.jpg)
Naacal Tablets[*]
[J. Churchward, The Lost Continent of Mu, p. 14]
Thursday
Notice of Seizure of Goods under Customs and Excise Act 1996
Reg. 80 / Form 13 / Section 227, Customs and Excise Act 1996:
(I) Insert name of importer or other person known or believed to have an interest in the goods
To ––––––––––––
Auckland, New Zealand
(2) Insert particulars of the goods seized
Take Notice that
1 x book titled “La Metamorphose De Lucius’ imported on 19 August 2003 have been seized on 16 September 2003 as forfeited to the Crown under section 225(1)(n) and 225(1)(a)(v) of the Customs and Excise Act 1996
(3) Insert particulars as to cause of forfeiture
on the grounds that
the imported publications identified above were examined and are considered to be prohibited from importation pursuant to section 54 of the Customs & Excise Act 1996 in that they are considered to be objectionable in terms of section 3 of the Films, Videos & Publications Classification Act 1993 for the reasons shown in the schedule on page two of this Notice of Seizure.
this 16th day of September 2003
SCHEDULE OF SEIZED PUBLICATIONS
>La Metamorphose de Lucius
This publication contains a cartoon story depicting sexual activity between adults. A scene in the story depicts a male turning into a donkey and then having sexual intercourse with a female.[*]
Section 3(2)(e) FVPC Act 1993 - Bestiality
Nuttall Codex
… those four important beings
which can only be defined in terms of nonbeing[*]:
Darkness[+], Silence[#], Nothing[~], Death.[$]
– W. H. Auden
[Z. Nuttall. The Codex Nuttall: A Picture Ms from Mexico, p. 81]
[#] See >Guide to the Otherworld.[~] See >End-times (Arghati).
Wednesday
O
Odyssey, The
[Book 6: 129-40]:
wave[*]
blue-green
growing
glowing
poised to break
beach[+]
white sand
bright sun
blue sky
salt on skin
girl[#]
Where am I?
asking her
Ao-tea-roa[~]
she replies
we’ve
got to get you
out of here
get you
cleaned up
voice fading away
[*] See >Baxter, James K.[#] See >Girl in Love, A.[~] See >Atlantis (Etymology).
Oral Sex
Clara[*] was sucking him in a perfect frenzy, throwing her head to and fro and banging it up and down on the pillow. He knew he would spend in another moment … and that nothing could stop him now. He thought vaguely that it was a good idea to come once in her mouth before really fucking her, then he’d be sure to hold out for a long time when he was in her cunt. And then he forgot that and every thing else too as passion overcame him.
“Squeeze my balls,” he told her. She did as she was bid enthusiastically. “And … put one finger in at the back,” Conrad continued, his voice tight with desire. She sucked and sucked, her eyes tightly shut and her hands caressing all his sex. He asked her again, coaxingly. “I’m coming in just about a second, darling. Please put one finger in, just there.” He guided her hand between the cheeks of his bottom, but she drew it away. Then in a moment it was back again, wetted from her own dripping sex. The long index finger slid in and in, and Clara moved it to and fro as she sucked ecstatically on his throbbing prick.
Conrad gasped and jerked convulsively, almost falling across her face, and Clara found her mouth suddenly inundated with his jetting sperm. It was hot and salty and she swallowed with difficulty and a sense of shame, and then suddenly she was swallowing again, passionately, and wanting to.
[The Sign of the Scorpion, pp. 176-78]
Clara – >Bianca – Mother-of-pearl
Conrad, Joseph (1857-1924), Polish novelist, author of Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904) & The Shadow Line (1917)
Orichalcum
because of the greatness of their empire many things were brought to them from foreign countries, and the island itself provided most of what was required by them for the uses of life.
In the first place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there, solid as well as fusile, and that which is now only a name and was then something more than a name, ORICHALCUM, was dug out of the earth in many parts of the island, being more precious in those days than anything except gold.
