Scarlet Woman

We're big book buyers here at Necropolis Now. Some may say we are worshippers of the scribal god, Thoth, and they wouldn't be wrong. The latest book I got - just today - was a fab one called "Damned: An Illustrated History of the Devil" by Robert Muchembled (Seuil/Chronicle 2002). It's big format and glossy, but I got it quite cheap from Clouston & Hall Booksellers - they are based in Canberra. Here's a pic I like from the book called "The Devilish Temptress" by Cecilio Pla Gallardo (1900). It originally graced the cover of a publication called "Blanco y Negro". If you're interested in this sort of sinister depiction of women, I recommend checking out Bram Dijkstra's book "Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-De-Siecle Culture" (Oxford University Press 1986).

Melbourne General Cemetery's Trees

Has anyone noticed how the pine trees around the periphery of the Melbourne General Cemetery have been being chopped down over the last year or so? I have, so I decided to email the cemetery asking why. (I assumed it was because of the drought we've been having). According to Gina Webling, the Memorial Sales Consultant, the trees along the Lygon street fence line have been removed because "the roots were damaging the monuments and graves, part of the some of the trees were dying off and branches were breaking and falling on the existing monuments. Each tree that has been removed will be replaced with the same type tree, this is a slow process as they are preparing the soil." So that's good - I mean that they are going to plant more trees there. Here are two pics I took recently at the cemetery, but in an area that does have trees. The top one is a very child-like angel under a peppercorn tree, and the other one was an attempt to get an image of the use of Cypresses in the cemetery, a traditional tree of mourning.

Hieronymus Bosch

Who does not love Hieronymus Bosch? I sure do. Do you know what his name means? It means "holy name", you may be more familiar with it as 'Jerome'. What a fantastic doodler he was. Here's a little image of some altar piece doors, showing his idea of how one gets to the afterlife - through a tunnel with the help of an angel apparently. There have been many words written about Bosch's supposed membership of the heretical "Bretheren of the Free Spirit", but then others say that he was not a member at all. If you want to see Bosch paintings close up, the Prado in Spain is the art gallery to go to.

Winter Solstice Offering

I think I can marry atheism with my love of religion. As Richard Dawkins says, scientists have that same awe in the wonder of existence as religionists do, but they don't need to believe in a supernatural being as the cause of it - the amazingness of the world is enough. So I've typed up a little atheistic prayer to the world.

World, you’re a good place. Look how amazing you are.
I love your trees, dirt and water.

How is it that you hold yourself up in space?
Thanks for the food.
Humans can be horrible, but at other times very nice.
Look at all the wonderful, evocative things they have produced.
I like animals too, our siblings (even though we often eat them).
When I look up, away from the land, I see sky.
Cosmos, you make me cower in terror - in a good way.
I fall over with vertigo at your vast incomprehensibility.
I’m glad to be here, to look at all this.

I think I can incorporate religious ritual gestures as well, and still be true to atheism, lets see... As a modern Pagan I could define my ritual space with salt water and the words "In the beginning we climbed out of the sea"; then I could cense the area with perfumed smoke while saying "I burn the blood and sex of plant life for its fragrance"; next I could plunge a dagger into a cup and say "Sex is amazing"; I could dance round in a circle (or ellipse) shouting "The orbits of celestial objects move like this!"; and I could go on a spirit journey inside myself and chant "I'm a microscope of the inner sea." Why should I even bother to express my awe at Nature in a ritual way? Because it is boring to go around not taking notice of this wonderous place in which we find ourselves and ritual is a pleasing artistic expresion of the relationship between ourselves and the orders of existence with which we live. I think I'll go do all that now. Happy Winter Solstice.

Spirited Away

That photo of the entrance to the Egyptian Avenue at Highgate cemetery (below) is reminding me of the doorway that leads to the "Underworld-ish" bath house in Hayao Miyazaki's anime movie, "Spirited Away". Talk about an excellent, weird, surreal movie! And the girl's parents get turned into pigs - very Homer's Odyssey! Pigs are sacred to the chthonic Greek goddesses, Demeter and Persephone. I can't find a good image of the doorway, so only those who have seen the movie will know what I'm talking about. Here are some pics that almost do the job that I want anyway.

Peter Ucko buried at Highgate.

Sad news for the living… archaeologist, Peter John Ucko: born London 27 July 1938; Lecturer in Anthropology, University College London 1962-72, Director, Institute of Archaeology and Professor of Comparative Archaeology 1996-2006 (Emeritus); Principal, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies 1972-81; and Professor of Archaeology, Southampton University 1981-96; died in London on the 14th of June 2007. Why do I like him? Because of his writings on prehistoric female figurines, in particular the very interesting “Anthropomorphic figurines of predynastic Egypt and neolithic Crete with comparative material from the prehistoric Near East and mainland Greece.” (London. A. Szmidla. 1968). Very useful for anyone interested in those fleshy female figurines, currently considered within the Pagan scene and in popular literature to be “Goddesses” – and they may well be… But don’t decide until having a look at what archaeological experts such as Ucko say about them. A funeral service for Professor Ucko will take place at 12pm on 26 June, at St Michael’s Church, South Grove, Highgate, followed by burial in Highgate Cemetery.

The Dominion of the Dead

You might be wondering what some of the things I post on this blog actually have to do with Death. Well, I’m going to resort to quoting Robert Pogue Harrison from his fascinating book “The Dominion of the Dead” (University of Chicago Press, 2003) in order to give you an idea of how I see “Death” as a very broad category, encompassing what is beyond human existence on earth as well touching what we do here during life.

‘Whatever the rift that separates their regimes, nature and culture have at least this much in common: both compel the living to serve the interests of the unborn. Yet they differ in their strategies in one decisive respect: culture perpetuates itself through the power of the dead, while nature, as far as we know, makes no use of this resource except in a strictly organic sense. In the human realm the dead and the unborn are native allies, so much so that from their posthumous abode – wherever it be – the former hound the living with guilt, dread, and a sense of responsibility, obliging us, by whatever means necessary, to take the unborn into our care and keep the story going, even if we never quite figure out what the story is about, what our part in it is, the end toward which it is progressing, or the moral it contains. One day the science of genetics may decode the secrets of this custodianship, but meanwhile we may rest assured that there exists an allegiance between the dead and the unborn of which we the living are merely the ligature.’

My interest in things archaeological, religious and artistic have in many ways come down to me from the Dead, from societies, mystics and visionaries, and artists who are no longer on this planet – although they have left a lasting legacy to us – to me - in their Great Work, to put it in a Thelemite sense. We will all also leave our Great Work, whatever that is, to the unborn. No wonder ancestor worship was the first type of religion for humans, or so it is said in anthropological circles. Death is a broader category to me than just morbidity. [Image: A Lycian tomb, from the cover of Harrison's book].