are you worth your weight in gold?

There are two things I really wish I was taught at school: Economics and, being British, Nutrition. Yoga would've been appreciated too.

I recently spent an afternoon in Bogota Colombia at the Gold Museum. An incredible shiny place of a very powerful element: Gold.  It illuminated to me the history of gold and the energy associated with it from days gone by.

It also made me wonder on how the value of gold is perceived today and the irony that we now have pieces of paper that we hold up as value when behind the scenes there's no gold to be seen to represent it. The history of gold before the the Hispanic societies invaded is quite an important observation because therein lies much wisdom of a people's much more attuned to the spirit of nature and the responsibility of those with power.

Gold artefacts were greatly valued by pre-Hispanic societies, because of both the meanings and stories attached to them and the materials, knowledge and skills involved in working them. Many of these objects were therefore repaired by goldsmiths. Some got damaged through the constant use and were remade using wires, bands or rivets, while others which had manufacturing defects, were repaired using new metal pourings or, as in the case of the filigree earrings from the Caribbean Plains, by mending the weave with metal threads.

These Pre-Hispanic gold-working societies developed special ways of understanding the world. With these, they gave order to their surroundings and filled them with symbolic content. These cosmologies answered problems that were central to their existence, such as death, illness, and the meaning of life. Imbued with a profound religious sense, they converted the universe, society and its creations into sacred realities, while establishing a link between man and his ancestors that was essential to the continuity of the traditions.  Metals, particularly gold, symbolised the fertilising powers of the sun and expressed the divine origin of the power held by the rules.

Chieftains, priests and shamans had the responsibility of guarding, transmitting and renewing cosmological representations. Endowed with special sensitivities and skills, they were subjected from childhood to lengthy processes about mythology, sacred plants, astronomy and ritual practices. With their work, gestures and objects as tools, they did a symbolic job, one which transformed the world in order to guarantee not only the wellbeing of society but also that nature would reproduce herself. Alongside them, the technical and at the same time magical work of goldsmiths transformed metals in to objects that had cultural meanings much like the artwork of today.

Because of its colour, intense shine and unchangeability, gold was associated with the sun. Gold ornaments expressed the celestial, divine origin of the rulers power.

The shaman's believed that metal that is transformed by goldsmiths returns to its place of origin. It takes the form of the bird-shaman who flies through the middle, upper and lower worlds and adopts the posture of the seated shaman who, in his hallucinatory trance discovers the secrets of the cosmos and controls the forces of regular life. Metal objects return to the Earth as gifts to the gods. Imbued with profound religious meanings, they are offered up in lakes and caves in order to restore the balance in the world. The metal cycle is thus completed, manipulated by man, it is used by him to manage the universe.

And thus we see the incredible stories attached to gold within ancient civilisations where spirit was at the heart of the matter. What was once an art has since become a commodity of which the craftsmanship of its creation is overlooked in a world of modern day mass consumption.

My Australian friend Jess Miller (who wants to see Australian Politics shaken up) decided to invest her pension in artwork instead of conforming with societal norms of major institutions while another friend of mine, Jamie Stockwood is selling this awesome Banksy piece (on eBay) that if I had walls for, I would love to invest in. Craftsmanship that is commentary on society today.

Gold was once something pure, unchanging and divine in these regions of the world. An art that connected man with the land. It strikes me how much that story has since changed.