Where have you gone, James DiMaggio?

A slightly interesting bit of name gamery going on in the case of the California teenager (Hannah Anderson) found this week in Idaho, recovered unharmed after her abductor James DiMaggio was shot and killed.

The area:  Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.  Indeed.

Weird thing is this obscure area of the country was in the news a few months ago.  A Twin Falls (Twin Peaks) animal shelter counts 34 dogs missing in February and March in the area an hour or so south of where DiMaggio, Joltin' James, took his victim.  All of the dogs vanished without a trace.

The area:  Magic Valley.

On March 12th, the body of a German Shepherd was found covered in a purple sheet, its head smashed to bits with a lump of concrete found at the scene.  The possibility of ritual killing and/or animal sacrifice was entertained.  This was in a place called Devil's Corral....

All Dogs Go to Hell.

Apparently, there's some doubt as to whether the number of missing dogs is in fact higher than the amount of missing dogs in previous years.

Still, we loves us them evocative names and when I saw the report about Anderson, the missing dogs immediately came to mind because well, usually all we hear about Idaho involves potatoes and survivalists.

Still, this is pure Baader-Meinhof.  Reminds me of a paragraph in the article I wrote about in my last post: 

One way to illustrate this [the filter theory of selective attention] to yourself is to experiment with a magical technique described by William S. Burroughs called, “Walking on Color.”  Pick a color and take a walk in an area that is familiar to you, choosing to only allow objects of that color to draw your attention.  You will quickly find yourself noticing things you’ve never paid attention to before.  Those things were always there, but your consciousness was editing them out, because it deemed them unimportant.

A few words by Burroughs himself can be found here.

But wait, what the hell, DiMaggio was killed 18 years to the day that his father, James Sr., committed suicide, not long after he'd held another girl, also 16, hostage.  Twin falls....

In another odd but as of yet inconclusive tidbit: 

The riders who spotted Hannah with DiMaggio earlier in the week said she appeared healthy and safe at the time, leading Sheriff Gore to conclude: 'As far as we know, it didn't appear she was being held against her will.'

The area has also been rife with alleged cattle mutilations. Since the 70's, a biggish wave has hit the state every 5 or 6 years. To the south-east of Magic Valley, 30 cattle were mutilated in 1989-90. In 2007, two bulls had their sexual organs removed. This was a bit farther north, in Clark County. (source)

A string of mutilations and shootings took place in 2010 on the other end of the valley in Gem County.

In any event, there's been no more news about the dogs since March.

BTW, Anderson is a name meaning son of Andrew, a name derived from the Greek for "man". Son of Man?  Baader-Meinhof nourishes my own suffering little girl/Jesus narrative.

This is a bit about how I interpret the "news" and construct poetic narratives out of random facts (alleged).

More than one way to skin a cat

25 September 2017:  I still think this post is an interesting experiment in "twilight language exegesis" and synchromysticism, but I'd be remiss not to follow up on a recent comment and point out that all charges were dropped against Tyler Weinman after it was determined the cats he was charged with killing were in fact killed by another animal.  I should have emphasized he was innocent until proven guilty.  The poetic exploration is remains valid even though Weinman is innocent, maybe especially so....

We often come across interesting blogs during our various researches, some of which we've linked to over there on the right. While we might not subscribe to their particular viewpoints, we include them because they explore themes and events so often explored here on LoS.

One thing that binds these blogs together is that they attempt in one form or another to decode what is referred to in the business as "twilight language."

Huh? you may ask. As far as we know, the concept of twilight language first appeared in the works of James Shelby Downard, one of the most elaborate and fantastical conspiracy theorists in recent memory. An example of his methodology can be found online in the introduction to the classic King Kill-33. Follow that link and take a look-see. You won't be disappointed. His self-avowed acolyte Michael Hoffman continues the Downardian exegesis in his regular columns and in his book Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, a book LoS chum TA Wilson refers to as "one of the greatest novels ever written."

So, again, what is twilight language? Twilight language can be viewed as a series of triggers or cues for subliminally-primed patsies and the public at large. It takes the form of number symbolism, suggestive names and symbolically charged events. It is alleged to induce anxiety, dread, panic, even upsurges in seemingly random violence. Twilight language is a tool of psychological warfare much akin to disinformation. Fact and fantasy are mixed up and released upon the unsuspecting public to create confusion, fear and paranoia. So much doubt about seemingly straight-up occurrences is created that the general public has a hard time separating fact from fiction, even when facing seemingly incontrovertible truths. Twilight language is both subliminal and overt, hidden--like the purloined letter--in plain sight, but it works best when the maximum number of people can see it, whether it consciously registers or not.

