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Welcome to a Shining Ones Webpage

Phantacea Publications in Print

Phantacea Publications in Print

- 'Phantacea Phase Two' 2016-2018 - The 'Launch 1980' story cycle - 'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' Fantasy Trilogy - The '1000 Days' Mini-Novels - The phantacea Graphic Novels -

Phantacea Phase Two 2016-2018

Decimation Damnation

E-cover for Decimation Damnation, cover collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2016

Published in 2016; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here;

Hidden Headgames

Front cover for Hidden Headgames, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2017

Published in 2017; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here;

Daemonic Desperation

Promo collage entitled Daemonic Desperation

Tentative cover for Dem-Des; will probably be changed before it's published; scheduled to be released in 2018;

Phantacea Phase Two physically began with 2016's "Decimation Damnation", the first mini-novel extracted from the as yet open-ended saga of 'Wilderwitch's Babies'. It was set between the 9th of Tantalar and the 1st of Yamana, 5980 Year of the Dome. However, its follow-up, "Hidden Headgames" was set between the 30th of Maruta and the 14th of Tantalar in that same year. "Daemonic Desperation" picks up Babes near the end of the second week of Yamana and continues through the Summer Solstice of 5981. As the last known member of the Damnation Brigade, if the Witch was fortunate to survive Dec-Dam, alive and pregnant, she may not be so lucky come the end of Dem-Des. Oddly enough, her unborn babies may yet still be both viable and unborn by then.
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The 'Launch 1980' Story Cycle

The War of the Apocalyptics

Front cover of War Pox, artwork by Ian Bateson, 2009

Published in 2009; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here;

Nuclear Dragons

Nuclear Dragons front cover, artwork by Ian Bateson, 2013

Published in 2013; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here;

Helios on the Moon

Front cover for Helios on the Moon, artwork by Ricardo Sandoval, 2014

Published in 2014; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here;

The 'Launch 1980' story cycle comprises three complete, multi-character mosaic novels, "The War of the Apocalyptics", "Nuclear Dragons" and "Helios on the Moon", as well as parts of two others, "Janna Fangfingers" and "Goddess Gambit". Together they represent creator/writer Jim McPherson's now concluded project to novelize the Phantacea comic book series.

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'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' Epic Fantasy

Feeling Theocidal

Front Cover for Feel Theo, artwork by Verne Andru, 2008

Published in 2008; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

The 1000 Days of Disbelief

Front cover of The Thousand Days of Disbelief, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2010

Published as three mini-novels, 2010/11; main webpage is here

Goddess Gambit

Front cover for Goddess Gambit by Verne Andru, 2012

Published in 2012; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

Circa the Year of Dome 2000, Anvil the Artificer, a then otherwise unnamed, highborn Lazaremist later called Tvasitar Smithmonger, dedicated the first three devic talismans, or power foci, that he forged out of molten Brainrock to the Trigregos Sisters.

The long lost, possibly even dead, simultaneous mothers of devakind hated their offspring for abandoning them on the far-off planetary Utopia of New Weir. Not surprisingly, their fearsome talismans could be used to kill Master Devas (devils).

For most of twenty-five hundred years, they belonged to the recurring deviant, Chrysaor Attis, time after time proven a devaslayer. On Thrygragon, Mithramas Day 4376 YD, he turned them over to his Great God of a half-father, Thrygragos Varuna Mithras, to use against his two brothers, Unmoving Byron and Little Star Lazareme, in hopes of usurping their adherents and claiming them as his own.

Hundreds of years later, these selfsame thrice-cursed Godly Glories helped turn the devil-worshippers of Sedon's Head against their seemingly immortal, if not necessarily undying gods. Now, five hundred years after the 1000 Days of Disbelief, they've been relocated.

The highest born, surviving devic goddesses want them for themselves; want to thereby become incarnations of the Trigregos Sisters on the Hidden Continent. An Outer Earthling, one who has literally fallen out of the sky after the launching of the Cosmic Express, gets to them first ...

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The '1000 Days' Mini-Novels

The Death's Head Hellion

- Sedonplay -

Front cover for The Death's Head Hellion, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2010

Published in 2010; main web presence is here; Character Companion starts here; ordering lynx are here;

Contagion Collectors

- Sedon Plague -

Front cover for Contagion Collectors, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2010

Published in 2010; main web presence is here; Character Companion starts here; ordering lynx are here;

Janna Fangfingers

- Sedon Purge -

Front cover for Janna Fangfingers, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2011

Published in 2011; two storylines recounted side-by-side, the titular one narrated by the Legendarian in 5980, the other indirectly leading into the 'Launch 1980' story cycle; main web presence is here; Character Companion starts here; ordering lynx are here;

In the Year of the Dome 4825, Morgan Abyss, the Melusine Master of the Utopian Weirdom of Cabalarkon, seizes control of Primeval Lilith, the ageless, seemingly unkillable Demon Queen of the Night. The eldritch earthborn is the real half-mother of the invariably mortal Sed-sons but, once she has hold of her, aka Lethal Lily, Master Morgan proceeds to trap the Moloch Sedon Himself.

In the midst of the bitter, century-long expansion of the Lathakran Empire, the Hidden Headworld's three tribes of devil-gods are forced to unite in an effort to release their All-Father. Unfortunately for them, they're initially unaware Master Morg, the Death's Head Hellion herself, has also got hold of the Trigregos Talismans, devic power foci that can actually kill devils, and Sedon's thought-father Cabalarkon, the Undying Utopian she'll happily slay if they dare attack her Weirdom.

Utopians from Weir have never given up seeking to wipe devils off not just the face of the Inner Earth, but off the planet itself. Their techno and biomages, under the direction of the Weirdom of Cabalarkon's extremely long-lived High Illuminary, Quoits Tethys, have determined there is only one sure way to do that -- namely, to infect the devils' Inner Earth worshippers with fatal plagues brought in from the Outer Earth.

Come All-Death Day there are more Dead Things Walking than Living Beings Talking. Believe it or not, that's the good news.

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phantacea Graphic Novels

Forever and Forty Days

- The Genesis of Phantacea -

Front cover of Forever and Forty Days; artwork by Ian Fry and Ian Bateson, ca 1990

Published in 1990; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

 

The Damnation Brigade

- Phantacea Revisited 1 -

Front cover of The Damnation Brigade, artwork by Ian Bateson, retouching by Chris Chuckry 2012

Published in 2013; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

Cataclysm Catalyst

- Phantacea Revisited 2 -

Front cover for Cataclysm Catalyst, artwork by Verne Andru, 2013

Published in 2014, main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

Kadmon Heliopolis had one life. It ended in October 1968. The Male Entity has had many lives. In his fifth, he and his female counterpart, often known as Miracle Memory, engendered more so than created the Moloch Sedon. They believe him to be the Devil Incarnate. They've been attempting to kill him ever since. Too bad it's invariably he, Heliosophos (Helios called Sophos the Wise), who gets killed instead.

On the then still Whole Earth circa the Year 4000 BCE, one of their descendants, Xuthros Hor, the tenth patriarch of Golden Age Humanity, puts into action a thought-foolproof, albeit mass murderous, plan to succeed where the Dual Entities have always failed. He unleashes the Genesea. The Devil takes a bath.

Fifty-nine hundred and eighty years later, New Century Enterprises launches the Cosmic Express from Centauri Island. It never reaches Outer Space; not all of it anyhow. As a stunning consequence of its apparent destruction, ten extraordinary supranormals are reunited, bodies, souls and minds, after a quarter century in what they've come to consider Limbo. They name themselves the Damnation Brigade. And so it appears they are -- if perhaps not so much damned as doomed.

At least one person survives the launching of the Cosmic Express. He literally falls out of the sky -- on the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head. An old lady saves him. Except this old lady lives in a golden pagoda, rides vultures and has a third eye. She also doesn't stay old long. He becomes her willing soldier, acquires the three Sacred Objects and goes on a rampage, against his own people, those that live.

Meanwhile, Centauri Island, the launch site of the Cosmic Express, comes under attack from Hell's Horsemen. Only it's not horses they ride. It's Atomic Firedrakes!

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The Shining Ones

Mithradite Master Devas

- Thumbnail Lynx to many female Master Devas - Apocalyptics Row - The Second-Born Apple Goddesses - Mithras's Ninth - Gorgons & The Twelfth - Apocalyptics and their War-Pox Allies - Bottom of Page Lynx - Re the Background Image -

This webpage contains a collection of character-suggestive images and excerpts from War-Pox, Feel Theo and its immediate sequel 'The 1000 Days of Disbelief'.

All are specific to Master Devas, the 3rd generation of Sed-Head's devil-gods as they were on or after Mithramas Day, 4376 Year of the Dome (Thrygragon)

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The 2nd-born Mithradite Apple Goddesses


Apple Goddess Collage most specific to Divine Coueranna, graphic prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

The Little Green Apple of Juvenescence

Apple Goddess Collage most specific to Bouncing Belle, graphic prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

The Ruby Red Apple of Concupiscence


Collage on Faceless Strife prepared by Jim McPherson, 2007,  integral images taken from Web

The Golden Apple of Discord (sort of)


9th-born Mithradites


Collage reminiscent of Pyrame Silverstar, prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2008

The Pauper Priestess
Pyrame Silverstar, devic half-mother of the Sed-sons and the fabulously female Perpetual Presence


Collage suggestive of Tralalorn and her White Dwarf talisman, prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

Tralalorn: Demon Child or 9th-born Mithradite?
The fabulously childish Perpetual Presence shown with her faces-roiling, feces-reeking, faeriedust-spitting Powder Puff Power Focus


Image suggestive of Cathune Bubastis, a Egyptian cat goddess as taken from Web

Cathune Bubastis - The Apocalyptic of Drought

'Domus Delle Gorgoni'


Collage featuring the 3 Mithradite gorgon, prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

The Legendarian claims that the 3 Mithradite Gorgons (the Medusa, the Cockatrice and the Basilisk) are, in reality, from the same brood of lowborn triplets


Collage featuring various shots of Medusa, prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

The re-embodied Medusa may not be a 12th born Mithradite but, howsoever grandiosely, she declares herself Mater Matare (Mother Murder), the Apocalyptic of Death, on Thrygragon, 4376 YD


Vetala as Moon Goddess Fecundity, image of a Judith figure shot in Florence, Italy, by Jim McPherson 2008

Until "The 1000 Days of Disbelief", her fellow Master Devas generally called Nergal Vetala Fecundity

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Apocalyptics Row

The main entries on the Apocalyptics that appear in "The War of the Apocalyptics" begin here. However, immediately below are a few representations of Apocalyptics that I've either shot or made note of over the decades of phantacea.

