I collect material for Serendipity Now. Email me or stick them in an envelope and send them to me if you've some PHANTACEA-specific
ones you'd like to share. In the meantime, here's another batch:
Autumn 2014
Hope for pHant's very own 'Bubble Boy', albeit (perhaps) over thirty years too late
Here's something from "Nuclear Dragons", the second entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle. The same sequence is only briefly noted in the trilogy's opening entry, "The War of Apocalyptics", and isn't referred to at all in the closing book, "Helios on the Moon".
As also per here, however, the then prevailing theory that the seemingly reemergent King Crimefighters are actually clones of the originals is repeated in Hel-moon.
('Launch 1980' is Jim McPherson's ambitious project to novelize the Phantacea comic book series of the late Seventies. More on that now concluded, multiple character, action laden, epic fantasy further down the page, here.)
A silver helicopter carrying howsoever many Signallers has landed in Vancouver's Southlands district. They're disgorged at the same, now smouldering ruin where eight members of the Damnation Brigade and the four devic components of the Byronic Nucleus have just had an ferocious battle. Fortunately for the lucky dozen involved, a semblance of sanity prevails such that the only casualty is D-Brig's Fraser Riverside ranch house.
It's late Friday, December 5, 1980. It's not until later on the next day (by then Devauray, Tantalar 6, 5980) that that statistic starts to change drastically. (See here if you're curious as to how time is counted on the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head.)
“Got anything, Spherus?” asked the group leader [Gus Soldakis but, when in the Silver, he answered to Space-Age Spartan].
“Not much, Spartan.” This Signaller’s helmet was a silver globe.
... from "Nuclear Dragons", the second entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Then, a paragraph or two later, same speakers:
"Mind rigging up one of your bubbles, Spherus?”
“My pleasure. Oh, by the way, Spartan, I wouldn’t be certain it’s the real Crimefighters. Even back in the Fifties, there were doppelgangers, sphinxes, mandroids and the like. More to the point there were such things as Callion Clones. They’d be grown up by now.”
“How would you know?”
“How about I tell you when, and if, we nail one of them?”
“Oh, we’ll nail them all right,” the voice of Sharpshooter came through their helmets.
... from "Nuclear Dragons", the second entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
The significance of these quotes isn't so much what's said as what Spartan asks Spherus to rig up. Oh, all right, it's also significant that Spherus knows enough about Callion Clones born in the early Fifties to tell Spartan they'd be grown up by December 1980.
Might that be because he's one of them? Don't know yet. Do know this, though, from the last entry in the Launch story cycle:
“Look at the way they glow,” said Spherus (Cecil Mayhew, under the globular
silver helmet and exoskeleton he wore). According to some the world’s first Bubble Boy, since being recruited for Signal System at an early age the hence severely immunities-deficient genius had made a study of supranormals.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
They're in the news again. Not Callion Clones or supranormals -- bubble boys. The Reuters article is entitled 'New gene therapy treatment showing promise against 'bubble boy' disease'. The author is Gene Emery. The whole article is (or was) here.
The rare condition is officially called X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome. It gets its "bubble boy" nickname because its victims are only safe in a sterile environment. The genetic defect leaves the boys - whose single X chromosome makes them targets of the disease - unable to fight infection. In the outside world, they usually die within a year.
The therapy involves removing bone marrow cells from patients, selecting specific cells that build the immune system and exposing those cells to the genetically engineered virus. Initially, the cells lack the genetic code for building a healthy immune system. The virus is trained to insert that missing code. The reprogrammed cells are then infused back in the child.
Serendipitously enough, I learned of this on Friday, Oct 17, 2014, the day after I got hold of the cover artwork for "Helios on the Moon". Which is where at least one of Spherus's secrets is revealed for sure.
Spoiler Alert
BTW, there's more on Spherus here; as per here, the theory the reemergent Crimefighters might be clones is mentioned in the short story "Sister Grandmother". which is set sometime after the 'Launch 1980' sequences;
Judicious Rejigging
This is how it originally read:
 Throughout the cosmos, courtrooms were much the same as they were on the Earth. The judge sat on a raised dais behind his or her bench, used a gavel and pronounced sentence.
... no longer from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Then I saw this in the Mythconceptions section of Fortean Times October 2014 (FT319). The writer is Mat Coward. The article is entitled: 'The Judge's Gavel'.
