SERENDIPITY NOW

A Chronological List of Lynx to Current and Previous Updates of Serendipity

1. December 1996: Egyptian Heliopolis, Phoenician Heliopolis, Human Heliopolises, were the Zerosses from Etocretan Ziros & how much of PHANTACEA did Jim McPherson actually make up?
2. February 1997: Of Ravenscroft, Rubens, Spears of Destiny, Korantism, & Mithraism in the Nazi SS
3. May 1997: Wormwood, Fox's Millennium, & the CHI-RHO (x-p) 'Chrismon' (Monogram of Christ) as a Mithraic Labarum
4. August 1997: The Spear of Destiny, Youthful Sex, Elvis & a near Sedon-sighting
5. September 1997: Sed's Head on the Giza Plateau in Egypt for 4500 Years?
6. October 1997: The Smiling Fiend as Judge Druj
7. November 1998: Is the US military using Centauri Island for bombing practise?
8. May 1999: Is that the Moloch Sedon in Star Wars?
9. February 2000: Xuthros Hor, the Genesea & the Grand Alignment
10. October 2001: Pyrame & The Atomic Twins (Osiraq)
11. Summer 2002: Serendipitous Sightings (snaps reminiscent of PHANTACEA characters: Blind Sundown and Raven's Head; Sorciere and Granny Garuda; Wilderwitch and Wildman Dervish Furie)
12. Summer 2003: Vampires in pre-Columbian Honduras
13. Autumn 2003: The VAM not in Vampires (Maya, Mithrandruj & More on the Forgettable Devil)
14. Winter 2003/4: Bad Rhad as Ahriman (Even More on the Ever Eminently Forgettable Devil)
15. Winter 2004/5: On Blimps and Brains in Boxes
16. Summer 2005: Chernobyl Summoning Children?
17. Winter 2005/6: Snails for Cerebrus
18. Summer 2006: Did Methuselah Survive the Genesea
19. Winter 2006/7: Sedon with a Pitchfork + We'll call him Varuna
20. Summer 2007: Planetary Demotion + Silver Dragsilk + Hel's on Mars too
21. Autumn 2007: Cerebrus Now + Blasting the Cloud of Hadd + Two Apropos "Feeling Theocidal" + Assassination by Asteroid (unless it was a comet)
22. Spring 2008: The Universal Substance + A Croc - Not a Crock + Noting Theocidal Tendencies
23. Autumn 2008: Medusas I have met + Spooky, not Serendipitous (whose head is she leaning on anyhow?) + Now She's in Portugal (the All-Seeing Eye of Pyrame as Providence)
24. Spring 2009: Still searching for the secret to the Signallers' Silver
25. Summer 2009: Did Edenites or Utopians make the Antikythera Mechanism + Did Saudi's descendents slip through the Dome and take up residence in Thailand + Salamanders not just in 'Feel Theo' + Jordy's attitude to not just militaries
26. Autumn 2009: Soul in a Stone (The Celestial Superior) + Terrorist Swallows Bomb (Prince Translav's Global Menace) + An Actual Eye-Mouth in the Sky (Dark Star Sedon) alongside echoes of Ubi's Son-Shine
27. Spring 2010: Those little gods -- er, make that devils + A Harmonious Demogorgon + Sprinkles as Utopian crud
28. Summer 2010: No wonder Smiler's always smiling + A Doughnut for the Melusine Master + Hoffmann's Tomcat
29. Autumn 2010: Buy the bye + No wonder he's running, the Legendarian doesn't want to be snake-ring gotten + Rat Catcher's Daze + the Garden of Earthy, not Earthly, Delights
30. Winter 2011/12: Phantacea, the other Mary Magdalene and the House of Orange + more weirdness re pHant's Magdalene + Utopians in China + the Order of Chaos (Jérôme Bosch as a comic book hero)

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Winter 2011/12

I collect material for Serendipity Now. Email me or stick them in an envelope and send them to me if you've some PHANTACEA-specific ones you'd like to share. In the meantime, here's another batch:

Auranja-Aurania; pHant's Magdalene; 11,000 year old Utopian; Bosco's Delcourt

The House of Auranja

Consider this for starters:

She (Fisherwoman, Queen Scylla of Godbad in this excerpt) flew in on a contraption (High Priest Thartarre's father) Holgat, who had a talent for technical precision, helped to both design and engineer. It was a prototype whirlybird, the like of which the Godbadian military perfected years later, during the subcontinent’s Civil War. Centauri Enterprises not yet in existence, it was made by one of the aristocracy’s most Outer-Earth-modern companies: Royal Byronic Volant, RBV for short.

