Looking under Rock(s)

I can't help but remember the wonderful Irish comedian Dave Allen once talking of seeking directions in Ireland & being told;

"Well if I were you, I wouldn't start from here."

So we won't either, we're going to start from over 'there' instead.

I was all set to wrap up the like sky-blue air series. I'd mentioned my line of investigation to my mate Michael from Hidden Agendas & I'd mentioned Elton John to him as a little aside line to that. His interestingly worded response about said minstrel combined with the strange (to me) affair of that said minstrel's one night stand in Auckland last year sent me a-sleuthing.

I have been neither a fan nor a detractor of Elton John. For me he has simply been a strange little man who wore big glasses & sang some songs on the radio during my formative years.

Actually quite a lot of songs.

"In his four-decade career, John has sold over 200 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. He has more than 50 Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 U.S. albums, 56 Top 40 singles, 16 Top 10, four No. 2 hits, and nine No. 1 hits. He has won five Grammy awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Tony Award. His success has had a profound impact on popular music and has contributed to the continued popularity of the piano in rock and roll. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him #49 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time."

However it was his funereal friendship with some of the unluckiest star studded names of the last (& this) century, that is the main reason we are gathered here today. Before we dig them up (not literally of course), let us travel briefly down that hallowed brick road from which I began pulling up paving stones last year in an effort to see what lay beneath.

A brief aside: You may, like me, have previously filed Elton in the slightly weirdo famous person basket & forgotten all about him. Therefore, if you have gotten thus far in this article, your hand may be sneaking towards your mouse with the Great Escape in mind.


So to cut a long explanation short we are going to take a look at Elton John, with some intuitively coloured glasses & see how he looks in an alternative light.
We are going to see if instead of an outrageous, weird or laughable performer, we have been wooed & crooned to over four decades by one who wears the title of chief priest.

Hopefully you either remembered or skimmed through the links I left under the Retelling heading & will know why I have retained a twinning of Elton & the god Mercury to this day.
Just in case you are a little hazy on Merc, let's do a little run down, not of him obviously (well he's fleet of foot & would probably outrun us).

Mercury is the Roman flavour of the Greek god Hermes - both have a penchant for the feel of the wind against their skin & who can blame them.

But there's a lot more to them than mere showboys. Ands there's a lot more connectivity, in my eyes, to them & the priest Elton Hercules John.

Mercury & or his twin Hermes will now make a short appearance on centre stage.

"Hermes is the messenger of Zeus and the herald of the gods" "Most importantly, he is the “messenger” (Gr. angelos - Angel) of the Gods."
"He was also associated with the Egyptian god of knowledge and magic, called Thoth" (wiki). Hermes & Thoth get all conjugated up together in the (too tricky for me) system of Hermeticism.

"Hermes was considered the inventor of the religious sacrifices to the other gods, and hence he not only acts the part of a herald at sacrifices... but is also the protector of sacrificial animals" ...errr doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose?

"...he was a patron of poetry and music, inventing the lyre, the pan pipe, and the flute." in other words has a musical bent.

" Later in life Hermes would give Apollo a flute in exchange for the Caduceus. The Caduceus was a winged staff with two entwined snakes which Hermes used to cast spells."

"Hermes was said to have invented fire (though it was Prometheus who gave fire to men)."

If alchemy has a patron deity it's Hermes, god of riddles, tricks and secrets; or as the Romans called him, Mercury; tutelary wheeler-dealer deity of trade, thieves and market places? The arch illusionist, the ultimate Tricky-Dickie, the fluid that is really a metal but behaves like a liquid..."

"Being the herald (messenger of the gods), it was his duty to guide the souls of the dead down to the underworld."


Ok boys thanks for your time. Please give a big hand to the fastest lads in the West as they make their way off stage (you might just want to keep a strong hold on your wallets as they pass, mind you I guess they don't have anywhere to hide them, so you should be ok).

Last week I bought a book I really didn't want to (but research overruled me).

It was a second hand book on Elton John, it had lots of pictures & my intuitive eyes were seeking understanding.
When I'd done I showed it to a friend of mine, who hails from West Africa. From my point of view, he is blessed with ears that can hear the kind of questions I like to ask. In this instance I was interested in his knowledge of African Traditional Religion. I asked him what impressions he got from viewing the costumes Elton has worn over the years.
He knew the direction my research had taken, but he is a very up front kind of guy & has never agreed with me just to keep me happy.
You have already read his answer, for it was he who gave us the title 'chief priest'.

I was reminded Credo Mutwa, a man who is what he appears to be, a Zulu shaman.

What I am not so sure of is Mr Elton John.

Does he have an outrageous sense of costume or does he dress for the rituals he oversees?

Obviously not Elton John, but the glasses reminded me of someone...

"Feathers from the Eagle or other birds (as swan, owl, raven) symbolize the ability of the shaman to travel the spirits world with his soul... The headdress is an instrument for inducing trance-states, also. By wearing the headdress only during shamanizing the shaman is actually programming himself (subconsciously) for the shamanic trance."

"The costume of the shaman almost always includes feathers to symbolise the shamans power of soul flight" -
"It's lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight
And I think it's gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home..."

"The symbols on the shaman's costume and drum can refer to animals (as helping spirits), or the rank of the shaman. There were also examples of “mutually opposing symbols”, distinguishing “white” shaman practicing at day contacting sky spirits, and “black” shaman practicing at night contacting evil spirits for bad aims." That the piano is such an integral part of this man's performance leads me to wonder...



...about the power of the ivories or 88 keys - that's a lot of potential locking or unlocking n'est-ce pas?



"Perhaps the most important aspect of the shaman costume was its function as a storehouse of power. Forms and objects were sewn or attached to the costume, some merely symbols, but others actual power objects. Spirits would give power to the shaman through these objects, allowing the shaman wearing the costume to directly profit from these powers during his ceremonies"

"the shaman made an important statement by wearing his costume, one which in many ways contradicted traditional societal rules, as their costumes were primarily androgynous... To become a shaman, one had to be both man and woman,...


...because a person should be the sum total of all human experiences. This idea was taken very seriously in many Siberian - and some Native American - tribes...Homosexuality and traditional - Siberian - shamanism have always been connected...Many traditional shamanic cultures offered their homosexual members the possibility of living with a partner: a gay or lesbian could become a shaman and change sex, afterwards being able to marry a person of the same biological sex. Usually such transformed shamans would be looked upon with awe, fear or suspicion. They were considered to have very strong and special magical powers."
Elton John 'married' his partner, David Furnish in 2005. As one would expect of a chief priest, this occurred on a highly significant date - 21st December, Winter Solstice - their 7th wedding anniversary may just take their breath away.

The different symbols found on most Siberian costumes can be divided into seven groups:
feathers and wings,
bones and skeletons,
antlers and horns,
human and animal figures,
bells and other small hangers,
chains and ropes.

Lets have a creative look then. Feathers & wings anyone?

"Pop king Elton John is set to swap his sequinned jacket for a feather cloak (korowai) at his concert in New Zealand next month... John reportedly met a New Zealander overseas wearing one and liked it."



