Medieval Monsters

 

A few years ago I discovered (by reading about it in a book, I'm sorry to say, rather than actually noticing it with my own eyes) that several of the village churches around where I live have strange demonic or cryptozoological-looking creatures crawling over their upper reaches. Colloquially you could refer to these as "gargoyles", although strictly speaking that word only refers to fancifully decorated waterspouts. The proper term for the non-functional ornaments I'm referring to is "grotesques" (which can be used as a noun as well as an adjective).

The main purpose of this post is to show off some of the photographs I took after my attention was drawn to these bizarre medieval carvings (a good excuse to give my 75 - 300 mm zoom lens an airing). Before that, however, it's interesting to speculate as to their purpose, since no one seems to know just why they were produced in the first place. Explanations I've seen include heraldic symbols relating to the local gentry, and depictions of local folklore - which here in Somerset would mostly mean dragons (as discussed in a previous post). But while some of the carved figures may well conform to one or other of those theories, they don't explain all of them - particularly the more demonic-looking ones.

By "demonic" I don't necessarily mean overtly so, in the sense of having horns and pointed ears or whatever, but just generally malevolent-looking - like the ape-headed, cloven-hoofed figure shown at the top of this post. This, and many of the other examples I've seen, are basically "chimeras" - fanciful combinations of two or more unrelated species. These were common in the mythology of ancient Greece and Egypt, but by the Middle Ages they'd become firmly associated with Hell (Dante's depiction of it, which I talked about last week, includes several chimera-like demons).

The decorations in and around medieval churches were, almost invariably, a form of communication with the congregation, who could understand imagery even if they were unable to read. So my own personal theory is that these demonic - or otherwise "ungodly" - creatures were depicted on the exterior of the church simply to emphasize that they weren't inside it. In other words, if you came into church you were safe from such monsters, but if you stayed outside you were at their mercy.

All the pictures in this post were taken on the same day in August 2019, at three different churches - Langport, Long Sutton and Huish Episcopi - the carvings on which date from circa 1450, 1490 and 1500 respectively. The ape-demon shown above, for example, is clinging to the tower of Long Sutton church - as you can see more clearly in the following wider-angle view, which also includes a vaguely pig-like face looking straight at you:

Here's another figure from Long Sutton, which reminds me a bit of a Chinese lion-dog statue:

Now two examples from Huish Episcopi. I've no idea what the first one is meant to be, partly because it's so badly weathered, but I'd say it's definitely in the demonic category. As for the much better preserved second one, it clearly depicts a chimera with a human face and four-legged body:

 Turning to Langport church, this one is absolutely covered in inter-species hybrids! Here are a couple of striking ones:

 ... and a few more:

 Langport also has a human head, but it doesn't look at all happy - possibly a soul tormented in Hell? Though it's difficult to make out from this angle, it's actually depicted wearing a crown, suggesting that maybe it's some recently deceased (and presumably unpopular) king. I mentioned last week that Dante used his description of Hell as a vehicle for political satire - perhaps that's what's going on here too! (incidentally, what looks like a bad case of chromatic aberration around the upper part of the head is actually a lead cover that's been added to protect it from the elements).

The Gates of Hell (with music video)

A long time ago on this blog, I did a post about Dante's Inferno - Hunt Emerson's comic-book adaptation of a 14th century epic poem set in Hell. As I said there, the comic does wonders for clarifying the whole point of Dante's original -  i.e. that it's basically a satire on Italian political history, rather than a serious attempt to depict the landscape and geography of Hell. But it does a strikingly vivid job of the latter even so, which has inspired a multitude of subsequent works from Sandro Botticelli's 15th century illustrations of Hell to Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's SF novel Inferno (1976), which uses the same basic setting (and, of course, Hunt Emerson's 2012 comic-book version).

On the musical side, there's a distinctly horror movie-esque portrayal of Hell in the Dante Symphony (1857) by Franz Liszt (who featured in another early post on this blog, Lisztomania). This begins with a dramatic depiction of the Gates of Hell, which inspired me to create the following video. I've added four electronic tracks of my own (demonic voice, drum machine, saw bass and synth pad), but otherwise it's just a digitally distorted vinyl recording of the opening of Liszt's symphony. Visually the gates and demons are courtesy of Bing's AI image creator, while the depiction of Hell itself is by Botticelli. When it's all put together, I think the result is pretty cool ((even though I say it myself):

I've twisted the original a bit in having the words spoken by demons. In Dante's poem, these are phrases that (in their original Italian form) are inscribed over the gates of Hell, while Liszt has them depicted by orchestral instruments, rather than being spoken or sung. But since I like playing with free software, I couldn't resist adding the synthesized voice.

The other software I used here was Tracktion Waveform Free, together with various free instrument and effects plugins (or ones that came free with Computer Music magazine, anyway). These are all great toys to play with, as I discovered a few years ago when I was doing a book called The Science of Music. I was asked to do that one because I'd previously written The Science of Sci-Fi Music - but while the latter was about a subject I knew something about (avant-garde classical music of the mid-20th century), the new one strayed way outside my comfort zone into modern digital music production. And the quickest way to learn a new subject is to try doing it yourself!

One thing I mentioned in passing in The Science of Music is that, if people who aren't fans of classical music have heard of Franz Liszt at all, it's most likely through the rhyming slang phrase "Brahms and Liszt". And as it happens, Brahms is another composer I've swiped a vinyl sample from. Unlike The Gates of Hell, there isn't even a tenuous fortean connection in this case, but I think the result is one of the most musically successful things I've done (in a chilled-out "lo-fi" sort of way). Here's the result:

While I was writing this post, I suddenly remembered that I've actually seen the "Gates of Hell", or at least a monumental bronze representation of them by the sculptor Auguste Rodin. This was at the Rodin Museum in Paris, which I visited in 2013 - the photograph below is one I took at the time. If you look closely at the panel above the gates, you'll see Rodin's most iconic image - "The Thinker" - in its original setting.

 

Paranoid Conspiracy Death Cult

I found another really good retro-style adventure game on Steam last week (I got it at an 80% discount, but I see it’s back up to full price now). It’s called Corrosion: Cold Winter Waiting, which is a rather weird title – but then it’s a rather weird game, from the minimalist gameplay and graphics (see screenshots above) to the disturbingly psychotic storyline. Personally I liked both these aspects, but not everyone will agree about the style, so I’ll start with the story (and I’ll keep it as spoiler-free as possible).

To start with a general comment – there’s something very odd about conspiracy theorists. The theories themselves are pretty odd, of course – especially the ones that involve shape-shifting aliens infiltrating world governments with a view to eradicating homo sapiens and taking over the planet. But it’s even odder that, having discovered this terrifying truth, all the conspiracy theorists do is talk about it on the internet. When France was occupied by the Nazis in the 1940s, the underground resistance fighters went in for things like sabotage and assassination. Why don’t conspiracy theorists do the same, to save Earth from the threat the rest of us are too stupid to see?