But this begs the question: by whom is it used?

Downard and Hoffman point to what they call "the cryptocracy": the hidden elite. It should come as no surprise that this hidden elite is comprised of some of the usual suspects: the Rabbis, of course, and their minions the Freemasons. For a better understanding of these ideas, we recommend reading Hoffman directly, but be forewarned: although unarguably a brilliant writer and an erudite mind, he may leave you convinced he's a raging anti-Semite.

Some may write-off the decryption of twilight language as paranoid raving and--in the sense of Salvador Dalí's "paranoiac-critical method"--it is. Dalí called his method a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."

André Breton, the magus of Surrealism, said it was and "instrument of primary importance" that "has immediately shown itself capable of being applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if necessary, all manner of exegesis." (Boldface added)

We suspect that consciousness itself, the process of forming a world view, is more or less a kind of paranoia. Think of perception itself as an organizing process. Metaphor, simile and symbol, the archetype. All are fundamentals of imagination and thinking, not to mention seeing. When it gets out of control--pathological--it may be a kind of mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia. Or it may be as simple as calling a cut fingernail a crescent moon.

We propose that the paranoid germ lies in every mind and when properly cultivated and trained, can become a valuable exegetical tool. At the very least it enables us to riff on current events and if not contrive a coherent conspiratorial narrative, at least make some interesting and beautiful noise. Like Burroughs said of his cut-up method, anyone can do it, but it may only be interesting in skilled hands. Both Burroughs and Woody Allen also point out that paranoia is merely knowing all the facts.

Which brings us to the story of Tyler Hayes Weinman.

Weinman is the South Florida teen arrested on 14 June for a series of cat killings/mutilations which had left at least two communities, in the words of one headline: "Frightened and Paranoid."

Now, why we were drawn to this case probably has to do with our series of posts about animal on human and human on animal violence. We were of course using irony as a weapon of satire in these posts, but it kind of kept us on the lookout for more of the same. Now, this here is a pretty brutal and extended series of mutilations, so we're going to avoid being snarky. If--and we reiterate the big "if"--this kid is guilty, we're looking at a pretty disturbed young fellow.

So, what does all of this have to do with twilight language? First of all, as the the headline says, residents were getting paranoid, many even speculating if this was all the prelude to the working of a serial killer of humans. And serial killers are the most fertile subjects imaginable for the weaving tales of conspiracy theory. There are also some other very suggestive features of the case. So lets decrypt a few things here and see what happens.

First of all the name: Tyler Hayes Weinman.

In Freemasonry, the Tyler is the guardian of the outer door of the Lodge. The word "tyler" or "tiler" initially meant a doorkeeper at an inn. As the Freemasons initially met in taverns and inns, they adopted this title. This is also why Freemasons were at some point characterized as drunkards, as in Hogarth's engraving Night where it is the Tyler who helps a drunken Mason to his home. Obviously, any evocation of Freemasonry, no matter how tenuous, will set of alarm bells in the would-be exegete.

Take note also of the many strange and incongruous images of fire in the engraving, as well as the general tone of panic and discord.

Hayes is an English or Scottish place name for a man who lived near a "haeg" or "heye", that is to say the enclosure around an area of forest designated for hunting. The name is said to have entered the language via Norman French and indeed, "haie" in modern French is the word for "hedge."

"Hayes" in Ireland is an Anglicized corruption of the Gaelic "Ó hAodha", or descendant of Aodh, a name meaning "fire." Aodh was the name of several early Irish saints and in pre-Christian times the name of more than a few Celtic divinities in some way associated with flames, fire or the sun.

I suppose it would be remiss not to point out that Florida is the "Sunshine State" (and the original homeland of your LoS writers!) More evocative perhaps is that the name is associated with hunting, which is what our cat-killer was doing, after all.

Weinman is a German/Ashkenazic Jewish name. It means exactly what it sounds like: "wine-man"; it is an occupational name for a viticulturalist or wine merchant. In Middle High German it was wīnman, In German: Weinmann.

