Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
One of those days
– photo by Mitch Waxman
March 25th… this is one of those days on which a random series of events lend the day a sense of odd concurrence and portentous destiny. Cherry picking any series of historical events in the name of stitching together a narrative is an easy thing to do, and its best practice is expressed by the art of propaganda. Certain patterns, moments of causality and traditional celebration, however, do seem to cluster around parts of the year. Equinoxes or traditional holidays that transcend temporal distance and cultural extinctions, the remarkable October 31–Nov. 2 period, the end of december and first week of january, middle-late march, and the last week of august all have long chains of historical events that coincide with ancient Roman feast days- which were post modern celebrations of antiquity even in their own time.
from wikipedia
At an equinox, the Sun is at one of two opposite points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator (i.e. declination 0) and ecliptic intersect. These points of intersection are called equinoctial points: the vernal point and the autumnal point. By extension, the term equinox may denote an equinoctial point.
An equinox happens each year at two specific moments in time (rather than two whole days), when there is a location on the Earth’s equator where the centre of the Sun can be observed to be vertically overhead, occurring around March 20/21 and September 22/23 each year.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Roman feast of Hilaria Matris Deûm (honoring Cybele) fell to it’s apex today, and of course its the Christian Feast of the Anunciation, and the British Empire legally abolished the Slave Trade on March 25 in 1807.
Today is also the anniversary of the 1947 Centralia Mine disaster (a seminal moment in the history of the American Labor movement), the Rev. Martin Luther King’s 3rd march on the state capitol in Montgomery, and closer to home- it’s the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire which happened in 1911.
from wikipedia
The Annunciation is the Christian celebration of the announcement to Mary by the angel Gabriel that she would become the Theotokos (God-bearer). Even though a virgin, Mary would conceive a child who would be the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her son Jesus (“Yahweh delivers”). Most of Christianity observes this event with the Feast of the Annunciation on 25 March.
According to the Bible, the Annunciation occurred in “the sixth month” of Elizabeth’s pregnancy (Luke 1:26) with the child who would become known as John the Baptist. This celebration of Jesus′ incarnation falls nine months before that of his Nativity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Deep in our colonial past, prior to 1752- in fact all across the early British Empire – March 25th was actually New Year’s Day. Commonly called Lady’s Day, it dates from the days of the Julian Calendar, which was established by Caesar.
from wikipedia
The logic of using Lady Day as the start of the year is that it roughly coincides with Equinox (when the length of day and night is equal) and it is worthy to note many ancient cultures still utilse this time frame as the start of the new year, for example Iranian new year. In some traditions it also reckons years A.D. from the moment of the Annunciation, which is considered to take place at the moment of the conception of Jesus at the Annunciation rather than at the moment of his birth at Christmas.
running in place
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Maritime pursuits call out to your humble narrator this 18th of March, and the mysteries of Barren Island and the greater Jamaica Bay await. Just a short post today, before I head down to the docks.
This whole “mom is sick again” business is going as well as it can, but has set me off in a tail spin of guilty self recrimination and brutal self examination. A quick walk around Cavalry yesterday helped to clear my head a bit, but I’m all ‘effed up, and even my little dog Zuzu is worried about me at the moment. Tendencies toward maudlin and tiresome self loathing render me a real “ray of sunshine” at moments like this, but from such psychic manure often bloom new and interesting ideas. In the meantime, I’m just snapping photos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some good news is apparent-
One of my photos ended up on the Roosevelt Island community newspaper’s front page. Click here for the latest Main Street Wire
Also, a Newtown Pentacle reader who once worked at Cavalry Cemetery offers some insight on the mysterious knotted cords I observed back around Halloween. I have another update, in the works, observed there yesterday- more on that next week.
Creek Week, which was truncated by “newsworthy” and “strike while the iron is hot” postings about public ceremonies and parades, will continue- I promise.
