The symbolism of Vatican smoke
In that vast cosmos of symbols that is the Roman Catholic Church, one of the more curious appearing at this time is the binary code used to alert the world if a new pope has been elected or not: the color of smoke from a temporary chimney above the Sistine Chapel. White for yes, black for no. Like many symbols, it was at one time purely practical, a way of communicating what was happening in the conclave of cardinals without unlocking the door and showing a human face: complete secrecy. It was Tweeting before Twitter – not 140 characters but one, and not even a character but a single byte of information, zero or 1, off or on, black or white. But there have been glitches. In days of yore, as yore has it, burning the ballots alone yielded pure white smoke; burning them with wet straw yielded pure black. I think the quality of the paper used for the ballots must have changed, because at least since the conclave of 1958 the color of the smoke has often been gray. To remedy this, according to reports, the Vatican has used everything from white and black smoke-bombs supplied by the police to a less-risky mixture of unidentified “chemicals.” In addition, there are now two stoves…
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