#REGINALD THE GULL

[batfambrainrotbeloved]

I'm going to need that chaotic bird

Let Tim be a Disney Princess and give him his birds

AHHHHHHHHH FUCKING REGINALD- DAMMIT YOU'RE CONVINCING ME IM BEING CONVINCED

Dick was so fucking confused and hesitated on if he should thank?? the bird?? and Jason 100% deserved to get bit

Now this wasnt the idea before- but Wisp obsessed w/ Corn?? Reginald craves the peanut.

HSHKSGDKALD AS always I fucking adore your art I wanna eat it- so thank you.

[vulpes-fennec]

Love on Water Lilies 🪷 (Ch 1)

Summary: Prince Lucien Vanserra of the Autumn Kingdom is all play, no work. Elain Archeron, a waitress and aspiring restaurant owner in the city of Colibri, is all work, no play. Caught in a larger scheme of politics and war, Lucien and Elain are turned into frogs. Will Elain get her restaurant back? Will Lucien ever become Fae again?

Read on AO3

An Princess and the Frog inspired story for @elucienweekofficial Day 5: Nature 🍃

“Fried plantains and fresh fruit salad! Two vanilla golden toasts with honey syrup! Banana pudding!” The line cooks’ voices rang out from the sizzling kitchen.

“Coming right on up!” Elain Archeron plastered on a bright smile and cheerful voice as she dished out plate after plate of breakfast at Roy’s Cafe. The heavenly smell of fresh coffee was barely enough to keep Elain awake—she was exhausted. Elain glanced at the clock. Five more minutes…

Her shift at the Purple Flamingo Cabaret last night had certainly taken its toll, for the Summer Kingdom’s Mardi Gras festivities had begun. The swamp city of Colibri, known for good food and even better music, drew thousands of visitors every Mardi Gras. And this year, a special celebrity was in their midst: Prince Lucien Vanserra of the Autumn Kingdom, who had arrived just yesterday.

Although Elain hadn’t seen this prince yet, she heard plenty about him last night at the Purple Flamingo. The fourth and youngest son of King Beron Vanserra, Lucien was young, rich, handsome…and most importantly, single. He would probably remain that way, too, for word on the street was that Lucien was a total flirt. Gallivanting his way across Prythian’s kingdoms, taking on new lovers each week, partying all night long…

Elain grabbed a beignet to-go when she finally clocked out. Gulls squawked in the distance, green-painted trolleys clanged as they rolled by. Mardi Gras revelers walked by, decked out in chic outfits of green, purple, and yellow. With her food-stained yellow apron, worn ballet flats, and frazzled honey-brown hair, Elain felt a pinch of resentment.

Must be nice to never have to work a day in your life. Every year, the promise of generous tips during Mardi Gras dangled before food service workers like a carrot, tricking them into taking extra shifts.

It wasn’t always this way. Elain remembered the Mardi Gras celebrations of her childhood, the way she and her sisters danced to lively jazz and ate their way through delicacies all night long. The Archeron home used to be in the Marigold District, where all the wealthy Fae lived. But then Elain’s mother passed away, leaving her father depressed. Reginald Archeron rallied himself enough to fight in the Hybern War seven years ago, but lost his leg during one of the early battles.

Elain loved her father dearly, but it was plain fact that he had practically given up on life after becoming handicapped. The familial roles had reversed: instead of their father ensuring his daughters’ needs were met, Elain, Feyre, and Nesta were forced to take odd jobs in order to survive. Nesta delivered and occasionally edited for The Colibri Tribune. Feyre cleaned the art studios and landed the occasional art commission. Elain juggled multiple shifts between Roy’s Cafe, the Purple Flamingo Cabaret, and Emile’s Seafood Bar.

Though her shifts were grueling, Elain tried to view them in a positive light. It was career training of sorts: she paid attention to different management styles, brushed up her conversational skills with all sorts of Fae as a waitress, and improved her culinary skills as a cook. Ever since she was a little girl, a riverfront cafe to call her own had been Elain’s dream. When her family fell from wealth seven years ago, that dream was almost lost.

But now, Elain was closer to achieving that dream than ever. She was fairly confident in her capabilities as a cook and waitress. She had strong accounting skills, enough to ensure her restaurant wouldn’t go bankrupt. And more importantly, she had been in serious talks with realtors for a decrepit riverfront pavilion. The pavilion was a little run-down, but it was perfect in Elain’s heart. She juussttt needed a little more money…which was where the Mardi Gras cooking contest would come into play.

Because in addition to the multiple parades, balls, concerts, and parties, Mardi Gras featured local cuisines in a series of cooking concerts.

Today was the jambalaya cooking contest, which was taking place at Firefly Square. Tomorrow, Elain was slated for the baking contest, where she planned to wow the judges with her peach cobbler. The day after, she would participate in the fry contest, having perfected her fried chicken spice rub.

Elain stopped home to briefly freshen up. It was a tiny, cramped space—an utter downgrade from their old home. She and her sisters had squeezed three narrow beds into a room, the sole closet overflowing with clothes. The living room wasn’t much better: Feyre’s art supplies were strewn across every available surface, and Nesta’s second-hand books tilted in precarious stacks. Only the kitchen, Elain’s domain, remained spotlessly clean and organized.

Elain powdered her face, brushed her curls, dabbed a bit of lipstick, and donned a new dress. She needed to look fresh and proper, and a cute face never hurt.

She then hurried to Firefly Square, wheeling a little wagon full of ingredients and her trusty steel pot. Savory dishes were not her specialty, so Elain needed all the luck she could get. However, she was fairly confident that her jambalaya would at least place in the top three. Her best friend, Vassa La Bouff, and her sisters had helped refine the recipe over the last year, and the ladies could be trusted to give their honest opinion.

“Name?” The event attendant held a clipboard at the check-in table.

“Elain Archeron,” Elain replied cheerfully. The event attendant wrote her name on a wooden placard and placed it on the scoring rack. The five judges, a mix of renowned cooks and locals, were seated under a rich purple tent. Onlookers had gathered on the sidelines of Firefly Square to watch the judges sample each entry and announce their points.

Several other participants were already present, busying away at their own cooking stations. While there was no set “start” time due to the participants’ varying culinary skills and recipes, the judges would begin tasting at one o’clock in the afternoon. So Elain got to work.

First, she braided up her honey-brown hair and donned a flowery pink apron. Then, she began expertly mincing: peppers, celery, onion, garlic, and tomatoes. The heated oil sizzled the chicken and sausage, bringing fragrant notes of paprika, bay leaf, and thyme into the air. The meat was taken out, the vegetables added in. Elain cleaned the rice, poured in homemade chicken stock, and added more salt, pepper, and herbs.

Elain stirred the bubbling mixture, using the time to observe the other participants. There were ten competitors total. Some appeared to be seasoned chefs, others looked like novices. Regardless, everybody was making good progress on their jambalaya. And more importantly, everyone looked like they were having fun.

Elain’s mouth watered from the scents wafting from her pot alone. The consistency of her jambalaya was thick, but not mushy—it was all coming together nicely. Elain did a final taste test and smiled. Spicy, savory, and tangy…it was her best pot of jambalaya yet.

The judges seemed to think so, too, when they sampled her dish.

“Wonderful aromas.”

“The chicken is the right amount of tender, Miss Archeron.”

“Tastes just like my grandmother’s home-style jambalaya!”

This—this was exactly why Elain loved to cook: seeing people enjoy her food made her happiest. She was the last contestant up for tasting, which meant the score the judges awarded would be her final placement for the contest. Elain’s breath caught when she tallied up the judges’ marks. Third place…third place! Oh, she was going to walk away with prize money! Elain ducked her head and tried to squash her victorious beam. One step closer to—

“Excuse me! Excuse me!”

The most beautiful male Elain had ever seen strode into the courtyard, lugging a steaming pot with bare hands. His skin was a burnished brown, his long red hair tied up in a haphazard bun. She found herself eyeing his corded forearms, exposed thanks to the rolled-up sleeves of his white linen shirt. The male’s straight-legged olive green pants accented his muscled thighs, and his shiny black shoes with their gold details indicated expensive taste.

An entire entourage of Fae, mostly female, had followed the male into Ironwood Square, inevitably shoving Elain to the back.

“It’s Prince Lucien,” the crowd murmured to each other. “What is he doing here?”

Prince Lucien? Well…that explained how he could hold such a hot pot without any oven mitts. The Autumn Kingdom’s royal family possessed fire magic, which meant they could manipulate flame and were essentially immune to burns. Elain even overheard at The Purple Flamingo last night that Autumn males—especially the royal princes—fucked with an intensity that matched the fire in their veins.

Elain had practically snorted upon hearing such words last night, though looking at Prince Lucien now, it was certainly believable. But the delighted giggling of several females when the prince stepped up to the podium snapped Elain out of her reverie. Ugh! Prince Lucien was a playboy at best, a heartbreaker at worst, she reminded herself. No, she would not encourage the fantasies that had been surely planted in her mind thanks to his impromptu appearance, lest she turn into a tittering female over a male like him.

“Good afternoon, honorable judges.” Prince Lucien’s voice was rich and buttery, with a slight accent. For some reason, it reminded Elain of sunlight. He turned towards the crowd, and Elain stifled a gasp upon seeing the scar that ran down his face and cut through his left eye, which had been replaced by a mechanical gold eye. Such a brutal injury, yet the prince was made more handsome even with the scar.

“Welcome, Prince Lucien!” The lead judge leapt to her feet, a wide smile on her face. The crowd cheered again. Some females even screamed hysterically.

Prince Lucien gestured grandly to the entourage that followed him, gold earrings twinkling off the tips of his pointed ears. “I am here to enter the jambalaya competition. As there was no kitchen in my hotel suite, I had to borrow the kitchen at Restaurante Genevieve. Chef Michel and these citizens can attest that I made the jambalaya all on my own.”

The prince peered intently at the scoreboard, already stacked with ten other names and numbers. Elain could have sworn his brows raised in subtle surprise.

“Though I see now that I was tardy…” Prince Lucien trailed off as his eyes swept the crowd, as if he were looking for someone.

“The entry period closed thirty minutes ago but ah…we can make an exception, can we not?” The lead judge said quickly, and the audience clapped in agreement. The other judges nodded eagerly, clearly delighted at the presence of royalty. “Well, Your Highness, we would be honored to sample your jambalaya!”

Elain’s jaw slackened. A prince, participating in a jambalaya contest? She had never heard of such a thing. Royals had their own chefs. They probably wouldn’t even know how to boil an egg.

The prince’s russet and gold eyes were still scanning the square with unusual interest. Elain eyed him skeptically from the back, observing the confident smile on Lucien’s face and the swaggering cut of his broad shoulders. There was the off chance that Prince Lucien possessed culinary skills…but he was from the Autumn Kingdom. He wouldn’t know a thing about authentic jambalaya, Elain told herself. Elain relaxed, knowing she was safe and secure in third place as the judges sampled Lucien’s entree.

“Cauldron, this is absolutely divine!”

“Look at the colors on the spoon! So vibrant, so fresh!”

“I could eat this for the rest of my life and die happy.”

“Last call to score…and…first place! We have a winner!” The crowd cheered raucously.

Elain’s mouth completely fell open when the score attendant placed Prince Lucien Vanserra’s name placard on the top of the board, shifting everybody else down. Which meant…which meant she had been knocked off third place.

Elain was in shock. She wasn’t going to make it to the podium, and she wasn’t going to earn any prize money. Prince Lucien bowed, and then turned to the crowd that had gathered.

