#✯⭒* ⭑┊Implacable wisdom. (Queen)

[caointeag]

what  chess piece  represents  you ?

𝕭𝖑𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝕭𝖎𝖘𝖍𝖔𝖕

You are a Black Bishop. 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒃𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝒊𝒏, 𝒃𝒆 𝒊𝒕 𝒂𝒏 𝒐𝒂𝒕𝒉, 𝒂 𝒑𝒉𝒓𝒂𝒔𝒆, 𝒂 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒆. It's what keeps the bishop on the diagonal path it takes on the board. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒏𝒇𝒆𝒄𝒕 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒊𝒕. You can easily turn others to your own opinion, making them listen to you and eager to hear what you have to say next. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒃𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒇𝒖𝒍 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓, 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒊𝒓𝒐𝒏 𝒇𝒊𝒔𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓. 𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒖𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒔𝒍𝒊𝒑 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒖𝒆.

tagged by : @azmenka tagging : @g0ldenstreak @crgnstrk @wornkindness

[aethersea]

📓!

There’s an atla au of star wars that I have tried so hard to bend into a shape that I can actually write, but alas, all I have are ideas. This is the one that’s in the wips folder as Everything Changed when the Clones Attacked, which is ironic bc I cannot for the life of me figure out what to do with the clones. Maybe they’re being brainwashed at Lake Laogai? Or something???

Anyway. The story has two parts, prequels and sequels. Details under the cut, because this got a bit long.

In the prequels, the elderly Master Yoda of the airbenders is Avatar, and in his old age he’s stopped traveling the world and instead dispenses his wisdom from one of the great Air Nomad temples, nestled deep in the mountains where only Air Nomads can reach. He’s unofficial leader of the council of Air Nomad elders, which is….not great, really, not how things should be, but it’s mostly been okay. He’s been a good avatar overall, and it’s only in later years that he’s leaned so heavily toward the Air Nomads, and really none of this is enough to push the four peoples truly out of balance. 

Our story starts with Qui-gon Jinn, an airbending master traveling with his apprentice, helping a besieged queen from a minor Earth Kingdom escape her city. (I saw a post once asserting that the Earth Kingdom is actually a collection of largely autonomous kingdoms that all loosely recognize the authority of the Earth King in Ba Sing Se, and I like that a lot, so that’s the worldbuilding I’m going with here.) Qui-gon agrees to take Queen Amidala to the Avatar’s council to beg their aid. 

Along the way, they encounter a young boy living with his mother. The boy can do a bit of earthbending—and also a bit of waterbending, and a bit of airbending, and a bit of firebending. Which is impossible, because Avatar Yoda isn’t dead, but there he is, bending all the elements anyway.

I don’t think there’s slavery in the atla universe, but we could probably get away with indentured servitude of some kind, and Qui-gon acquires Ani in much the same way as he does in canon. He takes him to Avatar Yoda—and Yoda rejects him. Says, essentially, “This is weird as hell but it’s also not my problem.” (Frankly I can’t come up with an actual good reason for Yoda to do that, but just go with me here.) So Qui-gon angrily responds that if the Avatar won’t take responsibility, he will, and then gets himself enmeshed in Amidala’s political problems to boot. 

And then he dies.

Something something evil emperor, yadda yadda you know the drill. (Though I think the empire isn’t going to be the Fire Nation, despite the thematic appropriateness of fire spreading unchecked to consume all in its path. Palpatine is gonna usurp the Earth King, I think, and I do feel the prequels’ themes around entrenched systems with deep flaws, which are too big to fight as individuals and too implacable to change, will fit well with atla themes around earth.)

The sequels portion of things is even less plotted out. All I know is that Luke grows up in the same nameless patch of Earth territory his father grew up in, and he doesn’t actually discover he can waterbend until he’s practically an adult. It’s a shock to everyone—except, somehow, weird Old Ben who lives in the desert, who tells him that the next Avatar is supposed to be a waterbender, and won’t explain why he’s so convinced Luke is that Avatar given that he’s pretty emphatically not from the Water Tribes. 

Luke is finally convinced when he manages to airbend, under Old Ben’s suspiciously skilled tutelage. He can’t pull off any other elements, though, so they go off on a road trip to that swamp where you see spirits, to try to reach the past Avatars and get some guidance.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to both of them, Leia has grown up knowing she can firebend. This is kind of an alarming skill for the princess of an Earth Kingdom to have, and even more alarming given that she’s already an earthbender. So she’s kept it secret, and no one but her parents has ever known.

They can meet in some way analogous to the Death Star raid in A New Hope, idk I have zero plot in mind here. The point, as far as I’m concerned, is that the Skywalkers have fundamentally broken the Avatar cycle. Anakin shouldn’t exist, and yet he does, and he was born while Yoda was still alive. If he hadn’t existed, the next Avatar would be a waterbender, and that’s Luke—except he’s from the Earth Kingdom. If Anakin is a true Avatar, then the next one would be an earthbender, and that’s Leia���only then she shouldn’t have been born until after Anakin’s death. Nothing makes sense! Even Yoda and all the other past Avatars together have no goddamn clue what is going on!

Imagine their consternation when they discover that neither Luke nor Leia is the Avatar: it’s actually both of them together. Luke has air and water, Leia has earth and fire; Luke can visit the spirit world and be the bridge between humans and spirits, and Leia can speak to kings and maintain the balance between the four nations. The two of them, together, can defeat their father, defeat the emperor, and restore harmony to the world.

[i-only-write-in-purple-ink]

Day 2: Crown (12 Days of Writers Self Love)

I couldn’t decide which of two ideas I wanted to do more, so I did them both! Apologies if this got a little long. I really did enjoy writing these, this challenge is turning out wonderfully! Many thanks to @writeblrfantasy for creating it!

1. Hermitcraft Season 8, White Wings AU (main story here) 2. Hermitcraft Season 9, Third Life SMP

1. HC Season 8, White Wings AU

Tommy had seen many crowns in his lifetime.

The gem-encrusted crown of the SMP, first worn by Eret, and then George.

Ranboo’s humble diadem, studded with rough-cut rubies and emeralds mined by hand from the depths of the earth.

The golden spikes adorning the top of Sam’s Warden armor, fused to the mask he had worn more and more often.

Techno’s simple golden circlet, twin to Phil’s silver one, relics of an empire long past.

But he had never worn one of his own before now.

False measured out a length of copper wire before presenting it to Tommy with a wink. “It’s easier if you start with this.”

Gem taught him how to weave stalks of grass together, how to twist and braid the fragile stems around the wire until they formed something resilient, stronger. Something complete.

Stress regaled him with the meanings of different flowers, what made them grow the best, which ones were good for tea or scents or dyes. Under her careful eye he worked Queen Anne’s lace, lavender, daffodils, and yellow orchids into the strands of his masterpiece.

Iskall chuckled as he swept a lock of Tommy’s ivory hair away from his eyes. “Ready?” He asked, his organic eye twinkling with warmth as it darted around Tommy’s face. Tommy nodded, expression implacable, and Iskall placed the completed flower crown gracefully among his curls. The Swede examined his handiwork for a moment, tucking hair or flowers into place, before nodding in satisfaction.

Iskall picked up his own creation from the ground beside him, sporting purple asters and orange orchids, and crowned himself with a flourish. Tommy tilted his head, judging through squinted eyes. After a few seconds a small smile rose to his face, and he nodded in approval. It's good. I like it, he signed.

A small noise made them both turn to where Xisuma was seated on the soft grass, his crown of blue bellflowers and pink dahlias resting crookedly on top of his helmet. He was struggling to right it, but the mechanical axolotl gills on either side of his visor made it so that the woven headress kept slipping. “I guess I’m just not made for crowns,” he said good-naturedly when he noticed them looking, giving up the fight and leaving the flowers slightly off-kilter.

Perfect, Tommy signed to him, and the admin let out a surprised laugh. “Perfect? I suppose it does suit me. I’m a bit of derp even on the best of days.”

Tommy leaned back, and let the sun hit his face. Laughter danced in the wind as the Hermits delighted in the carefree summer day. He had never felt so far and yet so close to home.

-----

// Yes, I know these flowers wouldn’t all exist in the same climate as each other. But honestly this is Minecraft fanfiction so lower your expectations and let me have my dramatic flower symbolism :’D 

// I really like that trope in fiction, I wish people did more of it. And can you tell I’m a sucker for found family? Lol

// Not me giving my headcanons for the DSMP crowns and forgetting all about the MCC champion team crowns. 💀 MCC is only sort of canon to this universe.... we can chalk it up to ww!Tommy never participating in MCC before, that’s only for the really famous competitive types like Technoblade and Grian. Yep. Definitely no plotholes here.

// Flower Meanings  vvv

Tommy:

Queen Anne’s lace (safety, sanctuary, and refuge)

Lavender (purity, silence, serenity)

Daffodils (rebirth, new beginnings)

Yellow Orchids (new beginnings, friendship, joy)

Iskall:

Asters (love, wisdom, trust)

Orange Orchids (pride, enthusiasm, boldness)

Xisuma:

Bellflowers (affection, constancy, unwavering love)

Pink Dahlias (elegance, grace, kindness)

2. HC Season 9, 3rd Life SMP

Kingmaker. That’s what they called him.

Ren rolled the chess piece between his fingers, relishing the weight of the solid obsidian. It made a satisfying clack as he placed it back in its spot on the board. The black queen.

If he was the king, the ruler over the entire Hermitcraft server, then Bdubs would be his queen. He certainly wielded enough power; it was through Bdubs’ support alone that Ren won the crown. Bdubs was the one who built the Crastle for him, who was his advisor, defender, friend. His second-in-command, his right… hand….

Ren frowned, unease rising in his gut, a sudden chill burning the tips of his fingers. He curled his hands into fists on reflex. Something wasn’t right.

He rose from his throne with a growl and swept down the stairs from the royal dais, his cape billowing out behind him. His paws made no noise on the plush carpet running down the center of the throne room, keeping away the chill of solid stone.

“Sir BdoubleO? Your king summons you!” Ren called, his voice echoing through the empty stone halls. He waited a few moments, but only silence answered.

“Bdubs? Where are youuuuu….” His words bounced eerily off of the cavernous ceilings, echoing back as if mocking him. He hesitantly ventured down a hallway, turned, and was faced with an identical hallway. He followed it, but that only yielded another similar looking passageway. The next was almost exactly the same. And the next. Ren frowned. He hadn’t remembered there being quite this many corridors in his Crastle.

He followed more turns, traversed more corridors, calls going unheard and unanswered, until he realized he was well and truly lost. Ren stopped at a four-way intersection, glancing down each hall. They all felt familiar, but was that because they looked the same or because he truly recognized them?

Ren pulled his cloak tighter around himself, shivering. And when had it gotten so cold? He needed to tell Bdubs to install some sort of heating system in the castle, like magma blocks behind the walls or something. These were not livable temperatures, certainly not for a king.

Ren’s breath had begun to fog the air by the time he reached something that certainly didn’t belong: a set of arched glass doors, metalwork spiraling intricately across their frosted surface. The metal handles were bitterly cold, but they turned without protest as he pushed the double doors open.

Beyond lay a courtyard, dead branches hanging like corpses over flowerbeds full of dried leaves. A few inches of snow was dusted over everything in sight, drifting heavily in the corners and on the trees. Ren’s trepidation spiked. It was supposed to be summer on the Hermitcraft server, after all. And the Crastle didn’t have an interior garden.

He stepped out into the courtyard, bracing himself against the freezing gusts of air. His royal cape was woefully equipped to protect him from the full wrath of a winter’s wind. The harsh blasts died down into a biting breeze as he neared the center of the courtyard, snow crunching beneath his paws. Ren scarcely minded the cold as he stared wide-eyed at the centerpiece of this unnatural display.

A large stone altar rose from the ground, more of an elevated platform than anything else. Ren ascended its steps, captivated by the rough, indecipherable runes hewn deep into the surface. Lines had been cut straight across the top slab, radiating out from a shallow, bowl-like indentation at the middle. Blood channels, Ren realized with a growing horror. Blood channels that had clearly already been used.

A sudden growl had him tensing, ears lying flat and lips pulled back into a snarl. The sound seemed to emenate from every corner of the courtyard at once, circling as one would stalk prey. It was more than a threat. This was the hunting call of a predator.

