February 2006 Archives

Today would not be complete on the BoG without a look at Mardi Gras, the traditional celebration of indulgence held before the forty days of self-denial known as Lent. 

Mardi Gras is a fascinating holiday.  It's a form of holy hedonism that distills our moral complexity into a single day--eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow you fast for the Lord.  Given that, I guess it's fitting that controversies arise over whether the festival is appropriate, from fundamentalist sermons against pagan practices to human rights concerns over the work conditions in Chinese factories where plastic beads are made.

What then shall we do?  To show that all are welcome here at the B of G, we offer a few Mardi Gras tokens that are workplace friendly in every sense of the phrase. Pictured here are nice vintage Mardi Gras beads, crafted in New Orleans from classic Czech glass.  If you're interested in more about the beads check out this article from National Geographic, which provides a lot of information without revealing why the magazine has remained popular among schoolboys for more than a century.

Want to learn more?  Wikepedia covers Mardi Gras across America, while the Times-Picayune has a nifty overview of the New Orleans MG celebration.  Should you be planning to cut back for Lent, remember that the City still could use our tourist dollars--if you're strategic about your Lenten self-denial (e.g., no chocolate-covered ants or young Cabernet), it's still quite possible to go there and have a great time!

This Flickr photo points to several recurring elements in spiritual adornment that we'll be exploring here. The images of gold and flame are perhaps the most compelling, and they reflect how human beings have transformed an innate fascination with shiny things into something sublime.

. . . is my moment of Flickr zen for the hour.

While paying obeisance to the Caffeine God at Starbucks this morning, I embarked upon some technorati searches to follow up on my post on China exports of religious bling.  The result?  A number of blogs detailing persecution in China, a couple of which were particularly interesting in relation to the BofG.

One observant Christian blogger realized that his Bible was made in China & puzzled over the irony of pastors smuggling in something actually made there. 

Meanwhile, Cherry, a new teen blogger, writes an impassioned post on Falun Dafa in response to folks who call her a Nazi for wearing a swastika necklace.  As she correctly notes, the swastika had a long history as a religious symbol long before the Nazis appropriated it for their nefarious ends,  although the association with the Holocaust has indeed made the swastika rather controversial in the West. 

What happens when a religious symbol is tarnished due to actions that believers abhor?  That's one of many subjects we'll be exploring soon here on the Blingdom of God!

Did you know that China makes about half of the world's jewelry?  According to the linked report, this amounted to more than $650 million worth of goods in the first 3 quarters of last year alone, a fifty percent increase for year before. 

A wide selection of this jewelry will be on display at this week's China International Gold, Jewelry & Gem Fair.  While this one has quickly grown into one of the region's largest, here at the BofG the race does not go to the swift (or the large). 

Rather, what we find most intriguing about the China trade in jewelry & other assorted tchotchkes is that a fair amount of it is explicitly religious.  Diamond crosses, Jesus medallions, Hindu gold and Buddha figures--look around the web and local stores, and you'll soon find an endless supply of Chinese-crafted goods.

 

China, of course, is a communist nation.  Even as the government is imprisoning Chinese evangelical Christians in forced labor camps, American Christians are buying the cheap religious trinkets that such camps produce.  Moreover, even if the item in question isn't made by prisoners, a portion of the profits still goes to the support of the state's religious persecution.

Which brings us back to Karl Marx's maxim that religion is "opium of the people."  Many in the U.S. are now working hard to end religious persecution in China, whether it concerns evangelicals & Catholics or Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong.  Is China's burgeoning supply of religious trinkets a sign of positive change or our own willful intoxication?

 

"The midriff is the message"--brilliant!

An article in today's Syracuse Post-Standard reminds us that the purveyors of spiritual bling live not only in the ethereal net, but the material realm. 

As the article relates, Seven Rays, a storied seller of new age books and jewelry, had announced that it would close this upcoming spring, but a couple entrepreneurial (and spiritual) employees are trying to keep it alive by opening a similar shop with the same name. 

The key to success, the employees believe is community--while anyone can buy things on the web, stores such as Seven Rays offer classes and meetings for spiritual seekers.  The new store would also have more things for kids.

If getting reborn in a new shell means we get more Buddha Beanies, I'm all for it!  Here's wishing everyone at Seven Rays all the best. 

 

Inquiries into the representation of Muslims in the government & military are leading many in India to be concerned that the future of their secular state is in peril.  As this editorial in Delhi's largest English language newsweekly notes, in the midsts of civil strife religious jewelry can seem like more than casual adornment--so much so that some people will even see it as a threat!

We cannot create divided loyalties in the armed forces. And that is why, it is the pride of India. . . .  This reputation as a secular institution has ensured the defence forces a higher status. During the NDA rule, the army directed its members to eschew all symbols of religious identity, like sindoor, tilak, bangle, pendant, ring and talisman to further reinforce this image. So why can’t we leave the army alone? Or is the UPA bent on dividing the country again?

Back when I was a religion graduate student I attended the first academic conference on theomusicology, the study of religion in music.  We talked about religious symbols in "Like a Prayer,"" the roll of the Rock in rock 'n' roll, and all sorts of other good things--somewhere out there, in fact, there's a little heard nor long remembered footnote with my name in it.    

