The Order of St. Hubertus (and other assorted Bavarians and Bohemians)

Screen shot of IOSH homepage

Back in 2011 I made a facetious post about "evil Masonic braumeisters".  A little jest to be sure, but strangely prophetic.  Five years on and we're in a bit of a constitutional tizzy over how to best go about replacing our recently-deceased Supreme Court Justice.  Doesn't look like the congressional Republicans are going to budge and will block any Obama nominee until he's out of office and can no longer press the issue.

We'll get to the fraternities and alcohol in a minute.

Scalia died at what appears to have been a meeting (perhaps merely informal), of the Order of St. Hubert, an aristocratic order of hunters founded by one Count Anton von Sporck in 1695, a man who is also said to have dabbled in Freemasonry.  The order promotes hunting and sportsmanlike conduct, in addition to respecting animals and minimizing their suffering; responsible hunters, in other words.  These are teachings handed down by their namesake.

Reading about St. Hubert (656-727 CE), I came across a passage about the vision he had one Good Friday; he'd skipped Church to go hunting, a pursuit in which he'd become immersed after the death of his wife.  He had retired from the world to hunt.

Chasing a stag (or hart) on that day, he was astounded to see it stop and turn towards him; a glowing crucifix appeared between its antlers and a voice said to him:  "Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord, and leadest an holy life, thou shalt quickly go down into hell". Hubert dismounted, prostrated himself and said, "Lord, what wouldst Thou have me do?" He received the answer, "Go and seek Lambert, and he will instruct you."

Hubert then sought out Lambert, Bishop of Maastricht, becoming his protege and successor.  Hubert embarked upon a life of piety and evangelism, becoming Bishop of Liège in 708 CE.  He laid down several principles for ethical hunting and wildlife management that are still highly-regarded among German-speaking hunters to this day.  He generally seems to have been a decent fellow and died peacefully in 727.

Drive Dull Care away with some Jäger shots

Hubert's vision of the hart made me think of the Jägermeister label; which I've been meaning to use in a post for years.  Finally the opportunity has arisen.  The Jäger label is indeed a reference to St. Hubert's vision.

But it does not only honor St. Hubert.  The label also represents the vision of St. Eustace, another patron of hunters.  Even the church says that Eustace is probably a spurious figure, as no evidence proves he ever existed, but his legend has become mixed with that of Hubert. 

This legend has it that Eustace was a Roman general.  Once, out hunting, he had a vision of a crucifix between a stag's antlers under pretty much the same circumstances as Hubert.  It seems Eustace's cult pre-existed that of Hubert, but it's possible they both have pre-Christian antecedents.  The stag (or hart, or hind) makes many appearances in various pagan mythologies.

According to the legend, after his vision Eustace converted to Christianity and baptized his family.  Eustace then went through a series of Job-like misfortunes, yet he always remained steadfast in his faith.  His patience served him well, for a time.  He was eventually restored to his position and reunited with his family.  But like many early Christians, the occasion arose where he refused to sacrifice to a pagan altar and thus he set the chain of events into motion that would lead to his martyrdom.  In this case he and his family were roasted to death inside a giant bronze bull (or ox) in 118 CE.

The refusal to sacrifice before a pagan altar is a common theme in the hagiographies of these early Christian martyrs.  St. Sernin of Toulouse (Hubert's birthplace) refused a pagan sacrifice and was killed by being tied to a bull (or ox) and dragged down the street until his head cracked open.  This road is now called the Rue du Taur and the site of his original tomb is a small church called Notre Dame du Taur.  The Matabiau quarter of Toulouse also takes it's name from this event and the big bell in a Toulouse-style carillon is known as the "big bull".

Anyway, Curt Mast, original distiller of Jägermeister, was an avid hunter and so named his drink appropriately; Jägermeister translates to "Hunting Master", a title familiar to Germans for centuries.

