Diamonds and Skulls part one

On a very simple level these two main components of 'For the love of God' have a long history as symbols not only in art but in human society. The skull could almost be said to be culturally insignificant, because of it ubiquitous nature as long as there have been humans there have been human skulls, and by their very nature they have always been associated with death for the most obvious of reasons. Only from the 20Century has it been possible to see the complete skull, human or otherwise without death being involved.

The skull has long been used as an emblem to represent danger or instill fear, the poison bottle, most famously in the Jolly Roger, skull and cross bones flag, however this seems to be a fictional flag that has been adopted in retrospect. Pirates’ supposed use of it seems to have been picked up on. Its later use has been to associate the flyer with pirates and the no prisoners taken ethos. The Pirate flag itself has been adopted by so called alternative culture. This pirate association has also come to mean alternative from the establishment, and rather than use an accurate depiction it tends to use a styalised ‘pop’ version. The ‘real’ skull is taken to be still taboo it is still a symbol of actual death

There are some wonderful examples of how this has sometimes been elaborated to the whole skeleton, and been used to personify death in European or Western culture. The scythe weilding figure the grim reaper that appears to collect the soul, is rarely completely defined in literature, but has been interpreted as a shrouded skeleton by many artists and film makers. This has in turn been parodied by many, notably and famously by Terry Pratchett in his Discworld books which defined and showed the ridiculousness of the practicalities of this literal interpretation of the metafor. Attempts to make the image more intricate and more scary are dispelled by the parody, it some how returns the gravity and effectiveness of the simple skull.