#and then here comes my man pliny the elder

[pastedpast]

Yep, I'm a pushover for an attractive book cover. This one by Edward Brooke-Hitching (I have another by him: 'The Devil's Atlas') features a section of the central panel of the triptych 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' by Hieronymus Bosch, painted between 1490 and 1510. It is on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain [been there, seen it!]. I've not bought as many books as I usually do this year, so I felt justified in indulging on a splurge this festive season and this is one of my fancies. I started looking through it last night.

It is filled with pictures of paintings, many of which I have never seen before (and a few I wish I could now 'unsee' e.g. the fresco depiction of Hermes and his disturbingly outsized phallus!). One chapter which caught my attention is called 'Dead Man's Fingers - Ceyx and Alcyone', which mentions the soft coral, 'Alcyonium digitatum', (known commonly as Dead Man's Fingers, and just do happens to be the strange spongey thing I found on the beach the other day). The stuff I found was all dried up. This is what it looks like when it's alive:

The chapter tells of the Greek myth of Ceyx, king of Trachis and his wife, Alcyone. They inadvertently got on the wrong side of god of gods, Zeus (not difficult to do, he was pretty petulant) and eventually ended up being transformed into seaborne birds known as halcyons (what we now call kingfishers). The book explains that the belief at the time, based upon that of Roman author and naturalist, Pliny the Elder, was that the kingfisher laid its eggs on the shore and that its nest was in the soft coral.

I need to read up a bit more on this, e.g. Wikipedia page on Alcyone and Ceyx in order to link it up with a previous post of mine about 'halcyon days' (link here). Basically, it's about the fact that Alcyone's father was King Aeolia (aka Aeolus) of Aeolia, god of the winds (you may remember him from Homer's 'Odyssey') who had the power to restrain the winds and calm the waves did so for a brief period so that his daughter, now in the form of a bird, could lay and nurture her eggs.

The book states that the gods "ordered that during the nesting period at the height of winter, the seas be calm and the weather still, so as not to interfere. These were the halcyon days." Brooke-Hitching references Pliny's belief in the soft coral being used by the birds as nest, but he doesn't link him directly to this myth , nor is Aristotle (as mentioned in my linked post) mentioned. Furthermore, the Wikipedia page connects the myth to the Roman poet Ovid and Latin scholar Hygius (apparently, it is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula or of Alexandria in Egypt), both writing around the turn of the first century.

As with most myths and their various retellings by different authors and poets over the centuries, it's complicated and probably impossible to narrow the information down into one definitive explanation. Scan-reading the Wikipedia page, I pick out that the phrase 'halcyon days' has "come to refer to any peaceful time" but its "proper meaning, however, is that of a lucky break, or a bright interval set in the midst of adversity; just as the days of calm and mild weather are set in the height of winter for the sake of the kingfishers' egg-laying according to the myth. Kingfishers, however, do not live by the sea, so Ovid's tale (and therefore Pliny the naturalist's belief) is not based on any actual observations of the species and in fact refers to a mythical bird only later identified with the kingfisher".

I suppose I may return to this topic one day, but really I just wanted to link the story of the myth to my previous posts regarding the soft coral I found recently and the scrapbook snippet about halcyon days which I posted earlier this year.

first draft; NEEDS RE-READING.

POSTSCRIPT: My friend Gareth has mentioned Aeolian harps to me, which are instruments, usually stringed, played by the wind and named after Aeolus, god of the wind. An example of this concept is the Singing Ringing Tree near Burnley which I posted a picture of here.

[nanzyn]

WHAT’S THIS? ITS PLINY THE ELDER COMING OUTTA LEFT FIELD WITH A STEEL CHAIR

[historieofbeafts]

Is there a reason for the persistent association between scorpions, crabs, and basil?

[It's been long enough this probably needs a link to the original scorpion post for context]

As far as I'm aware, the association between scorpions and crabs comes from straightforward physical similarities (pincers, exoskeletons, etc.). Though when Ovid gives a list of animals that grow from decay in Book 15 of the Metamorphoses he says scorpions come specifically from crabs that have been buried without their claws, which is the opposite of what I'd expect.

[from the 1567 Golding translation, which gets overhyped as one of Shakespeare's influences, but was still an important text in the English Renaissance. also cleas=claws & writhen=twisted]

The association with basil is more complicated. The short version is that the first confirmed Greek mention of basil comes from a physician called Chrysippus (~4th c. BCE). His works were lost, but enough survives in later texts to know that he thought basil was extremely dangerous and unfit for human consumption, but doesn't seem to have mentioned scorpions.

Africa and Asia have a much longer history with basil, and when it does start to get linked with scorpions in classical texts there’s often an accompanying reference to “African” practices. Which isn’t enough to establish cross-cultural influence, but for the purposes of this blog I think it’s okay to speculate that a preexisting link between basil and scorpions + the Greek & Roman medical practice of treating scorpion stings with a mixture of basil, wine and vinegar + the fact that scorpions are frequently found in the kinds of places where basil grows +  a cultural belief in the spontaneous generation of small animals made the idea of scorpions growing from basil seem pretty reasonable.

That’s a lot of words without a primary source, so here’s internet favourite Pliny the Elder providing an example of what I’m talking about:

Brief digression, but the highlight of Pliny’s basil facts actually has nothing to do with scorpions. It’s this Totally Normal Gardening Tip:

Obviously it’s fun to imagine a world where this caught on and HGTV stands for Hostile Gardening Television, but it might be even more fun to imagine someone at a fair asking a prizewinning vegetable grower what their secret is and being told “ancient wisdom: swear at yer zucchini.” /end digression

This is already a pretty long post, but while I’m on the subject I can’t not talk about the ‘sniffing too much basil will give you brain scorpions’ urban legend popularized in the 16th-17th centuries. To start with, here are two 17th c. summaries that also give a pretty good idea of the Basil Discourse ™ at the time:

[Culpeper’s The English Physician (1652)]

[Topsell’s History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents (1658)]

Point form notes because there’s a lot to unpack:

Billingsgate is a fishmarket famous for vulgar language

 Non nostrum inter nos tantas componere lites is Virgil reference for “above my pay grade”

Dr. Reason is an allegorical figure representing logic/common sense

The link with basilisks comes from dubious folk etymology, but still probably contributed to basil’s bad reputation

Hollerius is the Latin name for the French physician Jacques Houllier, and I went through his De morborum internorum curatione, liber I (1572) & De morbis internis, libri II (1589) in hopes of finding more information about Brain Scorpion Patient Zero

He doesn’t provide any

Seriously

Each volume contains a one (1) sentence summary saying that an Italian man grew a scorpion in his brain and then died as a result of smelling too much basil

That’s it

The Gesner example comes from a treatise on scorpions published posthumously as part of Vol. 5 of his Historiae animalium (1587)

It also doesn’t provide any information beyond “an apothecary told me about a French girl who died after smelling basil and turned out to have a brain full of scorpions”

Obviously the real reason for the vagueness is because these are, at absolute best, examples of the false cause fallacy, but I still have a pressing need to know how patients’ basil-sniffing habits entered the medical record

Like, where would you even get that information?

Catch me learning necromancy so I can ask 16th c. physicians some pointed questions about brain scorpion diagnostic criteria, I guess

After all that, it seems fitting to conclude this post with someone who has no problem describing exact methodology: the scientist and mystic Jan Baptist van Helmont, who provides a recipe for growing scorpions from basil in his Oriatrike, or Physick Refined (1664)

I mean, what can you say to that except

He also has a recipe for growing mice by leaving a dirty shirt in a container of wheat:

[llewey-watts]

Work in progress post:

Detective Watts Best Quotes

Concocting A Killer

Watts: “Ah, so you’re the one who botched it.” Murdoch: “Excuse me?”

Watts: “Well, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

Brackenreid: “Listen, Detective Murdoch did nothing wrong. The Crown is just worried that Shanley may claim prejudice if the same detective reinvestigates the case.”

Watts: “Right, right, right. You’re just biased. The coroner’s the one who botched it. Coroners. Odd lot. Far from reliable to say the least. Not to mention the smell.”

Murdoch: “Our coroner has a flawless record. And she also happens to be my wife.”

Watts: “Good God, man. You’re married to the city coroner?”

Murdoch: “Yes.”

Watts: “Oof. Is she pretty? Ah, she’d have to be pretty. I don’t know how else you could tolerate being married to a colleague.”

“The streets of this fine city are my office.”

Crabtree: “Should I read these files?”

Watts: “Absolutely not. The less you know, the more pure you remain. From purity emerges truth. From truth emerges justice. Knowing nothing allows one to see everything.”

“Our mind is where we live our lives. The only home one needs is the human skull.”

Watts: “Oh, no. You interviewed a witness?”

Murdoch: “Oh, no. She called on me.”

Watts: “Your involvement was to cease entirely. Instead, it appears you are continuing to seek a conviction. And based on what? A visual test done 12 years ago by a neophyte coroner?”

Murdoch: “Dr. Ogden is my wife.”

Watts: “Which makes it all the more likely you’re blind to her mistakes. No, it appears this dinner was a poor idea. Good night Detective.”

Watts: “The detective was wrong.”

Ogden: “About what?”

Watts: “You’re not pretty.”

Ogden: “Excuse me?”

Watts: “Look at you. Classic, Romanesque bone structure, excellent physiognomic symmetry. You’re not pretty. You’re beautiful.”

Ogden: “Well, I suppose I’m flattered.”

Watts: “Why? It’s merely an objective assessment. But that necktie **shakes his head**.

“Honestly, Inspector, how does anyone work with this man? He is some kind of renegade to whom rules are a foreign concept.”

“Let’s suppose for a moment that Mr. Shanley is guilty of this current murder. Now, does that make him more or less likely to be guilty of the first? Are you the same man today you were yesterday? Your hair is not the same. You cut and discarded it. Same with your fingernails. Over time, our entire body falls away and is reconstituted. How, then, can you be the same? Oh, but our thinking changes with maturity, with experience. In truth, the continuity of personhood may be nothing more than a delusion. In fact, it makes me question our whole profession..."

“We need to get out of doors detective. The truth is in the air. We must **deep breath** breathe it in.”

“We both know you didn’t do it. — We have to blame someone. The function of the police is to attribute blame on behalf of the community, but the community doesn’t particularly care if we blame the right person. — Why not? Man has been using scapegoats since Leviticus. The sims were placed upon the goat, the goat was banished to the desert, but mo one cared that the goat was innocent.”

“The ignorami at Station One have done it again. I clearly told them to release the man who looks like Karl Marx. They’ve let out some fellow who’s as clean-shaven as bloody Kierkegaard.”

Hades Hath No Fury

“How could I have been so unaware? My sister was in distress, and I suspected nothing. Age is no excuse for inattention. -but, sir, you found her. Your sister’s alive.- Yes. So I’m at peace.”

“Yes. Well life is but a cruel sport for whatever maker you are forced to believe in. -Detective Watts I understand...- Would your sister forsake you for a house of women who have eschewed the world in which you live?-my sister was a nun.-“

“Truth is absolute, unyielding and eternal, Jackson. It is our one constant in a turbulent universe.”

“Your face is *pause* symmetrical, but that hat *shakes his head*”

Merlot Mysteries

Watts: “Wine is proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy.”

Murdoch: “I highly doubt that”

Watts: “Oh, you reject the words of Benjamin Franklin?”

Murdoch: “Even a clever man is capable of a bad idea. no. wine, like any alcohol, is a depressant. It hinders the mind.”

Watts: “Ah, but ‘in wine there is truth.’ -Pliny the Elder.”

Murdoch: “Writers and Philosophers are seldom the best of judges. Especially when it comes to alcohol.

Watts: “Well, no one less than Louis Pasteur called wine, ‘the most helpful and most hygienic of beverages.’ Is it that you don’t enjoy the taste?”

Murdoch: “Ah.”

“Oh. Wait right there. I’m going to show you how wrong you are.”

“‘Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and a serious smile.’”

“In the words of Diogenes, ‘What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.’”

Murdoch: “Spectroscopic analysis.”

Watts: “Ah, yes. Not reliable in my experience. How’s it meant to help us?”

Murdoch: “By comparing the wine in question to the light profile of other varying ages, we’ll be able to discern precisely how old it is.”

Ogden: “The older the wine, presumably, the light the color, thanks to the blanching effect of sunlight.”

Watts: “Mm, but it was kept in a cellar. Depending on conditions, two bottles of the same provenance could be wildly different. There’s absolutely to way to determine —“

Murdoch: “Thank you, Detective. Please.”

Watts: “All right.”

Ogden: “Ready?”

Murdoch: “Yes.”

Ogden: “It’s 4.3.”

**Watts waiting + messing around.**

Ogden: “It’s 5.2. 8.5.”

Watts: “Well?”

Murdoch: “[Sighs] They are all different.”

Watts: “Really?”

Murdoch: “Every grape, every year, every bottle.”

Watts: “Hm, you don’t say.”

Murdoch: “It compares to an 1880 Merlot...a 1902 Tempranillo...and...several others.”

Ogden: “Well, I suppose you told us so, Detective.”

Murdoch: “All right. Call in your expert.”

Watts: “Uh, not my expert. My sommelier.”

The Talking Dead

“No one intends to get murder **scratches his beard** and yet.”

Crabtree: “Sir, are you not concerned that you yourself are marked for death?”

Watts: “Oh, I don’y like it, but the truth is death could come to any one of us any day.”

Crabtree: “Still, no need to hurry it along.”

Watts: “Well, very little of life is under our control. Very little death as well.”

Crabtree: “Watts, have you ever been to Paris?”

Watts: “Ah yes, The City of Light.”

