tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47889043365074609332024-03-13T20:24:33.448+00:00The Eclectarium of Doctor Shuker<br>Welcome to The Eclectarium of Doctor Shuker, showcasing the varied interests of Dr Karl Shuker beyond cryptozoology - everything from fantasy art and literature, James Dean, masks, science-fiction, motorbikes, clowns, ancient civilisations, Forteana, esoteric science anomalies, philately, Sherlock Holmes, animation, the supernatural, rock 'n' roll music, quiz trivia, and much more. If it's unusual, intriguing, and obscure, it may well appear here, sooner or later!
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<br>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-33995559731808791682023-02-09T11:08:00.000+00:002023-02-09T11:08:29.816+00:00CONFESSIONS OF A BIKER - OR, HOW MY BLACK LEATHER JACKET BECAME A STAR EXHIBIT AND A MEDIA STAR!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn_AL0Yofu8n5IJ1iOjWoM6NnKoTrySFLUgjDJbkZcQ1Trre3cSgJh0AxXIW2xpEF1e1winZ9wiUdSQCFyuFZm3l4WSXbPD53oz_oxFy1qfr8l7CKR5kuY9clD5j3W7Aw60QwfkYATKEyMSJ64Iu6NdXFR2fk-V7HTTH8DwRFlfgNOa0hkU-hndbjI/s2292/Black%20Leather%20Jacket,%201989,%20front%20cover%20VHS%20video.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2292" data-original-width="1313" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn_AL0Yofu8n5IJ1iOjWoM6NnKoTrySFLUgjDJbkZcQ1Trre3cSgJh0AxXIW2xpEF1e1winZ9wiUdSQCFyuFZm3l4WSXbPD53oz_oxFy1qfr8l7CKR5kuY9clD5j3W7Aw60QwfkYATKEyMSJ64Iu6NdXFR2fk-V7HTTH8DwRFlfgNOa0hkU-hndbjI/s320/Black%20Leather%20Jacket,%201989,%20front%20cover%20VHS%20video.jpg" width="183" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></b></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Full
cover of my official sell-thru VHS video of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Leather Jacket </i>(© Nick Mead/Paul Cowan/Mick Farren/Channel 4
Television Corporation/Polygram Music Video – reproduced here on a strictly
non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)</span></b></b></div><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">As a biker ever since my late teens in
the 1970s, my habitual and favourite garment of choice to wear has always been
the classic black leather jacket, of the motorbike style beloved by bona fide,
would-be, and on-screen bikers alike, not to mention rock stars, fashion
models, punks, and rebels of every shape, size, and description.</span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">So when while browsing in a bookshop one
Sunday afternoon during the mid-1980s in the Warwickshire, England, town of
Stratford-upon-Avon, world-famous as the birthplace of one William Shakespeare,
I chanced upon a fairly large brand-new hardback book entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Black Leather Jacket</i>, sporting an
embossed, textured front cover designed to look and even feel like the real
thing, and documenting the fascinating history of this truly iconic item of
clothing, I lost no time whatsoever in purchasing it and reading it from cover
to cover as soon as I arrived back home.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Written by English journalist Mick Farren
and first published in 1985, this engrossing book reveals and extensively
illustrates via a comprehensive selection of very distinctive glossy b/w
photographs how its titular subject, the black leather jacket (or the BLJ, as
I'll refer to it hereafter for convenience), has evolved and diversified since
its origin during the early years of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The BLJ's progress is succinctly
chronicled from the standard unadorned predecessors worn by the likes of WW1
fighter pilots and the Gestapo of WW2, through the classic 1950s Brando/Dean
rebel styles, plus all manner of self-customised be-studded and
badged-to-the-hilt individualized versions worn by outlaw bikers and 1960s
rockers/greasers, to the slashed and safety-pinned punk gear of the 1970s, and
the somewhat emasculated 1980s fashionista formats more at home on the catwalk
than the highway, as well as every conceivable variation in between. So too is its
enduring intrinsic appeal, traditionally daring, dark, even dangerous,
regardless of its ever-changing external form. But that's not all.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJl2n0CDVz5GBNVFkTDZTsSFUIzBqVV7OGE545oXASvQ0EtKP24S_LkWwP4-JpKk2qtsu7AXZ3Sz3RZm_VIV1ya2WgqyqvstkUwQt86Kv-ELdw8e5Xls5FnabTjt4KRmE1mSV5TYn_GtYKT4x3e6bBcKcKzazKQp4L1R70lfvCV8qEyv1LNPLSlbvZ/s3031/Black%20Leather%20Jacket,%20The,%20Mick%20Farren%20book,%201985,%20Plexus%20Publishing%20Limited.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3031" data-original-width="2314" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJl2n0CDVz5GBNVFkTDZTsSFUIzBqVV7OGE545oXASvQ0EtKP24S_LkWwP4-JpKk2qtsu7AXZ3Sz3RZm_VIV1ya2WgqyqvstkUwQt86Kv-ELdw8e5Xls5FnabTjt4KRmE1mSV5TYn_GtYKT4x3e6bBcKcKzazKQp4L1R70lfvCV8qEyv1LNPLSlbvZ/s320/Black%20Leather%20Jacket,%20The,%20Mick%20Farren%20book,%201985,%20Plexus%20Publishing%20Limited.jpg" width="244" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></b></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The
front cover of the original hardback First Edition of Mick Farren's book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Black Leather Jacket</i> that I still
own today (© Mick Farren/Plexus Publishing – reproduced here on a strictly
non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)</span></b></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 148.85pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In
1988, Channel 4, a
terrestrial TV station in the UK, produced and screened a 60-minute
docu-movie directly inspired by Mick Farren's book but simply entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Leather Jacket </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(i.e. no <i>The</i>)</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> It was
directed by Nick Mead, co-written by him with Farren, and produced by Paul
Cowan. Narrated by big-screen bad boy Dennis Hopper of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Easy Rider</i> fame, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Leather Jacket</i> stayed faithful to the contents of Farren's book but
also featured clips from a number of classic movies relating in some way to the
BLJ and motorbikes, such as the cult 1970s British biker/horror movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Psychomania</i>, which I've reviewed <a href="https://shukerinmovieland.blogspot.com/2021/06/psychomania-aka-death-wheelers.html"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> (on my <a href="https://shukerinmovieland.blogspot.com/"><span style="color: red;"><b>Shuker In MovieLand</b></span></a> blog, which also includes <a href="https://shukerinmovieland.blogspot.com/2023/02/black-leather-jacket.html"><span style="color: red;"><b>here</b></span></a> a version of this present Eclectarium article re my black leather jacket).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Moreover, it contained an excellent rock
soundtrack too, including contributions from famous BLJ-wearing performers such
as Elvis Presley, The Clash, Gun, L.A. Guns, Zodiac Mindwarp (remember them?),
Velvet Underground, Kiss, and Motorhead – whose song 'Black Leather Jacket' was used
as this documentary movie's title song, accompanying clips of a teenage BLJ/Levis-wearing
Michael Vartan (in his on-screen debut) riding a Harley through a neon-lit city
centre at night and duly dubbed Motorcycle Boy in the credits.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Knowing full well that I would definitely
enjoy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Leather Jacket</i> just as much as I'd done with the original book, I had the foresight to video-record it
for future re-watchings at home, which was just as well, because I never
remember it being re-screened. Tragically, however, as was so often the case
with all but the highest-quality recordable blank videocassettes available back
then, the picture quality of my precious recording of it diminished with
repeated viewings down through the years.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Imagine my surprise but delight, then,
when just over a year ago I discovered not only that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Leather Jacket</i>
had actually been released as an official
sell-thru video but also that there was a single example of it listed at
that very same time on ebay, on a Buy It Now basis. So that's what
I did, and just a few days later I was able to watch and enjoy it
in its original top-quality viewing state all over again. But that's
still not
all.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Just a few miles from where I live in the
West Midlands, England, is the prestigious Walsall Leather Museum, devoted to
the history of the town of Walsall's long-established leather trade and
manufacturing, and during summer 1993 I learnt from a friend who worked there
that they were planning to stage a temporary public exhibition devoted
exclusively to the BLJ!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1hHQDGGZyXvaUGzYuUkGWStfqoOXholgy9pvyk-NNVMpRQKsUirIWcg8vsW76iwgoPFCtMFwl_rA6iJrdDOvTxLcXFqYd74IuHnwrg7kSc4lVqz4zUq4So0wNbidDlS56TcmUghyuDRJpREPE88e0h-zqLkBxlXd4Z1NVmJtRu9XoypOhTPeDmX0h/s3356/Photocopy%20of%20poster%20for%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20Exhibition,%20autumn%201993.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3356" data-original-width="2423" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1hHQDGGZyXvaUGzYuUkGWStfqoOXholgy9pvyk-NNVMpRQKsUirIWcg8vsW76iwgoPFCtMFwl_rA6iJrdDOvTxLcXFqYd74IuHnwrg7kSc4lVqz4zUq4So0wNbidDlS56TcmUghyuDRJpREPE88e0h-zqLkBxlXd4Z1NVmJtRu9XoypOhTPeDmX0h/s320/Photocopy%20of%20poster%20for%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20Exhibition,%20autumn%201993.jpg" width="231" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></b></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Mini-poster
produced by the Walsall Leather Museum advertising its BLJ Exhibition (©
Walsall Leather Museum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use
basis for educational/review purposes only)</span></b></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">As a local biker who had painstakingly
customized several of my motorbike BLJs in the classic 1960s rocker/greaser
style (having been inspired to do so after seeing and admiring original examples worn by various bikers featured in clips </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">from <i>Black Leather Jacket </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">of
London's famous biker/rocker-associated Ace Cafe and 59 Club during
that decade), it occurred to me that the Museum may perhaps be
interested in including
one of them in their exhibition as a representation of that particular
BLJ
genre. So one afternoon shortly after learning about their plans, I rode
there
on my motorbike wearing one of them – and was delighted when they were
indeed
very keen to exhibit it!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVerQ9McDPLYROztsTZ1_kItLUuael3ak2Dc_jhzBCNzCr0gDieR3QxkUQ8kE3X9O2EzPV6a4tk8U037cKfmLlYNEtNoBLKARDTVi_FYi5H8ghRzZbOrUH_iLVX16pWEhqJ2hiSSHsldpBSugV3zieofmHT2EA1IfktaZ25SMfk3AyuFsxxft4pnGx/s1779/My%20invitation%20to%20preview%20of%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20Exhibition,%20autumn%201993.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1188" data-original-width="1779" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVerQ9McDPLYROztsTZ1_kItLUuael3ak2Dc_jhzBCNzCr0gDieR3QxkUQ8kE3X9O2EzPV6a4tk8U037cKfmLlYNEtNoBLKARDTVi_FYi5H8ghRzZbOrUH_iLVX16pWEhqJ2hiSSHsldpBSugV3zieofmHT2EA1IfktaZ25SMfk3AyuFsxxft4pnGx/s320/My%20invitation%20to%20preview%20of%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20Exhibition,%20autumn%201993.jpg" width="320" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></b></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">My
official invitation to the preview of the Walsall Leather Museum's BLJ
Exhibition in autumn 1993 (© Dr Karl Shuker/Walsall Leather Museum – reproduced
here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review
purposes only)</span></b></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The Walsall Leather Museum's 'The Black Leather Jacket' Exhibition
ran from 4 September to 14 November 1993 inclusive, but I was invited with
other contributors to an exclusive preview, and when I turned up on my motorbike
(wearing a different BLJ), there on display in a tall glass showcase was my
very own jacket, fully labeled and fully visible from all angles. If pride is a
sin, then I sinned very extensively that day!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaf2vX-ZLuAEPLcfBSKyGv5MpHZR2DvvyL5fTUL4BT8_ewbnj4iWtlFCsXo2gPccamAofAPIbW7WoHbM2cmiVbzIoDTMLxtymmbp3MRCWJXZRILjUBsqLRWiPtC_bf6FHudhdutI7zkC3Hy9EpHkWnE7RvmLtT8KfJFYB0WJdb0Sl6ESp-P0Loynvn/s2663/Photo%20of%20me%20included%20in%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20Exhibition,%20autumn%201993.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2663" data-original-width="1756" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaf2vX-ZLuAEPLcfBSKyGv5MpHZR2DvvyL5fTUL4BT8_ewbnj4iWtlFCsXo2gPccamAofAPIbW7WoHbM2cmiVbzIoDTMLxtymmbp3MRCWJXZRILjUBsqLRWiPtC_bf6FHudhdutI7zkC3Hy9EpHkWnE7RvmLtT8KfJFYB0WJdb0Sl6ESp-P0Loynvn/s320/Photo%20of%20me%20included%20in%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20Exhibition,%20autumn%201993.jpg" width="211" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></b></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The
official b/w photograph of me wearing my exhibited BLJ that appeared alongside
my jacket's showcase in the Walsall Leather Museum's BLJ Exhibition, and which
also appeared in Mike Phillips's article 'Black Art', on the subject of the BLJ,
published by the British monthly motorbike magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bike</i> in its October 1993 issue (© Walsall Leather Museum
(photographer unknown to me) – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial
Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)</span></b></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Moreover, perhaps because of how
eyecatching it was, bristling all over with badges, studs, chains, and above
all else its full official Easyriders back patch, it was my BLJ that attracted
much of the media attention relating to the Museum's BLJ Exhibition.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObpAzA79LYkj0zOax8etcaJz8KUN14hsiwOKbdVJdbgitiE5qk-AFFPeDFWTmwTcOnLjtCRI9csqRSIINd_qrPf8kKi_7cAIxrl-e8bIFHoOoIo1ZKa2n8d8utq4isH5rEYuMHnUIfI6HWsdEAwGG_3Nfxi8IywBAJVhv0PGpUbMScIlffLP4voTJ/s3396/Observer,%20The,%20London,%205%20September%201993%20re%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20Exhibition,%20autumn%201993%20and%20picturing%20my%20jacket.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="3396" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObpAzA79LYkj0zOax8etcaJz8KUN14hsiwOKbdVJdbgitiE5qk-AFFPeDFWTmwTcOnLjtCRI9csqRSIINd_qrPf8kKi_7cAIxrl-e8bIFHoOoIo1ZKa2n8d8utq4isH5rEYuMHnUIfI6HWsdEAwGG_3Nfxi8IywBAJVhv0PGpUbMScIlffLP4voTJ/s320/Observer,%20The,%20London,%205%20September%201993%20re%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20Exhibition,%20autumn%201993%20and%20picturing%20my%20jacket.jpg" width="320" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></b></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Report
from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Observer</i> (London) for 5
September 1993 re the Walsall Leather Museum's BLJ Exhibition, and including a
close-up photo of my exhibited BLJ </span></b></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">–</span></b></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> please click to enlarge for reading purposes (© <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
</i>Observer/Guardian Media Group – reproduced here on a strictly
non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)</span></b></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">It was pictured in a number of newspaper
reports (including one by none other than London's eminent weekly broadsheet <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Observer</i>,
the world's oldest Sunday
newspaper, founded in 1791, and in which I am referred to as "a local
biker with a vivid sense of design" - love it!), as well as in a special
BLJ article entitled 'Black
Art' authored by motorbike journalist Mike Phillips and published in the
October 1993 issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bike</i>, Britain's
best-selling motorbike magazine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"></span></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZ3w75uewitx2agn24rh1OJHeLlMZPnCrssUylstx8OMqlZn58Dt87tyEM9fPq1G1oB4IaJjzqndAkqMyelEGhXlXlVktX32A5hXsOEeOigbTgRv6uID3iiMvyvCyzSzkGf44P91NVItFyW_S2aHb0WaEoh64HC2RkSh5ye2lP7_hxmSU8wjNO3Iz/s1800/Birmingham%20Post,%2029%20September%201993,%20pp4-5,%20re%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20exhibition.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZ3w75uewitx2agn24rh1OJHeLlMZPnCrssUylstx8OMqlZn58Dt87tyEM9fPq1G1oB4IaJjzqndAkqMyelEGhXlXlVktX32A5hXsOEeOigbTgRv6uID3iiMvyvCyzSzkGf44P91NVItFyW_S2aHb0WaEoh64HC2RkSh5ye2lP7_hxmSU8wjNO3Iz/s320/Birmingham%20Post,%2029%20September%201993,%20pp4-5,%20re%20Walsall%20Leather%20Museum's%20BLJ%20exhibition.jpg" width="320" /></a></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></span></b></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Birmingham Post</span></span></b></i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> newspaper's 2-page magazine supplement report for 29 September 1993
re the Walsall Leather Museum's BLJ Exhibition, which includes a name-check and
quote from me (arrowed in red) on p.4 and a picture of a model wearing my
exhibited BLJ on p. 5 </span></b></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">–</span></b></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> please click to enlarge for reading purposes </span></b></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">(© <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Birmingham </span>Post</i>/Reach
plc – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only)</span></b></span></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">My exhibited BLJ also featured in two
local TV news reports, and in one of them it was even worn by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Midlands Today</i> presenter Richard Ulridge
while sitting astride a motorbike and then riding off on it, with my BLJ's
Easyrider back patch fully displayed (click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Rmn9Q0ojQ"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> to view both of these TV news
reports – and my BLJ! – on YouTube).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEVCaAx1Ikl56yxgYN3T_2GW54koLsAWqefNUMnZgF0uqnUMWwrbn7mXtCErOJv355b285jWTfBLFG_HMGkTWXddZmBFuIf4G8iobIPkRstAZhYJ5Lr5IBfl9CTowABn1FP3UvivfOnoULhtho0uv5-Tbv8f6ZJm8hC1wqbWVcv0Xc32_z5vqUF4C/s803/Screenshot%20from%20autumn%201993%20news%20report%20featuring%20my%20leather%20jacket.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="803" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEVCaAx1Ikl56yxgYN3T_2GW54koLsAWqefNUMnZgF0uqnUMWwrbn7mXtCErOJv355b285jWTfBLFG_HMGkTWXddZmBFuIf4G8iobIPkRstAZhYJ5Lr5IBfl9CTowABn1FP3UvivfOnoULhtho0uv5-Tbv8f6ZJm8hC1wqbWVcv0Xc32_z5vqUF4C/s320/Screenshot%20from%20autumn%201993%20news%20report%20featuring%20my%20leather%20jacket.JPG" width="320" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></b></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Photo-still
from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Midlands Today</i> news report
re the Walsall Leather Museum's BLJ Exhibition depicting presenter Richard
Ulridge wearing my exhibited BLJ (© Dr Karl Shuker/<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Midlands Today</i> – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair
Use basis for educational/review purposes only)</span></b></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">If you'd like to watch <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Leather Jacket</i>, most of it can
currently be viewed free of charge on YouTube, where it has been uploaded in
nine parts (but, oddly, Part 3 is seemingly missing), though the resolution
quality is not great. Click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VpJkzB6lZU"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> to
begin viewing with Part 1.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Finally: </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">To view a complete chronological listing of all of
my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film/TV reviews and articles (each one
instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click <a href="https://shukerinmovieland.blogspot.com/p/my-shuker-in-movieland-review.html"><b><span style="color: red;">HERE</span></b></a>, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">and please click <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/"><b><span style="color: red; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;">HERE</span></b></a> to view a
complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOB3YQxDNaOacigMKV6xERLGBf_26TOk8OiXSpdkTSYYOvsYWE-LUtmA_iq4TyMot4iTM98jOkJ-Nc2KE2t8GJDKBH-ls2Yt0JzvLd-gI-7D-QrPTfX1ysLlUUnnHQruLc_MKmmf0t9IMLPKeE5HIUkv7CFmov_9uW85sdG_c7Pq0aFnN2IMu1ELTL/s820/Screenshot%20from%20autumn%201993%20news%20report%20featuring%20my%20leather%20jacket,%20Easyrider%20back%20patch%20view.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="820" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOB3YQxDNaOacigMKV6xERLGBf_26TOk8OiXSpdkTSYYOvsYWE-LUtmA_iq4TyMot4iTM98jOkJ-Nc2KE2t8GJDKBH-ls2Yt0JzvLd-gI-7D-QrPTfX1ysLlUUnnHQruLc_MKmmf0t9IMLPKeE5HIUkv7CFmov_9uW85sdG_c7Pq0aFnN2IMu1ELTL/s320/Screenshot%20from%20autumn%201993%20news%20report%20featuring%20my%20leather%20jacket,%20Easyrider%20back%20patch%20view.JPG" width="320" /></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></b></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: magenta; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Photo-still
from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Midlands Today</i> news report
re the Walsall Leather Museum's BLJ Exhibition depicting the back of my
exhibited BLJ as worn by presenter Richard Ulridge (© Dr Karl Shuker/<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Midlands Today</i> – reproduced here on a
strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)</span></b></b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></p>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-25871979222285739112017-09-06T03:00:00.000+01:002017-11-04T00:03:10.546+00:00DREAMCHILD AND VAMPIRES AND HOBBITS, OH MY! - (MINI-)REVIEWING THE MOVIES: SOME THOUGHTS UPON A SELECTION OF RECENTLY-WATCHED FANTASY FILMS<!--[if gte mso 10]>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dGZ3e10w2XQ/Wa9MDeCizZI/AAAAAAAAOXM/8UiJlJ9Kpz4fkypPJh0EdF9sF1x84uMuACLcBGAs/s1600/Orfeo%2BNegro%252C%2BBlack%2BOrpheus%252C%2B1959.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1136" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dGZ3e10w2XQ/Wa9MDeCizZI/AAAAAAAAOXM/8UiJlJ9Kpz4fkypPJh0EdF9sF1x84uMuACLcBGAs/s320/Orfeo%2BNegro%252C%2BBlack%2BOrpheus%252C%2B1959.jpg" width="227" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Orfeo Negro' – Brazilian publicity
poster for 'Black Orpheus' (© Marcel Camus/Tupan Filmes/Lopert Pictures)</span></b></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Over Christmas last year and the early part of the
New Year, I fulfilled a longstanding promise to myself and watched all eight of
the Harry Potter movies, one a night for eight consecutive nights, on DVD, and I
thoroughly enjoyed all of them – which has in turn inspired me to indulge periodically
in further film-watching binges ever since.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nsVFHVMMuFg/Wa9MT5OgJnI/AAAAAAAAOXQ/KdvwjzRPDIMcNCbPiXxfCTFv0MVAnoHRQCLcBGAs/s1600/Harry-potter-films.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="851" data-original-width="1209" height="225" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nsVFHVMMuFg/Wa9MT5OgJnI/AAAAAAAAOXQ/KdvwjzRPDIMcNCbPiXxfCTFv0MVAnoHRQCLcBGAs/s320/Harry-potter-films.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">The eight 'Harry Potter' films on DVD
(© Chris Columbus/Alfonso Cuarón/Mike Newell/David Yates/Heyday Films/1492
Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures)</span></b></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Consequently, during the past few months I've
finally succeeded in watching a number of fantasy-themed movies that I've long wanted to see
but had somehow never got around to doing so, plus a few new releases. I've
posted my own mini-reviews of some of them on my Facebook wall, containing my
thoughts, opinions, various related if somewhat random facts, and other allied
ephemera. As these generally have attracted quite a degree of interest from FB
friends and other movie fans, it seemed worthwhile gathering them together and
preserving them in my Eclectarium. So that's what I've done, and here they are.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">NB</span></b><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> - All
illustrations included in this blog article are copyrighted to the respective
directors, film studios, and distributors that released and distributed them,
and are included here on a strictly educational, non-commercial Fair Use basis
for review purposes only.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span class="textexposedshow"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">22 March 2017: 'KONG
– SKULL ISLAND'</span></b></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1S9_vpH9b9k/Wa9S83ZOvEI/AAAAAAAAOYs/JGxLycSxsVovr931QoAzXL-OPkws_VLhQCLcBGAs/s1600/Kong%2BSkull%2BIsland%252C%2B2%2Bpix.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1135" data-original-width="1162" height="312" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1S9_vpH9b9k/Wa9S83ZOvEI/AAAAAAAAOYs/JGxLycSxsVovr931QoAzXL-OPkws_VLhQCLcBGAs/s320/Kong%2BSkull%2BIsland%252C%2B2%2Bpix.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Kong: Skull Island' publicity poster
and film still (© Jordan Vogt-Roberts/Legendary Pictures/Tencent
Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures)</span></b></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Another cinema visit today, this time to see 'Kong:
Skull Island'. Whereas I felt that Tom Hiddleston (playing a British SAS captain leading the expeditionary party to Skull Island) had been unfairly panned by
the critics, the monsters were zoologically implausible to say the least (but
in any film featuring a gorilla the height of the Empire State Building or
thereabouts, this fact was never going to be unexpected), yet thoroughly
entertaining nonetheless.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia";">My
own particular favourite - other than Kong himself, naturally - was
what initially appeared to be a fair-sized algae-covered hillock
mysteriously rising above the water surface of a huge lake but which
soon revealed itself to be the humped back of a truly humungous amphibious
yak-like ungulate - a veritable bovine behemoth, in fact, but which proceeded
to stare impassively at an armed-and-ready Hiddleston with cud-chewing
indifference. I've been (semi-)reliably informed that it is officially known as a sker buffalo.</span><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8h5Jqw5RKeA/WbAIKqJMJEI/AAAAAAAAOZU/09Ed7uYoc64iMCQQF1Z4WQbSg_fhOFyhQCLcBGAs/s1600/Giant%2Bskullcrawler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="1280" height="134" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8h5Jqw5RKeA/WbAIKqJMJEI/AAAAAAAAOZU/09Ed7uYoc64iMCQQF1Z4WQbSg_fhOFyhQCLcBGAs/s320/Giant%2Bskullcrawler.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: magenta;"><b>The giant Kong-sized skullcrawler </b></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: magenta;"><b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">(© Jordan Vogt-Roberts/Legendary Pictures/Tencent
Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures)</span></b></b></span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia";">As
expected in all the best monster movies, there were the obligatory
giant invertebrates (squid-octopus combo critter, spider, parasitised stick insect), mostly lurking unseen for much of their screen time
but with murderous intent aplenty, and also some very weird giant flying beasts called leafwings. However, Skull Island's principal monstrous
villains this time round were a grotesque two-limbed reptilian lineage known as
skullcrawlers that lived underground but surfaced periodically to wreak
havoc and horror upon their human victims, with the skullcrawler numero
uno being a colossal monster of comparable proportions to Kong himself.
Morphologically, the skullcrawlers were truly bizarre, looking something
like what might be the macabre outcome if ever a gigantic tatzelworm
(ask a cryptozoologist what that is) or a ginormous lindorm (ditto a
dracontologist) and an immense wingless pterodactyl ever got it together
- but without these latter beasts' charm!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The film purists have scoffed, are scoffing, and no
doubt will continue to scoff, but I never go to monster movies to expect
zoological reality, I go for awesome special effects and escapism, and this
film more than delivered on both counts for me. Click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44LdLqgOpjo"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> to check out this action-packed trailer, and see
for yourself. As for the plot: look, guys, this is a monster movie - you weren't really expecting a plot, surely??</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">24 March 2017 – 'LORD OF THE RINGS' TRILOGY (2001,
2002, 2003)</span></b></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uZAFlKGuuPQ/Wa9MyS2gBrI/AAAAAAAAOXU/suMMFarZcf4Ccsh_sySlTY1Atw0m5fpfQCLcBGAs/s1600/Extended%2BLOTR%2BDVDs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="236" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uZAFlKGuuPQ/Wa9MyS2gBrI/AAAAAAAAOXU/suMMFarZcf4Ccsh_sySlTY1Atw0m5fpfQCLcBGAs/s320/Extended%2BLOTR%2BDVDs.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">The extended DVDs of the 'LOTR'
trilogy (© Peter Jackson/WingNut Films/The Saul Zaentz Company/New Line Cinema)</span></b></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I spent last weekend box-setting (lo, a new verb is
created!) all 12 hours or so of the extended DVD versions of Peter Jackson's 'Lord
of the Rings' film trilogy.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I loved the books and the three 3-hr
cinematic-release versions of the films, but the extended DVDs each contain
about an extra hour's worth of footage that helped to fill in a few notable
gaps in the cinema versions, most notably showing what happened to Saruman
(played by Christopher Lee) after the ents flooded Isen<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">gard and marooned him
there.</span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">In the cinema version,
that incident happened at the end of 'The Two Towers', and nothing more was
seen of him afterwards. But in the extended version of 'The Return of the King',
Saruman is seen still at Isengard but treating his lackey Wormtongue badly
there, who responds by stabbing him to death in the back. Why this pivotal
scene was cut from the cinema version of 'The Return of the King' (and hence
meaning that Lee never appeared in this third film at all), I shall never
understand (true, it deviates from the books, in which they are in the Shire
when Wormtongue stabs him, but at least it provides a resolution of sorts that
was absent from the cinema version).</span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Anyway, glad to have
seen these at long last. Next on my movies to-do list: box-setting the three
extended DVD versions of 'The Hobbit'!</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">7 April 2017 – 'MALEFICENT' (2014)</span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Maleficent' publicity poster (© Robert
Stromberg/Walt Disney Pictures/Roth Films/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Many months ago, knowing that I've always been a
massive Disney fan, a friend lent me her DVD of the 2014 movie 'Maleficent',
which tonight I've finally got around to watching. It's the Disney live-action
reworking of their earlier animated feature film version of the classic Charles
Perrault fairy tale 'La Belle au Bois Dormant' ('Sleeping Beauty').</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">In 'Maleficent', the eponymous fairy is evil only
because she had previously been grievously betrayed by her human lover (father
of the<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> future
Sleeping Beauty, Princess Aurora), so she is actually misunderstood rather than
malevolent. Yeah, right. The special effects are spectacular, as you would
imagine from Disney's CGI department, but there is only so much reworking
possible with anything, and I'm sorry but in the classic tale, and especially
in Disney's original animated film, Maleficent is the absolute embodiment of
evil. There is not a glimmer, not the slightest scintilla, of goodness in her,
so for me it was impossible to suspend disbelief and pretend that she's really
not that bad after all.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Having said that, it
was an enjoyable romp, with Angelina Jolie playing Maleficent superbly
(especially in her more sinister scenes), wonderful visuals, and a most
unexpected twist on who actually wakes Sleeping Beauty with true love's kiss.
Oh yes, almost forgot: a beautiful Tchaikovsky-based song and the vocals of
Lana Del Rey really don't go together, honestly - just sayin'...</span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Anyway, if you haven't
seen the movie, click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-XO4XiRop0"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> to view an eye-popping
trailer for 'Maleficent'.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">15 April 2017 – 'DREAMCHILD' (1985)</span></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HjDKhrTlobY/Wa9NV6AAESI/AAAAAAAAOXg/U-Mn0eRUunAGksaJ0lqiHNC-187VzmKoACLcBGAs/s1600/Dreamchild%2Bin%2BVHS%2Bvideo%2Bformat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="856" data-original-width="1200" height="228" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HjDKhrTlobY/Wa9NV6AAESI/AAAAAAAAOXg/U-Mn0eRUunAGksaJ0lqiHNC-187VzmKoACLcBGAs/s320/Dreamchild%2Bin%2BVHS%2Bvideo%2Bformat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Dreamchild' in VHS videocassette
format (© Gavin Millar/PFH Films)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Last night I watched 'Dreamchild' on DVD, a classic
1985 British movie giving a fictionalised version of how the original Alice who
inspired Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the
Looking Glass' books visited New York when she was 80 years old to receive an
honorary degree from Columbia University in celebration of the 100th anniversary
of Carroll's birth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">That did happen, but in the film it is interspersed
throughout with flashbacks to when she was a c<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">hild and also with several fantasy sequences in
which Alice both as a girl and as the elderly lady (the latter played superbly
by Coral Browne) encounters some of the Wonderland characters.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">The characters are
played by life-sized human-containing puppets produced by muppet creator Jim
Henson's Creatures Workshop, but if you're expecting cute Kermit/Fozzie
Bear-type creatures, think again! Instead, they're grotesque, sometimes
hideous, monstrous entities that look, speak, and behave as if they've escaped
from a Stephen King nightmare, most notably the March Hare and the (very) Mad
Hatter.</span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Disney this ain't,
that's for sure! But bearing in mind that the film was written by Dennis
Potter, perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised by that.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">16 April 2017: 'SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES'
(1983)</span></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6FpKYhnc_hs/Wa9O69jDDCI/AAAAAAAAOXs/nlaYegEbs7Uz30Do4f860VEITD5ddREfwCLcBGAs/s1600/Something%2BWicked%2BThis%2BWay%2BComes%2Bpublicity%2Bposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="381" data-original-width="486" height="250" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6FpKYhnc_hs/Wa9O69jDDCI/AAAAAAAAOXs/nlaYegEbs7Uz30Do4f860VEITD5ddREfwCLcBGAs/s320/Something%2BWicked%2BThis%2BWay%2BComes%2Bpublicity%2Bposter.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Something Wicked</span></span> This Way Comes'
publicity poster (© Jack Clayton/Walt Disney Productions/Buena Vista
Distribution)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Back in my student days I devoured sci-fi and
fantasy novels in innumerable quantity, and among my favourites was Ray
Bradbury's mesmerising '<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Something Wicked</span></span> This Way Comes'. Now, after years of
seeking it, courtesy of YouTube I've finally succeeded in viewing the
sumptuously sinister, consummately creepy Disney film version (inexplicably all
but unobtainable in Britain either on VHS videocassette or on DVD), and it was
well worth the wait.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Jonathan Pryce is a superbly malign Mr Dark,
carnival owner and leader of the Autumn People who grant greedy or unsuspecting
visitors to the carnival all that they desire, then feed upon the fear and
misery that their desires inevitably generate. Click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up7KHbJTmoo"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> for a taster of what to expect.</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">27 April 2017 – 'EVENING PRIMROSE' (1966)</span></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7HfhgebTBJo/Wa9PJdfh6dI/AAAAAAAAOXw/d8cWavheAv8_9aU_mhlF7s80XQws8uCawCLcBGAs/s1600/Evening%2BPrimrose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="354" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7HfhgebTBJo/Wa9PJdfh6dI/AAAAAAAAOXw/d8cWavheAv8_9aU_mhlF7s80XQws8uCawCLcBGAs/s320/Evening%2BPrimrose.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Evening Primrose' on DVD (© ABC TV
channel)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Not a movie this time but instead a one-off TV
special. Just tracked down another long sought-after fantasy rarity. Ever since
hearing Sarah Brightman singing the haunting song 'I Remember Sky' on her album
'The Songs That Got Away', I have always hoped that one day I'd get to see the
obscure 1960s made-for-American-TV musical 'Evening Primrose', by Stephen
Sondheim, from which this song originated, because it had such a weird
storyline, yet had never been made available commercially (a DVD of it now exists) and never shown at
all in Britain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">A group of peopl<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">e secretly live their entire lives inside a large
department store, remaining hidden from all customers and staff during the day
by posing as store mannequins, coming alive as it were only at night when the
store is closed. None is ever allowed to leave this enclosed community in case
they betray its presence in the store, and if anyone ever does try to escape
they are visited by the fearful 'Dark Men' who transform them into mannequins
permanently. One day, a very disillusioned-with-life poet (played by Anthony
Perkins of 'Psycho' fame) decides to stay in the store after hours, whereupon
he unexpectedly meets the closeted community, who accept him into it, but he
also falls in love with one of its members, a young woman who has been there
ever since she was accidentally separated from her mother while shopping there
aged just 6 years old. She sings 'I Remember Sky' to the poet, in which she
recalls memories from her life in the outside world, before she became part of
the store's secret community all those years ago. The poet and the young woman
plan to escape, to make a life for themselves outside the store and in the real
world, but what happens? Do they succeed?</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Now, like I've done,
you can find out for yourself, by clicking <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enFR2UVldhA"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> to watch this
fascinating 51-min-long curiosity, originally screened as part of ABC's <i>ABC
Stage 67</i> anthology TV series, but currently accessible online courtesy of
YouTube (it is in English but has Spanish subtitles). There is also an
excellent webpage devoted to 'Evening Primrose' <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/cultoddities/home/tv/evening-primrose"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">29 April 2017 – 'KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN' (1985)</span></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gfvazTVtQzo/Wa9Pj1G1MkI/AAAAAAAAOX0/1oZrjhhV0nE7If0lDQnQIXiEo0jbU_2dwCLcBGAs/s1600/Kiss%2Bof%2Bthe%2BSpider%2BWoman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gfvazTVtQzo/Wa9Pj1G1MkI/AAAAAAAAOX0/1oZrjhhV0nE7If0lDQnQIXiEo0jbU_2dwCLcBGAs/s320/Kiss%2Bof%2Bthe%2BSpider%2BWoman.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Kiss of the Spider Woman' publicity
poster (© Héctor Babenco/Embrafilme/Island Alive/FilmsDallas Pictures)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Finally watched another film that I've long
promised myself I would – 'Kiss of the Spider Woman', a joint
Brazilian-American production released in 1985, starring William Hurt (who won
the Best Actor Oscar for his role in it) and Raul Julia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Not a super-hero(ine) movie, lol, but instead a
somewhat stark, prison-based, politically-themed film and hence not the genres
that normally appeal to me, but its decidedly strange, surrealistic nature,
interspersing reality with fantasy, d<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">rew me in and maintained my interest throughout.
