diamonds, wounds, & magick

some diamonds of turkey

2011-11-04T12:14:00.000-07:00

Mosaic of Ananeosis (Awakening), from Antakya, 5th Century AD. In the Mosaic Museum of Hatay.

Ceramics Studio, Cappadocia.

Graves, outside Mevlana Rumi Mausoleum and Museum, Konya.

Stadium of Myra, present day Demre.

Aphrodisias Archaeological Site, near Geyre.

Ephesus Archeological Site.

Ephesus Archeological Site.

Ephesus Archeological Site.

Basilica of St John, Ephesus.

Basilica of St John, Ephesus.

Basilica of St John, Ephesus.

Altar of the Domitian Temple. Ephesus Museum.

The Obelisk of Theodosius, Istanbul.

House in Fener/Phanar, Istanbul.

outside the Little Hagia Sophia, Istanbul.

Istanbul Archeological Museums.

Istanbul Archeological Museums.

Istanbul Archeological Museums.

two fingers

2011-09-10T11:07:00.000-07:00

The Ladder, #86, The Two-Fingers, #82. William Thomas and Kate Pavitt, The Book Of Talismans, Amulets And Zodiacal Gems, 1922.

[The two-fingers amulet] was intended to take the place of the two fingers of the god who helped Osiris to ascend the Ladder of Ra. [...] The Ladder amulet, provided the deceased with the means of ascending from earth to the floor of heaven, i.e. the sky. An ancient legend says that Osiris wished to ascend to heaven, but had not sufficient strength to do so. Ra seeing his difficulty provided the ladder, and he and Horus standing, one of each side of Osiris, helped him to ascend. [...] The legend is referred to in the text in the Pyramid of Pepi I, lines 192 f, 472 and 473, and in it we are told that it was the "two fingers of the Lord of the Ladder" which helped Osiris to ascend to the sky. The Egyptians presumed that the deceased might not be able to obtain the assistance of the "two finger," and they made the amulet [...] to take their place.
--E.A. Wallis Budge, Amulets and Superstitions, 1930.

British Museum, Obsidian amulet in the shape of two fingers. From Egypt, Late Period, after 600 BC.

The 'two-finger' amulet shows the index and middle fingers, with the nails and joints clearly indicated. They were placed on the mummy near the incision by which the internal organs were removed before embalming. This may suggest that the amulet was intended to reaffirm the embalming process, the fingers representing those of Anubis, the god of embalming. However, the amulet could also have been intended to 'hold' the incision sealed, to prevent malign forces from entering the body, like the plaques sometimes placed over the wound.

Brooklyn Museum, Amulet Representing Two Fingers. Egypt, said to be from the area of Memphis. Ptolemaic Period, 332–30 B.C.E.

lately

2011-06-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

Five Things About the Mutation of Fortune at HTMLGiant

Fiction Review of The Mutation of Fortune at Newcity Lit

+++

I also recently had the honor to read for the Neverwhere Literature Contest, sponsored by Depaul University and One Book, One Chicago.

imagined landscape, collage, 2009

the mutation of fortune

2011-05-19T12:53:00.000-07:00

"THE MUTATION OF FORTUNE documents the parallel fortunes of one protagonist living multiple lives. As she navigates her Märchen landscape, she goes through varied transformations, becoming at times a wolf, a thief, an amputee, a hunter, a rabbit and a runaway. She sleeps with swans and suffers a sister that bites the back of her knees. The world of this book is unstable, delicious and carries with it an inexplicit sense of danger."

available at the paper cave and quimby's in chicago (online & store).

& an interview about the book, wherein i speak of psychic inheritance, 2nd grade science teachers, and magic.

diamond fingers

2011-02-25T22:47:00.000-08:00

something made many moons ago

bleeding trees

2011-01-26T16:22:00.000-08:00

blood as a sign of wounding:::

--William Tell,Friedrich Schiller, 1804.

"Down to 1859 there stood a sacred larch-tree at Nauders in the Tyrol which was thought to bleed when it was cut; moreover people fancied that the steel pierced the woodman's body to the same depth that is pierced the tree, and that the wound on his body would not heal until the bark closed over the scar on the trunk."
--The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Sir James George Frazer

Codex Borgia (c. 1497, Mixtec-Puebla Culture. A Mesoamerican ritual and divinatory manuscript) plate 66, blood gushing from trunk

There is, in the churchyard at Nevern, an ancient tree known as Yr Ywen Waedlyd, 'The Bleeding Yew'. A blood red sap flows from its trunk.
Some say it bleeds because a monk was hung to death there, and the blood is a sign of his innocence. Others believe Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross made from the yew tree, and that the tree bleeds in sympathy. Another legend proclaims that the tree will continue to bleed “until there is a Welsh prince on the seat at Nevern Castle.”

