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| 'The Worship of Mammon' - by British Pre-Raphaelite Evelyn De Morgan, 1909 |
"Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things."
In the New Testament of the Bible, greed is personified by Mammon - a demon - who is sometimes elevated to the exalted position of one of the Seven Princes of Hell (what's with the number seven, anyway?). Dante, too, believed that there was a circle of hell especially designed for those who had been avaricious and wasteful in their lifetimes - within this circle, the fourth by Dante's reckoning, the souls were divided into two teams - those who had hoarded their wealth and those who had squandered it. These teams were locked, for eternity, in a great joust with great weights that they must push with their chests.
In the New Testament of the Bible, greed is personified by Mammon - a demon - who is sometimes elevated to the exalted position of one of the Seven Princes of Hell (what's with the number seven, anyway?). Dante, too, believed that there was a circle of hell especially designed for those who had been avaricious and wasteful in their lifetimes - within this circle, the fourth by Dante's reckoning, the souls were divided into two teams - those who had hoarded their wealth and those who had squandered it. These teams were locked, for eternity, in a great joust with great weights that they must push with their chests.
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| Gustav Dore's engraving, showing the joust with rocks. |
One of the most famous of all greedy men must be the legendary King Midas, of Greek mythology. Everything he touched (with his hands) turned to gold, including his hapless daughter.
Greed, in the animal kingdom, could be well represented by the dragon sitting on her mound of gold (think of Smaug, from Tolkien's 'Hobbit', or the thieving magpie, driven by desire for as many shiny things as he can get his beak onto.
Each time I have considered both this post and the yarn to come I'm hit by one word: BLING. Once a term confined to hip-hop culture the word bling (an ideophone of the sound of light hitting silver or other sparkly stuff, supposedly) has made its way into mainstream culture, having been added into the Oxford English dictionary in 2002 and the Merriam Webster in 2006.
Greed, in the animal kingdom, could be well represented by the dragon sitting on her mound of gold (think of Smaug, from Tolkien's 'Hobbit', or the thieving magpie, driven by desire for as many shiny things as he can get his beak onto.
Each time I have considered both this post and the yarn to come I'm hit by one word: BLING. Once a term confined to hip-hop culture the word bling (an ideophone of the sound of light hitting silver or other sparkly stuff, supposedly) has made its way into mainstream culture, having been added into the Oxford English dictionary in 2002 and the Merriam Webster in 2006.
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| Smaug, as imagined by Canadian illustrator John Howe, who is most famous for his works alongside Peter Jackson on the Lord of the Rings trilogy and as a consultant on the in-progress Hobbit movies. |
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