Like most members of the imported aristocracy that owned almost everything worth owning in the subcontinent in those days, as CE did now, her husband’s ancestry was Bandradin, meaning his extensive family hailed from the Cattail Peninsula. Nevertheless he, Achigan Auranja, was Godbad’s hereditary king, hence the ‘Royal’. Godbad’s gods, devils that they were, were Byronics, hence that. The Volant part – ‘Volant’ just meant flying – came from PV, Pyçonja Volant [Fish's presumed devic half-mom].

... from game-Gamibit: 'Freespirit Nihila', the sixteenth chapter of "Goddess Gambit"

Now consider this, as taken from Atlantis Rising #91 (January/February 2012)

After the death of Jesus, his wife Mary Magdalene sailed to France and settled in Tarascon, just south of Gellone (the City of Orange). "Orange was known in antiquity as the Latin Aurania ... But the family of Jesus ... was also called Aurania ... In the original Greek, the name Aurania (or Ourania) referred to the Heavens above ..."

The article then notes that "that same name has been transferred to all things golden — 'aur' in Latin, 'or' in French ... Like King Louis XIV of France, the Ouranian royal family were known as Sun Kings ... The humble orange fruit was the obvious similitude for the sacred Sun itself ... Thus she (Mary Magdalene) invariably wears golden or orange clothes, and she is always depicted with ginger or golden hair.

... Atlantis Rising #91 -- Mary Magdalene and the House of Orange, written by Ralph Ellis

And to think I came up with the name just because it sounded a lot like 'naranja' (Spanish for 'orange') whereas the name Achigan (French for 'bass') just because Fish, who's prawn-prone to spouting 'fishisms', tended to refer to her oft-times estranged husband as 'her big bass-ass'.

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As for pHant's Magdalene

Going back to the Web Serials of bygone years, specifically to the never-completed (online) Vampire Variations, here's a quote from one of its chapter synopses:

In life she was Mary Magdalene born Ryne become Mandam (old Joe's wife). As first detailed in Manoeuvres and as repeated, howsoever suggestively and howsoever often, in its continuations (Helioddity and Curse), she died on April 13, 1933. That would be the same day, Good Friday out there, and probably to the second, that Aranyani Nightingale and Gloriella D'Angelo were born in Rome.

That the Magdalene died giving birth to Thea we've already determined. She wouldn't be a lamia if she hadn't. That Thea's was a phantom pregnancy, and the Magdalene had herself a phantom midwife (Granny Garuda) ...

Jesus Mandam may have been her Summoning Child. So too might have been Virginia Mannering. Even though she looked somewhat like her mother, Athena born Kinesis, Barsine Mandam probably wasn't her daughter.

... from the chapter synopsis to "Grave Gravy", the third chapter in "The Vampire Variations" web serial

Barsine, old Joe's Sunshine, during the Heliodyssey story sequences set in 19/5938, appears throughout "Goddess Gambit", which is set in 59/1980. She does so not in her serial-familiar role, however, and, as one might expect from Thartarre's story, which is still online, especially not in the sunshine.

Nevertheless, that she does at all qualifies the following for Serendipity and Phantacea, though it might be more appropriate (given Gambit's arrival on the shelf as of Imbolc aka Candlemas Day) for Synchronicity and Phantacea if there was such a thing.

"But the family of Jesus ... was also called Aurania — for they were the descendents of the Egypto-Persian Queen Thea Muse Ourania ..."

... Atlantis Rising #91 -- Mary Magdalene and the House of Orange, written by Ralph Ellis

Sort of, um, bad-ass-backwards, I'll admit, Magdalene being a descendent of a Thea (meaning 'Goddess'), rather than as the mother of one, but it struck me as worthy of an entry.

All the more so when ones considers the Ryne Family (named after the legendary Rhinegold, supposedly the source of unlimited wealth) considers itself Iraryan (Persian).

As for Egypto-Persian Queen Thea Muse Ourania, she googles, hence the purloined image. Perhaps suspiciously, though, she shows up more usefully as Helena of Adiabene.

(Not to be confused with Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, or Helena Somata, who in phantacea-fact are one and the same. Unless, that is, 4376's Master of Kanin City in Feel Theo was named after Helena Adiabene.)

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Utopians in China

Here's something from 1000-Daze:

For Bosco it was something else to paint: a three-eyed, dark-skinned, bearded yet shaved-bald god or demigod sitting up there amidst a veritable nimbus of Gypsium glory. He wouldn’t call it ‘The Last Judgement’ but the slimy jerk who sold his best paintings to the Church, for a much bigger cut than he deserved, probably would – after insisting he change Sraddha to Christ of course.