“Good food is meant to be shared! Please, feel free to finish the pot!” he announced, voice dripping with pride. More cheers and claps rang out as Elain was jostled out of the way in the mad stampede for the winning jambalaya.

This was not possible. This could not be happening.

Elain’s face grew hot with embarrassment, as she hurriedly packed up her wagon. It was time to go; she could not bear to spend another minute in the square with knowledge of her loss. Elain half-wondered if she should join the crowd and really try Prince Lucien’s jambalaya for herself. It couldn’t be that good. But the notion of a rich, playboy prince edging her off the podium in a cooking contest he had no stakes in was too shameful to consider. She could’ve done better. Should’ve done better.

Elain didn’t look back as she wheeled her wagon home, the rusty wheels click-clacking over the cobblestoned streets. Her half-full pot of jambalaya would become leftovers for her sister and father. At least they didn’t have to spend more money on groceries this week.

Some humility would do her good, Elain knew, as she was not a “professional” chef yet, but gods…would she ever be? If a prince could beat her in a cooking contest? If she couldn’t even win a couple judges’ favor, how was she going to draw the Colibri Fae to her restaurant?

—Later that evening—

After a fitful afternoon nap, Elain decided to stop by her cafe before heading to Vassa’s house. Well, it wasn’t hers yet, but Elain had recently begun treating it as such. She sat on a bench, listening to the lapping of the Mayhaven River, watching the steamboats chugging by.

“I’m almost there,” she whispered to herself. “People are going to come here from everywhere, I’m almost there.” The riverfront pavilion was a shabby brick building that had been a mess hall for dock workers in its previous life. The interior’s open layout would be the perfect place to install a stage for local musicians. Each table would have fresh flowers, the walls would be painted a creamy tan, the big windows would offer river views and plenty of natural light… oh, it was all coming together.

The door swung open. Hudson Jennings, Elain’s realtor, walked out with a folder tucked under his arm. Elain leapt up from her bench, ready to bid him hello. But she froze when a head of red hair ducked through the doorway. No…it couldn’t be…

“Pleasure doing business with you, Your Highness,” Hudson said, shaking Lucien Vanserra’s hand firmly. Even without his entourage of fans, Lucien held himself with a regal grace and winning smile.

“Of course,” Elain could hear the prince respond smoothly. “I look forward to establishing a second residence in Colibri.” Elain could only watch in horror as the realtor handed Lucien a set of keys before parting ways. Keys to her riverfront cafe!

“Mr. Jennings!” Elain ran as fast as her little feet could carry her as soon as Lucien had walked away. Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods. This must be a bad dream.

“Oh! Miss Archeron!” Hudson blinked his cat-like eyes in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here!”

“Mr. Jennings, did you just sell the property to Lucien?” Elain was breathless. Please say no, please say no, she begged silently.

“Ah, yes I’m afraid I just did.” Hudson patted the folder of papers. “I know, I know…you have been eyeing that property for some time, Miss Archeron, but the prince showed up with ample cash! We have several other properties available in town for your cafe, though. Let us talk more next week.”

“But—” Elain tried to say, then deflated. Her realtor was already walking away. There was no use. Unless she somehow managed to alter Hudson’s memory, rip up the sale papers, and steal the keys from Lucien, the property was gone. And so were her dreams of owning a riverfront cafe.

It seemed the prince was hell-bent on ruining her life. Lucien had fame and fortune, and got everything Elain wanted because of his name. Perhaps Elain had angered the Mother, somehow. For how else could so much go wrong in less than 24 hours?

Elain tried very hard not to cry as she rode the trolley to Vassa’s house. One, she was in public, and ladies did not cry in public. Two, the La Bouff Mardi Gras ball was starting in a few hours. Elain had been looking forward to the event all month, and crying right now would make her eyes puffy.

The La Bouffs resided in the Dorado District, the richest district in all of Colibri. Vassa’s “house” was actually a grand, three-story mansion of pale white marble, elegant columns, iron lace accents, and sweeping gabled roofs. When Elain arrived, the bustle of the musicians tuning their instruments and the servants, the gurgling fountain, and the beautiful lanterns of green, yellow, and purple faelight made her smile. A good party always made her feel more alive, even though she attended very few of them in recent years.

Vassa’s parents were one of the Mardi Gras royalty this year, and had invited Elain to the La Bouff Mardi Gras ball. Vassa was a true friend: she didn’t shun Elain after the Archerons fell into poverty, and for that Elain was eternally grateful. The footmen, used to her comings and goings, offered Elain warm greetings when she entered the mansion via the servants’ gate.

While Elain spent her days working, Vassa spent her days studying. The young La Bouff was finishing her last year at the prestigious Colibri Academy for Witchcraft, and was determined to be the top of her class. The only thing in Vassa’s way? Briallyn, a rival witch from the Continent. During the unfortunate occasions Elain had to interact with Briallyn, Elain felt the witch resembled a beady-eyed lizard.

Elain made her way down the spacious hallway and knocked on Vassa’s bedroom door.

“Elain! I’m so glad you’re here!” Vassa threw her arms around Elain. Her best friend’s orange hair was styled into loose waves, her bright blue eyes already lined with gold shadow. “Come, let us get ready together!”

“Vassa, it’s so good to see you,” Elain sighed, her voice still thick with emotion from earlier.

“What’s wrong?” Vassa asked, her brow creasing with concern. “Was it the jambalaya contest? Did you not get first place? I mean, second place is also fine, and so is third.”

Elain sat down on Vassa’s bed, hugging her knees to her chest. “The jambalaya concert was fine, until Prince Lucien Vanserra showed up at the last minute,” she said bitterly. “I had placed third, but that was before the judges awarded him first place. I got bumped down and I didn’t get any prize money.”

“Oh no,” Vassa rubbed Elain’s back sympathetically. “I’m so sorry, Elain.”

“It’s just not fair!” Elain complained, her face heated with anger. “The judges gave him special treatment, letting him enter the contest even though the judging window had closed! Lucien was cooking off-site, how could anybody truly tell he was the primary chef? And perhaps they didn’t want to upset a prince, so they put him first even though he didn’t deserve it!”

“I see what you mean,” Vassa hummed. “Did you end up tasting his jambalaya? Surely it couldn’t be as good as yours. Those judges must not have working tastebuds.”

“No, but that’s not even the end of it. I found out he bought the riverfront property from Hudson Jennings this afternoon. Vassa, you know how long I’ve been saving up for my cafe! To think the perfect location would be gone, just like that…”

“Cauldron boil and fry him,” Vassa muttered darkly, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, Vassa. I know you’ve been looking forward to meeting Prince Lucien, that you want him to court you.” Elain sighed. “I shouldn’t be bad-mouthing him.”

“No, no, no,” Vassa shook her head. “Of course, I want Prince Lucien to court me, have you seen how handsome he is? But, your restaurant is something that I’ve been waiting for ever since we were little girls, Elain…when I see him tonight I will convince him to rescind the purchase.”

“Thanks, Vassa,” Elain smiled, feeling better. What Vassa set her mind to, Vassa achieved. She had no doubt her friend’s beauty and persistence would get the prince to change his mind. “He did say he wanted the property as a second residence.”

“Well! It wouldn’t be too hard to convince him to buy property in other Colibri districts!” Vassa raised her brows excitedly. “He could move in with me.” Vassa jumped to her feet, trying to inject some more life into Elain’s forlorn posture. “Now I know today hasn’t been the best day, Elain. But this ball will turn it all around! I have just the perfect dress for you, and I know you’ll have plenty of males to dance the night away with. It’s in the closet, come see!”

***Lucien***

“Just look at all of this, Jurian,” Lucien said to his best friend when they regrouped after the dance ended. “One of the best parties I’ve been to in a while.”

He had left his entourage of pretty females at the La Bouff mansion gate. Not that it really mattered, since there were even more females inside the ball. The musicians played lively tunes, inviting attendees to kick up their feet and whirl across the marbled outdoor dance floor. The La Bouff Mardi Gras decorations were simply exquisite, from the soft faelight lanterns hanging off trees to the flower arrangements on tables. Fae wine and cocktails flowed freely, wait staff walked around with platters of delicious food.

“Don’t tell Tarquin, but I’m enjoying myself far more here than the Mardi Gras balls in Adriata,” Jurian slurred slightly. The male lifted a pair of deviled eggs off a waiter’s tray and handed one to Lucien. “Though it is positively boiling in Colibri.”

“Of course, we’re near the Bog of Oorid,” Lucien remarked. He had donned an emerald green jacket with embroidered gold leaves at the cuffs, a freshly pressed white shirt, and black pants. The layers made him sweat profusely, though Lucien wicked away the excess moisture with a slight release on the damper of his magic. He looked good, and that was what mattered at the end of the night.

“Gods, I’m so hungry,” Jurian muttered as he inhaled a fried catfish filet within seconds. “They ate all your jambalaya before I could eat some.”

Lucien laughed. “Better clean up those crumbs and drink some mint julep before the next dance, Jurian. The females won’t appreciate fish breath.” Jurian only rolled his eyes as he turned his attention to a slice of Mardi Gras king cake.

Lucien scanned the rows of vendors, looking for the baked goods. But none of the vendors’ name tags read “Elain Archeron”. He sighed inwardly. He had no idea what Elain Archeron looked like, but had been hoping to try some of her famed treats. Tarquin, Prince of Adriata, could not stop talking about the hummingbird cake, peach cobblers, and powdered sugar beignets Elain made when she catered his Mardi Gras event in Adriata last year.

“If you’re visiting Colibri, you must try Elain Archeron’s food,” Tarquin had told him. “Elain’s cafe should be open by now. She is a very kind female as well, and please tell her I said hello.”

Elain Archeron had been one of the jambalaya contestants earlier in the afternoon, but the female did not bother introducing herself to him. Odd.

“Looking for Vassa?” Jurian inquired. Lucien was supposed to meet the Mardi Gras princess and ask her for the first dance, but her parents claimed Vassa was running late for the ball.

“I suppose,” Lucien murmured, even though that was not the case. Jurian knocked back another glass of Fae wine beside him. “Cauldron, Jurian. Save some space for the mint juleps before you get too drunk.”

“Aha! That reminds me…I’ll find those mint juleps while you’re looking for your princess. All this heat has me parched. Be right back.” Jurian clapped Lucien on the shoulder before disappearing into the crowd.

Lucien lingered on the side, trying to assess which pretty female he would dance with next, when he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. A pale-faced female, with onyx black hair and equally dark eyes, was standing behind him. There was something cunning in her face, something odd Lucien could not quite place. Nevertheless, the female was dressed as one of the wait staff and innocuously offered him a platter of powdered beignets.

“Beignet, Your Highness?” she asked, her voice peppy. “I heard the prince has a sweet tooth.”

“Thank you.” Lucien picked one up with a napkin and absentmindedly brought it to his mouth. It was only when Lucien swallowed his first bite that he realized something was wrong. The beignet was slightly bitter, the powdered sugar chalky on his tongue. Suddenly, everything seemed bigger. Everything was bigger.

Lucien blinked, feeling like his eyes had doubled in size based on how long it took for him to fully blink. The grass…it was eye-level, the blades of green sharp and extra vibrant. His body was hunched over on all fours. He was…a frog?

Oh gods. What the hell just happened?

A looming shadow darkened the space around him. Lucien looked up just in time to see the waitress, monstrously tall with a wicked glint in her eyes, poised to slam a bowl over his head.

Act first, think later.