Ren scanned the courtyard wildly, but there was nothing to see except a slate-gray sky bordered by gargoylic crenelations and the first few flurries of snowfall. The rumbling grew louder and louder, until the very air trembled before it. Oh, little wolf, the voice purred, smugly satisfied and impossibly deep.

“Who are you?” Ren shouted at the sky, hating the way his voice had gone high-pitched with fear.

The voice merely chuckled, the sinister whisper of a blade pulled from its sheath. Winter is coming, it intoned. And the crown weighs heavy.

Ren spun in place, breaths coming sharp and cold biting at his lungs. The voice was crushing him from all sides, pushing him down to his hands and knees on the cold, stone altar.

Do ye have what it takes to be KING, Rendog?

And Ren woke in his royal bedchambers, gasping for air and sheets soaked in sweat. His hands didn’t stop shaking for the rest of the day.

-----

// I am just now getting into the 3rd life fandom (yes, a year late) and holy cow I love the Red King so much!! Big kudos to dog at the door by fluffy_papaya and iamsolarflare for getting me hooked on Ren’s lore, it’s one of my favorite fics ever. 

// For the voice, have you heard the voice of the Old God N’Zoth from the Warbringers short? Yeah, that but with a hint of Scottish accent. Very dark and powerful-sounding.

Deal? I like deals.... *eldritch laughter*

- N’Zoth the Corruptor

[babelziggurat]

ANGEL HEART AND THE FALL OF LANGUAGE

The frames above correspond to one of the deleted, never-seen scenes in Alan Parker movie “Angel Heart” —1987, based on William Hjortsberg’s Mephistophelean novel “Falling Angel”—, in which the private detective Harry Angel, hired to track the whereabouts of a man called Johnny Favorite, writes one word in blood on the wall of the apartment of the old blues guitarist and Vodou devotee Toots Sweet, after killing him with a barber’s razor by cutting his genitalia off and sticking them into his mouth.

One word: TELOCA.

What the hell is “TELOCA”?

Initially, the word does not make sense in any recognized language and, after a deep search on the net, no one seems to have interpreted it in connection with the movie.

A first attempt is to take it as an anagram, as Rosemary did with Hutch’s message in Polanski’s classic Satanic film “Rosemary’s Baby” (when she rearranged the letters discovering, with terror, that they composed the phrase “all-of-them-witches”).

Thus interpreted, “TELOCA” gives us “ALECTO”. In Greek mythology, Alecto (Ἀληκτώ: “the implacable or unceasing anger”) is one of the Erinyes, or Furies, Tisiphone’s sister (the avenger of murder). According to Hesiod, Alecto was the daughter of Gaea fertilized by the blood spilled from Uranus when Cronus castrated him.

In spite of its mysterious echoes the meaning is however unsatisfactory: the right key, but the wrong keyhole.

The track seems to be in an ancient biblical book which is not part of the biblical canon as used by Christians or Jews, apart from Beta Israel: the strange Book of Enoch, which has driven so many people insane.

Ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, actually modern scholars estimate the older sections to date from about 300 BC.

According to some Jewish traditions, there was once an ancient language in the time before the days of the construction of the Tower of Babel: the language of lost Paradise. It was created by God to communicate with angels, and it was also spoken by the angels of the Apocalypse and the end of times as well as by Satan and his demons, for all of them were once angels, too.

In his classic novel “City of Glass” —the most perfect picture [Vorstellung] ever written of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—, the private detective created by Paul Auster writes in his report these words about the man he’s chasing:

“This fellow, Dark, based his conclusions on a reading of the Tower of Babel story as a prophetic work. Drawing heavily on Milton’s interpretation of the fall in “Paradise Lost”, he followed his master in placing an inordinate importance on the role of language. But he took the poet’s ideas one step further. If the fall of man also entailed a fall of language, was it not logical to assume that it would be possible to undo the fall, to reverse its effects by undoing the fall of language, by striving to recreate the language that was spoken in Eden? If man could learn to speak this original language of innocence, did it not follow that he would thereby recover a state of innocence within himself?

“We had only to look at the example of Christ, Dark argued, to understand that this was so. For was Christ not a man, a creature of flesh and blood? And did not Christ speak this prelapsarian language?

“In Milton’s Paradise Regained, Satan speaks with “double-sense deluding,” whereas Christ’s “actions to his words accord, his words / To his large heart give utterance due, his heart / Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.”

"And, because of Christ, did the fall not have a happy outcome, was it not a felix culpa, as doctrine instructs?

"Therefore, Dark contended, it would indeed be possible for man to speak the original language of innocence and to recover, whole and unbroken, the truth within himself.” (…)

In 1581 this kind of original language or “language of lost innocence” prior to the destruction of the Tower of Babel —the second Fall of Man—, which by association with the Book of Enoch came to be called Enochian, was glossed, through visions and strange ceremonies, by John Dee, an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, and by his friend Edward Kelly, an alchemist with a sinister reputation who lived in Prague during the Renaissance whom King Rodolfo arrested and imprisoned in the Křivoklát Castle.

Nowadays it is supposed that Enochian is used by some Satanists and practitioners of black magic, although Anton LaVey did not include it in his Satanic Bible and discourages its use.

The name Edward Kelly was, not by chance, the nom de plume of the magician Aleister Crowley, "the Beast 666" —and "the wickedest man in the world"—, and amazingly it is also the name used by one of the most ominous characters in “Angel Heart”: the millionaire father of Margaret Krusemark, Ethan Krusemark, who introduces his own daughter into black magic and voodoo, organizing afterwards the ceremony in which Johnny Favorite murders a young soldier with an ancient Babylonian dagger, eating his heart. Eventually, the old Krusemark shall be thrown alive by Angel himself into a gigantic pot of boiling broth à la Cajun.

So have you finally found the Yellow Sign, Sam Spade?

When searching for the word “TELOCA” in Enochian, according to (allegedly) John Dee and Edward Kelly’s writings, we find out:

TELOC = Death

TELOCA = Damned

TELOCAHE = Damnation

TELOC VOVIM = Of Him who has fallen

Below, three frames of “Angel’s Heart” deleted scenes.

1. Death scene of Herman Winesap (“Don’t worry, Johnny, no one will mourn one less lawyer in the world.”)

2. Harry’s journalist girlfriend is burned alive in some house

3. Unknown deleted scene in which body of Epiphany Proudfoot is shown burning

“How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise.” —Oedipus Rex, Sophocles • via Bibliothèque Infernale on FB

[fantasticstoryteller]

Kingdoms ch.1

The army quickly overran the small castle. The moat, which had been created to repel intruders, was quickly forded. The walls, built high and smooth as possible, were quickly scaled due to the superior numbers of the oncoming horde. They built ramps out of their own bodies to reach the top of the walls. Soon enough, the ones that made it inside reached the drawbridge and cut the ropes holding it up.

Less than an hour afterwards all of the inhabitants of the castle had either been killed or rounded up. Those that weren’t dead were taken to the courtyard and bound roughly with rope. The leader of the army smiled as he strut in front of his prisoners. The moonlight over the castle bleached all color from the scene, but the leader knew who he was looking for.

Spotting his target a hand darted down and hauled the bound man up. “And there you are,” purred the leader of the army. “Are you ready to submit?”

Long hair, glowing gold even in the moonlight, framed the angular face. “We will never submit to you,” his captive said.

“Oh, never is a long time,” the army leader said. “All right,” he ordered his men, “throw the rest of these into whatever excuse for a dungeon this castle has.” He shook the one he was holding. “This one is going to need—a more personal treatment,” he said.

The reigning monarch, the Queen of the Arachnid kingdom, surveyed her court. Many of the couriers were arguing about the best action to take over the heinous actions of the Golden kingdom. They were pretty evenly split down the middle on whether they believed it was better to attack the Golden kingdom to reclaim Death’s Lands, or to wait and see what happened. There was only one opinion she wanted to hear.

Her emerald eyes scanned the court until they fell upon one of the priests. The priests, who were ostensibly not taking sides. As representatives of the Goddess, they were neutral to all courtly debates. As fellow humans, they had their own opinions.

Queen Mary banged her scepter against the ground, the hard bronze striking sharply against the stone. “I have heard all positions,” she said with a calmness that she did not feel. “And I will make a decision. High Priest Parker!” she called. The court stilled as she rose from her throne, the wispy linen hanging off her tall, lean frame. “I desire the consultation of the Goddess,” she said as she stepped away from the throne (a large bronze affair depicted with all the different spiders of the kingdom) and towards the group. She led the priest, who obediently followed in his dark linen robes, to the gardens.

None of the court—not courier, priest, or servant—dared to enter the garden while the Queen was in there. For a moment the two simply strode through the tall, ridged trees. The light purple blossoms scented the air. “Has the Goddess granted you with advice?” she asked.

High Priest Parker, Peter, the child she’d grown up with, bowed slightly to her. “No, Majesty,” he said simply. “The Goddess has granted me no wisdom for this occasion.”

It was nothing more than she’d expected. Wisdom from the Goddess usually came in the form of warnings for natural disasters, not advice on how to help a country whose prince had been captured by another nation. A brutal nation. The Ajax were not known for their gentle treatment of prisoners.

“And you? Peter?” she asked transforming them from Queen and High Priest to Peter and MJ, old childhood friends.

The carved bronze staff Peter held creaked in his grip as he stared out, unseeing, at the garden. “I want to save him,” he said quietly.

“Good,” said Queen Mary, with a firm nod. She put a hand on his shoulders. “You will take my army, you will save him, and you will make sure those bastards know what will happen to anyone who dares to threaten our allies.”

Dark brown eyes met emerald green ones. “With pleasure,” he said firmly.

That night he knelt in the temple, in front of the alter of the Goddess. He felt the change in the air behind him as the Goddess blessed the world with Her presence. “You have asked for no blessing, my priest,” she said, her voice that of an old, careworn woman.

“I deserve none,” Peter responded without hesitation. “Ajax is a country defined by its soldiers.” He opened his eyes and stared at the statue, not seeing the carved marble. “They are a horde, eating into their neighbors. If I was a true councilor I would council caution. I would council for us to sit and wait as we build our own reserves of military forces. And I would council this because Ajax will not be satisfied with what it has gained from its neighbors—and if they keep up, they will soon be neighbors with us and it will take all we have to keep our people safe from them.”

“Tell me my priest,” said the Goddess, “why have you not counseled your queen so, when this is what you believe?”

Peter remembered Wade. The two of them had only met a few times before, but a bond had sprung up between them. The cheerful, loud, crude person had become someone Peter cared for. Someone he loved. “I have to save him,” Peter said. He knew it was the wrong thing, that this was the wrong time to attack the golden kingdom—but it was true. He was willing to do whatever he had to in order to find and rescue Wade. His other half.

Two hands of the Goddess reached over and held themselves over his glands, coolness coating them. “You do,” she affirmed. “With this blessing, you will not receive your heat until after you and your mate are home and safe. Call on me in the morning and I will grant the entire army this blessing.”

“I—I am not worthy of this,” Peter said as guilt roiled through his gut.

“This is a matter,” the goddess said implacably, “that must be resolved. You must rescue your mate. Ajax must be halted in its conquest. Whether you feel you are worthy or not, you are My Priest.”

The presence of the goddess faded from the temple, but Peter still did not rise. The acolytes knew better than to bother him as he spent the night in contemplation and prayer.

[signorformica]

The frames above correspond to one of the deleted, never-seen scenes in Alan Parker’s movie "Angel Heart" (based on William Hjortsberg’s Mephistophelean novel “Falling Angel”), in which the private detective Harry Angel writes some word in blood on the wall of the apartment of the old blues guitarist and Vodou devotee Toots Sweet, after killing him with a barber's razor by cutting his genitalia off and sticking them into his mouth.

One word: TELOCA.

What the hell is “TELOCA”?

Initially, the word does not make sense in any recognized language and, after a search on the net, no one seems to have interpreted it in connection with the movie.

The first attempt is to take it as an anagram, as Rosemary did with Hutch's message in Polanski's movie "Rosemary’s Baby" (when she rearranged the letters discovering, with terror, that they compose the phrase "all-of-them-witches").