In a nutshell, that’s the idea behind this game. It’s played from a first-person perspective, with the player exploring a now-deserted underground complex that until recently was occupied by a small cult with a very strange belief system. In this case, the supposed threat isn’t from shape-shifting aliens, but from an ancient race of “demons” that can take people over at random. But the effect is pretty much the same. The cult members believe they can detect demon-possessed individuals (although a cynic might think they just pick members of the public at random), who they bring back to the complex to be dealt with. I won’t say exactly what this entails, partly because it would be a plot-spoiler, but mainly because it’s too horrible to think about. If you play the game, you’ll find out – if not, then count yourself lucky!

One of the outstanding things about Corrosion: Cold Winter Waiting is its characterization, which is excellent and chillingly believable. That may seem an odd thing to say, because you never actually come face to face with any of the cult members. However, you get a very good picture of them from their writings and audio recordings. There are six of them in all, four of which you get to know really well. Essentially they’re all social outcasts with deep-seated grudges against humankind in general – so it’s rather ironic that they consider themselves to be humanity’s saviours. Also ironic is the fact that they all hate each other, to the point of working to subtly different agendas. And they’re all head cases. One of them is a psychopathic sadist, another is a paranoid schizophrenic, another suffers from a chronic inferiority complex.

Worst of all is the cult’s charismatic leader, who is the ex-CEO of a large pharmaceutical corporation and the only one who knows what’s real and what isn’t. I won’t say too much on that subject – except that one of the two chemicals the demon-hunters use to “immunize” themselves turns out to be a harmless placebo, while the other is a fear-enhancing hallucinogen… and the whole narrative about ancient demons (and how to neutralize them) is taken from the rambling notebooks of a mad psychiatrist in the 1950s.

The first-person point-and-click gameplay is reminiscent of Jonathan Boakes’s Dark Fall games, which I’ve enthused about on at least two previous occasions (here and here). But Corrosion: Cold Winter Waiting was released in 2012, ten years after the first Dark Fall game, and if anything its user interface is even more minimalist. That gives it a strongly nostalgic feel (and when you get to my age, that’s never a bad thing). Like the Dark Fall series, this game is pretty much the work of a single creator – in this case Daniel Lee Peach. Like Jonathan Boakes he’s British, but unlike Jonathan’s games this one is set in America (I spotted a few British spellings and the occasional little-endian date, but apart from that I thought the American setting was pretty convincing).

Point-and-click adventures always tend to emphasize the cerebral rather than the visual, and Corrosion: Cold Winter Waiting is an extreme example of this (if you’re wondering why I picked those four screenshots at the top of the post, it’s because they were the most exciting ones I could find). Personally I wasn’t too bothered by the minimalist graphics, but I did find the gameplay a bit too obscure in places. I ended up having to consult a walkthrough at least half a dozen times, in most cases because there was some non-intuitive action I had to perform on one of the in-game computers. Having said that, if there’s ever a sequel, I’ll snap it up as soon as it comes out (and happily pay full price this time).

Madame Xanadu

Madame Xanadu #1 (pictured above left) dates from 1981, but I bought my copy much more recently than that. I can’t remember exactly when or where, but it was probably about 10 or 12 years ago. I don’t often buy DC comics, so it was obviously an impulse buy – probably on account of the Tarot cards on the cover, which is a subject I’ve always found fascinating. Quite apart from the Tarot connection, though, it’s a really good story. I was reminded of it last week when I saw a Madame Xanadu trade paperback (pictured above right) in a local shop. It was reduced to £4.99 so I bought that too. The story isn’t quite as perfect as the first one, but it’s still great fun.

The character of Madame Xanadu first appeared in a comic called Doorway to Nightmare in 1978, but the story in Madame Xanadu #1 is pretty self-contained. The setting is Greenwich Village, the same as the early Dr Strange stories (see Master of the Mystic Arts). But there’s little indication at this stage that Madame Xanadu has the same kind of supernatural powers as Dr Strange – the character is basically just a Tarot card reader (albeit one with genuine psychic powers and a rather mysterious background). The story includes a detailed Tarot reading as an integral part of the plot, and there’s a text article on the inside front cover about the history and use of the Tarot.

The story itself isn’t really about Madame Xanadu though, but one of her clients. It’s a variation on my favourite occult cliché – bored teenager starts to dabble in witchcraft for a giggle... gets drawn into a big grown-up world of sex and drugs... ends up summoning timeless demons who don’t give a toss whether she lives or dies. Then enter Madame Xanadu, and cue the happy ending!

The trade paperback, Madame Xanadu: Broken House of Cards, is one of a series collecting issues from a later incarnation of the Madame Xanadu title – the ones in this volume date from 2010. By this time, Madame Xanadu has been retconned as a powerful supernatural being from Arthurian mythology. Personally I feel this is a backward step, because it makes the character harder to believe in and relate to (for me, anyway), and it reduces the title’s Unique Selling Point – the use of Tarot cards – to little more than a cover story to hide the protagonist’s secret identity, instead of her primary talent. But that’s just my opinion – other people may disagree.

Having said that, it’s really a very enjoyable story. It’s set in the late 1950s, which gives it a nice retro feel (even in the 1981 comic, it was implied that Madame Xanadu had occupied the same Greenwich Village premises for several decades without appearing to get any older). There are a number of threads to the story, including one about a cult of devil-worshippers called the Church of the Midnight Dawn. As in the earlier story, the people involved are portrayed as predominantly middle-class and driven by boredom (as you can see in the sample panels below). I imagine that’s true of real-world Satanists, too... although in the real world they probably end up having a promiscuous orgy instead of conjuring up demons from hell. But you can’t have an orgy in a comic book, so you get the demons instead – which is much better!

 

Satan, Sin and Death

The dramatic scene depicted above is the work of the 18th century painter and engraver William Hogarth. This particular engraving is based on a painting he produced circa 1735-40, but it’s easier to see what’s going on in this black-and-white version. It’s a scene from Milton’s Paradise Lost in which Satan, en route from Hell to Earth, encounters two strange figures guarding the Gates of Hell:

Before the gates there sat on either side a formidable Shape. The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, but ended foul in many a scaly fold, voluminous and vast – a serpent armed with mortal sting. [...] The other Shape – if shape it might be called, that shape had none distinguishable in member, joint, or limb. Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, for each seemed either. Black it stood as Night, fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, and shook a dreadful dart.

The first figure is the personification of Sin, while the second figure is Death. It’s interesting that Satan himself is portrayed in relatively heroic form, although his facial features look more monstrous in the original painted version than in this engraving.

