AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD
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Next time you’re strolling from the Museo Mural Diego Rivera to the Palacio
de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, walk along Avenida Juarez rather than through
Alameda Park. That way you’ll spot a statue on the park’s perimeter
of a muscular, nearly naked fellow with a cloak-like strip of cloth strategically
draped over one arm and one leg. He’s depicted wearing a Phrygian cap
(without a Brainrock quill stuck into it) and wielding a Roman-style ‘gladius’ or straight, stabbing sword. There’s also a belt and pouch strapped
over his chest.
True, the statue’s a bronze monochrome but, especially when you’re
blessed or cursed with a phantacea like mine (that’s
Greek for imagination), it isn’t much of a stretch to see his skin golden-brown,
his cloak having many colours, his pouch as a bottomless bag and his blade curved.
There’s no indication as to whom the statue represents but every other
statue in the park is based on Greek and/or Mediterranean mythology so, mostly
from the Liberty Cap, I’m thinking it is Phrygian Attis. In other words
I’m seeing Feel Theo’s
Taurus Chrysaor Attis.
 On four separate pedestals outside the Palacio de Bellas Artes rear magnificent
renditions of Winged Pegasus, presumably with either Perseus or Bellerophon
riding them. In PHANTACEA terms they’d be, once
again, the Attis, this time
astride Peg, his unimaginatively named psychopomp.
Go inside the Palace, up the stairs to the third level. Lo, there’s
David Alfaro Siqueiros’s Nueva democracia (“New Democracy”),
probably the most famous Mexican mural ever done. Me, I don’t see Siqueiros’s
wife, Angelica Arenal de Siqueiros, as the iconic, bare-breasted woman breaking
out of chains. I see the whole mural as representing Datong Harmonia, Feel
Theo’s self-proclaimed Unity of Panharmonium.
Along the same wall to its left is another triptych: Jorge Gonzalez Camarena’s Humanidad librándose (“Humanity Liberating Itself
”). Who’s the woman shown on its right third? Surely –
better make that serendipitously – it’s Pyrame Silverstar, albeit with a normal head and eyes. She’s definitely got Pyrame’s
silvery hair. As for the crucified fellow smashing apart the wooden cross to
which he’s been tethered, that has to signify Terrible Tethys from Pre-Theo,
doesn’t it.
 To Humanity’s left, occupying the entire west wall of the mezzanine,
is Diego Rivera’s “Man, Controller of the Universe”.
Nelson Rockefeller commissioned the original in 1933 for New York City’s
RCA Building. When Rivera refused to remove the figure of Vladimir Lenin, Rockefeller
had the entire mural chiselled off the wall. Needless to say, New York’s
loss thereafter became Mexico’s gain.
On the right third of the Rivera mural,
he shows a decapitated statue of a Great God. Below it, note the peasant sitting
on its severed head as if a cushion. Who do you suppose the god might be? Opposite
it, way across the stairwell on the mezzanine’s east wall is La Katharsis by José Clemente Orozco. Could that red-skinned voluptuary be beguiling
Belialma, Sinistral Lust of Satanwyck? Of course it could (not).
There, on the south wall, in the midst of Siqueiros’s “Torment
of Cuauhtemoc” (Attacking Eagle), is that a Keres Hellhound? Is the
distraught woman dressed in various shades of red Hot Stuff, Methandra Thanatos,
minus the mask and 3rd eye? And, on the front-facing balcony outside the Palace’s
second level, is that statue of the mother of the muses really Mnemosyne,
the Sophia to Helios’s Sophos? Is that therefore a rendition of the miraculous
Female Principal once humanized? Wouldn’t want to speculate, would I.
Until now I haven’t even mentioned the massive statuary found along
the Paseo de la Reforma, which runs north and south of Av Juarez.  Wilderwitch
as Diana Cazadora (Huntress) is to the south, near the Bosque de Chaputec, whilst
an arguable Raven’s Head caw-whinnies outside the Torre El Caballito,
at the Juarez intersection. Between them, at Insurgentes, there are a couple
of John Sundown types within the Monumento de Cuauhtemoc and, closer to Diana
Cazadora,  a Gloriel D’Angelo type atop the Monumento de la Independencia
in the ’glorieta’ of the same name.
Who’d have thought Mexico City would provide a veritable hotbed of imagery
applicable to the PHANTACEA Mythos? I’m the
obvious answer to that. But, now that you’ve read “Feeling
Theocidal”, and are about to embark upon the opening chapter
of “The War of the
Apocalyptics”, which I’ve included immediately after this
missive as a bonus, maybe you’re another answer.
But wait! Which is to say: Whoa! Wilderwitch,
Raven’s Head, Blind Sundown, Gloriel D’Angelo: weren’t they characters from the six issue PHANTACEA comic book series that came out between
1977 and 1980? They were indeed; members of the Cerebrus-proclaimed D-Brig (Damnation Brigade), as it happens. So were the four Primary Apocalyptics: War,
Plague, Disaster and Mother Murder, who you’ll
have noted also appear in 'Feel Theo'.
And that’s what’s coming your way next down the PHANTACEA Mythos print publication pipeline. “The
War of the Apocalyptics” is the first book in a series of prose
novels not so much based on the comic books as
retelling their as yet not-quite finished storylines.
 So how does this jibe with “Feeling Theocidal” being Book One in “The
Thrice- Cursed Godly Glories” Trilogy? Let me put it this way:
Book Three in the trilogy is set immediately after War-Pox.
Like Book Two in the trilogy, it’s already written.  The pair just need
some more of my undivided attention. Which I’ll be giving them after War-Pox is ready to roll off the presses in all its thousands.
You can probably find jpegs of every one of the Mexico City murals or monuments
I refer to above online. You can definitely find some of them among the stacks
of personal photos I’ve mounted on my long-running website: PHANTACEA on the Web. A few have even creapt onto phantacea.com, which
is solely dedicated to the various PHANTACEA Mythos print publications.
I invite you to visit both websites next time you’re in the mood. My email address is on their navigation bars, if you want to get hold of me. Every so often I’ve been known to
respond to readers’ queries.
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*OFF PAGE NOTES*: With respect to the murals referred to in this piece, I took pictures of all of them. Unfortunately I'm not happy with most of them. There are lynx, though, and in the interests of 'hey, that's hardly all they did' here are some of them:
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