#note from the editress

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

Hmm just thinking about creating a little Aristasia-in-Tumblaria colony of racinated blogs.

[jackson38toh]

Stewardess and other -ess words

Q: How did English, a fundamentally nongendered language, get the word “stewardess,” a gendered term that’s now being replaced in our gender-sensitive era by the unisex “flight attendant”? What’s wrong with using “steward” for both sexes?

A: We’ll have more to say later about the old practice of adding “-ess” to nouns to feminize them. As we’ve written before on the blog, the current trend is in the other direction.

Modern English tends to favor the original, gender-free nouns for occupations—words like “mayor,” “author,” “sculptor,” and “poet” in place of “mayoress,” “authoress,” “sculptress,” “poetess,” and so on.

But first let’s look at “stewardess,” which is probably a much older word than you think.

It first appeared in writing in 1631 to mean a female steward (that is, a caretaker of some kind), and it was used for hundreds of years in caretaking, managerial, or administrative senses.

Only in later use did “stewardess” come to mean a female attendant on a ship (a sense first recorded in 1834), a train (1855), or a plane (1930).

“Stewardess” was of course derived from the gender-free noun “steward,” which is very old.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates written evidence of “steward” (stigweard in Old English) back to 955 or earlier, and notes that it was created within English, not derived from other sources.

“The first element is most probably Old English stig,” which means “a house or some part of a house,” Oxford says, noting that the Old English stigwita meant “house-dweller.”

In its earliest uses, the word meant someone who manages the domestic affairs of a household, and it later took on more official and administrative meanings in business, government, and the church.

The femininized “stewardess,” defined in the OED as “a female who performs the duties of a steward,” was first recorded in The Spanish Bawd, James Mabbe’s 1631 translation of a “tragicke-comedy” by Fernando de Rojas:

“O variable fortune … thou Ministresse and high Stewardesse of all temporal happinesse.”

We might be tempted to attribute that example to rhyme alone. But we found two more appearances of “stewardesse” in a religious work that was probably written in 1631 or earlier and was published in 1632.

These come from Henry Hawkins’s biography of a saint, The History of S. Elizabeth Daughter of the King of Hungary. Because Elizabeth gave her fortune to the poor, the author refers to her as God’s “trusty Stewardesse &; faithfull Dispensatress of his goods” and “this incomparable Stewardesse of Christ.”

Until the early 19th century, “stewardess” continued to be used in the various ways “steward” was used for a man. For example, the OED cites an 1827 usage by Thomas Carlyle in German Romance: “She was his … Castle-Stewardess.” (The book is an anthology of German romances, and the example is from an explanatory footnote by Carlyle.)

But as the old uses of “stewardess” died away, a new one developed. People began using “stewardess” in the 1830s to mean (like “steward” before it) a woman working aboard a ship.

The OED defines this use of “stewardess” as “a female attendant on a ship whose duty it is to wait on the women passengers.”

The earliest example we’ve found is from an 1834 news article about a shipwreck that left only six people alive, a passenger named Goulding and five crew members:

“Mr. Goulding and the stewardess floated ashore upon the quarter deck.” (From the Oct. 16, 1834, issue of a New York newspaper, the Mercury.)

The OED’s earliest citation is a bit later: “Mrs. F. and I were the only ladies on board; and there was no stewardess” (from Harriet Martineau’s book Society in America, 1837).

The use of the word in rail travel came along a couple of decades later. We found this example in a news account of a train wreck:

“A train hand, named Miller, had his leg broken above the ankle, and seemed much injured. Margaret, the stewardess of the train, was likewise bruised.” (From the Daily Express of Petersburg, Va., Oct. 30, 1855.)

Soon afterward, on July 29, 1858, a travel article in the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer in West Virginia noted that on the Petersburg & Weldon Railway, a “stewardess travels with each train to wait on the lady passengers—serve ice water to them—hold their babies and other baggage occasionally.” (Note the reference to “babies and other baggage”!)

The earliest example we’ve found of “stewardess” meaning an aircraft attendant appeared in the New York Times on July 20, 1930. The reporter describes firsthand his experience aboard a flight from San Francisco to Chicago:

“And then there is Miss Inez Keller, stewardess or rather traveling hostess. The Boeing system has solved the problem of looking after the passengers by putting girls on all the liners.”