... from "The Thousand Days of Disbelief"

I have actually seen Bosch's 'Last Judgement'; rather, there being more than one, I've seen the one attributed to him in Bruges, Belgium. Got right up close to it and snapped some neat details that I'll put online once I acquire more space for my Travels website.

At any rate, hey, Bosco was right. The slimy jerk who acted as his agent did insist he change Sraddha Somata, sitting atop a mushroom cloud on his Brainrock throne, to Christ on high. And it's Sraddha, the Depilated Dand of the Hoodoo Hamlet circa 5476, who inspired this entry.

He's described in the two aspects of 1000-Daze that he appears in ("Contagion Collectors" and "Janna Fangfingers") as being a black-skinned hybrid Utopian, a living god champion of Life itself. He eventually grew a big beard and shaved his head bald. (A style, mostly minus the beard, the Sraddhite Warrior Monks of the phantacea comic book series and 2012's "Goddess Gambit" continue to emulate in the Dome's 60th Century.)

In other words, he's supposed to look like an African or African-descended imam (a Muslim prayer leader). I've never taken any pictures of such a sort, though there are plenty of them around online.

Which (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17370170) is where I saw this in mid-March 2012:

[China's 11,000 year old] Red Deer Cave people have a mix of archaic and modern characteristics. In general, the individuals had rounded brain cases with prominent brow ridges. Their skull bones were quite thick. Their faces were quite short and flat and tucked under the brain, and they had broad noses.

Their jaws jutted forward but they lacked a modern-human-like chin. Computed Tomography (X-ray) scans of their brain cavities indicate they had modern-looking frontal lobes but quite archaic-looking anterior, or parietal, lobes. They also had large molar teeth.

Might they be Utopians, the males black and the females white? After all it was a mere 11,000 years ago and Utopians, they in their millennial ships, had been chasing devils, they on the Sedonshem, throughout the cosmos for many tens of thousand Earth-years before then.

Who's to say they didn't land on the Whole Earth centuries before devils did circa 4669 BC? Not me, that's for certain. It would definitely explain the remnants of some of old Eden's disgraced technology, as depicted in the graphic novel, "Forever & 40 Days -- the Genesis of PHANTACEA", that Golden Age Patriarchs and Anti-Patriarchs were still using way back when.

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Bosco gets his own comic

[INTERRUPTIVE NOTE: As per here and here, in Spain and in phantacea, Bosco's an alias or nom-de-brush used by forever pHant-favourite, and possibly the greatest painter of pure weirdness ever: Jheronimus van Aken.]

Not only that, it's called ...

Wait. Let's first recall this observation made re what went on at the awards ceremony of the 5 Blades Championship of Weir, which was held in the Weirdom of Kanin City on the 21st of Azky, 5456 YD.

In truth, [Harmony's] two immediate brothers [Chaos & Order] were so surpassingly powerful many feared not even Sedon had the clout required to cathonitize them should their rage reach the point where they went at each other unrestrained.

That happened, the Hidden Headworld itself might be terminally endangered. That apprehended, the mere fact they were seen together in Kanin City, let alone seen smiling amidst the same company, was an occurrence noteworthy for its close-to-unprecedented matchlessness.

It must have struck the crowd gathered as a pure wonderment they could look at each other without drawing weapons and spilling blood. Yet, significantly, not to mention retrospectively suspiciously, as if the day’s startling events had been prearranged, ever so callously, heads didn’t instantly fly off shoulders.

Not only that, Harmony being otherwise occupied, they did it again. Then they smiled at each other.

The collective whoosh of relief must have seemed, if not necessarily sounded, cyclonic.

... from "The Thousand Days of Disbelief"

Run your mouse of the immediate link in the above blockquote. It goes to a text anchor that has existed out here in pH-Webworld for years, perhaps even a decade or more. The anchor reads 'Lorder', short for Lord Order. So, where were we?

Oh, yes: What's the album called? (Despite their hard covers, suchlike aren't considered books in Belgium.) Answer's "L'Ordre du Chaos — I. Jérôme Bosch"!

It's in French, duh, but as you might have guessed it means 'The Order of Chaos'. (Not sure if there's an Order of Harmony, let alone an Order of Order, in the, um, album but it wouldn't surprise me.)

Now that's a doubly or trebly serendipitous sighting if ever I've seen one. (And I've seen plenty, hence Serendipity and Phantacea.)

I don't read French very well but I couldn't resist buying it. Won't tell you how it ends as I'm not sure myself but I can tell you that it speculates Bosch, his wife (who's mentioned in Contagion, albeit as his wife-to-be), and his brother (who isn't mentioned in Contagion) are involved with the Adamite sect, something I've already addressed in these very pages.