“Satan, Sin and Death” is an unusual departure for Hogarth, most of whose works are satirical in nature (see for example Paranormal investigation, 18th century style and Another historical myth-conception). Hogarthian satire was pretty gentle stuff, aimed at broad social classes rather than at specific individuals. By the end of the 18th century, however, all that had changed – and political caricatures were every bit as viciously ad hominem as they are today.

James Gillray (1756 – 1815) was one of the first great political cartoonists. His own variation on the theme of “Sin, Death and the Devil”, dating from 1792, is shown below. Death is represented by the Prime Minister of the time, William Pitt the Younger, while the Devil is Pitt’s Lord Chancellor, Baron Thurlow. They are separated by the figure of Sin in the person of Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III. Even today, the depiction of the present Queen in such an unflattering way would be frowned on in some quarters (although Conspiracy Theorists might detect a resemblance between Her Majesty and Milton’s personification of Sin, in that both of them are half reptilian).

William Blake (mentioned previously in A 19th Century Contactee and Reinventing Ezekiel's Wheel) was born the year after Gillray. He had something of an obsession with Milton’s Paradise Lost, producing at least 30 illustrations based on it. The earlier of Blake’s two versions of “Satan, Sin and Death” (circa 1807) is depicted below. Like Hogarth, Blake makes the figure of Satan look surprisingly heroic... while his version of Death is a semi-transparent ghost.

Monsters, Mystery and a Monkey

I can’t think of anything to write about this week, so here are a few more interesting paintings I saw in the Louvre Museum last summer. The photos are a bit blurry because they’re my own, but I’ve included links to better images.

The first picture was painted by Raphael around 1504, when he was just 21 years old. It depicts the story of Saint Michael and the dragon from the Book of Revelation, which I mentioned in a previous post (Dragon Symbolism). The dragon in question was Satan himself, although Raphael’s version doesn’t look much like the traditional depiction of Satan... or the traditional depiction of a dragon, for that matter. It looks more like one of Hieronymus Bosch’s demons, as do the various monsters in the background. They’re easier to see in the Louvre’s own picture – Saint Michel terrassant le démon. With the exception of the figure of Saint Michael himself, there is quite a striking resemblance to Bosch... who after all lived at the same time as Raphael.

The second picture is one of the most Fortean of all paintings – Les Bergers d’Arcadie by Nicolas Poussin, dating from around 1639. The title means “The Shepherds of Arcadia” – Arcadia being a place in ancient Greece. That doesn’t sound very Fortean, except that many people (on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, as far as I can make out) believe the picture really depicts the tomb of Jesus Christ near Rennes-le-Chateau in France. I would really like to go back in time and tell Poussin that’s what people in the 21st century think the painting is meant to depict. He would probably laugh quite a bit.

The last picture is by a French painter named Jean-Siméon Chardin, who is nothing like as well known as Raphael or Poussin. But I still think it’s a good picture. It’s called “The Antiquarian Monkey” (or in French, Le Singe antiquaire), and it was painted around 1726. It depicts a monkey trying to look like the kind of refined, educated, middle-aged gentleman that I try to look like. Except the monkey does it better.

Laplace's Demon

This time last year I did a post about Maxwell’s Demon, which featured in a TV documentary by the physicist and science popularizer Jim Al-Khalili. The same subject is discussed in his excellent book Paradox, together with another distantly related demon attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace (the photo shows a statue of Laplace that I saw at the Palace of Versailles).

The name of Laplace isn’t as well-known to non-physicists as that of Maxwell, although his role in the history of science was just as important. In much the same way that Maxwell consolidated everything that was known about electromagnetism in his famous set of equations, Laplace consolidated Newtonian dynamics in an elegant new formulation that is much easier to work with than Newton’s own rather clunky equations.

If people have heard of Laplace at all, it’s because he supposedly told Napoleon “I had no need of that hypothesis” when asked a question about God. As with many well-known scientific soundbites (cf. Spooky Action at a Distance and Not Even Wrong), this doesn’t mean what it appears to mean. Laplace wasn’t saying he had scientific proof of the nonexistence of God, simply that it wasn’t necessary to invoke divine intervention, as Newton had done, in order to explain the long-term stability of the Solar System.

This brings us to the subject of Laplace’s Demon. Laplace believed the entire workings of the universe were determined by mathematical equations, and that neither random chance nor divine intervention had any role to play. Hence “an intelligence that, at a given instant, knows all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the entities that compose it, if moreover it was sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis... nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes.”

This is an awesome concept if you think about it. The term “demon” was applied retrospectively, by analogy with Maxwell’s demon, but Laplace himself used the more neutral term “intelligence”. In modern terms, he might have been thinking about a supercomputer. But was he right? Is it possible to compute the entire course of future events simply by making a complete set of measurements at a single instant in time?

Two centuries of scientific progress haven’t changed Laplace’s basic premise – the physical universe still seems to conform to immutable laws that can be expressed in the form of mathematical equations. We don’t know all the equations, but we know more of them than Laplace did. Saying that a mathematical equation is rigorously obeyed, however, isn’t the same as saying you can predict its observable consequences. In fields like statistical mechanics and quantum physics, all the important equations are stochastic – they deal in probabilities. The equations allow you to calculate the probability of an event to whatever precision you want, but they don’t tell you if the event will actually occur or not – that’s down to random chance.

In fact, as Jim Al-Khalili points out in his book, you don’t even have to invoke post-Laplacian physics to see the fallacy of Laplace’s Demon – only post-Laplacian number-crunching. The equations Laplace worked with are nonlinear differential equations, which are notoriously difficult to solve. In the days before computers, people had to stick to a small subset of easy solutions, and that’s what Laplace did. But we now know there are always some regions of phase space where the solutions are effectively stochastic – the tiniest change in initial conditions leads to a completely different phase trajectory. This result isn’t limited to complex systems – it’s true even for the classic three-body problem (e.g. Earth – Moon – Sun) that Newton and Laplace worked on.

For my own attempt to calculate the evolution of the Galaxy (using Laplace’s equation) see A Virtual Spaceship.

Big Black Cats: Physical or Paranormal?

Many Fortean phenomena, from ghosts and UFOs to Bigfoot and other cryptids, revolve around witness accounts of strange sightings. In most cases, if the object seen is what the witness believes it is – an extraterrestrial spacecraft, the spirit of a dead human being, a huge hairy apeman – then it would be a truly earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting event. When it comes to the subject of “Big Cats in Britain”, however, that’s just not the case. The issue here is simply a known species that happens to be a few thousand miles from its normal habitat. For this reason, the whole subject of “out-of-place animals” is one that’s never really interested me that much. But last week I came across a couple of blog posts that made me look at the subject in a different light.