Later that year, an Australian newspaper ran this item: “A successful trial flight was made with the finest and largest passenger air liners in the world, each having luxurious accommodation for 38 passengers, with smoking saloon two pilots, steward and stewardess.” (From the Western Herald, Nov. 18, 1930.)

The OED’s first example appeared the following year in a photo caption published in United Airlines News (Aug. 5, 1931): “Uniformed stewardesses employed on the Chicago-San Diego divisions of United. The picture shows the original group of stewardesses employed.”

Oxford defines the newest sense of “stewardess” this way: “A female attendant on a passenger aircraft who attends to the needs and comfort of the passengers.” It adds that the word also means “a similar attendant on other kinds of passenger transport.”

This brings us to the larger subject—the use of the suffix “-ess” to form what the OED calls “nouns denoting female persons or animals.”

The ancestral source of “-ess,” according to etymologists, is the Greek -ισσα (-issa in our alphabet), which passed into Late Latin (-issa), then on into the Romance languages, including French (-esse).

In the Middle Ages, according to OED citations, English adopted many French words with their feminine endings already attached, including “countess” (perhaps before 1160), “hostess” (circa 1290), “abbess” (c. 1300), “lioness” (1300s), “mistress” (c. 1330), “arbitress” (1340), “enchantress” (c. 1374), “devouress” (1382), “sorceress” (c. 1384), “duchess” (c. 1385), “princess” (c. 1385), “conqueress” (before 1400), and “paintress” (c. 1450).

Some other English words, though not borrowed wholly from French, were modeled after the French pattern, like “adulteress” (before 1382) and “authoress” (1478).

And in imitation of such words, “-ess” endings were added to a few native words of Germanic origin, forming “murderess” (c. 1200); “goddess” (some time before 1387), and obsolete formations like “dwelleress” and “sleeresse” (“slayer” + “-ess”), both formed before 1382.

As the OED explains, writers of the 1500s and later centuries “very freely” invented words ending in “-ess,” but “many of these are now obsolete or little used, the tendency of modern usage being to treat the agent-nouns [ending] in –er, and the nouns indicating profession or occupation, as of common gender, unless there be some special reason to the contrary.”

Some of the dusty antiques include “martyress” (possibly 1473), “doctress” (1549), “buildress” (1569), “widowess” (1596), “creditress” (1608), “gardeneress” (before 1645), “tailoress” (1654), “farmeress” (1672), “vinteress” (1681), “auditress” (1667), “philosophess” (1668), “professoress” (1744), “chiefess” (1778), “editress” (1799), and “writeress” (1822).

Still seen, though rapidly going out of fashion, are “hostess” (c. 1290), “authoress” (1478), “poetess” (1531), “heiress” (1656), and “sculptress” (1662).

Of the few such occupational words that are still widely used, perhaps the most common are “actress” (1586) and “waitress” (c. 1595). These “-tress” endings, the OED says, “have in most cases been suggested by, and may be regarded as virtual adaptations of, the corresponding French words [ending] in -trice.”

In conclusion, “stewardess” was created at a time—in the 1600s—when English writers created all sorts of what the OED calls “feminine derivatives expressing sex.” It was also a time when educated English speakers regarded their native tongue as inferior to French and Latin, the gendered languages that were the lingua franca of nobles, clergy, and scholars.

Now “stewardess,” like so many of those feminized nouns, is rapidly becoming obsolete. But unlike the others, it hasn’t been replaced by a unisex “steward.”

Why? We don’t know the answer. But for whatever reason, as “stewardess” has fallen out of favor it’s taken “steward” down with it—at least in reference to air travel.

The usual replacement, “flight attendant,” showed up in the late 1940s, and passed “stewardess” in popularity in the late 1990s, according to Google’s Ngram Viewer.

The earliest example we’ve found for “flight attendant” is from the Jan. 26, 1947, issue of the Santa Cruz, Calif., Sentinel about a Hong Kong plane crash in which all four people were killed:

“The company listed those aboard as Capt. O. T. Weymouth, an American pilot, and a crew of three Filipinos, including Miss Lourdes Chuidian, flight attendant.”