Just a funny costume or invoking the 'magic' of Disney? "Among his many honours, John was named a Disney Legend for his numerous outstanding contributions to Disney's films and theatrical works on 9 October 2006, by The Walt Disney Company. It is the company's highest honour." John was instrumental in creating the songs that accompany another animal magic ritual, The Lion King.

Bones & skeletons anyone?



Antlers & horns? ... or perhaps antennae?




Human & animal figures or just cuddly costumes?

"ELTON JOHN once terrified a doped-up IGGY POP when he stumbled on stage during a THE STOOGES show wearing a gorilla suit. The punk icon admits he still remembers how the sight of Elton as a gorilla over 30 years ago had him trembling"

"But that wasn't all. Five different-colored pianos were opened up and released real doves, Elton came down in an outrageous silver get-up, and during "Crocodile Rock," a real crocodile was walked around stage on a leash."

Bells & other small hangers? - will jewelry do?

"SIR ELTON JOHN stunned fans at a recent British gig by wearing explicit jewellery for his onstage performance. The YOUR SONG singer, 57, shocked audience members at soccer team Bristol City's stadium by wearing a diamante necklace bearing the words "f*** off" and a penis-shaped necklace."

Chains & ropes?

"Aug. 11, 2009 NEW YORK - Alice in Chains thought it would take a miracle to get Elton John to play on the band's tribute record to their late lead singer, Layne Staley. But it only took a listen to the song to get the rock legend on board"

"It's easier to lose a rope around a fool
Easier sometimes to throw a rope around a fool
A ring of your indifference thrown anywhere you choose
Easier sometimes to throw a rope around a fool" (Rope around a Fool - Elton John)

"I got a ball and chain hanging around my heart" - (Elton John - "Ball & Chain").

Ok the fashion show is over - I actually had a hard time finding the pics in my book that I wanted. This simply gives another way of looking at someone whose persona has thus far been cemented into our memories simply as a strange little man who composes & sings & plays the piano & likes dressing up & well, he's gay so it's not surprising.

From magical costumes we move to magical music. Unless you are very old, deaf or grew up in a cave, music has been your constant companion in this life. We all know who & what we like & don't like. You will have exchanged your hard earned money for your favourite merry melodies. You may have got emotional, uplifted or danced round the room like a lunatic to certain ditties, well I know I have.

However looking at Elton has made me look at music. It has made me wonder.

I know there has been talk of backwards lyrics & hidden messages & all sorts of nasties, but we do tend to excuse the music we like from such exploration. I asked my African friend about music in his childhood world & he told me that it was important in ritual, it was used either to invoke or appease the gods. From what I have found in my research I would have to agree, that the endless, blood-soaked centuies of sacrifice are to do with invoking or appeasing.

The word music is born from the muses who were (of course) "Greek goddesses who presided over the arts and sciences. They were believed to inspire all artists, especially poets, philosophers, and musicians. The Muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory." Hmmmm .... isn't there a saying about giving a wide berth to Greeks bearing gifts?

Let's look at the words of others, & as we do keep in mind the energy that is invoked by music, all music, both in your life & the that which is created & magnified at a rock concert;

"I learned the value of music in ritual nearly 20 years ago. I remember a Samhain ritual in Colorado where the priestess and those calling the quarters sang over a recording to cast the circle. I can't remember the actual song, but I do remember the energy that was raised and the sense of power I felt as their voices reached to the cold, starry sky.

I found that when we dimmed the lights and processed with candles and incense around the circle to powerful music, the ritual participants were put in a different state of mind, separate from the mundane world and open to the energies of the elements, deities and magick that we would be working that night... Most of us were already in the habit of using song to raise energy... singing up the energy and then walking backward with it to draw it out over the larger circle.

... I found that rather than looking for a song to fit a ritual, I couldn't even write the ritual until I found the music... Music had become the inspiration and focus of the ritual, rather than an addition to it."

"There is something deeply spiritual about music. Our Celtic ancestors understood this, and they gave poets and musicians a place of honor they deserve..
I imagine that rituals were very musical and that most of their prayers and words of praise were sung. The legends and stories of the Gods and heroes speak of the magical power of their music.
The deeper truth here is that music is magic. Music is prayer. “Music,” says Beethoven, “is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.” It is no less than the universal language of the Gods."



"The discovery of song and the creation of musical instruments both owed their origin to a human impulse which lies much deeper than conscious intention: the need for rhythm in life… the need is a deep one, transcending thought, and disregarded at our peril. ~Richard Baker"

"...the period of Samuel, David, and Solomon was the golden age of Hebrew music... Music was now for the first time systematically cultivated. It was an essential part of training in the schools of the prophets (1 Sam. 10:5; 19:19-24; 2 Kings 3:15; 1 Chr. 25:6). There now arose also a class of professional singers (2 Sam. 19:35; Eccl. 2:8). Solomon's Temple, however, was the great school of music."

My African friend also made mention of the need for drugs to help those who become the focal points to the vast amounts of energy created during rituals. The feeling I got from this was that the stars are a type of transformer - whether they are stepping up or down the energy I know not. Look at Elton in the picture above, what kind of strength or ability would you need to keep from burning out or up? Can't you almost seeeee/feel the energy. Man, imagine if 'the peasants' (that's us apparently), could use that energy to heal ourselves & our world!

I have come across the description of the lyrics of Elton John's songs as cryptic, personally from what I know of them I'd have to agree. Bernie Taupin has written a great deal of Elton's words & yet it was mostly done in separate times & spaces. I don't know why I find this strange, perhaps it reminds me of artificial insemination, when the creative energies never meet - somehow it seems to me the energy of music demands the physical presence of it's begetters. Then again perhaps it's just another instance of my "knowledge" of how things should be done, coming from the school of television.

Ok, finally we come to the suggestion that Michael from Hidden Agendas made, that got my attention, some weeks back. That of Elton John being 'a herald.'

In NZ, the Herald is our big newspaper. In the dictionary it's quite big too - "To introduce, or give tidings of, as by a herald; to proclaim; to announce; to foretell; to usher in" - it's the latter meanings that we're toying with here.

We are now going to attempt to a big leap. We are going to see if Mr John might not only fit the Mercurial/Hermetic role of a herald, but also undertake another this god's roles - that of psychopomp.

"Psychopomps"... literally meaning the "guide of souls") are creatures, spirits, angels or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly-deceased souls to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply provide safe passage." (wiki)

For surely there's no other superstar (deity?) that has anything like Elton's record for guest appearances at funerals for friends.

So where to begin...

Let's not start from here, let's go over there to the man-made-god who 'was' Mercury.


"Freddy Mercury voted Top Rock God" - the god who was Queen died on 24 November, 1991. His death sentence was heralded to the world just a day earlier. It was during that most auspicious of times for a man-made-god to die. perhaps we could call them the Kennedy days.

Just a very, very few were granted audience to the Zorastrian finale that was Freddie's leave-taking, among these of course, was Elton John.

In all these, perhaps preposterous, presumptions, I cannot say if I believe Elton consciously fulfills his roles or if it is done uncosnciously. These 'great ones' who live among us are not like us. They seem capable of holding & generating a power that most of us cannot even imagine. Could you, would you, walk out on a stage in front of say twenty thousand people & bewitch them to such a degree that they become a single emotional entity? Really??

