The Heart of Fashion

Sure, you love to wear nice clothes, but there's much more to it than social clout

Spiritual people have a sense of imagination. Your capacity to visualize the unseen makes you appreciate high fashion.

Conceptually speaking, clothes with beautiful, intricate designs and patterns are poly-chromatic geometrized auric fields vibrating at frequencies that are just slow enough for you to see them with your naked eyes.

When you see fine garments—whether on a man, or a manikin—you stare at it for a reason. The visual speaks directly to your personal wants, needs, lusts and desires.

I appreciate fine clothing. It doesn’t have to be designer wear, either. When I have a fresh shave and beard shape up from my barber, and I’m wearing fragrant cologne with my choice of new apparel, I walk the street as copper-toned perfection robed in starlight, gold, and glory. I blaze new trails of preferred possibility. You can’t hurt my style. I’m sure that you can relate to this majestic state of grace.

What makes clothing so appealing to us though? Why do we feel such a rush of excitement when we walk out of our homes with well-made garments with beautiful colors, designs, and textures? We flirted with the answer to these questions in the very first paragraph.  Let’s delve a little deeper to reach a common core of understanding.

Our best thoughts define us because they reflect the true  essence of who we are. A man is what he does most frequently, but his habits are based on his conscious thoughts as well as the pre-conscious mental impressions that he has internalized over time. A man cannot generate any internal vision of beauty unless that beauty is already within him. 

However beauty comes in many forms. More often than not, people crave a form of beauty that they either FEEL that they don’t innately have, or they think they are severely lacking in. Color, shape, and texture are the symbolic representations of timeless universal principles. Just as letters combine to form words, the alphabet of color, form, and texture combine to produce a different kind of word that can only be read by the curious soul.

This “word,” which consists of a variety of woven fabrics that function as letters, exemplifies the very principles that we want to cultivate within ourselves INTERNALLY. Through well-fashioned pieces of clothing we add these desired qualities to ourselves EXTERNALLY. In the process, we tell the world “this is what I value; this is the idealized version of me that I would like to reflect back to myself and project to the outer world today.”

The soul of man yearns for self expression, and this is achieved when he cloaks his flesh in garments that visually define the universal principles that his soul wishes to cultivate internally through direct human experience. In short, fashion can literally aid in the advancement of the soul’s journey on earth. Soulful people love nice clothes because their capacity to simultaneously internalize, and embody, the totality of creation through their adornments is simply unlimited. As a collective, they makeup the singular intelligence that brought creation as we know it into being.

There are many great fashion designers, but a SUPERIOR designer is one who has traversed the empathic bridge that allows her to step into the heart of all humanity with her left foot forward.  There is more  that I can share. For those who seek further elaboration I do creative consulting.

When we talk about the history of modern fashion, it would be a huge mistake if we ignored the contributions of those Moors who occupied medieval Europe.

Damian Fonseca (1573-1640) was a Spanish author who witnessed the impact that these Moors had on Spain’s fashion scene nearly a century after the Reconquista, which was the Spanish reclamation of Spain from Moorish dominion in the latter part of the 15th century. When the Christian Moors (Moriscos) were being driven out of their Valencian homes in 1609, there were reports of mass lootings of their personal belongings which were left behind.

Many of their possessions were sold by bidders at mass auctions.  In an English translation I obtained from Fonseca’s book Relacion de la expulsion de la Moriscos del reino de Valencia, we read:

“They held there a very cheap fair of extremely rich clothes in the Moorish style, beds, tents, sheets, towels worked in gold, wonderfully made shirts, very fine pieces of linen, with many other things, and whoever had money, at small expense returned home rich with these jewels.”

On the heels of this ethnic cleansing campaign, the Spanish government went so far as to pass legislation that forbade members of the general public from dressing like Moors, despite the fact that Moorish fashion was already popular with Europe’s aristocracy going back to at least the 13th century.

Dedicated students of America’s colonial period may recall that as early as the 18th century, Black American indian women living in New Spain—which included the state now known as Louisiana—were required to cover their heads with scarves as a result of the Tignon Laws enacted by governor Esteban Rodriguez Miro, who of course, was a Spaniard. Spain purchased the land now known as Louisiana from the French before giving it back to them in 1803.

