#cadaver monument

[bizarrobrain]

"Dethroned Emperor" (Celtic Frost cover) by Deadbird - From "Cadaver Monuments" split (2023)

[fallbabylon]

The Hardwick Monument- complete with grinning skull and cadaver with shovel- Leeds Minster, UK

[catullus101]

Detail of Alice Chaucher’s tomb, St Mary's Church, Ewelme, 1470s

Duchess of Suffolk and granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer, Alice is buried in an elaborated cadaver monument, a two-tiered tomb that was fashionable in the Late Middle Ages. While the top tier shows a dignified effigy of Alice in life, wearing the Order of the Garter, in the one at the bottom she is shown as a decaying corpse staring at a painting of the Annunciation.

Photo by Fiona Charters [x]

[squawk-chatterbox]

Ah! Worldbuilding stuff!

This one is still highly in development, and if you’ve seen the maps, this is completely irrelevant. Now that I think about it I should really have tags or something to help differentiate them. Honestly, maybe separate blogs would be better. I could reblog into other blogs! Wouldn’t that be perfect. Actually, I think I might just do that then.

ANYHOW.

More on the world!

I’ve no intentions to spill all the beans just yet, and honestly there’s a whole lot of uncooked ones in there, but the basics are as follows:

THIS is a world between the realms of life and death, conscious and cadaver. It is beyond the unconscious, but what penetrates it are dreams. Dreams make up the basis of life here. They are the source of all matter, all energy, and all physics. They shape what would otherwise be a void.

Souls aren’t supposed to exist here, but some get trapped between where they are supposed to be.

Normally, souls would be the driving force of this world, what with them being a collection of dreams, and they would be rather distant from this world altogether. But a soul inside the world, oh they’re a walking target for things that eat dreams. Something that is a near undying source of energy and radiating dreams wherever it goes? The dream creatures would see a hamburger with legs!

And these two folks are a couple of the unlucky souls stuck here, poor them.

About the drawing, though!

The jellyfish are probably the biggest thing anyone would wonder about, so I’ll just address that.

See, unlike down in our world, there’s no stars in this place, and it’s perpetually nighttime. Though, if you gaze up at the sky you might see something that resembles stars, but they move! You’d be seeing jellyfish. Like stars, they look small, but in actuality they’re monumental things. Maybe not quite as big as a star, but probably bigger than a house.

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

ROUND TWO

Text form and links under read more

Just a reminder, these are one day polls!

SET 1

MATCH ONE: Lament for Icarus vs Untitled (the angel came to me in a fever hallucination, perched upon my bed as I returned from the bathroom)

MATCH TWO: Figures vs Hubble Deep Field

MATCH THREE: Bath Curtain vs Une Martyre

MATCH FOUR: Can't Help Myself vs Rape

SET 2

MATCH ONE: A Walk at Dusk vs Diary Page

MATCH TWO: Dead of Night vs Christina's World

MATCH THREE: Untitled (I’m Turning Into A Specter Before Your Very Eyes And I’m Going To Haunt You) vs Lustmord

MATCH FOUR: Untitiled (Zdzisław Beksiński) vs The Fallen Angel

SET 3

MATCH ONE: Device to Root Out Evil vs Fifty Days at Iliam: The Fire That Consumes All Before It

MATCH TWO: Exotic Bodies vs Doubting Thomas

MATCH THREE: Somebody Fell From Aloft vs Anguish

MATCH FOUR: Cat in Obsolete Bath vs Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World)

SET 4

MATCH ONE: Symphony of the Sixth Blast Furnace vs Tarpaulin

MATCH TWO: Khajuraho Group of Monuments vs ปราสาทสัจธรรม (The Sanctuary of Truth)

MATCH THREE: The Weather vs The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit

MATCH FOUR: Statue of Vincent and Theo van Gogh vs Judith Slaying Holofernes

SET 5

MATCH ONE: Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands) vs Chauvet Cave Bear

MATCH TWO: Winged Victory of Samothrace vs Crouching Aphrodite

MATCH THREE: Kūya-Shonin vs Arena #7 (Bears)

MATCH FOUR: Enbu (炎舞) (Dancing in the Flames) vs Belfast to Byzantium

SET 6

MATCH ONE: The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayan vs Nighthawks

MATCH TWO: Electric Fan (Feel it Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate vs Forgotten Dreams

MATCH THREE: Pixeles (a group of 9 works) vs War Pieta

MATCH FOUR: Ajax and Cassandra vs Nāve (Death)

SET 7

MATCH ONE: Meeting on the Turret Stair vs Stańczyk

MATCH TWO: Closeness Lines Over Time vs The Maple Trees at Mama, the Tekona Shrine and Tsugihashi Bridge

MATCH THREE: Survival Series: In a Dream You Saw a Way vs The Kitchen Table Series

MATCH FOUR: In the Grip of Winter vs NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt

SET 8

MATCH ONE: Blue Plate Special vs Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba

MATCH TWO: Susanna and the Elders, Restored - X-Ray vs Moby Dick

MATCH THREE: how to look at art vs St. Sebastian

MATCH FOUR: Carroña vs The Dog

SET 9

MATCH ONE: David vs The Other Side

MATCH TWO: Starry Night vs Headress - Shadae

MATCH THREE: Woman with Dead Child (Frau mit totem Kind) vs Siroče na majčinom grobu (Orphan on Mother's Grave)

MATCH FOUR: Fighting Against SARS Memorial Architectural Scene (弘揚抗疫精神建築景觀) vs The Hull

SET 10

MATCH ONE: Worship vs Wheatfield with Crows

MATCH TWO: Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X vs The Tragedy

MATCH THREE: Judith and the Head of Holofernes vs oh god i had a really big epiphany about love and personhood but i’m too drunk for words

MATCH FOUR: I am happy because everyone loves me vs Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan

SET 11

MATCH ONE: Water-Lilies, Reflection of a Weeping Willow vs The Grief of the Pasha

MATCH TWO: Passion vs Two Earthlings

MATCH THREE: Seer Bonnets vs Clytemnestra after the Murder

MATCH FOUR: “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers)/The Lovers (TIE) vs Kedai Ubat Jenun

SET 12

MATCH ONE: The Apotheosis of War vs Mouth

MATCH TWO: The Icebergs vs Maman

MATCH THREE: The Book of Kells Folio 188r: Luke carpet page vs Dome of the Rock mosaics

MATCH FOUR: Rowan Leaves and Hole vs Le Désespéré (The Desperate Man)

SET 13

MATCH ONE: Deimos vs Prudence

MATCH TWO: Siberian Ice Maiden shoulder tattoo vs Transi de René de Chalon (Cadaver Tomb of René of Chalon)

MATCH THREE: The Day vs Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban জাতীয় সংসদ ভবন (National Parliament House)

MATCH FOUR: Juventud de Baco (Bacchus Youth) vs Oath of the Horattii closeup

SET 14

MATCH ONE: St. Francis vs Thunder Raining Poison

MATCH TWO: Among the Waves vs Sagrada Família stained-glass windows

MATCH THREE: Noonday Heat vs Gielda Plakatu

MATCH FOUR: The Garden of Earthly Delights vs Kuoleman puutarha (The Garden of Death)

SET 15

MATCH ONE: da oracle vs Panel from Fun Home

MATCH TWO: La Mort de Marat (The Death of Marat) vs Düsseldorf 4 (Museum Kunst Palast)

MATCH THREE: Capriccio vs José y Maria

MATCH FOUR: Lágrimas De Sangre (Tears of Blood) vs Boy Staring at an Apparition

SET 16

MATCH ONE: The Gran Hotel Ciudad de México Art Nouveau interior vs Unfinished Painting

MATCH TWO: Memorial to a Marriage vs A Few Small Nips

MATCH THREE: Saturn Devouring His Son vs Lamentation over the Dead Christ

MATCH FOUR: Little Girl Looking Downstairs at Christmas Party vs Agnus

ROUND 3

SET 1

MATCH ONE: Lament for Icarus vs Hubble Deep Field

MATCH TWO: Bath Curtain vs Can't Help Myself

SET 2

MATCH ONE: Diary Page vs Dead of Night

MATCH TWO: Untitled (I’m Turning Into A Specter Before Your Very Eyes And I’m Going To Haunt You) vs Untitled (Zdzisław Beksiński)

SET 3

MATCH ONE: Fifty Days at Iliam: The Fire That Consumes All Before It vs Doubting Thomas

MATCH TWO: Anguish vs Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World)

SET 4

MATCH ONE: Symphony of the Sixth Blast Furnace vs Khajuraho Group of Monuments

MATCH TWO: The Weather vs Judith Slaying Holofernes

SET 5

MATCH ONE: Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands) vs Winged Victory of Samothrace

MATCH TWO: Arena #7 (Bears) vs Belfast to Byzantium

SET 6

MATCH ONE: Nighthawks vs Electric Fan (Feel it Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate

MATCH TWO: Pixeles (a group of 9 works) vs Nāve (Death)

SET 7

MATCH ONE: Stańczyk vs Closeness Lines Over Time

MATCH TWO: The Kitchen Table Series vs NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt

SET 8

MATCH ONE: Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba vs Susanna and the Elders, Restored - X-Ray

MATCH TWO: how to look at art vs Carroña

SET 9

MATCH ONE: The Other Side vs Starry Night

MATCH TWO: Woman with Dead Child (Frau mit totem Kind) vs The Hull

SET 10

MATCH ONE: Wheatfield with Crows vs Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X

MATCH TWO: oh god i had a really big epiphany about love and personhood but i’m too drunk for words vs Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan

SET 11

MATCH ONE: The Grief of the Pasha vs Two Earthlings

MATCH TWO: Clytemnestra after the Murder vs "Untitled" (Perfect Lovers) and The Lovers

SET 12

MATCH ONE: Mouth vs Maman

MATCH TWO: Dome of the Rock mosaics vs Le Désespéré (The Desperate Man)

SET 13

MATCH ONE: Deimos vs Siberian Ice Maiden shoulder tattoo

MATCH TWO: The Day vs Juventud de Baco (Bacchus Youth)

SET 14

MATCH ONE: Thunder Raining Poison vs Sagrada Família stained-glass windows

MATCH TWO: Noonday Heat vs Kuoleman puutarha (The Garden of Death)

SET 15

MATCH ONE: Panel from Fun Home vs Düsseldorf 4 (Museum Kunst Palast)

MATCH TWO: José y Maria vs Lágrimas De Sangre (Tears of Blood)

SET 16

MATCH ONE: Unfinished Painting vs Memorial to a Marriage

MATCH TWO: Saturn Devouring His Son vs Agnus

[ccaptain]

Thinking about how H:SR Kaeya's anger is never directed at the people he holds dear; in case of hurt or upset towards them, he's like a damp match that doesn't catch a spark despite multiple tries. He stays ''damp'' in these cases because the friends he surrounds himself with are reasonable people who understand if what they said/did upset him, and are quick to apologize. He has lived enough to understand most of humanity, in terms of how they act.

Kaeya's true anger, however, is cold, icy; cold as a cadaver, almost impersonal; this fellow isn't your Kaeya.

There's no affectionate glint in pale, frozen diamond; there are no hints of crinkles at the edge of his eye. His gaze is directed at them, unblinking. Emotionless. His hands are still, instead of picking at something to do- at his gloves, at the fur of his jacket. There's usually some semblance of human mannerism when he observes others, but this time he's still as a statue. Almost frighteningly so.