Crabtree: “I thought that was Buffalo?”

Watts: “No, I believe Paris came up with it first. Why do you ask?”

Crabtree: “Nina’s involved with a show that’s preforming there. She wants me to go.”

Watts: “Forever?”

Crabtree: “No, no, just a short while.”

Watts: “Well, the world is only an oyster if you choose to open it.”

Crabtree: “So go to Paris today, for tomorrow I might die?”

Watts: “Precisely.”

Crabtree: “What about you? What would you do with your last day?”

Watts: “Just this. Talk to a friend.”

Crabtree: “Who? Oh me?”

Watts: “And solve a crime.This is what were looking for.”

Crabtree: “Brilliant.”

Watts: “The City of Love with a beautiful woman. You’d be a fool to say no.”

Crabtree: “Thought you said it was the City of Light.”

Watts: “Light. Love. Are they not one and the same?”

Crabtree: “I prefer to love with the lights off, sir. I fear I’m bashful.”

Crabtree à la Carte

“A shame. It looks terrific. I think I’ll go out for lunch. Anyone care to join me? —- This disappoints me. But I soldier on.”

“I’ll work with her. People are not to be defined merely by their words, thoughts, and actions.”

“KRRRKRRRKRRRSHING SHING SHING SHING SHING! a moleta.”

“[speaking Italian] RESPONDA TO ME!”

That man’s look tho.

Watts: “It may once again be safe, but I’m not sure I’ll ever regard meat with the same enthusiasm again.”

Cherry: “Perhaps you should stick to freshly butchered cuts.”

Watts: “I thought the same. Then I read up on the abattoir conditions in the stockyards.”

Cherry: “The Shelleys subscribed to a Pythagorean diet. Da Vinci too.”

Watts: “Pythagorean? You mean vegetarian?”

Cherry: “I do. ‘My body,’ said da Vinci, ‘will not be a tomb to other creatures.’”

Watts: “Yes. Yes, it’s the only way to live, isn’t it? Join me, Miss Cherry. From this day forward, we shall follow the ranks of all moral men in our strict adherence to vegetarianism.”

Cherry: “Uh, I don’t think so. What, are we cows?”

Murdoch Schmurdoch

“Are you being facetious?”

“**To Constable John Brackenreid** Let me guess, you invited a lady to accompany you on an outing and she declined. — I would counsel you to persevere. Ask again. As Lord Nelson wrote, ‘the boldest measures are the safest,’ although I suppose a woman is quite unlike a Danish Fleet. — Yes. Tread softly, Young Brackenreid. Let her know that if her inclination changes, your offer still stands.”

Game of Kings

Ogden: “I see. Well, I don’t much fancy being stared at for the next five months.”

Murdoch: “Julia...”

Ogden: “Inspector, I couldn’t help but notice that you and all of the men were staring at the us both. Is there something you’d like to ask?”

Brackenreid: “Uh, no.”

Ogden: “Constable Crabtree?”

Crabtree: “What? [Chuckles]”

Ogden: “Higgins?”

Higgins: “No, ma’am.”

Ogden: “What about you, Detective Watts? You seem like a curious fellow.”

Watts: “Well, there is one thing.”

Murdoch: “What is that?”

Watts: “When’s the baby coming?”

Crabtree: “Oh!”

Brackenreid: “Bloody hell, Watts! They wanted to keep it a secret.”

Watts: “How could they do that when everyone clearly knows what’s going on here?”

Free Falling

Watts: “One hopes this won’t put too much of a strain on their relationship.”

Crabtree: “How so?”

Watts: “In the face of great loss, emotions can be misdirected. Feelings amplified. I knew a young couple who experienced a similar issue. They never recovered.”

Watts: “The secret to dealing with gruesome remains is to replace natural instinct with logic.”

Constable Brackenreid: “Okay. How?”

Watts: “Consider an ant. Imagine you trod upon one, crushing it, and leaving it’s body mangled beyond recognition. Now, does this disturb you?”

Constable Brackenreid: “Not really.”

Watts: “Exactly. So we simply apply the transitive law. If we are not disturbed by an ant, there is no reason to be disturbed by a beetle. If not by a beetle, then not by a caterpillar. Nor a butterfly, nor a sparrow, nor a fish, nor a rabbit, not a dog...nor a human. What we have here, then, is no more disturbing than the squashed remains of an ant.”

Hart: “What’s this?”

Watts: “A reminder of the inhumanity of man, Miss Hart.”

Hart: “How poetic.”

Watts: “Constable? It seems something’s troubling you.”

Crabtree: “How so?”

Watts: “There’s an expression on your face that suggests you have a thought in your head.”

Crabtree: “Do you remember I asked you about visiting Paris?”

Watts: “No.”

Crabtree: “And then I was away for some time?”

Watts: “No.”

Crabtree: “No. Well, in any case, I did. I went to Paris with Nina.”

Watts: “Mm.”

Crabtree: “And she wants to go again, but for good.”

Watts: “So you’re considering leaving us all behind?”

Crabtree: “I don’t want to. My whole life is here. But I could imagine a life there. I don’t know. If I...If I don’t go, I lose Nina. If I do, I lose everything else that’s dear to me.”

Watts: “One loss doesn’t outweigh the other?”

Crabtree: “The enormity of either seems too great to contemplate.”

Watts: “Oof. Well...I can’t give you any advice. But I can tell you what I know. I know that we spend our whole lives holding on to what we have. We fear loss as much as death itself. But without loss, there is no change. Without change, there is no? Life.”

Crabtree: “Detective. You realize there’s nothing written on the blackboard, right?”

Watts: “Uh, yes, but it provides a frame of reference.”

Crabtree: “Ah.”

Brothers Keepers

“Of course I’m not certain. Memories are fragmentary impressions at best. The mind moves like a flock of starlings. It’s hard to pin down a thought, let alone a memory.”

“Did I have reason? Nigel Baker tortured and killed a man I...A man who was in every way my brother. Someone who deserved my protection. I had ample reason to kill Nigel Baker. But as I have already made clear, I didn’t recognize him. So did I kill him with intention? No. Am I sorry he’s dead? No, I’m not. To be honest, even if given the chance to exact my revenge, I’m not sure I’m capable of it. Obviously, my philosophy rejects that very idea. No one asks to be the way they are, not even boys like Nigel Baker.”

In reference to justice being found:

Watts: “Where is that to be found? I’ve been asking myself that. To be honest, I’m unable to think of much else.

Murdoch: “You seek justice.”

Watts: “I crave it. If I could, I would demand it. I want the man who killed my brothers to feel their pain. To feel my grief at what he did to them. But he’s dead. At the hand of his father. Did he even know why? And now the father will likely hang. Is that justice?

Brackenreid: “Of a sort, I suppose.”

Watts: “Then why don’t I feel better?”

Annabella Cinderella

Constable Brackenreid: “Do you think I’ll get a chance to meet him?”

Crabtree: “Who? The lawyer? What do you want to meet him for?”

Constable Brackenreid: “I-I followed the trial. I felt sorry for her.”

Crabtree: “John, she killed her mother with an ax.”

Constable Brackenreid: “Harriet Rawlins wasn’t her mother. Annabella was a home child.”

Crabtree: “So that makes it alright?”

Constable Brackenreid: “She was beaten and tortured. Her home sister admitted as much.”

Crabtree: “The home sister that Annabella then tried to murder?”

Constable Brackenreid: “Rosemary Rawlins was abusive as well.”

Watts: “That’s what made it such a brilliant defense. The victim was painted as a villain, the villain painted as a victim. Annabella Cinderella.”

Crabtree: “So you’re a fan of the lawyer as well?”

Constable Brackenreid: “He took her case for free.”

Watts: “Oh, nobody’s motives are purely altruistic. It’s all in the service of his political aspirations. He running for mayor, don’t you know?”

Crabtree: “Thank you very much, Detective Watts, for everything. You as well, Mr. Daniels.”

Constable Brackenreid: “And I’m terribly sorry about all of this.”

Watts: “Of course you’re sorry. It doesn’t change anything, so why waste energy in saying it?”

Constable Brackenreid: “Does Detective Murdoch know?”

Watts: “No, he doesn’t. And that’s not the question you should be asking right now.”

Constable Brackenreid: “Sorry, I...”

Watts: “Nope.”

Constable Brackenreid: “W-What is?”

Lawyer: “How do we find her?”

Watts: “Ah. On the train over, I went through the file from the Crown prosecutor. There’s one more person we should protect.”

Lawyer: “Who’s that?”

Watts: “The doctor who filed the death certificate and attended the case.”

Lawyer: “Dr. Beattie was never called to testify.”

Watts: “He provided evidence that helped convict her.”

Lawyer: “Good point. Let’s go.”

Watts: “No. You stay. **waves gun in the air** This is police business. All right.”

Constable Brackenreid: “I’m not saying she’s innocent. I just pointed out that there are other people who may have wanted to kill her mother.”

Watts: “Which, if they did, would ipso facto make her innocent.”

Crabtree: “Did she say she was innocent?”

Constable Brackenreid: “She did, yes.”

Watts: “‘Twas ever thus.”

Constable Brackenreid: **opens the door** “Oh, my God.”

Watts: “Still think she’s so innocent?”

Constable Brackenreid: “This is my fault.”

Crabtree: “It’s jot your fault, John.”

Watts: “Losing the prisoner was your fault. This is merely a consequence. One cannot be accountable for every consequence, because the consequences of every action are infinite.”

Constable Brackenreid: “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Watts: “Your feelings are irrelevant. It’s simply the truth of it.”

Crabtree: “It does confirm our fears. The girl’s out for bloody revenge.”

[alwaysalreadyangry]

Giraffe

by Lucie Brock-Broido (hear her read it here)

In another life, he was Caesar’s pet, perhaps a gift from Cleopatra When she returned to Rome   Her hair salty and sapphired From bathing, the winged kohl around her eyes smudged     From heat.   In another life, he was from Somalia     Where he spent hours watching clouds In shapes of feral acrobats tipping along their tightropes Spun of camels’ hair and jute.     His eyes were liquid, kind.     His lashes each as long as a hummingbird’s tongue. His fetlocks puffed from galloping, his tail curled upward From the joy of feeling fleet across the tinted grasslands     And the gold savannahs there.              Do you find me colorful as well? Once, in another life in the Serengeti, he stretched his neck To feed on the acacia twigs, mimosa, wild apricot.     He was gentle and his heart was as long     As a human’s arm. At night, the others of his species hummed to each other across The woodlands there; no one knows how, exactly, to this day, But you can hear their fluted sounds.                Pliny the Elder wrote that, In the circus of the hunting-theatres of ancient Greece,     He would be safe.     He was considered among the curiosities. The House of the Medici found him novel, And he pleased them mightily.             Do you find my story pleasing, too? Even on the ship to France,             The sailors cut an oblong hole Through the deck above the cargo hold to allow his head     To poke safely through.     When he arrived they dressed him in royal livery To walk the seven hundred leggy kilometres     From Marseilles to Paris to be presented To the Queen     Who fed him rose petals from her hand. At Thebes, in the tomb of the Valley of the Kings, He was depicted in a hieroglyph, his forelegs gently tethered By two slaves with a green monkey clinging to his neck like a child Just along for the ride.             Do you think I have imagined this? In a woodblock, once     In an early-Netherlandish world, He is shown with a crocodile, a unicorn, and a wobbly man With a tail and prehensile feet.               Once, in Khartoum, He bent his neck low enough to take milk from a pewter bowl Held by a Sudanese farmer’s son.    Centuries later, In Piccadilly Circus, he was excluded from the Carrousel; Everyone favored him, but no one could climb that high.        If you come back from the other world, to this— The sky in Denmark, in its reticulated weathers, is inky               On most days in February now. In the Copenhagen Zoo they only name the animals who grow Old there, and, in this life, they called him            Marius but he was just a two-year-old.     In that moment was he looking at a gray, cobbled Steeple in the middle distance of a dome Or thinking of a time when his life was circled by a mane Of warmth in a bright Numidian sun? His belly was full And his eyes closed slightly   His lashes casting long     Pink shadows on his face.               Do you think I made this up? The attending veterinarian, Mads Bertelsen, shot him only once. He needed badly to be culled—his genetic type and character Replicated quite tidily enough already there, said Bengt Holst,     Director of the Zoo.   On that same day,     After mid-noon tea and biscuits at their schools, The Danish children were ushered to the habitat in the Gardens,     So they could learn firsthand   About anatomy. The keepers cut him open to reveal his neck, his tongue, his heart        (Which weighed just shy of twenty pounds). The children, wound in down, bound in bright wool scarves Which covered their open mouths with horizontal stripes, Were mittened, wide-eyed, curious.               Do you find me curious as well? When the Nordic dark settled in, so early, The children, blanketed in white, began to fuss at sleep, and cry. It would not snow that night. What is it in me       Makes me tell you of these sights.

[chrysalispen]

Prompt #11 - Ultracrepidarian

AO3 Link HERE a special thanks to pliny the elder for sauce on this most expensive of fifteen dollar word prompts

====

"There we are," she whispered with a short snip of the clippers. "Just a bit of a trim..."

There were not many places within the grounds of the Laskaris villa that Aurelia could properly call a haven, but if she had to pick her favorite place on her uncle's property it was the greenhouse. He had had it built for her aunt to preserve the tea roses she loved, along with the other flowers that grew in much warmer climes than the mountains of far northern Ilsabard, but Aunt Marcella seemed to much prefer looking at flowers to tending them.

Aurelia, who had carefully tended her own small plot back home in Ala Mhigo, was more than happy to spend her term breaks making sure the heating system was functioning as intended and ensuring the soil for each plant had the necessary nutrients to winter them. As a result, the greenhouse had become her domain, which suited her just fine. Plants couldn't criticize her deportment nor her appearance, and she could get as covered in dirt and sweat as she liked with no one to gainsay her.