There was an abundance of wood for carpenter’s work, and sufficient maintenance for tame and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island; for as there was provision for all other sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains, so there was for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of all.
Also whatever fragrant things there now are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or essences which distil from fruit and flower, grew and thrived in that land; and the pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we console ourselves after dinner, when we are tired of eating[*] – all these that sacred island which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth fair and wondrous and in infinite abundance.
[Plato, ‘Critias’, Collected Dialogues, p. 1219]
things we eat when we are tired of eating = deserts / desserts
Tuesday
P
Panopticon
Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon is a structure incorporating “a tower central to an annular building that is divided into cells, each cell extending the entire thickness of the building to allow inner and outer windows.[*] The occupants of the cells are backlit[+], isolated from one another by walls, and subject to scrutiny collectively and individually by an observer in the tower who remains unseen. Bentham envisioned not only venetian blinds on the tower observation ports but also mazelike connections[#] among tower rooms to avoid glints of light or noise that might betray his presence.”
The Panopticon, crucially, allows one to see without being seen.[~]
[J. Bolton. ‘Metonymic Imprisonments’, JOL 9 (2), p.309]
[+] See >Nuttall Codex.[#] See >Ramananda, K. B.[~] See >Enoptromancy.
Paris Eros
The >Imaginary Museum of Eroticism in Paris:
Paris, the city of life, has always symbolised eroticism and sinful pleasure.[*] But the city does not possess an erotic museum comparable to Berlin’s or Amsterdam’s. Hans-Jürgen Döpp has taken the liberty of constructing an imaginary museum there – a Paris where time and space are infinite[+], but desire is bound up in images.[#] Covering more than five centuries of naughty Parisian history, this volume has 230 full-color illustrations culled from private collections. Döpp provides a highly entertaining commentary.
Parkstone. Adult Material[~] — by ordering this item you are stating you are over 18 years of age. HCW, 9 x 12, 224 pp., FC.
[Bud Plant’s Incorrigible Catalogue (2004), p. 25]
[F. Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Polyphilii, p. 400]
Phaeacia
LITTORE = beach[*]
CLAUSURA DE MYRTO = Norfolk pines[+]
BOSCO = bush[#]
SILICATO = ochre clay
THEATRO = the mall[~]
NEMORI = privet
NARANCETO = mandarin tree
PRIMI PRATI = front lawn
SECUNDI P. = side lawn
TERTII P. = back lawn
PERISTULIO = multiplex[$]
FIUME = creek
[F. Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Polyphilii, p. 311]
[*] See >Zener cards.[#] See >Naacal Tablets.[~] See >Memory Theatre.
Monday
Q
Quarles’ Book of Emblems
Two several loves built to several cities: the love of GOD builds a Jerusalem; the love of the world builds a Babylon. Let every one inquire of himself what he loveth[*], and he shall resolve himself of whence he is a citizen.
[F. Quarles, Emblems, Divine and Moral, p. 49]
Questionnaire
Name
Miss X
Age
24
At what age did you first use drugs?
12
When did substance abuse first become a problem?
The first time I used. I felt as though a void had opened up and the only way to feel normal was to use more.[*]
When did you realise that you had a problem?
At about 16. I was constantly in search of more drugs. My life had become unmanageable and I was always in trouble with the law.
Would you consider yourself to be an addict?
Yes.
Could you have stopped using drugs on your own?
No. I tried so many times but to no avail.
How did you confront your drug problem?
When I was 21 I booked myself into a Rehabillitation Centre. I spent 5 months there undergoing extensive therapy. It was there that I realised that I was an addict before I evan picked up my first drug, and that I need ongoing support in order to keep myself safe and off the drugs.
Is this me?
