Adoration of the Golden Calf

The Adoration of the Golden Calf – image from the 

Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg 

(12th century)

 

I.

 

According to the Book of Exodus [1], the golden calf was a cult idol made by the Israelites when Moses was for forty days and nights at Mount Sinai being entrusted with a ten point list of commandments inscribed by YHWH himself on two tablets of stone. 

 

To be fair, slipping back into bull worship is tempting at the best of times - even when, ironically, the very first two of the above commandments read: Thou shalt have no other gods before me and Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. 

 

Unfortunately, six weeks is a long time for a fanatically religious people to be left without an idol to worship and, fearing Moses might never return, they convinced his brother, Aaron, to make them such. And so Aaron constructed a golden calf and an altar to place before it, declaring: This is your god, O Israel!       

 

Before long, the people were making burnt offerings to their new deity and feasting and dancing in front of the lustrous bull. Happy days ...!   

 

Yahweh, of course, soon discovered what was going on and was not best pleased; he told Moses that he intended to destroy the Israelites. Fortunately, Moses was able to persuade God to be merciful. But when he returned from the mountain and saw the golden calf, Moses found himself in a rage and threw down the Tablets of Stone, breaking them on the ground. 

 

Further, he burnt the golden calf, ground it to powder, mixed this with water, and then forced the Israelites to drink up.   

 

 

II.

 

What has this biblical story got to do with us today? 

 

Quite a lot if, like Jordan Peterson, you passionately believe that such tales still have things of vital importance to teach us; warning, for example, as this tale does, about the dangers of false gods, materialism, and hedonistic self-gratification [2].   

 

If, however, like me, you're not quite so exercised about these things - viewing Abrahamic religions to be far more dangerous in their idealism, self-denial, and claims to absolute Truth than false gods, etc. - then probably not so much. 

I've never seen a golden calf - and certainly never worshipped one. And when I hear mention of the golden calf, I don't think of the ancient Jews messing around in Egypt. I think, rather, of the bohemian set who used to frequent the notorious London nightclub called The Cave of the Golden Calf ... 

Opened in the summer of 1912 by the Austrian writer Frida Strindberg - wife of the famous Swedish playwright - The Cave of the Golden Calf was the last gasp of late-19th century decadence, as epitomised by Oscar Wilde and his gang of aesthetes (i.e., young men who liked to wear nail varnish and drink iced champagne or sip absinthe in order to see the world as they wished to see it, for a short while at least). 

 

Located in the basement of 3-9 Heddon Street, in Mayfair, it was a favourite haunt of aristos, artists, and intellectuals trying to recreate a European caberet vibe. It was decorated by the painter Spencer Gore, with contributions by Jacob Epstein and Wyndham Lewis. Sculptor Eric Gill, meanwhile, designed the club's motif; a phallic Golden Calf - symbol of biblical dissipation and idolatry.

 

Regular guests of the establishment included many of the usual suspects; Ezra Pound, Katherine Mansfield, Ford Maddox Ford, Augustus John, et al. I can't imagine, however, that it would've been the kind of place that D. H. Lawrence would have been happy in, even if he was friendly with several of the above.  

 

The Cave of the Golden Calf - a place given up to gaiety - closed its doors shortly before the outbreak of war in 1914; not as a response to the seriousness of the times, but because it went bankrupt, Mme. Strindberg heading West to the States and leaving a trail of debts behind her. 

 

Today, members of the LGBT community claim The Cave of the Golden Calf as the prototype of London's gay bars and clubs and the site is home to one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants.      

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Exodus 32: click here for the version found in the King James Bible. 

 

[2] Peterson - wearing his amazing(ly ugly) dreamcoat - insists that worshippers of the golden calf were "dancing around naked, drunk" and describes what went on as a "Pride parade" (i.e., the surrendering to immature instincts). Click here to watch a six minute video on YouTube in which Peterson shares his thoughts (with Russell Brand) on the story of the golden calf. 