She was glad of it today, for it was a rare warm day in early spring and she was preparing the roses for transport. That meant trimming them back into a semblance of order and placing them in the soil she'd spread while making sure the root systems remained intact and inured against any shocks.

This was hard and sweaty work, and one which required a good deal of concentration and fortitude.

She exhaled and wiped her hands on the long linen apron she wore over one of her old day frocks, long since stained and soiled, then muddled around on the ground in search of the carbonweave gardener's gloves she'd dug from one of the supply closets. The extra grip would come in handy when she--

"Mistress Laskaris," a reedy voice echoed at her back. Aurelia paid it little mind, bracing her hands on the rim of the pot. "...Young miss, you have-"

"Tell them to wait, Cicero," she let out a tiny grunt with the exertion as she hoisted upward, "I'll be in presently."

"Beg your pardon, young miss, but it won't wait."

Aurelia rounded on her aunt's groundskeeper, an exasperated reply on her lips, and froze. A tall and immaculately dressed Garlean man stepped forward, looking down his aquiline nose at the weakly protesting servant for one brief glance before giving her a deep and courtly bow.

"You must be Aurelia," he said, his voice ebullient with false warmth. "Father has heard much of you from your aunt."

She stared blankly.

"I," he announced, "am Sebastian wir Acisculus."

The proud, haughty expression he wore told her everything she needed to know. Inwardly she groaned-- wir meant he was at least related to Gens Galvus by marriage if nothing else, which meant he would expect her to show him due obeisance for that alone.

My thanks, Aunt Marcella, she thought irritably. A stuffy and self-important lordling to dog her heels, just what she'd wanted while she was trying to work.

Another grunt had the base of the pot braced against her thigh, and she thrust out a filthy hand in his direction.

"Aurelia jen Laskaris," she said. "Pray excuse my appearance. Aunt hadn't told me to expect visitors."

"Your aunt is not to be faulted. She didn't know I would be coming today," Sebastian said, his nose wrinkling as he took her proffered hand- and, before she could stop him, had pressed his lips to the back of it. Somehow she managed not to yank her wrist from his grasp before he dropped it and reached into his coat for a handkerchief to wipe the soil from his fingers. "My servants and I were in the area and I thought to indulge my curiosity."

"One presumes you now find said curiosity fully sated."

"Might I ask what you are about?"

She leveled a steady, faintly disdainful gaze upon the man- more than enough to indicate she thought him at least partially witless.

"His lordship, I am sure, has seen a garden before."

"Ah," he coughed. "Yes, so I have. I did not expect to see a young gentlewoman of my peerage tending it personally."

Shaking her head, Aurelia turned her back on him and in the most undignified waddle in her arsenal began to lug the pot towards the open bed.

"I'll get that for you," and without waiting for her assent he had plucked the pot from her fingers, ignoring the annoyed scowl that crossed her features as he carried it to the edge of the soil and set it on the grass. "I fancy myself something of an expert botanist, you know."

"Do you," she said, flatly. He was removing his soiled gloves with a smirk, one he turned upon her with an uptilt of his chin.

"I do. When I studied at the Imperial Magitek Academy, I thought it might be pleasant to take up a hobby." When Aurelia didn't react to the obvious namedrop, he announced, "I took some courses in horticulture, and if I do say so myself, it left me with a renewed respect and understanding for such matters."

"I suppose one must have hobbies."

"For instance, did you realize that perennials cannot grow properly in alkaloid soil?"

With some effort, Aurelia managed to keep a straight face.

"Lord Sebastian," she said, "I find it quite interesting that you attended the Academy. What did you say was your field of study?"

"Engineering, of course."

"Not bioengineering?"

"Certainly not," he scoffed. "Very little glory to be had in such things, you know."

Aurelia rolled her eyes, turned her back to him, and pulled on the gloves she had tucked in her apron pocket. Once they were secured, she reached for her spade.

"If you attended the Academy and dabbled, as you say, in horticulture," she said, "then you would have encountered the guest lecturer there, Philetus lux Merenda."

"Well, I-"

"Master Merenda was very good friends with Midas nan Garlond, the previous Academy provost," she punctuated this statement with a deep and satisfying thrust of her spade into the edge of the potted soil, "and together they created a summer exchange program between the Academy and the Valetudinarium. He gives lectures as part of the optional curriculum, and likewise Cato nan Mammula offers in-depth capstone bioengineering lectures."

"You have taken them yourself, I assume?"

"Oh," Aurelia said airily, "for the past two summer terms, in fact. I find them quite enlightening. One must always have a thorough grounding in one's area of expertise and review all options. Don't you think?"

"Yes," he said. "Of course."

"There is a saying," she braced one hand against the edge of the pot for purchase, "of which Master Merenda is quite fond. An old Ilsabardian saying he attributes to a historian of the old republic-- in Old Ilsabardian, naturally. Do you know what it is?"

"I am certain -- though perhaps you might remind me."

Aurelia paused long enough to stare him in the eye and brush a wisp of forelock from her third eye with the back of one gloved hand, her golden coiffure as sweaty and dirty and disheveled as the rest of her.

"Ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret. I assume that shouldn't need a translation, for a learned man such as yourself."

"Madam, are you implying-"

"It does? Why, how curious. My governess was quite emphatic that a good grounding in the classics was vital for a basic imperial education." She shrugged. "Well, I suppose I can enlighten you. 'The cobbler should not judge beyond his shoe.' It means that one should not speak of matters upon which he has no understanding."

Two pinpoints of hectic blush the color of rose petals had appeared upon his prominent cheekbones. Aurelia offered a smile that did not reach her dark blue eyes.

"I find it a most apt sentiment," she said coolly, "and one well-applied to life in the modern world."

His hands clenched at his sides and without a word he rounded on one heel and stormed back towards the peristyle, her aunt's household keeper at his heels frantically offering refreshment.

She watched them go, laughed, and turned back to her work. She still had a baker's dozen of roses left to plant.

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for 24th Sunday after Pentecost

1 Thess 1:2-10; Matt 13:31-35

The Roman author and naturalist Pliny the Elder observes in his Natural History that the mustard plant is “extremely beneficial for health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand once it has been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it because the seed, when it falls, germinates at once.”

So, when the Lord Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed, these are the properties of the mustard plant that he wants us to think about: it grows quickly, it is tenacious, it is resilient, and it is extremely beneficial. And all this is true of the Faith; of our graced relationship with God; of the living community of the Church.

There is a tendency to hear the word ‘Church’ and to think of a building, or an institution, or a place, or even a gathering of people. But these word associations all lack the dynamism of the Gospel and of Jesus’s teaching. When the Lord speaks in St Matthew’s Gospel of the basileia twn ouranwn, he is speaking of the royal power of God, the kingship of God, the reign of heaven on earth. In short, Jesus is speaking in the Gospel today about grace, and the extension of God’s grace in our lives, and in our society, and thus throughout the world. As such, he is speaking about God’s power to change and transform our lives; his divine life and dynamism infusing the world and raising it up; his Holy Spirit filling and renewing all of creation, making you and me to become Saints, citizens of heaven. As St Paul says in the epistle: “our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” (1 Thess 1:5)

Hence, our Lord likens the kingdom to a mustard seed, which he calls “the smallest of seeds”. (Mt 13:32a) This isn’t a botanical point, as such, because we know that in fact there are smaller seeds around, but rather it makes the point that the kingdom begins invisibly – like the smallest of seeds, it can barely be seen. So it is with God’s grace. Grace, and the powerful gift of faith, is sown invisibly in our hearts. For grace is entirely of the working and the gifting of God independent of our merits and totally undeserved. The man who sows this seed is Christ himself, he who is “true Man”, who, begotten of the Father’s love, is the eternal Word sown on this earth, and who is planted in the hearts of men. So, the Lord Jesus sows his Word, sows faith, sows vivifying grace in you and me, and he does this great work invisibly, ordinarily through the Sacrament of Baptism.

After all, the word ‘sacramentum’, sacrament, comes from the Greek word musterion, mystery, which means something hidden or secret. For although the Sacrament is a visible and outward sign, it effects something mysterious, hidden, and does its true work in our souls in an unseen way. For grace, too, is hidden, small, unseen by human eyes; like a mustard seed.  

The effects of grace, though, are altogether astonishing and evident to our senses. Jesus thus says that “when it has grown up it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Mt 13:32b) The image of the tree, specifically a cedar tree, in which all the birds shelter was used by the prophet Ezekiel to speak of Israel, the people of God. Now Jesus alludes to this image, but he is speaking of the new people of God formed by his grace; the communion of Saints, his holy Church. So, the people in whom God’s invisible grace, God’s sacramental mysteries, have been growing shall become a great tree; they shall become God’s holy kingdom, God’s people in whom God dwells; they shall have become branches connected to God’s holy Vine, Christ himself. For this is what grace does: it unites us to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and we draw our life, our identity, our being from him.  

The image of the birds coming to nest in the branches of the tree is a charming and attractive image of the Catholic expanse of the Church: all peoples are called to come and find shelter, and refuge, and rest in her, to find salvation through her.

However, I think its says something direct and challenging to each of us Christians too. For if you and I are branches of the tree, then you and I are being called, without discrimination, to support and give shelter to those who come to us seeking help and refuge. For as we are connected to Christ and draw our life from him, then we also draw from him the grace of charity that transforms our attitudes and opens our hearts to others in benevolence and goodwill. So, only with charity, coming from God himself, can we human beings grow and reach out like branches to give divine hospitality and refuge to those in need regardless of who they are – “all the birds of the air come and make their nests in its branches”, says the Lord. Hence Pope Francis said in Fratelli tutti: “Faith has untold power to inspire and sustain our respect for others, for believers come to know that God loves every man and woman with infinite love and “thereby confers infinite dignity” upon all humanity. We likewise believe that Christ shed his blood for each of us and that no one is beyond the scope of his universal love. If we go to the ultimate source of that love which is the very life of the triune God, we encounter in the community of the three divine Persons the origin and perfect model of all life in society.”  (para. 85)

When Christ speaks of the kingdom of heaven, therefore, he is saying that God’s grace transforms human beings and our relationships so that how we treat one another on earth mirrors that of the Triune God in heaven. Thus Jesus says in St John’s Gospel: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jn 13:35) And this love, this divine faith, this life of grace is like a mustard seed. How? Firstly, it can spread and grow quickly, and indeed, it can spring up unexpectedly. So, ignore all the gloomy prognoses for the death of Christianity in the West. For the life of grace, the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth is God’s work, not man’s. Secondly, it is tenacious and resilient. Time and again, wicked men and Satan’s evil spirits have tried to stamp out the Christian faith, but it has returned, and come back to life, and even among atheistic and unrepentant hearts, we have countless testimonies of the miracle of grace secretly bringing cynical souls to conversion and to faith in the living God; many Saints were thus converted. Thirdly, like the mustard plant, the kingdom of heaven coming to be in our lives is “extremely beneficial for salus, health”. Indeed, God’s grace is most beneficial for it brings us the most enduring health benefit of all namely, salus, meaning, salvation, and indeed, eternal life.

The second parable in the Gospel today likewise points to the hiddenness of the kingdom of heaven, the unseen workings of God’s grace in our hearts. For “the kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” (Mt 13:33) Here, grace is likened to yeast, which permeates the dough and causes it to rise. We shouldn’t miss the reference to a woman which may be a subtle reference to the Holy Spirit, ruah Adonai, which is feminine noun in Hebrew. So it is the Holy Spirit who hides God’s grace within us, and our whole person is leavened, that is to say, we are infused and changed by God’s grace so that, like leavened dough, we rise up and are filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit. For this is what grace does: grace divinises us, transforms us from within, and elevates us to share in the divine nature. And God is Love (1 Jn 4:8). Therefore, the astonishing effect of grace is to cause you and me to love as Christ loves. This is the basileia twn ouranwn, the royal power of God, the reign of heaven experienced in our lives. When we love – truly, simply, self-sacrificially – as Jesus does, as the Saints do, then heaven will have come to earth: “thy Kingdom come… on earth as it is in heaven.” (Mt 6:10)

[mariamallahan]

Chapter 7 - The Mallahan Schism

There are secrets that change your life forever. A few years ago I discovered one of these secrets in a hotel room in Rome. Thanks to what I heard that night from a boy named Zayden Snicket, I immediately stopped communicating with Dr. Handler, interrupted the writing of this brochure, and married a man much older than me. I had a brief but lovely marriage to Count Kornbluth. I became known as Condensa Kornbluth, but I never got used to that title. Before we got married, my husband had told me, "Apparently it's a tradition for Mallahan women to keep their maiden names after marriage, so I won't be the first to ask that to change." I am so grateful that he accepted my request.

A few weeks before he died, my notorious husband made me three requests. The first was "I want you to take me to ride a lion for the last time." The second request was something he made me promise not to tell the general public, but it has to do with an intricate plan of revenge against Dr. Handler. And the third request was "I want you to use part of the inheritance you will receive to fund the completion of the Mallahan Brochure." I feel very sorry for my beloved and deceased husband. If he knew about my intentions, he never wasted two of the three requests on things I was already determined to do using all my available sweat and financial resources.

I got 2/3 of my husband's inheritance, and our adopted daughter, Beatrice, got 1/6 of his inheritance. We had to adopt her because he could no longer have children when we got married, and he really wanted to relive the experience of having a girl close to adolescence at home. Next year áshe can enjoy her inheritance as she wishes. For now, Beatrice is working voluntarily with me on writing the Mallahan Brochure. Count Kornbluth also had a biological daughter from his first marriage (Lisa), but her whereabouts are unknown. But I am sure she will soon appear to claim the part of the inheritance that belongs to her. And when that happens, I'll be ready for her.