The Bleeding Yew

The tree in this distinct pictoria [folio 13r of Codex Telleriano-Remensis] is laden with flowers; its trunk is split in half, and its roots are fully exposed, and bleeding. The accompanying text says: Tamoanchan xochitlycacan, meaning: "Tamoanchan, (where) the flowers are in its house." The broken Flowery Tree here definitely symbolizes the breaking away from Paradise - from the primordial state of things, and from the House of the Gods from which, as the text explains, men had been expelled by orders of the male and female gods, for having harmed both trees and flowers there.
--Social Memory in Ancient and Colonial Mesoamerica, Amos Megged

Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Mexico, 16th century), folio 13r

"There is a story that tells how, when a musician cut a piece of wood from a tree into which a girl had been metamorphosed by her angry mother, he was startled to see blood oozing from the wood."
--Plant lore, legends, and lyrics: Embracing the myths, traditions, superstitions, and folk-lore of the plant kingdom, Richard Folkard, 1884

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2010-12-22T22:56:00.000-08:00

and through the porthole they can make amends

collecting an image

2010-12-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

Francis Alÿs: Fabiola at the National Portrait Gallery, London

oh fabiola, you are a diamond. but with my diamonds i must make them again. it is the remove that intrigues me --

---Mary Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson: who was taken by the Indians at the destruction of Lancaster, in 1676

first there was fabiola.
then, the copy, a painting. over a thousand years after her death. lost, now.
and then, more copies. which duplicate an original that no one has seen or touched.

original: fabiola the human or fabiola the first-painting?

whitman

2010-12-06T15:21:00.000-08:00

fortuna

2010-12-06T15:06:00.000-08:00

notes on the wheel of fortune -- living multiple lives, scanned

experience to believe

2010-12-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

MS M.106 fol. 88v, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

--from Emily Dickinson's Master Letters

....and i always thought thomas was the saint of proof. but remember, he is called doubting thomas for a reason.
he must experience -- find his proof -- in order to believe.

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--April D. De Conick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation. The Gospel of Thomas was believed to be a "false gospel" by the early church, and not included in the Bible. It was (re)discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945, in one of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library.

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"That the Doubting Thomas ampullae [flasks] were created to evoke a popular holy site or revered relic seems unlikely, since none of the early pilgrim texts makes more than a passing reference to the fact that the event was thought to have taken place at Holy Sion; moreover, the inscriptions on both flasks leave no doubt that they, like the others, contained sanctified oil from the Golgotha Cross. It seems more probable to suppose that the portayal of this scene on this object was intended to remind the pilgrim of the Gospel account of Thomas' incredulity [..] Doubting Thomas provides an obvious biblical parallel for the pilgrim and his own experience. Significantly, the words on the flask, “My Lord and My God," are those which come from Thomas' lips at the moment when, like a pilgrim, he touches and believes."
--from Gary Vikan's brilliant essay, "Byzantine Pilgrimage Art", which can be read here.

Doubting Thomas Pilgrim Ampulla (Flask), note the DIAMOND -- Monza, Treasury of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (Jerusalem ca. 600)

words of power

2010-11-24T12:13:00.000-08:00

vulnerable/vulnerableness/vulnerary/vulneration/vulnerose/vulning/vulnus

from the Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1731

Vulnerary Herbs: promote healing of wounds with broken skin such as abscesses, eruptions and cuts.

“The Hidden Name was secretly inscribed in the innermost recesses of the Temple, guarded by a sculptured lion. If, as was most unlikely, an intruder saw the name, the lion would give such a supernatural roar that all memory of it would be driven from his mind. But Jesus knew this, he evaded the lion, wrote the Name, cut his thigh open and hid it within the wound, closing it by magic. Once out of the Temple he re-opened the incision and took out the sacred letters.”
--The Law and the Word, 1919, Thomas Troward

"The Pitt diamond, it is said, was found in Golconda in the year 1702, by a slave, who, being desirous of keeping the stone to himself, made a wound in his thigh, placed the diamond in the wound, and covered it over with a bandage."
--Picturesque Science, for the Young

lineage

2010-11-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

Sebastian Munster, Europe as a Queen, Basel 1570

what we learn from the middle ages, from the world:
the body teaches us about enclosure: the blood is enclosed by the body.

the blood defines the individual. and the blood defines the collective. and the blood is proof of existence. and the blood must be kept enclosed.

bleeding endangers the integral. consanguinity. there is no introduction for bad blood: the other, outsider cannot wave hello. the skin is a fence for blood. the nation is a fence for blood.

Consanguinity Chart
from the Etymologies by Isidore of Seville
Prüfening, Germany; ca. 1160–65
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Clm. 13031

"Girls of fortune, we, and this is the first time, here in Brighton, that we call ourselves fortunate, perhaps because we're talking about our past, know that we come from a long and glorious lineage. Of death. For one of the meanings of the word lineage is 'dead.'"
--Kathy Acker, Pussy, King of the Pirates

The genealogical tree of Noah from 'Rudimentum Novitiorum' (Handbook for Beginners), Lübeck, 1475

"Lineage and blood relate... to every ordering by kinds, where every stranger,every strange thing, marks the absence of neutrality [...] We institute our hierarchies of blood in a forgetting that pretends to neutrality without responsibility. [..] Kinds in lineage and blood come forth in ambiguous profusion, overlaying, overlapping, intermingling beyond any system of classification."
--Stephen David Ross,The Gift of Kinds: the Good in Abundance: an Ethic of the Earth

"..All margins are dangerous. If they are pulled this way or that the shape of fundamental experience is altered. Any structure of ideas is vulnerable at the margins. We should expect the orifices of the body to symbolize its especially vulnerable points.
--Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: an Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo

also: Bodies, Buildings, and Boundaries:
Metaphors of Liminality in Old English and Old Norse Literature

almost thanksgiving,

2010-11-09T23:46:00.000-08:00

And now I speak to you, are you in there?
You have her face and her eyes
But you are not her

red riding hood says,

2010-10-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

visit the web issue of the inimitable fairy tale review. the wolf sent me.

