Weapon of Flesh by Chris A. Jackson
SE rating: 5 of 5 stars
Weapon of Flesh: Accessible, Well-designed Dark Fantasy: The back-cover blurb is concise and has no spoilers, and captures the book well (copied/pasted below).
This book is saturated with oppression, violence, and murder but none of that is gratuitous. Like his assassin characters, author Chris A. Jackson balances several tight-rope acts: (a) have the protagonist, Lad, commit evil acts while being innocent at heart; (b) present the coming of age of three characters with burgeoning romance without being cheesy; (c) dole out humor (mostly through Lad's dialogue) while shedding blood; (d) present mature themes of identity and life-purpose with an easy-to-read style (suitable for YA or adult audiences).
Each chapter blends into the next with a carefully scripted, enjoyable plot with just the right amount of tension. All the main characters (Lad, Mya, Wiggin) grow while establishing strong character motivations. There are five more in the series and this is solid introduction. Before I jump into #2 Weapon of Blood, I will read Chris A. Jackson's Deathmask since I already have the paperback and I'm a sucker for necromancers.
Most (if not all) are illustrated by Noah Stacey:
Weapon of Flesh Series
#1 Weapon of Flesh 2005
#2 Weapon of Blood 2013
#3 Weapon of Vengeance 2014
#4 Weapon of Fear 2015 *
#5 Weapon of Pain 2016 *
#6 Weapon of Mercy 2017 *
(* with Anne L. McMillen-Jackson)
Back Cover Blurb to Weapon of Flesh:
"Forged from flesh… and magic. Made to kill… but not to feel.
He was made for one purpose: To be the most efficient killer, the most lethal assassin the world had ever seen. But something has gone wrong with the plan.
The Master is gone… The weapon is free… And in a dangerous world, a weapon does what a weapon is made to do. Or does he?
Without even a name, the weapon chooses one: Lad. And so the weapon begins to become a person… All he has been told is that his destiny awaits him, so he seeks it out, though he knows not what that destiny is.
But the one who paid for the weapon to be forged awaits his prize…impatiently. The Grandfather of Assassins has invested nearly two decades and a fortune in his perfect weapon, and when it does not arrive on time, he begins to search. His hunters are seeking Lad, and Lad is seeking his destiny.
There is only one problem: No one thought a weapon of flesh would fall in love."
View all my reviews
This focuses on Beauty in Weird Fiction, with interviews. S E Lindberg is the creator of Dyscrasia Fiction, a Managing Editor at Black Gate, an intern for Tales From the Mag.’s Skull, and moderator of the Goodreads Sword and Sorcery Group
Friday, September 14, 2018
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Lover in Hell - "Lovers Sans Phalli"
Cover art by Roy Mauritsen |
Download it or the free sampler today! Hell never disappoints.
Are genitalia needed for love? To feel "whole"? Without them, you may be in Hell.
Egyptian myths really handicapped Osiris, god of rejuvenation--even left him penis-less for a time. Eh gad. His wife Isis repaired him by most accounts, but in this version of afterlife fate may differ.
Egyptian myths really handicapped Osiris, god of rejuvenation--even left him penis-less for a time. Eh gad. His wife Isis repaired him by most accounts, but in this version of afterlife fate may differ.
My contribution to this anthology is “Lovers Sans Phalli.” To repair the penis-less Osiris of Duat, a dozen cursed pharaohs team with the infamous, tomb-raiding Howard Carter (of King Tut's tomb) and discredited evolutionist Ernst Haeckel.
The Heroes in Hell books all stand alone, but also have story arcs spanning across books. My story continues a story arc beginning with "Curse of the Pharaohs" in Pirates in Hell. This volume is all about Lovers, and Love, in Hell:
Shakespeare said "To be wise and love exceeds man's might," and in Lovers in Hell, the damned in hell exceed all bounds as they search for their true loves, punish the perfidious, and avoid getting caught up in Satan's snares. In ten stories of misery and madness, hell's most loveless seek to slake the thirst that can never be quenched, and find true love amid the lies of ages.
Only fools fall in love, and hell is filled with fools. Our damned lovers include: Christopher Marlowe and Will Shakespeare, Napoleon and Wellington, Orpheus and Eurydice, Hatshepsut and Senenmut, Abelard and Heloise, Helen and Penelope, Saint Teresa and Satan's Reaper, Madge Kendall and the Elephant Man, and more . . . -- all of whom pay a hellish price for indulging their affections.
