On Gold

Gold!

Gold, the metal, is not universally loved. Gold the metal has been the cause of countless disputes between humans because it is useful and rare, and because we have used it as money across the centuries. Plato warned that all the gold in the world was not worth exchanging for virtue. Kahlil Gibran calls pitiful those who turn their dreams into silver and gold. 

Gold the metal is not inherently all that valuable. The Spanish conquistadors were astonished that the American Indians used it casually and gifted it freely. Several Earth masses of gold are said to have been manufactured by an interstellar collision observed recently.

Mining gold usually creates a toxic mess.The  Rumplestiltskin story comes to mind when you see the cartoon image of a little fellow who is sitting on top of the world with a spinning wheel, proud he has spun all of the worlds’ resources into gold. “Now what do I do?” he wonders. 

In ancient Tibet, powdered gold is tossed to the wind as an offering of renunciation from worldly attachments. Many other holy places humans have built are adorned with the amber colored metal. Perhaps we wish to redeem the negatives associated with gold by donating it to the community place.

The malleability of gold, the metal,  gives it usefulness in creating so many of the accoutrements of modern life, including the device you are reading this on, which contains gold. Gold is the play dough of metals, soft, conductive, easy to use and form.

But we can’t quite dismiss the color, gold, as just another yellow. 

It shines! It reflects light plus it adds warmth. 

The connection to sunshine cannot be dismissed.

There is no denying the beauty of gold. 

Artists employ it to create a sense of beauty and grandeur, people have been banging it into adornments for the body practically forever, and it is a status symbol to use and possess.

My favorite source of the color gold is sun glitter, or the sunlight that is reflected on water. 

I love the golden diamonds sparkling in the morning dew. 

When something is of extraordinary value, we say it is as good as gold. 

A very glorious person is called “golden”.

Another symbolic meaning of gold is purification.

 Jesus tells his followers to get from him gold that has been “tried in the fire”, referring to the process of refining gold from ore by burning away all that is not gold.

Use gold to explore your feelings about wealth, attachment, royalty, sunshine, and beauty.

I wonder if and when we will ever return gold to its place of just being beautiful and useful.