Bible CAMP: MAYHEM Requiem

[bxr 2,165]

On 5/23/2026 at 9:32 AM, Apec said:

I need to answer here too... I have always found BJ+AF to be such an incredibly fascinating song (a bonus track even!) because it's supposedly about her background and coming-of-age yet centers on not only worldly but spiritual change the whole way through, the line that embodies the entire song for me has always been the one you quoted, “concrete poetry to feed my mind, old symbolism was left behind", embedded in a song in which she indeed centers a notion many Westerners still find too radical: That Jesus, geographically, would never be white, but darker in skin tone merely JUST CANNOT BE according to so many because of dogma. He needs to look like "us" to be acceptable. 

This hints at much deeper developments for her younger self: that the symbolic nature of this concept meant that all her received religious notions were on shaky foundations and while she yearned for truth and freedom, her mind needed community and liturgy, but in thinking for herself she rejected dogma and the discovery of such free ecstasy AND secular freedom (as it were) must've meant a lot to a young person trying to rhyme seeming contradictions (belief, ecstasy and liturgy making you feel more connected to humanity as well as divinity while organized religion has and still spreads misogyny, homophobia and further "others", marginalizes/scapegoats and has incredibly painful skeletons in its closet that came out even more as she grew up)... Seeing that she could integrate both profane openness of thought/sheer kindness and strenghten religious texts and ecstasy about loving, grace and humanity's inability to "throw the first stone" must've been the second layer to this song and why she chose "Black Jesus" to represent a song about her growing up and thus also about expanding her mind.

The incredible feat to turn said tools of oppression in either ways of self-expression and identity, using tools of subjugation and either defang them or use them to show survival or even dominance in a MV (I talked more at length about my views in a previous post) was masterful. But that rosary was indeed the key to understanding nearly all that came next: I've always seen it as HER portal, as it were, to her ever-evolving thinking. You put it beautifully, that the deconstruction and digesting of said rosary signals her already blossoming but finally integrated views: "loving thy neighbor" isn't an exclusionary idea ever and is even inextricably bound to "loving thyself". As you put so eloquently: "This type of “vanity,” which would previously have been decried as heretical by the patriarchal church becomes sacred self-manifestation of the divine through self-expression and compassion (“letting your own light shine…[gives] others permission to do the same”). Non-dualism shows up more and more in her work, a fascinating tightrope.

A trove of intrigue throughout the abovementioned, but/and particularly the revisitation of Black Jesus † Amen Fashion … the story within the song always feels like a sphinx hidden in plain sight … you explore the record‘s eponymous duality quite beautifully … somewhere at the locus of the existing dichotomy (Black Jesus, Amen Fashion) and evolving into this blossoming integration with the rosary and a certain portal into divine feminine / sacred matriarch embodied consciousness … I was just thinking of The Black Madonna (Monsterrat, Czestochowa, etc.), and am really curious wondering where / how / if you see any narrative association … ?

Hope you‘re resting well!

Spoiler

Also 

[T]he line that embodies the entire song for me has always been the one you quoted, “concrete poetry to feed my mind, old symbolism was left behind", embedded in a song in which she indeed centers a notion many Westerners still find too radical: That Jesus, geographically, would never be white, but darker in skin tone merely JUST CANNOT BE according to so many because of dogma. He needs to look like "us" to be acceptable. 

 

[bxr 2,165]

On 5/24/2026 at 2:34 PM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

This sense of the “iconoclassic” reminds me of one of the ways in which Warhol’s (admittedly nihilistic) sense of postmodernity actually holds space for the sacred: Warhol discusses how, as a child, when his parents took him to church, he experienced profound aesthetic arrest at the icons of the saints, the Virgin Mary, and Christ in the statues and stained glass windows. These experiences he describes as formative to his own conception of the deification of pop cultural figures as these impressionistic archetypes and icons from which he derived a similar sense of aesthetic arrest. I do also think, in his own trickster way, Warhol’s nihilism was perhaps his own version of leveling the Cathedral by decentralizing conventional objects of worship, opening the door for the ruins to be inspected and interrogated to see what they were really made of.