When the Nazis reformed the hunting laws in 1934 "Jägermeister" was applied to senior foresters, game wardens, and gamekeepers.  Hermann Göring, who was a particularly active hunter, was appointed Reichsjägermeister at that time, so when the drink was introduced in 1935, some people called it "Göring-Schnaps."  In addition to being an avid hunter, Mast was a local politician and joined the NSDAP on May Day, 1933.  He claimed it was political opportunism and a way to help his fragile business (he was never prosecuted after the war), but Mast did become pals with Göring, probably bonding over hunting. (source)

Now here's something I've just read and had already suspected:

Some historians have noted that Hitler and Göring’s hunting regulations actually had little to do with concerns for animal welfare and were merely part of a concerted attack upon the German aristocracy. Hitler and Göring had a dream of giving each of the Jägermeisters their own private hunting grounds as a symbol of their position of privilege within the Reich. Curt Mast became a Jägermeister and organised hunting parties for leading Nazi dignitaries at the Reichsjägerhof, Göring’s hunting lodge. Sensing an opportunity to rebuild his business interests on the back of his association with the new hunting fraternity, Mast re-branded the herbal liqueur that his company produced as the official drink of the hunt. (boldface added)

Göring's relationship to the Order of St. Hubert bears this speculation out:

In 1938, after Austria was absorbed by the German Reich, Herman Göring demanded membership on the Order [sic] and executed the Grand Prior when he was denied. At the end of the World War surviving members of the Order, were authorized by Halvor O. Ekern, chief political adviser of the US Armed Forces in Austria to use their sporting guns to provide winter food to the rural population, avoiding not only famine but helping to save the country from falling behind the Iron Curtain. (source)

The Order was Restituted on May 1st 1950 by Albert Franz Messany at the request of Chancellor Figi of Austria. In order to better reflect its new multi-national character it was redesignated as International Order of St. Hubertus.

Reichsjägermeister Hermann Göring --
1937 Hunting Exposition in Berlin

I wonder if  "helping to save the country" meant using their sporting rifles for more than hunting.  Could they have been re-armed in order to fight the Communists?  The aristocracy had a lot to lose to both the Communists as with the Nazis before them....

Despite the Nazi's attacks on the aristocracy and the apparent sympathy of Curt Mast, the hunting ethics espoused by Jägermeister, the Order of St. Hubert, and the Nazi reforms all kind of match.  There is an un-credited verse from a poem by outdoorsman Oskar von Riesenthal (1830–1898) on each bottle which the company translates as:

It is the hunter’s honour that he
Protects and preserves his game,
Hunts sportsmanlike, honours the
Creator in His creatures.

This is very much the same creed as the Order of St. Hubertus: "Honoring God by Honoring His Creatures". Jägermeister, as the story goes, was intended to go with "a toast with which every hunt would begin and end."

The symbolism of Hubert, patron of hunters is reproduced in the crests of various German hunting clubs to this day.  Thus it is so with the Deutsches Jägerverein, the Nazi-era German hunting organization.  Interesting how the swastika has replaced the cross.

http://www.rzmilitaria.com/viewitem.php?id=10066

Göring apparently took his role as Jägermeister seriously and sincerely threw himself into the reforms of German hunting laws.  This page shows a collector's one-of-a-kind Deutsches Jägerverein collar pin, custom-made for Göring himself, a collar pin with the antler/swastika motif we see on the flag above.  Göring posed for a painting wearing this collar pin and in his Jägermeister uniform, and this painting of him appeared on the covers of both Time and Life, in 1940 and 1939, respectively.

If Göring took his role this seriously, imagine his fury when he was refused membership in the Order of St. Hubert.  Furious enough to execute the prior, apparently.  This really is a medieval saga.  Whatever else you want to say about the Order, that their leader would die rather than admit Göring speaks volumes about their attitude towards the Nazis.  This was a microcosm of the tensions and conflicts in Nazi Germany, the uneasy relationship between the old aristocrats, the Church, and the Party.  Although anti-Bolshevism united them, the old guard must have resented this new Nazi power structure and the Church certainly couldn't have been happy with seeing a swastika replace the cross; this wasn't just a question of the hunting clubs.  It also reminds me that assassination attempts on Hitler were organized by aristocrats within the Army; Clause von Stauffenberg was one of the last conspirators, but a quick glance at the list of assassination attempts on Hitler between 1940 and 1944 -- and there are quite a few -- show that most were organized by members of the aristocracy, after the war began.  Before the war, there were also a few attempts on Hitler's life, but these did not seem to implicate the aristocracy.