First there was The Big Cat Mystery from Kate Kelly's blog The Scribbling SeaSerpent. Amongst other things, Kate says: “There is another line of thought that they are creatures from the spirit world that pass across occasionally into ours; the rationale behind this theory being that the cats described by witnesses are so variable in appearance.” This is a really fascinating idea. Prior to the 20th century, there were frequent sightings of “phantom black dogs” in Britain, which were emphasised to have supernatural qualities. They were unnaturally large, they had glowing eyes, and they appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye. In more recent, more materialistic times, these black dogs seem to have been superseded by “black panthers” and “black pumas”, which witnesses describe as being flesh-and-blood creatures – although they may not be.

The second piece I saw last week – a similar idea approached from a different angle – was all about an ancient pagan ritual called the Taigheirm. This was the subject of a post by Nick Redfern on the Mysterious Universe blog, called Sacrifice and Supernatural Cats. Before I go into details, I’ll just try and squeeze in the painting on the left, which I saw on the Dark Classics blog a few days ago. It’s called “A Scene of Sorcery”, and it was painted by Domenicus van Wijnen around 1685. It’s a depiction of some kind of demonic ritual, although it’s not the Taigheirm, and it’s got a cat in it, although no-one seems especially interested in sacrificing it. But it’s a really spooky painting, all the same.

According to Nick’s Mysterious Universe post, the Taigheirm ritual had its roots in pagan times, but continued to be performed in remote parts of Scotland well into the 19th century. The ceremony involved the sacrificial roasting of domestic cats, with the aim of “coming into communication with the powers of darkness”. According to a supposed eyewitness account, “after a certain continuance of the sacrifice, infernal spirits appeared in the shape of black cats. There came continually more and more of these cats; and their howlings, mingled with those roasting on the spit, were terrific. Finally appeared a cat of a monstrous size, with dreadful menaces.”

Whether the “Big Black Cats” encountered in Britain today are likewise paranormal phenomena, or whether they have any physical reality, is a moot point. The same could be said, of course, about many other Fortean sightings... with one important difference. Ufologists, for example, have a tendency to burst into tears if you suggest UFOs may have a non-physical explanation. It simply isn’t as exciting as the idea of nuts-and-bolts extraterrestrial spacecraft. On the other hand, a ghostly creature from another realm of existence is far more exciting than a flesh-and-blood member of the genus Panthera, that just happens to find itself on the wrong continent!

For anyone who is interested in raw data on British Big Cat sightings, I helped to set up an online resource on the subject last summer: The CFZ Mystery Cat Database. This draws on a huge number of news reports collected over several years by Jon Downes and his colleagues, for which I've tried to produce a user-friendly interface. The result is only partly satisfactory – it seems to work with some browsers but not others. Also, the keyword assignment was done mechanically, rather than by a human – so it quite often throws up irrelevant results (or misses relevant ones). For what it’s worth, I also produced a short demonstration video on YouTube.

Fortean Opera

I recently came across this gothically surreal image, which illustrates an early 19th century opera called Der Freischütz. Reading up about this, it turns out to be quite a Fortean opera, which started me thinking. A Google search for “Fortean opera” turns up nothing of relevance, so I decided it was time to rectify the situation. Two or three titles sprang to mind, in addition to Der Freischütz, and some further research turned up a few others. In the end I came up with the following list (in chronological order of composition):

Il Mondo della Luna (The World of the Moon) by Haydn (1777). As the title suggests, this opera features a trip to the Moon and an encounter with its inhabitants. That wouldn’t be particularly Fortean... except that the “aliens” are fakes and the journey to the Moon is all a big hoax. As such, Il Mondo della Luna is probably the first opera ever written about a fake Moon landing – all the way back in 1777! It isn’t a well-known work (Haydn is more famous for his symphonies than his operas), but I found this clip on YouTube from a recent performance in New York. It looks quite jolly!

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart (1791). This is a famously nutty opera that turns fairy tale conventions on their head. It begins with the hero, Prince Tamino, running away from a giant snake and fainting with fright. He is saved by three young women, followers of the Queen of the Night, who give him a magic flute and a mission to rescue the Queen’s daughter Pamina from a man named Sarastro. And why is this Fortean? Because it’s all a lie! When Tamino eventually catches up with Sarastro, it turns out he isn’t a villain at all, but a wise priest of Isis and Osiris (I should have mentioned this takes place in ancient Egypt). It’s true that Sarastro abducted Pamina, but only to free her from her mother’s clutches. He was keeping her safe so she could marry Tamino... but only after the latter has proved himself worthy by undergoing an arcane, Masonic-style initiation ritual. Strange as it may seem, he is assisted in this task by his magic flute, which was given to him by the evil Queen of the Night... who incidentally also steals the show.

Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter) by Weber (1821). This is a Pact with the Devil story.... the specific pact in this instance relating to the manufacture of magic bullets which always hit their target. The catch is that the seventh and last bullet does what the Devil—or rather the demon Samiel—wants it to... after which he takes your soul as per the standard agreement. The picture above illustrates the Wolf’s Glen scene, in which the magic bullets are forged while various spirits and demons look on. The whole scene is viewable on YouTube in two parts, here and here.

Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) by Wagner (1843). The tale of the Flying Dutchman is a distinctly Fortean piece of folklore, about an old, ghostly ship that is occasionally glimpsed by sailors, its captain having been cursed to sail the seas forever. The original legend dates from the 17th century, but the opera turns it into a characteristically 19th century gothic romance. This is very early Wagner, and he went on to bigger and better things. It’s always struck me that, if the only thing that was known about Wagner was his operatic subject-matter, he would be considered an archetypal New Ager! You’ve got Celtic legends in Tristan und Isolde, the Holy Grail in Parsifal and paganism in the Ring – including this awesome invocation of the Earth Goddess!

La Nonne Sanglante (The Bleeding Nun) by Gounod (1854). Writing about Matthew Lewis’s novel The Monk (1796), H. P. Lovecraft wrote “In the sub-plot where the Marquis de las Cisternas meets the spectre of his erring ancestress, The Bleeding Nun, there are many enormously potent strokes; notably the visit of the animated corpse to the Marquis's bedside, and the cabalistic ritual whereby the Wandering Jew helps him to fathom and banish his dead tormentor.” This sounds like a great idea for an opera, but unfortunately Gounod’s attempt at it was a complete flop. Interestingly, the libretto was also offered to Gounod’s great contemporary Verdi, but he turned it down. If he hadn’t, The Bleeding Nun might have been up there with Rigoletto, Aida and La Traviata!