Thus interpreted, "TELOCA" gives us "ALECTO". In Greek mythology, Alecto (Ἀληκτώ: "the implacable or unceasing anger") is one of the Erinyes, or Furies, Tisiphone’s sister (the avenger of murder). According to Hesiod, Alecto was the daughter of Gaea fertilized by the blood spilled from Uranus when Cronus castrated him.

In spite of its mysterious echoes, the meaning is however unsatisfactory, and the answer seems to be in an ancient biblical book which is not part of the biblical canon as used by Christians or Jews, apart from Beta Israel: the strange Book of Enoch, which has driven so many people insane.

Ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, actually modern scholars estimate the older sections to date from about 300 BC.

According to some Jewish traditions, there was an ancient language in the time before the days of the construction of the Tower of Babel and the Fall of Man: the language of Paradise. It was used by God to communicate with angels, and it was spoken also by the angels of the Apocalypse and the End of Times as well as by Satan and his demons, for all of them were once angels, too.

In “City of Glass”, the first novel in the Trilogy of New York, the detective created by Paul Auster writes in his report:

“This man, Dark, based his conclusions on a reading of the Tower of Babel story as a prophetic work. Drawing heavily on Milton’s interpretation of the fall in “Paradise Lost”, he followed his master in placing an inordinate importance on the role of language. But he took the poet’s ideas one step further. If the fall of man also entailed a fall of language, was it not logical to assume that it would be possible to undo the fall, to reverse its effects by undoing the fall of language, by striving to recreate the language that was spoken in Eden? If man could learn to speak this original language of innocence, did it not follow that he would thereby recover a state of innocence within himself?

"We had only to look at the example of Christ, Dark argued, to understand that this was so. For was Christ not a man, a creature of flesh and blood? And did not Christ speak this prelapsarian language? In Milton’s Paradise Regained, Satan speaks with “double-sense deluding,” whereas Christ’s “actions to his words accord, his words / To his large heart give utterance due, his heart / Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.” And had God not “now sent his living Oracle / into the World to teach his final will, / And sends his Spirit of Truth henceforth to dwell / in pious Hearts, an inward Oracle / To all Truth requisite for me to know”?

"And, because of Christ, did the fall not have a happy outcome, was it not a felix culpa, as doctrine instructs?

"Therefore, Dark contended, it would indeed be possible for man to speak the original language of innocence and to recover, whole and unbroken, the truth within himself.“ 

This sort of Original Language, which by association with the Book of Enoch came to be called Enochian, was glossed through visions in 1581 by John Dee, an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, and by his friend Edward Kelly, an alchemist with a sinister reputation who lived in Prague during the Renaissance whom King Rodolfo arrested and imprisoned in the Křivoklát Castle.

Nowadays it is supposed that Enochian is used by some Satanists and practitioners of black magic, although Anton LaVey did not include it in his Satanic Bible and discourages its use.

The name "Edward Kelly" was, by the way, the nom de plume of Aleister Crowley, and amazingly it is also the name used by one of the most ominous characters in "Angel Heart": the millionaire father of Margaret Krusemark, Ethan Krusemark, who gets his own daughter into black magic and organizes the ceremony in which Johnny Favorite murders a soldier with a dagger —and eating his heart afterwards. Eventually, the old Krusemark shall be thrown alive into a gigantic pot with Cajun boiling broth by Angel himself.

So, is this the right way, you Sam Spade?

When searching for the word "TELOCA" in Enochian, according to (allegedly) John Dee and Edward Kelly’s writings, we find out:

TELOC = Death

TELOCA = Damned

TELOCVOVIM = Of Him that is Fallen

Below, three frames of “Angel’s Heart” deleted scenes.

1. Death scene of Herman Winesap ("Don't worry, Johnny, no one will mourn one less lawyer in the world.")

2. Harry's journalist girlfriend is burned alive in some house

3. Unknown deleted scene in which body of Epiphany Proudfoot is shown burning

"How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise." —Oedipus Rex, Sophocles  • Bibliothèque Infernale on FB

[solitarylurker]

a critical reflection on the failings of star wars: the rise of skywalker

(Rey's failure on a mythological level)

the surprising twist of Rey's story after The Force Awakens was that she was on a legitimate heroine's journey, which is a journey mostly into the inner world; this was an aspect that Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi nailed perfectly, and it's the main reason that film still works despite its flaws on other analytical levels

the heroine's journey, a tragic rarity now in modern storytelling, requires Rey to confront her animus, to grapple with it, and eventually to incorporate it (or marry it in a more literal sense), all the while overcoming these challenges with wit and love

in TFA, we see her meet her animus--represented by the hulking, shadowy figure of Kylo Ren; in TLJ, she grapples with her animus--her conversations with Kylo Ren transform him from monster to man, and she is forced to wrestle with the humanity within him and the shadows within herself

The Rise of Skywalker should have completed Rey's heroine's journey, allowing her to incorporate her shadow into herself, to triumph over it by using its strength and quelling its weakness, and to marry herself to her animus, a reformed/redeemed Kylo Ren

in a properly formed heroine's journey, the heroine does not reject her animus in the end--she embraces him and accepts that he is part of her as she is part of him; her love, in essence, transforms him from a shadowy monster to a functioning part of both herself and society at large

the heroine's ultimate goal is to mend the bridges between the spiritual realm (the inner world) and the physical realm (the outer world); much like the hero's journey, the heroine must bring something of value back to her community, but the specific thing of value is different from the hero--she's not meant to slay a monster, but to integrate one, defeating it via her own set of skills

the wisdom she gains from the experience informs her as she transforms herself from maiden into matron, completing the first phase of a woman's life cycle

unfortunately, JJ Abrams didn't seem to get the memo on the core element that makes Rey's journey work, and he tries to stuff her into the hero's mold instead

the beats of the traditional hero's journey fall flat in a story like Star Wars, which has always held an element of the inner journey at its heart

even Luke's hero's journey does not end with him vanquishing his foe--Darth Vader; instead, it ends with him offering compassion to his foe, and through his compassion he reforms Vader enough for Vader to complete his own heroic arc and slay Palpatine

Abrams is so focused on making Rey into a super woman type of high priestess character, a woman so pure and moral that despite showing obvious signs of fragmentation and subliminal rage still manages to always make the "correct" decision 

Rey in TROS is a Queen of Swords, a harsh woman of sharp judgment and little compassion for anything that doesn't do exactly what she wants when she wants it; these aspects would be fine if we were still in the second film, for this would symbolize her obstacles she'd have to overcome to reach her full potential, but unfortunately TROS is the third film and these are presented as admirable qualities (or, if not admirable per se, then not detrimental)

Rey repeatedly has several run-ins with Kylo Ren, her animus, who continues to open the door to conversation and understanding with her, but unlike in TLJ when Rey allowed herself to soften toward him, she remains hard and implacable in TROS

she draws a hard, sharp line between her fictional image of "Ben Solo" and the shadow of Kylo Ren who stands before her

this comes out most prominently in the scene where she and Kylo Ren fight for the final time--she is snarling with rage and absolutely incapable of conversing with him, despite having cared for him in the previous film

she goes so far as to fatally stab him with his own saber and then has the nerve, after half-heartedly healing him (while she's crying more for Leia than for him), to tell him she wanted to take Ben's hand, the subtext being that she would never take Kylo Ren's hand

lucky for Rey, Kylo Ren magically transforms himself for her because he's so desperate for any human contact that even a woman who avidly loathes him so obviously is better than nothing

however, this is no win for Rey on any genuine level--this is merely her being a creator's pet and receiving narrative benefits she hasn't properly earned

Rey shows no legitimate remorse for how far she's fallen, or for her own lack of compassion for Kylo; she never once in the film attempts to understand Kylo or reach out to him or offer him an alternative, instead continuing to make demands of him without offering anything in return

when she speaks with Luke, she's more worried about her own purity as a jedi than she is the darkness that's caused her to harm someone she supposedly cares for or her own temptation (which is never shown) of joining him as his Empress

in the end, Rey gets her wish and Ben appears before her, rescues her, and dies sacrificing himself for her; while the scene is pretty, it's ultimately hollow because Rey did nothing to earn Ben's love and sacrifice--these are entirely testaments to Ben's character and his own heart than to Rey's, as she is merely the passive beneficiary of a love she neither pursued nor sacrificed for

the enormous gaping hole in Rey's journey falls in her own inability to properly face her own shadow and incorporate it, thus healing her interior wounds and enabling her to reach Kylo Ren; to do this properly, in TROS she should have learned how to accept her own call to the dark side, as well as Kylo's, and accepted them both as having these sides to themselves while offering Kylo a way to move forward without giving in entirely to the dark

her inability to accept her own inner animus and transform it into something of worth to the community is why her journey fails, despite the success of her shoehorned hero's journey--her journey had never been a traditional hero's journey, and killing is never the proper ending for a legitimate heroine's journey; love is always the correct end to a heroine's journey

worse than failing to accept the darkness within herself and Kylo, she fails to understand that the man she loves is the culmination of Kylo Ren and Ben Solo; she is not in love with Ben Solo

Rey does not even know Ben Solo; there is no guarantee Ben Solo would have loved Rey had he met her ten years before

the man who extends his hand to Rey, the man who pushes her, the man who offers her companionship and understanding, is Kylo Ren, the very same one who offered her a galaxy because he didn't understand she only wanted him

it was not Ben Solo's light that drew Rey to him, it was his darkness that compelled her; her desire for his light comes from her inability to accept her own inner darkness, which is merely her ego wanting to remain a "good girl" for her parents rather than properly face the totality of the woman she is becoming

Kylo's darkness calls Rey toward growth and autonomy, but it also represents the danger of temptation and wrath, fatal flaws Kylo himself has fallen prey to

if in TROS Rey had properly found herself, she would be able to help Kylo see he was more than just the darkness, and help him reincorporate his light as she had incorporated the darkness he'd helped her tap into; these could have turned into deep wells of strength for both characters, allowing their bond to become a force (pun intended ;D) capable of taking down whatever villain stood at the end of their journey

but because Rey refuses to accept that the man who has been the one by her side the entire journey is the "evil" Kylo Ren, she can't complete her journey into womanhood and instead retreats into childish fantasy; ultimately she can't have a happily ever after with whatever the Kylo Ren/Ben culmination turned out to be because she never grows up enough to accept such a man (this is further emphasized when she's sliding down the dunes like a child again at the end of her journey, a subtle sign that nothing of relevance has changed)

Rey never comes to the understanding that Kylo Ren is not split from Ben Solo, nor that her own darkness is not split from her light; she never reaches the understanding that Kylo and Ben are one and that her light and her darkness are one

this inability to incorporate the two aspects within herself leads to her failure to accomplish her narrative objectives while her inability to show any form of compassion to either Kylo Ren or Palpatine clinches the deal and renders her character ultimately a sad example of a creator's pet who never achieved her full potential

as far as i'm concerned, the reason this film fails goes beyond poor plotting, poor pacing, and poor characters--it can't even get the basic mythological steps of the final leg of the heroine's journey correct, thus rendering Rey completely ineffective in the only two missions her character had: find belonging with someone and come to terms with herself and her past

it's truly a shame Abrams couldn't stick the landing on this one, because Rey deserved to grow up, learn how to express true love and compassion, marry the man she loved, bring him back into the community as an asset rather than a liability, and bring forth the next generation with him at her side

[7/9]

[bonesingerofyme-loc]

hey about those books with dragons in them

I have a book series to recommend

Do you like intense political intrigue and infighting, scheming, and plotting of Kings and Queens in a gambit to claim the grand throne of all the realms?

Are you a fan of fantasy realism, of a world that takes itself seriously and portrays human nature in all it’s highest highs and truly lowest lows?

What about dragons? Fan of them?

Or a special, sacrosanct order of keepers of knowledge and wisdom, who are sworn above all else to preserve the continuity of the realms?

What about betrayal and lust and love and breaking of oaths and a great civil war that rips the kingdoms in two, all while a far greater, far deadlier threat is stirring, unbeknownst to them all?

How does an exiled queen of dragons sound, banished to a far-off land with no allies, no support, but a bitter and serious determination to return to her own lands and reclaim her rightful throne?

What about a world of massive, incomprehensible magic lurking below the surface, slowly revealing itself as the story goes on?

