Happy 122nd Birthday H. P. Lovecraft, (August 20th, 1890 - March 15th, 1937)
Today, in your honor, we will do nothing but unravel our sanities, and cower at the indescribable horror of shadows. Thank you so much for what you’ve given us.
“That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.”
On this day in 1890 Howard Philips Lovecraft was born.
Without his wonderful imagination I would not have been scared half to death as a kid, and we would not have this wonderful company without his wonderful works.
I’d like to take this moment to remember that man of Providence who blessed us with his world.
I dedicate this day to you Mr. Lovecraft…
And if I hadn’t have found Lovecraft, I would have never been inspired to become a writer, I would have never discovered…
Fallschirmjager:
I think that is such a testament to the power of his writings.
No single writer has touched my imagination, honestly scared me, or impressed me the way Howard Philips Lovecraft did. Most of my friends who are writers and artists were inspired by his works. My only qualm is he fact he was not recognized while he was alive, but that is the de rigueur.
I thank you for sharing that bit of inspiration.
More great photos from my Fj Kamerad Josef Eders, taken at the Conneaut Ohio D-Day reenactment, August 18, 2012.
My boss’s first work back in 1996-1997...
Church of Satan recruiting poster by Coop©
Hello ghouls and growls, this blog is dedicated to horror, the occult, and various oddities, so step right up and see the seedy Satanic side of life.
That’s right folks, we have everything from Pinheads to to xenomorphs!
I decided on making a blog for my horror and occult interests since they do not dovetail with my WWII stuff, that said here it is.
There will be a good mix from the scandalous and salacious to the fascination and freaky. I hope you folks enjoy it.
Charles Baudelaire as read by Yvette Mimieux with music by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
I’ve read a considerable amount on this subject over the years, the main problem being most are nothing more than sensationalistic and far from being actual academical prose on that subject. About the only book I can say that has any validity to it was The Secret King: The Myth and Reality of Nazi Occultism.
A very popular yet sordid book on the subject, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology, but the problem is while there is some truth to a good many theories and implications throughout the book, it is biased and full of a lot of sensationalistic fahderah.
I’d take care in reading about the subject of ‘Occult Nazism’, as it’s full of academic pitfalls and must be taken with a grain of salt.
They are more or less fun to read as entertainment and nothing else.
While I take this as a compliment, let me air some issues out:
While I do have to partially fit into our societal constraints, I live for myself and myself only. If I seem unnerving to you, I do not feel the need to appropriate a new lexicon or ‘change’ myself to fit in and make people feel comfortable. People need to censor that which makes them uncomfortable themselves, meaning; if you’re listening to a song which bothers you, turn off the device or change the music. If a movie has you out of sorts, turn it off. Basically if you’re an adult, you and only you knows what offends or bothers you. I am sick to death of this need for people to don a good guy badge and have others do their thinking.
The feeling you probably get out of my blog(s) is called ‘Eustress’:
stress that is deemed healthful or giving one the feeling of fulfillment.
As far as being happy, I am happy, and avoid drama and stressful situations I need not be part of as much as possible, but real life is not fair and is full of unavoidable pitfalls.
I now leave you with this quote from Goethe;
“That which disturbs your soul you must not suffer”
To recognized by your friends and family is wonderful.
To be recognized amongst your peers and mentors is nothing more than a reflection of your worth and work ethic. I am more than thankful of the work ethic my grandfather instilled in me, and after many years my hard work and being hard-headed, life has placed me on the path I had willed in my head so many years ago as a child.
If you are a real live American boy you will want one.
Freud would clearly have something to tell me if this is the case….
Fallschirmjager:
Back in the days when saying “Boy…I sure cranked the hell out of my Big Dick and all the fellas on my street were envious.” didn’t sound so creepy.
Max Schreck through the years. 1906, 1909, 1915 and 1929
Books Bound in Human Skin
Boston Athenaeum
A morbid secret lies hidden within the beautiful walls of the Boston Athenaeum
Fallschirmjager:
Having visited the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia this past weekend and having looked at the examples of volumes bound in tanned human flesh they have on display had me wanting to update this post with an addendum about…you guessed it, books bound in human flesh. So without further ado.
Happening to come across the other day the catalog of a book auction in 1864, when a book on the Constitution of the French Republic, bound in human skin in the year 1793, was offered for sale, a book lover was prompted to inquire whether the human skin had ever been put to such a use before or since.
