Book of Insults

...the suffering could be read on each body, as a document written in insults to flesh and bone...

-- Pynchon, Against the Day, Pt. III, p. 654

Wish I'd heard the crying of Lot # 181 at Wilkinson's Auction![1]

A Rare & Macabre Early 17th Century Anthropodermic Bound Book in carrying box. The book entitiled; 'A True and Perfect Relation of The Whole Proceedings against the Late most barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit and his Confederats'; Printed London 1606 by Robert Barker, printer to the King and believed to be bound in human skin[2], possibly that of the aforementioned Jesuit Priest; Father Henry Garnet.

But books, snooks: The Brits apparently nailed Viking hides to their church doors—a caution to would be marauders. "It would seem," notes FoxEarth, "to be ascribing a meticulous care to the Anglo-Saxons to take the existing hinges off in order to mount the Danes' skin."

If you're interested in bounding books and doors (and yourself, Mr. Gein) with human skin but you cannot spare the flesh, here is the workshop for you:[3]

Sunday Dec 2nd 11am to 5pm - Mini Tissue Engineering workshop and lecture ... University of Western Australia (sorry, sold out): Tissue culture and tissue engineering represent a new area for artistic engagement ... Tissue engineering enable researchers to grow three dimensional living tissues constructs of varying sizes, shapes and tissue types. This half-day hands on intensive workshop will introduce … people to basic principals of animal tissue culture ... The workshop will involve a demonstration for how to extract and cultivate stem cells from bones bought at the butcher. These advanced techniques can be done with homemade equipment and kitchen gear.

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[1]"Contact your postmaster!" cried our friends on the Pynchon-L, noting that "Lot 49 is some kinda pot!"

[2] Of course there are many other Necromicon wanna-be’s, including this here reverse-Faustian-twist: "The Boston Athenaeum, a private library, has an 1837 copy of George Walton's memoirs bound in his own skin. Walton was a highwayman -- a robber who specialized in ambushing travelers -- and he left the volume to one of his victims, John Fenno."

[3] We thank BoingBoing for bringing this class & the Wilkinson’s Auction Item to attention.

Welcome to Visions of Jesus Christ.com

This site is a collection of weeping statues, weeping icons, miraculous images and a list of Catholic visionaries who are associated with Marian apparitions.

'Nuff said, really.

It was fortuitous that Laws of Silence stumbled onto Visions of Jesus via the page about the rather gruesome Bolivian weeping icon we've pictured with this here blog entry, for he's macabre enough to excite the morbid imagination and invite further exploration of the site.

Although the site is evidently reverential and comes from a standpoint of faith, there are lots of good photos and lore to be found for those seeking to learn more about "miraculous" icons. And hey, why not put it into some context with a dubious Wikipedia link to Weeping statues. While you're at it, take a peep at Marian apparitions.

The Tale of the Lambton Worm

The Laws of Silence recently reported two tales of water & death: the fountain sprung from the sarcophagus of St. Fris & the haunted falls at the heart of Minneapolis. Another such tale stems from Sunderland (North East England); this tale is said to be at least 500 years older than the stories of the Loch Ness Monster.

Our story starts with Young John Lambton, heir of the Lambton estate, a rich young punk who shirked his duty and smirked at misdeeds. Skipping church one Sunday to fish the River Wear (rhymes with “near”), he pulled out a hideous open-gilled eel; disgusted, he tossed the foul thing into the peasants’ well (one can picture the jerk taking a piss in the waters right after)—echoic of the French tales of Gargantua, living in a well where people tossed stones at his head.

But the weight of duty cannot be escaped so easily: shrugged from young John’s shoulders, it weighed upon his heart, a burden of guilt. After a restless Sunday night, a weary Monday morning found Lambton at church, where the priest sent him to the Crusades in penance.