I’m talking, obviously, about Stephen Deas’ Memory of Flames and Silver Kings series. What else could I possibly be referring to?

I’ve often referred to it as ‘A Song of Ice and Fire if it was completed, and also was good.’ It’s jam packed with dragons, war, intrigue, murder, and a bunch of very believable, very rough characters that you can’t help but grow to love. Jehal is a piece of shit, but he’s our piece of shit. 

And seriously. The dragons. I couldn’t crow about them enough. Two hundred foot long monsters that reincarnate, can rip apart castles in minutes, breathe fire hot enough to melt stone and iron, can fly to the edge of space itself and are utterly terrifying, implacable, amoral and monstrous. True forces of nature made flesh, willful and furious and passionate. Dragons in the tradition of the uruloki of Morgoth.

It’s worth it for the dragons alone.

Diamond Eye would whip shit on any of Dany’s chode-ass wyverns. 

[diosa-loba]

Queen of Swords:

Keywords: Independent, unbiased judgement, clear boundaries, direct communication, honest, independent, principled, fair, constructive criticism, objective, perceptive   

Marseille: REYNE D'EPEE honesty, decision, strength, implacability, rudeness.    

Description: Feminine logical authority, good judgment for decisions with flexibility to take in knowledge of others, leading with head over heart; making judgements & decisions without emotions, frankness & clarity of speech,  

Person: Mature, wise, coolheaded & perceptive feminine, cerebral & intuitive, appears stern or emotionless, guarded, analytical, quick witted, independent & self sufficient, upfront & honest, has reached spiritual depth through painful experiences,    

Advice/Action: Be independent with judgements, use unbiased intellect- research alternate viewpoints & think carefully. Avoid being distracted by emotions, speak clearly & tell it like it is, establish clear boundaries.

About this card: The Queen of Swords is clever, composed, and always logical, combining wisdom with truth. It can indicate a need to exert your opinion, but remember to do so with love.

So many times we avoid speaking up because we're afraid of what someone else will think or how they'll feel. We sugarcoat things, keep quiet because we "don't want to be rude," or beat around the bush to avoid saying what's really on our mind. But sometimes, by sparing the feelings of others, we end up hurting ourselves because our own needs aren't being met.

The Queen of Swords reminds us that we are our own best advocates, and that unless we speak up and say what we want/need, nothing will change.

Today, focus on firming up your boundaries. The Queen of Swords is decisive and strong, and she doesn't take any crap from anyone. It doesn't mean that she's unfeeling or cold; she just knows where the line is between "this is okay, and this isn't", and she won't let others push her around. It can be tough to stand your ground in the face of guilt, threats, and other pressure, but it will be worth the effort. hang in there; you are tougher than you know.

Don't take no for an answer when you have a strong boundary about something.

A lot of times what we allow, we would never do to other people. We ourselves would never cross anybody else's boundaries like that. So don't allow other people to overstep your boundaries! 🔪

Queen of Swords. Art by Eugene Smith, from the Animal Totem Tarot.

[longforgottenunofficial]

Here Comes the Bride, Part Four: Constance, Hat Boxes, and the Meaning of The Attic

(Photo by Jeff Fillmore)

Warning label.  We're going to get pretty heavy here before we get light, but you'll get no apologies from me.  I happen to believe that people always and everywhere keep talking about the same old things, whether they're writing big, thick theology books or scripts for situation comedies.  Stupid jokes or philosophical systems—it doesn't matter.  We are all natural born theologians and moralists, and darn it, we just can't help ourselves; everything we discuss with each other echoes into and out from something vast and serious.  No matter how trivial and superficial we think we are being, Deep calls to Deep (Ps 42:7).  Connie will show up some paragraphs down, but if what goes first is not your cup of tea...well, no doubt there's a blog out there dedicated to hidden Mickeys in the Haunted Mansions.  Google, and go in peace.  Rest assured that there will be another installment of "Here Comes the Bride" to deal with some of the interesting inspirations for Constance and even some intimations of her future. It's all good. The current incarnation of the attic bride is a unique and ambitious attempt to swell the Mansion's cast of characters and expand and solidify its backstory.  No longer is the HM simply a retirement home for ghosts from all over the world, brought here by invitation but getting stuck in the fabric of the house itself until Madame Leota fixes the snag so that they can materialize and start schmoozin' and boozin'.  Until now, this basic plot has been the only backstory to the HM that could claim official sanction, and indeed it accords with what the Ghost Host tells you and accounts for most of what you see.  But it has never completely covered the phenomena presented.  For example, the Ghost Host has a further tie to the house.  (The other end is tied to his neck.)  What's with that?  Was he an owner at one point?  That would explain why the hosting duties fell to him, and perhaps the retirement home idea was his, but it suggests that the house had its own haunted history before that. The other thing that suggests a previous history is the attic.  Attics are places of concealment, of hidden horrible secrets.  Moreover, the attic has always functioned as the asterisk on the big Marc Davis joke.  The first thing to do is make it clear what that joke is, because that joke accounts for 90% of the HM.  That joke is the broad, firm base from which other, smaller things may deviate. As we saw in an earlier post, at first you think the ghosts are malevolent and out to get you, but it turns out that "they pretend to terrorize" and really don't care about you at all; they just want to get to a state of comfortable materialization so that they can enjoy themselves.  Ha ha, the joke's on you:  you thought they were hostile, and you were wrong. The point of the joke, the moral of the story, the message of the Mansion, is that fear of death is overblown. That's it in a nutshell.  I mean, you really don't know if it's a chamber of horrors on the other side of the veil, do you?  No one really knows, right?  Perhaps the scary hauntings you hear about are just naughty pranks, perhaps all is forgiven and all is well and everyone's having a jolly good time over there.  So long as you don't know which is the case, you might as well take the optimistic view.  That's the vision presented to you by Mr. Davis.  In his portrait of the afterlife, the executioner and the knight he dispatched are now best buds.  There is no revenge, no bitterness, not even any residual hierarchy of power on the other side of the grave—kings and queens are playing like children!  Yeah, there are those two duelists still going at it, but it's more a matter of both of them being humorously stuck in a cycle of irresolvable earthly business than a tragic vision of implacable hatred.  You almost suspect that they're doing it as a game now.  After all, what happens when a ghost shoots a ghost?  Is he going to die or something?  See?  Joke!  Ever'body laugh. Without going even deeper than we need to, we might briefly note that there is a certain resonance between this joke and traditional Christian theology, wherein Death is defeated and rendered harmless ("where is thy sting?"), and ultimately the story of the universe is told as a comedy and not a tragedy.  In this sense, the Haunted Mansion is simply expressing an optimistic hope firmly rooted in Western culture.  "All shall be well." Okay, now the asterisk, now the "yes, but."  Equally part of the Western and Christian worldview is the notion that the afterlife is also the place where justice is finally served (it sure as hell ain't on this side of the veil, in case you hadn't noticed).  Justice implies judgment, and judgment is bad news for the bad.  That happy optimistic vision hopes that enough mitigating circumstances will ultimately be found so that everybody, or almost everybody, gets off, but if the wisdom of the ages is given any weight, there remains a residual pool of those who choose evil without any possible excuse for it and put themselves beyond the reach of even the most generous of post-mortem visions. Disney traffics heavily in traditional fairy tales, correct?  You'll note that the villains in fairy tales are often very villainous indeed.  It might sometimes be possible to understand them, but you cannot excuse them.  They have made their alliance with Death.  You cannot redeem them; what you do is, you kill them.  In truth, the world of traditional fairy tales is pretty stark and grim, and Disney has always faithfully represented this fact.  Fairy tales are also a good place to check out the aforementioned wisdom of the ages.  It's not surprising that Davis's warm bath of good feeling has a sober asterisk attached. The HM is just complex enough to give a nodding acknowledgment to this darker truth while celebrating the rosier vision.  This could have been accomplished in a number of ways, but the route the Imagineers chose (by intuition—don't ever think I'm claiming that they sat around and thought about all of this consciously), is the detective mystery.  What is it that motivates the sleuth in all of those whodunnits?  Bringing the criminal to justice.  Making sure the guilty party doesn't get away with it.  You don't associate Sherlock Holmes with forgiveness, do you?  Now ordinarily, writers of detective fiction banish the supernatural from their pages.  That's because the readers are supposed to be able to figure out who did it based on clues dropped along the way.  If you throw angels and demons and ghosts in there, it spoils the whole thing.  No one can reasonably be expected to anticipate a deux ex machina resolution to a mystery.  But the reverse is not true:  crime and detection are not absent from ghost lore.  Too many ghosts busy themselves with revealing where the body is hidden, or where the knife was buried, or by terrorizing the guilty into confessing their crime.  These ghosts, at any rate, are not in a forgiving mood.  They want justice. In our discussion of the Hat Box Ghost, we showed that the whole attic scene originally was held together by the head-in-a-hatbox symbol, which hails from the world of crime mystery.  You're in the attic, which is one of the two places in an old house where horrible secrets and crimes are hidden (the other is the cellar, of course).  You see that hatbox, and you have a dreadful suspicion that there's a severed head in it, and when your suspicion is confirmed, you realize you're looking at a murder, and you wonder what happened and who did it.  Like a good murder mystery, the attic gives you just enough clues to conclude that the bride is the guilty party, as we saw.  What's the Hat Box Ghost up to, anyway?  He'sshowing you what happened.  Got his noggin whacked off and hidden in a hatbox.  The murderer evidently got away with it, but now the victim's ghost has come back to reveal the awful truth to the world.  The crime is illustrated before your eyes and it is linked to the bride via the synchronized heartbeat.  Very efficient storytelling—this all takes about a second and a half.  These guys are GOOD. Note that the question of justice enters in here—you wonder who committed the crime—whereas when you see the knight in the graveyard, who is just as beheaded as the HBG is, you don't ask any such questions.  The perp is right there, after all, and neither of them care any more, and you don't even know which was in the right and which was in the wrong.  And you don't care either.  You regard the two beheading victims in completely different ways.  Creepy atmosphere + a hatbox in the attic = bingo,  you're in murder mystery land. Oh, all right, I hear those fingers drumming on the tabletop.  You've been good, so here.  Here's a few more Connie shots by Jeff Fillmore (aka ~Life by the Drop~ at flickr).  She's miserably hard to photograph, and I don't know how he does it, but IMO Mr. F. has got the best Connie shots on the Web.

From beginning to end, the attic scene has never been free of the grisly-hatbox symbol.  It is just as fundamental as the bride herself.  We noted how the two blast-up ghosts were skullish heads popping from hatboxes.  They were there from 1969 until 2006.  You can go back earlier.  Here again is a shot of the scale model, which we've seen before:

Let's pan to the right and see what got cropped out.  Well looky there.  I see two hatboxes, and one of them is suspiciously isolated.  You look inside, I just had dinner.

Next up, some Claude Coats concept art for the attic:

Well, I'm not so sure that it isn't an innocent hatbox in this case.  But this is an attic.  No doubt something horrid is hidden there.  Any guesses where the body is?  Possibly the trunk, but if you didn't think, "Maybe walled up in the brickwork of that chimney," you really need to read more books and see more movies.  See how it works?  They know that you just know these things. When they were kicking around ideas for a New Bride in the mid-2000's, there was a range of ideas put out there for consideration.  One widely-reproduced sketch that passes as "concept art for Constance" actually stayed very close to the then-current bride.  Still has the candle, still has the beating heart, still has the bouquet, and still has the blank white eyes.  Just a coked-up version of the "middle bride," really.

Oh, and if you come across a less-severely cropped version...well whaddya know:

Here's the Frank tableau in the finished make-over at Disneyland:

Nice.  And here's a piece of concept art for it.  (Nudge nudge:  lower left, atbox-hay on the oor-flay).

Just in case you think I'm imagining things, some concept art for Constance throws subtlety to the wind and takes us directly back to Hat Box Ghost territory.  Oh, and notice how close this Connie is to the finished character:

Ewww.  That'll put you off your Eggs Benedict.

Reportedly, there were plans to put a stack of five hatboxes across from Constance in the HBG's old spot, with the names of her five husbands on them.  Hatbox city.  One report even suggested that they would light up and glow from within.  That didn't happen, but they did put a hat-rack there, with hats on it matching Connie's hubbies in the portraits.  Heh heh.  When they put Constance into the WDW attic in 2007, they too got a hat-rack, but they also got the stack of hatboxes.  No name tags or lights though.