The myth: 'When the Old Bailey erupts into uproar, the judge bangs frantically on his desk with a wooden hammer called a gavel. "Order, order!" he cries, gavelling away like a good 'un, until the inevitable momemt when the accursed 's step-granny at the back yells "I'll have pint on mild!"'
The "truth": 'No judge of any kind in any court anywhere in England and Wales has ever used a gavel. Not in real life, that is. ... In Britain, if you use a gavel to make a point, you're either an auctioneer or a toastmaster.
Now it reads like this:
Throughout most of the cosmos, courtrooms were much the same as they were on the Earth. The judge sat on a raised dais behind his or her bench, used a gavel (unless he was sitting in England or Wales) and pronounced sentence.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Janna Yataglands
Who says Jim McPherson's Phantacea Mythos novels never have happy endings? They do ... for some.
“APM’s got lots of eyeballs,” said Connie [Lindquist], tapping her forehead nevertheless
third-eyelessly. “And she knows how much I like George [Hannibal] here.”
“And I like Yati the Yeti,” added Janna [born St Peche], also third-eyelessly. “Even if he is a little
green around not just the gills.”
“I don’t have gills,” said Yataghan [raised Montressor].
“Glands then,” said Janna, grabbing a quick hug.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Which brings us to this from the Science section of Fortean Times October 2014 (FT319). The writer is David Hambling. The article is entitled: 'Monkey Gland Cocktail'. (Although the cocktail's ingredients are noted in article, there's a hardly subtle, triple entendre in last word of title. Brits are notorious for their snickering toilet humour and its cousins.)
When Dr Serge Voronoff revealed a new type of animal-to-human transplant operation with remarkable rejuvenating effects in 1920 ... Clients flocked to receive the ... treatment and recover their youthful vigour. He was soon discredited, but a spin-off from what were euphemistically termed 'monkey glands' still has millions of followers.
By this last the writer is referring to testosterone therapy, of which he notes 'it is not recommended for general use'. As is evident from the first blockquote, Janna definitely approves of Yati the Yeti, as Hush Mannering first dubbed Sentalli-Centauri's son by Emeralda Plantagenet, albeit strictly for personal use.
Serendipitous Stuff this Season on pHantaBlog
As per here, pHantaBlog and webpages associated with Jim McPherson's Phantacea Mythos now count the seasons in accordance with the Pagan Wheel of the Year
Summer 2014
Neither Shelios nor Selfish: Shellfish
Vetella or Vetala? In this case it's Vetella.
Which reminds me. In Hualtuco, Mexico, years ago now (2008?), there was a jelly fish infestation in one of the very popular bays there. They looked weird so I asked someone, in typically terrible Spanish, what they were. He answered Medusa.
As per the Free Dictionary, it turns out that's true in English. I'd just never heard the word used in small case before.
And who purports to be Nergal Vetala's triplet sister in Mithras's Twelfth? Why, none other than the Medusa (Mater Matare) from the Phantacea Mythos and, graphic novelty speaking, "Phantacea Revisited 1: The Damnation Brigade".
And this on the very day I put a new top-of-page promo for "Helios on the Moon" on both pH-Webworld's Welcoming Page and pHantacea on pHacebook. Talk about Serendipity.
The 'D-Brig' graphic novel features the Medusa (Mater Matare) in a highly pivotal role whereas 'Kitty-Clysm' has her supposed triplet sister, Nergal Vetala, in a similar boo-hiss role.
- Artwork for D-Brig cover by Ian Bateson, 2012; artwork for Kitty cover by Verne Andru, 2013/4; double-click to enlarge image in a separate window -
But it is Shelios in Paris
It's not every entry that inspires a howsoever minor revision of a Phantacea Mythos project. Then again it's not every time I'm in the process of editting a forthcoming novel that Serendipity comes calling. 
So I figured, what the Herr Hel, when the opportunity arises seize it:
"Trouble yourself no further, milady. We have prepared for every eventuality, you and I. If I am Helios on the Moon then you are Shelios on the Same. Through us, humanity wins!”
“Only if we do, too, Kad.”
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
As for what provoked this addition to a story finished in February 2014, sometimes Serenpidity and Phantacea doesn't provide a jar-dropping moment or, much more often, just a curio or coincidental item that pertains, from a howsoever peculiar perspective, to said subject matter.