The United States purchased the land from Napoleon Bonaparte that same year after the French autocrat was seriously weakened by the Haitian Uprising. The defeat handed to Napoleon by Haitian rebels crushed his dream of building an empire in the Americas.

Apparently, Haiti was able to conquer the French  by assembling what we might call a supernatural Voltron. This entity was quite literally an aggregate of shadow matter intelligences working as one cohesive unit under the auspices of Vodou priests. That’s another story you can get more context on in my latest book Da Homey in Modern Dahomey: A Black American’s Travels Through the Land of Vodun.

The intricate beauty of Black women’s highly decorated natural hairstyles, which included bird feathers and precious stones, were making white women in Louisiana jealous as their white husbands and fiancés expressed a sexual appreciation for natural Black feminine beauty. Black women were forced to wear modest scarves called tignons to dull their natural light in the midst of deeply rooted jealousy.

I suspect that these fears rested on the concern that European male settlers would openly court these women in marriage, which would potentially transfer stolen land and property back into the hands of the original Black natives of America it was stolen from. I suggest that you read the book Devil's Lane: Sex & Race in the Early South to draw your own conclusions.

As I escort you on this abbreviated cat walk through centuries you’ve probably noticed a pattern developing. Black excellence in fashion has historically been a rabid assault on the “white” inferiority complex. For the Black hairstylist, or weaver of exquisite cloths, being true to an ancient cultural identity—while remaining innovative in that endeavor—is in and of itself, a revolutionary act.

Some readers will say that I should not call myself, or other people of a similar complexion, “Black” because it’s no better than the terms “Negro” or “Colored” which were coined by European colonizers who sought to give me an inferior social status by using a form of word sorcery known as legalese. 

I can respect the rationality of this stance as it relates to navigating through the U.S. court system and engendering a spirit of nationhood. Both are key aspects of the human experience in America.

However the black cosmos that I am a microcosm of is older, bigger, and far more important, than the U.S. court system. Moreover,  none of the European colonial lawmakers knew that they were actually venerating us by calling us Black, because they were not empirical scientists. They had no knowledge of dark matter and dark energy, or the role of these elements in creation.

At the 2013 Nobel Conference astrophysicist and Nobel laureate, George Smoot, explained that dark matter is not what holds the physical structure of the universe together. Instead he specifically said that it literally IS “the true structure in the universe” which is reportedly shaped like an EGG, which therefore makes our physical universe a dark Oval Office, of sorts.  What are the social implications of this when we follow the universal principle of correspondence which says “As Above, So Below” to its inevitable end?

It implies that the only SOCIAL structure on planet earth that can effectively determine global policy in accord with universal principles is a feminine (egg), Dark Matter power structure, which is essentially a Black female power structure.

The most powerful man on Earth is the one who has been willfully appointed as King by a council of women and consciously acknowledged as the primary authority of instruction within the collective psychology of the global populace.

To authoritatively preside over the affairs of nations, you must pass through The Ring of Fire and be crowned by the vaginal orifice you figuratively call the Oval Office. To this day, the Oval Office remains the most precious room—A coveted SeaT of authority—in the collapsing global white house where senility and negligence resides.

 When you adopt the mantle of Blackness you are wrapping yourself in the vestments of cosmic power and universal law, which is in stark contrast to relative colored law which is man-made. In the realm of physics, black is not considered a color, although every color of the visible light spectrum is within it. Those who call themselves “Black” are the Light Bearers, and the true projectors in this dark Technicolor movie theater known as the holographic universe.

We generate this holographic light show called third dimensional reality when we gaze into Oshun’s mirror with the goddess’ curtain of beads covering our faces. This adornment stimulates Third Eye function because it inhibits the sight of the first two eyes that deceive the foolish. However those same two eyes can also be healthy and useful when in the possession of a wise man or woman. This is the paradox of light and the seeming contradictions of those who are the chosen bearers of it.

The judge you plead your sovereignty case to wears black, in acknowledgment of the Black judge Ausar who determines the fate of those whose hearts have been weighed by Ma’at’s scales of justice. Those copper-toned men and women who say that they are not Black ironically plead to have their independence acknowledged by a man or woman who is  AUTHENTICATED in the courtroom by the BLACK garb that they wear. This is very interesting to me.