Should mention that, within the phantacea Mythos, there are at least eight Apocalyptics excluding Death. They include Plague, War, Disaster, Drought, Famine, Flood, Illness, and Pestilence. The main lynx for most of them are here, here or here.

There are also a number of Deaths, including three whose last name is Thanatos, one Nergalid, at least one Byronic, and Mundane Murder, who as per here egocentrically started calling herself Mater Matare (Mother Murder), the Apocalyptic of Death, during the course of Feel Theo.

All except Pestilence appeared, howsoever briefly, in Feel Theo. Only the big four depicted in the lower part of the Apocalyptics collage next column down appear in War-Pox.

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There are numerous depictions of Apocalyptics and/or the consequences of them riding by. Perhaps the most famous of them is by Albrecht Durer (1471-1528).

Collage made up of Durer and Phantacea cutouts, prepared by Jim McPherson, 2010

I dutifully cut it out (along with a different Death and a Devil from another of his woodcuts, this one entitled "The Knight") and incorporated it into this collage.

However, to my mind Durer's Apocalyptics are more representative of Thrygragos Lazareme and his three Unities (as per here).

After all, this Death (blue) carries a trident, the same as Unholy Abaddon (Chaos), whereas this War or Conquest, as he's sometimes identified (brown), has a sparking blade, the same as Lord Yajur (Order).

The clincher would be the main fellow, who wields Scales of Justice like a slingshot. I've read that this figure represents Famine.

I've further read that, in this iconography, the scales are those used in markets to measure produce (of which, in times of hunger, there wouldn't be much).

Be that as it may, just as it's Drought, not Death, who carries an hourglass in the phantacea Mythos, I tend to associate scales with Datong Harmonia (Balance).

I say that even though her power focus is the Necklace of Harmony whereas her most renowned manifestation of it are her manacles and still-attached, broken chains.

Unfortunately for my theory — namely that Durer was on the Hidden Headworld when he witnessed this particular (hence therefore non-Apocalyptic) ride — Harmony's resolutely female.

Unfortunately also, Lazareme the Libertine (masquerading in my version of Durer's ride as Disease) has never been shown, or described as, carrying a bow and arrow.

Nor would he likely be any good at firing it — let alone riding a horse. As per, especially, Feel Theo, neither are exactly his style.

Then again maybe Durer had to alter his original woodcut after returning to Outer Earth. The then approaching-omnipotent Church might have objected to him depicting a powerful woman and a clean-shaven Great God in any sort of Biblical display.

That would also explain none of them having three eyes. And, of course, in Durer's time you messed with the Church in fear of a decidedly earthly Last Judgement.

The Inquisition was at its height, Torquemada was Spain's Grand Inquisitor from 1493 until 1498 and ... whoa, hey, maybe he was on the Head too, around the same time as young Durer.

Hmm ...


(NOTES: a Byronic, Libra No-Eyes, has as her Tvasitar Talisman the Scales of Justice.

(As for the ostrich feather Egyptian Maat was often depicted using as a counterbalance when weighing someone's soul, Tvasitar gave it, in the form of a clipped quill, to Harmony's younger brother, Rumour of Lazareme.

(Further to the Apocalyptics' collage at the top of this column, some of the phantacea Fiends were taken from here while others were taken from here and here.

(Nakba Ramazar, being headless, is somewhere in the cluster. I threw in Demon Land mostly because, if it weren't for him, the primary Apocalyptics wouldn't have had anyone to possess once they reached Damnation Isle in the cosmicar.

(As for why Smiler's depicted when he never appears in War-Pox, well, um, now's hardly the time to get into that. But here's a hint anyhow.)

========

... on to next panel, down to the Apocalyptics photo essay

I shot this image in the British Museum. It and its three fellow Apocalyptics were hanging from a ceiling in a huge room off the main courtyard.

Famish, as shot in the British Museum by JIm McPherson

(Another shot, this one with most of them in it, is here. The Young Death figures with the top hat — the ones I incorporated in a different collage as per here — were shot in the same massive space.)

I'm not absolutely certain which Apocalyptic it's supposed to represent. Could be Famine, I suppose, but the big bug strongly suggests Pestilence.

The Apocalyptic of Pestilence may have been mentioned in War-Pox, though no one has as yet connected Kinsecto, an apparent supra (from the Forties and Fifties beyond the Dome) with devazurkind.


As for pHant's Famine, she's generally called Famish. As follows, along with that of Flood, a brief description of her appears in Feel Theo:

Diluvia Ran was a pastry-puffy, humanoid rain cloud prone, as one might imagine, to soppy emotionalism, whereas a fourth female with them, the last third of his Tenth, Famish by name, Famine-Hunger-Pestilence by combined attribute, was a skeletal starveling with washboard ribs and a locust’s head.

... from Theo 12: Kronos Quake


With respect to Durer's version of Death next door, as noted there the devil who wields an hourglass in the phantacea Mythos is none other than Cathune Bubastis, the Apocalyptic of Drought:

Not surprisingly, of the Ninth there was only Cathune, Desiccated Drought, she whose power focus, an hourglass, had stood in his Tholos atop Apple Isle’s Mithradium for hundreds of years and which, knowing she’d need it, he’d thoughtfully brought with him to Attis’s Praetorium.

He’d done so, perhaps, in the additional hope she might purr again – for him alone, needless to say.

... from Theo 12: Kronos Quake

The Leper's Lady (Milady Malaise, as he calls her) also appears briefly in Feel Theo:

Contrarily Sickness, as devils had Malaise, looked to be as robust and outdoorsy tanned as any of the Valkyries or Athenan War Witches, both of whom prided themselves on their fitness. As they should – for them athleticism was an occupational requirement.

... from Theo 11: Theomachy as Theomedy

Speaking of Flood, here's a shot of an Olmec head taken in Villahermosa, Mexico, during a truly devastating flood in 2007.

Shot of a flood shot embedded in sidewalk in Villahermosa, Mexico, taken by Jim McPherson in 2010

(NOTE: Long time pHant-followers will recall that I tend to use Olmec heads like this one, which date to well before the common era, as representative of Bodiless Byron; another example is here whereas an even earlier one is here.)

========

... on to next panel, down to the Apocalyptics photo essay

In Spanish this painting is entitled "Sequia, Peste, y Hambre" (according to the sign beneath it, that translates as "Drought, Plague and Famine").

Drought, Famine, Pestilence, by Pacheco, shot in Merida by Jim McPherson, 2010

One of over a dozen fabulous works hanging in the Governor's Palace across the road from the Grand Plaza of Merida, Mexico, it's by Fernando Castro Pacheco (1918- ).

I've used his work to illustrate aspects of the phantacea Mythos previously, notably — almost from day one of pH-Webworld in the mid to late Nineties — to represent John Sundown and again here, where there are cutouts from two separate Pachecos, both of which can be seen in Merida's Governor's Palace.

Yet another Pacheco I've been using online is here. In English it's entitled "Mexico's Eternal Struggle" and it too can be seen in the Governor's palace.

Finally, although it's meant to represent the West, where the sun dies everyday, I was struck by this one, in the palace's public staircase. To my mind, it has some decent Mars Bellonas in its background.

Pacheco painting purportedly representing the western sky, shot in Merida, Mexico, by Jim McPherson in 2010


This rather remarkable diorama is ages old. I can't remember exactly how many ages, as in centuries, but please take my word for it.

Liquified version of the Disease shot taken in the Victoria Albert museum in London, England

I spotted it in the Victoria Albert Museum in London, England, a number of years ago but only recently extracted it from the archives.

It's entitled "Disease", though I cut what I assume to be him (Carcinogen the Leper) out of the small shot mostly because he's depicted with wings and a long beard.

Phantacea's Plague has neither. Nor do any of the Deaths referred to above, in Apocalyptics' Row, lack either skin or clothing. One of them does carry a scythe, however.

That'd be the Byronic antique Illuminaries named Vanthysces Vastness. (Vastness refers to death. It'd be ubiquitous were it not for devils, who are damn near ever-enduring.)

Since his fellow devils call him Scarecrow, that gives me a chance to mount a particularly good looking just that, which I spotted in Hamburg, Germany, in the late Spring of 2008.

A scarecrow as art, spotted and shot in Hamburg, Germany, in 2008 by Jim McPhersonferson

(NOTE: Vanthysces, Byron's Grim Reaper, has never appeared in any of the phantacea Mythos print publications. However, as the former devic Dand of Greater Iraxas — 1980-nowadays Hadd, the Land of the Ambulatory Dead — that will no doubt change come "The Trigregos Gambit".)

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Mithras's Ninth

| Pyrame Silverstar | Tralalorn | Cathune Bubastis |

- double-click to enlarge images -

Pyrame Silverstar

The Fabulously Female Perpetual Presence

| As the Pauper Priestess | As the Sed-sons' Half-Mom | The Eye of Pyrame | Ab Fab | More Lynx |

The Pauper Priestess

Collage reminiscent of Pyrame Silverstar, prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2008

Pyrame as a silver-haired humanoid and as a tetrahedron-headed devil


Devils regularly addressed Pyrame as the Pauper Priestess because she had neither a power focus to call her own nor a realm to make her home.

As for devotees, she served Father Sedon, not herself. As a result she had none; didn’t need any. She had Sedon and that was more than enough.

She had him because she alone could successfully occupy the mortal women he, occupying mortal men, impregnated in order to produce his necessarily male and invariably mortal sedons, small case, three or four times a human generation on either side of the Dome.