Can also tell you what painting appears at the end. Yep, it's the central panel of 'The Last Judgement', albeit the Vienna version, not the Bruges (which bears his signature or something like it) or the Munich one, which apparently isn't by Bosch after all. (A shame that, as I once took a bunch of detail shots of it, too.)

The scenario is by Damien Perez & Sophie Ricaume. The dessin et couleur is by Geto and the publisher is Delcourt. Read French, want to order it? Don't read French, either, but still want to buy it?

Here's the link: http://www.editions-delcourt.fr/content/search/?keywords=l%27ordre+du+chaos&isbn=ISBN&SearchText=l%27ordre+du+chaos

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Autumn 2010

| The Lunatic British Press | Quill, but no Ring-Gotten Snot-Snake | Pied Piper Daze | Bosch Bits |

Published lunarly, not monthly

I reckon coming across, rather than buying, the other August 2010 issue of Fortean Times (FT 264) qualifies as a serendipitous experience. Partially that's because of what it contains (of which see here, here and here, though there could have been more). Mostly, though, it's because I didn't know it even existed until I accidentally spotted it in the window display of a store I rarely frequent after having already received the first issue of my new subscription. Which also had the cover date of August 2010.

To backtrack somewhat, sometime shortly after mounting the Bad Rhad, Bad Jokes contribution to this page, my favourite web-feature, a few month ago, I finally got around to subscribing to the (I thought) monthly magazine that offers "the world's weirdest news stories" as well as specializes in "the world of strange phenomena", to quote a couple of its cover blurbs.

The first issue, FT 265, which had a cover date of August 2010, had already arrived, and been devoured in a literary as opposed to literal manner. In fact, I quoted from it, as per here, the last time (until this time) that I updated Serendipity Now.

Considering I'm a Canadian used to North American ways, why would I think it existed? I look at dates, not numbers, and I knew I had the August issue at home. So, instead of even looking at it, let alone purchasing it, I went home and checked mine out again.

Yep, August 2010. So why did it have a different cover, of a huge sea serpent rather than of a huge UFO evidently menacing the White House? Mystery noted then relegated to woeful memory no doubt for extinguishments.

A few days or weeks later, near the end of August and with FT466 recently arrived, I noticed the serpentine August 2010 at a different store, one I often frequent. Then more than just the cover registered. Whoa, what's this about Hamelin's Lost Children and Bosch's near death experience. I was still in the process of extracting a second mini-novel from section two of "The 1000 Days of Disbelief" and, well, more on that momentarily.

Point being, I now realize that Fortean Times is published every 4 weeks, which makes for 13, not 12 issues a year. Which also means that what I took out wasn't a yearly subscription but one for only 12 issues; that, furthermore, this year had two August 2010 issues. So there, you dumb Canuck.

For my part, since it publishes lunarly, not monthly, I reckon that what should be on its cover is "the world's weirdest newsmagazine".

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Ringots, not a snot-snake-wheel, for Jordy

Heady Moments is no longer the title of 1000-Daze's opening chapter. Nor is it the opening chapter of "The Death's Head Hellion". It was, and still is, around long before there even was a Hellion, sooth said. Which is also to say it appeared at the end "The War of the Apocalyptics" as a bonus chapter ostensibly taken from the oft-mentioned, but as yet unpublished, "The 1000 Days of Disbelief". Which it was, and is, just isn't its opening chapter anymore.

Among the tantalizing prospects laid out, so to speak, in War-Pox's last pages was Jordan 'Q for Quill' Tethys, one of the main protagonists of "Feeling Theocidal" (if one can call a perfidious polygamist a protagonist), in bed awaiting his sweetie of recent moment, one Master Morgan Abyss by both name and title.

Someone else appears and in short order Jordy's off dancing the legless limbo again. That someone else was the Devil Himself and he was looking for his millennial babe, Pyrame Silverstar, another of Feel Theo's main characters. (Who must never be confused with a millennial child, one Jordan 'Q for Quoits' Tethys).

Call her Providence; call her the Pauper Priestess; call her as many inoffensive – indeed, mostly complimentary – names as Smiler does in Feel Theo; myrionymous Pyrame, has been the mother of Sedon's Sed-sons for something like 4800 years by then.

[NOTE: Born in the Year of the Dome 5000 (AD 1500), Quoits is, by contrast, more of a mother, um, menace in 1000-Daze. As instigative and hence important as she is, Quoits is also mostly an off-camera character in both Contagion and Fangs.]