The only thing that moves are icy, diamond-shaped pupils, appointed on the person who has done something so monumental, so monstrous, that Kaeya has discarded his human mannerism.

This Kaeya is much more frightening, and not your friend: his gaze is calculated, detached. He looks at the person who has ellicited his anger and all that is there is a cold assessment of an experiment, with the lights flickering on and off to match his mood. He could cause them serious harm and study how long it takes for them to die, and sleep with it at night just fine.

In a way, this is what happened to Wuchlock in the Liminal Laboratories plotline: when Kaeya offered himself up in Hannah's place, alluding to the fact that he's a Emanator and, as such, could offer many more experiments to bring on himself, the man refused him, citing how they were at an advanced stage with the tests ran on the other being, and that it would have taken them a great deal of time that they didn't had to start again on a newer subject.

For this, Kaeya spent most of the plot psychologically traumatizing the man, sliced off his forearm to use his handprint to access Hannah's room to free her, and coldly informed him that an average human male can die by losing from two and half to four liters of blood before locking him in the sound-proofed room. And, to this day, once a month Kaeya haunts the amnesiac, old man, and will do so until the day he dies, each time taking a bottle of liquor that he doesn't drink from him in a petty gesture.

Kaeya's anger is dangerous, because it's cold and calculated down to the finest details. He knows the human body, knows where to strike, knows how to make somebody suffer. It's a difficult kind of anger to summon out of him, luckily, and only for people who break the morals he imposed on himself in such a way that it's impossible to go back. 

Until then, he's your affectionate, kind-of-weird Enigmata fellow.

[blogofloathing]

Part 1 of 3! They'll All Know Your Name Y'know

Chittering skulls, splintered bones, chipped femurs, clacking teeth. The necromancers tower stood tall and glorious, a monument to rebirth.

It stood above the land, it stood in waiting, the magistral titan, the culmination of a generations souls. The karmic power of countless slain bodies.

This is where it all lead up to, not to Frisco, but of course they would be instrumental all the same.

I could hear the voices of all those I'd struck down, wailing curses and horridly gavening soulside.

They gave static to my withered hair, my palid skin.

My atrophied muscles tingled with necromantic energy, a swirling mana that permeated the air.

In any case, this body wasn't of much worry to me.

If I fail this attempt, I'll simply wake up back at my parents house, and do it again, all over again.

I couldn't tell you how many times I've done this, the trail of spirits tracing my steps knew no end.

My pardner however, would prove to be of trouble.

Her sensibilities were all too empathetic, the stupid old woman. She was only alive to lead me here.

And then she would leave once she knew the truth.

The same way she did everytime, so so predictable

As if she was some kind of saint by any standard.

All the cultists, all the skeletons, it was a shame to kill my own supporters, but appearances matter.

At last, we'd arrived at the entrance, I greeted the door with a wink, "Abra-Cadaver" I spoke,

This password familiar on my tongue, but one I could never fully remember until I read it.

It's a fun quirk of the world I've noticed, I have all these.. impressions, memories of another time.

Glimpses into other eventualities, glances of odd, familiar sillouhettes, reflections that didn't match.

But not the past, or future; alternate memories from my present, even still, with this knowledge..

I continued to have to "learn" everything again, to discover the key I already had in the lock.

Like I was simply a character in a performance, hung taught to the whims of the curtained gallows.

Forced to act the scenes out in the proper order.

By this time I had already read all of the books, I knew it was necessary to do so before coming.

Same way I knew which horse to get, and who to bring with me, who to help, and who to kill.

Every step in the path printed out before me, even if I didn't always know the reasons why.

It was all a means to an end, steps in the puzzle.

What items to get, what to eat, to drink, what skills to hone I could see it all, I could manipulate it.

I couldn't make her support my goals, you can only do so much with moxie, but I could get close.

I could see clearly what exactly made her clock tick

Every response, every question every answer, the script memorized, ready to preform for all.

The stage set out before me as the infinite horizon.

"How d'ya feel Doc? Being here at last?" I said, with reverence in my voice, she couldn't know where exactly that tone came from, she could only say-

"Time to set aside my Hippocratic oath," cocking her shotgun "let's do some harm" it's what she always says, I nearly giggled at the cheesy line.

We stepped inside, it was just like I remember, a home I'd long since left, returned, it felt so so cold.

The chill in my heart was as calming and soothing as the warmth many describe feeling with others.

But at this point, I couldn't see these, things, as people, they weren't like me, they didn't think,

They simply said and did what the damn "story" demanded, I was so horribly sick of it, but soon, I would achieve my ending, at the top of the spire.

I was practically giddy with delight, a skip to my step as I approached the first of three obstacles.

Impeding our path to the ladder was an entire forts worth of skeletons, the same ones as usual, I'd even taken to memorizing the differences in them.

Despite already knowing the words, I had to read the tablet, the secrets grinned a knowing grimace.

I resisted saying her line for her, I knew the exact moment she would say it, every single time.

"I'm tellin ya you shouldn't be messin with that.."

My reassurance dampened her worries, always did, until the very last one, I couldn't wait for it.

The silly old doctor readied her gun, expecting a fight, I smiled and spoke the words I never forgot.

Turning an entire army of skeletons that once stood just before us into a volley of white shrapnel.

It was so easy, so so easy, as if I'd personally raised all of these skeletons, just to put them down again.

Her sidelong glance at me, boring a hole into my head, oh how anger could become so amusing.

Not even bothering to give her a glance, I knew the glowering expression of discomfort she'd wear.

We made it through the next two floors, reading the runes, annihilating the enemies in our path.

Skipping past it all like nothing, until we reach the top, my goal, my salvation, this was where it would all finally end, once I finally get the right outcome.

I walked towards the necromancer, his hollowed out shell eyed me, it seemed to understand,

Maybe he was once trapped like me, but failed.

Succumbed to the grip of this linearly pathed world, become another set of predictable nothing.