... from Theo 1: "THE WEIRDOM OF KANIN CITY"

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The Devic Half-Mother of Sedons on both sides of the Dome

The devil finished materializing. Wearing, or at least appearing to wear, a silver shawl and a similarly satiny, ankle-length sheathe dress, she was bodily beautiful. That she intentionally left her breasts uncovered had nothing to do with a desire to show them off.

She co-ruled the devic third of Crete during the devic goddesses’ 500-year Middle Sea matriarchate on the Outer Earth and that was how Etocretan women of the time disported themselves.

There was nothing human or even devilish about her cranially, however. Skull-wise she’d describe herself as triangularly pyramidal. In terms more precise, her head was akin to a rock-hewn tetrahedron. Out of each side of its three stony top-slabs a solitary eye glared. And that was it– just a single, glowering eyeball: no hair, no ears, no eyebrows, no noses and no mouths.

She nonetheless spoke and he nonetheless heard her. “You’ve blown it big time this time, big boy.”

“Been a while, mom.”

“Half-mom, Gorgon. You just mutilated your other half-mom.”

“She was a devil worshipper. Fact of the matter is she worshipped you.”

Pyrame Silverstar as the Perpetual Presence, collage prepared by Jim McPherson using some of his own pictures, 2004

“I don’t have worshippers. Your half-father Sedon is all I need now and have needed ever. We are the Perpetual Presences.”

... from Pre-Theo: "THE CRUCIFIXION OF TERRIBLE TETHYS"

As also per the page background, I tend to use the so-called All-Seeing Eye of Providence as Pyrame's primary symbol:

Instead of adopting anything animalistic to take its place, which many of her fellow devils did in Egypt immediately before, during and for a short while after the halcyon days of the Middle Sea matriarchy, Pyrame altered her skull into the shape of a tetrahedron. Gif taken from Web of a blinking wadjet or Eye of Horus

In this imitable – for metamorphs – but idiosyncratic form, the upper sides of her head met at an apex like that of a capstone on a three-faced pyramid, if such a thing existed. In her case, each of its upper faces sported a solitary eyeball along the lines of an Egyptian ‘wadjet’ or, even more precisely, the all-seeing Eye of Providence.

... from "The Thousand Days of Disbelief"

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Lynx to Scads more Silverstar online

Pyrame didn't feature in either the comic book series or the graphic novel (all of which can still be ordered in one form or another).

She features, often prominently, in many of the online PHANTACEA web serials, however.

Here are a few lynx to notes re her and them:

Pyrame as the Cretan Snake Goddess, Queen Tanith, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2004


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Cathune Bubastis

The Apocalyptic of Drought

| Deliberately Dried-Up | Devic Goddess | Once Purred for Mithras | Then War |

Caterwauling God-Queen of Matriarchal Egypt

Illuminaries called her Cathune, first of all, because she squealed catlike when she made love and, second of all, presumably because Cathune sort of rhymed with sand dune.

Image suggestive of Cathune Bubastis, an Egyptian cat goddess as taken from Web; original found in Louvre, Paris

How she came to acquire the attribute of Drought had everything to do with the fact she’d chosen to become barren. Not only couldn’t she have any more azuras – more like wouldn’t – but those she possessed invariably had stillborns.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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The Sands of Drought in an Hourglass

[Mithras] glanced at the oversized hourglass standing to one side of his torch-lit sanctuary at the pinnacle of the Tholos. A Tvasitar talisman, it was a gift, a token of filial devotion, from Chrysaor Attis, his ever-enduring deviant offspring. The Attis, rightly fabled as the Universal Soldier, acquired it as a consequence of combat against one of Mithras’s still surviving, hundred-plus, devic daughters.

A Lesser Apocalyptic, Desiccated Drought made the same mistake so many others had over the centuries. Rather than funnel her worship quota through him, she preferred to send it directly to Father Sedon. Crime reaps punishment in the lands of Mithras.

He’d set its sands running at midnight, the start of the Mithranalia: the Upper Head’s weeklong celebration of his brilliance and the equivalent of Imperial Rome’s Saturnalia, which the Romans named after one of his myriad other identities. They’d run out at its conclusion, Mithramas, his feast day, the customary date for the Winter Solstice.

Due to the fact his Outer Earth devotees were abandoning him in hitherto unprecedented numbers, he’d already deemed it differently this year. And if Thrygragon went badly, many multiple millennia more than a year’s time might run out on him.

... from "Feeling Theocidal" - Theo 2: "THRYGRAGOS VARUNA MITHRAS"

Here's another quote from 'Feel Theo' re the Apocalyptic of Drought.

And in this one there's nothing lesser about her:

Most devils counted Drought, whom Illuminaries had as Cathune Bubastis, as ... a third of Mithras’s Ninth. Most agreed further that made her Tralalorn and Pyrame’s brood sister.

Eventually intentionally fallow, she detested War’s profligacy.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Here's another image suggestive of Cathune

Image of Egyptian Goddess identified as Bastet, taken from the Web


And here's yet another excerpt re her:

Not surprisingly, of the Ninth there was only Cathune, Desiccated Drought, she whose power focus, an hourglass, had stood in his Tholos atop Apple Isle’s Mithradium for hundreds of years and which, knowing she’d need it, he’d thoughtfully brought with him to Attis’s Praetorium.

He’d done so, perhaps, in the additional hope she might purr again – for him alone, needless to say.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Tralalorn

The Fabulously Childish Perpetual Presence

| Dilly-Saddy | Devil or Demon or Both | Poorly Possessive | Mithras's Bane | More Lynx |

Demon Child or 9th-born Mithradite?

Collage suggestive of Tralalorn and her White Dwarf talisman, prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

The fabulously childish Perpetual Presence shown with her faces-roiling, feces-reeking, faeriedust-spitting Powder Puff Power Focus


Trala adopted by the Korant Sisterhood early in Headworld History

After Father Sedon and definite daughter Pyrame, Trala constituted the Head’s third, albeit never an adult, Perpetual Presence. You trifled with her, absolute aberration that she was, the mighty Moloch above would strike you down with finality as much as he would with a jolt of lightning.

Even though soulless daemons more like persisted than subsisted, the invaluable, long ago proven irreplaceable Korant Sisterhood in effect adopted her millennia earlier, when their devic goddess, Divine Coueranna as Illuminaries named her, was still his primary bedmate.

Consequently she ordinarily dwelt right here on Apple Isle, Sedon’s Human Eye-Isle. Happily for him – to use a euphemism he often did when he found himself inadvertently thinking about her – the miserable little horror ‘abided’ miles away in the vicinity of Mt Maenalus, Kore’s Volcano.

... from Theo 2: "THRYGRAGOS VARUNA MITHRAS"

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The Devil Child as a horrifying ventriloquist

Devils and their azura offspring could make anyone except pureblood Utopians, whom they couldn’t possess, talk true. They also couldn’t lie any more than they could disobey their fathers or senior-born siblings. And, thanks to them, neither could those they possessed, not even ambulant carcasses.

“Silly daddy,” agreed his reanimated youngest, head in hands. “Unless it was dilly-saddy, tra-la tra tee-hee,” she added with a typical giggle.“We weren't even there in the square.”

The girl’s head was in her hands due to the fact the devil child – unless she was a demon child – who occupied her wasn’t as accomplished when it came to possession as her adult-sized brood sister, unless she was her devic mother. The former had named herself Tralalorn after the ridiculous, fay-saying rhymes she was always inventing, whilst truly ancient Illuminaries had named the latter Pyrame Silverstar.

Pyrame’s possessive technique was irreproachable, but Trala just couldn’t get it right. In seeking to reanimate the dead girl she’d unintentionally whooshed the cadaver’s newly sewn-on head off her neck like a cork. Pyrame was there so she picked it up and handed it back to her.

However, proclaiming herself much better at ventriloquism, an evidently embarrassed Tralalorn wouldn’t countenance any attempt to reattach it.

The praetor presiding at both the inquiry and trial demurred. He couldn’t stand Trala’s actual head – scarlet skin, two-toned pink and red hair, cute but pointy little horns and nastily sharp-looking fangs – sticking out of the corpse’s neck while, at the same time, the Tethys girl’s deadhead, lips moving, appeared to speak.

He found it so distracting that, after she had a tantrum and refused his request to let a different devil or a symbiotic Sangazur take her place, he ruled she couldn’t give any more evidence on behalf of the Tethyses’ dead daughter.

... from "THE CRUCIFIXION OF TERRIBLE TETHYS"

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Lynx to more of Trala's nonsense

Unlike Pyrame. her maybe-sister in Mithras's Ninth (maybe-mother according a theory prevalent in 'Feel Theo'), Tralalorn seldom appears in the online PHANTACEA web serials.

She's often mentioned in them, however.

A child  from Lake Titicaca in Peru taken from the Web, reminiscent of Tralalorn

Here are a few lynx to some notes re her:


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Mithras's Second Born Apple Goddesses

| Kore-Discord | Kore-Concord | Kore-Coitus |

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Marut Kanin

The Golden Apple of Discord

| Devic Half-Mother of the Universal Soldier | Seemingly vapourized circa 4000 YD | Yet many devils thought her Mithras's post-Thrygragon Golden Avenger | Survives as Strife at least into the 1980s | Mom no More |

Mithras's Ewe for Aries

Collage on Faceless Strife prepared by Jim McPherson, 2007,  integral images taken from Web

Reputedly the Attis was an immortal deviant, the possessive half-son of a Master Deva, Kore-Eris, aka Strife or Discord – as well as Marut Kanin, after whom Marutia, Sedon’s Cheek, was named – and her Great God father, Thrygragos Varuna Mithras himself.

... from Pre-Theo: "THE CRUCIFIXION OF TERRIBLE TETHYS"

Spousal Reprisal

Despite her unsavoury reputation, Chrysaor Attis remains fiercely defensive of his half-mothers

That taunt finally proved one too many for his father to endure in silence. “First desperation, now jealousy: Are you done lecturing me yet?

"The Whore provided you with the wherewithal to get Helios out of me because she wanted his Mnemosyne out of your birth mother and back into the time stream along with their Trans-Time Trigon. She resented the Female’s influence on Incain’s Sphinx and that’s the truth of that.”