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language.

Subscribe to the Blog by email

Enter your email address to subscribe to the Blog by email. If you are an old subscriber and not getting posts, please subscribe again.

Email Address

/* Custom functionality for safari and IE */ (function( d ) { // In case the placeholder functionality is available we remove labels if ( ( ‘placeholder’ in d.createElement( ‘input’ ) ) ) { var label = d.querySelector( ‘label[for=subscribe-field-461]’ ); label.style.clip = ‘rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px)’; label.style.position = ‘absolute’; label.style.height = ‘1px’; label.style.width = ‘1px’; label.style.overflow = ‘hidden’; }

// Make sure the email value is filled in before allowing submit var form = d.getElementById(‘subscribe-blog-461’), input = d.getElementById(‘subscribe-field-461’), handler = function( event ) { if ( ” === input.value ) { input.focus();

if ( event.preventDefault ){ event.preventDefault(); }

return false; } };

if ( window.addEventListener ) { form.addEventListener( ‘submit’, handler, false ); } else { form.attachEvent( ‘onsubmit’, handler ); } })( document );

from Blog – Grammarphobia https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2018/10/ess-words.html

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

Your humble editress is usually quick to say "No, of course Aristasia wasn't a cult!", usually. But sometimes, I feel as if perhaps it was a bit too close to being a cult for comfort. It definitely varied from what you normally might think of as a cult, in that they didn't really recruit, and they usually played all their weird cards first thing, right out on the table. They didn't keep their strange secrets until after you were already invested in them, they wanted everyone to know, right up front, that they were aliens in exile. But maybe not in so many words. They were, of course, very happy to cozy up to girls who shared their interest, and see who were willing to to play their game (see Operation Roriita and their Femmekin/Otherkin blogging), but once they hooked you with their weird ideas, they didn't seem to want anything from you beyond your willingness to engage in long-term life theatre with them. Of course, it's also apparently true that certain girls, with certain positions of power, have allegedly used their spiritual and social power to act out what seems like obvious kinks (viewing it from this century, with what we understand now about kinks, even if it is just a bongo Tellurian's understanding) against seemingly unwilling members of their community who apparently were willing to subject themselves to such treatment because they apparently were lead to believe it was done for spiritual reasons. Maybe it was printed in bongo tabloids, but the events certainly seemed to transpire, one way or another.

To make a long post even longer, I would like to go through many of these and speak a little about my thoughts on them.

Chanting Chanting is used within the religious aspect of Aristasia/Chelouranya, but the religious side was never particularly pushed to any real degree. Instill guilt about not living up to potential This seems to be something that comes up a bit when ex-Aristasians (particularly of the Second Life era) tell their stories, and mostly it relates to feeling guilty that they're not really living a racinated life outside of the internet. No happiness outside of group The idea that the rest of the world was in an eclipse, and the world outside of Aristasian hearths was The Pit is a big one. Almost everything about the modern world was deemed disgusting. Forbid critical questions about leader The leaders (if that is what you could call Miss Martindale and Miss Langridge) had so many different personas it was almost impossible for them to have answered any critical questions about them. It's very possible that whole people have been invented, for the purpose of deflecting questions about who really founded Aristasia. Information deliberately withheld Now this is one that doesn't seem to actually have been a thing. Aristasians seemed to play all of their strange cards right at once. They wanted you to know they were aliens. If you didn't like that, you were free to leave. When, how, and with whom you have sex dictated While Aristasians generally didn't seem to care about your relationships outside of the group, it was indeed stated that if you were to be a full, inner circle, Aristasian, you were expected to give up relationships with em-ee-en. The old Artemis zines also have a lot to say about how intimacies between women shouldn't be regarded as "sex", and that "sex" should mean gender. So there is a lot of redefining what sex even entails in Aristasia, and more importantly, what is and isn't sexual. Which has lead to some behavior that is distinctly sexual in Tellurian life being regarded as nonsexual within Aristasia. This blurring of lines between sexual and non-sexual has lead to, to put it very lightly, misunderstandings. Encourage only good and proper thoughts This seems to be largely a Chelouranya idea, but encouraging their members to always be sweet and happy was important. Some emotions deemed evil See above, and also see this old Poppitops comics. Outsider vs insider doctrines Aristasians vs the rest of the world was a central theme to their lifestyle. There were a number of names for non-Aristasians, and even different Aristasian words for mundane objects. It was generally regarded by Aristasians that there was a war on, and they were fighting for the winning side. Instill fear of outside world See above. Control information at different levels within group This is something that they didn't really practice. While there was definitely the idea of inner and outer circle Aristasians, there seemed to be no secret information that would be revealed to the inner circle. New name/identity Creating a new identity was a central core of being Aristasian. If you decided to use your Tellurian name, you were at the very least encouraged to choose if you were a Blonde or a Brunette. Many Aristasians had many different names, identities, and even sexes. Distort information to make it acceptable There was a lot of information bending within Aristasia. Reading Aristasian musings often feels like it's very obvious that they're working backwards from whatever point they're trying to make to make it fit around their world views. This ranges greatly from science denial (for there's no belief in evolution in Aristasia) to their own history revision (They only ever got involved with all that Silly Monkey stuff to make money to fund their embassies, but also what they did wasn't Silly Monkey stuff anyways, because, remember, what they did wasn't sexual) Impose buddy system This one is a little bit vague, but pairing up blondes and brunettes or forming communal households was always a priority with Aristasians.