Nine battle-weary years later, Lambton found his homelands in the grips of terror. First the well had grown foul; soon nearby sheep and cattle were vanishing in the night. A ring of terror and death spanned outward from the well, a navel with the umbilical worm grown gargantuan in John’s absence A few brave souls challenged the beast, but whenever it was hacked by swords it healed itself, rejoining its cleaved halves and smothering its would-be killers in a constricting embrace before devouring their lifeless bodies. John’s weary old father surrendered into truce, leaving nightly offerings for the beast outside his castle: a trough filled with milk from nine cows seemed to satiate the dragon’s ravenous hunger ("worm" stems from older words meaning "dragon"). The once proud ruler was emasculated, reduced to a wet nurse for his son’s worm.

John Lambton had turned to a priest when guilt engulfed his heart, but he turned to a witch when the worm engulfed his lands. The witch gave John a plan of attack but told him that once the serpent was defeated he was required to kill the first living thing he saw; should he fail, shirking from this duty, the Lambtons would be cursed—for nine generations, none would die in bed. (This type of deal is know as Jephthah’s Vow in reference to a similar bargain related in Old Testament, Judges 11:30-35.)

Lambton followed the witch’s plans: he crafted razor-spiked armor, waited for river-swelling rains, and rowed a boat to a rocky stand in the Wear. The Lambton worm sensed the challenge and rushed forth to kill its former captor. It coiled round the Crusader and constricted; but the tighter it gripped, the more the armor cut into its flesh. John stood fast as the serpent cleaved itself, its severed flesh rushing off in the roaring waters which prevented it from rejoining itself.

John rowed back to shore and trumpeted victory with his hunting horn, the prearranged signal to his father who was supposed to release a hound for John’s required sacrifice. But the elder Lambton, overcome with joy and relief, tottered out of the castle, arms held out wide for his son—he was the first living thing to fall under John’s horrified gaze. All John had to do was meet his father’s embrace; the razor-sharp armor would do the rest—but he could not fulfill his duty. He shouted for a hound and killed it in desperation.

History shows that nine generations of Lambtons died a violent death.

As an interesting side note, Lewis Carroll spent lots of time in Sunderland. Was Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole inspired in part by this tale of a beast in a well?

We leave you a few final questions: Why are death & water so often linked? Is it simply that water is associated with life and the desecration of water therefore a harbinger of death? Then why the River Styx? And why is slipping into the earth so often associated with surrealist adventures? Our recently posted examination of the desecration of the Mississippi suggests that these are not just the stuff of European tales of yore: elemental water and earth continue to hold sway in the shadowy realm of ... imagination?

Recommended for further reading on the Lambton Worm:

• Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 60
• Alice in Sunderland, Bryan Talbot
• The Bishoprick Garland, Sir Cuthbert Sharpe gathered 30-some versions of this tale in 1834. There were a couple reprints, but it’s still an uncommon work. We would be incredibly grateful to anyone who could supply us with a scan of the relevant pages in the The Bishoprick Garland.

Google Earth reveals secret Nazi-UFO landing pad

 

SWASTIKA?: The buildings, constructed in the 1960s, are on the Coronado amphibious base and serve as a barracks for Seabees. From the ground, or even adjoining buildings, the configuration cannot be seen. Nor are there any civilian or military landing patterns that provide such a view. But Google Earth shows the shape clearly. 

So reads a Chicago Tribune story about the US Navy's new $600,000 project to assuage those afflicted by an aerial view no one would have been able to see if not for the world-at-your-fingertips phenomenon called Google Earth. Funny thing is how old this story is. Conspiracy websites have been yammering about this image for years and no one gave a shit. Now Google comes along with its Nazi-busting super-technology and the Navy is going to turn the swastika into something less offensive, perhaps maybe a nice big fasces like you can find on the walls of Congress, the Supreme Court building, old dimes....One can only hope that Google will foot the bill, you know, cuz 600,000 beans would go a long way towards paying off those outstanding Blackwater invoices....

 

Of course, we would be remiss not to include a link to this article, which suggests architect John Mock was a Nazi sympathizer....

