Bot van een hert before 1869

This photograph shows a deer bone, suspended in monochrome against the dark. The bone itself, a relic of Cervus Belgrandi, speaks to ancient rituals and the hunt. Since Paleolithic times, the deer has been a potent symbol across cultures: of the forest, of cycles of life, death, and rebirth. We see its echoes in the myth of Actaeon, transformed into a stag and hunted to death by his own hounds, a brutal rendering of primal forces. Consider how the deer’s antlers, shedding and regrowing, mirror the cyclical nature of time itself, and of seasons changing. This motif resurfaces in Celtic and Norse traditions, where the stag embodies virility and guidance. As a sacred animal, the deer becomes a vessel for spiritual and cultural memory, a symbol that returns to us, reshaped and reinterpreted.