The inquiry led to a number of surprising revelations. It was not merely during the excesses of the French Revolution that such things were done, but as long ago as the thirteenth century he found there were in existences several such books, including a Latin Bible very handsomely engrossed upon a woman’s skin. In 1765 the “French Encyclopedie” gave a recipe for tanning human skin, and stated that M. Sue, a surgeon in Paris, had presented the King with a pair of slippers made of human skin, according to this prescription.
During the reign of Napoleon III, a copy of the Decretals, written on human skin, was found in the library of the Sorbonne and transferred to the Tulleries. John Ziska, the one-eyed chief of the Hussites, ordered in his will that his skin should be tanned and made into a drum. “The noise which my skin will make,” said he, “will frighten away all our enemies and put them to flight.”
It was, however, at the time of the French Revolution that this art was developed to its greatest extent. A man presente himself one day at the bar of the Convention and announced that he had devised a simple and original scheme for procuring leather in abundance. The Committee of Public Safety granted him a concession of the Castle of Meudon, where he carried on his work with a certain amount of secrecy. In return for the concession of the members of the committee were privileged to be among the first to wear top boots made of human skin.
The tannery of Meudon acquired considerable notoriety. A great number of books were bound with the leather turned out there, and Phillipe Egalite, Duke of Orleans, encouraged the tannery by wearing a pair of breeches made there with human skin at a ball in Palais-Royal. The republican General Beysser, who made himself a name by his ferocity in the wars of La Vundee, set the fashion of wearing similar trousers in the army, always wearing a pair at battles and at reviews.
An old soldier who had taken part in most of the campaigns of the French Revolution, told a writer of memoirs in the middle of this century that he had owned a specially fine garment of this kind, made entirely of one piece. An architect, who was one of the leaders of the infamous Black Band of France in 1823, which for a long time terrorized the country districts in the West of France, wore a jacket made of human skin, comely and exceedingly comfortable.
The infamous Saint-Just, when at the height of his power during the Reign of Terror, caused a young and beautiful girl, who had refused his advances, to be arrested and sent to the scaffold. After the execution he obtained possession of the body, flayed himself and had the skin tanned and made into a waste-coat, which he wore till the day of his death. The tannery of Meudon and its imitators carried on the process on an extensive scale, and must have made a good deal of money by tanning the skins of the victims of the Revolution for every sort of commercial purpose.
Oil extracted from human bodies was also placed upon the market and sold.
Since those days the process has naturally become much rarer, but Dibdin relates how at a comparatively recent date a collector possessed a treatise on sport bound in stag’s skin; a copy of Fox’s “History of James II.,” bound in fox’s skin and a book on anatomy bound in human skin. In 1837 the narrative of the adventures of a highwayman was bound in his own skin at Boston, Mass., with inscription in Latin outside, “This book was bound in the skin of Walton.”
The title page in De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, a book bound in human skin written on the subject of anatomy, by Andreas Vesalius in 1543.
Häxan
While watching this wonderful and often overlooked silent era film it started to dawn on me that the Devil and Daemons in the film look very much like those from various High Middle Ages illuminated manuscripts and wood block carvings.
With the witches hour at hand, I looked into information on the director’s research into this wonderful world of imagery of Ole’ Scratch and his cloven hoofed pals to find that Benjamin Christensen had indeed did some traveling to look at the old volumes from many different areas of Europa in order to maintain a strict aesthetic pastiche harking to the days of Codex Gigas and other volumes dealing with the Dark Prince and his minions.
So without further ado…
Plate-01: The Devil as seen in the 13th Century book Codex Gigas or Giant Book, which is also the largest extant medieval manuscript in the world. The Devil represented here is reputed to have been drawn by a monk who sold his soul to the Devil.
Plate-02: The Devil as seen in Häxan, the relation to Medieval manuscripts are more than evident.
Plate-03: Taddeo di Bartolo, The Last Judgement, detail of the Leviathan, San Gimignano, Collegiata.
Plate-04: The Witches Mass scene from Häxan, again many similarities can be seen and appreciated. It is said he had spent more time on these scenes to be painstakingly reenactments of various sources (such as the scene where the Witches kiss the Devil’s rump and stomping on the cross.)