Bacchanal
Astoria Back Yard – photo by Mitch Waxman
The Romans had a name for March 16th and 17th, specifically for tonight and all day tomorrow, and it was the Bacchanlia. A central holiday for the cult of a fertility and wine god called Bacchus, who was a latin interpretation of the greek Dionysos, the Bacchanal (which was originally a gathering of women, but was made co-ed in 188 BC) would take place on the Aventine Hill. Shackles of conventional morality and licentiousness would be thrown off and vast celebrations of oinoculture would be enacted.
from wikipedia
In the rites, men were said to have shrieked out prophecies in an altered state of consciousness with frenzied bodily convulsions. Women, dressed as Bacchantes, with hair dishevelled, would run down to the Tiber with burning torches, plunge them into the water, and take them out again. Their flames would not diminish as they were made of sulphur mixed with lime.
The rites gradually turned into sexual orgies, particularly among the men, and men who refused to take part were sacrificed. It is said these men were fastened to a machine and taken to hidden caves, where it was claimed they were kidnapped by the gods.
The festivities were reported to Postumius who persuaded the Roman Senate to authorize a full investigation. In 186 BC, the Senate passed a strict law (the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus) prohibiting the Bacchanalia except under specific circumstances which required the approval of the Senate. Violators were to be executed.required the approval of the Senate. Violators were to be executed.
Lexington Avenue, Manhattan – photo by Mitch Waxman
Just as our modern Republic seeks favorable comparison with the ancient titans of Rome, so too did the Romans see themselves as the inheritors of the advanced cultures that preceded them in dominance over the Mediterranean world, and which they conquered in the most brutal manner imaginable. The Bacchanal was a conservative Italian version of the wild Dionysian Mysteries and the Greek Bacchanal.
from wikipedia
If the Dionysus Cult first came to Greece with the importation of wine, as seems likely, then it probably first emerged around 6000 BC in one of two places, either in the Zagros Mountains, the borderlands of Mesopotamia and Persia, both with their own rich wine culture since then (arriving in Europe via Asia Minor), or from the ancient wild vines on the mountain slopes of Libya / North Africa. North Africa was the source of early Egyptian wine from around 2500 BC, and home of many an ecstatic rite involving animal possession—notably the goat and panther men of the Aissaoua Sufi cult of Morocco (though it is also possible that this was of later origin and influenced by Dionysian cults itself). Whatever the case it appears Minoan Crete was the next link in the chain of transmission, importing wine from the Egyptians, Thracians and Phoenicians and exporting it to its own colonies, such as Greece. Thus it was in Minoan Crete (c. 3000 to 1000 BC) that the basic Mysteries probably took form—certainly the name Dionysus exists nowhere else other than here and Greece.
Ia, Santorini – photo by Mitch Waxman
Even the Greeks, or “Hellenes” as they would have and do call themselves (Greek is bad latin, a derogatory term meaning short legged- Graeki). When the christians gained power and influence in the latter days of the Roman Empire, Hellenes was the term used for heathen or pagan, and so it fell out of usage.
The Hellenes themselves were late comers to the mediterranean milieu, conquering a civilization which modernity refers to as the Mycenae (which had supplanted the still earlier Minoan) some 10,000 years ago. This culture, which is believed to have traded with Pharonic Egypt and Phonecia (also modern terms), fell to ruin after the explosion of the Santorini (Thera) volcano ca. 1600 BC left them defenseless. The Bacchanal, however, was already an annual tradition by then.
from wikipedia
Cultic rites associated with worship of the Greek god of wine, Dionysus (or Bacchus in Roman mythology), were allegedly characterized by maniacal dancing to the sound of loud music and crashing cymbals, in which the revellers, called Bacchantes, whirled, screamed, became drunk and incited one another to greater and greater ecstasy. The goal was to achieve a state of enthusiasm in which the celebrants’ souls were temporarily freed from their earthly bodies and were able to commune with Bacchus/Dionysus and gain a glimpse of and a preparation for what they would someday experience in eternity. The rite climaxed in a performance of frenzied feats of strength and madness, such as uprooting trees, tearing a bull (the symbol of Dionysus) apart with their bare hands, an act called sparagmos, and eating its flesh raw, an act called omophagia. This latter rite was a sacrament akin to communion in which the participants assumed the strength and character of the god by symbolically eating the raw flesh and drinking the blood of his symbolic incarnation. Having symbolically eaten his body and drunk his blood, the celebrants became possessed by Dionysus.