The difference, and the way in which I think Gaga is truer to that ethos than Warhol ever was, is that Gaga’s sense of iconic and iconoclastic was always intertwined with a sense of the ecstatic: icons are not figures that live behind the glass at a museum, in the tabernacle of the church, or behind the sheen of a TV screen, icons (religious, pop cultural, political) become a discursive psychic force that animates our behavior, help us to interrogate and actualize ourselves, and, by extension, help us arrive at beliefs and principles around which we organize our understanding of the world and our role in it.

Taking it further, the way that Gaga revolutionized that process was by asserting that icons are not idle constructs emerging from the ether, but are actively forged (or born, should I say) through cultural, historical, and political dialectics. By becoming an icon openly engaged in conversation surrounding the nature of icons, iconoclasm, and the social/cultural/historical/political forces that animate them (and us, by extension), she becomes a figure that functions almost like a lens for her audience: a way for them to see their own agency through the nature of her own self-invention and a way for them to understand all of the potential avenues for self-invention through the scope of her omnivorous cultural and intellectual attitudes and also a force that, through it’s own synthesis of its own relationship to its context in culture et al, both becomes aware of itself, the world in which it lives, and its relationship to it, she provides a sublimated experiential blueprint for the individual, through the initially mediated lens of the icon, to become agentic within that same matrix.

The Andy insights, the native cultural context … the “way for them to see their own agency through the nature of her own self-invention and a way for them to understand all of the potential avenues for self-invention through the scope of her omnivorous cultural and intellectual attitudes and also a force that, through it’s own synthesis of its own relationship to its context in culture et al, both becomes aware of itself, the world in which it lives, and its relationship to it, she provides a sublimated experiential blueprint for the individual, through the initially mediated lens of the icon, to become agentic within that same matrix.”  

A brief first blush on the blink, the Pittsburgh / Parochial intersection surfaced with immediate significance … and it underscores this postmodernist triptych (maybe an expansion or adaptation of the Hall / Warhol scale), that finds a certain significance in the native or creative source of zeitgeist pop iconography … Warhol feels industry-adjacent (which, in its own way (The Factory, etc.) seems to naturally reflect Pittsburgh‘s Steel City industrial DNA in production, and the presentation / aesthetic philosophy reads, to your point, tantamount to religious imagery), the icon‘s native creative source is industrial; here, Hall feels culture-adjacent, the discursive significance of the icon is rooted in the people and the cultural identity of the audience participants (which might echo the working class anchor in Caribbean and British mass / pop culture); and Gaga’s native creative source within that zeitgeist pop icon scope feels inherently rooted in the personal—your person (your spirit, your soul, your spark)—is the source of that postmodern pop iconography / zeitgeist icon identity (which, to the point of * gestures broadly at Marry the Night, et. al. * engages with the New York City genome) … so, something felt resonant within the industrial-cultural-personal postmodern icon triptych

Your lucid insights into the admittedly nihilistic approach‘s capacity for the sacred, for some reason, just called to the surface the word: void … the apparent vacuum of a nihilistic world cipher or sense of conventional significance as a fundamental nonentity, reminded me of the philosophical “void” as this mysterious essential source singularity … so, heading toward the admittedly more abstract, but for the sake of why not … Musashi, in particular, on the front …

Spoiler

What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void. People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment. […] Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void. In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.

… but then, with the further progression into process revolution, Lao Tzu just felt resonant at the root in that Way … possibly because the icon is also defined in its elementary function as subject of the sacred to direct the audience to the supernal (whereas the idol, for instance, is the end to reverence / devotion / allegiance to the object of itself) … there was a sense of the icon as, to your note, the way (to / through the Way / Tao … ?) … but, fundamentally here, was just this element of nihilism as this essential nothingness, but/and that as the essential source of, everything … ? so, maybe the icon establishing its identity (whether industrial, cultural, personal, etc.) from that void of the unknown, it‘s that mysterious nexus of ineffable creation … the spark from pitch darkness … but/and culturally, that could also reflect the emergence of stellar icons amidst cultural dark ages … dawn from darkness, or something to said effect … 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

4

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.

5
The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.

The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the center.

6
The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.

It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.