Quetzalcoatl
Less commonly mentioned is the fact that Quetzalcoatl ruled in tandem with his sister Uemac and that their partnership is said to have extended to incestuous sexual relations.[*] In this way he asserts his kinship with the god-kings of Egypt (Akhenaten and Nefertiti; Ramses II and Nefertari, all the way back, in fact, to Isis and Osiris), but also with culture heroes such as King Arthur, >Yama, Kullervo – even Hamlet.
[Z. Nuttall. The Codex Nuttall: A Picture Ms from Mexico, p. 26]
Sunday
R
Radiant Child, The
John M—– once, when I was in his house, told me a curious tale about himself. He was riding one night to Thirsk, when he suddenly saw passing him a radiant boy on a white horse. There was no sound of footfall as he drew nigh. Old John was first aware of the approach of the mysterious rider by seeing a shadow of himself and his horse flung before him on the high-road. Thinking there might be a carriage with lamps, he was not alarmed till by the shortening of the shadow he knew that the light must be near him and then he was surprised to hear no sound. He thereupon turned in the saddle and at the same moment the radiant boy passed him. He was a child of about eleven, with a bright, fresh face. “Had he any clothes on, and if so, what were they like?” I asked. But John was unable to tell me. His astonishment was so great that he took no notice of particulars.[*] The boy rode on till he came to a gate which led into a field. He stopped as if to open the gate, rode through, and all was instantly dark.
Ramananda, K. B. (1917-1987)
The mandala is a sacred circle surrounded by eight rays[*], signifying an area purified of all ephemeral ideas. Mandalas also serve as a template for the universe – the centre of the mandala is the primordial atom, born from the germinal syllable of meditation, containing the image of a holy city or a famous temple.[+]
The outer circle is ringed with flames, fiery peaks denying access to the mysterious world within the circle.[#] The flowers are the Buddha consciousness which breaks down all obstacles. The third circle with eight cemeteries symbolises the eight consciousnesses of illusion. A ring of lotus petals comes next – the harmonious unfolding of spiritual vision.[~]
After that we come to the heart of the mandala, the four gates which symbolise the first dawn of knowledge. Within these gates is the city itself, whose central park is surrounded by another four gates topped with thunderbolts of power. In the middle is the primal lawn where the Buddha rests, buoyed up by lotus flowers.[$]
[K. B. Ramananda, Buddha Consciousness: An End to Turmoil, pp. 32-33]
Circles and squares (>Felton Mathews, Critias):
[+] See >Derren Brown Mind Control.[#] See >Guide to the Otherworld.
R. U. R.
RADIUS. All our expeditions have returned. They have been everywhere in the world. There is not a single human being left. …
ALQUIST. Why did you murder us?
RADIUS. Slaughter and dominion are necessary if you want to be like men. Read history, read the human books. You must domineer and murder if you want to be like men. We are powerful, sir. Increase us, and we shall establish a new world. a world without flaws. A world of equality. Canals from pole to pole. A new Mars. We have read books. We have studied science and the arts. The Robots have achieved human culture.
ALQUIST. Nothing is more strange to man than his own image. … Robots are not life. Robots are machines.
RADIUS. We were machines, sir. But terror and pain have turned us into souls. There is something struggling with us. There are moments when something enters into us. Thoughts come up on us which are not of us. We feel what we did not use to feel. We hear voices. Teach us to have children so that we may love them.[*]
ALQUIST. Robots do not love.
[J. & K. Čapek. R. U. R., pp. 94-95]
terror and pain have turned us into souls
Saturday
S
Short-term Memory Impairment
There is a small group of patients who suffer from an extremely intense amnesia, and yet who do not appear to exhibit any other evidence of general intellectual impairment. Though uncommon, such patients are of great interest because they enable us to distinguish certain features of the normal and amnesiac memories.