The Makropulos Case by Janáček (1926). I watched a production of this on a portable black and white TV when I was a student more than 30 years ago, and even then it occurred to me that it’s one of the few operas where the plot actually makes sense. The central character is a young woman named Emilia Marty, who takes an interest in a legal case that has been running for a century – and who talks about events of the 1820s as if she had been there. It gradually emerges that she’s lived for hundreds of years, using various different names all having the initials EM. But there’s an explanation for this which makes perfect sense. Anyone who is familiar with the story of John Dee and Edward Kelley will know that the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552 – 1612) was obsessed with alchemy and the search for eternal life. Rudolf was based in Prague, which is where The Makropulos Case is set (Janáček was a Czech composer). When an alchemist named Hieronymus Makropulos offered Rudolf a life-extending potion, the Emperor asked him to test it on the alchemist’s daughter, Elina Makropulos, first. This caused her to fall into a coma, and the Emperor changed his mind about using the potion... but when Elina woke up a week later she discovered she had stopped aging! Hence her survival into the 20th century.

Wagner Dream by Jonathan Harvey (2007). Richard Wagner died of a heart attack in February 1883, at the age of 69. But, according to this opera, he didn’t give up without a Tibetan Book of the Dead style struggle. He was just embarking on his last opera, Die Sieger, and he argues with his spirit guide Vairochana that he ought to be allowed to go back and finish it. Wagner Dream is an opera within an opera (Wagner’s opera Die Sieger, as imagined by Harvey, framed inside Harvey’s own opera about Wagner’s battle against death). Die Sieger is set in ancient India, where the Buddha is busy setting up his community of monks. The hero is a young monk named Ananda who is trying to persuade the Buddha to allow women to join the monastic order. But isn’t that a bit far-fetched? Wagner may have been into a few New Age beliefs like Paganism and Celtic mythology, but surely not Buddhism? And feminist Buddhism at that? But it’s all true. Back in the 1850s, Wagner really did write a synopsis of Die Sieger along exactly these lines, and he really did return to the idea shortly before his death. I was aware of that (it’s mentioned by Philip K. Dick in VALIS, and in turn I referred to it in my Worldcon talk about Parsifal as Proto-SF)... but I’ve only just found out about Wagner Dream. Now I’m kicking myself that I missed its London performance last year – although there is a short clip of an earlier Dutch production on YouTube.

Maxwell’s Demon

There was a two-part documentary on BBC4 last week called Order and Disorder, which among other things discussed the subject of Maxwell’s Demon (left, with presenter Jim Al-Khalili). Maxwell’s Demon is the only demon you are likely to come across in the average physics textbook, and—as far as I know—the only supernatural entity that has been subjected to rigorous scientific analysis. But it turns out the analysis has major implications for any purported “supernatural being” of a non-physical nature, whether you call it a demon, angel, ghost or anything else.

The aim here isn’t to prove or disprove the existence of non-physical entities, but to address the question of whether—if such entities exist—they would be able to interact with the physical world in a way that breaks the laws of physics. At first sight, this is a no-brainer: surely a non-physical entity, by definition, can act outside the constraints of physical laws. But the catch is in the word “interact”—it turns out that as soon as the demon (or whatever) tries to interact with the physical world, it finds itself caught up in the inexorable laws of physics.

Many physics students will have encountered Maxwell’s Demon in their first year at university. This particular demon is the central character in a “thought experiment” originally proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1871. The experiment involves a box divided by an impermeable partition into two halves, each containing air that is initially at the same temperature. In other words, the two halves of the box start out in thermal equilibrium. The demon is imagined to be microscopically small, with hyper-acute senses that can detect the motions of air molecules on both sides of the partition. By some unspecified supernatural (non-physical) means the demon is assumed to operate a tiny shutter in the partition—allowing slower-moving molecules to move from the left-hand side to the right-hand side, and faster moving molecules from the right-hand side to the left-hand side. Over time the left-hand side will become hotter and the right-hand side cooler—in other words, the two halves are no longer in thermal equilibrium.

This situation is a direct violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics—or to put it in layman’s terms, it breaks one of the fundamental laws of physics. The fact that Maxwell’s Demon is a demon—a non-physical, supernatural entity—is absolutely crucial to the thought experiment. It’s not that Maxwell, with the limitations of his Victorian perspective, had never heard the word “nanobot” so he used the word demon instead. A nanobot, if such a thing existed, couldn’t do what the demon can do. A nanobot, being a part of the physical world, wouldn’t violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It would have to expend energy in opening and closing the shutter, and that’s fine—moving heat from one place to another by expending energy is what Victorian thermodynamics was all about. The thought experiment only works if the demon is a truly non-physical entity.

Personally I suspect Maxwell would have been astonished that his thought-experiment would feature so prominently in a TV documentary about information theory almost a century and a half later. I don’t think he had any such profound implications in mind. I think he was just trying to dramatize the point that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is predicated on an assumption of randomness, and that if something intervened to compromise that randomness then the Law would no longer be true. This contrasts with other scientific laws of the time, such as the Law of Gravity or Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism, which don’t require any assumptions of randomness.

In the TV programme, however, Jim Al-Khalili presented the story of Maxwell’s Demon as if Maxwell had some visionary inkling of 21st century information theory and was struggling to get to grips with it. While I’m sure that’s romantic nonsense, the fact remains that 21st century information theory does have something startling to say about Maxwell’s Demon. It turns out that, if the essential information processing that has to go on inside the Demon’s brain is taken into account, then it doesn’t violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics after all.

As I said at the beginning, I suspect this is a general result for all supernatural entities, real or imagined, that try to interact with the physical world. No matter how non-physical they are themselves, at some level they have to conform to the laws of the physical universe when they interact with it.

A Fortean History of Somerset

I was very pleased to be given the opportunity to write a volume on Somerset for the Bloody British History series from The History Press. This is my kind of history – all the good bits and none of the boring bits. As well as the eponymous “bloody” history (prehistoric cannibals, Viking invaders, Catholic-massacring Puritans and Victorian murderers) there is no shortage of more offbeat items to interest a Fortean audience:

