A Gonk is a name for a kind of stuffed toy ball suitable for a child under three years of age, sewn out of panels of felt and stuffed with wool roving in pre-modern days, or polyfil today. Usually they’re composed of twelve five-sided panels of fabric (sometimes with lining fabric sewn to the inside, sometimes not). They’re sometimes embroidered with decorative themes… and sometimes not.
The Scepter and the Orb are usually seen as symbols of kingship, and in many examples of royal and imperial portraiture, the Orb is understood to be a representation of Tellus/Terra — that is, the Earth.
But anyone who knows their way around the number twelve, should be able to realize that there are a number of sacred or occult things that are represented by the number twelve…. twelve signs of the Zodiac, for example. And so I found that the intersection of making a child’s toy, or gonk, and making the Great Jewel of royal regalia suitable to a more… cosmic… sovereign… had something in common.
It’s really made of quite ordinary materials. The felt is allegedly wool, although it behaves in practice a bit more like poly/wool blended felt. The template for the five-sided panels was cut from the side of a one-gallon milk jug. All the embroidery is regular 6-strand DMC embroidery floss. I used regular embroidery needles to make it. And I learned a few things in the process. Eventually, I’ll give this one away, probably to a child, a toddler under three years of age who needs a gonk, and whose parents are sufficiently understanding to know that their child needs to hold the Great Jewel of the cosmic order, if only for a little while. Seems like a good gift to give to a baby who’s born soon, like, underneath the current regime of Saturn in Aries.
At least some ancient texts describe the cosmos as a “Great Jewel” of twelve sides. Plato, in the Timaeus, goes into great lengths on the five Platonic solids, associating the one with four triangular sides with Elemental Fire, the one with six square sides with Elemental Earth, the one with eight triangular sides with Elemental Air, and the one with twenty triangular sides with Elemental Water. And, he goes on to say, “There was yet a fifth combination which God used in the delineation of the universe.”
When there is a shape of twelve flat sides, with each side being the shape of a regular pentagon, that’s called a dodecahedron. And… when there’s such a shape where the twelve flat sides are allowed to curve out, under the pressure of the contents with which the Great Jewel is stuffed… apparently, that’s called a gonk, and it’s a child’s toy.
Woe to those inside when the child starts shaking this little universe in miniature, their lives shifted like the flakes in a snow globe.
