The Lover's Path: Three of Coins

Sophie-David

In The Lover's Path Three of Coins, Acrisius has used the resources of his kingdom to provide a beautifully ornate and richly furnished tower in which to raise his daughter. Material progress supersedes holistic growth. Emotionally absent and morally inadequate, the King treats his daughter as a treasured possession to be secured and protected, attempting to prevent her from maturing and forming relationships with others. Instead of nurturing his daughter with fatherly love and involvement, he is unable to take the emotional risks involved in relational commitment, and thus he isolates her from both himself and the world. Danae will grow up not knowing how to relate to men in a healthy way, with an inadequate and distorted view of the masculine in both men and within herself. She will later be seduced by Zeus, an secondary image of her father, a man who relates to the feminine by showering it with riches, and by taking it by force if it doesn't comply.

In this wonderfully evocative image, the isolated tower of riches is echoed in the isolated and alienated form of Danae herself, an elegant tower without a purpose, paralysed by her father's fears and materiality. High above the nurturing reality of the natural world, Danae will be separated from the innate groundedness of childhood. But yet, perhaps even within this superficial security she may learn and prepare, her world expanding beyond its socially circumcised limits. Perhaps one day her Tower will be blown away in a flash of lightening.