But tonight Andrew Sullivan has linked to a music video that deserves to be seen:  Deeyah's What Will It Be?  It's a trenchant protest by a Muslim woman against the mistreatment of women by Islamic fundamentalists. 

Western dress, exposed flesh, a woman smoking a hookah in public--the images in this video break conservative taboos in a way that has far more cultural significance than transgression-for-transgression's sake in the liberal West. 

And then there's this conspicuous piece of jewelry worn by American rapper Young Maylay:  a Christian cross.

Which is one reason why the "Muslim Madonna" now has to guard against death threats.

 

Another Saturday, another Sabbath, and for today's we feature a striking piece of jewelry from a Christian denomination that unlike most others still regards the seventh day to be the day of rest.

To the left is a striking piece of . . .

of . . .

well, nothing.

You see, according to Seventh Day Adventist prophetess Ellen G. White, "The ornamentation of the person with jewels and luxurious things is a species of idolatry."  From such pronouncements--as well as certain Scripture passages--the SDA has formally forbidden wearing ornamental jewelry. 

A wedding ring?  That's (begrudgingly) OK, so long as it is primarily a signal of one's married status and not ornamental.  However, buying a booth to sell jewelry at an SDA church sale is not a good idea.  As one designer learned, God might even send a blizzard to keep you away!  

While looking through pictures of religious tattoos I happened upon this excellent example of a Bahai engagement ring, which features the Bahai symbol discussed in an earlier post on the Bahai faith.

You'll note that the engagement ring is not simply worn by the woman. The following photo, albeit a little blurry, illustrates how couples in the Bahai faith use dual engagement rings to symbolize their spiritual unity:

Angela & Kia

Which just goes to show that if the folks at De Beers were paying closer attention to the BofG, they'd find a quick and easy way to at least double the existing market for diamond jewelry: diamonds for all affianced, arrayed in the religious symbol of their choice!

Folks interested in spiritual tattoos might want to check out a few of the following resources.

• "Skin is a Language," an exhibit now running at the Whitney Museum in New York.
  
• "Skin Deep," an exhibit currently touring the UK
  
• Spiritual Tattoo by John Rush (plus a number of other interesting books that show up on the linked Amazon page) and of course,
  
• The Christian Tattoo Association (which I'm reeeeeaaaallllyyyy glad I didn't know about back when I was 16!)

A charity auction isn't the only measure the Pope could take to counter criticism that his lavish fashion sense is too materialistic.  He could also replace his expensive bling with a far cheaper tattoo. 

As this newspaper article observes, religious tattoos are on the rise in the U.S., from the Bible verses on Duke's J.J. Redick and to the Hindu lotus flower.

 

Just we have long worn clothing has as "an extension of the skin" both to warm our bodies and to define ourselves, many now freely using their skin as an extension of their soul.  This should not come as no surprise.  Back in 1964 Marshall McLuhan observed that

After centuries of being fully clad and of being contained in uniform visual space, the electric age ushers us into a world in which we live and breathe and listen with the entire epidermis.

The Bahai tattoo above represents the fundamental unity of all religions, but it could also symbolize what McLuhan referred to as the "all-at-onceness" created by electronic technology.  People, places, objects, time--everything now flows together, smashing the divisions and taboos of the literate West.  Which also brings with the supreme irony of our technological age--

by immersing us in a world in which every surface is a communications medium, computers and the Web have actually helped revive our tribal spirit.

A religion's devotion to opulent jewelry and designer fashion can raise serious questions about its spiritual commitment.  When Jesus bade Christians to take up their cross and follow him, did he really mean for it to be a gold cross studded with emeralds?  Would Muhammad have felt at home at the Taj Mahal?  Did the Buddha call us to seek enlightenment in a temple filled with gold adornments and a statue made of jade? 

Compelling arguments can be made against adornment in excess, and we can even find devotees of almost any religion who argue that all bling is an offense.  One line of argument derives from the otherworldly nature of a system of belief--believers are simply not supposed to care for such materialistic indulgences.  Another line of argument is ethical--a community defined by its charity betrays its sacred trust when it accumulates wealth as the less fortunate suffer. 

Nonetheless, there's a rich tradition of delirious diademic display, and the persistence of such practices reminds us of the intimate connection between religious sentiment and our fashion sense. 

As the anthropologist Ellen Dissanayake has observed, human beings display a predilection for "making special."  The resonance between religion and art reflects their common roots in our desire to transcend mere existence; for many people across the globe religion needs style to soar. 

The problem, of course, is one of proportion.  Finding what the Buddha called the "middle way" is a dynamic process, which is why within any given faith we'll find a yin and yang--or a Benedict XVI and a Benedictine monk.   Still, as Almostgirl aptly reminds us, perhaps it would be in order for Pope Benedict to follow the example of his more humble counterparts. 

My own pick for a model would be his most immediate namesake, Pope Benedict XV, who replaced the gems in his papal tiara with glass after selling them to benefit veterans of World War I.  After all, if PBXVI wants to dispel the allure of liberation theology & charismatic evangelicalism among the world's poor, wouldn't a public charity sale be more influential than abstract theological debate?

