Call me Sheldon Cooper....

It appears I like flags with a) astronomical elements and b) blue fields.  I think I prefer the Australian over the New Zealander (Zealandish?  Kiwi?) flag.  No offense NZ; I think if the stars were just white I'd like yours more....and I think I'd like both more without the Union Jack....

South Carolina

Alaska

New Zealand

Australia

El Mano de Dios

I've already written directly about Gauchito Gil and San La Muerte, two of the more popular Argentine folk saints.  Both have widespread and fervent cults, with thousands of devotees, roadside shrines ranging in size from small altars to sculpture gardens and even centers of pilgrimage:  holy cities, so to speak; despite all this, despite the many attestations of miracles, the Catholic Church does not recognize these saints.

San La Muerte and Caspar, the dead baby.

This may be understandable, at least in the case of San La Muerte, aka Saint Death or Holy Death.  An imposing figure, a skeleton, often robed and wielding a scythe, sometimes leaning forward in his throne, he is basically a sainted Grim Reaper.  Although some pray to him as one would with any other saint, for matters of love (red), money (gold) or other worldly powers and concerns, he is suspected to be the patron of more sinister worshipers, and nefarious deeds have been discovered and ascribed to his influence.  His cult is strongest in northeast Argentina, especially in Corrientes.  Some speculate the cult is a product of the encounter between Guaraní ancestor worship, which included the veneration of bones, and the influence of Jesuit missionaries in the 1760's; but fact is, nobody know exactly when or how it started.

A similar figure is, unsurprisingly, also worshiped in Mexico.  I say unsurprisingly because death, skulls and skeletons are a common Mexican artistic motif and Todos Santos (All Saint's Day), or the Day of the Dead, is one of Mexico's most rambunctious and widely-celebrated religious traditions.  Death is mourned and celebrated with drink, fireworks and feasting at the local cemetery.   The image of the mother is also an important motif in Mexican culture and the national patroness is La Virgen de Guadalupe, an image ubiquitous in Mexico and wherever Mexicans live.  She is the heart and soul of Catholic Mexico.  Not surprising that death is, unlike in Argentina, a woman:  La Santisima Muerte.  This would be an interesting area of study; the respective gender of "Saint Death" in Mexico and Argentina and why such a similar figure appeared in both countries.  I wonder if it could be something as secular as the fact that both countries are the largest producers of cultural products in Latin America:  music, television, literature and especially cinema.  Not sure why this would be, but for some reason the possibility came to mind.

Anyway, pictured above is my red San La Muerte.  I had actually first purchased a flashier gold statuette, but my mother-in-law knocked it off a table while tidying up, and it broke into pieces.  She's a psychoanalyst and my wife is as well; my wife is always trying to tell me that many of my accidents are not that at all, but unconscious reflections of inner desires or aversions.  So it's ironic that her mother, who disapproves of these things, "accidentally" broke it.  The iconoclastic mother-in-law.

In writing this I learned that Guatemala also has a skeletal death saint, El Rey San Pascual, who seems to be pretty much the same as Argentina's San La Muerte.  The three death saints I've discussed are believed to have their origins in pre-Colombian religion; indeed, the syncretism between non-Christian religious beliefs and Catholicism is a Latin American-wide phenomenon.  African traditions have blended with Christianity to produce Candomblé (Brazil), Voudon (Haiti) and Santería (Cuba) to name but a few.  In countries with a fewer African Americans, such as Guatemala and Mexico, this process took place with Native American beliefs.  The Catholic Church has always been tolerant of the syncretism, up to a point.  Indeed, allowing the use of "pagan" traditions was first applied to European Christianization and even has a name:  Interpretatio Christiana.  This has become a point of contention in countries once dominated by Catholicism but now rife with various Protestant and Evangelical sects, which seek to eliminate pagan traditions from Christian belief and practice.  In Guatemala, this has led to riots on several occasions; one notorious brawl took place of the steps of the cathedral in Chichicastengo.  

"Chichi" has a very strong syncretic religious culture.  I witnessed a ritual in nearby Utatlán, at the end of a long, incense-filled, tunnel-like cave under a Mayan temple complex.  I also saw what was clearly a fertility ritual before a stone idol called Pascual Abaj; this sits atop a hill closer to Chichi than Utatlán.  I photographed this ritual at the friendly urging of the man performing it, and made extensive notes on the precise actions he performed.  One day I'll dig up this notebook and photos to share here on LoS.  I was also personally blessed by a curandero in Nebaj, a bit farther north, at a shrine hidden in a cornfield.  It involved lots of prayers and the burning of various materials we picked up at the local market.  What bound all three of these rituals was the free intermingling of the names of recognizable Catholic saints with Mayan gods.  Syncretism in action.  There was also a Day of the Dead in the Guatemalan town of Todos Santos; this was an emotional experience for me, having not long prior lost my father, and I danced and drank all night with a family who must have sensed my grief, as I was welcomed into the kitchen periodically throughout the night to warm up, rest and drink bowls of a delicious gruel that kept me going and helped absorb the copious amounts of alcohol I imbibed -- which in this town, is a big part of the ritual observance.  I feel privileged to have witnessed and participated in these rituals so I am eager to meet some practitioners of Afro-Catholic religions.  My only concern is to avoid becoming a gawking tourist; I need to participate, but I do not want to contribute to the "touristification" of these rituals.