Pity the eponymous spider woman played such a very minor part in it, but it's
certainly a one-off film wholly unlike anything that I've seen before.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">It would be interesting
to see the musical based upon it, and learn how such a singular, decidedly dark
film (featuring as it does the torturing of political prisoners) has been
transformed into a stage show with songs.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">7 May 2017: 'BLACK ORPHEUS' (1959)</span></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QKKFHqcu_ww/Wa9PzjRePpI/AAAAAAAAOX4/eFn-ptqLmQY1ZEs_2u-qH0NEgpt6ej5owCLcBGAs/s1600/Black%2BOrpheus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1133" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QKKFHqcu_ww/Wa9PzjRePpI/AAAAAAAAOX4/eFn-ptqLmQY1ZEs_2u-qH0NEgpt6ej5owCLcBGAs/s320/Black%2BOrpheus.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Black Orpheus' English publicity
poster (© Marcel Camus/Tupan Filmes/Lopert Pictures)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Friday just gone was a day from hell for me (major
car trouble - don't ask!!), so to chill out and put it all out of my mind, I
devoted Friday night/Saturday morning to watching a very special film that I'd
wanted to see for many years – '<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Black Orpheus'</span></span> ('Orfeo Negro'), the
celebrated, award-winning Brazil-set musical from 1959 offering a modern-day
interpretation of a classic story from Greek mythology, <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Orpheus</span></span> and
Eurydice. It is in Portuguese, but a few days ago I was able to <span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">purchase an official
DVD of it dubbed into English and also with English subtitles. So I sat back
and watched it twice, once the English-dubbed version, and once the original
Portuguese version with English subtitles.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">A fascinating film,
blending the wild samba-driven gaiety of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro with life
in one of this city's famous favelas (much of the movie was filmed in a real
favela), full of melodic music and colourful dance, with eerie supernatural
overtones as Death stalks and ultimately claims Eurydice, followed by </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Orpheus</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">'s vain attempt to win
her back by participating in a Macumba ritual taking place within an
Underworld-redolent setting complete with a ferocious guard-dog called Cerberus
(albeit only one-headed here).</span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">In the English-dubbed
version, the movie's most famous song 'Manhã de Carnaval' is sung in direct
English translation from the original Portuguese, and was the first time that
I'd ever heard these beautiful lyrics, as the two more famous English versions
('Carnival', and 'A Day in the Life of a Fool') are not translations from the
Portuguese version but are entirely new lyrics, so that was a very pleasant
surprise.</span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">As a longstanding fan
of musicals and Greek mythology and as someone fortunate enough to have visited
Rio, I thoroughly enjoyed this most unusual but spellbinding film, and can
readily recommend it to anyone seeking something very different and totally
captivating in the world of movies.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span class="textexposedshow"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">9 May 2017: 'THE MONKEY
KING 2 – JOURNEY TO THE WEST' (2016)</span></b></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ISWYFUuYpDc/Wa9TNmi4xaI/AAAAAAAAOYw/UBfMrNpwJFoqJZvxs0aKuJFDBMY1UA0nACLcBGAs/s1600/Monkey%2BKing%2B2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="888" height="136" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ISWYFUuYpDc/Wa9TNmi4xaI/AAAAAAAAOYw/UBfMrNpwJFoqJZvxs0aKuJFDBMY1UA0nACLcBGAs/s320/Monkey%2BKing%2B2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'The Monkey King 2: Journey to the
West' publicity poster (© Cheang Pou-soi/Filmko Entertainment)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I've just watched the spectacular 2016-released
Chinese fantasy movie 'The Monkey King 2: Journey to the West', with English
subtitles. The special-effects were truly out of this world - not in any of the
countless sci-fi/fantasy films that I've viewed down through the years have I
ever seen anything to compare to them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The monsters are as varied as they are numerous - everything from a pair of bloodthirsty aerial mermaids, an Oriental mothman lookalike, and a colossal white tiger that effortlessly defies the laws of gravity when attacking our heroes, to skeletal wraiths, a pig demon, an immense Eastern dragon, and, as the film's villainess, a mercilessly evil female demon whose aerobatics, shape-shifting abilities, and chilling yet mesmerising malevolence renders the likes of Maleficent, Cruella De Vil, and Ursula the sea-witch mere toe-dippers in the deep, dark waters of evil.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">And if you don't believe me, click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygTmV3K57_8"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a><b><span style="color: red;">
</span></b>for a taster of what to expect from this stupendous film - there's
certainly never a dull moment in Oriental mythology, that's for sure!</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span class="textexposedshow"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">27 May 2017:
'INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE' (1994)</span></b></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Interview With The Vampire' film still (© Neil
Jordan/Geffen Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures)</span></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Weather too sultry for sleep tonight, so exactly 30
years after reading <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">the</span></span>
original Anne Rice novel it seemed to me to be <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">the</span></span> ideal night for finally watching <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">the</span></span> 1994
Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise movie version of '<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Interview With The Vampire'</span></span> - so I
did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Although I much prefer <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">the</span></span> novel (Rice's flowery to <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">the</span></span> point
of decidedly mauve if not entirely purple prose in places may not suit everyone
but in relation to its subject matter I enjoyed it), <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">the</span></span> film certainly holds its own -
thou<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">gh my
all-time favourite </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">vampire</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> movie remains '</span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">The</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> Lost Boys'
(overlapping as it does </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">the</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> rock'n'roll and biker genres guarantees that!).</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Tom Cruise and horror
was something new for me, but his Lestat was undeniably and wickedly malign,
and a young Kirsten Dunst as </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">the</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">vampire</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> world's answer to Shirley Temple was chillingly
good too. Brad, conversely, seemed rather less enamoured by it all, which
accords well </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">with</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> media accounts claiming that he was not overly enthusiastic about his
role. And so, another long-promised-to-watch movie duly watched!</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span class="textexposedshow"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">28 May 2017:
'NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE' (1979)</span></b></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Nosferatu</span></span> the Vampyre' publicity
poster (© Werner Herzog/</span></b><b><span lang="EN" style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Werner Herzog Filmproduktion/20<sup>th</sup>
Century Fox)</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";"></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I've just expanded my vampire movie night of last
night into a double vampire movie night double-bill, because tonight I've just
watched the 1979 film '<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Nosferatu</span></span>
the Vampyre' - Werner Herzog's art-house remake of the classic 1922 silent
movie '<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Nosferatu'</span></span>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">As I expected from an art-house film, it's visually
stunning, but with the very notable exception of Klaus Kinski, who is quite
mesmerising in the title role of <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Nosferatu</span></span> (i.e. Count Dracula), the
acting is rather stilted and la<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">boured, and I confess to being somewhat mystified
by certain aspects of the plot. In particular, am I correct (or not) in
assuming that the rats and the plague are merely a cover created by Dracula to
conceal his vampiric activity? But if so, surely the death count is too high for
even the most bloodthirsty vampire to achieve? Conversely, if this is all a
misapprehension on my part, and the spreading of the plague via the
rats was truly real and not a subterfuge, what was the point of it?</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Also, the physical
appearance of </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Nosferatu</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">/Dracula is so grotesque, so unearthly, that how
could Jonathan Harker not realise instantly that he was indeed a member of the
undead rather than merely a castle-bound eccentric?? Such plot-holes aside,
however, and suspending disbelief in relation to them, it is unquestionably a fascinating
film, and yet another long-awaited one finally ticked off my list.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span class="textexposedshow"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">30 May 2017: 'PAN'S
LABYRINTH' (2006)</span></b></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Pan's Labyrinth' publicity poster
and film still (© Guillermo del Toro/Telecinco Cinema/Estudios Picasso/Tequila
Gang/Esperanto Filmoj/Sententia Entertainment/Warner Bros)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I've just watched the Spanish fantasy/war movie '<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Pan's Labyrinth</span></span>',
directed by the highly-acclaimed Guillermo del Toro, with English subtitles,
and I can honestly say that it has been some time indeed since I have been so
emotionally involved in a film, but this one incorporated so effectively and so
evocatively such a diversity of universal themes that it would have been impossible
for me not to have been.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">It contained strange magic and dark fantasy (including a huge
Pan-like faun, shape-<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">shifting
fairies that reminded me of Ray Harryhausen's winged homunculi in 'The Golden
Voyage of Sinbad', a gigantic subterranean toad, a screaming writhing mandrake
root, and a hideous child-murdering humanoid monster known as the Pale Man);
beauty and barbarism; the futility of warfare (it features bloody aggression in
1944 Spain between Franco-supporting Falangist nationalists and a
forest-protected outpost of Maquis republican guerilla rebels); self-sacrifice
for the greater good of others; plus haunting music; and profound sadness, so
much profound, pervasive sadness (as you'd expect, the traumatic scene in which
the young heroine's mother died is one that I could scarcely even look up at,
let alone watch).</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">But just like the
original, this Pandora's Box also contained hope, sometimes faint but always
flickering, and with that the viewer is ultimately sustained. A spellbinding
masterpiece of a movie, and one whose images and emotions will remain with me,
I'm sure, for a long time to come. Check out this trailer for it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=4Evmr2ZCjWc"><span style="color: red;"><b>here</b></span></a>, and you'll see what I mean.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span class="textexposedshow"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">10 June 2017: 'THE
WICKER MAN' - The Director's Final Cut (1973/2001)</span></b></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'The Wicker Man' – Final Cut
publicity poster (© Robin Hardy/British Lion Films)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Just watched the Director's Final Cut (2001) version
of the cult 1970s British horror movie 'The Wicker Man', containing 15 minutes
of restored footage that had been cut from the original theatre-released
version. Nothing spectacular in that additional footage, but it enhances the
continuity of certain scenes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">It's a fascinating movie, unquestionably, but,
ironically for such a famous horror film, there is a conspicuous lack of horror
until the climactic 10 minutes or so, when all suddenly becomes hideously clear
to the poor deluded police sergeant (played by Edward Woodward) from the
mainland as he witnesses the gigantic Wicker Man awaiting him, in which he is
to be imprisoned and then burnt alive within it as a human sacrifice. The
people, and most especially the Lord (played by Christopher Lee), of the remote
Scottish island of Summerisle, have been playing him for a fool, in every
sense, ever since he arrived there in search of a supposed missing child. There
was no missing child - she was simply the decoy to lure him, because he was the
perfect sacrifice needed by them in their bid to gain the benevolence of the
nature gods and thus procure from them a bountiful fruit crop next year - or at
least, this is what they hope.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Prior to that dramatic scene, however, the film had
played out in a very tongue-in-cheek, nudge-nudge wink-wink manner throughout,
even veering dangerously towards 'Carry On'-style farce on occasions
(particularly those featuring the gorgeous and frequently disrobed Britt Ekland
as the pub landlord's voluptuous daughter, Willow) - but the truly horrifying
Wicker Man scene fully vindicates what would have otherwise been an
outrageously unwarranted 15 certificate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">So, not so much a movie of two halves as one of
9/10ths vs 1/10th, or thereabouts. Nevertheless, it is certainly a unique,
enthralling film, totally compelling throughout, but above all in those scenes
featuring Lee's suavely sinister Lord of this pagan dominion - think a Scottish
Saruman, and you'll get the picture. Highly recommended.</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span class="textexposedshow"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">11 June 2017: 'GUARDIANS
OF THE GALAXY' (2014)</span></b></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Guardians</span></span> of the Galaxy'<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>publicity poster (© James Gunn/Marvel
Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"></span></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I recently watched the original '<span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Guardians</span></span>
of the Galaxy' movie, one of my ever-increasing collection of videos and DVDs
waiting to be viewed, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, not least of all because of
the refreshingly-unstuffy Chris Pratt's engagingly laconic portrayal of the
hero/anti-hero Peter Quill as a would-be (but in reality not always)
ultra-cool, hip dude. Unlike so many po-faced 'what is my motivation?' actors
currently purveying their thespian wares in Hollywood, Prat<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">t never takes himself
too seriously, actually seems to be enjoying himself, and therefore avoids
mirroring his surname, unlike a fair few of his contemporaries whom I could
(but won't) mention here. Unfortunately, the same cannot, I feel, be said of
this film's leading actresses, whose character portrayals were, I felt, way too
portentous, and pretentious (lighten up, ladies, it's only a super-hero film,
it's not Citizen Kane!).</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">As one expects,
nowadays, from any super-hero genre film, the story was ludicrous, but who
watches this kind of film for profound plotting and lyrical depth anyway? What
we want are spectacular special effects, and there were plenty of those
throughout - which leads very neatly to two of my favourite characters, both
CGI-generated. One was a genetically-engineered talking raccoon called Rocket
(voiced by Bradley Cooper), the other a huge sapient tree called Groot (not so
talkative - his entire vocabulary consists of 'I am Groot', albeit enunciated
very effectively in innumerable variations by Vin Diesel).</span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">The soundtrack includes
a wonderful selection of 1970s songs, including two that, inexplicably, were
hitherto new to me (as a 1970s teenager), but which are now massive favourites
of mine – 'Hooked On A Feeling', by Blue Swede, and 'Come And Get Your Love',
by Redbone.</span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">I plan to see '</span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Guardians</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> of the Galazy 2', but
meanwhile, click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_jRQBGKPaA"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> to view my favourite
scene from the original film, introducing to the audience during its opening
credits the all-dancing all-butt-kicking adult Peter Quill, in which Chris
Pratt showcases his character in the delightfully tongue-in-cheek,
devil-may-care manner that continues throughout the movie, and all to Redbone's
afore-mentioned, insanely-catchy 'Come And Get Your Love'. Enjoy it, and, btw,
no small alien carnivorous bipeds were harmed during the making of this scene.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">17-18 June 2017: 'THE HOBBIT' TRILOGY (2012, 2013,
2014)</span></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Teo97RMxgYk/Wa9ROnWfbHI/AAAAAAAAOYQ/ii3dNxeA6Z8eJCNoRnWJ8ozepKnQOSrYQCLcBGAs/s1600/The%2BHobbit%2Btrilogy%252C%2Bextended%2BDVDS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1356" height="141" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Teo97RMxgYk/Wa9ROnWfbHI/AAAAAAAAOYQ/ii3dNxeA6Z8eJCNoRnWJ8ozepKnQOSrYQCLcBGAs/s320/The%2BHobbit%2Btrilogy%252C%2Bextended%2BDVDS.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">The extended DVDs of 'The
Hobbit' trilogy (© Peter Jackson/WingNut Films/New Line Cinema/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Warner
Bros. Pictures)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Heaven help me but I've started ploughing through
the extended DVDs version of 'The Hobbit' trilogy. Only viewed the first
2-hourish DVD of the 2-DVD extended version of 'An Unexpected Journey' so far,
but I can see already that the compelling, close-knit <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Tolkien</span></span>
novel that I read with such pleasure back in my childhood has been turned into
a vastly over-blown, mind-numbingly staggered pseudo-epic, which the original
novel's storyline simply cannot sustain. Ah well, only another five 2-hour DVDs
presumably featuring Martin Freeman's irritatingly-excessive mannerisms of
confusion, fussiness, and displeasure throughout to go, plus nine DVDs of
extras - Lord have mercy upon my soul!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Ok, I've now watched the extended DVD version of 'The
Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey', and the second half was certainly better than
the first, especially when the gargantuan roc-reminiscent eagles appeared. But
a camp goblin king rapping with the voice of Dame Edna Everage (or at least her
alter ego Barry Humphries)?? I don't remember reading that in 'The Hobbit'
novel!! Ah well... - bring on 'The Desolation of Smaug'.</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F7SNuzNPM-U/Wa9RaTssRoI/AAAAAAAAOYY/cqZ9OsyFT1UThqvacrB88AwQanzTJ6OMQCLcBGAs/s1600/Goblin%2BKing%2Band%2BDame%2BEdna%2BEverage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="833" data-original-width="1600" height="166" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F7SNuzNPM-U/Wa9RaTssRoI/AAAAAAAAOYY/cqZ9OsyFT1UThqvacrB88AwQanzTJ6OMQCLcBGAs/s320/Goblin%2BKing%2Band%2BDame%2BEdna%2BEverage.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">The Goblin King and Dame Edna Everage
- separated at birth...? (© Peter Jackson/WingNut Films/New Line Cinema/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Warner Bros.
Pictures / Wikipedia)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Now watched the first of the 2 discs comprising the
2-disc extended DVD version of 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug'. Some
memorable horror: the gargantuan spiders of Mirkwood, the ferocious wargs,
Beorn in his rampaging ursine form, plus the biggest horror of them all - but
that's enough about Stephen Fry's acting... Yet what about this movie's
eponymous reptilian star? So far, 'The Desolation of Smaug' has been notable
for the decidedly desolate, i.e. non-existent, presence of the Benedictine
Cucumberpatch-voiced wyvern in question, but no doubt he'll set the scenes
aflame when he does finally deign us with his appearance in this film's second
half, otherwise it is really going to drag on (sorry, couldn't resist!).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Ok, I've now seen both halves of 'The Desolation of
Smaug' in 2-disc extended DVD version, and I can see why Smaug as a wyvern (two
wings, two legs) has attracted criticism. Basically, it just doesn't work,
morphologically - especially as Smaug is also portrayed as exceedingly
serpentine. It has to use its wings as a pair of legs in place of the pair that
it should have had, in order to sustain terrestrial locomotion effectively with
such an elongate yet only two-legged form. A shame, because its presence is so
powerful, but let down by its form. Incidentally, is it just me or does Smaug's
head and face look extraordinarily similar to that of the <i>T rex</i> in the 'Jurassic
Park/World' series?</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YDLOvjZeWaU/Wa9RszMtJBI/AAAAAAAAOYc/AYzBYlfi3mci-n3ZTeL-t_OzeICTGkpVACLcBGAs/s1600/Smaug%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1600" height="134" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YDLOvjZeWaU/Wa9RszMtJBI/AAAAAAAAOYc/AYzBYlfi3mci-n3ZTeL-t_OzeICTGkpVACLcBGAs/s320/Smaug%2B1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">Smaug (© Peter Jackson/WingNut
Films/New Line Cinema/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Warner Bros. Pictures)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I've now watched 'The Battle of the Five Armies' in
extended 2-disc DVD version, the third and final film in 'The Hobbit' movie
trilogy, which certainly lived up to its title and was a marvellous spectacle
of CGI brilliance. However, as <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Tolkien</span></span> purists will definitely
confirm, apart from a few minutes here and there following the death of Smaug
its storyline bore little resemblance to anything in <span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Tolkien</span></span>'s original novel,
constituting instead a sprawling wargame spawned by the fu<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">sion of the
film-makers' own imaginations and notes written by </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Tolkien</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> but contained in
appendices at the end of 'The Return of the King', the third 'LOTR' novel. If
the film-makers had faithfully adhered to 'The Hobbit' novel, it could have
been told, as originally planned, in just two films, rather than in three, but
of course three films make more money than two...</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">That aside, there were
some very nice (crypto)zoological touches in this third hobbit instalment,
notably the Irish elk <i>Megaloceros giganteus</i> serving as a most noble, imposing
steed for the elven leader Thrandull, the giant wereworms that resembled
Mongolian death worms writ very large indeed (click <a href="http://karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/bilbo-baggins-versus-mongolian-death.html"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a>
to read a ShukerNature blog article of mine concerning this intriguing
cryptozoological link), and the huge white bipedal anthropoids that looked like
the misbegotten offspring of King Kong and the Great White Apes battled by John
Carter on Barsoom.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-09Uc1Ej95UI/Wa9ScijqteI/AAAAAAAAOYk/5u9lQmacaQIcuQSNK6jMc54NYI591T-iQCLcBGAs/s1600/Thranduil%2Bon%2BMegaloceros%2Bsteed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="795" data-original-width="1072" height="237" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-09Uc1Ej95UI/Wa9ScijqteI/AAAAAAAAOYk/5u9lQmacaQIcuQSNK6jMc54NYI591T-iQCLcBGAs/s320/Thranduil%2Bon%2BMegaloceros%2Bsteed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="textexposedshow"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">Thrandull
astride his <i>Megaloceros</i> steed </span></b></span><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">(© Peter Jackson/WingNut Films/New
Line Cinema/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Warner Bros. Pictures)<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"></span></span></span></b></div>
</div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">All in all, if taken
out of the context of being supposedly based upon </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Tolkien</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">'s novel and viewed
instead merely as films in their own right, the three Hobbit movies
unquestionably make compelling viewing (albeit a little tedious and drawn-out
at times for those of us who are not rivetted by extended battle scenes), but
for </span></span><span class="highlightnode"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Tolkien</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> purists I can see why
they were greeted with less than enthusiasm, unlike the 'LOTR' movie trilogy,
which did largely stay true to their source material and were all the better
for having done so.</span></span><br />
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<b><span lang="EN" style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">24 September 2017: 'THE MONSTER CLUB' (1981), and 'VAULT
OF HORROR' (1973)</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_Imni3SfU-g/WfyEkRewXEI/AAAAAAAAOiI/q6n7jqgNJHsk5hPdjK497-bYON6dKRdwQCLcBGAs/s1600/Shadmock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="824" height="173" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_Imni3SfU-g/WfyEkRewXEI/AAAAAAAAOiI/q6n7jqgNJHsk5hPdjK497-bYON6dKRdwQCLcBGAs/s320/Shadmock.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Raven the shadmock, played by James Laurenson, from 'The
Monster Club' (© <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Roy Ward Baker/Chips
Productions/Sword and Sorcery Productions/ITC)</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Amazing, isn't it, how in spite of having been seen just once, countless
years ago, certain movies retain a tenacious grip on one's
memory. Two such examples, both of which are British, have aspects of the
supernatural as their theme, and take the form of a compilation of shorter,
semi-autonomous segments, are the subject of this mini-review double-bill - if
only because it is only now that I have finally viewed again from the first of
these two films the segment that totally fascinated me when I saw it for the
first (and until now) the only time way back in the 1980s and has stayed in my
mind ever since; and it is, equally, only now, after many fruitless attempts,
that I have finally identified the second of these two compilation-type films,
which I watched on TV once during either the late 1970s or early 1980s but have
never seen again. And by a remarkable coincidence, it turns out that both of
these long-elusive films, albeit produced by entirely different companies and
released by entirely different companies, were directed by one and the same
person – Roy Ward Baker.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Jiminy Cricket advised Pinocchio to give a little whistle if ever he was in
trouble, but that is the very last thing that you'd ever want a troubled
shadmock to do! After more than 30 years since reading the original 1975 novel <i>The
Monster Club</i> by British horror author Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes and seeing once
on television the 1981 movie version of it starring Vincent Price, David
Carradine, Donald Pleasence, Britt Ekland, and Patrick Magee among others,
which consists primarily of three separate 25-minute segments interlinked by
scenes at the eponymous monster club, I've finally re-watched the shadmock
segment, courtesy of YouTube. A memorable invention of Chetwynd-Hayes, a shadmock
is a fictitious, complex human hybrid of vampire, werewolf, and ghoul whose
piercing whistle, emitted only in times of severe distress, has truly
devastating effects.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The shadmock's segment in this movie is rooted very much in the bittersweet
Phantom of the Opera genre, its uneasy coalescence of pathos and terror playing
out beautifully against Fauré's hauntingly melancholic Pavane melody, and
featuring a very moving, finely-tuned performance by James Laurenson as Raven,
the reclusive, ashen-faced, poignantly-naive but fatefully-betrayed shadmock in question. If you've
never seen this tragic little gem, watch it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqAXEdd48v8"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a>
on YouTube:</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">[Update, 3 November 2017: Sadly, the above video is no longer present on
YouTube, having been removed for copyright reasons, so it was very fortunate
that I found it and viewed it when I did.]</span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Gk9gMjO7ELA/WfyE5KbxtZI/AAAAAAAAOiQ/8Zukwj0oSawZpYlmmI3b0ewgNSj1ApYkQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Vault%2Bof%2BHorror%2Bposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="441" data-original-width="613" height="229" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Gk9gMjO7ELA/WfyE5KbxtZI/AAAAAAAAOiQ/8Zukwj0oSawZpYlmmI3b0ewgNSj1ApYkQCEwYBhgL/s320/Vault%2Bof%2BHorror%2Bposter.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"></span><span style="color: magenta;"><b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Publicity poster for 'Vault of Horror' (</span></b></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="color: magenta;"><b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia";">©</span> Roy Ward Baker/Amicus Productions/20th Century Fox/Cinerama Releasing Corporation)</b></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Many years ago, as in 30-odd years, I once saw on TV a horror movie
consisting of a series of separate segments, each one telling how someone met a
bizarre but invariably grisly end after committing some heinous crime as I
recall, and most of them featuring some supernatural aspect. Of particular
interest was that it featured a host of iconic British actors and actresses,
including Terry-Thomas, Tom Baker, Terence Alexander, Denholm Elliott, Arthur Mullard, Daniel Massey, Anna Massey, and Glynis Johns, and I
dimly remembered that the ending revealed that the villains were in fact ghosts
doomed to retell their grim histories for all eternity.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I have tried many times to discover the title of this film, but all to no
avail - until now when, finally, I tracked down some of its six segments on
YouTube, and was then able to confirm it by reading its entry on Wikipedia. The
film was 'Vault of Horror' (1973) - click <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vault_of_Horror_(film)"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a>
to read the detailed Wikipedia entry for it.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
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<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Also requiring a (very) honourable
mention:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span class="textexposedshow"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">17 March 2017: LA LA
LAND (2016)</span></b></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BXj24qrj9Js/Wa9SnBsLxxI/AAAAAAAAOYo/Ei_gTR9dghwucUy9kTme1Mmc1tA3qaJigCLcBGAs/s1600/La%2BLa%2BLand%2Bposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="780" height="202" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BXj24qrj9Js/Wa9SnBsLxxI/AAAAAAAAOYo/Ei_gTR9dghwucUy9kTme1Mmc1tA3qaJigCLcBGAs/s320/La%2BLa%2BLand%2Bposter.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'La La Land' publicity poster (©
Damien Chazelle/Summit Entertainment/Black Label Media/TIK Films/Imposter
Pictures/Gilbert Films/Marc Platt Productions)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">This afternoon I watched 'La La Land' at my local
cinema. I've read very different comments re it, but I absolutely LOVED it -
wonderful music and songs, beautiful colours throughout, a great storyline well
acted by its leads Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, and some bewitching fantasy scenes - dancing in the sky, a tantalising "what if..." imaginary alternate plot-line at the end, etc.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">All in all a thoroughly delightful, charming homage
to the golden age of MGM-style technicolor musicals, which if made 50 years ago
would have probably starred Gene Kelly and Lesley Caron. Modern-day films
rarely move me, but something about this one really resonated deeply within me,
reviving distant memories of younger days, both happy and bittersweet, so many
what had beens, what could have beens, what should have beens, and what never
would have beens. An enchanting afternoon.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pdqf4P9MB8"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> to check out an excellent 'La La Land' trailer. And for anyone in heartfelt reminiscing mood who wistfully sighs: "Ah, the good old films, they don't make them like that any more" - yes they do, and here's the proof.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">And finally: a short mini-review of the film, a
longer mini-review of the book:</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">22 November 2016: 'FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO
FIND THEM' (2016), the film</span></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ed3ooGGGL6w/Wa9TySjhopI/AAAAAAAAOY4/qKv-kaSokiQxY3qR3unx8qFGB_VgciyQQCLcBGAs/s1600/Fantastic-Beasts-And-Where-to-Find-Them.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1000" height="192" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ed3ooGGGL6w/Wa9TySjhopI/AAAAAAAAOY4/qKv-kaSokiQxY3qR3unx8qFGB_VgciyQQCLcBGAs/s320/Fantastic-Beasts-And-Where-to-Find-Them.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find
Them' publicity poster (© David Yates/Heyday Films/Warner Bros. Pictures)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Today I saw 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find
Them', which I thoroughly enjoyed, although I must confess that for me the plot
was definitely secondary to the afore-mentioned Fantastic Beasts, all of whose
CGI engenderings were truly spectacular. My personal favourites were the giant
four-winged griffin-like creature that turned out to be a thunderbird and the turquoise
winged serpentine dragon called an occamy. I also liked the graphorns, as seen
in the film still below. Highly recommended for cryptozoologists and magizoologists
alike.</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-az28XB1KSuQ/Wa9UJbcBP5I/AAAAAAAAOY8/bbCNxLIA5IIHbGgzFf3KGZTIyzCnHlaQQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Graphorns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="979" height="164" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-az28XB1KSuQ/Wa9UJbcBP5I/AAAAAAAAOY8/bbCNxLIA5IIHbGgzFf3KGZTIyzCnHlaQQCEwYBhgL/s320/Graphorns.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">An adult female graphorn with her
calf (© David Yates/Heyday Films/Warner Bros. Pictures)</span></b></div>
</div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia";">18 June 2017: 'FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND
THEM' (2017), the book (updated, expanded edition)</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">From Tolkien to Rowling: A couple of days ago, I
purchased the updated hb edition of Newt Scamander's 'Fantastic Beasts And
Where To Find Them', which I'm reading through now, and finding to be a very
enjoyable mix of entirely fictitious beasts invented by J.K. Rowling (such as
the niffler, jarvey, kneazle, and graphorn), bona fide mythological creatures
(e.g. unicorn, manticore, griffin, sphinx), and even some cryptids (yeti, sea
serpent, the Loch Ness kelpie aka Nessie), plus at least one fantastic beast that
is ostensibly invented yet may well have been inspired by a cryptid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Namely, the nundu, described in this book as being
a gigantic and very ferocious leopard from East Africa, which is very
reminiscent of the similarly-named nunda, a feline cryptid from Tanzania said
to be a huge brindled cat of ferocious demeanour that was blamed for the
killing of several people in that East African country (or, to be precise, the
region that subsequently became Tanzania) during the early part of the 20th
Century. I've documented the nunda (aka the mngwa) in my two mystery cat books
and also <a href="http://karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/nunda-in-search-of-strange-one.html"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> on my ShukerNature blog.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Returning to 'Fantastic Beasts…': it's a delightful
book, full of tongue-in-cheek descriptions, some very wry and arch, and amply
supplemented throughout by exquisite line-drawing illustrations. A great
companion to the film, which again I very much enjoyed when viewing it at the
cinema last November.</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZDn0Yd45ihU/Wa9Up9OqM_I/AAAAAAAAOZE/UuOv_dQ7q649bEGgBaWVFlbNtHG8OAJXACLcBGAs/s1600/FantasticBeasts_Green%252Cnew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="556" data-original-width="373" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZDn0Yd45ihU/Wa9Up9OqM_I/AAAAAAAAOZE/UuOv_dQ7q649bEGgBaWVFlbNtHG8OAJXACLcBGAs/s320/FantasticBeasts_Green%252Cnew.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: "georgia";">'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find
Them', the updated, expanded 2017 edition (© J.K. Rowling/Bloomsbury)</span></b></div>
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Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-2165553965628896202015-05-06T19:19:00.001+01:002015-05-06T19:19:39.216+01:00THE PORCELAIN TOWER OF NANKING - REMEMBERING ONE OF THE LOST WONDERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bje1i_Wupgg/VUpZKhOqruI/AAAAAAAALSQ/t0jcydRQFg8/s1600/Porcelain%2BTower%2Bof%2BNanking%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bje1i_Wupgg/VUpZKhOqruI/AAAAAAAALSQ/t0jcydRQFg8/s1600/Porcelain%2BTower%2Bof%2BNanking%2B1.jpg" height="320" width="243" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hand-coloured 19<sup>th</sup>-Century
engraving of the </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Porcelain</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tower</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> of </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nanking</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> (public domain)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Most people can name at least some
of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Far less familiar, conversely, is
the list that designates the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages. Chronologically
speaking, its medieval time-scale is interpreted very loosely, bearing in mind
that among those monuments included in this list are </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Stonehenge</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">, the Colosseum of Rome, and the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Great Wall of China</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Even so, the term 'wonder' is
undeniably appropriate, not only to those three already named here, but also to
their four fellow marvels. Namely, the Mosque of St Sophia in Constantinople,
the Catacombs of Alexandria, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and - perhaps most
incredible of all - a now all-but-forgotten but incomparably exquisite pagoda
known as the Porcelain Tower of Nanking (now Nanjing).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Beginning in the year 1413 AD
during the Ming Dynasty, this ethereal edifice's creation was commissioned by
the Emperor Yung-Loh, as a peerless monument to the memory of his late mother.
Indeed, as one bygone chronicler eloquently wrote:</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">"He determined
that its beauty should as far outshine that of any similar memorial, as the
transcendent virtues of the parent, in her son's eyes, surpassed those of the
rest of her sex."</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u-L9AY8U_GQ/VUpZe8vJphI/AAAAAAAALSY/KoYF5tNckdU/s1600/Porcelain%2BTower%2Bof%2BNanking%2C%2Bfrom%2BOlfert%2BDapper%27s%2BGedenkwaerdig%2BBedryf%2Bder%2BNederlandsche%2BOost-Indische%2BMaetschappye%2C%2B1670%2C%2Bpub%2Bdom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u-L9AY8U_GQ/VUpZe8vJphI/AAAAAAAALSY/KoYF5tNckdU/s1600/Porcelain%2BTower%2Bof%2BNanking%2C%2Bfrom%2BOlfert%2BDapper's%2BGedenkwaerdig%2BBedryf%2Bder%2BNederlandsche%2BOost-Indische%2BMaetschappye%2C%2B1670%2C%2Bpub%2Bdom.jpg" height="233" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Porcelain</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tower</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> of </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nanking</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">, from Olfert
Dapper's <i>Gedenkwaerdig Bedryf der Nederlandsche Oost-Indische Maetschappye</i>,
1670 (public domain)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Almost 20 years, and a fabulous
sum of money (the equivalent of over a million pounds today) later, the
emperor's </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Porcelain</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tower</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> was complete, and its
magnificence surpassed even his own grandiose expectations. Standing </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">260 ft</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> high, octagonal in shape, containing
an inner staircase spiralling upwards for 184 steps, and consisting of nine
storeys topped by a lofty spire, it was faced from base to apex with the finest
glazed, coloured porcelain, bearing designs of animals, plants, and landscapes.
