SERENDIPITY 2005 to 2009

Autumn 2009

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:

| Souls Sunk | A Real Life Gloman | Stellar Serendipity |

Recollecting Heliodyssey's Celestial Superior and Feel Theo's Deadly Dryads, among others

phantacea has all sorts of phases besides the ill-starred Phase One project (which was where a riff on this version of the Moloch Sedon's Mighty Eye-Mouth in the Sky originally appeared).

Among them are the novels I started serializing with the very first installment of pH-Webworld in 1996. In that regard, preserved here is the very first chapter of the very first novel serialized online.

In many respects its first few sentences mark the beginning of Jim McPherson's phantacea Mythos:

London, 1895

The silver-haired, seven year old Sicilian awoke knowing something was very wrong. She was in a large dormitory in the London England Shelter of the Antediluvian Sisterhood of Flowery Anthea. Nothing wrong with that of course. It was where she was supposed to be. Almost everyone else was asleep though.

But that was only part of what was wrong.

Over the years I've done at least one photo essay and created quite a number of lynx regarding that silver-haired, seven year old and what she became over the course of her own perhaps surprisingly extended years.

Recounted during the course of 'The Moloch Manoeuvres', and its successor snippets and sagas within the Heliodyssey story cycle, is how Magister Joseph Mandam (who, under a different name, or names, may be appearing in "The War of the Apocalyptics" even as I type this) once trapped her in a soul sink.

Something similar happened to the Legendarian near the end of "Feeling Theocidal". Lest we forget (it is November after all), don't forget what Hellions, Valkyries and Rakshas demons, from both Feel Theo and "The Trigregos Gambit" (which I hope to print-publish toward the end of 2010), can do with their Crystal Skulls.

That brings us, not for the last time, to Fortean Times (the October 2009 issue to be specific, or #253, for those who keep track of such things):

Soul in a Stone

Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered a ... stone ... that provides ... evidence ... that people in the region believed the soul was separate from the body.

The ancient Egyptians believed in a life force or spirit known as ka, which was immortal, and a soul known as ba, which was linked to personal attributes and fled the body after death.

... text from Fortean Times #253

Of course, in terms of the Celestial Superior at any rate, her ka more so than her ba (still can't quite grasp the distinction) didn't so much flee as moved over to Virginia eventually 'Headmistress' Mannering (who definitely doesn't appear in War-Pox, though she is mentioned).

Should add, purely in the spirit of serendipity naturally, that ka plus ba equals ka-ba and that this next lot, re the Kabbalah, came directly from War-Pox's Afterword:

I named one of my major characters, the time-tumbling Male Entity born Kadmon Heliopolis, after that Cadmus and that Heliopolis, the one in Lebanon. PHANTACEA’s version of the Biblical Adam appeared in War-Pox’s predecessor novel, “Feeling Theocidal”.

As first noted in the graphic novel, which I published in 1990, for a variety of reasons I named him Alorus Ptah. In both ‘Feel Theo’ and ‘4-Ever & 40’, I suggested that this Ptah was actually the Male Entity in his 61st lifetime.

What I didn’t know in the Sixties, Seventies or Eighties, when I was formulating as well as formalizing my private mythology, but learned before I wrote ‘Feel Theo’ , was that Adam Kadmon is a phrase found in the Kabbalah meaning ‘Primordial or Primal Man’.

... from the Afterword to "The War of the Apocalyptics"

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Prince Translav's Global Menace thought of it first

The second of the Web Wheaties I presented out here in Cyberia actually ended after the third one I began. As mentioned in War-Pox's Author's Foreword, though, it'll be back. I'm referring to "Centauri Island". Although planned to become the second book in the Launch 1980 story cycle I can't promise it'll end any better than the web-serial did:

Crystallion shook-shoulder-shivered uncontrollably. Then her suit began to glow.

"Gloman!" someone shouted.

"Nuclear!" someone else shrieked.

"Sluts for nuts," the trickster nattered inanely, in frustration as much as horror.

And then it was over!

There's an image of Crystallion, Hell's Horsemen and their nuclear firedrakes here. But what, pray (unless it's prey) tell, is a Gloman? Well, since I can't find any truly telltale glows re them, I'll show you some sad serendipity and let you figure out the rest.

Fears over 'internal' terror bomb

It has emerged that an al-Qaeda bomber who died last month while trying to blow up a Saudi prince in Jeddah had hidden the explosives inside his body.

Only the attacker died, but it is feared that the new development could be copied by others.

Experts say it could have implications for airport security, rendering traditional metal detectors "useless".

... from the BBC Online, Friday, September 25, 2009

or

Terrorist swallows bomb to defeat airport security

[The would-be killer] called other militants to tell them that he was standing alongside [the target, a Saudi prince].

During the conversation, a bleep was heard between two identical phrases repeated by the bomber and the man he is speaking to. This keypad sound or text message may have activated a short fuse on the bomb ...

... from the Vancouver Sun, Monday, October 5, 2009

Have to say that phantacea's Glomen are somewhat more human, as well as fantastical. They're assassins, yes, and they will blow up without the antidote, but their devious guarantor, Prince Greygreave Translav, will pay off their dependents just as if they'd signed up for standard life insurance.

No need of heaven and all those nubile rewards for that little Prince's Glomen.

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Summer 2009

| Saudi descendent | The Antikythera Device | Salamanders | Jordy's not Alone |

I bought the July-August 2009 edition of Atlantis Rising specifically for an article entitled "The Other Sun of God - The Strange Story of Ancient Mithraism". I could quibble with a number of points it raises but it does feature some interesting material on the Church of San Clemente, which isn't far from the Roman Colosseum.

I visited the Church, more specifically the uncovered Mithraeum deep beneath the current edifice, during my Euro '08 excursion (as mentioned below). I got stacks of shots, piles of postcards and enough fodder for future material to last for years on that trip. However, that isn't what this entry's about -- nope, it's about two other articles in the same issue.

Did Saudi's descendents slip through the Dome and take up residence in Thailand

Saudi Tethys plays an ultimately decisive role in "Feeling Theocidal", the first ever all-prose novel featuring Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA Mythos (not to mention the first print publication since 1990's graphic novel). You really must order it now!

She's a Steg Sari, a witch sisterhood peculiar to the Saurians of the Hidden Headworld's Flood Lands. Saurians worship Klizarod Rex, one of Mithras's Seventh. (As per here, Klizarod appears on the novel's front cover.) There's a detailed description of her here. What follows is a sample of dialogue taken from the novel re her. The speakers are two of its main protagonists, Thrygragos Lazareme and his firstborn daughter Datong Harmonia. They've just survived a very rough Mithramas Eve and are still in the early stages of recovery.

“Funny, I don’t remember any panpipe player there. You sure you didn't go off with the fauna? Pusan Wanderlust’s a female satyr.”

“I wasn't that drunk. Neither was she. Besides, Pusan was all over Order.”

“Oh, no!” Lazareme suddenly echoed her.

“What is it?”

“I’ve just remembered where I got the tee-tee tail.”

“Where?”

“Off of whom, put better. I guess we’ve both got a weakness for musicians.”

“Not the fiddler with the high soprano? She’s just a kid.”

“No, the witch-drummer you said you tossed around in Kanin City last week. I started dancing with her after you left.”

