can only be seen in certain lights.  His colour scheme was used to represent the other worldliness nature of the subject.  

Weight 1.7kg Height 19cm Width 28cm Depth 13cm