On Dropping the Dead Lion: A Tale of Rebranding and the Secularisation of Contemporary Culture

Before (good) and After (bad)

 

 

I. Opening Remarks

 

The recent hoo-ha surrounding the decision by Lyle's to remove their iconic dead lion logo from its Golden Syrup in a rebranding effort that is intended to broaden its appeal amongst a younger generation of shoppers and avoid causing any possible offence, reminds us of two things: firstly, just how feeble-minded some of those working in marketing and brand promotion can be and, secondly, just how deeply disturbing is the Bible story upon which the original design was based.  

 

Let's discuss each of these points in turn ...

 

 

II. What Were Those Idiots in Marketing Thinking? 

 

Actually, thanks to press releases and statements made on social media, we have a very good idea of the thinking that shaped Brand Director James Whitley's decision to abandon 140 years of history and replace the world's oldest food logo [1] with a heavily stylised but soulless image which reminds one of Disney's Lion King [2] rather than Samson's heroic exploits in the Book of Judges. 

 

This obsession with refreshing the legacy and moving with the times in order to remain relevant to a modern audience has resulted in a number of disastrous decisions over the years; just ask the rebranding geniuses at Tropicana, for example [3]. 

 

And so, whilst I'm not opposed to change and happily acknowledge that, when done well, rebranding can help bring in new customers and dramatically increase sales, the fact remains that it involves more than shitting on your own past and designing a friendlier logo. You have to produce a strong new narrative in place of the old one and simply telling people that your product meets their current needs and remains an affordabe treat doesn't really cut it.     

 

As Mr Whitley and his team at Lyle's have now discovered, when attempting to rebrand a long-established and much-loved product you run the risk of losing more than you gain. And when, as in this case, rebranding seems to be driven by a certain woke sensibility, it can quickly lead to a PR disaster.

   

III. What Were Those Old Testament Lunatics Thinking?

 

The Scottish food manufacturer Abram Lyle (1820-1891) was, first and foremost, a deeply religious man. An elder of the Presbyterian Church, he was also a strict teetotaller and would proudly tell people that he'd sooner have a son of his carried home dead than drunk.

 

So it's perhaps not surprising that he would choose to give reference to an Old Testament narrative on his tins of Golden Syrup ... 

 

The story he chose - in which the superhumanly strong Samson kills a young lion with his bare hands - is, I have to admit, not one I was very familiar with until news broke of the rebranding exercise discussed above. 

 

But now I'm a lttle obsessed with the story, in all its horror ...

 

Returning to the scene of this lion-killing some time later, Samson discovers that a swarm of bees have built a hive in the animal's carcass [4]. Having tasted the honey made by the bees, Samson decides to take some home as a gift for his parents (although he doesn't reveal to them the origin of the honey).  

 

Shortly after, Samson decides (at God's bidding, but against his parents wishes) to marry a Philistine woman and, at the wedding feast, he challenges a large group of guests on the bride's side to work out what it is that he refers to in the following riddle: 

 

Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness [5].  

 

Obviously, it's impossible for them to guess as the riddle is based upon Samson's own experience. However, after threatening her with extreme violence, they force his new bride to obtain the answer for them (which she does by begging her husband to be let in on the secret). 

 

The guests then reveal to Samson they know the answer and, having lost the wager made, Samson is obliged to provide them all with new clothes. 

 

But, being a sore loser and a schizophrenic prone to auditory hallucinations that he believes to be the voice of Yahweh, rather than simply donate items from his own wardrobe or pay for some new garments, Samson murders thirty Philistines, strips the corpses, and hands the clothes over to those who solved his riddle.

 

Angered by his wife's betrayal (as he sees it), Samson decides to return to his own family and hand the woman over to his best man to do with as he will. 

 

It is, I trust readers will agree, a shocking tale; one involving cruelty, divine madness, deceit, extortion under threat of violence, racism, and mass murder. 

 

I know these things are not uncommon in the Bible, but, even so, they're probably not topics you want to be reminded of when pouring syrup on your pancakes in the morning, which makes me think that perhaps James Whitely and his rebranding team at Lyle's were justified after all in dropping the dead lion logo and that the secularisation of contemporary culture is a good thing (even if it results in a more boring, disenchanted world).       