I used to say that my only further use of psychedelics would be to try ayahuasca with a shaman to guide me, but ritual ingestion of ayahuasca, aka yagé, has unfortunately become a kind of drug tourism, the Quechua and Aymara-speaking regions treated like some kind of New Age Amsterdam, a New World Kathmandu.  William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg wrote an excellent book on their search for the drug, entitled The Yagé Letters.  A detailed and often hilarious account, it doesn't get into folk saints, but it does  describe a serious series of psychic and spiritual investigations.  It has also undoubtedly helped spawn the kind of zonked-out pilgrimage to the hinterlands I used to undertake without understanding the potential deleterious effects this can have on a spiritually rich but financially impoverished people.  Some will end up selling their religion to the highest bidder and others will become hucksters, with either no real knowledge of the shamanic role or just jiving the gullible and saving the real traditions for themselves.  This is, not in the specific context of spiritual tourism but tourism in general, why I turned a bit cold towards traveling in parts of Mexico and Guatemala, not for lack of "authentic" experience, but for contributing to the kind of human interactions that reduces everything to an exchange of goods and services for cash.  I realize tourism can be an important economic boost for a country, and if anyone needs a boost it's Mexico and Guatemala, but I'm kind of leery of the whole "Gringo Trail" these days.  I'd still like to experience the Afro-Latin-American traditions though.

 

But back to my collection of figurines, next pictured is Gauchito Gil.  I've discussed his story before, but it's worth repeating that before his murder, he'd enlisted in the war against Paraguay to escape the wrath of a local police chief, jealous of his affair with a wealthy widow.  After his return, he refused to fight in the Argentine Civil War and fled from the authorities into the pampa, more or less forced into the role of a bandit.  Gil was eventually captured and killed by the police, but not before he informed the gendarme who was about to cut his throat that his dying son would recover; he did, and the grateful policeman spread Gauchito's cult as thanks and penance.  Gil's roadside shrines are painted red and red banners hang from them or fly overhead.  His cult, like that of San La Muerte, is strongest in the north, in Corrientes, but it has spread throughout Argentina and into neighboring Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile.  He even has a Facebook page.  But who doesn't?  Even San La Muerte is social media savvy.

Before Gil's throat was cut, he was hung upside down on a tree typical of the pampa.  This recollects Old World sources such as the crucifixion of Jesus (not to mention Mithras and Osiris) and also the self-sacrifice of Odin, who hung upside down on the Norse axis mundi named Yggdrasil, an ash tree to Gil's algarrobos.  Argentina has strong connection to Italy, so it's more likely that the upside down Gil was inspired by Italian pitture infamanti, portraits of criminals hung by their heels upon a tree, a way to humiliate condemned men, especially those deemed traitorous.  When the Roman populace rose up against them, Mussolini and mistress Clara Petacci were dragged from their home, hung by their heels by an angry mob and beaten to death.  The hanging by the heels part always intrigued me; perhaps I jump too quickly to conclusions in seeing a connection.  But this practice was almost surely based on the Roman predilection for crucifying the condemned upside down if an extra dose of humiliation was required.  The pitture infimati in turn became the model for the The Hanged Man, the 12th card of the Tarot's Major Arcana.  In the Tarot, the hanged man is usually hung from either a tree, or a leafy tree-like Tau, the man's body cross-like, his face serene, seemingly out of place in a less than serene predicament.  He also has a nimbus around his head, like a saint or a martyr.  This may be because the crucifixion is a prelude to illumination, as in Odin's case, or resurrection, as in the case of Jesus.  For that matter, in Gil's case as well, for while the man died on the tree, his cult was also born; the man became the saint, his power to intercede on behalf of the powerless announced.  Tarot-designer A.E. Waite doesn't see The Hanged Man as a martyr and it's not generally interpreted in this light, but the cardcould easily have formed the basis of Gil's iconography.  A position usually reserved for reviled criminals but who was, in Gil's case, a saint.

I mention the bit about Gil refusing to fight and the story about being drafted because this element also plays into the story of La Difunta Correa.  Legend is that circa 1840 a woman named Correa set off to rejoin her husband, who'd been drafted to fight in the Argentine Civil War.  (Other versions of the tale have her fleeing into the pampa because she had her child out of wedlock, while others yet have her fleeing the sexual advances of corrupt officials -- a common element in the "virgin martyr" category of saint; there are dozens of examples in the "official" canon).  She died of thirst on the way and, when some gauchos came across the body four days later, her baby was still able to suckle at her breast.  The gauchos buried her and saved the baby.  So both Saints' tales involve the gaucho, still a powerful symbol of freedom, men who live beyond the confines, and law, of the city, in the wide and wild pampa, with their own code of justice, symbolized by the gaucho's knife.  The tango, another symbol of Argentine society and a powerful erotic dance, is said to have been born in the brothels, evolving from the milongas which were first danced by pairs of men, imitating the movements and gestures of a knife fight.  Both stories also attest to the heavy weight these Civil Wars put on people's hearts, as brother fought brother and tore the people apart.  Some versions of Correa's story also involve unjust officials whose actions set in motion the Saint's martrydom.  So we have two massively popular cults, very death-centered, plus the worship of death itself, all three of which seem to have grown most rapidly in the years following the Falklands/Malvinas War.  This war is a big part of contemporary Argentine consciousness, the outline of the islands instantly recognizable on signs in countless cities reading "Las Malvinas son Argentinas!"  The Malvinas are Argentinian!  This war also brought down a brutaldictatorship and with its exit came countless revelations of a long reign of terror effectuated by the police and the military:  kidnappings, murder, horrifying detention centers, theft of children, the stuff of nightmares.  It's a scar on every family, and my own is no exception.