It was also adorned with many Buddhist images. But that was not all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the summit of the tower's spire
was a richly gilt pineapple-shaped sphere of brass, from which, like the
tentacles of a gleaming metallic octopus, eight long iron chains extended to
eight projecting points upon the roof - and from each chain a small bell was
suspended, which hung over the tower's face. The same format was duplicated on
each storey, yielding a uniquely delicate, fragile aspect contrasting
pleasingly with the more formal upright outline of the tower itself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">This fairytale effect was
heightened further by the presence of 140 lanterns in several specially-carved
apertures round each storey's outer face. Quoting from the description penned
by a long-demised Chinese chronicler, when these lanterns were lit each night:</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">"...their light
illuminated the entire heavens, shining into the hearts of men, and eternally
removing human misery!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">And as an act of veneration to the
deities of Heaven, as well as a charm for warding away evil, two large brass
vessels and a bowl were placed on top of the tower, and filled with priceless
articles of countless kinds. Glittering precious gems, multicoloured pearls
reputedly empowered with miraculous properties, quantities of gold and silver,
and even a selection of silken wares, copies of ancient Chinese writings, and a
box of the finest tea - all were present.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4Q3Qx6-qcsA/VUpZqlVUfUI/AAAAAAAALSg/QQsRzVeP1fw/s1600/Porcelain%2BTower%2Bof%2BNanking%2C%2Bfrom%2BFischer%2Bvon%2BErlach%27s%2BPlan%2Bof%2BCivil%2Band%2BHistorical%2BArchitecture%2C%2B1721%2C%2Bpub%2Bdom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4Q3Qx6-qcsA/VUpZqlVUfUI/AAAAAAAALSg/QQsRzVeP1fw/s1600/Porcelain%2BTower%2Bof%2BNanking%2C%2Bfrom%2BFischer%2Bvon%2BErlach's%2BPlan%2Bof%2BCivil%2Band%2BHistorical%2BArchitecture%2C%2B1721%2C%2Bpub%2Bdom.jpg" height="231" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Porcelain</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tower</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> of </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nanking</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">, from Fischer von
Erlach's <i>Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture</i>, 1721 (public domain)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">The spectacular result was a
radiant beacon of porcelain, emitting a dulcet paean of joy whenever the gentle
breezes stirred its bright company of bells, and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>proffering a myriad of treasures beyond
estimation in decorous obeisance to the deities in exchange for their divine
benevolence. How richly indeed did this dream-like monument in memory of a dear
mother deserve its worldwide renown as an architectural wonder too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tragically, however, like all
dreams and fairytales, it could not last forever. Four centuries passed by
without incident, but in March<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1853 the
city of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nanking</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> was captured by the Taiping Rebellion - a major uprising
against the Qing dynasty. Even so, such was its spectacular, awe-inspiring
beauty that for three years the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Porcelain</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tower</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> quelled even the rebels'
destructive impulses, as they single-mindedly annihilated everything else
appertaining to </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nanking</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">'s imperial heritage. By 1856, however, their anti-Imperialist fervour
had at last focused its impassioned attention upon the final symbol of this
city's historic past - the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Porcelain</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tower</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Having been created by an emperor,
the tower was doomed. And so it was that this glorious triumph of inspirational
human achievement was demolished - felled like a mighty oak tree, shattering
its porcelain visage into an infinity of glinting fragments, stilling forever
the tinkling laughter of its bells, and strewing its venerable offerings far
and wide like cheap, discarded trinkets.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">The victims of War have been many
and multifarious, and one was the Porcelain Tower of Nanking. Truly a thing of
beauty and a joy, if not forever, then certainly for several centuries - and
perhaps even longer too, if we are able to recall and recapture its peaceful,
timeless memory for a brief moment amid this hectic modern world.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Moreover, in 2010 Wang Jianlin, a
Chinese businessman, donated the stupendous sum of 1 billion yuan (equivalent to
156 million US dollars) to Nanking to pay for this lost national (and
international) wonder's complete reconstruction. So who knows – perhaps one day
this city's magnificent Porcelain Tower may rise like a veritable phoenix from
the ashes and rubble of erstwhile rebellion, restored to its former glory and
destined to delight future generations right across the globe. May it indeed be
so.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z11iXDfuNn8/VUpZ3aNlCRI/AAAAAAAALSo/R-84Y4fKXO0/s1600/Porcelain%2BTower%2Bof%2BNanking%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z11iXDfuNn8/VUpZ3aNlCRI/AAAAAAAALSo/R-84Y4fKXO0/s1600/Porcelain%2BTower%2Bof%2BNanking%2B2.jpg" height="320" width="224" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">A second
hand-coloured 19<sup>th</sup>-Century engraving depicting the </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Porcelain</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tower</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> of </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nanking</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt;"> (public domain)</span></b></div>
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Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-70730915081386249362014-07-14T05:13:00.001+01:002017-11-03T21:36:09.468+00:00ShukerNature: CREEPY CREATIONS AND CRYPTOZOOLOGY – MONSTROUSLY-AWESOME ARTWORK FROM SHIVER AND SHAKEShukerNature: <a href="http://karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/creepy-creations-and-cryptozoology.html"><span style="color: red;">CREEPY CREATIONS AND CRYPTOZOOLOGY – MONSTROUSLY-AWESOME ARTWORK FROM SHIVER AND SHAKE</span></a>: The Turkish Turn-Eyed Twitter – one of my favourite Creepy Creations (© Kevin Reid/IPC) Unless, like me, you were a child or early...Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-26518921051502348892014-05-06T23:18:00.001+01:002017-11-03T21:41:05.993+00:00ShukerNature: THE BIG GREY MAN OF BEN MACDHUI - BRITAIN'S VERY OWN BIGFOOT?ShukerNature: <span style="color: red;"><a href="http://karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-big-grey-man-of-ben-macdhui.html">THE BIG GREY MAN OF BEN MACDHUI - BRITAIN'S VERY OWN BIGFOOT?</a></span>: Ben MacDhui’s principal claim to fame is that, at 4296 ft (1309 m), it is the highest mountain in the Cairngorms range and is second ...Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-3728278453681668782014-04-02T14:35:00.004+01:002014-04-03T01:48:42.605+01:00PRESENTING THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT - THE WORLD'S MOST BAFFLING BOOK<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Qq5IKuDmX9o/UzwE4W98PqI/AAAAAAAAI_A/QTpithOxcc4/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Qq5IKuDmX9o/UzwE4W98PqI/AAAAAAAAI_A/QTpithOxcc4/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p32.jpg" height="320" width="238" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Voynich Manuscript,
p. 32, depicting unrecognisable plant forms (public domain) NB - please click on each picture in this article (and also in all of my other blog articles) to obtain an enlarged view.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">Amid the vast store of knowledge
contained within Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is
a unique manuscript lavishly illustrated with colour paintings of strange
plants and astronomical/astrological symbols, not to mention a varied selection
of what its researchers refer to as 'nymphs' (i.e. nude women). The only
problem is that the ornate script of the text in this very remarkable book is
written in a wholly unknown language that has withstood all attempts in modern
times to decipher it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IYhpIgqXXEE/UzwFSFbos5I/AAAAAAAAI_I/39-ZHQbwhQo/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p170.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IYhpIgqXXEE/UzwFSFbos5I/AAAAAAAAI_I/39-ZHQbwhQo/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p170.jpg" height="163" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Voynich Manuscript,
p. 170, including fold-out sections (public domain)</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">This baffling tome (which is over
200 pages long – though some pages are missing - and also includes several
fold-out, multi-part pages) is known as the Voynich Manuscript. It is named
after New York-based Polish book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich who purchased it in
1912 from the library of the Villa Mondragone, a former Jesuit college in the
commune of Frascati, central Italy. Accompanying the manuscript when he
purchased it was a letter dated 1666, written to the famous Jesuit scholar
Athanasius Kircher (died 1680) by his former tutor, the eminent Bohemian
doctor/scientist Johannes Marcus Marci (died 1667). In his letter, Marci
claimed that the manuscript's author had been identified as Roger Bacon, a 13<sup>th</sup>-Century
Franciscan friar who was also an outstanding
English proto-scientist/alchemist, by one of the manuscript's most illustrious previous
owners - the Holy Roman Emperor and Bavarian king Rudolf II (died 1612). In 2009,
however, precise internal carbon-14-dating of its vellum by researchers from
the University of Arizona revealed that it had actually been created two
centuries later, some time between 1404 and 1458, probably originating in
northern Italy during the Renaissance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QtlWlHpbTvc/UzwFlfHix3I/AAAAAAAAI_Q/M67wgz71otI/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p158.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QtlWlHpbTvc/UzwFlfHix3I/AAAAAAAAI_Q/M67wgz71otI/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p158.jpg" height="311" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Voynich Manuscript,
p. 158 - multi-page representations of inexplicable astronomical and/or
astrological symbols (public domain)</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">Rudolf II passed the manuscript to
Jacobus Horcicky de Tepenecz (died 1622), who presided over the emperor's
botanical gardens, from whom it somehow found its way into the ownership of
Georg Baresch, a Prague alchemist. Unable to decode its contents, in 1639 Baresch
sent samples of it to Kircher, in the hope that this acclaimed scholar and
code-breaker could succeed where he had failed, but there is no record of any
results obtained by Kircher, though he did seek, unsuccessfully, to purchase
the manuscript from Baresch. Following Baresch's death in 1662, however, it was
acquired by Marci, who did pass it on to Kircher – but what happened to it
then, and, indeed, for the next two centuries, is unknown. However, in or
around the 1870s, along with Kircher's collected correspondence from a lifetime
of scholarly research and writings, the manuscript found its way into the
personal libraries of the faculty of the Collegio Romano (which is now the
Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome), and thence to the Villa Mondragone,
where in 1912 it was seen and purchased by Voynich.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">After purchasing it, Voynich made
copies of this puzzling manuscript available to many of the world's leading
code-breakers, including British and American teams previously and subsequently
employed in cipher interpretation during the two World Wars, as well as ancient
language researchers - but all to no avail. Not only is the language resolutely
incomprehensible, most of the illustrated species of flower do not even exist!
In fact, many seem to be chimerical, combining portions from several totally
separate species (e.g. the flowers of one species combined with the roots of a
second species and the leaves of a third). Indeed, as noted by Gerry Kennedy
and Rob Churchill in their comprehensive investigative book <i>The Voynich
Manuscript</i> (2004), it is as if even the very illustrations themselves have
been encrypted – and perhaps they have!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZdYuAI2Q7RU/UzwFvaaeQPI/AAAAAAAAI_Y/YQ4C28gfJ0M/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p66.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZdYuAI2Q7RU/UzwFvaaeQPI/AAAAAAAAI_Y/YQ4C28gfJ0M/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p66.jpg" height="320" width="246" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Voynich Manuscript,
p. 66, depicting some additional unidentifiable plants (public domain)</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">Voynich died in 1930, after which
the manuscript passed to his widow, Ethel Lilian, and when she died in 1960, she
bequeathed it to her good friend Anne Nill, who in turn sold it the following
year to antique book dealer Hans P. Kraus. However, Kraus's attempts even to
market it (let alone translate it) ended in such disappointment that in 1969 he
donated the exasperating tome to Yale University, where it still resides to
this day, officially catalogued there as Beinecke MS 408.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zi_XGHtgQXo/UzwF8k5j2DI/AAAAAAAAI_g/-na-W4i3nNA/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zi_XGHtgQXo/UzwF8k5j2DI/AAAAAAAAI_g/-na-W4i3nNA/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p24.jpg" height="320" width="236" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Voynich Manuscript,
p. 24 (public domain)</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">But who was the author of this
most extraordinary of tomes, and how did it come into the possession of Rudolf
II? These questions frame a mystery just as sizeable, a controversy just as
considerable, as the nature of this manuscript's contents. Voynich thought it
likely that the person who sold the manuscript to Rudolf II was none other than
esteemed English mathematician, scholar, and mage John Dee (1527-1608).
However, his belief stemmed from Marci's mistaken claim that the manuscript had
once been owned by Roger Bacon (Voynich was aware that Dee had possessed a
notable collection of Bacon's manuscripts), but Marci's claim was of course
discounted almost half a century after Voynich's death by the radiocarbon-dating
results that placed the manuscript's creation two centuries after Bacon had
died. So Bacon had never owned it, nor could he have authored it – a popular
theory prior to the radiocarbon tests.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">Several other historical figures,
including Marci himself, have been named as potential authors by various
researchers, but none is convincing in this role. Moreover, some investigators have
even deemed it possible that Voynich himself created the manuscript – i.e. a
skilful modern-day forgery that someone with his specialised knowledge of
antiquarian books and documents might have successfully accomplished. However,
the very precise internal nature of the radiocarbon-dating would seem to
invalidate this hypothesis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V-ku2Uez5IU/UzwGGiLKQ3I/AAAAAAAAI_o/DeUWPpWbqvc/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p78.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V-ku2Uez5IU/UzwGGiLKQ3I/AAAAAAAAI_o/DeUWPpWbqvc/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p78.jpg" height="320" width="289" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Voynich Manuscript,
p. 78, containing the famous, so-called 'nymphs in a bathtub' illustration (public domain)</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">As for what the Voynich Manuscript
actually represents – once again, the theories are as diverse as they are
diverting. Among the identities offered to explain it are that it represents an
attempt to devise an artificial language; it is an extravagant hoax that has no
meaning whatsoever; it is an example of spirit-mediated automatic writing; or it
is an exceedingly peculiar herbal or pharmacopoeia. However, one of the very
few persons to achieve even the slightest degree of success in exposing its secrets,
Yale University's own Professor Robert S. Brumbaugh (author of <i>The World's
Most Mysterious Manuscript</i>, 1977), considers it to be an alchemical work -
such works are well known for their intricate symbolism and cryptic text. A few
scribbled calculations in the manuscript's margins led him to formulating a
code whereby he was able to decipher some of the names of those few illustrated
plants in it that are recognisable species, and also certain stars. Aside from
that, the text's contents continue to remain a complete mystery.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">I too have speculated that it may
conceivably be an elaborate alchemical treatise. The reason why such works were
so fiendishly (but purposefully) impenetrable was so that only bona fide
alchemists could translate them and discover the lore that they contained -
thereby protecting them, and their alchemist readers, from persecution and
obliteration by contemporary religious zealots who considered alchemy to be
blasphemous and a dark art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dLkPFaLUOVo/UzwGgwT8pKI/AAAAAAAAI_w/RoXgSbYNO4w/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dLkPFaLUOVo/UzwGgwT8pKI/AAAAAAAAI_w/RoXgSbYNO4w/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+1.jpg" height="320" width="226" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Bizarre plant-animal
hybrids depicted in the <i>Codex Seraphinianus</i> (© Luigi Serafini/Franco
Maria Ricci)</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">The hoax identity for the Voynich
Manuscript is also intriguing, if only because there is at least one very
relevant precedent in existence – the <i>Codex Seraphinianus</i>. Originally
published in Italy by Franco Maria Ricci in 1981, this is another fascinating
tome, consisting of two volumes each of 127 pages, which are packed throughout with
gorgeous multicoloured illustrations of grotesque non-existent plants (and all
manner of phantasmagorical animals too, as well as bizarre anatomies, food, and
fashion) plus text written in an indecipherable language and unique script.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B_WvpQinaqM/UzwGqNGOSXI/AAAAAAAAI_4/frx2E8BNeTQ/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B_WvpQinaqM/UzwGqNGOSXI/AAAAAAAAI_4/frx2E8BNeTQ/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+2.jpg" height="320" width="318" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Miraculous
mer-folk(?) from</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> <b><span style="color: magenta;">the <i>Codex Seraphinianus</i> (© Luigi Serafini/Franco
Maria Ricci)</span></b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">However, the origin of this ostensibly
enigmatic work is not – and never has been - in dispute. It is the creation of
Italian artist and designer Luigi Serafini, who expressly prepared it between
1976 and 1978 in order to demonstrate that a highly complex and very perplexing
manuscript but one without any meaning to it whatsoever could indeed be produced.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FkewLhRqOXE/UzwGyaaR8-I/AAAAAAAAJAA/v_Eg2CTAKCg/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FkewLhRqOXE/UzwGyaaR8-I/AAAAAAAAJAA/v_Eg2CTAKCg/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+3.jpg" height="320" width="226" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Fabulous flora from
the</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> <b><i><span style="color: magenta;">Codex Seraphinianus</span></i><span style="color: magenta;">
(© Luigi Serafini/Franco Maria Ricci)</span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">Incidentally, if, like me, you are
fascinated by spellbinding works such as this one, you will be pleased to learn
that the <i>Codex Seraphinianus</i> is readily available to purchase (albeit at
a not-inconsiderable price) <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Codex-Seraphinianus-Luigi-Serafini/dp/0847842134/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396443137&sr=1-1&keywords=codex+seraphinianus"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> on
Amazon's UK site and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Codex-Seraphinianus-Luigi-Serafini/dp/0847842134/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396443192&sr=1-1&keywords=codex+seraphinianus"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> on its USA
site.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FddhT-0QBas/UzwG6ApDRTI/AAAAAAAAJAI/F01t3bWXBic/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FddhT-0QBas/UzwG6ApDRTI/AAAAAAAAJAI/F01t3bWXBic/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+4.jpg" height="320" width="232" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">A scene from the
weird wonderland depicted in</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> <b><span style="color: magenta;">the</span></b> <b><i><span style="color: magenta;">Codex Seraphinianus</span></i><span style="color: magenta;">
(© Luigi Serafini/Franco Maria Ricci)</span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">The nature of the Voynich
Manuscript text's language has attracted several different suggestions. As
noted earlier, one such suggestion is that it constitutes an artificial,
constructed language. Others include the possibility that it is an example of
micrography (i.e. its meaning is concealed within the construction of each text
character), or of steganography (i.e. its true message is hidden within another,
outer message), or is a little-known natural language written in a manufactured
alphabet. Alternatively, perhaps it is a more familiar language but which has
been purposefully rendered obscure by mapping it through a cipher to the
manuscript's alphabet. Or could it be a series of codes needing to be looked up
in a codebook – but if so, where and what is this crucial codebook?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K75YQbMKLdI/UzwHFN60mVI/AAAAAAAAJAQ/bcOgLv1LC0Q/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+sample+text.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K75YQbMKLdI/UzwHFN60mVI/AAAAAAAAJAQ/bcOgLv1LC0Q/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+sample+text.jpg" height="317" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Close-up of the
Voynich Manuscript text's elegant but esoteric script (public domain)</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">On 20 February 2014, media articles
around the world reported the claim by linguistics professor Stephen Bax that
he had made a breakthrough in that he had successfully identified and
deciphered various astronomical and botanical proper nouns (numbering 10 in total) within the manuscript's
text, including the constellation Taurus, what appears to be the seven-member
Pleiades star cluster, and 'kantairon' – a word seemingly alluding to the herb
commonly known as centaury, popular in medieval times. However, it was stressed
that Prof. Bax had not solved the entire mystery of the manuscript's meaning,
but that he was reporting what he had uncovered so far in order to encourage
others to investigate and help decode this centuries-old riddle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W_T9g9pBXVo/UzwHPwJV8XI/AAAAAAAAJAY/Dpy_na42tug/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p80.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W_T9g9pBXVo/UzwHPwJV8XI/AAAAAAAAJAY/Dpy_na42tug/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p80.jpg" height="320" width="245" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Voynich Manuscript,
p. 80 (public domain)</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">When I wrote the original, much shorter
version of this account back in 1995, for inclusion in my forthcoming book <a href="http://www.karlshuker.com/unexplained.htm"><b><i><span style="color: red;">The Unexplained</span></i></b></a>, I wondered if Yale University
had considered the idea of self-publishing the Voynich Manuscript, selling it
in their bookshops and any others willing to stock it, and announcing in a
blaze of media publicity that a handsome prize would be given to anyone who
succeeded in deciphering the manuscript and made their methods available for
independent scrutiny. (In 2005, a facsimile edition was indeed published, with
an introduction in French.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">Having said that, perhaps it is no
bad thing that the radiocarbon-dating tests have demonstrated that this
mystifying manuscript is not the work of Roger Bacon. After all, bearing in
mind his fame in accurately predicting all manner of major scientific
inventions and principles many centuries before they were formally conceived, who
knows, this extraordinary manuscript might contain secrets best left
undiscovered, even in this modern-day age.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">But now that we live in the world of the internet
and already have immediate online access to an ever-expanding, near-limitless
corpus of knowledge, such concerns are of little avail. Indeed, among this
incalculable quantity of online data is none other than the Voynich Manuscript
itself – because a complete high-resolution scan of it can be freely accessed
and downloaded <a href="http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2002046&solrid=3519597"><span style="color: red;"><b>here</b></span></a> directly from Yale
University,
and also <b><a href="https://ia600305.us.archive.org/6/items/TheVoynichManuscript/Voynich_Manuscript_text.pdf"><span style="color: red;">here</span></a> </b>
from the U.S. Archives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uLrzJVyOvQc/UzwIgZCMv0I/AAAAAAAAJAk/qOPVi8qDHQw/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p176.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uLrzJVyOvQc/UzwIgZCMv0I/AAAAAAAAJAk/qOPVi8qDHQw/s1600/Voynich+Manuscript,+p176.jpg" height="320" width="266" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Voynich Manuscript,
p. 176 (public domain)</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">So if you enjoy cryptology – the study and
application of codes and code-breaking techniques – why not visit this virtual
Voynich tome right now, and who knows? Perhaps you may be the one to prise
forth at long last its abstruse, opaque secrets from its
beautifully-illustrated and elegantly-scripted but currently still-bemusing
pages.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">This present Eclectarium post article of mine is a
much-expanded and updated version of my original account of the Voynich
manuscript that appeared in my book <a href="http://www.karlshuker.com/unexplained.htm"><b><i><span style="color: red;">The Unexplained: An Illustrated Guide to the World's Natural and Paranormal Mysteries</span></i></b></a> (Carlton: London, 1996).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7H9E0z4ye4w/UzwLlcOQMwI/AAAAAAAAJA4/9qiljxfWnQU/s1600/Unexplained,+The.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7H9E0z4ye4w/UzwLlcOQMwI/AAAAAAAAJA4/9qiljxfWnQU/s1600/Unexplained,+The.jpg" height="320" width="241" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;">And finally - I just can't resist: here's one last, gloriously-inexplicable illustration from the totally splendiferous <i>Codex Seraphinianus</i>, a copy of which will definitely be added to my library very shortly!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rpPHPAetaY0/UzwJO1z-mMI/AAAAAAAAJAs/D2C7scbQJgk/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rpPHPAetaY0/UzwJO1z-mMI/AAAAAAAAJAs/D2C7scbQJgk/s1600/Codex+Seraphinianus+page,+example+5.jpg" height="261" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;"><span style="color: magenta;"><b>Unique, mesmerising, arcane - welcome to the surreal, spectacular world of the <i>Codex Seraphinianus</i></b></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small;"><span style="color: magenta;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b><span style="color: magenta;">
(© Luigi Serafini/Franco Maria Ricci)</span></b></span> </b></span></span></div>
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Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-6111601556785260212014-04-01T02:02:00.001+01:002017-11-03T23:29:18.279+00:00ShukerNature: REMEMBERING MY MOTHER<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dGv7IDjQJVk/UzoP9QvrjFI/AAAAAAAAI98/7uOSUA-W6W4/s1600/Mom+in+protea+coat+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dGv7IDjQJVk/UzoP9QvrjFI/AAAAAAAAI98/7uOSUA-W6W4/s1600/Mom+in+protea+coat+3.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
ShukerNature: <b><a href="http://karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/remembering-my-mother.html"><span style="color: red;">REMEMBERING MY MOTHER</span></a></b>: Mom, wearing the beautiful protea-decorated coat that she purchased in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2008 (© Dr Karl Shuker)<br />
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<br />Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-90415466519318589132014-03-28T02:04:00.002+00:002014-03-28T02:04:53.149+00:00SHERLOCK HOLMES VS THE SPECKLED BAND AND THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wlFdK9rqV3g/UzTXXML1ssI/AAAAAAAAI7g/ZO2WPIUNrmw/s1600/My+Sherlock+Holmes+toby+jug+vs+the+Giant+Rat+of+Sumatra+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wlFdK9rqV3g/UzTXXML1ssI/AAAAAAAAI7g/ZO2WPIUNrmw/s1600/My+Sherlock+Holmes+toby+jug+vs+the+Giant+Rat+of+Sumatra+2.jpg" height="241" width="320" /></a></div>
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<![endif]--><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">My Sherlock Holmes toby jug confronts
the Giant Rat of </span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Sumatra</span></b><b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">! (© Dr Karl Shuker)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">When I first opened my Eclectarium, I promised that
it would include some Sherlockian exhibits, and I am nothing if not a man of my
word.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">So now, courtesy of my ShukerNature blog, I have
great pleasure in presenting not one but two of the great fictional detective's
most daunting foes of the zoological kind. Click <a href="http://www.karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/sherlock-holmes-and-speckled-band.html"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a>
to face the creeping terror that is the dreaded Speckled Band; and click <a href="http://www.karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-giant-rat-of-sumatra-zoological.html"><b><span style="color: red;">here</span></b></a> to encounter the mysterious – and monstrous –
Giant Rat of Sumatra.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--bY6Z6UTufw/UzTX6pMfefI/AAAAAAAAI7o/0IoQIQwxW-0/s1600/Indian+swamp+added+aka+The+Speckled+Band,+Tim+Morris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--bY6Z6UTufw/UzTX6pMfefI/AAAAAAAAI7o/0IoQIQwxW-0/s1600/Indian+swamp+added+aka+The+Speckled+Band,+Tim+Morris.jpg" height="123" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia;">Artistic representation of the
Speckled Band's likely appearance (© Tim Morris)</span></b></div>
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Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-32979658026139828842014-03-27T02:40:00.001+00:002014-03-27T02:40:19.882+00:00MY TOP TEN MOST ECCENTRIC FESTIVALS IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y_SNG8DY1sk/UzONzUTMWKI/AAAAAAAAI7Q/ngAyYuPBSTw/s1600/Straw+Bear+of+Whittlesea,+2008,+Kev747-Wikipedia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y_SNG8DY1sk/UzONzUTMWKI/AAAAAAAAI7Q/ngAyYuPBSTw/s1600/Straw+Bear+of+Whittlesea,+2008,+Kev747-Wikipedia.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: magenta;"><b>The straw bear of Whittlesey, 2008 (Kev747/Wikipedia) </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What do dwyle flunking, goat crowning, straw bears dancing, a village packed full of human-sized faceless scarecrows, and fireball flinging all have in common? They all feature in some of the most bizarre, eccentric festivals held annually in various parts of the British Isles. I recently penned an article that presented my personal top ten examples, which has just been published by <i>Enterprise Magazine</i> and can be accessed online <a href="http://magazine.enterprise.co.uk/open-road/headlights/the-10-most-eccentric-festivals-in-britain-ireland"><span style="color: red;"><b>here</b></span></a>. So if you're looking for something out of the ordinary to visit and perhaps even participate in this year, be sure to check it out!</span></div>
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Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-22452857161889757162013-05-28T21:05:00.001+01:002014-03-10T03:14:38.339+00:00WHEN MY GREAT-AUNT SENT A FEATHERED MESSENGER TO SAY GOODBYE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8y7iLZvpT_U/UaUKbwH5yUI/AAAAAAAAHhE/1YtNFucsAvY/s1600/Edith+Griffin+and+Me,+aged+7+months.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8y7iLZvpT_U/UaUKbwH5yUI/AAAAAAAAHhE/1YtNFucsAvY/s320/Edith+Griffin+and+Me,+aged+7+months.jpg" height="320" width="194" yya="true" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #3366ff; font-family: 'Courier New';"><b><span style="color: magenta;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Edith Griffin with her great-nephew, Dr Karl Shuker, aged 7 months (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Until now, my Eclectarium has remained closed throughout the present year, and this is why. Quite simply, 2013 has been the worst year of my life. It began with the deterioration in health of my dear mother, Mary Doreen Shuker, and continued with her passing away on Easter Monday, aged 92. She was my only family and the best person I shall ever know, and I shall miss her more than I can ever hope to convey in words every day for the rest of my life. I know that my mother took immense pride in my writings, so I am re-opening the Eclectarium today with a post that not only features her but is also dedicated to her. Thank you, little Mom, for your love, support, and faith in me throughout your life – may I be worthy of you throughout the remainder of mine. This is for you, Mom, with all my love, always.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">According to traditional English folk-belief, birds will come to tell a person when a relative is about to die. However, not everyone is convinced that it is just folklore. The following remarkable incident involved members of my own family.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">During the late 1960s, Miss Edith Griffin, my very elderly great-aunt, suffered a severe stroke from which there was no hope of recovery. Each day, her niece, my mother Mary Shuker, visited her at her home, which she shared with my maternal grandparents (one of whom was her younger sister Mrs Gertrude Timmins, whose recollection of a shower of frog rain can be accessed <b><a href="http://www.karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-griffins-and-frog-rain.html"><span style="color: red;">here</span></a></b> on my ShukerNature blog).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #3366ff; font-family: 'Courier New';"><b><span style="color: magenta;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">My grandmother, Gertrude Timmins (1894-1994), with my Jack Russell terrier, Patch (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Back at our own house one night, after having spent the day with my great-aunt, my mother was unable to sleep, and lay awake in bed for some time. Suddenly, she heard a bird land on her windowsill and begin chirping loudly, even though it was now approximately 2 am the next morning and totally dark outside.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This continued for quite a time before the bird eventually flew away, leaving my mother feeling very ill at ease by this strange, unexpected visitation. So much so, in fact, that she called in at my grandmother's house just a few hours later, earlier than normal - where she learnt that my great-aunt had passed away, at around 2 am that morning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Just a coincidence?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">My mother, Mary Doreen Shuker (1921-2013), visiting the Royal Palaces in Bangkok, Thailand, with me during 2005 (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: red;"><b>UPDATE - 13 December 2013</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Today I received an email from an American friend containing details of an extraordinary event from his own life that so closely mirrors the incident featuring my mother and my great-aunt described by me above that I am including it here as follows. Because of its very personal nature, however, I am not publicly releasing any details concerning my friend's identity, but I have retained them on file.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"<span lang="EN"><span></span>On the day my mother passed away she had
been in Hospice care for three days although she was not expected to make for
48 hours. Our whole family had come to her bedside on that first day. We had a
family prayer time, my uncle Derrell (mom's youngest brother) an ordained
Baptist minister led the prayer. After the first day it was my sister and
brother-in-law and my wife and myself that took turns spending the night those
last three nights. I returned home that morning after spending the night there
and was trying to unwind a little before returning. I had just sat down in our
living room when a small wren flew up under our porch and landed momentarily on
the screen of our front window looking in at me. The minute after it flew away I received a phone call from my sister telling me mom had just passed away.
