#i. mercy roman — portrayal. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

alexandralyman · 5 years ago

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Summary: A Hook/Emma angel/demon AU. They hide in plain sight, the servants of heaven and hell. The angels and the demons, who can save your soul or damn it. They stand on opposite sides, they are the bringers of light and the agents of darkness, they are enemies in an eternal war, but what happens when an angel and a demon are inexplicably drawn to each other?

Read on FF.net here or on AO3 here

Part Twenty-Four

The Sistine Chapel - May 6, 1527

The long train of her gown made a faint whispering sound against the floor as she glided the length of the chapel, the heavy gold satin rippling and flowing in waves over the fine marble and intricately laid mosaics. They would have been a showpiece in any other cathedral, but here they paled in comparison to the splendour of a thousand years' worth of papal wealth that surrounded them. A few lanterns were still lit in the niches and alcoves set into the walls but the light was dying, flickering and growing even more dim with each step she took further and further into the shadowed heart of Christendom. It was in this place where a new pope rose upon the death of the old, crowned and gowned and bequeathed the Keys to the Kingdom as he ascended upon Saint Peter's seat.

The ancient throne lay empty and abandoned on this night.

Her hair was a loose spill down her back and she wore no hood or veil to conceal it, normally an unthinkable breach of protocol for a woman entering the sacred site and a grave offence to the Church. But there was no one left to bar her entry, not that any mortal man could actually stop her from passing through any door to any room in this place, where even the holiest of relics, the priceless texts of scripture and verse, the sacred hearts of saints, the swords carried into battle during the Crusades, all paled in comparison to her.

Not a single candle was left burning by the altar where a figure was just visible in the gloom, garbed as a monk in sober dark robes. But he was no more a lowly cleric labouring anonymously in the depths of the Vatican in his humble attire than she was a wealthy Roman noblewoman in her rich gown and while her head might be uncovered, it was far from bare. She wore her own diadem above her brow, it was made not of gold or gems, but of an unbroken circle of Heavenly light. Divine radiance illuminated her path while the astonishing frescos that the Florentine master, Michelangelo, had laboured over for the better part of a decade looked down from the ceiling above, now silent witnesses left behind when everyone else had fled.

Almost.

"His Holiness has left in the company of the Swiss Guard and the Emperor's army is about to breach the walls. Rome will fall to the wolves and it will fall tonight, it's too late to stop it now."

Emma delivered the news to the figure's back, as still as any of the painted prophets and saints that surrounded them. For several long moments he didn't move and if it was anyone else she would have thought he didn't hear her. But he heard everything, and when he finally turned the hood of his monkish robe fell back to reveal one who was both prophet and saint, known by many names and titles in different languages and traditions. In the chronicles of noble knights seeking the glory of the Holy Grail he was the mysterious and powerful Merlin, possessor of magic and esoteric knowledge beyond that of mortal men. In truth, he was a Prince of Heaven in his own right, an Archangelus, the patron of healers, lovers, and guardian angels and one of the highest ranked of the Blessed Ones along with his brothers Michael and Gabriel.

The Archangel Raphael.

Like all angels he was captivating to look at, with a face that Michelangelo would have given his own soul to capture in marble. Strong brows, full lips, and large, liquid eyes that were fixed firmly at some point in the distance before his attention turned to her. Pleas for salvation were echoing in the back of Emma's mind like a thousand hands all reaching out from the shadows to clutch at her train, while the Pope had been spirited away to safety many innocent souls had been left behind, unarmed and completely defenceless against the rampaging horde of soldiers about to descend upon them.

Raphael spoke in a low voice as his gaze drifted again, to the shadows that veiled the splendor around them and grew more with each passing moment. "Yes," he exhaled, and painted heads turned as his breath gave the little figures miraculous life. "They will come from the north...an army sent to expand an empire and lay waste to all who stand in the way...cities fall one by one and there will be death and destruction and war."

An exasperated huff escaped her lips. "Will be? War is already here!"

He shook his own head, his hair as close-cropped as any monk's in place of the flowing locks usually depicted in the many portrayals of him that adorned chapel walls and illuminated texts. The shapeless robes stirred about his legs, lifted by a cool breeze that swept through the nave and made the lanterns flicker and the frescos cower. The light dimmed even more with it and didn't recover, more faint, misty glow now than illumination.

"No, I don't mean this. What is to happen tonight will fade from history and be all but forgotten within a generation, though the effects will linger. This is not war, this is two mules eyeing each other balefully over the same pile of hay.

Only an angel would openly refer to the two most powerful men in Europe, the Supreme Pontiff Clement VII, who held dominion over all Catholic souls, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who ruled most of the land those souls resided on, as nothing more than humble pack animals fighting over a mouthful of feed. But the description was an apt one, it was their mutual stubbornness and refusal to cede any ground that had led to an army the Emperor could no longer control poised to lay waste to everything in its path and the Pope abandoning Saint Peter's throne to flee like a thief in the night instead.

"Charles and Clement may be nothing more than mules, but even a mule's kick can be fatal," Emma argued back. "And when a Hapsburg aims for a Medici, he doesn't just strike his rival. Tell the people of Rome that this is not war when they're burned from their homes and slaughtered without mercy in the street."

Raphael sighed and statues wept. "His Majesty and His Holiness are not the only ones possessed of an excess of stubborness. Now is not the time for debate about the constitution of war, it's long past time for you to go home, beata Emma. The army is not the only wolf howling at the gates tonight."

Emma lifted her chin, not giving quarter even to an Archangel. "And the innocents will suffer all the more for it."

His voice was firm and the warning in his tone was clearer than any bell. "The darkness will always seek to snuff out the light, in every form. Always. We can't save them all, Emma, and we are not meant to. He gave them the freedom of their own will be they prince or peasant, and as such they are capable of so much beauty and so much ugliness in equal measure. That potential they all hold within is His gift to mankind and we must allow them to choose their own path. You can not interfere in this mortal quarrel and if you stay, it is inevitable that the darkness will seek to find you."

She knew what would follow the soldiers in once they descended like locusts from the plagues of old and began to pillage the city. Even in the very heart of the Vatican itself she could sense them faintly in the distance, just beyond the seven hills.

Waiting.

Damnate Infernum.

The Damned of Hell.

"I do not fear the darkness."

Her voice didn't rouse the frescos or move the carvings to tears as his did, but her voice was steady and her shoulders were squared back in her elegant gown. She carried no sword, no heaven-forged blade like the one that had made it into legend alongside Raphael's tenure as Merlin appeared in her hand with which to repel back a demonic horde, but she couldn't leave, not when so many voices were out there and calling to her with their pleas for salvation.

"You do," the Archangel intoned with a raise of his brow. "Oh, you are brave and your heart is pure, but no one, not even an angel, is immune to fear."

He smiled then, a breathtaking sight that eclipsed even the glory of the grandeur that surrounded them. Emma felt her own lips lift in response and the candles that had been left unattended at the altar all ignited, filling the air around them with the scent of beeswax and sweet oil. Raphael's smile turned melancholy, his pupils twin golden flames from the reflections but also flickering with something else, beyond what Emma herself could see. The Merlin of tale was a prophet and that wasn't the fanciful imaginings of a twelfth-century cleric, Raphael had the divine gift of prophecy as all the Archangels did and in truth, Emma was afraid to ask what he saw when he looked at her now.

Another breath of wind swept through the chapel, cold, and decidedly unnatural. It licked a shiver down her spine and the candles went out again from the force of it, wisps of dark smoke curling up to the ceiling in serpentine ribbons. All save for one long, pale taper that continued to burn alone in defiance of the attempt to snuff it out. Raphael looked at it for a long moment and then he nodded once, as if in acknowledgement.

"A single light remains. If you truly wish to stay through what is to come, I won't forbid it. But Emma, you must keep in mind that the most divine of gifts can also become the heaviest of burdens. To listen and stay silent is not easy, you can find yourself longing not to hear them at all when you can't answer. Perhaps even for eternity."

She couldn't imagine even considering such a notion, one that trod so dangerously close to a path that led away from Heaven and only a few had chosen to follow since He first separated the light from the darkness as painted above.

"Is your gift a burden, beatus Raphael?"

His handsome face shifted, becoming softer and more wistful at the question. "My gift is wonderful. And terrible. I see such marvels to come, each more astonishing than the last as they continue to embrace art and science and learning, even when they stumble along the way. Then there are the horrors that have yet to be as well, when they fall into ignorance and loathing. But that is the future and as pleasant as it might have been to be gifted with visions of only the former and not the latter, without both, I would be blind in one eye."

With that, he made a motion with his hand and the candle that still burned lifted from the altar on unseen wings, crossing the bit of distance to float between his cupped palms. The little flame grew even stronger and for a moment that was an eternity unto itself the whole chapel blazed with light. Frescos acted out their stories in miniature, Passion Plays in pigment and plaster. The First Man reached to his Creator, the waters rose as the Flood washed over the banks and the Serpent hissed in triumph as the Forbidden Fruit was consumed and Man fell from grace.

Raphael offered the taper to her and she accepted it, his hands closing over hers so they both formed the ancient gesture of prayer. When he pulled away the flame returned to nothing more than a tiny spark, the painted figures were still and his eyes no longer reflected that which fate had hidden to all but him.

"They will follow you by this light, beata Emma."

She dipped her chin. "Gratias tibi ago."

The Archangel Raphael stepped back and folded his hands solemnly in his sleeves. A papal audience would conclude with the kissing of the fisherman's ring, but angels wore no jewelry. Her own fingers were bare of any adornment despite the richness of her attire. Still, she recognized she was being dismissed and she turned, satin gown rustling with the movement.

The candle illuminated the path back out of the chapel and no more, saints had retreated into shadows and all that remained of the dazzling splendor was a solitary angel. A glance back revealed what she already knew, Raphael was gone and she was alone.

It had already begun, Emma could hear the hue and cry quickly spreading across the city in advance of the army. She picked up her skirts and started to run, flying not with her wings but on her faith instead, trusting that it would take her where they would find her, whoever *they* were.

When she reached the closest set of doors that led outside they opened into the darkness of the night, the sky above indistinguishable from the ground below even with the candle in her hand burning bright. The space between the ornately carved wood gaped like a maw, and she could smell the smoke in the distance as her own prophecy came true and the fires were lit.

Rome had fallen.

When she reached the threshold the finely laid mosaics abruptly stopped, giving way to the drop where the Pope would slowly descend to the cheers of the waiting masses come to pay him homage in His name. Adoration had turned to debasement, cheers to screams, and as the floor fell away from beneath her feet Emma didn't ascend.

She leapt straight into the storm instead.

Lower Saxony, Germany, 1943

Bright sunshine shone down on the tall stone walls of the medieval Schloss, an imposing structure that dominated both the surrounding countryside of forests and fields and the picture postcard village nestled in the valley below, all nearly unchanged from how it must have looked centuries ago when the Hapsburgs still ruled this part of the world with absolute power not as mere kings like in France and England, but as emperors anointed by Rome.