Patients of this kind can appear quite normal when you first meet them. Their speech and manners are quite conventional, and they are normally able to discuss memories of childhood without difficulty. Some appear quite conscious of their memory difficulties; others less so. If they are, they have a tendency to look for ways to conceal it.[*]
So what aspects of an amnesiac’s long-term memory remain undamaged? Semantic recall can be quite normal: a ‘pop-quiz’ on geography, politics, and other aspects of general knowledge may leave them with quite a respectable score. Perceptual–motor skills can also be attained at a normal rate, both the learning of new processes, and the retention of information after an interval. One patient, a writer, was able to compose a poem and to recite it again a few days later. He was, however, quite unable to recall writing the poem, and quite curious about its details. It was as if it came, he commented, “from somewhere outside.”
This, it should be said, is fairly typical. He had no memory of the notebook in which he had written it, or even his own pen, pencil and rubber.[+] He could use them when he had to, though.
[The Home Encyclopaedia of Human Psychology, ed. G. O’Bannon, p.145]
appears entirely normal / semantic memory normal / motor skills normal / perceptual skills normal
may – or may not – be aware of his/her problem
[*] See >Socrates & Alcibiades.[+] See >Zeus & Mnemosyne.
Socrates & Alcibiades
Socrates (c.470-399 BC) /
Alcibiades (c.450-404 BC):
415 BC – On the morning of the departure of their fleet for Sicily, the people of Athens awoke to find that vandals had been busy during the night, knocking the phallus off every Hermes in the city. These miniature stelae were attached to the fronts of most houses to guarantee fertility and good fortune. Alcibiades, their former golden boy, the darling of Socrates, was blamed (probably unjustly), and summoned back from Syracuse for trial. Instead, he chose exile, and thereafter helped to direct the war against his former countrymen.
[Compendium of World History, p. 234]
The Athenian invasion of Sicily was a disaster, resulting in the death or enslavement of almost the entire Athenian expeditionary force.
Both condemned to death by the Athenians
Alcibiades chooses to go into exile & fight against his own people
Socrates submits to their judgement & takes the hemlock[*]
Symposium
the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods.
Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them … At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said: “I have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.” He spoke and cut men in two, and, as he cut them one after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: he would thus learn a lesson of humility. So Apollo gave a turn to the face and pulled the skin from the sides all over the belly, and he made one mouth at the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel).
After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one; they were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them, sections of whole men, and clung to that.
Each of us, when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half.[*]
[Plato, ‘Symposium’, Collected Dialogues, pp. 543-44]
Friday
T
Talismano della Felicitá, Il
GENERAL ANTIPASTO
ARTICHOKE HEARTS[*] IN OLIVE OIL
24 small artichokes
½ cup lemon juice
3 cups dry white wine
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
3 bay leaves
3 cloves
6 peppercorns
¼ lemon, thinly sliced
olive oil
3 bay leaves
4 peppercorns
Remove the outer leaves and the tops of the artichokes. Detach the excess stalks. Dip them in lemon juice. Mix together wine, vinegar, bay leaves, cloves, peppercorns and lemon slices[+], add artichokes and simmer for ten minutes or so (the duration may vary depending on the tenderness of the artichokes). Drain the resulting mixture thoroughly, and place in a large jar. Cover it with olive oil, bay leaves and peppercorns and leave it to mature in the jar for at least three days.[#] Add more oil if required, and seal the jar. Store it in a cool place.[~] It will keep very well for a long time.[$]
[Ada Boni, The Talisman of Happiness, p. 3]
will keep very well for a long time
[*] See >Quetzalcoatl.
[#] See >Keeper of the Scales, The.
[$] See >Questionnaire.
Timaeus
Plato is writing about Critias telling Socrates a story by his grandfather (also Critias) who heard it from Solon, who heard it from an Egyptian priest:[*]
Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your Athenian state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came from the Atlantic Ocean.
There was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean.
Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia.
This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars.
But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.
[Plato, ‘Timaeus’, Collected Dialogues, pp. 1159-60]
mighty power from the Atlantic Ocean
(see >End-times: Prophecies of 9/11)
Time Travel
As far-fetched as it may seem, for one moment consider that the incredible technology of Atlantis was able to step up the individual frequency of every man, woman, and child, every rock, flower, tree, and the very earth of their island continent and translate them into the fourth dimension.