I'm betting that when it was "restituted" in 1950, those Americans invited to join the Order of St. Hubert were neck deep in de-Nazification and anti-Communist activities.  Just a hunch.  Ambassadors, Generals, and "others", including the George Wood who established the American branch at the Bohemian Club in 1968.  It would be interesting to see what other groups the Order has links to, either within the arcane labyrinth of Catholic lay orders (Knights of Malta, Knights of Columbus, Opus Dei, the Jesuits....) or factions or within the intelligence community.

Something about that period between the Order's dissolution by the Nazis and their Postwar rebirth intrigues me.  A group of powerful men which spread out to include Americans at the highest levels of the Postwar occupation.  It seems a bit strange that five years after the war's end, ambassadors and generals were joining the clubs of their recent enemies, and 16 years later creating an American chapter at the site of the most elite group of men in America, the Bohemian Club.

What intrigues me in this context about the Bohemian Club (despite the name -- remember the Order is of Bohemian origin) is its tangential connection to another German organization called the Schlaraffia.  It would appear that a number of American elite groups have their roots in German culture.

The Schlaraffia is a fraternal society founded in Prague (Bohemia) in 1859.  It is a German-speaking club founded by people much like the founders of the Bohemian Club, people involved in the arts and theater.  Like the Bohemian Club, their symbol is an owl and their philosophy is one of fun; once stepping into their "castle", they remind themselves to leave dull care outside.  The Bohemian Club was founded in 1879 and we know the Schlaraffia existed in San Francisco in 1884.  Is it possible that they are connected, that the Bohemian Club was inspired by the Schlaraffia?  The latter conduct their meetings in German, so perhaps the B.C. was created to make a more accessible organization?  (I'd be remiss not to point out that Terry Melanson first made me aware of these connections).

I almost feel apologetic bringing it up, but I'd also like to mention the Skull and Bones, founded at Yale in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft (father of the future president and no small shakes himself).

Skull and Bones doings are largely unknown, but there is talk of a rebirth initiation ritual which involves the candidate lying in a coffin and recounting their sexual history.  There are photos of Bohemian Grove encampments where a similar ritual is enacted, a man lying in a coffin-shaped array of candles prayed over by robed figures.  This rebirth ritual is a fairly well-known element in various Masonic Rites.  The Schlaraffia has three grades, which also brings to mind Masonic organization.  What interests me here though, is that like the Order of St. Hubert, the Schlaraffia, and the Bohemian Club, the Skull and Bones has a connection to the German-speaking world.  Founder Wm. Russell allegedly got his idea for the Skull and Bones after returning from a trip to Germany, where quasi-Masonic secret societies were quite popular, some of which are said to have modeled themselves on the Illuminati (a group I have purposefully avoided in my writings on this topic thus far).  The Bavarian Illuminati was founded in 1776 at Ingolstadt, about 360 KM from Prague, basically a stone's throw from Bohemia.

Interestingly, there is another order, The Bavarian Order of Saint Hubert, a Roman Catholic dynastic order of knighthood founded in 1444 or 1445 to commemorate a victory on Saint Hubert's day.  There doesn't appear to be a connection to this order and the International Order of St. Hubertus, despite the name, but if we're looking to complete a Bavarian/Bohemia axis, I suppose there's value in following up on this.  St. Hubert was in fact the patron saint not only of hunters, but soldiers as well, which is logical.  At least one historical military unit used the horns and cross imagery:  the Royal Bavarian Jäger Regiment Nr. 1 (again with the Bavarians!). Jäger units were elite light infantry and the word in this sense can translate to "Ranger", which has the sense of both the US Army's elite units and forest rangers.  Think Aragorn in Lord of the Rings: aristocrat, woodsman, badass soldier, Ranger.  The first Jäger units were indeed recruited from gamekeepers, hunstmen, and foresters, people with both a knowledge of the woods and firearms, and who were also closely linked to the aristocracy who appointed them.  The first units of this type were formed in 1632 in Hesse-Kassel and in the modern German army the term is still used for elite Special Forces.