EXTRA:  You can see Benedict XV's famous faux tiara at the Milwaukee Public Museum, which is hosting the last stop of a U.S. tour of Vatican treasures.  For an excellent write-up of "Saint Peter and the Vatican:  The Legacy of the Popes," check out this article from the Milwaukee Sentinel Tribune, the source of tiara pic above.

With regard to papal bling, Almost Girl raises the excellent point that the lavish celestial stylings of Pope Benedict are not exactly consistent with the humble saintly stylings of Saint Benedict.  This taps into an eternal tension with spiritual bling, one on which I'll have more to say later today when I'm not running the good race out the door.

However, a pop-up just now miraculously hijacked my computer with an ad for a piece of heavenly bling that I think all can agree raises no deep moral quandaries, since, in the end, we all live in his world:

An article in Sunday's New York Times picks up on the buzz as to the new pope's fashion sense.

The Gucci sunglasses, the lavish ceremonial dress-the article touches on the themes ubiquitous in all such news stories.  But as the Times' story indicates but does little to explain, there's much more at work here than Pope Benedict's fashion sense or questionable materialism, and it has to do with the messages sent by these new clothes.

One is patently political.  Prada shoes, sunglasses by Gucci & Serengeti, the red Gammarelli "santa hat"--by linking himself so openly with Italian designers,  Ratzinger   Benedict is diverting attention from his German roots and making a subtle play for support from the Italian populace, press and Vatican hierarchy.

The other reason for the shift is theological.  According to Roman Catholic theology and canon law, the Pope is "vicarius christi"--that is, he stands in for  Christ on earth.  Believed to be Christ's designated representative, the pope exercises all of Christ's power and fulfills all of Christ's functions on His behalf. 

On the one hand, it seems that Benedict believes that the Pope, as the earthly manifestation or agent of Christ, should get honored with the best of the everything.  But it's also apparent that the Pope's new groove is meant to reinforce the image of the Pope as Christ on earth.  Consider the following now worn by the pope:

• a wool stole representing the sheep that Christ the shepherd carries on his shoulders
• an extra-tall gold miter:  the size emphasizes the pope's supremacy, and the color--gold--is a traditional color of the divine
• red shoes, an ancient symbol of imperial power
• and of course, the elaborate gold cross encrusted with emeralds--emerald being the color of the rainbow surrounding God's throne as well as a medieval symbol of healing.

All of which goes to show, I guess, that if someone were to ask the pope, "Who do you think you are?  Jesus Christ?", he just might answer yes!

EXTRA:  For more on the Pope's new clothes, check out the extensive set of notes provided to the Times by Vatican blogger Rocco Palmo.  Even if his blog didn't provide tantalizing insider info on the Vatican & papal fashion, it would have won a place on my blogroll simply for its reference to the pope's "Bling Box." 

The Jesus/Darwin fish wars perpetuate the image of a war between science and religion.  Nonetheless, the Jesus fish did play a key role in the evolution of modern science fiction--and with it, aided in popularizing its underlying science of complex adaptive systems.*

To the left are panels from Robert Crumb's adaptation of "the religious experience of Philip K. Dick."  (Hat tip:  Boingboing.net)  As you can see, the object that set it all off was a Jesus fish necklace, worn by a girl bringing him some pain medication.  A beam shot off of it into his eyes, unveiling a hidden truth:  that we are actually living in New Testament times.

When PKD had his vision in March 1974, he already had written a sizable body of work dealing with alternate realities.  The experience that you see described here, however, led PKD to see the modern world itself as a fictional skein obscuring the reality beneath.  For PKD, the reality hidden by dark forces was the real world of around 50 AD, plunged into a mythic struggle between Christian enlightenment and satanic deception.

 

For the remainder of his life PKD wrote fiction and gave talks spreading his gospel of a real world hidden by fictional forms.  As he himself observed, it was a theory that would have made Plato proud.  His writings also helped popularize a neo-gnostic vision of hidden reality behind the deceptions of so-called modern day existence. 

Sound familiar? 

PKD's vision of a deeper reality behind our current fiction helped spawn a new generation of speculative fiction, Philip Dick's own Valis to William Gibson's landmark concept of cyberspace to Baudrillard's Simulacra to Grant Morrison's influential graphic fiction series, The Invisibles. 

The first Matrix film arguably represents the high watermark of this movement, not only for its special effects but its imaginative integration of the science of complex adaptive systems with a host of memorable metaphors from philosophy and religion.

And it all goes back at least in part to a delivery girl's Christian fish sign pendant. 

 

When denizens of ancient Roman catacombs sketched images of fish, little did they imagine that the role their piscine sketches would play in later culture wars. 

Today, though, I want to turn swords into mindshare and without strife or judgment take a look at how the fish has become an all-purpose symbol for belief. 

              

 

                        

 

What is this last one, you ask?  Why, it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which emerged as an object of worship worldwide at the height of the recent Kansas controversy over intelligent design!

Earlier this morning, I wrote about the Japanese symbol of the seed of life & its relation to the spiral patterns throughout life.  Here's a little more.

The image on the left is a sketch of the Japanese seed of life taken from the encyclopedic Symbols by Carl Liungman (most of which is also viewable online at symbols.com).  Next to it is another image that further illustrates the power of the spiral archetype.  If you don't recognize what it is, click it! 