I believe to this day that was a sign from heaven."</span></span></span></span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 11pt;">And perhaps it was. In the words of the much-loved hymn composed by William Cowper:</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">God moves in a mysterious
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">His wonders to perform;</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">He plans His footsteps in the
sea,</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">and rides upon the storm.</span></span></span></div>
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Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-21937976158616607412012-12-30T21:38:00.001+00:002012-12-31T01:07:31.637+00:00THE NEPHILIM - A BIBLICAL MYSTERY OF GIANT PROPORTIONS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Like many others of my generation, I first learnt of the term 'Nephilim' via the superb English gothic rock group Fields of the Nephilim, formed in the mid-1980s, but when I began to investigate the origin of their unusual name I soon realised that there was far more to the Nephilim than I'd ever suspected.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Fields of the Nephilim - a superb English gothic rock band formed in the 1980s</strong></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sometimes termed 'the sons of God', and said to have mated with 'the daughters of Man', who - or what - were the Nephilim, and were they truly one and the same as the sons of God? One of the most mystifying passages of the Bible appears in the Book of Genesis (6: 1-4), and reads in the Revised Standard Version (RSV) as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years."<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown</span>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">As will be seen, several different identities have been offered during centuries of profound theological controversy and discussion regarding the Nephilim and the sons of God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Before we can entertain any thoughts concerning these identities, however, it is important to examine the origin and meaning of this problematical Genesis passage (hereafter referred to for convenience as the Nephilim Passage).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Notwithstanding the tradition that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), most modern-day biblical scholars believe, as noted by N.H. Snaith in<i> The Century Bible</i> (1967), that this quintet is a compilation of at least five different sources. The earliest is the Jehovist (Yahwist) document (designated as J), dating back to c.850 BC, of southern origin, and split by later scholars into J<sup>1</sup> and J<sup>2</sup>. Next is the Elohist document (E), dating back to c.750 BC, of northern origin, and combined in c.700 BC with J to yield the JE document. They are the documents most relevant to the subject of the Nephilim.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In addition, there are numerous different translations of these, which means that the Nephilim Passage has appeared in a variety of forms, thereby yielding all manner of interpretations and speculation as to its precise meaning. For instance, in <i>The Anchor Bible: Genesis</i> (1964), E.A. Speiser offers the following version of verse 4:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">It was then that the Nephilim appeared on earth - as well as later - after the divine beings [sons of God] had united with human daughters. Those were the heroes of old, men of renown.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In contrast to the earlier-quoted RSV version, which sets the Nephilim entirely apart from the sons of God, the Anchor Bible's wording indicates that the Nephilim were the offspring resulting from unions between the sons of God and mortal women. Indeed, according to George A. Buttrick et al., writing in <i>The Interpreter's Bible</i> (1972), verse 2 originally concluded with some such sentence as: "and they conceived and bare the Nephilim". Also, 'sons of God' and 'divine beings' as featured in versions of the Nephilim Passage are translations of the Hebrew <i>Elohim</i>, i.e. they have their own name, distinct from 'Nephilim'.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Yet Raymond E. Fowler notes in his book <i>The Watchers</i> (1991) that 'Nephilim' literally translates as the 'fallen-down-ones'. This indicates that these entities fell from the sky and were therefore celestial - in turn suggesting that they were one and the same as the sons of God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">So which, if any, of these three mutually-exclusive scenarios is the correct one?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Another weighty issue upon which to ponder is the precise moral significance of the Nephilim Passage. Were the unions between the sons of God and mortal women judged by the authors of Genesis to be normal or abnormal, good or bad?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Some scholars, such as Frank E. Gaebelein, editing<i> The Expositor's Bible Commentary </i>(1990), consider the Nephilim Passage to be nothing more than a summary of the previous chapter (fifth) of Genesis, thus merely reminding the reader that the offspring of Adam had greatly increased in number, had married, and had continued to have children, i.e. that it was nothing unusual. In contrast, many scholars down through the ages have considered this passage to be an introduction to the account of the Great Flood - deeming the union of divine and human beings to be sinful, and the Flood to be God's punishment for this sin. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Yet another area of contention, and one that is closely linked with the previous one, is verse 3's statement that man's days "...shall be a hundred and twenty years". Does this mean that hereafter man's lifespan will be limited to 120 years? (Prior to the Nephilim Passage, Genesis had contained details of humans living to ages far in excess of this.) Adherents of this viewpoint suggest that a 120-year age limit was imposed by God to ensure that children resulting from matings between the divine beings and human women did not inherit eternal life from their fathers. Or, as assumed by Luther, Calvin, and the Scofield Bible, is 120 years a period of reprieve, granted by God to humanity before the onset of the Flood? The attractiveness of this second option is that, unlike the first, it does not conflict with post-diluvial records in Genesis of people living far beyond 120 years of age.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">As can be appreciated from the above selection of examples, the identities on offer for the Nephilim are greatly influenced by the range of interpretations for this passage's meaning.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE EARTH...<o:p></o:p></span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Perhaps the most familiar identity proposed for the Nephilim is that they were a race of giants. Indeed, in the Septuagint (the 3rd-2nd Century BC Greek translation of the Old Testament produced in Egypt) and also in the Authorised King James Version of the Bible (KJV), the word 'Nephilim' is replaced by 'giants'. This yields the oft-quoted phrase: "There were giants in the earth in those days".</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The giant identity is substantiated to a degree by the second (and only other) RSV biblical mention of the Nephilim by this name - in the Book of Numbers (13: 33):<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">And there [in Canaan] we [the Israelites] saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim); and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Nephilim mentioned in this passage from Numbers (hereafter referred to as the Second Nephilim Passage) comprised a tribe of pre-Israelite inhabitants of Canaan in the hill country (especially Hebron) west of the Jordan. Known as the Anakim, they were descended from a great warrior called Anak, whose father, Arba, was the greatest of them all. They had been sighted by twelve Israelite spies, who were struck with terror at the awesome spectacle of this people. And certainly, the Second Nephilim Passage makes it clear that these Nephilim were of great size, but it also poses a very sizeable problem.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">According to Genesis, the only people who survived the Flood were Noah and his family. Yet if the Nephilim encountered by the Israelites were indeed bona fide Nephilim, i.e. descended via Anak and Arba from the same lineage as those mentioned in Genesis 6, this means that a race of giants had also survived the Flood - but how? Seeking to resolve this anomaly, some scholars, such as Speiser, suggest that the Anakim were not true Nephilim at all. Instead, they were merely giants (as described in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate in preference to Nephilim) who reminded the Israelites of the real, pre-diluvial Nephilim.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Also referred to as the Rephaim, the Anakim were known to the Moabites as the Emim, and to the Ammonites as the Zamzummim. Irrespective of their identity and names, however, and despite their huge size, the Anakim were ultimately overcome by the Israelites, led by Joshua, who drove them out of Hebron, Debir, and the hill country of Judah. A few seemingly lingered for a while in the Philistine regions of Ashdod, Gath, and Gaza.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SXhfUdm-4Cs/UOCtuQgO3qI/AAAAAAAAGSc/ay3PtwTE0U0/s1600/The+Sons+of+God+Saw+the+Daughters+of+Man+that+they+were+Fair,+Daniel+Chester+1923+in+Corcoran+Gallery,+Image+from+sandsteadDOTcom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" eea="true" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SXhfUdm-4Cs/UOCtuQgO3qI/AAAAAAAAGSc/ay3PtwTE0U0/s320/The+Sons+of+God+Saw+the+Daughters+of+Man+that+they+were+Fair,+Daniel+Chester+1923+in+Corcoran+Gallery,+Image+from+sandsteadDOTcom.jpg" width="196" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong><span style="color: magenta;">'The Sons of God Saw the Daughters of Man That They Were Fair', Daniel Chester (1923), in the Corcoran Gallery (sandstead.com)</span></strong> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Returning to the original Nephilim, in Genesis: there is an etymological argument against identifying them as giants, because 'Nephilim' is distinct from the standard Hebrew term for giants, <em><span style="font-family: Courier New;">r<sup>e</sup>dup</span><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: 'Times New Roman Special G1';">ª</span>’îm, </em>which indicates that the Nephilim were something more than just giants.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Leading on from this is a recent, highly original idea, encapsulated in an online (Internet) research paper authored by John Denton in December 1996 (which can currently be accessed at </span><a href="http://www.ftech.net/~bric/rp.no38.html"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://www.ftech.net/~bric/rp.no38.html</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Entitled 'Neanderthal=Nephilim?', Denton analysed the entertaining possibility that the Nephilim, whose biblical references date back around 4500 years, are synonymous with the Neanderthals. These hominids officially died out around 30,000 years ago but may well have lingered into more recent times, judging from folkloric and certain cryptozoological testimony, as well as recent palaeontological evidence.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jasrdHHyQvQ/UOCutuRqhhI/AAAAAAAAGSo/JulVPnFJhRQ/s1600/Neanderthal+skull,+Dr+Karl+Shuker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" eea="true" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jasrdHHyQvQ/UOCutuRqhhI/AAAAAAAAGSo/JulVPnFJhRQ/s320/Neanderthal+skull,+Dr+Karl+Shuker.jpg" width="292" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="color: magenta; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Neanderthal skull (Dr Karl Shuker)</strong></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">However, whereas the biblical account clearly describes the birth of Nephilim from matings between divine beings and mortal humans, new palaeontological and molecular researches have confirmed that the Neanderthals and modern humans are not descended one from the other, but are two wholly separate lineages that branched off from a common ancestor.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>WHO - OR WHAT - WERE THE SONS OF GOD?</strong><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Today, the most popular theological views regarding the sons of God and the Nephilim are that they were one and the same, or that the Nephilim were giant monstrous progeny of the sons of God. But if either view is true, then who, or what, were the sons of God?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">One popular idea is that they were pious men from the line of Seth, youngest brother of Cain, who were ultimately led astray by Cain's female descendants, or merely by unspecified immoral women. Alternatively, as suggested by Gaebelein, the Nephilim may simply be the ten great men of antiquity that had just been listed in Genesis (5: 3-32). However, there is etymological evidence to dispute both of these mortal, human-based interpretations.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">According to Allen C. Myers, editing <i>The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary</i> (1987), the term <i>Elohim</i>, from which 'sons of God' is derived, refers to gods in general, and is also the most frequent Old Testament name for God. Similarly, a term sometimes employed in relation to the sons of God is 'the Watchers'. Derived from the Aramaic <i>‘îr</i>, it appears in the Book of Daniel too, where it is taken to mean an angel, a messenger, or an agent of Yahweh (the covenant name of the God of Israel). Thus, it seems highly unlikely that such well-defined, divine-specific terms would be used to describe mortal (albeit righteous or renowned) men.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>ANGELS OR DEMI-GODS?</strong><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This in turn leads to the inevitable conclusion that the sons of God were indeed divine, immortal beings, rather than mortal men, and down through the ages two different identities of this nature have been considered. Some scholars have proposed that these entities were angels, i.e. mediators between God and men. Others have considered them to be demi-gods, not descended from God in the literal sense of the term 'sons', but belonging to a lesser hierarchy of deities, analogous to the stratification of deities in classical Greek mythology.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">For many centuries, however, the concept that the sons of God were divine entities who had nonetheless liaised sexually with mortal women was viewed as scandalous, and was vigorously suppressed by the early Christian Church fathers. After all, as stated in the RSV version of Matthew (22: 30): "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven", thus emphasising the purity of angels.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Even so, there were certain controversial documents that not only supported this heretical scenario but also provided details not present in Genesis. Furthermore, they had once been well known to theological scholars. These were the Books of Enoch.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>THE ENOCHIAN REVELATIONS</strong><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Descended from Seth, Enoch was a son of Jared and the father of Methuselah. He spent his relatively short life (by pre-diluvial standards), spanning a mere 365 years, in spiritual communion with God, as a result of which he did not die but was taken physically by God to Heaven, where he beheld the indescribable wonders of the seven heavens.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Little is said of Enoch in the Bible, as the pseudoepigraphical work (i.e. claiming to be authored by a biblical figure) known as the Book of Enoch, Ethiopian Enoch, or '1 Enoch' was not included in either the Hebrew or most Christian biblical canons. It was probably written by several different authors, and dates back to at least a century before the birth of Christ. Originally written in Aramaic, it was later translated into Greek and Latin, but was lost, seemingly irretrievably, by the 4th Century AD. In 1773, however, James Bruce, a Scottish explorer, returned home from Ethiopia with no less than three copies, all Ethiopic (Ge'ez) translations from Coptic monasteries, two of which are still retained in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Moreover, portions of this book's original Aramaic version have been discovered among the Dead Sea fragments in Qumran Cave 4.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There is also a Slavonic document variously termed the Slavonic Enoch, 2 Enoch, or 'The Book of the Secrets of Enoch'. This parallels the Ethiopian Enoch to some extent, and may have been written in Alexandria a couple of centuries after the latter was authored.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">According to the Ethiopian Enoch, the sons of God were angels who became filled with lust and desire by the beauty of the daughters of men. Two hundred descended to earth on Mount Armon, led by Samyasa and also including Urakabrameel, Azibeel, Tamiel, Ramuel, Danel, Azkeel, Sarakuyal, Asael, Armers, and Batraal. Choosing wives from the daughters of men, they lived with them and eventually degenerated into unrestrained sexual abandon.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">They also taught these mortal women secrets of sorcery, astronomy, cosmetics, and herbalism; and the women became pregnant by them, giving birth to immense giants, the Nephilim. So it was that magic, knowledge of the stars, moon, and planets, the sexual allure provided by cosmetics, and both the medical and hallucinogenic properties of plants became known to humanity; and numbers of semi-divine, half-breed giants walked the lands.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The profanation by the fallen angels of their divine arcane wisdom, which was ultimately harnessed to great evil by mankind, was so devastating that only a deluge, washing away humanity entirely from the face of the earth, could restore the equilibrium formerly existing between the immortal and mortal. Accordingly, God told Enoch to inform the fallen angels that He would show them no mercy, and would rid the world of their monstrous offspring. In response, they sent Enoch to Heaven to speak to God on their behalf, but to no avail. The fallen angels were duly imprisoned to await the Day of Judgement, and God sent the Great Flood to cleanse the world of sin, sparing only the righteous Noah and his family.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Inevitably, the Enochian documents were viewed with horror by the zealous early Christian Church fathers. Thus, once these manuscripts were lost (or deliberately hidden?), they and their successors were swift to sow doubt in the minds of future generations of scholars and worshippers as to whether such works had ever existed at all, thus facilitating their desire to deny any prospect of angelic fallibility. Indeed, so successful was their goal to eradicate the Enochian books from the minds of their acolytes that by the 4th Century AD, the scholar-monk St Jerome, author of the Vulgate, asserted that these works were truly apocryphal, never having existed in reality, only in rumour.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Notwithstanding this, sections of the Ethiopian Enoch were clearly alluded to in the Book of Jude (verses 14-15), possibly inspired a portion in the First Book of Peter (3: 19) too, and gained a whole new following after the rediscovery in 1773 by Bruce.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Like so much speculation arising from ancient documents, however, it is exceedingly unlikely that we shall ever uncover the truth concerning the Nephilim and the sons of God. Yet there are sufficient curiosities and anomalies associated with the Nephilim Passages to suggest that their words have indeed locked away a notable secret not deemed suitable by early religious figures to be made accessible to the masses. If only we could find the key...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This Eclectarium blog post is excerpted and expanded from my book <strong><a href="http://www.karlshuker.com/planet_earth.htm"><span style="color: red;"><em>Mysteries of Planet Earth: An Encyclopedia of the Inexplicable</em></span></a></strong> (Carlton Books: London, 1999).</span></span></div>
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Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-32097039374945575352012-11-29T23:33:00.000+00:002020-05-04T11:10:20.647+01:00THE GREEN CHILDREN OF WOOLPIT - INVESTIGATING A MEDIEVAL MYSTERY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If we are to believe the medieval chroniclers, during the Middle Ages Britain was a land not unaccustomed to the appearance of many extraordinary marvels and miracles - but few were stranger than the unheralded arrival in Woolpit of the green children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This extraordinary episode is believed to have taken place during the reign of either King Stephen (1135-1154 AD) or King Henry II (1154-1189 AD), both reigns occurring during an unstable time of great poverty and hardship for the ordinary masses, and it appears to have been first recorded by two monastic scholars, penning separate but closely corresponding versions during the early 1200s. One of these scholars was Ralph of Coggeshall, who, in 1207, was the abbot of a Benedictine abbey in the <st1:place>Essex</st1:place> <st1:place><st1:placetype>village</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename>Coggeshall</st1:placename></st1:place>. The relevant passage, from his <i>Chronicon Anglicarum</i>, was translated into English from its original Latin by Thomas Keightley in his own book, <i>The Fairy Mythology</i> (1884). The other scholar was a well-educated Augustinian monk from <st1:place>Yorkshire</st1:place>, known as William of Newburgh, who documented the episode in his <i>Historia Rerum Anglicarum</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Centre of modern-day Woolpit (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In both versions, the locality where the strangely-hued visitors appeared was named as Woolpit, a small village just a few miles to the east of Bury St Edmunds in <st1:city><st1:place>Suffolk</st1:place></st1:city>. 'Woolpit' is a corruption of 'Wolfpit', for in the Middle Ages wolves still existed in Britain, and on the outskirts of this particular village were a number of deep pits dating back to ancient times that were traditionally used for trapping these creatures. However, it is possible that on at least one occasion these pits ensnared - or released? - two much more exotic entities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Alongside Woolpit’s village name sign, depicting the green children and a wolf (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One day, some of the Woolpit villagers spotted two very unusual individuals near to the mouth of one of these pits. They seemed to be children - one was a girl, the other was a boy and somewhat younger in age. Both of them were dressed in unfamiliar-looking clothes, and spoke in a language that was unintelligible to the villagers - but by far the most bizarre characteristic of this peculiar pair was their colour. It was as if they had been skilfully fashioned from summer leaves or soft meadow grass, for just like their clothes, and even the strange hue of their eyes, their skin was green!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The banner of St Mary’s Church, depicting the green children (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Totally bemused, the villagers decided to take these incongruous infants to someone whose elevated status and education would enable him to decide the best course of action to pursue regarding them. And so it was that the green children of Woolpit (whose original names appear never to have been recorded) were introduced to Sir Richard de Calne, a knight living at Wikes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Not surprisingly, Sir Richard was initially as perplexed as the villagers had been by the sight of these outlandish youngsters, who were weeping bitterly. Were they just frightened, or were they hungry too? There was only one way to find out. After doing what he could to try to console them, he then set out to discover their favourite food, by offering them as many different dishes as possible - but all to no avail. Every type of food placed before them was instantly rejected, and their anguished howls became ever louder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Finally, inspired more by desperation than deliberation, Sir Richard and his staff brought into the house some raw bean shoots - and to everyone's surprise the children immediately made it clear via non-verbal but no less evocative means that these were what they desired. When the shoots were handed to them, however, they amazed their observers by ignoring the bulging pods...and splitting open the stalks instead! Not surprisingly, they did not discover any beans, and so they hurled the shoots away in disgust and disappointment, until they were shown that the beans were contained in the pods. At once they began eating the beans, and from their evident delight it was clear that these were a familiar food to them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Indeed, for several weeks to come they would not eat anything else, surviving entirely upon an exclusive diet of beans. Eventually, however, the girl began to consume other foods too, but the boy refused to do so. Inevitably, he became ever weaker, and in less than a year he had died. His sister, conversely, survived and prospered, maturing as the years passed by into a normal young woman, whose skin gradually faded to a more typical shade. In due course, she married a man from <st1:place>King's Lynn</st1:place>, in southern <st1:city><st1:place>Norfolk</st1:place></st1:city> (and in some later accounts she then became known as Agnes Barre).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Perhaps the most significant event in her acclimatisation was that she eventually learnt to speak English fairly fluently. At last, she would be able to shed some much-needed light upon the greatest mystery of all surrounding herself and her late brother - their origin. Where had these remarkable children come from?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Close-up of top of Woolpit's village sign, portraying the green children and a wolf (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In reality, however, her testimony served only to deepen the mystery, which has now spanned over eight centuries without reaching a satisfactory conclusion. According to Keightley's translation of the green children's history as penned by Ralph of Coggeshall:</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Batang;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Being frequently asked about the people of her country, she asserted that the inhabitants, and all they had in that country, were of a green colour; and that they saw no sun, but enjoyed a degree of light like what is after sunset. Being asked how she came into this country with the aforesaid boy, she replied, that as they were following their flocks, they came to a certain cavern, on entering which they heard a delightful sound of bells; ravished by whose sweetness, they went for a long time wandering on through the cavern, until they came to its mouth. When they came out of it, they were struck senseless by the excessive light of the sun, and the unusual temperature of the air; and they thus lay for a long time. Being terrified by the noise of those who came on them, they wished to fly, but they could not find the entrance of the cavern before they were caught."<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Readers perusing the first portion of this excerpt may be forgiven for wondering whether I had slyly inserted a description of the <st1:place><st1:placename>Emerald</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>City</st1:placetype></st1:place> from L. Frank Baum's immortal children's book <i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz </i>(1900). Certainly, there is an unexpected similarity between this fictional viridescent realm and the supposed origin of the green children - a parallel made even more intriguing by the fact that certain accounts of the Woolpit green children have actually claimed that they were transported to Woolpit by a whirlwind, just as Dorothy and her dog Toto were transported to Oz by a cyclone! Who knows - perhaps Baum was aware of the Woolpit episode, and incorporated a modified version of its theme within his book?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Be that as it may (or may not!), it is important to note that the version of the green girl's testimony documented by William of Newburgh differs from that of the Abbot Ralph, inasmuch as he claims that the villagers had found the two children wandering through the fields around Woolpit, rather than at the mouth of one of the wolfpits. A third chronicler from this period, Gervase of Tilbury, made the same claim, and his account also amplified some of the details given in those of the other two writers:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"We are folk of <st1:place>St Martin</st1:place>'s Land; for he is the chief saint among us. We know not where the land is, and remember only that one day we were feeding our father's flock in the field when we heard a great noise like bells, as when, at St Edmunds [Bury St Edmunds], they all peal together. And on a sudden we were both caught up in the spirit and found ourselves in your harvest field. Among us no sun rises, nor is there open sunshine, but such a twilight as here goes before the rising and setting of the sun. Yet there is a land of light to be seen not far from us, but cut off from us by a stream of great width."<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Could Woolpit be the land of light, and could the stream be a river - or even a sea?</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Batang;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Faced with such a bewildering if not bewitching tale, it is hardly surprising that down through the centuries the mystery of Woolpit's green children has attracted a diverse array of theories and proposed explanations - ranging from the mundane to the metaphysical.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The most striking feature of the story is the green colour of the children's clothes, eyes, and - most especially - their skin, which has attracted appreciable attention from folklorists, and for good reason. Green is the colour of Faerie, of Nature, and, in Celtic mythology, of Death. Several well-known examples and associations readily spring to mind - could the green children of Woolpit constitute yet another one?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ornamental wall plaque depicting the Green Man (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Prominent among these is a mysterious entity known as Jack-in-the-Green or the Green Man, depicted as a shaggy humanoid figure covered not in hair or fur but in sprouting leaves instead, and sometimes merely as a foliate head. He is portrayed in many church carvings and decorations, including ornate misericords, tympana, fonts, tombs, roof bosses, and screens, and is also preserved in the name and signs of many pubs and inns. Variously classed as a pagan god, a tree spirit, or the personification of fertility and the renewal of life in spring, the Green Man's complex symbolism as well as his longstanding association in art and religion is vigorously examined in William Anderson's fascinating book <i>Green Man</i> (1990).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Another Green Man wall plaque (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Equally noteworthy, and possibly allied to the Green Man, is the enigmatic Green Knight, as featured in a classic if anonymous 14<sup>th</sup>-Century poem, 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. It tells of a mysterious knight with green skin, wearing green armour, and riding a green horse who arrived uninvited one day at the hall of King Arthur and challenged his knights to trade blows with him. Only one, Sir Gawain, accepted the strange visitor's challenge, and promptly chopped off his head - but instead of dying, the Green Knight merely picked up his severed head and told Gawain to meet him in a year's time so that he could return the favour. When Gawain did so, his bravery was rewarded by the Green Knight's failure to chop off his head - after which the knight revealed himself to be Sir Bertilak, at whose castle Gawain had been staying while awaiting his potentially fatal meeting with the Green Knight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gawain and the Green Knight (artist unknown to me)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This eerie tale has a direct link with Faerie, because it transpired that Sir Bertilak was transformed into the Green Knight by the enchantment of King Arthur's half-sister, Morgan Le Fay, and as with so many fairy links the colour embodying the enchantment was green. Green is, in any event, the favourite colour for fairy clothing, and some fairy beings, particularly elves, are often described as green-hued.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Green is the colour of Faerie and fairies<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Even the <st1:place><st1:placetype>land</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename>Faerie</st1:placename></st1:place> as described in traditional folktales bears a degree of resemblance to the Woolpit green girl's account of <st1:place>St Martin</st1:place>'s Land. While journeying through <st1:country-region><st1:place>Wales</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 1188 AD, Giraldus Cambrensis documented one such story - concerning the visit to Faerie by a boy called Elidor - in his subsequent narrative, <i>Itinerarium Cambriae</i>. Translated into English by R.C. Hoare, it includes the following description of Faerie:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"...a most beautiful country, adorned with rivers and meadows, woods and plains, but obscure, and not illuminated with the full light of the sun. All the days were cloudy, and the nights extremely dark, on account of the absence of the moon and stars."<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nor should we forget the legendary outlaw Robin Hood, dressed in Lincoln Green and sharing the sylvan seclusion of Sherwood Forest with Maid Marian and their band of Merry Men - for Robin and Marian are sometimes likened to or even directly homologised with the King and Queen of Faerie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Robin Hood - Louis Rhead (1912)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Particularly pertinent to the folklore facet in seeking an explanation for the green foundlings of Woolpit is their especial liking for beans. According to ancient Celtic tradition, beans are the food of the dead - the sole sustenance of resurrected corpses and ghosts - thus enhancing the unworldly aura already encompassing these weird children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Middle Ages were extremely credulous, unscientific times brimming over with portents, misconceptions, exaggerations, and superstitious fancies of every kind. Hence it is a very hazardous task attempting to distinguish between fact and folklore, hearsay and truth when analysing accounts from this period. The green children of Woolpit may be nothing more than an imaginative rumour or fairytale given a semblance of substance by uncritical or distorted chronicling, but it is unlikely that this theory can ever be adequately tested.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Family Tree' (Robert M Williams)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A very different and far more dramatic explanation was proffered by Harold T. Wilkins, an investigator of unexplained anomalies. In his book <i>Mysteries: Solved and Unsolved</i> (1959), Wilkins boldly proposed that the green children may have entered our world from a parallel version (existing in a separate dimensional plane but directly alongside our own), by accidentally passing through some form of interdimensional 'window' bridging the two.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Other writers have offered the equally radical scenario of a vast but gloomy subterranean world linked to our own by a worldwide labyrinth of interconnecting tunnels, and inhabited by a mysterious race of advanced humanoids, two of whose children accidentally became lost in one such tunnel and eventually wandered out into our own sunlit world above-ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Another dramatic proposal is that the green children are extraterrestrials. As long ago as 1651, Robert Burton opined in his tome <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i> that they may have come from Venus or Mars. Much more recently, the extraterrestrial hypothesis has been pursued enthusiastically by astronomer Duncan Lunan, assistant curator at <st1:country-region><st1:place>Scotland</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s Airdrie Observatory. Based upon the children’s description of their twilit St Martin’s land, and the great river separating it from a luminous land beyond, Lunan has speculated that they may have originated from a planet whose one side permanently faces the sun and whose other is permanently cloaked in darkness with a twilit zone sandwiched between them. As for the great river, Lunan has postulated that this is actually a huge canal that encircles the entire planet and is used for planet-wide thermoregulatory purposes. He believes that they must have reached Earth by teleportation, and has suggested that this was accompanied by a bright auroral display, thereby interpreting the children’s description of a sweet sound of bells as a visual rather than an aural stimulus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bearing in mind, however, the claim by both contemporary chroniclers of the green children episode that once the two began eating normal food their green skin colour slowly vanished, and that the girl grew up into a typical-looking woman and married locally (there are even claims that some modern-day descendants of her lineage exist today, including one branch in the USA), it seems unlikely that they belonged to some alien species.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p> </o:p><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b>The Emerald City, from L. Frank Baum's children's novel <i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</i> (1900)</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As an advocate of Ockham's Razor - a philosophical maxim stating that the simplest answer is usually the <span style="color: black;">likeliest,</span> provided that it fits all of the available facts - I personally prefer the rather more prosaic but much more tangible explanation offered by researcher Paul Harris, with whom I have corresponded at length concerning the history of Woolpit's green children. Paul has studied this fascinating case in considerable depth, and has presented his illuminating findings in a detailed <i>Fortean Times</i> article (spring 1991) and subsequently elsewhere too (see my own book <i>Dr Shuker's Casebook</i>, 2008, for full details).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Harris speculated that the twilit world of <st1:place>St Martin</st1:place>'s Land and the underground cavern through which the green children came to Woolpit may owe more to local geography than to parallel worlds and interdimensional windows. Just over a mile north of Bury St Edmunds is the <st1:place><st1:placetype>village</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename>Fornham St Martin</st1:placename></st1:place>. Remembering that the girl referred to Bury St Edmunds merely as "St Edmunds", perhaps "<st1:place>St Martin</st1:place>'s Land" was her own abbreviation for Fornham St Martin. If so, her story is no longer so opaque to interpretation.<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Batang;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As pointed out by Harris, northwest of Woolpit and separated from it by the river Lark are the thick woodlands of <st1:place><st1:placename>Thetford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Forest</st1:placetype></st1:place>, at the centre of which are numerous Neolithic flint mines. Looking out from this dim, shadowy region towards the more open, and hence sunnier, countryside surrounding Woolpit on the far side of the Lark certainly corresponds closely to the scene described by the green girl with regard to the "land of light" visible from St Martin's Land and separated from the latter by "a stream of great width". And the mysterious underground cavern leading to Woolpit could be any of the flint mine tunnels running from <st1:place><st1:placename>Thetford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Forest</st1:placetype></st1:place> and emerging on the opposite side of the Lark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Babes in the Wood – 1879 woodcut by Randolph Caldecott<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Prior to the reign of Henry II, there had been a significant influx of Flemish weavers and merchants into <st1:place>Eastern England</st1:place>, but these were severely persecuted by Henry, culminating in a massacre of the Flemish at a battle in 1173 near Bury St Edmunds. Paul deems it very plausible that the green children were Flemish children from Fornham St Martin whose parents had been killed, and who had fled away northward into the dense woodland terrain of Thetford Forest (whose dark shadowed interior would have reminded them of twilight), but survived there for a time in a half-starved state (recalling the traditional 'Babes in the Wood' fairy tale) before wandering out among the roaming livestock of farmers and later becoming even more disoriented within this region's maze of subterranean mining tunnels - leading them ever further away from their home territory. Eventually, while wandering aimlessly through one of these tunnels, they came by chance within earshot of the bells of Woolpit's village church, and after following the familiar sound of pealing church bells they finally emerged from the tunnel, confused and dazzled by the sudden glare of the outside world's bright sunshine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">St Mary's Church, Woolpit (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To substantiate this proposed scenario, Harris offered the following three thought-provoking pieces of corroborating evidence:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Firstly: in medieval times, villages were extremely insular - so much so that villagers hardly ever travelled outside their own neighbourhood. Consequently, even the dialects spoken by villagers from nearby villages were very distinct from one another. This meant that the dialect of anyone visiting Woolpit from a fairly distant, non-local village, such as Fornham St Martin, for instance, would have been virtually unintelligible (and entirely so if the children had been Flemish) - just like the green children's speech, in fact.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Secondly: there is a type of anaemia known as chlorosis that confers a green tinge to the skin of sufferers. It is caused by poor eating - and is therefore a disease to which young children lost and starving in the outdoors would be particularly susceptible. Significantly, chlorosis can be cured if the diet of sufferers is improved - and the green girl's skin did indeed become pink after she had begun to eat a wider range of foods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(A related proposal supported by some researchers is that the green children had been abandoned or orphaned as youngsters and thereafter reared by wolves. Because these feral children would have lived in caves with the wolves away from sunlight and would probably have had a very poor diet, they may have suffered from chlorosis, turning their skin green. Moreover, in a <i>Daily Mail</i> letter of <st1:date day="2" month="7" year="1997">2 July 1997</st1:date> discussing this theory, Laraine Bates of Brome, <st1:city><st1:place>Suffolk</st1:place></st1:city>, stated that after appearing at Woolpit both children were said to howl at a full moon and were sometimes seen running on all fours.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thirdly: a centuries-old East Anglian legend tells of how two young children, heirs to the estate of their dead parents, were poisoned with arsenic and then abandoned by their evil guardian in the depths of Wayland Wood, in the vicinity of <st1:place><st1:placename>Thetford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Forest</st1:placetype></st1:place>. If this were more than a legend, it could conceivably explain the origin of the green children - and surely it is more than just a coincidence that one of the effects of arsenic poisoning, which is not always lethal, is that the victim's skin turns green.