“You were dancing with a Steg?”

“Hey, she had nice knockers, for a saurian.”

“Drummers would have nice knockers. I’m surprised she didn't eat you.”

“She may have mentioned something along those lines.”

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

As for the Atlantis Rising article, 'Feel Theo' takes place in 4376 Year of the Dome. For those of you unfamiliar with time-keeping on Sedon's Head, that's the equivalent of 376 A.D. Yet "Khmer artisans [made the carving] sometime between A.D. 800 and 1400".

Cambodian Temple Stegosaur Mystifies Orthodox Science

A creature closely resembling an extinct stegosaur is clearly shown in bas relief ... on a portal of the ruined temple at Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

... But, where did that Cambodian sculptor get the idea of vertical plates standing along the spine? Such a thing really existed but not, we are told, for 155 million years.

Ah, but Saurs have been on Sedon's Head throughout its existence. Indeed, according to the PHANTACEA Mythos, they're a product of old Eden's disgraceful experiments with the building blocks of life. Clearly a family of Saudi the Steg Sari's descendents or cousins slipped through a rift of Cathonia at some point in time. Perhaps they got through a Tholos Beehive Ghost House -- guest house for the gods, rather.

(NOTE: You can double-click on the graphic and a new window will open with an enlarged image.)

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Of vimanas, cosmicars and the Antikythera Mechanism

I've made mention of both vimanas and cosmicars many times elsewhere (here and here respectively for a couple). I've done so in the comic books and graphic novel as well. However, I've never associated them with the famous Antikythera Mechanism. So ...

Here's a lengthy quote from one of the sample chapters that are still online.

Shem, in one tongue at least, meant name. It was also the name of one of Noah's sons, the ancestor of the Semite race according to certain professorial types who probably should have known better. A Shem was one other thing, however, -- a flying vehicle. Edenites did not call these mechanical birds akin to modern day airplanes that, though. As in the Vedas, they referred to them as vimanas.

Outer Earth iconography generally depicted them as either a caduceus or a winged sun-disk, often with an 'X' in the centre of a circle. In the Bible, the Mark of Cain, which was branded into the middle of the anti-patriarch's forehead by God the Singular after he slew Abel, was also a circled X. So were the symbols of Xuthros Hor, the Persian Mithras and the Greek Sun God Helios much later on in recorded history.

Shortly after his disappearance, Droch Nor's son landed one of these war-birds on the outskirts of Power Point Bharata in what was now the Indian subcontinent. With the death, ascension as rumour already had it, of his father, Amemp Tut became the Golden Agers' nominal patriarch. It was only a slightly premature promotion. Later that same year, 669 PD, when he turned three hundred himself, he would have anyhow. Officially only. Even Nor recognized that the de facto patriarch of Golden Age Humanity was Magister Pseth Ra, the Biblical Adam's third son. Had been since Alorus' death fifty-seven years earlier.

Everyone but his second son, that is. Then again, few believed Cain was Ptah's by Eve. Most thought he belonged to Daemonicus’s ever-wayward mate: the strangely missing Lilith, Demon Queen of the Night.

... from Cain, Slayer of Abel

The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in the Aegean shortly before Easter Sunday in 1900 (5900 YD). I'm not suggesting that it was originally part of one of old Eden's flying machines. Still, always assuming I didn't make everything up, one has to wonder if it did come from either of those last. After all ...

The mechanism was originally meant to show the motions of the Moon, the Sun, all the then known planets, the rising of the major stars, plus major solar and lunar eclipses, all against the backdrop of the celestial Zodiac.

Those aren't my words. The author of the article (Joseph Robert Jochmans) uses them to summarize a 1974 book entitled 'Gears of the Greeks' by one Dr. Derek de Solla Price. Jochmans also makes this point: "...Nowhere among any of the know classical ancient civilizations do we find evidence [for how this device came about]. However, we know it had to exist somewhere in the unknown past."

Well, duh. So maybe I am suggesting ...

(NOTE 1: You can double-click on the graphic and a new window will open with an enlarged image.)

(NOTE 2: A vimana driven by Amemp Tut is pictured in the graphic novel, something else you should order NOW! The Mark of Cain is mentioned in 'Feel Theo' and there's dribs and drabs on both Edenite vimanas and Utopian cosmicar in it as well.)

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Salamanders and PHANTACEA in 'Feel Theo'

Believe it or don't, the beasties do feature in the novel a few times; at least a certain sort of them do. For instance:

At almost 10 feet, Methandra didn't quite match Tantal’s enormity. Nonetheless, she was as proportionately massive as her beer-guzzling brood brother. As was her wont, she was masked and clad in varying shades of red, mauve and purple. Her homeland was Mythland, the jewel of Sedon’s Crown. Possibly, if not overly likely, its Athenan dressmakers made her voluminous garments from a colony of fire-resistant, fairy salamanders.

It was too late to pray his [Chrysaor Attis] latest succession had been born at least in part with the blood or skin of a daemonic salamander. How hot would the eyefire blaze?

...the Trinondevs in the ones that did crash and burn weren't daemonic, fire-resistant salamanders ...

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

So what do you make of this from the Vancouver Sun dated 2 July 2009?

Revealed: Why salamanders are rarely out on a limb

... Salamanders top the list for regenerative agility. [... They] can replace a limb in weeks, re-grow damaged lungs, mend a severed spinal cord and even replenish lost chunks of brains.

[Scientists] have generally surmised it uses 'pluripotent' cells, [... which] are somehow coaxed by chemical signals into differentiating into the specific tissues that make up skin, bone, nerves, nerves, muscle and so on.

All right so the article doesn't specifically say they've fire-resistant skin but pluripotent cells does sound a little fairylike, wouldn't you agree?

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Jordy's not Alone

At the risk of raising the ire of his many exes, not to mention some women in my own acquaintance, I have to say that, for mosaic tales (and tails) featuring anheroic fantasy, Jordan 'Quill' Tethys has to be one of my favourite characters. He may be a perfidious polygamist, and drink way, way too much beer on a daily basis, but occasionally he gets something bang on:

As long or as often as he lived he’d never comprehend soldiers. Sure, from the moment the first pointed stick was invented anyone with any sense sharpened one for his or herself. But what made fighters sure they had a soul capable of transmigration anyhow? Whatever happened to the notion of just saying no? What if they called a war and nobody came? Besides, getting killed hurt like hell in Kore’s dogcart.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Here are some quotes from Oscar Arias, the nobel prize winner who's now in his second term as Costa Rica's president. He wrote it for the Washington Post but I copied it from the Vancouver Sun on 11 July 2009. The headline comes from the Sun.

Referring to the 'coup d'etat' (his term) that occurred in Honduras on 28 June 2009, he writes, among other things:

Latin America's armies are a destabilizing force

At one time in the history of the Americas, weapons and armies were associated with liberty and independence .... At one time ... there were liberating armies.

But today we have seen far too many stories of tyranny, violations of human rights and political instability -- stories traced in the dust by the boots of our militaries.

... I hoped for a Central America that would become the world's first demilitarized region.

So did I. Put better, so do I.

BTW, over on the jmcptimps website, there's a relatively recent entry entitled: 'Slothing around Costa Rica & Panama'. As for a couple of other places I've been in Central America, have a boo at 'El Retorno del Maximon'.