So I began preparations to restart my research on the history of VFD. During the past 5 years, during the brief periods when I was not taking care of my family's needs, I sought information about past big fires.

The Most Marvelous Method (I can say I'm happy to be an individual practitioner) indicates that there will be records of VFD actions in the vicinity of major fires. Unfortunately I cannot communicate with the many archeology groups around the world without this leading me to risk my life or risk the life of my adopted daughter or risk compromising a beautiful plan in progress. That's why I invited Zayden Snicket to join our group.

He became a handsome, intelligent and handsome young man of 18 years. He specializes in disguises and he is also an animal behaviorist. He said "I don't want to participate in anything that exposes my name or my work to the general public, as it could endanger me or disrupt an intricate revenge plan." But I promised him that I would not publish the brochure until our goals were definitely finalized, and if you are reading this it is because I was able to fulfill everything I intended or broke my promise with Zayden Snicket.

I decided to research one of the biggest fires I've ever heard of: The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Naples that hit the Pompeii district. Beatrice suggested that she go to Naples disguised as Snicket's girlfriend. I hated the idea and suggested that I go disguised as Snicket's girlfriend and she was disguised as my older sister. Snicket on the other hand said, "I believe we had better go separately to Naples so we can cover more research sites in a single day. And it will get harder be recognized in our disguises." I'm grateful to have him on the team, even though he's 9 years younger than me, he seems to have received unusual training.

Snicket painted Beatrice's face white, and handed her a black and white outfit. She went by bus to Pompeii Archaeological Park disguised as mime. I went to Neapolitan University by train and Snicket To the Neapolitan Library by taxi. On the train, I realized that it would have been better to have gone by taxi. I listened to the conversations of people sharing a small passenger compartment with me. "I'm afraid to go to Naples, but I have to go because of my work," one of them said. I thought the passenger was afraid of the volcano there, but his colleague replied, "Just don't get involved with the Camorra." I was already talking about that secret organization. They were known to be cruel, and to seize deep through illegal practices and violence (they are the Mafia). "But there's Camorra headquarters. How will I know if I'm involved with Camorra or not?" They looked at me silently. I realized that it had been a dangerous idea to wear a black suit and sunglasses on public transport.

When I arrived at university, I introduced myself as Violetta Coppola, a researcher at the University of Rome who needed help finding handwritten information about the eruption of Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii. Luckily, Snicket had made a card with my name very convincing, and a few hours later I was in the university library studying the writings of Pliny the Younger. At first I did not understand this title. I wondered "Younger than who?" The librarian named Yuiop explained to me that there was a man older than this Pliny. Coincidentally his name was also Pliny. The older Pliny was tutor to the younger Pliny. Yuiop gave me some privacy, and brought me coffee to help keep me awake while reading the Latin writings. Apparently the two Pliny were involved in studying and trying to avoid the serious effects of the worst fire of all time, which was the Great Eruption of Vesuvius.

According to what I read about Pliny the elder, he was an officer of the Roman army. But he dropped his weapons after a trip to Africa. I can't say for sure, but apparently he must have passed through Alexandria where he might have come in direct contact with AS. He returned to Italy with a completely different attitude, and devoted himself to studying law and the sciences of nature. I found in one of his writings the following: "It was a pleasant surprise to find a man from Alexandria who had noble ideas and a structured plan on how to avoid alarming uncontrolled combustions. " Thus, one of the heralds certainly met Pliny the Elder, and he was one of the first members of VFD in the Roman empire.

I didn't have time to do a thorough study there at the library, so I asked Yuiop to borrow those books. "Unfortunately I can't lend you, Dr. Coppola. But maybe I could lend to a certain Miss Mallahan." I shuddered to hear my name. I looked more closely at Yuiop, and then recognized those drawn eyes. I had to restrain myself from shouting with joy. "Mr. Editor! What are you doing here?" He explained to me that a certain Mr. Qwerty had made a great effort to find him in China. "He said people like me genuinely interested in history needed support and that other people falsely interested in history should pay for their crimes through an intricate revenge plan." Without further words, Mr. Editor lent me the publications I needed. I returned to the mansion by taxi. I read a lot of interesting things on the way back. Pliny the Elder died in 79 AD while he was studying the volcano and trying to save people. He also tried to avoid a major fire in Rome, which apparently Emperor Nero caused and blamed a group of religious pacifists. The younger Pliny, on the other hand, created a secret fire brigade, contrary to the orders of Emperor Trajan. I had certainly taken the VFD trail, and looked forward to coming home to study these writings with Beatrice. But unfortunately I didn't have enough time for that that night. Snicket came running to me as soon as I got home. He said:

"Maria ... The Camorra has captured Beatrice."

[tsunflowers]

what i’ve learned in

the energy of the brushstroke can activate the surface of the canvas

D.A.I. dragon age inquisition

ultramarine blue -- color of crushed lapis lazuli. “chanel of paint”

angel Gabriel wearing a cool plaid cloak

allegory = visual representation showing a link between represented forms and abstract ideas

“seems like there’s a little bit of a death theme”

busy doggo

that’s capitalism

“what we have learned today is eat the rich and patriarchy’s bad”

“the Carthusians... their jam is kind of hard to explain. they wanted to be hermits... together”

MOSES HAS HORNS bc they mistranslated rays of light as horns LMAO

“the Renaissance faire was every day, back in the... Renaissance”

golgotha is in a universe opposite to ours

“the man on the right seems to be praying which is a common thing to do in a church”

if the reformation were happening today it would probably start on twitter. martin luther would be like ok /thread

watermelon wings angel

hm do the readings

maybe she just got her amazon prime

florence controlled by medici family

linear perspective has come to town

linear perspective has a vanishing point

rembrandt jewish jesus

“we’re going to introduce the medici family as important protagonists in our renaissance story”

not classical antiquity... 2!!

“brunelleschi is the anna kendrick of the time”

donatello got arrested in 1401 for hitting another guy with a club

possible justification for showing david nude

donatello and ghiberti were horny

pliny the elder :/

I think titian’s venus is better

we gotta bring back multicolored hose

colin creevy...

da da da vinci

vinci isnt even his surname it’s just the city he was from. so a surname I guess

“leonardo did not have a romantic life and if he did it would not have been with a woman”

*gets a boner from looking at the mona lisa’s hands*

leo didn’t fuck to our knowledge also he was gay

raphael--dreamy? manners, good at networking, would be on linkedin

French moralized bible... like the regular bible isn’t moral enough? hello??

DIOGENES IS THERE

“if michelangelo’s rude to you it’s bc you deserve it” -- vasari

prof’s mom broke her arm in the line to enter the sistine chapel and still went

david’s big hands are cute like puppy paws

mike loves muscle even on women

prof started crying at titian’s grave and her friend took a pic and put it online

titian out here freelancing for bigwigs

duke of urbino was hiding this behind a curtain so he could show it off to his friends extra dramatic

prof and prof fay are fighting over disegno vs colore please

the original modern art?

invention of printing press just mentioned like it happened offscreen to our class

dove.

mike was big mad about the sistine chapel bc it hurt his back and he wanted to be working on pope julius’s tomb instead

“does it seem fitting at the last supper of the lord to paint buffoons, drunkards, Germans, dwarfs, and similar vulgarities” GOT HIM

what was like... wrong with heironymous bosch

dürer was a genius I love him

it if ain’t baroque don’t fix it

caravaggtio’s judith is like “oh ick :/” gentileschi’s is like “ARGH!! FUCK!!”

kin with judith?

prof would not swipe right on bernini’s tinder bc he was problematic

david for horny sculptors and st sebastian for horny painters

“david refused the armor” horny renaissance and baroque sculptors: so he was naked

angels and demons--bad. the illuminati? no

goofy rubens horses

“these interests were colonial and not cool at all”

tulip mania!

“etching is literally engraving on acid”

“I’m going to ask my lovely teaching assistant colin firth to explain it to you”

we think vermeer used camera obscura bc some of his paintings have reflections that wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye

also I took 26 pages of real notes. I take like a page and a half of notes in class every day I dont know why I’m like this

[atheistforhumanity]

Jesus as an actual, living, historical figure: is this bound by concrete evidence? Of course, there’s the whole “is he actually the Son of God” thing (which I’m sure you’ll say no). But I’m just wondering if you believe there was any man in the Middle East at all resembling Jesus during his era (and if he was actually crucified, etc).

Reasons to Doubt Jesus Ever Existed

This is a great question and Sunday morning before Christmas is the perfect time to answer it. Yes, any historical figure must be proven by historical evidence. While I do not claim to know for certain, I think it is highly unlikely that Jesus was ever a real historical figure. In this post I’m going to focus on the lack of evidence and why this points to fictional Jesus.

There is a shockingly small amount of evidence. The reason our pool of evidence is so small is that we must be strict about what can be considered evidence. We must only consider independent sources, that have validity, integrity, and are reasonably connected to the events.

So what do we have when we apply all of these rules to the evidence of Jesus? Virtually nothing. The New Testament contains almost everything that can be said to be known about Jesus Christ. You would think that for such a monumental figure there would be a large amount of corroborating evidence, but NT is all we have. Even that obviously leaves gaping holes. We know nothing of Jesus’ life between birth and prophethood, and none of this information is very reliable.

Remember we need authenticity and integrity, the NT does not truly meet these requirements. We know for a fact that there is a large amount of editing, rewriting, and flat out forgery within the NT. Mark is the first Gospel written and every one after that is a retelling of the same story, so as a collective they don’t contribute a large amount of independent information. The Gospels are not eye witness accounts as they are said to be, scholars unanimously agree that they were written toward the end of the 1st century, anywhere from 60 CE to 130 CE. So on top of the fact that the documents have been rewritten, redacted, and altered over and over they are essentially lies in the first place. However, it could be that these were documents that existed and were republished under their pseudonyms later on, or they are referencing documents that have been lost (which is the assumption). The reason they are called the Gospel according to… is because this phrase was meant to name the source where the author got the information, not the author themselves.

Then we have the Epistles, which many were written by Paul. Paul is seen as one of the most reliable sources of information on Jesus, but there’s a real problem with that. Paul’s letters are the earliest Christian writings that exist and yet they were written around the 50s CE, he was not a contemporary of Jesus either. Even worse, Paul states that all he knows of Jesus comes from hallucination (Gal. 1.11-12 & Gal 1.16 & Rom. 16.25-26). Paul is seen as the founder of Christianity by many and by his own account we have no reason to believe that his letters are based on fact.

You may not be aware, but there are literally no surviving documents of the first 60 years of Christianity. We are asked to believe that Nero persecuted Christians around the 30′s or 40′s, but this group was so clandestine that nothing of their actual activity, beliefs, structure, or anything else survived. Christianity literally begins with Paul (on paper). Carrier has an interesting idea about how Paul essentially usurped Christianity from the elders by introducing revelation, but that’s another story. What’s significant about this in the question of Jesus is that we want to get the most direct evidence possible and if anyone were going to write something reliable about Jesus it would be the contemporary Christians who he supposedly inspired, yet literally nothing exists.

That leads into my next point that there are no contemporary writers that talk about Jesus. Furthermore, non-christian writers that came shortly after him and wrote historical accounts of the same time as Jesus’ supposed life never mention him! Here’s a list of historical writers that we would have absolutely expected to mentioned Jesus, but didn’t!

Nicolaus of Damascus (Official court historian of Herod The Great)

Justus of Tiberias (King Agrippa’s personal secretary-Agrippa from Acts 25-26)

Josephus (Historian)

Philo of Alexandria (Jewish Historian and Writer)

Marcus Velleius Paterculus (Wrote a history of Rome up to 29 CE)

Marcus Servilius Nonianus (Wrote a history of 1st century)

Pamphila of Epidaurus (Writer of history in the 1st century)

Aufidius Bassus (Historical writer)

Pliny the Elder (Historical writer)

This is by no means the whole list of writers that should have written about Jesus, but even the fact that these people did not write about him is unbelievable. It’s the same situation as Moses. He supposedly brought destruction down on Egypt and led the exodus of millions of slaves, yet there is not a single word written about him or piece of evidence for those events. I find the lack of writing on Jesus extremely hard to swallow.

What about Josephus? If you’ve followed atheist blogs and channels then you’ve probably heard someone mention the Jewish historian Josephus. His accounts add another layer of doubt about the specific Jesus Christ from scripture being real. Josephus himself was not a contemporary of Jesus either, but he wrote history about that same time period. He is known to be one the most reliable historians of his time because he was detailed, reasoned, and admitted or noted oddities in historical accounts. ( I just want to take a second to say this is a quality that the Gospels absolutely lack. They are not written by historians for sure, because they do not question anything. They are written as narratives that take the supernatural for granted and offer not suspicion or amazement.)

As you’ve probably heard before, Josephus wrote about four savior figures: The Samaritan, Theudas, The Egyptian, and The Impostor. All around the same time period, these men came preaching radical ideology, gained a mass following, and were executed by the state. None of them fit Jesus Christ’s description in detial though. If we take Josephus as reliable then we know radical cults were common. In fact we know from other sources that there were many different Jewish and Pagan cults at this time all competing for followers, and in the past 100 years writings of messiahs and saviors were very popular. People actually often attended meetings of multiple ideologies. It was Christianity that popularized devotion to a single ideology. Even other figures int he Bible have a messiah over tone, such as John, Joshua, Isiah.