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Scroll enscribed with the green children's history inside St Mary Church, Woolpit (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Speaking of coincidences: Over the years, several writers have alluded to a mysterious Spanish episode that duplicates almost exactly the events discussed here for Woolpit. A pair of young children, the elder of the two a girl, but both with green skin, are discovered at the mouth of a cave by villagers from nearby Banjos in <st1:state><st1:place>Catalonia</st1:place></st1:state>. They are taken to the home of a nobleman called Señor Ricardo da Calno (a name remarkably similar to Sir Richard de Calne!), who cannot tempt them to eat anything - except for beans. The girl gradually learns Spanish, and announces that she and her brother come from a permanently twilit land separated by a wide river from a much sunnier country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Indeed, the only significant differences between the two stories are that the Banjos version is set in the 19th Century (the children allegedly appeared in August 1887), and the girl as well as the boy eventually dies.</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Batang;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sussex-based researcher Frank Preston has carried out several enquiries in an attempt to validate this story, but all without success. Similarly, when the British Council Institute in <st1:city><st1:place>Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city> conducted their own investigations on his behalf, they too drew a complete blank. After methodically searching and contacting Spanish town hall, library, and museum archives, and perusing all of the relevant newspapers for August 1887, they were unable to locate a single reference to this singular incident. Clearly, therefore, it was a complete fabrication, evidently inspired by the Woolpit history - not that this is too surprising a revelation really...bearing in mind that the <st1:place><st1:placetype>village</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename>Banjos</st1:placename></st1:place> does not exist either!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But what about the green children of Woolpit? Today, more than 800 years later, they are still fondly recalled here, commemorated in a village sign and also depicted in the banner of Woolpit's church. Harris's theory remains the most convincing explanation put forward so far, but without any unequivocal physical evidence to examine we can never be absolutely certain of the truth behind this small <st1:city><st1:place>Suffolk</st1:place></st1:city> village's most celebrated visitors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet assuming that they did indeed exist, and had inexplicably found themselves far from their home (wherever that may have been), a second link with L. Frank Baum's masterpiece <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> readily comes to mind. After all, their thoughts on finding themselves in Woolpit were no doubt akin to those voiced aloud by Judy Garland's Dorothy: "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in <st1:state><st1:place>Kansas</st1:place></st1:state> anymore!" Nor is that the last of the Baum links.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Title page from the first edition of L. Frank Baum's novel <i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz </i>(1900)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Several years ago (on 14 July 2008, to be precise), I visited Woolpit to see for myself the various relics there commemorating the history of the green children. These include the tall, elegant village name sign standing not far from St Mary's Church that depicts the two children, the church, and a wolf; the colourful banner of the church that also depicts them; and a scroll inside the church on which the history of the green children is enscribed. Walking through St Mary’s Church, moreover, I was surprised to find a most unexpected correspondence between Oz and Woolpit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A mythological winged creature carved at the end of a pew in St Mary's Church, Woolpit (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The church contains numerous carvings of animals, some real and others mythological, but one of the most startling of these, perched at the end of a pew, is an extraordinary composite beast that looks remarkably like a flying monkey!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The winged monkey carved on a pew inside St Mary’s Church, Woolpit (Dr Karl Shuker)<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, Dorothy and her friends were, of course, pursued and harried by a flock of flying monkeys sent by the Wicked Witch of the West. Meticulously carved, with every feather beautifully delineated, this mini-masterpiece may be an opinicus, i.e. a griffin-related hybrid, sometimes combining a simian face with a lion’s body and the plumed wings of an eagle – yet another bizarre being finding shelter in the magical village of Woolpit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3366ff;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Green – the colour of magic and mystery<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-43740731230012549112012-10-25T01:57:00.001+01:002012-10-25T01:57:57.052+01:00IS DIVINATION MORE THAN JUST SMOKE AND MIRRORS (AND ENTRAILS, ROSE PETALS, SNAKES, FINGERNAILS...)?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">No-one knows what the future holds, but down through the ages humanity has done its utmost to find out - by devising and employing an extraordinary panoply of divination rituals, ranging from the imaginative and ingenious to the downright bizarre and bewildering. Nevertheless, there is a core belief unifying all of these seemingly disparate practices. Namely, that the patterns perceived in Nature, whether they be visual, aural, tactile, moving, stationary, natural, or induced, are in some subtle, cryptic manner a reflection of what is yet to occur, but can be correctly comprehended and decoded only by those who are sensitive to them.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 14pt;">DIVINATION – THE EARLY DAYS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Prognostication methods involving the interpretation of these patterns or movements, as produced by all manner of non-living or non-human living objects, are collectively known as the mantic arts, and were in existence as far back as Palaeolithic times, when our long-departed troglodytic ancestors were guided by the prophecies of the tribal shaman or medicine man, which were drawn in turn from astute observations of the world around him. They also flourished in the earliest civilisations when the role of soothsayer was frequently taken by a high priest or similar religious figure in authority.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Scrying, for example, during which visions seen by psychics within crystal balls or other shiny surfaces are then interpreted by them to yield insights into future events, can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians, the Hebrews, and the druids (who also set store in epatoscomancy – deriving guidance from examining the entrails patterns of sacrificed animals). A variation on this theme, using a mirror instead of a crystal ball, is known as catoptromancy, and is currently enjoying renewed popularity thanks to New Age rituals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><strong><span style="color: magenta;">'The Crystal Ball' (John William Waterhouse, 1902)</span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">The ancient Greeks, meanwhile, favoured their oracles, through which the gods supposedly spoke directly to their mortal subjects; whereas the Romans put their faith and trust in the putative potency of augury and haruspicy (interpreting the cracks that form in the scapulae of a roasted sheep!). Gematria, an early precursor of numerology, in which divination was performed via the translation of words or passages of text from holy works of literature into numerical values, was practised by the Babylonians as well as the Greeks, Persians, Gnostics, and emerging Christians</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">In </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Asia</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">, as far back as 1000 BC the Chinese had developed their celebrated system of I Ching, utilising long and short sticks of yarrow. And in rural </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Europe</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">, a favourite divinatory technique during medieval times was the reading of patterns created by tossing a handful of pebbles (pessomancy), or a shower of other small pellet-shaped objects such as peas, onto the ground</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><strong><span style="color: magenta;">I Ching, Song Dynasty print</span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Such methods as the latter, in which the techniques are purposefully devised and performed for the sole purpose of divination, are referred to as voluntary or man-made. Throughout time and the world, however, the most popular and widespread practices have tended to be ones in which humans have sought to discern the future by observing natural phenomena all around them, such as fire, water, light and shadows, weather, and wildlife.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 14pt;">THE FLICKERING FLAME OF FORTUNE<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Lampadomancy (pyromancy) in particular is a very ancient technique. A subject's future is determined, or an answer to a specific question obtained, by observing the flickering movements of a flame (nowadays usually from a candle), and deciphering their supposed significance</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Closely related is capnomancy, divining the future from the swirling, ever-changing forms assumed by smoke. This again is a very ancient system of divination, whose origins stem from those of humanity itself following its discovery of fire</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Yet another related technique dating back to humanity's earliest age is sciomancy - a means of divination utilising the shape, size, and movement of shadows. Although once popular in ancient </span><st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Greece</span></st1:place></st1:country><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">, when corpses were used to cast the shadows, this particular mantic art no longer seems to be readily practised.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 14pt;">OF WATER AND WEATHER<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Hydromancy is prognostication by staring into a dish or pool of water and analysing the patterns inherent within its lucid surface, but there any many variations upon this theme. Bletonomancy is a hydromantic art concentrating upon moving patterns of water, such as the currents in rivers and streams. And pegomancy, a technique again popular in ancient </span><st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Greece</span></st1:place></st1:country><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">, harnesses the images created by water spouting forth from a fountain</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">An aural version of hydromancy is leconomancy, developed in ancient </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Assyria</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">. This uses as its indicators of future events the sounds or movements made when an object is thrown into water</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Gazing up at clouds for inspiration and insights amid their fleecy, ever-transforming shapes is nothing new either - those earnest mantic practitioners the ancient Greeks were very fond of nephelomancy. Translating into prophecies the murmurs, whistles, and other utterances of the wind, as heard when holding a seashell to one's ear, formed the basis of austromancy in </span><st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Tibet</span></st1:place></st1:country><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> and ancient </span><st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">China</span></st1:place></st1:country><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">. Ceraunoscopy featured the prediction of impending events from perceiving the flashing patterns created by lightning during a thunderstorm.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 14pt;">WILDLIFE DIVINATION<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Not surprisingly, however, the immense multitude of wildlife with which humankind shares this planet has engendered two major branches of mantic arts. One is alectryomancy or zoomancy, in which the behaviour of domesticated or wild animals is closely observed and analysed for clues to future events. Today, it has largely descended into the realms of folklore in the Western world, but is still seriously practised in many other regions of the globe, especially </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Asia</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">, and was particularly popular in ancient civilisations</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">One very noteworthy form was hippomancy, as performed by the Celts. Practitioners would monitor the movements of a white horse walking within a specific region of a sacred grove, and then examine the dust and hoofmarks left behind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">The Greeks studied the behaviour of snakes in ophimancy; and ornithomancy, occurring both in </span><st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Greece</span></st1:place></st1:country><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> and in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Rome</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">, involved the prognostication of events by a blindfolded augur based upon his apprentice's description of the flight movements yielded by a flock of birds passing by. One vestige of ornithomancy is preserved today in the oft-quoted traditional British verse linking sightings of specific numbers of magpies to certain forthright predictions – “One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy...”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Another relic of the zoomantic arts in modern times is apantomancy – divination interpreted via random encounters with animals, as typified by the lingering superstition that a black cat crossing one’s path will bring good luck (in the UK) or bad luck (in the USA), and vice-versa with a white cat</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Speaking of cats: felidomancy involves scrutinising the activity of domestic or wild cats as a guide to predicting future events (the canine equivalent is canidomancy). And there is even a mantic art known as myomancy, originating in the </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Middle East</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">, in which a practitioner's predictions are based upon the behavioural activity of mice or rats.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">The other major wildlife-related branch of the mantic arts is botanomancy - divination by observing plant life. Thus, the patterns and veins exhibited by leaves (and also flower petals) constitute the basis for phyllomancy. A notably curious version of phyllomancy is phyllorhodomancy. Practised by the ancient Greeks (who else?), a rose petal was placed between a person's hands after he had posed a question; he then clapped his hands together, and the seer sought the answer by examining the precise form of the resulting squashed petal. A very odd way indeed of discovering whether someone has - quite literally - a rosy future in store!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 14pt;">THROUGH A GLASS, STRANGELY!<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Not all methods of divining the future involve such familiar objects or methods as crystal balls, tea leaves, or cards. Moreover, some of the lesser-known techniques on offer are very strange indeed. Onychomancy, for example, is divining by studying a person's fingernails; whereas hepatomancy (very popular in Babylonian times) involves examining the size, texture, colour, and shape of the lobes of a sacrificial animal's liver. Molybdomancy requires the seer to interpret the patterns and hissing sounds produced when molten lead is dropped into water.</span></div>
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<span style="color: magenta; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><strong>Molybdomancy (Micha L Rieser-Wikipedia)</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">A method of fortune-telling still popular in China is the random choosing of a stick from a selection, all numbered, known as ming sticks, after asking outloud a specific question. Nor should we overlook kephalonomancy – an ancient technique involving the pouring of lighted carbon onto the baked head of a goat in order to determine innocence or guilt; or tiromancy - using as its guiding influence the configuration of holes and mould in or on cheese.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Mercifully, uromancy (foretelling the future from urine in place of water, widely performed by the ancient Greeks and Romans) and copromancy (ditto using faeces) no longer seem to be practiced. In stark contrast, thanks to the timeless guilty appeal of listening to gossip coupled with the often-irritating ubiquity of mobile phone conversations played out for all to hear in public, transatuaumancy – divination via chance remarks overheard in a crowd – is still very much alive.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 14pt;">IS DIVINATION A GAMBLE?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Not surprisingly, gambling and divination are intimately associated with one another, given that both involve attempting to foresee what is yet to happen. Games of chance featuring the dealing out of playing cards evolved from cartomancy, and the rolling of dice to determine future events (an example of cleromancy) became incorporated into many modern board games. Even the origin of the roulette wheel for employment in games of luck may well have stemmed from a mantic art – cyclomancy, which is an early method of divination using a wheel or a revolving circle to foretell the future. Clearly, this principle has also been successfully harnessed in a number of modern game shows, most notably ‘Wheel of Fortune’, variations of which have been widely broadcast around the globe</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Perhaps the most extraordinary, and sometimes decidedly grotesque, contemporary links between divination and gambling, however, involve the national lotteries nowadays established in many countries worldwide. For instance, a number of occult practices are commonly employed in the selection of numbers, such as magical timing - featuring a combination of dice divination and Solomonic magic (utilising tables of planetary hours), as meticulously elucidated in the occultview.com website. During the early days of the Italian national lottery, conversely, players would be guided by unusual current events when selecting their numbers, culminating most bizarrely in a case reported from Naples when a man severely injured in a car crash was besieged by lottery players haranguing him to tell them his date of birth so that they could use its numbers in their lottery selections! This may sound surreal, but in fact is nothing more than a modern-day incarnation of numerology.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 14pt;">WHY SUCH DIVERSITY IN DIVINATION?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">One of the most fascinating aspects of divination is the mind-boggling diversity of techniques that have evolved through the ages, as shown here, which is unparalleled among the psychic arts. There are a number of different reasons that collectively explain this situation, of which the following are by far the most influential.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">First and foremost is personal choice. Quite simply, everyone is different. What may appeal to one person might not inspire any degree of faith or belief in another, leading the latter person to look for or devise some other method instead. Even in today’s society, this still applies. One person may testify to the efficacy of Tarot readings, whereas another swears by palmistry, and a third by scrying. For some, visual stimuli such as the movement of flames and shadows or the patterns created by tea-leaves in tasseography engender confidence, whereas others are guided more effectively by tactile stimuli like dice-throwing, or phrenology (divination by feeling the bumps on a person’s head), or instead by sounds as in austromancy and leconomancy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Geographic location has also played an important role on the evolution of divination systems. In regions with few trees but an abundance of rocks and stones, such as northern Scandinavia, it is hardly coincidental, for example, that divination methods concentrated upon runic systems rather than versions involving cards or other systems employing paper-derived objects. The same applies with regard to divination systems on tropical islands favouring techniques featuring seashells, driftwood, waves, and other maritime-derived materials.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Occupation is very influential too, with early hunters paying particular attention to animal-related phenomena, such as the behaviour of their prey, or the structural variation of specific organs extracted from the latter, whereas farmers would note and be advised by the movements and activity of their own domestic livestock.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 14pt;">DIVINATION IN THE MODERN AGE<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">The continuing popularity of Tarot readings, scrying, chiromancy, I Ching, and a host of other familiar divination systems readily demonstrates that even in today’s technologically-advanced, ostensibly ultra-scientific age, a desire to see into the future and learn one’s fate remains just as potent now as it ever was. The ever-increasing expanse of bookshelves devoted to the mantic arts in contemporary bookshops is silent but evocative testimony to this. Moreover, such a desire is not limited to expression by the well known methods just listed. A surprising number of much less familiar systems are still practised, often in the most unexpected localities or at the most unexpected times.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Molybdomancy, for instance, remains very much alive and well in Germany during the Christmas period, and one of its most (in)famous erstwhile practitioners was none other than a certain Adolf Hitler, who was even photographed performing this feat amid the festivities held on one particular New Year’s Eve. Similarly, elderly inhabitants of the </span><st1:country -region="-region"><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">USA</span></st1:place></st1:country><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">'s </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">New England</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> states still attempt to foretell changes in the weather by observing the movement of smoke emitted from their houses' chimneys, thereby maintaining the archaic tradition of capnomancy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Moreover, in what sceptics must undoubtedly look upon as a bewildering paradox, even modern scientific technology is being effectively harnessed to power the drive for ever more accessible means of divination, as evinced by the development of sophisticated computer software for the reading and interpretation of astrological charts, Tarot cards, and dreams (oneiromancy).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Similarly, scientists are nowadays casting a much more interested and far less cynical eye upon methods of divination once dismissed as folklore and baseless superstition, especially certain examples focusing upon animal behaviour. These include the activity of livestock, migratory birds, and insect swarms prior to major weather changes, and, most dramatic of all, the extraordinary ability of many varied types of animals, but notably snakes (thereby effecting a re-emergence of ophimancy) to sense impending earthquake activity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">There are even surviving elements of divination in a number of contemporary religions, most notably voodoo, Santeria, and Wicca, while the popularity of feng-shui stems from the practitioners’ hopes that it will assist both in divining and in directly influencing their future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Quite apart from being incited by a markedly broad spectrum of interest – spanning idle curiosity and desperate urgency - to uncover the veiled secrets of the future, there is, however, one other major impetus fuelling humanity’s need for divination, and that in turn is, perhaps, the most basic psychological requirement of all. Namely, the need to stay in control.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Our greatest fears stem not from the known, over which we can usually exert at least a measure of control, but rather from the unknown, over which we generally have none whatsoever. And there is no greater source of the unknown than the invisible, intangible, incomprehensible future. If, however, we can devise mechanisms by which we may be able to penetrate, however faintly, the caliginous mists of time separating the present from the opaque equivalent that is yet to come, some of the future’s power to frighten us is diminished.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Little wonder, then, that divination achieved such prominence and diversity in bygone ages, when our long-departed ancestors’ understanding of the world in which they lived was so much less than ours today. Yet the persistence of divination in various forms within the modern world too attests vehemently to the fact that, even now, we have not entirely mastered our fear of what the future may hold for us, of our ultimate destiny and fate. And who knows, perhaps we never will.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">NB - Unless otherwise credited, all illustrations included here are, to the best of my knowledge, in the public domain.</span></div>
Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-32658641660342905032012-09-04T00:52:00.008+01:002012-09-04T00:57:35.936+01:00A VISIT TO EASTER ISLAND - LAND OF THE STONE GIANTS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GOXniNAETLk/T7RMX5p9VUI/AAAAAAAACII/cZQ-9a4vtyQ/s1600/Birdman+on+festival+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" kba="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GOXniNAETLk/T7RMX5p9VUI/AAAAAAAACII/cZQ-9a4vtyQ/s320/Birdman+on+festival+poster.jpg" width="237" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: magenta;"><strong>Easter Island birdman on festival poster (Dr Karl Shuker)</strong></span></div><div align="center"><br /></div><div align="center" style="text-align: justify;"><br />Not so long ago, in a magazine and internet survey to find the world’s most mysterious, paranormal locality, the runaway winner was a certain tiny triangular island (no more than 25 km across) separated by over 2000 km of southeastern Pacific Ocean from any other inhabited locality, formerly home to an extraordinary birdman cult, and ringed by numerous stone statues of enormous size and alienesque appearance that stare inward across their lonely domain through unseeing eye-sockets yet with a gaze as chilling as the rock from which they were hewn many centuries ago. Where else could this be but Rapanui – or, as we know it better in the West, Easter Island.</div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="justify"><strong>MEETING THE MOAI</strong></div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="justify">A special territory of Chile since 1888, Easter Island is so-named because it was first encountered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722, when it was reached by Dutch explorer Admiral Jacob Roggeveen. In April 2008, I fulfilled the ambition of a lifetime by finally visiting this truly remarkable island – containing three extinct volcanoes, a lush but entirely artificial flora and fauna almost entirely introduced by man from elsewhere to replace its own decimated native ecosystem, and only a single dusty town, Hanga Roa (with roughly 3500 inhabitants), which recalled to mind a 19th-century frontier town that had somehow been transported by cyclone far from its Wild West homeland and unceremoniously dropped down upon a fragrant tropical isle. But whereas Dorothy and Toto met the munchkins and the wizard of Oz, I met the moai – or at least a sizeable representation of them.</div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TT3Pko-T0iI/AAAAAAAAAQo/RwDoV5Vd8sY/s1600/Dr%2BKarl%2BShuker%2Band%2Bhalf-buried%2Bmoai%2Bon%2BRano%2BRaraku%2Bslopes.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565832942880805410" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TT3Pko-T0iI/AAAAAAAAAQo/RwDoV5Vd8sY/s400/Dr%2BKarl%2BShuker%2Band%2Bhalf-buried%2Bmoai%2Bon%2BRano%2BRaraku%2Bslopes.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 282px;" /></a><strong><span style="color: magenta;">Alongside a half-buried moai on the slopes of Rano Raraku (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong></div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="justify">No amount of photographs or films can prepare you for the sheer scale and awesome majesty of these gigantic stone statues, Easter Island’s most famous denizens, coldly aloof and silent, their thin lips and haughty visage radiating Ozymandian disdain. Numbering over 800 in total, many are still inside the quarry, within the eastern volcano Rano Raraku, where they were originally hewn from tuff (an igneous rock ash). Some lie there fully formed, waiting for the acolytes that will never come, to transport them out of the volcano and down the slopes, to be erected with honour as protective icons upon a ceremonial stone platform known as an ahu. Once greatly venerated as the revered representations of their sculptors’ ancestral leaders, and also as the earthly vessels of their leaders’ spirits, even today the moai command respect and deference – it is illegal merely to touch one of these stupendous monuments.</div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="justify">Having said that, some moai have not even been detached from the inner rock face from which they were carved. Consequently, everywhere that you look within this volcano’s obsidian depths there is a surreal juxtapositioning of heads, noses, brows, elongate ears, and hooded eye-sockets, staring imperiously but sightlessly upwards and inwards at every conceivable – and inconceivable – angle, like a particularly febrile nightmare of Picasso, Dali, or Hieronymus Bosch.</div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="justify" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MklXfOXroBc/T7RHWakchyI/AAAAAAAACHs/pHwpLFtcqRk/s1600/Dr+Karl+Shuker,+toppled+moai,+and+Rano+Raraku+in+background.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" kba="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MklXfOXroBc/T7RHWakchyI/AAAAAAAACHs/pHwpLFtcqRk/s320/Dr+Karl+Shuker,+toppled+moai,+and+Rano+Raraku+in+background.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div align="justify" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="color: magenta;">Alongside a toppled moai with Rano Raraku in the background (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong></div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="justify">A fair few did make the journey out, however, and today they can be found in many locations around the island. A number stand half-buried in grassy soil on Rano Raraku’s outer slopes, like a scattering of abandoned chess pieces on a giant’s forgotten chessboard. Others still lie in prone humiliation, where they were deliberately tipped over centuries ago by warring clans, but in modern times a select company have been raised and re-erected onto their ahus at various sites by teams of visiting researchers. With the exception of an ahu of seven moai at Ahu Akivi at the island’s centre, which look out towards the sea, all moai were originally erected by their sculptors near the island’s edge and faced inward, overlooking their clans as protective effigies. Such sites include Ahu Tongariki (restored with 15 moai) on the island’s southeastern edge, Ahu Nau Nau (with seven moai) at Anakena on its eastern edge, and Ahu Kote Riku at Tahai on its northwestern edge.</div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="justify"><strong>A HISTORY OF MYSTERY</strong></div><div align="justify"><br />Until Thor Heyerdahl’s famous first archaeological dig here during the 1950s, it was not generally realised that a moai is more than just a giant head. In reality, it is carved down the hips, with a pair of spindly arms and long-fingered hands pressed closely to its bulbous torso’s sides. However, so many moai were half-buried in soil and other deposits after centuries of gradual concealment by natural encroachment from sediment and plant life that their true nature was not realised until Heyerdahl oversaw the first scientific excavation of a moai, revealing its entire form.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565834212761283570" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TT3QujpaK_I/AAAAAAAAAQw/WLgobHP_3JM/s400/Half-buried%2Bmoai%2Bwith%2Bcharacteristic%2Blong%2Bearlobe.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 280px;" /><strong><span style="color: magenta;">One of Easter Island's most famous and much-photographed, half-buried moai, showing one of its characteristic long earlobes (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />On Rano Raraku, I encountered torso-buried heads that were 6 m tall, so when you add to that the height of the hidden body, it becomes evident that these extraordinary statues are indeed gargantuan, far bigger than anything even remotely similar to be found elsewhere in the world. Biggest of all is El Gigante, which would have stood a colossal 23 m high if it had ever been transported out of Rano Raraku, but this petrified giant remains here, its vast weight (estimated at over 145 tonnes) probably proving too much for even the most enthusiastic sculptors and workers to overcome.<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gxeSAVnRh68/T7RIGFUbCHI/AAAAAAAACH0/rSqOkjjvHvU/s1600/Dr+Karl+Shuker+and+moai+inside+ring+of+stones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" kba="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gxeSAVnRh68/T7RIGFUbCHI/AAAAAAAACH0/rSqOkjjvHvU/s320/Dr+Karl+Shuker+and+moai+inside+ring+of+stones.jpg" width="226" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="color: magenta;">With a moai inside a ring of stones (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong></div><div align="justify"><br />Like so much of Easter Island’s past, the history of the moai is enshrouded in controversy and mystery. Estimates as to when they were created vary by as much as a millennium depending upon the authority consulted. The current consensus (discounting Heyerdahl’s problematic views of a South American origin) is that the island was first colonised in the 4th Century AD, by seafaring Polynesians, who subsequently split into separate, independent clans or kin-groups, and began constructing ahus and carving statues of modest proportions a few centuries later. By the 15th Century, however, moai production had reached frenzied proportions, as indeed had the moai themselves – now monstrously huge. Then, so abruptly that many of these statues were simply abandoned where they lay, complete or still in various unfinished stages of carving inside Rano Raraku’s volcanic bowels, moai production ceased. This is believed to be due to increasing rivalry and hatred developing between the various clans, culminating in violent battles and, as highly symbolic desecration, purposefully toppling over each other’s sacred moai.<br /><br />Another factor is the wholesale destruction of the island’s once-luxuriant native foliage, most notably the giant palm trees that were eventually felled across the entire island. Their sturdy trunks were used as rollers on which to transport the moai from Rano Raraku to their chosen sites elsewhere, but once the palm trees had vanished, the moai could no longer be moved.<br /><br /><br /><strong>ALIEN RAYS AND THE STATUES THAT WALKED…?</strong><br /><br />Having said that, tree-trunk rollers (and also sledges constructed from trunks) may well be the orthodox explanation for how the moai were moved, but it is not the only one that has been proffered. Highlighting the paranormal links to Easter Island, proponents of the ancient astronauts school of belief have suggested that visiting aliens transported and erected the moai using anti-gravitational beams released from their spacecraft. Another suggestion is that the natives somehow levitated the moai by harnessing electromagnetism. And my Rapanui-born guide noted that according to traditional native lore, the moai themselves very obligingly walked to their chosen sites during the night, utilising a special life-force called mana. Then again, she was smiling when she said this. In any event, the moai are certainly left strictly alone following the onset of darkness, because even during the sunny daylight hours many visitors have reported experiencing a dark, unfathomable feeling of oppression and apprehension when in the presence of these stark, brooding sentinels.<br /><br />Some moai originally bore on their heads a huge ceremonial topknot or pukao, carved from red scoria rock transported from Puna Pau, a quarry in the island’s southwestern region. How these enormous blocks were raised onto the moai’s heads, well over 6 m high in some cases, remains unresolved. A few of the lately re-erected moai have their pukao in place, but these were placed there using modern-day cranes.<br /><br /></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TT3STGQSo5I/AAAAAAAAAQ4/9Fc2xSozBuU/s1600/Moai%2Bwith%2Btopknot%2Band%2Brestored%2Beyes%252C%2Bat%2BTahai.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565835940038091666" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TT3STGQSo5I/AAAAAAAAAQ4/9Fc2xSozBuU/s400/Moai%2Bwith%2Btopknot%2Band%2Brestored%2Beyes%252C%2Bat%2BTahai.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 282px;" /> </a></div><div align="center"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="color: magenta;">Moai with topknot and restored eyes at Tahai (Dr Karl Shuker) </span></strong></div><br />Most intriguing of all, thanks to the unearthing of an intact example in recent years, is the realisation that the moai originally had eyes. These were made from white shells with pupils of black obsidian, but were destroyed or removed during the inter-clan battles that marked the end of moai production. <br /><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br /></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br /></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>BIRD-HEADED MEN AND LONG-EARED GHOSTS</strong><br /><br />Less famous but no less extraordinary than the moai of Easter Island, and further earning it its claim as the world’s most mysterious, paranormal location, is its erstwhile birdman cult. The cliff faces around Rano Kau, the island’s westernmost volcano, are liberally etched with striking birdman petroglyphs depicting bizarre bird-headed humanoids, often curled up in almost foetal pose – which if nothing else is fitting, given that this volcano’s slopes also harbour a prehistoric village called Orongo that contains many remarkable stone houses supposedly representing the human womb.</div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br /></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Until as recently as 1878, when the arrival of Christianity here swiftly suppressed it, the election of the Birdman each September was a very significant event. Every clan sent a representative to Orongo to compete for the birdman title. The competition consisted of scaling down the steep, jagged cliffs of Rano Kau into the sea and swimming through shark-infested waters to a small outlying islet called Moto Nui, where the objective was to collect an egg newly-laid there by a small seabird called the sooty tern, and bring it back safely to Orongo. The winner would be duly crowned the Birdman or Tangata Manu, bringing great glory and esteemed status to his clan, because the Birdman was deemed to be the living reincarnation of Makemake, Easter Island’s eminent fertility deity. He would then be taken away to live in solitude for the next 12 months inside a sacred cave on the other end of the island, at the foot of Rano Raraku.</div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w-f4DTCD8BY/T7RKne-5YEI/AAAAAAAACIA/SsjeXbHoM08/s1600/Petroglyph+of+Birdman+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" kba="true" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w-f4DTCD8BY/T7RKne-5YEI/AAAAAAAACIA/SsjeXbHoM08/s320/Petroglyph+of+Birdman+2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: center;"><strong><span style="color: magenta;">Petroglyph of crouching birdman, head thrown back, on a rock near Rano Kau (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br /></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The birdman cult is no more, and even its origin remains unknown, but its image lives on, sometimes in the most surprising locations. There are a number of underground cave systems on the island, including Cave of the Cannibals, whose walls are profusely decorated with birdman carvings, but when viewing them, just pray that the light does not illuminate the cave’s more frightening inhabitants – the moai-kava-kava, the ghosts of the ancestral long-eared clan chiefs, said to haunt this subterranean domain! The birdman image has also been utilised abundantly in modern-day signs and gifts for sale in Hanga Roa, but perhaps the most unexpected location for birdmen is inside the town’s church, where Christian icons share its inner sanctum with statues of bird-headed humans.</div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br /></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br /></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong>THE RIDDLE OF RONGORONGO</strong></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br /></div><div align="justify" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">As if the moai, birdmen, and assorted ghosts were not mysterious enough, Easter Island can also boast an indecipherable native script language – rongorongo. Carved on wood, these hieroglyphics could only be read by the native elders and priests, but when Peruvian slave raiders reached the island during the 1850s-60s, all of its educated native men were transported to Peru’s guano mines as slaves, where they soon died, leaving no-one behind on Easter Island who could decipher the rongorongo tablets. Even today, these cryptic scripts remain largely unexplained, and the few surviving rongorongo tablets are priceless relics in museums.</div><div align="center"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TT3U6VP2klI/AAAAAAAAARA/D3Uile4WdIE/s1600/Dr%2BKarl%2BShuker%2Bwith%2Brongorongo%2Breplica%2Bslab.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565838813100937810" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TT3U6VP2klI/AAAAAAAAARA/D3Uile4WdIE/s400/Dr%2BKarl%2BShuker%2Bwith%2Brongorongo%2Breplica%2Bslab.jpg" style="display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 283px;" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong><span style="color: magenta;">Holding a replica rongorongo tablet (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong></div></div><div align="justify"><br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Whereas Easter Island may not lay claim to such overtly or ostensibly supernatural phenomena as headless horsemen, baying werewolves, or weeping statues, as someone who has experienced the sheer unearthly nature of this truly strange locality, stood in the chill shadow-casting presence of its grim monolithic moai, and shivered in the stygian gloom of caverns populated by countless carvings of grotesque long-beaked birdmen I can well appreciate why this lonely Pacific Island has been voted the world’s most paranormal place. Sometimes, not seeing a ghost (long-eared or otherwise) can be more unnerving than seeing one!</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br /></div></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TT3Vf7o9wdI/AAAAAAAAARI/2qG2kO7PI0I/s1600/Ahu%2BTongariki.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565839459061973458" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TT3Vf7o9wdI/AAAAAAAAARI/2qG2kO7PI0I/s400/Ahu%2BTongariki.jpg" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; cursor: hand; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /> </a><strong><span style="color: magenta;">Ahu Tongariki (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong></div><div align="center"></div>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-63107705053009030822012-08-06T19:30:00.027+01:002012-08-06T20:59:36.179+01:00LIVING STATUES AND OTHER ANIMATED EFFIGIES<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6QIA5eje1kI/UCAdXirV_pI/AAAAAAAADng/W8yVM2NKQYY/s1600/Pygmalion%2Band%2BGalatea%252C%2Bas%2Bpainted%2Bby%2BJean-Baptiste%2BRegnault%252C%2B1786.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 310px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5773647012571774610" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6QIA5eje1kI/UCAdXirV_pI/AAAAAAAADng/W8yVM2NKQYY/s400/Pygmalion%2Band%2BGalatea%252C%2Bas%2Bpainted%2Bby%2BJean-Baptiste%2BRegnault%252C%2B1786.jpg" /></a><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Pygmalion and Galatea, as painted by Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1786</span></strong><br /><br /><br />Inside any cabinet of curiosities – and especially inside the Eclectarium of Doctor Shuker – anything is possible, even living statues and other recondite examples of art imitating life in the most literal sense! So please indulge me if you will, and permit me to explore a longstanding interest of mine that resides amid the outermost shadows of unnatural history.