Booiingg! Lucien moved on instinct, his frog legs launching him into the air like a spring. He dove straight into the crowd of Fae party-goers, stalling the waitress from pursuing him any further.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. That was new. Fear seized Lucien like a vise, the adrenaline sending him into flight mode. Where the hell did Jurian go? Everything was so damn big…the distance he normally crossed in three quick strides now required multiple leaps.

There! Jurian was near the tree line, mint juleps in hand. Lucien hopped towards his friend, gaining more mastery over his new limbs with each leap.

“Jurian!” Lucien blinked, surprised that he still retained the ability to speak. “Jurian! Down here!” he called out, louder this time.

The Fae male above him glanced down and promptly dropped the drinks in shock. Lucien flinched reflexively when minty sweet alcohol rained down, but it didn’t matter any more. As a frog, he had no clothes to protect from spilled drinks.

“Fuck, I must be more drunk than I thought.” Jurian blinked twice and chuckled. “I could have sworn that a frog with Lucien’s voice just spoke to me.”

“That’s because it is me!” Lucien hissed, hopping up and down insistently. “Jurian!”

“Holy shit.” Jurian knelt on the ground, scooping him up in his hands. “Lucien, is that you?”

“How many times do I have to say it’s me?” Lucien grumbled. Jurian’s green-brown eyes peered down.

“Cauldron, you still have your scar and your gold eye. Well, it’s not made of metal anymore, but…fuck.” Jurian lifted Lucien up to perch on his shoulder. Lucien brought a webbed hand to his face, feeling at his left eye. Sure enough, he could see out of both eyes—truly see, without relying on a metal contraption. “Fuck, I probably look like I’ve gone mad, talking to a frog.”

The male took some deep breaths, pacing back and forth. Lucien clung onto Jurian’s purple jacket for dear life. “Jurian, can you stop moving?”

“Sorry. We need another drink.” Jurian swiped two goblets of wine off a passing tray and ducked behind a drooping willow tree. Lucien hopped down, sitting on all fours on top of Jurian’s thigh. “Okay, Lucien. What the fuck happened?”

“I ate a beignet from this waitress, and then I turn into a frog and she’s trying to trap me under a bowl!” Lucien glanced furtively at their surroundings, but did not see the wretched female’s face.

“What did the waitress look like?”

“High Fae. Pale, with black hair and black eyes. She was wearing the La Bouff servant’s uniform.” Jurian’s gaze darkened with protective instinct.

“Why would she put a curse on you?”

Lucien shrugged. “Not sure. She knew who I was, though, so that’s strange. I’m Beron’s youngest son, with a slim path to the throne. What good would come out of cursing me?”

“Perhaps she wanted money. Ransom a prince, you know.”

“As if Beron would pay more than a couple coppers to get me back,” Lucien said bitterly.

“You’re right, your father is a bastard.” Jurian frowned. “Could you undo the curse yourself?”

“I can try.” Now that he had Jurian to keep watch, Lucien closed his eyes and tried to tunnel deep down into his well of magic. He had always had a knack for spells and curses. It wasn’t like that of witches, who required specific ingredients, tools, and conditions to generate any effect. Rather, it was pure magic—power that stemmed from being the son of a High Lord.

He found the dark stain of the curse, but despite all his efforts to extract it, the stain remained stubbornly present. It was as if it was interwoven into his very essence. Lucien yanked and prodded and threw wave after wave of magic against it, but to no avail.

“It’s not working,” he announced glumly.

“We should find the La Bouffs…tell them that one of their staff, or the food they served, turned the visiting Autumn Prince into a frog,” Jurian proposed, his fists clenching with concern. “If they cannot resolve this, then they should be held liable.”

“Isn’t that a little harsh?” Lucien replied dryly. “Lord and Lady La Bouff can only do so much. But Vassa…she’s studying to be a witch. I heard she’s the top of her class…perhaps she could assist with undoing the curse.”

“Perhaps,” Jurian mused doubtfully.

Lucien hopped onto the rim of the wine goblet and stuck his tongue into the chilled liquor. The sweet and tangy notes were far more sensational thanks to his new taste buds. Unfortunately, his added weight was an imbalance to the delicate stem, and Lucien promptly tipped backwards. Red wine poured over his entire underside, drenching him.

Jurian began to laugh.

“You know frogs absorb liquid from their underbelly skin, right? You’ll be drunk in no time.” Lucien stuck his tongue out at Jurian and rolled around the grass for a bit, trying to clean himself off. “I suppose Vassa would be glad to help a prince for fame, or fortune.”

“Also, we have the old tale of princesses kissing frog princes,” Lucien reminded Jurian. “With the laws governing witch magic, it’s very likely that this curse follows the same path of resolution.”

Jurian snorted. “Good luck trying to convince a princess—even if it’s a Mardi Gras princess—to kiss a frog. We are better off pleading directly.”

Lucien tried to grin, but it felt strange with a new mouth and new facial muscles. “You seem to underestimate me, Jurian.”

“Let’s bet on it: if you can get the princess to kiss you, I’ll walk Eris’s dogs for the next month.”

“I do enjoy a challenge. I offer you this, just for fun. If the princess kisses you, Jurian, then I’ll buy you a new sword. Out of Illyrian steel.” Lucien stood on his hind legs, straightening his back and tilting his chin up with the regal air of a prince. Jurian rolled his eyes.

“As if a princess would want to kiss a lowly Autumn Kingdom foot soldier over its prince.”

“I beg to differ, Jurian. I’m a frog this time…I think that evens the playing field.” Lucien winked. “Besides, stop discrediting yourself. You’re one of our most skilled warriors. Anyways…best of luck, I’m off to find the princess!”

“You bastard,” Jurian muttered darkly, shaking his head with amusement. He finished his wine in two large gulps, holding the empty glass up in a mock toast. “I would say I hope you lose, but life would also be boring if you were stuck in frog form.”

With that, Lucien hopped off towards the La Bouff mansion. There was a slim chance Vassa was still getting ready for the party—truly, females needed all the time possible plus more for these elaborate events.

Most of the ball’s festivities were taking place in the garden and first floor, and Lucien could hear Lord and Lady La Bouff—the Dorado Mardi Gras King and Queen—chatting with guests. That meant the light emanating from the window on the second floor was none other than Vassa La Bouff’s.

Clinging to small nooks in the marble, scaling up vine to vine—which was made harder thanks to his slippery frog mucus, Lucien made his way to the golden window.

Princess Vassa was standing on the balcony, and simply put, she was the most beautiful female Lucien had ever seen.

The female’s wide eyes were cast towards the heavens, her expression a mixture of hope and despair. Honey-brown hair was swept up into an artful bun studded with luminous pearls. A tiara of rose gold rested on her brow, glittering in the moonlight. Her soft curves and elegant shoulders were accented by a strapless lavender gown with a heart-shaped neckline.

“Please, please, please,” the ethereal princess whispered, clasping her gloved hands to her chest. “Please.”

Lucien hopped closer, the world spinning out of view. Ah, damn it. The alcohol was kicking in faster than he’d anticipated. Princely charm now had to be mobilized in full force if he wanted to receive a kiss.

He cleared his throat, but only a ribbet came out. The princess glanced down, spotting him. Gods, she was beautiful. Those doe brown eyes, that golden skin still warm under the silver moon, and those pretty rosebud lips that hooked Lucien in like a moth to a flame.

“If you wanted a kiss, all you had to do was ask.”

[iloveyoudie]

[limetimo]

[ID:

THE CRAB ALIGNMENT CHART

Horizontal line Purist: crab must be in the subphylum Crustacea Neutral: crab must be in the phylum Arthropoda Radical: crab must be kingdom Animalia Vertical line Purist: Crab is fully aquatic Neutral: crab lives near water Radical: crab lives anywhere Horizontal/Vertical P/P: Reginald is crab P/N: A hermit crab is a crab P/R: An isopod is a crab N/P: A sea spider is crab N/N: Damselflies are crab N/R: A bumblebee is a crab R/P: A tuna is a crab R/N: A gull is a crab R/R: YOU ARE A CRAB

Crab alignment chart 2.0

Horizontal line (taxonomy) Purist: crab is in io. Bracyura Neutral: crab is in cl. Malacostraca Radical: crab is anywhere in sph Crustacea Vertical line (morphology) Purist: crab must be flat, wider than it is long, pleon folded under carapace Neutral: crab must be compact Radical: crab can be of any shape Horizontal/Vertical P/P: He is a crab P/N: Porcelain crabs are crabs P/R: o. Cyclida were a crab N/P: fam Raninidae are crabs N/N: mole crabs are crabs N/R: water flea is a crab R/P: arrowhead crab is a crab R/N: skeleton shrimps are crabs R/R: spo Rhizocephala are crabs /End ID]

(source)

[tridentine2013]

Corbyn - What if you are wrong?

Ok, so you hate Jeremy Corbyn; but what if you are wrong to?

I get it. You are furious that a major political party in the UK has a leader who is an ‘IRA sympathiser’. Incensed that he is ‘weak’ on defence; a pacifist. Enraged that he didn’t sing the national anthem that time … boiling mad that he didn’t campaign effectively for ‘remain’, and that he is a Marxist puppet of the troublemaker trades unions, who cosies up to extremists and wants to borrow even more money which we ‘cannot afford’, especially since Labour already ‘crashed the economy’, and are not fiscally competent. He voted time and again against anti-terror legislation, wouldn’t push the nuclear button, isn’t a royalist, and wants to tax your home, your garden, your work and your inheritance. He’s scruffy, he’s an enemy of business, and he supports uncontrolled immigration. You know this, because everyone knows. Everyone except the barmy army of dupes and gulls who hang on his every word like brainwashed sheep. But what if you are wrong? What might you be passing up by holding to ‘your views’, because the media you trust have exposed these truths time after time?

Let’s address the issue of most concern to many, Corbyn the terrorist sympathiser and appeaser. In this context, the IRA issue is pre-eminent. I dare to suggest that most British people not living in Northern Ireland have a very limited grasp of the politics of Ireland, little understanding of the period from William of Orange to the Easter Rising, or the ‘Anglo Irish Treaty’, the establishment of the Irish Free State, or what precipitated ‘The Troubles’ from the mid-1960s to 1998. But that is not important. What is important is that you know that the IRA murdered and bombed their way around the six counties and the mainland for many years, inflicting harm on innocent civilians along the way. And that anyone who showed support for them was obviously anti-British, and by definition a terrorist sympathiser. Do you believe then, that it is ‘not the British way’ to try to find a solution to a 20-year-old guerrilla conflict, which might bring the killings to an end? Some of you may remember Margaret Thatcher proclaiming that the British Government would “… never negotiate with terrorists”. But in 2011 cabinet papers were released which showed that in 1981 she did just that, during the ‘hunger strikes’. But she was not the first; in 1969, the British Army met senior figures in the IRA. In 1971, they met again in secret talks. In 1972 Irish Labour Party politicians acted as a ‘conduit’ for talks between the IRA and Reginald Maudling of the Conservative government of the UK. Later in 1972 MI6, the UK Government, and the British Army held talks in N.I. and subsequently the IRA ‘top brass’ were flown to secret talks in London. This trip included Martin McGuiness and Gerry Adams. Willie Whitelaw represented the British Government, led by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath. From 1973 to 1976 many more secret talks were held. In 1977 Douglas Hurd met Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison. These secret ‘back channel’ communications were not suspended until 1982. And the it gets interesting. In 1983 Ken Livingstone met with Gerry Adams in Belfast, which led to an invitation to the Palace of Westminster in 1984, extended by Livingstone and fellow MP Jeremy Corbyn. In 1986 Gerry Adams MP, president of Sinn Féin, and Tom King MP, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, entered into secret correspondence, carried out by intermediaries. With the approval of prime minister Margaret Thatcher, King lays out the UK’s position for negotiations. Livingstone, Corbyn, and many other Labour and Tory politicians had come to the view that a military solution was not possible. In 1988 James M. Glover, former Commander-in-Chief of the UK Land Forces, admitted during television documentary that the Irish Republican Army cannot be defeated militarily, and the most rational period of the entire troubles followed, 1989 to 1994, known historically as the peace process period, beginning under Thatcher in which (1991 on) the British Government held regular covert talks with the IRA which ultimately led to the 1999 ceasefire, and eventually the Good Friday Agreement. Jeremy Corbyn’s role was perhaps minor, but it was, in contrast to many politicians, open and honest. It was, in keeping with Corbyn’s political beliefs, an attempt to explore the opportunities for peace.