I cannot go on without inserting this rather bewildering, synchronistic (to my recent articles) find.

"No one knows for sure what became of Freddie's ashes. He was cremated at the West London Crematorium. Some say that Mary has the urn, others think he was taken back to Zanzibar, and yet others think he was scattered over a south London cemetery. There is one unconfirmed report that his ashes were scattered over Lake Geneva, in Montreux, Switzerland. Queen did own a recording studio there, and Freddie was very fond of the place. I can tell you that Freddie's friends believe that is entirely possible. There is a statue of him, uh, erected at the site."

I have come across a number of internet head scratchers wondering why a 3 metre high statue of Freddie Mercury would be placed in a small town in Switzerland, not exactly the 'rock capital' of the world. However Lake Geneva interests me more every day! I can't help but wonder if Freddies ashes might not lie in or under his symbolic statue.

It was unveiled in 1996 & left in relative peace for several years. However as of 2003, a new celebration (invocation?) has been taking place there every year - it's called Freddie Mercury's Montreux Memorial Day & it's held annually in the first week-end of September. What is it about the worship of memorial statues that is so very important??

If you & your mouse are still with me, I congratulate me, personally I've had enough of Elton John to last a life time, but I must finish what I started. Doth not the Mercury below remind you of the Freddie Mercury Rising above?

Let's back up a bit & turn the clock back to 1974.
"28th November 1974 was Thanksgiving Day as well as the date that an Elton John concert at New York's Madison Square Gardens turned into a very special event. Towards the end of the evening Elton was joined onstage by close friend and fellow musician John Lennon. Together they performed three numbers -'Whatever Gets You Through The Night','Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' and Ï Saw Her Standing There'. Lennon's performance of the last number surprised many as he has never been known to sing a Mccartney song before. This was the last concert appearance by John Lennon."



It was Elton who heralded (announced) that Lennon's new album would get to number one. And he made a bet to the effect that Lennon would have to get up on stage with him next time he performed. That performance was Lennon living up to his part of the bet.

Ok fast forward 6 years.

"On 13 September 1980, [Elton] John... performed a free concert to an estimated 400,000 fans on The Great Lawn in Central Park in New York City. Elton sang and dedicated "Imagine" to his friend, John Lennon, at this concert. Three months later Lennon would be murdered in front of his home building"

...and just across the road a memorial would be created, with this focal point, & at the heart of this focal point would lie one word "Imagine".

Lets skip forward to a year that is so darkly occult, I'm surprised we navigated our way through it without headlamps. 1997.

On 15th July that year, the fashion designer Gianni Versace, is murdered outside his front gates. To be honest, this is where this article was supposed to start. For now I can only spare a few lines, but I'll be back.

Elton & friends gather to say farewell in the cathedral of Milan. It is time for Versace's trek to the underworld.

Six weeks later Diana is dead. Elton turns in the performance of all our lifetimes. ...Uh Ok I'm getting the inner tug that says to stop here - a rush to the finish line will leave too much unsaid,
for this performance is the culmination of a chief priest's life's work...

Lest we forget, Elton John serenades the newly deceased Pharaoh Hermenthotip in the Futurama's "A Pharaoh to Remember. " He sings the pharaoh to his rest with a revised version of Crocodile Rock. Elton is then tipped into the tomb, presumably so he can fulfil his role as pychopomp.

More to follow...

Well I didn't think I'd be back so quickly

I finally remembered something that Freddie Mercury's statue has been trying to remind me of every time I pass this way.

The town of Montreaux on the shores of Lake Geneva has yet another claim to fame. On 4 December 1971, Montreax Casino burned down during a Frank Zappa concert. We are 'told', that a fan fired a flare gun into the ceiling.
"In the middle of Don Preston's synthesizer solo on "King Kong", the place suddenly caught fire."

Camping out just down the road were Deep Purple;

"The "smoke on the water" that became the title of the song (credited to bass guitarist Roger Glover, who related how the title occurred to him when he suddenly woke from a dream a few days later), referred to the smoke from the fire spreading over Lake Geneva from the burning casino as the members of Deep Purple watched the fire from their hotel across the lake." (the words belong to wiki, but the emphasis is mine)

"We all came out to montreux
On the lake geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didnt have much time
Frank zappa and the mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky"

22 years later on 4th December, (the date of the fire), Frank Zappa dies.

4th December is the Roman festival of Bona Dea, "the perpetually virginal goddess, associated with virginity and fertility in women". "In the Roman mythology, Vulcan (god of fire) shared his realm with Bona Dea". "Bona Dea ('the Good Goddess') is a Roman fertility goddess, especially worshipped by the Roman matrons." - Frank Zappa's & the Mothers, were playing the night Montreaux Casino on the shores of Lake Geneva was set alight...hmmm
Just to give an inkling of how famous "Smoke on the Water" (or "Fire over Lake Geneva") is - when I type it into Google it comes in with 12,800.000 results (that's just a fraction more than this blog gets).

A retelling

I am presently up to my elbows in research for a new post.


In the meantime I have decided to re post two articles from last year as they revolve around & around a mercurial character that will be reappearing on this stage in the nearish future. They are interlocking articles, so if you have the time & inclination you can start with the mercurial minstrel & if the mood takes you, follow on to the tale of the thief


Best wishes to all

The day of the Jackal in Hyde Park

"Whilst the 11th September 2001 holds an indescribable place in the psyche of New Yorkers, the 20th July 1982 is similarly stamped on the hearts of thousands of Londoners."

That was the day that the IRA detonated two bombs in London.

I suppose in the storymind of modern times this is just another tale of destructive terrorism. From wiki "It is estimated that between 1969 and 1997, the IRA was responsible for the death or injury of over 20,000 people: over 14,000 of these being civilians."

I am Irish by birth, I don't know if this made our household slightly more aware of the violence or not, but certainly I should think most people in the Western World have an instant Brand Name recognition of the IRA.

I'm now going to borrow some more from the site that gave us the opening quote. The author was an eye witness & his embroidered style gives a tapestry-like view into a day 27 years past.

"It was a typical summer's day in London, and I was a young engineer who had spent six of the previous nine years working in offices where I could get a good view each morning of the Horse Guards trotting along Carriage Road on the south side of Hyde Park. I was just one of hundreds of office workers who would congregate around their park side windows to admire the daily spectacle of plumes on high helmets bobbing up and down in perfect unison.


Mirror polished breast plates reflecting the sun in blinding flashes and black leather thigh boots burnished to a patent gloss atop perfect black mounts whose clinking harnesses provided a triangle like backing to the rhythmic thudding of hooves on tarmac.


That July morning I was busy on a sales enquiry and could only glance across the six heavily trafficked lanes of Hyde Park Corner to see the Blues and Royals passing by. I saw the usual mixture of locals and tourists strolling along the pavement, cameras clicking, fingers pointing. As I lowered my head below the nondescript partitions of my cubicle I heard a sound like thunder, louder even than the intense concussion you get when lightning flashes directly over head. The next sound was a crack and a glass window just a few yards from me split diagonally from top to bottom as it failed to resist the pressure wave of the explosion.

I looked up again knowing that something was badly wrong, and saw a guardsman crawling along the road on all fours behind the remains of a car that was on fire. The previously animated spectators were now horizontal, scattered all over the pavement.


