| I've been thinking a lot about religious symbols and the layers of meaning they accumulate in an increasingly secular world. In everyday life religious symbols are repeatedly hijacked by culture, from faith to fashion, from repentance to rock and roll. In particular I was drawn to the cross. A sacred or protective emblem offering symbolic meaning long before its Christian connection and found in almost every culture around the world – the cross has symbolized variously fertility, immortality, faith, union of heaven and earth, the human form, the 4 cardinal points as the four directions – four element, to name but a few. From Mary Magdalene to the Material Girl, from a symbol of faith to a shortcut to faith. | A reflection of disappointment in the belief of mankind or a shield against evil in the eyes of my favourite vampire Barnabas Collins, the cross has been described as the sign of signs. What do we feel when we wear a cross? Affiliation with Christ? Sanctimonious? Protected? Rebellious? A simple graphic yet it is held as an answer to so many unspoken questions, unfounded "truths", great superstitions and even greater beliefs. A symbol with so many meanings, shifting and reappropriated, until maybe it means everything and nothing or perhaps most important of all, worn against our skin signifies only what we wish to project onto it. A small blessing indeed. | |||
Stephanie Simon
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