Killian stepped out of his car and tilted his head back to take it all in, squinting into the light. It really was like stepping back in time, his was the only vehicle he'd seen on the winding road that connected castle and village and, unlike in every other city and town across Germany, there was no hint of the current turmoil to be seen or heard. No armed checkpoints on the roads, no soldiers posted at the town hall, not even the distant roar of the Luftwaffe in the sky overhead that was ever present now in even the most remote provinces far from the hive of furious activity that was Berlin. It would be curious, if Killian didn't already know exactly who was currently residing behind the ancient walls, someone who was far older and had the power to keep everything that was going on at bay.

For now, at least.

Inside, heavy damask curtains were drawn tight across every window and he was plunged directly into the darkness upon entering what was almost certainly enemy territory. It would have been disconcerting to anyone else, but Killian could see perfectly in the dark and his eyes adjusted at once with a flash of crimson to take in the artwork that crammed every inch of the walls in ornate frames. Far from an unusual sight in a castle, but these weren't the expected solemn-faced portraits of family scions or middling landscapes by unimportant artists like the one Emma had been so enamoured with before the French decided to give their entire aristocracy the same treatment as Herod gave to John the Baptist. Killian recognized the unmistakable hand of Titian in a red-haired siren and Caravaggio's signature chiaroscuro in the depiction of a saint, there was a Rembrandt that, as far as he knew, belonged to the Dutch royal family, currently exiled in Canada, and a half-finished sketch that he would wager a literal king's ransom was a Da Vinci. It was a veritable Aladdin's cave of priceless treasures, and none of it was owned by the noble family who had given their name to both the Schloss and the village and were now conspicuous by their absence. War had redrawn the European borders once again and, like the sacking of Rome by another German army four centuries prior, spoils had been taken and even more innocent blood was spilled. As Damnate Infernum, a Demon of Hell and corruptor of human souls Killian had seen it all before, he'd been standing on the hill when the city gates were finally breached on that May eve long ago and the holy city itself started to burn, but this conflagration was the closest he'd ever felt to the End of Days and the war destined to eclipse all others.

The Final Battle.

The artistic splendor was marred by the presence of an imp, lounging on an antique chaise in an insolent sprawl with one leg slung over the back and a grin that revealed a mouth packed with too many teeth.

Killian detested imps.

"Corruptor," the lesser demon practically purred, drawing the title out like it was a juicy treat. "What business have you with the illustrious Dark One? Have you come to make a deal?"

He would sooner be tortured by the Inquisition again than make a deal with Rumpelstiltskin and he bared his own teeth at the imp, white and far sharper than they looked.

"Tell your master that I'm here to speak with him, and that he needs to keep his pets on a tighter leash. I've heard what you've been up to when he lets you run loose. Bad form, even for an imp."

The rebuke in his voice made the imp's head snap back hard against the padded velvet, but instead of being chastised, it let out a high-pitched giggle that quickly melted into an obscene moan.

"Do it again!"

Killian grit his teeth, trying to keep his hellish temper in check. As much as he would have liked to teach the imp a painful lesson in the proper amount of deference owed to a higher demon, he was here for something far more important and anything else was a distraction.

Besides, the infernal creature would probably enjoy it.

"Fetch. Your. Master," he repeated, each word snapping in the air like the crack of a whip.

The imp stood and gave a mocking salute, clicking its heels together and bending its knees like a ballerina doing a plié. Killian didn't return the gesture, despite the uniform he was currently wearing.

"Aye, aye, Kapitän."

He felt his eyes narrow at that as the imp disappeared down the hall, dancing and whistling a jaunty tune through those piranha teeth as it went. The sound seemed to echo long after the imp was gone until Killian realized he was hearing someone else instead, his head turning in the direction it was coming from and following on silent feet until he found the source.

A pair of narrow doors stood ajar with a sliver of light peeking out and through the gap he saw that it was the castle's library, tall stacks rising right to the ceiling and filled cheek by jowl with leather-bound books. He gave the door the tiniest of nudges and it swung open fully, revealing that the curtains were tied back in heavy swags unlike in the other rooms he had passed, letting in the sun. The reason why quickly became obvious, there was a ladder attached to the bookcases to allow access to the higher shelves and perched on it was a soman, her back to him as she dusted along a row of books and hummed to herself in a sweet voice. Unlike the imp she was mortal, entirely human, her petite figure clad in a modest blue dress and her chestnut hair falling down her back in thick curls. Killian supposed she was Rumpelstiltskin's chambermaid, but strangely for someone in a demon's employ there wasn't a whiff of corruption about her. As one whose entire purpose was to corrupt and defile he could always detect it, to him it was like the scent of overripe fruit about to spoil. It clung indelibly to those falling away from the Light as their souls blackened and shrivelled like the half-eaten apple left behind in the Garden, so perfect and unblemished on the Tree until temptation proved too much for Mankind to resist. Whoever the woman was, she was still innocent, and curiosity had time taking a step closer because he was never one to resist temptation in any form.

The doors both slammed shut in his face before he could cross the threshold, with enough force to make his teeth rattle and the sweet humming was abruptly cut off, replaced by the harsh scrape of a lock being turned.

"Corruptor."

His demonic title was spoken from behind him in an oily voice and Killian turned smoothly on his booted heel, away from the library and the woman now locked within.

"Dealmaker," he acknowledged.

Rumpelstiltskin's thin lips went even thinner, but he couldn't fault Killian for addressing him in kind and not by his preferred moniker. He was attired in current fashion from the knife's-edge part in his hair down to his two-tone loafers, but he still carried the silver-tipped cane that Killian remembered from Paris, in the midst of another time and another war. The handle was shaped like a reptile's head, fitting for an ancient demon with such a cold-blooded disposition. The ebony tip rapped sharply against the floor when he turned and started to walk back down the hall without another word, not bothering to check if Killian followed. The dealmaker was more arrogant than any king in his newly acquired castle, and Killian rolled his eyes behind the self-styled Dark One's back before falling reluctantly into step to the metronome of the cane against the polished stone, each strike echoing loudly in the silence.

More incredible art adorned the walls on either side of them, one long corridor was completely lined in fourteenth-century tapestries that were somewhat faded with age but remarkably intact, depicting a typical medieval hunt. Killian had participated in his fair share of them under his many different noble aliases, he immediately recognized the scenes. The elusive quarry managed to evade the hunting party for several panels, leaping through glens and peeping defiantely at them through a copse of trees just beyond their reach. It almost slipped away, but the pursuers were determined and the freedom of the forest was fleeting, as the tiny woven arrows landed straight and true at the end.

Rumpelstiltskin came to a halt by another pair of doors where the imp was waiting, bowing like a well-trained footmen when he approached, fawning and obsequious now in the master's direct presence instead of mocking and impertinent. Rumpelstiltskin lifted the tip of the cane off the floor and used it to raise the imp's chin, forcing the creature's head back at what on anyone else would be an unnatural angle.

"Wait for me outside the library. It's currently locked, and it stays that way."

The order was clear and the imp ran off again, not bothering with any theatrics this time to scuttle away like a cockroach instead. Killian watched it scurry down the hall, his interest piqued even more while Rumpelstiltskin entered what looked like an ordinary sitting room. Tufted chairs, a wireless in a walnut case, and a china tea set left on a side table, nothing unexpected at first glance. A closer look told a slightly different story, there was a copy of the current evening edition of the London Telegraph folded next to the flowered cups, even though it wouldn't be out for another two hours across the Channel. There was no picture of Der Führer hung in place of pride or copy of his odious book on display as there were in every patriotic German household, and even ensconced as he was deep within the dark heart of the Glorious Reich, Killian suspected that Rumpelstiltskin had his long, grasping fingers stuck in all sorts of pies.

"Did the local count bargain away both his Schloss and das Mädchen?"

Killian sat down in the tallest chair without waiting for an invitation, pulling out a silver cigarette case engraved with his monogram and flicking it open. He lit one without a match, inhaling deep and blowing out not a mere smoke ring, but a smoke serpent that rose in the air and hissed right in the other demon's face until it dissipated from an equal flick of Rumpelstiltskin's finger, his expression clearly unimpressed by the showy display.

"She made her own deal with me and is therefore off limits to you, Corruptor," he said. "Don't think I've forgotten the last time you interfered in my affairs."

Killian hadn't forgotten it either, and he couldn't say he felt any remorse for assisting the courtesan Maleficent settle her affairs behind Rumpelstilskin's back. The letter she had written had been delivered safe to her daughter while the daughter's husband was away from the house and unable to confiscate it, Killian had made sure of that. It hadn't been a deal, not exactly, just an offer made to give the woman a bit of comfort with none of his usual strings attached because he felt like being magnanimous. Besides, he'd always enjoyed Maleficent's elegant salons. He took another drag on his cigarette and did his best to look contrite, even though they both knew it was completely insincere.

"Speaking of which," Rumpelstiltskin continued, as if the thought had just occurred to him, "what happened to that angel you were so damn adamant about? I heard rumours that an angel finally smited that irritating succubus Zelena in Paris and yet by some miracle you appear to have walked away from that encounter completely unscathed. How curious."

Killian hadn't forgotten the Dark One's interest in his angel either, an interest he had no intention of encouraging. Emma hadn't fallen, not yet, and until she did and he could claim her openly for his own, she was fair game to any demon that crossed her path. He was certain that he was the only one who could seduce her, but the others would be all too eager to attack a Blessed One and try to destroy her. Including the demon who sat across from him now.

He needed to tread very carefully.

"She flew beyond my grasp," he said, blowing out another lungful of smoke that turned into an image of Zelena's face, rendered as delicately as any of the paintings on display. Her mouth split open in a silent pantomime of her final, agonized scream when another breath of smoke spilled over it just as the holy water had in life. "Zelena thought she could take an angel on herself, if she had stayed on her back where she belonged and out of my way, then maybe she wouldn't have ended up as nothing more than effluent in the Paris sewers alongside the contents of every royal bowel loosened by the steel kiss of Madame Guillotine. But I can't say I mourned her untimely passing, not after she spoiled my plans and let the angel escape."

Zelena's image finally melted away just like the succubus herself when he stubbed the cigarette out into a crystal ashtray, leaving behind a smear of ash as dark and thick as her infernal blood had been when it spilled over the blade of his iron knife. Rumpelstiltskin's gaze followed the movement, unblinking even through the eye-watering haze of smoke that now filled the room.

"Indeed. Perhaps you'll have another bite at that particular apple, one day. Although it's already been what, a hundred and fifty years? Taking the definition of eternity rather literally, aren't we now?"

Killian knew it was a jab at his apparent failure and he let his expression twist into a scowl. Little did the Dark One know of all the nights since then when he'd succeeded in "capturing" Emma, her wrists pinned fast by his grasp that could so easily become shackles from which she'd never escape, caging her with his body while she was wound in his sheets, close, so close to surrendering to him fully and not just to his carnal temptation. He'd savour his other victories privately until then, how he'd coaxed out her name the night they met, worked to gain her trust over the centuries, her confession that she could hear him, each far more valuable and rarer than any painting or tapestry Rumpelstiltskin could acquire.

He'd get what he wanted, in the end. Patience might be a virtue, but he was willing to be virtuous for this, and he'd rub Rumpelstiltskin's nose right in his success whether it took ten years or a hundred. Losing a little face now was a small price to pay.