<br /><br />One of Greek mythology’s most famous stories tells of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, who skilfully carves from ivory the statue of a young woman so beautiful and realistic that he falls in love with her, and which, in answer to his prayers, the goddess Aphrodite brings to life so that he can marry her and make her his queen, Galatea. Although I have yet to encounter a modern-day factual case quite so dramatic as this, there are many accounts on file of statues, icons, and other carved, inanimate effigies that have reputedly exhibited all manner of unexpected behaviour – weeping, moving, blinking, singing, and even wing-flapping and chess-playing. However, as examined here, could it be that these miraculous entities owe their talents more to a complex mix of human ingenuousness and ingenuity than to any divine intervention?<br /><br /><br /><strong>MIRACULOUS – OR MANIPULATIVE – ICONS?</strong><br /><br />There are numerous reports of venerated statues and icons that allegedly exhibit miraculous powers, as previously documented in detail by me in <em>Dr Shuker’s Casebook</em> (2008) and elsewhere. Perhaps the most famous – or infamous – examples are weeping and bleeding statues (usually of the Madonna), many examples of which have been documented from around the world. In 1995, however, Pavia University chemistry researcher Dr Luigi Garlaschelli published a revelatory paper in which he disclosed precisely how to create such an icon. Other researchers have achieved similar successes, since when, not surprisingly, this particular phenomenon has attracted rather less attention from the media. The same is true in relation to milk-drinking statues, whose ostensibly extraordinary feats have been readily duplicated by scientists and revealed to involve nothing more dramatic than capillary action.<br /><br />However, these are by no means the only religious effigies that in some manner or another imitate the living form. Among the earliest known versions, present in a number of ancient Egyptian temples, was a goddess statue placed upon the altar and holding an empty vase. When the priest lit a fire on the altar, wine would miraculously appear inside the goddess’s vase, and then pour out onto the fire in front of the suitably-amazed worshippers gathered there. In reality, however, as explained by Hero of Alexandria, a perspicacious 1st-Century-AD scholar, the statue contained a secret reservoir of wine and a tube leading up to and into the bowl. As the fire warmed the statue, air expanded inside a hidden airtight chamber linked to the wine reservoir, forcing the wine up the statue’s internal tube and out into the bowl until it poured over the edge, quenching the fire, whereupon the statue would cool, the hidden chamber’s air would stop expanding, and thus the wine flow would stop.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wsrtPpkgMbI/UCAeBuGGvXI/AAAAAAAADns/4kBqiK_aPxA/s1600/Moving%2BStatues%2Bof%2BBallinspittle.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 258px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5773647737191316850" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wsrtPpkgMbI/UCAeBuGGvXI/AAAAAAAADns/4kBqiK_aPxA/s400/Moving%2BStatues%2Bof%2BBallinspittle.JPG" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Book documenting the moving Madonna statue of Ballinspittle phenomenon<br /><br /></span></strong>Very different but equally noteworthy was the moving Madonna statue of Ballinspittle in Ireland. During 1985, many worshippers and intrigued tourists alike visited a statue of the Madonna at a shrine in Ballinspittle, County Cork, after hearing reports that it had been seen to move, rocking backwards, sideways, and forwards, and had sometimes even been said to move its head and shoulders. As so often occurs with such events, comparable reports also began to emerge in relation to other similar statues all over Ireland, but in the case of the Ballinspittle Madonna, events drew to a dramatic, unexpected close on 31 October, when the statue was violently attacked by some men, badly damaging it.<br /><br />Luckily, before this destructive denouement occurred, the statue had been filmed by a team of scientists from Cork’s University College during some of its purported bouts of movement, but when the film was examined, no movement whatsoever could be detected. Consequently, it would seem that the Madonna’s observers had fallen victim to the autokinetic effect – the false perception of movement in a stationary object caused by the viewer’s own slight movement, but which he fails to notice due to an absence of background detail that would reveal that he was the one who was moving, not the object.<br /><br />As for the life-sized crucifixion figure of Jesus at the Holy Trinity Church in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, that supposedly opened and closed its eyes during a service on Good Friday 1989, or the Madonna statue at the Mater Ecclesiae Mission Church in Thornton, California, whose eyes, chin, and hands were said to move on several different occasions during 1981, both of these icons were also filmed and photographed by investigators. When the data was analysed, however, the ‘movements’ were found to be nothing more than optical illusions – i.e. created by the angles at which the icons had been observed, photographed, or filmed.<br /><br />In other words, it would seem that at least as far as religious effigies are concerned, miracles are very much in the eye of the beholder – as opposed to the lens of the camera.<br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000000;">MEMNON’S SINGING COLOSSUS</span></strong><br /><br />While visiting Egypt in 2006, one of my must-sees was among this ancient country's lesser-known attractions - yet, ironically, it is also one of its most extraordinary. Standing amid the ruins of Thebes on the West Bank of the Nile are two gigantic stone statues, aptly dubbed Colossi, but less aptly known in full as the Colossi of Memnon - as they have nothing to do whatsoever with the Trojan hero Memnon. Instead, they are 18.6-m-tall representations of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, seated on his throne, were erected approximately 3500 years ago, and are all that remain of his mortuary temple.<br /><br />In 27 BC, the eastern Colossus was partially destroyed when its upper half crashed to the ground following a powerful earthquake, but far from losing its former glory this shattered edifice gained even greater fame – due to its extraordinary ability thereafter to sing! Prior to the earthquake it had been resolutely mute like any other self-respecting statue, but now, each morning at daybreak, this singular structure gave voice to a weird, readily audible sound that resembled a chiming bell – at least according to the numerous visitors that came from far and wide to hear it, believing that this statue’s eldritch cry would bring them good fortune.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L5vFMkVJRcQ/UCAftMX-tdI/AAAAAAAADn4/j9srHC5QZ3A/s1600/Colossi%2Bof%2BMemnon.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 250px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5773649583565354450" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L5vFMkVJRcQ/UCAftMX-tdI/AAAAAAAADn4/j9srHC5QZ3A/s400/Colossi%2Bof%2BMemnon.jpg" /></a><span style="color:#009900;"><strong>The Colossi of Memnon (Dr Karl Shuker</strong>)<br /><br /></span>There is a very pertinent American maxim: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Sometimes, moreover, it may be best to leave well alone even if the object in question is indeed broken. Sadly, however, the Roman emperor Septimus Severus clearly thought otherwise, because in 199 AD he supervised the eastern Colossus’s long-awaited repair, in which a freshly-carved upper half replaced the original wrecked version. As a result, the statue regained much of its erstwhile majesty and dignity, but during the restoration process it also lost something – its voice, because from then on the statue never sang again, remaining silent to this day.<br /><br />Many suggestions to explain its unwonted vocal ability and its equally unexpected silence have been proposed (though none has been confirmed). These include the effects of the earthquake causing the conversion of previous ultrasonic emissions into audible ones prior to the statue’s restoration, or the audible rubbing together of certain sections of the statue’s lower half warmed by the sun and expanding unequally as a result – or even phoney noises created secretly by Egyptian priests for the purpose of extorting money from gullible visitors.<br /><br />This last-mentioned proposal, if true, would certainly not be unique in the annals of history. In the 12th Century, for instance, when Bishop Theophilus infamously smashed a number of statues at Alexandria that he deemed to be heathen, he discovered that some of them were hollow and were placed against a wall in such a manner as to permit an Egyptian priest to hide behind them and speak through their mouths to an awestruck audience of worshippers.<br /><br /><br /><strong>THE GOLEM OF PRAGUE<br /></strong><br />According to Jewish tradition, a golem is a model of a man made from clay or mud, which can be brought to life if certain holy words written upon a piece of parchment and then placed in its mouth are spoken by a Rabbi, but is rendered inanimate again if the parchment is removed (in some versions of this tale, a neck medallion bearing the words, rather than a piece of parchment, is used). The most famous example is the man-sized golem of Prague, which Rabbi Yehudah Loew ben Bezalel supposedly created and brought to life in 1580 to work as a labourer for him, but which, when he forgot to replace the parchment in its mouth, ran amok in the city’s until he finally subdued it, then hid its lifeless body thereafter in the attic of Prague’s Old-New Synagogue.<br /><br />Although this story is fictitious, it is a curious anomaly that even today, it is against Czech law to enter this synagogue’s attic, even though no such ruling exists in relation to any of this country’s other Jewish temples. So could there really be something mysterious hidden in the synagogue’s attic?<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0is7dzcBCEM/UCAf9NIgfeI/AAAAAAAADoE/dFnuIMPOme0/s1600/Golem%2Bof%2BPrague%2Bbook%252C%2Bby%2BIvan%2BMackerle.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 256px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5773649858646801890" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0is7dzcBCEM/UCAf9NIgfeI/AAAAAAAADoE/dFnuIMPOme0/s400/Golem%2Bof%2BPrague%2Bbook%252C%2Bby%2BIvan%2BMackerle.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Ivan Mackerle's book documenting his investigations into the Golem of Prague (Ivan Mackerle)</span></strong><br /><br />Czech investigator Ivan Mackerle has proposed an intriguing explanation. Namely, that there really was a golem of sorts – but not a clay creation brought to life. Instead, after learning that the word ‘golem’ translates from Hebrew not only as ‘artificial man made with magic’ but also as ‘fool’, Mackerle suggests that it was actually a retarded man cared for by the Rabbi. Moreover, he believes that the ‘parchment’ was medicine given to him by the Rabbi to control fits or seizures, that the golem’s running amok when the parchment was not replaced in its mouth was actually the man running wild due to not receiving his medicine, and that when captured by the Rabbi the man died, so to save himself from prosecution the Rabbi swiftly hid the man’s body in the synagogue’s attic and forbade anyone from entering it again.<br /><br />To test his hypothesis, Mackerle succeeded in persuading the Czech authorities to allow him entry into the attic – but only to find it empty. However, he later learned that in 1883 the synagogue had been renovated, and that if any human remains had been found there they would have been removed and buried in the Jewish cemetery. So who knows? Perhaps in some unmarked grave are the mortal remains of a real-life golem.<br /><br /><br /><strong>TALOS AND THE TERMINATOR</strong><br /><br />Among the most popular of modern-day science-fiction films is the all-action series of Terminator movies, but countless centuries earlier the ancient Greeks were thrilled by tales of their very own killer android. This was an enormous bronze statue called Talos that famously came to life when, during their quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason and his band of fellow heroes landed on the island of Crete. This terrifying episode was skilfully recreated by animatronics expert Ray Harryhausen for the classic fantasy movie ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ from 1963.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GG_SriCeWAw/UCAgROAsCdI/AAAAAAAADoQ/azBndSCQTYU/s1600/Talos%2B2%252C%2Bfrom%2BJason%2Band%2Bthe%2BArgonauts%2B1963%2Bfilm.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5773650202479823314" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GG_SriCeWAw/UCAgROAsCdI/AAAAAAAADoQ/azBndSCQTYU/s400/Talos%2B2%252C%2Bfrom%2BJason%2Band%2Bthe%2BArgonauts%2B1963%2Bfilm.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Still from 'Jason and the Argonauts featuring Talos (Columbia Pictures)<br /><br /></span></strong>Who as a child watching that film for the first time was not pleasurably chilled when - after Hercules and Hylas had robbed the gods’ own treasure chamber concealed inside the pedestal of Talos’s immense bronze statue - Talos’s head suddenly creaked and slowly turned round, looking down at the startled heroes? And then, to their even greater horror, the entire statue came to life, stepping down from its pedestal to pursue them and attempt to sink their vessel the Argo by hurling huge boulders at it. Fortunately, Jason was able to save his ship and crew by pulling out the great cork in the heel of one of Talos’s feet, which released the immortal fluid or ichor that bestowed life upon this bronze statue, and thus rendered it lifeless once more. Nevertheless, compared to Talos even Arnie’s relentless, murderous Terminator seems relatively tame!<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#000000;"><strong>MEDIEVAL AUTOMATA – MAGICAL OR MECHANICAL?</strong><br /></span><br />It was celebrated science-fiction novelist Sir Arthur C. Clarke who once wrote: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, and this is definitely true in relation to certain highly ingenious creations dating back to medieval times. Today, we would readily recognise such constructions as mechanical, animatronic devices, but back in those bygone ages, they were deemed by all but the most discerning, educated observers to be magical entities, and their creators – far from being lauded for their inventiveness – could well find themselves charged with witchcraft!<br /><br />Indeed, this was almost the fate of a certain enterprising student at Cambridge University during the 1540s. He manufactured a mechanical flying beetle to feature in a stage production of the play ‘Pax’ by Aristophanes, but the beetle was so lifelike that he faced accusations that it was the work of the devil! Happily, however, although a charge of sorcery was brought against him, it was dismissed – otherwise, if he had been found guilty and executed in some typically gruesome manner, the world would have been deprived in subsequent years of the extraordinary talents of occultist, alchemist, and early scientist Dr John Dee.<br /><br />By the 18th Century, the world was rather more accustomed to automata, but even this enlightened age was awestruck by the inventive genius of Jacques de Vaucanson. His ability to manufacture realistic automata was unparalleled in terms of complexity and diversity. Among his most astonishing creations were a statue of the Greek deity Pan, which stood up from its seat and played its panpipes, before bowing when applauded and then sitting back down; a mandolin player that simultaneously played its instrument, sang, and tapped in time with its foot; a frighteningly lifelike asp that hissed and struck at the breast of an actress playing Cleopatra when it was touched by her; and a ‘breathing’ piano player that faithfully imitated a breathing human pianist and also moved its head whilst playing.<br /><br />Indeed, Vaucanson actually began work upon the production of a mechanical man complete with artificial heart and circulatory system that would fully replicate its living counterpart, but died before he could complete it. Had he done so, the world’s first android robot might have been created – Vaucanson’s Frankensteinian ability for replicating the living state in artificial form had, after all, already been demonstrated by virtue of his most famous creation, an animatronic duck.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i4GHLFHDQUo/UCAhCqMnnTI/AAAAAAAADoc/kCdokuzaazQ/s1600/Jacques%2Bde%2BVaucanson%2527s%2Bduck.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 368px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5773651051859647794" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i4GHLFHDQUo/UCAhCqMnnTI/AAAAAAAADoc/kCdokuzaazQ/s400/Jacques%2Bde%2BVaucanson%2527s%2Bduck.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Internal view of Vaucanson's extraordinary animatronic duck<br /><br /></span></strong>Even by today’s technological standards, this invention would be an exceptional feat of engineering (in 1868, kaleidoscope inventor Sir David Brewster referred to it as “perhaps the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever made”), so more than 250 years ago it was little short of miraculous. Vaucanson stated that his intention when constructing this automaton was to reproduce a real duck’s internal organs and thence to simulate the functions of eating, drinking, and digestion – and judging from Prof. John Cohen’s description of this amazing entity in his enthralling book, <em>Human Robots in Myth and Science</em> (1966), he certainly succeeded:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;">"The duck stretched its neck to take grain from a hand and then swallowed and digested it. It drank, paddled and quacked, and imitated the gestures which a normal duck makes when swallowing precipitately. The food was digested by dissolution, not by trituration, [Cohen then quotes Vaucanson himself:] “the matter digested in the stomach being conducted by tubes, as in an animal by its bowels, into the anus, where there is a sphincter which permits it to be released”."</span><br /><br />And just to demonstrate and confirm his claims beyond any shadow of doubt, Vaucanson constructed his duck as a transparent automaton, so that its internal organs and their functioning could be clearly seen by its fascinated observers.<br /><br />Vaucanson’s inspiration for his duck may well have been the mechanical peacock constructed in 1688 by General de Gennes, which could eat and walk in a lifelike manner. Or perhaps he had heard of a truly extraordinary ‘miracle’ that had taken place one day in 1653. That was when a drunken visitor to the Caiaphas chapel at Sacro Monte in Piedmont, Italy, came upon a stone statue of St Peter repentant, which incorporated in its structure a large cockerel. Allegedly, the cockerel suddenly came to light, flapping its wings and turning round on its pedestal, before just as abruptly regaining its normal, rigid pose! Needless to say, the man’s inebriated state would have been sufficient to ensure that his testimony received short shrift – were it not for the fact that the cockerel’s unanticipated activity had also been witnessed at the same time by several other visitors to the chapel.<br /><br />Had a genuine miracle truly taken place, or could it be that what had been observed was a beautifully-timed, elegantly-choreographed performance by a secretly-manufactured automaton? In view of Vaucanson’s incredibly complex mechanical duck and de Gennes’s peacock, the contemporary production of a wing-flapping, rotating cockerel would certainly not be beyond the realm of conceptual or practical possibility.<br /><br /><br /><strong>THE CHEATING CHESS PLAYER OF VON KEMPELEN</strong><br /><br />No discussion of living statues and human automata can ignore the most scandalous, controversial example of all – Von Kempelen’s miraculous chess player. During the late 1700s, a Hungarian civil servant called Wolfgang von Kempelen (later made a Baron) constructed a life-sized mechanical man, dressed as a turbaned Turk and seated behind a wooden cabinet, which was so greatly skilled in the art of playing chess that it attracted the interest of many European monarchs and toured the continent successfully for over a century, passing through several owners after its creator’s death in 1804.<br /><br />However, the secret of the Turk is that it owed its chess-playing success not to any mechanical inventiveness on the part of Von Kempelen, but rather to the hidden presence of a human chess player cleverly concealed within the cabinet, who moved the chess pieces on the board above by means of a series of magnets. Sadly, Von Kempelen’s chess player was destroyed by a fire that broke out in 1854 at the Chinese Museum of Charles Willson Peale in Philadelphia, where it had been donated by its last owner, Dr John Kearsley Mitchell.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-13Tt7jKtTM8/UCAhavX6wjI/AAAAAAAADoo/MD1DlQo4m9g/s1600/Baron%2Bvon%2BKempelen%2527s%2Bmechanical%2Bchess%2Bplayer.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 280px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5773651465566077490" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-13Tt7jKtTM8/UCAhavX6wjI/AAAAAAAADoo/MD1DlQo4m9g/s400/Baron%2Bvon%2BKempelen%2527s%2Bmechanical%2Bchess%2Bplayer.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Revealing the secret of Von Kempelen's chess player</span></strong><br /><br />As proposed at the beginning of this Eclectarium blog post, there are many cases in which animate statues and other ‘living’ effigies unquestionably owe their miraculous state not to any supernatural source but to much more mundane (albeit undeniably inventive) human involvement. Not surprisingly, therefore, in his excellent book <em>Looking for a Miracle</em> (1993), mysteries debunker Joe Nickell claims that there is no credible evidence for the existence of any miraculous icons and effigies. Moreover, he backs this statement by noting that although there are numerous religious statues on display in museums and galleries, there is no report of any miraculous happenings with any of them, only with versions in churches and other places of worship. He concludes that this is because museums and galleries are controlled environments where the opportunity for hoaxing would be much less.<br /><br />This is certainly true, but there is also an equally pertinent, alternative viewpoint to consider – could it be that it is the very act of worship that generates miracles, which is why they are never recorded in museums and galleries?<br /><br />Perhaps, as succinctly voiced by St Augustine of Hippo back in the 5th Century:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;">"A miracle does not happen in contradiction to nature, but in contradiction to that which is known to us of nature."</span><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-04YxhviHt2I/UCAhp1VePII/AAAAAAAADo0/-XB23KjzhK8/s1600/Colossus%2Bof%2BMemnon.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 258px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5773651724864470146" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-04YxhviHt2I/UCAhp1VePII/AAAAAAAADo0/-XB23KjzhK8/s400/Colossus%2Bof%2BMemnon.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Colossus of Memnon (Dr Karl Shuker)<br /></span></strong><br /><br /></div>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-1996847978470110362012-07-13T13:51:00.051+01:002012-07-16T02:23:33.322+01:00BE A CLOWN, BE A CLOWN, BE A CLOWN!<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pia3O5Gde30/UAM-XHSNvcI/AAAAAAAAC68/Q6Sy6jj6kfs/s1600/Pando%2527s%2BBox%252C%2BOwen.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 287px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765520514777726402" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pia3O5Gde30/UAM-XHSNvcI/AAAAAAAAC68/Q6Sy6jj6kfs/s400/Pando%2527s%2BBox%252C%2BOwen.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">'Pando's Box' (Robert Owen)<br /></span></strong><br /><br /><div align="justify">I've always been fascinated by clowns, jesters, and their predecessors, the characters of the Commedia Dell'Arte, so accompany me now as I explore the colourful history and evolution of these most enigmatic of entertainment figures.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IkxrtLaOgrM/UANecWhfnVI/AAAAAAAAC_Y/uZaotLquSkY/s1600/Full-face%2Bharlequin%2Bmask.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 289px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765555789139778898" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IkxrtLaOgrM/UANecWhfnVI/AAAAAAAAC_Y/uZaotLquSkY/s400/Full-face%2Bharlequin%2Bmask.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Full-face Harlequin mask (Dr Karl Shuker)<br /></span></strong><br />"Be a clown! Be a clown! Be a clown!" So sang Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in the Cole Porter film musical ‘The Pirate’, and for countless generations that is precisely what all manner of talented circus performers throughout the world have indeed been – and continue to be, to this very day. But if anyone assumes that being a clown simply means donning white face paint and baggy clothes, and throwing buckets of water over other clowns, think again. Paradoxically, clowning is actually a very serious business, with a complex history and array of intricate, specified traditions and customs.<br /><br /><br /><strong>HARLEQUIN AND PIERROT – FROM THE COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE TO THE CIRCUS RING</strong><br /><br />Comedy figures approximating in various ways to clowns have featured since the earliest of times in most civilisations (from the archetypal jokers performing in ancient Egypt c.3500 years ago, and tricksters in native American lore, to the Kabuki theatre of Japan - to name but three examples). However, the familiar Western circus clown originated for the most part in Italy’s celebrated Commedia dell’Arte theatre. Attaining the height of its popularity during the 16th and 17th Centuries, this was closely linked to pantomime, which in turn influenced the occurrence of clowning in circuses, and contained certain characters that would give rise to the major circus clown types of the present day. Chief among these characters were Harlequin (aka Arlecchino) and Pierrot.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wC9OVrsctbg/UAM-nyZTOrI/AAAAAAAAC7I/yUw9dto1lyo/s1600/Harlequin.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 200px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765520801228077746" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wC9OVrsctbg/UAM-nyZTOrI/AAAAAAAAC7I/yUw9dto1lyo/s400/Harlequin.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">A Harlequin doll (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong><br /><br />Traditionally, Harlequin was a nimble, acrobatic, often quick-witted trickster figure, usually tall and slender, and epitomised by his motley costume of brightly-hued, contrasting patchwork, but he subsequently transformed into a more romantic, and sometimes even quite serious, character.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ySElC0LlafY/UANQK970GWI/AAAAAAAAC9k/KM80xCYVbY4/s1600/Harlequin%2Bat%2Bthe%2BPantomime%2BTheatre%2Bin%2BTivoli%2BGardens%2Bin%2BCopenhagen%252C%2BDenmark%252C%2BChris%2BBrown-Wikipedia.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 192px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765540097318721890" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ySElC0LlafY/UANQK970GWI/AAAAAAAAC9k/KM80xCYVbY4/s400/Harlequin%2Bat%2Bthe%2BPantomime%2BTheatre%2Bin%2BTivoli%2BGardens%2Bin%2BCopenhagen%252C%2BDenmark%252C%2BChris%2BBrown-Wikipedia.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Harlequin at the Pantomime Theatre in Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark (Chris Brown/Wikipedia)</span></strong><br /><br />Moreover, he frequently carried a special kind of cane composed of two sticks that made an exaggerated slapping sound when clapped together – from which the modern-day clown-related term ‘slapstick’ is derived.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sjgYd2Dy6a4/UANPiYjVY-I/AAAAAAAAC9U/TRrYeOwNwNg/s1600/Pierrot%2Band%2BHarlequin%252C%2BVasily%2BNesterenko.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 285px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765539400089166818" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sjgYd2Dy6a4/UANPiYjVY-I/AAAAAAAAC9U/TRrYeOwNwNg/s400/Pierrot%2Band%2BHarlequin%252C%2BVasily%2BNesterenko.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">'Pierrot and Harlequin' (Vasily Nesterenko)<br /></span></strong><br />Conversely, Pierrot was originally a slower-witted, bumbling fool, usually dressed predominantly in white, with an elaborate neck ruff and sometimes a tall pointed hat, but adorned with black coat buttons and other black accessories.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J1QRs8-fQoI/UANUMVxsgOI/AAAAAAAAC90/H45iIqxj7BU/s1600/Pierrot%252C%2Bmodern-day%2Bversion.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 278px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765544518945112290" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J1QRs8-fQoI/UANUMVxsgOI/AAAAAAAAC90/H45iIqxj7BU/s400/Pierrot%252C%2Bmodern-day%2Bversion.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Pierrot (source unknown to me)<br /><br /></span></strong>Again, however, his role gradually changed, until he eventually became the precursor of the contemporary ‘sad clown’ figure, laughing on the outside but crying on the inside.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6WAQVjfqQtM/UAM_AbMtIPI/AAAAAAAAC7U/gzdmZ6NTIZA/s1600/Pierrot.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 393px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765521224497963250" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6WAQVjfqQtM/UAM_AbMtIPI/AAAAAAAAC7U/gzdmZ6NTIZA/s400/Pierrot.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">A Pierrot doll (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong><br /><br />Also worth mentioning here is a third Commedia dell’Arte character, Punchinello or Pulcinella, who eventually transformed into the comical (if violent) Mr Punch, as still seen today in seaside Punch and Judy shows.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w0trs-mvno8/UANV8_WR36I/AAAAAAAAC-A/6Mzq8chvtHw/s1600/Punch%2Band%2BJudy%2Bshow%252C%2BIslington%252C%2BJonathan%2BLucas-Wikipedia.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 265px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765546454249758626" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w0trs-mvno8/UANV8_WR36I/AAAAAAAAC-A/6Mzq8chvtHw/s400/Punch%2Band%2BJudy%2Bshow%252C%2BIslington%252C%2BJonathan%2BLucas-Wikipedia.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Punch and Judy show at Islington, London (Jonathan Lucas/Wikipedia)</span></strong><br /><br /><br /><strong>THE WHITEFACE, THE AUGUSTE, AND THE CONTRA-AUGUSTE</strong><br /><br />Harlequin and Pierrot were ancestral to two of the three principal types of modern-day circus clown – namely, the whiteface (or white) clown, and the auguste (or red) clown, which frequently play off one another as duos in circus ring performances. The whiteface clown is basically the straight man or stooge, usually a figure of high standing, serious to the point of being pompous or mercurial in attitude, and supposedly quite intelligent (at least in his own opinion!), thereby borrowing some of Harlequin’s traits. In contrast, the auguste (named from the German slang for a bumbling fool) is the comedian, a figure of lower social status, and far less intelligent, more like Pierrot, who inevitably creates confusion and mayhem when attempting to carry out the whiteface’s instructions, with hilarious results. These clown types are instantly distinguished not only by their behaviour but also by their visual appearance, because each type has its own, clearly-defined costume and make-up.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PAVsqQCLw9Q/UANjaIWwjFI/AAAAAAAAC_0/dHNqe4fTEUw/s1600/Clowns%2Band%2BPierrots.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 384px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765561248535055442" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PAVsqQCLw9Q/UANjaIWwjFI/AAAAAAAAC_0/dHNqe4fTEUw/s400/Clowns%2Band%2BPierrots.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">A selection of clown and Pierrot dolls (Dr Karl Shuker)<br /><br /></span></strong>As the name suggests, the whiteface clown’s most recognisable feature is the white make-up that completely covers his face and neck, plus the well-fitting but extremely extravagant costume that he wears, often brightly spangled or otherwise decorated, like his Harlequin precursor (though his white face, pointed hat, and neck ruff owe more to Pierrot). Also like Harlequin, he is generally taller and thinner than the auguste.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1kO8VKq5PZ0/UAM_qXxfWvI/AAAAAAAAC7g/sTPYeS2ezhs/s1600/Canada%2Bblock%2B1998%252C%2B2%2Baugustes%2Band%2B2%2Bwhitefaces.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 278px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765521945133013746" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1kO8VKq5PZ0/UAM_qXxfWvI/AAAAAAAAC7g/sTPYeS2ezhs/s400/Canada%2Bblock%2B1998%252C%2B2%2Baugustes%2Band%2B2%2Bwhitefaces.bmp" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">A block of Canadian postage stamps from 1998 depicting two whiteface clowns and two auguste clowns (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong><br /><br />Conversely, the shorter, fatter auguste is famous for his ‘typical’ clown make-up, in which the mouth and eyes of his otherwise predominantly red face are highlighted and greatly enlarged with white, his nose is false and extra-large, his hair is generally a garishly-hued wig, and his clothes are usually grotesquely out of proportion, with enormous shoes, long flapping sleeves, and baggy patched trousers, often with huge suspenders. This now-traditional clown outfit’s creation owes much to Tom Belling, an American circus rider in Circus Renz during the 1860s who, it is said, devised it as a joke, but attracted such hilarity when wearing it that he gave up his riding career and became a clown there instead.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Goo89RyKmUA/UANrAiD3k0I/AAAAAAAADAU/cPorbn9TE44/s1600/Auguste%2Bclown.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 266px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765569604851569474" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Goo89RyKmUA/UANrAiD3k0I/AAAAAAAADAU/cPorbn9TE44/s400/Auguste%2Bclown.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">An auguste clown (Wikipedia)<br /></span></strong><br />As for the highly detailed facial make-up worn by clowns, especially augustes: not only does each performer have his own unique make-up design, but if he wishes to join Clowns International (believed to be the world’s oldest clown society), he must register it there officially. He does this in a remarkable manner - by painting an accurate representation of it on an eggshell, and then formally lodging his shell in the society’s ‘Egg Gallery’.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BiHH5zVOTxw/UANAGt3jIFI/AAAAAAAAC7s/n0BLxIjSAUY/s1600/Joseph%2BGrimaldi.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 336px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765522432100343890" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BiHH5zVOTxw/UANAGt3jIFI/AAAAAAAAC7s/n0BLxIjSAUY/s400/Joseph%2BGrimaldi.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Joseph Grimaldi<br /></span></strong><br />This unique form of clown face copyright was devised by none other than Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837), perhaps the most famous clown of all time. Indeed, even his name, Joey, has become a recognised soubriquet for clowns in general, but especially whitefaces. This is the type that Grimaldi popularised and portrayed as an energetic Harlequin-derived character throughout his immensely successful career on stage as an English pantomime clown.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ROnRzPrD5js/UANAj8ecoLI/AAAAAAAAC74/sMsBLN_pJk0/s1600/Gibraltar%2B2002%252C%2BJoseph%2BGrimaldi%2Bas%2Bpantomime%2Bwhiteface%2Bclown.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 301px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765522934237798578" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ROnRzPrD5js/UANAj8ecoLI/AAAAAAAAC74/sMsBLN_pJk0/s400/Gibraltar%2B2002%252C%2BJoseph%2BGrimaldi%2Bas%2Bpantomime%2Bwhiteface%2Bclown.bmp" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Gibraltar postage stamp from 2002 depicting Joseph Grimaldi as a pantomime whiteface clown (Dr Karl Shuker)<br /><br /></span></strong><br /><strong>CIRCUS CLOWN TYPES EMULATED IN THE CINEMA AND ON TELEVISION</strong><br /><br />The tradition of whiteface and auguste clown types in the circus has also been widely emulated by comedy duos in the cinema and television. There, the auguste has been represented by the likes of Stan Laurel, Lou Costello, and Eric Morecambe, and the whiteface represented by Oliver Hardy, Bud Abbott, and Ernie Wise.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MrhoBPLQmZg/UANWuXlCf5I/AAAAAAAAC-M/XT3TF0uBxPs/s1600/Laurel%2B%2526%2BHardy.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 324px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765547302567706514" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MrhoBPLQmZg/UANWuXlCf5I/AAAAAAAAC-M/XT3TF0uBxPs/s400/Laurel%2B%2526%2BHardy.bmp" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Laurel and Hardy (Wikipedia)</span></strong><br /><br />Less common than the whiteface and the auguste is a third type of circus clown, the contra-auguste, who acts as a kind of intermediary between the other two. Perhaps the best example of a film trio representing in basic role and behaviour all three clown types is the Marx Brothers – with Harpo as the auguste, Chico as the contra-auguste, and Groucho as the whiteface.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FeojCJYxJsU/UANdWwmsJXI/AAAAAAAAC_A/bmKurZG6CIA/s1600/Marx%2BBrothers.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 334px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765554593550050674" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FeojCJYxJsU/UANdWwmsJXI/AAAAAAAAC_A/bmKurZG6CIA/s400/Marx%2BBrothers.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">The Marx Brothers</span></strong><br /><br />In early days, clowns often included a good deal of verbal humour in their performances, but much of this was subsequently curtailed in favour of ever more complex and exaggerated visual comedy. One modern-day clown-inspired figure that pursued this visual approach to its greatest extreme was France’s premier mime artist, Marcel Marceau (1923-2007). His famous whiteface creation, Bip, acted out wonderfully elaborate, often hysterically funny scenes in a somewhat surreal, almost cartoon-like manner but without uttering a single word.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RYeNzIsL0A8/UANfk3i4gKI/AAAAAAAAC_k/DagmIYRe8_c/s1600/Marcel%2BMarceau%2Bas%2BBip.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 176px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765557034954555554" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RYeNzIsL0A8/UANfk3i4gKI/AAAAAAAAC_k/DagmIYRe8_c/s400/Marcel%2BMarceau%2Bas%2BBip.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Marcel Marceau as Bip<br /><br /></span></strong><br /><strong>THE CHARACTER CLOWN AND THE TRAMP CLOWN</strong><br /><br />A fourth type of circus clown is the character clown, who adopts a very specific, usually job-related role, such as a baker, butcher, policeman, etc. One very popular character clown role is the tramp – so popular, in fact, that nowadays this role is normally categorised as a separate clown type in its own right, discrete from the character clown.<br /><br />As with the whiteface and auguste, the tramp type of circus clown has inspired various big and small screen equivalents, and is epitomised there by the immortal ‘Little Tramp’ character created by Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977). In an interesting career reversal, after he had largely retired from films, Buster Keaton (1895-1966), one of Chaplin’s silent screen contemporaries and another adept populariser of hoboesque underdog characters, actually spent some time performing as a circus clown.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ff82Jh3sVgg/UANXqHUwtrI/AAAAAAAAC-Y/K6vVk2aQOL0/s1600/Charlie%2BChaplin.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 298px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765548328996615858" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ff82Jh3sVgg/UANXqHUwtrI/AAAAAAAAC-Y/K6vVk2aQOL0/s400/Charlie%2BChaplin.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Charlie Chaplin in his 'Little Tramp' persona<br /></span></strong><br />The most notable circus clown who performed as a tramp clown was Emmett Kelly (1898-1979). Appearing for over a decade at the celebrated Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, and also at the Bertram Mills Circus, he created the world-famous character Weary Willie - a tragic little hobo clown inspired by the downtrodden real-life tramps of the American Depression era.<br /><br /><br /><strong>FAMOUS CIRCUS CLOWNS</strong><br /><br />Emmett Kelly’s success confirms that although circus clowns have generally attracted rather less fame, at least outside the circus world, than their movie and TV counterparts have done, some have nonetheless gained national and even international acclaim. Perhaps the most celebrated circus clown of all time was Latvia’s Nicolai Poliakoff (1900-1974), who became globally famous during the mid-20th Century as Coco the Clown. After establishing his own circus in Russia, he later fled to Berlin and thence to England in order to escape from the Russian Revolution. In England, he appeared as a famously immense-footed, trick-bewigged auguste for many years afterwards at the Bertram Mills Circus, receiving more custard pies in the face and drenches from buckets of water than possibly any other clown in history!<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8Qnvh8kt1E/UANBfnF2dXI/AAAAAAAAC8E/6HKas5i5hiQ/s1600/Gibraltar%2B2002%252C%2BCoco%2Bthe%2BClown.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 326px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765523959289640306" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8Qnvh8kt1E/UANBfnF2dXI/AAAAAAAAC8E/6HKas5i5hiQ/s400/Gibraltar%2B2002%252C%2BCoco%2Bthe%2BClown.bmp" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Gibraltar postage stamp from 2002 depicting Coco the Clown<br /></span></strong><br />Britain’s most famous contemporary auguste clown was unquestionably Italian-born Charlie Cairoli (1910-1980), who spent much of his career performing to enormous acclaim at the Blackpool Tower Circus, He appeared in no less than 40 consecutive summer seasons there (a world record for the most performances at the same venue), he was also an extremely accomplished musician on numerous instruments, and he ultimately became the most famous clown on British television.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1fLTCnQ-uG4/UANDcWZrrYI/AAAAAAAAC8Q/8rZ-QyHikCg/s1600/Gibraltar%2B2002%252C%2BCharlie%2BCairoli.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 306px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765526102293065090" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1fLTCnQ-uG4/UANDcWZrrYI/AAAAAAAAC8Q/8rZ-QyHikCg/s400/Gibraltar%2B2002%252C%2BCharlie%2BCairoli.bmp" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Gibraltar postage stamp from 2002 depicting Charlie Cairoli</span></strong><br /><br />Circus star and vaudeville actor Pinto Colvig (1892-1967) was responsible for creating (and also performing as) Bozo - American television’s most famous circus clown. Bozo received adulation from generations of children, but especially during the 1960s, and he even became a mascot for Capitol Records. Interestingly, Colvig was equally famous as the original voice of one of Walt Disney’s most beloved cartoon characters, Goofy.<br /><br />Another key figure in the history of clowns and clowning was Swiss-born Charles Adrien Wettach (1880-1959), who, as Grock, the ‘King of the Clowns’, was at one time the world’s highest paid entertainer.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7-C4vl4ZYow/UAND6H8eNuI/AAAAAAAAC8c/thUMaz6aR_s/s1600/Gibraltar%2B2002%252C%2BGrock%252C%2Bthe%2Bfamous%2B%2527King%2Bof%2BClowns%2527.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 283px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765526613808527074" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7-C4vl4ZYow/UAND6H8eNuI/AAAAAAAAC8c/thUMaz6aR_s/s400/Gibraltar%2B2002%252C%2BGrock%252C%2Bthe%2Bfamous%2B%2527King%2Bof%2BClowns%2527.bmp" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Gibraltar postage stamp from 2002 depicting Grock (Dr Karl Shuker)<br /></span></strong><br />Perhaps the most famous family of circus clowns was the Trio Fratellini, consisting of three brothers who elevated the art of Parisian circus clowning to hitherto unimaginable levels of excellence during the first half of the 20th Century. Combining effortless timing, exquisite costumes, and superb musicianship, they produced perfectly-crafted performances that dazzled and delighted audiences wherever they appeared.