This leads me to believe that forging a fictional narrative about a man named Jesus would be extremely easy. I won’t go into the motivations now, because this post is long enough, but suffice to say that Christianity was an attempt at cultural reform and power, like many other movements in history have been. Like many other movements, they used a figure head (a infallible model) to be the source of their movement to give it authority. This point of course ties into the fact that there are many previous god and demigod figures in previous faiths that have extremely similar dying and rising savior stories. I won’t get into that line of argument now, but it’s important to know Jesus was not original and therefore makes his fictional creation very believable.

On what we do have there is very little agreement. Scholars cannot agree on his place of birth, year of birth, year of death, or even who killed him. Was Jesus born around the time of Herod’s death in 4CE or the take over Judea in 6CE? Did he die by Pontius Pilot’s hand around 30CE or under Emperor Claudius in the 40sCE? OR Did he live and die under King Jannaeus around 100BCE? Early Christian Bishop Epiphanius wrote about a sect of “Christians” that followed the old law yet believed in Christ. Yet these Nazorians believed that Jesus lived under Jannaeus a century earlier than typically assumed. They essentially have their own Gospel of another Jesus by a different name, Ben Stada. Their story mirrors Jesus Christ with small differences, but have the important details. It is a far better match than any of Josephus’ savior figures. This story is confirmed in the Babylonian Talmud. Last Christmas I wrote a post specifically on the conflicts in the details of Jesus’ birth. What’s strange about Jesus’ birth is that we often don’t know when a historical figure was born exactly, because he wasn’t famous then. However, in Jesus’ case, he somehow was famous before he was born, yet there is so much disagreement on the simplest of facts. Plus, we apparently lose track of him immediately after he’s born, which is also suspicious. Then he pops around 30 years later and we’re supposed to believe it’s definitely the same person. The fact that the very little information we have about Jesus cannot be agreed upon makes accepting him as historical very difficult.

I don’t think there are any absolutely solid facts about Jesus. There are things that are mostly agreed upon, but they alone don’t constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Acceptance of Jesus’ existence is mostly an assumption based on the prolific influence the figure has had on the world. That, however, does not prove his existence. King Author, Robin Hood, Moses, Socrates, Betty Crocker. These are all famous figures that never existed in history. Socrates is assumed to have been real, but there’s not a shred of proof. We know for a fact that a fictional figure can be created, passed off as historical, and become highly famed and beloved. We also know that people are subject to outrageous beliefs about recent history (i.e. Holocaust denial). So it’s not unreasonable to believe that Paul and those that actually wrote the Gospels could have fallen victim to this historical revisionism, or even consciously took park it in. Remember, Paul said he only knew Jesus through revelation(i.e. dream, hallucination, or lie).

So this sums up the problem of lack of evidence for Jesus, and pushes me to think he was never an actual living person. There are many other reasons to doubt his existence, and maybe I’ll keep writing on them in a series fashion. Maybe I’ll make it a tradition to write about his controversial existence every Christmas. I hope everyone found this interesting. Check out the authors below for more information regarding Jesus and early Christianity.

Thank you all for reading!!

Sources

The Bible

Richard Carrier

Bart Ehrman

Van Voorst

Gern Ludemann

Josephus

Epiphanius

Earl Doherty

Thomas Thompson

[elleberquist6]

Play Upon Me Like This Piano - chapter thirty-nine

Summary: In many ways, Phil’s life is perfect: he loves his life in London, he has a wonderful brother and parents, and he has a great job as a radio DJ for BBC Radio One. There’s only one thing missing in his life… A rumor reaches an executive at the BBC about a talented local piano player named Daniel. The executive decides that Daniel would be the perfect guest on Phil’s radio show, so she sends Phil to speak with the evasive and mysterious piano player.

When they finally meet, Phil starts to think that he has found the person who will make his life complete. Unfortunately, Dan has a secret that will make getting close to him difficult.

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 1992

Warnings: Smut

—

Siren fact: 2008: A sighting of a mermaid happened in Suurbraak, a village in the Western Cape of South Africa, reported Aldo Pekeur, a correspondent for the New Zealand Herald. A resident of the village, Daniel Cupido, said he and his friends were next to the river around 11:30 p.m. when they heard something like someone “bashing on a wall.” Cupido went toward the sound, and found a figure “like that of a white woman with long black hair thrashing about in the water”. Cupido said he tried to help the woman but the woman made “the strangest sound,” which Dina, Cupido’s mother, said was so sorrowful “my heart could take it no more.” The creatures are described as Kaaiman, or half human and half fish creatures living in deep pools. [https://www.theepochtimes.com/mermaid-hoax-columbus-shakespeare-and-pliny-the-elder-say-mermaids-are-real_82540.html/]

“Oh?” Dan asked.

“I think that you should sing. I mean, really sing as you. Not in your siren voice. You can do that, right?”

Dan’s mouth opened and closed as he contemplated for a moment. Finally, he said, “I suppose I could. I don’t see why not… It’s possible.” Then his eyes widened. “Oh, but fuck, Phil, I can’t sing! Not for real as an entertainer. I’ve never done anything like before. I don’t know how.”

Phil covered his mouth to hold in a laugh, but it still bubbled past his lips. He dropped his hand and said, “I’m sorry. It’s not funny. Really, it’s not. I don’t know why I’m laughing.”

“I do, it’s okay,” Dan assured him, since he knew how anxiety and tension could mount to a point where a person felt like he was about to explode and all he could do was either laugh or cry. If Phil wanted to laugh right now, that was fine. It was better than seeing him cry.

Phil took a steadying breath and settled himself. “I’m sorry about laughing. But really, Dan… of course you can! Just sing.”

“I can’t. Not well.”

“Do you have to sing well?” Phil asked with an arched eyebrow. “I mean, I see what you’re saying – you’re not professionally trained. But do you have to be for this? I mean, if the options are sing like a siren and endanger your life, or sing like a normal person and… I don’t know. I’m just thinking that everything might turn out alright?”

Dan bit his lip as he thought. Then he nodded. “You’re right. This is better. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but at least I won’t be risking my life. And if I do this, then I’ve fulfilled my deal with your boss. She can’t fire you.”

Phil beamed at him. “See? Everything is going to be okay.”

As Dan waited just offstage, knowing his turn to step on stage would come any moment, his eyes flicked to Phil’s face, seeking comfort.

Phil took Dan’s moist hand in his. He whispered, “You’re sweating.”

Hearing this, a young woman working backstage grabbed a makeup compact from the dressing table. She inserted herself between Dan and Phil and held up a powderpuff. “For the shine,” she explained, and waited until Dan nodded to powder his sweaty face. Then she leaned back, tilting her head as she admired her work. Then she nodded as was gone as quickly as she’d appeared, hurrying around a corner intent on another task.

Dan’s eyes flicked to Phil as he nervously bit his bottom lip and then asked, “How do I look?”

“Lovely, as always,” Phil said with a smile, and he ran his fingers through Dan’s hair, arranging the curls.

“Thank you,” Dan whispered.

Before Phil could say anything else, a young man carrying a clipboard hurried over to them, and he squinted at Dan through glasses before asking, “Mr. Howell?” When Dan nodded, the man gestured in the direction he had come from. “You must come with me. I need you to stand on your mark and await your cue.”

“Oh, um, okay.” He started to move, but hesitated as he looked at Phil. Dan knew that his fear that Phil would vanish the moment he took his eyes off him was unfounded, but he couldn’t help asking, “Will you be here when I get off the stage?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Phil promised. “Go break a leg.”

Dan swallowed heavily and nodded. He started to follow the man with the clipboard but had to stop and turn around. Phil hadn’t gone anywhere – he was still standing there with a smile on his face as he watched Dan. Feeling grounded by the sight, Dan shouted, “I love you!”

Phil’s smile widened. “Love you, too.”

As his breathing was coming easier and his racing heart fluttered once before settling, Dan started to believe that he could do this. Since Phil was going to be waiting for him once this was done, did anything else matter? Dan turned to follow the man with the clipboard.

“You’re on any second now. We should be there already,” the man said, sounding a bit exasperated as he grabbed Dan by the elbow to hurry him down the hallway. By the time they reached the black curtains concealing backstage, the crowd was applauding as the previous performer stepped off the stage.

Dan swallowed heavily and hesitated at the edge of the curtain. “Um, do I have time to get a drink of water?”

“No, you’re on,” the man with the clipboard hissed in a whisper, as he shoved Dan through the curtains.

Dan blinked for a moment at the lights, and once his eyes adjusted he saw the crowd… the massive crowd. He took a deep breath to find his focus, a trick he had first learned when appearing on stage, and while this audience was a lot bigger than any he had seen before, the breathing helped. He stopped looking at the crowd, and he walked to the piano that he knew was waiting for him on the stage.

There was no sheet music sitting on the piano, as Dan couldn’t read it and hadn’t planned what he was going to perform. When he sang as a siren, the song choice didn’t matter as his listeners wouldn’t remember what he had performed – this time, they would.

There was a microphone hanging above the piano, and Dan leaned into it. “Hi, I’m Daniel Howell. Thanks for letting me entertain you today.” As several people in the crowd cheered encouragingly, his eyes flicked over the audience that was staring at him expectantly before his eyes dropped back down to his hands resting on the keys. “I’m going to perform a cover for you today. It’s a song that has been running through my head for the past few days as I reflected on things that were going on in my life. I hope I do it justice.”

His fingers started moving across the keys, hesitantly and carefully at first, but the piano portion of his show was always the area that made him feel most confident and he quickly got into it. Then he leaned into the microphone. For the first time ever, Dan sung to this crowd in his normal voice with no hint of magic in it. It felt like he had to lower his guard to do this and that he was exposing his true self to these people. It was an unsettling experience, but Phil had thought this was a good idea and he trusted Phil.

“And I’m thinking about how people fall in love in mysterious ways. Maybe just the touch of a hand. Oh me I fall in love with you every single day, and I just wanna tell you I am.”

His eyes flicked up from his hands moving across. Dan continued singing, but he was searching for a familiar face. The crowd was full of strangers, and though he tried to read their expressions, he couldn’t tell if they were enjoying it or not – he had gotten accustomed to seeing blissed-out faces on the members of his audience, and it was jarring to see them singing and swaying to the familiar song.

“I’m thinking about how people fall in love in mysterious ways. Maybe it’s all part of a plan. I’ll just keep on making the same mistakes, hoping that you'll understand.”

A movement at the curtain caught his attention, and he stopped searching the audience as his gaze flicked in that direction. Phil… of course he wasn’t at the crowd. He was right there at the curtain a few feet away, silently supporting Dan. He had never left his side. Dan kept his eyes fixed on him as he continued to sing, unable and unwilling to break the gaze.

“Take me into your loving arms. Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars. Oh darling, place your head on my beating heart. I’m thinking out loud that maybe we found love right where we are.”

Dan ended the performance with a flourish, the notes ringing from the piano as he lifted his hands from the keys. He stood from the stool and made a quick polite bow to the audience before rushing off stage. He plowed into Phil as he did so.

Phil wrapped his arms around him to steady them, and then walked a few paces back, dragging Dan out of view of the audience. He chuckled, “Hey, was that a hug, or a tackle, or did I just get in your way as you were running off stage?”

“Kind of all three,” Dan admitted as he hugged Phil tighter. “I can’t believe I did that. Tell me, how awful was I?”

“You were really good!”

Dan leaned out of the hug with a frown. “Please don’t lie to me. Tell me if I just embarrassed myself in front of everyone.”

“You didn’t! I’m not lying.” Phil assured him with a laugh. “Your natural voice is really good, considering that you haven’t been trained.”

Dan bit his lip, considering a vision of the future where he could perform like this in front of crowds using his real voice. Perhaps he could make people happy without hypnotizing them. “You really think so?”

“I do. Your voice is…” Phil frowned as he seemed to carefully consider his next words. “I’m trying to think of how to describe it, and I keep coming back to metaphors. I like comparing instruments to animals sometimes. Like, a flute can sound like a bird – sometimes it’s chirpy and beautiful, and in other situations it could sound shrill. I feel like your voice is like that. It can be beautiful and calming, but if you don’t level and control it carefully, it can strain and get a bit shrill.”

“Oh…” Dan blinked as he processed that.

“Did I offend you? Sorry.”

Dan waved off Phil’s worry. “No, it’s okay. I’m glad you’re being honest.”

Phil’s tense shoulders relaxed. “Of course. I’ll always be honest with you.”

“Me too. So, I was just a little shrill?” Dan asked, considering if practice and voice lessons were all he needed.

Phil nodded. “Your range is impressive, but when going high you strain your voice a bit. When singing lower, you’re less likely to be shrill but may have a harder time being in tune. But you’re really good. You have natural talent.”

Dan felt a lump forming in his throat. People had complimented his voice before, but always his siren voice as they rode a high. No one had ever complimented his real voice like that. Hearing this honest opinion, it felt like a world of possibilities had been opened to him – he could be a real singer.

The ocean eyes widened as he watched Dan’s face. “Hey, you look like you’re about to cry. I wasn’t too harsh, was I? I’m sorry.”

“No, not too harsh.” He wrapped his arms once more around Phil.  “That was exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you.”