Below is the latest addition to my collection.  La Difunta Correa's cult is centered in Vallecito and was first spread by cattle drivers -- gauchos -- and now more by truckers.  Roadside shrines are apparent because devotees leave bottles of water to represent her "eternal" thirst.

There is a Catholic antecedent to this story, by the way.  There is a story in Jacobus da Vorigine's Golden Legend about a barren couple, a Roman Governor and his wife, who had their prayer for a child granted to them by Christ, via Mary Magdalene's intercession.  The governor and pregnant wife then set sail for Rome to meet St. Peter, but the wife died en route, during childbirth.  Making land, the governor found he could not bury the body, so he covered it with his cloak and left the doomed baby by her breast.  He returned two years later, shocked to find his child still alive, having suckled at his mother's breast the whole time, her body incorrupt.  Mary Magdalene, who'd accompanied him, then resurrected the wife!

La Difunta Correa

I don't have a figurine for this last saint, but my mother-in-law, the iconoclast, told me about him when she gave me La Difunta Correa:  Miguel Ángel Gaitán.  Miguel was a baby who died in 1967.  In 1973 a violent storm unearthed his coffin and his corpse was found to be incorrupt.  This is a pretty common first step towards sainthood.  A saint specific to the Toulouse region, Germaine of Pibrac, is such a saint.  And of course the incorrupt body of the Roman Governor's wife precedes the story of Gaitán and La Difunta Correa. The locals made four attempts to shelter the coffin but each time a tomb was erected, it was later found demolished.  This is actually quite a common motif in legends surrounding miraculous images of the Virgin.  It was then decided simply to place the coffin in a chapel, but even then, the lid was found to have been removed; after this went on for a while the boy's mother decided to put a glass lid on the coffin and today, the little mummy receives thousands of visitors yearly and answers prayers.  This too is not unheard of in "official" Catholic saints.  I've seen plenty of saints in glass coffins; in Cortona, Italy, where I stayed for 3 months back in 1990, the dried cadaver of an obscure local saint, Saint Margaret of Cortona, was placed upon the parish church's altar.

A bit out of place, but it just occurred to me that the story of Correa is also a strong symbol of a mother's love for her child, which recalls what I said about the role of the mother in Mexico, but also the role of the Virgin.  The incorruptibility of the body is an indication of spiritual purity, itself linked to sexual purity.  For the Virgin is free from original sin, an innocent not corrupted by the carnal pleasures responsible for the Fall and thus, the aging and infirmity-prone corporal bodies from which Adam and Eve were originally free.  Makes the Christian Science concept of sin as a kind of disease seem a bit less innovative; the incorrupt bodies of the pure are the other side of the doctrine that sin causes corporeal corruption....

So none of these miracles or stories, and even their specific details, are out of place among the enormous roster of Catholic saints, many so local that most people haven't even heard of them, even Catholics from the same country.  St. Fris, anyone?

People are hungry for religion, especially receptive to the idea that prayer and offerings can result in miracles; where poverty is endemic, sickness, education, money and success are concerns with more hopelessness attached to them than in much richer countries.  And in the last few decades, Argentina has slipped deeper and deeper into poverty and all its accompanying woes.  It is a country dominated by a profound sense of insecurity, for the future, for the hope of economic recovery and an end to corruption, the explosive growth of shanty towns and above all, crime.  This in a country already wounded by a recent war and a brutal dictatorship, many of whose criminal perpetrators are still alive.  I would only expect these cults and others like them to grow.  Everybody's looking for a miracle, to be touched by the Hand of God.  Or at least one of his deputies.

With folk saints, all the familiar elements of official Catholic saints are recycled and put into a more contemporary and familiar context -- not, for example, Roman Gaul, but contemporary Argentina.  And this will continue to happen, whether officially recognized or not.  In France, the current most popular "official" saints date largely from the 19th century; long enough ago that the historicity of the accounts is not an issue, but close enough in time and within familiar enough events to reassure the devoted that their saint knows exactly what they might going through.  As the times continue to change, we can expect periodic updates to the legends of existing folk saints, as well as the development of entirely new ones.  The age of miracles isn't over.  Evangelicals will speak in tongues and be slain in the Spirit like the apostles, the logical conclusion of the Protestant devaluation of the role of the priest as an intermediary, the belief that each man and woman can read the Bible for themselves and develop a special relationship with the Christ.  Catholics, still valuing the role of the priest, will continue to look towards even holier intermediaries, and if the old ones are found lacking -- because inevitably, poor people will remain poor, sick people will not recover and the sterile will remain childless -- new ones are just waiting to be found.

