#apparently he’s greco-roman and from the first century

[yamayuandadu]

who was nergal syncrestised with in hatra? apparently it was the iranic god verethragna but verethragna himself was syncretised with heracles. is it possible that all three deities were syncretised with each other?

First things first, I must admit I've been really enjoying the recent wave of very focused questions. It's actually easier to answer these than vague ones like "why was Inanna important". The worship of Nergal in Hatra is a complex topic because the city arose very late, there's only evidence of settlement from the final centuries of the first millennium BCE. Lucinda Dirven in her study of the matter basically characterized the local Nergal as "a Herakles-figure (...) worshipped in Hatra under the name of Nergal" rather than as outright the same deity Shulgi built a temple for in Kutha. She notes most of the art of the god follows Greco-Roman Heracles iconography, and anything resembling the classic Mesopotamian Nergal is uncommon. Ted Kaizer in his slightly earlier article questioned identifying the Heracles figure with Nergal altogether, though Dirven considers this too extreme. So, in other words, we have a deity who seemingly was called Nergal (multiple inscriptions confirm that directly), had Nergal's traditional roles tied to war, death and punishment, but looked enough like Herakles for this to be a very murky matter. And there are peculiarities which are strictly local, such as the association of dogs which is exclusive to the Parthian period and has no real precedent in Mesopotamia (medicine goddesses were associated with dogs, and Marduk has four attack dogs in his court, but Nergal has nothing like that at any earlier point in time). I think Dirven's "Nergal-Herakles" label is warranted and explains the situation best. Association between Nergal and Heracles was not limited to Hatra, and pops up in a few other cities in Hellenistic times; Heracles was associated with various fully divine foreign figures though, so it should not be surprising (see ex. the case of Sandas from Tarsus as another example) An additional problem is that some of the Herakles figures are actually inscribed with the name Gad, but that's a whole other can of worms, and here this might simply be a designation of the god as the tutelary deity of specific families, not a reference to Gad understood as an independent deity. As for the Iranian side: one of the best attested epithets of "Nergal-Herakles" in Hatra, Dahashpata ("lord of the guards" or "executioner"), seems to originate in an Iranian language. The connection to dogs might be borrowed from an Iranian milieu too, though more from the general perception of these animals as guardians of the dead etc. rather than from their link to a specific figure. I see no reference to Verethragna in Dirven's paper, and Shenkar's Intangible Spirits and Graven Images doesn't mention any connection between him and Nergal either - it just mentions that he was identified with Heracles in Commagene, Mesene and presumably in various locations in Armenia, but that even this was not universal because they're two different deities in Kushan sources which probably reflect a preexisting Iranian tradition. To sum up, I cannot really give you a straightforward answer. The god worshiped in Hatra definitely combined Mesopotamian, Greek and Iranian elements. However, even though Nergal, Heracles and Verethragna definitely show some similarities in terms of character, and Heracles could be viewed as analogous to both of them in different contexts, but I can't find any evidence that they were regarded as a three-way set of equivalents the way, say, Enlil, Dagan and Kumarbi were understood as in in the second millennium BCE. The closest point of connection between Verethragna and Nergal is the fact both of them corresponded to the same planet, as pointed out in Encyclopedia Iranica, but I am unable to find any recent source arguing this was anything like the Tishtrya-Nabu situation. In the light of the recently proven lack of any real connection between Anahita and Ishtar beyond sharing the same planetary symbol I'd be very cautious with similar claims about other supposed pairs.

[mask131]

French fantasy: The children of Orpheus and Melusine

There is this book called “The Illustrated Panorama of the fantasy and the merveilleux” which is a collection and compilation of articles and reviews covering the whole history of the fantasy genre from medieval times to today. And in it there is an extensive article written by A. F. Ruau called “Les enfant d’Orphée et de Mélusine” (The Children of Orpheus and Melusine), about fantasy in French literature. This title is, of course, a reference to the two foundations of French literature: the Greco-Roman heritage (Orpheus) and the medieval tradition (Melusine).

I won’t translate the whole text because it is LONG but I will give here a brief recap and breakdown.

A good part of the article is dedicated to proving that in general France is not a great land for fantasy literature, and that while we had fantasy-like stories in the past, beyond the 18th century we hit a point where fantasy was banned and disdained by literary authorities.

Ruaud reminds us that the oldest roots of French fantasy are within Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian novels, the first French novels of the history of French literature, and that despite France rejecting fantasy, the tradition of the Arthuriana and of the “matter of Bretagne” stayed very strong in our land. Even today we have famous authors offering their takes, twists and spins on the Arthurian myth: Xavier de Langlais, Michael Rio, Hersart de la Villemarqué, René Barjaval (with his L’Enchanteur, The Enchanter, in 1984), Jean Markale, Jean-Louis Fetjaine or Justine Niogret (with her “Mordred” in 2013). He also evokes the huge wave and phenomenon of the French fairytales between the 17th and the 18th century, with the great names such as Charles Perrault (the author of Mother Goose’s Fairytales), Madame d’Aulnoy (the author, among others, of The Blue Bird), and Madame Leprince de Beaumont (author of, among others, Beauty and the Beast). He also evokes, of course, Charles Nodier, which was considered one of the great (and last) fairytale authors of the 19th century, the whole “Cabinet des Fées” collection put together to save a whole century of fairytales ; as well as the phenomenon caused by Antoine Galland’s French translation of the One Thousand and One Nights – though Ruaud also admits this translation rather helped the Oriental fashion in French literature (exemplified by famous works such as The Persian Letters, or Zadig) than the genre of the “marvelous”.

Ruaud briefly mentions the existence of a tradition of “quests” in French literature, again inherited from the medieval times, but quests that derived from Arthurian feats to romantic quests, love stories, “polite” novel of aristocratic idylls or pastoral novels of countryside love stories – the oldest being Le Roman de la Rose (the Novel of the Rose, the medieval text began by Guillaume de Lorris in the early 13th century and completed by Jean de Meung one century later), and the most recent L’Astrée (THE great romantic bestseller of the 17th century, written by Honoré d’Urfé). But overall, Ruaud concluded that between the 17th-early 18th century (the last surge of the marvelous, abruptly cut short by the French Revolution and the reshaping of France) and the 1980s (the time during which role-playing fantasy games and the English-speaking fantasy was translated in France), there was very little “fantasy” to be talked of as a whole, a gap that resulted in people such as Gérard Klein declare in the 90s: “Fantasy is a literature made by ignorant people for ignorant readers, and with a true absence of any kind of challenge”.

At least for literature… Ruaud however spends a lot of time detailing the “fantastical” and “marvelous” traditions of visual art – from the stage performances to the movies. There was quite a rich tradition there, apparently. He starts by evoking the massive wave that the release in the United-Kingdom of “The Dream of Ossian” caused. France ADORED Ossianic stuff – even when it was proven that it wasn’t an actual Scottish historical treasure, but a work made up by Macpherson, people still adored it – from Napoleon who commissioned enormous paintings illustrating the Ossianic stories, to the colossal opera by Jean-François Lesueur, “Ossian ou les Bardes”, created for the then brand-new Imperial Academy of music.

There was also the fashion of the “féeries”, a type of stage-show that was all about depicting stories of fairies, gods, magics and other fairytale elements – the “féerie” fashion was at the crossroad between the opera, the ballet and the theater, and in the “dreary, drab and modern” era of the 19th century, people were obsessed with these “little pieces of blue sky” and “golden fairy-clouds”. However, despite the quality of the visuals, costumes and sets (which made the whole power of those féerie, it was their visuals and their themes that drew people in), the dialogues and the plots were noted to be quite bad, simplistic if not absent. The “féeries” were not meant to be great work of arts or actual literature, but just pure entertainment. Gustave Flaubert, right after finishing Salammbô (see my previous post), was exhausted and trying to escape the colossus of the historical novels, he tried to entertain himself by getting into the fashion of the féeries. He read thirty-three féeries in one go, and he was left sickened by so much mediocrity. He decided to create his own féerie that would rehabilitate the genre, and the result was “Le Château des Coeurs”, “The Castle of Hearts”. Nine “tableaux” written by Flaubert on a “canevas” by his friend Louis Bouilhet: “The gnomes, the new avatar of the bourgeois, are stealing the hearts – and thus the ability to love – of humans, to keep them locked up in the vault of the Castle of the Hearts, as their treasure. But the fairies are afoot: they will try to revive love on earth, through two human beings that are said to still have a heart, and to still have the ability to love”. Unfortunately this play, while entirely created, was never actually showed on any stage due to two things. One, at the time the féeries were falling out of fashion and nobody wanted to see them anymore ; two, Flaubert was carried away and placed a LOT of special effects in his play, many which were incredibly more complex than those used at the time. A typical féerie special effect would be for example for a table to turn into a chair, or for a bed to turn into a hammock – but Flaubert demanded for a YOUNG MAN to turn into a DOOR LINTEL.

Anyway… The use of legends and myths was also reigniting in operas thanks to the enormous success of Wagner’s pieces. Claude Debussy created a “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” in 1894, based on Mallarmé’s work (Prelude to a Faun’s afternoon), and later created a Pelléas et Melissande in 1902 based on Maeterlinck. But again… In France, the literature was all about the “fantastique” rather than the fantasy – the supernatural was supposed to be of this disquieting, disruptive, bizarre magic, wonders and horrors that entered the normal, rational, logical reality we all knew. It was the reign of Gautier, Maupassant and Poe through the lenses of Baudelaire). In the 20th century a lot of authors touched upon the “wonderful” and the “marvelous”, but they were discreet touches here and there: André Dhôtel, André Hardellet, Jacques Yonnet, Charles Duits, Henri Michaux, Marcel Aymé, Pierre Benoît, Marguerite Yourcenar, Sylvie Germain, Maurice Maeterlinck, Julien Gracq… Once again, the visuals won over literature – and to symbolize the French fantasy cinema of the 20th century, Ruaud only has to mention one name. Jean Cocteau. Cocteau and his two most famous movies: La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast, 1946) and Orphée (Orpheus, 1949). They stay to this day the greatest “fantasy movies” of the 20th century.