Kalives, Crete – photo by Mitch Waxman
Crete, which is the true cradle of the western tradition, was an important cultic center for Dionysus- but the Cretans are known and commented on historically for their parties. Come and spend a night out in Astoria, you’ll see what I mean.
from wikipedia
The idea of a mystery religion consisted essentially of a series of initiations which benefited the individual or their society in some way. Initially associated with the passage from childhood to adulthood and maturity, they later became seen as what we might call an evolutionary rite. And it was in the form of a Mystery Religion that the Dionysus Cult was first channeled in a more civilized way, probably first in Minoan Crete.
The notion behind the Dionysian Mysteries seems to have been not only of the affirmation of the primeval bestial side of mankind, but also its mastery and integration into a civilized psychology and social culture. Given the dual role of Ariadne as the Mistress of the Minoan Labyrinth and consort of Dionysus, some have seen the Minotaur story as also partly deriving from the idea of the mastery of mankind’s animal nature, though this remains controversial. The self mastery achieved in this way was not one of domination as in similar cults, most famously preserved in contemporary culture as George and the Dragon, and perhaps the original Minotaur myth, but one of acceptance and integration. Thus while the Mysteries did much to lighten the darker aspects of the cult they often failed to reassure its perhaps excessively civilized critics and continued to be regarded by many as dangerously liberative (particularly given its egalitarian tendencies as well).
Astoria Maenads – photo by Mitch Waxman
Fascinating, the way that some traditions just will not die out. St. Patrick’s day is tomorrow, and when you raise a glass to some wee lass in a pub, or go to some drunken revel at a friends apartment, think of the Maenads and realize that you are enacting the bacchanal- and carrying out a tradition that extends back through time. Watch out for the ladies, though, they have a tendency to go a little wild on this sort of holiday, even the prim and proper ones.
from wikipedia
Carry A. Nation (November 25, 1846 – June 9, 1911) was a member of the temperance movement, which opposed alcohol in pre-Prohibition America. She is particularly noted for promoting her viewpoint through vandalism. On many occasions Nation would enter an alcohol-serving establishment and attack the bar with a hatchet. She has been the topic of numerous books, articles and even a 1966 opera by Douglas Moore, first performed at the University of Kansas.
Nation was a large woman, almost 6 feet (180 cm) tall and weighed 175 pounds (79 kg) and of a somewhat stern countenance. She described herself as “a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn’t like”, and claimed a divine ordination to promote temperance by smashing up bars.
Ides
– photo by Mitch Waxman
He died alone, squirming in agony, surrounded by strangers. His last friend and only true colleague had recently used a colt handgun to commit suicide, and the only woman he ever loved had left him years ago. Instead he lay there alone in the charity ward- dying in anonymity and pain as his parents had. An orphan raised by matron aunts who indulged and spoiled the strange child who came to them in their dotage- they left him unprepared for adulthood. He retreated into his letters, wrote his stories, and never knew he would live on in the dreams of the sensitive and artistic forever more.
Just 14 months previous to his death, the newspapers detailed the lurid crimes of Albert Fish- the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, The Boogeyman– who was executed at SingSing. The good old days, indeed.
“In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Severely malnourished due to privation and poverty, cancer of the intestine was the diagnosis when he finally checked himself in to the hospital, for the pain had become unbearable. Some money had been found by cousins to bury him in a family plot, but there was no memorial to him on the stone, just his name. He lay with the parents who had disappeared into mental hospitals. Rumors and postmortem analysis of medical records support the theory of tertiary syphilis as the cause of their ruination- but for the son, though, it was failure and loneliness.
In the year same month that he was born, a genius painter– who also suffered from the madness induced by syphilis- shot himself in the chest.