So, while it may seem like this Bingo card has a lot of marks, I still don't necessarily think that Aristasia or Chelouranya was a cult. I think that it was potentially a very toxic community, with some toxic views, run by some girls who maybe were not suited for running a community, members were free to leave if their faith in the game wavered, were not really expected to give up anything besides aesthetics, and were not actively recruited. However, I was never part of any Aristasian circles, so perhaps I'm very wrong about this.

I would like to make special note that I'm speaking strictly of the Aristasia that later transformed into Chelouranya, and not at all about the Filianic, Madrian, or Deanic religious community, which have made much effort over the decades to distance themselves from whatever Miss Martindale and Miss Langridge were doing after about 1982.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

I have an absolutely unconscionable hoard of PDFs that were uploaded to the internet a handful of years ago with the great Madriana revival that only currently exist in the depths of archived websites. I'm working on uploading a number of them to archive.org, as well as the Eastminster published works. I've been tagging them with "Aristasia" even though they are only tangentially related.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

I’m going to keep posting semi-secret Aristasian information, dug up from the depths of the internet, until pettes start posting about Aristasia on the internet again.

Feel free to send me whatever Aristasian questions you have, I’ll do my best trying to find an answer.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

@msfenriss I'm always interested in hearing first-hand accounts of people who mingled with the Aristasians, if you would be willing to share anything at all, I'd love to hear about it! I'd also like to say, that there's no absolute proof that these persona are all from the same person. It's just a series of coincidences, similarities, taking other people's word, and guessing over the years, and there are definitely some places I have my doubts. There's also no definitive proof that Cure Dolly has passed on, just a purposely vaguely worded message from a presumed other person and the closing of her Patreon. However, if she has passed away, she lived a very full life, full of incredibly interesting things. She was definitely treated like a princess among her people, and even during the later days, she was very well respected as a Japanese teacher among outlanders. She

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

It’s fascinating how the old Aristasian and Lux Madriana and even Romantia works have been online for years now, and I was fully aware of them and had skimmed through them many times, but none of it really made sense until I started realizing which names were the same people and what certain words meant.

It all just appears to be a jumble of nonsense written by no one, until you learn what racinated means or that Miss Tyrell and Miss Martindale are the same person who later was perhaps Miss Aquilla, and Miss Lucinda is the same Miss Priscilla who very well may have also been Miss Sushuri, and you learn that the Romantia group was literally just the same St. Brides girls.

There have been very few “deep dives” into this subculture online, except, strangely enough, from the retro gaming community, but even then they are largely just interested in how their St. Brides game was also a real life school. But, all of this information is just available online, freely, for people to draw their own conclusions from. I feel like I am digging up so much secret, hidden, information, but it’s all just there in pdfs of old magazines or newspapers or in forum archives.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

Aristasian Archeology in Elektraspace

There is still a wealth of information about Aristasia, and what came before, and what came after, available on the internet, and I’m still working my way through it.