“Be that as it may, father, it is equally correct to say that the moment they were gone Kore-Coueranna dubbed my half-mother Kore-Eris, Strife or Discord, even though she was the bellicose one.”

“I haven’t forgotten that either. And, for all I know, Concord was responsible for Discord’s disappearance most of 400 years ago. But there’s nothing new about spousal reprisal. It’s as old as this hill.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Commonly Called Strife

In the first part of 1000-Daze, a number of devils believe Strife has somehow returned to both life and the Hidden Headworld; that, acting as Mithras's post-Thrygragon Golden Avenger, she is responsible for wiping out so many of her fellow Master Devas from all three tribes.

Except ...

It couldn’t have been her. She’d been bodily wiped out in the same year, circa 4000 YD, that Quill was born for the first time. Datong Harmonia knew it, too.

She’d watched her debrained daemonic body melt away, her golden apple power focus with it, as she desperately attempted to swim across Sedon’s Peak’s lava lake to a two thousand year ancient, but rapidly fading portal that she hoped would take her safely beyond an enraged grandfather’s grasp on the Outer Earth.

There had never been any love lost between her and Strife-Marutia so the Unity wouldn’t have saved her then even if she could. The truth of matter was she’d tossed her into the molten Brainrock in the first place. For the sake of Headworld harmony, it went without stipulating.

... from "The Thousand Days of Disbelief"

Mithras's Golden Avenger

Strife-Marutia may not appear in 1000-Daze but someone wearing her likeness certainly does:

The prohibitive murderess had neither face nor any visible hair. What she did have sticking out of the top of her reflective skull appeared to be nothing less than a curved, polished, crimson blade. That her skin was glassine or mirrored was another universally held recollection.

Her necklace seemed to consist of ruby red droplets dangling off a chain composed of golden links. Her short, thigh-high and sleeveless gown might have been made out of rich brocade. It might also have been varying shades of red, though like everything else about her it gave off the aurous aura of Brainrock-Gypsium.

... from "The Thousand Days of Disbelief"

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Kore-Marutia in the PHANTACEA Mythos web-serials

Although Strife doesn't appear in either Feel Theo or its immediate sequel, 'The 1000 Days of Disbelief' (at least not overtly), she's often mentioned in both -- and not just as the devic half-mother of Taurus Chrysaor Attis.

Nor did she feature in the comic book series or the graphic novel (all of which can still be ordered in one form or another).

She often features in the online PHANTACEA web serials, however. In phantacea-fact she may be the main boo-hiss villain in both 'Coueranna's Curse', which is set in 1938, and 'Aspects of an Amoebaman', which is set in 1960.

She isn't altogether a devil come the Outer Earth's 20th Century (the 60th Century of the Dome), though.

As for what she is, there are loathsome loads of lynx to entries re her over in pH-Webworld. Almost all of them can be found here or here.


As per both Feel Theo and 1000-Daze, the notion that Strife couldn't abide possessing pregnant women stemmed from Mithras dumping her, his ewe for Aires, in favour of new blood, a fishwife for Pisces, when one age gave way to its successor circa 4000 YD:

... her [Strife-Marutia] denying him her [azuras], after so many centuries of grinning and bearing them, didn’t faze Mithras in the slightest ... since plenty of her younger sisters continued to reckon it an honour and a privilege to have his Mithrazurs.

... such was the antipathy between Great God and Apple Goddess many claimed [that] Strife couldn’t, or wouldn’t, possess pregnant women.

... from "The Thousand Days of Disbelief"

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Divine Coueranna

The Little Green Apple of Juvenescence

| Mithras's Boss Cow for Taurus | Gives birth at the Solstice | The Angriest of the Mad Goddess | Whose head it is? | Despises Discord's Darling | Attis returns the sentiment | Pyrame hates her too | Apple-Kore Online |

Myrionymous Kore

Apple Goddess Collage most specific to Divine Coueranna, graphic prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

As Mithras's Boss Cow, Concord was worshipped as the Upper Head's Mother Goddess until the end of the Age of Taurus. Replaced by Discord in Mithras's bed, she fled to the Outer Earth for a further 500 hundred years atop the totem pole.


Also Ancient Rome's Great Mother

The Great Mother recumbent, using a head as an arm rest, shot in Ostia Antiica, near Rome, by JIm McPherson in 2008

Yes, Magna Mater is shown using someone's severed head as an armrest. Given where I shot it (Ostia's sanctuary of Attis), it's pretty obvious whose head it represents.

The PHANTACEA question is: Whose head is it really?

(There's a note on that here.)

Must be Attis's

Close up of head the Great Mother is using as an armrest, photo by Jim McPherson, 2009

I've another theory.

Except the sanctuary of Attis in the Imperial Roman port of Ostia was already abandoned by 376 AD, wasn't it?


Attis hates Apple-Kore

“Kore did have me castrated, father,” Taurus Chrysaor Attis protested, more vehemently than intelligently.

“Then she had me crucified, on whatever tree was handy, or on one of those wooden crosses not just the Romans are so fond of these days.

"And she did do it over and over again, succession after succession, for hundreds of years after I killed Helios for his seventh time.”

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Hellhounds Harnessed

Jotan Tethys didn’t perceive Divine Coueranna in back of her flying cauldron.

The Great Mother Cybele as her own charioteer, shot in the Met Museum by Jim McPherson, 2009

As was her wont, come the Winter Solstice, appearing to be nine months pregnant, aka Myrionymous Kore looked to be herself only to her fellow devils and someone like the real Attis, albeit only because he was looking through the Mask of Byron at the time.

To everyone else, Jot included, she appeared to be whom she was occupying: Meroudys now Tethys, last spring’s Corn Queen for a Day, about to burst with birth.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

As Cybele, a mother goddess imported to Rome from Phrygia in the moderately remote past, Kore-Coueranna was sometimes revered as Attis's mother instead of his greatest enemy.

Bust of Cybele, shot in Rome by Jim McPherson, 2008

She wasn't much of either/or come Thrygragon, sooth said.

Cold trudged. Heat flickered. Pyrame stepped gingerly, in constant danger of sluicing between them. Giant and giantess propped her up. As embarrassing as the slipping and sliding was, needing their assistance to not end up with her lovely butt a slinky sled was worse. Divine Coueranna smirked as they passed her on the way to the next hillock and their father’s now resplendent pavilion.

The Bull and Lady Lust, both moderately if not particularly modestly robed, stood beside her. Heat and Cold glared at them. Plathon and Belialma bowed, effectively genuflected, with their eyes averted. Concord nodded, eyes locked on them. The two Thanatoids simultaneously sparked their third eyes. Myrionymous Kore got her knees dirty. Pyrame was very happy.

Pigs enjoyed wallowing in the mire even more than bulls did. You roasted a pig suckling on an apple. Pork was best served with applesauce. Muck suited Apple Goddesses.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Queen of Heaven or just Queen of her own Hell?

As Magna Mater, the Great Mother or Great Goddess, Apple-Kore (as many refer to her throughout Feel Theo) was worshipped on the Outer Earth during the Mad Goddesses' Middle Sea Matriarchate (circa 2000 to 2500 Years of the Dome or 2000 to 1500 Before the Common Era).

Divine Coueranna talking to Methandra Thanatos, photo taken in Rome by Jim McPherson in 2008

In this picture, which I believe is called 'The Queen of Heaven', and which I took in Rome's Capitoline Museum in 2008, Apple-Kore may be speaking with Hot Stuff (Methandra Thanatos); aka Hot Stuff, she was another great goddess of the era, one who apparently remained Mithras's Virgin until the 60th Century of the Dome.

I'd like to think that whoever is shown painting their portrait could be Jordan Tethys. However, since he isn't around during the Middle Sea Matriarchate it may be his devic half-father, Rumour of Lazareme.


Kore-Concord in the PHANTACEA Mythos web-serials

Myrionymous Kore, under any of her multiplicity of names, never featured in the comic book series or the graphic novel (all of which can still be ordered in one form or another).

Truth told, she never actually appears in any of the online PHANTACEA web serials either. However, since one of them ('Coueranna's Curse') is named after her there are plenty of lynx to entries re her over in pH-Webworld.

Here are a few of them:


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Beguiling Belialma

The Ruby Red Apple of Concupiscence

| The Luscious Lady Lust | Beauty and the Bull in 4376 YD | Lust wears a Denim Demon in 5424 YD | Cruel Plathon as Kore's Charioteer | The Bull's a Bident, not a Bisexual | From Chaos to Order |

aka Lady Lust

Apple Goddess Collage most specific to Bouncing Belle, graphic prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

Sinistral Belialma, Lady Lust of Satanwyck, has as her power focus the Ruby Red Apple of Concupiscence, called thus because it means 'sexual desire'.


Apple-Kore's Charioteer

There, running on the air itself above the Gregarian Fields, multi-headed Cereberant or Keres hellhounds pulled a wheeled cauldron. In back of it, looking fit to split, which she would given the time of year, stood Divine Coueranna.

Cruel Plathon, artwork by Ian Fry, late 1980s, taken from 4-Ever & 40 Days, published in 1990

In front of her, Brainrock bident in one massive paw and the hellhounds’ reins in the other, loomed her charioteer and fallback-companion of much more than two millennia: Cruel Plathon, the Bull of Mithras.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Multi-Horns on Parade

Then it was four, the newest Sedon had a pitchfork just like the Devil as well as the Demon King, A bident spotted in the British Museum, shot by Jim McPherson, 2005albeit one with two tines rather than four. Call it a bident.

He also had four horns instead of the usual stubby pair. His tail was distinctly bullish instead of satanic and he avoided the goatee, which would have been too goatish to be bullish.

His skin was red, though, and the fur covering his nether regions, fore and aft, might have been an article of clothing rather than bullish bushiness.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Hell's Belle and the Beast

Then someone definitely was paying attention to Plathon (the Bull of Mithras). She was ruby red, stark naked, voluptuous to an extreme and evidently hornier than he was cranially. She barrelled out of the Weird, bowled him out of Kore’s cauldron, flung him onto his back in the field’s muck, and promptly got down to some serious petting.