These giant swastikas can go relatively unnoticed for decades after their creation. In 1992 a swastika made of trees was discovered in a forest near the village of Zernikow, 60 miles north of Berlin. No pussy landscape architecture here. Them Nazis commandeered a healthy chunk of pine forest to show the sky just what the fuck was what.

 

Apparently it was planted in the thirties and not discovered until almost sixty years had passed by a guy looking through some aerial photographs. Nothing like a bit of altitude to get a better perspective on things.

The Zernikow swastika was destroyed by chainsaws, ostensibly to prevent the site from becoming a neo-Nazi pilgrimage but just as likely to make up for a collaborationist sense of shame. The San Diego swastika will reverse that method: elaborate plantings, among other camouflage, will hide the offending fylflot. No word yet as to which pilgrims will thus be discouraged from making the reverent hajj to Coronado.

 

“We told the Navy this was an incredibly inappropriate shape for a structure on a military installation,” said Morris S. Casuto, regional director of the [Anti-Defamation League]. He added, however, that his group “never ascribed evil intent to the structures’ design."

A much different attitude from critics of the Pentagon.... 

How much will the DOD spend to change that offensive bit of geometry?

And Francisco Coronado's successor Don Juan Oñate hacked off the left foot of every adult male in Acoma Pueblo as retaliation for a battle that left his nephew dead. These men and everyone else in the Pueblo were put into slavery.

Be warned, ye good men! There are certainly many other as-yet-undiscovered offensive shapes lurking out there in Google's wide, woolly Earth....

Be careful of those names, too. You might just end up in Matamoros, or as we say in English: The War on Terror.

The Sad Case of Ramoncito Gonzales

Two posts back Laws of Silence ended with a synopsis of the story of Ramoncito Gonzales, a young boy brutally murdered by a person or persons unknown in such a way as to suggest an occult or ritual murder. According to a local newspaper, police are moving away from the theory that the murder had to do with "Satanic rites" and focusing instead on the no less shocking but less sensational underworld of child prostitution and exploitation.

The fate of the two women arrested, mentioned in our previous post, remains unclear from subsequent articles related to the case, but it would appear that more arrests have been made since the beginning of August.

It is also clear that strong pressure to resolve the case is leading to perhaps hasty arrests and wild speculations which only add to an atmosphere of fear and confusion.

In any event, those who know some Spanish might be interested in checking out the Mi Mercedes website, which is following the case closely.

One of the articles links to a blurb about the celebration of Ramón Nonato on his feast day, 31 August. St. Raymond (1204-1240) is the patron of pregnant woman, childbirth, children and the unborn. "He is also a patron of secrecy and anonymity, and a protector against slander and captivity. His name means "not born" and comes from his own entry into the world: his mother having died during labor, he was delivered by from her dead womb. "Cut out of her dead body in a spontaneous emergency operation performed by the Viscount of Cardona with a dagger he carried in his belt" according to Fausto's Art Gallery in Ojinaga, Chihuahua. He became a Mercedarian monk, working for the release of Christian prisoners held by the Moors. He was sent to Algeria in this capacity and at one point he traded himself for a prisoner. According to Wikipedia:

"He suffered in captivity. A legend states that the Moors bored a hole through his lips with a hot iron, and padlocked his mouth to prevent him from preaching. He was ransomed by his order and in 1239 returned to Spain."

Although his cult was reduced in status in 1969, he's apparently becoming more important again as a Church tool against abortion; he remains especially popular in Latin America and appears to be well-known in New Mexico as well.

Mexican believers pray to him in order to silence malicious gossips. A red candle is lit by a votive image of the saint, which is then "silenced" by means of a coin affixed over the saint's mouth while prayers are recited.

In any event, he may have suffered like his namesake in Mercedes, but he seems to have been sleeping on the job when the poor little fellow needed him most. He might be pretty busy these days, however; with the demand for arrests and justice mounting, many people might be asking for help with any number of his various specialities, falsely and legitimately accused alike.