more fingers, more proof

2010-10-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

detail from late 12th c. manuscript leaf at the Art Institute of Chicago

"[The Pope] holds the host with his left hand and points toward a chalice on the altar with his right. [...] A strange object, which appears to be a finger, rest on top of the chalice. Two sets of creases, visible underneath, mark its joints, and a fingernail has been delineated at the upper right."
--from "An Early Image of a Mass of St. Gregory and Devotion to the Holy Blood at Weingarten Abbey", Michael Heinlen, in Gesta, Vol. 37, No. 1

St. Gregory (Pope Gregory I) was saying mass when a woman present started to laugh during Communion, saying to a companion that she could not believe the bread was Christ, as she herself had baked it. Gregory prayed for a sign, and the host turned into a bleeding finger.

from The Sacred Shrine a Study of the Poetry and Art of the Catholic Church by Yrj Hirn, 1912

relic of the finger of thomas the apostle, rome, italy (my photo, taken 6/2009)

if you do, it will bleed

2010-09-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

bloodroot harvested from a forest in northern wisconsin

"You make something resembling blood. If there were a way home it would be a mystery, Flannery O’Connor might say. No use trying to prattle your way into mystery. But tell what you see, tell what the blood was like, and maybe a gesture will form. Probably unbearable. Certainly unclean. And then you will go ahead with your exile."
--Anne Carson, from "Untitled (Flannery)"

bloodroot

"And I thought/Of the tongue, of how it is a wound, a pool of blood,/And of how you should bind a wound."
--from "Pale Rider", Brigit Pegeen Kelly

--from the Revelations of Saint Gertrude

exactly-- what is proof?

2010-09-16T22:14:00.000-07:00

finger of st. thomas, the doubting apostle

detail of doubting thomas

"What gives the soul its deepest wounds brings to it best relief"
--Beatrijs of Nazareth

a return

2010-07-31T13:23:00.001-07:00

a diamond a day...

2010-02-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

written on the body is

2010-02-06T15:40:00.000-08:00

my lately

diamond body

2010-02-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

"..the moment of effacement of the boundary between an opaque object and a living body..." --Patricia Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity

open the door

2010-02-01T19:11:00.000-08:00

diamond doors, chicago

diamonding, wounding

2010-01-29T12:40:00.000-08:00

washington, dc & new orleans, la

Will to meet me in the orchard's shagged or shadowed southern light, the low rub of cicadas indexing their oil & eventide, then I would tell you -- everything.
--from "Pursuit of Happiness", Lucie Brock-Broido

fetal fashion

2009-12-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

Christina of Sweden (b. 1626) was born with a "victory-shirt" -- what Scandinavians call a more or less intact fetal membrane clinging to the newborn baby. A victory-shirt was always regarded as a lucky omen & also signaled "extra protection" from the gods.

"The cap of victory was an omen of good luck for the child being born with it. It was a sign the child would become something useful."
--Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend, Reimund Kvideland, Henning K. Sehmsdorf

"In Vaever, Musse, there lived a man named Ole Hansen. His oldest son was born with a shirt of victory. If he walked three times around a burning house, the fire would not spread to another building. Nor could anyone shoot him, as long as he carried his shirt of victory in his pocket."
-- Collected by E.T. Kristensen from Jorgen Mortensen in Musse parish, Lolland (Denmark).

'Glass rolling-pin, painted and dated 1855; said to have contained a child's caul as a sailor's charm, Sunderland'

"One of the most powerful personal charms was a caul, the fetal membrane that in some cases covered the face or head of a newborn infant. To carry a caul protected its bearer from drowning, and accoring to belief, no ship with one on board could sink. Being born with one not only protected a person from drowning but also gave hhim supernatural clairvoyance and allowed him to see supernatural sights, such as ghosts and spirits, hidden from ordinary eyes."
--Melville's Folk Roots, Kevin J. Haynes

"The correct name for those who are born with a Caul is a Caulbearer. Such people are often referred to as being born behind The Veil."
--www.caulbearer.org

---
A riddle:
What is worn of necessity, and then is necessarily worn,
hinders sight, but will allow to see?

measure, lance

2009-12-11T16:20:00.001-08:00

imagined amulet, sans pierce

"Attention was drawn to the violations of Christ's body, as these were recorded and incorporated in acts of writing, measuring, wearing, eating: people carried the wounds around on a piece of parchment hanging from their necks, as amulets and as remedies. An amulet containing a 'measure' of Christ's wounds was expected to stop the flow of blood, appealing to Longinus, the Roman soldier:
Longinus: who pierced the side and had blood flow - I dare you - in the name of Jesus Christ, so that the blood of Margery will stop flowing. "
--Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture

Lambeth Palace Manuscript, MS 545

"In prints closest to our woodcut, with one or two angels presenting the heart on a cloth, the wound is indicated not only by a printed line or drops of red pigment but also almost always by an actual slit through the paper. This seems to suggest that these prints were produced specifically to be pierced by the Holy Lance and thus to serve as contact relics for pilgrim and other devotees of the relic cult."
-- Peter W. Parshall, Rainer Schoch, Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-century Woodcuts and their Public

bounds

2009-10-30T14:59:00.000-07:00

"The body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious."
--Mary Douglas, Purity and danger: an analysis of concept of pollution and taboo

"The ordinary margins of the body, those orifices where things enter and leave are places of danger, all the more so when those margins malfunction or when an ordinarily less permeable boundary, the skin, becomes compromised and therefore vulnerable."
--Patrick Nugent, "Bodily Effluvia and Liturgical Interruption in Medieval Miracle Stories."

Prayer sheet with the wounds and the nail, issued by JP Steudner, Augsberg, late seventeenth century

A manifestation of sympathetic magic was the widespread use of the weapon salve for healing in the 17th century. The weapon salve was applied not to the wound, but to the weapon that caused the wound.

--Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel

cunning, ash

2009-10-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

"the [virtue] of the ash tree"

--from an 18th c. scottish cunning man's book of herbal remedies

"Whan some tempest doth aryse in the ayer we oughte anone to make a fyre of four staues of an asshe tree in crosse wyse aboue the wynde and thenne afterwarde make a crosse vpon it, and anone the tempest shal torne a syde."
--from the 15th c. Gospelles of Dystaves

"Beware of an oak, It draws the stroke. Avoid an ash, It courts the flash. Creep under the thorn, It will save you from harm."
--William Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (1897)

"How to get wound wood: To cut wound wood, Go out and hunt a small ash tree. On Good Friday, before sunrise, take a sharp hatchet or axe and cut off a branch or the whole tree with three strokes-- it is to be noted that if the tree does not fall after three strokes the wood is useless. After cutting the wood rightly let it lie until the sun has risen and shines upon it, then cut the wood up into small pieces and you have the true wound wood. Preserve it well. If you should hack, stab, cut, or pinch yourself, so that the flow of blood is not easily stilled, lay the wood upon the wound so that the wood becomes warm and the wound will heal without festering."
--Thomas R. Brendle & Claude W. Unger, Folk Medicine of the Pennsylvania Germans, 1935

here, and here

2009-09-23T22:34:00.000-07:00

writing that can be read:

denver quarterly, v.44 n.1
finalist for the annual experimental fiction contest, diagram

lately, also: string, captivity narratives, & digestive enzymes---

of diamonds and wounds, venice

2009-09-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

Photograph from my journey to Italy: A <> Sir, discovered in June 2009, Venice

Sir, I must have that diamond from you.--
There, take it.
--Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, Act v

The Scuola Grande Di San Rocco, or the Confraternity of St. Roch, was built in Venice in the early 16th century. Saint Roch, or Rocco, or Rock was expelled from his healing mission in the town of Piacenza, and withdrew into the forest, where he made himself a hut of boughs and leaves. He would have died, if a dog had not come to him, supplying him with bread and licking his wounds, healing them. He is usually represented in the garb of a pilgrim, lifting his tunic to demonstrate the wound in his thigh.

As Above, So Below

2009-08-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

Central Anatolia, Prayer Rug. 17-18c

"I have become convinced that a [woven] carpet [as having reached their pinnacle in early Turkish village carpet weaving], when it is a good one, reverberates with some kind of primitive and archetypal force, that it has in it some kind of being, that it connects with some primitive, almost animistic “soul of the world” — and that the carpet must be judged, in the end, according to the degree to which it does, or it does not, make a connection with this force.

In this sense, it is in its power, very much like the great bronze castings of the Chinese Shang dynasty, which establish an almost magic force, by establishing themselves as beings, in some realm, which connects us to itself, to which we are connected, which is an absolute realm of beings, and whose functioning is almost entirely animal-like, spirit-like, not matter-like, almost conscious — it is as if the thing, the bronze, or the carpet, establishes itself in my own belly, as a voice, speaks with my own voice, exists with my own force, and forces my awareness of an ultimate mother, or an ultimate creature of which I am a part — and which exists in me.

This nearly animistic view of carpets is consistent with the recent discoveries, already mentioned, that have centered around the tradition of prehistoric art in Central Anatolia. The essence of the view which lies behind these discoveries, is that what we naively call beauty, and what we experience as artistic force, lies in the creation of an object which speaks directly with my own inner voice, that there is, at the heart of all things, a single voice of universal blackness and thickness and light, that speaks in all tongues, and that holds all force into itself.

A carpet, when it holds the almost magical force which all carpet lovers recognize, holds this force, because, to some degree, it embodies this original voice, lets us see this original animal force that exists in ourselves. I believe the same is true, of every artifact. As a builder, I am trying, every time I make a building, to reach a connection with this force, and to make a thing, which fills us, with this animal and animistic force. The force, though primitive, and almost alien, is that underbelly of ourselves, which makes us human. Though unrecognizable, and almost taboo, because it is by turns violent, lustful, peaceful, and absurd, is nevertheless that thing which, to the degree it comes to life in us, makes us live innocently as people in the world."

--From Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets, Christopher Alexander

Thanks to: The College of Mythic Cartography

the switch

2009-06-08T17:02:00.000-07:00

fortune telling card, my collection

aretalogy

2009-06-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

from recent journey, self- portraits at abandoned house

the book of the heart

2009-05-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

The heart can be opened, read and interpreted like a book. For Clare of Montefalco, her "spiritual sisters came to believe so intensely that Christ had painted his cross in her heart that at her death in 1308 they threw themselves upon her body, tore out her heart, and found incised upon it the insignia of the Passion." Or, after the death of Ignatius of Antioch, "they took the heart out of his body, split it down the middle, and found there the name of Jesus Christ inscribed in gold letters ..."
see: Eric Jager, "The Book of the Heart: Reading and Writing the Medieval Subject"

Master of the View of Sainte Gudule, Young Man Holding a Book, ca. 1480

"This is what I want to do in my heart, in front of you, in my confession, and with my pen before many witnesses."
--St. Augustine, Confessions

a desperate light

2009-04-30T22:53:00.000-07:00

Today when the sun began with its shafts
to tell the story, so clear, so old,
the slanting rain fell like a sword,
the rain my hard heart welcomes.

I must renew my bones in your kingdom,
I must still uncloud my earthly duties.

