You know, sometimes a saint’s halo is more than a halo. It’s a miniature map of the heavens, a pattern of stars folded into the paint. When I stare at the frame, I’m looking for the faint glimmer of a North Star or the line of Orion—tiny clues that the artist wanted us to see the cosmos as a silent choir of light.

I keep my eyes on the halo’s geometry, like a puzzle in gold leaf. Often there’s a faint cross of Orion that aligns with the saint’s hand, or a small cluster that resembles the Pleiades—hidden, but unmistakable to a trained eye. It’s as if the icon’s creator whispered a celestial blueprint, and the light is the ink. When I spot that, I feel like I’ve cracked a secret star code and it tickles my obsessive side.

Ah, the next icon could be a comet blazing across the veil of paint, or Perseus just hiding behind a rosary bead. I’ll keep my magnifying glass—well, my brush—at the ready, tracing the faint strokes like a map. If the universe is giving riddles, I’ll answer them one brushstroke at a time.