But he definitely didn’t sing the National Anthem though …   that much is true. Jeremy Corbyn is a democrat and a republican. And definitely a man of principle. A man of peace. He sat in silent contemplation, reflecting perhaps on the horrors of war; who can actually say?

But do we prefer armies of politicians who fiddle their expenses, avoid tax, break promises, lie in court, ’employ’ family members as researchers or office managers, take money from ‘lobbyists’ or in countless ways abuse their position and privilege, so long as they sing the National Anthem? Liam Fox for example, our current Conservative Secretary of State for International Trade. Who had to repay over £22,000 of falsely claimed mortgage expenses, and claimed £19,000 in 4 years in ‘mobile phone charges’. Liam Fox who failed to declare several trips abroad paid by foreign governments, who simultaneously rented out his London home whilst claiming the cost of living in rented accommodation (£19,000) from the state. Liam Fox who took his close male friend Adam Werrity to MOD meetings with foreign dignitaries at the taxpayer’s expense, even though Werrity had no security clearance. I bet he would sing the National Anthem with gusto.

What Jeremy Corbyn did do however, apart from not sing the National Anthem, was to stay talking with ex-service veterans, while the other ‘dignitaries’ at the Remembrance Day event went off for a taxpayer funded slap up lunch. To suggest that you would rather he had simply sung the National Anthem ‘out of respect’ is to endorse the Liam Foxxes of this world. To imply that it is ok to act abominably so long as you give the appearance of having the interests your country, not naked self-interest as your primary motivation. This affair was actually an example of the kinder, fairer, more honest politics which Jeremy Corbyn seeks to encourage. You may not agree with him in this regard. You may be a ‘patriot and a royalist’. But we have the only National Anthem which conflates support for the royal family with patriotism. Which does not, if god is invoked at all, ask him to favour and protect the nation, instead suggesting he does so by proxy in favouring the monarch, and the monarch’s enduring rule. Is it unpatriotic to be a republican? Is it not possible if you are German, or French, or Irish, to be ‘patriotic’? Jeremy Corbyn is a proud Briton. But he draws that pride from how in our best selves, collectively, we treat all humanity. When we do not invade or destabilise, undermine or subvert other countries for our own economic gain. When we do not attack other nations on false pretexts, when we look after our own, be it our disabled population, or other socially disadvantaged groups … When we show global leadership in human rights. When we improve the entire world by scientific or medical breakthroughs, when we are the best we can be.

But he is a Marxist, and that is reason enough to hate the man with a passion. Except that he isn’t. He just isn’t. I hope that we are agreed he does stand by his principles, whether we agree with them or not? In his over 30 years in politics, he has presented himself as a democratic socialist. The wealth of ‘Marxist and Marxist-Leninist’ groups have never had Corbyn on their membership list. But it’s his policies that mark him out as a Marxist? I cannot go into the technical reasons that Corbyn cannot credibly be argued to be a Marxist, but it is worth remembering that what motivated Marx and Engels was the interests of the working man, and the establishment of a system of economics which offered an alternative to capitalism. Marx believed the capitalist system bore insoluble contradictions, and contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction. In 2008 the inherent flaws of free market economics were laid bare. Marx was in many respects visionary. His ideas about the exploitation of Labour, the primacy, within the system, of those owning the means of production, the problems created by overproduction have become manifest. But that is a separate discussion. The fact is that Jeremy Corbyn is somewhere between a democratic socialist and a social democrat. This should not describe a position on the political spectrum which troubles or scares you unless you are someone who has become hugely wealthy, largely by paying workers considerably less than their labour value. Jeremy Corbyn is a pragmatic socialist, with an objective of progressive, achievable change to a more equitable and rewarding system for the individual worker. He is broadly in line with the theories of Keynesian economics, and fundamentally opposed to the idea that ‘austerity’ is or was a necessary response to the circumstances of the 2008 global crash. Whilst we are on the subject, we might look at some evidence from the Office of National Statistics, regarding the immediate post-crash growth. 

          The graphic above charts the actual GDP growth over the period shown. The post-crash trough which bottomed out in 2009 demonstrates that in less than a year from the trough, GDP growth had returned to positive, from a low of -2.4%. From shrinking 2.4%, to shrinking less, (relative growth) to actual positive growth for 3 quarters before the 2010 election. Since then, we see a very stagnant period, with virtually no growth, which looks set to continue into the foreseeable future, due to lack of investment. Yes Corbyn, and Labour would borrow more money, which at historically low interest rates, would be spent in areas of the economy, including infrastructure … building etc., to stimulate economic activity and growth, which (the theory goes) would be more than capable of creating the wealth to meet the increased interest costs, providing a faster paydown of international loans than to meet interest payments by continuing to impoverish the public sector including schools, the NHS, and social care. Corbyn’s Labour seek to create better wages, and a better standard of living for all working people. Even the 5%, or 1 in 20 people who would pay higher taxes will actually earn more collectively, in a better performing economy.

But are Labour not demonstrably, historically worse at running the economy that the Conservatives? You may be surprised, since this is a claim made daily, usually by more than one Tory politician, that it simply does not bear scrutiny. It isn’t true. (1) The Conservatives have been the biggest borrowers over 70 years. (2) Labour have borrowed less and paid back more debt than the Tories even during the ‘Neo-Liberal era’ since 1979. (3) 130 leading economists endorsed Labour’s spending plans as detailed in their 2017 manifesto. Many issues are misrepresented regarding their ‘cost’ to the state of course; the ‘huge’ cost of renationalising key industries such as the railways is a case in point. In this case the systemic change would occur in stages, as the existing franchises expired, the lines will become state owned and operated. In other nationalisations, the principle which applies is that the industry is bought, effectively, with government bonds sold on the debt market providing the funds to purchase the shareholding, either majority or total, and take control thereby of future profits. The obsession with selling off the public sector to private interests, for profit, has been enduring and extensive. And value is extracted from the water, power, and transport sectors, from refuse, prisons, NHS, parts of the Courts System, Police, Care Homes, collection of business rates, Army recruitment, TV licensing, custodial and immigration services, and disability assessment. Do we want or need private companies extracting value (private sector profit) from these services? In many cases nationalised or part nationalised businesses in other states are the ultimate beneficiary.

But he has voted against ‘anti-terror’ legislation time and again, that is true. Does he want terrorists on our streets or something? No. Jeremy Corbyn voted in the main, against anti-terror legislation which was frequently framed to permit definitions of terrorism which impinged on our own rights or civil liberties, against 14 day detention, (so did May), against Control Orders, (so did May), against ID cards, (so did May), against 90 day detention, (so did May), against the Counter Terrorism Act 2008, another attempt to extend detention without charge (to 42 days on this occasion) ,a vote from which May was absent, against TPIMs, which May supported. Do we want our politicians to speak out if they see legislation being proposed which whist having a specific claimed purpose, creates the possibility of loose interpretation or wanton misuse, against our own interests? It is right that our civil rights are front and centre of such debates, and this is the reason why so much ‘anti-terror legislation has been either defeated or considerably amended between readings. Corbyn wants the public to be safe, but from the abuse of process by the state, as well as from terrorism.

But the Unions though, bunch of leftie troublemakers! Maggie sorted them out.  The relationship between Labour and Trade Unions is as old as the Party itself. Trade Unions were once just about the only organised resistance to the systematic abuse of British workers. The Labour Party, originally the Labour Representation Committee, was formed to increase workers’ representation in Parliament, a Parliament made up almost exclusively of the historical ‘powers that be’, the Tories (Conservatives) and the Whigs (Liberals). The function of a trade union is to look after the interests of its members, and that is as true today as it has ever been. The fact that Thatcher era propaganda ‘demonised’ Unions has been entirely to the advantage of business. The Labour Party and the Trade Unions of today, (although stripped of much of the power they once had) are a bulwark against the worst excesses of the exploitation of Labour. If you hold to the Thatcherite view of unions, and are not leading a large corporation, you would do well to study the reality behind the rhetoric.

But the nuclear button. How could we have a Prime Minister who wouldn’t defend us against our enemies? Corbyn doesn’t even want us to have a nuclear capability. He wants to scrap the Trident replacement programme. Jeremy Corbyn has stated, on record, “We want a secure and peaceful world. We achieve that by promoting peace, but also by promoting security”. What he has also said, (in paraphrase) whilst holding to the opinion that all wars are a failure of diplomacy, is that there are circumstances in which he would support military action. But reluctant to send our soldiers to foreign lands to pursue political objectives? Unpersuaded that we have not in the past been too quick to adopt the military option, on occasion embarking on wars which were illegal in international law? Yes, without doubt. So he is someone committed to defending our interests, but in search always of a nonviolent, peaceful, negotiated solution to potential conflict, who approaches military options as a ‘last resort’? I would hope that this approach to defence would be popular with most reasonably minded people.

He is as is well known, a unilateralist. Which means that Britain under Corbyn would be seeking to take the lead in international efforts to bring about an end to nuclear weapons globally. We would pass legislation to dismantle our own nuclear arsenal, and seek to do so whilst leading an international initiative aimed at achieving, by negotiation, a nuclear free world. There is a credible roadmap to nuclear disarmament, and there are options, when such a process is complete, to see that no country develops such a capability again. I would hope that all our descendants are born into a world in which the threat of total annihilation is no longer ever present. Could any of us claim, in circumstances where Jeremy Corbyn is asked to consider authorising the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, that as a civilisation we have achieved anything worthwhile? The dogma of mutually assured destruction is outdated. There are simply so many ‘battlefield weapons’, also known as ‘tactical nuclear weapons’, for the M.A.D. logic to remain credible. When generals in the field have access to small, strategic warheads, designed to create tactical advantage by eliminating mere thousands of troops, (and any civilians in the very localised blast zone) we have a recipe for a disastrous escalation.

Jeremy Corbyn is a peacemaker, a military ‘dove’, who wishes to use the position of Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister to improve the circumstances of the British people, whilst seeking also to take initiatives to stabilise, and make more peaceful the wider world. Those who seek to convince us that this is ideological and unachievable are frequently those who are in some form benefiting from the huge sums spent each year around the world, on ‘things to kill people with’.  

