The Great Rebis is a sculpture rooted in myth, memory, alchemy and the weaving together of generations. Built within an antique brick mould, its heart is a sealed, glass-fronted metal box containing a photograph from 1941: a small child standing in a darkened doorway. The child is a male relative on my fathers side but as a child the image holds all potential possibilities. His image is framed by three embossed metal shapes: a gold circle, a copper square and a silver triangle. Together, they reference sacred geometry and the alchemical symbols that fascinated Jung, shapes that speak of wholeness, transformation and the integration of opposites.
Inside the box rests a brass snake, an ancient emblem of the Rebis and of knowledge, rebirth and renewal. Coiled beside it is a spiral salvaged from an old clock mechanism, suggesting the looping, evolving nature of the human journey: the way we revisit old patterns, wounds and inherited traumas, yet each time with the possibility of rising a little higher, choosing differently and breaking long-held cycles. This motif of time turning back on itself, yet gradually moving forward, is central to the piece.
Emerging from the top of the box is a piece of twisted branch found by my youngest child on a family walk. It is a small, beautiful curiosity, two branches that grew together, pulled apart, and later fused once more. This organic gesture of separation and reunion resonated deeply with me. Our homes and pockets are forever full of sticks, stones and tide-tumbled treasures, and although I almost left this one behind, our dog, Sage, carried it back to the car as if insisting it had a purpose. It has been in my studio ever since, waiting for its place in this work.
The branch becomes the spine of the Rebis figure that rises from the box, a being with both male and female heads and bodies intertwined. I have long been drawn to female figures in mythology, the heroine’s journey, and the stories of the women in my own ancestral line. Years ago, I had a waking dream of my paternal grandfather, a man I never met, as he died before I was born. Like my maternal grandmother, he too was orphaned, and I know almost nothing of his roots. In the dream he handed me a white lotus, a gift, he said, from his father and from my male line. This small vision opened something in me, and around the same time I became deeply engaged with the ideas of Carl Jung, particularly his writings on the anima and animus: the inner feminine and inner masculine that live within each of us.
The Great Rebis symbolises the union of these dual forces, the balancing of the male and female within, and the healing of generational trauma held in polarised or fractured parts of the self. The two heads, crowned with horns that twist and merge, embody this merging. Surrounding them are seven stars, representing the seven classical planets, acknowledging the ancient belief that cosmic forces shape our inner worlds. One arm holds the sun, the archetypal symbol of the masculine; the other holds the moon, the eternal emblem of the feminine. The Rebis stands as a reminder that we are individuals, but also participants in something larger: a collective consciousness, shaped by both ancestry and cosmos.
On the forward-facing hand you will find two thumbs, a quiet gesture to the protective Hand of Fatima, or Hand of Miriam, symbols linked to blessing, abundance and the often-forgotten goddess. Set at the palm is a watchful eye, a guardian against negativity and a reminder of the unseen forces that accompany us.
The Great Rebis is ultimately a work about reunion: of past and present, of personal story and ancestral inheritance, of masculine and feminine, of fragmentation and integration. It honours the truth that healing is rarely linear, that we are shaped by those who came before us, and that the journey toward wholeness requires courage, curiosity and the willingness to embrace all parts of ourselves.