Sometimes Serendipity is just plain embarassing. A case in point occured this weekend.
I don't do anything Phantacea-related on Sundays. Sooth said I'm not even supposed to turn on my computer. Idea is to have a full day off to go for a long walk or catch up on my reading, preferrably down at the local beach. However, if the weather sucks I often do turn on my computer if only to look at my photos.
Then again there are days when I do both: look at my photos and do something pHanta-fabulous with them. Such a day was Saturday -- Devaura on Sedon's Head, assuming it's still there.
Having recently assigned an alter ego, Blogmeister pHantaJim, to add comments re Character Likeness shot I've taken during my travels, near and far, or copied while on the web doing research, I looked up an artist, sculptor François Rude (4 January 1784 - 3 November 1855), as identified in the latest batch. And what did I discover?
 Recall these two? They've been representing Herr Hel Helios out here in pH-Webworld since 2004. (You can get to them by clicking images or just go here.) I'm pretty sure they were shot in the Musee d'Orsee across the Seine from the Louvre in May or June of 2004. I looked for them when I went back there a decade later, in June 2014; hence the latest batch. Didn't see them then and, even if I had, the museum doesn't allow photos anymore, not even of statuary.
The Louvre does, however. So, when I spotted this fellow, who's also now on pHanta-pHlickr, I snapped instantly. Except, as I discovered online, it's not a fellow at all. It's a gal. And (s)he isn't either singing La Marseilles or looking horrified by what (s)he's seeing during the Revolution; she's a head created by Rude as a plaster model for a part of the Arc de Triomphe he was commissioned to decorate in the early 1800s.
I went back to my 2004 photos of the Arc and, lo, what do I now notice? Yep, she appears in "Le Départ des Volontaires" (aka La Marseillaise), by J. Rude, Arc de Triomphe Etoile Paris.
And not only had she got wings, she's got a woman's breasts!
NOTE: At the head of this entry is a gif of the bust of Marianne/Lady Liberty as shot in the Louvre. Rude didn't make it transparent and solarized (I did) but he did carve it as part of his studies for La Marseillaise, now on the side of the Arc de Triomphe.
It doesn't have an All-like creature on its head. Neither is it shown wearing a Phrygian or Liberty Cap. As the last link reminds us, Taurus Chrysaor Attis wore one of those throughout "Feeling Theocidal", Book One in the epic and appropriately three-part Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories trilogy.
Double-click image to enlarge with a dark background.
From talaria to Talos to Serendipity Now
Yes, there is a Talos in the Phantacea Mythos; no, I didn't remember him until I searched for 'Talos' in the search engine at the top of this page. After searching and finding talaria, I also searched for Talos on the Free Dictionary.
Scored too -- and I don't mean the nephew of Daedalus, whom I'd never heard of before. I mean the mythological giant (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Talos). It's where our word 'talus' derives, which would also be where we get talaria from. That'd be this talus:
1. The bone of the ankle that articulates with the tibia and fibula to form the ankle joint. Also called anklebone, astragalus.
Did said searching while I was preparing for the debut of pHanta-pHlickr. I knew the myth, hence the character's name, but what I didn't know was:
In the Cretan dialect, talôs was the equivalent of the Greek hêlios, the Sun: the lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria notes simply "Talos is the Sun". In Crete Zeus was worshipped as Zeus Tallaios,[4] "Solar Zeus", absorbing the earlier god as an epithet in the familiar sequence.
Furthermore:
Talos is described by Greeks as either a gift from Hephaestus to Minos, forged with the aid of the Cyclopes in the form of a bull or a gift from Zeus to Europa.
I discovered all this while manfully avoiding the necessity doing a final edit of, you guessed it, "Helios on the Moon".
And that Helios is the son of Melicertes' leader Agenor, the brother of Agenor's daughter Europa by Mnemosyne D'Angelo (Human Memory) and, yes indeed, talarial wings do come into play, in the form of Raven's Head, yet again in the novel. (Perhaps more correctly I should have them as fetlock wings but talarial sounds better even if it isn't a proper word as such.)
There's also a Medea and a Jason, as per the myth, in phantacea and of course almost all of the above are called Malanthean Minoans and/or Etocretan Extremists throughout the Heliodyssey web-serials.