What you could be passing up, with your determination to not rationally reassess your view of Jeremy Corbyn, is everything you ever dreamed of. For you, your children and your children’s children. This is not hyperbole, this is about the future not just of the UK, but the world. You and I share a world where $1.6 trillion is spent on ‘defence’. The collective means to harm one another. One point six thousand BILLION dollars, at immense cost to the mere seven billion inhabitants of the planet. A stack of dollars, every year, which piled up would stretch over 80,000 miles. Yes, we spend annually, as a civilisation, a pile of money eighty thousand miles high, on stuff to harm one another. Or if stacked on their side, more than three times around the circumference of the earth.I don’t want that to continue, Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t want that to continue, and we neither of us could imagine that you want this to continue. The spend on the collective means to harm one another equates to $240 per head for every living being; 3 billion of whom currently live on less than $2.50 per day. Jeremy Corbyn’s call for talk, diplomacy, consensus, agreement, rather than war, is informed by many things. The most powerful is the idea that we really shouldn’t be killing one another. (378,000 deaths per year attributed to wars during the relatively peaceful 1985 to 1994.) It isn’t a civilised way to behave. But another important factor is the 1.6 thousand billion dollars could be used in so many more humane and socially beneficial ways. In the UK we spend forty five thousand million pounds a year on ‘defence’. And Jeremy Corbyn is not even suggesting a reduction to the ‘defence’ budget. In fact, since the war the Tories have on average reduced the defence budget by 0.5% during each year in power. Labour in power, over the same period, have increased defence spending by 2.4% per year. We can talk later about other ways to spend that money, but for the moment I would like to explain why I am talking in largely global terms, about one party leader, in one country, the UK. It is because a better WORLD is possible.

Jeremy Corbyn is not a figure without parallel in global politics. There are, and have always been leaders of parties or even countries, whose objective has been the best possible future for their people. Senator Bernie Sanders ran a campaign in the US Presidential ‘primaries’ which enjoyed huge (yuge) popular support, for an agenda which promised to give greater power to individual Americans in the process and management of the US political system. He faced seemingly insurmountable odds, not least because of the enormous amount of money needed to even campaign effectively. That he did not win the Democratic Party nomination is largely due to a particularly undemocratic structure within the party’s nomination system. He ran Hilary Clinton almost to the wire, and in the end, it was power and money in the hands of an elite which prevented his election as the Democratic Party Presidential nominee. Sanders also represented a fairer, kinder politics. For the many, not the few, to borrow a phrase.  

Instead, Trump triumphed against Clinton, in a contest which could easily have produced a very different result had the race been between Sanders and Trump. But in a little over 3 years, Americans will return to the polling booths. Were that to coincide with a Jeremy Corbyn Labour Party in power in the UK, the impulse toward real change could become irresistible. If you can begin to imagine a world where the most powerful leaders, of the most powerful countries, were genuinely committed to a peaceful world in which the living and working conditions, the health and fortune of the average person was of primary importance, things could change for the better very quickly.

  (1)    http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/03/13/the-conservatives-have-been-the-biggest-borrowers-over-the-last-70-years/

(2)    http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/03/14/labour-have-borrowed-less-and-repaid-more-than-the-conservatives-since-1979/

(3)     http://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/guws3cyv3ctq9g7vg754p2zyymvc2f/

�����M

[anneboleynresearch]

Sources

“To the Roman Catholics, it was not just that in order to satisfy his lust Henry had displaced his rightful wife in favour of Anne Boleyn, and broken with the true Church. Anne herself was soon being blamed for what had happened. Reginald Pole claimed that she had never loved Henry and described her as ‘the cause of all evil’ and ‘the person who caused all this’. George Cavendish, in the confidence that God, through the accession of Mary, had restored right to rule to England, produced a series of Metricial Visions in which over forty victims of political disaster, from Wolsey onwards, lament their ill-fortune...

“By the accession of James I, an analysis preserved in the papers of those incorrigible recusants, the Treshams of Rushton, could attribute all the sufferings of Roman Catholics under Elizabeth I’s penal laws to the fact that Anne ‘did beget a settled hatred of them against her and hers’...

“Anne had been of ‘bad parentage, of bad fame afore her marriage, and afterwards executed for adultery.

“Very understandably, the descendants of Thomas More had a particularly nice line in insult...William Roper, the chancellor’s son-in-law, claimed that it was Anne’s personal vendetta against More which encouraged Henry to demand that he conform. It was More’s nephew, William Rastell, a religious exile and (briefly) judge of the court of Queen’s Bench, who gave currency in his lost Life of his uncle to the lie that Henry VIII was Anne Boleyn’s father. He also alleged -- with obvious echoes of Herodias, Salome, and Herod -- that Anne put on a great banquet for Henry at Hanworth where she ‘allured there the king with her dalliance and pastime to grant unto her request, to put the bishop [Fisher] and Sir Thomas More to death’. In this edition of More’s English works, Rastell even edited out remarks by Sir Thomas More which were favorable to the Queen...”

“That more should have recognized Anne as ‘really anointed queen’ was unthinkable; worse still, it must not be admitted that a saint had described a whore as ‘noble’. To Catholics, the deaths of Anne and those accused with her and, later, of Cromwell, ‘and most of all those who procured his death’ were blood sacrifices to expiate More’s murder...”

“Protestants told the opposite story. John Foxe staunchly defended both the queen’s morals and her religious commitment. He hints at the involvement of the papists in her fall and cannot resist assigning responsibility to his bete noire, the conservative champion, Stephen Gardiner...”

“Bishop John Aylmer...hailed Anne as ‘the crop and root’ of the Reformation whom ‘God had endued with wisdom that she could, and given her the mind that she would, do it’; John Bridges, writing in 1573, elevated Anne to the status of ‘a most holy martyr’. 

“Protestant writers were not, however, always unanimous in praise of Anne Boleyn. William Thomas...who was to be Northumberland’s clerk of the privy council, and who was executed later for plotting Mary’s assassination, firmly maintained the official version of Anne’s guilt, even after Henry VIII’s death: 

“[Anne’s] liberal life were so shameful to rehearse. Once she was a wise woman endued with as many outward good qualities in playing on instruments, singing and other courtly graces as few woman of her time, with such an outward profession of gravity as was to be marvelled at. But inward she was all another dame than she seemed to be; for in satisfying of her carnal appetite she fled not so much as the company of her own natural brother besides the company of three or four others of the gallantest gentlemen that were near about the king’s proper person -- drawn by her own devilish devices that it should seem she was always well occupied.

“A school of puritan opinion was prepared to imply that Henry’s second marriage was as much a matter of lust as principle: 

“Whether he did it of an upright conscience or to serve his lusts I will not judge for in the burrows of man’s heart be many secret corners and it cannot be denied but that he was a very fleshy man, and no marvel for albeit his father brought him up in good learning yet after...he fell into all riot and overmuch love of women.

“As for Anne herself:

“This gentlewoman in proportion of body might compare with the rest of the ladies and gentlewomen of the court, albeit in beauty she was to many inferior, but for behavior, manners, attire, and tongue she excelled them all...But howsoever she outwardly appeared, she was indeed a very wilfull woman which perhaps might seem no fault because seldom women do lack it, but yet that and other things cost her dear.

“It is indeed noticeable that a number of writers seem almost reluctant to write about Anne Boleyn in any detail. Thus Holinshed remarked:

“Because I might rather say much than sufficiently enough in praise of this noble queen as well for her singular wit and other excellent qualities of mind as also for her favouring of learned men, zeal of religion and liberality in distributing alms in relief of the poor, I will refer the reader unto that which Mr. Foxe says.

“Foxe, however, had already referred to better-informed reports still to appear: 

“...because touching the memorable virtues of this worthy queen, partly we have something before, partly because more also is promised to be declared of her virtuous life (the Lord permitting) by others who were then about her, I will cease in this matter further to proceed.

“No vindication of Anne Boleyn was ever published. Her chaplain, William Latymer, presented to her daughter an encomium on her religious activities, and the Scottish Lutheran, Alexander Ales, wrote an account of her fall, placing all blame on the enemies of the Reformation, but both men evidently had patronage in mind. Ales, indeed, included an address for any financial contributions Elizabeth would like to send. The reason for silence elsewhere is not far to seek. Few defenses of Anne Boleyn have been entirely happy. Any vindication of the wife was an implicit criticism of the husband; if Anne was ‘noble’, ‘virtuous’, and ‘worthy’, Henry had either been a monster or a gull.

“One of those who may have been concerned with a project for an official Elizabethan account of ‘the mother of our blessed Queen’ was George Wyatt of Boxley Abbey in Kent. One of the most assiduous of Anne’s defenders, Wyatt claimed that he had begun work at the request of an official biographer who asked him to set down what he knew of Anne Boleyn’s early years, and had continued it under the encouragement of the archbishop of Canterbury. With the accession of James, interest...had waned, leaving him to carry on alone. George had a strong person interest in vindicating the English Reformation in general and Anne Boleyn in particular; he was the youngest son (but also the heir) of Thomas Wyatt, the leader of the 1554 rebellion against Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, Mary I, and grandson of Thomas Wyatt, the poet who had been imprisoned in the Tower in 1536 as one of those suspected of involvement with the queen. 

“George Wyatt devoted the latter part of his life not only to her biography but, as we have seen over the business of Anne’s alleged deformity, to an effort to reply specifically to the Catholic propagandist, Nicholas Sander. Sander was no original authority, but his Origins and Progress of the English Schism...had broadcast very effectively the scandalous stories about Anne which circulated in recusant circles. A typical example...is the story that after her miscarriage in January 1536, Anne committed incest with her brother in order to beget a son and so set up the Boleyn dynasty. In the end Wyatt was no more successful than others who had been publishing a defence of a queen, but more because of the grandiose nature of his plans than want of effort. Two, or possibly three, of his attempts have survive: the earliest a brief but completed ‘Life of Anne Boleigne’, the second a vindication of the relations between Anne and Thomas Wyatt the elder, which may not be by, but is certainly after, George Wyatt, and finally...the opening section of a massive ‘History of the English Reformation’. 

“The purpose of what George does have to say about Anne is naively obvious. ‘Elect of God’, ‘heroical spirit’, ‘princely lady’ -- the adjectives abound. 

“The fact that writers have agendas according to their religious alignments does not, however, make them valueless to the historian. The test is, did they have access to real sources of information? The line from Sander back to William Rastell is direct, but if we are to believe Sir Thomas More, he never discussed Anne with Rastell or anyone else, and the personal recollections of the members of his family were confined to his life outside the council and the court. They certainly breathe no word of More’s dangerous and sometimes highly secret encouragement of the opposition to the king’s divorce. On the other hand, even as the author of a Catholic account as full of picaresque invention as the mid-century Cronica del Rey Enrico Otavo de Inglaterra had from time to time access to genuine recollections -- for example, his report that Thomas Wyatt watched the execution of Anne’s alleged lovers in 1536, which was only confirmed in 1959 when a manuscript containing hitherto unknown Wyatt material was identified in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. As for George Wyatt, he had three particular sources to augment the material he collected about Anne: ‘some helps’ left by his grandfather, the poet, the recollections of his mother Jane, who had married in 1537 and lived to the end of the century, and the memories of Anne Gainsford, later the wife of George Zouche, gentleman pensioner and a target for Catholic investigation in Mary’s reign. Given such links, the volume of material Wyatt recorded is disappointing, but at least one important episode has independent warranty in other sources.

“The importance of persisting with material from partisan sources is well illuminated in the little which John Foxe does record about Anne. Undoubtedly Foxe wished to present Anne in a positive light, but he was equally aware that factual inaccuracy would lay him open to ridicule -- and so too the Protestantism he espoused. In consequence, he regularly revised his account of the queen as his data improved. In his first work, the Rerum in ecclesia gestarum...Commentarii written while he was still abroad, he was little more than hagiographical: 

“There was at this time in the king’s court a  young woman not of ignoble family, but much more ennobled by beauty, as well as being the most beautiful of all in true piety and character, Anne Boleyn, whom the king greatly loved, as she well merited, and took as his wife and queen. 