     

EXTRA:  In one of those weird coincidences that Aquinas would no doubt say is the sixth proof for the existence of God, I found the image of Superman linked above on a Japanese blog--http://blog.yam.com/momoshu/, where I found myself diabolically hypnotized by the singing dogs featured on February 10, 2006.

Our pendant today combines both of this week's themes of love & creation.  It's the Japanese symbol known as the seed of the universe, and it's available from the good folks at Gems & More in Mooloolaba, Australia, a town at which I'd never shake the dust from my feet for no other reason than I love the name..

This image conveys a sense of dynamic creation and growth.  If it reminds you of something you've seen already this week, praise yourself for your heightened degree of spiritual enlightenment--this symbol is one of many that echoes a spiral, and in so doing it echoes the spiral swirls in our Valentine's Day nebulae.

 

Why the fascination with spirals?  We'll talk about a lot more as the Blingdom grows, but if you want a little taste check out this uplifting site. 

Writing about the fish as a symbol of Darwinism reminded me of this Flickr photo from Japan, which describes the person wearing the crucifix as "shocked" to learn that "a wearer of this jewelry in America would probably be religious."

Which raises the question: are we moving toward a time when religious symbols will move beyond their sectarian origins?

This is has happened before. The Christian fish itself is a borrowing from fish symbolism in pre-Christian Roman religion, a reference lost among most who see the fish solely (!) as a symbol for Jesus.

More generally, in his influential study After Virtue, Alisdair MacIntyre argues that the West no longer comprehends its core philosophical vocabulary. (For more on this, here's a link describing After Virtue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue)

At a time when the Mohammed cartoons have pushed the appropriation of religious imagery front and center in the news, it seems to me that our response to religious symbols may be even more important than the ongoing holy war over what to teach in class.

In the 1980s, a Hollywood prop-maker had an idea.  Wouldn't it be funny, Chris Gilman joked, to promote evolution by putting feet on a fish?  His friends thought it was hilarious, and thus a fad was born.

The inspiration for this bumper bling was, of course, the Christian fish, a symbol now ubiquitous in Christian cars & jewelry.  Why a fish?  Supposedly the inspiration comes from the use of the Greek word for fish--ichthus--as a acronym for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior:

Iesous CHristos THeou Uios Soter

However, in recent years the Darwin fish has become so ubiquitous in popular culture that some people think that the fish was itself originally a symbol for Darwin's theory of evolution! 

 

 

It wouldn't be Valentine's Day without a rose, and the Blingdom is no exception.  But as inspiring as hand-crafted jewelry can be, we should not ignore marvels of the heavens!

The above Valentine's commemorative photo depicts a cluster of newborn stars "found in a rosebud-shaped (and rose-colored) nebulosity known as NGC 7129."  This striking photo was taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope and is one of many spectacular images found on NASA's Planetary Photojournal.  

If you want to bring the stars into your love life, advanced perfume technology has enabled us to capture a sensation literally not of this earth:  the unique space rose scent created when astronauts took a rose into space.  You can experience this yourself in "the fragrance of the spirit," Shiseido ZEN.

EXTRA:  Looking for other items inspired by nebulae?  Here are a few pieces to contemplate:

Blue Nebula

Orion's Nebula Light

Nebula Goddess & Vortex

Jesus Nebula & Card

EXTRA EXTRA:  Did you know that some believe a NASA photo of a "rose nebula" proves the Quran to be the word of God?  At the turn of the millennium, many Muslims celebrated the following Hubble photo of the Cat's Eye Nebula as the fulfillment of Sura 55:37-38, "When the sky disintegrates, and turns rose colored like the paint, which of your Lord's marvels can you deny?"

 

 

"A bug necklace for Valentine's Day?  Are you JOKING??????"

Sure, that may be your (or your sweetheart's) initial reaction to this Pharoah's Scarab Valentine Necklace, but work with me for a minute.  In ancient Egypt the scarab was the symbol-of-all-trades:  new life, best wishes, strength, eternity--from tablets to seals to the scarab heart amulet placed on the dead, this hearty little beetle said it all. 

And why not?  The egyptian dung beetle is a nifty metaphor for renewal and rebirth, as it rolls, um, junk up into a large ball from which baby beetles emerge.  It's the rising of the sun, the tree from the seed, the birds and the bees, all rolled up in one. 

Still not convinced?  Well, just think of it as an ancient version of the bear, which can be a mark of power or a token of affection & good will. 

Although I gotta admit, I'm not sure that I've ever seen a hieroglyphic scarab in boxer briefs.

 

I don't care if the holiday is named after him--giving your loved one this St. Valentine pendant is not a good idea. 

Of the making of Christian books against evolution there may be no end, but adaptation and natural selection are everyday realities in the world of Christian booksellers.  As this article notes, one of the themes emerging from the annual convention of the Christian Booksellers Association is the need to adapt to Walmart and big box stores, who are taking away a sizable portion of the Christian book trade.

What is keeping the booksellers in the black?  Yes, they are beginning to emphasize their more informed selection & ties to local churches, but statistics tell the real tale:  "Books now account for only 40 percent of sales in Christian retail stores." 

