A great example of a communications medium transcending the intent of its users: New York's union rat, a form of protest designed to intimidate & embarrass non-union businesses, becomes a fun tourist attraction--especially among visitors from China, currently marking the year of the rat.
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.
This is the Aries Large Shoulder Bag from the Donna Karan Zodiac Collection, each of which expresses a different astrological sign.
The following Bell Labs movie--directed by Frank Capra!--was a reliable way for my elementary & middle school teachers to kill time. What I'd forgotten about this classic film since then was how religion dominates it early on--the biblical reference at the opening to offset the science & paganism, Mr. Sun as a bitterly nostalgic dethroned deity basking in the memory of past adulation, the use of Father Time's forward focus to skirt explaining creation before the film had a chance to establish its cultural cred. The overarching narrative frame is fantastic as well--the meta-play of fiction and fact, with the text escaping control of its authors, illustrates a point with which I've annoyed any number of graduate seminars: there's precious little in postmodernism that hadn't already appeared in cartoons.
Anyway kids, roll up your nap blanket and get your milk & cookies, 'cuz here he is . . . Our Mr. Sun!
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.