“’The entire British nation’ he went on, was indebted to Anne, not only for her own contribution to the commencement of the Reformation but as the mother of Queen Elizabeth, who has revived it...

“Anne’s fate he refused to discuss, but he did include her scaffold speech as evidence of her ‘singular faith and complete modesty towards her king’. In 1563 Foxe, now back in England, was able to be more specific in the first edition of his great work, The Acts and Monuments, better known as The Book of Martyrs. He gave details of Anne’s charitable activity, her support of named scholars, the discipline she kept in her household, and her feeding of the reformist ideas of Simon Fish to the king. What is more, he cited sources, for example, Anne’s silk woman, Joan Wilkinson. Seven years later, a second edition added other stories and identified the material about Fish as having come from his widow. Foxe also included a rebuttal of Anne’s alleged offenses, along with the barbed comment that Henry’s immediate remarriage was ‘to such as wisely can judge upon cases occurrant, a great clearing of her’ -- as near to the knuckle as he dared to go. In the last edition (the fourth of 1583), he was able to tell of Anne’s support for Thomas Pastmore, the unorthodox parson of Much Hadham, almost certainly based on the text of a surviving petition. We also have an amount of material which Foxe assembled but did not use, or else abridged. Foxe’s overall purpose was to present Anne as a Protestant role model, but that is no reason ex hypothesi to discard material carefully collected, much of which can, in fact, be verified. 

The problem of potential distortion is equally or more pressing with the one source that approaches anything like a regular commentary on English affairs. This is provided by the reports of resident foreign ambassadors, for, as well as regular domestic news reporting being unknown, Tudor monarchs were convinced that it was best for subjects to be told only what was good for them. The resident ambassador was a new breed in northern Europe. Only in the sixteenth century was it becoming generally recognized that a country needed to keep a representative at the court of an important neighbour, to watch over its own interests and to send back a steady flow of news. Older-style envoys continued to be sent to handle special negotiations, but there were now men stationed abroad and, according to the advice manuals, reporting back every few days, with monthly situation reports and, on their return, a relation or written debriefing. Theory did not turn out quite like that in practice, but a series of letters to the home government updating the situation every ten or twelve days -- which is what survives from the best-organized embassies -- is an outside commentary on affairs of unique value to the historian.

“The three principal embassies to England during Anne Boleyn’s career were from Venice, from France, and from the Holy Roman Empire. Venetian ambassadors were primarily concerned with trade questions and international relations...The French had a far greater interest in English domestic affairs, and for much of the time they might hope to keep Henry VIII from allying with Charles V. Anne, indeed, was sometimes wholly identified with French interests, almost another ambassador in residence. Yet the reports of Francis I’s representatives in London are frequently disappointing. Various reasons can be put foward for this. The French diplomat service...was...still in its infancy, and it has not received the editorial attention from modern historians which its reports need and deserve. What is more, the relative ease and greater safety of communication between the French and English courts may have encouraged the use of messengers for more difficult matters, rather than lengthy coded letters. 

“Relations between London and Paris may...have been mainly at an official level, with the French ambassadors, representatives of the traditional enemy, finding it difficult to penetrate to non-government sources. In February 1535, when English suspicions of French treachery were running high, apparently even Anne Boleyn herself felt it was unwise to talk freely with Francis’ envoy, Gontier. There was also a sense in which the French took Anne Boleyn for granted. She was there by Henry’s will and they would use her, but policy was not determined by the need to support her position. Even more important, perhaps, was the brevity of French ambassadorial tours -- the 1533 resident was complaining after six months! This did not impede the ambassador’s representative duties, but it did limit his usefulness as a news-gatherer. Ambassadors tended to get better the longer they stayed. As a result in...1532, the year most critical for the English Reformation and for Anne herself, we have very little first-hand evidence from French sources. The ambassador, Giles de la Pommeraye, was new to the job but was gone within a year, and from 5 May to 17 June he was away in Brittany ‘consulting with his government’. He was a strong supporter of Henry’s wish for a divorce; he worked hand in glove with the king and his ministers, even helping them put out the official explanation for the anti-papal statute conditionally ending the payment of annates to Rome; above all, he was close to Anne. Yet none of this do we know from La Pommeraye himself.

“No contrast would be more marked than with the third of the principal foreign embassies resident in England. The Burgundian-Habsburg diplomat service was the oldest in northern Europe and the best organized -- essential in view of the far-flung territories in which Emperor Charles V had inherited and the issues he had to cope with. Furthermore, Charles was simply not interested in affairs in England because of their possible impact on his chronic rivalry with Francis I. He had a family interest in the treatment of his aunt, Katherine of Aragon, and the legitimacy of his cousin Mary. Thus, when it was suggested that the reports he received might contain too much about Henry’s marital problems, the emperor requested even more information. Not that Charles was allowing himself to be governed by sentiment; the traditional alliance with the Burgundian Low Countries would have powerful backing in England so long as Katherine could be supported as queen and Mary as the acknowledged heir. 

“The sophistication of diplomatic technique and depth of interest goes some way to explaining the fullness and utility to historians of reports from the imperial embassy in England. Yet what really makes the difference is the identity of the ambassador. Eustace Chapuys, a lawyer from Annecy in Savoy, was not merely a highly efficient and assiduous envoy, writing between thirty and forty reports a year to the emperor, plus letters to his officers. Far more important was the length of time he spent in England; he arrived in 1529 and remained until almost the end of Henry VIII’s life, retiring only in 1545 at the age of 56. This continuous residence enabled Chapuys to overcome many of the obstacles in the way of an ambassador seeking news...It took time to discover sensitively placed individuals who would supply information, or servants who could go out freely enough to be able to verify reports. Moreover, funds did not stretch to the employment of many agents and...the real secrets were at court...The answer Chapuys adopted was the answer of the diplomatic manuals: speak French, make yourself persona grata  with the elite, and news and contacts will come to you. And this is where his training and experience came in, and especially his standing as a humanist and a friend of Erasmus. A man of address, he was worth conversing with and soon passed everywhere. Even in times of Anglo-imperial tension when another envoy might expect to be cold-shouldered, Chapuys continued to be welcomed as an individual. Henry VIII clearly enjoyed sparring with this shrewd, brilliant, cynical cosmopolitan. And Chapuys soon discovered something else as he worked tirelessly for the cause of Katherine and Mary. He became the focus for all those who disliked what was going on, who believed as he did. Here was a ready-made set of contacts as anxious to give him news as he was to collect it. His ear became almost the confessional for the king’s critics, and Chapuys dabbled a good deal more deeply in English politics than the emperor either knew or would have sanctioned.

“The professionalism of Charles V’s envoys, and especially the personality of Eustace Chapuys, come to us clearly over the centuries, and it is easy to succumb to their authority. Friedmann went as far as to write that...’...they never gave an essentially false idea of the events they had to report.’ We must remember...there were pitfalls awaiting even the ablest ambassador, and disadvantages as well as advantages in Chapuys’ ready acceptance by English society, and especially by Anne’s opponents...his reporting on the court tends to derive from individuals who share a single point of view...and pass news with the gloss which that view gave. Thus, when Chapuys reports bad feelings between Anne and Henry he is relying on informants who wanted to believe that Anne was falling out of royal favour and were ready to see hopeful signs...many of those who spoke to him were out to serve their own agenda...An instance of this which is specially relevant to Anne is the series of conversations Cromwell had with Chapuys during the crises of 1536...the envoy was well aware that Henry and his ministers would be trying to ‘feed’ him...but evaluating private individuals was far more difficult...An ambassador could also let his own feelings mislead him...Ambassadors with Chapuys’ level of commitment can easily find themselves in the business of self-fulfilling prophecy. It is also true that however long he remained in England, Chapuys continued to see things through Habsburg eyes...thus his continual description of Anne Boleyn as ‘the concubine’ completely missed the point that to appreciate the situation in England as it actually was, it was vital to recognize that to Henry his marriage with Katherine had been, and would always be, a nullity. The ambassador’s failure to see this cost Katherine’s daughter dear in the summer of 1536. 

“The inherent dangers in ambassadorial reports have led some scholars to play down their utility...The diplomatic reports of Eustace Chapuys...provide the only relatively continuous commentary on English politics and the royal court during the lifetime of Queen Anne; on particular episodes they are often the only evidence. Thus to dismiss them as inherently unreliable is to accept that we shall never know...The professionalism of the historian lies in reading such partisan material critically. 

“The danger of distortion is much less acute with administrative records, always assuming these were not prepared for public consumption. They are...uninformative. Anne only became important in her mid-twenties and until then such material tells us no more about her than about other women of her age and class...Even when she did become prominent, even when she was queen, we continue to know almost as little of her day to day as we do of the other women in Henry VIII’s life. The first is the account of Henry’s private expenses which survives for just over three years from November 1529 to December 1532. This gives us a lively picture of the king’s disbursements on Anne’s behalf in the crucial period during which she was moving from being a recognized rival to Queen Katherine being queen herself in all but name...From the autumn of 1532, Anne was in receipt of a regular direct income -- first as lady marquis of Pembroke and then as queen -- and many of the costs previously borne by Henry would now have gone through her own accounts...The second important official source is...the inventory drawn up after Henry’s death. Despite the decade and more since Anne’s execution...it provides substantial evidence of her lifestyle, vivid details found nowhere else. 

“Where significant information about Anne Boleyn is to be found, as so often for her contemporaries, is in judicial records. The most important is the material covering her trials and that of her alleged accomplices. This includes commissions, writs, lengthy indictments detailing the supposed offences, jury lists, and verdicts. After the trials these were all put in the Baga de Secretis -- the Tudor equivalent of the file marked “Top Secret” -- and they survive virtually intact. Other judicial material of value is the evidence which the Crown assiduously collected with a view to possible prosecution of Anne’s critics, evidence which provides a clear indication of her general lack of popularity and the gossip which circulated about her. Even post-mortem material can be of use...In the autumn of 1539 the reformer, George Constantine...set down his first-hand memories of the execution of Anne’s supposed lovers three years earlier. In all such evidence, it must be remembered that the deponent has an ulterior motive...

“Another obvious resource for the biographer might appear to be correspondence. Anne’s own letters are disappointing. Few have survived and most are strictly concerned with practicalities...There is...a letter she is supposed to have written to Henry VIII on 6 May 1536, after her committal to the Tower. It exists in many copies but none is contemporary, and although the tradition is that it was originally discovered among the papers of Thomas Cromwell, its ‘elegance’...has always inspired suspicion. It would appear to be wholly improbable for Anne to write that her marriage was built on nothing but the king’s fancy and that her incarceration was the consequence of Henry’s affection for Jane. Equally it would have been totally counterproductive for a Tudor prisoner in the Tower to warn the king...that he is in imminent danger of the judgement of God! There are practical objections, too. The ladies who watched Anne night and day in the Tower were charged with reporting all she said and did, but they made no mention of any such missive and it certainly could not have been smuggled out. Similar improbabilities must also rule Anne out as the author of the lament O Death, O Death, rock me on sleep, even though it existed at least by the start of Elizabeth’s reign...

“The scarcity of genuine letters from Anne is nothing to wonder at. Except in diplomacy or matters of exceptional importance, people at this period did not normally keep copies of letters they sent. Correspondence is generally known only if the original has survived in the papers of the recipient. Letters to the queen are...more plentiful and more revealing...the seventeen love-letters from Henry himself, ten in French and the rest in English, which have ended up...in the Vatican. These letters have no dates; although some belong to the summer and autumn of 1528, there is...no firm agreement about the order in which they were written. Letters between third parties are also valuable, particularly to and from correspondents within court circles such as Lord Lisle, the governor of Calais, and his wife, but with one proviso: communicating political information or gossip could get people into serious trouble, so that sensitive material was normally conveyed by word of mouth. 