[ithisatanytime]

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa there. (sorry. horse joke) The author is woefully misinformed when it comes to medieval Europe. Yes, the average peasant was not going to see the rhino. However, there was travel, even steady trade back and forth between Europeans and Africans. Where do you think the bestiaries of Europe came up with their stories? These books (the oldest known came from Pliny the Elder in ancient Rome) inclueded entries about a lot of creatures that did not live in the region. For example, they talk about the elephant and hyena. Now, the medieval versions were altered to be more allegorical (in order to push the Christian faith) than Pliny's version. But the important point to keep in mind here is that they are very frequently very, very wrong about the animals' behavior as well as appearance. Just look up the Aberdeen Bestiary's entry on the hyena, if you want a "WTF" on how wrong it is”

 ok lets

There is an animal called the hyena, which inhabits the tombs of the dead and feeds on their bodies. Its nature is that it is sometimes male, sometimes female, and it is therefore an unclean animal. Since its spine is rigid, all in one piece, it cannot turn round except by turning its body right around. Solinus recounts many marvellous things about the hyena. First, it stalks the sheepfolds of shepherds and circles their houses by night, and by listening carefully learns their speech, so that it can imitate the human voice, in order to fall on any man whom it has lured out at night. The hyena also [imitates] human vomit and devours the dogs it has enticed with faked sounds of retching. If dogs hunting the hyena accidentally touch its shadow behind, they lose their voices and cannot bark. In its search for buried bodies, the hyena digs up graves. The sons of Israel resemble the hyena. At the beginning they served the living God. Later, addicted to wealth and luxury, they worshipped idols. For this reason the prophet compared the synagogue to an unclean animal: 'My heritage is to me as the den of a hyena.' (see Jeremiah, 12:8) Therefore those among us who are slaves to luxury and greed, are like this brute, since they are neither men nor 

seems pretty fucking accurate to me, there are some weird mystical qaulities to it, but female hyenas have huge psuedo penises, they were known to and are still known to rob shallow graves for fresh corpses, they are powerful scavengers with one of the strongest bites in the animal kingdom in order to break the bones of corpses. they may not be mocking humans with their vocalizations, but there is a reason they are called “laughing hyenas” and to top it all off, the sons of israel do resemble hyenas to me

 fuck modern intellectuals, seriously they dont want you reading history from those contemporaneous

[victoriagloverstuff]

The Patron Saints of Pessimism: A Writer's Pantheon

If all is for naught, then why bother writing it down? Caught in a vicious circle, ensnared in the logical absurdities of awkward self-awareness. It seems there are one of two options: either speak to this situation, or remain silent. The writer’s failure is that they know they should choose the latter, but cannot help attempting the former. Writers (and readers . . . when there are readers . . . ) console themselves by naming this failure: an apology, a confession, a testimony, a treatise, a history, a biography, a life. But the continual accumulation of that-which-cannot-be-put-into-words always points back to this one basic realization—that, when it comes to human beings, silence is the most adequate form of expression. There are, then, two paths. Ultimately writers dream of taking neither path, leaving all paths for the forest. But it’s just a dream.

The patron saints of pessimism watch over our suffering. Laconic and sullen, they never seem to do a good job at protecting, interceding, or advocating for those who suffer. Perhaps they need us more than we need them. There are patron saints of philosophy, but their stories are not happy ones.

Even in cases where the entire corpus of an author is pessimistic, the project always seems incomplete, as if there was still one more thing to say, one last indictment . . . from Goethe’s sorrowful Werther, to Dostoevsky’s burrowing creature, to Pessoa’s disquiet scribbler; Baudelaire’s spleen and ennui; the mystical pessimism of Huysmans and Strindberg; the stark and unhuman lyricism of Meng Jiao, Georg Trakl, Xavier Villarrutia; the frenetic obfuscations of Sakutaro Hagiwara, Ladislav Klíma, Fyodor Sologub; the haunted and scintillating prose of Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Izumi Kyōka, Clarice Lispector; the misanthropic rigor of Lautréamont’s Maldoror or of Bonaventura’s Nightwatches; the crumbling of reason in Artaud’s The Umbilicus of Limbo or Unica Zürn’s The House of Illnesses. Grumpy old Beckett.

The list quickly expands, soon encompassing the entirety of literature itself, and beyond ( . . . even the great pessimist stand-up comedians). In the end it’s overwhelming; all of literature becomes a candidate. All that remains are singular, anomalous statements, a litany of quotes and citations crammed into arborous fortune cookies read by no one. So I confine myself, somewhat arbitrarily, to pessimist “philosophers,” dubious though this distinction is. But a cursory look at the history of philosophy reveals something quite different. Philosophers that stumble and trip over their own feet. Philosophers that curse themselves. Philosophers that laugh at themselves. Philosophers that abandon philosophy, but still remain “philosophers.”

Article continues after advertisement

Emil Cioran

Cioran’s fragments are themselves so fragmented, so shattered (and shattering), that they sometimes seem less than a fragment: more a particle, a speck of dust, the debris of thought.

Cioran published De l’inconvénient d’être né (translated as The Trouble with Being Born) in 1973. It was a time of loss and refusals. A few years before, Cioran’s mother and sister had died. Cioran’s close friend, the playwright Arthur Adamov, committed suicide. The year also saw the death of another close friend, the existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel. A year later, the poet Paul Celan, who had translated Cioran’s work into German, also committed suicide. It was a period of refusals. Cioran proudly spurned several gestures of monetary support, as well as numerous literary prizes, many of them financially significant (there is an anecdote of Beckett  lending Cioran money while chiding him for refusing such prizes). All the while Cioran continued to live modestly in his rented apartment, working at his compact and cluttered desk, writing in his multi-colored notebooks, taking his frequent walks. In The Trouble with Being Born Cioran grapples with an age-old philosophical dilemma—the problem with being here, in this moment, thrown into an existence that one has neither asked for nor desired, in a world that we have difficulty whole-heartedly accepting or rejecting.

Article continues after advertisement

Philipp Mainländer

On the evening of the first of April, 1876, 34-year-old Philipp Batz gathered together copies of his book Die Philosophie der Erlösung (The Philosophy of Redemption), which had just arrived from the publisher. He had worked in the finance and banking sectors for nearly a decade, before quitting his job in disgust. He had been discharged from his military service due to exhaustion and fatigue. He had written several poems and literary works which remained unpublished. And, from the time he was a teenager, he had enthusiastically read Schopenhauer, in addition to Leopardi, Dante, and Heraclitus. In his Offenbach apartment, Batz gathered together the copies of his 900-page book, but with how much premeditation it is impossible to know. The book, published under the pen name of Philipp Mainländer, talks of a pervasive “Will-to-Die” that indifferently drives everything that exists, to exist—to exist in order to be extinguished. Batz arranged the copies of his book on the fl oor into a single pile. He stepped up on top of his books, and hung himself from the ceiling beam of the room.

At the core of Mainländer’s philosophy is the idea that everything that exists, exists in order to not exist—not for some imagined and fantastical afterlife, and not in order to re-enter the cycle of birth, suffering, and death, but for pure annihilation—a “mortification of energy.” Everything that exists, driven by a blind “Will-to-Death,” exists only to achieve its own nullification. Mainländer calls this “redemption.”

Michel de Montaigne

Aristocrat, statesman, businessman, diplomat, humanist, socialite, melancholic, tourist, bibliophile, translator, and essayist—Michel de Montaigne was by all standards a worldly person. Born near the Bordeaux region to a wealthy merchant family, he had been reared according to the highest standards of humanist education. As a young man he served in the Bordeaux Parliament, and then at the court of Charles IX. As an adult Montaigne would also become a wine-grower, editor and translator, and would serve as Mayor of Bordeaux. As a statesman he was often pulled into the national negotiations surrounding the religious and political conflicts of his time. He travelled extensively across the continent, sometimes making spiritual pilgrimages, sometimes seeking convalescence for health problems, sometimes out of curiosity. It is perhaps strange, then, that, at the age of 38, Montaigne would decide to refuse the world. He shut himself in his library in order to write. So decisive is this refusal that Montaigne christens it with an inscription made on the wall of his library:

In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of 38, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.

What does he write? As any reader of his Essays can attest, Montaigne seems to have written about everything—over a hundred essays in three books, covering everything from the art of conversation to cannibalism, much of it written in the first eight years spent in his retreat from the world. However, what is noteworthy among the pages and pages of observations is Montaigne’s often unfavorable view towards life—human life in particular. The diplomat so enamored of conversation now writes: “We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.”

It would seem that owning an estate and castle would be more than a sufficient means of shutting out the world. But the Château d e Montaigne was still too “worldly” for Montaigne. What is needed, as he notes, is an arrière-boutique, a kind of room-within-a-room, where one can recede from the governance of daily life: “We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.” Montaigne himself decides to spend most of his time in “the Tower,” a small circular abode located at the southern tip of the castle. It is comprised of a central tower and an adjoining smaller tower that serves as a staircase.

It appears that Montaigne’s bibliophilia extended to the physical space of his library as well. On 46 of the 48 ceiling beams of the library Montaigne had inscribed almost 70 quotations in Latin or Greek, mostly from classical authors or the Bible. Among them one finds stark statements such as this, from Pliny the Elder: “Only one thing is certain—that nothing is certain. And nothing is more wretched or arrogant than man.” And then there are an abundance of lines from Greek Skeptics, foremost among them Sextus Empiricus: “I decide nothing.” “I understand nothing.” “It is possible, it is not possible.”

This peculiar form of graffiti had a more practical purpose. Montaigne notes how he often paces around his library, occasionally glancing up at the beams for inspiration. His refuge is less a place of work, and more a space of wandering, in which the space of the library becomes the hollowed-out listlessness of the skull: “When at home, I turn aside a little more often to my library . . . There I leaf through now one book, now another, without order and without plan, by disconnected fragments. One moment I muse, another moment I set down or dictate, walking back and forth, these fancies of mine that you see here.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Though he is commonly regarded as a philosopher, Nietzsche himself was not so sure. With its mania for constructing elaborate systems, philosophy was perhaps too well-formed for Nietzsche. Perhaps what he sought was a philosophy with less integrity. An oft-repeated aphorism reads: “I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” And yet, Nietzsche continued to write, up until he could no longer—or would no longer—write. A fragment from Human, All Too Human lauds the “incomplete thought”:

Just as it is not only adulthood but youth and childhood too that possess value in themselves and not merely as bridges and thoroughfares, so incomplete thoughts also have their value. That is why one must not torment a poet with subtle exegesis but content oneself with the uncertainty of his horizon, as though the way to many thoughts still lay open. Let one stand on the threshold; let one wait as at the excavation of a treasure: it is as though a lucky find of profound import were about to be made. The poet anticipates something of the joy of the thinker at the discovery of a vital idea and makes us desire it, so that we snatch at it; he, however, flutters by past our heads, displaying the loveliest butterfly-wings—and yet he eludes us.

Paul Deussen, a friend during Nietzsche’s boarding school days at Pforta, and who would later, as a scholar, translate the Upanishads into German, once described Nietzsche’s dwelling in Sils-Maria in 1887 as a “cramped and dingy cave,” littered with “coffee cups, egg shells, manuscripts and toilet articles thrown together in confusion,” set off  against a perpetually unmade bed.

__________________________________

Good read found on the Lithub

[historieofbeafts]

If I wanted to, theoretically, do a D&D campaign in a quasi-medieval setting with monsters inspired by beafts, which would you suggest as potential enemies for the heroes to encounter?

What a fun question! An actual answer would vary depending on where the campaign falls on the nonsense-to-serious gameplay spectrum, but here are 5 Potential Creatures to Encounter on a Historical Fantasy Adventure (+ 1 Sea Knight)

1. A Selection of Strange Snakes

[The Morgan Library & Museum, MS. M.81, fol. 85v]

Pictured are the scitalis, a snake covered in markings so beautiful anyone who sees it falls into a trance, and the amphisbaena, a two-headed snake with glowing eyes and the ability to move both backwards and forwards (which is admittedly more impressive when it’s drawn as an actual snake). But there are so many superpowered medieval snakes that you could populate an entire world with them, if that’s what your heart desires.  My personal favourites are the chersydros,  a snake which leaves a trail of smoke on the ground but can only move in straight lines because of the horrible noise it makes whenever it turns, the jaculus, a flying snake which springs from trees onto unsuspecting victims, and the salpuga, a snake which is invisible.

2. Whale

[Merton College, MS 249, fol. 8]

No one will be surprised to hear I’m a big advocate of whales in every adventure. They can be transportation, environmental obstacles or just background flavour instead of enemies, but I do think it’s a waste not to include at least one. Not near a large body of water? There’s always teleportation, dream sequences, hallucinations, dirt whales, turning your players into whales... The possibilities are endless. Whale abilities are also almost endless, but the important ones in a medieval setting are Island Imitation, Sweet Breath (For Attracting Fish), Weaponized Waterspouts & Paws.

3. Salamander

[Det Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS 1633 4º, fol. 55v]

Salamanders: the most deadly creatures an adventurer could ever be unlucky enough to encounter.  I’ll let Bartholomaeus Anglicus take this one:

“[L]ike to the Ewt in shape, & never seene but in great raine, & fayleth in faire wether, and his song is crieng: and he quencheth the fire that hee toucheth, as Ise doth, & water frore: and out of his mouth commeth white matter, & if that matter touch a mans body, the haire shall fall, & what it toucheth, is corrupt and infected, and tourneth into foule coulour. Also Salamandra is a manner kind of an Ewt or of a Lisard, and is a pestilent beast, most venimous. For as Plinius sayeth, libro. 29. cap. 4. Salamandra infecteth fruit of Trees, and corrupteth water, so that he that eateth or drinketh thereof, is slayne anone. And if his spittle touch the foot, it infecteth and corrupteth all the mans body.”

Also, a fun worldbuilding note is that the French bestiary writer Pierre de Beauvais claims that salamanders produce a substance that is not wool, silk, or linen, but is used to create clothing for the most important and fashionable people. This clothing is cleaned by throwing it in a fire.