Jewelry, tchotchkes, gifts--that's where the profit center now lies in the Christian market.  But if mainstream merchants continue to expand their range of Christian and other religious products, look for more traditional Christian bookstores to go the way of all flesh.

Valentine's Day is tomorrow, so in addition to commemorating the complexities of Darwin Week, the Blingdom of God will go on a sacred pilgrimage to holy shrines of love.

We begin our travels at the heart of European civilization:  the pagan Roman Empire.  The week of love actually began yesterday, February 12, with an ancient Roman holiday dedicated to the goddess Diana. 

Like the Norse god Ullr, Diana was a divinity associated with hunting, but she also was also something more:  an eternal virgin.

Goddess of chastity, Diana was immune to Cupid's arrows. Nonetheless, she was a protector of women in all aspects of their lives, from warding off undesirable suitors to enduring childbirth.

What does an ancient holiday for the goddess Diana have to do with the present celebration of Valentine's Day?  Ask your local Wiccan!  Diana is a central figure in the growing Wicca movement, especially in the younger generation.  While Venus may rule over love, Diana the Huntress provides a model of a woman who will not let her loves rule over her.

Yesterday parishioners in hundreds of churches around the world gathered together to praise . . .

Charles Darwin?!?!???

Yes, it's true.  As one of the most clicked stories on the web notes, several hundred churches did indeed participate in Darwin Day, held annually to commemorate Darwin's birth on February 12, 1809.  In fact, the celebration still continues in many towns, churches and universities, as Darwin Day has evolved into Darwin Week.

To mark this event, this week in our devotionals we'll take a look at a heavenly host of bling emerging from the holy war over creation, from the Fish Wars on car bumpers to Pastafarian jewelry and beyond.  

Of course, if you buy all the bling pictured in the coming days you'll need somewhere to put it, so to start I suggest that you pick up a new jewelry box--but exactly which intelligent design I'll leave up to you.

                

The Northeast U.S. is buried in snow.  

People trapped.  Transportation paralyzed.  Who ya gonna call?

Ullr, the Norse god of the slopes! 

 

 

Little has survived regarding this god of hoar-frost, who is commemorated in this pendant from the Asatru Alliance.  However, we do know that Ullr's divine attributes included skill in skiing, a trait that in recent years has given him new life as the legendary god of the slopes.  Fortunately, today's skiiers and snowboarders don't take along a bow to hunt game or to slay their competitors.

 

                  

Ullr also has a new band of neopagan devotees, some of whom have revived the Nordic practice of swearing by Ullr's ring.  Alas, I don't have a picture of this fabled band, but here's a representive selection from an ancient poem, taken from a website seeking to reconstruct the ancient Nordic mythos:

Hon said:
"So be it with thee, Atli!
as toward Gunnar thou hast held
the oft-sworn oaths,
formerly taken -
by the southward verging sun,
and by Sigtý's hill,
the secluded bed of rest,
and by Ullr's ring. "

And who would want to restore the "heathen tribalism" of the snowy Norse?  A hearty band of faithful in snowbound New York!

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy."  Just like "don't steal," "don't lie" and "don't covet your neighbor's ox," this is an essential part of the Torah's top ten commandments.  

In honor of the Jewish Shabbat, or holy day of rest, we turn our thoughts today toward ancient Hebrew jewelry.  Just wait until after sunset to buy it!

 

               

Pictured above are earrings and a necklace from judaicawebstore.com, all of which sport the word "hallelujah" in Hebrew as it was written around the seventh century B.C.E.  The colored glass is somewhat more recent--which is to say, about 2000 years old.

Coins, seals, short religious texts--we've found a number of examples of ancient Hebrew inscriptions on which to model modern jewelry.  But what about the ten commandments themselves? 

Weeeeeelllllllllllllll...........

The above is an inscription of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) in archaic Hebrew that some have found to be three thousand years old, a relatively short time after God would have handed them down from Mt. Sinai. 

The problem?

It's carved in a rock in Los Lunas, New Mexico, a place not exactly known for its Shabbat observance in 1000 BCE. 

Is this inscription proof that the lost tribes of Israel migrated to North America?  Was it a subtle dig at an eighteenth century Catholic priest by his educated Jewish translator?  Or could it simply have been a hoax perpetrated by some enterprising college students in the 1930s?

Beats me.  All I want to know is, where's the Petroglyph Decalogue gift shop????

Do you ever get so fed up with the vanity fair atmosphere of Fashion Week that you wish the whole thing would just go up in smoke?  That's the prayer of many industry insiders, and it looks like their wish might come true.

Why would divine wrath come down upon Bryant Park?  The unholy presence of two Paris Hiltons? 

Close, but not quite.  It all comes to down to one little word that some fear is a Satanic snare:

Astrology. 

As the New York Times chronicles in its Fashion Diary, an obsession with star power rules the major prophets of couture, as designers seek diviners from Justine Kenzer to Starsky & Cox, whose bestselling Sextrology is "the bible du jour at Colette." 

So the moon is in the Schouler house and Jupiter's aligned with Kors, but does this mean the dawning of the age of Aquarius?

The Times is skeptical--it ascribes the waxing faith in stars to an "overall tentativeness" born out of fashion's "dicey" prospects.  Astrology may reflect a hunger for certainty and meaning, the article opines, but it does so through a "loopy" hodge-podge of arcane symbols and postmodern pop mythology.