But it’s vanishing fast, or getting buried more and more every day. I’m doing what I can before it goes away forever, to save it for my own archives, and to try to connect the dots of what’s left. And I encourage anyone else interested in it to do the same. See it before it’s gone forever.

I’ve slowed down a little bit on my blog here, largely because I feel like I’ve managed to get out the big important bits, but there’s still a lot of little things to discover.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

Where are the Aristasian secular holidays?

In my Aristasia deep dive, I became curious of how Aristasians celebrated holidays and have been disappointed to find relatively little chatter about holidays. They celebrate Christmas, by a different name, in a relatively normal way, and there's a little bit of chatter in the Chelouranya days about a kawaiier version of Halloween, but other than that it's mostly just Filianic Holy Days, which seem to mostly consist of prayer, reflection, and some specific suggestions for fussing about your altar. There is an immense amount of world building in Aristasia, and certainly during their heydays there was a lot of real-world interaction between Aristasians with the founding of embassies and households, and parties and gatherings were frequently thrown. But there's a surprising lack of secular holiday celebrations. There seems to be no such thing as a Cuivanya traditional throwing of the wheat wreath, no Florimaia picnics celebrated with purple cakes, no traditional Lady Day tree planting, or any other number of silly traditions that tend to pop up naturally over the course of the years from celebrating holidays. If they were creating any sort of annual traditions, they were not talking about them. For world building in a game that is largely inspired by the wonderment of childhood, there is a surprising lack of games and play in Aristasia

-Editress out.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

Why I Started This Tumblr

I have been bumping up against the Aristasians online in various ways since their 1996 BBC documentary was first posted to early Youtube in the late 2000s. First it was just a silly thing posted to one of those old long-dead “weird people on the internet” sites, then I noticed them popping up in unrelated internet searches, mentioned offhandedly in the early days of Tumblr, popping their heads to say hello in the lolita fashion community, and showing up in people’s discussions on learning Japanese.

Every time they would bump up against my own internet I would check out what they were doing at the time, and lurk a little bit. Admire their strangeness, and be frustrated with them. Recently, after on-and-off lurking for well over a decade, I was curious what they were up to and found them entirely gone.

I felt like I had stumbled into a big abandoned house with furniture overturned and the ghosts-marks of picture frames on the wall. I wanted to make sense of it, to try to figure out which room used to be the dining room and put the chairs back there, to hang the pictures back up on the wall. I wanted to peel back the layers of wallpaper to see what sort of decorating changes happened over the years. To understand what it had looked like long ago and how it ended up in the state it was in now.

It was never my house, but it was open to parts of the public for a time and I could see them waving at me through the windows whenever I would pass it. -The Editress 

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

I frequently see people just learning about Aristasia say that they’re lesbians in denial, or even queerphobic, because of the blondes and brunettes technically being different sexes, but I think they’re missing the point completely.

The vast majority of Aristasians, especially during the Miss Martindale heights of the 90s, were bi or lesbians. Aristasians hosted monthly nights at a local lesbian bar, they frequently discussed and approved of gay rights, they had their own cheeky lingo for being a lesbian, they were personally in queer relationships, they published wlw magazines, and I believe several were vocal lgbtq activists and supporters in their mundane lives. They were well aware that in the real world they were queer.

Even within the world of Aristasia they were fine with blonde/blonde and brunette/brunette pairings. They even accepted that girls could have personas of both sexes, or that sometimes the sexes didn’t easily fit at one end of the blonde-brunette spectrum, and discussed the possibility of what it meant to be redheads.

In later years, especially during the Second Life Embassy years when they mostly moved outside of the UK and largely went online, I believe they began to attract more online-only role-players who were drawn to the aesthetics, lifestyle theories, spirituality, or world-building role play, they seemed to readily welcomed girls of any sexuality because it didn’t necessarily matter what they were doing outside of the world of Aristasia, especially since Aristasia largely existed online at this point, and as a world-building exercise, not the horny thirst-posting about ladies stockings of yesteryear.