Aucamville Project 11: Mary on the Cross (redux)

3/3:  I'd forgotten I'd already done a (quite different) little riff on this theme:  The Virgin and the Cross.

Toulouse is known as "la Ville Rose" (the Pink City) because of the brick with which its buildings have been constructed since at least the Middle Ages.  These bricks are not the smallish rectangular jobbies you might think of in American or English construction.  In Toulouse and the surrounding areas the principle brick is called a "foraine" and is about 45 x 25 cm and 5 cm thick.  They're quite heavy and make for a solid wall.  45 centimeters is no small shakes.

 

The gatehouse to the Aucamville cemetery gives a sense of the ingenuity with which these foraines can be put to use.  The walls are made with them, as are the decorative elements of the cornice and the pediment, even the frame of the arched entry.  I've always liked this gatehouse, which is simple  but elegant.  The size and shape of the cross in the pediment is determined by the material:  four foraines make up each arm, and to me, it has always looked something like a flower.  If you look at our other posts about architecture in Toulouse (example), you'll see that everything from walls to bridges to obelisks to chateaux are made with these foraines.  I suppose that's due to the fact that the soil around here is pretty much pure clay.  If I dig in my garden, I will find this clay with some river stones mixed in, but very little dirt or vegetal matter.

In Toulouse, the Terre Cabade cemetery (see the previous example I mentioned), whose entrance features two brick obelisks, takes it's name from this clay-like earth--"cavade" in Occitan.  (Like Spanish, the v and b sound is pretty much interchangeable in some Occitan dialects).

For stately buildings, this clay is put into a more or less standard mould and fired in a kiln to produce bricks of terra cotta, or terre cuite.  But humbler buildings, barns and even homes will be made of unfired brick.  The clay is mixed with some straw and dried in the sun.  The uncooked bricks have the same dimensions as a foraine.  They are not usually used on the north face of a structure, and even the humblest of buildings will use cooked brick at their foundation, as well as to frame windows, doors and reinforce the corners of a structure; sometimes a row or two will be thrown in to solidify the wall, along with smooth flat river stones, or galets.  This architecture is much like that of the American Southwest, with wooden beams and adobe walls.  The principal difference is that in France, one almost never finds a flat roof.

Anyway, this is less about architecture than it is to present a few images for The Gid, something that astonished him:  the Virgin Mary at the center of the cross.

The two examples presented here are typical of the region, in material and imagery:  they are made out of wrought iron as opposed to cut stone, and the crosses use a vegetal motif.  Get your Joseph Campbell out, as Yggdrasil definitely comes to mind.  In the first example below, I find a deft piece of work; the vines curl about Mary's head and the leaves are clearly star-shaped, thus evoking Mary's halo of stars.  Whether intentional or not, the leaves as a crown of stars symbolically connect Heaven and Earth, referring (I believe) to the Tree of Life as a kind of axis mundi (see Aucamville Project 4).  It would also connect the very terrestrial act of burying the dead with the post-mortem voyage of the soul to heaven.

Example 1.  Note how the vine forms a halo of star-shaped leaves around Mary's head.

In the second example, we find a form more common in this area, where the Cross itself is like a tree.  The flowers are lilies, symbols of the Virgin, almost exploding from behind her in a luscious bouquet of vegetal grace, iron-clad to boot.  The spring-like form to the right of Mary's head (from the viewer's perspective) adds an especially dynamic touch.  Recall also that the fleur-de-lis, a stylized lily, is a long-standing symbol of French royalty; the lily as a symbol of both French royalty and the Virgin Mary would also link Mary with France.  As an aside, a cock is also commonly used on these wrought-iron crosses and it, too, is a symbol of France.  Current notions of laïcité aside, France is a decidedly Catholic country, or at least a Marial one:  no village is complete without a statue of the Virgin.

Example 2:  The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.

These use of these crosses is not confined to grave markers; for a detailed discussion of the many ways they are used, please see "Too late, baby. Slay a few animals. At the crossroads."

I'm also looking forward to an upcoming guest post by LoS pal Tim Wilson, who will write about these crosses, especially in the funerary context, and traditions derived from the pre-Christian worship of Hecate.  I don't know what he'll write, but I'd like to mention that Hecate is a tripartite goddess who was often portrayed facing three directions; this is linked to her function as a goddess of crossroads, of which death is a sort, I suppose!  Hecate, unsurprisingly, is sometimes viewed as an influence on Marial attributes; the latter's symbol, the lily, in it's stylized fleur-de-lis version, is often used to symbolize the trinity.  Hecate was also seen as a Savior, the Mother of Angels, which definitely fits in with Mary's role in Catholicism.  She is also associated with the underworld, which is especially resonant in the context we're looking at here.  I predict Tim will go into these ideas pretty thoroughly and, if I know Tim, not without a great deal of erudition and a dash of humor.

Finally, the third example below is less typical of the region, but the mandala-like, vaguely floral motif at the center really grabbed my attention.  It may merely be a pretty abstract design, or it may be intended to represent a flower or even the sun; a floral motif is clearly present at the base of the cross, with leaves growing up the sides and some kind of flower on the middle, a lily perhaps, or a lotus.  The flower strikes me as vaguely Egyptian.  The extremities on the arms and top of the cross also seem like stylized flowers.  If the "mandala" is a solar symbol, this could allude to the Occitan cross used in these parts, which some theorize may derive from a Gaulish solar disc.