Crest of the 1st and 2nd Battalions and the 2nd  Reserve Battalion - Royal Bavarian Jäger Regt. 1

So, a lot of elements to ponder.  My German history is piss-poor, so I have probably missed some interesting connections someone else might have easily picked up on.  I did, however, think of one other thing, which is almost embarrassing to include; but what the Hell....

The Church of Satan has a rebirth ritual involving sexual rites and a coffin, called the Ceremony of the Stifling Air. Anton LaVey obviously cribbed his work from pre-existing Masonic Rites (like he cribbed everything in the Satanic Bible, from John Dee to Ayn Rand and Ragnar Redbeard).  Interesting time the 60's, especially 1966 (666 get it?); the same year George Wood was appointed Grand Prior, Anton LaVey launched the Church of Satan, on April 30th, which in the occult world goes by the German name of Walpurgisnacht....

Which brings me back to the question....who the f--k is George Wood?

Night of the hunter

Now here's a headline bound to make us look twice:

Justice Scalia spent his last hours with members of this secretive society of elite hunters

The society in question is the Austrian outfit called the Order of St. Hubertus (official site), an order of knights founded in 1695 by Count Franz Anton von Sporck in what is now the Czech Republic, in the region known as....Bohemia!

His goal was to gather "the greatest noble hunters of the the 17th Century, particularly in Bohemia, Austria and countries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ruled by the Habsburgs."  Count Sporck was quite the philosophical dilettante; in addition to the order of St. Hubert, he is alleged by some to have founded a branch of Freemasonry in Bohemia.  This is debatable and seems to have originated in 1888 with an unsubstantiated claim by a Czech journalist, but if your spider senses are tingling anyway, maybe they should be.  The U.S. chapter of the Order was started in 1968 at the Bohemian Club.

Feeling the weight of dull care yet?

George Wood was appointed Grand Prior and founded the American Chapter in 1968. The first Investiture of American Knights took place at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. The ceremony was presided over by then Grand Master Karl Messany.

Scalia breathed his last in his room at the Cibolo Rach.  The cibolo is the "near threatened" American Bison, which once roamed the Great Plains in vast numbers, but were hunted near to extinction by trigger-happy travelers west in the 19th century.  Stories report that men would shoot from the windows of their trains as they passed, into herds so thick they barely even needed to aim.  The animals were left to rot.  They weren't hunting, they were target shooting, killing for the thrill of killing.  As the plains Indians' primary source of sustenance, these "hunters" were quite consciously depleting the tribes' hunting grounds, effectively starving the tribes off their lands.

Is "cibolo" a thumbing at the nose, then, dickish hunters honoring their bison-killing forefathers?  Cibolo Ranch was certainly a place to forget dull care.  Is its name a flippant disregard for the massacre of the American Bison?

I'm pretty sure that's all wrong.  It could also be meant as a solemn reminder of the tragedy of the slaughter of so many of God's creatures.  Perhaps the name should be taken in the spirit of their motto: 

"Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes"  Et deinde occidere eos 

"Honoring God by Honoring His Creatures"  And then killing them 

Scalia traveled to the Ranch with D.C. lawyer C. Allen Foster, a passionate hunter who passed his 65th birthday in the Czech Republic at an old castle and hunting park.  Dull care was definitely lifted in a series of hunts, wine tastings, sightseeing and a masked ball.  Eyes wide shut?  It sounds exactly like the kind of aristocratic event one would expect from a group of knights.  So what's a defender of the constitution doing by buddying up to a group of aristocrats with pretensions to Medieval splendor?

"Cibolo" also puts me in mind of Craig Baldwin's film, ¡O No Coronado! (1992).  As one website puts it, the film is "a delirious, open-ended historiography that updates issues of imperialism, tourism, treaty rights and environmental protection from the 16th century to the present and beyond."  Quite appropriate; as the expedition falls apart, a delirious Coronado rushes about in a frenzy muttering "Cibola cibola cibola" over and over.  According to the NPS, "Cibola" is a corruption of "She Wo No" or "Land of the Zuni."  Coronado, driven mad by the future, a future that expeditions like his unleashed, a future where the cibolo were slaughtered as part of the long-haul campaign to exterminate the natives not forced into the mines and the slave plantations.

