goddess: Isis "was the Crescent, crowned with the headdress of cow horns, the Horned Goddess, the Cow, and as such was identified with Hathor the Cow-Goddess who preceded her. Osiris (her husband), too, was a horned deity, known as the bull god." (Harding,1976). "The Isis and Osiris story is about regeneration, which is what I think the theme of the nuclear story is. It is woman's story. Isis, you may recall, couldn't find the penis. The nuclear pile is a kind of penis. It is a constructive use of potentially destructive power. It is full of connotations of regeneration of power." (Interview of Anselm Kiefer by Donald Kuspit, 1987)

golden horns: "Jahwe himself originally had a bull nature, in accordance with all ancient semitic religion...This means that the image of the bull worshipped by the Children of Israel in our story and known to us under the name of the Golden Calf was not a different, alien God in opposition to the high God, but was this very God himself!" (Giegerich,1985)

uranium mill: The Homestake Mining Company site is located near the village of Milan, and the city of Grants, New Mexico. Milling operations began in 1958. Wastes were disposed of in two tailing piles next to the mill, covering approximately 245 acres, impacting ground water in the San Mateo alluvium and the upper Chinle aquifer. In 1983 the HMC mill was placed on the National Priorities List of hazardous waste sites eligible for remedial action under the Superfund program.

on a cross: On June 20,1986, Kerry Hassell, a resident near HMC, began sitting on a wrought iron seat attached to the front of a 15-foot-high wooden cross, vowing not to come down until something was done about the contamination of the land.

between worlds: "The sign of the cross appears everywhere, wherever communication of traffic between the worlds is to be indicated." (Deren,1970)

Death's twins: "Eye killers were twins (who "lived in a conical hogan at the foot of Mt. Taylor."). Roundish and tapered at one end, they had no limbs or heads, but were provided with depressions somewhat like eyes. They could, however, kill by staring at their victims without winking. As they did so, their rudimentary eyes grew into the eyes of those they were killing." (Reichard,1974)

the lengths: "Although a weapon is an extension of the human body (as is acknowledged in their collective designation as 'arms'), it is instead the human body that becomes in this vocabulary an extension of the weapon." (Scarry,1985)

Yellowcake: "In conventional mills, the uranium ore is first crushed and ground to a uniform consistency. The crushed ore is treated with an alkaline or (when the lime content of the ore is less than about 12 percent) an acid leach to dissolve the uranium. Decanting and filtering remove the solids, and a uranium compound can then be precipitated from the solution...The output of a uranium mine is called 'yellowcake' because of its appearance. Yellowcake is a compound of uranium oxide with either ammonium or sodium; its exact composition varies but it usually contains 80 to 85 percent U³O⁸." (Lamperti,1982)

Excrement: "Excrement is the dead life of the body, and as long as humanity prefers a dead life to living, so long is humanity committed to treating as excrement not only its own body but the surrounding world of objects, reducing all to dead matter and inorganic magnitudes." (Brown,1959)

Dung: "It occurs frequently in sagas that animal dung...is changed into gold as, inversely, gold sent by evil spirits is easily turned (again) into dung." (Silberer,1971)

Tongue Mountain: (Tsodzil, Navajo) Mount Taylor, 11,389 ft., is sacred to Native Americans of the region. This mountain also holds the nation's largest single deposit of high-grade uranium ore.