This stone cross also has a weird androgynous quality, evoking at once both a curvaceous feminine form and a phallus.

So in these iron trees and this stone representations of flowers, as well as in the flower-like design of the gatehouse pediment, we have an interesting visual metaphor for the ephemeral being immortalized.  The flower is ephemeral but, like the Christian hope for the faithful at the end of the world, returns to life.

One final thought.  As the Aucamvillois bury their dead in the clay, one can't help but wonder that if on some level they are reminded of the origin of all life in Adam, who the Bible tells us, was formed by God from a lump of clay and then fired in His kiln, so to speak.

Human life grown from the soil, like a brick....or a flower.

Aucamville Project 6: From the universal to the particular

Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek Neo-Platonic schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos, from the largest scale (macrocosm or universe-level) all the way down to the smallest scale (microcosm or sub-sub-atomic or even metaphysical-level). In the system the mid-point is Man, who summarizes the cosmos.

I think this just about sums up what I intend to do with this latest installment of the Aucamville Project. We've gone on at great length about many themes on LoS: obelisks, sacred stones, the Tree of Life, snakes etc. and there are a few things in town worth mentioning as they reflect this wider dialogue. As most of what needs to be said on the subject has already been said in other posts, I'm just going to present the local manifestations with a few bits of trivia and new observations, with a few personal comments thrown in.

The Virgin Mary and Satan: Smackdown!

In a very recent post (Jesus was in shape) we looked at the symbolism of the serpent and cross, or rod. By way of explanation we also looked at those images of the Virgin where Satan is vanquished under her foot. It's a rather common motif in the South of France. Near our village church there is a small plaza with a statue of the Virgin doing exactly this, vanquishing.

Although the discussion of Mary appears in a recent post, it comes from an article I wrote years ago about Daurade Basilica. You may have also noticed that Daurade Basilica is my namesake. This is because when I moved to Toulouse I lived in a quartier called Croix-Daurade (Golden or Gilded Cross). I then moved to the very center of town where my small quartier was simply called La Daurade, after the basilica. Although far from gilded these days, the orginal building was a Byzantine-style orthogonal church with Byzantine-style guilded frescoes; hence the name of my quartier and now, my moniker. Pretension is deflated when you realize a Daurade is also a tasty fish--the gilt-head breem.

If you check out the English Wikipedia entry on the basilica, there is a column from the original church (400 to 600 CE) with a striking vegetal motif--stone and tree become one.


Our own statue of the Virgin is missing her left arm, smashed apparently by a stone-throwing mysterious stranger (according to a friend who lives next to the plaza). Oddly, I already had (and still have) a small icon of the Virgin, missing her left arm. I'm left-handed, too.

Pole Dancing with Snakes

It occured to me that the portal of the village church is flanked by two small pillars on each side. This is not unusual but is yet another example of the use of in this case not structurally necessary pillars to demarcate the threshold of a sacred space. The capitals of these pillars are sculpted in the form of dragons, or serpents. Though not specifically wrapped around the shaft of the pillar, as in the aforementioned post, there is an evocation of said image, at least in my mind.

Just for kicks, here's a link to some sexy women with serpents.

St. Blandine Chapel: Got Milk?

This chapel was razed during the Revolution and sold off for the building materials. For some reason, pregnant women and wet nurses went to this chapel to pray for abundant milk. Incidentally, pregnant women also go to the Black Madonna at the Daurade to ensure a smooth delivery and for the well-being of their newborns.

Blandine's legend doesn't seem to have anything to do with breast milk. She is the Patron Saint of those falsely accused of cannibalism, however. Her martyrdom was particularly gruesome: roasted alive and then thrown to wild bulls, still living. None of this may be so out of place after all. Local icon Notre Dame de Boisville is still solicited for the protection of children and martyrdom by bull is a potent image in Trans-Pyrenéan culture, especially here: Patron of Toulouse Saint Sernin was martyred by an angry bull. Additionally, a rather large number of Black Virgins are reputed to have been discovered due to the strange behavior of bulls, whether they were especially averse to or attracted to where the Virgins lay hidden.

In any event, the site of the chapel is now marked by a roadside cross which when viewed casually appears to have a serpent coiled around it. In fact this is a ribbon and vines. But still it too reminds us of the rod/cross and serpent motif described in our recent post, as well as another link to the vine imagery once associated with the Daurade. Off the cuff, one could in times past rent the belt of the Black Madonna, a kind of glorified ribbon, to lay over the belly during childbirth. Given what the Virgin crushing the snake implies (again, please see Jesus was in shape), could it be that the serpent, the ribbon and the vines are all symbolically linked to one another, as a way of reminding the faithful of the origins of sin and the ways to defeat it?

Monument aux Morts

This section doesn't merit a funny title. Every town has one of these monuments, often in the form of an obelisk, a form you may recall occupied a lot of our time in 2009. Strictly speaking, in Aucamville, it isn't an obelisk. It's as if Aucamville went for the bargain model and got a 2D version. Viewed from afar it's an obelisk but close up one can see that the pyramidion atop the column only has two slopes and is flat.