The Bible--the Hebrew one, not Colette's--offers a more dire prophesy of what lies in wait for astrological artistes:

Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame . . . .  (Isaiah 47:13-14)

Yikes!  Is there any hope for salvation in the Blingdom of God?

            

                     

 

 

 

As illustrated by the accessories above, figures from astrology flourish in design. This is perhaps to be expected, since the spiritual union of astrology and fashion flows from the same source as religious ritual or belief in a divine plan:  our innate fascination with the forces that shape us and the patterns they create. 

Whether astrology is sinful or sublime I leave to the conscience of each fashion saint.  For now, I simply invite you to meditate on this:  if "the heavens declare the glory of God," perhaps it's inevitable that so many people look to them for guidance.

I have been meditating today on the catalog of Pictureballs, a Thailand shop that describes itself as "the world's largest source for picture and logo jewelry with over 2,400 designs currently online and more being added every day."

And they're not kidding!  Akin to Pugster & its charms, Pictureballs sells earrings, toe rings & pendants from a multitude of faiths and lifestyles, including the colorful Bismillahs in my previous entry today. 

But the one pictured above has wheels within wheels:  a US-Afghan yin-yang symbol.  Who Owns Culture indeed! 

From fashion design to the Danish Mohammad cartoons, the appropriation of Islamic symbols can spark vehement and even violent protests.  But there is one story from not too long ago that gives us hope for a more ecumenical future.  It is the story of

Queen in Iran!

Long-time readers will remember that in an earlier post, I noted that when Freddy Mercury sings "Bismillah" in the Queen anthem Bohemian Rhapsody, he is singing a phrase from the Quran--"In the name of Allah."  This phrase is ubiquitous in Islamic jewelry, art and, of course, religious rhetoric. 

Islamic fundamentalists, of course, have an extensive history of persecuting gays, non-Islamic religions and those who blaspheme the name of Allah.  Since Queen is a gay icon whose lead singer was a Zoroastrian, you'd expect that Queen's Greatest Hits would be the last thing allowed to become a hit in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

Oh ye of little faith!

As this article recounts, Queen bootlegs were popular for years in Iran, and the government eventually relented and allowed a cassette of Queen's Greatest Hits to go legit.  And how could religious leaders justify this?  By providing an explicitly Islamic message to Bohemian Rhapsody.  The Iranian cassette includes a pamphlet with liner notes that  

tells Queen fans that Bohemian Rhapsody is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil.

On the night before his execution he calls God in Arabic, "Bismillah", and so regains his soul from Satan.

So you see, it's a hymn!

But even though the blend of commerce and religious narrative can lead to newfound tolerance, I'm still not sure I want to know the ayatollahs' explanation for Another One Bites the Dust.

Religious jewelry miraculously appears in a three-page R. Crumb comic in the pages of the latest New Yorker.  Look to the right of the panel to see Aline Kominsky-Crumb sporting a Virgin of Guadalupe bolo tie while visiting Manhattan last month.

Devotees of illuminated manuscripts know that the appearance of a Robert Crumb cartoon is in event in itself, so hie thee to a magazinery and check it out in the Feb. 13-20 2006 New Yorker!

But what is this Virgin of Guadalupe?  A miracle, or at least that's what many believe--it is an image of the Virgin Mary that materialized on a piece of cloth after Mary appeared in a vision to Juan Diego in 1531. 

Since then, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe has become a cultural icon in Mexico and beyond.  In the picture below, for example, Our Lady of Guadalupe communes with the leading religious icon of the United States--

Saint Elvis!

In the Blingdom of God there are many mansions, most of which are unknown to the average seeker.  But fear not!  Our mission here is not simply to unveil the mystery of religous symbols, but to bring to light designers and stores that one might otherwise miss.

A jewelry maker whose work I've enjoyed contemplating recently is one that I would have never found outside the web:  Trilogy Jewelers, located in Gauteng, South Africa.  Under "Stories" on their site they feature what they aptly describe as "jewelry with meaning," including multifaith religious symbols and designs based on African masks. 

Clicking around the site reveals that Trilogy has supplied jewelry to none other than the Walt Disney Company, thus proving that it's indeed a small world after all!

Here at the B of G we're always in the mood for a good word from on high, and this meditation from the saints at Jack & Hill has deeply moved our soul. 

At a time when people are getting killed over cartoons and threatened (or worse) for using religious imagery in design, we join in looking forward to the day when artists the world over feel free to communicate with the symbols from all major faiths--even if the result isn't always easy on the eyes!

of those who heed the wisdom of Manolo at Shoeblogs.com! 

 

The blingdom of God takes center stage at New York Fashion Week, with the Fall 2006 collection for Child Magazine.  I'll leave for you to decide whether putting kids on the runway is truly divine.

 

Internet dating can spruce up your love life, but can it also save the truth of God on Earth?  Today's Wall Street Journal tells how the Zoroastrians, a waning religious movement with followers mostly in Iran and India, are replenishing their ranks by finding love online. 

                       

OK, so you've won heavenly rewards by signing up on theparsimatch.com and scoped out a Zoroastrian hottie who really fires up your inner light.  Is there any jewelry you can give or wear to show that you've got the moral fortitude to propagate the faith?