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Spring 2009

| Signalers Silver (Again) |

It's more than just spider silk

I'm not about to tell you precisely what it is (yet) but here's a hint:

Devic bodies were de-brained demons. Although none-too-bright themselves, certainly not when compared to all except the lowest born Master Devas, be-brained demons could shift shapes. What could shift shapes could easily grow clothes out of what amounted to their skin or hide or whatever.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Here's another one:

The devil finished materializing. Wearing, or at least appearing to wear, a silver shawl and a similarly satiny, ankle-length sheathe dress, she was bodily beautiful. That she intentionally left her breasts uncovered had nothing to do with a desire to show them off. She co-ruled the devic third of Crete during the devic goddesses’ 500-year Middle Sea matriarchate on the Outer Earth and that was how Etocretan women of the time disported themselves.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

The devil in the above quote is of course Pyrame Silverstar, of whom a great deal has been written in pH-Webworld and, lately, in www.phantacea.com Perhaps the primary link re Pyrame is here. An illustrated one with lots of lynx is here.

But this isn't about Silverstar. It's about the Signalers' Silver. It's also a truly serendipitous entry since on the day before I saw it I was re-reading 'War-Pox', likely the next PHANTACEA Mythos print publication, and Signalers figure prominently in its pre-Head midsections.

What follows is a non-fantastic, as in real life, possibility re their Silver (one that's specially as well as especially related to this one). I took it from the Vancouver Sun dated 24 April 2009:

Spider silk combined with metal produces a super-tough material

Spider silk has long fascinated scientists but producing it in commercial quantities is difficult because spiders kept in captivity tend to eat each other.

Think that's bad? Imagine trying to de-brain a demon. Actually, come to think of it, provided you've the wherewithal maybe the latter's easier than producing spidery silk via proper spiders:

Instead, because there was so much Brainrock vapour in the air, collapsed masses of Sinistral Lust’s accordingly de-brained demons did fill out.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Autumn 2008

Got a number of particularly serendipitous events to report on this time. One is a collection of coincidences more than anything else but two are so remarkable I remarked on them in a pair of emails I sent to Verne Andru, the cover artist and innards InDesigner for "Feeling Theocidal", while I was in Europe this last Spring Season.

(Nothing like Europe in the Spring; nothing like North America in it either, as far as that goes. It's warming up, the days are long, the line-ups to sites wanting seeing not so much so and, of course, it's way cheaper, comparatively, than going there in prime vacation time such as the summer, Christmas, Carnival or Holy Week seasons.)

In terms of truly consternating ones the chronological first isn't so much serendipitous as spooky whereas the second has to count as just plain weird -- and not because of the Hieronymous Bosch, though that was pretty special too -- so much so I've decided to make him a character in "Fangfingers - The 1000 Days of Disbelief". (I've scanned in some Bosch here, here and here, with no doubt more to come.)

Deciding to make Bosch, along with Durer (whose work I also saw a lot of on my Euro '08 trip) and, yes, Tommy Torquemada, minor characters in the immediate sequel to 'Feel Theo' is, in a way, unfortunate because it means my winter writing's not going to be quite as simple as I'd anticipated. Instead of a long-planned follow-up to "Decimation Damnation", it's more likely going to be a prequel to '1000 Daze'.

| Medusas I have met | Spooky, not Serendipitous | Now She's in Portugal |

Medusas I have met

Well, perhaps not literally but it seems I couldn't get away from them on my 6-week jaunt in Europe last spring.

(I deemed the trip Euro '08 because, along with much of the world, I spent more than a few evenings in Ostia, Lisbon and London watching games televised from the Euro '08 FIFA football tournament. It, which Spain deservedly won, was being held in Switzerland and Austria during the early part of June, at the same time as I was simultaneously seeing sights in the continental neighbourhood.)

Here's something from 'Feel Theo' re its main Medusa (Mater Matare, Mother Murder, in the comic books). There's plenty more quotes re her here. There's something about ... well, see if you can figure it out here. As for Attis, he's described here.

Chrysaor Attis took that as a challenge. He too was on his feet in an instant. Brushing Pyrame aside as effortlessly as he would the strands of a weeping willow, he confronted her face to non-stonily fearsome face. “Why wait? Let’s get to it. The Bull’s inspired me and there’s nothing I like better than wrestling Death Devils. Or would you rather just give me its kiss right this minute?”

Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed the mostly naked, four-armed gorgon, pulled the hell-spawn against himself, chest to nearly as bare chest, and smacked her full on the lips. She was so shocked she glared at him with all three of her eyes wide open. Eyefire was next. He braced himself. While devic eyefire could burn anything as well as it could coerce, devils were so conditioned not to kill they mostly used it to jolt, not to toast someone unto burnt cookie crumbs.

The Medusa, whatever she’d decided to call herself, blinked instead.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

I saw so many Medusas I almost changed the name of my trip from Euro '08 to the Medusa Manoeuvres. A couple more of them are in a collage living here. The one behind the Attis-figure is better seen there and here.

Of those I incorporated into this graphic, the two from Firenze (Florence) were next to each other: the Carvaggio inside the Uffizi and the Cellini outside in the statue court, which I believe is called the loggia. (Have to say that I didn't see the Carvaggio coming - its sudden appearance in my sight lines consequently caused something of a heart-fluttering Boo! effect.)

The one from Venice (the one whose snaky hairs end in heads) is actually a mask with an asking price at an online auction of €15,000 (Euros). I walked into the Natural History Museum in London in search of stegs (Saudi the Steg Sari, a Saurina from 'Feel Theo') and look who was looming over the foyer of the side entrance. As for the one hidden behind Perseus (Attis in 'Feel Theo'), that's in the Lisboa (Lisbon) train station. I spotted it on the day I came back from Sintra, as per below.

(NOTE: You can double-click on the graphic and a new window will open with a different image. It contains a Medusa from Rubens and red & black one I took off the web when I was preparing graphics to illustrate 'Feel Theo'. I kind of prefer this one, though, so it's the one I used over in www.phantacea.com. If you're curious to see the collage move, try hitting here. I prepared the Animated GIF for a refresher course I took re Web Dynamics not long after I came back from Europe in 2008 but didn't put in online until the Fall of 2015.)

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Spooky, not Serendipitous

This entry's exactly why I started this webpage. It's right up there with some of 'coincidences' I remarked upon here if you want to have a boo -- or a reboot, as the case may be. Me, when it comes to PHANTACEA and this sort of seriously spooky stuff, I've had so many mental boos I've become almost blasé about them. Which is a good thing, if only because everyone in the world is no longer as young as they once were.

Was in Ostia Antica, near coast 20 mins from Rome by train, yesterday. Something like 18 Mithraea there and I only had time for 2. May return there on Tues after Etruscan Museum and Galleria Borghese. Anyhow saw sanctuary of Attis, who's a character in Feel Theo (You might recall him as Vetala's Soldier from comic book daze.)

In it there's a reproduction of statue of Attis's devic half-mom, called in real myths Cybele or Mater Meter (Kore-Discord or Kore-Concord in book). She's leaning, as if a pillow, on the severed head of a male god with a beard. Considering what happens to [you know who] in novel, if he had a 3rd Eye I'd have been seriously spooked.