You can also see that there are quite few names on it (25 WW1 dead). I'm not sure of the population at this time but in 1954 it was 756 and in 1999 was 790. One can only surmise that during the Great War there weren't many more, there may have been less. It is an indication of what an effect the war must have had on people, no one was immune. Which is why I get a little miffed when people slam the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" for the Second World War. After having 11% of your entire population killed or wounded twenty years prior might make one less enthusiastic about the prospect of doing it all over again. To put this in persective, US casualties amounted to one-third of one percent of the overall population. Not quite the same psychic shock.

Not to downplay US casualties. My great-uncle Tom Sanders was KIA during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on September 28, 1918 (my birthday). His brother John made it out alive--barely. Hospitalized and medically discharged as a result of exposure to gas, he died a young 47 years old a result of the stress to his heart.

Sadly my great-uncle and over 26,000 other men died as a result of poor leadership and being thrust into battle while too green; they fought this battle not because they were ready, but because they were near the area.

This all took place near Verdun, in the north. Incidentally, Aucamville is 7 kliks away from Verdun-sur-Garonne. Some American men came to France for adventure and found death. I came here and started a new life.

That is all.

Jesus was in shape (Gid remix)

The Trigger

It all began with this logo of the Stade Toulousain, the storied rugby union club of Toulouse. I've seen it millions of times and it never rang synchromystic bells, except the red and the black: Stendahl, of course; accounting terminology, yes; the anarchists and reds of the Spanish Civil War. In Toulouse, this latter is not as far-fetched as it may first appear.

The logo appears banal enough, really. A shield, a show of strength, the diabolic and virile colors, aggression and warning, blood and bile, the S. the T. Stade Tolousain. Simple. But one day, my kid was drawing the logo, tracing it from the computer screen, and something struck me. It resembles a serpent and tau I saw in a local basilica; then the associations exploded: the snake on the Tree of Life; the snake vanquished under the foot of the Virgin; but especially, Moses fending off a serpent plague with a bronze snake on a tau--a scene John evokes for the crucifixion.

I'm not crazy. I don't know what the designer of this logo intended. But therein lies not the rub. We're all about the bean-pole of the empty vessel: a head, a pair of eyes, a set of memories, a keyboard. We say sumpin', and we aims to extrapolate upon the association.

Before we wander too far down this associational trail of images, let's take a moment to consider the historical context in which Stade Toulousian arose.

Sporting History

Fraternal organizations date back to the ancient past; we know of them among the Greeks and Romans, for example. During the middle ages, trade-based guilds or lay fellowships of confraternities were common. Closer to our time, the 19th century saw an explosion of groups, fraternities and clubs. In the US, an estimated 50 percent of adult males belonged to a club or fraternity at the beginning of the 20th century, leading historian Arthur M Schlesinger to refer to the US as "a nation of joiners."

Part of this was due to the emergence of a middle class with time on its hands; for the first time, leisure became more widely available and at the same time more regimented, mirroring perhaps the more regimented life of the worker in an emerging industrial capitalist economy. Leisure became sport. Baseball and American Football have their origins in the late 18th or early 19th century, but it wasn't until the second half of said century that the rules were codified and the first leagues formed. The first professional American football league dates to 1903 after evolving out of rugby, although the NFL formed in 1920. Walter Camp, who perhaps is the single most important figure in its development during the 1870's onward, was also a vigorous proponent of exercise, penning several works on the subject. The National League (1881) of Baseball joined the American League in 1901 to form MLB.

Concurrent with the increasing coherence of organized sport, the Anglo-Saxon world experienced an upsurge in so-called "Muscular Christianity." Put simply, this refers to "a movement during the Victorian era which stressed the need for energetic Christian activism in combination with an ideal of vigorous masculinity." Although originating in England, the doctrine found a strong reception in the US. The YMCA (1844), for example, was influenced by it, and the organization's version has left us with volleyball and basketball.

The link of athleticism and Christianity is not as zany as it might seem. The New Testament includes a number of athletic metaphors linking faith with racing and even boxing. According to Wikipedia, "Such metaphors also appear in the writings of contemporary philosophers, such as Epictetus and Philo, drawing on the tradition of the Olympic Games, and this may have influenced New Testament use of the imagery."

19th century religious movements also involved aspects of health and diet. The Mormons (Book of Mormon, 1830) have had bans on caffeine. The 7th Day Adventists (1863) are known for a heavy emphasis on diet and health. Kellog's corn flakes were created by an Adventist as a natural extension of the sect's practices; the Kellog company itself dates to 1906. Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science, 1866) left us Science and Health. The Oxford Group of the 1920's and 30's sviewed sin as a disease.

In Europe, the same growth of sport and athleticism was occurring. The "father of gymnastics" Friedrich Jahn may have studied theology and philology, but his gymnastics movement, the Turnverein, spread starting in 1811 and influenced a physical culture movement which came to encompass Muscular Christianity. The Czech Sokol and following Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon culture of bodybuilding and gymnastics were heavily influenced. On other fronts, the German Scout-like Wandervogel was founded in 1896. Baden-Powell founded the Scouting movement in 1907. In sport, the Football Association was formed in 1863. FIFA in 1904. Stade Toulousain, point of origin for all of this, also traces its origin to 1904. Rugby's first rules were written in 1848, that revolutionary year, and perhaps its final form was set off in 1863 when the Football Association formed. Rugby union (15 players) has been governed by the same board since 1886. 13-player rugby (league) can be dated to 1895.