Two small family cars that had been parked one behind the other were now burned out shells, one shattered carcass on top of the other, perfectly placed as though they had been lifted into position by a crane following the instructions of a movie director making a war film...

...One of my colleagues, a man of great sensitivity and warmth, rushed across the road to do whatever he could - when he came back he sat down in the room where we kept the stationery and slept all afternoon, within a year he had died of a stroke. Full article here..

That bombing led to the death of four soldiers & seven horses. Less than two hours later another explosion under a bandstand in Regents Park blew a further seven music making soldiers to kingdom come. Rather graphic article here.

Ever since my deeply & darkly felt visit to Sydney's Hyde Park in 2007, I have wondered about the OZ-London Hyde Park connection. I started looking then stopped. I started again when I discovered London's Hyde Park-Tyburn connection in conjunction with the mysterious Serpentine drowning of Harriet Westbrook (Shelley).

I felt a strong urge to look into the IRA Hyde Park bombing, but had no idea what I might be looking at. Certainly the date of 20th July was one I had come across during my time of writing & researching.

It was the date, we are told, that Apollo parked his Eagle on the moon.


It was also the date in 1944, that that the bomb-ina-briefcase huffed & puffed & blew down the Wolf's Lair - four little piggies fell down, but the Big Bad Wolf got away.


And it was the birth date of the Titan Sir Edmund Hillary.

While searching for a picture of 'Moon over Everest' to complete my moonish ensemble, I experienced a number of wtf moments when I learned of an astronaut taking a piece of the moon to the summit of Mt Everest earlier this year.

"Former astronaut Scott Parazynski reached the summit of Mt. Everest on May 19, just as dawn broke. A moon rock sample, collected by Apollo 11 Astronaut Neil Armstrong in July 1969, accompanied him.
The lunar sample... was retrieved about 15-20 feet north of the Lunar Module Eagle which landed in the southern Sea of Tranquility. NASA loaned the sample to Parazynski and his climbing team."

If I was not already a lunatic, I hope that I would have found this just a little strange!

Being a lunatic gives me free range to suggest that something very symbolic went down, err sorry I mean up, when the moon climbed Mt Everest (Qomolangma). If you scroll down on the link I'm gonna give you, you come to an image which shows this - "Scott holding up moon rock sample... so as to eclipse the rising moon. The west shoulder of Mt. Everest is on the left."

Going for an Ouroburos ride on this unscheduled, symbolically-charged moonstop, lets finish where we started. "After his historic trip to the moon, Armstrong became close friends with the first man to summit Everest (in 1953) Sir Edmund Hillary. The two historic figures later traveled the world together - including a trip to the North Pole."

So that's a little background to July 20.

Actually I lied, I'm not quite finished - I was just doing a very quick final scan down the wiki page for that date when a name caught my eye - one I'd thought of in conjunction with the 'women, water & death' connections of this series - July 20 was the birth date actress Natalie Wood who drowned in mysterious circumstances 9 months before the Hyde Park & Regents Park bombings.

The Hyde Park slaughter held an unusual element. The death of horses. Not just any horses, but highly ceremonial horses, form a highly ceremonial guard;

"The Household Cavalry - made up of the Blues and Royals and the Life Guards - is the army's most senior and oldest regiment and has the job of protecting the Queen on ceremonial and state occasions."
"the Queen's official bodyguard regiment during the Changing of the Guard between Buckingham Palace and Knightsbridge."


"...[The} Household Cavalry deemed the most glamorous of all the Guardsmen. Riding immaculate horses, their grand ceremonial dress consists of thigh length black boots, shiny breastplates, plumed helmets and red tunics for the Life Guards and navy ones for the Blues and Royals."

A number of thoughts formed when I began wondering if there was a reason for horses being targeted. I recalled a snippet of info I'd bumped into some time ago about horse sacrifices. I played (very gingerly) with the IRA & found something interesting when I perceived, looking back at me, the Eye (I) of RA. I got a sense that I should be noticing something about that year, 1982. The regal atmosphere of the event reminded me of Newspaceman's tireless watchings of the Royals & in particular The Boy who Will(iam) be king.

So let's take a closer symbolical look.

"The Blues and Royals were formed in 1969 from an amalgamation of The Royal Horse Guards (The Blues) and The Royal Dragoons." Our sacrificial lambs were symbolically born the year Apollo & his Eagle took the moon. Prince William of course is the Sun of the Moon oops I mean the son of the moon goddess, Diana. Diana, we remember, is the Roman version of Artemis, twin sister of the moon walker, Apollo.

Prince William was born on the Summer Solstice or 21 June, 1982. Just one month later a horse sacrifice takes place in the outskirts of his Kensington Palace garden. Kensington Palace being home to the sun & moon royal family.

Kensington Gardens was carved out of the western section of Hyde Park and designed c.1728-1738. (111 hectares).

It never ceases to amaze me how many little extra snippets appear along the way once I put fingers to keyboard.

I'd seen Physical Energy Statue marked on the maps of Kensington Gardens but had thought it would be something geometric & hadn't got round to checking it out. As my eyes were leaving the Kensington Garden internet page, this blackened figure leaped out of the page at me.


I guess you can make anything fit your ideas & this 1902 statue, by the energetically named G.F Watts... did rather remind me of the 1982 Hyde Park horse sacrifice.

"His [G.F. Watt's] most famous work, the 1902 large bronze statue Physical Energy, depicts a naked man on horseback shielding his eyes from the sun." If you wanted to get a spade & dig a little deeper, you could apparently find the "origins of this iconic work in Watts’ equestrian bronze Hugh Lupus" (Latin: Wolf). So we have a sunny side up statue, originally based upon a man dressed in a wolf's name - "As a Celtic symbol, the Wolf was a source of lunar power. Celtic lore states that the Wolf would hunt down the sun and devour it at each dusk so as to allow the power of the moon to come forth."
This sun-moon statue is situated between the crescent shaped Serpentine River & the oval Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. (If I've inserted it correctly, you can now trundle back up the page a bit & click on the map to get the bigger picture).

In keeping with our symbolic horse trek under a moonlit sky, I will also point out that the moon goddess Diana was birthed 46 years to the day that Watts died.


I played a little with the topography of sacrifice & created this little triangulation - the outer limits being the Regents Park 'bandstand bombing site', Buckingham Palace where the Blues & Royals were headed & the Physical Energy Statue. Mind you Kensington Palace works too, & my son informs me that you can make a triangle with any three points that are not on a straight line - still it puts the 20th of July, 1982 into a little more perspective.
Along the bottom line of my geographical menage a trois, is an orange dot indicating the Hyde Park bomb site plus a blue dot indicating the Goddess Diana Memorial Fountain . Actually it's far more of a watery Ouroburos, than a fountain & creates yet another Lady of the Lake scenario within Hyde Park.
From what I could find on my maps the two bombs of 20th July seem to be in a straight longitudinal (ley??) line.

Sorry I haven't even gone into horse sacrifices yet.

"In Vedic India, the greatest of sacrifices was the Ashvamedha (or Horse Sacrifice). Kings spent fortunes in the elaborate rituals, which sometimes required hundreds of officiating priests and lasted for several weeks at a time... these sacrifices were often associated with Tantric practices." Yep, you read that rite.