Turn the other cheek, as it were.

"I'm sure it didn't take you nearly as long to accumulate your little treasure trove, did it, Dark One? And all strictly for the glory of the new German empire, I'm sure."

There was a flash of amusement on Rumpelstiltskin's face at the sarcasm in Killian's tone.

"I've held up my end of all the bargains I've made on behalf of the empire. What you see here are merely a few trinkets kept for my private collection."

Killian thought that "looted" was probably a more apt description than "kept" for the fortune crammed onto the walls, but he didn't say it out loud. And he was the one who'd once been called a pirate. Still, the dealmaker's penchant for trinkets was the whole reason why he'd come and he made a photograph appear, held delicately between his fingers like the cigarette before he set it on the table and slid it over.

"Is this one of your new acquisitions like the artwork and the decorative young girl, perhaps?"

The image was grainy, a faded sepia and foxed at the edges from age. Rumpelstiltskin looked down at it and while his expression didn't change the blue haze in the air from the cigarette smoke rippled around him, like a stone dropped in a still pond.

"It's called the White Hilt," Killian began, watching the other demon carefully as he spoke, "among other names, and was said to have been made from a remnant of the sword wielded by the angel who drove the First Man and First Woman from the Garden, where it was cleaved in two by their sin."

While the photograph was badly faded, the object pictured was still recognizable and had even retained a bit of gloss, forever reflecting the flash that had gone off when the image was captured for posterity. It was a blade, long and narrow and oddly shaped. Both sides were curved several times along the edge, so that it resembled less of a knife and more like a lick of flame made metal. Despite the name the actual hilt wasn't white, it was so dark in the picture that it was probably black or nearly to it, and was studded with what looked like a large jewel at the top.

"There was legends about it, like those about the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny, but they fell out of fashion and out of history and only a few scholars have even heard of the White Hilt now, including those that Der Führer has combing every pilfered record he can get his hands on thanks to his new obsession, the occult sciences."

Rumpelstiltskin gave him a contemptuous look. "Spare me the lesson, I'm far more versed in these tales than you, Corruptor. More than one soul has tried to barter with me for holy relics, thinking it will bring them power and glory. A blade forged from Heavenly light is an attractive idea, especially to one who has styled himself a Saviour of the people."

"While he exterminates those who don't fit his definition of the term," Killian added.

It wasn't spoken of openly, but people knew where their absent neighbours had gone. Yellow stars were left behind on the lintels of empty houses, paint flaking away in the elements and the sin cut deeper than any knife.

The other demon lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "Sieg Heil."

As before, Killian didn't return the sentiment. He gestured to the photograph instead. "This was taken sometime before the Great War, in this very castle."

He flipped it over and revealed the writing on the back, done in an old, copperplate hand. There were only three lines, the name of the Schloss they were currently sitting in, an illegible signature, and below them both was a word written first in German, and then, perhaps more tellingly, in Latin.

Dagger

Rumpelstiltskin eyed his uniform, one that gave him near absolute authority in the name of the would-be king. "I suppose you've come here as the knight on a noble quest?" he asked, tone still laced with contempt. "Shall I address you as Sir Killian instead of Corruptor then, collecting shiny tribute for your new master?"

Killian ignored that jab as well and focused on what the dealmaker might have just accidently let slip instead.

"So it is here?"

He met Rumpelstiltskin's gaze head on across the table. It was like staring into a well, his eyes were fathomless black depths that seemed to ripple from deep within. A mortal soul would fear what lurked unseen at the bottom and glance away from it, as Damnate Infernum in his own right, with power far beyond what the rank on his collar granted him, Killian didn't blink.

When Rumpelstiltskin spoke again it was through teeth gone serrated as a crocodile's. "I don't answer to you. Or to Der Führer. You think I'm somehow unaware of his more esoteric interests and attempts to collect such objects? Napoleon went to Egypt in search of Biblical treasures to strengthen his laughable claim, Charles V sent his troops to Rome to seize Saint Peter's throne, and now Adolf Hitler seeks a broken sword with which to rule the world. An emperor in all but name, and like those who came before him, doomed to inevitable failure. Just as you've failed in your pathetic attempt to intimidate me."

He started to rise from his seat then, cane in one hand and clear dismissal in his voice. "You can see yourself out now, Corruptor."

Killian remained where he was, idly examining his rings. The large, square cut ruby that he'd owned for centuries sat on his finger and winked up at him, he refused to don the honours that went with the uniform and wore his favourite pieces in their place instead. He rubbed his thumb over it and admired the fire within before rolling his wrist and snapping his fingers without looking up.

"Even in this modern world, I find that some still cling rather stubbornly to the old ways, don't you, Dealmaker? Especially those who used to hold power. They still style themselves with the titles they lost in the last war in the hope they'll regain them one day, prince, duke, count, and they still arrange marriages for their children. Marriage is a sacrament, and there is nothing more sacred to these people than money."

Rumpelstiltskin snatched up the papers that had appeared on the desk at Killian's command, his face a mask of utter fury as he scanned them and obviously realized his error. The marriage contract was clear, the bride's wealthy family had provided a considerable dowry to the impoverished but noble groom, on the condition that she be granted sole ownership of his ancestral seat and all the contents within upon the wedding, a hedge against a future divorce. Furnishings, carpets, silverware, there was a complete inventory right down to the number of teaspoons.

Including; "an antique jewelled dagger of unknown provenance."

"I confess I may lack your level of expertise," Killian continued, acting as innocent as a virgin at Mass, "but I do know that you can't put up what doesn't belong to you as collateral. Your contract was only with the husband. Mine is with the wife."

Her signature was next to Killian's own on the document the Dark One now held, granting him possession of the castle and surrounding estate. Marriage was a sacrament, and adultery was his favourite sin. He lit another cigarette from his silver case, filled as much with smug satisfaction at having pulled the rug out from under Rumpelstiltskin as the smoke he drew into his lungs. Another demon couldn't interfere directly once a bargain was struck and they both knew it. But Killian hadn't, since the deal was never valid to begin with. "Good faith" was not a doctrine demons followed, and Rumpelstiltskin had no choice but to accept that his own carefully wrought deal was now completely null and void.

"You don't answer to me, that's true. But you do answer to the Fallen One, so if you care to argue this further we can always take this little disagreement to him for a final ruling, if you desire."

The papers fluttered back down and spread across the table in an untidy heap while Rumpelstiltskin's dark gaze went sharper than any dagger. Despite his easy posture with the cigarette dangling loosely between his fingers, Killian was inwardly as tense as a bowstring. They were both bound by the same rules that called for the other demon to acquiesce, however unwilling he was to do so, but he looked to be on the verge of breaking those rules completely and refusing to relinquish his claim. If he did it would come at a considerable cost, and Killian's entire plan hinged on the Dark One being unwilling to pay it.

"That's twice," he said at last. "Believe me, there won't be a third time."

With that, Rumpelstiltskin lifted his cane and slammed it back down on the floor. The sound was like the strike of a match flaring to life, only magnified a thousandfold and everything in the room rattled from the force of it. For a split second Killian could see what lay beneath the unassuming countenance that had slithered unnoticed and forgotten throughout history for so long, the Beast without his human form to conceal him. He braced himself for the attack that was sure to follow, fingers tightening on the arm of the chair and ready to leap up and fling the lit cigarette right into the demon's face.

It never came. The Dark One was gone instead.

His boots made no sound when he stood up from the chair and walked around the table, the tip of the cigarette flaring crimson as he took another deep inhale. A chasm had opened in the floor like a sinkhole, right where the cane had struck. Killian crouched down to examine it, taking a final drag before flicking the cigarette into the hole and watching it fall end over end until it was swallowed up by the darkness. The chasm was deep, impossibly so, and for a moment he wondered if Rumpelstiltskin had decided to appeal to Lucifer after all and returned to Infernum itself to do so, as the Fallen One rarely left his kingdom below. He waited a few moments, but there was no summons under his skin that compelled him to follow and a check of the castle revealed that most of the treasures had been removed as well. The walls where the tapestries had hung were bare, the exquisite paintings were gone, furniture was draped in dusty cloths and there was an air of disuse and neglect as if everything had been shut away and left untouched for months. A check of the hall outside the library revealed the imp was nowhere to be found, and now that he'd established himself as master the door opened as soon as Killian touched the knob.

It was empty.

Not just the maid, a lot of the books had vanished alongside her. There were holes on the shelves that hadn't been there before and a few of the ones left behind had toppled over completely without the others to hold them in place. Rumpelstiltskin had withdrawn in silent acknowledgement that he'd been outmaneuvered, but he'd obviously taken everything from his other deals along with him. Using that much power at once could nearly cripple a demon, even one as powerful as the dealmaker.

When he returned to the sitting room he saw the rent in the floor had sealed itself back up and all that remained where it had been was a small black mark, perfectly round, left by the tip of the cane. His shoulders dropped with relief under the tailored wool of his jacket that his gamble had paid off, in truth, Killian hadn't wanted to involve the Fallen One either and the invocation of his authority had been a bluff.

The edge of the photograph peeked out from underneath a page of dry German legalese, Killian picked it up and read the words on the back again. If the White Hilt truly existed, then it was a holy relic of the highest order and one he would not allow to fall into Nazi hands. That madman in Berlin could make do with the ramblings of false prophets and the bones of apocryphal saints to fuel his insane crusade, anything genuine was exceedingly rare and he had his own reasons for searching such objects out, reasons he didn't share with those who only thought the commanded him. Just as it had the last time he'd been part of a German army, it was to serve his own purposes and not the other way around.

"Find it."

He didn't have any imps at his disposal so he sent his shadow to begin the search instead. The dark shape moved along the wall of its own volition and sank into the stone like water sinking into the sand, if the dagger was secreted somewhere within the Schloss then he'd find it no matter how well it was hidden. If it turned out to be a medieval copy then he'd return with it to the capital and graciously accept the Reich's accolades, but if it was real, then his coded dispatch would report that the legend of a blade forged from a sword once wielded by a holy angel was just that, a legend, and nothing more.

Night had fallen by the time Killian went outside for some air, frustrated by what appeared to be a fruitless search. There was no jewelled dagger anywhere to be found and he couldn't sense the presence of anything holy. He'd known the odds were exceedingly slim to begin with, and yet for some reason a part of him had believed that not only did the White Hilt exist, he would find it here. Learning that Rumpelstiltskin had chosen this of all the estates he could have had for a wartime headquarters had only increased that belief, it was too much of a coincidence that the demon who coveted power above all else could be sitting unawares on such a prize.

A single line in an inventory that had been prepared years prior and a photograph even older still. It could be real, or it could be nothing more than a wild goose chase and there was no way to tell without the dagger itself. He'd know immediately, just as he'd known that Emma was an angel. The damned always recognized the divine.

A light appeared high in the sky above and drew his attention up. It wasn't the holy light that had drawn him closer on that night in Rome when war had raged unchecked and the city burned, it was the Luftwaffe, flying on steel wings to rain fire in the form of the bombs dropped nightly across the Channel. A falling star streaking across the heavens with a deafening roar, and as it passed overhead he felt the disturbance in the air even from the ground.