But unfortunately for France, there never was any “popularization” of the fantasy through media like the pulps of the USA. Science-fiction as a genre was accepted though, to the point that anything that was a “marvel”, a “wonder” or a “supernatural” had to be science-fiction, not magic. The 70s and 80s were the supreme rule of the science-fiction in France: Jean-Pierre Fontana had his stellar ark/arch, Alain Paris his antediluvian continent, Michel Grimaud his spatial colonization, Bernard Simonay his spy-satellites, Hugues Doriaux all sorts of sci-fi gadgets… In this time, if you wanted to do something out of ordinary, you had to go into speculative science, else you wouldn’t be taken seriously. Again, it was Klein’s opinion that fantasy was for “ignorant” readers and writers who didn’t like to “challenge” themselves.

However, in this “desert” that preceded the true fantasy boom of the 90s in France, Ruaud claims that there are actually true French fantasy novels: five “ancestors” of the French fantasy. And those I’ll reveal in a second post…

[aeidemnemosyne]

Black History Month Special

"Aesop Narrates His Fables to the Handmaids of Xanthus" Roberto Fontana, 1876. Engraving by Gallieni.

Even if one has not heard of the name Aesop, they undoubtedly have come across The Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy who cried Wolf, or any other of the hundreds of fables attributed to the man. Yet besides these tales, very little is known about Aesop himself other than that he lived from about 620–564 BCE and was a slave. The only pseudo-biographical account that exists is The Aesop Romance, which has been called out for lacking any historical credit. One thing it did popularize was the depiction of Aesop as someone with dwarfism (perhaps not with the best intent. The Aesop Romance lists this among several unflattering characteristics).

Another discussion is that of Aesop's race. The general term for the African people in ancient times was "Αἰθίοψ" (Aithíops), which translated to "burnt-face"(noun) or "red-brown"(adjective) and was used for the people the Greeks encountered in northern Africa. Andromeda is a famous Ethiopian.

It has been argued that Aesop's name is a form of Aithiop that has altered over time. It is not unthinkable that the θ became an s-sound and the second ι was dropped. Another argument made by Richard Lobban in (recent) scholarship is that (Egyptian) animals play a very prominent role in the fables. Animals as subjects/actors in Greek myth and tales are a rarity, and more common in African folklore.

That Aesop is described as a slave by most accounts does not confirm his possible African identity. Slaves in ancient times were often prisoners of war and the like. Race would not make Aesop a slave by definition, but if he were one, being an Ethiopian would have made it likely that he was a storyteller/entertainer in the household (Snowden, 1970).

Referring to Aesop as Ethiopian/black started in the 13th century and continued till the present day. Though (as is frequently the case...) not without some grumbling.

The painting that the above image refers to won the first prize during its exhibition at the Fine Art Academy of Brera in Milan. A French critic at a Parisian showing noted: "Why is M. Fontana's Aesop, expounding with forceful comic gestures some sort of moral, apparently very agreeable to the young women stretched limply among the oleanders, black as an Ethiopian? Perhaps M. Fontana knows more about Aesop than we do, which would not be difficult."

And, yes, while there is no indisputable evidence that Aesop had been "black as an Ethiopian", there also is no evidence of him having been white either. A white default is questionable in modern times, but this is equally so when one talks about Ancient Mediterranean and the frequent interactions between the peoples surrounding it.

Recommended reading: Lobban, Richard A. “Was Aesop a Nubian Kummaji (Folkteller)?” Northeast African Studies 9, no. 1 (2002): 11–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41931299. Snowden, Frank M. Blacks In Antiquity: Ethiopians In the Greco-Roman Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970. https://hdl-handle-net.proxy-ub.rug.nl/2027/heb31888.0001.001. Snowden was a prominent African-American classicist to whom we owe much of the research into the lives of black people in ancient times. Like women, people of color and other minorities were (and still are) under-researched in scholarship.

[thenightling]

Origin of the Folkloric Sandman (with sources)

 Earlier today someone asked me if The Sandman originated with the Charlottes song.  Buckle up.  You’re in for a long ride...

The idea of The Sandman originates from European folklore.  It may actually be an evolution of the idea of Morpheus and the other Oneiroi in Greco-Roman mythology.

in Greek mythology there were these beings known as the Oneiroi which meant Dreams. They were supposed to have black wings.  Oneiros directly means Dream.  The Romans named three of them.  Phobetor (Terrifier, as their preference was making Nightmares) though he was sometimes called by a more friendly name of Icalus (Not to be confused with Icarus), Morpheus (Shaper, whose dreams were usually metaphorically or literally true), and Phantasmos (Fantasy).  Their names can be found in Metamorphoses by Ovid.  

Phobetor AKA Icalus, the Nightmare making Oneiros, may have been the basis for Nightmare, Marvel’s equivalent character to Dream AKA Morpheus from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman for DC Comics (though in comics Nightmare came first).

Over the years, in society’s collective consciousness, only Morpheus was really remembered.  And the modern idea of him is he creates both dreams and Nightmares.  

The gates of horn and ivory in the realm of dreams, which are also mentioned in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, were mentioned in Homer's The Odyssey.  The Gates of Horn admit true dreams, the gates of ivory admit the deceptive dreams. 

In 1841 Hans Christian Andersen published a story called Ole Lukøje (meaning close-eye) about a strange man who would sprinkle "Sweet milk" in your eyes to induce sleep and dreams.  In the story Ole Lukøje tells us he is the Roman God of Dreams, making it clear he is also Morpheus (as around this time his fellow Oneiroi were mostly forgotten by pop culture).  Later translations changed the sweet milk to sand.  This is the most common version of The Sandman.  Ole Lukøje also had a sibling, Death, who looked a lot like him. As Death can easily be mistaken as Sleep and Sleep can be mistaken as Death.  In the original Roman mythology though, Death was actually Morpheus's uncle, not sibling.  However just like with Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, his mother is Night personified (Nyx).

The idea that he sprinkles sand in your eyes to make you sleep and dream originates with Scandinavian folklore and may also connect to Morpheus of Roman mythology as he was a ‘shaper” or sculptor and sand, when wet, can be very clay-like, for sculpting. 

The Scandinavian / Eastern European lore eventually made it’s way to Central and Western Europe where it easily merged with Morpheus. 

The Sandman has become so merged with the mythological Morpheus that the TV show Once upon a Time made “sands of Morpheus” a plot device for Season 6.   

There is a more obscure Sandman legend that turns up in a nineteenth century short story called Der Sandmann (The Sandman), a nurse tells a small child.In this version that The Sandman sprinkles sand in the eyes of children who don't sleep to make their eyes fall out and then he eats the eyes.  This was clearly the nanny twisting the benign "I'll make you sleep" Sandman to scare the child into going to bed. And might be where Neil got the idea for the Nightmare creature The Corinthian, who has a taste for human eyes.

In the nineteenth century a land that you go to when you dream became very popular in children’s literature.  Often called the Land of Nod (which is the name of the place Cain fled to in the Cain and Abel story) it has also been called Slumberland (Nemo’s adventures in Slumberland) or the Dream-Time or The Dreaming (from Indigenous Australian lore).    

The Animated series The Real Ghostbusters (based on the Ghostbusters movie) considered The Sandmen (there are apparently multiple) to be a "Class 6" apparition which I think was a mislabeling as in show canon, Class 6 is animal-like.  He'd be class 7 or higher.

There's also a version of The Sandman in the animated movie Rise of the Guardians and he uses a very obscure part of Morpheus mythology.  According to some sources Morpheus cannot or will not speak in the waking World.  So Sandy in Rise of the Guardians is mute.

 I think Neil Gaiman may have almost went with that lore, that Morpheus won't or can't speak in the waking world, but had changed his mind by issue 3. 

In any event his speaking is at least partly telepathic for The Sandman AKA Dream AKA Morpheus in The Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman.  That's why everyone hears their own native language when he talks.

Pitch, the villain of Rise of the Guardians, may have also been physically modeled on Morpheus from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.

[pridepages]

Cavalier: Gideon the Ninth

I just finished Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I have thoughts.

Here there be spoilers!

The world of Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series is impossible to pin down. It is composed of some kind of galaxy of planets. It exists thousands of years after the discovery of necromantic arts. It largely appears to be of greco-roman influence. And yet, the warriors of the houses are called cavaliers: a term that was made famous centuries after the fall of Rome in the era of Charles I.

It’s odd, offbeat, slightly wrong...and completely perfect for Gideon Nav.

Gideon the Ninth introduces the readers to the Nine Houses under the Emperor Undying: THE guy who purportedly discovered the secrets of necromancy. The story kicks off as the Emperor sends out the call that his original core fighters, his Lyctors, have all but died off. He requires the scions of each of the eight remaining houses to come compete to become the next generation of Lyctors. Each young necromancer shall come accompanied by their cavalier primary to answer the call. This is particularly unfortunate for Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. The Ninth House has long been in decline. Harrowhark has no cavalier primary. But she does have a childhood rival who’s handy with a blade...Ninth House foundling, Gideon Nav. The pair of them answer the Emperor’s call, and they are taken through a mysterious and horrifying series of challenges that are interrupted by a series of occult murders.

The plot is honestly too baffling to sum up. The real appeal here is our unlikely hero: Gideon Nav. Gideon is masculine coded, a butch lesbian. She’s buff, a beast with a two-hander sword, horny, vain, sarcastic, occasionally stupid, honorable, shockingly kind, and unapologetically gay. What’s fascinating about seeing the world through Gideon’s eyes is how unselfconscious Gideon is about her queerness. 