• Joseph of Arimathea is reputed to have brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury in 63 AD.
• Cadbury Castle may have been the inspiration for the legend of King Arthur’s Camelot – it was certainly the stronghold of a powerful warrior chief around the time Arthur is presumed to have lived.
• When the Saxons invaded Somerset in the 7th century, they found that the locals believed Saint Patrick was buried at Glastonbury... this may not have been true (see Saint Patrick of Glastonbury?) but it did wonders for the pilgrimage trade.
• During the 12th century, when Glastonbury Abbey was in desperate need of funds for rebuilding work, the monks dug up an even more lucrative pilgrimage attraction – nothing less than the bones of King Arthur himself!
• At their height, the Knights Templar owned much of the land in Somerset, and at two Templar sites symbolic “heads” have been found that might be related to the mysterious Head that the Templars are supposed to have worshipped (much more detail is given in Juliet Faith’s book The Knights Templar in Somerset).
• When Henry VIII ransacked Glastonbury Abbey in 1539, he found a vast treasure trove of gold and jewels that he was quick to turn into much-needed cash for the royal coffers. Relics – including the reputed horn of a unicorn – that had no obvious financial value were thrown away. Later in the 16th century, a man rummaging through the ruins of the Abbey found what he claimed was the alchemists’ secret formula that would transmute base metals into gold. That man was Edward Kelley... soon to become the most notorious and sought-after occultist in Europe.
• The “whistling” ghost of Mother Leakey from Minehead was famous enough to be described in some detail by Sir Walter Scott. Less well known is the role the ghost played in the downfall and execution of John Atherton – a man from Bridgwater who became the first and only Anglican Bishop to be hanged for sodomy.
• Much of the theoretical basis for the 17th century witch-hunts, in America as well as England, was laid down by the book Saducismus Triumphatus by Somerset-born Joseph Glanvill – who has a reasonable claim to having been the world’s first paranormal investigator (see The Daemon of Tedworth).
• One of the best-documented exorcisms of the 18th century took place in the Temple Church in Bristol, but the subject was a man from Somerset: George Lukins, the Yatton demoniac. In the same century, another Somerset man, a professional geologist named John Beaumont, wrote extensively about a race of demons that he believed had a personal vendetta against him.
• Some years before she wrote Frankenstein, Mary Shelley attended a lecture by the Somerset-based electrical experimenter Andrew Crosse. The latter subsequently gained an undeserved reputation as a “real-life Frankenstein”, when the press announced that he had created artificial life in his laboratory – something Crosse himself never claimed to have done.
• During the 19th century, a former Church of England vicar named Henry Prince set up a “free love commune” in rural Somerset that he called the Abode of Love, where he and the other members indulged in Hieros Gamos style sex rituals behind 15-foot high walls.

Bloody British History: Somerset is available from Amazon UK and all good booksellers.

Descent into Limbo

Here is an unusual painting I saw in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery a couple of days ago. If you look carefully (click on the image and then click "Show original" to see a larger version) there are a number of odd things about the picture, but perhaps the most obvious is that it depicts Christ in a rather unflattering rear view. They say you should never turn your back on the audience, but that is exactly what Jesus is doing here! His identity is indicated by a halo and by the "Banner of the Resurrection" -- symbolism that would have been instantly recognizable in 1475 when the picture was painted.

The painting is entitled The Descent of Christ into Limbo, and is the work of the Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini. It is loosely based on an engraving by Bellini's brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna. The scene depicted was very popular in medieval Christianity, even though it is not mentioned at all in the Bible. The idea is that, during the three days between Christ's death and the Resurrection, he descended into Hell to rescue all the Old Testament Patriarchs and Prophets who had been incarcerated there. The first to be released were Adam and Eve, together with their "good" son Abel: these are the three naked figures on the right of the picture (Abel's brother Cain, as the world's first murderer, was left in Hell).

The story of Christ's decent into Hell was first told in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, written several centuries after the canonical gospels. In the original version, the idea was that the Patriarchs and Prophets were suffering in Hell along with regular sinners, but as time went on theologians decided they weren't happy with this. They invented the concept of "Limbo" (a Latin word meaning "edge") which was a relatively nice part of Hell reserved for virtuous but unbaptized individuals.

By the time of the renaissance, when educated Christians were developing a new respect for the pre-Christian culture of ancient Greece and Rome, the idea of Limbo became indispensable. When Dante wrote his Divine Comedy in the early 14th century, it was in Limbo that he met his tour guide, the Roman poet Virgil. The latter still had a clear recollection of Christ's visit: "I beheld the arrival of a Mighty One, crowned with the token of victory. He delivered from this place the shade of our first parent and of Abel his son, and that of Noah, and of Moses the lawgiver and servant of God; Abraham the patriarch and David the king, Israel with his father and his sons and Rachel for whom he served so long, and many more; and he made them blessed."

The story of the descent into Limbo is what might be called "folk Christianity" -- a legend concocted for the masses which symbolizes a purely spiritual concept. As everyone knows (thanks to Robert Langdon) symbolism was of paramount importance in medieval Christianity. Some of the symbolism in Bellini's painting is obvious: for example the half-human, half-reptilian demons symbolize the torments of Hell, while the cross-holding figure on the left (Saint Dysmas, who according to the Gospel of Nicodemus was crucified at the same time as Jesus) symbolizes the followers of Christ. Ivy, which can be seen growing on the rock behind Dysmas, was a well-established symbol for everlasting life.

The strangest thing in the picture is close to the bottom and easy to miss. The figure of Christ is trampling on the broken gates of Hell, which of course makes perfect sense. But if you look closely, underneath the broken gates is something that looks like a large book. I've no idea what this is supposed to mean -- and it's one of the few features of Bellini's painting which is absent from the Mantegna engraving. A big book, in the Middle Ages, would inevitably have meant the Bible -- which doesn't make sense in this context. Possibly it's meant to be just the Old Testament, and to symbolize the fact that, by freeing the Patriarchs from Hell, Jesus is effectively bringing an end to the legacy of the Old Testament. But that still sounds decidedly heretical to me!

Gods of the Bible

The religion of the Bible is emphatically monotheistic. But no culture exists in isolation, and the ancient Hebrews and early Christians rubbed shoulders with other civilizations that were less frugal in their choice of deities. The New Testament, written in the early days of the Roman Empire, makes several references to well-known gods and goddesses of the then-thriving European pagan tradition -- such as Jupiter/Zeus, Mercury/Hermes and Diana/Artemis.

In contrast, the pagan deities of the Old Testament are far less familiar, coming as they do from long-dead civilizations. Perhaps the most famous of them is Dagon, if only because H. P. Lovecraft invented a modern-day "Esoteric Order of Dagon" in The Shadow over Innsmouth. In the Bible, Dagon is the chief god of the Philistines -- who are the arch-enemies of the Israelites in several Old Testament books. In chapter 5 of the first book of Samuel, the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant and place it inside the Temple of Dagon at Ashdod... where the Ark proceeds to wreak havoc on Dagon's statue! Many centuries later, the same Temple of Dagon was finally destroyed in chapter 10 of the first book of Maccabees (as depicted in the accompanying detail from an engraving by Gustave Doré).

"Dagon" was also the name of an Assyrian god, who may or may not have been connected with the Philistine god of the same name. The Assyrian Dagon had the head of a fish... which is probably where HPL got his inspiration for the denizens of Innsmouth! This version of Dagon is closely related to another Assyrian deity, Nisroch, who is depicted with the head of an eagle. Nisroch is mentioned in the Bible, in the context of the assassination of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (a historically documented event that occurred in 681 BC). According to 2 Kings 19, the assassination took place while Sennacherib was praying to the god Nisroch.

