Porto: Very Catholic
Catholicism permeates everything here in Porto, Portugal. In its native context – total, monumental, and all-encompassing – it seems a completely natural reflex, articulated through architecture as well as artistic output.
It offers the last word on everything, with the monopoly of cause.
An example of how this works – in Igreja dos Clérigos, or The Church of the Clergymen, there is a quote on the wall that explains how, given God creates all, including the faculty of artistic expression, the artist cannot help but express the glory of the divine.
By this logic, by choosing to not play the game, all you're doing is playing the game badly.
So – you may as well do yourself, your eternal everlasting soul and everyone else a favour, and devote yourself to painting or carving ever-more-refined images of Jesus or the Saints, or maintaining the massive stone churches, basilicae and cathedrals that are everywhere.
They have also updated the presentation – a laser light and sound show, held several times nightly inside Clericos, takes spectacular technology more often seen at raves, and directs it towards the Divine. It's a fun show.
Interesting also what we couldn't find, in our hours wandering around the streets. There was little evidence of New Age shops, though a few headshops selling assorted murti to Hindu gods and salt lamps, amidst the forest of bongs, so I'd imagine this was more for ambience than practice.
I never saw any evidence of St Cyprian, the sorcerous saint with a long Portugese tradition. He is a popular saint among those in or adjacent to the grimoire revival, though reportedly regarded as a dangerous outlaw here.
Every other saint, it seems, has a street, church, school and sportsground named after them.
Within this weight of tradition, it seems hard to find the rare area, the smooth space, or where any autonomous zone may be. Maybe I'm not reading the signs right, though; I'm a lot older than I was last time I did this. At any rate, it raises the question of how people innovate, and come up with or explore new ways of doing things, when everything is already complete and managed.
When the first word is the last word, what more can be said?