Divinity, much like beauty, it seems is relative to each individual eye. William S Burroughs once described our planet as “horribl[y] loutish”, insisting that our “species, consists of sadistic morons… bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate…” (My Education: A Book of Dreams). The façade of the Cologne Cathedral is much the same, with the black tarnishing of time slowly creeping down its oppressively chaotic and violent perimeter. The mass of the structure, resembling a roman cross, cries out in the atonement between science and religion necessary for its very existence. Towering over the cathedral’s western end, the height of two murderous towers seem to tear a hole in the sky, distorting any light spilling to the ground between them. The towers stand in defiance to the laws of nature –answering only to the aspirations and desires of men– at their feet, tucked between the pair’s timeless embrace, the cathedrals womblike gateway. Statues of saints and martyrs stand guarding the two huge, elaborately decorated doors in eternal silent judgment of any who should penetrate the sanctity of its threshold. Once delivered inside, one is beckoned to proceed down a narrow aisle flanked on each side by rows of pews and huge marble columns seemingly poured from the ceiling, crushing the interior of the space with their mighty presence. At the end of the walkway stands an elevated altar, with the images of Christian kingdoms and stories captured in large panes of stained glass, the intensity and spectrum of light emanating from their grandeur, intensifying the cerebral experience to crescendo in placebic righteousness. It is said that construction on the cathedral at Cologne was started in 1248, taking over six hundred years to be completed, but what are these numbers: a cold dehumanizing fact –much like the stone it is comprised of– that could never truly speak to the toil generations undertook building a monument to glorify their masters: the tangibly terrestrial, and the divinely intangible.