Kore-Concord skewed her face in disgust. Her lone lasting, immediate sister, Kore-Concupiscence, Satanwyck’s reigning Prime Sinistral, was humiliating her yet again. She, Lady Lust, did it every year on Suffering Sapienda, the night before Black Lazam, when, occupying the Korant Sisterhood’s Corn Queen for a Day, she lay with their hated father, he occupying the Mithrant Brotherhood’s designated Attis.

The Bull had a luxuriant pelt. Prior to leaving their Hell, inside Ap Isle’s only active volcano, Mt Maenalus, Concord probably had her acolytes thoroughly wash and comb it out at the same time they groomed her hellhounds. It wasn’t lush anymore; that was for sure. To Attis’s two eyes, even from this distance it looked positively frothy.

“Hell’s Belle and the Beast, eh, lover,” Pyrame said, chuckling. “I wonder if Bad Daddy Thrygragos put her up to that. Apple-Kore and the Bull should have gone straight in to see him.”

Bygone Illuminaries named Sinistral Lust Belialma, after Beltis, the female form of Baal, a Semitic fertility god who, for once, wasn’t him. Baal was the very same Bull with whom Lust was currently reacquainting herself in typically disrobed Belialma-fashion. Devils weren't the only ones who called her Bouncing Belle, however. Having half-bounced with her as recently as nine months ago, Attis sometimes did too.

“Looks like the Bull’s gone straight into her instead.”

That crack got Pyrame going. She began chuckling the more, which was disconcerting given that, unlike the Moloch Sedon, the Headworld’s mighty Eye-Mouth in the sky, none of her three side-eyes did double-duty as a mouth. They did sparkle, though, once she caught her breath, not that devils needed to breathe as such.

“Illuminaries should have called her Kore-Coitus.”

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

(NOTE: The few entries re Beguiling Belialma to be found on pH-Webworld link from here.)


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Lady Lust returns in 'The 1000 Days of Disbelief'

As follows below, evidently unbeknownst to her she's covered with an invisible denim demon:

Lustfulness was upon him, yes, but it was in the form of Beguiling Belialma, Sinistral Lust of Satanwyck, which devils thought of as Sedon’s Temple.

They were frolicking, as they occasionally did, within her bastion of bliss above Pandemonium, the Temple’s frenzied, ever-changing and sometimes all-encompassing capital city.

As usual with her, she wasn’t just upon him. She was all over him. What he didn’t notice, because he was too busy being all over her, was that she was bodily putting out more than herself and hence what passed for her sweat.

If no souls as such, Mother Earth did impart to her existential excretions degrees of sentience to go along with an ability to shift shapes.

The stickiness they oozed was, as a result, more like Mother Earth’s quick-drying excrement. In short order he’d be as hard as an immobilized statue of him could be, including nothing short about it.

... from "The 1000 Days of Disbelief"

From Chaos to Order

As below, sometimes Kore-Concupiscence wears actual clothes.

She still isn't overly fussy about which Great God or Unity she hangs out with come 4825 Year of the Dome.

Seemingly he just has to be male.

“No it isn’t,” said a pinkish-skinned, apple-eyed and, many would consider, delightfully proportioned stunner.

The last acknowledged Prime Sinistral of Satanwyck entered arm in arm – and enticingly robed for a change – with a sparkling companion.

“The question is what are we going to do about it?”

... from "The 1000 Days of Disbelief"

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'Domus Delle Gorgoni' + Fecundity

| The Medusa | The Gorgons | Nergal Vetala at Thrygragon | Just a Killer |

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The Demogorgon Duplicity

Panharmonium's Ace in the Kibisis

| Naked Ambition | In phantacea pHact | Honeysuckle Buttocks | No Longer Gorgonic | Where's the missing head? | pHrom phantacea | Wisdom of Lazareme on 'Sovereign Female Wisdom' | Hot Stuff | Hot Pox | Re the Domus Collage |

The Medusa pre-Thrygragon

Collage featuring various shots of Medusa, prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

Much less Kore than gore, the re-embodied Medusa may not be a 12th born Mithradite but, howsoever grandiosely, she declares herself Mater Matare (Mother Murder), the Apocalyptic of Death, on Thrygragon 4376 YD


Harbouring Homicidal Humours

“Didn’t I tell you?” proclaimed the boggle-eyed, snake-haired temptress.

Medusa Head, spotted in San  Jose, Costa Rica, picture taken by Jim McPherson, 2003

“From now on you may address me as Mater Matare, Mother Murder, the Apocalyptic of Death.”

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

(small photo shot in San Jose, Costa Rica circa 1995; larger double-click photo shot in the same place, outside the National Theatre, in 2009)


Miss Myth mistaken for Minerva

Minerva as Methandra, photo taken in Frankfurt by Jim McPherson, 2008

(Image of Minerva (Athena) with the Medusa's head on her shield (aegis) and the face of a gorgon on her belly as shot in Frankfurt, Germany in 2008.)

The reference is to Metisophia telling her half-son, Jordan Tethys, that Dark Sedon ended up with a gorgon instead of his real target Methandra Thanatos, Mithras's Virgin.

(NOTE: There's a different Athena with Medusa on a shield in the double-click behind a close-up of her on the shield here.)


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Constellation Consternation

Perseus rides Taurus the Bull, slaying him. At least he does in the night’s sky above the Inner and the Outer Earth. That Perseus and that Taurus were and are constellations. Reputedly the hero Perseus slew more than a few monsters in his day, most notably the gorgon Medusa.

That Perseus and that Medusa were mythological characters. The reality wasn’t all that much different ...

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Stone Stare Astray

The first thing that struck Attis was she hadn’t struck him unto stone just by looking at him.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Weakness as Wrongness

Well over 2,000 years had passed since Attis, as Perseus, stuck her inside All on Incain and confiscated not just her head. Nonetheless, the Medusa remained as fearsome to behold as any gorgon.

Naked except for a glowing girdle – the other thing he’d confiscated all those centuries ago – in addition to her snaky hair she had four arms, filthy fangs and perspired blood.

All of that then was right but, somehow, all of her today was wrong.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Sovereign Female Muck-Up

[Metisophia speaking to her half-son, the deviant known as Jordan 'Quill' Tethys, aka the Legendarian]

“I can therefore tell you, with no fear of contradiction, that in one language beyond the Dome ‘Medusa’ means ‘sovereign female wisdom’ whilst in Sanskrit it’s ‘Medha’,in Egyptian it’s ‘Met’, ‘Mut’ or ‘Maat’, in Greek it’s ‘Metis’, hence Illuminaries coming up with my name even though I’m a Lazaremist, and so on. Implicitly they refer to the same goddess, not distinct devils like Harmony, me or even the Medusa.

“Once you accept that, you should be able to accept that the same deity was also called ‘Neith’, ‘Anath’, ‘Athene’ or ‘Ath-enna’ in North Africa and ‘Athana’ in Minoan Crete. You get where I’m going?”

Tethys didn’t so she as good as spelt it out for him. “First of all, recall that at first only the Dual Entities called the middle sea between Europe, Africa, Asia and the Atlantic the Mediterranean. What happened was Illuminaries jumbled up many of the same letters or syllables comprising Medusa, Maat, Athana, and rest. They then came up with Methandra as the name for that goddess. They did so because, to their mind, Hot Stuff, Mithras’s Virgin, represented ‘sovereign female wisdom’.

“So, Sedon got the Medusa, yes, but he wasn’t after her. Nor was he after Harmony or me, as wise as I may be. He was after Methandra Thanatos.”

“And he got a stone-staring gorgon.”

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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What a difference a day does not make

“Over here, Chrysaor honeysuckle.” The Attis knew that voice. It was the Medusa’s.

Honeysuckle, his golden-brown buttocks! She was one honey overdue for sucking into his Amateramirror.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

As Mater Matare (Mother Murder), the self-proclaimed Apocalyptic of Death, the Medusa first appeared in the PHANTACEA comic book series

Mater Matare as drawn by George Freeman for pH-5, which was published in 1980

(Beginning with pH-3, which can still be ordered in one form or another as per here.)


War-Pox Mama

As per here, she should therefore be expected, she also appears in 'The War of the Apocalyptics'

A potential image for the cover of the War of the Apocalyptics, prepared by Jim McPherson circa 2002

(Ordering information re 'War-Pox', the second mosaic novel featuring Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA Mythos and the first book in the Launch 1980 story cycle, is here.)

By the way, in addition to the 1995 Costa Rica Medusa, some of the images that went into the 'War-Pox' graphic can also be seen here, here, and here.


House Notes

As for the images that went into the 'Domus Delle Gorgoni' graphic, some are here whereas one is over there.

BTW, you too can see the Domus (or 'House'). It's in Ostia Antica, which is maybe 20 minutes from Roma Italy by subway train.

Very near it is the 'Campo della Magna Mater' (the Great Mother Kore-Concord in the PHANTACEA Mythos), which I incorporated into its image.


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Howsoever Many Stone-Staring Sisters

Temporary Immobility and/or Insanity

| How many gorgons are there? | Did one have a Cestus instead of a Head? | At least 3 Species | But only 2 collages so far | The Wisdom of a third Sovereign Female |

The Gorgonic Triplets (?)

Collage featuring the 3 Mithradite gorgon, prepared by Jim McPherson, 2008

The Legendarian claims that the 3 Mithradite Gorgons (the Medusa, the Cockatrice and the Basilisk) are, in reality, from the same brood of lowborn triplets


Mithras, however, thinks differently:

Among the even lower born lesser lights whose names or designations he actually remembered were the three haggish Graii and the two extant gorgons: the Cockatrice and the Basilisk.

Cockatrice collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2009, with images either taken from Web or scanned in by Jim McPherson

The third one, Lamia as Illuminaries had her, was as speculative as his long-missing third-born triplets in that she never did become a solid entity.