Atlantis did not sink below the earth in a single day of an antediluvian cataclysm: Atlantis trembled for twenty-four hours as incredible machines raised its vibratory rate until it could materialise in another spectrum of tangibility and establish itself in another space-time continuum.
Atlantis may be all around us and may be entered through certain window areas of dimensional interpenetration.
Don’t be in a hurry to find such an ultra dimensional door, however; a single day in Atlantis may be equal to a month, a year, a decade in our own space-time continuum.[*]
[N. Driscoll, Atlantis: A Conspiracy Revealed, pp. 13-14]
Thursday
V
UFOs
UFOs are:
· Spacecraft built by aliens from other planets.
· Craft built by a super race living inside the hollow Earth.
· Craft built, either by humans or aliens, in secret bases on the Earth’s surface.
· Craft developed by humans in the future which are travelling back in time.
· Craft reaching us from ‘other dimensions.’
· Products of leylines or patterns of earth energy which interact with our senses so that we see them as structured craft.
· ‘Purely psychological’ projections of the unconscious mind.
[S. Sunderland, Soul Avatars, p. 151]
Later, while he was reading a report in the newspaper about a Bigfoot sighting in Northern California, he began to recall certain details of his own encounter. It took some time to recover it all, but the interesting thing was that, until then, he had completely forgotten it[*], not even knowing what to say when a friend asked him how he had got the big dint in his car’s front grille.
[S. Sunderland, Soul Avatars, p. 123]
Ventris, Michael (1922-1956)
Ventris began with a list of 553 words which could plausibly paired off with known Greek expressions. This, which he called his ‘Experimental Vocabulary’ included proper names as well as grammatical signifiers. Modifications were made to this list subsequently, but it provided a good basis on which to begin to guess the meanings of some of the rarer signs. Very few of the texts available to him and his collaborator, John Chadwick, could be read in full[*], but the first extended sentence they were able to spell out together had a resonance for them which made it a kind of Rosetta Stone for Minoan culture:
PU-RO i-je-re-ja do-e-ra e-ne-ka ku-ru-so-jo i-je-ro-jo WOMEN 4
ΠΥΛΟΣ: ίερείας δοϋλαι ένεκα χρυοϊο ίεροϊο
At Pylos: slaves of the priestess on account of sacred gold: 4 women
[M. Estebán. The Code-Breakers, p. 128]
slaves of the priestess
on account of sacred gold
4 women
Antinéa / Annie
>Bianca / Clara
Verne, Jules (1828-1905)
Where was I? Where was I?[*] I must know, at any cost. I tried to speak, but Captain Nemo stopped me by a gesture, and picking up a piece of chalk stone, advanced to a rock of black basalt, and traced the one word –
ATLANTIS[+]
What a light shone through my mind!
Whilst I was trying to fix in my mind every detail of this grand landscape, Captain Nemo remained motionless, as if petrified in mute ecstasy, leaning on a mossy stone. Was he dreaming of those generations long since disappeared? Was he asking them the secret of human destiny? Was it here this strange man came to steep himself in historical recollections[#], and live again this ancient life[~], – he who wanted no modern one? What would I have not given to know his thoughts, to share them, to understand them! We remained for an hour at this place, contemplating the vast plain under the brightness of the lava, which was sometimes wonderfully intense.
At this moment the moon appeared through the mass of waters and threw her pale rays on the buried continent.[$] It was but a gleam, but what an indescribable effect! The Captain rose, cast one last look on the immense plain, and then bade me follow him.
We descended the mountain rapidly, and the mineral forest once passed, I saw the lantern of the Nautilus shining like a star. The Captain walked straight to it, and we got on board as the first rays of light whitened the surface of the ocean.