The feeling didn't go away after the plane was gone, if anything it increased, hairs on the back of his neck rising and a prickling under his skin that usually meant one thing. Something else caught his eye, a tiny bit of movement that was nothing but a pale smudge against the deep indigo at first. As it grew closer Killian saw that it was a bird, a dove, with something held in its beak.

Not an olive branch, it was a note, falling straight into his hands while the dove flew away. There was only one who correspond with him in such a fashion, and it wasn't another demon. When he unfolded the square of paper letters appeared as if by magic in gold script, addressed at the top in a familiar hand to, "Damnate."

Killian quickly scanned the lines, his brow creasing with a frown. Once he'd secured control of the castle his plan had been to keep following the trail of the White Hilt if it wasn't there, he had some other leads and records that pointed to where it might have gone and the war was the perfect cover for his pursuit. Now that the Dark One knew of his interest, it was even more important that he maintained his cover and moved as quickly as possible. He wasn't bound to answer the summons he held in his hands, the promise he'd made could easily be broken.

"...as you once agreed to give me safe passage I ask that assistance again of you now…"

"...I need you…"

"...please…"

It was signed at the bottom with a single initial in lieu of a name, E, and he brushed his thumb over it.

His answer was silent to all but her.

Belgian Countryside, 1943

"Someone's coming."

The whispered announcement made everyone freeze for a moment before they hurried to the dusty windows in a flurry of palpable dread, dousing the old gas lamp they'd been using for light and pulling the tattered curtains back to peer out into the gloom on the other side of the glass. Outside it was pitch-black for miles around and silent as a tomb across the barren fields and empty roads that made up the ancient Flemish countryside, with not a soul to be seen nor heard from in days. Or it had been, at least. Now there was a distinctly mechanical hum in the air, quiet and barely audible at first, but growing louder and louder and a collective gasp echoed around the room when the long drive to the abandoned farmhouse where they'd taken refuge suddenly lit up with twin oblong lights. As yellow as the predatory eyes of a serpent poised to strike and moving even more quickly, they were unmistakably headlamps, from a large vehicle that was making its way directly towards them at breakneck speed.

"Soldiers!"

"Germans!"

It was a single cry of alarm that was taken up at once by the rest of the ragged group, white-faced and trembling with both exhaustion and fear. In the shadows Philippe and Richard shared that kind of unguarded embrace that would send them straight to the camps as sexual deviants alongside Isaac and the other Jews who sought shelter under her wings, while the Mother Superior had her arms wrapped comfortingly around little Gretel, as thin and delicate as a baby bird fallen from the nest.

Emma forced herself to her feet despite her own utter fatigue and lurched towards the door, tossing a hurried, "Stay here," over her shoulder as she went.

"Emma, Emma come back!"

"Emma, wait, no, it's too dangerous, you don't know who's out there-"

She heard them, but there was another voice that was even louder and she didn't heed their warnings, already on the sagging porch with her shoes scarcely touching the ground as she practically flew down the steps and flung herself headlong into the path of the oncoming car. The light found her immediately and there was an ear-splitting squeal of metal as the unseen driver behind the wheel slammed on the brakes. Gravel flew from under the tires like shrapnel and the car skidded to a halt scant inches from where she stood, so close that Emma could feel the searing heat from the engine, a shocking contrast against the cooler night air. A door opened and a tall figure emerged, standing just beyond the pool of light with his face hidden under the brim of his hat. His appearance elicited another shriek of fright from behind her when they caught a glimpse of his uniform, the glint of silver on his collar and the armband red as blood. Her little flock hadn't listened and had followed her outside, staying close to their shepherd and bleating in fear like orphaned lambs in the dark. Their presence pulled at her to return while his pushed her back, his damnation attempting to repel away her divinity and she swayed back and forth where she stood, caught between warring instincts until he stepped into the light and there was nothing except him.

"Engel," Killian murmured when she threw herself at him, straight into his arms and burying her face in his shoulder. His voice rumbled through her, equal parts amused and concerned. "Oh blessed one. What have you done now?"

There was a shuffle of footsteps behind her and she felt him stiffen, his attention shifting to the small group she'd guided from the Dutch border and across half of occupied Belgium. Emma knew she should pull herself away and try to come up with an explanation as to why she was embracing what appeared to be a Nazi officer who'd just appeared out of nowhere in a car more suited to a film star than a soldier. It must look like their shepherd had delivered them straight to the wolves instead of the safety she promised and she should step back, reassure them, ease their worry...but her head was too heavy, weighed down with innumerable unanswered prayers that flickered behind her eyes in an endless loop. People were suffering, starving, dying, and it was too much for even her wings to carry. Her fingers curled into the dark wool of his jacket and when they called her name again it seemed to come from very far away. His voice was among them but she couldn't answer, her hold loosening and her knees giving out, buckling like an ancient tree gone hollow with age and unable to withstand the force of the wind any longer.

"Killian."

His name fell from her lips in a whisper and she was falling with it, the hard earth below rushing up to meet her and the heavens above, dark, and devoid of stars.

The demon caught her before she hit the ground.

#cs ff #cs fic #my fic #Between Heaven and Hell

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insanityclause · 5 years ago

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William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, starring Tom Hidldeston in the title role, is currently streaming as part of the UK National Theatre at Home initiative.

Coriolanus is set in ancient Rome, where the people suffer from a famine and clamor for changes to the current ruling system. Distinguished general Caius Martius returns from a successful campaign in Corioles and is thus named “Coriolanus.” He finds himself caught in the middle of conflicts at home and abroad as his mother, Volumnia, pushes him to become a consul of Rome. But he is a soldier at heart and ill-suited to politics and thus, betrayal and banishment drive him to form an unexpected alliance with a former enemy, Tullus Aufidius. He vows revenge on the city that rejected him, but this final, ill-fated campaign leads to his downfall.

Coriolanus is particularly relevant in these times of social unrest and political upheaval because it portrays a a country in the throes of transformation, people demanding a voice, and the breakdown of oppressive structures and systems. The play explores the idea of power and the very pertinent question of in whom it should reside and whether it should ever be in the hands of a single person.

It also tackles the dangers of imposing inordinate pressure on an individual and how they can break from the weight of nigh-impossible expectations. In an interview with The Guardian, Hiddleston himself says it best:

“I think the play also raises another complex question as to what degree any individual can withstand the intensity of idealisation and demonisation that comes with the mantle of unmoderated leadership or extraordinary responsibility.”

Directed by Josie Rourke, the production succeeds in bringing Shakespeare’s bloody epic to life even in a confined space. The production was filmed on stage at the Donmar Warehouse in 2014 by National Theatre Live.

The closed quarters of the Donmar Warehouse always push production teams to be more creative in their execution of material and the results in this case are truly impressive. Rourke made the most of the limited space and even turned it to her production’s advantage, ingeniously giving the focus on the characters and the dialogue more than the trappings of ancient Rome, creating a truly visceral experience.

The production was stripped to its bare essentials, the set design all the more striking for its sparseness. Simple props are deployed to impressive effect and even complicated battle scenes are deftly conveyed through chairs, ladders, and creative lighting.

A particularly memorable scene is when Caius Martius takes a shower after being bloodied in battle. The shower scene is not fan service but really more symbolic of the objectification of Martius’ body by the characters, how much blood he has shed for his city and how many scars he bears as proof of his service.

Hiddleston explains that the shower scene was also a way for the audience to see how the character bore his wounds in private even as he refused to reveal them in public. He cries out in pain as the cold water seemingly stings his wounds and one can feel him buckle under the weight of so much expectation. As Hiddleston says:

“We wanted to show him wincing, in deep pain: that these wounds and scars are not some highly prized commodity, but that beneath the exterior of the warrior-machine, idealised far beyond his sense of his own worth, is a human being who bleeds.”

The performances are consistently engaging and even with the majority of the ensemble seated in the shadowy background, when one character has his or her scene, the audience can look at no one else.

Tom Hiddleston is magnificent as Caius Martius Coriolanus, giving depth and nuance to a controversial character. Coriolanus is a difficult man to root for but Hiddleston effectively captures the many facets of the character from the daring warrior, the haughty patrician with such disdain for the plebeians, the dutiful son, the reluctant consul, the vengeful exile, and eventually, the vulnerable family man.

He effectively portrays a man seemingly unyielding in his convictions and yet also easily swayed by his mother, whether she is prodding him to become consul or begging him to spare Rome. Coriolanus is constantly torn between his obedience to his mother and her aspirations for him and his own proud and brutally honest nature.

His fearlessness and ferocity in battle do him little favors when he tries to play the politician and there is a brilliant scene when Hiddleston sarcastically tries to win “votes” from his countrymen and it is obvious how he struggles to keep up appearances. When he eventually snaps and unleashes his rage against the people, one can already foresee his inevitable doom.

Deborah Findlay as Volumnia is masterful and mesmerizing, her powerful influence over her son evident from her first appearance. She is clearly the driving force behind the story – pushing her son to gain renown on the battlefield, then to become consul of Rome, and finally, to relent in his revenge plans to raze the city. Far from the traditional depictions of motherhood as full of tenderness and compassion, Volumnia’s love for her son is rooted in brutal ambition, and she values the glory he can bring to their house more than his own life.

The mother-son relationship is one of the more fascinating dynamics in Shakespeare’s plays and the chemistry between Findlay and Hiddleston effectively portrays this. For all his pride and rage, Martius can never bring himself to refuse anything his mother asks of him, even when they both know that some requests will end in tragedy.

Birgitte Hjort Sørensen as Virgilia, wife of Martius, does not share many scenes with her husband but in the few that she does, her manners and tender looks effectively convey the bond between them. She even employs some sensuality in the scenes where she tries to convince him to give up his bloody crusade.

Hadley Fraser as Tullus Aufidius gives a fascinating portrayal of a character who starts out as the lead’s fiercest foe and then somehow, becomes a powerful ally. The mutual admiration between the two warriors is evident from the moment they are face-to-face in battle.

While there are battle scenes in the play, the duel between Martius and Aufidius is the only one given complete fight choreography and it is an intense and gritty affair, both actors having rehearsed their movements extensively before the play’s run. Even as they exchange violent blows, there is a reluctant respect between them.

When their paths cross again later in the play and, in a rare display of humility, Martius puts himself at his enemy’s mercy, Aufidius recognizes an opportunity for them to finally become the brothers-in-arms they were destined to be. But the alliance is short-lived and soon Aufidius finds his rage replaced with sorrow.

Mark Gatiss gives a delightful performance and is a refreshingly jovial character in a cast of grim figures. His Menenius has the thankless task of counseling the stubborn Martius in his journey to becoming a consul and also tries his best to win the support of the people for his tempestuous protégé.

Peter de Jersey is regal and noble as the general Cominius, another supporter of Caius Martius, but one who is still unable to prevent the misfortunes that befall the ill-fated Coriolanus. Both Cominius and Menenius fail in their efforts to build Martius a career as a consul because they realize that he is a man who cannot go against his own nature.

Alfie Enoch plays Titus Lartius, a Roman general and another ally of Coriolanus. He is a brave and loyal companion in battle but he also is unable to help Coriolanus achieve his political ambitions.