All in all, a good excuse for another entry in Serendipity Now.
Serendipitous Stuff this Season on pHantaBlog
As per here, pHantaBlog and webpages associated with Jim McPherson's Phantacea Mythos now count the seasons in accordance with the Pagan Wheel of the Year
Spring 2014
Should have called it Gorgon Goggles
 Phantacea didn't copyright Gorgon Goggles, Facebook, but perhaps it should have, because an oculus doesn't have two lenses. If it did, it would be an 'occuli'.
The most famous occulus, besides the eye itself and, nowadays, Facebook's howsoever incorrectly named Oculus Rift, is probably the one atop the Pantheon in Rome, Italy. (There are a few Pantheons -- there's one in Paris for sure -- but the one linked is the only one I've been inside.)
The Roman Pantheon is a circular temple (which makes it a tholos in the Phantacea Mythos) built in 27 BC that still stands even though it's no longer dedicated to all the gods, devils that they were and probably still are, somewhere.
That said, moderately irrelevantly, consider this from the forthcoming "Helios on the Moon" mosaic novel, which is the final volume in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle:
The Diver had been too slow to avoid [the] Stopstone-blessed, or cursed, Indescribables. They didn’t exactly overwhelm him, however. He hit the ground and did a dolphin (or dorado); kept on going. They dug after him, deeper and deeper; some could even soil-swim. Fortunately they were neither as fast nor as manoeuvrable as he was.
They also weren’t equipped with gorgon goggles, as he knew to call the ‘magical’ eye-covering – what allowed him to see through solid rock – that he’d first acquired in Rome, Italy, during the Alliance of Man’s colloquium there in January 1938.
(That they as a unit might be a devic power focus had occurred to him. They didn’t glow, though, so he dismissed the notion. Once again, being unfamiliar with Master Devas until just lately, he had no idea that so-called Tvasitar Talismans didn’t necessarily have to glow. Thalassa’s Aqua Ankh or Water Wand and her twin’s, Aires-Airealist’s omega-shaped Aerod, didn’t, not usually, and Demon Land thought them power foci a week and a day ago on Damnation Island.
(Good thing his gorgon goggles didn’t glow, too. Otherwise he would have inhumed them by now.)
... from "Helios on the Moon", the final volume in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Which brings us to this from BBC Tech. It showed up around Beltane Day, at the end of April 2014:
 Norwegian army tests virtual-reality headset in tanks
The virtual-reality Oculus Rift headset has been put to a novel use by the Norwegian army - helping soldiers to drive tanks.
... "The concept is sound, but the technology isn't quite there yet. The picture quality is good for 10-15m [30-50ft] - but after that it is difficult to distinguish details, for example whether an opponent is carrying a weapon."
Clearly, as the above sequence shows, the Diver could care less about whether his foes are carrying weapons. He just wants to get away from them. And so would you, even if you were in a Norweigian tank.
BTW, in the Phantacea Mythos, Indescribables are eldritch earthborn. In less syllables, that makes them demons. And, yes, as he didn't learn until Endgame-Gambit, the Diver does inhume the Godstuff best known as either Brainrock or Gypsium.
Can't be Wilderwitch's Granddad
For starters, in the Phantacea Mythos, Wilderwitch's paternal grandfather is either Agenor Heliopolis or Adam Kadmon, unless it's Mithras or, heaven forfend, the Devil Sedon. As for her maternal grandfather, well, that a little more complicated. Her devic half-granddad is almost certainly Thrygragos Everyman (Little Star Lazareme in ).
This popped up on TheFreeDictionary by Farlex one morning while considering which Phantacea Mythos web-serial to novelize next. Hence it qualifying for Serendipity and phantacea.
(Before you ask, I'm leaning toward "Wilderwitch’s Babies, Part 1: Decimation Damnation", though I might call it "Wilderwitch's Daughters". Ultimate decision awaits making penultimate preparations to publish "Helios on the Moon".)
The following is from an article entitled 'Shamanism'.
There are many variations of shamanism throughout the world, but several common beliefs are shared by all forms of shamanism. Common beliefs identified by Eliade (1972)[4] are the following:
 Spirits exist and they play important roles both in individual lives and in human society.- The shaman can communicate with the spirit world.
- Spirits can be benevolent or malevolent.
- The shaman can treat sickness caused by malevolent spirits.