7
The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.

The Master stays behind;
that is why she is ahead.
She is detached from all things;
that is why she is one with them.
Because she has let go of herself,
she is perfectly fulfilled.

So much to consider: a sequel! 

Edited May 26 by bxr

[Ladle Ghoulash 52,855]

On 5/20/2026 at 11:08 AM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

swallowing of the rosary beads: it becomes a theatrical depiction of consuming, digesting, and breaking down received symbology to arrive at its essential meaning, which is the only point at which it can be truly appropriated and put into practice.

Interesting to see such a crude depiction of this concept and a version that I think is genuinely more heretical than what Gaga did. Consumption of knowledge with no interest in substance, only in perceived proximity to power

 

[Ladle Ghoulash 52,855]

@****oDanceFightHello, sister 👼

[PornoDanceFight 1,991]

3 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

@****oDanceFightHello, sister 👼

Oh let me catch up on the reading today...!

[Ladle Ghoulash 52,855]

On 5/20/2026 at 11:08 AM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Extending the ethos of that reading beyond BR’s personal rebellion into collective rebellion actually makes the bond between Gaga and her gay army in the Alejandro MV all the more potent- the dynamic becomes a shared, intersectional struggle between women and the gay (and broader LGBTQ+) community against hegemonic masculinity and the patriarchy as embodied through received notions of religion as the language and codification of real world power, which makes the use of the symbols not just hollow vectors for controversy, but rather a real world power struggle for the nexus at which icons and meaning become power, who gets to determine the meaning, and who has the power.

That power struggle and desire for liberatory myth making also serves as a great lead into the birthing of a new race born without prejudice in the BTW video: the point at which the deconstructed and digested rosary is metabolized into an evolved understanding that “loving thy neighbor,” for example, is not exclusive in practice and that it is, as Gaga asserts through her intersectional cross-section through the lyrics of BTW, not separate from “loving thyself.” This type of “vanity,” which would previously have been decried as heretical by the patriarchal church becomes sacred self-manifestation of the divine through self-expression and compassion (“letting your own light shine…[gives] others permission to do the same”).

By extension, the BTW MV feels like the nucleus of Gaga’s pop spiritual ethos: the articulation of how creation, the divine feminine, and a sort of metaphysical queerness through the rejection of received hierarchies and roles are essential and intrinsic parts of all life which are made manifest, not just in the process of being physically born, but extend into the psychic realm of self-determination, self-expression, and identity (which, in this context, feels like the fulfillment of the spiritual process begun through the desecration of the false altar of patriarchy in the BR video) and a process which we are not merely objects of, but participant subjects articulating and shaping the world through self-chosen roles in a religious mythic symbology of their own creation/reappropriation.
 

The way in which the video also decanters the othering binary of good/evil, sacred/profane etc. which is so often the origin of the scapegoating of out groups by those in power (in this case: the hegemonic masculine apex) through Gaga accepting and embodying the roles of Mother/Messiah, Goddess/Devil, creation/destruction, paves the way for the non-dualism completed by the synthesis of EtherealGa and the Mistress in TAOPC. 

Circling back to this: thinking about the Alejandro video, is it not possible that there are two Gagas in this video (the imperious, fascistic overlord and the devout nun who surrenders herself to her army) and that those two are in fact both the Eternal Mother and the Mother of Evil (who are potentially the prototypes of Ethereal Gaga and the Mistress of MAYHEM)? When you consider the fascistic posturing of the evil queen Gaga in the Alejandro video in the context of the ethos of the Mother of Evil (“How could I protect something so good without evil?”) and the nun Gaga deep in the belly of the castle/fortress praying and communing with her allies…idk it makes a certain kind of intuitive sense and, to me, further suggests a correlation and connection between those videos.

Rewatching the video for the first time in a while- notable relative to the theory of Alejandro/Fernando/Roberto as Father/Son/Holy Spirit: Nun Gaga prays and reaches to the sky when saying, “Stop, please, just let me go Alejandro! Just let me go!”