This hearkens back to the original meeting places of the Freemasons and for the racist conspiracy theorist has the dubious "bonus" of in some way implicating the Jews, as some sort of barely-suppressed or even overt blood libel. This is risky territory because even though we're not promoting anything of the sort, we don't want to inadvertently provide any ammunition for anti-Semites. Don't feed the animals. Too late. They're already chunky and frothing for more.

So, on with the riffs.

In Classical mythology, Priapus was the guardian of vineyards. Ovid relates a tale where Priapus attempted to rape the sleeping nymph Lotis but was thwarted by a braying ass, which caused him to lose his erection and also woke the nymph. She fled and was eventually turned into a lotus plant by the gods, in order to save her from the pursuing Priapus. After this episode, Priapus hated asses and became happy to see them killed in his honor.

In Bulgaria, an important saint and guardian of vineyards is Trifon Zarezan. Among other anecdotes it is said that once--while pruning his plants--Trifon mocked the Virgin Mary as she passed his vineyard. She cursed him and had an accident--his new nickname became Trifon the snub-nosed!

So when we riff on tyler (guardian) with weinman (viticulture) we find at least two mythological vineyard guardians which evoke animal sacrifice and human mutilation.

Now, ABC reports--oddly precise compared to other sources--that 33 cats were killed in two towns near Miami (also known as The Magic City). Number symbolism is an omnipresent warning bell among aficionados of twilight language. Anything which has 33 in it will automatically be associated with Freemasonry because in the Scottish Rite, 33 is the ultimate degree. Now if 33 were all we had to work with, it might be less convincing. Add to it that the kid bears the name of a Masonic officer and there's a lock on it. The headline of that ABC report includes the following phrase:

Killings Had Stumped Police, Left Miami-Area Residents Frightened and Paranoid

Which is exactly the purpose for which twilight language is purported to be employed: to spread fear, confusion, paranoia. Oddly, we don't find this 33 figure in other reports.

Recall for a moment Saint Trifon. The legend says he mocked the Virgin Mary, but is it so outlandish to wonder if the mockery was in fact some kind of lewd remark or proposal? Did he make a wolf whistle? Her rebuff and the subsequent curse which caused him to cut off his nose would both be a kind of symbolic castration. Obviously though, he was reborn--the cock will rise again, after all--or he would not be venerated as a saint today in important Bulgarian fertility rituals clearly dating back to pre-Christian times.

In Classical Greece Priapus served as a protector of vineyards and was an important fertility figure. Priapus is recognized by his permanently engorged phallus. What may be less apparent is that these organs were more a source of frustration than pleasure. Indeed some tales have it that his member was made of wood, impressive but otherwise useless. Ovid's tale is one of thwarted rape and in many tales Priapus' unbounded sexual desire is met with equal doses of sexual frustration. Sounds like many guys we knew in high school.


In Sexual Personae Camille Paglia devotes a few paragraphs of her analysis of the famous Nefertiti bust to the worship of cats in ancient Egypt. She equates the cat with chthonic, womanly forces. Paglia also points out that cats were hunted and killed in the Middle Ages during periods of witch hysteria. It has long been assumed that witch hysteria in some aspects represents the struggle of the masculine Christian faith over the remnants of goddess worship. Psychologists also note that fear of witches also may be simply an expression of the fear of feminine sexual power. Tales of witchcraft invariably speak of naked orgies, copulation with the devil and flying about on poles greased with ointment.

In the following chapter of her book, Paglia equates many of the legends surrounding Greek goddesses as a fear of castration. Without being crass it may also be worth re-stating what every grade-schooler knows, that the word for a female cat--a pussy--is also slang for the vagina, a rule which also holds true in French with the word "chatte."

Paglia also explores the significance of the androgyny of the Olympiad. This was often expressed in the transvesticism of both divine beings and their worshipers. Dig if you will these comments on the alleged perpetrator's Facebook page:

-- "niggercake. you're a freaking bisexual."

-- "i think u look like a chick...u cross dressing freak from HELL!!!!!!!\"

The occult associations of cats and cat sacrifice are worthy of a book in and of itself. But perhaps the following examples might be of interest.

Robert Talen, in Voodoo in New Orleans (1994) claims that 19th-century voodoo rituals involved killing cats by dunking their heads in boiling water. The cats were then skinned and eaten and the bones divided among the celebrants. The purpose of this was to ingest the power thought to reside in the bones.