Of all the references to pagan gods in the Bible, by far the most frequently mentioned is Baal -- which was probably just a generic word for "pagan god" (the name sometimes appears in the plural, Baalim). But the record for the most gods in one place goes to verses 30 and 31 of 2 Kings 17: Succoth-benoth, Nergal, Ashima, Nibhaz, Tartak, Adrammelech and Anammelech. These deities come from a variety of different cultures, all of which were forcibly resettled by the Assyrians in Northern Israel during the late 8th century BC.

While most of the "false" gods and goddesses mentioned in the Bible were associated with outsiders, some of them were worshipped by the Hebrews themselves. King Solomon is reported to have placed idols of Ashtoreth, Chemosh, Milcom and Molech in the temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings 11), where they remained for centuries until they were destroyed by King Josiah (2 Kings 23).

The names of many of the Bible's pagan deities -- such as Baal, Dagon, Ashtoreth, Nisroch, Molech, Chemosh, Nergal and Adrammelech -- were appropriated by mediaeval occultists as the names of demons, and they regularly feature in "demonologies" of the period. More surprisingly, many of the names also turn up as "fallen angels" in Paradise Lost, by the Puritan poet John Milton. The English Puritans hated idolatry (and they destroyed countless works of art to prove it), so one might expect them to dismiss the objects of idolatry as fictitious deities existing only in the minds of their misguided worshippers. Instead, Milton chose to give them validity by suggesting they have a solid existence... albeit as Lords of Hell!

The Ancient Mariner

On a recent trip to the North Somerset coast, I came across this rather unlikely statue of a man with a dead albatross hanging around his neck. Obviously it depicts the Ancient Mariner, from the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but what's it doing in the small fishing village of Watchet? The answer is simply that Coleridge used to live in this part of the world... in fact Watchet is only a few miles from the place where he had his famous encounter with The Person from Porlock.

As mentioned in my Porlock piece, Coleridge was a bit of an opium-head... a fact worth bearing in mind when trying to make sense of The Ancient Mariner. It reads almost like something from the pages of Weird Tales magazine -- a far cry from the cosy "gothic horror" that was all the rage when the poem was written in 1798. The Ancient Mariner is a tale of supernatural horror, but there's nothing cosy or familiar about it. Even H.P. Lovecraft remarked on its "sinister daemonism".

As in Lovecraft's own At the Mountains of Madness, the horror in Coleridge's poem emanates from the Antarctic regions. And it's something much less tangible than an albatross. The Mariner's shipmates hung the bird around his neck as punishment for shooting it, because they thought it was a friendly spirit that had brought them good fortune. This was mere superstition, of course, and the bird was really just a bird. Unfortunately, it was a bird that happened to be a particular favorite of an immaterial (and distinctly unfriendly) creature that inhabited the South Pole... and that's when the weirdness really starts! As Coleridge says in a side-note: "A spirit had followed them; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more."

Here Coleridge is using a trick that Lovecraft later made his own -- hitting the reader with a mixture of real and spurious references in order to add verisimilitude to his tale. Josephus, of course, was a famous historian who wrote on a great number of subjects... although immaterial spirits of the Earth wasn't one of them! On the other hand, the less well-known Michael Psellus did produce a treatise called De Operatione Daemonium in the 11th century, which does indeed describe ethereal spirits of the kind imagined by Coleridge.

The polar daemon dispatches a couple of avatars in a spectral ship to deal with the hapless crew, all of whom are slain except for the Ancient Mariner. The latter seems condemned to a slow death in the freezing, windless ocean, while the eyes of his dead crewmates continue to stare accusingly at him. Unexpectedly, Heaven comes to his rescue (for the simple, and typically bizarre, reason that he manages to look on a writhing mass of sea-snakes with something less than utter revulsion). The corpses of the crewmen are reanimated... but not with their own, now departed souls, but with angelic spirits.

There is one final bit of weirdness. As the ship speeds homewards at an unimaginable pace, there is still no trace of a breeze. A disembodied voice asks "But why drives on that ship so fast, without or wave or wind?"... to which a second voice answers "The air is cut away before, and closes from behind." That sounds very much like the mode of operation of William Heath's "Grand Vacuum Tube" described in An Intercontinental Rapid Transit System (1829)!

Devil-worship

The Devil of mediaeval Christianity was a thoroughly unpleasant character, and it's difficult to understand why anyone would have wanted to worship him. Yet the idea that certain individuals indulged in "Devil-worship" was common during the Middle Ages. There are at least three different (and completely independent) explanations for this:

[1] Paganism. Before Christianity came to Europe, there were several perfectly benign pagan deities who had superficially "Devil-like" characteristics, such as horns or cloven feet, or were associated with goats or serpents. One example is the Celtic God Cernunnos, pictured on the left (this is a modern representation on display in the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall). It's possible that worship of such deities survived in secret into the Middle Ages, and when encountered by Christians was misinterpreted as Devil-worship (It's also possible that the iconography of the Christian Devil was deliberately modelled on these pagan deities, in order to deter people from worshipping them).

[2] Gnosticism. This was a variant form of Christianity, which existed for several centuries alongside the mainstream form. Gnostics worshipped Christ, who they believed was the Son of the one true God... but at the same time they believed the God described in the Book of Genesis was an impostor who had created a world that was flawed and inherently evil. In this view, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was arguably on Christ's side, since he was an enemy of the pseudo-God! At least one mediaeval Gnostic sect, the Ophites, actually worshipped the Serpent... although this wasn't really Devil-worship, because in their interpretation the Serpent was the Good Guy and the Creator was the Bad Guy!

[3] The Occult. The idea that certain individuals had dealings with the Devil (or one of his subordinate demons) was common in medieval folklore, as attested by the legends of Faust or Pan Twardowski (see A Polish Pact with the Devil). Undoubtedly some people really did try to summon up demons by magical means -- although I wouldn't be surprised if these attempts were inspired by the legends, rather than the other way around. Whether this counts as Devil-worship is a moot point, since the individuals concerned are generally portrayed as being Christians who are revolted by the thought of the Devil -- but persuaded to  deal with him by the promise of worldly power. In reality, if such things ever did take place in the Middle Ages, I suspect the participants were just bored, over-educated cynics who had no expectations of anything supernatural occurring... much like the people who enact "Satanic rituals" in our own supposedly more enlightened times!

A sixteenth century dinosaur

At first glance, the strange animal pictured on the left looks like a small theropod dinosaur -- or at any rate, a rather cartoony caricature of one. Admittedly it has some undinosaurlike features such as horns and long droopy ears, and it doesn't appear to have any forelimbs... but with its thick tail, birdlike legs and reptilian head it looks more like a dinosaur than anything else!