4. Ostrich

[BnF, Latin 11207, fol. 21v]

This is by far the most ridiculous item on the list! But medieval ostriches were infamous for eating metal & I think it would be fun for a low-level party to be hired by a local blacksmith to track down missing supplies and instead have to wrangle an extremely large bird.  And I do mean extremely large, because according to Pliny the Elder ostriches are both taller and faster than a man on horseback.  They also use their feet to throw rocks at pursuers and “have the marvelous property of being able to digest every substance without distinction, but their stupidity is no less remarkable; for although the rest of their body is so large, they imagine, when they have thrust their head and neck into a bush, that the whole of the body is concealed.”  Perfect setup for screwball comedy.

5. Hyena

[BnF, Français 14970, fol. 14]

Despite the fact the picture I’ve chosen resembles a goth rabbit, medieval hyenas are genuinely spooky. Hobbies include hanging out in tombs, lurking outside people’s homes in the middle of the night calling their names in a perfect imitation of a human voice, cursing any animal they walk around 3 times with total immobility, magically silencing creatures who touch their shadow, and just generally being incredibly powerful eldritch abominations. Fortunately they come with a built in weakness, since their spines are fused, making it impossible for them to turn their head without also turning their whole body. They also come with a built in loot drop, since every hyena contains a hyena stone, which allows a person to see the future when held in the mouth, like a psychic gobstopper.

+ 1. Sea Knight

I was today years old when I learned most people are more familiar with sea knights as a type of helicopter, but this is a monster from the Ortus Sanitatis with a great design and an even better set of worldbuilding options. Here are some potential explanations for its existence:

underwater metallurgy?

cultural exchange between merpeople and landfolk? (follow up question: why armour of all things?)

an extremely whismical artificer?

really the only limit is your imagination

[johnboothus]

Wine 101: The Points System

This episode of “Wine 101” is sponsored by E & J Gallo Winery. At Gallo, we exist to serve enjoyment in moments that matter. The hallmark of our company has always been an unwavering commitment to making quality wine and spirits. Whether it’s getting Barefoot and having a great time, making every day sparkle with La Marca Prosecco, or continuing our legacy with Louis Martini in Napa, we want to welcome new friends to wine and share in all of life’s moments.

Interested in trying some of the wine brands discussed on “Wine 101”? Follow the link in each episode description to purchase featured wines or browse our full portfolio at TheBarrelRoom.com. Cheers, and all the best.

Click the link below to discover and purchase wine brands discussed on the “Wine 101” podcast series. Get 15% OFF of your purchase of $75 or more when you use the coupon code “wine15″ at checkout. https://www.thebarrelroom.com/discover.html?src=vinepair

In this episode of “Wine 101,” VinePair tastings director Keith Beavers discusses the 100-point wine scoring system, which has long influenced American wine culture. Beavers details the history of the system, and how famed wine critic Robert Parker popularized it in the late 1960s — using the United States’ high school grading system as a model.

Beavers also explains why other publications — including VinePair — have since adopted Parker’s points system, and why these wine scores have continued to influence the market and American palate even after Parker’s retirement.

Tune in to learn more about the hundred-point system.

Listen Online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Or Check out the Conversation Here

Keith Beavers: My name is Keith Beavers, and sometimes, I just think to myself, “Keith, why can’t you get into Wes Anderson films?”

What’s going on, wine lovers? Welcome to Episode 28 of VinePair’s “Wine 101” podcast. My name is Keith Beavers. It’s Season 2, and how are you? Wow, that rhymed. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the 100-point wine scoring system, but we have to talk about it.

Wow. Scoring wine. What’s that about? People make wine, and scores are applied to those wines by random people. Then, you go out into the world, and you look at the scores. Now, not all, but some of us buy wine based on scores. That’s crazy, right? The thing is, buying anything with scores today is what we do. When we want to go to a restaurant, we look for at least four and a half stars, right, guys? What are we doing with three and a half? What are we doing with that?

When you’re on Amazon and you’re looking up something you want to buy — especially with something a little more expensive — you’re reading the reviews. You’re hoping that item is at least four and a half stars so we’re used to this whole scoring thing. When we read online, there are a lot of roundups. We have them on VinePair with “the best of this, the best of that.” We rank things. It’s easy, it’s fun. It’s shorthand. You say, “Cool, just help me figure this out so I can go and do this. I’ll get into it more in-depth later, but right now, I just need a score.”

This is how our world works. In the wine world, the literature of wine has been going on since antiquity. Back in the day, all the way up until the 19th century, it was really mostly about agriculture. People writing about wine when they weren’t really scoring wine. They were talking about wines they may have liked. Even Pliny the Elder, in the ancient Roman era, would write about wines that he liked from different parts of Italy. Yet, a lot of the work being done in literature back in the day was more about the vine, the vineyard, maybe even viticulture. Of course, all that was mostly in Europe.

For the United States, though, from colonization all the way through to Prohibition, there was a lot of wine literature being pumped out. It was chaotic, disorganized, and people trying to figure out how to make wine in the United States was an absolute nightmare. That was based on which wines work. It wasn’t until the 1960s when the United States started realizing, “Oh, wine that’s not sweet like we had in Prohibition is actually good. We like dry red wine with a little bit of acidity and structure.”

As we started learning how to drink wine again, a lot of literature would come out to help us enjoy wine. Books on wine etiquette and how to throw wine parties and this misunderstood science of how to understand aromas and flavors. As we saw Napa rise before the Judgment of Paris and before it became its own American viticultural area, there were great things happening in Napa. It’s one of the reasons why the Judgment of Paris happened.

In Napa and Sonoma, there were people there helping the people who lived there enjoy wine. One of the most well known is Robert Finnegan. He was in the story I told last week in the Judgment of Paris. There were people out there helping Americans enjoy wine but it wasn’t until the hundred-point system was applied to wine in the United States that things got crazy.

That is because of one man: Robert M. Parker Jr. If you’re not familiar with that name, this is one of our premier or first celebrity wine critics who became nationally and internationally famous for his writing about wine and this scoring thing with wine. It got to the point where a score from Robert Parker could define the price of your wine. I’m not sure if his story has a humble beginning, but it’s a very typical American Eastern Seaboard story where he was born and raised outside of Baltimore. He became a lawyer in Baltimore. At the age of 20, he tried his first wine, I believe it was at law school. He fell in love with wine, and this started his whole love for wine, as we all do. When you taste wine for the first time, you say “Oh, my gosh.” Then, you start working your way through wine trying to understand it, listening to “Wine 101,” you know how it goes.

As he practiced law, he was able to explore wines. He actually went to Europe at one point and enjoyed Bordeaux and Burgundy wines. This is so fascinating because Robert Parker was around at the right time doing what he was doing. As we’ve talked about in the past few episodes, when it comes to American wine history, this moment in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was a catalyst moment for us. The timing here is crazy. He was falling more in love with wine, but still practicing law. However, he was getting very frustrated with the lack of independent and reliable criticism about wine. He wanted to read more tasting notes than guides to where to go. There’s a story I read in the mid-’70s when he was at dinner with one of his friends and he was a lawyer friend, I’m not really sure. This friend was fascinated with the fact or Robert Parker’s ability to assess wine and said, “Hey, you should be doing this full-time instead of law.”.

I don’t know if that was the conversation that made it happen, but Robert Parker was thinking about launching his own buyer’s guide. He said, “If people can’t do it, I’m going to do it right.” He decides to launch this newsletter bi-monthly called The Wine Advocate. It was his way of dissecting wines. This guy wrote very copious tasting notes. He went down to some serious detail.

In 1978, the first newsletter went out. What happened here is I guess nobody really knew how hungry Americans were to understand wine. By 1984, The Wine Advocate was doing well enough that he could retire from law and have this be his full-time gig. Now, it was time to really make a name for himself. I don’t know if he planned this or not, but he did an extremely detailed breakdown and description of the 1982 vintage of Bordeaux, to the point where it really got the attention of the French. It prompted him to actually release a Wine Advocate in French, and that blew up.

By 1998, The Wine Advocate had 45,000 subscribers from all over the world, mainly the U.S. and France, but I think it was 30-plus other countries. People were subscribing to this. People wanted to know about wine. At that point, he was the only voice doing it. Now, Robert Parker wasn’t the only one with a newsletter in the United States. There were hundreds of them, I’m sure, and there were some that were probably very influential to their communities, but Robert Parker was on an international level at this point. There was something about his newsletter that was different than everybody else’s.

He was the first to apply scores to wines. This is why it became such a big deal. He designed the hundred-point scoring system that he used for wine off of the United States high school grading system, which started from 50 at the lowest, all the way up to 100. Every American could understand that point system.

He would give points to wines, and mostly it was Bordeaux and then some American wines, but he was really fascinated with Bordeaux. The scores he applied to wines, he did not believe these were the major part of the entries of his newsletter. I’ll paraphrase here: He really wanted people to use the point as a supplement to the tasting notes. This guy wrote, again, very detailed tasting notes about wine. He wanted that to be the feature of his newsletter, not the points. However, this is at a time in America when we were, again, very hungry for wine knowledge.

If we’re hungry for wine knowledge and we’re in a modern era where distribution and importation is now a thing, wine reps selling to retail stores and restaurants, started to rely on these points very heavily because the wines that Robert Parker was writing about were not your everyday wines. These were fine wines, or wines built to age.

One of the reasons why The Wine Advocate was so respected, beyond the tasting notes and the scores, was there were no ads. It was just wine information cover to cover with no distractions. As people noticed how successful the scoring thing could be, they started applying it to their own ventures. For example, Marvin Shanken, who created Wine Spectator, which I think started as a newsletter but quickly became a magazine — he started using a hundred-point system for scoring wines their own way. That is a magazine, so there are advertisements there.

That’s where capitalism started churning out. This idea of scores and wine started to really define what people looked for in a wine. They didn’t look for what was inside the bottle so much as they looked for the score. They assumed that the higher the score, the better the wine, which is true. Yet, there was really no indication as to their personal preference in that score, and that’s the capper. That’s the twist with numerical scores to denote the quality of wine, and that led to some controversy.

For example, Hugh Johnson, who’s a very famous wine writer in the U.K. and wine critic, said, “You’re going to apply a score to a wine that’s going to age, so it’s going to change. Are you going to then apply a score later on? How do you correlate that score that you apply later on with the earlier score? It’s a mess. This doesn’t work.” But Robert Parker didn’t see wine that way, specifically.

There’s a quote on the cover of his newsletter that says, “Wine is no different from any consumer product. There are specific standards of quality that full-time wine professionals recognize.” Obviously, he was approaching wine with this very calculated effort, and someone like Hugh Johnson had more of a sense of where a wine was going and that it’s an active thing. It’s not just a snapshot in time wine.

Also, Robert Parker really loved Bordeaux and also really enjoyed deep, dark, fuller-bodied red wines. He was mostly a red wine critic, and he ended up doing a lot of his little literary work in Bordeaux and in the Rhône. It got to the point that his influence was so great that winemakers in France, Italy, the United States, Spain, and beyond would make wines so that he would actually like them and get big scores so those scores could get them sales. Even though Robert Parker wanted the scores to be a supplement to his very detailed notes, this system was just too easy. It was just too good.

This became the standard. A score on wine defined its price, its popularity, and its reputation. Other publications like The Wine Spectator and eventually Wine Enthusiast applied scores as well. That’s what the game became. It was a score thing.

Today, scores are still very popular. They’re not the standard they once were, but they still have influence. I believe The Wine Advocate morphed into robertparker.com, which is his website. In 2012, he sold that entire website to a Singapore ex-wine merchant for $1.5 million. So he retired, but his idea never did. To this day, scores are still applied to wine, so we gotta talk about that. What does it mean when a score is applied to wine? How do you figure that out?

One of the cool reasons why scoring is not as popular as it once was is because these days we, the American drinking culture, are more interested in the stories behind the wines than we are about applying a calculated score to a wine. And tasting notes are also very important to us, but the language of tasting notes is a whole other thing. We go over that in previous episodes, of course, but there’s something nice about a point. It’s a number. It’s quick and easy to understand. It’s very shorthand. If you trust the person who’s giving the score, you trust the score. It’s also something that transcends all languages. It’s a number — everyone knows 93. Everyone knows what a 94 is, but no matter how calculated a point is supposed to be applied to wine, it’s a very arbitrary thing. How do you trust a score applied to a wine, knowing you’re to spend some money on wine? Every 100-point system is very similar, but every one is actually different from one another. Every system is created independently and designed for that particular publication or entity to get its message across.

At VinePair, we’ve actually created our own hundred-point scoring system with our own levels in tiers and how we think a hundred-point system should be applied to when we review wines. Being the tastings director of VinePair, I’m the one that does all the tasting and all the reviewing. Using that system that we developed helps me get my message across to you guys, based on how VinePair sees a certain wine.

That’s where the 100-point system exists today. It’s similar to a movie critic. When you want to see a movie, I don’t know about you, but I have certain movie or film critics that I like to read before I see a movie because I often agree with what they say. This is similar to the 100-point wine scoring system. You go to a wine shop, and you see a point, that point is given to that wine by somebody. If you’re familiar with that somebody, and you like the way that somebody talks about wine, you’re probably going to go ahead look at that number and choose to buy the bottle of wine based on that person’s wine score. If you see a number from another wine critic that you may not know, you may not get the wine or you may get it anyway, but not take into account the score. That is how it works these days, because wine is so much more than one point, but it’s a really good, quick reference point for you if you know who’s actually giving the point and agree with that person’s taste in wine.

Even though these numbers can seem a little bit arbitrary — and they are arbitrary and subjective because it is one person’s palate or a panel of palates making a decision on wine and a score — what’s really cool is every website has its own hundred-point system with its criteria so you can see why they’ve chosen what they’ve chosen. At VinePair, we have our 100-point system in categories and we have it all explained for you. If you look at a wine on VinePair that I reviewed and given a score to, you can go and look at that link to see why where it is in the scale of why I said what I said.