Not to tell too many tales out of school but Quill Tethys went to the Weirdom of Cabalarkon to present Pyrame with a kibisis full of ringots. (A kibisis is an apparently solely mythical term of dubious providence for a wallet or purse like the magical hold-all almost as myrionymous Athena gave Perseus in the Medusa myth.) She was supposed to lock this kibisis away before it fell into the wrong hands.

As it turns out, that's exactly what it does the moment he handed it to her. Seems Pyrame (who is also called Providence but whose most common first name actually means 'in the middle of the fire', which of course is only appropriate for someone who sleeps with the Devil every year or so) was possessing Master Morg at the time and she, Morg, was ... Well, that would be telling.

Here's a sequence from later on in 1000-Daze:

The image is credited to Richard Svensson. It's from FT264, the above-mentioned other August 2010 issue. And, but for the whiskers, doesn't it remind you of Bosch's Wayfarer, the very image I've been using to represent the Legendarian for a number of years now. Has to be Jordy, the quill in the cap gives it away.

The rolling lindorm, well, it may not be a ringot but it's certainly the right shape. As for the snot-snake allusion above that too is from 1000-Daze:

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Rat Catcher's Daze

Jordy didn't make it to the front cover of "Contagion Collectors", the second mini-novel extracted from "The Thousand Days of Disbelief" (which I tend to refer to as 1000-Daze, hence the section heading).

He did, or does, for "Janna Fangfingers", the third and final mini-novel extracted from Daze, but I'm not putting that online as yet. (Fangs' front cover appears in the mini-novel, as does its opening chapter. Plus, I used the same image for Jordy in the Deviancies collage over in www.phantacea.com.)

However, a copy of Jordy's artwork did. That's according to him. It's also as per the image to the right of this paragraph. Which, to quote from Fortean Times 264 (discussed above), is of a "1592 painting derived from the lost window of Hamelin's Market Church".

Relevant text from the very first page of the mini-novel explains its significance within the phantacea Mythos.

By Serendipity standards this blockquote is rather extensive. It being thus does allow me to provide some no doubt ever-so-significant lynx to other destinations in the just-as-wonderfully-extensive webpages dedicated to Jim McPherson's phantacea Mythos. It does not, however, explain why it qualifies as serendipitous.

That it does comes down to the simple fact that, while I already had the Pied Piper painting on file, I didn't have the Rattenfängerhaus or 'House of the Piper'. Do now, though. Sooth said, I scanned it in from FT 264. Then I incorporated it into cover in place of another hoodoo hamlet shot that, as per here, I took in Cappadocia in 2003.

[Sectional Notes: Both images in this section double-click. The front cover image opens up a window containing the full cover of the non-digest version of Contagion, of which more here. Its back cover blurb is reprinted here. The digest's back cover blurb is here. More on the Bosch bits follows immediately.]

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The Garden of Earthy, not Earthly, Delights and other Bosch bits

Made mention of Bosch's Wayfarer earlier with respect to Jordy's tweed cap. As per here, it's hardly the first time I've, um, cribbed artwork attributed to Hieronymus Bosch or, as per the front cover of the first mini-novel extracted from 1000-Daze, namely "The Death's Head Hellion", by his imitators.

[NOTE: See entries re Magnus Minus here and here for confirmation of that.]

Another one, as per here, I cribbed was from The Haywain. In that case, even though I didn't blow it up, I was mostly interested in the daemonic trumpeter, whom I equated with Djinn Domitian (The Masochist). Which, I suppose, would make him more of a devilish trumpeter.

Click over to it or click over to The Last Judgement, one of a number of them, and note please the guy in the clouds. Then note this:

Said quote (admittedly abbreviated and ameliorated, with plenty of distracting lynx, for the sake of suspense) isn't the serendipitous entry, however. It's what happens afterwards, which I'm not going to altogether quote here and now either.

What I am going to quote from, yet again, is FT 264; this time with respect to the background for Contagion's front and back cover in both versions of it.

[NOTE: The article's writer is given as Sophie Stoll, which in itself is sort of serendipitous since Metowl seemingly appears a couple of times in Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. A couple of times that I've so far noticed, that is — double-click here and on Bosch's Juggler for verification.

[As I may have mentioned either elsewhere or already, Metowl is what Metisophia, a second-born Lazaremist, the Legendarian's devic half-mom, eventually becomes just prior to the beginning of Hellion's narrative.]

Angelic beings bearing aloft the souls of the recently departed; a tunnel linking this world with another; ending in a blaze of light; an all-pervading sense of peace and calm; and the hint of another reality, just out of sight.

