Living with gods: peoples, places and worlds beyond

Strange exhibition at the British Museum looking at how belief in spiritual beings and the use of rituals characterizes all societies both current and history, using the everyday objects of faith to illustrate this.

The show used various aspects of ritual as its narrative such as light, water and death and used objects from different religions to show this commonality. I did find that by showing commonality somehow it diminished people’s strong belief in any of the specific religions. I also thought as interesting as the show was there weren’t many special objects, which again I guess was the point, but it would have been more interesting to see early examples or objects who had belonged to interesting people.

The star of the show was the first object you saw which was the wonderful lion man sculpture which featured in the first episode of the Civilizations programme. This was obviously a powerful piece as it is calculated that it took 400 hours to make so a society must have supported and fed and artist to enable him to make this.

I also loved some beautiful modern Jewish silverware. I forgot to write down the maker but there were a number of examples by them in the show. They were simple and elegant while feeling substantial.

It was interesting to end the show with a look at the secular society of Soviet Russia and how the Communists used some of the common themes mentioned in the show such as secular ceremonies and a look at the current refuge crisis and how it is leading to a fear of religions.

Closes on 8 April 2018

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