This is the first book I have encountered where a character is queer without seemingly being aware of it. In other books, whether the character is closeted and ashamed or out loud and proud, some kind of attention is drawn to the fact that the character is queer and that queerness isn’t the norm. It might be a giant and explicit plot point or it could be as simple as a character making some sly reference to not being attracted to the opposite gender through commentary on someone else’s appearance or relationship. This literally does not occur to Gideon. She only ever expresses attraction toward other women (“Corona had vaulted herself out of the water in a flash of warm golden skin and her exceedingly long legs, and Gideon made her first and only devout prayer to the Locked Tomb of thankfulness and joy”). But Gideon never feels compelled to contrast her attraction to women against her lack of attraction to men--even men she likes and respects like Palamedes Sextus. No mention is made of labels or sexuality. Positive heterosexual pairings are seen, particularly Magnus Quint and Abigail Pent, but Gideon does not comment on them as an example of the norm or contrast them with her obvious attraction to women. Gideon’s sexuality just...is. 

As is her gender presentation. There are, seemingly, no gender roles in the Nine Houses. There are a mix of women and men as the warrior cavaliers and as the necromancers. No discussion is really made of, or attention paid to, gender. Although it must be noted: we are seeing this whole story from Gideon’s vantage point. So the case could be made that the reason no one seems to care is actually because it’s Gideon who doesn’t care. While the rest of us were busy defining our gender and sexuality, she was studying the blade!

Cavalier is, in fact, apparently the perfect word to describe Gideon. Not only is it the term for the kind of warrior she must be in this society, but it is also an adjective. To be cavalier is to have or show no concern for a serious or important matter. Gideon ‘Finds Puns Automatically Funny’ Nav insists on making jokes during every serious moment she possibly can. She sees a giant bone construct that should be impossible and her instinct is to fight it. Her primary goal in life is, at least in the beginning, to antagonize her necromancer.

 (Although that last one changes with perhaps the most hilariously incongruous set of love confessions. While Harrowhark is busy proclaiming “I’ve lived my whole wretched life at your mercy...You are my only friend. I am undone without you,” like the dramatic disaster that she is, Gideon merely replies: “too many words. How about these: One flesh, one end, bitch. Say it, loser.”)

But while Gideon may act cavalier...she actually cares a great deal more than she wants to let on. Gideon agrees to a painful sacrifice of her soul power to get Harrow through a trial. When Harrow asks why, Gideon bluntly replies: “Probably because you asked...That’s all I ever demanded. You asswipe.” In the end, she cares enough to make the ultimate sacrifice for Harrow by reciting the words of a cavalier’s vow: “Harrow...the entire point of me is you. You get that, right? That’s what cavaliers sign up for. There is no me without you. One flesh, one end.”

Gideon the Ninth represents a refreshing step in queer literature. It’s a story that is unapologetically gay, featuring mostly women characters who are fully realized individuals and not preoccupied by gender. Here, sapphic readers can see a world where we exist openly without explanation or apology. 

And that’s something I can’t be cavalier about.

[fuckindiva]

Villa of the Mysteries’ Frescoes - The Villa of the Mysteries (Villa dei Misteri) is a well-preserved suburban ancient Roman villa on the outskirts of Pompeii, famous for the series of exquisite frescos in one room, which are usually thought to show the initiation of a young woman into a Greco-Roman mystery cult (probably into the cult of Bacchus, women and satyrs are featured prominently). These are now among the best known of the relatively rare survivals of Ancient Roman painting. There are many different interpretations of the frescoes, but they are commonly believed to depict a religious rite. Another common theory is that the frescoes depict a bride initiating into the Bacchic Mysteries in preparation for marriage. x

“It was a special meeting room, with wall containing paintings which suggest an initiation ceremony into the cult of Dionysus, by a would be bride of the God. The ceremony is intricately depicted, yet some things are hidden from us. A near naked child reads the holy word, the Logos, while the female priestesses attend and bring cake offerings.

Some things are hidden from our eyes, such as perhaps the sacred symbolic phallus of the popular fertility god, which gets unveiled. The purification ceremony continues around the walls of the room, and includes ritual whipping, as well as the emerging bride, now purified and ready to take her place with the followers of the god. In the center of the back wall of the room, an apparently inebriated Dionysus reclines in the lap of what may be Ariadne, the bride he once rescued when she had been abandoned by the greek hero Theseus on the cycladic island of Naxos.

The scene is second style, dates somewhere around 40, 30 BCE. The wall has been broken up as a flat surface, and the action now takes place on a stage. The sparse style of the figural detailing suggests artistic influence from the Hellenistic Greek world, at the end of the second and into the first century BCE.” - David Soren

[clare-with-no-i]

theogony ch4 end notes:

-this was just a fun little thing I did for no reason, but I say that James does goes over how to talk to remus about lily "nearly to the point of nausea," instead of just saying "ad nauseam" (meaning over and over again) because 'ad nauseam' is a Latin phrase. heh. lil latin-greek feud joke there.

-I made McGonagall’s name “Athena” because her canonical first name is Minerva, which is the Roman version of Athena. she is also the sort-of-analog to Mrs Fitz from Outlander

-the breakfast foods they have are period-accurate! barley-bread dipped in wine and teganites, which are apparently some sort of ancient pancake. and yes, they had wine at breakfast, because it was often safer to drink than water (oy vey…); essentially, lots of wine was consumed at all times.

-important point of vocab here that I want to emphasize: "se filo" is one way of saying "I love you" in Ancient Greek. so, when Sirius says "are you sure you did not mean se Philomel" he's playing on the first syllable of "philomel" being identical to "filo"; essentially saying, "are you sure your nickname for her isn't just 'I love you'?"

-"Thermopylae" refers to the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BCE (1 year prior to this story), in which, after a three-day-long bloody battle, the Greeks were betrayed by someone (or so I have read) and the Persians outflanked them. It was a terrible loss for the Greek side of the Greco-Persian wars.

-Draco was a dictator in Athens in the 7th Century BCE. The word “Draconian” (meaning ‘excessively harsh and severe’) comes from his policymaking. So, when Lily says “this is Draconian,” James thinks she’s actually referring to Draco, and is like how do u know about him

-Ancient societies were transitioning from papyrus to parchment rolls around this time. so if “papyrus” ever comes up, take it to mean that the document is old.

[stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland]

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The Art Behind Romance (Album Cover) If there is something that caught my attention with Camren it is the reference that the music and the visual of both have made to the Greek and Roman culture and to Renaissance art. And it's something that I personally loved because I really enjoy that type of art since I recognized one of the works in the cover of Camila’s Romance.

Judith and Holofernes by Caravaggio

Judith and Holofernes is a biblical-inspired painting by Caravaggio, painted in 1599. Specifically, it is based on the apocryphal story of Judit, rejected by the Protestants, but kept by the Catholic popes Sixtus V and Clement VIII in the 1592 Bible.1

The painting shows General Holofernes when he was beheaded by Judit, the woman who seduced him in less than one night. It caused reactions of horror and surprise among the visitors to its first headquarters, as Caravaggio managed to endow the work with great realism and rawness. Judit is shown standing, majestic and undaunted, while her maid, who has provided her with the sword, is nervous and on the lookout for what may happen. The effects of the work would later be recreated by the versions of Artemisia Gentileschi (Judith beheading Holofernes, 1620) and Francisco de Goya (Judith and Holofernes, 1820).

I studied Caravaggio when I had a Renaissance art class, so it was easy for me to know that Camila made reference to one of her works. It is a somewhat difficult painting to see but it is visually powerful and one of the most famous of the so-called tenebrist author. The second work I did not recognize but it caught my attention too and then when I discovered its meaning I was also surprised.

The Martyrdom of Santa Águeda by Sebastiano del Piombo

For those suffering from breast cancer, Agatha is their patron saint. She was a beautiful Christian maiden, from Catania, Sicily, who dedicated her life to God. As she rejected the love proposals of consul Quintiliano, she suffered cruel tortures. One of the tortures she suffered was to have her breast cut off, with iron shears, a detail that furnished to the Christian medieval iconography, the peculiar characteristic of Agatha. Catania honors Agatha as her patron saint and throughout the region around Mt. Etna. Saint Agatha’s feast day is February 5. All of those dedicated to the treatment and prevention of breast cancer are known as “the soldiers of Saint Agatha”.

Saint Agatha as other authors call her is the patron saint of breast diseases (breast cancer) that is something that really caught my attention and I do not know if Camila or her team has noticed the detail but I think that if the painting is in The Romance cover goes more for the abstract meaning: The saint's refusal to marry a consul. The last painting was more difficult to recognize but I started looking for references since it is not so difficult to identify the characters, a man and a woman. The man is lying on the scene and the woman seems to approach him to touch him or "wake him up." And that reference has a work.

Diana and Endymion Francesco Solimena In Greek mythology, the moon goddess, Selene, drives her moon chariot across the heavens, although she was also regarded as the personification of the Moon itself. Selene is best known for her affair with the beautiful mortal Endymion, the young shepherd who used to sleep on a mountain, and with whom she had fifty daughters.[2] The late 7th-century – early 6th-century BC poet Sappho had apparently already mentioned Selene and Endymion's history.[3] In Roman mythology, Diana has the attributes of Selene and she was mentioned as the goddess who falls in love with Endymion. Both goddesses were regarded as lunar goddesses, except for the fact that in Roman mythology, Diana became a virgin goddess

I think that this last work is the one that most connects Camren and his Greco-Roman cultural concept. The Moon and the goddesses. When I discovered the similarity of these two works, I knew immediately what Camila wanted to achieve with that concept and I hope I am not wrong, but it is the one that most resembles the work on the album cover. Our butterfly as always, a genius. The whole concept of the cover is denial of heterosexuality and homosexual love. Besides, there’s the detail of the two female models covering that painting, that’s not a coincidence. I think if Romance had not been stolen by the circus, it would have a very different concept from what we know until now, but it is there, hidden in art.

Oh and of course

a sculpture of Venus de Milo. That's a direct reference to Lauren's visual from Expectations and More Than That.

[aimee-maroux]

Sexual Curse Tablets

The first time I ever heard about curse tablets was when I visited Bath and its namesake Roman bath. The curse tablets found there were written in Latin and addressed to local goddess Sulis, identified by the Romans with Minerva.

