The Seven
Cat o' nine tails with dreadlocks, bronze skull and wooden handle in the image of sin
(ongoing series – 1st example: Pride)
Statement
The Seven is a series of seven cat o' nine tails, each inspired by a capital sin.
The first completed is Pride, often considered the original sin – the one that opens the way to all others.
The idea of capital sins doesn't come from heaven. It was born in the Egyptian deserts in the 4th century, when the first monks, withdrawn from the world, tried to understand what was eating away at them internally.
Among them, Evagrius Ponticus. Born in 349, died in 399, he would codify the psychology of the desert. Drawing from the Stoics on one side, investigating hermits on the other, he undertook to systematize the discipline of life that allows one to free oneself from passions.
He classified eight invasive thoughts: gluttony, lust, avarice, vainglory, anger, sadness, acedia and pride. Internal flaws, not yet moral faults.
This framework would be translated, reduced, adapted. In the 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great reduced the list to seven: sacred number, more manageable. He merged vainglory and pride, made sadness disappear, and added envy. Later, Thomas Aquinas fixed their status: these are not acts, but fundamental inclinations — internal motors capable of generating everything else.
The Church seized upon them. Art represented them. Hieronymus Bosch surrounded them in a wheel, like a divine eye or moral target. The list became a pillar of Christian morality, then a cultural framework in the modern West.
But fundamentally, what these sins reveal is less a moral ideal than a control tool. A way to identify, name, and channel the excesses of body and mind.
A mental structure placed on the animal instinct that lives in each of us. They continue to traverse modern narratives – under other names, in other forms.
We find them in personal development discourse, in productivity, in identity or moral narratives.
- Pride is no longer a sin: it's an ego problem.
- Sloth becomes a lack of motivation.
- Gluttony, a control deficit.
- Lust, a question of limits.
- Envy, a side effect of social networks.
- Greed, an accumulation strategy justified by merit.
- Wrath, poor emotional management.
The language changes, but the mechanisms remain.
The dreadlocks were worn for five years, then stored for ten years like whiskey. The handles and skulls are crafted in the image of the sin represented. Every detail is thought to suggest an idea.
The Seven extends the reflection initiated with Cycles and Civilizations, moving from system to symbol. We leave the scale of large structures to observe what acts quietly, always, in behaviors, narratives, gestures.
Credits
Manche en bois
Wooden handle created by: My paranoid CTO of PsychozAI project networks (indirect proof of his cyber skills)