George C. Horst's Deuteroscopie (1830) describes a ritual called the Taigheirm practiced in the Scottish Highlands intended to invoke evil spirits by sacrificing cats in the cruelest of manners, including burning them alive. The last of these was held in the mid 17th-century. The ceremony is believed to have originated as a sacrifice to subterranean--that is to say chthonic--divinities. The benefits of these invocations could include second sight, fortitude and courage.

John Richard Stephens, author of The Enchanted Cat, relates that cats not only were sentenced to die in witch trials but sometimes involved in non-occult litigation.

The following passage is instructive:

"There are various aspects of the cat's close association with fire. Sometimes it guards the fire; sometimes it is transformed by the fire or burnt in the fire; at other times, as in the case of the Celtic myth of Maeldune, it is the fire....In so far as the cat was other than the fire, it was destined to be destroyed by it. It was as an incarnation of the god of the setting sun, for ultimately, the sacrifice people make is always of a god to a god. As the head and tail of the White Cat had to be burnt, in order that the maiden should regain her natural form, so the solar cat had to be sacrificed in order that it should rise again and its worshipers be reborn.

The spiritual significance of such a ceremony was so manifest, that in later times, the pagan rite of cat sacrifice had the full support of the Christian Church. At Aix, in Provence, on Corpus Christi [in 2009 it fell on June 11], the finest tom cat in the country was chosen each year and wrapped in swaddling clothes like an infant. It was then exhibited in a beautiful shrine for public adoration. People burnt incense, strewed flowers and bent low before this incarnation of the solar god. When the sun crossed the meridian, the feted cat was placed in a wicker basket and thrown alive into a huge bonfire in the city square. During the sacrifice of "the dying god," priests sang anthems and when the ceremony was complete, they marched off in solemn procession."

A few weeks ago on the blog Twilight Language, self-described "synchromystic" Loren Coleman made a post describing "an ongoing war that seems to be going in both directions." This was entitled Cat People: Enemy Action? This so-called war caught our attention due to its thematic similarity to our own series of (satirical) posts which at one point led us to write: "In the apparently escalating war between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom...."

What all this means, however, is still an open question. There is a seemingly weird series of coincidences, perhaps even synchronicity, which lead us down various avenues. Can we psycho-analyze from afar? Was Weinman simply a sexually frustrated youth? A foot soldier in this war between humanity and its feline neighbors? Is Weinman merely a modern Priapus? Permanently ready to go without a pussy in sight and, thus thwarted, primed to take out his energies on the hapless neighborhood cats which mocked him from their pampered pedestals, arrogant, maybe even inviting? In the Magic City of the Sunshine State, is there some pale echo of archaic rituals to the sun god?

Apparently, Weinman did in fact have a girlfriend. To speculate upon the sex lives of two 18-year-old kids we've never met goes beyond absurdity and risks being perverse, but in the world of twilight language, her name is suggestive.

In the ethnic crucible of Miami, it would be absurd to say what constitutes a "normal" name or not. But this girfriend, even among such a flurry of diversity, bears the strikingly evocative name of Valentina Contesse.

Valentina is a feminine is a feminine form of the Roman name Valentinus and derives from the Latin word "valens" meaning "healthy" or "strong." For the modern reader the name will of course evoke Valentine, the Saint associated with romantic love.

In the Golden Legend of St. Valentine, the hapless saint was set to be be executed for refusing to deny Christ before the Emperor Claudius. Before having his head cut off, Valentine is said to have restored sight and hearing to his jailer's daughter. Valentine's Day is mostly a 19th-century invention, but Valentine's feast day is said to have become associated with romantic love among Chaucer and his pals, who elaborated upon the Golden Legend in order to celebrate the virtues of courtly love.

In the U.S. Sat. Valentine's day is on February 14. Remember Saint Trifon? That wine man is celebrated on February 1, but many people prefer to repeat their rituals on February 14.

A Contesse is of course a "countess"--the wife of a count, a word which ultimately derives from the Latin comes meaning "companion".

The object of courtly love was more often or not a woman that could not be had, but an ideal woman. She was often an aristocratic figure, well above the station of the troubadour. In the heyday of courtly love, this might have been a source of suffering but it was a noble suffering. But in the affluent suburbs of Miami, in a culture of instant gratification and hyper-sexuality, it might just cause a young man to go off the rails.

