While many would regard these metaphors as so much hyperbole, a little playfully figurative language at the expense of IKEA and its fans, the idea of IKEA as a sort of emerging world religion is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Simply put (in the Nike-ad sense of the word) IKEA knows religion; more than that, it is not at all shy about borrowing rather liberally from the various rhetorical and symbolic apparati of religion or using what we might call a linguistic, visual and architectural grammar of religion to sell its myriad products.

Take, for example the current (2001) IKEA catalogue, everywhere in which there is evidence of a shift toward a visual and linguistic vocabulary through which the notion of "better living" (as in the IKEA motto "affordable solutions for better living") is defined as living in a world in which one's physical environment facilitates or increases the likelihood of spiritual awakening or fulfillment. IKEA, in short, has begun to hawk its products with the promise that through our purchase and use of them (if we were to totally IKEA-ize our domestic world) we might achieve something close to the Zen idea of kensho (satori). Accordingly, the cover of the new catalogue invites us to "Uncover [our] inner home." Inside on p. 12, superimposed on a photograph of an IKEA-ized bedroom (white walls and bed linens, blond wood, just a few objects arranged carefully on shelves in front of tall windows, the only color supplied by two orange pillows and a blue bowl), we are greeted with the invitation to "Enjoy peace of mind," along with a caption that declares, "When everything clicks in a room, you create your own personal center for well-being."

The appropriation of Zen imagery and Zen-infused axioms continues elsewhere. On page 31, Kolby, an unbleached woven paper rug, is shown spread out on a bare hardwood floor. In the center of the rug sits a simple white bowl along with several small pillows. The wall behind is white and conspicuously bare; in the foreground, we see two pairs of modest sandals (recently shed, we are to understand). Depicted thusly, Kolby is no mere rug: rather it has become a locus for Zazen. (One can almost imagine the tones of bells and clappers, then the faint chanting of the Prajna Paramita. . .) Similarly, on p. 42 : the limes arranged for our contemplation in a simple rectangular dish, beside which stands an equally simple vase holding a single tulip. On p. 36 we find a child playing with her toy in the middle of a an expanse of hardwood floor, and, in a second photo, a room containing only a white linen-covered bed and a red alarm clock. Everywhere there is a carefully composed austerity, the suggestion of an emptiness ideally suited to contemplation or meditation. With images such as these and their accompanying platitudes, the new IKEA catalogue reads something like an illustrated Zen primer for Western seekers, a sort of satori-through-design for dummies.

However, in its appropriation of Zen and the austerity/emptiness of Zen-inspired design in order to suggest a world ideal for the quest for spiritual quietude, etc., IKEA has not completely neglected other signs that invoke both the more mystical side of Christianity and the holisticity of all things "New Age." Candles, for instance, are ubiquitous. The series of photographs on p. 41 shows us the votive-like Gallej, along with Fjarran, a tall, slender, tapering metal holder, which wouldn't be at all out of place beside an altar. In yet another photograph, a tray of thick pillar candles flicker in choir-like tiers, as if lit in offering. Who can deny the multiple signifieds here: the light of hope, of faith, of healing; eternal light and life; the Light of Christ, the Fire of the Holy Spirit?

But nowhere is the notion of IKEA as cult/emerging religion more plainly validated that in the IKEA showroom itself, the initiatory function of which is undeniable. Entering the Plymouth Meeting, PA showroom (which, in its basic program, is identical to every other IKEA showroom), visitors pass through a set of yellow electric sliding doors into a smallish atrium. At left there is the entrance to the children's room (filled its plastic balls in primary colors), a counter where, if you haven't received one in the mail, you can pick up a copy of the current IKEA catalogue, and just beyond a row of lockers you can use to unemcomber yourself of jackets or handbags, etc. Like any foyer or atrium, this area is a transitional space, in this case, a sort of anomalous category in-between IKEAland and suburban America just outside the doors. It would be disconcertingly small were it not for the high ceiling, the light pouring in from the glass windows. Clearly, this is no place to gather or linger; there is nothing to do here that is not preparatory for what is intended to follow, which is immediately clear: ascend the staircase in front of you in order to enter IKEAland proper.

Once you have ascended the staircase and have arrived in the showroom, you must follow a winding, vaguely circular path that leads past displays, complete rooms, really, of IKEA furniture. Everything in these sample rooms is IKEA-made or, at the very least, IKEA -endorsed, from the sofas, chairs, beds and shelving units, to the framed prints on the walls, the cardboard magazine holders, the potted plants. Only once you've completed the circuit can you descend a second set of stairs to the first floor self-serve/checkout area where you can buy whatever it is that has struck your fancy. And you must complete the circuit; the linoleum-covered walk twists and turns and switches back to such an extent that, if you leave it and, say, try to cut through the area where the dinettes and etc. are displayed to get to the down staircase, you run the risk of becoming momentarily disoriented or lost.

If you have visited IKEA before, and, having toured the 2nd floor showroom and completed its initiation (to one extent or another you are already a member of the cult of IKEA), you decide to proceed directly to the self-serve/checkout area (say, to pick up some candles or a potted plant or a framed print of Botticelli's "Venus"), you can certainly do this, but not without considerable difficulty. The showroom (every IKEA showroom) is laid out in such a way as to punish transgressors, those who would deny or decline the intended initiation, even though it means expediting one's investment in the IKEA cult. To perform this end run of sorts , you have to go through two inconspicuous swinging doors at the right of the entrance atrium (they are unmarked: this is a secret passage of sorts) and buck the traffic coming out of the checkout line: the squeaking push carts laden with long flat cardboard boxes, folks with armfuls of those signature yellow bags. Doing this on a recent visit to the Plymouth Meeting IKEA, I am momentarily Brad Davis/Billy Hays in the scene in Midnight Express, where, after spitting out his daily dose of whatever pills have kept him narcotized since biting Rifki's tongue, he reverses his daily circumambulation (a zombie's pradakshina) of the loony bin's Shiva linga-esque column. This sends his fellow inmates into a panic: "No!" they shriek, clawing at his rags, "Turn around; you MUST turn around." (One must not rebel against the phallic power of the captor/father. ) To walk "in through the out door" at your neighborhood IKEA is to perform a not dissimilar act of rebellion.

And of course any rebellion, however minor it may be, must be discouraged, for to truly find our "inner home" as we are called to do by the 2001 catalogue, we must participate totally in IKEA's vision, accept in full its ideological program; cafeteria-style sampling will get us only so far on the road to bodhisattva-dom. Such is the message of this not-so-secular cult.