Email sent 9 June 2008

I took a bunch of shots of the jaw-dropper but the sun and situation were such that none of them were altogether satisfactory. Nonetheless, you might like to have a quick boo hereabouts. And right near the Sanctuary of Attis is the 'Domus Delle Gorgoni'. Talk about serendipity -- and to think all I was looking for was the remains of some no longer underground Cave Temples. Really must go back there someday. Who know what'll jump out at me and say boo.

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Now She's in Portugal

The titular 'she' is our old pal Pyrame Silverstar. She's been in these parts previously, notably here. Other serendipitous sightings inspiring thoughts of Silverstar are noted here and here. The main link re Mithras's Ninth is here.

A week left on my version of Euro 2008. On to London tomorrow for 5 nights. Don't have any plans as to what I'll do there but I imagine I'll return to British Museum to revisit Mithras and Lilith amongst others. Might take a train to Nether Wallop (on road to Stonehenge) as well, just because I like its name.

Notched another Bosch here in Lisbon. I think that's 5 in all this trip, plus some misses because paintings were elsewhere for conservation purposes. One here was Temptation of St Anthony, which I saw on Thurs, the eve of the biggest national holiday in Portugal. It's a saint's feast day, believe it or not. I mean, as my niece might say: "Hello, what century is this anyhow?" What saint you might ask? Why, St Anthony of course. How weird is that?

So, it clouded over on way to beach yesterday and I ended up in Sintra, which has a reputation for weirdness due to its sitting on these ley-lines, whatever they are. Walked into this fairyland park completes with palace (more like a villa) built by one of those enormously rich madmen from 19th Century. (It's the site of the Initiation Well if you want to look it up.)

Initiation into what, you might ask. And I might answer, not Mithras. Drat! But it did have this quirky chapel. Looking up I spotted in roof an eye in a triangle. That'd be Pyrame, a major character in novel. (The woman with a quadrangular head, the top three being triangles with a single eye shining out of each side a la the Freemasonry thingee on the back of the American Dollar.) I count that kind of weird.

Email sent 16 June 2008

(NOTE: You can double-click on the graphic and a new window will open. It contains the Sintra Eye of Providence and another one I spotted on an absolutely wild building in Lisbon while I was in Portugal in 2008. The topless Pyrame is from the British Museum. I took it on the same trip. It's in one of the Egyptian rooms but to my mind it's more reminiscent of the Cretan Snake Goddess, whom I've previously identified with Pyrame as Queen Tanith of Etocretan Phaistos circa 2000-1500 B.C.)

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Spring 2008

| The Universal Substance | Not a Crock, a Croc | A 'Feel Theo' Lapse into Profundity |

The Universal Substance

One constant found throughout the PHANTACEA Mythos, be it in the comic books, the graphic novel, PHANTACEA Web-Serials and/or "Feeling Theocidal", is the dark-grey Universal Substance of Samsara, of all there is. Also called variously (Stoprock or Brainstone, the Grey and/or, as most witches referred to it, the Weird), the most common term I use for it -- primarily because because that's how I conceive of it -- is between-space.

One of my brothers is a particle physicist. He assures me that my concept of between-space does not exist. Maybe not but, well, as I copied from CBC Online back on the 14th of September 2007, something like it does:

Dark matter: FAQ
Invisible substance has big impact on universe

Counting all of the stars in the universe is a bit like counting grains of sand on the Earth ... but the European Space Agency said there could be roughly 10 to the power of 24 — or one million billion billion — stars. And that's not including the other stellar material we can see: clouds of dust and gas, black holes and quasars, for example.

Yet astronomers generally agree these stars and other visible matter accounts for less than 15 per cent of the matter in the universe. Where is the rest of it hiding? In a mysterious substance or group of substances called dark matter: matter that doesn't absorb or emit light and is thus invisible to direct observation. In other words, we can't see it. .

"It's a huge part of the universe, and we know virtually nothing about it," said ... an astronomer with the University of Toronto.

Maybe scientists know virtually nothing about it but followers of the PHANTACEA Mythos at least know where it is: everywhere there is anywhere between-space.

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Not an April Fools Joke -- an actual Croc

The Demon Child Tralalorn (unless she's actually a Devil Child) rarely gets to appear anywhere in the PHANTACEA Mythos. "Feeling Theocidal", which you should order immediately, is an exception:

Unhappily for one immortal in particular, Stynx barfed, three heads concurrently, all over the devil child and her pretty, tailor-made, green, gold and crimson party dress. Thus provoked Trala promptly burst, ear-splittingly loudly, into such a temper Pyrame [Silverstar] had to repeatedly threaten to take her home to Apple Isle before she shut up.

After multiple millennia of life, most of the last five next to uniquely for Master Devas as a solid individual – the other exception being Pyrame herself – shouldn't she have grown up? Not if she didn't have to, which she didn't, that answered that. Even if it wan’t necessarily by name, brats everywhere worshipped her and Tralalorn hated to disappoint her fans.

Ostentatiously her crocodile tears were, howsoever briefly, protozoan crocodiles creeping down her cheeks until she swallowed them anew.

Being a 3-headed chimera, Stynx is the funny kid but Trala's no slouch in the funny brat department. So is this story, which I excerpted from the BBC Online on the 1st of April 2008 (funny, I mean, all the more so since it's evidently true):

[Today a] thief walked out of a busy Norwegian aquarium with a crocodile that was over two feet long, says the Independent.

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Feeling Serious re Theocidal Tendencies

Here, though not in an actual nutshell (which someone does get stuck in during the novel's course), is the grist of the gist of "Feeling Theocidal", which you should order immediately. The speaker is Datong Harmonia, the 'indescribably beautiful' Unity of Balance as well as Panharmonium. She's speaking to Helena Somata, the Master of the Weirdom of Kanin City in 4376 Year of the Dome (YD), a week prior to Thrygragon:

“Congratulations, Helena. The absurd monotheism you and your ilk propagate is working; at least it is beyond the Dome. Mithras is becoming so desperate for true believers he’s challenging his two brothers for theirs."

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

I referred to Helena, albeit not by name, last time up. To conclude this time up, serendipitously on the same day I turned the novel over for layout of its innards, I spotted an online article regarding 'The Jesus Sayings: The Quest for His Authentic Message', a recently published book by Vancouver author Rex Weyler (http://thetyee.ca/Books/2008/05/02/JesusSayings/).

The following is a direct quote from Weyler:

On the bloody effort to make a Christian monolith

"I was not interested in doing a pop treatment of Jesus and Mary, with all the royal bloodline hoopla. I wanted to know the real history, purged of ancient prejudice and modern fiction."

"The depressing discovery for me is the tragedy of the manipulation and misinformation, innocent seekers abused, libraries burned, manuscripts destroyed, and the full horror of what the grasping for power did to the truth.

"By the fourth century, Constantine adopted the messiah religion of Paul, merged it with a Romanized Mithraism borrowed from Persia, and created his state religion which we now call Christianity. Very little of this echoes the voice of the modest Jewish, Israelite peasant Jesus.