All of these features are familiar to us as 'core' features of a Near-Death Experience (NDE). Yet all of them can be found in a painting over 500 years old: Hieronymus Bosch's shockingly prescient Ascent into the Empyrean.

How did they get into Bosch's picture given that the concept of ... NDE is less than 40 years old?

Answer to that's obvious to me, Sophie — all the more so when considered from a phantacea Mythos pHact perspective. Too bad for your hypothesis ... because, sorry, it has nothing to do with NDE's. (Which may or may not be a load of, um, bosh anyhow.)

"A tunnel linking this world with another" is pretty perspicacious of you, however.

As for this bit ...

There is evidence to suggest that Bosch was a member of the Adamite cult from around 1486 ... The Adamites, or the 'Brotherhood of the Free Spirit', believed that they were the incarnation of the Holy Ghost and that through its power they could reach a state of high spirituality.

For verification of this statement, she cites L. Dixon: Bosch [Phaidon 2003]. However, W. Bosing: "The Complete Painting of Hieronymus Bosch" [Taschen 2006] states that "the last certain reference to this group ... appears at Brussels in 1411."

Then again, the authors of Bosch [D.R. Books London, 1976] state that "Erasmus ... went to ‘s-Hertogenbosch [Bosch's hometown, in 1484] and spent some not very happy years as a member of the Brothers of the Free Spirit".

So, who can say one way or the other? Other than the know-it-all, but accounted-humourless, Librarian (Biblio Drek, one of 4-Ever's narrators), that is.

In 5475 YD (1475 AD), Drek participated in a conversation with Kanin City's higher ups about some intercepted and, um, highly entertaining artwork. It was sent by Squiggly Tethys and intended for his beloved, Janna Somata, the deviant half-daughter of Thrygragos Lazareme and his firstborn Unity, the ever-exquisite Harmony.

That should do it for both FT 264 and the Autumn 2010 instalment of for Serendipity Now ... Except, that is, to say that I'd never come across Simon Marmion's Le Livre des Sept Ages du Monde until this over-and-over-again-highlighted issue of Fortean Times.

(Double-click on Bosch's Ascent of the Empyrean for an enlargement of the Marmion. The rollover is a cut-out from a picture of another cloud guy that I took in Melbourne, Australia. Unfortunately, I neglected to write down the artist's name. Please advise if you know it.)

So, the question begs to be asked: Did the folks behind FT really put it out this issue with phantacea in mind?

If they did, well, that wouldn't be serendipitous. That would be truly extraordinary. (And where's my cut?)

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Summer 2010

| The Smiling Jester | Morgan Abyss as a Vouivre | Tricky Tom as a Hoffman Tail |

Did Bad Rhad Invent Bad Jokes

More to the worrisome (if it isn't serendipitous) point, did I know it when I invented him?

Here's how Pre-Theo ends:

In the next chapter, Helena (Augusta) Somata expresses her distaste for a poor, but nevertheless thought-human, influence on her last living offspring (her first two children Constance, mother of an Attis, and Constantine, a Roman emperor, were long dead by then):

When he appeared in the comic books, I as commonly called him Rhadamanthys as I did either Smiler or the Smiling Fiend. Like so many of my characters, he had a mythological antecedent. In that regard here's an excerpt from a mini-novel released this summer:

Which is an extremely long-winded lead in to a very short quote, from Classical Corner #125, as found in the July 2010 edition of Fortean Times (FT 263, if you count them by issue): "Palamedes and Rhadamanthus (sic) were said to have invented jesting." Which in turn led me to ask if I knew it when I invented him.

Sooth said, I can't answer that. As I've remarked many times: 'I'm not losing my memory, it's full.' Put perhaps more accurately, neurologically speaking, I don't intentionally suppress my memories, they just naturally compress -- all too sadly often unto extinguishments.

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Abysmal Heroine

(Double-click images in this section for enlargements of same.)

I did not conceive of "Feeling Theocidal" as Book One of 'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' because it seemed like everyone who wrote in the fantasy field was doing trilogies so I better do one too. The fact of the matter is I didn't put it out until I figured I'd already written all three parts of Thrice-Cursed.

Nor did I publish "The War of the Apocalyptics" because I hadn't as yet finished revising Feel Theo's sequel. Publishing War-Pox first had always been part of the plan forward.

After all, because its, um, apocalyptic ending impacts Book Three (previewed starting here) so crucially, I couldn't very well end the trilogy without it coming out first. However, it then turned out that I couldn't end it without the Death's Head Hellion.

What happened was, when I was re-reading Book Two, a flashback character, one along the lines of the demon-human hybrid named Hecate in Feel Theo, simply wouldn't go away.

