Probably the most iconic Pillar in Christianity is the Colonna di San Marco in the Piazetta of Saint Mark's Square in Venice. The column was one of 3 which were looted from Constantinople in the 12th Century. One of them fell into the Adriatic on the voyage back. The other - the Colonna di Todaro - stands next to the Column of St. Mark. Exactly how many heretics and other criminals of dogma were murdered at the base of these two pillories is a closely guarded Church Secret. Every Eurocity had its pillory - big cities like Rome had groups of them spread out thru the neighborhoods in Parish churchyards - they served as both a memorial and a warning.

Alchemy is about work that starts in the dark. Nietzsche said: "Out of the lowest the highest reaches its peak." I found that quote in an article on the symbolism of shit in alchemy, religion, and art. The goal may be in the light but the birth of the Opus is always in the dark. And so we gathered for the installation mission.

Zero-Dark-30am, the installation crew gathers for the mission briefing at the atelier. In the background you can see Officer Bob signing off on the permits. Hitching-up in the moist dark is a sensual kick for Adventure Theologians. Snake Eyes in the cool fog of morning near a big lake the artist's caravan crests a hill.

In the village we set to work in near silence. By the fall of 2001, Kenny La Roche had 6 years of practice in on-site discipline. Everyone knows his or her part. The hole to step the Pillar in had been pre-dug so we had simply to roll the piece up to the lip and let the base slip naturally into the warm earth. There is an erotic tinge to Alchemy and its related arts which cannot be denied - nor would we want to.

A Pillar, in world mythology, can also be a boundary marker for a ritual or ceremonial world center, what the Greeks called an Omphalos - a word which has both the sense of navel as well as phallus. The Pole itself is often seen as god standing firm in the midst of human changings.

When the Pillar is composed of either fire or its product smoke the idea conveys the actual presence of god. A broken pillar or column is a Momento Mori - a reminder of death. A Pillar crowned with a human head marks a terminus, a boundary. When the Pillar is surmounted by doves then the Magna Mater herself is present. Crows mean she's pissed off.

Pooler and I were in Padua, in Italy, for lunch - just passing thru. He was trying to get Skippy to change his name to Benito Krassi and to take up Futurism. Pooler celebrates powerful gasoline engines and angular momentum. He has made motion his religion and dynamism its creed. He gives not a rat's ass that Futurism always leads to fascism. Like Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, he sings of great crowds excited by riot and the "polyphonic tides of revolution, & electric moons, factories hung from clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke and deep-chested locomotives pawing the tracks." He dreams of "man mutiplied by the motor and the destruction of syntax." Marinetti used to scream at his audiences: "There's a crack in your empty head and the air whistles thru it."