The Tribunes, played by Elliot Levey and Helen Schlesinger, are as scheming and manipulative as one expects them to be, and though there is mutual hostility between them and the proud Martius, they hold the advantage because they are easily able to sway the people to their cause. In the end, Martius, for all his prowess in battle, is no match for seasoned politicians, who know the game too well.

The rest of the ensemble play multiple roles as Roman citizens and Volscians and though there are only a handful of actors, they are all still able to effectively convey the sense of a mob rising against a tyrant or an army of soldiers in the heat of battle. Once again, it is Rourke’s excellent direction that makes the most of the Donmar’s small space and allows the cast to be strategically placed in every scene. Not an inch of the stage is wasted.

The intense, intimate production brings out the character dynamics and the forces at play without distracting the audience with the bells and whistles of intricate set design or flashy costumes. The story is the star of the show and what better way to perform Shakespeare than to put the emphasis on his words.

Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare’s more brutal works, full of rawness and rage, without the customary elegance and charm that audiences may be used to with the romances or comedies. Coriolanus is a bloody cautionary tale about the nature of power, a theme that will certainly resonate strongly with audiences today.

In a time where we are all deprived of the communal experience of live theater, the National Theatre at Home initiative has provided a worthwhile alternative experience and a reminder of the excitement and wonder a well-executed play can inspire. While we wait for the worst effects of the crisis to abate, we can take comfort in the hope of a better future. In the words of Coriolanus himself:

“There is a world elsewhere.”

The stream will be available on the National Theatre’s Youtube Channel from June 4 to June 11. Watch it while you can:

https://youtu.be/XHqkEruwBT0

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wordacrosstime · 5 years ago

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Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being

[Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. Ted Hughes. 1992. Faber & Faber Ltd, London. 504 pages]

I do not think it an accident that Ted Hughes was brave enough to tackle this subject. An award-winning poet himself, Hughes was husband to the poet Sylvia Plath, and seems equally at home in drama and mythology. Plath’s artistry and suffering must have informed and influenced Hughes, whose book tracing about a dozen Shakespearean works focuses on the tragic hero’s terrible relationship to women. This deeply disturbing and yet mythological theme in these plays, Hughes reduces to a Tragic Equation and compares this Tragic Equation in terms of psychology and even psychobiology, a term new to me. It is interesting that Hughes does not describe his Goddess Of Complete Being as a Supreme Being, but rather more like the Mother Earth, or Mother Nature Herself, or even Plath’s White Goddess, all of which Hughes mentions as examples of female divinity. For Hughes the ultimate truth is bound up not with spirits hovering magically in the forest air, but to be found in the bosom of women. Not that Hughes’s equation is formulated from a woman’s point of view; no, rather from the point of view of the boys who become men, that is warriors, monarchs, poets, and playwrights. Hughes draws our attention to the one thing the tragic heroes have in common in the Shakespearean tragedies, behaviour towards women that is brutish, if not violent. This is a brave thesis, and probably not one that would have been published if proposed by a woman. He calls this theory the Tragic Equation.

The Tragic Equation begins, according to Hughes, when the adolescent who is precariously independent from the Mother Goddess and the paralysing force of her love, as a aavaictime of new and uncontrollable sexual energy searching for union with an unknown female, and in Elizabethan society that female is bound to be fairly unknown. Hughes declares the origin of this Tragic Equation is the severing of the emotional bonds with the mother. This emotional recoil which coincides with the first sexual urgings, he believes results, for the man of leisure and intelligence, in a ‘madness’. He convinced me that this ‘madness’ is substantiated throughout the oeuvre. We cannot deny the fact that the infant male, for many years, is in the powerful kingdom of the female, who has miraculous powers to give birth to a human being, must be affected in his search for his male identity. For Hughes this is an adequate reason to explain distrust and hatred of women that Shakespeare’s tragic heroes experience before their final downfall. So it is a kind of revenge Tragic Equation, where the female ends up banished, abandoned or dead, which brings the hero to his knees.

Hughes begins his thesis with the two poems,Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Hughes feels that these two poems are the beginning of the tragic hero who features in the rest of Shakespeare’s works. These heroes, according to Hughes, are tortured by their blind lust, either unconsciously or consciously, and are really seeking a kind of divine love. He makes a good case for his thesis as he convincingly traces the love affairs from the bestial in Venus and Adonis, right through to The Tempest. Interestingly, the process begins with the lust of a woman, the Goddess Venus, who is blamed for lust in general. This lust is transferred, as it must be for the Tragic Equation, to the rapist Taquin. In the male, bestial lust quickly becomes violent. I think Hughes convincingly traces, through the works, the fate of love from its source in confused bestiality to the pursuit of a woman who ideally embodies divine love.

I think contemporary psychology theory agrees with him, and that at the mercy the natural surging of his hormones, the young man is in an unstable emotion state and can reject the object of his desire who is always a young virtuous woman. This is the woman who our tragic hero desperately wants, but can easily hate. Hughes quotes a number of tragic heroes as victims of this ‘irrational madness’, the foremost being Hamlet, and the most irrational being Leontes in A Winter’s Tale, but there are many instances of the hero abusing his most loved woman. Hughes thinks this is purely a psychobiological trait, mythologized through the centuries. He does not relate it to being an English subject in the reign of a powerful queen.

For all lovers of Shakespeare Hughes’s book is delightful reading except for the number of folkloric references which are confusing. Hughes desire is clear; to trace a path from bestial to divine love in the entire Shakespearean oeuvre and he begins this journey with the boar as symbolic of male desire. The book cover is a drawing of a boar. In Hughes’s Tragic Equation, the hero who chases the chaste woman, invariably comes to a sad end himself, and I find this supported by at least ten of the plays in the Shakespearean oeuvre. Hughes also insists that the plays portray a penitent hero who can transcend his madness and trade in his lust in order to reach a more spiritual love. Unfortunately, while this may be neat and psychologically sound, Hughes then goes on to confuse the boar with the Queen of Hell. This particular myth, or effigy I found difficult to accept since there’s only one character who could rightly be called that, Lady Macbeth. What is easier to accept is the raw youth at the mercy of his hormones in All’s Well That Ends Well, evolving into the wise old man, Prospero, at the end of the cycle who cares for his daughter so lovingly.

While agreeing in general with Hughes’s thesis, that the plays represent a growth towards spirituality, I think Hughes relies on psychology more than sociology or political impetus. Sociologically there is a very potent reason for the overbearing mother and her frustrated sexuality, namely, the oppression of women in the sixteenth century, especially aristocratic and landed-gentry women. They were inevitably bartered away and invariably ended up with an arranged and loveless marriage. Thus the problem of imposed ‘madness’ but Hughes does not credit this new interest in the relationship between men and women with the powerful rulers who are women. This very emphasis and criticism of male behaviour must have been inspired by the very powerful female monarchs of that era. There was the first ever queen of England, Queen Mary, a hated first English Queen, Mary Queen of Scots, who claimed to be queen of Scotland, England and France, and of course the omnipotent Elizabeth the First. Subjected to such powerful women must have been the source of much internal and external conflict. All three women must have ushered in a new sensibility, not necessarily in the portrayal of women but in the portrayal of men’s behaviour towards women who, for the first time had political clout. Hughes makes no reference to the possible influence of these monarchs. He also omits to note that these inner conflicts about the opposite sex, however common they are among the commoners and even aristocracy, are never described as the fatal flaw of the reigning monarch, or the paternal Dukes that pepper the plays. Perhaps Elizabeth would have more than frowned on portraying royalty with this fatal flaw. The most insidious male monarch who subdues a woman is, of course, Richard the Third, who is deliberately being maligned. Prince Hamlet is a great example, of someone who cannot become a monarch after his ‘madness’. The Winter’s Tale proves to be the exception, but that is because he becomes a penitent and is forgiven by the statue of his victim wife. Towards the end of the cycle, King Lear’s aggression is relatively mild against Cordelia, and he too repents.

Hughes does, however, make some historical explanation for the sudden emergence of scholarship of such profound depth and meaning. He credits the conflict between the Papal Church, personified perhaps by the Virgin Mary, and the rapacious Henry VIII. Hughes neglects to mention the protestations of Luther which made the intelligentsia (not the monarchs) question the Divine Right of Kings. These are powerfully conflicting elements which reach right down through every strata of society, and were represented in the person of Elizabeth the First; a rebel female and ‘unnaturally’ a scholar, who used the divine right of kings to rule. Hughes does mention that Queen Elizabeth had a keen interest in what was being dramatised because she was aware of the support she needed and appreciated the theatre as an instrument of propaganda. She headed an aristocratic class with leisure to reflect on the nature of women, and to believe that it was patriotic to do so. England was finally emerging from the brutality of the Roman Empire although English scholars had no desire to avoid the civilizing influence of Italian thought, language and painting. Dante and Boccaccio were influential. Elizabeth the First spoke Italian fluently and probably read Castiglione’s prescription for the perfect courtier and Machiavelli in the original. Even Mary Queen of Scots had her Florio.

When Hughes drew my attention to the Tragic Equation and even to his theories of psychobiology, it made me realize that the aristocratic, and characters who feature as leaders and celebrities in the plays, were probably always raised in dysfunctional family circumstances. Interestingly, they have this in common with the aristocrats of the day who supported the theatre and followed the Shakespearean oeuvre and argument on behalf of the conflicted tragic heroes. At the mercy of suppressed mothers, they must have felt like tragic heroes themselves.

Hughes does not need to mention the fact that Shakespeare is very popular today, but I think it is pertinent. Violence towards women is still with us and the reason why is still a subject of contention and endless theorizing. Jonathan Fast explores this violence in young males in his two books, Ceremonial Violence, A Psychological Explanation of School Shootings, and Beyond Bullying, Breaking the Cycle of Shame, Bullying and Violence. Interestingly this shame is not racial, or even competitively nurtured, no, it is learned in the heart of the dysfunctional (to a nth degree) family. Apparently Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother made him eat all the food she cooked, rotten or not. . Feminists may run from facts like these, by pointing out to the use and abuse of women which is responsible for such dysfunctional families. I agree with this position. Family dysfunction can easily be socially approved, such as in the suppression of women’s sexuality and ambition. I’m sure women’s liberation and the respect women are now acquiring in the public and private sector, will go a long way to reducing the effect of this trauma.

Hughes’s analysis of the tragic hero was long-winded but still left me wanting more, and a little sceptical of his need for formulas and theories. He focuses on the dramatic characters’ violence, rather than their passion for words and joy of life, notably absent from this didactical tome. But I want to thank Hughes for pointing out the ‘scurvy’ males in the Shakespearean oeuvre, and tracing the cycle of plays where the hero evolves towards some veneration, it not worship, of a divine being that is female in nature like the goddesses in The Tempest’s marriage ceremony.