That hadn’t stopped the Artificer crafting her a power focus, however; one that War’s Medusa absconded with because she preferred it to her own, a love-inspiring golden girdle or cestus.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Fowl, Saurian and Humanoid

Antique Illuminaries named the other two, definitely lowborn gorgons after the immortal sisters of Medusa found in the Middle Sea myth of Perseus. Generally speaking Stheno appeared as a hen-headed cockatrice, whereas Euryale appeared as a reptilian basilisk. Although Attis, as Perseus, did encounter them after Pyrame, not heady Athena, sent him in pursuit of the Medusa, he did not dispose of them, for the first of a few times, in All on Incain until a much later succession.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"


[Metisophia speaking to her half-son, the deviant known as Jordan 'Quill' Tethys, aka the Legendarian]

“For instance, one legend recounted by your dead pal, Publius Ovidius Naso, in his Metamorphosis, tells how Athena, read Methandra, effectively made the Medusa. To quote him as close to accurately as I can from memory: ‘when Medusa was a virgin Foaming Poseidon in Heady Athena’s temple raped her. Athena, who saw it happen from behind a slotted curtain, rejected the ocular proof of her own eyes and blamed Medusa for the sacrilegious act.’

“She thereupon punished Medusa by changing her loveliest feature, her fiery golden hair, into snakes; dreadlocks as the Entities call their African facsimiles.”

“Ovid never mentions any dual entities.”

“I didn’t say he did. He also didn’t say Athena lay with Pan or a Pan-like deity but some myths I’ve heard or read say precisely that. Substitute Poseidon for Pan and recall who likes to look like Pan.”

“The Entities’ Devil,” Tethys acknowledged: “Great-grandfather Sedon.”

“The fact that Ovid describes her as ‘Heady Athena’ is highly suggestive. So is the fact that virtually every myth I’ve ever seen has Perseus giving Athena the gorgon’s head afterwards and her attaching it to her aegis or armour. Why couldn’t she have had it beforehand?

“Then there’s the commonality of their supposed Libyan origins in that both are associated with Lake Tritonis. It’s even said of the pillars holding up the Athenian Parthenon, her greatest temple outside of Mythland, that they’re Athena’s men turned to stone. I could go on.”

“Please don’t bother.”

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Re the two Gorgon Collages

A couple of images suggestive of a cockatrice, one's by Max Ernst, the other's a hen

While there are numerous lynx to Mater Matare over in pH-Webworld, there are only a couple about the other two definite gorgons, Stheno (Cockatrice) and Euryale (Basilisk).


The Parisienne Basilisk, photo by Jim McPherson, 2004

Respectively they are here and here. The main entry re the three gorgons, with the Medusa listed as one of the triplets, is here.


Various Medusas shot or bought in Europe 2008 by Jim McPherson

NOTE: Jim McPherson took one of the cockatrice images off the Web; another's a Max Ernst also used here; on the other cockatrice collage, the big chick was scanned in from a Vancouver newspaper; the Parisian Basilisk is from a shot Jim McPherson took from Notre Dame in Paris in 2004.

As for the 'Medusas I have met' graphic, the Carvaggio is from a postcard Jim McPherson bought at the Uffizi in Firenze whereas the others are shots I took in Firenze, London, Venice and Lisbon in 2008.

An animated GIF and more info re Jim McPherson's Medusas collage is here;


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Fecundity on Thrygragon

Not yet 5980's Blood Queen of Hadd

| Waxes and Wanes with the Moon | The Growing Nergalid | Bent Nasty | Lathakran Beneficiary |

 

Vetala as a Mithradite Moon Goddess

Vetala as Moon Goddess Fecundity, image of a Judith figure shot in Florence, Italy, by Jim McPherson 2008

Until 'The 1000 Days of Disbelief', her fellow Master Devas generally call Nergal Vetala Fecundity


Many more lynx re Vetala can be found starting here

A potential dust cover for "The Triggregos Gambit", prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005

All goes well she'll be a featured character in "The Trigregos Gambit", a potential cover for which is immediately above.

Here's some foreboding from War-Pox:

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Wilderwitch added. “There was a ghost with him. At least she looked like a ghost, a revenant maybe, like my soul-self only way toothier and nowhere near as cute and creamy cuddly.”

“To a castrated ghoul already bathing in acid,” the Kronokronos cracked.

“I'll be more precise, shall I. It was a spectral vampire. You know, a bloodsucker, with fangs. Only this one has three eyes and isn't entirely there. That better?”

... from "The War of the Apocalyptics"

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Nergalids are Seasonal (sort of)

Zuvem Nergalis plants them, Nergal Vetala grows them, and Yama Nergal harvests them. Except they don't just do so yearly. They do it monthly, at the very minimum. No wonder Vetala waxes and wanes with the moon.

An ancient goddess with a moon-sickle, photographed in a one-time Roman bathouse, circa Nero's time, in  2008

Plus, the male Nergalids interchange. Zuvem isn't just spring-like. Neither is Yama altogether autumnal.

They also aren't the only ones with the privilege as much as the pleasure of her company. Which is only one reason Mithras's Moon is called Fecundity throughout Feel Theo.

It is, however, why she voluntarily becomes a ... come 1000-Daze.

Vetala was stunning to behold. Long, raven-black tresses; a mouth packed with sharp, pearly white teeth; ruby red lips; a slightly greenish tinge to her otherwise creamy white skin; she concealed, barely, her pedestal-perfect body in a burgundy gown slit down the front to her navel, down the back to her butt-cleavage and split along either leg from thigh to ankles.

Decidedly Mithras’s highest born moon goddess was in Seductress, as opposed to Fecundity, mode today. That confirmed that, since she would only become fertile again come the New Moon, the moon had to be waning. Unfortunately, as the wine had also made Pyrame temporarily neglect to recollect, when she wasn’t pregnant, which she tended to be as many as 13 times a solar year, as the moon waxed unto fullness, Vetala was prone to what might be charitably termed lunar lunacy.

“Here, let me help you, Whore.” Materializing her Brainrock moon-sickle, Vetala made short work of her brood sister’s webbing. She also made short work of Pyrame’s neck. Hoisting her severed head up by her silver hair, she tore the gagging web out of her mouth.

“That’s much better. Now answer my sister!”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Nergalid,” sputtered Pyrame’s gore-dripping head. “How dare you, of all devils, call me a whore?

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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Nergal Vetala as a PHANTACEA Mythos mainstay

Vetala, whose main entry over in pH-Webworld is here, is one of the first Master Devas (3-eyed devils) to appear in the original PHANTACEA comic book series.

Her debut came in pH-2. She made the cover of pH-5. Her-story, not to mention her fate, was one of a number that dominated proceedings throughout pH-6.

She also made the cover of 'Feel Theo' as one of the 4 devils desperately seeking cover within their triumphant father, Thrygragos Varuna Mithras.

(BTW, the other three are Klizarod Rex, Djinn Domitian and Mater Matare, who claims to be her triplet sister but probably isn't.)

Since she also appeared in the graphic novel, "Forever & 40 Days", which can of course still be ordered, that makes her approaching omnipresent.

Hey, what can I tell you? Scantily covered, but beautiful, vampires (even ones with three eyes and a particularly nasty bent) sell books.

All the more so when, as per "The 1000 Days of Disbelief" they voluntarily became one!


Manoa, 4824 YD

Zuvem had been Satanwyck’s co-regent as well as a regular co-occupant of Bouncing Belle’s bastion of bliss. Because of that, it was tempting to point an accusing finger at him and possibly the other two Nergalids, Yama and their commonest mate, Nergal Vetala, for masterminding the hence despicable conspiracy to eliminate rival devils.

Except Vetala – whom Harmony found easily at her new residence in the former Weirdom of Manoa, on the lower west coast of the Penile Peninsula, Sedon’s Mutton Chop – convincingly denied their involvement. As well as confirming Zuvem’s whereabouts at the time of the New Moon at issue (“It was his turn!”)

... from "The 1000 Days of Disbelief"

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The Primary Apocalyptics and the Vultyrie as they first appear in "The War of the Apocalyptics"

Transparent gif featuring the Apocalyptics; text reads the War of the Apocalyptics Variation of Phase One cover, artwork by Ian Bateson, text by Jim McPherson

OMP drove the head of his Homeworld Sceptre into the ground. When the smoke and dust settled, Gloriel was screaming, Aires was hugging his sister, and the Diver, reflexively rendering himself untouchable, found himself saying: "Saints, preserve yourselves!"

Their six fellows in the Damnation Brigade had just gone to Hell and come back as demon-devils: the Primary Apocalyptics, that of War, Death, Disease and Destruction, and two others, one of whom was nearly mindless and the other merely recent!

... from War-Pox 2: "Advent of the Apocalyptics"

- Plague - War - Catastrophe - Mundane Murder - The Vultyrie -

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Carcinogen the Leper

The Apocalyptic of Disease

| 1st Impressions | Now Devils Can Kill | Pocks Aplenty | A Plague Mask + Bosco | Funny Guy, Plague |

Plenty of Pox

As above, I'm not too sure which Pock is which in this shot that I took in the British Museum.

The 4 Apocalyptics, as shot in the British Museum by Jim McPherson

My guess is that Death is riding the vulture whereas the two besides Pestilence (on the locust) are Plague (red horse) and War or Conquest (standing atop the globe with the A-Bomb in hand).

Could be wrong of course and don't really know what difference it makes. After all, the one on the vulture has a bomb as well.


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Took over Cerebrus David Ryne on Damnation Isle

He who had been Cerebrus reared to his feet, now a creature wrapped like a mummy in horrid, putrescent bandages. snakeHead, from a postcard bought in Costa Rica in 2002

In his hands he wielded a snake and skull-engraved pole, a kind of perverse caduceus, with a scalpel-like blade shaped like a sharpened pendulum depending from one end, instead of a pair of wings, and a clear bulb full of bubbling, yellowish liquid at the other end.

What pinkish, perhaps flayed skin could be seen through his bandages was festering, crawling with maggots and leeches.

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"

A plague mask from Venice

Plague Doctor Mask, from a postcard bough in Venice, 2008

Bleeding ignorant doctors actually wore masks like this as prophylactics when the plague was rampant in Europe a few hundred years ago. Another one – from a photograph I shot (as opposed to a postcard I bought) in Venice 2008 – is here.

Such things always remind me of the bird-headed, man-eating, man-pooping Prince of Hell in Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, hence the double-click.

BTW, Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516), a Dutchman called Bosco in Imperial Spain during his lifetime, was a contemporary of Durer and Torquemada. Hmm, wonder what that forebodes?