"We have allowed absolute propaganda to stand as history. Constantine often gets credited by historians with ending persecution against Christians, but this is simply not true. He only ended persecution against his Christians. He persecuted and executed all the Jesus followers who did not adopt his version of Christianity. His armies eradicated the authentic Jesus followers and executed innocent ascetics. They burned the libraries of Europe and Alexandria in an attempt to purge all competing ideas.

"Constantine and his favoured Bishops drafted their religion at the Council of Nicea in 325 [the equivalent of 4325 YD in the PHANTACEA Mythos], and their doctrines had almost nothing to do with Jesus or his authentic message."

I'll leave you to find and read the rest of the article yourself. For now I'll repeat one of the supposedly genuine 'Jesus Sayings' quoted therein: "Beware those who claim to speak on behalf of God; first, know yourself!"

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Autumn 2007

| Cerebrus's Headplate as a Near-Reality | Blasting the Cloud of Hadd | Who Says Utopians are Weird? | A 'Feel Theo' Meskel Moment | Assassination by Asteroid |

Cerebrus Now

As mentioned below, Cerebrus David Ryne, the leader of the Damnation Brigade in "The War of the Apocalyptics" and who apparently met in his end in "Decimation Damnation", is a cyborg. According to an article I cut out of the Vancouver Sun dated 2 August 2007 what makes him one, namely his headplate, isn't such a far-fetched notion anymore. [BTW, Cerebrus is the talky guy in the D-Brig collage to the left.]

First, though, here's something re him from 'War-Pox'. The chapter I took it from is still online if you want to check it out either again or for the first time.

The hooded monk was floating in front of him (Vayu Maelstrom). He lowered his cowl. The man was not entirely human either. He had a metal plate instead of hair or scalp wired into his skull. A cyborg, a cybernetic organism, possibly a Mantel, this Ryne-son, this latter day Golden Age Horrite as he now realized, was smiling cherubically, unhealthily proud of himself.

... from War-Pox 1: "The Damnation Brigade"

Evidently the procedure, a model of which is pictured here, is only suitable for those in a "minimally conscious state" (MCS). I can't recall how minimally conscious David Ryne was after he was shot in the head by the Silver Arrow assassin code named Sagitta in 1938 but I do remember that Virginia "Ginny" Mannering looked after him on Aegean Trigon throughout most of the war years.

'Pacemaker' for brain ends man's coma

Electrodes wired to batteries deliver pulses that 'switch on' undamaged parts of assault victim's brain

Observers caution that the procedure has so far only been shown to work in one carefully selected patient and much more research is needed.

(NOTE: You can double-click on any of the graphics in this section and a new window will open with an enlarged image of same.)

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Blasting the Cloud of Hadd

This one's going way back to the beginning of PHANTACEA on the Web. That said, it remains as applicable today as it would have then. Click over to both the end of "The Trigregos Gambit" and the first few chapters of "Decimation Damnation" for confirmation of that.

Recollect also Thalassa's psychically prompted conjuration from pH-3 and "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor", the third chapter of 'The War of the Apocalyptics', which is still online ...

"LET THE SKIES BURST FORTH. LET THE MATCHLESS FURY OF THE OCEAN WAVES RISE UP. FLOOD OVER THIS ACCURSED ISLE. WASH THE EARTH CLEAN OF THESE EVIL CREATURES!"

Or this, which is pretty much the same exhortation, from 'Forever & 40 Days - The Genesis of PHANTACEA', which can still be ordered ...

"Let the skies burst forth! Let the matchless fury of the ocean waves rise up! Flood over this cursed planet! Wash the Earth clean of devas and all that is evil!"

Meanwhile, in the real world (as extracted from the Vancouver Sun on Friday 1 July 2007; article credited to Richard Spencer of the Daily Telegraph), how about this for a headline and text:

China looks to the clouds to solve its water shortage

Cannon and rocket-launchers still protect Beijing from their vantage point in the Fragrant Hills ... The Fragrant Hills gun emplacement is part of China's desperate quest to counter its chronic water shortage. Whenever the sky clouds over, the guns fire shells ... [the result of which] is supposed to precipitate rainfall ... Liquid nitrogen is also ... sprayed directly into the clouds ...

Ah, but does it work?

"It's very hard to quantify how much rain falls because of the seeding and how much is natural," [a Chinese spokesperson] said.

Well, something worked in PHANTACEA. Too bad Centauri Enterprises is fantasy fictional, isn't it?

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Who Says Utopians are Weird?

Just because most of them live in a Weirdom (the Weirdom of Cabalarkon in the comic book series as well as the 5938 and 5980/1 web-serials; though the Weirdom of Kanin City is much more prominently featured in "Feeling Theocidal"), Utopians on either side of Whole Earth aren't necessarily weird.

The same holds true despite the PHANTACEA-fact that their ancestors came from the stars. Even though they lived and died on approaching impossibly massive millennial, or generational, ships for tens of thousands of years pre-Earth, in terms initiatory that'd be from the second Weir world. (As for what became of the first Weir system, the first Weir world with it, that's another reason you'll be wanting to order "Forever & 40 Days - The Genesis of PHANTACEA".)

According to many, albeit not so much so in the PHANTACEA Mythos, our ancestors may have come from the stars, too. Either that or they were made-over (as in improved) by godlike extraterrestrials howsoever multiple millennia ago. (And, no, this installment of Serendipity has nothing to do with Zechariah Sitchin, (Un?)Intelligent Design or the Secret Doctrine.)

What may seem weird is the dramatic, literally black and white differences between male and female purebloods. They're illustrated in this excerpt from a conversation taken from "Tympanic Memories", the 4th chapter of 'The Vampire Variations'.

It's between Barsine ('Bat-Bait') Mandam and Solace ('Sorciere') Sunrise, who's quoted first. The Mel they're referring to, in 1938, is Melina nee Sarpedon Zeross.

"...Morg [Morgianna still Somata] has always had the hots for Demios [Sarpedon], Mel's twin, who was also in Castle Nightmare and on Trigon when you were there."

"Wait a minute. The young black guy's this Mel's ..."

"Twin. And Morg's called the White Witch for reasons solely to do with her skin colour. Utopians are funny that way; males are always black while their women are white."

"How come their offspring aren't mulattos then?"

"It's one of the Head's great mysteries. Utopians are originally extraterrestrial; they've always been like that. But, when they interbreed with ordinary humans, they do end up with some intriguing offspring. Believe it or not, I've seen a few who aren't so much mulatto as striped. They're called Zebranid lepers."

"Good thing I brought my camera."

Except, have a boo at this headline from the Vancouver Sun, dated July 5, 2007: "Quirk results in black twin, white twin". Although the headline reads 'quirk', I'm thinking it should have read 'serendipity'.

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Assassination by Asteroid

I reckon "Feeling Theocidal" could be considered Book One of "The Thrice Cursed Godly Glories" Trilogy. Book Two will probably be called "Fangfingers - The 1000 Days of Disbelief" whereas Book Three will definitely be "The Trigregos Gambit". In this regard '1000 Daze' will probably be mostly made up of much expanded upon material that I ended up not so much deleting or discarding as excising from the serialized version of 'PREGAME-Gambit' (whose synopses are still online starting here).