Now available as a Kindle, and coming soon in deluxe trade paper. Whether you're lovelorn or love-sworn, the rages and ravages of love await . . .
CONTENTS
- Cover Art by : Roy Mauritsen
- Janet Morris & Chris Morris: "Love in the Afterlife", Parts 1, 2, and 3 ("Never Doubt I Love"; "Fume of Sighs"; "Wrath of Love")
- Nancy Asire: "Love Interrupted"
- S. E. Lindberg: "Lovers Sans Phalli"
- Michael E. Dellert: "Calamity"
- Michael H. Hanson: "Love Triangle"
- A. L. Butcher: "A Hand of Four Queens"
- Andrew P. Weston: "Devil’s Trull"
- Joe Bonadonna: "Withering Blights"
- Andrew P. Weston: excerpt from Hell Gate
Monday, September 3, 2018
Darrell Schweitzer - Interview by SE
SE Lindberg Intro: It is not intuitive to seek
beauty in art deemed grotesque/weird, but most authors who produce
horror/fantasy actually are usually (a) serious about their craft, and (b)
driven my strange muses. This interview series engages contemporary authors
& artists on the theme of "Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy
Fiction." Recently we cornered weird fantasy authors like John R. Fultz, Janeen Webb, Aliya Whiteley, and Richard Lee Byers. Today
we hear from the legendary author and editor of weird fiction, Darrell
Schweitzer!
DS: If I am to make a guess in the case of Poe (who, being dead, was not as entirely revealing as you might want in my interview with him), the beauty of horror does indeed have to do with sadness and loss. It is a reflection on the inevitable passing away of all things. Poe was the guy who said that the most poetical subject in the world is the death of a beautiful woman, and I don’t think he was into necrophilia. You can see this in his life. He knew his wife was dying. Various other beloved figures in his life kept dying on him. He knew that his own stay on this mortal coil was always tenuous.
Darrell Schweitzer is
an American writer, editor, and essayist in the field of speculative fiction.
Much of his focus has been on dark fantasy and horror, although he does also
work in science fiction and fantasy. Schweitzer is also a prolific writer of
literary criticism and editor of collections of essays on various writers
within his preferred genres. Together with his editorial colleagues Schweitzer
won the 1992 World Fantasy Award special award in the professional category for
Weird Tales. His poem Remembering the Future won the 2006 Asimov's Science
Fiction's Readers' Award for best poem. His
novels include The White Isle, The Shattered Goddess, The Mask of the
Sorcerer, and The Dragon House. His most recent story
collection is the explicitly Lovecraftian Awaiting Strange Gods published
by Fedogan & Bremer. He has also been known to lead the choir at Cthulhu
Prayer Breakfasts, where his The Innsmouth Tabernacle Choir is
used. He has published books about H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Lord
Dunsany.
SEL: What Beauty is there in horror and sadness? Edgar Allen Poe subscribed to evoking melancholy to
stimulate 'Beauty'. In his 1846 “Philosophy of Composition”, Poe revealed
his views on experiential beauty by detailing the deliberate construction of
his poem The Raven: “Regarding then, Beauty as my province, my next question
referred to the tone of its highest manifestation-and all experience has shown
that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme
development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is
thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. In “Windows of the
Imagination” you interview Poe, through dubious means. So we must turn the
tables. Paraphrasing from you, “Which do you prefer writing [poems for Beauty,
or tales for Terror]?” More broadly, how do you define Beauty in art/fiction
that appears to be repulsive (weird/horror/melancholy)?
DS: If I am to make a guess in the case of Poe (who, being dead, was not as entirely revealing as you might want in my interview with him), the beauty of horror does indeed have to do with sadness and loss. It is a reflection on the inevitable passing away of all things. Poe was the guy who said that the most poetical subject in the world is the death of a beautiful woman, and I don’t think he was into necrophilia. You can see this in his life. He knew his wife was dying. Various other beloved figures in his life kept dying on him. He knew that his own stay on this mortal coil was always tenuous.
SEL: Do
you find beauty in your weird fiction? Dissect an example.
