THE FIRST BIOGRAPHY OF THE LIFE OF BRIDGET BATE TICHENOR

TX, PA, PAU COPYRIGHTS 2006 & 2009 Writers Guild Registration TX 1382590 2008

Zhringen

Derived from Bridget Bate Tichenor The Mexican Magic Realist Painter TX, PA, PAU COPYRIGHTS 1990, 2000, 2006, & 2009 TXU 1 321 112 11/6/06 By Zachary Selig
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www.zacharyselig.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Selig

Bridget Bate Tichenor Copyright Estate of George Platt Lynnes 1945

INTRODUCTION The mesmerizing story of the Magical Realist painter Bridget Bate Tichenor has not been told. It is not just a story. It is an extraordinary and riveting story of a remarkable female artist who impacted the 20th Century world of fashion, art, and society with enormous contributions. Revealed are the intimacies and secrets of an outwardly beautiful, exotic, bold, and courageous, yet painfully shy and reclusive woman who lived in extraordinary times, hither to the unknown world or her peers and colleagues. Bridgets life was led in an astonishing way in many contrasting countries and in many revolutionary platforms on a level of excellence that has not been recognized or acknowledged outside small eccentric art circles. Bridget adhered to rarefied and noble standards of human pride, integrity, respect, discipline, and compassion. These humane traits she honored above all else in life. Bridgets impeccable personal values in tandem with her determination and prioritization to execute her artistic vision are the essence of her story, which creates historical value as her world message. Bridget inherited a peripatetic world from her self-absorbed, famous, and creatively gifted parents that fueled deep insecurities fed by fears of abandonment. Subsequently, she reinvented herself by necessity and by choice to mold herself into the world that she needed to fit into at any given time in order to survive.
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Bridget's mother, Vera Bate Lombardi (Sarah Gertrude Baring Arkwright Fitzgeorge Bate Lombardi) was an indomitable combination of beauty and bravado with the highest connections. From 1925-1939, Vera became CoCo Chanel's muse and social advisor and liaison to several European Royal Families. Her demeanor and style influenced the 'English Look, the very foundation for the House of Chanel. The beautiful, noble, artistic, and rich are different and misunderstood or condemned, yet granted societal privileges few receive. These very qualities that embodied her unique style influenced and were copied by some of the greatest names of the 20th century, who were capable of creating a mass appeal through their vision that she ignited. She was loved and envied, but most of all she was awe-inspiring. Bridget had an amazing and tragic multidimensional life that was filled with an arranged marriage, fantasies, true loves, romantic and professional rivalries, artistic achievements, mysticism, perfectionism, and shattered dreams. All of which was portrayed in the most glamorous world settings with famous personalities and eccentric nobility that she orchestrated into a dramatic metaphysical theater of magical relationships. Her controversial royal illegitimate background overshadowed her profound artistry and her sense of self worth. In her era and society, it was important to be of royal lineage. Her achievement in the art world was diminished by who she was as an illegitimate royal family member, her ravishing beauty, her refined intelligence, and her commanding personality. Her controversial background was more important and interesting to her friends, which graciously made her celebrated and received on one hand, yet made her hide how great an artist she was on the other
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and never acknowledged. This is why she was so shy about showing who she was as a superlative painter. She compartmentalized her life. She was deathly afraid to remove her complex multiple masks and reveal not only her precious art, but also her deepest intimate feelings to others. She was validated only by those relationships that had a higher profile than she, so that she could retreat behind her provocatively mysterious and seductive persona to hide her acute vulnerability. She was difficult to get to know, guarded, and very secretive. She revealed certain things to socially survive, while withholding her poetically rich emotional and spiritual communications to focus through her dedicated relationship with her sacred and sovereign art. She had a genius gift of observation and execution in cryptic detail, both in her character and painting. Bridget painted for herself, and not for commercial gain or notoriety. Bridget Bate Tichenors life and art lifted Mexican art up to new high point. She was a European royal that was a part of an international society, who rejected her privileged upbringing and background for self-realization and expression as a female artist in rural Michoacan. Bridget reflected the inherent value of Mexico as a mystical ancient cultural magnet filled with authentic artistic and spiritual mosaics of chiascurro passions. Bridget spiritually adopted me and I became her protg in 1971. Among her many gifts, she benevolently trained me in drawing and painting, introducing me to ancient occult religions, which included many lost esoteric sciences and eschatology of Egyptian, Hindu Tantrika, Mesoamerican Magic and Alchemy. She fed my hunger to learn, and I became her consummate student in a world that had received a death rattle to classically trained artists. The trajectory in this biography is about the journey of
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metamorphous we shared together as friends, what Bridget considered important and unimportant, how we impacted each others lives, and what each of us gained from our rapport. Bridgets character is discovered through my eyes and what she taught me, because I had to be taught. The story follows the changing arcs in our characters through the alchemy of our bond. It is a beautiful recovery love story between two people who were destined to have a sacred relationship. Bridgets life stories were one of her great legacies that she imparted to me during the 19 years of our relationship. Over 20 years ago, I began to research and document a small portion of these elaborate, and many times confusing, historical events and their interplay as she told them. In most cases, she would use a particular aspect of her life, a family member, friend, or someone she admired in story telling as an example to teach me something she felt I needed to learn. Bridgets long and entertaining monologues focused on definitive standards and values she felt imperative I absorb. There was a lesson to be learned in every story, which was one of her intimate ways of expressing her love to me. To some that knew her superficially or were envious, she appeared to exaggerate or embellish only to discover that what she said was true, to others that were awe-stricken by her and did not know the obscure details of her secreted life, she was labeled an aristocratic artist, and to those few that knew her well, she was a loyal friend, wise teacher, and genius painter. Just before her death, I promised Bridget that she would be known to the world. -Zachary Selig

