La Licorne - The Unicorn: why this name?

With La Licorne (the Unicorn), it is the birth of a new scriptural adventure...

But why this strange, fantastic name, which seems to come from a child's imagination?

Ariane explains everything to you...

The Unicorn! What a funny name...

So why did I choose it for subscribing to my new articles and podcasts?

For the symbolic charge of this fantastic animal, of course!

In the medieval bestiary, the unicorn is a fabulous animal, a symbol of purity, faith, and innocence, submitting to the young virgin on whose breast it lays its head. The unicorn was also said to have the power to cure poisoning.

The unicorn also represents absolute purity and Christian sacrifice, an ideal that is both feminine and masculine; through Christian allegory, it is linked to the Virgin Mary fertilized by the Holy Spirit, the incarnation of the Word of God in earthly flesh. The unicorn's horn is the sword of God, that of the Word.

A little later, the unicorn was associated with chivalric values, in particular those of an indomitable freedom that prefers death to capture. In Renaissance iconography, it is omnipresent: its spiral horn symbolizes a spiritual arrow, or the penetration of the divine principle into the earthly creature, spiritual elevation through the union of opposites, the reconciliation of spirit and matter, the flesh sublimated by the divine principle.

In China, the unicorn is called ki'lin or qilin (kirin in Japan), which means… yin-yang!

The main characteristic of the Unicorn is that it can only be tamed by the tenderness of a genuine being with a pure heart, without malice.

Known collectively as The Lady and the Unicorn, the famous tapestry in the Cluny Museum (in Paris) consists of five tapestries, each representing one of the five senses (touch, hearing, smell, sight, taste) and a mysterious sixth tapestry called "to my only desire" , which represents the sixth sense, the one that leads to the intelligible world of the mind, accessible by... desire alone, that is, the nostalgic aspiration to contemplate the stars and constellations.

It is therefore under this high and salutary patronage that I wish to inscribe the birth of this new scriptural adventure, which begins this Saturday, December 7, 2024, with your precious and faithful support.

La Licorne

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Author

Ariane Bilheran

Ariane Bilheran, graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm), philosopher, clinical psychologist, doctor of psychopathology, author of numerous books (some of which have been translated into foreign languages): essays on society, psychology, philosophy, children's and adult literature, poetry. Her best-known books are Psychopathology of Paranoia, Chronicles of Totalitarianism, Psychopathology of Totalitarianism, The Forbidden Debate, The Imposture of Sexual Rights.

Rational and methodical, but also a musician and poet, Ariane plumbs the depths of the human soul with as much ardor and patience as she contemplates the stars, to pierce the mysteries of the universe.