- The shaman can employ trance inducing techniques to incite visionary ecstasy and go on vision quests.
- The shaman's spirit can leave the body to enter the supernatural world to search for answers.
- The shaman evokes animal images as spirit guides, omens, and message-bearers.
- The shaman can tell the future, scry, throw bones/runes, and perform other varied forms of divination
Shamanism is based on the premise that the visible world is pervaded by invisible forces or spirits which affect the lives of the living.[44] Although the causes of disease lie in the spiritual realm, inspired by malicious spirits, both spiritual and physical methods are used to heal. Commonly, a shaman "enters the body" of the patient to confront the spiritual infirmity and heals by banishing the infectious spirit.
Many shamans have expert knowledge of medicinal plants native to their area, and an herbal treatment is often prescribed. In many places shamans learn directly from the plants, harnessing their effects and healing properties, after obtaining permission from the indwelling or patron spirits. ... By engaging in their work, a shaman is exposed to significant personal risk, from the spirit world, from enemy shamans, or from the means employed to alter the shaman's state of consciousness. Shamanic plant materials can be toxic or fatal if misused. Failure to return from an out-of-body journey can lead to death.
Plenty more where that came from but I was most intrigued by one of the images that came with it. Might this be Wilderwitch's granddad? After all, somewhere Kronokronos Akbarartha voices the information that Wilderwitch might be Russian and the caption that goes with it does read:
The earliest known depiction of a Siberian shaman, produced by the Dutch explorer Nicolaes Witsen, who authored an account of his travels among Samoyedic- and Tungusic-speaking peoples in 1692. Witsen labelled the illustration as a "Priest of the Devil" and gave this figure clawed feet to highlight what Witsen perceived as demonic qualities
Doubly serendipitously, note the Tungusic reference.
We can suppose from Freespririt Nihila's comment in both Phantacea Revisited 1: The Damnation Brigade" and "The War of Apocalyptics" that Wilderwitch might be her incarnation. We also know that the Witch is a deviant who regards the Dual Entities as her birth parents.
If memory serves, which it doesn't always with me, Machine-Memory was possessed by Krepusyl Evenstar (aka Mariamne Dawnstar) while Heliosophos was occupied by Thrygragos Lazareme (unless it was Bad Rhad) when she was conceived.
Since she was born in 59/1927, that means they conceived her during Helios's Eleventh Lifetime. Which began when Trans-Time Trigon came crashing to Earth above Siberia on June 30, 1908, thus causing the Tunguska event.
Serendipitous Stuff this Season on pHantaBlog
As per here, pHantaBlog and webpages associated with Jim McPherson's Phantacea Mythos now count the seasons in accordance with the Pagan Wheel of the Year
Winter 2013/14
Digging up Phantacea in Glauberg, Germany
 There is such a thing as pHantacea on pHacebook. Phantacea Publications also has a presence on Google+. On the former, a pHalz entry was made just before Mithramas. It was subsequently corrected.
The mistake made was equating the Glauberg torc with Harmonia's necklace. The latter's what brought disaster to all who possessed it; including, as told in "Janna Fangfingers", herself; hence, come "Goddess Gambit", Freespirit Nihila. The former, also pictured here, was dug up in Glauberg, Germany, sometime in the Nineties.
Since it was golden it was only natural to mistake it for Harmony's power focus. However, that very day I was re-lettering a panel for "Cataclysm Catalyst", the next scheduled graphic novel from Phantacea Publications, and looked a couple of panels to the right, Vetala's left. (All three panels initially came from pH-4, which came out in 1978, something like fifteen years before the Glauberg treasure was dug up.)
Even if it's in black-and-white, and even if the Glauberg torc isn't crimson, does it not look virtually identical to Verne Andrusiek's drawing of the Crimson Corona, aka the Mind of Sapiendev, one of the thrice-cursed Godly Glories? It does to me; hence why I whipped up the appended collage.
As for the wooden warrior or idol dug up at the same site, it immediately brought to mind Rabbit the Wise, a recent entry on this very page. The article, which also contains a full-frontal shot of the Keltenfürst (Celtic Prince), suggests the ears are on his helmet and that they're meant to represent mistletoe leaves.