Wouldn't want to be in there on a warm day.  Notice the swords laying around.  You don't suppose that means anything, do you?

With the grisly-hatbox symbol, you've got CRIME looking for PUNISHMENT.  You've uncovered something deliberately hidden.  There's a murderer out there somewhere, a score to settle, a vengeance yet denied.  Question:  How has the attic bride always been different from most of the other ghosts you see?  Answer:  She's not happy.  No socializing for her.  Even Constance is only experiencing the lunatic glee of the criminally insane.  If you insist on calling it "happy," then it's kind of a Charles Manson happy, you know?  I wouldn't say she's happy.  She's not forgiven or forgiving, not within the embrace of any resolution.  But is justice being served?  Well, if she wasn't so utterly wacked-out, she'd realize that she's exposing herself and being exposed.  Hattie with his damning heart-beat box is gone, but now we've got five haunted wedding portraits with the husbands' heads disappearing.  Those portraits are five ghostly fingers from beyond the grave laying accusation.  And yet, those guys aren't happy either, and they don't even get the relief of being too crazy to care.  You don't see forgiveness, but you don't see just deserts either.  The ghostly revelations inspire no remorse in Connie, and she's suffering no reprisal.  Her madness has taken her to a place without punishment, but also without love.

This is a very sour note in the HM, and it may well be a thematic blunder.  The Connie addition is seriously flawed.  Unlike the knight and executioner, there has not been any post-mortem reconciliation in this case.  They're grim ghosts without the grinning part.  If there were a way to show the husbands yukking it up with Connie, all of them laughing at the silly fuss their earthly crime drama stirred up, then they'd be part of the Marc Davis all-is-now-well joke.  Or, alternately, if the hubbies were allowed to show some sense of satisfaction that at last the murderer has been caught out, putting their spirits to rest, avenging them, giving them something to grin about like the old Hat Box Ghost, then they would fit into the traditional role of the attic as the "justice must be satisfied" asterisk added to the otherwise merry universalism of the Haunted Mansion.  As things stand, the message of the attic is, "the Devil wins," however lightly and humorously expressed.  Yes, you will survive death and live forever; but no, there is no guarantee that you will find either justice or forgiveness on the other side.  That's a common enough stance in modern horror, of course, but it is utterly foreign to the Mansions.  Or it was, until May 2006.

Originally Posted: Wednesday, June 2, 2010 Original Link: [x]

[phynxrizng]

HECATE, GODDESS OF THE WITCHES !

Witches

Hecate: Goddess of the Witches! Different traditions of Wicca honour different deities, but Hecate seems to cross all the boundaries. And why not? She is the original boundary-crosser, the Goddess of all doors and gates, all transitions from one place (or state of being) to another. She is the original hedge-sitter, the Hag, the Hex-mistress – all words arising from the same root as Her name. She is the One who has access to all the realms of existence – material Earth, the Heavens, the Underworld…. Hecate stands at the Gateway between the Worlds, as guard and guide.

Hecate’s Herstory The Deities (at least our perception of them) evolve over time. Our earliest records of Hecate (pronounced HECK-a-tay) come from Anatolia, where she was a Goddess of the wilderness, childbirth, and children – a Mother Goddess, a Great Goddess, the source of life. She was the font of bounty, giving endless gifts to those who honour Her. She is now seen as the Crone Goddess, Goddess of the Waning Moon, but this doesn’t bother Her because the Crone is the most powerful and empowered of the stages of womanhood. Originally the Queen of Heaven, Hecate became downplayed and twisted as She was incorporated into Greek mythology. She gradually became seen as a Triple Goddess (the Great Goddess in multiple aspects), and later as only the Crone face of the Triple Goddess. She has been with humankind so long, that She is seen in many aspects, all of which taken together confirm Her status as Great Goddess: Mother of the Gods Goddess of the Earth Goddess of the Underworld, Queen of the Dead, Queen of Ghosts Goddess of Crossroads and Gates Goddess of Sorcery and Magick Light-bringer The one who leads She is associated with Isis as Queen of Heaven, Ereshkigal as Queen of the Underworld, and Artemis as Goddess of the Hunt and Wild Places.

Although later, as Western religion became more devil-oriented, Hecate was considered to be the source of evil spirits and demons, this evolved because She was known originally to protect against them.

Eventually, it was reasoned that if She didn’t like you, She would fail to protect you, so ghosts and demons would get you… a small step to thinking that She was the cause of such things.

Hecate In Modern Wicca

Hecate is the Crone Goddess of Wicca, the third phase of the Moon Goddess.

She is a protector Goddess, implacable yet tender-hearted. She is wise and strong; She knows Herself and all Mysteries. She sees through illusion and deception as if the Truth were a blazing torch.

This doesn’t mean She is easy to understand! In fact, Her wisdom is so profound that no mortal can hope to know it all, or to predict Her actions, which may seem mercurial.

She is also a Karmic Goddess – She upholds the Law of the Universe, the one who doesn’t let you get away with anything, who doesn’t allow you to avoid the consequences of your actions.

So when working with Hecate you must be careful – you may get less than you ask for, more than you expect… or what you really deserve.

She is the Goddess of beginnings as well as endings, and all transformations from one state to another.

She is the Goddess of the Gateway between the worlds, present when we come into this life as well as when we leave it. And though She is implacable, She is not without mercy, generosity, and tenderness of heart.

Hecate is the Reaper, the Goddess of Death – the inexorable tides of time, the pitiless Mother who takes Her children back into Herself.

(There must always be the death of the old, in order for the new to be born, and She clears the way).

The Crescent Moon is Her sickle – the hand-held arc of a knife that was used for harvest. Yes, there is death here, but as always in Nature, the death is in service to life.

She guides souls into birth, and back into the soul’s True Home at death.

Her power is also healing, for as Mother of All, Her compassion is boundless. She holds, and shares, the knowledge of all healing modalities and the uses of plants.

She is the Keeper of the Mysteries. Time and Space

Darkness, Mystery, Spirit Realm – These are Hecate’s domain.

The season of the Dark is Her time. As such, she is associated with the Dark of the Moon.

October 31st, leading into the wintery death of the Earth, is a day to honour Her (among other Samhain traditions).

Since one way of honouring Her is to put out lanterns, it seems as though Jack o'lanterns may have begun as a way to honour or call Hecate (since as Queen of Ghosts She could protect us from harmful spirits).

She is Goddess of the wilderness, the Queen of Magick and the Night, and thus the Queen of Witches.

Her time of greatest power is Midnight.

She is the Goddess of Threshholds, boundaries and hedges, Gates, and the Triple Crossroads where life decisions must be made – wherever you must surrender your other options in order to follow your choices.

She is the guardian of the liminal zones – the border lands, the edges, the place where choices can make the world over. Where 3 roads intersect, Hecate waits to light the way with Her lantern, enabling you to see what each decision will lead to, and cuts the cords that tie you to the past, when you are ready to move forward.

Attributes and Powers

Standing as the bridge to the spirit realm, Hecate is a Goddess of immeasurable power. She is not a soft-and-cuddly Goddess, though.

She is the Grandmother, whose scope of concern goes far beyond the immediate family of spouse and children – the well-being of all humanity, present as well as future, is Her domain.

She knows all your tricks and won’t let you get away with anything… but who also loves you and wants to help protect you.

She honours your own choices, though, and will not protect you from yourself – however She is always there for guidance if you choose to look for Her.

She comes to take the living to the land of death, and so seems hard and even cruel, but She releases us from suffering and illness. Her care is genuine and deep as the universe, but it is not gentle or accommodating.

She is the Crone. Hecate is as virgin as the Maiden, having no consort, complete in Herself. She needs no one, giving Herself away to only Her own calling.

She is the hag, the original witch that patriarchal fairytales scare us with (since nothing is more terrifying or dangerous to the patriarchy than a single woman, fearless in her magickal power).

She does not desire youth nor beauty, love nor fear; veneration and status are meaningless to the Crone.

She knows the ways of Mystery and follows the wisdom She finds within herself. And that is the extent of Her ambition.

Queen of Magick

This is a title that seems a natural for the Goddess of the Boundaries. Witchcraft taps into the forces of creation through a process known as Magick, and Witches are agents of creation. The Great Goddess of Creation is a worthy matron deity.

As the Mother of Creation, Hecate upholds / creates / IS the law of the universe. She is magick.

She has the power to TRANSFORM.

Anything She touches, is changed. And She shares this ability with those who honour Her, teaching us how to create our world to fulfill our visions.

Symbols and Associations

She has ever been associated with dogs, particularly black and female dogs.

The sound of barking dogs was thought to signal her approach.

She is also closely associated with horses, owls, ravens, snakes, and dragons – all creatures of great spiritual or magickal power. Bats, frogs, bears, wolves, lions, and horses are also linked with Her.

She is associated with many plants, particularly those that help induce altered states of consciousness.

Her symbols are torches and lanterns, knives and sickles, ropes, keys, labyrinths and mazes, and pomegranates — all tokens of finding wisdom, moving between the worlds, making choices.

Torch / lantern: to pierce the darkness of illusion and confusion… revealing wisdom,

Key: to unlock the door other realms and mysteries,

Knife or sickle: to cut away the paths we don’t choose, and the past that we can’t return to… including the umbilical cord that ties one to the other world at birth, and the silver cord that ties us to the body at death.

Invoking Hecate

As stated earlier, working with Hecate is tricky. You need to be careful and extremely respectful. I advise not invoking Her until you are skilled in Wicca and know what you’re doing.

Then, you may want to see the next article for some ideas on how to invoke this powerful Wiccan Goddess.

With Bright Blessings,

ERIN DRAGONSONG SOURCE, WICCA-SPIRITUALITY.COM

[reginrokkr]

Tag dump #3: Connections & ships.

◟༺✩༻◞ Crystallize your sorrow into everlasting frost to reach the promise of light.┊Ace × Kurasame┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Your dreams and existence will find light beyond the paradox; o’ golden star.┊Ace × Stella┊

◟༺✩༻◞ Melody of kindness. ┊Deuce.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Fearful knowledge. ┊Trey.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Valor’s illusion. ┊Cater.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Unbeatable innocence. ┊Cinque.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Intrepid tenacity. ┊Sice.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Audacious discernment. ┊Seven.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Unarmed tranquility. ┊Eight.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Thoughtless action. ┊Nine.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Naïve ignorance. ┊Jack.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Implacable wisdom. ┊Queen.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Composed judgement. ┊King.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Unbreakable love. ┊Rem.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Unrestrained fear. ┊Machina.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Ice reaper. ┊Kurasame.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Soldier of history. ┊Izana.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ We’re different from everyone else. ┊Class Zero.┊ ◟༺✩༻◞ Deceitful Mother. ┊Arecia.┊

[sueboohscorner]

#The100 Season 3 Recap & a Defense of Bellamy Blake

The 100 starts its fourth season tomorrow night (9 PM Eastern/Pacific, after Arrow!), and I for one am stoked. This has been my #1 show since about episode 104, and it continues to be a sweeping, gorgeous, thoughtful sci-fi spectacle, exploring a future in which race, gender, sexuality, and even personality conflicts all feel secondary, because the true measure of a person's worth is simply, "Are you contributing to our survival or endangering it?" 

Let’s look back over an intense Season 3:

Clarke's decisive victory at Mount Weather earned her notoriety among the Grounders. She became known as Wanheda, Commander of Death. But not all the clans revered Wanheda, at least one just wanted to kill her and gain her power (the Grounder mythology about reincarnation has led to some unfortunate offshoot beliefs!). 

Lexa first captured Clarke (for her own protection from Azgeda, aka Ice Nation), but then earned Clarke's trust and affection once again. Lexa allowed Clarke to influence her decisions and leadership style, which kept skaikru alive but increasingly weakened the alliance and Lexa's own hold over the clans. Lexa wound up fighting to defend her reign upon a challenge from Queen Nia of Azgeda, and we got to see one of the most badass fight scenes in the series.

