Money & Power, the Spiritual Movement's Pyramid (own work, 2008)
Some important posts on this blog are on the pitfalls associated with Money, Power, the Spiritual Leader, the Pyramid (by which I mean the pyramidical organization of the Spiritual Movement).
After writing these posts, I changed an older sculpture of a bishop figure (I'm a visual artist) into a more disturbing comment on the way that spiritual movements (including religions) tend to function. Because a picture sometimes speaks a thousand words, I'm putting up a photograph of this sculpture.
In the sculpture one sees the Spiritual Leader (or perhaps his Manager?) on top of a dark, mostly opaque Pyramid, which in turn is based on a pedestal/dais-like elevation. The Spiritual Leader is dressed in full regalia, with a silver staff and other attributes of his position. As in the previous post, there is no real humility, here we have the CEO of the Money & Power machine.
If one looks closely, one sees that the Pyramid is filled with Money.
detail of Money & Power, the Spiritual Movement's Pyramid
There were several recent newspaper articles reporting on financial malversations and lack of transparency in a variety of spiritual movements. (To mention one: a long article in a leading Dutch newspaper on the complete lack of transparency regarding the wealth of the Vatican and the catholic church. Wealth which is conservatively estimated in the billions of euros. Yet churchgoers are asked time and again for their financial support, and catholic missionary posts keep asking money for all sorts of projects in the developing world.)
That these issues crop up again and again could cause occasional posts on this blog, even though the main analysis was completed already last September.