A curse tablet, called tabella defixionis or defixio in Latin and katadesmos in ancient Greek is a small tablet, often made of lead, stone or baked clay, asking a god, spirit or dead person for help. The tablet was then secretly buried or hidden in a significant place.

Curse tablets were a popular type of magic throughout the Greco-Roman world used by both, men and women. And of course people back then cared just as much about sex and love as they do today. The ones in Bath dealt with the return of stolen possessions, with the exception of one:

"Qui mihi Vilbiam involavit sic liquat comodo aqua. Ell[…] muta qui eam involavit si Velvinna, Exsupereus, Verianus, Severinus, Augustalis, Comitianus, Catus, Minianus, Germanilla, Iovina."

"May he who carried off Vilbia from me become liquid as the water. May she who so obscenely devoured her become dumb, whether Velvinna, Exsupereus, Verianus, Severinus, Augustalis, Comitianus, Catus, Minianus, Germanilla (or) Jovina." Bath / Aquae Sulis, England, 43-410 CE

This curse tablet also deals with a theft, but it's the theft of a girl named Vilbia. Whether Vilbia was actually the writer's slave, or only his concubine, either would make sense here.

A Love Affair with Eterna

The only curse from Britain with a truly erotic context was found in Old Harlow, Essex:

"Mio M(ercurio) dono ti(bi)‌ negotium Et-‌ern(a)e et ipsam,‌ nec sit i(n)vidi(a) me(i)‌ Timotneo sangui(n)e suo."

"To the god Mercury, I entrust to you my affair with Eterna and her own self, and may Timotneus feel no jealousy of me at the risk of his life-blood." Old Harlow, England, found together with 3rd-4th century pottery

Mercury or Hermes is the god of thieves, magic and spells (among many other things) and as the guide of dead souls he moves freely between the world and the underworld. Hermes, Charon, Hekate, and Persephone were most often addressed to bring about a curse tablet's spell.

In comparison, this excerpt from a curse found inside a wax figurine in Upper Egypt, is far more dramatic:

"[...] Rouse yourselves, you daimones who lie here and seek out Euphêmia, to whom Dôrothea gave birth, for Thêon, to whom Proechia gave birth. Let her not be able to sleep for the entire night, but lead her until she comes to his feet, loving him with a frenzied love, with affection and with sexual intercourse. For I have bound her brain and hands and viscera and genitals and heart for the love of me, Thêon..." 5th century CE, Upper Egypt

The following, similar spell is also from Egypt. It was inscribed in Greek on a lead tablet that was rolled up around some strands of brownish red hair and inserted into the mouth of a mummy, to whom the spell was apparently addressed:

"Aye, lord demon, attract, inflame, destroy, burn, cause her to swoon from love as she is being burnt, inflamed. Goad the tortured soul, the heart of Karosa...until she leaps forth and comes to Apalos...out of passion and love, in this very hour, immediately, immediately; quickly, quickly...do not allow Karosa herself...to think of her [own] husband, her child, drink, food, but let her come melting for passion and love and intercourse, especially yearning for the intercourse of Apalos." Eshmunen, Egypt

Another spell of the same kind, but from a woman this time:

"Ad(iur)o … per magnum deum et per (An)terotas … et per eum, qui habet archep-torem (= accipitrem) supra caput et per septem stellas, ut, ex qua hora (h)oc somposuero (= composuero), non dormiat Sextilios, Dionysi(a)e filius, uratur furens, non dormiat neque sedeat neque loquatur, sed in mentem (h)abiat me Septimam, Amene (= Amoenae) filia(m); uratur furens amore et desiderio meo, anima et cor uratur Sextili, Dionysi(a)e filius (= filii), amore et desiderio meo. Septimes, Am(o)en(a)e fili(a)e. Tu autem Abar Barbarie Eloee Sabaoth Pachnouphy Pythipemi, fac Sextilium, Dionysi(a)e filium, ne somnum contingat, set amore et desi derio meo uratur, (h)uius spiritus et cor comburatur, omnia membra totius corporis Sextili,  Dionysi(a)e filius (filii). Si minus, descendo in adytus Osyris et dissolvam τὴν ταφήν et mittam ut a flumine feratur; ego enim sum magnus decanus dei magni, dei AXRAMMACHALALA.E."

"I forswear you, the great god [i.e. Osiris], and Anterotes [Anteros, god of requited love] and the one with a hawk head [i.e. Horus, the Egyptian god of death], and the seven stars [i.e. planets], from the moment I put this tablet [into the grave], may Sextilius, son of Dionysia, not sleep, may he burn [with passion] in madness, may he not sleep, nor sit, nor speak, but bear in his mind me, Septima, daughter of Amoena; may he burn with love and longing for me, may the mind and heart of Sextilius, son of Dionysia, burn with love and longing for me, Septima, daughter of Amoena. And you, Abar, Barbarie, Eloe, Sabaoth, Pachnouphy, and Pythipemi, make Sextilius, son of Dionysia, unable to sleep, but burn with love and longing for me, may his spirit and heart, as well as all limbs of Sextilius’ body be consumed by love: if not, I will descend into the shrine [grave] of Osiris, open his grave and throw him [into the river], so that he is carried away by the current; because I am the great decan of the god, mighty god AXRAMMAXALALA.E." Sousse / Hadrumetum, Tunisia, 2nd century CE

Separation Curses

Many curses written for erotic motives aimed to drive a person desired away from their current lover, husband or wife and to direct their love towards the commissioner of the tablet:

"Of [Theti]ma and Dionysophon the ritual wedding and the marriage I bind by a written spell, and of all other wo[men], both widows and maidens, but of Thetima in particular, and I entrust to Makron and [the] daimones, and (only) when I should dig up again and unroll and read this, [?] that she might wed Dionysophon, but not before, for I wish him to take no other woman than me, and that [I] grow old with Dionysophon, and no one else. I [am] your supplicant: Have pity on Phila, dear daimones, for I am (a) dagina? of all my dear ones and I am abandoned. But guard [this] for my sake so that these things do not happen, and wretched Thetima perishes miserably. [...] but that I become happy and blessed." Pella, Macedonia, 375–350 BCE

"Makron" is most probably the name of the dead man in whose grave the tablet was deposited to deliver the message to the chthonic spirits of the underworld (the daimones).

Of course, those curses also targeted same-sex lovers:

"I turn away Euboles from Aineas, from his face, from his eyes, from his mouth, from his breasts, from his soul, from his belly, from his penis, from his anus, from his entire body. I turn away Euboles from Aineas." Nemea, Greece, 4th century BCE

Everlasting Sex

Cursing rivals with impotence and sexual misery and to attract a lover were also common motives. The culmination of the process was often envisaged as everlasting sex:

"I bind you, Theodotis, daughter of Eus, by the tail of the snake, the mouth of the crocodile, the horns of the ram, the poison of the asp, the hairs of the cat, and the penis of the god so that you may never be able to sleep with any other man, nor be screwed, nor be taken anally, nor fellate, nor find pleasure with any other man but me, Ammonion, son of Hermitaris. For I alone am LAMPSOURE’ OTHIKALAK’ AIPHNOSABAO’ STESEON’ UELLAPHONTA’ SANKIST’ CHPHURIS’ ON. Make us of this binding spell, employed by Isis, so that Theodotis, daughter of Eus, may no longer try anything with any other man but me alone, Ammonion, and may be subservient, obedient, eager, flying through the air seeking after Ammonion, son of Hermitaris and bring her thigh close to his, her genitals close to his, in unending intercourse for all the time of her life. And here are the figures:" [Features some images of a god holding a staff, with a snake at his feet, a crocodile to the upper right of the snake, a cat at the extreme right, two figures (perhaps a ram and the woman) above the crocodile, and other magical signs and letters and obscure drawings.] Egypt, 2nd-3rd century CE

I bind Theodora to remain unmarried to Charias, and I bind Charias to forget Theodora,and I bind Charias to forget . . . Theodora and sex with Theodora. And just as this corpse lies useless, so may all the words and deeds of Theodora be useless with regard to Charias and to the other people. I bind Theodora before Hermes of the underworld and before the unmarried and before Tethys. I bind everything, both her words and deeds toward Charias and toward other people, and her sex with Charias. 4th century BCE

The person performing the spell, presumably a woman who wants Charias for herself, wishes that Theodora be as incapable of having a sexual relation with Charias as the corpse into whose grave the tablet has been deposited. Graves and tombs were considered a gateway by means of which the curse would reach the dead or underworld deities charged with its execution.

Calling on Aphrodite

A curse intended to affect a person's sexuality oftentimes called upon those chthonic gods alongside a sexual deity—Aphrodite and Eros were quite common, as was the goddess Isis from the Egyptian pantheon.

An example of a sexual curse comes from a man named Pausanias (no, not the ancient historian) who wanted to bind a woman called Sime:

"Pausanias binds Sime, daughter of Amphitritus (may no one but Pausanias undo this spell) until she does for Pausanias everything Pausanias wants. May she not be able to get hold of a sacrificial victim of Athena, nor may Aphrodite look kindly upon her, before Sime embraces Pausanias." Akanthos, Macedonia, 4th or 3rd century BCE

The Penis Curse Tablet

This curse tablet from Cyprus’s old city kingdom of Amathus went straight to the point:

“May your penis hurt when you make love.” Amathus, Cyprus, 7th century CE

Pierre Aubert, head of Athens Archaeological School in Greece said the tablet showed a man standing holding something in his right hand that looks like an hour glass. Perhaps most surprising is the young age of this tablet: The inscription dates back to the 7th century CE when Christianity was already well established on Cyprus. While many of the old pagan beliefs had disappeared or been suppressed by this period, it is clear that people’s love of — and need for — sex-curses had not gone anywhere.

Today, we may not write our curses on lead tablets anymore, and fewer people will ask Hermes or Hekate for help. But the secret wishes to separate a desired partner from their spouse, attract a lover or rain impotence and disaster on a romantic rival are as alive as they were 3000 years ago.

Author's Note: If dates or places are missing beneath the curses, I was unable to track this information down. Despite this shortcoming, I hope to have given an enjoyable overview of the colourful curse tablets of ancient Greece, Egypt, and Rome.