The erosion of support for Lexa led to her Flamekeeper, Titus, making a horrible decision. He sought to eliminate Clarke, whom he saw as a distraction and a corrupting influence on Lexa, but he wanted to frame Clarke's own people for her death (specifically Murphy), so he used a skaikru weapon. Lexa wandered into the room where Titus was wildly shooting a weapon he had no experience using, and Lexa wound up his unintended victim. This was not the best scene, obviously, but way more than enough has been said about that plot point, so I am not going to talk about it anymore. Suffice to say, Alycia Debnam-Carey took a role on Fear the Walking Dead, and as a result, we got an in-depth story exploring the Grounder mythology of reincarnating Commanders. 

In the wake of Lexa's death, Clarke took responsibility for the Flame, knowing that it literally contained Lexa's spirit. She couldn't bear to see it handed to a mass-murdering psychopath like Ontari, and Titus had explained that the Flame doesn't overwrite its new host, it just becomes part of them, so Ontari's violent nature would not be dampened by gaining the Commander's Spirit. Both to save skaikru from a cruel new Commander and to honor Lexa's spirit with a worthy host, Clarke struck out on a quest to find Luna, who had known Lexa and Lincoln, and who was the only remaining Nightblood (i.e., viable host for the Flame).

Clarke's desperation to complete this mission brought out the worst in her; when Luna refused the Flame, Clarke tried to force it on her. Luna's a pacifist, but I don't see her inviting Clarke to holiday supper this year.

With no Nightblood hosts to take the Flame, but a pressing need to gain access to the Flame in order to defeat ALIE, Clarke took the Flame herself (aided by a Mount Weather-style transfusion from Ontari). She was briefly, beautifully reunited with Lexa, and she did defeat ALIE...but in doing so, she learned that an even more implacable threat faces humanity: Earth's nuclear power plants, long unattended, are in critical meltdown. The world is going to be irradiated and unlivable within a few months.

Murphy spent some time in Polis, playing at being the Flamekeeper to make himself useful to Ontari, as she pretended to be a legitimate Commander. She also forced herself on him sexually. Murphy's been difficult to truly like most of the time, but he's truly suffered, too. At season's end, he was reunited with his girlfriend, Emori, and Ontari was dead. So maybe Murphy will be on a better track than in the past. Also, Emori's history as a well-connected thief and smuggler may be useful as our heroes seek a solution for their nuclear dilemma.

Raven's another one whose suffering was extreme but whose portrayal featured some of the greatest acting of the year. (Seriously, someone get Lindsey Morgan a pile of awards for the work she did!) She was the first major player to volunteer for the chip, seeking relief from her chronic, debilitating pain. She was also the only one to fight back after taking the chip, because she realized she'd lost more than she could stand, such as her memories of Finn.

She saved the day by hacking into ALIE and showing Clarke how to access the back door and shut ALIE down.

In addition to her physical suffering, she lost her mentor/surrogate father, Sinclair, when he was murdered by Emerson. (Of the many deaths last year, that one was toughest for me.)

King Roan of Azgeda wasn't always on our team's side, but he also wasn't an intractable, straight-up baddie. He had plans and needs and loyalties, just like anyone. He and Clarke have made alliances here and there where it suited them, and he's smart enough to be a valuable frenemy, at the very least.

Octavia suffered the loss of her love, as well as the loss of her family connection, because of the part Bellamy played in the events that led to Lincoln's death. She took her revenge on Pike, but she just walked away from her brother (and skaikru as a whole, it seemed). 

Abby & Kane grew closer, finally acting on the chemistry we've all been seeing between them for a while. It was lovely, but the timing was as unfortunate (as usual on this show!). They had their first kiss as he fled to avoid execution, and when next they saw each other, she'd been chipped; their next kiss was false (the moment of his realization that she's not really herself is one of the most powerfully acted scenes in the series--Henry Ian Cusick is phenomenal), and he wound up surrendering to ALIE to save Abby's life.

Kane has had probably the most profound character arc on the show, and one of the best I've seen on any show. He used to be a leader of his people, but on the Ark, that meant something very different than it does on the ground. Adjusting to life on the ground means learning to be a new kind of leader, and we've watched him do the hard work of finding his path, learning his limitations, accepting the counsel of others based on their experience and wisdom rather than shutting them down to preserve a hierarchy. He's become the man who humbly insists on having a free election rather than simply accepting the power offered to him by its current wielder. Granted, that went horribly wrong, but the intent was noble enough.

The political situation portrayed in S3 was heavily influenced by, even patterned on, the events unfolding in the United States’ presidential election. Watching it again, after the fact, the similarity is stark. Kane and Abby represent the incumbent leadership, cocky about holding on to their power. They are secretive, because they’ve been in charge for so long, they’ve got these bad old habits from the Ark council. On the Ark, secrets were their way of life, and if you told the populace too much, it was bad for everyone. Spilling a secret would get you floated. Sharing the inner workings of any council decision with the people affected by it was unheard of. The one time we know it happened, the culling of Section 17, was traumatic for everyone involved. The other time we know it almost happened, Abby had to consent to her own husband’s death. Abby and Kane have not yet learned how to be open and honest leaders. It doesn’t mean they aren’t good leaders in other ways, but it led to growing distrust and dissent from the people. They never imagined they could lose power. Pike’s populist uprising took them entirely by surprise.

So yes, that brings us to Pike. He’s angry, aggressive, vengeful, unwilling to see the Grounders as humans on some level. Like Bellamy, he can’t help but be affected by Lincoln’s bravery and honor, but he also can’t extend that good will to the Grounders as a people. He challenges Abby and Kane for their whole “need to know” attitude, as well as their edict that skaikru must make peace and submit to Grounder authority by becoming the 13th clan. He doesn’t want to make peace, and it turns out that at least a slim majority of skaikru feels the same. He wins the election, and his first action is a war crime. He slaughters the entire Grounder army that was stationed there to protect Arkadia from Azgeda. He immediately plans his next war crime: He wants to murder a nearby village and claim their land. Perhaps most telling, though, is how he treats his own people. He railed against the behavior of the Ark leadership, but his own leadership style is also based in secrecy, distrust, and punishment. He starts a spy network, uses friends and family against each other, throws his political enemies in jail and orders their executions. Ultimately, he has to be deposed in order to avoid all-out war.

And you have to imagine that by the end, a number of those who voted Pike into power found themselves thinking, I guess Abby and Kane’s know-it-all attitude wasn’t really that bad.

Jasper was a wreck all season. He couldn't move on from the horror of Mount Weather, of watching Maya literally melt in his arms. His rage at Clarke and Monty for their parts in the mass murder served to isolate him emotionally, which fed his misery further. He desperately wanted to take the chip and lose his pain, but in the end, it was unclear whether he willingly accepted a chip or was forced...he'd joined the fight against ALIE, but he remained deeply conflicted and weighed down by emotional pain. In the end, he was back out of the City of Light, but he was plainly struggling with a suicidal urge when we last saw him.

Monty was hurting all season because of Jasper's anger, but things only got worse when he was suddenly reunited with his mother. Hannah Green turned out to be a mom from hell, and Monty's loyalties were torn for a little while; he wanted to be with his mom and honor her wishes, but it meant betraying most of his friends and doing things he truly didn't believe were right or honorable. Ultimately, he chose to do the right thing, and they shared a tearful goodbye as Hannah told him she couldn't defend his treasonous acts, so he should run before he gets arrested. He later saw her again, but she was chipped and homicidal, so he had to kill her. 

A small ray of sunshine entered Monty's life toward the end of the season, when Harper made a move on him, and he accepted. So yeah, let's take a moment to talk about the good things in our heroes' lives. There aren't that many, but there's still Miller and Bryan's relationship.

These two were together on the Ark, then separated by Miller's incarceration and dropshipment to the ground. Miraculously, though, they found each other again, after Bryan survived Azgeda's sieges on Farm Station's crash site. Bryan's loyalty to Pike was a problem, but Miller was understanding in a way people aim for in their purest heart but rarely achieve. Ultimately, Bryan realized that his loyalty to a man who'd saved his life couldn't outweigh his loyalty to the man he wants to spend his life with.

Jaha was a real piece of work, as usual. You can argue that he was chipped, but the truth is that he wasn’t a good guy to start with. He has a religious fanatic vibe–he feels that he knows what is best, and he will stop at nothing to make it happen to you, for your own good, like it or not. That’s who he’s always been. He was ALIE's acolyte, helping her to enslave people, though he called it "saving" them. (Technically, that's true--they got their brains backed up to the City of Light, so he saved them as you save files to a disk...but not without serious loss of data.) When Raven rebelled, ALIE said she was unable to override free will, so Jaha came up with the evil idea of torturing Raven until she agreed to permanent submission. That's all kinds of messed up, and make no mistake, that was Jaha's idea, not ALIE's.. 

Can Jaha be redeemed? Is he capable of admitting he needs to seek redemption?

And now I'd like to talk about Bellamy. One of the common complaints from fans last year was that he changed too much, or too quickly, or without sufficient explanation. But I have a different viewpoint on it. He never changed at all; we just learned something we had never known about him, and it was different from what we had assumed, so it felt like a change. 

Think of it this way:

Have you ever had a friend with whom you never actually discussed a major topic, yet your depth of friendship led you to assume you both felt similarly on it, so when the conversation finally took place, you felt betrayed, like you never could have imagined you disagreed on something so huge, and you must never really have known them? 

That’s Bellamy Blake in Season 3 of The 100. He never really liked or trusted the Grounders, but he loved and trusted his sister and his friends, so he deferred to their judgment. He went along with the whole scenario of allying with the Grounders, not based on his own feelings toward them, but because his people made that choice, and he had faith in Clarke and Octavia, and he is loyal. His people (and the audience) made the easy mistake of assuming he felt the same way they did. 

We know of one Grounder Bellamy truly did trust: Lincoln. And we know that Lincoln had a kill order hanging over him, because the Grounder leadership considered Lincoln a traitor for allying with skaikru. Do that math: Lincoln stood by us when the other Grounders betrayed us, and that is a death penalty offense in Grounder justice; therefore, Lincoln is nothing like the rest of his people, and my high regard for him should in no way extend to his people.

So while Bellamy wasn’t outspoken about his anti-Grounder sentiment, it really wasn’t a change to his character when that sentiment was finally revealed. We felt oddly betrayed, because we have seen things mostly from Octavia and Clarke’s perspective, so it had never occurred to us or them that Bellamy felt that way…but there was really no reason he couldn’t have felt that way all along–we just didn’t notice until it became more important to him to express his own feelings than to go along with others’ feelings.

And of course, the event that pushed him over the edge was the destruction of Mount Weather, when his decision to trust a Grounder, Echo, led to the slaughter of dozens of skaikru, including his girlfriend, Gina. 

Throughout S3, Bellamy acts in a way that is difficult to forgive…for us, for his friends, and most of all for Octavia. But think of the moment by the signal fire, before they’re taken to meet Luna, when he asks Octavia, “How long?” How long will it take her to forgive him, to look at him as her big brother again. To us, and probably to everyone in the scene, it sounds callous and selfish, because we are aligned with Octavia. But if you try to see it from his perspective, you can’t deny that he’s been twisting himself around to accommodate the emotional directives of everyone else, overriding his own suspicions and misgivings to accept the decisions Clarke and Octavia have asked him to help enact, setting aside his own feelings at every turn. Now, he’s finally acted on his own feelings, and he’s waiting for the others to respond with the acceptance and forgiveness he’s shown. Yes, Lincoln died…but Gina died, too, and no one seems to treat that with the same reverence or regret. It’s hard for us to feel that strongly about Gina, because we didn’t get to know her much, but we can’t assume that Bellamy’s feelings are less intense or important than Octavia’s or Jasper’s or Clarke’s, just because the relationship didn’t get as much screen time. 

Plus, Bellamy didn’t only trust a Grounder, he went off to save Clarke (again), only to be rejected by Clarke and sent home empty handed (again!). So the decisions that weigh on him for causing Gina’s death are twofold: He vouched for Echo, and he chose to go rescue Clarke rather than stay to protect Gina. Never mind that he didn’t know the attack was coming, because the emotional weight is the same, and the emotional answer is that he should have known better than to trust a Grounder; he should have foreseen the danger.