Preserved online from the 2005-version of 'PREGAME-Gambit' is this exchange between Sedon's Stooge and a certain 30-Beers:

It’s not quite two thousand years after Father Sedon raised the Sedon Sphere, out of his own essence, in order to separate the Inner Earth, his Headworld, from the Outer Earth. Trans-Time Trigon has been out there, in the heavens, for awhile now. They’ve been looking for Sedon, in order to destroy him. They’ve decided King Sodom, of Sodom, or Nikaya, or whatever, is him in human form.

After taking themselves safely elsewhere, into Thrygragos Varuna Mithras and Kore-Discord as I eventually discover, they launch Trans-Time Trigon at him, at the twin cities. A big bang ensues; one of the biggest bangs the planet’s experienced since another asteroid, and presumably this one was a cosmic happenstance, wiped out the dinosaurs.

Or, as this article, which I cribbed from the Vancouver Sun on 12 June 2007, 'North America's "mega fauna" including the mastodon, the sabre-toothed cat, the American camel and giant ground sloth':

Comet over Canada linked to extinction of mammoths

... A comet exploded ... about 12,000 years ago with the force equivalent to millions of nuclear weapons. That unleashed ... a tremendous shock wave that destroyed much of what was in its path and ignited across North America.

I suppose that's something else you can blame on Canada, as the South Park gang would have it. Not sure you can blame it on Trans-Time Trigon, though I suppose it's possible. In PHANTACEA-fact I'm not even sure the speaker in the above quote (Smiler) is right when he blames the destruction of the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, which he claims to have co-ruled as King Sodom with Pyrame Silverstar as Queen Gomorrah, on Trigon exploding.

Personally I'm leaning to the theory it was a Utopian millennial or generational ship, one commandeered by the Dual Entities, or at least the male of the two, but we'll have to wait until 'Gambit' comes out in print for confirmation of that.

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A 'Feel Theo' Meskel Moment

Now that I've decided to take the admittedly chilling plunge into the financially treacherous waters of self-publishing again, I might as well reveal a well-kept, for me, secret re "Feeling Theocidal". In addition to some of the usual cast of characters blessed, or blighted, with some form of immortality, or at least delayed mortality, one newcomer has, as they say, an actual history.

Correction: One newcomer has an actual her-story. Not only that, she's apparently a saint!

From, as per usual for this edition of Serendipity, the Vancouver Sun (in September 2007; writer given as Peter Martell; source given as Agence France-Presse):

Flames were leaping high on a giant bonfire in central Asmara [the capital of Marxist Eritrea] Friday as crowds in white shawls chanted to the boom of a drum, the climax of celebrations to the ancient Christian festival of Meskel ...

"Today is also a day for us to be happy," said a woman carrying a wooden cross ... "It is an important day to celebrate and remember the miracle of finding the cross."

And, no yet again, the woman quoted is not referring to the Cross of Mithras. With respect to the saint's identity, in 'Feel Theo' she's a hybrid-Utopian, but nevertheless long-lived, Anthean Nightingale, as the Superior Sisterhood's witch-superiors are referred to throughout the PHANTACEA Mythos. She's also Kanin City's Master of Weir in 4376 YD.

As for the serendipitous nature of this entry, on the very day I was reading it I got an email ...

Hence, my perilous plunge!

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Summer 2007

| Bad Rhad Gets Planetarily Demoted Even More Humiliatingly | Is the Signalers' Silver really Black (Widow) Silk? | Helios on Mars |

Bad Rhad Gets Planetarily Demoted Even More Humiliatingly

Let's start with a BLOCKQUOTE from way back whenever (the synopsis to Odd-13, to be absolutely precise):

Look out Ark! Look out Argo!That's how I ended my last synopsis. 'Ghost Ship Ahoy!', -- that's how I'll begin this one. Let me be perfectly clear from the outset: The Argo came out of the Olympian Tantalus. It's a ship, a trireme with the requisite skeleton crew row, row, rowing their infernal tub not so much out of Hades, though Hades is on it, as between-space from Aegean Trigon.

A few paragraphs later on in the same synopsis we come across this BLOCKQUOTE:

(NOTE: the first speaker is Loxus Abraham Ryne, the father of David 'Cerebrus' and Saul 'Psycho', both whom I've done features on previously. The second speaker looks like Virginia Mannering {whose assertiveness resulted in the ruination of a lot more than her virginity in 'The Moloch Manoeuvres'} but isn't. She's the chapter-titular Huh? Who? How? What? Horny Ghost. The year is 1938.)

"Where the hell is the real Virginia?"

"Right here. I'm inside her ... I've made it my mission in what remains of my life to eliminate a certain possessive spook that haunts between-space and preys on some of my sisters."

"Generically speaking ... Does this certain possessive spook have a name?"

"Strife, -- speaking specifically!"

"Didn't think it could be Matilda or Alice or anything semi-normal. And what does this Strife look like, specifically speaking?" He suddenly held up his hand, the one upon which he now wore his wedding ring again after giving that of the Nebuland to his guest the night before. "Let me guess. Anything she damn well pleases."

"'Afraid so."

Put Hades (Pluto) and Strife (Eris) together in your mind then consider this headline from the Vancouver Sun dated Friday, 15 June 2007: "Pluto found to be smaller than dwarf planet Eris" and you get part of the serendipity of this entry.

Bad Rhad, the never-remembered Smiling Fiend, who was masquerading as Hades on the Argo Ghost Ship, would not be pleased to discover he's no longer a planet. He'd be doubly displeased to discover the heavenly body named after one of his aspects is even smaller than one named after the nefarious Strife (Kore-Discord as well as Kore-Eris).

The other part of this entry's serendipity is that the biggest of the dwarf planets thus far discovered way out there in the Kuiper Belt goes by the highly suggestive name of Sedna. Sound familiar? Sound like, say, the Moloch Sedon?

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Is the Signalers' Silver really Black (Widow) Silk?

Serendipitously enough, right beside the Sun's piece on Pluto's further downgrading is a heading that reads: "Black widow silk offers material for body armour". Sounds like the exoskeleton worn by the Signalers during the course of both 'War of the Apocalyptics' and 'Centauri Island', doesn't it? It certainly does to me.

Here's more from the article:

Dragline silk from black widows is regarded as superior to that from other spiders because of its strength and extensibility, which enable the silk to absorb enormous amounts of energy.

The silk's properties have interested the military, medical and sporting worlds, which are keen to explore the possibility of lightweight body armour, medical devices and athletic attire.

In a way, discovering this about black widows' dragline silk is a relief. I've been wondering for literally decades now how to account for the Signalers' Silver. Since they're public figures, ones with essentially their own circus act (ala, for example, today's Cirque de Soleil) and that, therefore, there's not supposed to be anything of the fantastical about them, there shouldn't be anything dot-ditto about their Silver.

Truth told, until I saw this article I reckoned it was just

composed of the stuff of superhero comic books.

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Helios on Mars

Referencing a long-serving web-page, 'Sedon's Head: Inspiration or Destination?', for the moment, here's yet another BLOCKQUOTE:

In Lebanon you can find one of the Whole Earth's earliest still extant cities. It's called Sidon. In Egypt, in a place the Greeks called 'Heliopolis', or Sun City, and I understand the Bible called 'On', there was some sort of Pharaonic fertility-affirmation ritual practised called the Sed Ceremony.