That’s a little bit of history, application, evolution, and where we are today with this 100-point wine scoring system. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere for a very long time. Even though today, stories and backgrounds are so much more enjoyable today than just a cold, hard score, that score will always help us in a pinch if we trust the person giving the score.

@VinePairKeith is my Insta. Rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcast from. It really helps get the word out there. And now for some totally awesome credits.

“Wine 101” was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big ol’ shout-out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin for creating VinePair. And I mean, a big shout-out to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of VinePair, for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast. Also, Darbi Cicci for the theme song. Listen to this. And I want to thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new every day. See you next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article Wine 101: The Points System appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-101-points-system/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/wine-101-the-points-system

[wineanddinosaur]

Wine 101: The Points System

This episode of “Wine 101” is sponsored by E & J Gallo Winery. At Gallo, we exist to serve enjoyment in moments that matter. The hallmark of our company has always been an unwavering commitment to making quality wine and spirits. Whether it’s getting Barefoot and having a great time, making every day sparkle with La Marca Prosecco, or continuing our legacy with Louis Martini in Napa, we want to welcome new friends to wine and share in all of life’s moments.

Interested in trying some of the wine brands discussed on “Wine 101”? Follow the link in each episode description to purchase featured wines or browse our full portfolio at TheBarrelRoom.com. Cheers, and all the best.

Click the link below to discover and purchase wine brands discussed on the “Wine 101” podcast series. Get 15% OFF of your purchase of $75 or more when you use the coupon code “wine15″ at checkout. https://www.thebarrelroom.com/discover.html?src=vinepair

In this episode of “Wine 101,” VinePair tastings director Keith Beavers discusses the 100-point wine scoring system, which has long influenced American wine culture. Beavers details the history of the system, and how famed wine critic Robert Parker popularized it in the late 1960s — using the United States’ high school grading system as a model.

Beavers also explains why other publications — including VinePair — have since adopted Parker’s points system, and why these wine scores have continued to influence the market and American palate even after Parker’s retirement.

Tune in to learn more about the hundred-point system.

Listen Online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Or Check out the Conversation Here

Keith Beavers: My name is Keith Beavers, and sometimes, I just think to myself, “Keith, why can’t you get into Wes Anderson films?”

What’s going on, wine lovers? Welcome to Episode 28 of VinePair’s “Wine 101” podcast. My name is Keith Beavers. It’s Season 2, and how are you? Wow, that rhymed. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the 100-point wine scoring system, but we have to talk about it.

Wow. Scoring wine. What’s that about? People make wine, and scores are applied to those wines by random people. Then, you go out into the world, and you look at the scores. Now, not all, but some of us buy wine based on scores. That’s crazy, right? The thing is, buying anything with scores today is what we do. When we want to go to a restaurant, we look for at least four and a half stars, right, guys? What are we doing with three and a half? What are we doing with that?

When you’re on Amazon and you’re looking up something you want to buy — especially with something a little more expensive — you’re reading the reviews. You’re hoping that item is at least four and a half stars so we’re used to this whole scoring thing. When we read online, there are a lot of roundups. We have them on VinePair with “the best of this, the best of that.” We rank things. It’s easy, it’s fun. It’s shorthand. You say, “Cool, just help me figure this out so I can go and do this. I’ll get into it more in-depth later, but right now, I just need a score.”

This is how our world works. In the wine world, the literature of wine has been going on since antiquity. Back in the day, all the way up until the 19th century, it was really mostly about agriculture. People writing about wine when they weren’t really scoring wine. They were talking about wines they may have liked. Even Pliny the Elder, in the ancient Roman era, would write about wines that he liked from different parts of Italy. Yet, a lot of the work being done in literature back in the day was more about the vine, the vineyard, maybe even viticulture. Of course, all that was mostly in Europe.

For the United States, though, from colonization all the way through to Prohibition, there was a lot of wine literature being pumped out. It was chaotic, disorganized, and people trying to figure out how to make wine in the United States was an absolute nightmare. That was based on which wines work. It wasn’t until the 1960s when the United States started realizing, “Oh, wine that’s not sweet like we had in Prohibition is actually good. We like dry red wine with a little bit of acidity and structure.”

As we started learning how to drink wine again, a lot of literature would come out to help us enjoy wine. Books on wine etiquette and how to throw wine parties and this misunderstood science of how to understand aromas and flavors. As we saw Napa rise before the Judgment of Paris and before it became its own American viticultural area, there were great things happening in Napa. It’s one of the reasons why the Judgment of Paris happened.

In Napa and Sonoma, there were people there helping the people who lived there enjoy wine. One of the most well known is Robert Finnegan. He was in the story I told last week in the Judgment of Paris. There were people out there helping Americans enjoy wine but it wasn’t until the hundred-point system was applied to wine in the United States that things got crazy.

That is because of one man: Robert M. Parker Jr. If you’re not familiar with that name, this is one of our premier or first celebrity wine critics who became nationally and internationally famous for his writing about wine and this scoring thing with wine. It got to the point where a score from Robert Parker could define the price of your wine. I’m not sure if his story has a humble beginning, but it’s a very typical American Eastern Seaboard story where he was born and raised outside of Baltimore. He became a lawyer in Baltimore. At the age of 20, he tried his first wine, I believe it was at law school. He fell in love with wine, and this started his whole love for wine, as we all do. When you taste wine for the first time, you say “Oh, my gosh.” Then, you start working your way through wine trying to understand it, listening to “Wine 101,” you know how it goes.

As he practiced law, he was able to explore wines. He actually went to Europe at one point and enjoyed Bordeaux and Burgundy wines. This is so fascinating because Robert Parker was around at the right time doing what he was doing. As we’ve talked about in the past few episodes, when it comes to American wine history, this moment in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was a catalyst moment for us. The timing here is crazy. He was falling more in love with wine, but still practicing law. However, he was getting very frustrated with the lack of independent and reliable criticism about wine. He wanted to read more tasting notes than guides to where to go. There’s a story I read in the mid-’70s when he was at dinner with one of his friends and he was a lawyer friend, I’m not really sure. This friend was fascinated with the fact or Robert Parker’s ability to assess wine and said, “Hey, you should be doing this full-time instead of law.”.

I don’t know if that was the conversation that made it happen, but Robert Parker was thinking about launching his own buyer’s guide. He said, “If people can’t do it, I’m going to do it right.” He decides to launch this newsletter bi-monthly called The Wine Advocate. It was his way of dissecting wines. This guy wrote very copious tasting notes. He went down to some serious detail.

In 1978, the first newsletter went out. What happened here is I guess nobody really knew how hungry Americans were to understand wine. By 1984, The Wine Advocate was doing well enough that he could retire from law and have this be his full-time gig. Now, it was time to really make a name for himself. I don’t know if he planned this or not, but he did an extremely detailed breakdown and description of the 1982 vintage of Bordeaux, to the point where it really got the attention of the French. It prompted him to actually release a Wine Advocate in French, and that blew up.

By 1998, The Wine Advocate had 45,000 subscribers from all over the world, mainly the U.S. and France, but I think it was 30-plus other countries. People were subscribing to this. People wanted to know about wine. At that point, he was the only voice doing it. Now, Robert Parker wasn’t the only one with a newsletter in the United States. There were hundreds of them, I’m sure, and there were some that were probably very influential to their communities, but Robert Parker was on an international level at this point. There was something about his newsletter that was different than everybody else’s.

He was the first to apply scores to wines. This is why it became such a big deal. He designed the hundred-point scoring system that he used for wine off of the United States high school grading system, which started from 50 at the lowest, all the way up to 100. Every American could understand that point system.

He would give points to wines, and mostly it was Bordeaux and then some American wines, but he was really fascinated with Bordeaux. The scores he applied to wines, he did not believe these were the major part of the entries of his newsletter. I’ll paraphrase here: He really wanted people to use the point as a supplement to the tasting notes. This guy wrote, again, very detailed tasting notes about wine. He wanted that to be the feature of his newsletter, not the points. However, this is at a time in America when we were, again, very hungry for wine knowledge.

If we’re hungry for wine knowledge and we’re in a modern era where distribution and importation is now a thing, wine reps selling to retail stores and restaurants, started to rely on these points very heavily because the wines that Robert Parker was writing about were not your everyday wines. These were fine wines, or wines built to age.

One of the reasons why The Wine Advocate was so respected, beyond the tasting notes and the scores, was there were no ads. It was just wine information cover to cover with no distractions. As people noticed how successful the scoring thing could be, they started applying it to their own ventures. For example, Marvin Shanken, who created Wine Spectator, which I think started as a newsletter but quickly became a magazine — he started using a hundred-point system for scoring wines their own way. That is a magazine, so there are advertisements there.

That’s where capitalism started churning out. This idea of scores and wine started to really define what people looked for in a wine. They didn’t look for what was inside the bottle so much as they looked for the score. They assumed that the higher the score, the better the wine, which is true. Yet, there was really no indication as to their personal preference in that score, and that’s the capper. That’s the twist with numerical scores to denote the quality of wine, and that led to some controversy.

For example, Hugh Johnson, who’s a very famous wine writer in the U.K. and wine critic, said, “You’re going to apply a score to a wine that’s going to age, so it’s going to change. Are you going to then apply a score later on? How do you correlate that score that you apply later on with the earlier score? It’s a mess. This doesn’t work.” But Robert Parker didn’t see wine that way, specifically.

There’s a quote on the cover of his newsletter that says, “Wine is no different from any consumer product. There are specific standards of quality that full-time wine professionals recognize.” Obviously, he was approaching wine with this very calculated effort, and someone like Hugh Johnson had more of a sense of where a wine was going and that it’s an active thing. It’s not just a snapshot in time wine.

Also, Robert Parker really loved Bordeaux and also really enjoyed deep, dark, fuller-bodied red wines. He was mostly a red wine critic, and he ended up doing a lot of his little literary work in Bordeaux and in the Rhône. It got to the point that his influence was so great that winemakers in France, Italy, the United States, Spain, and beyond would make wines so that he would actually like them and get big scores so those scores could get them sales. Even though Robert Parker wanted the scores to be a supplement to his very detailed notes, this system was just too easy. It was just too good.

This became the standard. A score on wine defined its price, its popularity, and its reputation. Other publications like The Wine Spectator and eventually Wine Enthusiast applied scores as well. That’s what the game became. It was a score thing.

Today, scores are still very popular. They’re not the standard they once were, but they still have influence. I believe The Wine Advocate morphed into robertparker.com, which is his website. In 2012, he sold that entire website to a Singapore ex-wine merchant for $1.5 million. So he retired, but his idea never did. To this day, scores are still applied to wine, so we gotta talk about that. What does it mean when a score is applied to wine? How do you figure that out?

One of the cool reasons why scoring is not as popular as it once was is because these days we, the American drinking culture, are more interested in the stories behind the wines than we are about applying a calculated score to a wine. And tasting notes are also very important to us, but the language of tasting notes is a whole other thing. We go over that in previous episodes, of course, but there’s something nice about a point. It’s a number. It’s quick and easy to understand. It’s very shorthand. If you trust the person who’s giving the score, you trust the score. It’s also something that transcends all languages. It’s a number — everyone knows 93. Everyone knows what a 94 is, but no matter how calculated a point is supposed to be applied to wine, it’s a very arbitrary thing. How do you trust a score applied to a wine, knowing you’re to spend some money on wine? Every 100-point system is very similar, but every one is actually different from one another. Every system is created independently and designed for that particular publication or entity to get its message across.

At VinePair, we’ve actually created our own hundred-point scoring system with our own levels in tiers and how we think a hundred-point system should be applied to when we review wines. Being the tastings director of VinePair, I’m the one that does all the tasting and all the reviewing. Using that system that we developed helps me get my message across to you guys, based on how VinePair sees a certain wine.

That’s where the 100-point system exists today. It’s similar to a movie critic. When you want to see a movie, I don’t know about you, but I have certain movie or film critics that I like to read before I see a movie because I often agree with what they say. This is similar to the 100-point wine scoring system. You go to a wine shop, and you see a point, that point is given to that wine by somebody. If you’re familiar with that somebody, and you like the way that somebody talks about wine, you’re probably going to go ahead look at that number and choose to buy the bottle of wine based on that person’s wine score. If you see a number from another wine critic that you may not know, you may not get the wine or you may get it anyway, but not take into account the score. That is how it works these days, because wine is so much more than one point, but it’s a really good, quick reference point for you if you know who’s actually giving the point and agree with that person’s taste in wine.

Even though these numbers can seem a little bit arbitrary — and they are arbitrary and subjective because it is one person’s palate or a panel of palates making a decision on wine and a score — what’s really cool is every website has its own hundred-point system with its criteria so you can see why they’ve chosen what they’ve chosen. At VinePair, we have our 100-point system in categories and we have it all explained for you. If you look at a wine on VinePair that I reviewed and given a score to, you can go and look at that link to see why where it is in the scale of why I said what I said.

That’s a little bit of history, application, evolution, and where we are today with this 100-point wine scoring system. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere for a very long time. Even though today, stories and backgrounds are so much more enjoyable today than just a cold, hard score, that score will always help us in a pinch if we trust the person giving the score.

@VinePairKeith is my Insta. Rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcast from. It really helps get the word out there. And now for some totally awesome credits.

“Wine 101” was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big ol’ shout-out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin for creating VinePair. And I mean, a big shout-out to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of VinePair, for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast. Also, Darbi Cicci for the theme song. Listen to this. And I want to thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new every day. See you next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article Wine 101: The Points System appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-101-points-system/