DS: This
seems a little pretentious. It is a “look how great I am” question. The
time-loops & their links to innocence and youth in “The Sorcerer Evoragdu”?
The dancing resurrected goddess at the end of The Shattered Goddess?
The strange redemption at the end of “On the Last Night of the Festival of the
Dead”?
SEL: What scares you? Is it beautiful?
DS: I
think we are all scared of death and the loss of identity or mental acuity. In
real life, it is NOT beautiful. There is no “City of the Singing Flame” in the
mundane world.
SEL: Art vs. the Artist: Is there a character that you most
empathize with or reflects you (i.e., Julian the Apostate or Sekenre the
Sorcerer)?
DS: I am neither of these persons.
Julian the Apostate (the knight, not the emperor) is a lost soul precisely
because he still has his faith. If you do not believe in God and the Devil, you
do not fear them. Sekenre the sorcerer is the kid that never grows up, and
always feels left out of normal society. There are some advantages to this,
such as long life, but I think his existence involves much loneliness and
suffering. I think of him as a cross between Joseph Curwen and Peter Pan. His
agenda, however, is not, unlike Curwen’s, evil. He has expressed an intention
to survive until the end of time and demand of the gods the reason for the
world’s pain.
Have I ever written myself into a story? Not really. I can see how, if I had not somehow managed to face the world, I could have ended up like the character in “Jason, Come Home,” but he is a very sad and unfulfilled fellow, is he not? There is a little of me in the comic artist in “Pennies from Hell,” but this is caricature. Also, that other guy draws better than I do. I do pick up pennies off the street, but not for purposes of occult divination. After a certain age you do it because you STILL CAN. Also, I am superstitious. I believe it is bad luck to leave money lying around when I could have it.
Have I ever written myself into a story? Not really. I can see how, if I had not somehow managed to face the world, I could have ended up like the character in “Jason, Come Home,” but he is a very sad and unfulfilled fellow, is he not? There is a little of me in the comic artist in “Pennies from Hell,” but this is caricature. Also, that other guy draws better than I do. I do pick up pennies off the street, but not for purposes of occult divination. After a certain age you do it because you STILL CAN. Also, I am superstitious. I believe it is bad luck to leave money lying around when I could have it.
SEL: Regarding other, Dark Arts: Clark Ashton Smith, whose soul or
muses seem to have corrupted your own, was a poet, illustrator, and sculptor.
Do you practice other arts? If so can we share them (i.e., images of fine or
graphic art) or mp3s/videos (of music). Likewise, can you discuss how art can
from one medium can inform/inspire another?
DS: I
have been known to draw cartoons. I suppose with some art training I could be
mediocre. There is some talent there, but I think that as a cartoonist I am a
pretty good gag writer. See attached.
Art by Darrell Schweitzer [Sidebar: Wilbur Whateley is a character in Lovecraft’s 1923 The Dunwich Horror] |
SEL: Cadence in fiction. In a 1930 letter to
Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith described his strategy of using aesthetics to
heighten the reading experience of his weird works: “My own conscious ideal has been to delude
the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by
means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use
of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other
stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation. You attain a black magic,
perhaps unconsciously, in your pursuit of corroborative detail and
verisimilitude. But I fear that I don't always attain verisimilitude in my
pursuit of magic! However, I sometimes suspect that the wholly unconscious
elements in writing (or other art) are by far the most important.” What tips or tricks can you reveal about
delivering the right cadence to affect beauty or horror?
DS: I have a theory that some of the best and most
“poetic” prose writers – Lovecraft or Dunsany for instance – have the impulse
to write poetry but not quite enough talent. So it is sublimated into their
prose. Lovecraft held that the rhythm or cadence was the most important aspect
of prose. Indeed, prose is for the ear, to be read aloud. The ultimate example
may be the last few lines of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” which is both
hideous and exquisite at the same time. Poe of course had the full poetic
talent, but also could do it in prose.
SEL: Unpublished
Conan and Inspiration: What Makes A Genuine Muse (inspired by your essay “My
Career As A Hack Writer” in the collection Windows of the Imagination)? Many
do not know that you wrote Conan the Deliverer (not a midwife,
but perhaps a milkman you jest in your essay) which was never published. It was
to be the “definitive Stygian novel.” I’m not sure of the chronology, but you
certainly wrote some beautiful-weird-adventure with Egyptian (a.k.a. Stygian)
influences (Mask of the Sorcerer and Sekenre) and proved yourself capable of damn good heroic tales (We Are All Legends). On the surface,
having you script Conan the Deliverer sounds awesome. But you
reveal that the script was perfect, and it was because of the artistic
inspiration (or lack thereof). Please explain more. What makes a
quality muse?