Which made me wonder if the city was actually called 'Sed-On'. [Which may be where and how I came up with name Sedon for PHANTACEA's ultimate villain, the Devil Himself.]

May be, I'll repeat.

In other words, I might have known that, when I invented Sedon's Head in the early to mid seventies, there was a Sed Ceremony that took place in the Biblical On. Then again I might also have known there was a 'head' on Mars in the Cydonia plains.

Except, counter-conspiratorially, I only found out Cydonia can also be spelt Sedonia a couple of weeks ago. Wherever I thereafter sought and found confirmation of that online, it's consistently stated that the Cydonian head wasn't identified until the early 1980s. Which kind of negates the whole notion that knowing Cydonia was on Mars is why I came up with its Inner Earth homonym (the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head) in the early to mid seventies.

Intriguingly to me, if any of you are interested, one just-as-google-able web site has a neat graphic that transitions from the Cydonian head to that of the Giza sphinx. It's at http://www.mt.net/~watcher/mars.html if you want to have a boo. The point being is that the transitional as well as animated GIF found on that web site (reproduced here) goes from the Cydonian face on Mars to that of the Giza Sphinx, one of my shots of which is here.

(As for the PHANTACEA sphinxes, info and lynx on a couple of them start here: http://www.phantacea.info/term.htm#sphnxs1)

What I find even more intriguing is that in the PHANTACEA Mythos I identify the head of the Egyptian Sphinx (that'd be Andy the Androsphinx) with Heliosophos, who was on the cover of PHANTACEA #3 ('Helios on the Moon'): http://www.phantacea.info/mythos1.htm#sphel2.

Maybe I'll have to do another comic book entitled "Helios on Mars".

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Winter 2006/7

Sedon with a Pitchfork + We'll Call him Varuna

Odd stuff happens. That's why I've been doing a web-feature entitled Serendipity almost from day one of PHANTACEA on the Web in 1996.

For example, I took a break from my extensive rewrite of "Feeling Theocidal" and went to Brazil for 5 weeks in the Autumn of 2006. There was no rain in the area of Iguassu, the largest, by volume, series of waterfalls in the world. There was no rain in the Pantanal Wetlands and no rain in the Amazon Rain Forest. But there was plenty of rain on the coast (Rio, Paraty and Ilha Grande).

It was pretty bleak in coastal Salvador as well. Consequently I wandered into the Afro-Brazilian Museum there. A couple of photos I took inside it constitute the related subjects of this season's entry.

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Allow me to preface the first with a Thought Quote from Feel Theo:

The tiny twinkle brightened, bloated. Ergo, the Masochist [Thrygragos Varuna Mithras's angel, jinn or Heliodromus] was slowly returning from his rendezvous with the Mighty Eye-Mouth in the Sky [the Moloch Sedon]. How should he greet him, in what semblance?

More to the point, what semblance did the Moloch Sedon prefer to adopt these days? Was he still going with the veneer of a near-naked, red-skinned – not red-furred – satyr? Probably.

True, as if to make himself appear less oafish and more fearsome, he usually sported stubby horns, filed sharp teeth, a forked goatee and tongue, a braided ponytail and a spade-bladed tail.

But did he have to carry a tri-tined pitchfork with him, like a labarum or a sceptre, whenever he held court in his Grand Elysium pyramid? Couldn't he come up with something more creative? Did he really not want to disappoint his fans that badly?

The Devil with a pitchfork? Well, I'm fairly certain Exu isn't a devil. In fact he's described in the museum catalogue as an Orisha "worshipped within the Baian Candomble system". Still, a be-horned, pointy-tailed statuette of an entity holding a pitchfork, I count that as a serendipitous Sedon-sighting.

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Here's a different sighting from the same place.

First, though, a link to a long-serving BLOCKQUOTE taken from the original version of 'The Trigregos Gambit' seems in order. It's part of a conversation between two-thirds of the so-called 'VAM Entity'. Now that you've clicked on it, and come back here, what follows immediately is another Thought Quote excerpted from the now thoroughly rewritten Feel Theo:

The Devil Sedon had one name. So did Unmoving Byron and Everyman’s Lazareme. But, despite efforts his followers made over the millennia to combine them into a binomial, Mitravaruna or Varunamithra, he always had two.

When he was feeling generous, the Mighty Moloch who was his father complimented Mithras with words to the effect he had two names because he was simply too powerful to be just one god.

Indeed, as the Legendarian often complained, there were so many gaps in his personal memory he could well have been a lot more than just two distinct deities simultaneously.

The male of the two putative Cosmic Principals – Adam-Kadmon, according to some current Cabalists the Legendarian also told him about – had loosely labelled him schizophrenic. Helios had even joked that the term ‘splitting headache’ was coined for guys, even if they were gods, like him.

To that, and to Helios’s further assertion that he suffered from a mental illness more correctly categorized as bipolar disorder in his future speak, Mithras countered that he was better branded the bi-solar disabler of disorder.

Smiler considers the Moloch Sedon to be at once the foremost and yet just one-third of the Great Gods. The Fiend further considers himself to be one-third of the collective whole of Thrygragos Sedon's first born litter of three by the Trigregos Sisters. Since Mithras himself is the one doing the thinking in the above Thought Quote, why don't we call the image to the upper right a serendipitous Varuna-sighting?

I think we'll do just that.

In case you're interested, the Afro-Brazilian Museum in Salvador has an English-language web site. In the 'Collection' link on its home page, there's some more statuettes of Exu. It's at http://www.ceao.ufba.br/mafro/apresentacao_engl.htm.

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Summer 2006

Did Methuselah Survive the Genesea?

Sometimes I consider Cyberia, that is to say the Worldwide Web, a gathering place for curiosities as well as just plain kookiness, including my own. Still, I occasionally google up web sites containing material directly applicable to the PHANTACEAMythos.

(For example, as I've recommended previously, you can google up Mithraism and come up with dozens of web pages. One suggests Mithras was actually Perseus, of Medusa fame. Another suggests that once the Roman soldiery was christianized, the worship of Mithras was transferred to the Archangel Michael.)

I used to list lynx to some of the more reliable ones in my online bibliography section but I haven't been doing that of late. However, for this edition of Serendipity Now, I decided to create a new, thus far non-reciprocal link, just in case you feel like being a goose and having a gander. Why?

Ah, as to that, among other things I appended to the graphic novel I published in 1990 ('Forever & 40 Days - The Genesis of PHANTACEA', which can still be ordered) a chart of calculations I made long before 1990. These calculations were based on the Biblical Book of Genesis.

They had to do with the incredible life spans of the ten Golden Age Patriarchs of Humankind and, presumably, many of their fellow Golden Agers (including Anti-Patriarch Cain) during the 1656 years between the birth of Adam and the Great Flood of Genesis (PHANTACEA's Genesea). Its pH-Webworld equivalent can be found here.

Recently, though, I stumbled upon similar calculations while web-surfing. For the most part - in fact I believe for all except one part, as per here - the dates agree with mine. In other words, as far as I'm concerned anyhow, they're mostly accurate. The one exception? It seems to indicate that Methuselah (PHANTACEA's Amemp Tut) survived the Great Flood.