Nonsense, they're not on his helmet; they're on his head. Helios must have developed fat rabbit ears while he was on the Moon in 1980, possibly as a consequence of being enchanted by the aforementioned Moon Rabbit. Then, after his 100th death knocked him backwards in time to 5th Century BC, Celtic Germany, he got himself turned into wood and buried alongside the Crimson Corona, become gold.
Of course you'll have to pick up the book, e-book or PDF of "Helios on the Moon" in order to determine for yourself if I'm not just making this up. It should be out sometime in the Spring of 2014.
Serendipitous Stuff this Season on pHantaBlog
As per here, pHantaBlog and webpages associated with Jim McPherson's Phantacea Mythos now count the seasons in accordance with the Pagan Wheel of the Year
Autumn 2013
If the Walrus was Paul, was the Rabbit Helios?
(BTW: In case you didn't realize it the titular reference is to the John Lennon song "I am a Walrus". It came out on "Magical Mystery Tour" in 1967 and remains one of the few Beatles' tunes I still play at home, as opposed to hear on the radio.)
Serendipitously (what else?), the day after I finally get the innards and outers for "Nuclear Dragons" uploaded to my chosen Print on Demand (POD) printer's website, I spot this on the Free Dictionary:
  The Moon Rabbit in folklore is a rabbit that lives on the moon, based on pareidolia that identifies the markings of the moon as a rabbit. The story exists in many cultures, particularly in Aztec mythology and East Asian folklore, where it is seen pounding in a mortar and pestle. In Chinese folklore, it is often portrayed as a companion of the moon goddess Chang 'e, constantly pounding the elixir of life for her; but in Japanese and Korean versions, it is just pounding the ingredients for rice cake.
The link is here. It comes with a couple of graphics that I've glommed for illustrative purposes. The mockup cover for Nuke-Drags is here whereas an ad utilizing the finished Ian Bateson cover is here.
(Double-click any of the images in this entry in order to enlarge in a separate window.)
As for why a rabbit on the moon is serendipitous with respect to Nuke-Drags (not Nuck-Dregs, that's here), as is my wont I included a bonus chapter at the end of the book for the next proposed novel. As you might have guessed, it's "Helios on the Moon".
 (Not that other Helios on the Moon, which I serialized out her in Cyberia back in the late Nineties, or the even earlier Helios on the Moon, the one that featured on the series-titular pHant-side of pH-3, of which more is here. This would be the upcoming third entry in the Launch 1980 story cycle, the one besides Nuke being "The War of the Apocalyptics".)
In order to present the bonus chapter consistently with other relatively recent releases from Phantacea Publications I had to do a mockup cover. You can see it on this very page, in both b/w and colour. It's a slight reworking of Richard Sandoval's cover for aforementioned pH-3. 
I rather like it. Especially with the arguably non-cowering, but definitely busty, woman behind the lute-wielding lunar lunatic, it reminds me of pulp art akin to that found on the covers for Astounding Stories and suchlike.
(That's not to say I'll get anyone to recolour this version of it, though I might. Right now I'm more inclined to hire an artist to do an original. Any applicants?)
 As for the article itself, I was struck by what famously 'Buzzed' Aldrin had to say in this exchange between Houston and the Apollo 11 crew just before the first moon landing:
Houston: Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, there's one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.
Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin: Okay. We'll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl.
If Houston had said 6000 years, I'd have been seriously spooked. That's because, at least within the Phantacea Mythos, the Genesea or Great Flood of Genesis occurred roughly 6000 years ago, in 4000 BC to be precise.
And, not all that many centuries before that, the Sedonshem was hiding out on, yes, the very Moon Apollo was buzzing towards in 1969. (In terms of Apollo and Helios being the same god, that's nonsense. Apollo was a veritable mouse, a hateful bringer of plague, compared to the always glorious Helios.)
At any rate, according to the article, the Chinese called the moon goddess Chang'e, not Chango, let alone the Bunny Girl. By contrast, her hammering helper goes by either the "Jade Rabbit" or the "Gold Rabbit". Gold suggests the Sun, which in turn suggests Mithras's old drinking buddy, the just-mentioned Helios.
Two of the most confounding, non-godly, but ever-returning Cornerstone Characters in the Phantacea Mythos do not appear to drink an elixir of immortality. They age and die just like regular folks.