DS: A quality muse is one that inspires you to create works of genius
all the time. One can only wish to have one … The Mask of the Sorcerer was
indeed written on the rebound from the failed Conan novel. I simply let go of
all the restrictions of trying to write a Conan novel, the first of which was
to dispense with the character of Conan or anyone like him. My Conan novel did
indeed deal with a descent into the Stygian afterworld, but the details are
very different. I have to admit that this many years later, I do not remember Conan
the Deliverer very clearly. That may be a sign that it was not,
ultimately, very successful. Tor Books still owns it. They paid for it. They
could publish it if they like. It used to be that about every five or ten years
I would mention this to someone from Tor and they would say, “Oh, I never knew
this existed,” and I would send a copy to them, and then they would lose it
again and a few years later the subject would come up again. The last time this
happened, I photocopied it for them and they did not bother to reply.
SEL: You have a
B.S. in geography and an M.A. in English; has the geography ever served your
writing? If not your degree, then
perhaps the geography of your person [I was honored to listen to you read “Girl
in the attic” the World Fantasy Convention 2016, a story that was published in
Black Wings VI S. T. Joshi. I recall the imagery of the
Pocono ridge lines pretty well.] Was this inspired by time spent in
PA? Actually, this line of interrogation reminds me of my favorite CAS tale,
“Genius Loci”. How does “place” affect one’s art?
DS: It does make me a little more aware of other places, but then so
does collecting stamps. I am not one of those Americans who has only heard of a
country when we have gone to war with it. I know where Kazakhstan is. Otherwise
my getting a degree in Geography was a naïve attempt to do something practical
so I could make a living while writing. But as with all the sciences, I could
not proceed very far because I couldn’t do the math.
The Pocono ridge lines in the stories are inspired by long drives to Niagara Falls. I used to be a regular at Eeriecon, and I drove up that way alone many times after my wife stopped doing. You do notice on such trips how the familiar and safe world is only along the roadway, and eldritch rites or hideous murders could be taking place a half a mile away into the forest and no one might ever know. That whole landscape has inspired the Chorazin series of stories, of which “The Girl in the Attic,” and also my YA novel The Dragon House. Chorazin is located in the “flyover” part of north, central Pennsylvania, which is pretty blank on the map. Go to the Poconos, turn left, and go beyond any of the towns or resorts, and there is … what? Any large state in America holds such mystery. It is quite different from Europe, particularly Britain, where if there is a clump of more than two or three trees, it probably has a name, a hereditary forester, and a record in the Domesday Book. We have a lot of empty land.
The landscape of Arizona and the area around the Grand Canyon inspired my “Howling in the Dark.” So, yes, I do respond to landscapes. In the southwest there is vastness of both landscape and sky, and the realization that everything around you is also mutable. An Arizona landscape may be dry, but it is shaped almost entirely by water. You can also look out over the Grand Canyon and realize that among those hundreds of spires you can see are places where, very likely, no human being has ever been, so if Lovecraft’s Great Race of Yith is still hiding on one of them, as long as they don’t shoot off fireworks or play their boom boxes too loudly, we might never know.
The Pocono ridge lines in the stories are inspired by long drives to Niagara Falls. I used to be a regular at Eeriecon, and I drove up that way alone many times after my wife stopped doing. You do notice on such trips how the familiar and safe world is only along the roadway, and eldritch rites or hideous murders could be taking place a half a mile away into the forest and no one might ever know. That whole landscape has inspired the Chorazin series of stories, of which “The Girl in the Attic,” and also my YA novel The Dragon House. Chorazin is located in the “flyover” part of north, central Pennsylvania, which is pretty blank on the map. Go to the Poconos, turn left, and go beyond any of the towns or resorts, and there is … what? Any large state in America holds such mystery. It is quite different from Europe, particularly Britain, where if there is a clump of more than two or three trees, it probably has a name, a hereditary forester, and a record in the Domesday Book. We have a lot of empty land.