I stood on the platform behest the throne, and awaited her line, right on que "step, back."

Her gun cocked, the sound almost sending me into a laughing fit, it was so comical, it was all so funny.

"Don't worry Alice, it's fine, I can control it" I spoke in a slither, my forked tongue sharp as obsidian, with the color to match, the lies tasted so good.

I couldn't muster the care to listen to this, as she leveled her gun at my center of mass, I did as needed, black fire shining dark in my eyes,

consuming the poor old soul on the pitied throne.

It was impossible but, for a moment I thought I saw the corpse smile, as he dissipated, a lingering expression of satisfaction not unlike my own.

Halting my advance for a beat, why on earth did I recognize.. not purely because I'd seen him before..

A half remembered gust of misplaced nostalgia.

Alice's hands shook in that delightful way, a mix of rage and regret danced like a fire in her eyes.

This familiar comedy bringing me back from my contemplation, I had almost missed my cue.

"Are you gonna pull the trigger?" I said, waiting for her line; "I better not ever see your face again"

And then she would meander offstage, again. The smile on my face threatened to split me in two.

But, as I had this thought, this expectation, I felt something impact me, hitting me, right in the gut.

It was so totally out of the question to me, that for a moment I was entirely unaware what happened.

Something hard, and metal, was burning inside me, I felt my organs scream, my bones crunch.

A ghoulish splatter of gore across the stark white floor, it would be beautiful if I could appreciate it.

I couldn't speak, both out of pain, and the fact I'd never experienced this before, I didn't know the words for this scene, for the first time in hundreds of years I was uncertain, I was truly surprised.

End of Part 1! Split In Two Because It's Too Long

[uispeccoll]

Guest Post from John Martin Rare Book Room

Hardin Library for the Health Sciences

When classes visit, I usually set out several books on a particular subject or time period. Students often ask why some of the books are so much larger than others, especially if one of our "elephant" books is out - folios ranging roughly from 55 to 100 cm (22 to 39 in).

This got me thinking about just what our largest and smallest books might be. As of January 2023, the largest and smallest bound books in the JMRBR collection are the 1747 Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis human (76 cm/30 in) by Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1770) and the 1527 Anatomice, sive Historia corporis humani (11 cm/4 in) by Alessandro Benedetti (ca. 1450-1512), respectively.

ALBINUS, BERNHARD SIEGFRIED (1697-1770). Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani [Diagrams of the skeleton and muscles of the human body]. Printed in Leiden by Johannes & Herman Verbeek, 1747. 98 pages [40 illustrations]. 76 cm tall.

Let's start with our big book of anatomy. Bernhard Siegfried Albinus was a Dutch physician, anatomist, and professor of medicine who lived during the last half of the 17th century and the first part of the 18th. He was part of a physician anatomist family, along with his father, Bernhard Albinus, and brothers, Frederick Bernhard Albinus and Christiaan Bernhard Albinus.

Albinus started his studies at the University of Leiden at the age of 12. He studied under some of the most famous medical minds of the day, including Bidloo and Boerhaave, and eventually in Paris with Frederik Ruysch and Jacques-Bénigne Winslow. Albinus then succeeded his father as the professor of the practice of medicine at the University of Leiden, while his brother Frederick, succeeded Albinus as the chair of anatomy.

Albinus wrote many works, but none were as famous or controversial as the monumental Tabulae. It took twenty-two years to make and a great deal of Albinus's own money. He worked closely with the artist Jan Wandelaar to create the detailed and occasionally whimsical images in the book.

Albinus was driven to execute his vision for the book and was exacting in his work with Wondelaar. The work became so intense that Wondelaar eventually moved in with Albinus to expedite the process. Unlike many anatomists who published before Albinus, he was interested in creating an idealized form of human anatomy, "homo perfectus." This ideal, as Albinus saw it, meant assembling body parts from different cadavers into a single illustration instead of illustrating a single body.

To help maintain proportion and accuracy, Albinus and Wondelaar developed a hanging grid that was placed in front of the skeletons. To allow for close-up observation to capture finer details, a proportionally smaller grid was placed closer to the skeleton. With Albinus intensely controlling the details of the bodies, some have suggested that Wondelaar must have felt creatively stifled. With Albinus focused on the bodies alone, Wondelaar was then free to express his creativity through the backgrounds.

As can be seen in the illustrations above, he included elements of nature and classical architecture, the most famous of which is his scene including Clara the rhinoceros. Petrus Camper, a contemporary of Albinus and fellow famed Dutch anatomist, was Tabulae's greatest critic. He criticized the book for its method of assembling the "homo perfectus," but mostly for Wondelaar's backgrounds. I suspect Camper was no fun at parties.

BENEDETTI, ALESSANDRO (ca. 1450-1512) Alexandri Benedicti, physici, Anatomice, siue, Historia corporis humani ; ejusdem Collectiones medicinales, seu Aforismi [Anatomice, sive Historia Corporis Humani - Anatomy, or the History of the Human Body]. Printed in Paris by Simon Du Bois, 1527. 167 pages. 11 cm tall.

Now on to our tiny tome, Alessandro Benedetti's Anatomice, sive Historia Corporis Humani from 1527. Benedetti was born around 1450 near Verona, Italy. Unlike Albinus, Benedetti was not born into a medical family but rather a farming family. Regardless, he eventually made his way to Padua and earned his doctorate in medicine.

After practicing for many years in Greece, in 1490 he returned to Padua as the Chair of Anatomy and Surgery. Benedetti's lectures were popular attractions for students, other physicians, and the famous. The Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I (to whom Anatomice was dedicated) attended a lecture in which Benedetti dissected an abdomen. Along with many medical works, he authored a report on the First Italian War (1494-1495) recounting his observations as surgeon general for the League of Italian Princes (the Italian army taking on the invading French army of Charles VIII).