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zvq75lLBs9k/UANYzvF0WyI/AAAAAAAAC-k/qayxDFTzKPQ/s1600/Trio%2BFratellini.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 246px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765549593801808674" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zvq75lLBs9k/UANYzvF0WyI/AAAAAAAAC-k/qayxDFTzKPQ/s400/Trio%2BFratellini.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">The Trio Fratellini<br /><br /></span></strong>And in more recent times, an increasing number of female clowns have successfully appeared in circuses, opening up what had traditionally been a male-dominated profession.<br /><br /><br /><strong>COURTING LAUGHTER AND CONTROVERSY – JESTERS AND FOOLS<br /></strong><br />Quite different in appearance and attitude from circus clowns but closely linked to them in ancestry, and equally adept at inducing laughter from their audiences, were court jesters and fools. Jesters traditionally comprised two fundamentally different types.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WgDwlsLWfDE/UANd9HogYYI/AAAAAAAAC_M/90RZxGzmysA/s1600/Jester%2Bartwork%252C%2BKim%2BNewberg%252C%2Bpub%2Bdom.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 282px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765555252566712706" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WgDwlsLWfDE/UANd9HogYYI/AAAAAAAAC_M/90RZxGzmysA/s400/Jester%2Bartwork%252C%2BKim%2BNewberg%252C%2Bpub%2Bdom.bmp" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">An unusual full-face jester mask (Kim Newberg)<br /><br /></span></strong>Also called fools, natural jesters were often – tragically - individuals who were incapacitated mentally, physically, or both, and were often maintained at royal courts throughout Europe during medieval and Renaissance times as figures of fun. Licensed or professional jesters, conversely, were, as their name indicates, hired specifically to act as buffoons but with a quick wit and sharp tongue. Consequently, their duties usually centred upon fulfilling the decidedly tricky role of being witty enough to entertain and amuse their aristocratic employers but without becoming sufficiently controversial or insulting to embarrass them! Needless to say, should they fail in this onerous task, they may well find themselves losing not only their job but also their life!<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IIRnfl21-9k/UANJef-EfFI/AAAAAAAAC9E/M8CbZbr3zfE/s1600/Jester%252C%2BBelgium%2B2.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 203px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765532736291109970" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IIRnfl21-9k/UANJef-EfFI/AAAAAAAAC9E/M8CbZbr3zfE/s400/Jester%252C%2BBelgium%2B2.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">A flamboyantly-garbed jester figurine from Belgium (Dr Karl Shuker)<br /></span></strong><br />Although a jester’s costume was sometimes quite ordinary, more often than not it was very distinctive and exotic in form, often a multicoloured motley reminiscent of Harlequin’s – which is little wonder, as the latter Commedia dell’Arte character was derived in no small way from the image and behaviour of traditional court jesters. This costume was normally topped off by a characteristic tricorned cap bearing a small tinkling bell at the tip of each of its three horns. Many jesters also carried an ornate tassled staff or false mace, which down through the centuries eventually became Harlequin’s slapstick.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-abBNSMb4mwM/UANJEa7gZPI/AAAAAAAAC84/NnTYfEGn2PQ/s1600/la-vie-parisienne-art-deco-print-1924-monkey-jester-and-princess-by-herouard-p.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 304px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765532288261580018" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-abBNSMb4mwM/UANJEa7gZPI/AAAAAAAAC84/NnTYfEGn2PQ/s400/la-vie-parisienne-art-deco-print-1924-monkey-jester-and-princess-by-herouard-p.bmp" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">A court jester (and princess) on the cover of the magazine <em>La Vie Parisienne</em> for 27 September 1924<br /></span></strong><br />When England’s ruling monarch Charles I was dethroned and executed in 1649, and the country was then ruled by the austere, humourless Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector, jesters swiftly fell out of favour. And even after the monarchy was restored just over a decade later when Charles II ascended to the throne, they never regained their former popularity, and largely vanished from court life thereafter. The time for jesting and jollity, it seemed, had passed (though as recently as the 20th Century, jesters were still employed by the Bowes-Lyons, the family of the late Queen Mother).<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s8qKcTa3gQQ/UANnwZBcNxI/AAAAAAAADAE/yjLsufKgwlc/s1600/The%2BCourt%2BJester%2Bposter.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 262px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765566029012678418" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s8qKcTa3gQQ/UANnwZBcNxI/AAAAAAAADAE/yjLsufKgwlc/s400/The%2BCourt%2BJester%2Bposter.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Danny Kaye as Giacomo, the court jester - in the 1956 film musical of the same title (Wikipedia)</span></strong><br /><br />Today, court jesters may be long gone, but circus-based jesters and clowns remain as popular as ever (coulrophobics or clown fearers notwithstanding!), as epitomised by their dazzling, exotic appearances in the sumptuous extravaganzas staged by the Cirque du Soleil, for instance.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1UPi4b-S5Y0/UANcJ0EdZ5I/AAAAAAAAC-0/Z6AUnIFuxDw/s1600/Cirque%2Bdu%2BSoleil%252C%2BSaltimbanco.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765553271630292882" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1UPi4b-S5Y0/UANcJ0EdZ5I/AAAAAAAAC-0/Z6AUnIFuxDw/s400/Cirque%2Bdu%2BSoleil%252C%2BSaltimbanco.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Saltimbanco, one of Cirque du Soleil's spectacular shows (Cirque du Soleil)<br /></span></strong><br />Even so, just like everything else in the modern-day world, nothing is as simple and straightforward as it used to be. Nowadays, prospective circus clowns attend special clown-training colleges as student clowns, studying such subjects as slapstick, costume, mime, juggling, and even unicycling. One such college was opened in 1968 by the Ringling Circus; and during its first decade alone, over 40,000 people had applied to enrol on its seven-week course, with more than 600 fully-qualified circus clowns graduating.<br /><br />Clearly, therefore, and irrespective of what their persona and outward image might otherwise suggest, being clowns in this day and age is certainly no laughing matter!<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VwJ5TNt1fg4/UANFq-H86qI/AAAAAAAAC8o/sLx_7YtmVIg/s1600/Clowns%2Band%2BJesters.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 300px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5765528552497539746" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VwJ5TNt1fg4/UANFq-H86qI/AAAAAAAAC8o/sLx_7YtmVIg/s400/Clowns%2Band%2BJesters.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">A selection of clown and jester dolls (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong><br /></div>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-91059003830242828552012-06-27T02:41:00.013+01:002012-06-27T03:13:05.368+01:00HEAVY METAL DRAGONS<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7SlrLWPPnSY/T-pm0GOU6OI/AAAAAAAACmw/9PBp-5RRD1Q/s1600/Whitesnake%2B-%2BLovehunter%2BLP.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5758528118756534498" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7SlrLWPPnSY/T-pm0GOU6OI/AAAAAAAACmw/9PBp-5RRD1Q/s400/Whitesnake%2B-%2BLovehunter%2BLP.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">'Lovehunter' - Whitesnake (Chris Achilleos)</span></strong><br /><br /><br /><div align="justify">Back in those far-off, antediluvian times that marked my youth and when I first got into motorbikes and tattoos, I was also a bit of a head-banger – although I won't horrify you by posting photos of me with long hair! However, I did have quite a collection of hard rock and heavy metal (HM) records, some of which I still retain.<br /><br />While chatting recently with a friend from that period in my life and who had shared my enthusiasm for this genre of rock music, we reminisced about the spectacular artwork featured on the covers of some of the classic albums, and I happened to mention one of my all-time favourite examples. Namely, the stunning artwork by Chris Achilleos for 'Lovehunter', British band Whitesnake's second studio album, released in 1979, which depicts a decidedly cryptozoological serpent dragon with long curved horns.<br /><br />Another favourite of mine that I mentioned was the ornate Eastern dragon depicted on the title single from Bruce Dickinson's debut solo album 'Tattooed Millionaire', released in 1990, and also on a 'Tattooed Millionaire' t-shirt that I had long since worn out due to relentless wearing!<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MKF7Z27FBfs/T-pqF85E34I/AAAAAAAACnM/b4HeGGAUDAQ/s1600/Tattooed%2BMillionaire%252C%2BBruce%2BDickinson.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 391px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5758531724024012674" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MKF7Z27FBfs/T-pqF85E34I/AAAAAAAACnM/b4HeGGAUDAQ/s400/Tattooed%2BMillionaire%252C%2BBruce%2BDickinson.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">'Tattooed Millionaire' (single) - Bruce Dickinson<br /></span></strong><br />As a result, the conversation then veered into reflecting upon just how popular the dragon remains as a subject referred to directly or at least metaphorically in HM song titles. Intrigued, I have carried out some research into this, and here is a representative list of examples from bands all around the globe:<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3e-91FQYOL4/T-pnBbOSfvI/AAAAAAAACm8/tyohPfHmMPY/s1600/Dio%252C%2BKilling%2Bthe%2BDragon.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 386px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5758528347731820274" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3e-91FQYOL4/T-pnBbOSfvI/AAAAAAAACm8/tyohPfHmMPY/s400/Dio%252C%2BKilling%2Bthe%2BDragon.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">'Killing the Dragon' - Dio<br /><br /></span></strong>'Magic Dragon', from German thrash metal band Sodom's third album 'Agent Orange' (released in 1989); 'Ride the Dragon', from American heavy metal band Manowar's seventh album 'The Triumph of Steel' (1992); 'The Dragon Lies Bleeding', from Swedish power metal band HammerFall's debut album 'Glory to the Brave' (1997); 'In the Dragon's Den', from American progressive metal band Symphony X's fourth studio album 'Twilight in Olympus' (1998); 'The Dragon's Lair', from Swedish heavy metal band Crystal Eyes' debut album 'World of Black and Silver' (1999); 'Black Dragon', from Italian symphonic power metal songwriter Luca Turilli's solo album 'King of the Nordic Twilight' (1999); 'The River Dragon Has Come', from American heavy metal band Nevermore's fourth studio album 'Dead Heart, in a Dead World' (2000); 'Killing the Dragon', the title track from American heavy metal band Dio's ninth studio album (2002); 'Heart of a Dragon', from English power metal band DragonForce's debut album 'Valley of the Damned (2003); 'Dragon Reborn', from Australian power metal band Black Majesty's second album 'Live Company' (2005); 'Where Dragons Dwell', from French heavy metal band Gojira's third studio album 'From Mars to Sirius' (2005); 'Dragonheart', from Danish power metal band Iron Fire's fourth full-length album 'Blade of Triumph' (2007); 'Chasing the Dragon', from Dutch symphonic metal band Epica's fourth album 'The Divine Conspiracy' (2008); and 'Daltor the Dragonhunter', from Italian symphonic power metal band Ancient Bards' album 'The Alliance of the Kings' (2010).<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LV5NraukgHE/T-pqTz2mcLI/AAAAAAAACnY/xGc_KQbv9og/s1600/rhapsody-of-fire-emerald-sword%2528single%2529.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5758531962115879090" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LV5NraukgHE/T-pqTz2mcLI/AAAAAAAACnY/xGc_KQbv9og/s400/rhapsody-of-fire-emerald-sword%2528single%2529.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">'Emerald Sword' (single) - Rhapsody of Fire<br /></span></strong><br />Other noteworthy examples include 'Tears of the Dragon', a critically-lauded, highly-melodic track from Iron Maiden's once-and-future front man Bruce Dickinson's second solo album 'Balls to Picasso' (1994); 'The Consummate Dragon', inspired by Smaug in Tolkien's The Hobbit, from American hardcore punk band Shai Hulud's second studio album 'That Within Blood Ill-Tempered' (2003); 'Dragon', from German heavy/power metal band Grave Digger's eleventh studio album 'Rheingold' (2003 – inspired by Richard Wagner's classical 'Ring Cycle'); and the various dragon songs contained in Italian symphonic power metal band Rhapsody of Fire's five-album 'Emerald Sword Saga' (1997-2004), inspired by the realms of high fantasy from the 'swords and sorcery' literary genre.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VXcC6vVXbk4/T-pqgOzTv4I/AAAAAAAACnk/3WTDYKxgl98/s1600/Vangelis%252C%2BThe%2BDragon.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 389px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5758532175508258690" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VXcC6vVXbk4/T-pqgOzTv4I/AAAAAAAACnk/3WTDYKxgl98/s400/Vangelis%252C%2BThe%2BDragon.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">'The Dragon' - Vangelis (Terry Oakes)</span></strong><br /><br />Also deserving of inclusion here is 'The Dragon', appearing on Vangelis's unofficial studio album of the same title released in 1978, whose cover featured a stunning sea dragon depicted by Terry Oakes.<br /><br />If there are any notable omissions, I'd welcome details.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dTj4dt6Ze7k/T-prKkYPktI/AAAAAAAACnw/xwBYjMuYgEU/s1600/RHAPSODY%2BSymphony%2Bof%2Benchanted%2Blands.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 396px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5758532902854824658" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dTj4dt6Ze7k/T-prKkYPktI/AAAAAAAACnw/xwBYjMuYgEU/s400/RHAPSODY%2BSymphony%2Bof%2Benchanted%2Blands.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">'Symphony of Enchanted Lands' - Rhapsody of Fire </span></strong></div>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-25586025533518026132012-05-22T00:55:00.001+01:002012-05-22T01:12:45.773+01:00COINCIDENCE OR COMMONPLACE? 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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZDYEP1eEjLE/T7rYzUgtEBI/AAAAAAAACJM/BV3QiTlQlc4/s1600/Tapestry+commissioned+by+Louis,+Duke+of+Anjou,+of+the+third+angel+and+wormwood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" kba="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZDYEP1eEjLE/T7rYzUgtEBI/AAAAAAAACJM/BV3QiTlQlc4/s320/Tapestry+commissioned+by+Louis,+Duke+of+Anjou,+of+the+third+angel+and+wormwood.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="color: magenta;">Tapestry commissioned by Louis, Duke of Anjou, of the third angel and wormwood</span></strong></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">To some, coincidences are nothing but random incidents impinging upon one another merely by chance, and therefore lacking any significance or meaning. To others, they are abruptly-revealed links within a grand chain of recognition still to be forged in its entirety within the human mind. What do you think?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Consider the following example, which I came upon yesterday while browsing through Sir Alec Guinness's <i>A Commonplace Book </i>(2001) - a fascinating collection of eclectica and esoterica drawn from countless sources and jotted down by this celebrated British actor over the years in a couple of exercise books but not collated in published form until a year after his death - and judge for yourself.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In the New Testament of the Holy Bible, the following verses (10 and 11) can be found in Chapter 8 of the Book of the Revelation of St John the Divine:</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: blue;">"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="color: blue;">"And the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Was this truly a revelation of what would be at the end of the world, or, rather, a prophecy regarding an event of much closer proximity in time, specifically 26 April 1986?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I only ask because it just so happens that in Russo-Ukrainian, the word for wormwood is...Chernobyl.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: magenta;"><strong>Chernobyl disaster (Wikipedia)</strong></span></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Just a coincidence...?</span></div>
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</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"></span>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-71552886609137037852012-04-20T03:39:00.013+01:002012-04-20T04:06:45.943+01:00THE DOVER DEMON AND INTERNATIONAL OBSCURA DAY<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYl4z5tSQTU/T5DSM_MT9lI/AAAAAAAACAM/-_9PmrOe8TA/s1600/Dover%2Bdemon.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 335px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYl4z5tSQTU/T5DSM_MT9lI/AAAAAAAACAM/-_9PmrOe8TA/s400/Dover%2Bdemon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733313446205978194" /></a><br /><div align="justify"><strong><span style="color:#009900;"><span style="color:#33cc00;">Sketch by eyewitness Bill Bartlett of the Dover demon, as featured in various newspapers during 1977 (Bill Bartlett-Wikipedia)<br /></span><br /><br /></span></strong>Here's a very interesting email that I've received from Heather at Atlas Obscura:<br /><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;"><span style="font-size:85%;">"Wanted to let you know about the third annual “International Obscura Day”, (<a href="http://www.obscuraday.com/"><strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">www.obscuraday.com</span></strong></a>), a day of unusual local explorations, all over the world, presented by Atlas Obscura, an online travel guide to curious and unusual places. On April 28th, Loren Coleman, from the the International Cryptozoology Museum, will be giving a lecture [click <a href="http://obscuraday.com/events/the-dover-demon-at-the-international-cryptozoology-museum"><strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">here</span></strong></a> for details] to mark the 35 anniversary of the Dover</span><span style="font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;"> Demon investigation."<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;">"Thought you and your readers would be interested in it."<br /></span><br />Thanks, Heather, for bringing this to my attention!<br /><br />In case there are readers who are unfamiliar with the Dover demon, here is what I wrote about this intriguing entity in my book <em>The Unexplained</em>:<br /><br /><br />The last thing that 17-year-old Bill Bartlett expected to see when driving with two friends through Dover, Massachusetts, at around 10.30 pm on 21 April 1977 was a creature from another dimension. Yet that is what he may have done, at least in the opinion of some investigators - and judging from Bill's description of what he saw, they could have a point!<br /><br />Driving along, his car's headlights suddenly illuminated a peculiar entity picking its way along a stone wall at the side of the road. As can be seen from the pencil sketch that Bill later prepared, which is reproduced here [see illustration opening this Eclectarium blog post], the creature had a disproportionately large head, shaped like a water melon, with two big, protruding eyes that glowed orange, but it did not seem to have a mouth, nose, or ears. Its body was small, its neck and limbs were long and thin, and its fingers and toes were slender and supple. The creature appeared to be hairless, but its peach-coloured skin was rough in texture. It stood 3-4 ft high, and was observed only by Bill (his two friends were not looking in the right direction to see it).<br /><br />Unknown to Bill, however, his strange sighting would soon be substantiated by an entirely independent eyewitness. Less than two hours later, 15-year-old John Baxter was walking home little more than a mile from the locality of Bill's encounter when he saw a strange figure coming towards him. After receiving no reply when he called out to it, John paused, and as he did so the figure ran away down a gully. John chased after it, and when he was about 30 ft away, he could see it clearly, standing upright on its hind legs and gripping the trunk of a tree. When he spied its brightly glowing eyes in an otherwise featureless face staring at him, however, John decided to let caution supersede curiosity, and he walked briskly back to the road. Once he reached home, he too sketched the creature, and as can be seen here, his wholly independent drawing corresponds very closely indeed with Bill's.<br /><br />At around midnight on 22 April, what Fortean researcher Loren Coleman would subsequently dub 'the Dover demon' was seen again, this time by 15-year-old Abby Brabham while being driven home by Will Taintor, 18, who only spied it very briefly. Abby's description matched those of Bill and John in every respect except one - when she observed it, its eyes were glowing green, not orange. And thus ended the curious case of the Dover demon - for it has never been reported again, and has never been satisfactorily identified.<br /><br />If the descriptions of it are accurate, and they are certainly very consistent, the Dover demon does not resemble any species known to science, either from North America or elsewhere. It may not, however, be entirely unknown. The Cree Indians of eastern Canada speak of a mysterious race of pygmy entities called the Mannegishi, who delight in playing tricks upon travellers. According to the Cree, the Mannegishi have round heads, long thin legs, arms with six fingers on each hand, and they live between rocks in the rapids. Excluding the finger count discrepancy, this description is reminiscent of the Dover demon. </div>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-25986790870121799242012-03-19T19:30:00.007+00:002012-03-19T19:54:35.553+00:00SEA NYMPHS AND STEAM DEVILS<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vxbR7KOoruw/T2eOSOj5q1I/AAAAAAAAB50/zobz2te5S98/s1600/Triton%2Band%2BNereid%252C%2B1895%252C%2BMax%2BKlinger.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 215px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5721698295394970450" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vxbR7KOoruw/T2eOSOj5q1I/AAAAAAAAB50/zobz2te5S98/s400/Triton%2Band%2BNereid%252C%2B1895%252C%2BMax%2BKlinger.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Triton and a nereid (Max Klinger, 1895)</span></strong><br /><br /><div align="justify">In his compilation volume <em>Tornados, Dark Days, Anomalous Precipitation, and Related Weather Phenomena</em> (1983), veteran anomalies chronicler William R. Corliss defined steam devils as: "Long fingers or columns of vapor rising from a water surface and swirling upward into the cloud deck". Resulting from thermal convection when the water is much warmer than the air, and moulded into shape by air currents, steam devils can sometimes occur in large arrays and yield geometrical patterns, but the reason for their remarkable stability is still a mystery.<br /><br />A classic observation of steam devils, which took place at New York's Canandaigua Lake, was recorded on 4 January 1912 in <em>Scientific American</em> by James S. Lee:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;">"The surface of the lake was covered by vapor caused by the difference in temperature between the cold air and the comparatively warm water. This vapor, white mist, gathered in spots in masses rising higher than the surrounding mist. As these masses of vapor reached a height of some twenty feet they appeared to take on a rotary motion and formed themselves into columns slowly rising until their apexes met the low-lying clouds, where they spread out in a funnel shape exactly as do water spouts. The columns varied from a foot to possibly ten feet in diameter; some of them ascending in a straight line and others bent into fantastic curves by the action of the wind. I saw a great number of these mist whirls during a drive of some two hours, covering a distance of ten miles along the lake shore, and as they formed and drifted slowly across the water, illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, they were a beautiful and to me a unique spectacle."</span><br /></span><br />In 1932, <em>Science News Letter</em>, another American periodical, published a report of a recent encounter with steam devils made by Professor Johannes Walther while voyaging in the waters around Greece during high waves and an impending snowstorm:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;">"The cold air striking the warm water caused numerous columns of white vapor to rise over the foamy caps of the waves. They hovered momentarily, then were caught up whirling by the wind, and as they spun away through the air it did not require any violent stretch of the imagination to see them as feminine figures dancing in filmy draperies."</span><br /><br />Faced with this magical scene, Walther proffered a very novel hypothesis, linking these enthralling meteorological creations with a certain company of maritime maidens from classical Greek mythology. He speculated that perhaps in ancient times, sightings by Greek sailors of diaphanous steam devils hovering at the surface of the sea may have given rise to legends of the Nereids. These beautiful sea nymphs were the fifty daughters of Nereus - an early thalassic shapeshifting deity who lived in a palace beneath the Aegean Sea - and would dance upon the waves, assisting endangered sailors.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WrS9S3DKCrs/T2eOe5NUnBI/AAAAAAAAB6A/ENY1imGzJwg/s1600/Nereid%2Briding%2Ba%2Bsea-bull.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 269px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5721698513001421842" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WrS9S3DKCrs/T2eOe5NUnBI/AAAAAAAAB6A/ENY1imGzJwg/s400/Nereid%2Briding%2Ba%2Bsea-bull.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Nereid riding a sea-bull<br /></span></strong><br />I have not seen any subsequent commentary relating to this intriguing if somewhat poetic notion. Nevertheless, I have little doubt that if unexpectedly confronted by the type of surrealistic spectacle documented here, in bygone ages the human imagination may indeed have conferred some supernatural, divine identity upon the swirling steam devils - especially in a land like ancient Greece, where it was widely believed that every facet of nature was controlled or inhabited by its own designated deities. From such beliefs were legends born. </div>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-59857680317120674092012-03-03T20:30:00.018+00:002012-03-03T21:53:01.666+00:00BEWARE THE BASILISK, O KNIGHT!<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J7scVR5qx5k/T1KAevyCeBI/AAAAAAAABzQ/v9zEVbwDUHM/s1600/Basilisk%252C%2BGesner%252C%2BHistoriae%2BAnimalium.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 325px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5715772142797355026" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J7scVR5qx5k/T1KAevyCeBI/AAAAAAAABzQ/v9zEVbwDUHM/s400/Basilisk%252C%2BGesner%252C%2BHistoriae%2BAnimalium.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div align="justify">Back in medieval times, the basilisk was one of the most feared beasts that never existed. This fictitious creature was widely if erroneously believed to be real - a greatly-dreaded monster originally likened to a modest-sized snake or short-limbed lizard, but bearing a regal crown upon its head, and able to move forward with much of its body held erect, yet so toxic that the merest glance from its radiant eyes brought instant death to those who beheld it, the merest waft of its noxious breath shrivelled every living thing for miles around, and the merest dribble of venom from its fanged jaws poisoned for untold ages to come the very dust of the earth upon which it fell.<br /><br />During the course of countless retellings of legends and lore concerning this reptilian horror down through the generations, its appearance became conflated with that of another imaginary creature, the cockatrice, sequestering from this latter monstrosity its rooster-like coxcomb, wattles and beak, a pair of sturdy spurred legs, and an ear-splitting crowing cry. Only a weasel or the rue plant (see image below) could combat the basilisk's lethal powers, and it left terror and destruction in its virulent wake.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d6GQHv_79pg/T1KAsFBoWNI/AAAAAAAABzc/PWqntjQMfyc/s1600/Weasel-and-the-basilisk.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 340px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5715772371838195922" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d6GQHv_79pg/T1KAsFBoWNI/AAAAAAAABzc/PWqntjQMfyc/s400/Weasel-and-the-basilisk.jpg" /></a><br />All in all, therefore, this was hardly a creature that readily elicited sympathy, and yet...<br /><br />The January 1997 issue of a wonderful magazine called <em>The Dragon Chronicle</em> contained an outstanding short story entitled 'The Caprice', written by my old friend and cryptozoology colleague Richard Freeman, which revealed a very different, surprising side to the feared and hated basilisk, and which so captivated me when I read it that I've remembered it vividly ever since.<br /><br />So now, with Richard's kind permission, I have pleasure in reprinting 'The Caprice', which I hope that you will enjoy as much as I did when I first read it, and still do today.<br /><br /><br /><span style="color:#009900;"><strong>THE CAPRICE - by Richard Freeman<br /></strong><br />What would one call a creature that devoured colour? A chromatavore perhaps? It seemed to Edgar that his quarry had the ability to drain away more than just life. For six miles now all he had seen was varying shades of grey. The dead grass, the withered husks of trees and the twisted rocks. His mount had screamed and foamed at the edge of the desolation. Rearing up in wild eyed panic. So he left it and continued on foot.<br /><br />He soon cast off the heavy armour, it would afford him little protection against his foe. He carried no sword or spear, the necromancer had warned him of that folly, "so bloated with venom is this serpent that, should a mounted man strike it down with a lance, the poison would travel up the weapon killing both man and horse."<br /><br />Edgar shuddered, but from the memory of he who had sent him on this errand, rather than from the monster's power. He feared Silas Rasp more than the thing at the heart of the desolation. Barely five feet tall his bald head was unnaturally round and chubby. His oily skin was porcelain smooth and taken with his pot belly and pudgy fingers gave him the appearance of an outsized baby.<br /><br />"One glance is death," he had hissed, fat tongue protruding toad-like through rubbery lips. "Yet it is such a rare and magical beast that its body parts have, shall we say, certain properties."<br /><br />His eyes like pips of jet with a hunger it was disquieting to see, "About its wattled neck sprout green feathers. Spells committed to parchment with a quill made from these feathers increase ten fold in potency. Slay the serpent and pluck it like a goose."<br /><br />So it was not to save the beleaguered land he had sallied forth. Rather in answer to the pull of the gold that glittered in Rasp's sweaty palms.<br /><br />The cadavers of a man and a mule lay at the road side. They shared the same rigid horror on their glazed eyes. Ugly swarms of blow flies were contesting ownership of the corpses. Edgar found the insects oddly reassuring, they were the only living things he had seen in the desolation. As he travelled further, the bodies grew more in number - a band of gypsies, a travelling merchant, a wandering monk and a hedgerow apothecary. Warriors too, all fiercely armed, all dead. He was nearing the lair.<br /><br />He found himself at a ruined chapel, stained glass broken, doors long rotted and gaping into darkness. He slipped the cloth cover from his shield and crept closer. Something moved; from the chapel came a rustle like dead leaves.<br /><br />"Stay as you are, come no closer and down your blade," the voice sounded neither reptilian nor evil; merely old.<br /><br />"The scourge speaks," breathed Edgar.<br /><br />"The scourge is fluent in fifteen languages," came the reply. "I have lived longer than you can imagine."<br /><br />"And now it is your day to die, abomination."<br /><br />"Mayhap, but I would talk with you first," it said. "It has been many moons since I spoke with a sentient being."<br /><br />"No, I will have none of your tricks, basilisk. "<br /><br />"So you know my name."<br /><br />"And your deeds."<br /><br />"And you are not curious about the nature of these deeds, and why I must kill wantonly."<br /><br />"You sound as if you have no choice, demon. "<br /><br />"I have none, and don't confound me with your Christian bugbears. I am a caprice, a whim of a nature that is mad, blind, cruel, or all three."<br /><br />"Riddles too, you wag your forked tongue well, serpent." But by now Edgar was fascinated. A loquacious cockatrice, no one had heard of such a thing in all of Christendom. "Riddle on, gorgon-seed."<br /><br />"When a hen grows old, she sometimes apes her opposite gender, growing spurs and crowing. Should one of these 'cock-hens' lay an egg at the time of the dog-star, and should said egg be hatched by a toad or snake, one of my kind is born. The doubly cursed. Be glad these events conspire only rarely and we number so few."<br /><br />"You said doubly cursed?"<br /><br />"Aye, we are twice damned. The curse of immortality and the curse of our glance."<br /><br />"Immortality is a curse?"<br /><br />"Callow youth, what know you of immortality, of the grinding tedium, the blandness and the pain?"<br /><br />"Pain?"<br /><br />"Pain, agony, torment beyond your feeble mayfly imagining." The basilisk's voice dropped now, almost to a whisper. "The pain is we cannot look upon another living creature without killing it. Imagine eternity of solitude and death, we cannot even look upon one of our own kind. Nothing but greyness forever and ever, even grass withers and flowers die beneath our gaze. I am a living prison to myself, hated, feared and bored by all creation. That is what it is to be a caprice."<br /><br />The basilisk slipped slowly from the shadows. It seemed that all the stolen colours from the desolation resided within its scaled body. It was cobalt blue save for the metallic green feathers about its neck, the yellow beak, and its comb and wattle the colour of arterial blood. The eyes swivelled independently like those of a chameleon, their lids were slowly opening.<br /><br />Edgar swung his shield of highly polished bronze and turned his head away. It was a full twenty minutes before he dared lower it again. Rasp had been correct, the basilisk's gaze was as lethal to itself as it was to any other creature. He walked over to the prone reptile. It was not the vast serpent of his imagining, but a lizard barely three feet in length. As he bent to pluck its ruff with the tongs Rasp had given him, he noticed something. Upon the basilisk's hooked beak, there was a hint of a relieved smile.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uRBeNQeUJzY/T1KBfP4cEAI/AAAAAAAABzo/Mq8H4zlHxo8/s1600/Basilisks.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 333px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5715773250925760514" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uRBeNQeUJzY/T1KBfP4cEAI/AAAAAAAABzo/Mq8H4zlHxo8/s400/Basilisks.jpg" /></a><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>This short story first appeared in <em>The Dragon Chronicle</em>, no. 9 (January 1997): 29-30.<br /><br /></strong></span>A new fiction anthology by Richard has just been published – <em>Green, Unpleasant Land: Eighteen Tales of British Horror</em> (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2012), available from Amazon.co.uk (click <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Green-Unpleasant-Land-Richard-Freeman/dp/1905723857/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329696272&sr=1-2&fb_source=message">here</a>) and all good bookstores. So be sure to check it out!<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GQ4J19QklnY/T1KCMguWkFI/AAAAAAAABz0/wNP7oZgu6PE/s1600/Green%2BUnpleasant%2BLand.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 283px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5715774028540973138" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GQ4J19QklnY/T1KCMguWkFI/AAAAAAAABz0/wNP7oZgu6PE/s400/Green%2BUnpleasant%2BLand.jpg" /></a> </div>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-34129776707488149132012-02-21T21:35:00.015+00:002012-02-21T22:08:29.725+00:00BRING ME THE HEAD OF OZYMANDIAS!<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ohiffzD0p7M/T0QR98xkqmI/AAAAAAAABx8/uL-QCeC_hb8/s1600/Ozymandias.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 313px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711709983396375138" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ohiffzD0p7M/T0QR98xkqmI/AAAAAAAABx8/uL-QCeC_hb8/s400/Ozymandias.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;">I met a traveller from an antique land<br />Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone<br />Stand in the desert....Near them, on the sand,<br />Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,<br />And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,<br />Tell that its sculptor well those passions read<br />Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,<br />The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:<br />And on the pedestal these words appear:<br />"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:<br />Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"<br />Nothing beside remains. Round the decay<br />Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare<br />The lone and level sands stretch far away".<br /><br />Percy Bysshe Shelley – ‘Ozymandias’<br /><br /></span><br />Had I not become a zoologist, I may well have sought a career in archaeology, as I have always been fascinated with ancient civilisations and the many extraordinary monuments, edifices, and other spectacular creations that once existed in those bygone realms - of which the following example is a particular favourite of mine<br /><br />Percy Bysshe Shelley’s celebrated poem ‘Ozymandias’ (quoted above in full) is a succinct but extraordinarily powerful evocation of the folly of human vanity, and the stark image of an immense wrecked statue encompassed by an empty wasteland of desert sand as conjured forth by Shelley’s strangely compelling lines has fascinated me ever since I first read them many years ago.<br /><br />It was only during my visit to Egypt’s West Bank in January 2006, however, that I discovered to my surprise and delight that Ozymandias, and his giant stone head, were much more than mere figments of a poet’s imagination.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BJBn-GzOuU4/T0QUVa6PMwI/AAAAAAAAByU/wo_vUhkShN4/s1600/Ramesses%2BII%2Bstatue%2Bat%2BAbu%2BSimbel%252C%2BHajor-Wikipedia.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 336px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711712585646027522" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BJBn-GzOuU4/T0QUVa6PMwI/AAAAAAAAByU/wo_vUhkShN4/s400/Ramesses%2BII%2Bstatue%2Bat%2BAbu%2BSimbel%252C%2BHajor-Wikipedia.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Ramesses II statue at Abu Simbel, Egypt (Hajor/Wikipedia)<br /></span></strong><br />Ruling for 66 years and 2 months during the 13th Century BC, when ancient Egypt had attained the very zenith of its power and splendour, Pharaoh Ramesses II was possibly the most celebrated, and wealthiest, of all of this great country’s ancient rulers, and he used his vast riches to create an unparalleled array of monuments glorifying his existence. None was more spectacular, however, than his memorial (mortuary) temple, located in Thebes on the West Bank, across the River Nile from present-day Luxor. It was originally known as “The House of Millions of Years of Usermaatra-Setepenra That Unites With Thebes-The-City in the Domain of Amon”, but following his visit to its ruins in 1829, French archaeologist Jean-François Champollion coined a rather more concise yet no less fitting name for it – the Ramesseum.<br /><br />Yet despite being dubbed the House of Millions of Years, in reality this architectural wonder lasted for a far shorter span of time, on account of its location. Tragically, it had been erected at the very edge of the Nile floodplain, and so its foundations were inexorably undermined by this mighty river’s annual inundation, as well as by neglect and desecration in later ages. Eventually, together with the gargantuan statues that it contained, Ramesses II’s magnificent temple collapsed, and in time became largely buried, with only scattered ruins to remind a modern world of its long-bygone glory.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tXWg3KweETY/T0QQZ4KZUuI/AAAAAAAABxw/z0ojSikR8Yk/s1600/Ozymandias%2Bhead%252C%2BSteve%2BF.E.%2BCameron%252C%2BWikipedia.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 266px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711708264171393762" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tXWg3KweETY/T0QQZ4KZUuI/AAAAAAAABxw/z0ojSikR8Yk/s400/Ozymandias%2Bhead%252C%2BSteve%2BF.E.%2BCameron%252C%2BWikipedia.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">The surviving head and shoulder of the Ozymandias Colossus (Steve F.E. Cameron/Wikipedia)<br /><br /></span></strong>Among its now-fallen statues was an immense stone giant dubbed the Ozymandias Colossus, which weighed over 900 tons and formerly stood as tall as Memnon’s twin counterparts documented earlier in this chapter. Today, however, only its massive head, hands, and feet remain. These shattered relics, the pathetic remnants of Ramesses II’s most grandiose attempt at self-glorification, are what inspired Shelley’s famous sonnet, though the “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” were his own invention, as no such relics exist here today.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mnzms07leow/T0QUnLstSII/AAAAAAAAByg/vFisVH4BkUs/s1600/Ozymandias%2B3.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 275px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711712890800392322" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mnzms07leow/T0QUnLstSII/AAAAAAAAByg/vFisVH4BkUs/s400/Ozymandias%2B3.jpg" /></a><br />As for the memorable name, Ozymandias, this was actually a mis-transliteration from Egyptian into Greek - by 1st-Century-BC writer Diodorus of Sicily - of the first part of Ramesses II’s throne name, Usermaatra Setepenra. This appears as a cartouche on the statue’s shoulder, and can still be seen today as shown in Steve Cameron's photograph included earlier here.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VnVfjC_KCXE/T0QSVh2MfyI/AAAAAAAAByI/UtvsNZOuVZw/s1600/Ozymandias%2B2.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711710388484865826" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VnVfjC_KCXE/T0QSVh2MfyI/AAAAAAAAByI/UtvsNZOuVZw/s400/Ozymandias%2B2.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Ozymandias (panthalassa3d.livejournal.com/)<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="color:#ff0000;">This Eclectarium blog post is excerpted from my book <em>Dr Shuker's Casebook</em> (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2008)</span></strong></div>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-89245246338094045442012-02-01T20:08:00.001+00:002016-08-06T19:04:40.423+01:00GROW YOUR OWN HOMUNCULUS<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jb-N9LrA3SQ/TwRUUjvEAbI/AAAAAAAABh0/tsboXI7yqoo/s1600/Homunculus%2Bcreated%2Bby%2Balchemy%252C%2Bcolour.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693768541069902258" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jb-N9LrA3SQ/TwRUUjvEAbI/AAAAAAAABh0/tsboXI7yqoo/s400/Homunculus%2Bcreated%2Bby%2Balchemy%252C%2Bcolour.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 310px;" /></a><br />
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<b><span style="color: #009900;">Creating a homunculus via alchemy</span></b><br />
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Even today, the alchemists of medieval times remain famous for their supposed (but unconfirmed) ability to transmute base metals into gold, using the fabled philosopher's stone. Less well-remembered, yet even more controversial, is their alleged artificial creation of tiny living humanoids - known as homunculi. Some references to homunculi in alchemical texts featured them as symbolic rather than literal. For instance, the fabled Philosopher's Stone is sometimes considered to be a homunculus, with its creation no less than the representation of the Great Work (Magnum Opus) process, merely described in a different way.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xNybR0GVR2I/TwRUcuTxbkI/AAAAAAAABiA/KFLwTuFCge0/s1600/Homunculus%2B-%2BDonum%2BDei.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693768681347182146" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xNybR0GVR2I/TwRUcuTxbkI/AAAAAAAABiA/KFLwTuFCge0/s400/Homunculus%2B-%2BDonum%2BDei.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 258px;" /></a><b><span style="color: #009900;">A symbolic homunculus, depicted in <i>The Pretiosissimum Donum Dei</i> ('The Most Precious Gift of God'), an important 15th-Century alchemical work by Georgius Aurach de Argentina</span></b><br />