Trains keep rolling but my brain, being what it is, keeps roiling. Morgan Abyss, the Melusine Master of Weir, thusly became the afore-titled Abysmal Heroine in an until-then unscheduled first section of "The 1000 Days of Disbelief".

In the late Spring of 2010 a friend wondered if I should take print publications of the phantacea Mythos to a local comicon at the end of August. I hemmed and hawed, as is my wont. I still hadn't hired a cover artist for 1000-Daze and thus wouldn't have anything new to sell. Then I had this notion of accelerated (as in chopped-down) novellas, hence:

Since this is for Serendipity Now, I'll leave it to you to google up Melusine. As per the afore-mentioned July 2010 edition of Fortean Times (FT 263): "Melusine [is] the heroine ... revealed as half-woman, half-snake." Or fish, as in mermaid.

The serendipitous article at hand comes from the same issue. Under the sub-heading of Gallic Monsters, it's entitled 'La Vouivre'. Apparently that translates as wyvern, though the article claims a vouivre is a form of Melusine.

The serpent woman ... is a guardian of treasures, underground telluric currents, and streams ... She lives under ... the Rock of La Vouivre ... on Mont Beuvray [in France's Morvan region] ... On Christmas Eve the rock moves [whereupon] she leaves, and a great treasure is revealed.

On 17 August 1955 a huge doughnut-shaped object was seen hanging over Mont Beuvray ... During the evening ... a beam of light [shone] from the sky "like a lighthouse" ... Aliens, or La Vouivre keeping an eye on her treasure?

Morvan certainly sounds like Morgan, who does admit to none other than the fearsome granddaddy of all devils, the Moloch Sedon himself, that she is half-Melusine, hence the booming Sed-Speak above.

In terms of telluric currents, well, the Hell-Well of the World, in its aspect of Absudyl-Minius, does underlay the Weirdom of Cabalarkon, where she rules as its consensus Master. That by the way, is significant. Plus, Cabalarkon holds no greater treasure than the Undying Utopian, Sed's thought-father, Cabalarkon himself, hence its name. Which, as D-Head plays out, is also significant.

As for Christmas Eve, as per Feel Theo, it's called Mithramas Eve on the Hidden Headworld. As for what Sed's doing in Cabalarkon on Mithramas Day 4824, as also per Feel Theo, he's come there to visit his Daddy Cabby. And impregnate Pyrame with little Sed-sons, it should go without saying.

And guess who's been possessing Master Morg for quite a number of years by then? No need to guess, is there. Ah but, while that may be contextually obvious, who does Pyrame need to hold onto in order to remain solid and not in need of a Tvasitar talisman, although like anyone else she can use them?

In other words, who makes up her daemonic body and has done ever since the early decades of the Dome? Note: I deliberately did not, in pHantacea-pHact, say 'debrained demonic body'.

All of that said anyhow, it was the last paragraph that truly caught my eye -- and qualified the whole piece as a serendipitous sighting.

And that should do it for this session of Serendipity.

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A Murr not a Mora, but a Tomcat nevertheless

Made mention of Tomcat Tattletail a couple of times in the Spring 2010 update of Serendipity Now. Back then I was leaning towards classifying him as a 'mora' rather than an 'iele'.

Having completed my pre-publication review-cum-final-proof of the first and second sections of "The 1000 Days of Disbelief" (which I can now reveal, if you haven't noticed already, are titled "The Death's Head Hellion" and "Contagion Collectors"), I can now state with increasing confidence that he is in fact a ‘lutin mora’, as follows:

Once I finally been solved that mini-mystery, I decided to act as my own librarian and start scouring my library of shots taken during various Travels for images I could use out here for Tatty Tom. Came up with quite a few actually.

While doing so, however, I was perusing the August 2010 issue of old reliable, aka the Fortean Times (FT265, if you're counting), whereupon -- and, yes, altogether serendipitously -- I came across an article on ETA Hoffmann (Fortean Traveller 71: 'The House of Hoffmann'). Hoffman is probably best known for writing the stories that became the basis for Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet and Offenbach's opera Tales of Hoffmann.

However, he also wrote 'The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr'. I'd never heard of this particular Tomcat before so my attention was duly sparked.

In the article he's described as a feline writer who is 'a prime example of bourgeois vanity and pretentiousness'. Which might be interesting if 1000-Daze was set in the 19th Century our time instead of, at its start, a thousand years earlier in terms of the Inner Earth of Sedon's Head (4824/5 YD).

The cover for the Penguin Classics edition is reproduced here. I've taken the liberty of scanning in much the same graphic as found in the FT article. It opens with a double-click.

