Actress Shirley MacLaine offers a line of "eco-friendly" jewelry based on sacred geometry. Above: Swirl to God, an homage to the spiral:

Generally, the spiral represents a broadening of consciousness, which is the destination arrived after a long journey.

In terms of astrology, mysticism and myth the spiral translates into meanings of spirituality and rebirth.

In terms of spirituality, the spiral symbol represents the path leading from outer consciousness (materialism, external awareness, ego, outward perception) to the inner soul (enlightenment, unseen essence, nirvana, cosmic awareness).

In terms of rebirth or growth, the spiral symbol represents the consciousness of nature beginning from the core or center and thus expanding outwardly. This is the way of all things, as recognized by most mystics.

This is just one of many spiritual products offered on her site, an epitome of commerce as an extension of the self. As Ms. MacLaine can affirm, there's little more rewarding than living long enough to go from outside to mainstream.

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The book of Genesis is not exactly subtle about its sexual content (sensual snake tempts woman, followed by childbirth and hard work), while the Medusa myth provides a complex and repulsive archetype of reductionistic sexual objectification (woman who revels in her stultifying beauty is raped, re-fashioned in the image of snakes that turn men hard).

However, in the modern US of A religion doesn't really talk about such things, so we gotta wear virtual breeches. Hence the partial nude pic, from Jamie Nelson via the Reverse Cowgirl, is below the jump.

Continue reading "Eve, Medusa, Snakes" »

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Via Robert Scoble's Twitter feed

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A brilliant look at jewelry & existence by Planet Fab for CITY Magazine.

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Swastika Freakshop via BMEZine. Be sure to check out the SF homepage for more, as well as this cri de coeur prompted by burgeoning internet fame:

the spirit of the ritual give me the energy to do what i do...

please read this... Effectively immediately, I am gong to stop doing body modifications. I no longer offer things like implants, scars etc... So please do not request any of this from now on. I need time to concentrate on my tattoo work and on my own life. Body modification IS my life - but not all in my life. And, right now, for me, tattooing is more important than the other stuff. So I will take a one-year break from promoting. I won't upload new pictures and try to take a break from being an internet celebrity. Please respect my decision and don't ask me about anything else than tattooing. When you want a tatu, please contact me via my homepage (www.swastika-freakshop.de).

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Allegra Stratton's Muhajababes gets name-checked (without a reference) in an NYT Book Review look at Mark LeVine's Heavy Metal Islam. Both are well worth reading for anyone who wants to look beyond cookie-cutter depictions of contemporary Muslim culture.

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Radosh.net points to what is surely a historic first: an ichthys tattoo in a Playboy pictorial. Ashley's explanation:

In the word-things that accompany the pictures, Ashley says she got the tat when she was younger, but stands by it. "I still believe in God, but God made female athletes beautiful and sexy, and I want to represent that."

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Commands/Forbids, originally uploaded by pantufla.

From the St. Joseph's Catechism series from the late '60s.

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Moses, Pan, the Devil--horns call to mind a range of spiritual associations. A compelling extreme body mod from BMENews.

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HOLY SiN, originally uploaded by spanaut.

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Trans Goddess - Venus Hermaphroditus - Cybele - Melusine, Trans Hathor, Trans Sekhmet, etc..., originally uploaded by skyoflehighvalley.

Lehigh Valley represent! From the original post, which is not the sort of thing I usually encountered when I grew up near Quakertown:

The Spirit of the Goddess is beautiful and delicious!
So hard to lose oneself and everything...
Having Her is like having the Old severed and taken away in order to be given the permanent embrace of Her Changes - the New!
Nothing that I may write will ever express how much I love the Goddess.
For Her I have been all and nothing at once, I have tasted all flavours and I have become all flavours.
The Butterfly of her Mysteries abides in my heart as I love Her as I did many lifetimes before and after!
There is no end nor beginning, we all are made out of Her changes.

Love and Light,

Sky (Skyofquakertown/SkyofLehighValley - JDAeon) JD

p.s. I am a GAY/Bi Non-Op MTF Transgender after my own ways, means and circumstances and of course for life.
I Am A Proud Member of the Pagan Wiccan and GLBTIQATs Family!!!

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One of the "best Kosher t-shirts online," from israeli-T via Rabbi von Sydow

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Now, alas, sold out.

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Via

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Religion is in many ways a story of our relation to collective identity, which can create something higher than ourselves as well as swarms that destroy. Not surprisingly the locust plays a prominent role in ancient religious texts, more in regard to the latter aspect of the mystery than the former, though now that most of us live a life far removed from swarms of locusts devouring our crops the references might seem somewhat oblique.

