Olivia Di Gregorio

Rule for Solitude: Find wisdom in being alone. This knight discovers her purpose, finding herself in the Cauldron of Rebirth, where she will never die. She faces an ouroboros mirror, revealing her future of eternal battle, death, and an all-devouring solitude.

Rule for Faith: Retain openness to the unknown, and keep belief alive. In order to pursue a holy purpose, sin is inevitable. A holy Eve lies on the head of a beast, a sin marking its head, and hers.

Rule for co-operation: “We must live and work together as brothers or perish as fools”. Mary Anne Atwood created a magical ritual meant to reveal and explore inner processes of the spirit. A golden hoop is cast with the help of fairies, as a knight seeks ‘perfection of the soul’.

Rule for Pride: To never diminish yourself as a knight. Myth suggests that a good knight will be reborn as a great horse, and so her pride for battle carries her off on a golden mare, stung by arrows and herself lit by flames.

Rule for a courageous death: To not fear the end, and extinguish knowing success requires pain. The modest, humble goldfinch is related in history to Christ’s Passion, and symbolises the ideals within the Order of Chivalry. It is the presentation of a good knight, though despite its great courage and sacrificial belief, dies in its sword’s hilt, revealing a stairway into the clouds.

Rule for love: to enjoy, and relish it. Courtly love was not fair to women in the medieval era, and although her position was strong, she was blundered with rocks for pursuing it. She emerges through the boulders, revealing a prismatic shell, and herself reborn.

Rule for forgiveness. A young, dead knight seeks absolution, marching forward, and escorting a party of souls out of the woodlands. They are accompanied by foolish fire, the ghosts of children buried in the forest.

Rule for humility: “never announce that you are a knight, simply behave as one”. In medieval lapidaries, an agate was believed to lead the way to pearls; treasures thought to be born from soaking in sun and moonbeams. In an effort to protect the pearls, it performs a selfless act that preserves the treasure’s safety, and makes them that much more valuable. A final courtesy, echoing, “to live by the sword is to die by the sword”.

The Lesser Goldfinch