Both our arithmetic skills indicate the Genesea, ergo the formation of the Sedon Sphere and therefore PHANTACEA's Inner Earth, the Hidden Headworld, occurred 1656 years after the birth of Adam (my Alorus Ptah, that is to say the Male Entity in his 61st Lifetime). However, my arithmetic skills continue to indicate 687 + 969 = 1656. Put to the point, Methuselah did die in the same year as the Great Flood of Genesis, as I've long contended, and not 10 years later.

Just thought I'd mention it. Should mention as well that the Library of Halexandria, where you can find the offending chart under "Adam's Children", can be located online at http://www.halexandria.org/dward192.htm. (One attraction it has is a built-in, site specific Search Engine, which is something I don't have space for in PHANTACEAon the Web. Oh well, maybe one day.)

And what's so serendipitous about all of the above? Well, for one thing the Library of Halexandria suggests the Golden Age Patriarchs lived such extraordinarily long lifetimes because their diet consisted in part of ground gold.

In 'The Volsung Variations', which debuts this time up, we get confirmation that, at least in terms of the PHANTACEA Mythos, they lived so long because they ate the Golden Apples of Eden, Idunn or the Hesperides. And I found the aforementioned web site in the same week I intend to upload the Summer 2006 edition of pH-Webworld.

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Winter 2005/6

Nano-Dust, Neural Snail Cells and Cerebrus David Ryne

Awhile ago, in the Winter 2004/5 edition of Serendipity Now, I did a brief piece entitled 'Brains in Boxes'. Given it was about rat neurons linking together to form a living brain, in a box, it seemed appropriate the character reference was to Saul Ryne, the Magnificent Psycho.

Starting in 'Centauri Island' and carrying on into 'Psychodrama', Saul started calling himself Magnifico. Which was somewhat egocentric of him considering that, by late 1980, he was reduced to being just that, a brain in a box. [As a aside, a not-so-legendary 'cysta mystica' is equated with Aladdin's Lamp here.]

Nonetheless, as he ably proves in both those now-concluded story sequences, Saul remained as much of a rat as he was in the first half of 'Ringleader's Revenge' ('The Last of the Supranormals'), which was set in late 1955. In the interests of fairness it strikes me as opportune, not to mention serendipitous (the opportunity having presented itself) to do a similar piece on Davy, Saul-Psycho-Magnifico's twin brother.

David Ryne's supra-codename is Cerebrus. As the acknowledged leader of the last (early-to-mid-50s) incarnation of KOC, the King's Own Crimefighters, he as much as Saul and their father, Loxus Abraham Ryne, the born-with-the-century patriarch of the Illuminated Faith of Xuthros Hor, was responsible for the disaster that befell what was left of KOC (along with the Untouchable Diver, Blind Sundown, Raven's Head and Wilderwitch) on Damnation Isle in late December 1955.

Upon their return from a quarter century in what they came to call Limbo, Cerebrus both named and assumed the leadership of the Damnation Brigade. It included (includes?), in addition to those named above, Wildman Dervish Furie, OMP (Old Man Power) and the Elemental Twins, Airealist and Sea Goddess. D-Brig 10 are the main set of characters in a good percentage of the 1980/81 serials thus far presented in PHANTACEAon the Web. He didn't fare so well in 'The War of the Apocalyptics' and, like the rest of D-Brig (with the exception of Air and Sea, who turn out to be fourth generational Thanatoid devils), apparently met in his end in 'Decimation Damnation'.

Be that as it may, Cerebrus is a cyborg, a cybernetic organism. He has a headplate, a cybernetic implant, that increases to the level of supra-normality his psychic abilities. In this respect I respectfully draw your attention to an article that appeared in Time Magazine (Canadian Edition) for the week of October 10, 2005. Entitled 'Mind over Matter', it's about Naweed Syed of the University of Calgary's Hotchkiss Brain Institute. According to Time, he's become "the first person to reconnect a network of brain cells onto a specially designed silicon chip, proving that the chemistries of living beings and computers could coexist, and even cooperate."

As we first learned in 'The Weirdness of Cabalarkon' (first learned on the Web anyway), in the PHANTACEAMythos Cerebrus's headplate is a product of Old Weir's science. We also learned it was brought to the Outer Earth during the Winter of 1946/7 by that annoyingly anonymous Conqueror fellow I mentioned in the last edition of Serendipity Now. There is as yet no word as to whether the scientocrats of Old Weir used either "nano-dust" or "nerve cells extracted from a snail" when they (or the Conqueror) developed the technology that went into the making of Cerebrus's headplate.

That said, given that Cerebrus met his penultimate fate ill-advisedly tangling with Mars Bellona, the Apocalyptic of War, by himself, I am considering re-titling that chapter of War-Pox 'Cerebellum'. After all, he wasn't 'nano-dusted' like Second Fangs was in the 2005 revision of 'The Trigregos Gambit'. Plus it's certainly more apropos than 'epencephalon', which my trusted Funk & Wagnalls lists as a synonym for cerebellum ("the massive, dorsally located part of the brain located below and behind the cerebrum [that] acts as the coordination centre of voluntary movements, posture and equilibrium").

Cerebrus might have been snail-slow, as in snail-stupid, but for the most part he wasn't epencephalon-deprived.

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Summer 2005

Chernobyl Summoning Children?

Years ago, in the May 1997 edition of Serendipity Now, I made mention that, in the PHANTACEAMythos, Chernobyl (Wormwood) may well turn out to be the site of the Soviet Supra City (Supracity) often referred to during the course of the 'Launching' serials. It was quite often referred to in 'Ringleader's Revenge', the second half of which ('Aspects of an Amoebaman') was set in late April, early May 1960, as well.

The Conqueror, an otherwise anonymous, silver-clad, Brainrock-helmeted supra, set up his headquarters in the Soviet Supra City during the Second World War. Rogue Crimefighters captured Sedon (Satan) St Synne there in the late Forties. Whereupon he was imprisoned at Spandau until released in time for 'Aspects'. The Soviet Supra Supreme long made it the location of its HQ.

Gunter von Alptraum (Prince Nightmare, also Prince Peashooter), one of the brats who appeared briefly in 'Coueranna Curse', started overseeing its running sometime in the mid-to-late Fifties. By the time 'Centauri Island' came along in late 1980, he may not have been anymore but he was definitely associated with Signal System's Silver Signallers by then. (System may yet prove to be what becomes of Sedon St Synne, aka the Judge Warlock referred to occasionally during the 2005 revision of 'The Trigregos Gambit'.)

All of which leads me to a brief snippet I spotted on pg. 53 of the September-October 2005 issue of "Atlantis Rising" #53 (Write: PO Box 441, LIvingston, MT 59047, USA). With reference to the so-called 'Chernobyl generation':

According to Russian doctors who have been keeping close track on the children exposed to radiation following the 1986 nuclear disaster in the Ukraine, ... kids growing up in areas damaged by the radiation are said to have higher IQs and faster reaction times. They also reportedly are growing faster and have stronger immune systems. [Research] showed the mental agility and health of kids in affected areas was clearly superior to those from unaffected areas.

Sounds a little like the Summoning Children who so dominate proceedings in the 1938 'Heliodyssey' serials, doesn't it?

I should make it clear I'm not advocating exposing kids to nuclear disasters. Mind you, I'm all in favour of the nuclear family.

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