Praise the Puppets
It’s almost delightful how sometimes people use the wrong symbols for what they perceive to be the right purpose. Today I ran into a poster advertising a meeting at the local church, a prayer circle for young and vigilant Catholics. They share testimonials, read from the Bible and get high on that dopamine like the average guy suffering from chronic porn fatigue.
No wonder religion was dubbed opium for the masses by Karl Marx. Perhaps unsurprisingly, on the poster we see a young man as a puppet on strings, running. Is he running to join the Jesus camp or away from them? I guess it depends on which side you are. If he’s running to you, you might be someone’s puppet as well. But whatever he’s doing, it’s out of his control. At least, many of them seem to be on a supernatural leash.
These people instill a certain fear in me, because I’ve been there myself and got to know other forms of spiritual collectivism that ocassionally bordered on insanity. Once I took part in a gathering with an Indian charismatic pastor. It was at a time where I had already distanced myself from organised religion, but was tagging along with someone else so I thought I might as well give it a try and see if I’m missing out on something.
Like smoking pot for the first time. If it doesn’t hit you properly, you give it an another go. So I gave it an another go and it worked indeed. The guy was leading a prayer that slowly threw you into a trance-like state where I felt like someone was pushing my head down and my knees on the floor. A fucking cult, that’s what it was. But I managed to pull myself together. This was definitely no longer a place where I wanted to be.
You need to get out of your comfort zone to see just how many crazy people there are. We all have our own sources of spiritual reflection but some are too kooky in comparison to others. I have witnessed that as well, when I first visited Spain and stayed at a castle called Mas Llaneta.
It looked like a combination of Antoni Gaudi and Aladdin, with domes, turrets, spiral staircases and a circular hall in the garden where we gathered in the evening. The estate was built in the 1970s, supposedly as a commune for a sect that eventually fell apart. It felt like vacationing in Disneyland. Or at least its equivalent with a swimming pool and working class hippies.
There are many more desperate puppets out there. During my visit, a group of people attended some kind of a spiritual retreat where the Goop crowd would feel very much at home. I couldn’t help myself so I took a peak into one of their sessions.
Instead of vaginal eggs, there was a giant penis made from rock crystal on a table in the middle of the room. It was rock hard after all. Around the table was a group of people on yoga mats on the floor, performing a leg exercise that resembled a coitus. Judging by it the only thing you can get out of this is a post-coital depression. While they stuck to their vegan diet, the cook would prepare sinfully tasty steaks to satisfy our carnivorous appetites.
Though the bizarre castle does indeed seem like a good destination for a sectarian suicide pact, there are many more places that can provide an out-of-mind experience. In Greece, there was the Pelekiti monastery above lake Plastiras, a labyrinth of chapels carved into a hill and abundantly decorated with frescoes, the interior infused with the fragrance of melting wax and incense.
The morning prayers of monks crawled into your ears like worms nestling in your skull, and the walls seemed to be vibrating with their voices. A transfixing sensation by all means, and the dull, homicidal stare of the saints on the walls aimed at me. If you put your name on a piece of paper, they would be willing to say a prayer for you. Fuck you.
With the dramatic acoustics of the chapels, a karaoke would be much more appropriate than morning prayers. There’s a limit to how much of this you can take and the terrace offered a great view to the Plastiras lake. A relief from the claustrophobic heart of darkness inside.
Religion is the most severe form of seduction that weaponises art as its tool. It created an unprecedented visual language that speaks to those that were yet unable to read or write, telling you all you need to know in order to obey. Sainte chapelle in Paris took this to the peak of perfection, where the interior is wrapped in a seemingly endless narrative in stained glass windows that paints the rays of sunlight in all the colors of the rainbow.
For a while now, a large group of men has been gathering in the main square in Zagreb, on their knees praying for pre-marital purity and resistance to the temptations of women that dare to show their legs or cleavage. It’s become some sort of a Christian pride parade, a public display of devotion to patriarchal ideals that keeps the rest of us vigilant for attempts to rewinding the cultural clock straight back into the Middle Ages. Which is why we can’t afford to ignore it. In America, they outlawed abortion. That might be the tip of the iceberg of restrictions in store for us. Yet those that applaud it don’t know that just maybe, soon they’d be coming for their rights too. And then it will no longer feel like a bad joke.
The wonderful irony of those improvised outdoor churches is that the only lady in presence is the Mother of God, because that’s what those men are about: mommies. Their lives are divided between clinging to their mom’s apron and clinging on to their wives that have long since hanged up the aprons.
It’s a new day, the age of the Working girl. And in specific places, it’s a subtle push to stay in the grind because maternity leave in Switzerland is three months. If you’re a single parent and you need to work, it’s a stunt you can’t pull off without help, so you pay for day care and nannies. Or try and keep your family on good terms to save a few bucks on babysitting. If you need to rely on one of those kneeling morons, you might as well give consider giving it up for adoption.
Maybe it’s time for a new wave of feminism because counter-protests with women against the public displays of affection to fictional women can’t do much. The hashtag movements didn’t really work out that well: now they’re more often than not man-hating witch hunts or activist discourse that the working classes find self-serving and patronising. And they’re probably right.
What’s now slowly creeping in is a new form of opression. But even the Church can’t ignore its misdeeds any longer. Recently, a new molestation case in Croatia prompted them to finally deal with the problem that’s been hiding in plain sight for far too long. Hopefully it will no longer be a taboo, because the wounds need time to heal. Fortunately, it’s never too late for the first step to redemption. That’s our own vigil and we can’t give up. Otherwise they’ll go back to grabbing aprons until there are none left. Which might be sooner than they expect. Even a hurricane takes time, its wrath leaving a burning, permanent scar.
