Our award is designed by the british artist David Van Gough, inspired in one of his earlier pieces. In the words of the creator:

‘Gods and Monsters’ was a part of a fledgling series I titled 'Dream Orphans' in 2003-05. These I envisioned as wandering vestiges of nightmares, soothsayers of truth, half hidden shadows and reminiscence, revealing fragments of the darker self through alchemy and symbiosis.

This particular creature, has her origins in the High Priestess Tarot and is based somewhat on Kali, the Hindu Goddess of creation and destruction, who crouches atop a pyramid (a power symbol and conduit between heaven and hades), her arms emblazoned with mercurial totems of astrological and alchemical significance, posed to echo that most corrupt and misunderstood symbol-the swastika, or 'Swasti' which a traditionally sacred sigil from Neolithic times, said to represent Solaris and to mean 'so be it'. Her crossed arms make an X, a sign of Osiris and one which has a great use in Ancient Mysteries, Freemasonry, and the occult as well as being a symbolf of transformation. Her fingers point East and West encompass the dual polarity. Together her arms form the Seal of Solomon, or the Merkabah.

Behind her, is a gold twelve pointed star which represent the fourth pentacle of Mercury, part of the greater seal said to influences correspond to invoking all spirits subject to Mercury for the purposes of finding hidden treasure, enhancing artistic and scientific ability, increasing psychic communication, convey personal magnetism, and open the door to secret knowledge.

On her back sits an incubi, or daemon who is representative of a primal force, blinded by mortality and focusing her will through the single eye (Horus). It is a creature of raw passion and a will to power. At her feet are the anthropomorphic vestiges that frame her like heraldic totems, progeny of the underworld that anchor her.

She is a divine entity, an emblem of the Codex Magica, unifying all of the elements of light and dark, the sun and the moon, by which to manifest a creative balance within the universe.

“As above, so below” as Hermes Trismegisto said.

Marcelo Pasqua completed the alchemy by embodying the original work in the physical world in all its three-dimensional glory.