So that more or less brings us up to speed. I’d love to hear your reactions, thoughts, predictions, etc., about absolutely anything in the world other than Lexa’s unfortunate demise, because I am sick of that topic for all time. Let’s just remember the good times, as Jasper would want to do.

[stephen-sadow-stuff]

  __________________________________________________________________

                   José Kozer

__________________________________________

José Kozer nació en 1940 en La Habana, Cuba, de padres judíos que habían emigrado de Polonia y Checoslovaquia. Dejó su tierra natal en 1960, vivió en Nueva York hasta 1997, cuando se retiró como profesor titular del Queens College, donde enseñó literatura española y latinoamericana durante treinta y dos años. Después de vivir dos años en España, se mudó a Florida. Su poesía ha sido traducida a muchos idiomas, ha sido ampliamente antologizada y ha aparecido en muchas revistas literarias de todo el mundo. José Kozer recibió el Premio de Poesía Latinoamericana Pablo Neruda en 2013. Tokonoma, su último libro en inglés, se publicó en 2011.\

______________________________________________

José Kozer was born in 1940 in Havana, Cuba, of Jewish parents who had emigrated from Poland and Czechoslovakia. He left his native land in 1960, lived in New York until 1997, when he retired as full Professor from Queens College, where he had taught Spanish and Latin American literature for thirty-two years. After living for two years in Spain, he then moved to Florida. His poetry has been translated into many languages, has been widely anthologized and has appeared in many literary journals over the world. José Kozer was awarded the Pablo Neruda Latin American Poetry Prize for 2013. Tokonoma, his latest book in English, was published in 2011.

____________________________________________________

DIÁSPORA

La tienda en la Habana está en polvo,

en el polvo está el dril importado de Irlanda,

y mi padre, judío polvoriento,

regresa día a día el pan de centeno bajo el brazo.

Regresa día a día, siempre idéntico,

ojos oblicuos de casimir rayado,

no parece un capitán sacudiendo sus retinas,

regresa a cráter áspero y alegre.

Viene papá y almorzamos mirando las molduras del techo,

jamás vi entrar el agua, no veo un pez ni una maceta,

mi madre vuelve a pulir la talla de los muebles, cambia las sábana

el jueves,

no hemos visto una flor en todos los dormitorios de la casa.

Todas las tiendas en La Habana se han cerrado,

los obreros se han puesto a desfilar enardecidos,

y mi padre judío polvoriento

carga las nuevas arcas de la ley cuando sale de Cuba.

____________________________

DIASPORA

The store in Havana is dust,

the white Irish fabric ground to dust,

and my father, a crumpled-up Jew,

comes back day after day with a loaf of rye under his arm.

He comes back day after day, always the same,

his eyes slanted from the twill pinstripes,

unlike a skipper darting his eyes,

coming home he seems a light and jagged crater.

Father comes and we eat staring at the molding around the ceiling,

I never saw water, I don’t see a fish or a plant.

My mother polishes the edges of the furniture again, she changes

Thursday sheets,

we don’t see a flower in any of the bedrooms.

All the stores in Havana have been shut,

the workers zealously taken to the streets,

and my father, a crumpled-up Jew,

bears the Ark of the Law again on leaving Cuba.

__________________________________________________

PÉSAJ

Abuelo esconde las galletas desabridas entre las servilletas de lino.

Abuelo abre las páginas incorregibles del Talmud.

Abuelo lee la Biblia agarrado a la sucesión de los acontecimientos.

Esta familia se congrega agigantada por el imán

de las prohibiciones.

Abuelo restalla aquí Israel, aquí cruenta Judá.

Abuelo escanciado al huevo amargo justificativo de la penuria.

Abuelo designado por los números de la expulsión en el antebrazo.

Abuelo libando las sentencias incorruptibles del desierto.

__________________________________

PESACH

Grandfather hides the tasteless afikomen between the linen napkins.

Grandfather opens the incorrigible pages of the Talmud.

Grandfather reads the Bible clutching the succession of events.

The family congregates extended by the magnet of prohibitions.

Grandfather snaps here Israel, here, cruel Judah.

Grandfather issues the bitter egg justifying our destitution.

Grandfather is designated for expulsion by the numbers

on his forearm.

Grandfather savors the incorruptible sentences of the desert.

_______________________________________________________________

PASCUA EN LA HABANA

Este es el día de la Pascua.

Este es el día en que los judíos se reclinan

sobre el día al día de la compra y de la venta,

pasan por Beirut, desembarcan en La Habana,

este es el día que fundan una sinagoga, abren una bodega

cubana,

y reúnen todos los nietos de la diáspora,

es la hora preciso en que Daniel Santos ameniza acompañado por

el Conjunto Casino.

Jacobo le regala a María Brull una caja de jabones perfumados,

Toña la Negro desempata el ritmo encajonado en la televisión,

los judíos ratifican los actos de la alianza.

los judíos se recogen a llorar la ausencia del agua,

se encogen miserablemente agarrados a las cuatro patas de la mesa

de los panes,

mastican el pan de las proposiciones por los cuatro confines

de la tierra

lamentando el éxito del inclemente de las prohibiciones,

escuchando a la voz de los abuelos de Aaron y Yahveh,

esa cólera de la montaña que nos hace ricos y nos hace indigentes,

y ojo por ojo, diente por diente,

los judíos ratifican día a día la tremenda expiación de los hijos

de Israel

que pagan cinco veces más, toro por toro.

mieses por mieses, y animal vacuno por animal vacuno.

padres por padres resarciendo irremediablemente la ley

de los decálogos.

___________________________________________________________

 PASSOVER IN HAVANA

This is the day of Passover.

This is the day Jews recline

over the day-to-day buying and selling,

passing through Beirut, landing in Havana,

this is the day they set up a synagogue, open a Cuban grocery

and gather in all the offspring from the diaspora,

It’s just the time that Daniel Santos tips it off led by the Casino Band,

Jacobo gives Maria Brull a box of perfumed soaps,

Toña la Negra breaks loose a beat boxed-in on TV,

the Jews confirm the act of the alliance,

The Jews retreat within themselves to grieve the absence of water,

they shrivel up miserably clutching the four legs of the votive table,

chewing the bread of the offering over the four corners of the earth

lamenting the merciless exile of prohibitions,

attentively listening to Aaron’s forefathers and Elohim,

the wrath of the mount that makes us rich and makes us want,

and eye for eye, tooth for tooth,

day by day, the Jews confirm the prodigious atonement of the Sons

of Israel

made to pay five-fold, steer by steer,

crop for crop, ox for ox.

father for father irremediably repaying the law of the Decalogue.

_____________________________________________________

SHUL

Los hijos de Lev, los hijos de Simoliansky

al pase de la lista,

buen día, buen año: temor a alzar la vista

y puntualidad

pues al rabino de ojos benévolos

y la sabiduría implacable

reprende y conmina a la adversidad:  Rabí,

duras bancas

y la alimentación prescrita, prohibición

del pez sin aletas ys escamas,

el animal milano, abominable:  veda

contra el chancho y , puñados

de cebado sin levadura, la sopa

clara (acelgas)

y el borscht, la zanahoria, coles

que se estatuyan para la contaminación:  todo

estudio en el niño ratifique la obligación

(grabad, pues, grabad),

la flor de timonero, fuerte pecado, reuniones

del grupo varón a la salida de la escuela

(Minsk) perteneciente

al maestro Eliezar

capaz del alborozo en Purim

y de ceder una alegría a la hora de los postres

para sus colegiales: compotas,

uvas pasas

y la ciruela como un negro granizo de Rusia

bajo el culto: el alba

y tras la ensoñación de las filacterias

confirmación

delante del Rabí

por palabras: Maestro

somos gente sencilla,

los exabruptos de la moral son fatigosos,

la formación de las aves

consagra la mano de Dios sobre el rocío,

abre su espiga

al hambre en los graneros.

abre la espiga

al hambre de los graneros.

____________________________________

SHUL

The sons of Lev, the sons of Smoliansky

at roll call,

a good day, a good year; afraid to raise their heads

and be puntual

for the Rabbi with benevolent eyes

and implacable wisdom

reprimands and threatens adversity; Rabbi,

hard benches,

and the food prescribed,

fish without fins or scales

prohibited, kite, abominable: a ban

against pig and hare, fistfuls

of unleavened barley, clear

soup (chards)

and borscht, carrots, cabbage

statues against contamination, every

lesson laid in the boy confirms the obligation

(engrave, then, engrave)

the lemon flower, a harsh sin meetings

with the others at the door after school

(Minsk) under the auspices

of the venerable master Eliezar

capable of jubilation on Purim

and of granting one whim for

his schoolboys’ dessert: s compote

raisins

and a prune like the black hail of Russia

after a reverie of phylacteries

confirmation

before the Rabbi

in words, Master,

we are simple people,

the harshness of morality is exhausting,

the formation of birds in flight

consecrates God’s hand over the dew,

opening the stalk

in the granaries of our hunger.

____________________________________________________

HE VENIDO A LLAMAR TRECE HOMBRES

He venido a llamar trece hombres que vengan a enterrar

a mi abuelo.

Vaya, que le pongan abuelo al bailongo del esplendor

de los judíos.

Si que lo carguen en cenizas, a este cordero lechoso, que se

desgrana una carne blanca en las urnas.

Y todos los judíos de Ostrava, de Zvolen, y

de Bratislava

vengan a Praga a ver cómo lamentan los ancianos la expulsión

saquen las cajas de cuero cuadrado y amárrenle los brazos

para que peregrine por los abecedarios de Deuteronomy,

para que mi abuelo peregrine con sus grandes cajas de habas

entre los hombres de negocios.

________________________________

I HAVE COME TO CALL THIRTEEN MEN TO BURY MY GRANDFATHER

I have come to call thirteen men to bury my grandfather.

Come lay the cassock of the splendor of my Jews on my

grandfather.

Yes, let them lift his as ash, this milky lamb, let his white flesh

be consumed by the urn.

And all  the Jews from Ostrava, from Zvolen, and

from Bratislava

come to Prague to see how the elders  lament the expulsion,

bear the square leather boxes and bind his arms for the pilgrimage

through the alphabet of Deuteronomy,

my grandfather roams with his great boxes of beans among men

of business.

__________________________________________________________

Algunos de los poemarios de José Kozer/Some of José Kozer’s Books of Poetry

José Kozer — Poeta judío-cubano/Cuban Jewish Poet — “Diáspora” “Diaspora” __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________ José Kozer nació en 1940 en La Habana, Cuba, de padres judíos que habían emigrado de Polonia y Checoslovaquia.

[onwardvirus87]

Gith Race

GITH TRAITS

Your character shares the following traits with other gith:

Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1.

Age. Gith reach adulthood in their late teens and live for about a century.

Size. Gith are taller and leaner than humans, with most a slender 6 feet in height.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Gith.

Subrace. There are two kinds of gith, githyanki and githzerai. Choose one of these subraces:

GITHYANKI

The brutal githyanki are trained from birth as warriors.

Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2.

Alignment. Githyanki tend toward lawful evil. They are aggressive and arrogant, and they remain the faithful servants of their lich queen, Vlaakith. Renegade githyanki tend toward chaos.

Decadent Mastery. You learn one language of your choice, and you are proficient with one skill or tool of your choice. In the timeless city ofTu'narath, githyanki have bountiful time to master odd bits of knowledge.

Martial Prodigy. You are proficient with light and medium armor and with shortswords, longswords, and greatswords.

Githyanki Psionics. You know the mage hand cantrip, and the hand is invisible when you cast the cantrip with this trait. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the jump spell once with this trait, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the misty step spell once with this trait, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these spells. When you cast them with this trait, they don't require components.

GITHZERAI

In their fortresses within Limbo, the githzerai hone their minds to a razor's edge.

Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 2.

Alignment. Githzerai tend toward lawful neutral. Their rigorous training in psychic abilities requires an implacable mental discipline.

Mental Discipline. You have advantage on saving throws against the charmed and frightened conditions. Under the tutelage of monastic masters, githzerai learn to govern their own minds.

Githzerai Psionics. You know the mage hand cantrip, and the hand is invisible when you cast the cantrip with this trait. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the shield spell once with this trait, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the detect thoughts spell once with this trait, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for these spells. When you cast them with this trait, they don't require components.