[images copyright to publisher & photographer]

Eliza Wyatt

Words Across Time

17 March 2020

wordsacrosstime

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mentiormusa-blog · 6 years ago

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The Portrayal of Satanism and How it Affects the Youth of Today

Preface

Growing up, I always had a pretty decent idea of what was good and what was evil. I knew that cops were the good guys and the robbers were the bad guys and I knew that Batman was the hero and the Joker was the villain. But I guess the most prominent example I knew of regarding the power struggle of morality was the battle between God and the Devil, with God being the bringer of life and the Devil being the evil incarnate. But, in more recent times, with society becoming more open when it comes to one’s belief, the idea of Satan or, more appropriately, Lucifer, being a misunderstood bringer of justice has become a more accepted concept among the younger population. This is only because of how he is presented in works of fiction like the Fox television show Lucifer, which is, in turn, based off of the DC comic series of the same name. The show follows Lucifer, the archangel who was cast out of heaven for refusing to follow his father’s orders, as he sets out to bring justice upon the criminals of L.A. This backstory can also be seen in the television show, Supernatural, where he is still a villain of the story but is given a sense of humanity for the pain he feels for being cast out by the father he loved.

Background

The Church of Satan, which is one of more the commonly referenced branches of Satanism, was founded in 1960 by Anton Szandor Lavey in the United States. Laveyan Satanism has the core belief of more humanistic values, which prioritizes the betterment of oneself. Satan, being the symbol of the religion, represents self assertion, rebellion against unjust authority, vital existence, and “undefiled wisdom.”

Lavey learned much about the occult and ritual-magic teachings during his time as a carnival worker and, in 1966, incorporated them in the tenants of the church he founded on the Walpurgisnacht, or April 30th (which is referred to as May eve). In 1969, he sat down and recorded these beliefs and teachings in the Satanic bible. They also participated in rituals designed to encourage members to develop their sense of self-importance and to cast away their past lives full of submissiveness.

But what appeals to people the most are the Satanic Commandments that Lavey conjured up within this bible. The 11 Satanic commandments are:

Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.

Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.

When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.

If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.

Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.

Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.

Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.

Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.

Do not harm little children.

Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.

When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

Not only do these promote a more open religion for the impressionable gen z, but it also appeals to a more open society as a whole. These commandments are comparable to the ideals that have been seen more frequently within this evolving society, especially with the obvious disdain for sexual assault, child abuse, animal abuse, and being an overall nuisance.

Interview one (Axel Garcia, 17)

I was on the phone with my first subject, Axel Garcia, when the matter was brought up. Me and him have discussed both religion and the existence of an afterlife many times before this. Upon beginning the interview, I noticed that he was at ease and the topic itself did not bother him. 1

What is your Religious affiliation?

“I’m not a very religious person, I need evidence in order to believe in something so I’d say that I’m agnostic.”

When you hear the terms Satan and Satanism, what comes to mind?

“Evil and the flames of the hell for Satan and people who do not like God.”

How do you think media portrays Satan and Satanism?

“Some portray him as the king of darkness and the prince of all evil, while others portray him as this cool, chill guy who’s trying to become good.”

Would you say that this portrayal have affected the way you view them?

“As a kid, everytime he was mentioned, I thought, ‘Holy Crap, it’s the devil, he’s gonna punish me if I don’t behave,’ but as I got older, I started to think for myself and with shows like Lucifer and even kids shows sometimes painting him out to be just another person doing what he needs to do really impacted my views.”

Interview two (Matthew Krug, 17)

The next person I interviewed was Matthew Krug. I asked him first if it was okay to interview him on the matter and, to my suprise, he was excited. The day of the interview, he kept texting me about how excited he was regarding it and how he could not wait to do it.

What is your religious affiliation?

“I was born Roman Catholic but up until a couple years ago, I have not been as religious and I now recognize myself as agnostic.”

When you hear the term satanism, what comes to mind?

“When I was younger, Satanism was just...Satanism; they worship the devil, sacrifice babies and all that. But now, with the more that I have learned about them, I see them as more independent as anything else. The whole thing about Satanism is being independent from religion or God and that is really being a service to yourself than to a higher power.”

When you hear the term Satan, what comes to mind?

“Well, because of popular media and stuff like that, the term Satan and the Devil will obviously be coincided with evil and bad, but right now, Satan is just...Satan, I don’t really feel a certain way about the word or have any negative or positive connotations with it.”

How do you think media portray Satan and Satanism?

“Obviously, since the world is run by religion, Satan and Satanism are portrayed as the bad guys and evil.”

Would you say that this portrayal have affected the way you view them?

“No, because I know it’s just pop culture; it’s just media putting their two-cents in.”

If you had to stereotype a Satanist, how would you describe them?

“The stereotypical ones are the people who draw pentagrams in lambs blood and sacrifice virgins and babies. But, as I see them now, they’re just people trying to believe in and follow a certain ideological standpoint and deity just like everyone else. I’m not going to persecute them for that.

Interview three (Christopher Dellinger)

The next person I decided to interview was my father, who is active in the music scene. Having played in numerous rock and alternative bands for the past couple of decades, I decided to speak with him about the matter. When the topic was brought up, I noticed that he was passionate about it. The questions for this interview went more in depth than the other ones.

What is your religious affiliation?

“Christian.”

When you hear the term Satan, what comes to mind?

“The Devil, a two-horned man with red skin and a goatee. The father of evil, the one who crushes the universe.”

When you hear the term Satanism, what comes to mind?

“A group of impressionable people who made up their views based off of a fictitious book written by Anton Lavey (Satanic Bible) in the 1960 who don’t really have a clue on what goes on.”

How would you say that Satan and Satanism is portrayed in media?

“It’s glorified, to make Satan seem like a superhero and is portrayed as something spooky, yet cool, which is not a good interpretation. Unfortunately, if there is a good and an evil, Hell is not going to be a party. If you go to Hell, you’re screwed; there is not this big rock and roll party in the streets where you get to hang out with your bros and jam out to Ozzy Osbourne and eat barbecue. So the portrayal is misguiding.”

Would you say that this portrayal has affected the way younger generations see him?

“Yes, because they blur the lines between good and evil and they glorify satan by thinking that Satan is actually good and could be something possible when it’s not.”

Would you say that this portrayal have affected the way you view them?

“Kind of, because it makes me dislike the fake Satanists, the people that believe in Anton Lavey, that do not have a good understanding of good and evil and think that they could have created a religion in the 1960’s. They claim that they are their own God and that they don’t believe in it while denouncing the bible.”

How do you feel about the younger generations viewing Satan as this anti-hero, in a way?

“Unfortunately, they’re just misguided, and don’t have a proper understanding of the religion or what Satanism actually is.”

Since you’re in the heavy metal scene and have been for awhile, how would you say that this portrayal has affected rock and roll?

“There’s a funness about it because there is rebellion such as ACDC’s Highway to Hell. Heavy metal has been associated with Satan. Members of Slayer have actually said that they’re catholics and it’s all for show. Marilyn Manson has had a career on being a priest at the Church of Satan and using Satan as a platform. But, in the end of the day, it’s all theatrics and, in that aspect, it’s fun for Halloween and shock rock. It’s fun as rebellion, but as long as the lines aren’t crossed and someone doesn’t commit an act of evil, then it’s fine. Partying with the devil seems like a great idea, but at the end of the day, as long as those lines aren’t blurred, it’s entertainment and shouldn’t be taken more than face value.”

Would you say that this portrayal is affecting the way kids see religion?

“Yes, it’s changing to an extent but there is always been young people that have rebelled against their parents. It’s just comes in different forms and now it might be more open, but it is what it is. Kids will always rebel against what their parents want for them until they are parents and the cycle just repeats itself.”

Conclusion

Going into this topic, I initially thought that Satanism and Satan were prime components of society that affected children but, the more research that I did, the more I realized that this issue could actually be viewed as an overlying theme and broken into a cluster of smaller pieces meant for a grander puzzle; glorification, societal acceptance, the change of religious importance, and rebellion.

With glorification and societal acceptance, which can both be tied into each other, one could infer that this type of response only happens when society allows for it. The idea of living in a society in which has become more accepting to unconventional practices, allows for this newer generation, who are leading members of this more liberal movement, to find an interest in a ideal that has previously been found as ludicrous and taboo. This, in turn, creates a worldwide mindset where people can, in a sense, exist in a moral purgatory; where life and, more specifically, morality, is not so black and white. Where something that should be inherently evil can have the possibility of being viewed as something else. And Laveyan Satanism caters to that by turning Satan into a symbol of acceptance.

As for teenage rebellion and religious importance, which can also be tied into each other, Satan is only an example of an outlet for children to rebel against an ‘unjust authoritarian figure,’ aka their parents (which correlates to the very symbolism this figure has within the religion). With Satan being such a prominent figure for being on the opposite end of the spectrum of conventional thinking and beliefs, teens are drawn to him for shock value. Plus, with how he is portrayed as this symbol of freedom, free thinking, and a live-for-yourself mentality, it is no surprise that teens wouldn’t see him as something entirely evil for they see a piece of themselves within the illusionary mask of the devil. And, if religion plays an important role within their upbringing, it is more likely for them to follow this path in order to spite their parents and drift away from family-set expectations.

#essays #ethnography #highschool essays

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tipsycad147 · 5 years ago

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Magic working on the Feast of Saint Cyprian of Antioch

BY PIP DE BELFRY

It would be fair to say that Cyprian was never born to be ordinary. Born a pagan child in Carthage, he was initiated into the mysterious worship of Mithras at the age of seven. He went on to be taught the ways of communing with daemons. By the age of ten, he was immersed in learning communicating with animals and trees, and then moved to Argos in the service of Juno. He then uprooted again and moved to Icara, where he switched allegiance to Diana.

You would think that this nomadic journey and Lifestyle would have been enough to then settle for a while, but he continued his travels to Sparta, where he undertook studies to learn how to communicate with the dead. After a brief time of respite, he then continued on to Memphis in Egypt, where he dug deeper into the ways of possession, and some say that it was at this point that he gained his knowledge of how to induce natural disasters.

By the grand old age of thirty, he was residing in what would now be known as Southern Iraq, and was dedicating himself to the teachings of the Chaldeans. It is said that this was the point at which he met the Devil, who entrusted him with his own personal contingent of daemons, and promised Cyprian that he would invest him with further powers after his death.

Move forward again, and we find Cyprian in Antioch. A young man named Aglaidas sought his help to win the love of a young maiden by the name of Justina, or Ioustina. Despite trying his damnedest (no pun intended), and sending his daemons to break her will, Cyprian failed in his work, supposedly because her God was more powerful. After several attempts, Cyprian’s powers were extinguished, and on seeing this, the Devil himself tried to intervene, but after Justina made the sign of the cross, the Devil failed too.

Relinquished of his powers, Cyprian renounced his Pagan ways, and pleaded unsuccessfully with Justina for her mercy. However, he was shown greater understanding by the Christian God, and eventually rose through the Church to become the Bishop of Antioch. The people weren’t convinced though, and turned Cyprian over to the Roman Governor of the region, who judged him for irreverence to their gods and turning people away from them. Cyprian and Justina were both subjected to terrible tortures, culminating in them being thrown into a boiling cauldron. No harm came to either of them, and so they were sent to Nicomedia, where they were both beheaded because of the fears of the people that they were both imbued with sorcery.

During his “confession” prior to his death, Cyprian reportedly admitted many heinous crimes, although quite how accurate or true these confessions were is open to debate. However, in the 19th century, a book appeared called “The Great Book of Saint Cyprian”, allegedly written by Cyprian, which detailed spells and incantations, and states that if it is read in its entirety, it will summon the Devil. The book later found its way to Brazil, where it was put into the melting pot along with other schools of belief including the religions of Umbanda and Candomble.