There’s also definitely a sense of integration in the video, as, through the violent sexual scenes and sexual initiation, the lines between what are (potentially two characters) blurs into one as Nun Gaga approaches the moment of swallowing the rosary (accepting EvilGa/MAYHEM’s proposition to abandon received notions of religion and forge her own way, taking in both the essence of faith, but also the ethos of evil as rebellion). Potentially meaningful as a tie-in between Alejandro and BTW that NunGa’s face evaporates/melts at the end: signals transformation?

Edited May 29 by Ladle Ghoulash

[bxr 2,165]

@Ladle Ghoulash Going to circle back on the Alejandro video spin, but/and, while it‘s on the radar … conceptually considering, in proximal context: summer to the right of them, zombie to the left of them … canon time again! a dialectic … and the optics on first blink

[bxr 2,165]

1 hour ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Circling back to this: thinking about the Alejandro video, is it not possible that there are two Gagas in this video (the imperious, fascistic overlord and the devout nun who surrenders herself to her army) and that those two are in fact both the Eternal Mother and the Mother of Evil (who are potentially the prototypes of Ethereal Gaga and the Mistress of MAYHEM)? When you consider the fascistic posturing of the evil queen Gaga in the Alejandro video in the context of the ethos of the Mother of Evil (“How could I protect something so good without evil?”) and the nun Gaga deep in the belly of the castle/fortress praying and communing with her allies…idk it makes a certain kind of intuitive sense and, to me, further suggests a correlation and connection between those videos.

Rewatching the video for the first time in a while- notable relative to the theory of Alejandro/Fernando/Roberto as Father/Son/Holy Spirit: Nun Gaga prays and reaches to the sky when saying, “Stop, please, just let me go Alejandro! Just let me go!”

There’s also definitely a sense of integration in the video, as, through the violent sexual scenes and sexual initiation, the lines between what are (potentially two characters) blurs into one as Nun Gaga approaches the moment of swallowing the rosary (accepting EvilGa/MAYHEM’s proposition to abandon received notions of religion and forge her own way, taking in both the essence of faith, but also the ethos of evil as rebellion). Potentially meaningful as a tie-in between Alejandro and BTW that NunGa’s face evaporates/melts at the end: signals transformation?

A reFRESH! So, reverse chronologically, blink on first blush—the BTW coup imperial instant callback … just, wow … considered from the cadence of Alejandro’s Monster Martyr seguing into BTW‘s Mother Monster … the unironic incorporation of a government-adjacent cultural entity … in echo context of the 2007 music government causerie … the commitment to narrative continuity—the professionalism, and paradigms!

Spoiler

“There is a musical government, who decides what we all get to hear and listen to. And I want to be one of those people.” The girl who said that didn’t yet have the number-one hits (although she had already written most of them). She was not yet the creative director of the Haus of Gaga, which is what she calls the machine of more than a hundred creative people who work for her. She didn’t make that statement in an interview or from the stage. She made it in 2007, when she was a go-go dancer sewing her own outfits and I was her DJ. She wrote it in one of my notebooks.

· · · 

This is the manifesto of Mother Monster
On G.O.A.T.
A Government Owned Alien Territory in space
A birth of magnificent and magical proportions took place
But the birth was not finite
It was infinite …

Spoiler

  

As the wombs numbered
And the mitosis of the future began
It was perceived that this infamous moment in life is not temporal
It is eternal
And thus began the beginning of the new race
A race within the race of humanity
A race which bears no prejudice
No judgment
But boundless freedom
But on that same day
As the eternal mother hovered in the multiverse
Another more terrifying birth took place
The birth of evil
And as she herself split into two
Rotating in agony between two ultimate forces
The pendulum of choice began its dance
It seems easy, you imagine
To gravitate instantly and unwaveringly towards good
But she wondered
"How can I protect something so perfect without evil?"