The double-click is a little more interesting in that there are a couple of goats and a female sphinx down towards its bottom. Aforementioned Pusan Wanderlust is often called 'Goat' when she shows up in phantacea Mythos mosaic novels whereas All of Incain also makes an appearance, briefly, in 1000-Daze (albeit with Pyrame Silverstar's silver-haired head, not Human Memory's dark-tressed neck-nut).

You'll note the quill in both. Now note this:

And that makes this a thoroughly worthy entry for Serendipity Now.

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Spring 2010

| Those darn little gods -- er, make that devils | A different take on Demogorgon | Perhaps the modest beginning of a Utopian-style elixir of longevity |

Devil does mean god after all

I've made mention of this issue many times previously out here in Cyberia. In no particular order, a sample of them can be found here, here, and here.

So I'm trolling through my personal library looking for the name of Cat Creatures such as Tomcat Tattletail, Harmony's capricious heartthrob throughout the first two sections of "The 1000 Days of Disbelief" and there it is ...

But first, how about some tittle-tattle re Tattletail:

And if any of that reminds you of a certain ever smiling fiend who featured so prominently throughout 1000-Daze's prequel, "Feeling Theocidal", score one for yourself. (Well, I'll grant you a temptingly tentative one anyhow.)

The book I pulled out is "The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Fairies" (Paper Tiger, 2002). It's written by Anna Franklin and illustrated by Paul Mason and Helen Field. The definition I chanced upon was for 'devil'. Here's part of a spiel contained within it:

The term 'devil' actually means 'little god'. It is often the practise of a new religion to demonize the gods of the old, rival religion. Early Christians denounced the gods and spirits of the old Pagan religions as baneful and identified the old Pagan gods as devils.

I say 'duh' to that, though it as often comes out as: "Hear, hear!"

BTW, the kind of cat creature I was looking for was an 'iele'. However, the more I discover about ieles, the less convinced I am that Tomcat's one. Nowadays I'm leaning towards 'mora' partly, if perchance not primarily, because he claims his devic half-mother is Wintry Moira, Lazareme's Dame Chance. Of course, as one of his presumed deviant brothers says during the course of 1000-Daze re Tom: “And you’d believe a guy whose last name is tattletale even if he spells it, in Sedon Speak, Tattletail?”

Myself, besides the legends that they often appear as cats, another reason I like mora is because it and related words in German and Slavic tongues mean nightmare.

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Harmony as a Demogorgon Type

Here's some solid, albeit abridged, um, stuff from Feel Theo:

And who were Harmony's brother Unities? Right. Further to that, check out this definition of Demogorgon as found in the same book referred to above.

A mysterious being that lives in the Himalayas ... his origins are obscure. ... Conrad de Mare's Repetorium of 1273 called him the earliest deity of mythology. He is said to have resolved chaos into order.

Harmony probably wouldn't want one brother to resolve into the other. Although she'd never admit it, especially not to either of them, she probably wouldn't have minded if one or the other, preferably both, resolved, dissolved or devolved unto nothingness, however.

Then again, as Lightning Lord Yajur, Sparky to his friends (of whom he has virtually none) and who appears on the front cover of pH-3 (and reused here, poking out from behind Abe's trident), observes to no one in particular later on in 1000-Daze:

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Sprinkles hint at Tethys-despised Utopian Swill

As in "Feeling Theocidal", the Legendarian appears throughout "The 1000 Days of Disbelief". In his case, that means a number of Legendarians appears. It means the same in her case. (Be a ghost and have a boo here if that statement confuses you.)

Here's one thing the Legendarian, in any era and of either sex, has always said one way or another:

He isn't alone of his assessment of the swill that came out of the nowadays long earthbound Utopians' replication units, which were leftovers from the many multiple millennia pre-Earth when Utopians, in their millennial or generational ships, chased the Sedonshem throughout the cosmos. Neither, as the case may be, is she.

Which brings me to this little tidbit extracted from the Vancouver Sun newspaper on the 15th of March 2010. It seems the University of Toronto developed the Sprinkles brand of micronutrients at an unspecified time presumably not so very long ago.

It further seems that they aren't so much an elixir of longevity as a method of allowing infants and young children to survive long enough that they might benefit from one once it's perfected (or cribbed from the Weirdom of Cabalarkon, as the case may be).

Sprinkles and other micronutrient powders [are] distributed by the UN [in Africa and other parts of the developing world]. Shake them over cooked maize or corn meal, and they won't change the colour or taste of the food, but they will add a potent boost of iron and essential vitamins to prevent anaemia, the most common nutrient deficiency.

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