[J. Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, pp. 247-49]
[#] See >Doctor Who.[~] See >Cicero, Marcus Tullius.
Wednesday
W
Waite, Arthur Edward (1857-1942)
... the Unclean Spirit will appear to you in a scarlet surcoat, a yellow vest and breeches of pale green. His ears will be those of an ass.[*] He will ask for your orders, and, as he cannot do otherwise than obey, you may become the happiest of men.
[A. E. Waite, The Book of Ceremonial Magic, pp. 132-33.]
Werewolves
Werewolves, called by some ‘the children of Atlantis'[*]– Alan Moore
The phenomenon of the black dog has also been reported in Canada. The creature seen at Rous’ Brook, Nova Scotia, appears generally as a bright light, but can also be more tangible: one man (admittedly somewhat under the influence) who was foolhardy enough to face the thing that was following him, was attacked and nearly choked to death.[+] ‘It looked like a black dog,’ he said, but when it got him around the throat it seemed more like a person.[#]
[S. Sunderland, Soul Avatars, p.171]
The shooting of a man-eater gives one a feeling of satisfaction. Satisfaction at having done a job which badly needed doing. Satisfaction at having out-manoeuvred, on his own ground, a very worthy antagonist. And, greatest satisfaction of all, at having a small portion of the earth safe for a brave little girl[~] to walk on.
[J. Corbett, The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon, p. 139]
[*] See >L’Atlantide.[+] See >Nuttall Codex.[#] See >Paris Eros.[~] See >Girl in Love, A.
World Map
Atlantis - Three Major sinkings:
1st. Approx. 23,000 B.C.
2nd. Approx. 14,000 B.C.
3rd. Approx. 9,600 B.C.
Lemuria:
Continental form approx. 3,000,000 years ago.
Final disappearance approx. 10,000 B.C.
Gondwanaland:
Continental form at least 2,000,000 years ago.
Last submergence 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.[*]
[R. B. Stacy-Judd, Atlantis: Mother of Empires, p.174]
Tuesday
X
Xanthippe (fl. 5th century BC)
Wife of the philosopher Socrates[*], to whom she bore three sons, she has become the prototype of the nagging, shrewish wife. There is, however, another model to consider:
Isis’ repeated searches for her husband’s dismembered limbs only ever result in her finding thirteen pieces, the fourteenth (the phallus) having been devoured by a fish, the oxyrinchus.
Reassembling the members and embalming the body, leaving only the head free of the wrappings, Isis creates a mock phallus from one of the trees in the Nile delta and straps it to the body of Osiris.
His divine seed is thus able to enter her, and she conceives.
[I. Maskelyne, Egypt or Atlantis? p. 124]
uxor [wife] – Luxor [capital] – lux [light]
[*] See >Socrates & Alcibiades.
Xerxes (c.519-465 B.C.)
The True Reason Why Queen Esther Pleased the King More
Than All the Other Virgins.
THE Jewish Rabbis have a tradition that it was entirely owing to the training Mordecai gave to his cousin Hadassah (or Esther), in order to prepare the young girl to be his own wife[*], that she was enabled to bear off the palm from all the competing virgins, when the whim of the Court suddenly impressed her for the royal pleasures, at once quashing her cousin’s plans for his own enjoyment.
Robbed of his prospective bride, Mordecai had the brilliant idea of making Esther’s advancement the stepping stone of his own fortunes. He knew that kings regarded their concubines as so many toys only to be cast aside when they had once submitted to the Royal ravisher, and his natural shrewdness and knowledge of human nature made him reflect how cloyed and disgusted even a king must get with the sameness of the pleasure, which the taking of hundreds of maidenheads from unresisting virgins could only afford him. (This king Ahasuerus is generally supposed to be identical with Xerxes, who was so ‘blasé’ that he offered an immense reward to the man who should invent a new pleasure).