 

Your insights reminded me of the space around the video‘s premiere back in the day … I wasn‘t planning on writing about the video at the time, but someone prompted an interpretation; so I remember watching it once and compiling a somewhat pastiche stream-of-consciousness capture … as always, some aspects aged with stronger continuity than others (no mistakes, just happy accidents—conceptually speaking ), but the duality you illustrate seems to draw a dialogue with the monarch / martyr makeshift or emergent matriarchal dialectic … 

Spoiler

The tone  2010 was a time to be alive (Stylization maintained for texture; re: GG)

 

I hadn‘t thought about it before, but the BTW intro costume has a somewhat inverse adjacence to Alejandro‘s nun in the closing scene—the Joan of Arc aesthetic takes a cosmic inversion … or, the silhouette of the red cross on the Alejandro gown / cape feels paralleled in the black cross on the BTW manifesto coif—live and dye as free …

[Ladle Ghoulash 52,855]

6 minutes ago, bxr said:

A reFRESH! So, reverse chronologically, blink on first blush—the BTW coup imperial instant callback … just, wow … considered from the cadence of Alejandro’s Monster Martyr seguing into BTW‘s Mother Monster … the unironic incorporation of a government-adjacent cultural entity … in echo context of the 2007 music government causerie … the commitment to narrative continuity—the professionalism, and paradigms!

  Reveal hidden contents

“There is a musical government, who decides what we all get to hear and listen to. And I want to be one of those people.” The girl who said that didn’t yet have the number-one hits (although she had already written most of them). She was not yet the creative director of the Haus of Gaga, which is what she calls the machine of more than a hundred creative people who work for her. She didn’t make that statement in an interview or from the stage. She made it in 2007, when she was a go-go dancer sewing her own outfits and I was her DJ. She wrote it in one of my notebooks.

· · · 

This is the manifesto of Mother Monster
On G.O.A.T.
A Government Owned Alien Territory in space
A birth of magnificent and magical proportions took place
But the birth was not finite
It was infinite …

  Reveal hidden contents

  

As the wombs numbered
And the mitosis of the future began
It was perceived that this infamous moment in life is not temporal
It is eternal
And thus began the beginning of the new race
A race within the race of humanity
A race which bears no prejudice
No judgment
But boundless freedom
But on that same day
As the eternal mother hovered in the multiverse
Another more terrifying birth took place
The birth of evil
And as she herself split into two
Rotating in agony between two ultimate forces
The pendulum of choice began its dance
It seems easy, you imagine
To gravitate instantly and unwaveringly towards good
But she wondered
"How can I protect something so perfect without evil?"

 

Your insights reminded me of the space around the video‘s premiere back in the day … I wasn‘t planning on writing about the video at the time, but someone prompted an interpretation; so I remember watching it once and compiling a somewhat pastiche stream-of-consciousness capture … as always, some aspects aged with stronger continuity than others (no mistakes, just happy accidents—conceptually speaking ), but the duality you illustrate seems to draw a dialogue with the monarch / martyr makeshift or emergent matriarchal dialectic … 

  Reveal hidden contents

The tone  2010 was a time to be alive (Stylization maintained for texture; re: GG)

 

I hadn‘t thought about it before, but the BTW intro costume has a somewhat inverse adjacence to Alejandro‘s nun in the closing scene—the Joan of Arc aesthetic takes a cosmic inversion … or, the silhouette of the red cross on the Alejandro gown / cape feels paralleled in the black cross on the BTW manifesto coif—live and dye as free …

Amazing (genuinely) how similar of a wavelength we are on here: seems like you always have a relevant (and, as always, excellently written) piece from the archive to share! I had never seen that government quote in particular, but between that and her overt discussion of religious aesthetic reappropriation, it’s remarkable how much of her meta aesthetic narrativizing tends to fly under the radar when it’s such a rich and important piece of her pop theatrical project. The GOAT callback also kind of clicked for me that the BTWB really does seem to be begin to take shape between the BR and Alejandro video with her breaking free from her captors, establishing her own revolutionary guard/regime, seizing the levers of power and control for her own gain, acting as her own government with it’s own moral imperative…

Also: FWIW I genuinely think your work on Gaga is absolutely worth publishing in print if that’s something you’ve ever considered. 

[gagacabana 7,432]

1 minute ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

I genuinely think your work on Gaga is absolutely worth publishing in print if that’s something you’ve ever considered. 

I've been saying this to her!!! The world needs the bxr archive compilation collection book(s)!! 