Well, you could shoot the moon & give the 4th-6th century necklace pictured above, which sports an image of Gayomard, the first man.  But let's face it, that's a thousand bucks & that's a lot to drop on your first meeting with an internet crush.

If your soul is torn between the high price of fine jewelry and the desire for true love, you might instead play it a little safer and get a nice pendant of Faravahar, which represents the human spirit and its ascent toward God.

What's Nietzsche got to do with it?  Well, the source of the pun might become more clear if I note another way of saying the name of the prophet Zoroaster:  Zarathustra!

Sad.

Today's New York Times has an article on roadside memorials and the growing effort to regulate them. 

These memorials, known as descansos in Spanish-speaking communities, are often much more than just a sign, a cross and flowers.  They also provide a place for remembering the deceased through the display of religious jewelry and other meaningful icons. 

For example, wrapped around the cross above is a St. Christopher's medal.  St. Christopher was a saint who somewhere in the third supposedly carried an infant across a river, only then to discover that it was the baby Jesus (like the ever-popular Footprints in the Sand, except in reverse). 

Thus St. Christopher (in Latin, Christ-bearer) became the patron saint of travellers, leading millions of people to where his medallion to secure a safe journey.  Unfortunately, the Vatican decided a few years ago that St. Christopher probably never existed, and so in 1969 he was delisted from the roll of saints.  Which probably explains the medal's rather dubious rate of success.

Here, the memorial features a rosary, buddha and Tweety.  In the remix culture that is American religion, "God is a DJ" indeed.      

White collar, Christian pendant, iron cross--

Is this Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld or a demonic biker priest?

Why do designers put religious imagery on clothing and accessories?  Pious devotion or multicultural respect; inspiration from religious sources; a blundering accident, hubris or a desire to get attention by seeming outre--these are a few of the more prominent reasons, of course.

In the case of Karl Lagerfeld, the anticlerical message of his clerical garb might even reflect his most recent challenge to the fashion establishment itself, as he has just announced the first ever iTunes podcast of a top-tier runway show, to take place on February 10 for his eponymous Karl Lagerfeld line.

Lagerfeld is, of course, far from the first prominent figure to use religious symbols in a subversive fashion--his garb reflects an anticlerical tradition that extends back through a pronounced anticlerical strain in European art to Jesus' own inversion of temple imagery to challenge religious authorities. 

But as Karl learned the hard way a few years ago, adorning clothes with spiritual references is not without its risks.  In 1994 he embroidered clothing for Chanel with phrases from the Quran--accidentally, he claimed--leading to death threats against both him and supermodel Claudia Schiffer.  He destroyed the clothes and apologized.  A similar fate would soon await Quranic Liz Claibourne jeans and Nike shoes seemingly emblazoned with the Arabic for Allah.

A few years later Fida Na'amneha, a young designer who is Arab and a Muslim, similarly tempted fate by embroidering several attributes of Allah on a low-cut dress.  Suffice it to say that despite her devout faith, she did not exactly receive flattering reviews. 

The lesson of today's homily?  As the Evil One himself once said, the purpose of life is life, so if you're going to be daring & transgressive with religious symbols, just do it with religions where you're not gonna get whacked!  

So you're immersed in the whirl of New York Fashion Week and amidst all the chaos of celebrities and swag you experience a moment of existential crisis . . .

Is this all there is? 

Of course not, my child.  There's always New Jersey!

So ride across the river in your Cristal sailing ship . . .

and check out The Newark Museum, which always seems to have an exhibit or two on fashion, jewelry or cool crafts. 

Or if the thought of trading Bryant Park for Newark gives new spiritual depth to an evening of air kisses and Lindsey Lohan, just click away from style.com for a sec & check out the Museum's online archive of its 2004 exhibit Baubles, Bangles and Bling Bling, which includes a section on religion and personal adornment. 

For those who want to know more about the Muhammad animated film mentioned in my post on the current protests, check out the overview here and imdb.com.  A couple items of note:

• The director, Richard Rich, who previously helmed The Black Cauldron while at Disney, is a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (commonly known as "Mormons").  Part of the recent surge in mainstream LDS filmmakers, he has made a number of other animated films at his own studio, including several on important religious and morally uplifting individuals.
  
  
• One of professors who advised the filmmakers, Khaled Abou el Fadl, is one of the most pre-eminent scholars of Islamic Law in the U.S.  He teaches at UCLA, but he has also taught at the Yale Law School--and it was in his class around threescore and ten years ago (at least for me), that your humble Heavenly Host first studied Islamic Law!
  

The violent protests in Europe against cartoons of Muhammad are leading many to reconsider how we portray the Prophet of Islam.  If you think the answer is simply to depict him with respect and reverence, guess again.

A longstanding tradition in Islamic law forbids the visual representation of the Prophet Muhammad, at least in human form.  In a nutshell, Muhammad as the Prophet expressed the will of God, and by extension an image of Muhammad is as blasphemous as an idolotrous image of God.  This is why you'll see Muhammad's name on jewelry, but not his picture--the charm above, for example, declares that "there is no god but god, and Muhammad is his prophet." 