“Our modern worship of empty ideals is ludicrous. What does the condition of the rabble matter? All we need do is to keep it as quiet as we can. What is more important, is to perpetuate those things of beauty which are of real value because involving actual sense-impressions rather than vapid theories. “Equality” is a joke — but a great abbey or cathedral, covered with moss, is a poignant reality. If it is for us to safeguard and preserve the conditions which produce great abbeys, and palaces, and picturesque walled town, and vivid sky-lines of steeples and domes, and luxurious tapestries, and fascinating books, paintings and statuary, and colossal organs and noble music, and dramatic deeds on embattled fields — these are all there is of life: take them away and we have nothing which a man of taste or spirit would care to live for. Take them away and our poets have nothing to sing — our dreamers have nothing to dream about. The blood of a million men is well shed in producing one glorious legend which thrills posterity and it is not at all important why it was shed.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For a time, he lived in New York, and took a wife. They lived in Brooklyn, and like any writer of the early 20th century, he spent a great deal of his time in Greenwich Village. The settings of several of his stories are still extant within the Shining City. Xenophobic and racially charged viewpoints, which are actually quite liberal by the standards of early 20th century America, dog his reputation to this day. However, the company he kept while in New York was a cross section of ethnicity. His wife was Jewish, after all, and his friends were shocked when they learned of his racial politics.
The New York he knew was a seething cauldron of crime and hatred, with all the tribes of man battling for their slice of the American Pie. For a bourgeois anglophile from New England, this was his first taste of fear, and when he picked up the newspapers they spoke of a sensational englishman who had proclaimed himself “the Great Beast”. This english wizard had just moved from Greenwich VIllage to Palermo to set up the “Abbey of Thelema“, after having performed a secret rite on Esopus island (in the Hudson RIver) and receiving the revelation “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.
“I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analysing causes.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The existential and celestial nature of the abyssal future mankind, as elucidated by the frenchman Camus, would soon be facing as the second World War slouched toward the use of atomic weaponry would not have surprised him . Long ago, in his house, quaint iterations of the macabre had been put aside for something grander. He looked past our world, into cosmic gulfs of infinity whose utter vastness filled him with dread.
That there are some things to which even madness and death are preferable to, and culturally childlike monstrosities like ghosts and vampires and messiahs should be shelved as quaint relics. He foresaw a world in which men would be regarded as ants, and the gods care not if you worship them or not, and all the faiths of men are mere superstition.
He put forward the belief that if mankind as a whole was to discover our true importance in the universe it would trigger a new dark age. He warned that the cosmic revelations would teach men new ways to fight, and eat, and enjoy themselves- while at the center of it all, cosmic evil would slaver with delight as mankind destroyed itself.
“Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species — if separate species we be — for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Howard Philips Lovecraft died in Providence on the Ides of March, of instestinal cancer, in 1937.
from wikipedia
In 1932, Lovecraft wrote in a letter to Robert E. Howard: “All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don’t regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.
chugging along…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An unholy and untrammeled period of exertions, which have left your humble narrator a hollow eyed wreck in the last few days, are nearly complete. A short missive this morning, as I am off to the shores of “sub jersey”, or Staten Island as the rest of you might describe it, to meet with my aged mother’s physicians. The poor woman’s health collapsed several years ago, and on doctor’s orders, we moved her into a nursing home. Luckily, dementia has shielded her from the depersonalization and horror of institutionalization- her constructed reality is filled with deceased loved ones and the belief that she is going home “tomorrow”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Unfortunately for my Mom, and even worse for the facility she resides in, she has developed a bed sore of some severity which has forced me to turn my attentions to Staten Island. A pressure ulcer, which is to be expected in patients suffering from her portfolio of illness but is nevertheless representative of neglectful failure for her caregivers, developed to Stage 4 (which I won’t even link to wikipedia to explain, as it’s that hideous). An open wound the size of softball, it is on her back and advanced enough to have required surgical debridement last week. An investigation into “how this advanced so quickly”, and “when, who, what, and how often” was initiated at my insistence by the administration of the Nursing Home, the findings of which are the point of my trip to… “sub jersey” today.
Something wicked this way comes… if you see a filthy black raincoat tattering down Victory Blvd. today… beware the coming of the Ides. Know that a storm is arrived, venom will be spat, and the dragon loosed.
Delayed by obligation, the next installment of “Creek Week” is on the stove and simmering, expect it tomorrow…