[Apec 284]

20 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Circling back to this: thinking about the Alejandro video, is it not possible that there are two Gagas in this video (the imperious, fascistic overlord and the devout nun who surrenders herself to her army) and that those two are in fact both the Eternal Mother and the Mother of Evil (who are potentially the prototypes of Ethereal Gaga and the Mistress of MAYHEM)? When you consider the fascistic posturing of the evil queen Gaga in the Alejandro video in the context of the ethos of the Mother of Evil (“How could I protect something so good without evil?”) and the nun Gaga deep in the belly of the castle/fortress praying and communing with her allies…idk it makes a certain kind of intuitive sense and, to me, further suggests a correlation and connection between those videos.

Rewatching the video for the first time in a while- notable relative to the theory of Alejandro/Fernando/Roberto as Father/Son/Holy Spirit: Nun Gaga prays and reaches to the sky when saying, “Stop, please, just let me go Alejandro! Just let me go!”

There’s also definitely a sense of integration in the video, as, through the violent sexual scenes and sexual initiation, the lines between what are (potentially two characters) blurs into one as Nun Gaga approaches the moment of swallowing the rosary (accepting EvilGa/MAYHEM’s proposition to abandon received notions of religion and forge her own way, taking in both the essence of faith, but also the ethos of evil as rebellion). Potentially meaningful as a tie-in between Alejandro and BTW that NunGa’s face evaporates/melts at the end: signals transformation?

That would explain even more. We see nun!Ga resisting the call of old while pushing her rosary into the sky while the dark clothed Gaga has much less problems staring at the army, leading them in the beginning, watching their every move with her admittedly very cool Victorian lace/steampunk 'the opposite of glasses'.

Nun!Gaga is torn, praying with/for the men and finally meets instead of communes with her army which makes the video even more clear, beside everything else we've already talked about (all the fascist imagery and what Gaga did with it, etc.). EtherealGa's prototype, if that is her, has let scripture in its most literal form go and integrates with her army, showing the intersectional struggle she also very literally joins just like Dark Clothed! Gaga already has (remember how EtherealGa looks TFM-like but Gaga has implied in several interviews that she's younger?) while wearing a cloak with upside-down crosses, including on her private areas. She is forging her own path where all her love for humanity is possible, not conditional. She "may be accepting EvilGa/MAYHEM’s proposition to abandon received notions of religion and forge her own way, taking in both the essence of faith, but also the ethos of evil as rebellion", as you say. Maybe she doesn't feel that her rebellion IS evil (yet), though,  as your mentioning for example of loving thy neighbor and loving thyself blending seamlessly like so many other ideas is just thinking things through and not taking everything literally.

Her aforementioned clothing may allude to her expanded thinking and why she's ready, and I never for a second believed it was for shock value. Saint Peter was supposedly crucified upside down because he didn't feel worthy to die like Jesus, which is why the inverted cross has been seen for centuries, until the 20th in fact, as a symbol for humility and martyrdom. Was there modern rebellion mixed in? Probably a bit, because that's one of the MANY facets this video is about. Then the complete ecstasy (whether a new form of religious ecstasy or non-religious ecstasy) on the faces of the gay men, when she rips open said cloak might also make more sense then: This is integration. The violence of those short scenes may show how difficult it is for a young mind who has been fed dogma to cross over to new ways of thinking that would condemn her to hell in what she has likely received in a strict Catholic Girl's School - it may allude even to religious trauma and shame. But we see that it frees her in transformation here and later in the BTW video in her escape to Earth imo.

When we have the rosary swallowing, that's her mind expanding into what we've talked about and yes, that's TRANSFORMATION! What is the first thing we see in the BTW video: The Eternal Mother, whose face design is more than a tiny nod to the Roman God Janus with his two heads - The first thing we see of her is her second head. Janus stands for transformation (!), duality and new beginnings.

He also intriguingly presides over the beginning and end of conflict.

So yes, I think she's been playing with these characters/figments a lot. There may be other reads but the nun really feels like prototype  EtherealGa. I do think there are times in other videos we see three sides of her, or one, etc. But these prototypes... Good catch.

I love how instead of the beard, the beehive hairdos on The Eternal Mother achieves a similar look to Janus somehow (but distinct and Gaga enough).

