Gold the chemical element with the element symbol Au and ordinal number 79 – only a few metals have played such an influential role in the history of mankind. As an element of sacred heightening, a guarantee of value, and an embellishing material, it has served people for centuries. Gold has always been imbued with a multi-layered spiritual context. The precious metal has engaged alchemists, launched explorers, decided the fate of civilizations, dominated the world economy, and fascinated artists for millennia. Ancient legends about the material have survived into the modern era, cementing the idea of gold as a symbol of power and wealth.
Also for centuries, there has been a close connection with a completely different material, shit. Long before Sigmund Freud’s famous treatise “Character and Anal Eroticism,” in which Freud locates the development of our relationship to money primarily in the anal phase of childhood, shit and gold were closely linked in human perception. The Aztecs called gold the dirt of the gods -Teo cuital, the Babylonians called it the excrement of hell.
How much anality and power are connected in our everyday life is clearly shown in our language. Money, power and excrement are unconsciously associated: the ducat donkey shits gold, people say: “money doesn’t stink”, criminals launder money, want to “cheat” others with it.