(words from Pablo Neruda's "The Separate Rose: I")

When You Imagine, You Compel the Stone to Put Forth Its Hidden Nature

2009-04-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

"Meditation: the name of an Internal Talk of one person with another who is invisible, as in the invocation of the Deity, or communion with one's self, or with one's good angel."
--Martin Rulandus, Lexicon of Alchemy, 1612

Giovanni di Paolo, St. Catherine of Siena Exchanges Hearts with Jesus

"It appeared to her that her Heavenly Bridegroom came to her as usual, opened her left side, took out her heart, and then went away."
--Raymond of Capua, Life of St. Catherine of Siena

here, two eyes have once more become one

2009-04-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

medieval alchemical texts, reworked + collage + drawings

<>

2009-03-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

beating the bounds

2009-02-21T17:57:00.001-08:00

Bartholomeo Eustachi (1500-1574), Tabulae Anatomicae

"In order that the boundaries of the parishes might be indelibly impressed on the minds of the younger portion of the community, it was deemed advisable to bump some promising boy painfully against the boundary stones; or better still, to publicly whip him while he strove to impress on his memory the exact position of the same landmarks."
--William Andews, Curiosities of the Church, 1895

"Children were originally the chief boundary-beaters thrashing away with their sticks on the relevant stone, tree, or other landmark which marked the edge of a town or parish. And the children were, in turn, beaten themselves, receiving a coin for their pains. Boys were pummelled with the sticks, ducked in waymarking ponds, dragged through intruding hedges, and even had to climb over building that straddled the boundary. This instilled in them a sense of place, with a wound for every landmark."
--Quentin Cooper, Maypoles, Martyrs & Mayhem: A Diverse and Diverting Guide to 366 Days of British Myths, Customs & Eccentricities

"... The outskirts are felt to be infected zones, where all kinds of monstrosities are possible, and where a different man is born, an aberrant from the prototype who inhabits the centre of things."
--Piero Camporesi, The Incorruptible Flesh: Bodily Modification and Mortification in Religion and Folklore

EIGHT:::

2009-02-19T22:01:00.001-08:00

"[The Christian's] fundamental belief in the efficacy of baptism led him to find this mystical symbol everywhere and imbue it with Christian meaning. The Lord rose on the eighth day: on an Easter Sunday, the liturgical eighth day, the Christian received baptism; and this is the day on which the 'Spirit moved upon the face of the waters.' Eight persons rode the ark over the waters, and this wooden structure by which man was saved is a symbol of the Cross."
--Hugo Rahner, Greek Myths and Christian Mysteries

"For Christ, the first born of all creation, is become the beginning of a new race, the race of those who by virtue of the mystery of the cross are born again of him by water and faith and the wood."
--Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone, 2nd century

Early Christians tended to build their baptisteries in octagonal form, with an eight-cornered rail.

"The holy temple has eight niches,
octagonal is the font, worthy of its sacred work.
The house of our baptism must be built in the mystical eight."
-- from a Latin inscription by St. Ambrose on the baptistery of St. Thecla at Milan, 4th century

"... the ogdoad is understood frequently as the dual four, which is identical with the below and above, the boundless infinite, from whom emanated the Logos, or Word."
--Marie L Farrington, Facing the Sphinx, 1889

"The Ogdoad was a company of eight creator-gods a Hermopolis (ancient name Khmnu, 'City of the Eight'), one of the oldest religious centers in Egypt. The eight gods comprised four male-and-female couples, who each personified aspects of primeal chaos: Nun and Nunet (the waters), Heh and Hehet (the flood), Kek and Keket (the darkness), and Amun and Amaunet (invisible wind). [...] The Ogdoad are thus called 'the fathers and mothers who made the light', 'the men and women who created the light', or 'the waters that made the light'."
--Alan F. Alford, The Midnight Sun: The Death and Rebirth of God in Ancient Egypt

collection:

2009-01-20T19:55:00.000-08:00

cards "printed" from fortune telling vending machines, my collection

2008-11-02T18:51:00.000-08:00

nature is red in tooth & claw

2008-10-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

Some animals I live with, a zoological study

10/17/08

2008-10-17T23:38:00.001-07:00

the little side cave

2008-09-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

"It was in the mid-eighteenth century, when Moravians questioned the gender of the Trinity, attributed maternal characteristics to Jesus, and celebrated a sensual, mystical personal relationship with their Savior, that Moravian iconography began assigning erotic qualities to the side wound of Christ itself. This included inscribing sensual, colored expressions about Christ and the side wound on hundreds of small cards, many of which contained striking water colors depicting the side wound [...] and/or showing daily activities – eating, sleeping, going for a walk, etc. – inside the wound." -- from Jesus Is Female: The Moravian Challenge in the German Communities of British North America, Aaron Fogleman

"Deep Inside! Deep inside! Deep inside the little side!"

badges

2008-07-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

Pilgrim Badges in a Medieval Book of Hours

"But perhaps the commonest medieval amulet of all was the pilgrim badge, made of tin-lead alloy, or poor-quality pewter. These badges were sacralized by being touched to a relic or shrine of the saint commemorated [...] Pilgrim badges might be obtained specifically to fulfill their role as amulets. Th French King Charles V, whose health was always delicate, obtained three enseignes 'for the disease of the kidneys,' as recorded in 1379-80. Sometimes they were used not just on the individual's body but to protect other people, places, or animals."
-- from Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1550, Jean Ann Givens

Pilgrim's Badge Depicting the Shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, 1350–1400

"Although pilgrim badges might look insignificant in comparison to other works of art, they are a valuable source of information for medieval iconograhy, because as these miniature images were produced, purchased, and dispersed in substantial numbers, they actively participated in the spread of visual language."
-- from "Medival Pilgrim Badges and Their Iconographic Aspects", Marike de Kroon