Do all Muslims adhere to this principle of Islamic law?  No, not even in a country as strict as Iran.  However, such leniency tends not to apply when an outsider flouts the rule. 

For example, to cite but one instance involving a cartoon, the prohibition against depicting Muhammad led to serious resistance to a recent animated movie retelling the Prophet's life.  In consultation with Islamic leaders, the filmmakers went ahead with their movie, but they also decided not to show Muhammad in human form.  Instead, his presence is indicated indirectly, by point-of-view shots and light. 

Note that while this was a compromise, it was not a wholesale capitulation to the most conservative wing of the Islamic faith--one longstanding tradition in Islamic law prohibits making an image of any living thing.  

As for the best course for the future, I'll leave that to the pundits and policymakers.  But as a rule of thumb, if you want to show your respect for the beliefs of your Islamic fundamentalist friends and neighbors this Superbowl weekend, you might want to think twice before you give them a . . .

Muhammad bobble-head doll!

Longtime readers of this site may remember my previous entries on the Jesus Head Medallion and Kanye West, in which I mention the singer's concern over the use of "conflict diamonds" in Christian bling. 

Today's Wall Street Journal picks up on the story in today's article Between a Rock and a Hard Place, which discusses how diamonds used to fund violence are being disguised as conflict-free in order to fool conscientious jewelry buyers.  I'll post a link if another paper picks this story up.

For more information on one of the more pressing policy issues in ethics, religion and jewelry, check out the kimberleyprocess.com.

Last night I lay me down to sleep, and here's the dream my soul did keep:

I am standing in a bookstore by a row of jewelry magazines.  With me is the cast and crew of a Project Runway-type fashion competition.

Several of the contestants speak with me about their life & work.  The last contestant is a woman wearing a large gold watch, in which the numbers have been replaced by little yin-yang symbols of the tao.  She lets me take a picture of the watch for the B of G.  

So I guess it's official:  this site has irrevocably insinuated itself into the "god spot" of my brain.

Fashion Week is a ritual in which the many sing the praises of a creative few.  There are reasons for this, of course, but we'll save that another day.  What lifts my spirits more is the emergence of a yin to the dominant yang.

This pendant is a perfect example of what MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld calls the trend toward personal fabrication.  The source of the picture?  Not a jewelry store, not a design magazine, but a flickr post.  The description says it all:

"I designed this myself and had a silversmith friend work it up for me . . . ."

Here you have it.  A cross, the yin yang symbol, and an image of water as the source of life woven together by someone who knows that fashion is at its most personal and transcendant when you create it yourself.

 

EXTRA:  If you have your own designs, feel free to post them on Flickr & send me the links or post them to the new BofG Flickr group.  I'll also be featuring posts about emerging designers in weeks to come, so be sure to make the Blingdom of God part of your daily web devotional!

And for more commentary on New York Fashion Week and the latest happening fashion trends, don't forget the pathbreaking work being done at Almost Girl & Fashion Tribes in cooperation with Pajamas Media and Glam.

The mandala is an ancient symbol representing the complexity of the universe.  This pendant from Exotic India Art captures in miniature the interplay of geometric forms that can make a larger size mandala a dazzling distillation of life itself.

In entries to come we'll explore such things as mandala construction, Jung's notion of mandala symbolism and the mandala's relation to modern math and science.  For now, I want to call your attention to a ritual that is definitely worth seeing when it takes place near you:  the creation and dismantling of a mandala made of sand. 

If you live in New York you're in luck:  this weekend (Feb. 3-4, 2006), in honor of the Lunar New Year, a Tibetan Buddhist monk will be dismantling a sand mandala he constructed at the Asian American Arts Centre.  Saturday will have time for viewing and meditation, along with a lecture.  On Sunday, the monk will destroy the mandala and then disperse the sand in the East River, with some of the sand set aside to give to those in attendance.

Yes, that's right.  Not only did Tibetan Buddhism anticipate the deepest insights of modern science--they also sang a version of "Dust in the Wind" hundreds of years before Kansas!

The President's State of the Union address was last night, and I'm sure that all of you are meditating on the profound prophetic moments that deeply stirred your soul.  Like when the President said . . .

um, he said . . .

Right.  Anyway, not to worry.  In connection with spring fashion week in New York, the fashion saints are marching in with the state of the fashion union, and I want to be in that number!  Though the focus may be on the runway, we must never forget to accessorize. 

 

Overall, the state of the blingdom is strong.  Crosses, crystals, mandalas--the symbols of spirit abound on today's jewelry.  The Temple St. Clair cross above, for example, is one of many such items displayed at last week's JA International Winter Jewelry Show in New York.  Whatever your particular religious persuasion, church chic is not going away.

But can a blingdom divided against itself stand?  Although spiritual-themed jewelry may be on the rise, we have yet to fully divine the meaning of the great gulf fixed between different types of people who wear it. 

In brief, the red/blue divide that we see in politics is also apparent in spiritual adornment.  The person who wears a "True Love Waits" cross is making a statement quite different from the casual wearer of a turquoise cross, just as the mandala market typically reflects a far different set of cultural assumptions from the market for Mary.

Rest assured, however, that the Blingdom of God is no respector of persons or beliefs.  Whether you wear your Bling of the Spirit for couture, for chastity, or for cuddling, all are welcome here!