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Perhaps decathonitized devils can kill after all

Cameo of a Venice Plague Doctor, shot by Jim McPherson, 2008

“Seems I was right. As a decathonitized devil I am no longer bound by the dictates of the Moloch Sedon, or the oaths we Mithradites swore to uphold when we committed to what was then called the Panharmonium Accord.

... from War-Pox

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Mars Bellona

The Apocalyptic of War

| 1st Impressions | A love-inspiring cestus did its job - over and over again | Shots start | As a Goddess of War | How come War gets a month and day named after him (or her)? | War and Drought in Yemen | As a Mithradite in Mexico | War in Temporis's pre-Tokugawa Cavern | Sangazurs mostly have War as their father | War not allowed to kill | War unnatural, Disaster not |

Mars and the Medusa were an item once

Given Mars Bellona, as Weir’s long ago and far-travelled Illuminaries had the bearded, muscle-bound deadhead, was such a relative highborn – and given what she must have looked like after she made off with Lamia’s gorgon-head – the Medusa probably needed a love-inspiring cestus to keep War interested in her affections.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Might he be a she?

Me, I've always reckoned Bellona was a Goddess of War, not a god in the exclusively male sense.

A bust entitled Bellone, scanned in from The Colour of Sculpture, 1996

Then again, this Bellona, scanned in from a book I bought at the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam circa 1996, might be male.


This one, though, as shot down some stairs in the refurbished museum atop Rome's Capitoline Hill in 2008, is not only definitely male.

Mars, as shot in the museum on Rome's Capitolone

It's actually called Mars. (You'll notice that he also sports a Medusa pendant, a token of her long ago affection perhaps.)


As for why Illuminaries named a skull-faced bonehead Mars Bellona when he doesn't look anything like either/or, well, Master Devas are shape-changers.

They can look like anyone they want to, male or female.


War and Drought still are an item

War in drought-ravaged Yemen, 2010, picture taken from Web

Like War and Murder, in the phantacea Mythos War and Drought were also an item once. (Until she grew sick and tired of his profligacy Cathune was but one of many mothers of War's Sangazurs, of which there's more here, here, and here.)

Shouldn't have to stipulate that War-Pox is fantasy. Sadly, even pathetically, war and drought are not fantasies in the Yemen of 2010.

Still, judging from this picture, which I cribbed from the BBC online on the day I was preparing this column, one still needs to do one's laundry.


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Took over Dervish Furie on D-Isle

Dervish Furie’s scouring pad of a moustache shrank in on itself then dissipated altogether, as if he had bitten its bristles off from inside his mouth.

Black skull-skin shrivelled; corrupted, blackened all the more; started to rot off and flake what little was left of Jervis Murray’s tuxedo.

Barbwire goatee extended, grew coarser, more metallic and grizzled. Wasn’t a straight razor that could cut it. It was hundreds of hair-breadth razors.

His eyes fell out; were caught by his tongue and crunched by his teeth. The newly becoming even more horrible horror swallowed them.

His backbone became akin to a spear’s shaft spiking a decapitated skull; spearhead pierced through the top of it then, like a Mohawk hairstyle, knotty horns propagated, fringing his deadhead fore and aft.

... from War-Pox 2: "Advent of the Apocalyptics"


There are of course any number of masks, paintings or statues featuring skull-headed nasties virtually anywhere you go in this world of ours.

Mexico, with its ages-old veneration of the Dead, does seem to lead the pack, though.

Then again, as part of the Americas — so-called by the Dual Entities apparently, long, long before the Great Flood of Genesis — it is supposed to be territory deeded to Byronics and all the Pocks are Mithradites.

Still ...

“Your haberdashery eccentricities are of no interest to us, Disaster,” Matare complained. “Although I must admit it is good to see you and the Vultyrie again.”

A skull-headed deity shot in Mexico by Jim McPherson, 2005

“As it is you and your fat belly, little sister. You two as well, litter brothers. Lose the sword and whips, War. This is the Sixtieth Century.”

“As you wish.” The Apocalyptic of War changed the sword into a cannon-barrel and the flails into an approximation of a Gatling gun.

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"
(conversational excerpt continues here )

The 'Tor-na-do' of War

As they watched, a samurai brought the cavern's headman a long box. “That's Lord Tor­na­do,” said the Dand, pronouncing it with a soft ‘a’. This, the box, Tornado opened. Inside was a World War Two, German-made MP-38 submachine gun.

There was no more doubt about which of the Apocalyptics and their two allies had gone there than there was about who had gone to any of the other caverns he'd thus far shown them.

... from War-Pox

Valkyrie Swan Maidens were still gathering the Glorious Dead in 4376 YD

Valkyries were choosers of the slain. They hailed from Valhalla, Hell’s Halls, a Mithradite territory in the Head’s north, within or just below the Mystic Mountain Range, Sedon’s Crown ...

Maiden riding swan, spotted and shot in NYC 2009 by Jim McPherson

As far as Attis was concerned, Sangs were a boon better than a boom on any battlefield. So long as the corpses they motivated weren't dismembered, crisped or pulped irretrievably, they could fight on indefinitely. Plus, since Sangs invariably had Mithradite parents, any soldier, once slain, then reanimated, would carry on the fight on his side, regardless of whose side they’d been fighting on previously.

In a way it was downright disheartening there were so few of them.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

(NOTE: When I spotted a maiden depicted as riding a swan howsoever ironically over top of a Body Shop in NYC in September 2009, I knew I had to find a place for it somewhere on one of my phantacea websites.)

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War is such a bonehead

Mask suggestive of Mars Bellona

Mars Bellona was a spike-haired bonehead with muscles and a beard

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Deathless War

Hard to feature a devic god of war not being allowed to kill but such was and is the case when it comes to Master Devas.

By Sedonic decree devazurs were not allowed to kill.

If they did, so went the Devil’s rationale, they might deprive they or other Master Devas of the invigorating adulation they needed to survive, as other than spirit beings, and deserved, for all the good works they did on behalf of said devotees.

They did, they’d also deprive the Moloch Sedon of his procedurally generous, funnelled-up share of it. Which would never do.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Of course that only applies to never-cathonitized devils. And, thanks to 5980's jailbreak, as graphically recorded above, in War-Pox the Apocalyptics are altogether decathonitized.

Which might mean this and that and ...


A Deathless War

Bellona, who also sometimes used blazing skulls for ammunition, smirked as best a lipless, skin-rotting skull could smirk.

“And I suppose," he put to Disaster, "'Stand and deliver' is a lot more personal than 'Run and die', or whatever you used to say to a bunch of poor schmucks just before you unleashed your landfalls, firestorms, and suchlike.”

War, shot in Berlin, 2008

“At least what I unleash is natural. People don't die in disasters unless they happen to get in the way. I've never yet heard of a natural, let alone a deathless war, War.”

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"

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Nakba Ramazar

The Apocalyptic of Sudden Destruction

| 1st Impressions | How Headless | Fancies Deviant Heads | Blazing skulls better than spitballs | Hats for heads |

Catastrophe lost his head in love, literally

The entirety of the Eighth, the three Primary Apocalyptics, War, Plague and Disaster, were ... hard to miss.

Headless Ramazar, as shot in the Met Museum, Nyc, by Jim McPherson, 2009

Ramazar was as headless as he had been for two millennia, ever since he lost it, quite literally, over the Lazaremists’ springtime charmer, Flowery Anthea.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

Thereafter he collected hats – and the heads to put them on.

A headless statue holding a head

Somewhat remarkably this statue, which I spotted in Rome back in the late spring of 2008, seems to suffer from the same affliction

(double-click for veracity)


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Took over Blind Sundown

"Oh, I don't know, Leper. I rather fancy their heads." This last came from Disaster, the Headless Apocalyptic of Sudden Destruction.

The fourth Apocalyptic was dressed entirely in black: waistcoat, creased pants, shirt, string-tie, and boots. In his left hand he held what used to be Sundown’s Solar Spear; what had now transformed into a luminescent, double-barrelled, flintlock shotgun: his power focus.

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"

Power Foci are, however, mutable.

“What about your flintlock?" Bellona complained. "Something like that hasn't been used since the Fifty-Eighth Century.”

Flintlock guns, shot at NYC's Met Museum by Jim McPherson in 2009

“Call me a traditionalist but I prefer the highwayman image.”

“It certainly beats the old-time, bone-through-the-nose head-hunter image you cultivated before you lost your head to Flowery Anthea all those millennia ago,” the Leper commented.

“I always thought there was something undignified, not to mention unsanitary, about having a blowgun for a talisman. Firing off blazing skulls instead of spit balls is much more masculine.”

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"
more from this conversation is here

And, lest we forget, though D-Brig on Damnation Isle in late November 1980 obviouly did, as a proper tale-teller once said ...

Bust of Homer, taken from Free Dictionary on WebThe man does better who runs from disaster than he who is caught by it.

Homer (900 BC-800 BC)

 

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Disaster's a headless chatterbox

Headless Ramazar, spotted in Catania, Sicily, shot by Jim McPherson, 1997

If there were any dispassionate observers in the vicinity they might wonder how this fourth one, the one who had been John Sundown, the one who had no head at all, could see let alone speak.

A headless study of some sort

There weren't of course. Air, Sea, the Rainbow and the Diver were too busy being scared stiff to waste time wondering about such a trivial matter.

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"

As for how he speaks when he doesn't have a head, well, as per here, evidently the maybe Demon Child Tralalorn isn't the only devic ventriloquist


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Mater Matare

The Self-Proclaimed Apocalyptic of Death

| 1st Impressions | 4-Armed Alarm | 4 Extra Talismans | The Gorgon of Gore | A Bellyful of Baneful | Paired with Air in Venice | Warrior Mom |

Mundane Murder

Images of Medusa aren't hard to come by. Finding them with 4 arms are, however.

On closer look, this one seems to have somewhat more than four arms. Sooth said, this Mater may even be a Pater.

A multi-armed figure holding, among things, a hatchet

She, if she is a she, does hold a hatchet in one of her too many hands, though.