Chapter 2 The High Priestess And Her Protg Although friends for many years with Carrington, Tichenor counted painters Alan Glass, and Pedro Friedeberg amongst her closest friends and artistic contemporaries. In 1970, my mothers cousin New York publicist Lee Kingsley, and my Aunt and Uncle Robert and Gertrude Fielding introduced me to Pedro Friedeberg in New York. Then in 1971 when I was living in New York, Pedro introduced me to Bridget in Mexico City at the home of Bridgets benefactor Eric Noren. She spiritually adopted me as her protg and she became my mentor until her death in 1990. A few days after my first meeting with Bridget, she invited me to drive with her to her ranch Contembo in Arios de Rosales, Michoacan. One morning, I arrived at Eric Norens home to meet Bridget where I loaded her dented and rusty old Nash Rambler with paintings and our bags. Bridget asked that I drive, while she sat next to me with 3 highly nervous, toothless, and aging Chihuahuas with halitosis. We left Mexico City and followed the dangerous highway called Mil Cumbres to Ario in a 6-hour journey, which was a mountainous and pine forested road filled with a thousand curves. Bridget fidgeted with her hair; chain smoked, took shots of tequila, reprimanded the dogs, and simultaneously directed me on how to drive properly. She would direct me on how to take the curves of the road, always holding the steering wheel with my hands in a ten oclock position.
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Whenever I visited Bridget at Contembo, she would relate her life stories to me at the end of the day. Every evening she would sit in her bed, covered in freshly ironed white sheets with heavy Guatemalan blankets with one kerosene lamp burning on her bedside table with 16 Chihuahuas and terriers on the bed. She commanded the dogs to go to their designated baskets that lined the perimeter of the room. When each dog had taken its place, there would be a semicircle of eerie glowing eyes with a variety shapes, sizes, and colors peering at her from the dark room. I became aware that the dogs eyes were in some of her paintings. Bridget would call for one of her servants, and a barefoot Indian girl with long braided hair to her waist would appear carrying a freshly ironed linen covered tray with two giant terracotta painted cups of hot coco. After the servant had left, Bridget would begin her stories. Occasionally she would be interrupted by one of the dogs leaving its basket. Bridget would scold the dog to return and then she would promptly praise the animal. She would resume her dialogue that would go on for hours with more hot coco and cigarettes. One night at Bridgets ranch Contembo, Bridget related to me a story her mother Vera Arkwright Bate Lombardi had told her. Vera had a friend in Paris that she had met through the Rockefeller family, who was a French Archaeologist that traveled to the Mexican state of Veracruz in 1920. The archaeologist had been contracted by Standard Oil Company to work as a liaison with the Mexican government to investigate the Olmec sites that covered rich oil deposits before any oil drilling could begin. During this trip, a local Indian guide had informed the archaeologist of the existence of the venomous Quetzalcoatl feathered flying serpent that was thought to be myth or extinct, but was said by the local Indians to be very much a living creature.

