a) to be divisible at will: as opposed to uniqueness;

b) to be uniform in their single parts: as opposed to what is composite;

c) to be identical in every specimen: as opposed to the difference.

The light from the crystal, upon refraction, imposes its own characteristics on everything that seeks to be transformed in it. And this means radically changing the status of images in circulation: from fetishes—unique, irreplaceable, and exclusive concretions of power—they become things that are above all replaceable, whose virtue lies in their replaceability. And yet—and here, once again, black magic comes into play—the spell of the fetish is not lost: it now encompasses not only the single circulating images, but the whole process.

Money provides the clearest example of inversion: the world becomes too esoteric. All hypostatic images tend to become autonomous, but now such images actually become objects: money becomes tangible currency, a crumpled banknote. The image thus asserts a position of excessive power, actually transforming itself into a thing, whereas before it was a simple invisible mental presence. But, from the moment in which that thing exists, the doorway leading to the realm of images is closed. Money comes to occupy that single empty place in the circulation of the real (“It always stays behind at a point in the arena of circulation vacated by the commodities”).⁵⁰³ This hole that provided access to images: “We have already seen that the sphere of circulation has a hole in it, through which gold (or silver, or the money material in general) enters as a commodity with a given value.⁵⁰⁴ Hence, when money begins to function as a measure of value, when it is used to determine prices, its value is presupposed.” That cavity is now closed: it is sealed by a sparkling crystal. All metamorphoses are directed to that point, and from it they rebound back: they can no longer refer to occurrences that take place beyond those metamorphoses, since everything now happens on this side, between their fluid material and the crystal, between the crystal and the multiplicity of forms.

“The circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as a money-crystal.”⁵⁰⁵ What is happening? A certain relationship between subjects, namely the circulation of goods, produces a natural deposit, a concretion, a crystalline commodity that reflects all other commodities and becomes essential for their circulation. This crystal is not an image: it exists as an object—and, as an object, the properties of the global process of circulation of goods are attributed to it. A double inversion, a chassé-croisé, a movement of money back and forth: a thing is invented as a concretion of a process, attributing to that thing the characteristics of the process: the characteristics of the thing have an effect upon a whole indefinite series of units of the process (commodities). The money-crystal becomes a single subject, but its uniqueness represents replaceability itself. A further paradox of inversion: the modern fetish is not just what appears to be unique, but what is replaceable, reproducible, alienable, to the highest degree. Hence Baudelaire’s fascination with prostitution. Prostitution is a guarantee of total alienability, just as the sacred protected the untouchable. In the age of inversion, the sacred is protected by its own prostitution.