Iaponiorum Numen Triceps (The Three-Headed Japanese Deity)

The woodcut depicts a central, divine figure with three bearded faces and six arms spread outward, adorned with three strands of beads draped across its torso. The figure is capped by a pointed, conical hat and emerges from a radiating solar disk inscribed with cryptic symbols resembling stylized Japanese script. To the upper right, a small box displays 'Janus Quadrifrons,' a four-faced head; to the lower right, a second box shows the mythic giant 'Centimans Briareus' with many arms. The composition is highly symmetrical, presenting an early modern European attempt to categorize non-Western religious iconography through the lens of classical Greco-Roman mythology.

This image is taken from Athanasius Kircher's 'Oedipus Aegyptiacus' (1652-1654), a massive work of syncretic scholarship that attempted to map all world religions onto a single Hermetic and Egyptian origin. The plate demonstrates the early modern 'comparative' method, equating the Japanese deity (likely a misinterpretation of a Buddhist multi-armed Kannon or similar figure) with the Roman Janus and the Greek Briareus.