Bridget said that Vera's friend had been diverted from his work with the oil drilling. He was taken on horseback, and then in canoes up the mouth of a river that opened into the Gulf of Mexico into the low mountains in search of place called Tulan-Zuiva or the Seven Sacred Caves. Mayan legend spoke of Tulan Zuiva as being the first Atlantean depositories of ancient records in the Americas by Quetzalcoatl. The fabled Tulan-Zuiva was to have been the first cave-temple of Quetzalcoatl and his priesthood, which scholars have positioned to be either in Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, or Guatemala. The expedition failed to discover the sacred caves, but it was on this trip that Bridget revealed the story of Vera's archaeologist friend seeing the Quetzalcoatl creature flying very low above their canoe on the river in the dawn hours. Bridget said Veras friend's description was that they saw a bird-like creature with a strange combination of a head the shape of Camarand bird that was spread out flat like a viper serpent. The neck was almost two feet long covered in dense, short, brilliant, white, and tufted green-blue iridescent plume-like longer feathers. The swan-shaped body had long broad wings with hand-like claws on the tips. Bridget said that Vera's friend described the animals neck retracting into a bizarre almost human curvature when it landed on a low tree at the rivers edge. It looked like a bird with a large snake shaped head that resembled both Egyptian and Chinese snakeheaded deities and appeared more dragon-like than anything she could describe. Bridget had said that Veras archaeologist friend had discussed the story shortly after the sighting of the Quetzalcoatl animal to the British author Colonel James Churchward in New York, who later wrote in generalities about the expedition and the Quetzalcoatl animal in his Sacred Symbols of Mu.