They also seemed eager to drop the fetish role-play connotations of the 90s as they simply moved on with their game and their own lives changed, so denying anything titillating happening at all became their modus operandi. By the time Chelouranya rolled around, Mary seems to have taken more of a back seat and Sushuri was leading the charge, and the focus shifted completely to spirituality and Japan. Sex and sexuality, and any hint of the real world simply seemed to have no part In Chelouranya.

I feel that their denial of being gay was equal parts allowing room for those girls who weren’t, but also their typical cheekiness. They knew they largely were, they were just making fun of you for not being smart enough to figure it out on your own. Only a bongo would be stupid enough to have to ask something like that.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

A post from the Treasure Trove archive by Lady Aquilla, who was, without a doubt*, previously known as Miss Martindale. This is her trademark nastiness and the same petty complaining about the Pit that she frequently indulged in. These types of musings by Aristasians always quickly took me out of whatever dreamy state they had inflicted on me with pictures of olde timey illustrations and fancy clothes, because it always felt immensely hypocritical to what they said their nation stood for. Sure, they kept out of Tellurian affairs, unless it meant a chance to nitpick how Tellurians talked. They preached about being kind and gentle, unless they were writing mean-spirited essays about clothes they didn't like to see other people wear. They were quick to judge Tellurian women for conforming to whatever Tellurian trends they followed, but Aristasian girls must wear certain types of stockings and must never say certain words. In essays like these, my illusions were shattered, and the mysterious group of girls from another planet just seemed like mean and petty girls, obviously upset that some people didn't care for the game they were playing. You can view an archive of The Decanter here.

*actually, there are many doubts. She could have very well have been the same girl as Miss Priscilla Langridge. It's often difficult to tell which, but certainly, Miss Aquilla spoke with an authority that only the girls formerly known as Miss Martindale and Miss Langridge were allowed.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

@msfenriss I definitely agree with you! The disdain the Aristasians had for alternative culture seemed like such a weird mistake. It really felt out of touch with a lot of who they later drew into their ranks as well.

While they do recognize that Type 3's make good Aristasian candidates because of their disdain for the modern world, so much time is spent belittling Type 3's and being snarky about their fashion choices ("pierced eyelids" is a phrase used quite a bit). Which I have always felt a little bit odd, because while they seem quite happy to complain that punks and goths all "conform to their own nonconformity" the Aristasians were very quick to attempt to latch onto lolitas once they discovered them. Lolita is an intensely structured fashion subculture that makes no room for their anachronistic hodge podge of vintage fashion choices (seamed stockings in early 2000's lolita fashion? Absolutely not). I imagine they would have had a much easier time mingling with the goths who liked vintage fashion than they ever would amongst the lolitas.

-Sincerely,

Your Type 3 Bongo Editress

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

Archiving Aristasia

It appears that the Filianic Studies website is down again, but I've been back to working on uploading the Madrian Literature Circle pdfs to the internet archive. I have also stumbled across a large assortment of older web pages, saved as pdfs sometime in 2012 or 2013. A few of them were corrupted files, but the rest I have uploaded in one big, messy, file on the internet archive. This is a combination of pages from the old Aristasian Encyclopedia as well as saved forum discussions. I'm not sure who saved these originally, as they appear to have been archived in 2012, but they appear to have been later used by the Filianists who were involved in the Filianic Studies website and in research on their Eastminster editions. You can view the archive here.

You can view the Madrian Literature Circle papers I have uploaded here.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

How Other Researchers Can Help

I got a question about this a few days back, and I've been thinking about it a bit more. The more people researching Chelouranya, Aristasian, Romantia, and Lux Madriana the merrier. And there are certainly some things that exist out there in Tellurian that I just can't get my hands on, due to the fact I don't live on the same continent. I would definitely suggest making a Tumblr side blog and just adding the appropriate tags and tossing whatever you find out into the ether. If you tag it with Aristasia, I'll certainly see it.

The following list will hopefully be helpful in finding those lost bits of history, both for digital researchers, as well as researchers in the real word (the physical, right-now, tellurian real world, not the other type), I will perhaps be updating it new things to find are discovered to be findable:

❧ Finding archives of lost websites, or even fragments of websites and forum discussions that are still online.

❧ Even just digging through the archives of known Aristasian websites for interesting bits of discussion is useful! If you don't know where to start, the archived Aristasian Preservation Project page is a good place.