Foster, for the moment, is traveling.  Perhaps in Argentina.  Check's in the mail, so to speak.  One woman hung up on the Post reporter when asked for comment.  Maybe she has some dull cares.

The Post concludes that 

Law enforcement officials told The Post that they had no knowledge of the International Order of St. Hubertus or its connection to Poindexter and ranch guests. The officials said the FBI had declined to investigate Scalia’s death when they were told by the marshals that he died from natural causes.

Poindexter is the ranch's owner and Scalia's second traveling companion to the ranch.  He told the Post that he "wasn't aware" of any connection between Scalia and the Order.  That said, both Foster and Poindexter "hold leadership positions within the Order."

The Order describes itself as

....a true knightly order in the historical tradition. The Order is under the Royal Protection of His Majesty Juan Carlos of Spain, the Grand Master Emeritus His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Andreas Salvator of Austria and our Grand Master is His Imperial and Royal Highness Istvan von Habsburg Lothringen, Archduke of Austria, Prince of Hungary.

Its stated purpose is innocuous enough:  conservation, fellowship, support good hunting practices, promote hunting, encourage sponsorship and "To promote the concept of hunting and fishing as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity."

I don't know why this goal struck me.  It makes me think that hunting in the knightly tradition is an activity of the aristocracy, strictly regulated and poachers -- meaning the landless -- dealt with severely.  Of course this is a far cry from the attitude of most American hunters, who tend to see what they do as more than a sport, but a right of every American citizen, whose tools are protected in the Constitution.  Again, a document Scalia swore to defend.  Yet he goes and dies while palling around with its aristocratic practitioners, an Order led by Archdukes and sponsored by the King of Spain.

Strange bedfellows for a defender of democracy.  And a strange deathbed scene:  a "breathing apparatus" nearby -- but off, his head propped up on a magical three pillows (hey, Sporck's Masonic Lodge was said to have been the Three Stars), a pillowcase over the eyes....  Apparently everything is order, but the investigation has raised some eyebrows and some wonder why no autopsy was performed.

I think we'll be hearing more about this as the days go by....

System of a Dawn

* Guantanamo, Cuba.  2002

* Operation Red Dawn, Iraq. Dec. 13, 2003.  Led to capture of Saddam Hussein.

* Operation Al-Fajr (the "dawn"), Iraq. aka The second battle of Fallujah.  Nov./Dec. 2004

* Operation New Dawn, Afghanistan. Summer 2010

* Odyssey Dawn, Libya.  March 19-31, 2011

http://lawsofsilence.blogspot.fr/2011/03/beware-of-greeks-bearing-strange-gifts.html

http://lawsofsilence.blogspot.fr/2011/03/stars-pentagons-suns-and-implied-eye.html

* Latin American flags

http://lawsofsilence.blogspot.fr/2011/03/stars-pentagons-suns-and-implied-eye.html

* Aurora, Colorado

http://lawsofsilence.blogspot.fr/2012/08/20-rosy-fingers.html

* Freemasonry

As the sun rises in the East to open and rule the day, so the Master rises in the East to open and guide the Lodge, in its labor.

or

As the sun rises in the East to open and govern the day, so rises the Worshipful Master in the East [WM rises.], to open and govern his Lodge, set the craft at work, and give them proper instruction.

* An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, which is in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn.  John Donne, metaphysical poet wrote a famous aubade called "The Sunne Rises" sometime prior to 1633.

* "Sun in the rock" myth, of a heroic warrior deity splitting a rock where the Sun or Dawn was imprisoned.

The Agony of Defeat

The latest foot

We've been following the Canadian foot mystery for some time now.

No idea what I'm talking about?  Wikipedia's opening paragraph on the subject sums up the situation perfectly:

Since August 20, 2007, several detached human feet have been discovered on the coasts of the Salish Sea in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington, USA. The feet belonged to five men, one woman and three other people of unknown sex. Of the 15 feet found, only two have been left feet; both of those were matched with right feet. As of February 2012, only five feet of four people have been identified; it is not known to whom the rest of the feet belong. In addition, several hoax feet have been planted in the area.