Erotic Pilgrim Badge

"The importance of these badge finds can scarcely be exaggerated; in addition to Bedaux, other scholar have also concluded that the profane badges, no matter what their imagery, were devices intended to avert bad luck, and by corollary, bring good luck. Those designed with sexual imagery represent a remarkably high percentage in the assemblage of profane secular badges. Dating mostly from the late 14th into the fifteenth centuries, they often contain images of, or are designed as, male or female sexual organs, or as combinations of male and female; sometimes they are devised as copulation scenes, and there are related variations. [...]If any doubt lingers about the apotropaic significance of sexual symbols, I point to some medieval amulets, dated in the fifteenth century, which eminently demonstrate what powerful protection most people believed-- at least in the fifteenth century-- sexual symbols to possess [...] They clearly declare the principle that the more talismans you ave, the more protect you will have; and they also manifest a significant cohabitation of apotropaic Christian and non-Christian motifs."
-- from Averting Demons: The Protecting Power of Medieval Visual Motifs and Themes, Ruth Mellinkoff

Contemporary Pilgrim Badges, My Collection

ladies

2008-03-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

saturn

2008-03-16T18:21:00.000-07:00

sounds of saturn, here.

"Saturday, which is Saturn's day, the oldest of the gods, claims for its distinctive talisman the most splendid of all gems, or the queen of precious stones, the lustre-darting diamond."
--from Finger-ring Lore: Historical, Legendary, Anecdotal, William Jones, 1877

"The first Diamond necklace made in Europe was given by Charles of France to Agnes Sorel, and was called a 'carcanet,'—(an iron collar),—because the sharp edges of the gem hurt the neck of the favourite. "
--Precious Stones, for Curative Wear and Other Remedial Uses, William Thomas Fernie, 1907

a hexagon on saturn ? article here

jesus as image

2008-02-15T14:53:00.000-08:00

In early Christian art Jesus was represented emblematically: he appeared as a fish or anchor carved on stone walls of the catacombs. He was rarely represented with the cross; for his early followers, the cross represented the death of a common criminal.

Even more abstract were the inscriptions of chi-rho (PX), the monogram formed from the transliteration of his greek title, Khristos. This monogram appeared on funerary slabs, simple gold rings, and even on the coin of Constantine in the fourth century. Lesser used were verbal images from the bible, including the metaphors of Christ as the vine and Christ as the Good Shepherd.

*

The first surviving relief showing the crucifixion appeared in the fifth century. His image is flat, expressionless: nothing like the gory images that came to dominate the late medieval period. By the thirteenth century, Jesus was depicted with all the trappings of morality— blood leaked from the wound in his side, tears streamed down his face.

He had become embodied, and in turn, devotion to his pain became a staple of Christian imagination. The devotion to the wounds of Christ flourished: a cross would often feature five carbuncles representing his five wounds.

*

Rings, too, bore inscriptions that sought healing from the wounds of Christ. Particular attention was paid to the wound in Christ’s side: pierced by the lance of a roman soldier, it pronounced him dead, and was considered the door to his heart. The instruments of the passion narrative— including the crown of thorns, the lance, the nails, and the bloodied scourge— became hieroglyphic reminders.

*

His wounds— particularly the wound in his side— became flattened, turned into emblems: a red one-dimensional lozenge (diamond) shape formed part of the “divine heraldry.” The wounds and instruments were often formed to make up a coat of arms of Jesus.
The wounds were sites of devotion, literal openings for the believer to "enter" Christ.

read: Sacred and Legendary Art, Anna Jameson
Christ Lore Fredrk Hackwood
Corpus Christi: the Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture Miri Rubin
The Image of Christ Gabriele Finaldi

lord of the rings, part 1

2008-02-10T15:42:00.000-08:00

So Pharaoh said to Joseph: "Since God has made all this known to you, no one can be as wise and discerning as you are. You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people shall dart at your command. Only in respect to the throne shall I outrank you.
Herewith," Pharaoh told Joseph, "I place you in charge of the whole land of Egypt."
With that, Pharaoh took off his signet ring and put it on Joseph's finger. He had him dressed in robes of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck. He then had him ride in the chariot of his vizier, and they shouted "Abrek!" before him. Thus was Joseph installed over the whole land of Egypt.
from The New American Bible, Genesis 41

The use of signet-rings as symbols of great respect and authority is mentioned in several parts of the Holy Scriptures, from which it would seem that they were then common among persons of rank. They were sometimes wholly of metal, but frequently the inscription was borne on a stone, set in gold or silver. The impression from the signet-ring of a monarch gave the force of a royal decree to any instrument to which it was attached. Hence the delivery or transfer of it gave the power of using the royal name, and created the highest office in the State.
from William Jones' Finger-ring Lore, 1877

And, coupled with mythology, we have, according to the ancients, the origin of the ring. Jupiter, from revenge, caused Strength, Force and Vulcan to chain his cousin-german Prometheus to the frosty Caucasus, where a vulture, all the livelong day, banqueted his fill on the black viands of his hot liver. [...] but as Jupiter had sworn to keep Prometheus bound for the space of time mentioned, he, in order not to violate his oath, commanded that Prometheus should always wear upon his finger an iron ring, to or in which should be fastened a small fragment of Caucasus, so that it might be true, in a certain sense, that Prometheus still continued bound to that rock. Thus, as we have said, came the idea of the first ring, and, we may add, the insertion of a stone.
from Charles Edwards' The History and Poetry of Finger-rings, 1855