I was mesmerized by Bridgets fated insight into my soul from the instant we met, as she knew and gave me everything I needed to learn with a precise direction in my life. I finally moved to Mexico City from New York in 1972 to spend time with her in Mexico City and at Contembo. Then, later I moved to Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, where I was in constant communication with her as my mentor and guide during my fieldwork there as Spiritualist. My great teacher and friend Mexican artist Pedro Friedeberg guided me simultaneously with Bridget through a labyrinth of esoterica that included the world of a profoundly learned Mystery School student, Edward James. Another Quetzalcoatl sighting was described to me in the 1970s by Bridgets cousin Edward James that took place circa 1949 near his home Las Pozas close to the village of Xilitla in the jungled mountains of the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi five hours west of Tampico near the Gulf of Mexico. I had a vision in 1976 in which my Spirit Guides directed me to return to Zihuatanjeo to learn indigenous shaman spiritualism, and I asked Bridget for an interpretation of these visions. She directed and supported me from 1976 1979 to work as an apprentice with a group of Tarascan Nahualli Shaman Spiritualists near Zihuatanjeo, Guerrero. After I began my work with the Spiritualists, I searched for many answers concerning the arduous training I had chosen through Bridgets wisdom. She directed me to re-read the English translated ancient Sanskrit and Pali texts from her mother Vera Bate Lombardis Theosophy book collection that she had given to me in earlier years as it pertained to my Kundalini awakening experiences with the Nahualli Spiritualists. Bridget had many facets. She was very careful to expose only the parts of herself to others that she felt they could understand. She was
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self-contained in regard to her painting, study, or absorption and application of knowledge. Each of her close friends had their own special relationship with her that many times excluded huge parts of who she was metaphysically, yet had eternal potency in emotional and intellectual shared intimacies. Bridget instructed me with many of her techniques in drawing and painting, which were so highly perfected by her that I could never attempt to match, but assimilated as standards in my own technical evolution. When it came to Mesoamerican spiritual history, Bridget would detail her knowledge; The Olmec civilization was established by African Black colonists from Egypt that were the founding fathers of Mesoamerican religion in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Very little is known of the Olmec by archaeologists, but the Indians of Veracruz carry their knowledge forward. The Black race existed throughout the Americas long before Columbuss arrival. This is evident in the giant Olmec stone heads of Veracruz and in every other Mesoamerican cultures statuary and pottery. When one studies Mesoamerican religion it is apparent that it has an Egyptian foundation from resurrection theology to exact pyramid construction formulae. The ancient Mayan culture evolved from the Olmec in the city of Chichenitza, which is thousands of years older than 19th and 20th Century archaeological dating. The great empire had extended its influence to every part of the world, exercising great cultural power over many nations. The name Maya and the vestiges of its language, art, religion cosmological, historical traditions from the ancient culture is discovered in many countries from America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. There were many wise men from these distant and remote parts of the world such as Egypt, Sumeria, and Atlantis, which came to
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Chichenitza to consult the H-menes and receive spiritual training with Mystery School Solar Religions initiations pertaining to the Kinan or Spirit Body. Additionally, she felt that the Star people from the Pleiades worked in tandem with these ancient colonists of the Americas and guided their Sciences. The name Maya always is attached to power and wisdom. She pointed out the numerous bearded Caucasian men that she felt represented the Assyrians (Afghans of today) were carved in stone formats of the Mayan Nation that extended from Veracruz, Yucatan Peninsula, Oaxaca, and beyond Guatemala as far south as El Salvador/ Bridget exposed to me the similarities in the Sanskrit words Kundalini and Chakra in relationship to the Yucatan Peninsular Mayan dialect words Kultanlilni and Chacla, which have the same definition. Bridget related the initiations of Buddha and Kukulcan, Buddha Sakyamuni was bitten by a seven-headed cobra serpent, Sakyamunis experience was parallel to the Mayan story of Kukulcans initiation during his first incarnation with the sevenheaded rattlesnake serpent named Chapat in the Yucatan. Buddha and Kukulcans initiations symbolized the Kundalini awakening through the seven Chakras. The Mayan Kukulcan and Nahua Quetzalcoatl mythology represented the Mesoamerican belief that humans are the integration of the seven forces of Solar Light within the Chakra system that spiral as a rattlesnake serpent infinitely towards a solar, galactic, and universal connection with God. Bridget discussed the founding deities of Mesoamerica, Quetzalcoatl for the Nahuas, Kukulcan for the Mayas, and Gucumatz for the Quiche Mayas is the pre-emanate founding deity of Mesoamerican creation mythology, which evolved after the Olmec civilization and approximately 10,000 years ago at the time