 Rather, he does; she's stuck following him around from lifetime to lifetime. They do keep coming back in their late twenties or mid-thirties, though, at the very ages their templates were when they died, if die they did indeed and weren't just, um, you know, transfigured or, as I like to put, God-stuffed.
I am of course referring to the time-tumbling Dual Entities. They generally go by Helios called Sophos the Wise (Heliosophos for short) and Mnemosyne (Miracle Memory, Machine-Memory, Milady Memory or just plain Memory, as in the Hellenic Titans' Queen of the Muses, the Moon to his Sun).
They're out there, too, in "Nuclear Dragons". There being ... well, I've probably said too much already. Check out its back cover blurb, first sentence, third paragraph down, and figure from there.
Note One: The Louvre's banquet scene between Helios and Mithras is here. Mnemosyne is called Luna or Selene in the description. A Silver Signaller named Selene appears in the latter stages of Nuke-Drags. So does, somewhat earlier on, Mnemosyne herself, albeit as Moon's Angel, though longtime pHant-pHans know she's no more angelic than her staff half.
Note Two: There are scads of references to the Dual Entities, either individually or together, throughout the Phantacea websites. Type in either Helios or Memory in the Search Engine at the top of this page to reach many of them.
Note Three: Should one so desire, hit here for dozens of shots of Mnemosyne the Moon Goddess as collected by our pals at world-conquering Google. There was even one from pH-Webworld's companion site (www.phantacea.com), though the Moon Goddess it links to is Nergal Vetala, not Miracle-Memory. Hey, despite what many believe, Google isn't perfect.
Are Brain Bags next?
They're at it again, those dastardly scientists. Attempting to prove that even more non-Godstuff in Jim McPherson's Phantacea Mythos isn't altogether unusual or even fantastical. First consider this line from page 59 of the graphic novel, "Phantacea Revisited 1: The Damnation Brigade":
Spoiler Alert
As the Byronic Nucleus leaves Damnation Isle, a blob of brainy tissue, hidden in the crags,
continues palpitating not quite oblivious to all else.
Now consider this, from the BBC Online (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23863544). The article is entitled: "Miniature 'human brain' grown in lab". The writer is listed as: James Gallagher, Health and science reporter, BBC News. Great pictures as well.
Prof Paul Matthews, from Imperial College London, told the BBC: "I think it's just mindboggling. The idea that we can take a cell from a skin and turn it into, even though it's only the size of a pea, is starting to look like a brain and starting to show some of the behaviours of a tiny brain, I think is just extraordinary.
"Now it's not thinking, it's not communicating between the areas in the way our brains do, but it gives us a real start and this is going to be the kind of tool that helps us understand many of the major developmental brain disorders."
The team in Vienna do not believe there are any ethical issues at this stage, but Dr Knoblich said he did not want to see much larger brains being developed as that would be "undesirable". Dr Zameel Cader, a consultant neurologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, said he did not see ethical issues arising from the research so far.
He told the BBC: "It's a long way from conscience or awareness or responding to the outside world. There's always the spectre of what the future might hold, but this is primitive territory."
Mindboggling? Extraordinary? Undesirable? Primitive? Saul Ryne, the Magnificent Psycho (though in "Nuclear Dragons", he pronounces a preference for 'Magnifico'), would agree with the first two, not the last two, at least with reference to himself.
As for why this qualifies as a Serendipity Now entry, well, I was resizing pHRev1:DB for about the fourth time when I came across the above quote and couldn't resist adding it to the List.
Turkish Psycho -- Did Saul Ryne survive Nuclear Dragons, Too?
The heading's 'too' reference is to the next entry down.
Saul Ryne is Cerebrus's twin brother. His supra codename, if you could call it that, is 'the Magnificent Psycho'. Rather, it was, up until Xmas 1955. He's back -- or was back, as of very late November 1980.
He earned his codename. He hates it. He's psychotic. He's also psy (psi) or psionic; a mentat, or whatever le mot du jour is nowadays. He appears, in all his murderous magnificence, in "Nuclear Dragons".
To put it gratefully to many, he's not precognitive. (Not even Shining Ones - devils or little gods - are precogs.)
“Wrong, dear countess,” proclaimed the young man, a few hours earlier. “You may now address me as Magnifico!”
“Don’t be so pompous, Ryne,” challenged Ramona Avar. “Magnifico, my royal Hungarian ass. It’ll be Saul or Psycho. Which do you prefer?”