"In the ashvamedha, the wife of the officiating priest the mahishi simulated a ritual mating with the sacrificial horse. The mahishi (lit. "the Great Cow") represented the Earth, much as the horse symbolized the Sun. Indeed, she also stood for the queen as the Primordial Whore, just as her husband (the mahisha) was an alias of the Horse, the Sun, the Primordial Male (or buffalo). The couple stood for Heaven and Earth... "

"The Ashvamedha could only be conducted by a king (rājā). Its object was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over neighbouring provinces, and general prosperity of the kingdom."

Rome was another place that sacrificed horses. Every year one was 'dispatched' to Mars.
"On the fifteenth of October in each year a chariot-race was run on the Field of Mars. Stabbed with a spear, the right-hand horse of the victorious team was then sacrificed to Mars for the purpose of ensuring good crops, and its head was cut off and adorned with a string of loaves. Thereupon the inhabitants of two wards—the Sacred Way and the Subura—contended with each other who should get the head."

It is more than likely that you yourself have partaken of a symbolic horse sacrifice. Well what do you think the horse's head was doing in bed with a man in The Godfather?
"Woltz, in one of the most famous scenes in movie history, wakes up the next morning to find the decapitated head of his prize stud horse, Khartoum, in bed with him."

I have come across other cultures who sacrificed horses & even read an account that was worthy of the blood thirsting Aztecs.

Lets look at the symbology of these amazing creatures.

"The Horse symbol meanings of power are widespread through most cultures, and it is linked as an emblem of life-force. Many cultures assign the attributes of the four elements to the Horse: Earth, Fire, Air and Water."

"As a Celtic symbol, the Horse was associated with war. With war, comes attributes of victory, conquer, longevity as well as procurement of territory and other spoils that come with triumph in battle... In fact, the Celts hailed the Horse as the beast belonging to the sun god, and assigned it a place with the goddess Epona."

"The Greco-Romans also associated the Horse with ... power, victory, honor, domination and virility. In Greco-Roman myth the Horse is said to be created by Poseidon (Neptune) and is devoted to Hades (Pluto) and Ares (Mars)."

"Black Horse:Mystery, death, night, secret, messenger of esoteric knowledge."


"White Horse:Light, sun, day, vitality, illumination, resurrection, messenger of birth."

It is not for no reason that powerful horses have long been linked with 'great' leaders of history

And who could forget horse racing "the chariot races of Roman times are an early example, as is the contest of the steeds of the god Odin and the giant Hrungnir in Norse mythology. It is inextricably associated with gambling. The common sobriquet for Thoroughbred horse racing is The Sport of Kings."

Lets return to the idea that a sacrifice of horses took place to reign in the newborn sun-king-to-be, in 1982. This event happened a month minus a day after his birth & a few weeks before his christening on August 4, the date that lives in infamy as the opening to 'The Great War' in 1914.

As bizarre as all this seems, I find I run the risk of falling asleep if I do not take the time to look again at the past with wondering eyes. The thing is, eleven men & seven horses were slaughtered that day. It seems that the Hyde Park ritual was performed by remote control which means that someone close by, chose the moment, pushed the button & watched.

I was very surprised to come on a name that kept this story even closer in the (royal) family. The commander of the 'blasted' Blues & Royals was one Andrew Parker-Bowles, former husband of the Camilla, the woman who took the place of the moon goddess by marrying the not quite so apparent heir, Prince Charles.

If we were re-looking & seeing what might be a horse sacrifice then the following excerpt reads rather ritualistically;

"The regimental farriers, who had sprinted from their barracks when they heard the explosion, were splashed with blood from head to foot on their bare torsos and long leather aprons. Debris was scattered everywhere, and human remains were being taken away. The atmosphere was desperately tense, for there was every chance that a second bomb might go off.
The regiment’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Parker-Bowles, had raced to the scene on foot, and as he arrived had met a groom leading a severely wounded horse, which had blood gushing from a huge hole in its neck.
Immediately he told the man to take off his shirt and stuff it into the wound — but that was impossible, for one of the groom's hands had been pierced by a four-inch nail, which was sticking out on both sides. Another man sacrificed his shirt and staunched the blood. But for that, the horse would never have reached its stable. It survived and became a hero — Sefton — and lived to the age of thirty.
At the scene itself mortally injured horses were still struggling to get up. The only weapon to hand was a pistol belonging to a constable on duty at a nearby diplomatic post, and as he had no experience of shooting horses, Parker-Bowles persuaded him to hand the gun over to one of the farriers, who put two horses out of their misery.
With commendable courage and presence of mind, the colonel then ordered that the bodies of the horses should be left uncovered until press photographers arrived, to make sure that their pictures would expose the full horror of the attack. Then, mercifully, the corpses were shrouded with tarpaulins."

Some of these horses were publically shot & their bodies were exposed to the masses via that on & on & ongoing humanitarian concern, the Media. Following Matthew Delooze's ideas on energy extraction we could say that the masses were meant to see & be affected by these images. Incidentally according to wiki Parker-Bowles' mother was the daughter of a multi-millionaire horse owner.

The IRA claimed responsibility, but who were the IRA? Were they Irish extremists or was there another element within their ranks as there seems to be within the ranks of every 'organisation'. What was behind their choice of targets?

I looked at their name & saw I RA or Eye of Ra. I wondered & I looked upon the waters of the internet.

Here's what wiki has to say;
"The Eye of Horus (Wedjat) (previously Wadjet and the Eye of the Moon; and afterwards as The Eye of Ra) or ("Udjat") is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection and royal power from deities, in this case from Horus or Ra."

Further along on this page are some fractional mathematicalisms that flew right over my head. Nevertheless this one was interesting
"1/4 was represented by sight or the sensation of light, symbolized by the pupil. The pyramid text says: "Perfect is the Eye of Horus. I have delivered the Eye of Horus, the shining one, the ornament of the Eye of Ra, the Father of the Gods."

and this one?

"1/64 was represented by touch, symbolized by a leg touching the ground, or what can also be thought of as a strong plant growing into the surface of the earth. The pyramid text says: "I shall see the Gods and the Eye of Horus burning with fire before my eyes!"

The number 64 does rather bring the chess board to mind & with it the realisation that The Godfather had been there too.

Some closing thoughts, all scrambled together because I'm knackered & this has taken me all weekend to write.

"There was chaos and confusion everywhere as roads around Knightsbridge were cordoned off; police were drafted in from all over London within half an hour. Scares and alerts that further bombs and suspicious vehicles were still around led to still greater confusion as police and soldiers shouted at spectators to stand clear." - so how come a band from the Royal Green Jackets was merrily playing songs from Oliver in Regents Park, just up the road, two hours later - check out the map.

The motto of the Royals & Blues motto "Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense (Shame on him who thinks this evil)" is the very same one as that of The Most Noble Order of the Garter - 'the pinnacle of the honours system in the United Kingdom' - think exclusive & elite "Membership in the order is limited to the sovereign, the Prince of Wales, and no more than twenty-four members." Sir Edmund Hillary was one until his death last year. Recently Prince William the son-king became the 1000th member.