[weareplanarchampion]

“Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)”

Below is the text of “Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)” by Algernon Charles Swinburne, which served as the inspiration for the one and only Lady of Pain. Though Our Lady is not nearly as sensual as the subject of the poem, the influence remains. 

Anyway:

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel      Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel      Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories,      What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain? Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;      But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, Seven ages would fail thee to purge in,      And then they would haunt thee in heaven: Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,      And the loves that complete and control All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows      That wear out the soul. O garment not golden but gilded,      O garden where all men may dwell, O tower not of ivory, but builded      By hands that reach heaven from hell; O mystical rose of the mire,      O house not of gold but of gain, O house of unquenchable fire,      Our Lady of Pain! O lips full of lust and of laughter,      Curled snakes that are fed from my breast, Bite hard, lest remembrance come after      And press with new lips where you pressed. For my heart too springs up at the pressure,      Mine eyelids too moisten and burn; Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure,      Ere pain come in turn. In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's,      Out of sight though they lie of to-day, There have been and there yet shall be sorrows      That smite not and bite not in play. The life and the love thou despisest,      These hurt us indeed, and in vain, O wise among women, and wisest,      Our Lady of Pain. Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories      That stung thee, what visions that smote? Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores,      When desire took thee first by the throat? What bud was the shell of a blossom      That all men may smell to and pluck? What milk fed thee first at what bosom?      What sins gave thee suck? We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,      Thou art noble and nude and antique; Libitina thy mother, Priapus      Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek. We play with light loves in the portal,      And wince and relent and refrain; Loves die, and we know thee immortal,      Our Lady of Pain. Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;      Thou art fed with perpetual breath, And alive after infinite changes,      And fresh from the kisses of death; Of languors rekindled and rallied,      Of barren delights and unclean, Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid      And poisonous queen. Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?      Men touch them, and change in a trice The lilies and languors of virtue      For the raptures and roses of vice; Those lie where thy foot on the floor is,      These crown and caress thee and chain, O splendid and sterile Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. There are sins it may be to discover,      There are deeds it may be to delight. What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,      What new passions for daytime or night? What spells that they know not a word of      Whose lives are as leaves overblown? What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,      Unwritten, unknown? Ah beautiful passionate body      That never has ached with a heart! On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody,      Though they sting till it shudder and smart, More kind than the love we adore is,      They hurt not the heart or the brain, O bitter and tender Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. As our kisses relax and redouble,      From the lips and the foam and the fangs Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble,      No dream of impossible pangs? With the sweet of the sins of old ages      Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore? Too sweet is the rind, say the sages,      Too bitter the core. Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time,      And bared all thy beauties to one? Ah, where shall we go then for pastime,      If the worst that can be has been done? But sweet as the rind was the core is;      We are fain of thee still, we are fain, O sanguine and subtle Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. By the hunger of change and emotion,      By the thirst of unbearable things, By despair, the twin-born of devotion,      By the pleasure that winces and stings, The delight that consumes the desire,      The desire that outruns the delight, By the cruelty deaf as a fire      And blind as the night, By the ravenous teeth that have smitten      Through the kisses that blossom and bud, By the lips intertwisted and bitten      Till the foam has a savour of blood, By the pulse as it rises and falters,      By the hands as they slacken and strain, I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,      Our Lady of Pain. Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining      The light fire in the veins of a boy? But he comes to thee sad, without feigning,      Who has wearied of sorrow and joy; Less careful of labour and glory      Than the elders whose hair has uncurled: And young, but with fancies as hoary      And grey as the world. I have passed from the outermost portal      To the shrine where a sin is a prayer; What care though the service be mortal?      O our Lady of Torture, what care? All thine the last wine that I pour is,      The last in the chalice we drain, O fierce and luxurious Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. All thine the new wine of desire,      The fruit of four lips as they clung Till the hair and the eyelids took fire,      The foam of a serpentine tongue, The froth of the serpents of pleasure,      More salt than the foam of the sea, Now felt as a flame, now at leisure      As wine shed for me. Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen,      Marked cross from the womb and perverse! They have found out the secret to cozen      The gods that constrain us and curse; They alone, they are wise, and none other;      Give me place, even me, in their train, O my sister, my spouse, and my mother,      Our Lady of Pain. For the crown of our life as it closes      Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's,      And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision,      Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division      Make barren our lives. And pale from the past we draw nigh thee,      And satiate with comfortless hours; And we know thee, how all men belie thee,      And we gather the fruit of thy flowers; The passion that slays and recovers,      The pangs and the kisses that rain On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,      Our Lady of Pain. The desire of thy furious embraces      Is more than the wisdom of years, On the blossom though blood lie in traces,      Though the foliage be sodden with tears. For the lords in whose keeping the door is      That opens on all who draw breath Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores,      The myrtle to death. And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,      And they mixed and made peace after strife; Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;      Death tingled with blood, and was life. Like lovers they melted and tingled,      In the dusk of thine innermost fane; In the darkness they murmured and mingled,      Our Lady of Pain. In a twilight where virtues are vices,      In thy chapels, unknown of the sun, To a tune that enthralls and entices,      They were wed, and the twain were as one. For the tune from thine altar hath sounded      Since God bade the world's work begin, And the fume of thine incense abounded,      To sweeten the sin. Love listens, and paler than ashes,      Through his curls as the crown on them slips, Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,      And laughs with insatiable lips. Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,      With music that scares the profane; Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,      Our Lady of Pain. Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle,      Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive; In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle,      In his hands all thy cruelties thrive. In the daytime thy voice shall go through him,      In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache; Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him      Asleep and awake. Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses      With juice not of fruit nor of bud; When the sense in the spirit reposes,      Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood. Thine, thine the one grace we implore is,      Who would live and not languish or feign, O sleepless and deadly Dolores,      Our Lady of Pain. Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,      In a lull of the fires of thy life, Of the days without name, without number,      When thy will stung the world into strife; When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion      Smote kings as they revelled in Rome; And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,      Foam-white, from the foam? When thy lips had such lovers to flatter;      When the city lay red from thy rods, And thine hands were as arrows to scatter      The children of change and their gods; When the blood of thy foemen made fervent      A sand never moist from the main, As one smote them, their lord and thy servant,      Our Lady of Pain. On sands by the storm never shaken,      Nor wet from the washing of tides; Nor by foam of the waves overtaken,      Nor winds that the thunder bestrides; But red from the print of thy paces,      Made smooth for the world and its lords, Ringed round with a flame of fair faces,      And splendid with swords. There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,      Drew bitter and perilous breath; There torments laid hold on the treasure      Of limbs too delicious for death; When thy gardens were lit with live torches;      When the world was a steed for thy rein; When the nations lay prone in thy porches,      Our Lady of Pain. When, with flame all around him aspirant,      Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands, The implacable beautiful tyrant,      Rose-crowned, having death in his hands; And a sound as the sound of loud water      Smote far through the flight of the fires, And mixed with the lightning of slaughter      A thunder of lyres. Dost thou dream of what was and no more is,      The old kingdoms of earth and the kings? Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores,      For these, in a world of new things? But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,      No hunger compel to complain Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate,      Our Lady of Pain. As of old when the world's heart was lighter,      Through thy garments the grace of thee glows, The white wealth of thy body made whiter      By the blushes of amorous blows, And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,      And branded by kisses that bruise; When all shall be gone that now lingers,      Ah, what shall we lose? Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,      And thy limbs are as melodies yet, And move to the music of passion      With lithe and lascivious regret. What ailed us, O gods, to desert you      For creeds that refuse and restrain? Come down and redeem us from virtue,      Our Lady of Pain. All shrines that were Vestal are flameless,      But the flame has not fallen from this; Though obscure be the god, and though nameless      The eyes and the hair that we kiss; Low fires that love sits by and forges      Fresh heads for his arrows and thine; Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies      With kisses and wine. Thy skin changes country and colour,      And shrivels or swells to a snake's. Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller,      We know it, the flames and the flakes, Red brands on it smitten and bitten,      Round skies where a star is a stain, And the leaves with thy litanies written,      Our Lady of Pain. On thy bosom though many a kiss be,      There are none such as knew it of old. Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe,      Male ringlets or feminine gold, That thy lips met with under the statue,      Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves From the eyes of the garden-god at you      Across the fig-leaves? Then still, through dry seasons and moister,      One god had a wreath to his shrine; Then love was the pearl of his oyster,      And Venus rose red out of wine. We have all done amiss, choosing rather      Such loves as the wise gods disdain; Intercede for us thou with thy father,      Our Lady of Pain. In spring he had crowns of his garden,      Red corn in the heat of the year, Then hoary green olives that harden      When the grape-blossom freezes with fear; And milk-budded myrtles with Venus      And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod; And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us,      A visible God." What broke off the garlands that girt you?      What sundered you spirit and clay? Weak sins yet alive are as virtue      To the strength of the sins of that day. For dried is the blood of thy lover,      Ipsithilla, contracted the vein; Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover,      Our Lady of Pain?" Cry aloud; for the old world is broken:      Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest, And rears not the bountiful token      And spreads not the fatherly feast. From the midmost of Ida, from shady      Recesses that murmur at morn, They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady,      A goddess new-born. And the chaplets of old are above us,      And the oyster-bed teems out of reach; Old poets outsing and outlove us,      And Catullus makes mouths at our speech. Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city,      With such lips as he sang with, again? Intercede for us all of thy pity,      Our Lady of Pain. Out of Dindymus heavily laden      Her lions draw bound and unfed A mother, a mortal, a maiden,      A queen over death and the dead. She is cold, and her habit is lowly,      Her temple of branches and sods; Most fruitful and virginal, holy,      A mother of gods. She hath wasted with fire thine high places,      She hath hidden and marred and made sad The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces      Of gods that were goodly and glad. She slays, and her hands are not bloody;      She moves as a moon in the wane, White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,      Our Lady of Pain. They shall pass and their places be taken,      The gods and the priests that are pure. They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken?      They shall perish, and shalt thou endure? Death laughs, breathing close and relentless      In the nostrils and eyelids of lust, With a pinch in his fingers of scentless      And delicate dust. But the worm shall revive thee with kisses;      Thou shalt change and transmute as a god, As the rod to a serpent that hisses,      As the serpent again to a rod. Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it;      Thou shalt live until evil be slain, And good shall die first, said thy prophet,      Our Lady of Pain. Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it,      Now he lies out of reach, out of breath, Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,      Sin's child by incestuous Death? Did he find out in fire at his waking,      Or discern as his eyelids lost light, When the bands of the body were breaking      And all came in sight? Who has known all the evil before us,      Or the tyrannous secrets of time? Though we match not the dead men that bore us      At a song, at a kiss, at a crime — Though the heathen outface and outlive us,      And our lives and our longings are twain — Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,      Our Lady of Pain. Who are we that embalm and embrace thee      With spices and savours of song? What is time, that his children should face thee?      What am I, that my lips do thee wrong? I could hurt thee — but pain would delight thee;      Or caress thee — but love would repel; And the lovers whose lips would excite thee      Are serpents in hell. Who now shall content thee as they did,      Thy lovers, when temples were built And the hair of the sacrifice braided      And the blood of the sacrifice spilt, In Lampsacus fervent with faces,      In Aphaca red from thy reign, Who embraced thee with awful embraces,      Our Lady of Pain? Where are they, Cotytto or Venus,      Astarte or Ashtaroth, where? Do their hands as we touch come between us?      Is the breath of them hot in thy hair? From their lips have thy lips taken fever,      With the blood of their bodies grown red? Hast thou left upon earth a believer      If these men are dead? They were purple of raiment and golden,      Filled full of thee, fiery with wine, Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden,      In marvellous chambers of thine. They are fled, and their footprints escape us,      Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain, O daughter of Death and Priapus,      Our Lady of Pain. What ails us to fear overmeasure,      To praise thee with timorous breath, O mistress and mother of pleasure,      The one thing as certain as death? We shall change as the things that we cherish,      Shall fade as they faded before, As foam upon water shall perish,      As sand upon shore. We shall know what the darkness discovers,      If the grave-pit be shallow or deep; And our fathers of old, and our lovers,      We shall know if they sleep not or sleep. We shall see whether hell be not heaven,      Find out whether tares be not grain, And the joys of thee seventy times seven,      Our Lady of Pain.