First printed in Venice in 1502, Anatomice, sive Historia Corporis Humani was a hit in the medical community. It deals with many medical and surgical subjects, including gallstones, the opening of the female urethral glands, the passage of the bile into the duodenum, the treatment of syphilis and blennorrhagia (it sounds bad - and it is: excessive discharge of mucus associated with gonorrhea), and a method for safely cutting out bladder stones.

Most notably, Benedetti includes a description of nasal reconstruction by means of a skin flap taken from the arm. The procedure is the same as the one the Branca family practiced in Sicily in the middle of the fifteenth century. The Brancas kept the operation secret and never published it. If this sounds familiar, that's because Tagliacozzi published this so-called "Italian" method in 1597 in his famous De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem which I profiled in the December 2021 newsletter. This method is most often referenced with Taglicozzi, but Benedetti profiled it almost 100 years before him!

Whereas Albinus's book is all about the illustrations, Benedetti's book focuses on the text. But that does not mean it is without fun imagery. The banner image at the top shows a few examples of the many delightful illustrated initials found throughout, except for the initial A which was left unadorned. Seems like an interesting creative choice. Or did something go wrong and the printer needed a quick replacement?

--Damien Ihrig, curator of John Martin Rare Book Room

[ambiguouspuzuma]

Necropolis now

It was a tomb with a view, but Gilrast didn't like to use it. It was heart-breaking, to look out across his erstwhile kingdom: the desert beyond was free to shift and dance, its people scuttling like beetles over distant dunes, but he was trapped within his grave. An exile from the land of the living, and a prisoner behind these greenstone walls. It didn't help to remind himself of that.

Far better to make himself at home. His tomb had been bestowed with enough rooms to occupy an army, and it was certainly enough to keep one man occupied, sorting the possessions they'd seen fit to bury him with. They had fashioned him a mighty mausoleum, a sepulchre fit for a king, and it was as much palace as final resting place.

Its construction had begun from the moment Gilrast had been crowned, the second that his fingers touched the sceptre of command, and it was complete before he'd grown used to that heft in his hand - let alone the weight of the realm on his shoulders. He might have been born to rule, but that hadn't meant that it came naturally. He'd been born to die as well, and he wasn't proving very good at that either.

In the distance, through the high slit windows he avoided like the Hopping Plague, the desert was littered with such monuments to history. Each ruler of the past had been treated to the same privilege, and the crypts had crept larger year on year, their architects growing more expansive and expensive in their plans. They had also become more proactive, after the early death of poor Queen Yelfen had left her corpse with nowhere to lie - it had been awkward, having to disturb her parents' rest to lay her at their feet. Better to get an early start, they thought.

King Gilrast's tomb was ready well before his time. It was an icosahedron of chiselled greenstone, interlocking sculptures forming solid walls: every brick a work of art, every perfect piece in place, every facet beautiful. It rose above the desert dunes, but also sank its roots into the darker sands that lay beneath - there were cooler chambers, an airtight crypt in which his body could lie, preserved for years before it finally succumbed to the decay of time.

In the end, he'd lasted longer than even they could dream. That shaded vault had been designed to slow decomposition as far as possible, but as a living cadaver he'd defied it entirely, beyond the graceful ageing of a man now freed of all of life's demands. Heavy had been the hand which held the sceptre, but now both palms were bare. Gilrast's days were his to spend as he chose, provided that he chose to spend them wondering alone, and he was beginning to appreciate his own company.

It had required some adjustment. The royal throne, and the living palace which surrounded it, had taken long enough to get used to, but it was nothing to this castle of ghosts. Gilrast was surrounded by reminders of his missing tombmates: a silence that echoed in the absence of voices, sunlight that fell where their shadows should dance. He passed through living quarters for supposed servants, barracks for his eternal guards - and of course the rooms for his widow to be buried alongside him, as tradition dictated.

Tradition had failed to dictate what should happen if she were to pass away first.

The only precedent had been to marry again - to marry young, and whole, and healthy. That was what King Halsin had done, his second wife surviving him with ease. But Gilrast was not his great-great-great-grandfather. He had married once, for love, and ruled for many years with the late, beloved Queen Elfira by his side. When the Hopping Plague had taken her, tending to those most in need, he had wept over her casket, refusing to let them remove him from hers.

Her body had been due to be delivered to the vault; there to lie in wait for his arrival, however many years later. Gilrast almost wished that he had been the first to die, but realised the selfishness of that regret, and the cruelty of the whole tradition: in that case, Elfira would have been consigned to be entombed by his side, as would the servants and the guards, left as an entourage for his passage to the afterlife. They would have been together, but she would have been alone; divorced from the rest of her life.

The mourning King Gilrast had been spared the same fate. As monarch, he had been allowed to continue to rule, placing his wife in cold storage until such a time as he joined her in death. He had been expected to move on, to live - and perhaps find a new queen to take up those posthumous responsibilities, to grieve a lifetime by his grave. But, unable to love again, he'd chosen to be buried with her.

Not dead, of course. The dead made for poor mourners. The black veils fit them ill, shrouds which clung to clammy skin, their tears leaking from all the wrong places. With his last command as king, Gilrast insisted he be buried alive; all the better to grieve for her, to honour her, and to ensure she wasn't left inside this empty charnel house alone.

The kingdom suffered in his absence. Through windows that he didn't use, those distant beetles scurried more and more: fallow years and fearful decades shifted with the dunes, through drought and famine and plague again. Wars were fought and won and lost, and many others died, their graves unmarked whilst Gilrest laboured in the bowels of the world's greatest headstone - working to install Elfira's name in place of his own.

"Your Grace? Please, I beg you, answer if you are there."

Gilrest didn't like to look out upon the world. He had come here to pay his respects to the dead, to look inward, and had turned his back upon the lands of the living. Let the kingdom fall to someone else, he'd thought. He might have been their ruler, but there was only one subject that interested him now, and he wished he had paid as much attention to her then. He had already lost his home, and he would join her in their new one.