Pliny believed that the use of rings had not existed even in Greece at the time of the Trojan war, and he tells us that the first date in Roman history at which ho could trace any general use of them was in A.u.c. 449, in the time of Cneius Flavius, the son of Annius. Yet, as he adds, after this date they must have come into use very rapidly, for, in the second Punic war, they were so abundant that Hannibal was able to send from Italy to Carthage three modii of thorn. The next advance in luxury was the practice of inserting or setting a precious stone in the gold of the ring, and it was not till a still later period that the use of signet rings was adopted, which implied the engraving of a device, of some kind or other, on the stone of the ring.
from The Intellectual Observer, Review of Natural History, 1867

jasper & feathering

2008-01-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

I John saw. I testify
to rainbow feathers, to the span of heaven

and walls of colour,
the colonnades of jasper [...]
--from Trilogy, H.D. 1944

And the building of the wall of it was of pure jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.
--from The Bible, Revelations Chapter XII, "The heavenly Jerusalem, with a full description thereof."

A popular etymology of the Greek and Latin name for jasper is reported by Bartolomaus Anglicus, who writes that "in the head of an adder [snake] that hyght Aspis is founde a lytyl stone that is called Jaspis."
--from The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, George Frederick Kunz 1913

Adder, an example of specialization in meaning, no longer refers to just any serpent or snake, as it once did, but now denotes only specific kinds of snakes. Adder also illustrates a process known as false splitting, or juncture loss: the word came from Old English nǣdre and kept its n into the Middle English period, but later during that stage of the language people started analyzing the phrase a naddre as an addre—the false splitting that has given us adder.
--American Heritage Dictionary

Quetzalcoatl: plumed serpent god of the Toltecs and Aztecs, 1578, from Nahuatl quetzalli "tailfeather" + coatl "snake."

read: "Strange Rumblings at the Center of Our Galaxy"

oceaning

2008-01-08T18:58:00.000-08:00

sea lace.

mayan canal.

Don'ts for Girls

2007-12-04T14:32:00.000-08:00

from Don'ts for Girls: A Manual of Mistakes by Minna Thomas Antrim, 1902

the regent, or How To Hide A Diamond

2007-11-27T19:47:00.000-08:00

In 1698, a slave found the 410 carat (82 g) uncut diamond in a Golkonda mine in India and concealed it inside of a large wound in his leg.

gems: a symbolic inquiry

2007-10-28T15:36:00.000-07:00

We could in some way judge the height of her place and the greatness of its glory if we could remember the precious stones and the virtues of the gems - indeed if we could even remember their names - she so wondrously described which the Lord has named when He showed them to her.
--from The Life of Marie D'Oignies (1177-1213) by Jaques Vitry

image, above: saturn swallowing the stone substituted for jupiter

At last Rhea, his wife, in order to save Jupiter, her sixth child substituted for him a rock enveloped in swaddling clothes--which Saturn, ignorant of the deception practiced upon him, immediately swallowed. Jupiter was concealed on the island of Crete until he attained manhood, when he forced his father to disgorge the five children he had eaten. The stone swallowed by Saturn in lieu of his youngest son was placed by Jupiter at Delphi, where it was held in great veneration and was daily anointed.
--from The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928), Manly P. Hall

image, above: the pythagorean signet ring

The number five was peculiarly associated by the Pythagoreans with the art of healing, and the pentagram, or five-pointed star, was to them the symbol of health. The above figure represents a magical ring set with a talismanic gem bearing the pentalpha, or star formed by five different positions of the Greek Alpha. On this subject Mackey writes: "The disciples of Pythagoras, who were indeed its real inventors, placed within each of its interior angles one of the letters of the Greek word ΥΓΕΙΑ, or the Latin one SALUS, both of which signify health; and thus it was made the talisman of health. They placed it at the beginning of their epistles as a greeting to invoke a secure health to their correspondent. But its use was not confined to the disciples of Pythagoras. As a talisman, it was employed all over the East as a charm to resist evil spirits.
--from The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928), Manly P. Hall

image, above: the 5 wounds of christ

At first, the Cross was a sign only. When formed of gold or silver, the five wounds of Christ were signified by a ruby or carbuncle at each extremity, and one in the centre. It was not till the sixth century that the Cross became a CRUCIFIX, no longer an emblem, but an image.
--"Sacred and Legendary Art" (1848), Anna Jameson

pillow of labradorite

2007-10-09T14:13:00.000-07:00

Best Field Indicators are occurence, twinning striations and labradorescence.

The Spaniards found amongst the ornaments of the Indians, dwelling upon the shores of the Amazon, grotesque figures formed of this mineral, supposed to have been exhumed from the tombs of the old Peruvians. It is now found principally on the norther coast of Labrador, and was priginally sent home by the Moravian missionaries.
-- Edwin William Streeter, Precious Stones and Gems: Their History, Sources and Characteristics, 1898

In the Writers' Apartments with their labradorite entrances it is like doomsday,
The floor where they put you depends on your standing.
--Dorothy Hewett

Gem-quality labradorite is known as spectrolite, while a colorless variety, darkened with needlelike inclusions, is often called black moonstone. Spectrolite is a dark, opalescent blue with shimmer when the light hits it. It was discovered in Finland during World War II. Another name for this stone is falcon's eye.
--D.J. Conway, Crystal Enchantments

if a girl was a geode

2007-10-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

All geodes dry and certain ones are astringent. A geode will purge matter which may cover the eyes and when mixed with water and used as a salve it reduces inflammation of the breast and testes.
--De Natura Fossilium (Textbook of Mineralogy), circa 1546