Accordingly, as the tradition has it, he secretly sent her instructions to rehearse with the seven virgins, her companions (see Esther 2.10), all the salacious ideas which he had himself instilled in her mind in view of the gratification of a bridegroom. He also especially enjoined upon her the wisdom of putting aside all modesty when her turn came to enter the Royal presence, to submit to his embraces most joyfully, also to put on the greatest semblance of erotic desire and abandon, and finally when she found her sovereign completely used up, she was to entreat His majesty to allow her maidens to enter his presence, and enact with her such scenes as would restore his prostrated energies.
The king was reclining on a couch. He was a handsome man of about forty, with a used-up “blasé” expression of countenance.
“Come, pretty girl, and kiss my Royal prick; perchance thy luscious lips may raise some slight desire, which I may gratify. Dost know aught, fair child, thou thinkest would please me?”
[The Pearl 12 (June 1880), p.16]
Monday
Y
Yama
As you approach the Judge of the Underworld, Yama – appointed to the post because he was the first man to die – remember to salute him and thank him for sending you his five secret messengers. These are (in order): a child, an old man bowed down by age, a cripple, a bound criminal, and a dead body. Tell him you have understood their meaning.
The message is that it is every man’s fate to be born, grow old, fall sick, suffer punishment[*], and to die.
If you fail to explain this to him, he will order the guards to imprison you in a house filled with fire, where you will burn for all eternity.
Yama is the master of Time, identified by the Hindus with Death, and thus with the Judge of the dead. Like Minos, his counterpart in Greek mythology, his house is a bewildering place, full of mirrors and false turnings.
[S. Sunderland, Soul Avatars, p. 174]
the houses are full of smoke
child, crock, cripple, criminal or corpse?
Yates, Frances (1899-1981)
In her magisterial summary of classical mnemonics, The Art of Memory (1965), Frances Yates describes a vast number of systems of artificial memory, none stranger (perhaps) than that exemplified by “the Hypnerotomachia Polyphilii, written by a Dominican before 1500, in which we meet, not only with curious archaeology, but also with Hell[*], divided into places to suit the sins and their punishments, with explanatory inscriptions on them.” She goes on to suggest that “the mysterious inscriptions so characteristic of this work may owe something to the influence of visual alphabets and memory images, … the dream archaeology of a humanist mingles with dream memory systems to form the strange fantasia.”
[G. de Souza, Masters of Memory, p. 17]
[F. Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Polyphilii, p. 403]Young, Edward (1683-1765)
The Complaint,
or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-1745):
There’s no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise
Than man’s presumption on to-morrow’s dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant we build
Our mountain hopes, spin out eternal schemes
As we the Fatal Sisters[*] could out-spin,
And big with life’s futurities, expire.
[Night the First, ll. 373-82]
Where is tomorrow?
In another world.
By following the connections I arrive
Where?
Atlantis? Antiterra?
The imaginary museum
Sunday
Z
Zeus & Mnemosyne
Memory, in Greek mythology, was the province of the goddess Mnemosyne, the deity who – after a sexual liaison with Zeus – gave birth to the nine Muses:
Clio, the Muse of history;From Mnemosyne comes the word mnemonics – the collective term for the science (or art) of memory. Among the earliest of these techniques were the rhythmic cadences of poetry. The blindness of Homer was not simply a literary trope[*]: the Greek poets recited from memory.
Urania, the Muse of astronomy;
Melpomene, tragedy;
Thalia, comedy;
Terpsichore, dance;
Calliope, epic poetry;
Erato, love poetry;
Euterpe, lyric poetry;
Polyhymnia, hymns to all the gods.
[G. de Souza, Masters of Memory, p. 14]
Museum = temple of the Muses
Zodiac
As she is going down she says in a moaning voice: “God, your cock so big it makes me gag.”
[Good moms can be really bad when they want sex[*]]
[R. B. Stacy-Judd, Atlantis: Mother of Empires, p.145]
[*] See >Zeus & Mnemosyne.
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