Gid has been thoughtfully compiling a few stats along the way, but it's been rather hard to keep track of all the details.

In the most recent turn of events, a foot was found on Feb. 7th washed up on Vancouver Island's Botanical Beach by a pair of unsuspecting walkers.

Five days later, on the 12th, another foot was found close by; these latest make a pair.  The findings were fast and furious around 2011 but have slowed down a bit -- the last was found in 2014.  Makes sense then that when two turn up days apart after a silence of two years, they'd be related.

We've speculated, punned and pondered about the meaning of all this, but to no avail.  At this point, we simply feel duty-bound to keep up with the latest developments.  Coming right on the heels of a post about severed hands, it seems doubly appropriate to keep the tally up to date.

We still welcome idle speculation....

Fiends, Omens, Countrymen, lend me your hands....

(I started this over a month ago and have been lollygagging about, so it's a bit of old news at this point.)

Some cadavers have a more active life than many people who assume they are alive.  Ever see Weekend at Bernie's?  S'nuff said.  Bernie had so many adventures they had to make a sequel to relate them all.

Take Abraham Lincoln....as at least one man has already tried!  The 16th President's corpse has traveled more than many people I know.  His coffin has been moved no less than 17 times and opened on at least five occasions.  That's five documented times.  Who knows who else has snuck a peek?  His tomb wasn't guarded for years.  Anything could have been going on in there.

When it was moved for what is said to have been for the last time, those present opened the coffin to ensure that yes, indeed, they were moving the President; they found his body to be in a remarkable state of preservation, incorrupt, like a saint's remains.  The witnesses half-expected him to sit up and begin telling one of those cryptic anecdotes he was famous for and for which people thought he might have been a total simpleton.  Given his (now) well-documented prowess as a vampire hunter, this would not have been beyond the realm of possibility.  His nocturnal habits and amazing constitution had many people "in the know" speculating about whether or not he'd been bitten and turned, but all that was settled when the fanatical John Wilkes Booth, Knight of the Golden Circle, cried out "Sic semper" and settled the question once and for all.

OK, the vampire thing is bullshit, but it's true his body was said to have been remarkably well-preserved, but perhaps no more than any other.  Lincoln had risen to such a status that by the 20th century he was almost a mythical being.  His memorial, completed in 1922, is almost like the shrine of a God Man.  It's an impressive and humbling statue, strangely intimate for something so grandiose.  Lincoln has a special place in the hearts of many Americans, often ranked as the best of our presidents.  This aura is what led to the attempt to steal his body in 1876.

Without soaking the story with all the details, the outline is this.  A Chicago mobster named James "Big Jim" Kennally ran a counterfeiting ring and his engraver, one Benjamin Boyd, had been arrested.  Kennally needed him back so he conceived of a plot to steal Lincoln's body from his unguarded tomb and ransom it for the release of his engraver; for good measure, he was also going to demand 200,000 dollars.

Kennally and his rather maladroit minions were caught and arrested after one of the guys he'd brought in for the caper turned out to be a Secret Service agent working undercover.  The SS was at that time dedicated to capturing counterfeiters and only later, partially due to this plot, did it evolve into the agency responsible for the permanent security of the President.  Oh, how far we've come from the days when a man or woman could walk up to the White House, knock on the door, and ask to see the President.  And most likely get an audience.  Simpler times that assassinations made more complicated.  Even then political violence was associated with a decrease in personal intercourse.  (Reviewing this post for publication, I have no idea why I wrote that last sentence or how it's relevant exactly, but I kind of like the phrase so, I'll leave it in; why not?)

Sometime last year, at least by December 11th, a plaster study of Lincoln's hand was stolen from the Kankakee County Museum, the work of Lincoln admirer G.G. Allin....woups, I mean G.G. Barnard.  According to the NYT, the police notice said the museum curator described the sesquicentenarian hand as being “the size of a 8-10 pound ham.”  Talk about your ham-handed press releases.

