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This article focuses on artistic and aesthetic practices within the idealist and symbolist movements of the late 19th century in France. It investigates how artists and art critics embraced androgynous imaginaries derived from Greco-Roman antiquity and the Platonic myth, transforming them into tools for social and sexual emancipation and giving rise to a proto-queer vision. An analysis of the art of Alexandre Séon, Odilon Redon, Jeanne Jacquemin, and Léonard Sarluis, in conjunction with the symbolist theories of Joséphin Péladan, Gabriel-Albert Aurier, and Émile Verhaeren, reveals an idealistic pursuit grounded in the union of the masculine and the feminine through the act of creation. Through the examination of artworks, contemporary critical discourse, and the personal correspondence of these art figures, this study posits that the androgyne serves as a heuristic model for a queer art history. The ideal androgyne, as theorized in Freud’s psychoanalytic writings, can function as a methodological paradigm in art studies as a tool for visualizing and conceptualizing homosexuality in art. Full article

Mirra Alfassa’s influence, power, and authority are essential to the integral yoga according to Aurobindo Ghose, yet most scholars have so far refused to examine their contours. Aurobindo saw her as the incarnation of the divine mother or Mahāśakti and said her spiritual growth “followed the same course” as his, which radically universalized Rāmakṛṣṇa’s teaching of vijñāna, which he called “supermind” and she “the domain of love”. Aurobindo left key parts of his supramental vision incomplete in his writings; however, Mirra claimed to complete it with new revelations that I call the “Descendant Manonāśa Period” of their practice. Manonāśa or “mental annihilation” is central to what scholars call “Yoga Advaita”. Mirra’s revelations include: 1. a posthuman vision of a sexless supramental humanity that is evolving now and in the future; 2. this evolution is coming with a cost: the mind and vital natures are being destroyed as we are going through an anatomical metamorphosis surpassing the one that yielded homo sapiens 300,000 years ago; 3. this shambolic process centrally involves what Mirra called “the psychic being” or evolving soul, somehow stimulating its materialization into what she called “the glorified body” in her early life in France. Though Aurobindo did not make a direct connection between the psychic being and what he called “the divine body”, he thought from the beginning of their partnership in the 1920s that her body could endure supramentalization better than his, no matter how it unfolded. Full article

Salix vitellina L., or golden willow, was described by C. Linnaeus in 1753. It was later considered to be affiliated with S. alba, and its taxonomic rank has been changed to variety, subspecies, and form. A recent proposal designated it as a form of S. alba × S. fragilis. The goal of this study was to verify the taxonomic designation of S. vitellina using morphological characteristics including ovule number. A few specimens of S. vitellina from Europe and North America, including the lectotype LINN1158.13, were analyzed. It was recorded that S. vitellina has an ovule index of 6–10, with most valves with four and five ovules and less than 50% of valves with five ovules. These ovule parameters were similar to those of S. alba. The other floral characteristics also indicated that S. vitellina is associated with S. alba. No signs of androgyny or flower aberrations, commonly occurring in willow hybrids, were found in the specimens of S. vitellina. Thus, the analyses did not corroborate the hybrid origin of S. vitellina. The ovule analysis also confirmed that f. chermesina with orange–red stems is also a taxon of S. alba, which differs from f. vitellina by a greater ovule index of 12–16. Full article