"Please, be alive. We are desperate."

But there came a day that the world came to look in on him. The group were refugees from the latest war, an army of the displaced, having backed the wrong cause somewhere along the line. They had also been deprived of home, and hope, but heard a rumour that the Last Good King still lived, and would return in a time of his kingdom's greatest need. The King Under The Mountain. The Widower King. They opened up the tomb, and called to him for their salvation.

"Your Grace?"

He was not where he'd been left. They made their way into the burial chamber, lighting torches which flickered in the dark, the shadows which had been his veil, but found his casket empty. Instead, he appeared in the corridor behind them: not a ghost, though his skin had taken on a less-than-healthy pall, and once flowing black locks were now thinning and grey with his robes.

"I'm not sure that I am, now." His voice was weak from lack of use. He'd spoken aloud to Elfira, at the start, but the echo had done too much to remind him of their solitude, or of her silence in response. Better to talk to her inside his mind. "Has the kingdom not replaced me?"

"Too much, and yet not enough," one of the visitors replied. "We have four kings and two queens, your grace - and yet no government between them."

"Our crops rot in their fields," another added. "Our people take no interest in the future, too consumed with this struggle for the present, driven to fight for one faction or the next.

"Our cause failed," the third told him. "The others turned us out of our homes, another slither of land they might contest between themselves. We need you to come back, your grace. We need real leadership again."

Gilrest considered all that they had said. He was no leader, he knew, whatever colours their nostalgia might have painted him. The kingdom had been stable under his command, but it had been as stable when he'd found it. He'd done nothing but allow the system to maintain itself, and managed not to overturn the applecart - until he had, when he left. Whatever had happened since, the fault might well be his.

"The kingdom does not need me," he told them. "Once, perhaps, but no more. My strength has failed. It failed the day my queen was taken, and I knew that from then on I could no longer be your king. I am sorry to disappoint you, truly, but I fear that as a saviour I would only disappoint you more."

"But... you are our last hope. We have travelled here from nothing, and we have nowhere to return without you by our side."

"Then stay by my side," Gilrest said, looking to the place where Elfira lay, the side that he'd attended all these years. He gestured around them. The architects had sculpted these walls, but Gilrest had decorated them, plastering these catacombs with signs of his enduring life. "This tomb is a city all my own, and it grows lonely. You are welcome to stay, for as long as you like."

The refugees looked to each other in disbelief, the relief clear on each of their faces. "A new city, in the image of the old?"

"So you would be our king again, after all - just not in the way we had planned."

"No." Gilrest nodded to Elfira's casket. "This city has a queen. Here I am a subject, not a king - but I grow old, and frail, and no longer fit for service there as well. It would be good to have some new blood, I should think. These tombs were built for dozens of attendants, mourners to see the dead pass safely on, to keep their memory alive. I cannot lead you, but perhaps you might still follow in my wake. Please, if you stay... will you remember her for me?"

[poemsofadifferentvein]

When time takes its final toll

Throw me in the common hole

Where beggars, orphans and destitute are found

Set my body to the rotting mound

Our cadavers do the decomposition dance

To give the worms their food and thier chance

To put right my debt to earth

My ethereal form rises up in mirth

Above rows of marble teeth

Capturing remembrance of life and grief

Bound to clay that no longer matters

On the fringes of urban splatters

How infrequent and impertinent it is after all

Where we are all to eventually take the fall

And what could show defiance the most

To build monuments to our decaying hosts

[20thcentutygeek]

The Magnificent Seven – Part One Highgate

Author: Molly Malone

Highgate Cemetery is a monument to the neo-Gothic vapourings and dramatics of Victorian Londoners. Designed as a ‘garden’ cemetery, it was built in the early part of the nineteenth century in an effort to prevent the over-population of the City of London by the dead. Nowadays it is a tourist destination as well as a functioning cemetery, and a celebration of managed decay and Victorian symbolism.

In 2024, if you wander around the City of London, you will inevitably come across countless tiny, well-kept and verdant gardens squeezed between offices, many of which are lined with gravestones that have been placed haphazardly against walls or, memorably, stacked around a tree in Old Saint Pancras. You don’t need to look too carefully: there are graves everywhere. Bunhill Fields off of Old Street is a wonderful larger example. Some are dotted with tombs worn smooth by centuries of exposure. These were the burial grounds of the Square Mile, which became an affront to both the sensibilities and the nostrils of Londoners. These supposed resting places were managed by unscrupulous clerics, who profited from each interment and piled bodies in pits twenty feet deep, before covering them with a mere dusting of earth. Bones, and worse, littered the ground. Grave robbing was a lucrative business, frowned upon by polite society but quietly encouraged by hospitals desperate for cadavers to train surgeons on.

The outcry against both this treatment of the dead, and the ‘miasma’ of decay that emanated from these burial grounds (which was considered toxic enough to be deadly) was a topic of heated discussion among those who were forced to bury their dead there, the newspapers and, eventually, the Houses of Parliament. Although it took several more decades for legislation to pass that would adequately address the sheer number of dead bodies resulting from the increasing population of London, work on the building of London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries began in 1833.

Arguably the most famous of the Seven is Highgate, which opened in 1839 and is home to more than a few famous architectural wonders and notable inhabitants. In its heyday, Highgate was manned by enough security to warrant the cost of both burying a loved one there and the not terribly convenient necessity to travel to Highgate. The idea of garden cemeteries had been developed on the Continent, and Victorians were encouraged to stroll through a secure, beautifully maintained, and carefully curated space. Highgate could be seen from the centre of the City, and it was so different then to its current state of overgrown wildness. Sunday picnics were commonplace, although they are emphatically discouraged these days. Dozens of gardeners were employed, and the cemetery was run as a profitable business.