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Golden Syrup's green tin featuring a dead lion surrounded by a swarm of bees, has - until now - remained pretty much the same since the product first launched in the early 1880s and holds the Guinness World Record for the world's oldest unchanged brand packaging. 

 

[2] The rebrand will take place across the full product range, excluding the classic Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin, which will retain its original identity and logo. This is called hedging your bets (and it's probably not a bad idea).  

 

[3] Tropicana is an American fruit juice company. Founded in 1947, it soon became an internationally recognisable brand. In 2009, however, the powers-that-be at Tropicana decided to radically simplify the design of their cartons sold in the US. Unfortunately, this move was not well received and after two months of negative consumer reaction - and a 20% drop in sales - they switched back to the original design of an orange skewered by a drinking straw.

 

[4] Samson's discovery of a beehive in the lion's dead body obviously lacks natural realism; bees would normally avoid rotting flesh. However, it's been suggested by those looking to get around this fact that the word usually translated as carcass might more accurately be read as skeleton. 

      Unfortunately, I'm not sure that really helps matters and I think it's probably wisest to view this incident as just one more miraculous occurrence in the Bible - albeit one informed perhaps by the ancient belief in spontaneous generation, i.e., the emergence of living creatures from nonliving matter.

 

[5] Judges 14:14 - click here to read this chapter in full (KJV). This astonishing line has been open to multiple interpretations. For me, it sounds like something Zarathustra might have said and one is reminded of Nietzsche's view that virtue is born of strength.   

 

 

Moloch

18thC German depiction of Moloch

During a memorial Mass for the murdered French priest, 85-year-old Father Jacques Hamel, the Archbishop of Paris accused the young men responsible of crying Allahu Akbar in order to disguise the fact that they actually worship at the altar of Moloch - the ancient pagan deity who gloried in human sacrifice.

Essentially an Old Testament take on the official line that acts of Islamic terrorism have nothing to do with Islam, Cardinal Vingt-Trois told the faithful not to be fooled by these self-proclaimed jihadists, whilst warning the latter that those who wish to serve and promulgate a god of death - one who demands bloodshed and promises paradise to those who slay the innocent - cannot expect all of humanity to surrender to their madness. In the face of evil, he concluded, Christians must do what they've always done; spread the Gospel of Jesus and find their strength, their courage, and their salvation in Almighty God, the God of Love.

   

Of course, this is as mendacious as everything else that comes out of the mouth of a religiously motivated speaker. For acts of Islamic terrorism have everything to do with Islam and, more widely, with Abrahamic monotheism in general; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are apocalyptic spiritual traditions with a common origin and they share many beliefs, traditions, and moral teachings.

And so, just as there is very little difference between Yahweh and Allah - both are judgemental and jealous gods who demand submission and sacrifice from their followers - there is genuine theological kinship and continuity between the God of Love worshipped by the Archbishop of Paris and the Canaanite idol known as Moloch.

Indeed, reviving a medieval rabbinical tradition, both Georg Friedrich Daumer and Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany published influential works in 1841 arguing that Moloch and Yahweh were actually one and the same figure and that the cult of the latter developed out of that of the former. 

It's probably best, therefore, that Cardinal Vingt-Trois doesn't say anything else along this line in future; 'cos he's on a very slippery slope. Modern followers of the major religions are essentially no different from ancient pagans with their savage superstitions. Muslims and Christians, for example, are often just as willing to martyr themselves for their gods (and to kill others) without ever asking - or even caring - whether their gods are worthy of such fanatic devotion.

Bertrand Russell - not a philosopher I would normally turn to for support - sums this up nicely in the following paragraph:

"Pathetic and very terrible is the long history of cruelty and torture, of degradation and human sacrifice, endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods ... The religion of Moloch - as such creeds may be generically called - is in essence the cringing submission of the slave, who dare not, even in his heart, allow the thought that his master deserves no adulation. Since the independence of ideals is not yet acknowledged, Power may be freely worshipped, and receive an unlimited respect, despite its wanton infliction of pain."

- Bertrand Russell, 'A Free Man's Worship' (1903)