The landscape of Arizona and the area around the Grand Canyon inspired my “Howling in the Dark.” So, yes, I do respond to landscapes. In the southwest there is vastness of both landscape and sky, and the realization that everything around you is also mutable. An Arizona landscape may be dry, but it is shaped almost entirely by water. You can also look out over the Grand Canyon and realize that among those hundreds of spires you can see are places where, very likely, no human being has ever been, so if Lovecraft’s Great Race of Yith is still hiding on one of them, as long as they don’t shoot off fireworks or play their boom boxes too loudly, we might never know.
DS:
Latest novel is The Dragon
House (Wildside).
Latest collection is Awaiting
Strange Gods (Fedogan
& Bremer). PS Publishing will publish a Best of DS in two volumes next
year. I am also working on two anthologies for them, The Mountains of
Madness Revealed and Shadows Out of Time. My most
recent anthology (for PS) was Tales from the Miskatonic University
Library co-edited with John Ashmead.
SEL: Any new
callings from the Church of Dagon?
DS: Funny you should ask. The spirit moved me to testify at the last
Cthulhu Prayer Breakfast at Necronomicon 2017. I spoke briefly on the fact that
the Esoteric Order of Dagon is the only nihilistic doomsday cult with a
positive message. The text of my remarks was published in Audient Void magazine
recently (No. 5), and will be used as a kind of preface for the second volume
of The Innsmouth Tabernacle Choir Hymnal. I write a new hymn
for every prayer breakfast. Last time it was “Great Old Ones” to the tune of
“Kumbaya.” There are now four uncollected hymns. I need to write three or four
more, and I can have another booklet. I don’t just want to do a revised,
expanded version, because that would render the old one obsolete and I want to
go on selling it too. It is good cultist relations too. No one wants to be told
that what I sold you last year is now out of date, so you have to buy a new one.
I want your money, but I’d rather let you keep the value of your previous
investment while I empty your wallet with the new one. So, I hope to have
Volume II available at Necronomicon 2019. Come and sing along!
Partly
squamously, partly rugosely, Darrell
Schweitzer (a.k.a. “Brother Darrell” in the Esoteric Order of Dagon).
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Helen's Daimones - paperback Giveaway 2018
In the US? Enter to win 1 of 15 signed paperbacks of Helen's Daimones!
Promotion lasts from Sept -1st to Oct-1st 2018
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Helen's Daimones
by S.E. Lindberg
Giveaway ends October 01, 2018.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Friday, August 31, 2018
Historical Anatomy: Composing Bodies and Representing the Invisible Soul
Note this is Part of a series:
#3: Historical Anatomy: Composing Bodies and Representing the Invisible Soul (you are here)
#4) Weird, Dark Art Design: Implicit vs. Explicit Gore and Horror
#4) Weird, Dark Art Design: Implicit vs. Explicit Gore and Horror
Historical Anatomy: Composing Bodies and Representing the Invisible Soul
Sixteenth century apothecaries sourced both medicine to physicians and raw materials to artists; the former treating souls with medicine, the latter manufacturing their own paint so they could portray the divine (as there were no art supply stores then, nor industrial means to mass produce it). Artists, alchemists, and early physicians would also convene within the dissection chambers. Anatomical artists had to grapple with documenting macabre scenes of opened bodies while remaining 'artistic'. For the dignity of the specimens and to satisfy the surgeons' needs, artists often found harmony by posing their subjects. Many artists captured or imparted a bit of the lost soul into their dead subjects. Perhaps most famous are Johannes de Ketham's Fasiculo de Medicina (1491), Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), and Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks (~ 1452-1519). Recent compilations like The Quick and the Dead i and Spectacular Bodies ii are fantastic resources on this subject.
