Writer, Sue Limb discovers the symbolic power of the ordinary household object...
I was washing up recently when I began to suspect someone was watching me. I could feel eyes boring into the back of my head. Behind me was a window overlooking our tiny backyard. Oh, no, I thought, I bet we’ve got a Peeping Tom, and I braced myself and whirled round to confront him with an indignant glare. There was nobody there.
Nobody out in the yard, that is. But I was being watched, and by four eyes, not two. Inside, on the windowsill, stood a couple of Oriental dogs I had bought at a junk shop a few days before. They’re about ten inches tall, very fierce and dragonish, baring their fangs and almost audibly snarling.
I looked at them for a few minutes and, well, call me loopy if you like, but I became convinced that these dogs wanted to be let out. As if watching a middle-aged woman doing the washing-up was not their thing at all. Following some obscure instinct, I carried them through to the front porch and installed on them on the windowsill there - facing outwards, looking down the front path. Their hackles were raised and they were ready to bite the postman. And I can honestly say I haven’t had a moment’s trouble out of them, since.
I later discovered they are what’s known as "Foo Dogs" and for centuries they have been placed in porches and entrances to Buddhist temples and houses to guard against evil spirits. Somehow I had intuitively placed them exactly where they needed to be, to fulfil their symbolic role.
Not all objects require such careful placing, of course. My bits of old English china and brass candelsticks are cheerfully jumbled together on the mantelpiece along with packets of firelighters and postcards from Penzance. But there is something about objects from other cultures, especially those with spiritual significance and mystery, which makes one pause and think.
The next little sacred figure I acquired was a British Museum replica of the Egyptian god Bes. He looks a bit like a tiny teddy bear, standing upright on his bandy legs and grinning. I didn’t realise the Egyptians had a sense of humour.All those funerary monuments are so severe and chilling. But Bes makes me laugh, and I wasn’t surprised to find that he was the god of celebration, parties, and children’s entertainments. I also discovered that in Egyptian mythology he had a girlfriend who was a pregnant hippopotamus. As I, too, had been a hippopotamus when I was pregnant, this helped the bonding process.
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