Pictured above: cicada jewelry, created and sold by teen entrepreneurs Katheryn Maloney and Brady Cullinan. And from a reference by a BoingBoing commenter, be sure to scroll down this fascinating site for a story about Mayan cockroach jewelry:

There once was, I have been told, a Maya princess who fell in love with a man she would never be permitted to marry. So heartbroken was she that she wept night and day over her forbidden love. A shaman, hearing her cries and learning of her misery, transformed her into a glittering beetle, a piece of living jewelry. Her beloved pinned her to his breast. Thus she spent her life, close to the heart of the one she cherished.

Doesn't sound like much of a relationship to me, but perhaps I'm too cynical. In any event, this legend is perpetuated to the present day in Yucatán by the makech (that's Yucatec Mayan, in Spanish, it's maquech).

These large beetles spend most of their lives as larvae; their transformation into adults marks the end of their existence. Once pupated, they stop eating, breed, and die. Yucatecos decorate them with rhinestones and tether them with little gold chain leashes. Pinned to the purchaser's clothing, they spend what remains of their brief existence wandering aimlessly about, sparkling as they move.

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There's much more to this than the cover picture--read the whole post on LP Cover Lover for the cool annotations and a Harvey Pekar classic on cantorial music.

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The article: Automatic inattention to attractive alternatives: the evolved psychology of relationship maintenance

There can be important reproductive benefits to maintaining a long-term romantic relationship. As a result, humans may possess evolved psychological mechanisms designed to help them maintain their commitment to a long-term mate, particularly when faced with attractive alternative relationship partners. The current study identifies a relationship maintenance process that involves being inattentive to alternative relationship partners. Experimentally eliciting thoughts and feelings of romantic love—an emotion thought to have evolved for the purpose of relationship maintenance—reduced attention to alternative partners at an early, automatic stage of visual perception. Consistent with evolutionary models of mate selection, this reduction in attention was observed only for opposite sex targets displaying high levels of physical attractiveness. This research illustrates the utility of integrating evolutionary models of mating with theory and method from cognitive science.

The experiment:

LOVE can make you blind, quite literally.

Jon Maner at Florida State University in Tallahassee and colleagues asked 57 students in heterosexual relationships to write about occasions when they felt extreme love towards their partner. Another 56 students wrote about feeling extreme happiness.

The students then viewed 500-microsecond flashes of 60 photos, comprising equal numbers of highly attractive and average-looking men and women. As the faces disappeared, they had to rapidly identify shapes that appeared on the screen - a measure of their subconscious visual attention to the photos.

Students primed with thoughts of love took significantly less time to identify shapes after viewing an attractive face of the opposite sex, compared with those who had written essays on happiness. It was as if being in love meant that they were "repelled, rather than grabbed", by attractive faces, says Maner. This may help explain why people in love do not seek out other mates.

The religious analog:

But I say to you, anyone who stares at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (The Gospel of Matthew 5:28)

What the new research would seem to indicate is that the latter is less a mystical sacred sexual breach than a folk observation of the same phenomenon confirmed by academic experiment--attention to another is arguably evidence of a decline in commitment. Important to remember in this context: adultery back in the day was less about sex and more about one's contractual commitment to provide material resources.

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Via Weird Universe, here's one of the most bizarre church fundraising strategies I've ever seen. [Be sure to read past the pic below for a controversial legal update]

When its youth group needed cash for two trips, Immanuel Lutheran Church members passed the toilet bowl.

The Waukee church raised more than $1,100 by planting a toilet on the lawns of local folks and requiring them to pay for its removal.

The scheme is part practical joke, part protection racket.

Victims pay $5 to send the toilet away or $10 to send it to someone else.

For $15 they can avoid paying again if it reappears, and for $25 they can forever flush the frightful fixture from their yards. . . .

Neon pink and green paint covers the toilet in a pattern that might best be described as, well, swirly. Fake sunflowers seem to grow from a spot where the sun seldom shines. An inscription on the front of the tank indicates that the painters "heart" Jesus - perhaps making the throne fit for a king.

A comment on the Jesus toilet story led me to coverage of another ongoing series of articles from the same Iowa paper involving pagan symbols--except this time, no one's laughing. The city ordered a man to remove pagan symbols from his fence, pictured below. First the city claimed it had to go because it was graffiti; after the man objected--after all, it's his fence--the city declared the symbols a sign that lacked the proper license for signage.

The situation that has folks upset: A church is allowed to extort non-members into paying to have a Jesus toilet removed from their lawns, while pagan symbols on private property are illegal.

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The Arabist (via Andrew Sullivan) posts an email image that tells women "You can't stop them, but you can protect yourself. He who created you knows what's best for you."

Discussion ensues.

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Adrants highlights this fun Islam-themed item: an AXE commercial designed for Singapore, which seeks to accommodate the country's Muslim population by adding a conservative twist to its sexualized style. In so doing, the ad actually improves upon the frat-boy cliches of its American analogs:

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