The prevailing Church did not permit the dissection of innocent believers, so criminals or 'sinners' were often used. Then, the notion of the four humors prevailed. Bodies were considered divinely sacred and were thus difficult to obtain and dissect; those corpses deemed acceptable could not be refrigerated, so one had to work fast! Nor were there cameras or video to capture the observations! Artists and alchemists partnered to explore, and document the microcosm of life. Leonardo Da Vinci provided detailed notes along with his drawings:
"I have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all the various members and removing the minutest particles of flesh which surrounded these veins, without causing any effusion of blood other than the imperceptible bleeding of the capillary veins. And as one single body did not suffice for so long a time, it was necessary to proceed in stages with so many bodies as would render my knowledge complete; this I repeated twice in order to discover the differences. And though you should have a love for such things you may perhaps be deterred by natural repugnance, and if this does not prevent you, you may perhaps be deterred by fear of passing the night hours in the company of these corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to behold; and if this does not deter you, then perhaps you may lack the skill in drawing, essential for such representation; and if you had the skill in drawing, it may not be combined with the knowledge of perspective; and if it so combined you may not understand the methods of geometrical demonstration and the method of estimating the forces and strength of muscle; or perhaps you may be wanting in patience so that you will not be diligent." iii
How brutally, and beautifully, clear he was in describing what was necessary to follow his muse. Corpses were given personality, soul if you will, through artificial poses and theatrical, emotional countenances. Da Vinci determined through his dissections that the senses were linked to a 'common sense' that led to the brain. But no actual soul was discovered. He yielded the goal of managing the soul to religion. Below, from his treatise on painting, he spoke how the artist must deal with this and impart the soul into its subjects otherwise:
"A good painter has two chief objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul; the former is easy, the later hard because he has to represent it by the attitudes and movements of the limbs. "iv
Interactive Book Link |
The next care to be taken, in respect of the senses, is a supplying of their infirmities with instruments, and, as it were, the adding of artificial organs to the natural; this in one of them has been of late years accomplished with prodigious benefit to all sorts of useful knowledge, by the invention of optical glasses. By the means of telescopes, there is nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view; and by the help of microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible world discovered to the understanding. By this means the heavens are opened, and a vast number of new stars, and new motions, and new productions appear in them, to which all the ancient astronomers were utterly strangers. vThere are two key points: one, the spiritual creative process occurs when artistry, science, and spiritualism coincide; and two, the soul has never found. Despite how far we see into space with telescopes, or how well we resolve structures with microscopes, the soul still eludes us.
Ernest Haeckel (1834-1919) was a famous artist-scientist fascinated with the aesthetics of nature and the elusiveness of the soul. His 1904 set of lithographs Art Forms in Naturevi brilliantly exhibit his obsession with the symmetrical beauty of biological microstructures, and his extensions into comparative embryology brought him controversy. He argued this in his support of his own monistic religion that scientific adventures continually uncovered the beautiful designs inherent in nature (monism generally supports that "body and soul" are one connected entity, not separate as many dualistic religions profess):
The remarkable expansion of our knowledge of nature, and the discovery of countless beautiful forms of life, which it includes, have awakened quite a new aesthetic sense in our generation, and thus given a new tone to painting and sculpture. Numerous scientific voyages and expeditions for the exploration of unknown lands and seas, partly in earlier centuries, but more especially in the nineteenth, have brought to light an undreamed abundance of new organic forms...affording an entirely new inspiration for painting, sculpture, architecture, and technical art. vii
In 1900, Haeckel published his scientific, spiritual book Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century in which he explains his monistic philosophies. Within this he has elegant discussions about the soul's lack of participation in the "Laws of Substance" (conservation of mass and energy); below, he discusses how many related the nonexistent soul to that which is tangible:
Thus invisibility comes to be regarded as a most important attribute of the soul. Some, in fact, compare the soul with ether, and regard it, like ether, as an extremely subtle, light, and highly elastic material, an imponderable agency, that fills the intervals between the ponderable particles in the living organism, other compare the soul with the wind, and so give it a gaseous nature; and it is this simile which first found favor with the primitive peoples, and led in time to the familiar dualistic conception. When a man died, the body remained as a lifeless corpse, but the immortal soul "flew out of it with the last breath." viii
Many beautiful rituals evolved since souls could not be truly located or measured after a body died; many myths persist that cannot be readily falsified. The notion of relics is common across cultures and time. It assumes that the soul is a contagion remaining attached to the body postmortem. Hence, the power of a Saint could be absorbed if one obtained his or her bones; this gave rise to the theft and desecration of many crypts and catacombs. Many crypts remain with the bodily relics are on display: the crypt of Saint Munditia of Munich and the Vienna Imperial Crypts are fine examples.