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In September 1994, however, Paul Thompson published an engrossing review of this largely-forgotten arcane subject in America's <i>Fate Magazine</i> that contained some remarkable revelations regarding the alleged creation of living homunculi, and which inspired my own ongoing fascination with this subject.<br />
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Alchemists claimed that the culture medium required for the growth of homunculi contained several biological fluids such as sputum or egg-white, and sometimes inorganic fluids like dew, but the two substances most commonly cited as essential were human blood and semen - both of which are widely believed in primitive or non-scientific societies to harbour the vital essence of life. Also required was horse manure, whose heat-releasing properties were utilised to incubate the medium.<br />
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Bearing in mind that all of the above ingredients are readily obtainable, why was the production of homunculi a skill restricted to alchemists? The answer is that the recipes always seemed to contain one vital ingredient that was exceptionally complex and difficult to prepare.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3hsTt0-F9nE/TwRUliIaeCI/AAAAAAAABiM/XLnQxcy7Of8/s1600/Paracelsus%252C%2Bpainted%2Bby%2BQuentin%2BMassys.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693768832697137186" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3hsTt0-F9nE/TwRUliIaeCI/AAAAAAAABiM/XLnQxcy7Of8/s400/Paracelsus%252C%2Bpainted%2Bby%2BQuentin%2BMassys.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 300px;" /></a><b><span style="color: #009900;">Paracelsus, painted by Quentin Massys</span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: #009900;"><br /></span></b>For example, in the homunculus recipe contained within the treatise <i>De Natura Rerum</i>, written by 16th-Century Swiss scholar and alchemist Theophrastus Paracelsus (aka Philippus von Hohenheim), 'the arcanum of human blood' was included - essential but esoteric, its constituents known only to the alchemical fraternity. Here, just in case any reader wishes to attempt it himself, is Paracelsus's description of how to create a homunculus:<br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;"><span style="font-size: 85%;">"Let the semen of a man putrefy by itself in a sealed cucurbite [glass vessel] with the highest putrefaction of the venter equinus [horse manure] for 40 days, or until it begins at last to live, move, and be agitated, which can easily be seen. After this time it will be in some degree like a human being, but, nevertheless, transparent and without body. If now, after this, it be every day nourished and fed cautiously and prudently with the arcanum of human blood, and kept for 40 weeks in the perpetual and equal heat of a venter equinus, it becomes, thenceforth, a true and living infant, having all the members of a child that is born from a woman, but much smaller. This we call a homunculus; and it should be afterwards educated with the greatest care and zeal, until it grows up and begins to display intelligence."</span></span><br />
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Equally obscure is 'animal tincture', listed in another medieval recipe.<br />
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The vaguely human-looking root of the mandragora or mandrake plant <i>Mandragora officinarum</i> inspired the false belief during medieval times that it could be utilised in the production of homunculi. During his body's last convulsive spasms before death, a hanged man will sometimes ejaculate semen, and it was said that where this fell to the ground, a mandrake would grow. If its anthropomorphic root was then pulled out before dawn on a Friday morning by a black dog, then washed, and nurtured with milk, honey, and sometimes human blood too, the root would subsequently develop into a homunculus, which would guard and protect its owner.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5aQAb8G4I5E/TwRUxaewosI/AAAAAAAABiY/QT93e3jirN4/s1600/Mandrake%2Bin%2BTacuinum%2BSanitatis%252C%2B15th-Century%2Bmanuscript.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693769036801811138" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5aQAb8G4I5E/TwRUxaewosI/AAAAAAAABiY/QT93e3jirN4/s400/Mandrake%2Bin%2BTacuinum%2BSanitatis%252C%2B15th-Century%2Bmanuscript.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 363px;" /></a><b><span style="color: #009900;">Mandrake with unrealistically humanoid root, depicted in <i>Tacuinum Sanitatis</i>, a 15th-Century manuscript</span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: #009900;"><br /></span></b>An even more exotic recipe for growing your own homunculus was cited during the 1700s by no less a figure of learning than Dr David Christianus from Germany's Giessen University. According to his claim, an egg should be taken from a black hen, and a tiny hole should be poked through its shell. A bean-sized portion of the albumen then needed to be removed and replaced by human semen, after which the egg's opening should be sealed with the hymen from a virgin maiden. Once this was accomplished, the egg must be buried in dung during the first day of the March lunar cycle. After 30 days, a homunculus should emerge from the egg, and as long as its owner provided it with a regular diet of earthworms and lavender seeds it would protect him and assist him in all of his endeavours.<br />
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Notwithstanding the inherent difficulties in obtaining the necessary ingredients and in performing the intricate series of processes required, records detailing the successful culturing of homunculi do exist. An extraordinary specimen grown from distilled human blood and able to emit beams of red light was reputedly cultured and exhibited at the court of France's King Louis XIV by royal physician Dr Pierre Borel.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_h0S653kSY/TwRU7mt2JwI/AAAAAAAABik/11Zx3fXpDic/s1600/The%2BHouse%2Bof%2BDoctor%2BDee.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693769211885004546" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_h0S653kSY/TwRU7mt2JwI/AAAAAAAABik/11Zx3fXpDic/s400/The%2BHouse%2Bof%2BDoctor%2BDee.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 262px;" /></a><span style="color: #009900;"><b>Homunculi feature in many contemporary novels including Peter Ackroyd's <i>The House of Doctor Dee</i> (1993), in which he portrays real-life Elizabethan magus John Dee successfully creating a homunculus</b></span><br />
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As fully documented in Dr Emil Besetzny's book <i>Die Sphinx</i> (1873), however, the most outstanding case must surely be the creation of ten living homunculi in a mere five weeks, accomplished in 1775 by two alchemists - Austrian noblemen Count Johann Ferdinand von Kufstein and Italian mystic/Rosicrucian cleric Abbé Geloni.<br />
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Like all homunculi, they were grown in sealed jars (homunculi die if exposed for any considerable period to the air), filled with water and eventually buried under heaps of manure. These were treated (as usual) with some special, but unspecified, solution, and doubled the size of eight of the homunculi, producing a series of 1-ft-tall specimens.<br />
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No two homunculi looked the same, and to each was fixed an identity. Eight were physical manikins, known respectively as the king, queen, knight, monk, nun, seraph, miner, and architect, and clothes pertinent to their identities were manufactured for them. Each of these eight homunculi was fed with special pink tablets every 3-4 days, and their water was changed once a week. On at least one occasion, the 'king' homunculus escaped from his jar, and was earnestly trying to remove the seal on the jar housing the 'queen' when he was spotted by Count Kufstein's butler, Klammerer. Chased by Kufstein and Klammerer, the 'king' soon fainted from exposure to the air, and was put back inside his own receptacle.<br />
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The remaining two homunculi were non-corporeal, and only appeared when Geloni tapped their jars and chanted certain magical words. A face would then materialise in each of them; moreover, in one the liquid would turn blue, in the other it would turn red. The red 'spirit' homunculus was fed on blood, and its water was changed every 2-3 days, but the blue 'spirit' homunculus was never fed and its water was never changed.<br />
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All ten homunculi would answer questions concerning future events, invariably predicting correctly the outcomes, and they were observed by many people. These included some very notable personages, like Count Franz Josef von Thun and Count Max Lamberg. Surely, however, such bizarre man-made entities could not really have existed - or could they?<br />
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I cannot help but wonder whether these particular homunculi were nothing more than large amphibians brought back by travellers from the tropics. One likely candidate is the African clawed toad <i>Xenopus laevis</i>, a common species vaguely humanoid in shape, which lives permanently in water - explaining why the 'king' fainted soon after escaping from its jar?<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ESYExrbg-Hg/TwRVKGP8AgI/AAAAAAAABiw/xImbPFRknpk/s1600/Xenopus%2Blaevis%252C%2BMichael%2BLinnenbach-Wikipedia.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693769460867662338" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ESYExrbg-Hg/TwRVKGP8AgI/AAAAAAAABiw/xImbPFRknpk/s400/Xenopus%2Blaevis%252C%2BMichael%2BLinnenbach-Wikipedia.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 317px;" /></a><b><span style="color: #009900;">Homunculi – created from blood, or merely specimens of the African clawed toad (like this one)? (Michael Linnenbach/Wikipedia)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: #009900;"><br /></span></b>No-one knows what happened to nine of the homunculi after Geloni and Kufstein ultimately went their separate ways. However, an event occurred that may actually have left behind some tangible evidence of the tenth. Once, the jar containing the 'monk' homunculus was accidentally dropped, smashing as it hit the floor and killing its humanoid inhabitant. His body was afterwards buried in the grounds of Kufstein's Tyrolean residence - but where is this today? If only we knew its locality, the soil around it could be sifted, as suggested by Paul Thompson - and who knows what remains might be found?<br />
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One thing is certain. If a 12-in-long skeleton is ever found under these circumstances, Thompson would be very interested to learn more about it - and so would I.<br />
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A greatly-expanded, updated version of this article, emphasising its potential (crypto)zoological aspects, can be accessed <a href="https://karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/grow-your-own-homunculus.html?showComment=1329241602908"><span style="color: red;"><b>here</b></span></a> on my ShukerNature blog. <br />
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<b>This article is extracted and expanded from the homunculus section of my book <i><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://www.karlshuker.com/unexplained.htm">The Unexplained: An Illustrated Guide to the World's Natural and Paranormal Mysteries</a> </span></i>(Carlton: London, 1996)</b><br />
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Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-82721018834352998502012-01-06T10:23:00.027+00:002012-01-06T15:34:05.774+00:00GHOSTS IN THE MACHINES? HAUNTED HARDWARE AND OTHER MECHANISED MYSTERIES<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ps7scJMl-6c/TwcPk0qy_tI/AAAAAAAABjI/91fEXQd6P5I/s1600/Ghost%2Bin%2Bmachine.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 250px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694537379121135314" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ps7scJMl-6c/TwcPk0qy_tI/AAAAAAAABjI/91fEXQd6P5I/s400/Ghost%2Bin%2Bmachine.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div align="justify">Somewhere out there is an unnerving diversity of treacherous technology that seems to possess (or be possessed by?) a veritable life of its own! Independently-minded machines boasting seemingly paranormal powers, or weird talents far beyond those implanted into them by their human creators, certainly appear to be much more widespread than we might otherwise suppose - and much too clever for our own good!<br /><br /><br /><strong>WORD PROCESSOR, DODLESTON, CHESHIRE - Spooked by a Ghost Writer, in Every Sense!<br /></strong><br />In the olden days, ghosts communicated with the living via such traditional media as ouija boards - but now, keeping abreast of modern technology, they utilise word processors!<br /><br />During late 1984, Ken Webster was renovating an old cottage that he had purchased in Dodleston, Cheshire, when his word processor began displaying strange messages and poems that he had not placed there himself. Precisely the same thing happened when he used any of his other computers too. The only common link was the presence of his girlfriend, Debbie, because these unsolicited communications always appeared when she was close by. Yet they could not have originated from her, or from Ken, for one very good reason.<br /><br />Linguist Peter Trinder, who made a detailed study of them, revealed that they were written in a Late Middle English dialect dating from around the 1500s. For instance:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;">"Wot strange wordes thou speke, although I muste confess that I hath also bene ill-schooled...thou art a goodly man who hath fanciful woman who dwel in myne home."<br /><br /></span>Similar messages even appeared on the cottage floor. Yet whereas Ken and Debbie had no knowledge of Middle English, some of the communications contained unfamiliar words that could only have been known to someone well-versed in this long-vanished dialect.<br /><br />Greatly intrigued, Ken began answering them on his machines, and eventually he learnt that his computer-mediated contact was a veritable ghost writer. Namely, one Tomas Harden, who claimed to have lived on this same site over 400 years earlier.<br /><br />Judging from some of Harden's messages, moreover, the reason why they appeared whenever Debbie was nearby seems simply to have been that he had taken a liking to her! A case, perhaps, of unrequited computer dating across the centuries?<br /><br /><br /><strong>COMPUTER CHESS - Check Mate...Forever!<br /></strong><br />For anyone who may deem it safe to dismiss machines as brainless, dispassionate morons, undeniably helpful but fundamentally harmless, the following cautionary, true-life tale should be made compulsory reading. In 1989, Soviet grand master Nikolai Gudkov had won two successive chess games against his opponent, a Russian M2-11 super-computer programmed to play at world-class level. At the precise moment that he reached out his hand and made the telling move that would have checkmated M2-11 for the third time, however, Gudkov dropped down dead. He had been instantly electrocuted by a sudden surge of power passing through the metal chessboard that his fingers touched as he placed the chesspiece down in his winning move. Just a coincidence...or a chilling demonstration of mechanical mentality?<br /><br />Equally controversial was the famous Turkish chess player of Hungarian nobleman Baron Von Kempelen. Dating from 1769, and exhibited widely in Europe, it consisted of a slightly larger than lifesize robot-like automaton, in the form and attire of a Turkish man, seated at a wooden cabinet, which, when opened, seemed to contain complex machinery. A chessboard was present on top of the cabinet, and the Baron challenged onlookers to compete against his mechanised Turk. Many did - but all met their match. Eventually, the Turk was sold to an American showman called Maelzl, and during 1835 it was witnessed in action by Edgar Allan Poe - who revealed that its chess-playing talent owed more to conjuring skill than mechanical sophistication. In reality, one of its owner's servants hid inside the robot chess player, and whenever this servant was ill or absent, all displays featuring the Turk were cancelled.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BBKlRS0Aj9A/TwcQBnlPzeI/AAAAAAAABjU/Cz2Q-7U2WxQ/s1600/Baron%2Bvon%2BKempelen%2527s%2Bmechanical%2Bchess%2Bplayer.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 280px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694537873824402914" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BBKlRS0Aj9A/TwcQBnlPzeI/AAAAAAAABjU/Cz2Q-7U2WxQ/s400/Baron%2Bvon%2BKempelen%2527s%2Bmechanical%2Bchess%2Bplayer.jpg" /></a><span style="color:#009900;"><strong>Exposing the secret of Baron Van Kempelen's 'Mechanical' Chess Player<br /><br /></strong></span><br /><strong>TELEVISIONS - Spectres on the Small Screen<br /></strong><br />In 1986, Mainz physicist Professor Ernst Senkowski announced that the first recognisable images of deceased persons had been taped from television. Supporting his claim is the research of electronics engineer J.P. Seyler from Luxemburg. By filming a TV screen tuned to an open channel, Seyler obtained a brief videotape that portrayed a recognisable image of Hanna Buschbeck, a German researcher of electronic voice phenomena (EVP), several years after she had died in 1978. Interestingly, the form in which she appeared on the videotape was as she had been in her youth, not as she had been when she died.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YCOH4RMOjq8/TwcQhbrbhVI/AAAAAAAABjg/ug0m_lCcnmE/s1600/Hanna%2BBuschbeck%2Bin%2Bspirit%2Bform%2Bon%2Btelevision%2Bscreen.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 277px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694538420384925010" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YCOH4RMOjq8/TwcQhbrbhVI/AAAAAAAABjg/ug0m_lCcnmE/s400/Hanna%2BBuschbeck%2Bin%2Bspirit%2Bform%2Bon%2Btelevision%2Bscreen.jpg" /></a><span style="color:#009900;"><strong>The alleged image of a youthful Hanna Buschbeck captured on videotape several years after her death<br /><br /></strong></span>Not all spectres of the small screen can be identified, however, thereby making their unheralded manifestations all the more unnerving. One morning sometime prior to 1988, the three children of the Travis family had been watching television in their home at Blue Point, New York, when they suddenly observed a face materialising on the screen. Obscuring the programme that they had been viewing, it resembled a lady's profile in silhouette, as confirmed by the children's mother, who also saw it. Somewhat alarmed, she turned the television off - but the face could still be seen, and remained on screen for more than two days! Before it finally faded away, this ghostly image was filmed by several visiting media reporters, but no-one has ever provided a satisfactory explanation for its origin.<br /><br /><br /><strong>ELEVATOR, PALACE HOTEL, SOUTHPORT - The Lift With a Truly Elevated Sense of Survival!<br /></strong><br />The less technologically-minded among us may be forgiven for suspecting that machines have a life of their own. After all, the lift that refused to die is certainly a case in point.<br /><br />This particular elevator was ensconced in Southport's Palace Hotel, which was demolished in 1969. All sources of electrical power were cut off before the demolition began, but three weeks later the lift mysteriously came to life! Without any warning, or any outside assistance either, it began soaring up and down its vertical chute, journeying from one floor to another and, as it did so, lighting up its floor-indication buttons as well as opening and closing its gates - just like it had always done during its 112 years of normal day-to-day operation.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xoNt3WbZu4c/TwcQxoKQtKI/AAAAAAAABjs/o_Z2hR74Ma0/s1600/Palace%2BHotel%252C%2BStockport.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694538698613372066" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xoNt3WbZu4c/TwcQxoKQtKI/AAAAAAAABjs/o_Z2hR74Ma0/s400/Palace%2BHotel%252C%2BStockport.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">The Palace Hotel, Southport, not long before it was demolished<br /><br /></span></strong>A team of electrical engineers was called in to investigate, but all to no avail. They confirmed that the current had been cut off, and that there wasn't a single amp flowing anywhere inside the remains of the demolished hotel. Following their exhaustive examination, they remained wholly perplexed, conceding: "We can't find any electrical reason why the lift should work". But work it did, and with undiminished enthusiasm, even when the glare of television cameras and lights were trained upon it during a special BBC news item.<br /><br />Faced with the inexplicable, the team did the inevitable. They bludgeoned the elevator to death with some hefty sledge hammers - a tragic end to a loyal if non-human employee that had apparently been unable to accept that its working life had finally come to an end.<br /><br /><br /><strong>AMSTRAD COMPUTER, STOCKTON - You've Been Talking in Your Sleep Again!<br /></strong><br />Do computers have nightmares, or talk in their sleep? If so, this may explain the nocturnal activity of an Amstrad computer installed during 1987 in a Stockton architect's office.<br /><br />During working hours, it behaved impeccably. But on many occasions at night, when only the cleaners were present, its screen abruptly began to glow, meaningless sentences appeared on-screen for about 30 seconds, and then, just as abruptly, they vanished - after which the computer gave out a loud groan, and switched itself off. What makes all of this even more strange, however, is that it occurred even when the computer was unplugged!<br /><br />Ken Hughes, editor of <em>Personal Computer</em>, examined this maladjusted machine, but despite stripping it down and inspecting every component, he could find nothing unusual. Yet a video camera, trained upon it for three months, confirmed the authenticity of its evenings' erratic outpourings. Ultimately, the mere presence of this eerie computer began to disturb some of its human workmates, who lost no sleep, therefore, over the decision to remove it. Whether the computer subsequently continued to lose sleep, conversely, is another matter entirely!<br /><br /><br /><strong>OBLIGING CARS AND LETHAL CARS - The Weird World of Mind Over Motor<br /></strong><br />Self-willed cars are not limited to the fictitious world of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Herbie the Lovebug. Take, for instance, the vigorous Volvo owned by Jack Oates from Yorkshire.<br /><br />One day in 1984, after Oates had left it parked in a village street, his car inexplicably started up and sped down the street in reverse, only to experience a decidedly close encounter with some parked cars further away. Yet it evidently remained unabashed, for when its distraught owner put the keys into its ignition and tried to turn it off, the recalcitrant runaway steadfastly refused to turn off - until the mechanics arrived, at which point it immediately complied...and then turned itself on again as soon as they had gone!<br /><br />Rather more affable, yet no less anomalous, was the SAAB owned by David Warner, also from Yorkshire. One day in April 1981, it smoothly reversed across the garden lawn of a local rectory and then carefully parked itself in the corner. Bearing in mind that his car was driverless at the time, it is hardly surprising that Warner watched this extraordinary incident with open-mouthed astonishment.<br /><br />And now, a warning for automobilophobes everywhere: Never take a dislike to your car - you may not live to regret it! In 1978, a lady from Florida came to a grim end under her car's wheels - all four of them. According to her colleagues, she had never liked that particular vehicle, and perhaps the feeling was mutual. One day, as she walked away after parking it at a supermarket and turning its engine off, the malevolent motor somehow started itself up, and ran over its disapproving owner. Not content with flattening her once, however, her four-wheeled assassin circled round, and ran over her again, then circled and did it again, then again, and again... Nor would it permit anyone from the large crowd of horrified spectators to retrieve her mangled body, but continued its frenzied, murderous circuit for another quarter of an hour or so before finally coming to a halt.<br /><br /><br /><strong>EERIE CLOCKS - When Death Holds Back the Hands of Time<br /></strong><br />There are many cases of eerie clocks or other fateful timepieces stopping at the precise instant when their owners die, reiterating in reality the song 'My Grandfather's Clock' (which also inspired a musical - see image below).<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eswe5Cxj78Y/TwcRXE314WI/AAAAAAAABj4/x9T8ElN9CKI/s1600/My%2BGrandfather%2527s%2BClock%252C%2Bmusical.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 269px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694539341975904610" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eswe5Cxj78Y/TwcRXE314WI/AAAAAAAABj4/x9T8ElN9CKI/s400/My%2BGrandfather%2527s%2BClock%252C%2Bmusical.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Professor Colin Gardner, author of <em>Ghost Watch </em>(1989), brought to attention a contemporary case from Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada, that actually featured a grandfather's clock. It had been owned for many years by a man referred to by Professor Gardner for confidentiality purposes merely as 'Stephen', who had always taken great joy in caring for it and keeping it in good working order. At the exact moment of Stephen's death, aged 72, his clock stopped, and for about a year its hands remained resolutely stationary.<br /><br />Then one day, for no apparent reason, they suddenly moved again, and the clock began ticking as normal. At precisely the same moment, but at a location far away, its late owner's daughter, Lori, had given birth - to a son, Stephen's first male heir.<br /><br />During her many years of research at the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory, Dr Louisa Rhine amassed several similar reports. In one incident, a gold pocket watch given by a Canadian man to his brother stopped at the very instant that the man died several years later, even though it was almost fully-wound.<br /><br />Perhaps the most famous example is the so-called 'clock of death', which allegedly marked the demise not only of its first owner, King Henry VIII, but also that of his son Edward VI, and Anne of Denmark (consort to James I). It still resides in Hampton Court Palace.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RmxgWRj8Hmw/TwcRubzT0qI/AAAAAAAABkE/_m-l2tlkOoY/s1600/Edward%2BVI%252C%2Bpainting%2Bby%2BWilliam%2BScrots.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 316px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694539743267902114" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RmxgWRj8Hmw/TwcRubzT0qI/AAAAAAAABkE/_m-l2tlkOoY/s400/Edward%2BVI%252C%2Bpainting%2Bby%2BWilliam%2BScrots.jpg" /></a><span style="color:#009900;"><strong>King Edward VI of England, painted by William Scrots<br /></strong></span><br /><br /><strong>HAUNTED PHOTOCOPIER - Who's That Girl?<br /></strong><br />In early 1995, Mark Burgess revealed that a firm in Bury, Lancashire, owns what may be a paranormal photocopier. Every so often, when copying documents, it inserts within a batch of normal photocopied documents a single sheet depicting the image of a mysterious girl, whose identity does not appear to be known to anyone working at the firm.<br /><br />However, it is possible that there is a conventional explanation to hand. In response to Burgess's account (published in <em>Fortean Times</em>), Alex Kashko revealed that the image may be a test image contained within an internal chip, and that a faulty connection was spasmodically sending the photocopier into test mode, thus reproducing the image. Such a possibility could be readily pursued via an inspection of the machine by its manufacturer's engineers, but what if an examination failed to confirm this? Yet another case of the spirit world modernising its means of communication with the living world?<br /><br /><br /><strong>PHANTOM FAX MESSAGE - A Timeslip Transmission?<br /></strong><br />During May 1993, corporate affairs consultant Anne Forrest, based in Hong Kong, received a very mystifying fax message. To begin with, it was not apparently intended for her, because it was addressed to a Phil Cundall of Mining Surveys Ltd, and had been sent by a Phil Cross from Dorset. Far stranger than this, however, was its date of transmission - 18 January 1972! In other words, it seemed to have been sent more than 21 years earlier! Substantiating this assumption was the fax's text, describing how fax machines work, for its terminology was so antiquated that it did indeed appear to date from the early 1970s.<br /><br />Yet how could a fax message have been lost 'in transit' for over 21 years after leaving Cross's fax machine? Could there be, lurking undetected somewhere in the rarefied realms of electronic communication, a digitised black hole - inexorably engulfing media messages of every kind, and subsequently releasing (and misdirecting) them only after many years had elapsed since their initial transmission? In fact, investigations disclosed a much more prosaic solution. The strange fax message was merely a routine fax-test document, known as the SLEREXE letter, which has been utilised internationally for a number of years.<br /><br /><br /><strong>MECHANICAL SEA MONSTER - Biting the Hand That Built It!<br /></strong><br />Morgawr, which is Cornish for 'sea giant', is the name given to a mysterious Nessie-like sea monster sometimes reported off the coast of Falmouth and elsewhere in Cornwall. As such, it has become quite a cryptozoological celebrity, and in 1994 it inspired the creation of a spectacular mechanical version, dubbed 'Moghar'. Designed and constructed by George Thain, this dragonesque monster's dramatic features included hydraulic tentacles, and 3-ft-high computer-controlled jaws that could be opened and closed, and which were brimming with sharp teeth. When completed, it was ensconced inside a Land's End tourist attraction called the Last Labyrinth, where its role was to terrify the visitors - but harmlessly.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nUTLODUWVIk/TwcSVTdGATI/AAAAAAAABkQ/Ka5Yf_kHOn8/s1600/Moghar%252C%2Bmechanical%2BMorgawr%252C%2B1994%252C%2BFalmouth%2BPacket.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 370px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694540411042136370" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nUTLODUWVIk/TwcSVTdGATI/AAAAAAAABkQ/Ka5Yf_kHOn8/s400/Moghar%252C%2Bmechanical%2BMorgawr%252C%2B1994%252C%2BFalmouth%2BPacket.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Moghar the mechanical sea monster from The Last Labyrinth, Land's End (<em>Falmouth Packet</em>)<br /><br /></span></strong>Moghar, however, seemed to have other ideas. On 30 March, Thain arrived for a close inspection of his monster - a little too close for comfort, as it turned out. For in finest Frankensteinian tradition, Moghar attacked him! Abruptly seizing him in its toothy maw, it refused to let go, gripping him firmly and inflicting severe bruising before technicians were able to release its jaws and free its hapless creator. Computer error was blamed, but just to be safe, all subsequent visitors were distanced from Moghar by a 3-ft-wide no-go zone.<br /><br /><br /><strong>VERBAL VACUUM CLEANERS AND SINGING CHAIN-SAWS - Is Electromagnetic Interference the Answer?<br /></strong><br />In his fascinating book, <em>The Nature of Things - The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects</em> (1990), Dr Lyall Watson included a vast range of unaccountably talkative and tuneful gadgets and gizmos. Take, for instance, the eclectic examples that he cited in the following paragraph:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;">"In Norfolk Janet Barker's new cooker talks to her in Dutch. Office-cleaner Madge Gunn in London gets silly orders from her vacuum cleaner: "Proceed at once to Tooley Street." Doris Gibbons' electric meter is far more polite. "Hello," it says. "This is Geoffrey. Come in, please." The electric organ at a church in Bolton regularly interrupts the vicar's sermons with relays of the shipping forecast. And Harry Goodchild of Ipswich cut off his toe when his chain-saw suddenly broke into song."<br /></span><br />It is very likely that cases such as these are nothing more than a bizarre by-product of electromagnetic interference - Madge Gunn's talking vacuum cleaner, for instance, is almost certainly picking up messages broadcast on the radio frequencies used by police patrols.<br /><br />Nevertheless, not all such cases can be so readily resolved. After all, how can straying electronic signals explain why music and voices were heard whenever Virginia Kimmey of Midland, Texas, turned on her kitchen sink's water taps during November 1960?<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ANadpUWOvrc/TwcSrhuILsI/AAAAAAAABkc/smTf4iyI6DQ/s1600/The%2BNature%2Bof%2BThings%252C%2BLyall%2BWatson.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 264px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694540792828800706" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ANadpUWOvrc/TwcSrhuILsI/AAAAAAAABkc/smTf4iyI6DQ/s400/The%2BNature%2Bof%2BThings%252C%2BLyall%2BWatson.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;"><em>The Nature of Things </em>by Dr Lyall Watson<br /></span></strong><br /><br /><strong>TELEPHONES OF TERROR - Dial 'D' For Death!<br /></strong>Telephones with an attitude problem are by no means an uncommon item in today's ever-expanding roll-call of troublesome technology, but in Nepal they have been revealing a far more sinister - and lethal - side to their nature.<br /><br />Several people in this mountainous Asian kingdom were killed during the first few weeks of 1993 when, after hearing their telephones emit a long, insistent ringing tone, they picked up the receiver. For at the precise moment that they picked it up, they were instantaneously zapped with a deadly blast of electricity exceeding 600 volts. The official explanation offered by the Nepal Telecommunications Corporation was that a telephone line and a power line had accidentally become connected. Yet if this were indeed so, why had lethal line connections of this type only begun to occur now, after years of danger-free dialling? The telephone company was unable to provide an answer. Could it simply be that certain telephones have developed a diabolical sense of humour?</div><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EnTBozShL8Q/TwcS6IhjnWI/AAAAAAAABko/ERnfOEcX54c/s1600/blue%252520deity.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694541043763223906" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EnTBozShL8Q/TwcS6IhjnWI/AAAAAAAABko/ERnfOEcX54c/s400/blue%252520deity.jpg" /></a>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4788904336507460933.post-3528863019667668342011-12-19T22:34:00.018+00:002011-12-19T23:32:40.070+00:00FATHER CHRISTMAS, MEET SANTA CLAUS - AND DON'T FORGET BEFANA!<div align="center"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TRTh_dgSA6I/AAAAAAAAAMs/RH8hRxGOkb0/s1600/Father%2BChristmas%252C%2Bmine.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 233px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5554312720822698914" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_awaeWdWdJZw/TRTh_dgSA6I/AAAAAAAAAMs/RH8hRxGOkb0/s400/Father%2BChristmas%252C%2Bmine.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;"></span></strong><div align="justify"></div><div align="center"><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Father Christmas, garbed in blue as traditionally described, bringing a little magic to my bookshelf! (Dr Karl Shuker)</span></strong></div><br /><br /><div align="justify">It is nothing if not timely today to blog about the most elusive crypto-primate of all. Glimpsed on only a single night each year, when it is usually seen clambering over roof tops and disappearing down chimneys, it is famed for its distinctive red and white pelage, profuse facial hair, rotund body form, readily recognisable ‘ho ho ho’ triple cry, predilection for sherry and mince pies, and unique symbiotic relationship with reindeer.<br /><br />Or, to phrase it another way, certain books of mine, most notably <em>The Unexplained</em>, <em>Mysteries of Planet Earth</em>, and <em>Dr Shuker’s Casebook</em>, have shown that my interests in mysteries and legends are not entirely limited to those of the cryptozoological and zoological varieties. Indeed, I have plans for another casebook, which, with stunning originality, will most probably be entitled <em>Dr Shuker’s Second Casebook</em>, and will include the following festive preview. Happy Christmas!<br /><br /></div><strong></strong><div align="center"><strong>SANTA CLAUS - THIS IS YOUR LIFE!</strong></div><br /><div align="justify">The exchanging of gifts is an intrinsic part of the Christmas celebrations, a popular tradition dating back to the very first Christmas, and even earlier - when the Romans offered tributes during the late December festival of Saturnalia, which Christmas replaced.<br /><br />Today, the personification of gift provision at Christmas is Santa Claus. Nevertheless, this jolly red-suited, white-whiskered, rotund figure with a zest for ho-ho-hoing, reindeer roof-riding, and chimney-descending as he delivers presents to children is only of fairly recent origin - the modern-day product of many fascinating transformations and identity mergings down through the ages.<br /><br />Indeed, Santa the gift-bringer most probably began life as we know him as a god - Odin (Woden), the chief deity of the Norsemen or Vikings. They believed that during December, Odin descended to earth in a chariot drawn by goats, or riding his famous eight-legged steed Sleipnir, temporarily deserting Asgard - heavenly abode of the gods - in order to bring gifts to his loyal human worshippers, thus helping to sustain them during the bleak, icy weather characterising winter in northern Europe. Odin typically wore a long blue hooded cloak, and possessed a profuse white beard - features retained in slightly modified form by his successor, Father Christmas.<br /><br />In an attempt to limit the worst excesses of winter and to placate this fearful embodiment of Nature, later Scandinavian traditions involved nominating someone in each community to personify Winter. This fortunate person would then find himself invited to everyone's home, where he would be richly regaled with food and drink in a symbolic effort to pacify Winter.<br /><br />Although, after having ingested and imbibed at a succession of houses, Winter's human ambassador was undoubtedly rendered exceedingly passive (if not entirely prostrate!), whether the same can be said for Winter itself is another matter entirely. Nevertheless, the custom proved popular, and travelled far, eventually reaching the British Isles, where the person representing Winter became known as Father Christmas.<br /><br />Paradoxically, therefore, Father Christmas originated not as a giver but as a receiver of gifts. All this would change, however, courtesy of a much-loved archbishop from Myra in what is now southwestern Turkey. He lived from 280 AD to 6 December 345 AD, and was later canonised - becoming the patron saint of many diverse people, including boys, pawnbrokers, dockers, coopers, brewers, unsuccessful litigants, unmarried women, and sailors, as well as the inhabitants of Aberdeen and Russia. His name? St Nicholas.<br /><br />Some of Santa Claus's most enduring traditions stemmed from the life or legends associated with St Nicholas. These included his bringing of gifts, because St Nicholas was well known for his great generosity. Moreover, he allegedly saved the three daughters of a poor man from being sold into prostitution by secretly throwing pursefuls of money into their house through an open window. One of these purses accidentally fell into a stocking that had been hung up to dry after being washed, which gave rise to the custom of putting out stockings at Christmas to be filled with gifts by Santa.<br /><br />The celebration of St Nicholas became very popular in Europe, but especially so in Holland, where he was called Sinter Klaas. During the early 1600s, Dutch settlers established colonies in North America, and took their traditions of Sinter Klaas with them. Here they flourished, giving rise to a new Yuletide gift-giver, who became known as Santa Claus.<br /><br /></div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N3sPCgYiQY4/Tu_DGi4W6JI/AAAAAAAABg4/pJt6odyZC78/s1600/St%2BNicholas.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 291px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687979371602045074" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N3sPCgYiQY4/Tu_DGi4W6JI/AAAAAAAABg4/pJt6odyZC78/s400/St%2BNicholas.jpg" /></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">A fairy story from 1906 in which St Nicholas is depicted with many of the characteristics nowadays associated with Santa Claus</span></strong></div><div align="justify"><strong><br /></strong><br />In Britain, meanwhile, Father Christmas reigned supreme, but also more sternly than his New World counterpart. For although Father Christmas ultimately became a gift-giver too, according to British custom he only gave gifts to good people, and he (or a helper) carried a cane for punishing those who had been wicked during the year.<br /><br />Elsewhere in Europe, other gift-givers had also appeared on the scene. In Germany, for instance, Father Christmas is merely a messenger, communicating children's requests for gifts to Heaven - it is the Christ Child (Kriss Kringle), an angelic fair-haired child dressed in white, representing Jesus, who brings the gifts. Spanish children, conversely, receive theirs directly from the Three Kings; whereas in Russia a grandmotherly figure called Babouschka does the present-providing honours.<br /><br />In southern Italy, a broomstick-riding woman called Befana drops presents down the chimney of every house on 5 January in the hope that one of them will be received by Jesus - to whom she did not give a present when He was born. This was because she was so busy sweeping her home with her broom that she was too late to visit Jesus before Mary and Joseph fled Bethlehem with Him to escape King Herod.<br /><br /></div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CuwfhG4xXUo/Tu_IGnfFBEI/AAAAAAAABhE/OJZRqOIYirU/s1600/Befana.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 378px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687984870396331074" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CuwfhG4xXUo/Tu_IGnfFBEI/AAAAAAAABhE/OJZRqOIYirU/s400/Befana.jpg" /><p align="center"></a><strong><span style="color:#009900;">A modern-day cartoon representation of Befana, who is often depicted as a broomstick-riding witch-like figure more befitting of Hallowe-en than Christmas!</span></strong></p><p align="justify">As for America: the evolution of today's Santa Claus continued apace with the penning in 1822 by a New York languages professor called Dr Clement Clarke Moore of his now world-renowned poem 'A Visit From St Nicholas', with its famous opening line: "'Twas the night before Christmas". This magical poem contained many of Santa's modern-day attributes, including his plump jolly form, vigorous laugh, sack of toys, reindeer-drawn sleigh, and his inimitable mode of entry into a house via the chimney.<br /><br />In 1863, <em>Harper's Illustrated Weekly </em>published the first in a classic series of Santa engravings by Thomas Nast, who bestowed upon him an even more rotund, bewhiskered, beaming, toy-laden image. This transformation was completed during the early 1930s by a highly influential Coca-Cola advertising campaign, starring a jovial red-robed Santa skilfully designed by artist Haddon Sundblom. This rapidly became the definitive Santa Claus, delighting generations of children ever since - and not only in the U.S.A.<br /><br />Just over a century ago, Christmas commercialism in America began to cross the Atlantic, infiltrating Europe and thus bringing the New World's legendary gift-giver with it. Inevitably, Britain's Odin-descended, blue-cloaked, hooded Father Christmas and St Nicholas's red-garbed, nightcap-wearing Santa Claus eventually merged into one. Indeed, many people today assume that these are merely alternative names for the same person - blithely unaware of their entirely separate origins.<br /><br />Although, from a strictly historical perspective, this is undoubtedly a sad situation, I very much doubt that there will be many children eagerly anticipating the arrival of a certain sleigh-riding visitor this Christmas Eve who will worry too much about which name they should call him by - as long as he has brought with him a sackful of presents!<br /><br /></p><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DCaDNbFfOos/Tu-_t_r2x-I/AAAAAAAABgs/q6UtYP5zr9o/s1600/Santa%2BClaus%252C%2Bpub%2Bdom.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 327px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687975651302623202" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DCaDNbFfOos/Tu-_t_r2x-I/AAAAAAAABgs/q6UtYP5zr9o/s400/Santa%2BClaus%252C%2Bpub%2Bdom.jpg" /> <br /><p align="center"></a><span style="color:#009900;"><strong>Typical representation of Santa Claus, garbed in red</strong></span></p>Dr Karl Shukerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06222845702628862829noreply@blogger.com3