The 19th century ferment of sport, athleticism and a spiritual emphasis on the benefits of being sound in body has had an enduring legacy. Muscular Christianity emphasized manliness and our instinct is that it refelects certain colonial insecurities about the fitness of young men. What but sport can arouse the full-on nationalism of the fans, the undulating flag-waving masses, the closest thing to a Nuremberg rally--witnessed every weekend. Sport was wholesome. Billy Sunday, popular evangelist in the 1920's, denounced drinkin' and card playin', but baseball was okay, even edifying. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (1954) would also seem to adhere to this mode of thinking. The Promise Keepers, though not specifically a sporting group, is centered around the idea of masculinity and reclaiming one's role as a man: fit, rugged, head of the household. Telling that the groups was founded in 1990 by the head football coach at the University of Colorado. And this guy uses the Muscular Christianity heritage flat-out, athletic/spiritual metaphors abound, time to trim the "spiritual gut", etc. His program: "In short, it's a fitness program for men based on the example of Christ... "

Okay--now that we've placed the formation of Stade Toulousian into the context of rising fraternalism and Muscular Christianity, let's start that tour of images that we've associated with the logo of Stade Toulousian.

Healing Serpents

Let's begin with the chapel of the Black Virgin at the Daurade Basilica in Toulouse, where we find several serpent images. First, near the chapel, we find a depiction of the tablets of the Ten Commandments and a staff. A snake is coiled around the staff, which has the form of a tau. This refers to a curious incident in the Old Testament book of Numbers. In Numbers 21 the Israelites have just set out from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea and, disheartened by their difficulties, speak reproachfully against God and Moses. So the lord sends fiery serpents among the people and many die from the bites. The people return to Moses and recognizing their sin, ask Moses to pray for a reprieve.

“And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live”.

So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” (Numbers 21:8-9)

According to my annotated Bible this echoes the serpent magic practiced in the ancient world, e.g. Egypt. The bronze serpent, called Nehushtan, itself became an object of worship and the Israelites burned incense before it until the reign of Hezekiah, who broke it into pieces (2 Kings 18:4).

In Exodus 7:8-13, we find the famous story of Aaron’s rod. God instructs Aaron and Moses to impress Pharaoh by throwing down the rod, which becomes a serpent. Pharaoh has his sorcerers do the same, but Aaron’s rod swallows them up. The incident is repeated in the Quran, and many traditions developed around the rod, associating it not only with the Tree of Life, but the Cross. Indeed, Jesus himself makes the connection between the incident in Numbers and his own destiny: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15). Its inclusion of the snake/tau image at the Daurade sanctuary thus refers not only to the healing powers of the Virgin but of redemption through Christ.

Another depiction of the serpent in the Daurade Basilica can be found in a massive oil painting of Mary as the Queen of Heaven. She has a halo of stars and stands upon an upturned crescent moon. In this image the snake is being vanquished. Mary’s right foot rests upon his head and his body seems uncomfortably pinioned underneath the moon. It is a common theme and is even in my own village of Aucamville, one can find a statue of Mary treading upon the wily Beast.

Initially I was baffled by these representations of the serpent, but an illuminating essay on Biblical typology by George P. Landow, Professor of Art History and English at Brown University, partially clears up the matter of the unusual imagery:

Certain problems arise in making representations of Genesis 3:15 since it comprises a prophetic, rather than an historic or legal, type…. One common solution is to combine two realistically depicted images in a realistic - that is, non-historical - manner. For example, mediaeval carvings of the Madonna which show her with one foot upon a serpent take Mary as the seed of the woman. These carved Madonnas offer visual images of a symbolic or spiritual act, since Mary nowhere in the Bible treads upon a snake. The artist therefore has juxtaposed two realistic images, one of Mary and one of a serpent. Whereas the pictorial representation of a legal or historical type depicts only those elements present in the type itself, this portrayal of a prophetic type conflates two times, for it includes the serpent from the Fall and Mary, mother of Jesus, in the same image. A second instance of such conflation of two times appears in those mediaeval Crucifixions that include a snake curled around the Cross. The snake rarely gives the impression of having been bruised, and only the viewer's knowledge of Genesis 3:15 explains its presence.

Genesis 3:15 then, is where God says to the serpent after Eve admits to eating of the apple: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The logic of the paintings is thus explained, but the reason for the inclusion of the prophetic type in the Daurade remains elusive until we read on to 3:16: “To the woman he said “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children…”

Thus, the iconography of the chapel serves to remind the pregnant woman precisely why she suffers, and why the intercession of Mary is necessary. For Mary conceived without sin and gave birth to the Savior who, through his Sacrifice upon the Cross, gave humanity the opportunity of washing away their sins.