I know I need to answer a couple questions still, it's coming really soon  Sorry for the delay, I'll be there asap. I'm a sloth right now and not willingly! You all write such amazing pieces I hardly get to write more than replies! As a nonbeliever who nonetheless reads a lot about many religions and mythologies this is incredibly fun and stimulating. Too bad I'm not at my best rn but whatever, I'll get there.

And then there's what I also just want to post too. I'll get there too, Persephone is still coming, don't worry.

Edited May 30 by Apec

[Apec 284]

16 hours ago, gagacabana said:

I've been saying this to her!!! The world needs the bxr archive compilation collection book(s)!! 

I SO agree. @bxr, you have so much material for everything, you could help us make Gagaology an academic field! Jk, but still...

I'm hugging you and all the rest here too (you too, @gagacabana!) , you all have amazing insights on everything and @bxr you even have the material to back everything up. I'm jealous!  I'm answering your Black Madonna of Montserrat/Czestochowa/etc. question, talking about how you and @Ladle Ghoulash saved my view of the to me too nihilistic feeling postmodernism in EVERYTHING gave me (literature takes it really far sometimes) by introducing me to Hall and further sharing my own thoughts on Requiem and beyond. I might still be slow but I'm a bit better 

[bxr 2,165]

On 5/29/2026 at 9:58 PM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Amazing (genuinely) how similar of a wavelength we are on here: seems like you always have a relevant (and, as always, excellently written) piece from the archive to share! I had never seen that government quote in particular, but between that and her overt discussion of religious aesthetic reappropriation, it’s remarkable how much of her meta aesthetic narrativizing tends to fly under the radar when it’s such a rich and important piece of her pop theatrical project. The GOAT callback also kind of clicked for me that the BTWB really does seem to be begin to take shape between the BR and Alejandro video with her breaking free from her captors, establishing her own revolutionary guard/regime, seizing the levers of power and control for her own gain, acting as her own government with it’s own moral imperative…

Also: FWIW I genuinely think your work on Gaga is absolutely worth publishing in print if that’s something you’ve ever considered. 

 

On 5/29/2026 at 10:04 PM, gagacabana said:

I've been saying this to her!!! The world needs the bxr archive compilation collection book(s)!! 

 [2]

18 hours ago, Apec said:

I SO agree. @bxr, you have so much material for everything, you could help us make Gagaology an academic field! Jk, but still...

I'm hugging you and all the rest here too (you too, @gagacabana!) , you all have amazing insights on everything and @bxr you even have the material to back everything up. I'm jealous!  I'm answering your Black Madonna of Montserrat/Czestochowa/etc. question, talking about how you and @Ladle Ghoulash saved my view of the to me too nihilistic feeling postmodernism in EVERYTHING gave me (literature takes it really far sometimes) by introducing me to Hall and further sharing my own thoughts on Requiem and beyond. I might still be slow but I'm a bit better 

 [3]

 

The digital editorial exegetical archives, akin to their muse‘s repertoire, are, admittedly, well-endowed … curation is one of those time and tone scenarios, when both sort of fall into place and bring a project‘s form into focus … there‘s this working title / concept or discourse that sparked awhile ago … Chaos Angelus … and I didn‘t really know how to materialize it in a practical way, but I‘ve been revisiting again, in light of proximal dialectics and zeitgeist iconographics …

Spoiler

Chaos

1 a: a state of utter confusion

b: a confused mass or mixture

2 a often Chaos  : a state of things in which chance is supreme

especially  : the confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms  compare COSMOS

b: the inherent unpredictability in the behavior of a complex natural system (such as the atmosphere, boiling water, or the beating heart)

Angelus

1: a devotion of the Western church that commemorates the Incarnation and is said in the morning, at noon, and in the evening

2: a bell announcing the time for the Angelus

The Angelus (/ˈændʒələs/; Latin for "angel") is a Catholic devotion commemorating the Incarnation of Christ. As with many Catholic prayers, the name Angelus is derived from its incipit—the first few words of the text: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ ("The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary"). The devotion is practised by reciting as versicle and response three Biblical verses narrating the mystery, alternating with the prayer "Hail Mary". The Angelus exemplifies a species of prayers called the "prayer of the devotee".
 