Walking around Highgate, you are struck by the symbolism associated with death. A grave was a Victorian Insta account, and clues adorn many of the monuments as to the achievements, and hubris, of those buried beneath. There are plenty that are common in all British and Christian cemeteries; a broken column indicating a young life cut short; a draped urn representing the veil between the living and the dead; three stones supporting a cross which are symbolic of the father, the son and holy ghost. The cross itself had been out of fashion for a few centuries but made a big comeback thanks to the Victorians. The grave of a world-famous champion bare-knuckle fighter features a carved dog, his faithful companion who was his chief mourner. Tom Sayers was a world-famous fighter and a working-class hero, and his funeral procession stretched from Highgate to Tottenham Court Road.

The tomb of George Wombwell is topped by a sleeping lion. In life, George was a celebrated zoo keeper, with his own private collection of exotic animals including, you’ve guessed it, a very tame lion called Nero.

The list of those laid to rest at Highgate is fascinating. Nearly two centuries of the notable, the rich and the inspirational are amongst the 170,000 who can be found there. George Michael, Bob Hoskins, Michael Faraday, Joseph Lister and Karl Marx are just a few. There is one relatively recent grave that particularly catches the eye, however, as you follow the main path into the West Side of the cemetery. That of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector who was poisoned by Putin’s regime in 2006. The grave is strikingly modern. It features a photo of Litvinenko, itself an exceptionally unusual feature at Highgate. Most of the West Side of the cemetery is being slowly worn away by the weather and swallowed by mature trees and spring flowers. The graves are shades of grey and often barely legible. Litvinenko’s grave is pinkish-red and was, by necessity, dug deeper than most. His lead coffin is buried twelve feet below visitors’ feet as a precaution, after his murder through the use of polonium-210. This radioactive substance admittedly has a half-life of less than five months, so is unlikely to cause any further mischief.

Highgate is also home to a particularly rare type of cave spider, which is monitored by London Zoo and can be found in the overgrown tunnel enveloped by trees that is the Grade I listed Egyptian Avenue. The locked crypts lining each side of the Avenue are not full, and if you can prove lineage to those already interred there you are guaranteed a spot. However, the eye-watering cost of spending your afterlife in Highgate might be a consideration. It is currently estimated that a pretty basic full-body plot costs between £25,000 - £30,000. A place in an Egyptian Avenue tomb in 1839 cost the modern-day equivalent of up to £150,000.

Beyond the Avenue is the beautiful Circle of Lebanon, lined with tombs, including that of the activist and writer, Radclyffe Hall. Atop the Circle stood a famed cedar tree, from which the Circle took its name. The 200-year old tree was recently lost to a fungus and in its place now grows a baby cedar, but the loss of the original tree is felt keenly by those working and volunteering at Highgate.

The Terrace Catacombs, which visitors are only able to enter whilst on the official tour of the West cemetery, speaks eerily and eloquently of the turbulent history of Highgate, and the general stupidity of people. Originally, each entrance to the Catacombs had been guarded, which reassured both the families of the dead and the particularly practical. Doctors, being more aware than most in the nineteenth century of the prevalence of grave robbing, were keen to be safely ensconced in the locked and guarded Catacombs after meeting their maker.  Coffins were lead-lined and placed on shelving. This practice left them exposed and vulnerable in the late 1960s. A sensationalist newspaper report of a ‘vampire’ roaming Highgate Cemetery led to the vandalism and destruction of much of the cemetery, including the desecration of the bodies laid to rest in the Catacombs. I will cover this more extensively in another blog, as it makes for very interesting reading. The damage took years to repair, coming as it did after several decades of cemetery-wide neglect after the Second World War. In fact, it was only addressed when The Friends of Highgate group was formed in 1975 to repair and protect the site.

For those of us who find beauty, comfort, and peace in a walk around a cemetery, there are few like Highgate. My interest in these places stems from my local cemetery in Chingford, London. Not considered one of the greats, it is notable perhaps only for its two most famous residents, the Kray twins. I clearly remember their funeral processions, one of which I watched from my junior school window, attended by an interesting if, by then, anonymous cohort of 60s gangsters, molls and actors, glamour faded after thirty years. Chingford Cemetery also features a pauper’s grave, a mound of earth with a few markers sticking out haphazardly. There are Commonwealth war graves and an overgrown area completely obscured by feral ivy and holly trees, where the stone markers are almost as buried as those they are intended to commemorate and completely illegible.

Cemeteries are havens for wildlife. From the ubiquitous grey squirrels of Chingford to the striking green parakeets that have spread from central London to inhabit most trees within the M25 over the last couple of decades, many of which have made Highgate their home. Perhaps it is simply the knowledge that cemeteries of this type are dying out if you’ll forgive the pun. As cremation becomes a more popular and cost-effective option, the marble tombs of our recent ancestors are icons of a lost age. Life and death are no longer celebrated in stone.

[fallbabylon]

The Modest Man; This monumental stone which is traditionally known as the ‘Modest Man’ is the tombstone of twice elected (1537 and 1549) Mayor of Cork Thomas Ronan (died 1554) and his wife Johanna Tyrry (died 1569). Both were members of prominent medieval families in the city.

The graphic depiction of the cadaver is accompanied by the following text:

‘Man, be mindful, since Death does not tarry; for when he dies, you will inherit serpents and beasts and worms.’

-Cork, Ireland

[obsidian-order-of-course]

I grappled with deciding whether to make a post on this during October, because it can get rather graphic and may be disturbing to some. So anyways, wanna hear about cadaver monuments?!

So, during the late Middle Ages, Memento Mori was very popular (as discussed prior) and as such, the funerary monuments of church members reflected that. The specific type of cadaver monument that I was introduced to is transi (art depicting decomposing bodies rather than just a skeleton) however, cadaver monuments can also be skeletons or a shrouded body. I find it really fascinating how they were able to sculpt realistic decomposing bodies in stone. It’s one of those things that most people would find disturbing that I find fascinating!