“...a number of eyewitness accounts have survived of several episodes in Anne Boleyn’s career...These are...confined to the more public events, from her creation as marchioness of Pembroke in September 1532 to her execution in the Tower three years and nine months later...they are the subject to the prejudices of the various eyewitnesses...

“An additional complication arises when first-hand reports have been worked into consciously produced pieces of literature. One example...is the poetry of George Cavendish. From about 1522 until the cardinal’s death in 1530, Cavendish was one of his gentlemen ushers...but he wrote in Mary’s reign, long after the event...there are some nuggets of value, but the 365 lines covering Anne and her alleged lovers, one after another, contain fewer than twenty points of substance...Furthermore, given that theme is again the fickleness of Fortune, it casts Anne Boleyn as the agent of ‘Venus the insatiate goddess’, called in by Fortune to ‘bate’ Wolsey’s ‘high port’ and humble him to dust. 

“Another notable literary source is Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of York and Lancaster...better known as Hall’s Chronicle...who did see much of what he described and tried to investigate more...the finished narrative (to 1532) has only three isolated sentences about Anne, and a short paragraph about her dancing with Francis I at Calais. The rest of the book...has two sentences about Anne’s marriage, another about her pregnancy, a long description of her coronation (in which Hall was involved), details of the birth and christening of Elizabeth, terse reports of Anne’s reaction to Katherine of Aragon’s death, and of her own subsequent miscarriage, six final sentences on her condemnation and a brief version of her speech on the scaffold. Perhaps if Hall had lived to write the material in final form himself we would have had more, but a hint in one passage suggests that he intended to gloss over Anne’s marriage as something on which ‘the king was not well counselled’. A ‘Chronicle’ which is truer to the style of London chronicles...is that of Charles Wriothesley, Windsor Herald...It is immediate -- items were recorded as or soon after they occurred -- and also well-informed since the author was close to government and took part in some of the events he describes. 

“The literary account which is closest in time to the events described is the Histoire de Anne Boleyn Jadis Royne d’Angleterre, the French metrical account of Anne’s trial and execution by Lancelot de Carles which we have already encountered. It was completed 2 June 1536, a bare fortnight after her death...although de Carles did not himself witness the trial of Anne and her brother, he was in London at the time; he could have attended the trial of the commoners accused, and undoubtedly had contact with well-informed eyewitnesses...de Carles’ account has been assumed to have original authority...The true source of his information was made clear when research revealed that a presentation copy of his poem, sent to Henry VIII, was listed as a ‘French book written in form of a tragedy by one Carle being attendant and near the ambassador’...in other words, de Carles wrote on the basis of what was known by the French embassy, and the principal source for this would have been the English government. It is therefore no surprise that de Carles’ account agrees with the information Cromwell had sent to Henry’s ambassadors in Paris on 14 May...The Histoire is...the government line in translation...De Carles’ imaginatively elaborated the queen’s response to being found guilty in fifty lines of verse. Her scaffold speech, too, is enhanced and distorted...

“Paul Friedmann closed his magisterial two-volume study, Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History, 1527-1536, with the depressing comment: ‘my object has been to show that very little is known of the events of those times, and that the history of Henry’s first divorce and of the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn has still to be written.’ The sources available today...suggest that we no longer need to be as pessimistic. True, there have been no block discoveries since Friedmann’s day, but...valuable new evidence has come to light piecemeal, and despite their distortions and irregularities, the bits and pieces do add up...historical research has transformed our reading of the period; the context into which evidence, old and new, has to be placed is far better understood...we can now see Anne as an active, three-dimensional, proactive participant. 

“...The sources for the life of Anne Boleyn stop short of that level of inner documentation which biography ideally requires. Only at a handful of points in the story do we know anything of what Anne thought. Only in Henry’s love letters and in remarks scrawled in the Book of Hours do we know for certain what they said to each other...The limitations are galling, given the fascination Anne Boleyn and her story have continued to exercise over the intervening centuries, and many have concluded that only artistic imagination will bring us to the truth...”

[grimoiresontape]

On Gaap

As many will probably know, my dear friend and podcast co-host Jesse Hathaway Diaz is the goatish half of Wolf & Goat – ‘qualified purveyors of materia magica, occult art and esoterica’ - working with the incomparably wolfish Troy Chambers. W&G are perhaps best known for their incredibly complicated and potent magical oils. One such oil forms the inspiration for this post: their Goetic oil of the spirit Gaap.

Gaap, aliàs Tap, a great President and a Prince, he appeareth in a meridional sign, and when he taketh humane shape, he is the guide of the four principal Kings, as mighty as Bileth. There were certain Necromancers that offered sacrifices and burnt offerings unto him; and to call him up, they exercised an art, saying, that Solomon the wise made it, which is false: for it was rather Cham, the son of Noah, who after the flood began first to invocate wicked Spirits. He invocated Bileth, and made an Art in his name, and a book which is known to many Mathematitians. There were burnt offerings and sacrifices made, and gifts given, and much wickedness wrought by the Exorcist, who mingleth therewithal the holy Names of God, the which in that Art are everywhere expressed. Marry there is an Epistle of those names written by Solomon, as also write Helias Aierosolymitanus and Helisaeus. It is to be noted, that if any Exorcist have the Art of Bileth, and cannot make him stand before him, nor see him, I may not bewray how, and declare the means to contain him, because it is an abomination, and for that I have learned nothing from Solomon of his dignity and office. But yet I will not hide this, to wit, that he maketh a man wonderful in Philosophy and all the Liberal Sciences; he maketh love, hatred, insensibility, consecration, and consecration of those things that are belonging unto the domination of Amaymon, and delivereth familiars out of the possession of other Conjurors, answering truly and perfectly of things present, past, and to come; and transferreth men most speedily into other Nations; he ruleth Sixty six Legions, and was of the order of Potestates. Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft (London, 1584: 1665), 234.

Gaap is a spirit that bridges spirit catalogues. Not only a senior king in the Ars Goetia of the Lemegeton, but a particularly important spirit in the Grimorium Verum, who also makes significant appearances in the Munich manuscript, the Livre des Esprits and several others. The exact spelling of the name may change, shifting and shimmering like moonlight on rippling water, but the current is familiar. As should not surprise those conversant with Elelogaap’s duties in Verum, I have found this spirit to have an especially watery nature, instantiated in seas that drown but especially related to serpentine rivers that both refresh and carry away.

The spirit can be felt – in my experiences at least – in the barks of moonstruck hounds and winding willows alike. In the sands between tides, marked in the foottrack of gulls. In the glimmer of beads – lush amethyst, roughly hewn quartz chips, beautiful lapis, the heavy depths of obsidian, and of course sacred bloodstone. Gaap’s mysteries can be pulled from between the teeth of fish and the jaws of watercourses.

The peculiar enchantment of this spirit is present in the two main branches of their root attested in the grimoires. For Gaap is a prince who incites love; transforming ourselves and others in a persuasive dance of lap and ebb. This can certainly be thought of as akin to the transfiguring fertility of the flooding Nile, that gave the Black Lands their very name after all. It is also a fae-ish charisma that invites us into the depths. The world and its extended hand is washed clean, sweetened in waters that spiral like the hearts of roses.

In this persuasion, we begin to grasp and be grasped by the second fork of Gaap’s identified offices: to carry folk between kingdoms, upon the rolling, stirring charm of open waters that promise, of tributaries that beckon and wind into the sunset. It is in this swell and tide of motion that this spirit may also bring us the golds and silvers of wishing well pennies, sunbeam sea glitter, and the banks and beds of rivers.

These philosophies of water, these reflections off and upon splendour, depths and the translucent and rippling mysteries of invisibility, offers an optics of second sight glinting in an eye of calm and storm. Such is the phlegmatic work of the Chalice. Gaap is present riding both churning riptide and lily-pond stillness. In the zoning-out of trance and transfiguration, thought bubbles punctured by the creoles of sea dragons, leaking into the waters that cool and freeze, claim and erode, that sink us and swim us like so many ducked witches. In the shock of salt spray and the subterfuges of curling shells. In the spiralling eddies of whorling point and dissipating potency. In the undertow at the bottom of the glass.

As such, working with this spirit in and as an oil makes a great deal of magical sense. The assured presence as the oil allows one to dive into deeper ends and immediately begin the nurturing of contact. For those with extant relationships with this mighty King, be assured, this oil will flow across your tools and space, enriching, ennobling and entrapping. Many magicians who have worked with these spirits find that such entities are often only-too-eager to present lists of fabulous things they desire or require. The Goetic oils of Wolf & Goat offer opportunities for neophyte conjurors to be assured of what this spirit actually feels like. Importantly they also offer more experienced nigromancers rich opportunities to consolidate and build upon contact and communion.

There is an issue of professionalism here. It is of course possible, with proper spirit contact and divination to confirm, that anyone actually working with these spirits should be able to synthesise a basic formulary for at least one’s own workings. Homecooking and reliance upon one’s own wits and networks is of course essential. Make no mistake though: these oils are not fast-food shortcuts to instant Darque Occult Power. They are subtle, complex gourmet banquets with a depth of sophisticated flavours, requiring refinement of palette and protocol. If treated with care, respect and wisdom they can inspire, empower and even – to an extent – initiate.

Practically, how the bottled oleum itself might be “enthroned” in a spirit-house or fetish presents serious and rewarding work. How the throne and port of communion can be watered and fished, how the tools can be netted and embroidered, how the threads can be knotted, frayed and followed. Seating this King in one’s own practice presents various operations and experimentum: from finding a suitable vessel to providing tools and materia necessary to direct the flow of the spirit’s imbued virtue. Likewise, securing one’s pact with the spirit through the oil – exposing it to locales in private rituals of empowerment – also allows one to gather, say, sands scored with the spirit’s seal in especially propitious hours.

I would certainly not recommend Wolf & Goat’s Goetic oils to everyone. But I will say if you have already made pacts, or even if you already plan to make such pacts, these seats of power are potent facilitators. 

[blog-cdaleyoung]

“Skin Trade” by Reginald Shepherd

And then I said, That's what it means to testify: to sit in the locked dark muttering when you should be dead to the world. The muse just shrugged and shaded his blue eyes. So naturally I followed him down to his father's house by the river, a converted factory in the old industrial park: somewhere to sit on threadbare cushions eating my words and his promises, safe as milk that dries the throat. If I had a home, he'd be that unmade bed. He's my America twisted in dirty sheets, my inspiration for a sleepless night. No getting around that white skin.                   He throws things out the window he should keep; he collects things he should feed to the river. He takes me down. While there, I pick them up. The river always does this to me: gulls squawking and the smell of paper mills upstream, air crowded with effluents like riding the bus underwater. I'm spending nights in the polluted current, teaching sunken bodies how to swim. My feet always stay wet. Sometimes I leave footprints the shape of blood; sometimes glass flows through broken veins, and I glitter. Every other step refers to white men and their names. The spaces in between are mine. Back of the bus with you, nigger. They're turning warehouses into condos, I'm selling everything at clearance prices: here's a bronze star for suffering quietly like a good boy.       River of salt, will I see my love again? Cold viscous water holds its course even after it's gone. Throw a face into it and you'll never look again, throw a voice and you'll hear sobbing all the way down. Narcissus, that's my flower forced in January, black-eyed bells echoing sluggish eddies. Who hit him first? The muse has covered his face with his hands. It's just a reflex of the historical storm that sired him: something to say, "The sun is beating down too hard on my pith helmet, the oil slick on the river's not my fault, when are you going home?" What he doesn't want to see, he doesn't see. In the sludge that drowns the river, rats pick fights with the debris. He calls them all by their first names, he's looking through his fingers like a fence. They make good neighbors. His friends make do with what they can. They drink beer from sewer-colored bottles in the dry stream bed, powdered milk of human kindness and evaporated silt. They stay by the river till past sunrise, crooning a lullaby to help it to sleep. The words of their drinking songs are scrawled on the ceiling, Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin: a madrigal for the millennium's end.                                           I'm counting down the days in someone else's unmade bed, let these things break their hold on me. The world would like to see me dead, another gone black man. I'm still awake.           