When I wrote the Mil-lion Man I played with the Egyptian gods - unfortunately they do not have a great sense of humour & were not amused. I found that if I gave Horus a good shake, then Shu the god of the air fell out & left me with some gold (OR) change -

HORUS = SHU (god of the air) + OR (French for gold).

At that time something royal came to mind which I knew I would find a home for one day & here it is. The royal family are the WINDSORS - WINDS = (SHU) + OR - can we shake up the Windsors & find HORUS? And who then would be Isis & Osiris?


On 20 july, 1997 an Eye of Ra ceasefire begins, & from what I can find that was the beginning of the winding down process of 'The Troubles'. Diana, Princess of Wales was killed a little over one month later, while her son had been born I month prior to the Hyde Park horse ritual.

And what of this LUNAR/RA link.

Michael Collins, Irish revolutionary leader & Director of Intelligence for the Eye of Ra (in the early years), was 'the third man' in the 1969 Apollo Moon production! Michael Collins, astronaut, who was born on All Hallows Eve went round & round the moon, while Neil & Buzz planted flags (apparently).

Ok one more thought to finish. I've been reading a book called "The Body has a Mind of it's Own" about how our brains are constantly creating maps. It tells me that my 'self' does not end where my flesh ends, but rather with each thing I come in contact with my self is extended & 'it infuses & blends with the world, including other human beings." The author goes on to give the example of what happens when a skilled horse rider goes forth - the body maps of horse & rider are 'blended in shared space'. It is possible then that the horse & rider connection in essence creates 'a centaur'.

This shared reality perhaps helps to explain how we are constantly being trapped within a very small world as we each share each other's realities.

Perhaps it's time to create some more exciting maps?


Additional: Apologies to Shergar who was always a part of this article, but in my tired trek to the finish line I missed him out.

"Shergar (born 1978. Sire: Great Nephew, Dam: Sharmeen) was an acclaimed racehorse, and winner of the 1981Epsom Derby by a record 10 lengths, the longest winning margin in the race's 226-year history. This victory earned him a spot in The Observer (Ob-Server) newspaper's 100 Most Memorable Sporting Moments of the Twentieth Century. A bay colt with a distinctive white blaze, Shergar was named European Horse of the Year in 1981 and was retired from racing that September.
Two years later, on 8 February 1983, he was kidnapped from the Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland by masked gunmen with the body never being discovered. The incident has been the inspiration for several books, documentaries, and a film..

What happened next set the tone for a police operation that has been called “a caricature of police bungling”. Fitzgerald called the stud farm manager, who called Shergar’s vet, Cosgrove. The vet then called a racing associate, Sean Berry, who in turn called Alan Dukes, the Irish Finance Minister. Not until eight hours had elapsed did anyone call the Gardaí (Police).

The strongest suspect for the kidnapping is the Provisional Irish Republican Arm"

A king of horses is taken just eight months after the Hyde Park horse sacrifice & disappears, with the help of an eight hour head start.

I also forgot to mention that along with the Indian Vedic horse sacrifices there was an almost mirror image tradition of horse sacrifice among the Irish kings. I'll try & find a link & post it when I can.

And Here it is - a link to a page from Volume 5 of Gods, Goddesses & Mythology that gives a clear account of the how Irish kings of Galway began their 'reign' with a horse sacrifice.

One last link to Ellis Taylors article "A Year of Tears & Tears" which covers a number of symbols that have bubbled to the surface (of the moon) in this article - Here's a sneak preview from page 4;
"NASA has physically despatched a Centaur rocket (read spear - or needle) to pierce, tear open the moon (the wolf Lupus) and timed the re-enactment exercise to coincide with the 40th anniversary of their Apollonian ‘cry wolf’ heresy." Full article here

The Jeckyll of Hyde Park & the Lady of the Lake unveiled (part 3)

At present in my world it is Monday evening. Every seven days I'm back at this or some equally 'same' place. A friend & I agreed today that it doesn't make sense.

So do we live within a Groundhog Week? Perhaps it stretches a little farther into Groundhog Month? Or maybe Groundhog Year? Did the Mayans have it right with their 52 year cyclic knowing? Surely we are indeed going round & round in circles, & perhaps living story lines that are not our own.

The first Ferris Wheel?

This chap "represents eternity and the cycles or "circle of life"." Wanna go for a ride? Oh silly me we're already on one & it's the ride of our lives.

We're now up to the same point in our story that Eve was in, when she wandered up to the tree of knowledge & noticed that something rather large & vocal had hoved into view between the apples.


I hopped onto the Ouroboros Roundabout lately but all I got was dizzy - there are as many pro-snakists as there are anti-venomists. Is the serpent good or goddess or evil or vile?

For the purpose of this tale we go with a theory that the snake's energy & symbolism been hijacked for nefarious purposes. The sync I needed to continue this serie came via line in a Matthew Delooze article last week "That force is a deceptive multidimensional energy that is symbolised in Serpentine form." We'll return to this.

So let's play with the idea that we are living within made-up stories. Of late I have been losing my awe of 'great' humans. Instead I've been seeing a pre-prepared stage of ho-hum-humans dominating dumbled-down dumb bunnies.

How does the leavened genius inherent in EVERY child get turned into an adult dough that rarely rises?

I took the death of Adrienne Shelly as a starting point on a trail that has taken me on a roller coaster ride. Yet I think perhaps we could take any occult death, do the same & still end up with a snake biting it's own tale - where does it begin & end? Or does it?

Many moons ago I looked at Frankenstein's creature's creator, Mary Shelley, simply because she & Adrienne Shelly shared a name. I wrote about it here. The twists & turns of that story went from some common threads to a whole ball of twisted & knotted yarn. Shall we see if we can untangle it & knit something useful?

Let's go back in time to 1815.


That's the year of Rock 'n' Roll when the world got all shook up. From 5th to 12 April that year, an almighty drum beat shook the earth


Mt Tambora (Spanish for drum) rocked Indonesia with one of the most explosive & deadly eruptions in history. 10,000 died from the explosion & an estimated 82,000 from starvation.

This beat of this drum ripped & rippled around the world.
"Tambora spewed sulphur-rich gases that rose to a height of 28 miles and created a giant sun filter in the northern hemisphere that caused the spring and summer of 1816 to be extremely cold across Europe and North America. Snowfalls and frost occurred in June, July and August and all but the hardiest grains were destroyed. Destruction of the corn crop caused farmers to slaughter their livestock. Soup kitchens were opened to feed the hungry. Sea ice formed in the Atlantic shipping lanes and glaciers advanced down mountain slopes to exceptionally low levels. Hundreds of thousands died of starvation as crops failed, touching off a wave of migration to the American South and Midwest."

"this eruption put more than 150 million tonnes of dust in the atmosphere which gradually spread around the globe acting as a veil"

Beneath this veil dark things were conceived, in The Year Without a Summer (also known as 1816).

That was the year that a group of heroically named wordsmiths arose & went forth to the shores of the Lake of Geneva. And during the summer that wasn't, Mary Godwin-Wollstonecraft & her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley, plus George Gordon Byron & John William Polidori birthed two of the worlds greatest monsters at Villa Diodati - "Italian: ... meaning ‘God-given’, from Latin deus ‘god’ + donatus ‘given’."