Our post has already made an reference to Poe's Purloined Letter, but it's appropriate here to summarize the plot of The Black Cat. In this tale an alcoholic and unreliable narrator tells us that he (like friends say of Weinman) was an animal lover with many pets, among them a black cat named Pluto. Pluto is of course the Roman god of the underworld, a subterranean, chthonic force. The man and his cat are perfect pals until one night our narrator comes home drunk and, in a fit of rage over a perceived slight, gouges out one the cat's eyes with a knife. This of course ends the friendship and not long after--overwhelmed by a spirit of "perverseness"--the narrator takes the cat out and hangs it from a tree, where it dies. That night, his house is destroyed by fire.

You will recall, no doubt the passages we cited about the association of cats with fire. Paglia's discussion of the cat comes at a moment when she is discussing the aesthetic and sexual meaning of the famous bust of Nefertiti.; one point she dwells upon is that the Nefertiti bust is missing an eye.

In Poe's tale, he eventually finds another cat which resembles Pluto in every detail, even down to the missing eye. He takes the cat in but soon begins to hate the creature. One night it gets underfoot and he stumbles on the stairs. Enraged the narrator grabs an axe with which to kill the cat and his swing misses; he plants the axe in his wife's head instead.

To hide the crime he conceals his wife behind a wall in the cellar. When the police come to investigate the wife's disappearance, they are convinced nothing is amiss until at the last moment a weird cry from the cellar draws their attention to the wall. Tearing it down they find the cat atop the body of his wife.

Now, an analysis of this tale is another essay in itself. We will merely point out that the cat is quite obviously a chthonic creature carrying the name of a chthonic god, which is ultimately associated with a cleansing fire. The cat is in a sense reborn yet this time a woman is killed in its place. The cat itself brings justice from the tomb. This cat and the woman are in a sense each others' surrogate. Paglia, in addition to equating Nefertiti (one-eyed) with the cat (one-eyed), also points out that the vagina is a kind of wound. It bleeds and as she reminds us--is often referred to as a "gash."

The tale is a more elaborate narrative to illustrate a principle defined more philosophically in The Imp of the Perverse. What is the origin of the perversity that afflicts our narrator? Alcoholism is often cited, but may it not also be sexual frustration? The cat becomes the focus but ultimately it is his wife who takes the axe. Could she have be the intended target all along? Had alcoholism rendered him impotent or at least repugnant to his wife, thus accounting for his otherwise inexplicable violent rage?

Remember also the name of the alleged cat killer in the Magic City, as it evokes by poetic association frustrated sexual desire, alcohol, fire and mutilation. We could also point out that Valentine, Trifon, Poe's woman, Nefertiti and Hiram Abiff all suffered some kind of death by a head wound or at least mutilation of the face.

When the narrator of The Black Cat walls his wife up in the cellar, one cannot help but think of The Cask of Amontillado, another Poe story in which a person is walled up in a cellar. Another unreliable narrator and a story of revenge. At one point In this tale the victim gives the Masonic distress signal, which the narrator doesn't recognize. The victim then asks: "You are not of the masons?" The narrator says he is and the victim is doubtful. The narrator then removes a trowel to show he is in fact a Freemason. It is this symbol of Freemasonry he then uses to conceal his victim behind the wall.
Themes of concealment and revenge, subterranean climax and of course drunkenness link these two tales. They also link back to the associations we have derived from the name of Tyler Weinman.

Remember also The Purloined Letter, in which an object is concealed in plain sight. Is this not in fact what the subliminal character of twilight language is purported to be? Isn't it also strange that Michael Hoffman--disciple of twilight language godfather James Downard--wrote one of his first books on Masonic Assassination (1978)--in which he purports to demonstrate that Poe was in fact killed by Freemasons?

What this post is not.

It is certainly not meant to be an endorsement of Weinman's guilt. The court of public opinion is a savage beast whose aggressiveness is matched only by its' ignorance. We have nothing but fairly scanty newspaper reports to go on and well, 'nuff said.

Questions of guilt and innocence aside, we don't think this is an alchemical psychodrama staged by the so-called cryptocracy. We're pretty much agnostic about the whole notion of a cryptocracy for that matter. Certainly there is at least one conspiracy floating around out there, attempting to manipulate people and events in pursuit of the obvious things: money and power. Maybe they do employ disinformation and twilight language. Maybe they just buy newspapers and television stations. One thing is for certain is that the stoking of and subsequent exploitation of peoples' fear is a time-honored way to assert authority, get laws passed, cause people to accept things they might never accept were the world a bit less menacing....