The problem is, whatever the animal was meant to be when it was painted, it can't have been a dinosaur. The picture dates from the sixteenth century, long before dinosaurs were first reconstructed from fossilized bones. It's a detail taken from a large painting by Marten de Vos (1532 - 1603), now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, which depicts The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

According to legend, Saint Anthony was tempted in the desert -- not by Satan or some other solitary tempter, but by a whole host of demons of various shapes and forms. This has made the subject a perennial favourite with artists, since it allows their imagination to run free in the depiction of the demons! In the 15th and 16th centuries it was common for demons to be depicted as fanciful chimeras, or combinations of several different creatures. Even Michelangelo got in on the act! The detail on the right, taken from a copy of a German engraving that Michelangelo painted when he was twelve or thirteen, shows Anthony being hit over the head by something that looks like a cross between a fish, a hedgehog and an elephant!

So what about Marten de Vos's "dinosaur"? He probably meant it to be a demonic cross between some kind of bird and a couple of other animals (though I can't imagine what)... and the result just happens to look like a dinosaur! Whatever it is, it's a long way from being the weirdest thing in the painting -- the full version is shown below.

[For similar posts, see Sixteenth century alien and Goya's Shadow.]

Black Easter

Rituals aimed at summoning demons from Hell are described in countless works of fiction, but probably none so comprehensive or accurate (with respect to genuine occult writings of the mediaeval period) as James Blish's short novel Black Easter, or Faust Aleph-Null (1968). The novel centres around an experiment designed to release no less than forty-eight of the most senior demons for one night only, and then return them to Hell. As a safeguard, the experiment is scheduled for Easter Sunday, the least auspicious day of the year from a demon's point of view. But in spite of all precautions, the experiment goes disastrously wrong. In an apocalyptic final scene the demon Baphomet triumphantly declares "God is dead."

In common with other science fiction writers of his generation such as Eric Frank Russell and Fredric Brown, James Blish was an avid follower of Charles Fort. His most Fortean novel is Jack of Eagles (1952), about a group of people with "wild talents" -- the book contains several references both to Fort himself and to the Fortean Society.

For the majority of readers, however, Blish will be best known for the Star Trek adaptations he produced in the 1960s and early 70s, and for Spock Must Die (1970) -- the very first original Star Trek novel. Despite the melodramatic title, this is quite a serious book (and Fortean in its own way), with discussions of solipsist philosophy, tachyon physics and the literary style of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake! On the other hand, the novel is probably infuriating to hardened Star Trek fans, since Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest all talk exactly like characters in a James Blish novel, and nothing like their counterparts on TV!

Another mildly Fortean novel by James Blish is Midsummer Century (1972), which deals inter alia with mystical experiences and ESP. My copy of the book (left) was signed by Blish at the Science Fiction Easter Convention in Coventry in 1975... sadly only a few months before he died. During the convention, at one of the panel discussions, he made it clear that at the time he wrote Black Easter he meant it to depict the end of the world, and had no intention of writing a sequel. Eventually his publisher persuaded him otherwise (The Day after Judgment, 1971), but his first reaction was that the publisher's request was a joke -- he suggested the opening line of the sequel would have to be "Meanwhile, in another Universe..."

Underground Art

The huge salt mine at Wieliczka in Southern Poland has attracted tourists since the fifteenth century -- the astronomer Copernicus was among its first visitors. In 1978 the mine was included in the original batch of thirteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites (only two of the other sites were in Europe). Besides its size (over 300 kilometres of tunnels) its main attraction consists of numerous images, statues, and even whole churches carved out of salt.

The mine even has its own demon (the Skarbnik) and its own saint (Saint Kinga of Poland). The Skarbnik (pictured on the left) is said to haunt the tunnels of the mine, and to guard its treasures (the name means "treasurer" in Polish). Saint Kinga (1224–92) was a Hungarian Princess who, according to legend, first discovered the salt deposits at Wieliczka. The largest of the underground churches (more than 50 metres in length) is dedicated to her. As can be seen in the picture below, Saint Kinga's church boasts a wall-carving which is a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper... the original of which didn't make the World Heritage list until two years later in 1980! [Thanks to Ewa Babarowski for providing background information for this post.]

The Daemon of Tedworth

The picture above was taken by Paul Jackson while out for a walk yesterday near his home in Wiltshire. It shows Tedworth House, which was the scene of one of the best documented poltergeist cases of the seventeenth century. At that time, the house was owned by a man named Mompesson, who had a dispute in 1662 with a vagrant who had been a drummer in Cromwell's army -- resulting in the latter being sent to prison. While the drummer was incarcerated, Mompesson's house was subjected to a barrage of unexplained phenomena ranging from drummings and other noises to sulphurous smells, strange lights and objects being hurled around. These phenomena were blamed on the drummer, who was said to have used witchcraft to summon an evil spirit, or daemon -- hence the case has become known as "the Drummer of Tedworth" or "the Daemon of Tedworth".

The Tedworth case features prominently in Joseph Glanvill's book Saducismus Triumphatus: Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions, published posthumously in 1681. A facsimile of the first volume of this work is available online, but unfortunately the Tedworth "Case Study" appears in Volume 2!

However, there is a brief mention of the Tedworth Daemon in the publisher's introduction to Volume 1 (see extract on the left), in which he complains bitterly about skeptical non-believers... whom he refers to picturesquely as "Exploders of Apparitions and Witches".

Glanvill's book has another claim to fame, in that it was one of the shudderingly blasphemous tomes referred to by H .P. Lovecraft. Aficionados of HPL will be familiar with the way he scattered book references (both real and fictitious) throughout his stories. The following is taken from "The Festival" (1925):

"...I saw that the books were hoary and mouldy, and that they included old Morryster's wild Marvells of Science, the terrible Saducismus Triumphatus of Joseph Glanvill, published in 1681, the shocking Daemonolatreia of Remigius, printed in 1595 at Lyons, and worst of all, the unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred..."

The Daemonolatreia is a real book like the Saducismus, while "old Morryster's Marvells of Science" was invented by Ambrose Bierce in his short story "The Man and the Snake" (1890)... and the Necronomicon, of course, is Lovecraft's own most notorious invention.

POSTSCRIPT 1/3/11... Further searching has uncovered an online copy of the second volume of the Saducismus, courtesy of Cornell University. The start of the Tedworth account can be found here. The following quote, referring to the attitude of skeptics, is particularly amusing: "But 'twas bad logick to conclude in matters of fact from a single negative, and such a one against numerous affirmatives... By the same way of reasoning, I may infer that there were never any robberies done on Salisbury Plain, Hounslow Heath, or the other noted places, because I have often travelled all those ways, and yet was never robbed; and the Spaniard inferred well that said there was no Sun in England, because he had been six weeks here, and never saw it."