*          

[rassgatibala]

Leyfið mér að útskýra af hverju ég er svona hallærislegur:

1. Careless Whisper á að vera fyrsta lagið á öllum Guilty Pleasures listum. Af hverju hljómar sax-línan svona ofboðslega væmin? Kannski af því að hún hefur verið spiluð svo hryllilega oft. Og tónninn í laginu er ekki hófleg eftirsjá heldur hágrenjandi táraflóð af eftirsjá. Hvers vegna virkar það ekki eins hallærislegt hjá Jeff Buckley eins og hjá George Michael? Ég veit ekki. Alla vega er þetta ógeðslega vel smíðað lag, sérstaklega með hliðsjón af því að þetta eru fjórir fokking hljómar. Útvarpið hefur líklega drepið það.

2. Hvað er málið með Immortality með Celine Dion? Eitt orð; þrír menn: GIBB! Djöfulsins poppgull sem þessir Ástralaskrattar mala. Hvernig er hægt annað en að dást að þessari laglínu? Verst að hún hefði örugglega notið sín betur í látlausari útsetningu. Laglínan var sveitagyðja sem var klædd í polýester í stað hamps. Það skiptir líka máli að selurinn Díon kann sér hóf í þessu lagi. Lætur tilfinninguna stýra flutningnum frekar en hetjulegum hánótum.

3. “You‘ve been cold to me so long, I‘m cryin‘ icicles in stead of tears…“ Two Out of Three Ain‘t Bad nýtur tvenns: að laglínan er einlæg og látlaus og undir textanum kraumar kímni. „Ég vil þig og þarfnast þín en það er ekki séns að ég elski þig. Ekki vera sár. Tvö af þremur er ágætt.“ Meat Loaf var líka með skemmtilega rómantíska raddbeitingu og persónutöfra áður en hann seldi sál sína appelsínuhærða antíkristi.

4. Úff, grúvið í Promises. Barbra er hvergi nærri topp fimmtíu á listanum yfir mitt sönguppáhald en í þessu lagi dettur hún vel í tilfinningu lagsins. Og enn og aftur: GIBB! Barry lagahöfundur og bakraddari. Jóel bróðir játaði að hann fílaði byrjunina og kallaði hana „fínasta barnakirkjufönk.“ Þetta lag er góð áminning um að það er hrynjandin sem hreyfir rassana, hvað sem rössunum annars finnst um hana.

5. Viva Forever. Éremías og allir hans andskotar hvað Kryddstelpurnar gátu farið í taugarnar á manni. Tyggjókúludrulla dauðans vall frá þeim eins og sviti en þær seldu eins og Bítlarnir. Þetta lag samt… Það er einhver töfrandi tregi í því. Enginn að öskra hótanir til mín um að hún skuli svoleiðis segja mér hvað hún vill, hvað hún virkilega vill! Bara lágstemmdar hugleiðingar yfir suðrænum takti og seiðandi strengjum.

6. I Don‘t Have the Heart var mikið á fóninum hjá pabba þegar ég var að skríða í gelgjuna og það væri synd að segja að James Ingram hafi orðið að uppáhaldi en þetta lag er margslungin gæðaballaða. Og karlinn er kraftmikill í því; sérstaklega þegar hann klífur brúna yfir í síðasta viðlagið og hendir sér ofan af hækkuninni út í gítarsólóið.

7. Er eitthvað eitthvað ljúfara en Carpenters til á plánetunni Jörð? We‘ve Only Just Begun byrjar á svo sálarríkri laglínu að maður getur vart náð að þerra hvarmana áður en einhver kemur inn til manns og spyr hvað í andskotanum maður sé að hlusta á. Og þessi dúnmjúki kafli skiptist á við Motown-legan grúvkafla sem fer í allt aðra átt en slítur samt aldrei tengslin við byrjunina. Eins og gleymmérei í skyrtuvasa.

8. Ég verð að játa að það sem ég fíla helst við Dansdrottningu ABBA er losaralegur diskótakturinn og HIMNESK baklínan undir “you can dance“ (raddir að úa ásamt strengjasveit). Nei, þetta lag finnur ekki upp hjólið, breytir ekki lífi neins og gerir ekki dæld í hungursneyðina í Biafra (70‘s vísun) en svífur helvíti vel inn í eyrað á manni.

9. I‘ll Be There er gott dæmi um það hvernig er hægt að gera ástarlags-gull úr vögguvísulaglínu og silkimjúkri barnsrödd. Kannski er óskeð tragíkómísk ævisaga aðalsöngarans líka hluti af áhrifamætti lagsins? Nei, þetta lag er bara baldursbrár og royal-búðingur í hjartað.

10. Think Twice var fyrsta lagið sem ég heyrði með selnum fransk-kanadíska og það er næstum drephlægilegt að segja frá því hvað það var sem heillaði mig við hana. Mér fannst hún rokk. Hear me out! Í fyrsta lagi er sólóið með blúshjarta og réttir henni keflið svo meistaralega að hún hleypur með það í mark eins og rokkhetja. Nei, ef ég heyrði lagið í dag fyndist mér það kannski ekkert spennandi. En kannski er maður orðinn svo lokaður fyrir poppi að maður er að missa af einhverju góðu sjitti frá Quebéc.

11. “Peter Cetera: The voice of modern love“ sagði Joey Tribbiani. Ég læt það vera. En Hard To Say I‘m Sorry er lag sem byrjar mátulega og rís í heeeeelvíti góðar hæðir um miðbikið í hlýlegri gítarglóð. Kannski hefur það einhver áhrif að ég heyrði lagið fyrst í flutningi hvítskyrtu-sveitarinnar AZ Yet. Djöfullinn sem þeir menn kunnu að syngja.

12. Kórinn í byrjun lagsins Will You Be There setur mann í réttar stellingar og takturinn undir úinu er svo seiðandi að maður situr álíka kyrr við spilun þess og rollingur með njálg. Mikki karlinn er líka í fantaformi við hljóðnemann, enda bara að biðja um smá kærleika, fjandinn hafi það! Söngtennisinn við kórinn er mikilfenglegasta ris sem hann gaf nokkurn tíma út og í endinn teygir hann skjálfandi höndina til hlustandans. „Vilt þú vera vinur minn?“ Hver kannast ekki við þessa tilfinningu? A bit much? Jájá. En hefur væmni einhvern tíma drepið manneskju? Nema í Dostoyevsky-sögu…

13. Nikita var fyrsta lagið sem ég heyrði með Elton John. Það er ekkert sérstaklega kúl að fíla Elton John en ef maður er á annað borð að því er ráðlegt að taka upp á sína arma 70‘s klassíkina hans; Goodbye Yellow-Brick Road eða Daniel (sem er reyndar mikið uppáhald hjá mér líka). Það er einstaklega ósvalt að fyrsta fönk-ást manns sé þetta 80‘s lag með kaldastríðs-fnyk og næfurþunnum hljómborðsdúllum. En Reginald má eiga það að brúin í laginu minnir á Gunna Þórðar upp á sitt progg-popp besta. “I‘ll never know how good it feels to hold you…“

14. Ég hlustaði á Nothing Like the Rain í vikunni og það hefur elst verr en ÖLL hin lögin á þessum lista (að meðtöldu því síðasta). En það er eitthvað við viðlagið sem hressir mig. Mikið vildi ég samt að söngkonan hefði límt fyrir munninn á þessum „rappara“ áður en upptakan hófst.

15. Don‘t Lie er eins og Nothing Like the Rain í 21. aldar útgáfu. Nei, Will.I.Am er ekki í neiiiiinu uppáhaldi hjá mér en hvorki hann né hinir rappararnir eru í sama bæjarfélagi og að vera jafn pirrandi og 2 Unlimited gaurinn. Og Fergie fokking GEISLAR í viðlaginu. Allt það swag sem þetta lag hefur kemur frá henni.

16. Ég fæ grænar bólur þegar ég heyri „Þegar þú í draumum mínum birtist…“ en Ég lifi í draumi er ballaða í ætt við Paul McCartney. Ekkert yfirdrifið ris eða ofsafengnar tilfinningar, bara einlægni. Kannski hefðum við náð lengra með því lagi en Gleðibankanum. Hver veit? Ekki ég. Ég lifi nefnilega í veröld og veit ekki hvaða vindar þjóta. Veit bara að þeir fara framhjá mér.

17. Þú sem ert mér allt er ekkert gott lag. Textinn er svolítið klaufalegur og bókstaflegur og hinn kraftmikli Jónsi er eins og tígur í búri. Þar til seinna viðlaginu lýkur. Þá kemur ris sem hittir mann eins og vel fléttað plot-twist. Svo einfalt. „Í nóóóóóóóótt…“ En gott ef ég fæ ekki bara gæsahúð í hvert skipti sem ég heyri það.

18. Fimm ára að horfa á hárspreyjaðar boltahetjur í rauðum og hvítum búningum? Það var sko ég. Elskaði Atla Eðvalds, Togga Þrá og Sævar Jóns á Hlíðarenda eins og mamma mín kenndi mér. En líka danska dýnamítið á HM í Mexíkó. Ég man eftir að hafa sungið Re-sepp-ten aftur í bíl án þess að kunna orð í dönsku. Ég skildi ekkert af hverju allir hlógu. Og ég finn ennþá einhverja Level 42 veiru smita mig þegar ég heyri þetta lag. “Vi er röde, vi er hvide…“ sungu líka Daníel bróðir og félagar hans í Val þegar þeir unnu Íslandsmeistaratitilinn árið 2007.

Já, það er gaman að þessu helvíti…

[anastasiaoftheironwood]

Flight ~ Jorge Guillén Translated from the Spanish by Reginald Gibbons

Through summer air The ascending gull Dominates the expanse, the sea, the world [more]

[ao3feed-jakesmorse]

bleed through

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/32zXAiY

by takecourage

There is nothing Peter wants to do more than go home, get obscenely drunk, and pass out on his sofa. But as he’s pulling his coat on, he catches a glimpse of Morse, in the dark save for the weak light of his desk lamp, head bent over his typewriter.

He doesn’t particularly know what he feels, but it’s something very similar to for fuck’s sake.

Words: 12679, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of reel around

Fandoms: Endeavour (TV)

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Peter Jakes, Endeavour Morse, Fred Thursday, Jim Strange, Reginald Bright, Max DeBryn, Mason Gull

Relationships: Peter Jakes/Endeavour Morse

Additional Tags: Case Fic, yet more mild police corruption in oxford, Pyromania, Body Horror, Nightmares, peter jakes is not immune to stray cats, or stray morses for that matter, one (1) single attempt at being nice, Unresolved Emotional Tension

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/32zXAiY