Our Mythos - Melusine
L-R, T-B 1. CoB's Altar Mat since 2019. The Yoko Ono/Starbucks design was created and used by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty for Welcome to the Dark Ages in 2017. 2. C16th Money Chest featuring Melusine on the locking mechanism cover. Photo © German National Museum, Nuremberg. 3. C16th Money Chest. One of the earliest artefacts of The Bank of England. Origin unknown. 4. Melusine Gold Ring found with the Solbergaskatten 'hoard' of C16th coins in Sweden, 1955.
Melusine and the Church of Burn: A Sacred Unfolding
Church of Burn has never consciously sought a Divine Being to worship. And yet, Melusine’s arrival as our Goddess of Money was as inevitable as it was unexpected, a revelation that unfolded not with fanfare, but with a quiet insistence. Since we began our money-burning rituals, Melusinian coincidences —uncanny, luminous— have accumulated with such frequency that dismissing them as mere chance would be, at best, a failure of imagination, and at worst, a desecration. We see them for what they are: synchronicities— playful prods from beyond the earthly realm, reminding us of our limited perceptions of reality.
The first such prod came when a rare exhibition catalogue from the Museum des Geldes found its way to us. The Museum des Geldes, in Düsseldorf, in 1978, was the most renowned exhibition of Money Art the world has seen, featuring artists like Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys. But what seized our attention was not the celebrated artworks inside the catalogue, but the enigmatic, explicit image on its cover (below). No explanation accompanied this image; it was a mystery left hanging by a printing error. We took to social media, seeking clues. Suggestions poured in —many pointing toward ancient goddesses.
And then, the day after our query, a more pointed sign: the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford posted an image of a plate made from Muntz metal —likely sourced from a shipwreck and fashioned in Africa toward the end of the 19th century. To our astonishment, this plate bore the same motif as the catalogue cover. Coincidence, if you’re a strict materialist; magic, if you know better.
Curious, we contacted the now elderly curators of the 1978 exhibition, Horst Kurnitsky and Jürgen Harten. They revealed that the cover image depicted a locking mechanism cover-plate from a 16th-century German money chest, adorned with Melusine —a twin-tailed Mermaid. The image was chosen to evoke the deep, primal connection between sex and money. Pursuing this lead, we traced the chest to the archives of the German National Museum. At our request, they agreed to take some photographs. The image above (top right) is from that set. At this point, the general feeling was that the mystery of the explicit image was coming to an end. That general feeling was mistaken.
Soon, it dawned on us: the explicit image of Melusine was the original form of the now-sanitised, commodified Starbucks logo. If the Gods thrive on mortal recognition, then Melusine is alive and well, occupying an extensive territory in humankind's collective consciousness; Her image gracing 40,000 coffee shops around the globe.
Some in our Church were already declaring Melusine as The Goddess of Money. And this connection to Starbucks strengthened their claim —not just because of the ubiquity of Her icon, but also because coffee shops themselves are deeply entwined with the history of money and capitalism. Stock Exchanges grew out of the trades and exchanges that originally took place in coffee shops in London and other major European cities.
And anyway, Melusine wasn't done with us by any means. Her next sign settled any lingering doubts about Her status as our Church’s Deity. A visit to the Bank of England Museum revealed three money chests. The first, unremarkable. The second, intriguing, bore a more traditional single-tailed mermaid motif —it was the model for the mermaid found on the Series E £50 note released in April 1994. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty famously burned 20,000 of these notes on Jura that August.
But it was the third chest that really hit home. Positioned directly beneath the 1694 founding charter of the Bank of England, this chest, of unknown provenance, had a cover plate strikingly similar to the German chest (compare the images above). And across it lay a few tally sticks not lost to the 1834 fire that razed the Palace of Westminster —a blaze sparked by the burning of tally sticks in the Palace’s furnaces.
Tally sticks were the Middle Ages equivalent of digital bank money. They were the records of transactions that became de facto money themselves. Though made obsolete by written ledgers, tally sticks still held the aura of money. Hence Richard Weobley, the Clerk of Works, decided not to give them away as firewood but to burn them in the Palace’s furnaces. His actions —his money burning— destroyed the 11th-century Palace of Westminster. It was eventually replaced by the current Palace of Westminster - more commonly known today as the Houses of Parliament.
The proximity of Melusine to the foundational artefact of the modern financial world —the Bank’s Charter— and to the few tally sticks remaining from the 1834 fire seemed to our Church, if not divinely ordained, then at least magically predetermined.
By the time of our first event at The Cockpit in 2016, Melusine’s presence had firmly taken root in our Service, Her energy channelled through Jacqueline Haigh. In 2018, Rev Jonathan’s former wife, Sally, became the voice of Melusine in Burning Issue’s “Ask Melusine,” offering divine guidance on the financial sins and woes of its readership. In 2019, Carrie Thompson brought the ‘Confessional’ to life as Melusine and has since continued to act as a vessel for Our Goddess, returning in both 2021 and 2022. Carrie also lends her voice to Melusine for the song Exist for Love (AURORA, 2020), which has become a loved and cherished hymn in our Service. It encapsulates the idea that what Melusine really desires is desire itself.
The event Welcome to the Dark Ages marked the end of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s 23-year moratorium on their Jura burn. Directed by Daisy Campbell, who has been instrumental in the development of CoB, directing our Service on many occasions as well as delivering sermons. However, neither CoB nor Daisy had a hand in the appearance of our Goddess. Bill and Jimmy weren’t even aware She’d installed Herself as our church’s deus. Nevertheless, in the run-up to their event, they created the Starbucks War is Over art piece where Yoko Ono is cast as Melusine (above, top left).
Before our 2019 CoB event, we needed an Altar Mat and floor covering on which Sarah Kershaw could perform The Union of Oppositions in Ecstasy. A seven-foot version of Bill and Jimmy’s work seemed the obvious and only choice. It has since been consecrated by both sex magic and Ritual.
Yet another nudge from our Mermaid Goddess came just recently. A foundational burner, Burning Issue contributor, and friend of our church, Magnus, came across the Solbergaskatten ‘hoard’ —an array of 16th-century coins found in Sweden in 1955 by two ten-year-old schoolboys. Among the treasures was a gold ring bearing Melusine’s image (above, bottom right). The museum displaying it could offer no explanation of its origin or the meaning of the motif.
Melusine, mermaids, sirens, and water spirits of all forms have been worshipped across cultures and time. Before the Industrial Revolution, money and credit were often represented as feminine forces, a notion still hinted at in the nickname for the Bank of England —The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. Water and money share an obvious kinship —both flow. Yet, such metaphors and analogies fall short of capturing the essence of Melusine in our Church.
We experience Her not as a symbol or representation of sacred energy but as a manifestation of it. Her presence reminds us that our sacrifices to the Gods are not transactions. She has no need for any material offerings; sacrifice, in Her eyes, is about us making ourselves worthy of Her presence.
May Her Blessings Be Upon Us All.