❧ If you're in the UK, there's still hope that some old Madrian literature is out there, gathering dust in used book stores. Even if you're not in the UK, we know for a fact we know for a fact that many of their publications were sent all over the world!

❧ If you're near Glasgow, there is the Glasgow Woman's Library that has the full Artemis run. They're currently unable to digitize it, but allow researchers to view their archive in person, and are fine with you making copies of snapping photos of pages (at least they were the last time I messaged them!). You could be the heroine that puts these volumes online for the first time ever!

❧ If you're in the US, and have access to a college library, there are a handful of colleges that have Artemis listed in their LGBT+ archives. These may be the already archived copies (vol 5 and 6), or they may not be, it's hard to tell from just the online listings.

❧ The more eyes looking for related books, magazines, and even news broadcasts the better. The following media have been mentioned before, in some relation to Aristasia, but no known copies are archived online, or readily available to be purchased. These may have useful information, or it may just be a rehash of what we know already. We simply have to find them first to discover that: ➳➳ Joanne Carminhow, The Light of the Goddess: Lux Madriana

➳➳ Original Rhennish language copy of The Crystal Tablet

➳➳ March 1982's Behind The Veil broadcast

➳➳ 1988's Issue 9 of Odin magazine with an article by Wolfheim Coll, who was the lone male of the original 4 Madrian founders.

➳➳ The Chap magazines from September 2004 through Bridgehead in late 2005, where Miss Martindale apparently had an advice column.

➳➳ Any of the Miss Martindale TV appearances from the mid-to-late 1990s.

➳➳ Any of the number of cassette tapes they sold in the late 1980s and 1990s. These had a number of different names, such as "Imperial Home Service" "Audio Dreams" and "A Feminine Journey". I would be willing to take a chance bet that any of these tapes would have one of their BM Elegance/Labrys/Perfect London forwarding addresses printed on the label, so it would be easy to spot, even if it had a different name.

❧ There are also some much more vague periodicals out there that may, possibly, mention the girls from Aristasia because they previously were mentioned in similar magazines, so it's worh poking around if you happen to stumble across any of the following:

➳➳ British computer game magazines from about 1984-1987 that may feature interviews with any of the St. Bride's girls.

➳➳ Pagan or Goddess magazines published in Oxford from 1975-1977ish that may mention the beginnings of Lux Madriana

➳➳ Hebden Bridge newspapers from 1981-1982 when there were several Madrian households in Hebden Bridge and they frequently appeared in local newspapers.

➳➳ Late 1970s to early 1980s new age, feminist, and pagan resource listings. Many of the different projects that Lux Madriana can be found in these.

➳➳ Late 1980s to late 1990s fetish and alternative lifestyle resource listings. This appeared to be the start of their active, not just accidental, involvement in the fetish scene. It's rumored that they advertised their services in the late 90s in adult magazines, and we can find evidence of them advertising such things during the Wildfire Club era.

If you're doing digital searches, there's a seemingly infinite list of search terms that will bring up results that may be related, and these include the unusual nom de plums used by the Madrians, the known phone numbers and addresses they used in their advertisements and published correspondence, as well as unusual terms that they frequently used. At some point I will make a list of some of the terms I search for.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

I’ve been digging deeply into the history of Lux Madriana lately, and have found some particularly interesting things that I hope I’m allowed to report on very soon.

Previously, I had found the idea that they were able to start an electricityless occult community based on a fictionalized history of the world, and were able to maintain that a fairly large and wide-spread community throughout the 1970s, quite far fetched. I mean, I knew they did it, I didn’t believe that that part of it was fictitious. But it still seemed like an impossible task.

But, the more I learned about Lux Madriana, the more I learned about the spiritual landscape of the UK in the 1970s, and I learned that Lux Madriana was just one of many such groups. They weren’t even the only matriarchal spiritual group at the time! To me, this made things make a lot more sense.

In the next few days I hope to be able to share some findings, in their entirety, although they are only a few pieces of paper. If I’m unable to do so (as I need to get permission from a library to share the source), I’ll be sharing as much as I am able to about Lux Madriana’s history and their relationship to the larger UK pagan community.