Spoiler

The devotion is traditionally recited in Roman Catholic churches, convents, monasteries and by the faithful three times a day: in the morning, at noon and in the evening (usually just before or after Vespers). The devotion is also observed by some Western Rite Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican churches.

The Angelus is usually accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus church bells, which is a call to prayer and to spread goodwill to everyone. The angel referred to in the prayer is Gabriel, a messenger of God who revealed to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God (Luke 1:26–38). In Eastertide, the Angelus is replaced by the Regina Coeli.

…

Spoiler

V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
R. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with Thee;
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death. Amen

V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
R. Be it done unto me according to thy word.

Hail Mary. . .

V. And the Word was made flesh.
R. And dwelt among us.

Hail Mary. . .

V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray: Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.

and in this immediate context, and the wake of definitive Mayhem (seventh) Requiem … a pop canon retrospective … somewhat in the realm of cultural audiobiography and dialectic web discursive tapestry … exploring the first seven plays of opus creation from said vantage … could be a genuinely creative collaborative print passion project 

 

Edited May 31 by bxr

[gagacabana 7,432]

12 hours ago, bxr said:

 

 [2]

 [3]

 

The digital editorial exegetical archives, akin to their muse‘s repertoire, are, admittedly, well-endowed … curation is one of those time and tone scenarios, when both sort of fall into place and bring a project‘s form into focus … there‘s this working title / concept or discourse that sparked awhile ago … Chaos Angelus … and I didn‘t really know how to materialize it in a practical way, but I‘ve been revisiting again, in light of proximal dialectics and zeitgeist iconographics …

  Hide contents

Chaos

1 a: a state of utter confusion

b: a confused mass or mixture

2 a often Chaos  : a state of things in which chance is supreme

especially  : the confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms  compare COSMOS

b: the inherent unpredictability in the behavior of a complex natural system (such as the atmosphere, boiling water, or the beating heart)

Angelus

1: a devotion of the Western church that commemorates the Incarnation and is said in the morning, at noon, and in the evening

2: a bell announcing the time for the Angelus

The Angelus (/ˈændʒələs/; Latin for "angel") is a Catholic devotion commemorating the Incarnation of Christ. As with many Catholic prayers, the name Angelus is derived from its incipit—the first few words of the text: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ ("The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary"). The devotion is practised by reciting as versicle and response three Biblical verses narrating the mystery, alternating with the prayer "Hail Mary". The Angelus exemplifies a species of prayers called the "prayer of the devotee".
 

  Hide contents

The devotion is traditionally recited in Roman Catholic churches, convents, monasteries and by the faithful three times a day: in the morning, at noon and in the evening (usually just before or after Vespers). The devotion is also observed by some Western Rite Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican churches.

The Angelus is usually accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus church bells, which is a call to prayer and to spread goodwill to everyone. The angel referred to in the prayer is Gabriel, a messenger of God who revealed to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God (Luke 1:26–38). In Eastertide, the Angelus is replaced by the Regina Coeli.

…

  Reveal hidden contents

V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.
R. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with Thee;
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death. Amen

V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
R. Be it done unto me according to thy word.

Hail Mary. . .

V. And the Word was made flesh.
R. And dwelt among us.

Hail Mary. . .

V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray: Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ Thy Son was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.

and in this immediate context, and the wake of definitive Mayhem (seventh) Requiem … a pop canon retrospective … somewhat in the realm of cultural audiobiography and dialectic web discursive tapestry … exploring the first seven plays of opus creation from said vantage … could be a genuinely creative collaborative print passion project 

 

Words cannot describe how incredibly hysterically excited I feel about the prospect of a Gaga-driven creative collaborative print passion project by the likes of bxr and Ladle Ghoulash so here's my honest reaction:

[bxr 2,165]

On 5/15/2026 at 9:56 AM, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Bible has no replay value, fr

“But/and/then on the eighth [episodic play] …”—a reprise, in real time! 

Spoiler

Bible CAMP … lil’ zephyr echoes in the zeitgeist …