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of Atlantiss destruction. Atlantis originally was ruled by a Black race that held the sacred knowledge of Orishas, which Osiris brought to Egypt in a pantheon of gods. Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan, or Gucumatz mysteriously appeared in Mesoamerica in several legends. The primary Eurocentric legend was that he was as a tall, white skinned Caucasian, blonde, blueeyed, and bearded priest and another indigenous legend as a black man from an Atlantic mother culture continent in the East that had been destroyed by volcanic eruptions called Tlapallan, Tollan, Atzlan, and Alua. Mesoamerican mythology states that he founded the Mesoamerican religions, taught them the arts of divination and civilization, and disappeared and reappeared in five world successions through incarnations of him. The name Quetzalcoatl originates from the Nahuatl words; Quetzal, a rare exotic bird of iridescent green color, and coatl, serpent, which means plumed serpent Kukulcan with the Mayas was represented as a serpent with two heads that symbolized Venus both as the morning and evening star, denoting Kukulkans faculties as a mediator between night and day, good and evil, and as force facilitating transcendence of opposites or dualities within human nature. Bridget described Kundalini, The goal of the fiery Kundalini as it makes its serpentine journey up the five lower Chakras, is to unit human polarities in the sixth center of the Brow Chakra of man. Quetzalcoatls original teachings were that of a wise and good ruler who taught the Ancient Wisdom School principles of Chakra Science through the principles of a microcosmic and macrocosmic universal view of Kundalini in death and resurrection, sin and redemption, and the transfiguration of a human into a God. Bridget explained Quetzalcoatls arrival in the Americas, Quetzalcoatl arrived from Atlantis with a group of colonists called
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Quetzales, who brought the advanced sciences and arts to the Americas. She said, The Aztecs theology and the few remaining records distorted the representation of the original Nahua/Toltec, Maya, and Quiche mythology of Quetzalcoatl in their declining civilizations before the Spanish Conquest, and lost the historical data of Quetzalcoatls immigration to the Americas when later translated. So, the Quetzalcoatl mythology evolved into one of the creation myths by the Quiche Maya that are reflected in the Popul Vuh of the serpent-bird like dragons that were covered with green and blue feathers that were the gods of both the sea and the sky. Both Quetzalcoatl the man and the myth were based in facts now lost through both the Mesoamerican civilizations decline before the advent of Spanish colonization and through the colonizations destruction of records. Bridget continued, There were many Quetzalcoatl representations throughout Mesoamerica, but the one specifically that relates to Ancient Chakra Science and the Kundalini principle of the regeneration and resurrection of life force is called the Cobra de Capella, and Ac-la-Chapa, which was the seven-headed Mayan Naga that is identical to that of Asia. The seven heads represent the Seven Planes of Consciousness, the Seven Chakras, the Seven Rays, and essentially that which encompasses the Kundalini principle of all living forms. The Seven Headed Naga is carved in numerous Mayan, Toltec, Mixtec, Olmec, and Aztec sites, but it is prolific in Chichenitza where Mayan Kundalini Science flourished most recently during the Toltec reign of power. Bridgets social or public persona did not reveal her own personal relationship with alchemy in painting, spirituality, or her acute vulnerability. To her these forms of self-exposure with others were taboo, and arrays of well-crafted societal masks were positioned for her to hide behind. She chose to reveal or discuss who she was as a
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spiritualized woman with a few close friends that she trusted. She discussed her art, its creation, and underlying wisdom with select relationships. The dichotomy in her personality made it very challenging for her to gain personal self-trust or build strong self-esteem, as she hid behind many noble facades entertaining or intriguing others. The focus or priority was on Bridget the personality, not the artist, woman, or lover. Her fragile thinking formula distanced herself from others emotionally. The unconditional relationships she had with her animals and in her painting that she controlled were where she found the purest form of love. Bridgets sometimes-askew thinking, versus connecting to and expressing sincere emotions with its self-protecting walls, impaired her love relationships. Bridget loved an audience, and deathly feared intimacy, so she was very busy with the most amazing theatrics. She was never superficial, and always had the most engaging approach with any topic with anyone. She was extremely knowledgeable and could expound upon any subject in elaborate dialogue that she directed. Those that were close to her had to read between the lines and accept her complexities with love. It took me many years to fully grasp the profound depth of the love we shared. She could be very cruel, controlling, critical, and demanding perfection of me on every level, which I rebelled against. At times she became her Nanny Fraulin Kraus and I became her child, where she pointed out and judged my character defects, questioning the strength of my values. Bridget relished telling me how to conduct every aspect of my life. Later, I grew to accept her and love her with all of her flaws. There were times after my near-death illnesses of encephalitis and liver amoebas in the Mexican tropics in 1979 that I did not want to see her and chose to distance myself from her. I had lived between
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two worlds that Bridget shared with me - the spiritual as Spiritualist and artist in Mexico, and the world of Studio 54 in NYC with an insane global lifestyle. At 29, I could not drink alcohol anymore and had a radical lifestyle change that occurred where I began to focus on my art professionally. My relationship with Bridget and her guidance created the foundation for this life-changing transformation. At the same time, I had to face and begin to resolve my own daemons and idiosyncrasies that had been mirrored in our relationship. I took all the great values and tremendous nurturing she gave me from her vast reservoir and left the rest. She understood me and cared for me with an insight I have yet to experience with anyone else. I worshipped Bridget in the beginning of our relationship and had so much compassion for her in the end. When she was dieing, I realized how blessed I was to have her as my mentor and dear friend. No ones death or shared love affected me as much as Bridgets. She did not have a bonded mother son relationship with her son Jeremy, yet she had a spiritually adopted one with me that we both cherished. The same was true for me in that I did not have any connection with my mother, and in essence Bridget became a divinely sent surrogate parent and mentor, who was the greatest friend I have ever had. Today, she stands at the head of my Spiritual Court as my primary guide

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