Sources

Curse Tablet Entry on Wikipedia

Getting even in Roman Britain: The Curse Tablets from Bath (Aquae Sulis) by Carly Silver

Ancient Roman Curse Tablets Invoke Goddess Sulis Minerva to Kill and Maim

Curse Tablets from Roman Britain - Introduction: cicrus and court, sex and stealing

Curse Tablets from Roman Britain - Images of curse tablets

Roman Inscriptions of Britain - RIB 154 Curse

Roman Britain Britannia IV 1973

Supplemental Material - Georgetown University

Pella Curse Tablet

For All Time: An Examination of Romantic Love Through Curse Tablets by Alicia Deadrick

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered - Erotic Magic in the Greco-Roman World by Radcliffe G. Edmonds

Archaeology Magazine: When Spells Worked Magic by Christopher A. Farone

Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks by Esther Eidinow

Latin Curse Texts: Mediterranean Tradition and Local Diversity by Daniela Urbanová

Atlas Obscura presents six sites with a sexual history

Mentalfloss: 7 Ancient Roman Curses You Can Work into Modern Life

  Further Reading:

Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World by John Gager

Ancient Greek Love Magic by Christopher A. Faraone

Roman Religion by Valerie M. Warrior

Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks by Esther Eidinow

[justforbooks]

The historian Mostafa Abdel Hamid el-Abbadi in his personal library in Alexandria, Egypt, in 2012. He developed plans to revive the ancient Great Library of Alexandria.

Professor Abbadi’s dream of a new library — a modern version of the magnificent center of learning of ancient times — could be traced to 1972, when, as a scholar at the University of Alexandria, he concluded a lecture with an impassioned challenge.

It was President Richard M. Nixon who blew wind into the sails of Professor Abbadi’s ambitious proposal. When Nixon visited Egypt in 1974, he and President Anwar el-Sadat rode by train to Alexandria’s ancient ruins to observe their faded grandeur. When Nixon asked about the ancient library’s location and history, no one in the Egyptian entourage had an answer.

In 1988, President Hosni Mubarak laid the foundation stone for what would become the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a $220 million seaside cylindrical complex. Designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta, it comprises a 220,000-square-foot reading room, four museums, several galleries, a conference center, a planetarium and gift shops.

It opened in 2002, hailed as a revitalization of intellectual culture in Egypt’s former ancient capital, which is now its often neglected second-largest city.

“With the founding of the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina,” Professor Abbadi wrote in 2004, “the ancient experiment has come full circle.”

The professor did not share fully in the glory. He, like other scholars, had been critical of some aspects of the finished library and maintained that the builders had been careless during the excavation, unmindful of the site’s archaeological value.

When the library was officially opened, in a ceremony attended by heads of state, royalty and other luminaries, he was nowhere to be seen. He had not been invited!

Mostafa Abdel Hamid el-Abbadi was born on Oct. 10, 1928, in Cairo. His father, Abdel-Hamid el-Abbadi, was a founder of the College of Letters and Arts of the University of Alexandria in 1942 and its first dean.

Mostafa el-Abbadi earned a bachelor’s degree with honors there in 1951. A year later, he enrolled at the University of Cambridge on an Egyptian government scholarship. He studied at Jesus College under A. H. M. Jones, the pre-eminent historian of the Roman Empire, and earned a doctorate in ancient history there in 1960.

Two years before, in Britain, he had married Azza Kararah, a professor of English literature at the University of Alexandria, who had earned her doctorate at Cambridge in 1955. She died in 2015.

Professor Abbadi’s book “Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria,” published in 1990 by Unesco and translated into five languages, continues to be widely cited by scholars.

In that book, one of several he wrote or edited, he blamed Julius Caesar for the ancient library’s destruction, countering one politicized narrative that holds Arabs responsible.

In interviews and papers, Professor Abbadi asserted that although it was not the world’s first library, it was the first universal library, housing an estimated half-million texts from many countries and in many languages, including Aristotle’s works and original manuscripts by dramatists like Sophocles.

“He was without doubt the doyen of Alexandria,” Dorothy Thompson, a Cambridge fellow and honorary president of the International Association of Papyrologists, said of Professor Abbadi. “He made Alexandria known in the English-speaking world in the 20th century.”

In 1996, he was elected president of the Archaeological Society of Alexandria, founded in 1893. He lectured throughout the world and received many academic and government honors.

In an email, the biographer Stacy Schiff, author of the acclaimed “Cleopatra: A Life,” cited the novelist Lawrence Durrell, author of the tetralogy “The Alexandria Quartet,” in writing of Professor Abbadi. “Every bit the representative of what Durrell called ‘the capital of memory,’” she said, “he seemed to hold whole civilizations in his head.”

When the library opened in 2002, Professor Abbadi donated a rare 16th-century copy of “Codex Justinianus,” the codification of Roman law under Justinian I in the sixth century A.D. It was one of the first books to sit on the new library’s shelves. Before his death, the professor donated his and his wife’s roughly 6,000 books and academic papers.

Yet during the construction and afterward, he found the project wanting. “We have a great name, fortunately,” he said of the library in an interview with The New York Times in 2001. “The challenge is living up to it.”

He found the library’s book collections for students inadequate. And the construction, in his view, had been done without proper archaeological surveys and excavation, even though the site was in what was called the palace quarter in the era of the Ptolemaic kings.

Standing on the balcony of his apartment nearby, he videotaped bulldozers digging up historical artifacts and plunking them into the sea.

“The ensuing scandal forced them to stop work and permit an emergency salvage archaeological dig,” Max Rodenbeck, then the Middle East bureau chief of The Economist, recalled.

Sure enough, a large mosaic of a sitting dog, from the second century A.D., was discovered at the site. It is now in the library’s antiquities museum.

Professor Abbadi had persuaded the Egyptian authorities to establish that museum, an endeavor that took him to dusty government storerooms and archaeological sites as he built out the collection. In a Luxor crypt that had not been opened in three decades, he stumbled upon ill-preserved wooden funerary boxes from King Tutankhamen’s tomb.

He also raised money to acquire hundreds of volumes of texts from early Christianity.

Yet the government did not invite Professor Abbadi to the library’s official opening, apparently because of his criticism of the project.

“No Egyptian newspaper mentioned his name at all,” said Prof. Mona Haggag, a former student of his and head of the department of Greek and Roman archaeology at the University of Alexandria. “It became the project of the presidents, of the people who cut the rope, the people who stood on the front stage, and not of Mostafa el-Abbadi.”

As his “Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria” was distributed among the guests at the event, he passed the day in his own library, at his home overlooking the Mediterranean.

Professor Abbadi, a Cambridge-educated historian of Greco-Roman antiquity and the soft-spoken visionary behind the revival of the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, died on Feb.13, 2017 in Alexandria. He was 88.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[sweatshirts11-blog]

T Shirts - The Mainstay of Fashion

Tensions between cultural appearance and notions of propriety are universal. I also handle it, not in party, but in fashion, as a Religious custom of girls wear. Today's models for girls are fixed, determine complementary, and often skimpier than we've seen in the past, so then are they "also sexy for church"?

The emergence of'uber-pink'women's fashion, nevertheless, may give people even greater pause. Wherever did this wind strike from, precisely? What occurred to the grungy, one-size-fits-all-genders-look that I remember want it was recently? What must we label of the enormous acceptance of the feminine styles niche?

As Christians we find to simply help form tradition while we are at once being counter-cultural, as wants be, wherever our belief are at distinct chances with certain developments and prevailing outlooks. But wherever would be the lines? Many may feeling a repulsion or subliminal disconnect with this article's concept, thinking, possibly, how'girly'and'Religious'may stay peaceably in the exact same phrase.how did pop culture affect the cold war

However, at their heart, "girly fashion" might be expressing anything good, if perhaps since it's probable to understand their current significance as a making free of gender-blurring unisex clothing and a re-embracing of the natural, developed differences custom-designed by the One that "made them man and female. A pleasure in the differentiating work of Lord in creation is one quality that sets Christianity aside from Gnosticism and Monism.

So, viva manhattan project difference! Love your curves--celebrate womanhood! However, several can question, how about'modesty '? That word is used in the New Testament in passages exclusively concerned with women's dress (I Tim. 2:9-10/ I Puppy: 3: 3-4). Certainly, while millennia besides us, these old texts will be the nearest issue we have to scriptural witness on women's fashion. They are also the'bugaboo'texts as many women's apprehensions are a "Religious dress code" is intended. However a few things of significance ought to be observed that contextualize these passages.

The first remark is why these passages, in their very own words, are less about prescribing unique criteria for dress and more in regards to the fact of splendor via within, rather than from external adornment. The second reason is that the'modesty'being told is most likely (though probably maybe not entirely) financial, that's, a modesty of means. It's far less apparent that feamales in these new first century congregations could have been flaunting their bodies, as it is that they certainly were flaunting their wealth, dressing to out-class! Silver, pearls, braided hair, and high priced clothes are specifically called, clearly the'bling'of Greco-Roman era ostentatious, status-seeking fashion choices. Also the phrasing around'braided hair ', in the original language, moved the meaning of going costly gems to the hair's braids. Therefore will getting pricier outfits'remedy'immodesty? These articles seem to be nudging in the alternative, dressing down direction.

Notwithstanding, a feeling of'modesty in all things'trails with the primary believed only if because the clothing can also be a metaphor of the recommended benefits (dressed in'great deeds'could be outrageous if literal!) and because'decency'and'propriety'will also be mentioned. I for one wonder about a society whose women's wear generally seems to move around in a far more and more baring direction. Personal motivations, even in fashion choices, will also be to be wrestled with, though much like all matters of conscience, a spectral range of variations is definitely predictable (dare I claim actually enjoyable?) Here I believe C.S. Lewis was to something when he noted that notions of modesty, while universal, differ from time to time and from tradition to culture.