More bizarre, and beautiful, is the notion that souls could be deified by creating architecture with the bones of the deceased. Here the artist would convene with the spiritualist in a funerary chamber and temple. Famous examples include: the shrines of Capuchin monks in Rome and Palermo, Sicily (these catacombs contain 6,000 to 8,000 bodies); and the Kostnice 'Church of Bones, Kutna Hora, Sedlec Ossuary, Prague, (containing remains of forty thousand people); lastly, the impressive catacombs of Paris (l'Ossuaire Municipal) in which several condemned cemeteries were collocated in the 18th century and countless skulls comprise the walls.
If one can make architecture from our bodies, can one make pigments or paint from them? Organic matter played a strong role in the history of art technology. Parchment, vellum, was manufactured from the hides of animals before wood based paper was available. Size, a gluey substance used to prepare surfaces or harden gesso, was made from boiling skin and bone. Many medieval pigments were iron based (blue, red, black iron oxides) or were derived from living material (dried blood, sintered black bone, and many binders were protein based (milk casein, egg yolk). Calcined bone is used as a white pigment. Gallstones were sometimes used as a source of yellow color in the Middle ages. Bile was used for some greens. Caput mortem was a mysterious pigment that may have been just iron oxide or, if the ghoulish rumors are true, powder from pulverized mummies.
If the sourcing of material was a spiritual motivation of alchemical artists, as the Mappae Clavicula indicates, would the sourcing of material for a self portrait be most genuine if the elements to manufacture it were provided by our ancestors? This notion was in the inspiration for the Inheritance Rite of the Picts in Lords of Dyscrasia.
i Petherbridge, D. J., Ludmilla (1997). The Quick and the Dead Artists and Anatomy. Los Angeles, University of California Press.
ii Kemp, M. W., Marina (2000). Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now. Los Angeles, University of California Press.
iii Da Vinci, L., Ed. (1998). The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Oxford World's Classics New York, N.Y., Oxford University Press. p151
iv Da Vinci, L., Ed. (1998). The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Oxford World's Classics New York, N.Y., Oxford University Press. p178
v Hooke, R. (2007). The Preface, Micrographia or Some Physiological Description of Minute Bodies. New York, NY, Cosimo, Inc. section d-e
vi Haeckel, E. (2008). Art Forms in Nature - the prints of Ernst Haeckel. New York, Prestel.
vii Haeckel, E. (1900). Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century (Die Weltraethsel). New York, Harper & Brothers Publishers. p341
viii Haeckel, E. (1900). Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century (Die Weltraethsel). New York, Harper & Brothers Publishers. p199
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Sept-Oct 2018 Groupreads: KANE and BLACK COMPANY
The Sword and Sorcery Group on Goodreads invites you to discuss and read (and listen) this Sept-Oct on these two topics:
2) KANE Group Discussion . It is always a good time to read Kane, but now we can do so with this group, and a fine podcast already in progress on The Dark Crusade Podcast.
It is always a goo time to read Kane, but now we can do so with this group, and a fine podcast already in progress: This Summer/Fall 2019, Jordan Douglas Smith and F. N. York chat about a different story on the Dark Crusade Podcast. The Dark Crusade is a podcast dedicated to the fiction, life, and influences of writer, editor, and publisher Karl Edward Wagner.The goal is to read through the works of Wagner, learn more about him, and reignite interest in his work.
They already started with:
- Episode 2.4 ‘Bloodstone’ Part 2 – Chapter XV: Lord of Bloodstone thru EpilogueAugust 15, 2018
- Episode 2.3 ‘Bloodstone’ Part 1 – Prologue thru Chapter XIV: Flight into NightmareAugust 1, 2018
- Episode 2.2 ‘Two Suns Setting’- Hear me, Sabertooth!July 17, 2018
- Episode 2.1 ‘Undertow’-Never Bring your Demon to a Sword FightJuly 6, 2018
- Kane is coming!June 27, 2018
Masthead Banner: Credits
Glen Cook's Black Company: Port of Shadows, Cover art by - Raymond Swanland 2018Karl Edward Wagner's Gods in Darkness: The Complete Novels of Kane
2002 by Ken Kelly
Saturday, August 18, 2018
GenCon 51 - GCWS Volunteering
Three Part Chronicle of Gen Con 51 2018
- Writer's Symposium - Volunteering <--- You Are Here
- Writer's Symposium - Panels & Selfies
- Vendor Show
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