Many people today assume that the image of Cyprian is one which often appears of him garbed in a white robe and a purple cape, carrying a golden crozier and a bible. But this portrayal is actually of Saint Cyprian of Carthage, with whom Cyprian of Antioch is sometimes confused. It is not known whether any actual images of Cyprian of Antioch exist, or indeed whether HE existed … It’s something that you may well be interested in researching further and deciding for yourself.

Whatever the truth, Saint Cyprian of Antioch went on to become the Patron Saint of Necromancers.

Today, 26th September, is his feast day, and Doktor Snake and I shall be venturing out to one of our magickal places, which is in a totally deserted hamlet deep in the Norfolk countryside. After a sacred feast, we will be making the most of the late September sunshine, laying out an altar and charging items to squeeze every last magickal drop of power into items which we will be taking with us.

So wish us well in the weather continuing to cast its blessings on us, or we may well have to summon up a bubble of protection to keep ourselves dry …

https://pipdebelfry.com/magic-working-on-the-feast-of-saint-cyprian-of-antioch/

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delwray-blog · 6 years ago

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THE TRULY SAVED CAN NEVER BE LOST

The Bible promises by these Scriptures that those truly saved will not lose their salvation

Rom. 8:14-17: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

The witness of the Spirit is the inner assurance of God's truth. One of the conditions of this inner conviction concerning the things of God is obedience to His known will (John 7 v.17). God uses this ministry of the Holy Spirit to convince us of truth that cannot be understood other than through His divine help (Matt. 16 v.17). This witness was obvious in Peter's confession to Christ (Matt. 16 v.16-17). Even though others had observed Christ and drawn certain erroneous conclusions, Peter received spiritual insight from God as to who Jesus really was (Matt. 16 v.17) This enlightenment did not mean he had nothing more to learn, because, within minutes of his confession, he was being rebuked by Jesus for his lack of spiritual insight (Matt. 16:23) Christians should be careful always to obey the clearly revealed Will of God, so as not to hinder this ministry in their lives.

Rom 8:1: There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Psalm 37:28: "For the Lord loves justice and does not forsake His godly ones; they are preserved forever.

John 5:24: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."

John 6:37: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out."

John 6:39-40: "This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. And this is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day."

John 10:27-29: "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand."

The doctrine of eternal security teaches that God is able to complete the good work of eternal life that He has begun in every believer. (Phil. 1:6) The eternal security of the believer is guaranteed by the person and work of God. He is true and just, and cannot deny Himself. Therefore anyone who has eternal life has it forever. God promises that no one can ever be separated from His love (Romans 8:33-39). Some argue this doctrine leads to antinomianism (allowing Christians to live in sin). This charge, however, denies the very nature of salvation, which involves union with Christ and death to sin (Romans chapter 6). But to the extent that a Christian fails to serve God, his reward may be lost, though he will be saved from everlasting wrath (1 Cor. 3:15). The Christian is saved and secured by faith, but in love and gratitude to Christ will seek to faithfully serve Him.

Romans 8:33-35 & 38-39: "Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Phil 1:6: "For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."

2 Tim 1:12: "For I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day."

Heb 6:17-20: "In the same way God, desiring, even more, to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek."

1 Peter 1:3-5: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

In 1 Peter 1:3-5, the portrayal of salvation looks to the future. The author of salvation is portrayed as the blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The work of salvation is described as to its effect. Hath begotten us again refers to a new stage of life that begins at salvation. This lively hope has no element of uncertainty, for it is guaranteed by Jesus' resurrection from the dead. The believer's inheritance is described as incorruptible (imperishable or indestructible) and undefiled (morally untainted). That fadeth not away means it is not subject to the ravages of time. Further, it is reserved, that is, it has been preserved in the past and still is in heaven. Kept is a present passive participle, we are secure because we are continually guarded by God, who never relaxes His vigil. Salvation here refers to final salvation, that is, deliverance from the presence of sin and into the presence of God.

1 John 2:1: "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

1 Cor. 3:10-16: "According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"

Notice the Scripture tells us quite clearly, "he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved". Such a one does not suffer the loss of his salvation, but the loss of reward. The stress in the entire passage is not on a person's relationship with Christ but on his or her service to Christ.

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ohioguru03 · 7 years ago

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I’ve Fallen and Can’t Get Up...

Do you ever feel like you just fall short?

Ah, maybe it’s just me. As a follower of Christ, it’s not always easy. Okay, it’s rarely ever easy. With the eternal reward and the honor to just know God, comes the pressures of being a reflection of a Holy, Blameless, and Perfect God. Whoa!!!

I don’t know about you, but it sure was a lot easier just living for myself and doing whatever I pleased whenever I pleased. Noticed I said easier, but not better. Before Christ became the focal point of my life, I said and did things in my life that I regret and am not proud of, and the same can be said for after I started following Christ and no doubt will happen in the future.

The difference being that I carried the weight of that sin before Christ, but when I laid down my life in His hands, Jesus completely washed me free from all past, present, and future sins. He forgot them as far as the East is from the West. That doesn’t mean when we sin that there won’t be ramifications, but I now have forgiveness and a Savior that stands in the gap for me to vouch for me in front of a Holy God.

I will be perfectly honest with you, there are many times, when it’s really hard to just accept this free gift of mercy, grace, and forgiveness, and I will continue to condemn, punish myself, and feel guilt for my shortcomings, but believe me that isn’t from God. That’s my own limited mind. God has set me (us) free from this type of thinking, but He also knows we will go back to it at times, which is why He gave us HIs Word to remind us of just who we are.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. -Romans 6:23

I mean it seems like every time I turn around, I’m messing something up. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it does feel like that at times. See, I’m a big time over thinker, so I’m sure that plays into it, but being a Christian can be overwhelming and stressful at times. I know what the scripture says about not worrying etc, but I’m human in need of God’s grace, and I worry and get anxious and stressed out. There is no denying it! Perhaps, you can relate.

I often feel like our brother in Christ, Paul, when he says this in Romans 7:15-20.

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Quite often it hits me that I’m not acting in a way that’s a great portrayal of Christ. As I’ve heard it said, “most people don’t refuse Jesus, they refuse your version of Jesus.” The way I conduct myself, at times, is not a reflection of the Biblical Jesus. So, I want to sincerely apologize to anyone out there that has based Christianity off of something they’ve seen me do or heard me say that doesn’t reflect the one, true Jesus Christ. Let me repeat, that’s not who Jesus is.

Us humans are full of sin, so watching our actions at times can be very misleading for a new believer or someone still on the fence about this whole Christianity thing. There are things I say and do, that if I were skeptical of Christianity, it would be a complete turn off. Bye-bye! I would be saying if that’s what a Christian is like, I don’t want any part of that garbage.

There are times when I say or do things that after time passes, I feel such sorrow and despair at my words/actions. It’s awful! I’m a child of God and with that comes a big responsibility, one that I don’t always fulfill. I will walk away from certain conversations or situations, and wonder if the other people involved were left with the slightest impression that I’m a Christian or at the very least something different about me. That’s humbling and sad all in one.

The world has a watchful eye on not just Christians, but anyone that stands for something greater than their self or that which goes against the grain of worldly norms. Fair or not, we are called to live above reproach, which should be a absolute honor that God chose us, but it can also be quite difficult. Without Christ in the equation, forget it, this is nearly if not impossible. However, when we insert Christ, all things become possible.

Will we be perfect? No! Will we fall short more often than not? Absolutely! Though, the Lord says He will never leave us nor forsake us. The closer we walk with the Lord we will inevitably begin to look more like Him. The dark world needs to see light and hope, something different, and not more of the same. We are sinful beings, but we should look different than the world. If not, why would anyone want to meet this Jesus. If His followers aren’t different (the way we conduct our business), why would a non-believer ever want to die to self and take up their cross? Simple answer...they wouldn’t!

I will close with this point...I’m a Christian and thank God that Jesus saved a sinner like myself, but I’m far from perfect. There will be those moments when I look more like much of the same, but let me say this, I apologize from the bottom of my heart because that’s not the Jesus of the Bible. I’m a child of God, but if you want to know the stainless and blameless version of our Jesus and not a broken version, I encourage you to read the Truth, which is God’s Word (the Bible). It’s the only way to understand just how incredible and amazing our Jesus is without being skewed by His wounded followers (ME included).

Lord, God, thank your for your Mercy, Grace, Righteousness, and Forgiveness!

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nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

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Hyperallergic: The Use an Abuse of Paint: ‘Fast Forward’ at the Whitney

Eric Fischl, “A Visit To / A Visit From / The Island” (1983), oil on canvas, 84 × 168 inches (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

When was the last time you complained that a museum exhibition was too small?

Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s is installed in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s light-filled 8th-floor gallery — arguably the most gorgeous viewing space of any museum in the city — but for the purposes of the exhibition, it is divided into three moderately sized rooms and a wide, narrow elevator lobby. I would like to have seen this show at least tripled in size across one of the sprawling galleries downstairs.

With the spare allotment of space, is the Whitney hedging its bets on the long-term significance of the work on display? The museum can be commended for its effort to place painting front and center, even as it derives the show’s title from the 1980s video revolution, which has absorbed most of the decade’s critical analysis, but the show feels like something of a missed opportunity. I believe that a case can be made for a deeper and wider examination of the period.

That said, the exhibition, like the decade it represents, is a mixed bag. In a sense, it serves as an institutional chaser for two scrappier, broader, and, taken together, richer examinations of the period that closed in late November, Paradise: underground culture in NYC 1978-84 at Stephen Harvey Fine Art Projects and Something Possible Everywhere: Pier 34 NYC, 1983–84 at the 205 Hudson Street Gallery of Hunter College.

At the Whitney, there are 23 large works hung one or two per wall, while a salon-style installation presents 16 smaller pieces from floor to ceiling. This is a mistake. At the press preview, the curators explained that they decided to display the works in this fashion because they wanted to get away from the “white box” and approximate the free-for-all hangings typical of East Village galleries and countercultural extravaganzas like The Times Square Show (1980).

The main problem with this idea — aside from its denial of the Whitney’s de facto white box ambiance — is that we go to museums to look into, rather than at, works of art. The crowded installations in the raw, stained, and smelly spaces where much of this art had its debut did not consist of the cream of the crop; the Whitney show does. This miscalculation suggests a fundamental misunderstanding that equates a painting with its image, but more on that later.

One service that the exhibition does perform is that it separates American painting of the period from its European counterpart, the transavanguardia whose sound and fury is all but synonymous with art of the ‘80s: Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Sandro Chia, Mimmo Paladino, the list goes on.

The resulting array of home-grown, almost entirely New York-based work seems lighter in two respects: the feeling that an enormous weight has been lifted, allowing the images of these artists to be seen on their own terms, and correspondingly, that there is something missing — a global dimension or a sense of historical awareness.

The other salutary effect is that the market heavyweights of the time have been set off in their own corners, affording a place in the sun for those who had once been shouldered aside by the Schnabel-Salle-Fischl juggernaut.