Have you been looking for great designs in t-shirts for females? If sure then there is good media for you. On the web searching at various fashion shops gifts you probably good possibilities to search for fashion apparel. Fashion clothing is one of many items that are closest to women'heart. Today's school and university planning girls are at the top of style quotient and are always trying to find the latest trends in fashion clothing. T-shirts are the most beloved piece of apparel for the men and girls of ages. There is no dearth of designs, designs and patterns of ladies t-shirts.

Style trends in t-shirts for girls Compared to the previous trends, tees now can be found in a striking new selection of patterns, patterns and styles. Contemplating their enormous need, rates of such cool tees will also be produced economical, rendering it easier to enjoy relentless shopping. They're made using synthetic and combined products that help making special shades and layers for a particular look. These resources contain mixed cotton, abs, lycra, delicate cotton and such flexible fabrics. Nothing is often as casual and modern at exactly the same time.

Some of the most used styles for girls t-shirts are the ones with slogans or one-liners. These slogans and quotes might be about anything on the planet from a cause to social matter to songs to common film dialogues. The most effective portion is you can also get your personalized slogans printed on the t-shirts that you like. Besides slogans and printing blocks, t embellishments, shoulder patches and decorative organizations are actually in vogue.

[dahabiyacruise]

Let’s Not Lose Our Heads About This! - Oct 10/19

My first stop of the day was the Aswan High Dam. While it is just another piece of big infrastructure to the west, to Egyptians it represents independence, industrialization and the emergence of their country as a modern nation. Funding was initially denied by the World Bank (Egyptians blame this on the US acting on behalf of their regional proxy Israel), so Egypt seized the Suez Canal in 1956 in the name of Arab Nationalism and planned to use shipping tolls to help pay for the dam. This led to a French, British and Israeli invasion that looked more like a Monty Python skit, which caused them to be badly mauled by Nasser’s troop and inspired Lester B. Pearson 🇨🇦 to invent UN Peacekeeping. Egypt then turned to the Soviet Union for help. The Soviets, being in the midst of the Cold War, were more than happy to oblige by providing money and expertise in return for mining concessions in the Sinai. Despite all its benefits, the Dam still has problems today, including:

- it is a symbol of injustice to the thousands of Nubians who were displaced without fair compensation;

- the absence of spring floods means that farmers downstream no longer receive free annual deposits of rich topsoil but must buy expensive fertilizer instead; and

- salt and the rich topsoil that use to flow downstream are filling the lake and will likely necessitate very expensive flushing or dredging.

While they were considering adding more turbines to the dam (our friend Julie, the power engineer👷🏻‍♀️, would salivate), this project and all of Egyptian agriculture is threatened by the construction of a huge dam project on the Blu Nile in Ethiopia. When it is completed, large volumes of water may be lost to evaporation and upstream irrigation and Egypt (where it sometimes does not rain for years) could lose much of its only source of fresh water. The whole country could potentially and quite literally, wither on the vine. Achmed seriously discussed his belief/concern that Egypt may go to war, as this is seen as a matter of national survival.

From there, we drove back into Ancient Egypt and to another temple that was moved when the lake was flooded, this time from one island to another. Built in the Greco Roman era, like Edfu and Kom Ombo (note the differing column capitals), Philae is dedicated to Isis, who was wife to Osiris and mother of Horus. When Set killed Osiris and cut him into 14 pieces (or 24, or 40, or 42), Isis resurrected him but she carelessly lost/forgot his head or phallus (something most wife’s would understand and applaud). It was apparently buried on an island in the middle of the Nile, so Ptolemy IV built her temple on an adjoining island. It is unclear whether this was so she could be close to her husband or so she could be constantly reminded of her incompetence. It is a small but well preserved structure except for the many chiseled out figures of the Gods and dozens of Coptic Crosses that are courtesy of the Roman Emperor Constantine and his Christian followers in the 4th Century (zoom in on some of the pictures). While it can only be reached by small boats carrying 2-30 tourists each, it is easily the most crowded site that I have visited so far. There is a constant stream of tour buses arriving at the riverside and masses of tourists being herded about the island like hundreds of Hathors (god with horns and cow ears) on a roundup.

The temple has two sets of the obligatory pylons (gates), a pillared courtyard and a hypostyle hall. This design is repeated so often and so precisely that it now reminds me of all those cookie cutter bungalows in 1950s suburbs. Nevertheless, the agency e, the scale and the beauty of these temples never fails to take my breath away. There are three sanctuaries side by side at the far end, one for each member of the Sacred Family, with Isis in the centre (after all, it’s her temple). Each one would have held a golden statue of the respective god, in a wooden shrine, on-board a model barque so that the God could be carried about for festivals.

Outside the main temple is a huge Chapel dedicated to the Emperor Hadrian where my guide says that he submitted his battle plans to Isis for approval. There is also a partially completed Triumphal Arch dedicated to Emperor Trajan that acted as the entry gate for the main boat landing.

At this point, it was time to say goodbye to Achmed, who had been with me for 6 days almost 24-7. I will miss his good natured demeanour and endless patience but not his regular tests to ensure that I remembered what he had taught me on previous days😊. Then it was back to the boat to begin our journey downstream, back to the north.

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 3: The Beast Within (Transcript) - 6th April 2015

tw: murder, rape, death of children, bodily mutilation, cannibalism, graphic descriptions of violence, ableist language, disease, werewolves

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Ask anyone in the mental health profession about full moons and you’ll get a surprising answer. They’ll respond with something that sounds incredibly like folklore and myth. The full moon has the power to bring out the crazy in people. We’ve believed this for a long time. We refer to unstable people as “lunatics”, a word that is Latin. It’s built from the root word luna, which means “moon”. And for centuries, has operated under the conviction that changes in the luna cycle can cause people to lose touch with reality. Just ask the parents of a young child and they’ll tell you tales of wild behaviour and out-of-the-ordinary disobedience at certain times of the month. Science tells us that just as the moon’s pull on the ocean creates tides that rise and fall in severity, so too does our planet’s first satellite tug on the water inside our bodies, changing our behaviour. As modern people, when we talk about the full moon we tend to joke about this insane, extraordinary behaviour. But maybe we joke to avoid the deeper truth, an idea that we are both frightened and embarrassed that we even entertain. For most of us, you see, the full moon conjures up an image that is altogether unnatural and unbelievable. That large, glowing, perfect circle in the night sky makes us think of just one thing: werewolves. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

Science has tried many times over the years to explain our obsession with the werewolf. One theory is a disease known as hypertrichosis, sometimes known as “wolfitis”. It’s a condition of excessive, unusual body hair growth, oftentimes covering the person’s entire face. Think Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf. Psychologists actually have an official diagnosis in the DSM IV handbook known as “clinical lycanthropy”. It’s defined as a delusional syndrome where the patient believes they can transform into an animal, but the changes only take place in their mind, of course. Delusions, though, have to start somewhere. Patients who believe that they are Napoleon Bonaparte have some previous knowledge of who he was. I think it’s fair to assume that those who suffer from clinical lycanthropy have heard of werewolves before. It’s actually pretty easy to bump into the myth, thanks to modern popular culture. Werewolves have been featured in, or at least appeared in, close to 100 films in Hollywood since 1913.

One of the earliest mentions of something even resembling the modern werewolf can actually be found in the 2000-year-old writings of the Roman poet Vergil. In his Eclogue 9, written about 40BCE, he described a man named Moeris, who could transform himself into a wolf using herbs and poisons. About 50 years later, Gaius Petronius wrote a satirical novel called, appropriately, Satyricon, which I think is basically the equivalent of Stephen King writing a horror novel called “Frighticon”. In it, he tells the tale of a man named Niceros. In the story, Niceros was travelling with a friend, and when that friend suddenly took off his clothes, urinated in a circle and transformed into a wolf right before his eyes, before running off toward a large field of sheep. The next day, Niceros was told by the sheep-owner that one of the shepherds stabbed a wolf in the neck with a pitch fork. Later that day, Niceros noticed that his friend, now returned to the house, had a similar wound on his neck.

In the Greek myth of the god Zeus and an Arcadian king named Lycaon, Zeus took on the form of a human traveller. At one point in his journey he visited Arcadia, and during his time in that country, he visited the royal court. The king of the land, Lycaon, somehow recognised Zeus for who he truly was and tried, in true Greek form, of course, to kill him by serving him a meal of human flesh. But Zeus was a smart guy, after all, and he caught Lycaon in the act, throwing the mythological equivalent of a temper tantrum. He destroyed the palace, killed all 50 of the king’s sons with lightning bolts, and then of course cursed King Lycaon himself. The punishment? Lycaon would be doomed to spend the rest of his life as a wolf, presumably because wolves were known for attacking and eating humans, and he tried to serve human flesh. Most scholars believe that this legend is what gives birth to the term lycanthropy: lukos being the Greek word for wolf, and anthropos, the word for man.

Werewolves aren’t just a Greco-Roman thing. In the 13th century, the Norse recorded their mythological origins in something called the Völsunga saga. Despite their culture being separated from the Greeks by thousands of miles and many centuries, there are in fact tales of werewolves present in their histories. One of the stories in the Völsunga saga involves a father and son pair: Sigmund and Sinfjotli. During their travels, the two men came across a hut in the woods where they found two enchanted wolf skins. These skins had the power to change the wearer into a wolf, giving them all the characteristics that the beast was known for: power, speed, and cunning. The catch, according to the saga, was that once put on, the wolf pelt could only be taken off every 10 days. Undeterred, the father son duo each put on one of the wolf skins, and transform into the beasts. They decided to split up and go hunting in their new forms, but they made an arrangement that if either of them encountered a party of men over the certain size of seven, then they were supposed to howl for the other to come join them in the hunt. Sigmund’s son, however, broke his promise, killing off a hunting party of 11 men. When Sigmund discovered this, he fatally injured his son. After the god Odin intervened and healed him, both men took off the pelts and burned them. You see, from the very beginning, werewolves were a supernatural thing, a curse, a change in the very nature of humanity. They were ruled by cycles of time and feared by those around them.