Mary's labour produced Dr Frankenstein & his creature, while Lord Byron dallied a little with with a vampiric theme, that was taken up by Polidori, eventually becoming The Vampyre, a tale that is most often seen as the predecessor of Dracula. "Polidori transformed the vampire from a character in folklore into the form that is recognized today — an aristocratic fiend who preys among high society." The formal presentation of these twins would occur a couple of years later.

Perhaps these creations were 'unearthed' & cast out from the belly of the Underworld when Mt Tambora erupted! Did they float in the ether until they reached a Garden of Eden in which to be born? What was it about the land around Lake Geneva that was so conducive to these creations? Surely it is about time that we gave thought to the lie of the land - that all that is created must be intimately connected to the place of its birth.

On the shores of Lake Geneva came this 'waking dream' to 18 year old Mary Shelley (nee Godwin Wollstonecraft) "I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world."

Lets return to the land of these monster's births. Could it be a place of highly charged energy?

Villa Diodati is nested on the shores of the crescent shaped Lake Geneva. You may have heard of Geneva, it is the seat of one or two organisations;
"Geneva is the seat of the European headquarters of the United Nations...was also the headquarters of the former League of Nations. Several agencies are headquartered at Geneva, among which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), the World Health Organisation, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) or the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)... apart from the United Nation agencies, Geneva hosts many inter-governmental organisations such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Economic Forum (WEF), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)...It is also the place where the Geneva Conventions were signed, which chiefly concern the treatment of wartime non-combatants and prisoners of war" (made very popular in war movies).


What a little hub of humanitarian conCERN



Oh silly me I nearly left something out. Lest we forget. What a remarkable coincidence that a hop, skip & a jump away from the birthplace of the dark matter of these tales lies yet another birthing machine, the Hadron Collider, where just like Dr Frankenstein, man again plays God(win).


The big green splodge is the reasonably accurate location of the Genesis Machine otherwise known as the Hadron Collider. If you peer (closely), across the lake to the right of it, you will make out a small dot, this is the Garden of Eden where the lads were born.

"September 10, 2008 The world's largest atom smasher's first experiment went off today without a hitch, paving the way toward the recreation of post-big bang conditions." That was the date that the mother of the mother of Frankenstein's monster died.

Frank's Ma & Pa returned to England a little later in the year. In October Mary Shelley's half sister Fanny Imlay (Mary Wollstonecraft's eldest daughter), committed suicide by taking an overdose of Laudanum in the seaside town of Swansea. There is some speculation that she was somehow let down by Percy Bysshe Shelley, when they met up in the English town of Bath in Somerset. We recall that Adrienne Shelley was found hanged from a shower rail in the bath.

Women, water, birth, baptism & death.

Two months later, Harriet Shelley becomes a rusalka. Percy Bysshe Shelley's wife drowns herself & her unborn child in the Serpentine River in Hyde Park.



I'd been under the impression that it was Shelley's child she carried & that he had abandoned her for Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft but this apparently was not the case. It seems the couple had decided to live apart, although they had two children.

"By July, when Shelley and Mary eloped, Harriet's unhappy, though not impossible, situation seemed clear. With her marriage her father had settled £200 a year on her; Shelley gave her a further £100... So she was comfortably situated as far as her financial situation was concerned. Yet she was clearly unhappy... At some point she took a lover... Sometime in the late summer of 1816 Harriet took lodgings in... Knightsbridge, clearly to shield her family from a pregnancy out of wedlock. In late November or early December, having written a despondent farewell addressed to her father, her sister, and her husband, she walked the short distance from her lodgings to Hyde Park and drowned herself in the Serpentine River. At the time of her death she was just twenty-one years old."

Before we call a very great discrepancy into question take a look at this

Lake Leman & the Serpent of Hyde

I'll admit in the second image I turned the world upside down, but what think you of the uncanny resemblance of the Serpentine River to Lake Geneva (Lake Leman)? On the shores of the latter Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft played goddess & gave birth to a fantastical monster. With the Serpentine death of her lover's wife, she received the consecrated name of Shelley on 30th December 1816. This is the hallowed name that is connected with the Frankenstein legend.

It was a busy year.

Lets take another look at Percy Bysshe Shelly's first wife, Harriet. It seems she took lodgings to spare her family the shame of a pregnancy out of wedlock. ...Errr so perhaps a less dramatic & attention seeking ending might have been on the cards, you know like Mary's sister with her discreet bottle of laudanum.

Tell me please how desperately you must want to die, to walk into a freezing cold lake in the middle of an English winter.



Then please explain to me the strange significance of the lady's name, for never have I come across a woman who so decidedly bears the title of Lady of the Lake.

A little background info. "The Serpentine (also known as the Serpentine River) is a 28 acre (11 ha) recreational lake in Hyde Park, London." A woman called it into being - "In 1730 Queen Caroline, wife of George II, ordered the damming of the River Westbourne in Hyde Park as part of a general redevelopment of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens."

Harriet Shelley was born Harriet Westbrook.

Lets look to the West: "Associated with the west is the season of autumn, old age and death... In Egyptian mythology, the "western lands" are the territory the souls of the dead make a hazardous pilgrimage to in their quest for immortality."
or
"Verb: go west Die; become destroyed" which was" first recorded in a poem of the early 1300s: “Women and many a willful man, As wind and water have gone west.”

A brook is "a natural stream of water smaller than a river." A bourne is "A small stream; a brook". The Serpentine is the child of the Westbourne River. The words 'brook' & 'bourne' are watery twins - The Lady WestBROOK was swallowed by a serpent born from the waters that twin with her name - WestBOURNE. She was just 21 years old.

Because I keep finding knots with the past & because I am wondering big time, if we are simply on a ouroburos roundabout going nowhere except where we've been before, I'm going to play with some ideas. One of these is that famous names return to create new famous names.

If you recall the earlier Fair Phantom series, you may recall the death of the Russianly descended model, Ruslana Korshunova. Four days before her 21st birthday she leaped to her death in Water Street. It was ruled a suicide. Was it something more - a memory of a past life, an echo, a repeating pattern in time? Did Ruslana become the new Lady of the Lake?



What of the other legends of that time? Did they leave echoes & patterns?

Frankenstein, the novel, was published on the most auspicious date of 1 January, 1818 when Mary Shelley was 21. Four years later in 1822, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in a boating incident that remains a mystery. They were living in Italy at the time. In the days before his death he claimed to have seen his Doppelganger - "the ghostly or in some cases, a physical double of a living person...Other folklore says that when a person's doppleganger is seen, the person him/herself will die shortly." Hmmm is not this the stuff of stories?

Shelley sailed away, not for a year & a day, but for the rest of his life, in a boat he had renamed 'Ariel'. The boat had originally been named Don Juan, a compliment to Lord Byron, the sire of Dracula. Lord Byron took umbrage & forced the re-writing of the name Don Juan on the mainsail. The twice named boat set sail. Somewhere along the way Shelley & his two sailing companions drowned. He was 29 years old.

