the first biography of the life of bridget bate tichenor - chapter 2: the high priestess and her...

7/31/2019 THE FIRST BIOGRAPHY OF THE LIFE OF BRIDGET BATE TICHENOR - Chapter 2: The High Priestess and Her Protege

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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 MagicRealist 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 GeorgePlatt Lynnes 1945

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http://www.zacharyselig.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Selighttp://www.zacharyselig.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Selig


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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 socialadvisor 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 the20th 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 inthe 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, andher 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, butalso 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 focusthrough 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 andbackground 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, HinduTantrika, 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 inour 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 asshe 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 ofexpressing 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

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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 UncleRobert 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 herbedside 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 girlwith 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 drillingcould 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.

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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 thefirst 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 friendseeing 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 snake-

headed deities and appeared more dragon-like than anything she

could describe.

Bridget had said that Veras archaeologist friend had discussed thestory 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.

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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 Jamesthat 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 andsupported 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 inearlier 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 byAfrican 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 Egyptianfoundation 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 ancientculture 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 ofKukulcans initiation during his first incarnation with the seven-

headed 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 inMesoamerica in several legends. The primary Eurocentric legend

was that he was as a tall, white skinned Caucasian, blonde, blue-

eyed, 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 worldsuccessions 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 forcefacilitating 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 macrocosmicuniversal 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 historicaldata 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 lostthrough 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 deCapella, 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 togain 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 linesand 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 herand 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 lifestylechange 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 andcared 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 adoptedone 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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the first biography of the life of bridget bate tichenor - chapter 2: the high priestess and her...

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