The exhibition opens with a fizzy blast of Neo-Pop: a billboard-size canvas by Kenny Scharf, “When the Worlds Collide” (1984), in oil and spray paint, hung against black-and-white vinyl wallpaper adapted from a mural that Keith Haring made for his Pop Shop (1986-2005) in downtown Manhattan.

The Scharf/Haring pairing, combined with Julia Wachtel’s “Membership” (1984), a painting that facilely juxtaposes kitschy greeting card imagery with a black-and-white rendering of matching African fertility figures, seems to signal that the Geist of the decade’s art was bent toward crowd-pleasing hijinks and elitist condescension.

But thankfully, on the opposite side of the exhibition entrance, the Haring wall takes a grittier turn with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “LNAPRK” (1982), a graffitied, scrawled, and distressed canvas sporting grotesque heads and musical notes. Alongside the Basquiat hangs Haring’s maze-like untitled drawing (1983-84) in fiber-tipped pen on synthetic leather, evoking a Native American hide painting.

Installation view of “Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s” (2017), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

The three galleries are thematically arranged: politics; appropriation; and abstraction. The salon-style wall is located in the appropriation room, a correspondence that fits most but not all of the work. The same can be said for the larger paintings as well: an acrylic on canvas of a shuttered storefront, “Closed” (1984-85) by Martin Wong, hangs in the abstraction gallery, but isn’t abstract at all, and only two out of the five paintings in the politics room are overtly political: Leon Golub’s monumental “White Squad I” (1982) and Eric Fischl’s diptych of frolicking vacationers abutted against drowned and desperate refugees, “A Visit To / A Visit From / The Island” (1983).

It quickly becomes apparent, however, that even though a set of paintings may look well together, there can be fundamental differences among them, in both content and form — differences that don’t so much undermine the curatorial structure but speak to the artist’s ability to use the language of paint — to reinvent its application and to put across a construct of ideas.

The two above-mentioned canvases in the politics gallery offer distinct contrasts in attitude and painterly approach. For his depictions of Central American death squads — bands of indiscriminate killers who, with the support of the Reagan administration, spent much of the decade terrorizing the peasantry of Guatemala and El Salvador — Golub rethought the idea of the triumphal frieze, transferring the red oxide of Roman frescoes to his monochromatic fields, while incising his super-sized figures in scraped-down, ever-shifting layers of dark and light.

Golub has cast his gun-toting, khaki-clad thugs as the dominant characters in the scene, leaving their victims virtually anonymous, and all but forcing the viewer to identify with the perpetrators. This standpoint operates collectively and individually, underscoring the culpability of a free and prosperous electorate whose tax dollars are funneled to support atrocities south of the border, as well as the genetic propensity of the human species to abandon mercy and reason for animalistic, tribal instincts. In Golub’s cool-eyed worldview, evil prevails; there is no uplift beyond the painting’s mesmerizing formal strengths. The only vulnerability of power is the extent of its overreach.

Leon Golub, “White Squad I” (1982), acrylic on linen, with metal grommets, 120 × 210 inches

At its best, and “White Squad I” is among his most exceptional works, Golub’s art conveys thorny truths with a sophisticated, stratified sense of nuance that inflects but never tempers his paintings’ overwhelming force. Eric Fischl’s “A Visit To / A Visit From / The Island,” on the other hand, relates to Golub’s work in category but not in kind; instead of the collective responsibility of a democratic society to remain vigilant over the actions of its government, we are presented with limousine liberal guilt over indulging upper-middle-class lotus-eating in climes where the majority of the population is black, destitute, and hopeless.

In contrast to Fischl’s truly disturbing early work — in which prurient, self-lacerating subject matter is underscored by the artist’s attempts at realism via the “Bad Painting” aesthetic defined by the New Museum exhibition of the same name (curated by Marcia Tucker in 1978) — “A Visit To / A Visit From / The Island” is executed in a not-entirely-successful academic technique that possesses none of the material exploration evidenced in Golub’s scoured pigment or the sooty exactitude of Wong’s “Closed.”

While it is tempting to imagine one of its panels bedecked with the buttery lushness and clashing colors of Luisa Chase’s “Limb” (1981), which hangs on an adjacent wall, while the other is painted with the knowing trashiness of Walter Robinson’s borrowed pulp-novel cover art, “Baron Sinister” (1986) from the neighboring appropriation room, it is of course pointless to play “what if” with a firmly established artist’s oeuvre.

Still, in a museum exhibition concentrating on a decade that brought about, in the minds of critics and collectors at least, a revival of image-based painting, the fusion or disconnect that exists between the handling of the medium and the picture it generates deserves special attention.

Like the bits of celluloid that make up a film, the laying-on of paint skews our emotions and layers our perception. Despite the flashiness of Fischl’s diptych as a whole and the undeniable beauty of its portrayal, in the right panel, of black refugees emerging from a black sea under a lowering sky, the blatancy of the political message and the retro quality of the neo-Manet brushwork render it the most incurious work in the show.

Despite the emphasis on subject matter that the decade heralded, the most effective works are those that take painting apart and put it back together again, often leaving traces of the process in scars and ghosts across the surface.

Christopher Wool, “Untitled” (1990), enamel on aluminum, 107 7/8 x 71 3/4 inches

In Christopher Wool’s untitled enamel-on-aluminum painting from 1990, the black-stenciled words “RUN DOG RUN” split and shift down the length of the white surface — a juicy presence in itself augmented by a vestigial “R” from a painted-over “RUN” in the uppermost rank. It is a work that would seem to genuflect before the denatured terms and conditions of mechanical reproduction, but can be fully experienced only in person, a sly subversion of expectations that leads you to look deeper into painting, where the drips hold a sexual charge and swatches of dark blue appear seemingly out of nowhere.

Wool’s painting hangs in the appropriation room, but it feels misplaced there, even though its text comes from an exterior source; its modus operandi is instead the kind of garden-variety appropriation that has been practiced by modernists from Pablo Picasso to Jasper Johns — an instigation for formal inquiry.

The type of appropriation that prevailed in the ‘80s involved a wholesale repurposing of imagery as the work’s primary statement. It has since become a byword for the bulk of Neo-Conceptual art, but its experiment in painting, as manifested here, feels as hermetic as it did when it first hit the scene — despite its aim to reopen art to mass media and the breakneck speed of contemporary life. The paintings in the rooms on either side of the appropriation-based works feel fresh and inquisitive by comparison.

Moira Dryer, “Portrait of a Fingerprint” (1988), casein on plywood, 48 1/8 × 61 1/4 × 4 inches

The exhibition is drawn entirely from the Whitney’s collection, which explains some of its lacunae and odd choices. I was surprised that the curators selected, for the political room, “The Three Graces: Art, Sex and Death” (1981), a candy-colored send-up of a classical theme by Robert Colescott, rather than one of the artist’s many trenchant and disquieting satires on race. But when I checked the Whitney’s website, I discovered that, at least according to the information provided by the collection database, it’s the only Colescott that the museum owns.

To my mind, the salon-style wall is the most problematic aspect of the exhibition; the obstacles it places in the way of absorbing the art is especially self-defeating in light of the high quality of what is on display.

The combo of Joyce Pensato’s untitled mouse head from 1992 (more Ignatz than Mickey) and Elizabeth Murray’s shaped abstraction, “Druid” (1979), smack in the middle of the uppermost reaches of the installation, is an instant eye-magnet, but it would be so much more enriching to experience, in a larger show, these two idiosyncratic artists facing off in a room of their own.

I also wish I could have had a better look at Carroll Dunham’s antic, untitled painting in oil and graphite on wood veneer (1984); Rex Lau’s painted landscape on carved wood, “The Mountain Demons” (1980); and Nellie Mae Rowe’s fanciful, untitled depiction of a woman raising her yellow-gloved hands above her head, which the artist made in 1981, the year before she died at age 82.

And it would have been intriguing to revisit in depth the individualistic, at times bizarre early work of such artists as Jonathan Borofsky, Andrew Masullo, Ida Applebroog, Glenn Ligon, among others, whose inclusion on the salon wall seems to relegate them to a footnote in the larger picture.

One striking omission in the museum’s collection was brought to light by a collaborative lithograph, “The Feminization of Poverty” (1987) by Nancy Spero and Leon Golub, which hangs in the lower right-hand corner of the installation. A quick search of the collection revealed that this is the only work by Spero owned by the Whitney, which makes you hope that the database is incomplete (though the text above the website’s search engine invites us to “browse the full collection”).

Of course, you could fill a pocket-size phone book with the artists who were active during these years but are not included in the exhibition, even Peter Halley and Philip Taaffe, who achieved substantial critical acclaim and market success at the time. Perhaps it would have been more fitting for the Whitney to present Fast Forward as a rotating exhibition, like the wonderful Human Interest portrait show downstairs.

These caveats, however, should not detract from the museum’s efforts to shine a light on the importance of painting in an era that has proven deeply influential on succeeding generations of artists, both inspirationally and critically — an era, it should be kept in mind, whose reactionary policies, as destructive as they were, will be nothing compared to what we are about to undergo.

Perhaps this is why the abstraction room offers such solace and grace. These are paintings, based on the human body, botanical forms, and other sources, that sublimate a storm of emotions into transcendently formal terms, none more than Ross Bleckner’s “Count No Count” (1989) in oil and wax on canvas, a glimmering memorial to those lost to the AIDS epidemic.

No less poignant are Carlos Alfonzo’s “Told” (1990) — an abstracted silhouette of a despairing figure made the year before the artist’s AIDS-related death at the age of 41 — and “Portrait of a Fingerprint” (1988) by Moira Dryer, a green-and-red abstraction in casein on plywood.

Dryer’s life was also cut short, by cancer, when she was 35. Her composition is smeared by solvent on three sides, turning her edge-to-edge horizontal red strokes against a green field into a fog lit by flashing patrol car lights. Dryer’s imagery typically played with dissolution, which we read now, rightly or wrongly, as the slipperiness of mortality and the inadequacy of trying to hold onto anything.

Elsewhere in the room we encounter the feathery whiteness of Susan Rothenberg’s “Tuning Fork” (1980), the zigzagging blue and white bars of Mary Heilmann’s “Big Bill” (1987), and the pollen spores and floating cells of Terry Winters’ “Good Government” (1984) — a title that refers to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s masterwork “The Effects of Good Government in the City” (1338-1339) in the Sala della Pace in Siena.

We may be tempted to smirk or shrug at the irony of Winters’ title, given what we’ve experienced in the past week alone, though the wall label suggests that the artist was playing it straight:

Winters considered this painting finished only when the elements began to cohere and the composition reminded him “of those maps you saw in grammar school and it said ‘good government’ and everything was working together.”

“Good Government,” which was done in oil on linen, is a tour de force of painterly techniques, where rough-hewn impastos in dark, aggressive earth tones are laid beside delicate stains and linear patterns, while scraped knife strokes in blue and white seem to glow from within. Though at times mottled and choked, it’s the kind painting, along with others in this room, that you would want to linger over, and that’s saying something.

Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s continues at the Whitney Museum of American Art (99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan) through May 14.

The post The Use an Abuse of Paint: ‘Fast Forward’ at the Whitney appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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