"Ariel is a fictional sprite who appears in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Ariel is bound to serve the magician Prospero" who commands him to "shipwreck the King of Naples and his crew in a violent tempest." (wiki)


Shelley's body was in a very bad state when it washed ashore, and "in keeping with quarantine regulations, was cremated on the beach near Viareggio (which is believed to come from "the Latin Via Regis ("Kings' Road")".



What follows sounds like fiction but is fact.
"Trelawney, in his account of the recovery of Shelley's body, records that "the face and hands, and parts of the body not protected by the dress, were fleshless," and by the time that the party returned to the beach for the cremation, the body was even further decomposed. In his graphic account of the cremation, he writes of Byron being unable to face the scene, and withdrawing to the beach.
Shelley's heart was snatched from the funeral pyre by Edward Trelawney; Mary Shelley kept it for the rest of her life, and it was interred next to her grave at St. Peter's Church in Bournemouth."

I cannot help but feel this reads like an heroic tale. Is there more to the 'great ones' than meets the eye. Do we recognise their stories from times past. Do the great ones come back again & again & lead their 'great lives'. Why would a man think to cut the heroic heart from a rotting corpse? Was he responding to heroic deeds of times past.

I stumbled upon this last week in reference to the death of 10 year old Louis XVII, son of Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette. "As was custom for royalty, the doctor removed the heart so that it would not be buried with the body."
While Mary Shelley kept her husbands heart, his ashes were buried in Rome & a gravestone proclaims him Cor Cordium "heart of hearts'.


Here I return to an idea that I am contemplating more & more. That the great ones of art & music & literature & science, the geniuses, royalty, villains, leaders, are the same people returning & repeating over & over again.

I propose that the great ones are not great at all. They are somehow freer to use the ability inherent within us all. They are held up to us as great & they seem to be so much better, but then have we not been trained in the 'art of being very small.' I propose that the work of the great ones is laughable compared with what each & every one of us is capable of, but as long as ooh & ahh over 'marketed greatness' we cannot access our own inspired & unlimited talents.

I propose that we know these great ones, we recognise them when they re-arrive or we let ourselves remember after they die OR we are subtley nudged into remembering at the appropriate time. Was the removal of Shelley's tell-tale heart the signal to remember his ongoing heroic greatness?

Was the sacrificial death of Harriet Westbrook the signal for the birth to greatness of Mary Shelley & her 'creation'?

What of other geat ones; How about the nobly birthed "6th Baron Byron of Rochdale", sire to the Vampire.

From wiki "Byron's notabilty rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured upper-class living, numerous love affairs, debts, and separation. He was notably described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"."


& once again of water & women
"...22-year-old Margarita Cogni ... left her husband to move into Byron's Venice house. Their fighting often caused Byron to spend the night in his gondola; when he asked her to leave the house, she threw herself into the Venetian canal."

Byron died an unpleasant death of fever & infection in Messolonghi, Greece in 1824, at the age of 36. According to wiki "It has been said that had Byron lived, he might have been declared King of Greece."

"In keeping with 'royal' tradition his heart was also removed from his body & is buried in Messolonghi."

The heroic Lord Byron on his death bed

It is interesting how many of the great ones defer to the ancient great ones of mythology.

The full title of Mary Shelley's novel is 'Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus'. One of her husbands great works is 'Prometheus Unbound'.

Lets go forward in time now.

In 1990 there came a film called Frankenstein Unbound. It starred a modern great one.
I mean no disrespect to these people I refer to, I simply wish to see what it is like to look at famed people from a different angle. The great ones are as 'dispensible' as the rest of us.
The particular great one I refer to now is Michael Hutchence. We met him in an earlier post connected with this series. In Frankenstein Unbound, Hutchence became Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Two of the great ones (actors) in this movie, John Hurt & Michael Hutchence share a birth date. Last year that date was sanctified with the death of another great one who has also appeared in this series - Heath Ledger. The date of course is January 22.
Slipping sideways on a green banana skin, we find the Incredible Hulk who found himself rather inspired, by Dr Frankenstein's monster. Bill Bixby, the man who played the Jeckyllish side of the Hulk, also partook of this notable date for birthday parties.

Of further interest in Frankenstein Unbound is the naming of the great one who plays Mary Shelley in that movie - Bridget Fonda. According to (an unsubstantiated wiki claim), she "is named after actress Margaret Sullavan's daughter Bridget Hayward, who (like far too many)committed suicide at the age of 21." Peering down an earlier track, we can just see Nathasha Richardson walking into the opening performance of her movie career in the shoes of Mary Shelley in Gothic (1986).

So what of the last great one from the Villa Diodati.

John William Polidori went on to flesh out Byron's ideas into The Vampyre in 1819. "Polidori may have been the first author in any language to cast the bestial vampire of legend into the form most familiar to modern readers: a sophisticated nobleman who exerts a sexual fascination over both male and female victims."

Two years later, Polidori was dead at the age of 25. "Many commentators, including Polidori's nephew William Michael Rossetti, assume that Polidori's death at age twenty-five was a suicide, but this remains unproven."

My last article detailed the strange route I took to reach the strange case of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian KGB agent, who was served a very nasty cup of Polonium tea on the same day that the woman who inspired this series was murdered. How even stranger then it was for me to read of Polidori (apparently) committing suicide by drinking Prussic Acid.

What really threw me when I stumbled over Litvinenko was his non-fictional presence. Up till then the story had almost elegantly combined stories tellers with their tales. The poisoning of Litvinenko had the harsh, glaring lights of reality.

But did it?

On reflection I would have to say 'No'. If ever there was a case of overkill, it was that man's death. If you step away from the scary, modern radioactive-death-concoction scenario, what you get is the most fantastical tale I have ever heard. Look at this;

"The Guardian has been told that the amount of polonium-210 found in the Russian's body could have killed him 100 times over, and would have cost as much as £20m to acquire."

Look again at his story, it is the stuff of thrillers.



Others saw the strangeness but still bought the baloney "Ian Fleming? No; Graham Greene? No; Tom Clancy? Absolutely not. Maybe John Le Carre'? Not even him. How about Frederick Forsyth or Eric Ambler then? No. None of the above mentioned authors could have imagined such a dramatically captivating plot as the mystery death of former KGB secret agent Alexandr Litvinenko."

And the world was captivated.
What if he hadn't spoken to the media? He would still have died, but perhaps the cause might have gone undetected. This was overkill & just like the bombing of the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, it was a show, a display for public consumption. A kind of reality tv show. It was a story brought to life & in the process it transformed Litvinenko into a great one or was he an echo from the past? This was a tale that was always going to be told.

Why?

I was going to finish it there for now, but I have one last remembering that does rather fit in here. I mentioned the Umbrella Murder, in passing last time. My Most Favourite Monster commented on it in his comment & so I looked a little further. Very briefly, we had the "murder of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, who was stabbed with a poisoned umbrella while walking across London's Waterloo Bridge in 1978." It was oh so horribly intriguing & cold war-ish at the time.

Looking from a storyline best-selling view-point, we see a Bulgarian upstart fiendishly done to death with a gadget straight out of a James Bond movie. This poison innoculation took place on 7 Sept (1978) which just happens to be birthing date of fellow posionee, John William Polidori. Both men were writers of fiction.
Georgi Markov, the man made famous for his 'death by umbrella' died on September 11.