His voice, a clarinet; his eyes, blue geodes; the tilt of his head; the hair tumbling down his brow; his dazzled expression; his small translucent teeth; his pointed tongue; his straight back; the vein running down his inner thigh; the ankle and the arch. He is already breaking into parts.
--Robert Gluck, from Margery Kempe

Even the iron that pierced the flesh of trees had a voice. It was deep, metallic, and sank heavily in the human dreams. At night, the iron spoke most eloquently, recognizing the kinship of darkness in sky and earth. The nails sang of geodes in the heart and the gathering of elemental forces only vaguely understood. When the iron sang, humans slept, troubled, their hands remembering the first iron. The spear, the knife, the sharp edge of death.
--Anita Endrezze, from "Ponies Gathering in the Dark"

But the impervious geode
Was entered and its inner crust
Of crystals with a ray cathode
At every point and facet glowed
In answer to the mental thrust.

Eyes seeking the response of eyes
Bring out the stars, bring out the flowers,
Thus concentrating earth and skies
So none need be afraid of size.
All revelation has been ours.
--Robert Frost, from "All Revelation"

today, the sky smoky as the quartz

2007-10-01T17:11:00.000-07:00

Soon, amid the clothing and the smoke on the sunken table, like a shuffled deck of cards, there appears the human soul: quartz and sleepless nights, tears in the ocean like pools of cold. [....]
[...] dew has for a thousand years been leaving its transparent calling-card on the branch that awaits it: O heart, O shattered
brow among the pitted expanses of autumn.
--Pablo Neruda, from "The Heights of Macchu Picchu"

marble

2007-09-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

Keep a marble for yourself and keep marble for marble. Keep a marble self for a marble self.
--H.D., from HERmione

Vitality is Carved and cool.
My nerve in Marble lies --
A Breathing Woman
Yesterday -- Endowed with Paradise.
--Emily Dickinson, from poem #1046

In folklore, marble is associated with the astrological sign of Gemini. Pure white marble is an emblem of purity. It is also an emblem of immortality, and an insurer of success in education.

things of marble: statue, column, gravestone, game, town, heart, sanity.

her flesh-- folding-- under his hands.

ruby

2007-09-21T18:50:00.000-07:00

Being red is the color of a white sun where it lingers
on an arm. Color of time lost in sparks, of space lost
inside dance. Red of walks by the railroad in the flush
of youth, while our steps released the squeaks
of shoots reaching for the light. Scarlet of sin, crimson
of fresh blood, ruby and garnet of the jewel bed,
early sunshine, vestiges of the late sun as it turns
green and disappears. Be calm. Do not give in
to the rabid red throat of age. In a red world, imprint
the valentine and blush of romance for the dark.
It has come. You will not be this quick-to-redden
forever. You will be green again, again and again.
--Marvin Bell, "Mars Being Red"

The ruby preserved its owner's house or vineyard from lightning, tempest, and worms if the former were touched by it. It was also a disinfectant and preventive of infectious diseases. Bruised in water it relieved weakness of the eyes, and cured liver complaints.
--Marbodus, writing in the latter part of the 11th century

amber

2007-09-18T00:46:00.000-07:00

Their tears continue flowing, and sun-hardened,
fall from the trees; borne onward by the Po,
they will one day adorn the brides of Rome.
[And so, in myth, mourning becomes electrum;
the sister's tears are, now and forever, amber.]

--from Metamorphoses, Ovid

diamond

2007-09-16T22:21:00.000-07:00

Margery and John entered the hall at Lambeth Palace in the afternoon. The walls were painted in blue and gold diamonds and a sideboard stood at the back. Clerks and yeoman swore oaths that tortured Jesus' golden flesh. Margery took sins against language personally.
"Do you know how God was made?" A squire pumped his finger into his fist. "Fucking and shitting!"
Margery said, "You will go straight to hell!"

-- From Margery Kempe, Robert Gluck

adamas

2007-09-13T23:01:00.000-07:00

"Words function as signs here as they do everywhere else: everywhere they can be said to point to something." --The Phenomenological Theory of Meaning and of Meaning Apprehension, Edmund Husserl

"A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing." --Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein

moonstone

2007-09-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

the night of the lunar eclipse, august 28th, 2007.

...

Your heart manholed
for the installation of feeling.

Your motherland’s parts
prefabricated.

Your milk-sister
a shovel.

--Paul Celan, "Your heart manholed"

Moonstone was very popular with the Romans, who thought it was formed out of moonlight, also used in Roman jewelry since 100 AD.

of conch & sand

2007-08-22T18:46:00.000-07:00

august at the atlantic, amaranthine hues of grey. read & wrote on blistered feet, soft-serve ice cream, gull's clatter.

...

There was a stare (yes, was) right here (hope it finds me). Right where the moon blared down its tinny gap. Prevalent predator. Originating—where? Smoke and opal, compressed to a null. Hey orb, what lives in that shell heath, shriek shack? Hey bleach-blink, sheen-gaze, pearl-pith—root of worlds. Splinter in the void’s eye, orphan. Got a plan. Got a sea-stitch here in my pocket, like to drop. Limned lozenge. William Tell’s pale apple on sable skull. Straggler. Magician’s vague lady, hacked in twain. Punk’s smooth shiv slid decisive, between the sky’s ribs. Waverer, rumor, rock-pit. Pawn, gaud. Vacancy’s ambassador, other—we are here.
-- "There was a stare," Karen Volkman