It also shouldn't be taken as an insult.

What it is.

We have already hinted that our take on "synchromysticism" is a poetic one. We're not even going to stick a toe into the epistemological minefield of determining what is "true." There are facts and there is interpretation. And for this interpretation we have chosen an associationalist methodology to explore indubitably weird stuff.

Do we believe in what we've written? Yes. And no.

Full disclosure: The author of this article is a Freemason, a modern drunkard, a sex-fiend and lives with a cat. A black one.

This article was pretty much complete a few days ago, but the most recent news focuses on potential accomplices. We'll go out on a limb and wager that a total of three ruffians are in on this....

[added July 20]

Check out the affidavit in support of Weinman's arrest warrant here.

And not an egg to be found

Long-time and attentive readers of LoS (ha!) will remember our photographic slideshows of the 2008 Sanch procession in Perpigan and Collioure. If you recall, this parade is held on Good Friday as pentinent societies march in solidarity with Jesus on his way to the Cross.

A bit more diverse, CNN presents this slideshow of penitents and other passion parades from around the world.

Great photos.

Procession de la Sanch, Perpigan

The Procession de la Sanch has its origins in the middle ages. As condemned prisoners were led to their deaths, both prisoner and executioner were hooded. In order to protect their identities and perhaps in a show of solidarity with the principle actors in these dramas, the groups of men who accompanied them also wore the distinctive peaked hood. These Penitents were there to give solace to the person about to die, remembering that Christ too was condemned and that through his sacrifice even the lowliest of sinners could be saved through penitence.

Over time the drama developed into a regular, annual religious procession. The original purpose dropped by the wayside but the garb remained, and the Penitents' purpose evolved exclusively into a commemoration of the most famous condemned man in Christendom. Thus, on his day of execution, Good Friday, they march through towns in a somber display of mourning.

These are some photos from from my visit to see the Procession in Perpignan:

Procession in Perpignan

Procession de la Sanch, Collioure

Photos:  Procession Collioure

In Collioure, a scant 20 kilometers from Perpignan, the procession is held at night, in a much more intimate setting.

Oh, and don't go thinking this has anything to do with the KKK.

(Pre) Zeus on the Loose

NYT article about excavations at Mount Lykaion, in the region of Greece known as Arcadia. Digging in a sactuary to Zeus, archeologists have come across the remains of sacrifices estimated to date from around 3000 BCE, nearly a millenium before the arrival of the Greek-speaking peoples who established Zeus as the pre-eminent deity of the land.

The article makes some interesting observations about how cultures adopt and transform pre-existing religious traditions as their own.

Folk Heroes and the Cults of Death

Only a post or so ago Laws of Silence linked to a Washington Post article about Jesus Malverde, a folk saint of northern Mexico whose cult has made its way into the teeming capital city. Malverde was a dark and handsome man, or so it is said, who was either a construction worker or railway man. During the anarchy which preceded the Mexican Revolution in 1910, he is said to have become a bandit, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. Then he was captured and again, reports differ, but he was either shot or hung. Some accounts give this martyrdom an especially New Testament spin by adding he was betrayed by a friend for a reward. Today he's treated as a full-fledged saint, his shrine attracts thousands yearly and healings have been attributed to him. The Vatican recognizes none of this but no matter, his cult is firmly entrenched anyway. The Post article describes a family shrine in a poor neighborhood of Mexico City, where Malverde is posed with "La Santísima Muerte", patroness of death. The scene described is macabre and the two make a sort of holy couple, he dressed in a stylish cowboy hat and sporting a thick mustache, she dressed as the blushing bride, her skeletal hand clutching a scythe!

Jump a few thousand kilometers south to Argentina. Gauchito Gil was a farmhand born in the 1840's in the region of Corrientes. A handsome young man, he fell in love with a wealthy widow. They may have had an affair. When a rival, who happened to be the local police chief, heard of this affair he conspired to have Gil arrested. Gil fled to the army, where he fought against neighboring Paraguay. He returned a hero and was temporarily shielded, but was pressed back into service in the Argentine Civil War.

By this time Gil was tired of the fighting and he deserted. When the police finally caught up with him he was tortured and strung up by his heels from a tree. As one of their number approached to kill Gil, Gil told him that he knew the man's son was dying, but if he prayed to him (Gil), his dying son would be spared. The cop then slit his throat.