Anyways, go check it out if you’re interested.

[kunselxsoldier]

❝  you are in your head. let it go.  ❞ (Angeal)

God of War 2018:

It wasn't his first mission out in the field, but it was the first one that had managed to go sideways. In a monumental capacity.

Staring openly as the security troops dug graves for the civilians, Kunsel let his helmet fall to the ground beside him; its visor was cracked and covered in blood. Not his. Maybe civilians. Maybe comrades. Probably both.

The intel had been wrong. His unit had been given outdated intel; there weren't supposed to be hostages. There wasn't supposed to be casualties. There wasn't meant to be a loss of life. It was an open-and-shut objective of entering the village, taking out the terrorist cell and exiting. Not this bloodbath.

The civilians were put into the mass grave. There would be new villagers moved here within the year, all toting the same company-line and new narrative; no mention of the previous inhabitants. The bodies of the SOLDIERs weren't buried, instead they were loaded into body-bags and placed on a Shinra chopper. They would go to the laboratory every SOLDIER feared. Was that his destiny too; end up a cadaver for Hojo's leisure?

'You are in your head. Let it go.'

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, shaking him with a strength that pulled Kunsel's attention away from the redhead Turk piloting the chopper. Blinking, he looked up at the man and was surprised to recognise Angeal Hewley; the 1st Class had been part of the back-up bravo team that stopped an all-out massacre. Zack's mentor and the moral-core of the SOLDIER force.

"I ... the intel was outdated. That shouldn't happen." Had he been the one on the recognisance team, this wouldn't have happened. Angeal didn't speak, but he nodded slowly with a sad expression before gesturing to the troop carrier that would exfil them. He never took the heavy hand from his shoulder, keeping him anchored to the here and now. Kunsel stooped to pick up his broken helmet and made a decision not to let this happen again. He had enough contacts and skills to dig into rumours of the company and ensure his comrades didn't go through this.

[fairest]

Anais Nin's Preface to Tropic of Cancer

"Here is a book, which, if such a thing were possible, might restore our appetite for the fundamental realities. The predominant note will seem one of bitterness, and bitterness there is, to the full. But there is also wild extravagance, a mad gaiety, a verve, a gusto, at times almost a delirium. A continual oscillation between extremes, with bare stretches that taste like brass and leave the full flavor of emptiness. It is beyond optimism or pessimism. The author has given us the last frisson. Pain has no more secret recesses.

In a world grown paralyzed with introspection and constipated by delicate mental meals this brutal exposure of the substantial body comes as a vitalizing current of blood. The violence and obscenity are left unadulterated, as manifestation of the mystery and pain which ever accompanies the act of creation.

The restorative value of experience, prime source of wisdom and creation, is re-asserted. There remain waste areas of unfinished thought and action, a bundle of sheds and fibers with which the overcritical may strangle themselves. Referring to his Wilhelm Meister Goethe once said: “People seek a central point: that is hard, and not even right. I should think a rich, manifold life, brought close to your eyes, would be enough without any express tendency; which, after all, is only for the intellect.”

The book is sustained on its own axis by the pure flux and rotation of events. Just as there is no central point, so also there is no question of heroism or of struggle since there is no question of will, but only an obedience to flow.

The gross caricatures are perhaps more vital, more “true to life,” than the full portraits of the conventional novel for the reason that the individual today has no centrality and produces not the slightest illusion of wholeness. The scars are integrated to the false, cultural void in which we are drowning: thus is produced the illusion of chaos, to face which requires the ultimate courage.

The humiliations and defeats, given with a primitive honesty, end not in frustration, despair, or futility, but in hunger, an ecstatic, devouring hunger—for more life. The poetic is discovered by stripping away the vestiture of art; by descending to what might be styled a “pre-artistic level,” the durable skeleton of form which is hidden in the phenomena of disintegration reappears to be transfigured again in the ever-changing flesh of emotion. The scars are burned away—the scars left by the obstetricians of culture. Here is an artist who re-establishes the potency of illusion by gaping out at the open wounds, by courting the stern, psychological reality which man seeks to avoid through recourse to the oblique symbolism of art. Here the symbols are laid bare, presented almost as naively and unblushingly by over-civilized individual as by the well-rooted savage.

It is no false primitivism which gives rise to this savage lyricism. It is not a retrogressive tendency, but a swing forward into unbeaten areas. To regard a naked book such as this with the same critical eye that is turned upon even such diverse types as Lawrence, Breton, Joyce and Celine is a mistake. Rather let us try to look at it with the eyes of a Patagonian for whom all that is sacred and taboo in our world is meaningless. For the adventure which has brought the author to the spiritual ends of the earth is the history of every artist who, in order to express himself, must traverse the intangible gridirons of his imaginary world. The air pockets, the alkali wastes, the crumbling monuments, the putrescent cadavers, the crazy jig and maggot dance, all this forms a grand fresco of our epoch, done with shattering phrases and loud, strident, hammer strokes.

If there is revealed here a capacity to shock, to startle the lifeless from their profound slumber, let us congratulate ourselves; for the tragedy of our world is precisely that nothing any more is capable of rousing it from its lethargy. No more violent dreams, no refreshment, no awakening. In the anesthesia produced by self-knowledge, life is passing , art is passing, slipping from us: we are drifting with time and our fight is with shadows. We need a blood transfusion.

And it is blood and flesh which are here given us. Drink, food, laughter, desire, passion, curiosity, the simply realities which nourish the roots of our highest and vaguest creations. The superstructure is lopped away. This book brings with it a wind that blows down the dead and hollow trees whose roots are withered and lost in the barren soil of our times. This book goes to the roots and digs under, digs for subterranean springs."

Anais Nin, 1934