In each of her hands she held a weapon that similarly glowed, albeit with what devils would call the luminosity of Brainrock. These were a machete, a noose, a harpoon, and a tomahawk.

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"

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Took over Wilderwitch

The Medusa was as fearsome to behold as any of the decathonitized devils. A red-skinned, bare-breasted, four-armed, three-eyed, snake-haired gorgon with serpentine fangs, she had claws on all twenty of her fingertips and ten talons instead of ten toenails.

Her only piece of clothing was a pair of printed cloth flaps girdled around her waist. It had a solitary pocket on the front flap and the whole thing Gypsium-glowed like the D’Angelo twins’ Aerod and Aqua Ankh.

Her breasts and belly were ballooning. She appeared nine-months pregnant.

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"

Goddess of Gore

Although she grandiosely accepted the title Goddess of Death, Matare was perhaps not surprisingly only one of many devils thus proclaimed.

She was, as War had just referred to her, little more than a gorgon; a comparatively lowborn mistress of mundane murder, suicide, and other forms of individual violence resulting in death, rather than of Death Itself.

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"

Life brings Death but this Death also carries Life

All four [female Apocalyptics] were born in earlier litters and, therefore, all four could claim seniority, if not superiority, over her. All four were also female. But Matare had one thing they never had: a belly packed with four, potentially future Apocalyptics.

As mother-to-be of their long hoped for, fully devic children, her word counted disproportionately highly amongst the principal threesome.

Nonetheless, devils could no more disobey their All-Father in order to adhere to her wishes than they could their conceptive fathers. Either/or would be a genetic impossibility. And she should realize that.

“Who can say for sure these are lesser creatures?” Matare countered. “You saw what they did to the Nucleoid and that was before we completely possessed these six. Those four resisted possession. Perhaps that makes them our equals.

“My sense is Grandfather won't or can't punish us out here; otherwise we would already be recathonitized. Besides, even if Byronics were the ones who cathonitized us in the first place, we escaped Cathonia and, as such, are no longer bound by Sedon’s dictates. I say kill them.”

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"

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Once a Medusa, always a Medusa

Medusa makes for great masks. Airealist-types do too, when they're Apollo-like.

Medusa Mask (with an Airhead mask beside it), shot in Venice by Jim McPherson, 2008

This shot, taken in Venice in 2008, has both.


The Sangs' Main Mom

As for why Murder can get away with calling herself a mother more than 1500 years before War-Pox even begins, as per Feel Theo, during the early centuries of the Mad Goddesses' Middle Sea Matriarchate she was almost as fecund as Fecundity.

Almost exclusively sired by Mars Bellona, the Apocalyptic of War, Sangs had numerous mothers. War’s serial infidelities spoke to why Drought, his first and highest born mate, caused herself to become fallow rather than rewarding him with more of her azuras.

Although she’d spent most of the last two thousand years imprisoned within All of Incain, a remarkable number, perhaps even a preponderance of them, called mom the Medusa who now styled herself Mater Matare, Mother Murder, the Apocalyptic of Death.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

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The Vultyrie

Disaster's devic mount

| 1st Impressions | A Gaggle of Vults | Sphinxes Aside | Vultyrie Benches in Costa Rica | 2-Headed Vults | A 2-Headed Crow | How a Headless Dickhead Talks |

The Glorious Dead in Feel Theo

The devic Vultyrie has descendents. Rather, not being very bright, she probably thinks she has them. The ones at issue, also called Vultyrie, can't really be considered her worshippers either.

Collage containing images suggestive of the devic Vultyrie, Disater's mount; prepared by Jim McPherson using his own pictures, 2010

While, like her, they're birdbrains, unlike her (because she's a third generational Master Deva) they've an excuse. Some of them might be as big as her but they're still birds - birds with one howsoever large body, one set of proportionately gigantic wings and only two eyes.

As follows, Chrysaor Attis observed a gaggle of these Vultyrie and/or their riders, all of whom are Sangazurs, foolishly taunting All the Invincible She-Sphinx in Feel Theo:

He wasn’t happy about the overhead onlookers, however. The enormous vultures – rather, their riders – better be careful.

The Vultyrie, as the grotesquely oversized buzzards were collectively known, carried the Sangazur-animated Glorious Dead of Valhalla.

All’s ghastly squalling must have attracted them as if moths to a flame.

... from "Feeling Theocidal"

All as Ginny

By the way, according to my dictionary there are dozens of different kinds of sphinxes.

In Feel Theo, though, and indeed thus far in terms of phantacea Mythos print publications, there are only two, a male and a female.

Ginny and Andy, as shot in NYC's Met Museum in 2009 by Jim McPherson

They'd be Andy (the Androsphinx) and Ginny (the Gynosphinx).


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Took over Raven's Head

In his right hand he (Disaster) held the reins to a thoroughly fantastical living gargoyle that until recently had been Raven's Head.

The grotesquery was an excessively oversized, two-headed, double-necked vulture who had two bodies joined at their midsections by some sort of fused wing -- as if it was once two beasts united by inner wings that grew together.

Both of its heads had three eyes and it appeared more draconic than avian. All in all it stretched at least ten feet long.

Its two outer wings were folded in at its sides but were proportionately as huge as the rest of its monstrous being. It scrunched down and allowed the headless Apocalyptic to step onto its backs.

Clearly this Ramazar rode the thing standing up.

... from War-Pox 3: "Thus Spake Xuthros Hor"

Vultyrie Benches

Have to admit I cheated when I prepared the Vultyrie collage.

Two stone benches spotted in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, in 2008

For example, as immediately above what appears to be one bench with the 2-headed, and 2-bodied, devic Vultyrie as its back support in the collage is actually two stone benches with two different vultures.

(NOTE: This twilight shot, and the two daylight shots I used in the collage, were taken in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, back in January 2008.)


So how the heck does Headless Ramazar talk anyhow?

Ramazar pulled a flip pad out of the breast pocket of his highwayman-style overcoat. He also pulled out a pair of spectacles. After a second's hesitation he returned the glasses to his pocket.

“Don't know why I keep those things around.” he mumbled, flipping open the notebook. “Haven't got a nose to perch them on nor the eyes to see through, have I?”

“So it would appear, yet you speak and have no mouth. How do manage that?”

“Promise not tell anyone, Dand the Dandy Deadbeat Dad, and I'll let you in on our scintilla of a secret.”

“Upon my inviolable oath as a highborn son of Lazareme, mightiest of the Great Gods.”

“Two-be-headed Vultyrie's a ventriloquist.”

“And here I thought she was just a mindless schlemiel.”

“That too.”

... from "The War of the Apocalyptics"

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Double-Headed Vultyrie(s)

As one might expect it is difficult to find shots worth taking of two-headed vultures. I have, however, snapped a couple.

They're here, here and here.

(And, yes I realize that's three, not two. Thanks for pointing it out to me, friend.)


Frankfurt Vults

Double-headed vulture spotted and shot in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2008 by Jim McPherson

I spotted and shot the top one in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2008.


Muscular Man Vults

A pendant spotted and shot in the Met Museum, NYC, by Jim McPherson in 2009

I spotted this one in the Met Museum when I went to NYC in 2009 hoping to bluff my way into publishing houses that might be interested in the phantacea Mythos.

I never got in to meet any potential publishers. I did, however, get plenty of good shots. One of them, of Magna Mater, the Great Goddess known as Cybele in Imperial Rome and ancient Phrygia, is up above.


Vults + an Aerod bonus

Another, just above the part I incorporated into the Vultyrie collage, is immediately below.

4 pounded out strips of gold spotted in NYC's Met Museum, 2009

(NOTE: I considered using the omega-shaped loop above the actual double-head vulture in the Airealist collage over on the deviants' webpage but opted for consistency instead.)


Haligonian Happenstance

There's also a serendipitous sighting of two-headed crow, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, here.

I reference it due to, as per the adjacent quote, what happened to D-Brig's Raven's Head on Damnation Isle in November 1980.


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Page Background Image: The All-Seeing Eye of Providence, as shot by Jim McPherson, 2008, within the chapel of the highly recommended Quinta da Regaleira (where it's called "The Flaming Triangle" for some reason) in Sintra Portugal. I've been using it, or something like it, as Pyrame's symbol for years now.

Webpage last updated: Spring 2010

There may be no cure for aphantasia (defined as 'having a blind or absent mind's eye') but there certainly is for aphantacea ('a'='without', like the 'an' in 'anheroic')


Link to Drive Thru Fiction's Phantacea Ordering PageLink to Drive Thru Comics Phantacea Ordering PageInteractive PDFs of some of the Phantacea Mythos books and graphic novels released by Phantacea Publications are available for downloading from One Book Shelf and its frontline ordering sites: Drive Through Fiction and Drive Through Comics


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Alternative Ordering Information for PHANTACEA Mythos mosaic novels

Downloadable order form for additional PHANTACEA Mythos Print Publications

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Jim McPherson's Worldwide Email Address -- jmcp@phantacea.com

pH-Webworld 1996-2006: THE WEB SERIALS

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Website last updated: Winter 2017/182013 logo for Phantacea Publications

Written by: Jim McPherson -- jmcp@phantacea.com
© copyright Jim McPherson (www.phantacea.com)

Phantacea Publications
(James H McPherson, Publisher)
74689 Kitsilano RPO
2768 W Broadway
Vancouver BC V6K 4P4
Canada


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Logo reads Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA  on the WebWebsites featuring, at least in part, Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA Mythos

Phantacea Publications: http://www.phantacea.com

Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA Mythos Online (pH-Webworld): http://www.phantacea.info

Serendipity and Phantacea (entries supplied by Jim McPherson since 1996): http://www.phantacea.info/seren.htm#TheList

The Phantacea Publications Blog (free to read; register to contribute): http://www.phantacea.com/blog

pHantacea on pHlickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/89008792@N06/galleries/

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Jim McPherson's pre-2010 Travels: http://members.shaw.ca/jmcptimps

Ozymandias, the Wonderful Weather Wizard of Oz's 2011 Travels Site: http://members.shaw.ca/jmcp_oz11/index.htm

Jim McPherson's post-2010 Travels: http://members.shaw.ca/jmcp1749

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