Things get interesting when we go to Germany. In 1582, the country of Germany was being pulled apart by a war between Catholics and Protestants, and one of the towns that played host to both sides was the small town of Bedburg. Keep in mind that there were also still outbreaks of the Black Death, so this was an age of conflict and violence. People understood loss – they had become numb to it, and it would take something incredibly extraordinary to surprise them. First, there were cattle mutilations: farmers from the area surrounding Bedburg would find dead cattle in their fields. It started of infrequent, but grew to become a daily occurrence, something that went on for weeks. Cows that had been sent out to pasture were found torn apart. It was as if a wild animal had attacked them. Naturally, the farmers assumed it was wolves, but it didn’t stop there. Children began to go missing. Young women vanished from the main roads around Bedburg. In some cases their bodies were never found, but those that were had been mauled by something horribly violent. Finding your cattle disembowelled is one thing, but when it’s your daughter or your wife, well, it can cause panic, and fear, and so the community spiralled into hysteria.

Now, we think of historical European paranoia and we often think of witchcraft. The 15th and 16th centuries were filled with witch hunts: burnings, hangings, and an overwhelming hysteria that even spread across the Atlantic to the British colonies, where it destroyed more lives. The Witch Trails of Salem, Massachusetts are the most famous of those examples, but at the same time, Europe was also on fire with fear of werewolves. Some historians think that in France alone, some 30,000 people were accused of being werewolves, and some (hundreds, they say) were even executed for it, either by hanging or being burnt at the stake. You see, the fear of werewolves was real, and for the town of Bedburg, it was very real.

One report from this event tells of two men and a woman, who were travelling just outside the city walls. They heard a voice call out to them for help from within the trees beside the road, and one of the men stepped into the trees to give assistance. When he didn’t return, the second man entered the woods to find him, and he also didn’t return. The woman caught on, attempted to run, but something exited the woods and attacked her. The bodies of the men were later found, mangled and torn apart, but the woman’s never was. Later, villagers found severed limbs in the fields near Bedburg, limbs from the people who were missing. It was clear that something horrible was hunting them.

Another report tells of a group of children playing in a field near the cattle. As they played, something ran into the field and grabbed a small girl by the neck before trying to tear her throat out. Thankfully the high collar on her dress actually saved her life, and she managed to scream. Now, cows don’t like screaming apparently, and they began to stampede. Frightened by the cattle, the attacker let go of the girl and ran for the forest, and this was the last straw for the people of Bedburg. They took the hunt to the beast.

According to a pamphlet from 1589, the men of the town hunted for the creature for days. Accompanied by dogs and armed for killing, these brave men ventured into the forest and, finally, found it. In the end, it was the dogs that cornered the beast. Dogs are fast and they beat the men to their prey. When the hunters finally did arrive, they found the creature cornered. According to the pamphlet, the wolf transformed into a man right before their eyes. While the wolf had been just another beast, the man was someone they recognised. It was a wealthy, well-respected farmer from town named Peter Stubbe, sometimes recorded as Stumpp. Stubbe confessed to it all, and his story seemed to confirm their darkest fears. He told them that he had made a pact with the devil at the age of 12. The deal? In exchange for his soul, the devil would give him a plethora of worldly pleasures, but like most stories, a greedy heart is difficult to satisfy. Stubbe admitted to being a, and I quote,  “wicked fiend, with the desire for wrong and destruction”, that he was “inclined to blood and cruelty”. Now, to sate that thirst, the devil had given him a magical belt of wolf skin. Putting it on, he claimed, would transform him into the monstrous shape of a wolf. Sound familiar?

He told the men that had captured him that he had taken off the belt in the forest, and some were sent back to retrieve it, but it was never found. Still, superstition and fear drove them to torture and interrogate the man, who confessed to decades of horrible, unspeakable crimes. Well-known around the town, Stubbe told his captors that he would often walk through Bedburg and wave to the families and friends of those he had killed. It delighted him, he said, that none of them suspected that he was the killer. Sometimes he would use these walks to pick out future victims, planning how he would get them outside the city walls, where he could, and I quote, “ravish and cruelly murder them”. Stubbe even admitted to going on killing sprees simply because he took pleasure in the bloodshed. He would kill lambs and goats and eat their raw flesh. He even claimed to have eaten unborn children, ripped straight from their mothers’ wombs.

The human mind is always solving problems, even when we’re asleep and unaware of it. The world is full of things that don’t always sit right with us, and in our attempt to deal with life we… rationalise. In more superstitious times it was easy to lean on old fears and legends. The Tuberculosis outbreaks of the 1800s led people to truly believe that the dead were sucking the life out of the living. The stories that gave birth to the vampire mythology also provided people with a way to process Tuberculosis and its horrible symptoms. Perhaps the story of the werewolf shows us that same phenomenon, but in reverse. Rather than creating stories to explain the mysteries of death, perhaps we created the story of the werewolf to help justify the horrors of life and human nature. The tale of Peter Stubbe sounds terrible, but when you hold it up to modern day serial killers, such as Jeffery Dahmer or Richard Trenton Chase, it’s par for the course. The difference between them and Stubbe is simply 400 years of modernisation. With the advent of electrical lights pushing away the darkness and global exploration exposing much of the world’s fears to be just myth, it’s become more and more difficult to blame our flaws on monsters. The beast, it turns out, has been inside us the whole time.

And Peter Stubbe? Well, the people of Bedburg executed him for his crimes. On October 31st, 1589, (Halloween, mind you) he was given what was thought to be a fair and just punishment. He was strapped, spread eagle and naked, to a large, wooden wheel, and then his skin was pealed off with red hot pinchers. They broke his arms and legs with the blunt end of an axe before finally turning the blade over, and chopping off his head. His body was burnt at the stake in front of the entire town, and then his torture wheel was mounted on a tall pole, topped with the statue of a wolf. On top of that, they placed his severed head. Justice, or just one more example of the cruelty of mankind? Perhaps in the end, we’re all really monsters, aren’t we?

Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke. You can find a transcript of the show, as well as links to source material, at lorepodcast.com. Lore is a bi-weekly podcast, so be sure to check back in for a new episode every two weeks. And if you enjoy scary stories, I happen to write them. You can find a full list of my supernatural thrillers, available in paperback and ebook format, at aaronmahnke.com/novels. Thanks for listening.

[burberrycanary]

The end notes for The Probable Stars are too long to makes sense having on AO3, so I’m including them here.

NB:

• Claudius Ptolemy: 2nd-century Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer. Tetrabiblos was a foundational text on astrology for more than a thousand years.

• Robert Grosseteste: a 13th-century English scholastic philosopher, theologian and scientist who wrote De sphera on astronomy and De luce on cosmogony.

• Robert of Chester: a 12th-century Arabist who translated the first book on alchemy to reach Europe, Liber de compositione alchimiae.

• Jabir ibn Hayyan: a 8th-century Islamic chemist and alchemist, astronomer and astrologer, among many other things. Matthew is apparently unconcerned with the pseudo-Geber controversy. (Does he have the inside scoop?)

• Sidereus Nuncius: Starry Messenger by Galileo. The first published scientific work based on observations made through a telescope. It's a lovely design artifact, as well.

• On the Nature of Things: De rerum natura by the 1st-century BC Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. Alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa. The manuscript was rediscovery in a German monastery by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. (I assume Matthew was team Valla in the very public Bracciolini-Valla feud. Did Niccolo de Niccoli hook Matthew up with De rerum natura during his decade-and-a-half “borrowing” of the manuscript from Bracciolini? And, wow, Matthew would have fit in so well amongst this bunch of early renaissance obsessive drama queens.)

• ni muer ni viu ni no guaris: from Quant l'aura doussa s'amarzis by Cercamon, a 12th-century troubadour who composed in Old Occitan and is credited with inventing the Provençal dirge.

• The title of this fic comes from You are tired, (I think) by E. E. Cummings, which includes this amazing stanza:

You have played,

(I think)

And broke the toys you were fondest of,

And are a little tired now;

Tired of things that break, and—

Just tired.

[newstfionline]

Roman Catholic Priests and Celibacy

By Alex Norcia, Vice, Sept. 25, 2018

In 1521, four years after a German priest named Martin Luther is said to have nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, the outlaw retired to Wartburg Castle to hide from his inquisitors. There, he translated the New Testament from Greek into his native German, and began a period he referred to as his “Patmos”--an allusion to the small Greek island where the Book of Revelation was apparently written. He delved into his studies, refining polemics against the sale of indulgences (paying the Church money in exchange for salvation), and for the idea of sola fide, that God forgives on faith alone (regardless of one’s “works”).

These would become some of the most commonly known divisions between Catholicism and Protestantism. But what’s sometimes forgotten, amid the general shattering of European politics that soon followed, is where the theologian came down on sexuality and marriage. At Wartburg, he wrote to Nicolas Gerbel, a jurist and scholar of canon law, laying out his views clearly.

“Kiss and rekiss your wife,” he insisted. “Let her love and be loved. You are fortunate in having overcome, by an honorable marriage, that celibacy in which one is a prey to devouring fires and to unclean ideas. That unhappy state of a single person, male or female, reveals to me each hour of the day so many horrors, that nothing sounds in my ear as bad as the name of monk or nun or priest. A married life is a paradise, even where all else is wanting.”

Like most aspects of the Roman Catholic faith, the requirement that a priest be celibate has been enshrined by centuries of tradition. But the idea has been challenged for almost as long as it’s existed. In recent years, some have gone so far as to question, in the context of religious piety or otherwise, if living a celibate life is even possible. he end of priestly celibacy might be closer than you think.

After all, leaving scientific matters of sexuality aside, we do know it’s possible for the Catholic Church to survive without the restriction. It already did.

“The Roman Catholic precedent [of celibacy] really dates to the 11th-century Gregorian Reform,” Julie Byrne, a religion professor at Hofstra University, told me recently. “Pope Gregory VII instituted a lot of changes. Mandatory celibacy for priests was instituted then, and of course, we’re talking about an arrangement of society that’s so different from our own--so it was partly for priests to be able to do their duties, and partly about the land that priests had, remanding back to the churches, instead of to heirs. So, if priests didn’t have children, it was better for the Church.”

