- Matthew S. Armstrong’s take on the song in Comic Book Tattoo, an anthology of visual stories inspired by Tori’s work
“Very simply, for the last thousand years it [organized religion] hasn’t worked so well because it became about my dog is better than your dog. It’s not like a Dalmatian works for me, and a Pekinese for you, and the size doesn’t really count. So there is a level of why can’t I be a born-again Christian -if that’s the case, and not need to convert or judge everybody who chooses not to be.
What about honor and respect for another person’s way of worshipping? Organized religion doesn’t do that. There isn’t really a respect unless it’s in line with your way of thinking. The bottom line on organized religion, or at least the ones that I have studied, is: I don’t see where the teaching is about becoming your own savior, you becoming your own master teacher. You may be inspired by other people... Jesus may inspire you, Mary Magadalene may inspire you, Mohammed, Buddha, or Space Dog may inspire you, but...
That’s really the underlying theme of ‘Space Dog’... everybody’s worshipped everybody else, so why not him? His philosophy is way more interesting, plus you get to wear those cute yellow space suits. I think people are always looking outside of themselves, having to belong to some kind of organization, instead of going, ‘I’m enough, being with me is enough, being part of the universe... that’s enough.’ I think religion is a distraction. It’s there to keep you from taking responsibility for your own actions." (Upside Down fanzine, issue #5)
"Space Dog" may be Under the Pink’s most hallucinogenic track, it’s far from being pure whimsical nonsense. Instead, the song rather is an ironic commentary on organized religion and the way we took for granted a large part of what history passed down to us. Tori denunciates these lies to urge people to think for themselves as not to be controlled by patriarchy. Like in "Past the Mission," we can still find the Mary Magdalene/Jesus connection amongst the numerous hidden references as Tori revealed to Upside Down that "there is also this huge underlying Holy Blood-Holy Grail theme in this song."This is not obvious at all (it’s the "centuries, secret societies" part) and it might not make sense if you haven’t read the bestselling essay Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) which partly inspired these songs to Tori.
Written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, the book speculates that the legendary Graal was not a bowl but Mary Magdalene herself because she held the Blood Royal, Jesus’ blood — his child who would have later ‘given birth’ to the Merovyngian dynasty. The authors browse through a lot of historical periods — including the Knights Templar — and, relying on sources found at the French National Library, they argue that a secret society called the Prieuré de Sion was created to protect the Graal. The book lost a great part of its relevancy when Pierre Plantard’s hoax was uncovered in 1993 (this French author had actually written under many identities the different texts found at the French National Library ’proving’ the existence of the so-called secret society; the authors’ book fell into the trap) but other books and studies relying on other sources talked and speculated about the Magdalene fleeing to Les Saintes Maries de la Mer to hide her child.