The policeman, however, could not let the condemned man's words rest, and he prayed for Gil's intercession. The dying son recovered. The policeman, grateful, decided to give Gil a proper burial, build a shrine in his memory and spread the word of the miracle. (Alternate details of the legend can be found here.)

The story is strikingly similar to that of Malverde. A poor yet virile and honorable man lives outside the law, becoming a hero to the marginal and suffers death for it. Like Malverde, Gil's cult is fervent among the poor and thousands flock to his shrine near Mercedes (Corrientes) each year, especially on January 8th, the day of his "martyrdom." Also like Malverde, the Church has given no official recognition to this cult.

Corrientes is home to many beliefs which are not officially recognized by the Church. Another regional folk saint honors death. Again, like Malverde, one can also find Gil side by side with San La Muerte or the Señor de la Muerte.

The cult of Señor de la Muerte or San La Muerte is very widespread in Corrientes. Just as the cult of Jesus Malverde spread to the capital city from the north, Gauchito Gil and San La Muerte have ended up in Buenos Aires. This website, if you can read Spanish or not, is guaranteed to intrigue. All of it seems so exotic, but to the practitioners, there is no conflict with this cult and Catholicism. They are simply celebrating another saint, morbid though it may be. The Protestants are trying to chip away at these beliefs as they are everywhere else in Latin America; in the process, they've left some interesting photos and descriptions.

What is intriguing is that in Mexico and Argentina we find nearly identical stories of a common man, virile and mustachioed, struck down by the Man and resurrected as a folk saint. Their stories are essentially the same and both are found side by side with Holy Death.

San La Muerte, unfortunately, is not simply colorful regional charm to blog about blythely. While surely not representative of the cult in any wider sense, some authorities in Corrientes suspect it had a part to play in the gruesome ritual murder of a 12-year-old boy.

The following account of this gruesome story comes from a report by Argentina's Pagina 12.

Ramoncito was the child of a poor woman who became a prostitute to support her family. He himself was eventually drawn into the world of child prostitution, still managing to go to school. In fact he was last seen leaving his school, on October 6, 2006. He was found the following day, dressed only in shorts. His head had been placed by his left shoulder.

Forensics reports state that he was beheaded with a sharp knife from left to right. As the beheading began, the boy was alive. The boy had cigarette burns on his hips, arms and the palms of his hands. A deep cut under his left buttock was found. His blood had been drained and the third to seventh cervical vertebrae had been removed.

Early in the case, the authorities thought they had found the murderers, suspected practioners of kimbanda among them. They were released in June as there was insufficient reason to hold them further. Then, in mid-July two women were arrested after a search revealed traces of human blood on the walls in one of the women's houses, located in the slaughterhouse district of Mercedes. They were both practitioners of a mish-mash of Christianity, kimbanda, various Afro-Brazilian practices, spiritualism and especially devoted to the Corrientes version of Señor La Muerte.

The judicial hypothesis is that the boy was a sacrifice in the death cult. "....Finding the body at a crossroads of street and avenue, the trunk and the feet pointing northeast. The position of the skull, that had been removed by somebody with certain knowledge. And mainly the fact the blood had been used for something, that we did not find any blood in the body makes us think this is a ritual crime" said a source familiar with the case to Pagina 12.

The family's lawyer, though appreciative of police efforts, said that "we cannot think there is much more behind this." Sources at the prosecutor's office admit that another line to follow is the "drugs" theory, though there is nothing concrete beyond the idea that the participants may have used drugs when they participated in the "sacrifice."

Jose Humberto Miceli, an ethnographer studying new religious movements since 1985, believes that to find an explanation of the crime one must look to the cult of Señor de la Muerte. Formerly he is said to have consumed blood symbolically because if not he would dry up. The missing vertebrae are also important. "Normally they [his devotees] robbed these from cemeteries," said Miceli, "and made talismans from them or with the scrapings of these, made ointments. It is the magico-religious tradition of Corrientes."

If it does prove to be the case that a perverted devotion to San La Muerte is behind this sad story, there is no reason the tar the entire belief system. The murderers are exceptional not only in their cruelty but in murdering someone at all. In the last century, this would be the first muder directly linked to the worship of San La Muerte. It's not the cult which should be eradicated, but the grinding poverty and degradation that compelled a mother and her son into prostitution in order to survive, and led the child directly into the hands of a savage and unconscionable death.