While the hand wasn't a real one, there is something of the grave robbery to this case.  Maybe it's because death masks produced during this period were also in plaster.  Maybe it's some kind of lingering Medieval notion about the power of the image -- statues that weep and heal -- or even a bit of the magical thinking that actually make Voodoo dolls work; they work because people think they do.  Basically, there's a strain of thought in the Western mind that makes the graven image something powerful, alive even.  Pygmalion, Constantine's head, Baphomet.  And then there's the negative power given them by iconoclasts, principal tenets of both Judaism and Islam, not to mention once-sporadic outbreaks of image smashing in the Orthodox world.  The Egyptians at times held that the obelisk was a petrified ray of light and thus contained the essence of Ra himself.  Their funerary practices placed a special emphasis on the objects the Pharaoh would need for the afterlife, the objects and sarcophagi were imbued with their power.  Lincoln, our martyred President, may have developed such an aura of sanctity that even a ham-sized plaster hand made from life could be considered as something akin to a holy relic.

It seems weird, but the holiness of Presidents was a  paleo-meme in the making during the mid-19th century.  Take Brumidi's The Apotheosis of Washington from 1865, which graces the Capitol's rotunda.  The painting references a sculpture from 1840 by Horatio Greenough which portrays Washington as a muscular godling, hand pointing up as opposed to down.  As above etc.  They both hold their swords in a non-threatening manner and have draped material over their knees.  Brumidi, however, took care to keep Washington clothed.  The weirdness of the Grrenough piece, and Washington's naked torso, did not go unmentioned at the time.  It too was designed for the rotunda, but was so scorned and derided that it was moved at least four times before ending up on the second floor of the National Museum of American History, where it has been tucked away since 1964.  Interesting that the essential pose of the sculpture was maintained in the rotunda fresco and specifically turned into an apotheosis; why did they need this Hermetic pose in the rotunda?  Also interesting that this dates from just after the assassination of Lincoln.  The nation's first martyred president.  By that act he'd become something of a god.

A lithograph roughly contemporary with Constantino Brumidi's painting shows Lincoln and Washington in an oddly intimate embrace, as if Washington is pulling Lincoln to his feet, resurrecting him perhaps, and holding a laurel wreath over his head; it is titled Washington and Lincoln. (Apotheosis).  Apotheosis represents the ultimate step on Lincoln's journey.  Where can he go now that he's become a god?  First a crowned martyr, then....deification.  Making good men better.

On LoS we've posted a few times about the political uses of the corpse.  In No body home, we compare the postmortem treatment of Osama Bin Laden and Che Guevara.  Both were rather hurriedly disposed of so as to avoid any prolonged controversy about their ultimate destination.  Bin Laden was dumped into the sea and Guevara dismembered and sent to many secret locations.  No grave in order to prevent their final resting places from becoming shrines, rallying points for disaffected young radicals.  The Soviets were hip to this risk as well, which is why they never really buried Hitler's body.  They wanted to prevent any place from becoming a pilgrimage destination for a new generation of Nazis; they were afraid of the corpse's power.  They burned it, ground it up and burned it again, eventually scattering the ashes in the Dneiper.  But always in almost tentative baby half-steps.  They apparently kept some charred skull fragments hanging around until god knows when, for all we know they could still be an a shoe-box somewhere in a vast Russian warehouse like the Ark in Indiana Jones.  The Soviets were into the power of corpses as shrine-fodder.  They did, after all, put Lenin on display at Red Square, as if his corpse were the golden milestone of the U.S.S.R.

Many believe Hitler may have not died at all.  He may have been ferreted off to Argentina....  That's the danger of not producing a body.  People will say Hitler's death was a fabrication, or that Osama had been long dead and only used as a bogeyman to scare the American people like children afraid of being carried off in a rotten sack by a smelly old man.

A disappearing body is a powerful religious symbol; one could reasonably argue that the empty tomb is the critical circumstance which saved Romano-Hellenized Judaism from obscurity; just another failed Messiah.  But this Nazarene was something different; and even he spoke of the severed hand.

And if your right hand subverts you, cut it off, cast it from you, for it is profitable for you that one of your members be lost, and not that your whole body fall into Gehenna.

-- Christ, Jesus H. (Matthew 5:30 | Aramaic Bible in Plain English).