Even in medieval alchemical literature it is specifically stated that the “Ethiopian” is the most promising candidate for alchemical transformation into gold because he starts off as BLACK lead. Think about all of this for a minute. If you see “Black” as a label that is inherently crippling, then maybe—just maybe—the joke’s on you. 

Only blackness grants us access to the infinite and the unseen, which is why wise people of all races dream and meditate with their eyes closed. Black is the “prima materia” of manifestation. I don’t see any NEW art or science manifesting out of the minds of those who perceive “Black” as a shameful title. They are like wayward cherry trees that have severed their cosmic roots from the fertile black soil. The Treasures of darkness elude them.

When I say that I am a Moor I am proudly identifying with a rich cultural background that is supranational in its scope. It is a term that captures who I inherently am, as well as my role in the western world as a practitioner and patron of the arts and sciences.

The Moors are the architects of modern Western society. If you currently live in a Western society and enjoy the convenience of shopping for a wide variety of international foods at the market, or value buying nice clothes, going to the club, raiding libraries for books, pursuing a university education—then you are appreciative of a Western social paradigm that is distinctly Moorish in origin.

You are what you personally identify with most. I identify most with the victors of history, not the victims. The only copper-toned men in the modern Western world who have been victors for any significant period of time are those who are identified as Moors.

When I say that I am Black I am not defining myself as the so-called white man’s polar opposite, nor am I describing my skin complexion which is clearly dark brown to anyone who can see.

When I tell you that I am Black, I am referring to my greater cosmic identity which predates my descent into this holy grail of experience made of flesh, blood, and bone. I am the compelling mystery that conceals the light of luminous stars; I am the unlimited range of possibilities staring back at you when you gaze at the vast night sky.  As a microcosmic expression of the entire universe, my soul is beyond the jurisdiction of any terrestrial court or government. 

My flesh is the rented fabric that our rich earth has sponsored. When my time comes, my flesh will return to its recycling facility where maggots and worms perform their daily labors. The bickering children on YouTube would have you believe that you cannot be “Black” and be a “Moor” but father knows best. By the way, tell me who’s your daddy?

Better yet, what is this mysterious dark energy that I speak of? It is the vital essence of every single ancestor that you and I have ever had going back billions of years and beyond. The universe is constantly expanding because our blood relatives are constantly dying.  They all return to the Celestial Pool of Power in the ethers we draw from when we give them their due acknowledgment and reverence.

Nothing in the universe, but our thoughts, can stop us from accomplishing our goals. This is because the dark universe is on our side once we embrace it and stop seeing ourselves as an “other” in relation to it.

The entire universe is within  you. Every star, every planet, every inch of blackness in the serene night sky has been condensed into a dark liquid crystal that flows through your veins. You are here as a living testament to the beauty and wonder of both the Creator and its creation.

Nice clothes visually remind us that there are literally countless ways of cloaking ourselves in the principles that govern life and creation.

The laced half boot, skull cap, bangle bracelet, stockings,  leather boot with buckles that wrap around the calves, women’s platform shoe, hooded burnus, and silk button-up shirt, were all popularized in Europe by Moorish fashion designers.  Moorsish men were so well noted for their sense of chivalry, charm, and fashion, that they were often cast as romantic figures in Spanish ballads, poems, and short stories even after the Reconquista.

Ascetic readers  may question why I would even equate fashion with spirituality. After all, beauty is only skin deep, right? Those who believe so are Third Eye Blind.

I’m almost certain that an ugly person coined that phrase. Only a beautiful person would know that there are many things that can make a person beautiful, one of them being their character, which is anything but skin deep. We know this to be true because people who have beautiful character have an uncanny ability to penetrate the walls and barriers we build around ourselves. These people resonate with our core values so we find compelling beauty in them.

Your garments can be used as a wearable vision board that moves you closer to accomplishing whatever you need to for that day. This is why you have a “dress code” because your thought patterns can be “encoded” by the clothes that you wear once you’ve seen your own reflection in the mirror.

Every time you put on clothes you are initiating a sacred ritual. Where is your ritual taking you today?