At the opposite end of the transept from the Black Virgin, there is a depiction of the Cross. As the Sacrifice of the Christ offers humanity the chance for salvation from sin, Mary offers the pregnant woman salvation from the punishment incurred through Original Sin as described in Genesis 3:16. In this chapel a cross with a tetragrammaton in glory has a snake coiled around it. We speculate that this connects the role of Christ with Mary; references the actions of Moses; calls to mind the intrinsic relationship between sin and the Trees of Life and Knowledge; and among other possibilities, reminds us of Christ as Healer.

Salvation Through Health

As the examination of the iconic serpent imagery in Daurade basilica shows, the serpent is a complex symbol associated with a variety of meanings; two common tanglings are religion and health. Thus, for example, we find the previously discussed tale of Moses' bronze serpent. Originally it healed, but as time went on, it was worshiped.

Likewise, Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, was symbolized by and often depicted carrying a wand or rod around which a serpent was wrapped. It is still used in medical symbolism today.

Another ancient symbol used in medicinal symbolism is the Caduceus, typically represented as a winged staff around which two snakes are coiled.

It often used interchangeably with the Rod of Asclepius, although the latter is considered more accurate despite the common usage of the Caduceus. The Caduceus has been linked with Tamit, the Phoenician goddess of the moon, but is more usually associated with Hermes, father of alchemy and known to the Romans of Mercury. In alchemy, the crucified serpent was used to represent making the elixir of mercury, a healing potion of sorts, which was made by removing the “volatile” element. The serpent represents the poisonous mercury held in check by the “soufre d’or” of the cross.

Predating both these rods, as well as that of Moses, is the Mesopotamian god Ningishzida. He was a god of healing; unless you prefer to think Western Civ and/or the Israelites grew up in a vacuum, it's hard not to see the link; the serpent(s) and stick represent healing and thus, health in general, and it has been with us from the farthest reaches of our symbolic history. Logos redolent of these ancient images proliferate from this image as far back as 2000 BCE.

The Salvation Army; plus obligatory Masonic References

Earlier, we tried to place the formation of the Stade Toulousian in an historical context fraternalism and Muscular Christianity. Other images come to mind. Check out the Crest of the Salvation Army, an image which we obviously associated with Stade Toulousian logo:

The Salvation Army was founded in 1878--right in the same time frame as the rise of rugby and other popular team sports. The Crest features a cross and crown reminiscent of those featured prominently on the early publications of experimental sects with radical health proscriptions: Christian Science (1879) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (1869). The Salvation Army, like the YMCA (and also, Alcoholics Anonymous) promotes the health of "mind, body and spirit." This three-part mission refers to Jesus' stages of development. This idea of progressing in steps or stages, passing rapidly through thresholds echoes the idea of ranks in the military and Scouting. In the logo a five-pointed crown is decorated with five gems and surmounted by five five-pointed stars. There are seven “shots” at the bottom of the crest which represent the seven truths of the Gospel. The S in the center wrapped around the cross represents “Salvation”. It also reads as a dollar sign and a snake on the cross. Spiritual hygiene for the armies of the Lord. Blood and Fire. The red and the black.

This cross and crown is also the symbol of the Masonic Knights Templar.

In addition to the Knights Templar, the 33 rays of the sun (count 'em) might be evocative of Freemasonry, to a mind so primed....

Freemasonry is, of course, much older than the Salvation or rugby or the YMCA, or the Scouts, but it is easy to imagine that any well-established fraternal organization, like Freemasonry or the Benedictines would have had a powerful influence (both directly and indirectly) upon a era so focused on joining and forming teams and organizations of men. The aforementioned Football Association was formed at pub called The Freemason's Tavern, later destroyed to build The Freemason's Hall, headquarters of the UGLE. Some people believe a baseball diamond is the Masonic square and compasses. Random we searches reveal that this guy's interests include Freemasonry and soccer. Freemasons even seem to have been pretty important in transmitting to us the lovely game of golf.

Which brings us to money, the filthy luchre of sport!

$: There is no other god but me

When we think of religion, how not but think of money money money. Actually, I didn't think that, but I did think that the pole and snake dance reminded me of the dollar sign--which is the next symbol to explore in our associational tour: Mr. Moneybacks. Ducks bathing in seas of golden coins. Silver, more likely, one theory is that the S and I comes from der silver mines in SLP. And that's San Luis Potosi not Salt Lake Punk. There are many other theories of its origin, but for us, we like the weirdo esoteric explanations, things we've touched on in LoS. This is because we wear sausage gloves.

Some say the dollar sign derived from the symbols of Hermes, god of tricksters, bankers and thieves. We've already talked about him. Supporters of this theory point to the image of the Caduceus Hermes often carries. Others point to an alchemical provenance; it has been used to represent cinnabar since the 18th century. You will remember the serpent and cross has other alchemical meanings. It may also derive from the Spanish coat of arms. Previously discussed due to the inclusion of the Pillars of Hercules, here draped with an s-shaped ribbon, the image evokes many LoSian themes....

Bringin' it All Back Home

[Sorry, D, but I didn’t come up with a snappy conclusion for this. In your earlier draft you’d mentioned in the intro that you were going to take us through Palestine? I didn’t get that, so I wonder it maybe you had some more associational images in mind. If so—it’d be pretty easy to keep tacking on more sections like we’ve done here, each section basically focusing on one or two images that you associated with the Stade Toulouse image. You’ve good work here! Keep at it! – gid]

And that's a good enough ending for me.