The notion of celibacy as a religious matter dates back even further. Kim Haines-Eitzen, a professor of religion at Cornell, explained that it has roots in the emergence of asceticism, the practice most commonly associated with monks. Haines-Eitzen has written extensively on the history of celibacy, offering a cogent timeline that touches on the introduction of priests to the Church hierarchy, the influence of Greco-Roman philosophy, and Christians’ eventual views on suffering and persecution.

“To simplify the historical scope,” Father Thomas Reese, a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and the former editor in chief of America magazine, told me, “I often say, ‘We had about a thousand years of a married clergy, and now a thousand years of having the rule of celibacy.’”

So the model for not requiring priests be celibate is there. For one thing, Peter, the first pope, was married, if we take Scripture at its word--and the more than two-dozen Eastern Catholic Churches, which are in full communion with Pope Francis, allow for the ordination of married men into the priesthood, as do many independent Catholic churches that have no affiliation with the Vatican. There are also thought to be several dozen Catholic priests based in the US who converted back to the Roman faith from Episcopalianism and got a pass.

The real questions are whether or not the Roman Catholic Church can revert to its previous position, how that would happen, what it could look like, and why it might happen now. The mechanics of making the change are not as tricky as you might think.

“The possibility of loosening the rules about celibacy, about priests not being married, that could be possible, because a discipline is more open to change than a doctrinal position,” Anthony Petro, a professor at Boston University who studies the intersection of sexuality and religion, said in an interview. “The discipline of celibacy, these sorts of things, can change. The Second Vatican Council [in the 1960s], for example, changed so much of the discipline around how mass is done. Does it need to be in Latin? How is the Eucharist held?”

There’s a subtle difference between how Catholic “doctrine” and “discipline” are defined, but, in short, “doctrine” concerns the teachings of the Church on faith and morals (it descends from God) and “disciplines” are acknowledged to be man-made rules and subject to potential shifts in practice. It’s slippery--yet important--phrasing.

“Celibacy is not doctrine in the Catholic Church,” Reese explained. “It’s a law. It can change. And people like myself, say, are in favor of moving toward optional celibacy--my primary reason being that we need more priests.”

The Church has, in fact, been undergoing a priest shortage for years, especially in Latin and South America. As the Wall Street Journal noted in February, “Around the world, the ratio of Catholics to priests has risen sharply in recent decades, to 3,100-to-1 in 2015 from 1,900-to-1 in 1980, according to Vatican statistics. It is especially high in South America--7,100-to-1, almost four times as high as in North America.” The logic follows: If we let men who want to have sex and get married become priests, more men would want to become priests. Pope Francis has hinted that he’s in favor of discussing the idea, and, in October 2019, bishops from the Amazon are set to travel to the Vatican for a synod that may ultimately have married priests on the agenda.

“If the majority of the bishops ask for it, then, I do think the pope will grant it,” Reese said, suggesting there might be a sort of domino effect if that occurs, and that priest marriage could start locally before spreading to other regions.

What limited (and less-than-scientific) survey data exists from the early 2000s suggests many American priests have long been open to a dialogue on the topic. And it’s been on the table, as a realistic suggestion, since Vatican II, when those disciplines Petro mentioned (nixing Latin and so forth) were tweaked, and there was some hope that Pope John XXIII might consider revising it. “Most other religions don’t prohibit marriage [of priests],” Warren Goldstein, executive director of the Center for Critical Research on Religion, told me. “The Catholic Church has always, in its history, been able to survive, and remain as large as it is, because of its ability to adapt.”

For his part, Father Reese did acknowledge there were actual arguments against relaxing the celibacy rule--the financial burden Catholics face to provide for a priest’s family, and the idea that celibate priests might be holier than married clergy. (“I just don’t buy that,” he said. “There are a lot of married couples who are a lot holier than I am.”) But he suggested the small problems--priests having to care for their children, for example--could be overcome, and that optional celibacy could realistically happen within the next few years.

“I don’t think [getting rid of the celibacy vow] would be as disruptive as it would have been, say, 100 years ago,” agreed Kathleen Grimes, an assistant professor of religion at Villanova University, who, among other areas, studies the intersection of theology and ethics. “Because I do think, now, we see married life as a positive path for holiness.”

[silverleafnightshade-blog]

The Omen

Richard Donner’s 1976 film about the Antichrist’s early days is touted by critics as one of the scariest horror movies of all times, and I am in agreement. I first watched this movie at far too tender of an age, with way too much Catholic upbringing holding sway over my wee brain. Apparently, though, the screenwriter David Seltzer was no believer in heaven and hell. He stated that he wrote the script for the money, and he set it in London because he wanted a free trip to England. Seltzer was somewhat horrified at the public’s reaction to the film, which he considered based on superstitious rubbish. Religious superstition or not, though, there are several scenes from this flick that are indelibly inscribed in my memories, e.g. the grisly deaths of the priest, nanny, and photographer, even if some of the special effects have not aged as well (see: severed head).

Seltzer’s moxie in getting a free trip to London is as refreshing as a glass of his namesake, and our cup bubbleth over with amazing landmarks on location. Front and center is the British abode of Ambassador Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck), scouted for him by his lovely wife Kathy (Lee Remick). The actual location is Pyrford Court of Surrey, and the old Guiness estate to boot. Let’s compare their former Italian digs (in Rome, where they adopted their son Damien):

I like that wallpaper, I do, but I feel like we’re supposed to find the Italians tacky, what with their self-referencing busts, shiny finishes, and demon-spawn adoption policies. In comparison, you get the Brits and their “classy” take on the Roman-Greco expo:

Pyford Court is classified as a Grade II historic building, built in the Neo-Carolean (or Restoration) style. This is probably what most Americans might think of as the “Masterpiece Theater” style, all velvet upholstery and tapestries and scrolls on every goddamn thing. Its heyday was really only a quarter of a century (1660-1685), during the reign of Charles II, but the trend reared its gilded head again about 200 years later. It was to the early 1900s as midcentury modern is to now, maybe.

We really get a good look at that scroll work after nanny (Holly Palance, Jack’s daughter) ends up dangling next to one of the windows. “Look at me, Damien!” she shouts before jumping off a ledge with a noose around her neck. “It’s all for you!”

My next birthday, maybe just get me gift card, okay? But check out those flanking scrolls and floral carvings!

Yeah, I can see how the eye might get distracted.  

Kathy starts to suspect there’s something not right with the boy after a couple of disastrous visits to a church and the zoo. Upon approaching the church, Damien loses his shit. 

Of course, the angel statue on top is giving a Nazi salute, so that might be the problem. 

Or maybe Damien just hates Kathy’s turban?

I think it’s quite lovely, but that shit gets torn off and fast.

At the zoo, giraffes run in fear from Damien and the baboons attack the car. The giraffes, sure, but the baboon attack seems to just be what baboons will do if given the chance. As a kid, my family often visited Parc Safari in Quebec, which is also a drive-through zoo. What brilliant parkitect came up with the idea to let visitors drive their own cars through a preserve? It seemed like there was a mauling at least once a year. I don’t remember a time where we didn’t have a primate of some sort pissing on the windshield or ripping off the antennae (which made for a grimly radio-free drive back to Vermont). My research shows that the drive-through is still there, but they now keep the feistier creatures off the road.

Meanwhile, Robert is getting visits from Father Crazy Eyes (Patrick Troughton), who suggests maybe a little Abraham-Isaac cosplay. And did he mention that Kathy is pregnant? Robert gets offended and all finger-shaking, and warns off the padre. 

Wasted breath, as the poor priest ends up impaled in a freak storm outside a rather charming church (All Saints in Fulham). I guess that’s just what happens when a Catholic priest tries to access the Church of England? 

But a curious photographer named Jennings (David Warner) thinks this is no accident, though. He’s been taking photos that seem to predict the demises of Nanny Noose and Father Crazy Eyes, and uh-oh, there’s one for him too.

Kathy discusses her feelings with Robert. For some reason, she has a photo of herself bedside. I don’t understand this. If it’s for Kathy, then why not just a mirror? If it’s for Robert, then why not just roll over? 

Anyway, that’s a pretty bedroom. 

Still, Kathy is feeling less than motherly, though, and who can blame her? Look at this goddamn painting!

Ferfuckssake, who decorated this room, Tod Browning? Kathy distracts herself by engaging in some fern watering practices frowned upon by OSHA, and little demon-seed plows his trike into her. I love these shots of Damien looking down on the fallen Kathy through the balustrades…

…and then booking it the hell out of there.

Robert and Jennings book it themselves to Rome to find some answers. They go to the hospital where Damien was born and there they also find my favorite archived architectural feature, the paternoster! It’s an open elevator on a chain that loops open compartments, and Jesus Christos, they were dangerous. People died or lost limbs in those death boxes all the time. The name comes from the “Our Father” prayer, ostensibly because the chain of compartments were like rosary beads, but more likely because you said a prayer before jumping on.

Thorn and Jennings find the corrupt priest responsible for Damien’s adoption, then tangle with some devil-dogs at the cemetery where the real Baby Thorn (Wee Prick?) was interred. Meanwhile, Kathy takes a swan dive out of her hospital window, courtesy of Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw).

Robert and Jennings hit a little town outside of Jerusalem, where they meet Carl Bugenhagen (Leo McKern), an archeologist and exorcist whom I shall refer to as AMB (Alcoholic Mel Brooks). 

AMB has a nice bundle of knives and instructions on how to stick them into Damien. Robert balks and Jennings completely, uh, loses his head. Robert manages to fly back to England with the knives (pre-9/11, amirite?) but he gets gunned down by the police before he can slay the beast. The last shot is of Damien standing with the President of the United States, his foster dad’s old buddy and Damien’s new daddy. 

And thus a franchise was born!

I am getting this one in just under the wire - it’s technically still June, right? For July, I’ve got the original 70s horror house planned. Check back in!