Argentina has produced one of the strangest cases of postmortem dismemberment I've read about.  This is the case of the surgical removal of Juan Peron's hands long after his body his was laid to rest in his mausoleum; the "theft" was a hornet's nest of conspiracy theories, said to involve the P2 Lodge, the Mafia, and elements of the Military junta who brutalized the country at the time of the grave robbery.  There are many theories behind the theft.  Some say it's related to occult practices like those which result in the creation of a Hand of Glory.  In addition to the occult value of the Hand, which allows its bearer to unlock any door, it might have actually worked -- some speak of Swiss bank accounts accessed with his thumbprint.  Others cite alleged Masonic punishments for breaking one's oath.  Still others point to a kind of symbolic and even more potent kind of castration; the hands -- being very visible in his televised speeches -- became associated with his gift of oratory, which was one his most effective tools in swaying the people.  Incidentally, in an older post (The hand is the whole, 29 January, 2011) we made the connection between the Hand of God and the Voice of God in medieval iconography.  Scientists measuring brain activity have noted that the language centers of the brain are stimulated to the same degree and in the same location whether the language be spoken, or communicated via sign language.

In The hand is the whole I wrote quite a bit about the relationship between the hand and images of power and authority, citing several popular expressions.  These metaphors are often about force, dominance and the effective exercise thereof. 

• His response was a bit heavy-handed.  
• She rules the office with an iron fist.  
• The man was strong-armed into signing the contract.  
• He can't escape the long arm of the law.

In Star Wars the changing balance of power between Vader and Luke is always preceded by a de-handing.  In another quasi-Oedipal conflict, Hook chases Peter Pan, to exact revenge for having been de-handed by him.  ("Peter" being slang for penis is surely a coincidence).  He is also driven into paroxysms of fear at the sound of an approaching clock.  The Lost Symbol is kicked off, if we can mix up our body parts, by the discovery of a Hand of Glory in the Capitol rotunda, which sits at one end of the National Mall, that Tree of Life directly across from the Lincoln memorial.  It occurs to me that in Game of Thrones, Ned Stark, the King's "Hand" (who is beheaded!) is a perfect illustration of this point.  The Hand represents the King, can speak on his behalf -- recall that the hand and the tongue activate language centers in the listener is the same manner -- and generally enforces his Will; the instrument in short, of Power.

The de-handing of Perón was more than a simple castration; it was a killing of the father, as in the Star Wars films.  A hand-less man is diminished in ways a legless man is not.  The hands are part of effective communication and without hands we are rendered partially mute.  I'll paste back in a fragment I wrote earlier:  "it was a cutting out of the tongue, for these hands held vast powers of communication."  Perón, from beyond the grave, could not exercise power over the popular imagination as he might have been able had he been whole.  In Buenos Aires, an enormous pair of portraits of Evita face the Obelisk, symbol of the Republic.  Graffiti to Evita is everywhere.  She is worshiped like one of the legendary folk saints that flourish in Argentina:  San La Muerte, Gauchito Gil, La Difunta Correa.  But Juan is strangely mute.

From Alpha-Zeta 16 October, 2012:

Eva Perón's body also suffered indignity in death; her corpse was ignobly shuffled about before returning to Buenos Aires.  After the military coup of 1955 her body disappeared.  It was secretly put into a crypt in Milan under the name María Maggi (Mary Magdalen?).  "Evita" was exhumed and repatriated in 1971, placed in an elaborate and highly secure tomb, which has become a popular shrine, and she, revered like a saint.   What is important is that her body has remained intact.  In his essay on "Latin America" in The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, John McManners "claims that Eva Perón consciously incorporated aspects of the mythology of the Virgin and of Mary Magdalene into her public persona."

Anyway, Lincoln's hand -- a few weeks later -- remains lost.  The nation hasn't crumbled.  Whoever took them probably just wanted a nifty and easy-to-score souvenir.  But given the recent spate of attacks on Confederate flags and memorials, it could be a kind of revenge by a lone "Lost Causer" of the sort who put a bullet into Lincoln's head in the first place...

And I just noticed that the museum director in is named Connie Licon.  Missing two letters.  Like two missing hands!!!!                 

Bwa-ha-ha-haaah!!