He simply smiled. Lady Guillotine screamed, fell to her knees in shock and promptly passed out. “That’s for your insufferable egotism, Ray ...
... from "Nuclear Dragons", Part Two: The Strife Virus
And to think they were once lovers.
Be it Saul, Psycho or Magnifico, he gains a much cherished entry in Serendipity Now because of this, from BBC's News from Elsewhere. It's entitled: Turkey: Telepathy 'linked to deaths'.
"Telepathy could have been used to compel four young Turkish engineers to kill themselves, it's been suggested.
"... Included ... was a study by a neuropsychologist, Nevzat Tarhan, who asks prosecutors not to disregard the possibility of telepathy causing severe distress and headaches in the victims."
In terms of Nuke-Drags' Pantin' Panther and Aunt Jemina's owner/shooter on Damnation Isle in December 1980... well, 'nuff said.
Other Serendipity Now entries on the Magnificent Psycho under any name are here and here. He's referred to here and is also quoted serendipitously on pHantaBlog here.
Did Alfredo Sentalli survive Nuclear Dragons and move to London?
  So, a couple of days after I wrote the Cellular Savouring piece for Serendipity, this appears on BBC's Newsbeat: "Britain's biggest 'fatberg' removed from London sewer". It comes with a video and a message: "Bin it, don't block it". (Which strikes me as applicable worldwide.)
The video notes where the water company disposed of it but I couldn't help wondering if lashings of fatberg (word no doubt inspired by non-lettuce iceberg) couldn't have been better employed to flavour the stem cell burger discussed below.
I also couldn't help but think of His Enormity, aka the Fatman, a grossly overweight obesity from not just (the still upcoming) "Nuclear Dragons".
(Double-click image to the left in order to enlarge an ad prepared by utilizing Ian Bateson's completed, 2013 front cover. An earlier mockup is here. Image on right can also be double-clicked. It looks like it was intended for the ill-fated Phantacea Phase One project. Ian Bateson's original sequence for pH-7 is here.)
Alfredo Sentalli was slightly over six feet tall and weighed much more than four hundred pounds. He was swarthy, pink-faced, and artistically goateed, though that tuft of fur was largely lost in his massive cheeks and multiple chins. Fifty-three and balding, what he’d lost up top, in terms of hair, he had gained down below, in terms of size. His head was almost as bloated as his body. Notwithstanding first impressions, it was filled with intelligence, not fat.
He disdained exercise so much so he unapologetically designed, and had built, an electronic wheelchair – one adapted from a battery-powered golf cart – specifically to his accommodate his crippling girth. Getting around took less effort that way, don’t you know. He professed never to worry about his physical condition, let alone his heart; claimed his ‘internal health’ freed him from such petty concerns.
Beer was by far and away his favourite elixir vitae. He called it the incredible thinking fluid and of necessity, being the boss, he thought a lot.
... from "Nuclear Dragons", Part One: Indescribable Defiance
Since "The War of the Apocalyptics" been out for a number of years by now, I don't mind telling you that, by his 'internal health', the Fatman's referring to Thrygragos Byron, one of Phantacea's cornerstone characters since Day One and whose shell he willing acts as early on in Nuck Drags.
However, I hasten to add that the heading should not be taken to mean he didn't survive Crystallion, Hell's Horsemen (or 'horsemeat', as a blogger preferred) and their atomic firedrakes. As for the latter's poop, well, it'd be irresponsible to spoil a reader's (future) enjoyment wouldn't it.
As for calling him Lord Lard, that didn't so much not occur to me when I was writing it as, at least in terms of the Phantacea Mythos, it was already taken by Baaloch Hellblob, aka Lord Lazy, Sinistral Sloth of Satanwyck, who's actually quite a good cook.
Everyone's favourite little trickster (Hush Mannering, not Auguste Moirnoir) comes close, though:
Spoiler Alert
“The latter two, King Cold and his Crimson Queen, are either yours or your namesake’s parents, Goddess. They had always rebelled from Mithras – so, perhaps, you are not as bad as the rest of the Mithradites. That does not mean I can trust you; does not mean that Daddy Lardass can’t trust you either. How did you come to be here?”
Thalassa didn’t like her tone, but there was no denying something rather fundamental wasn’t right about the situation in which she found herself.
... from "Nuclear Dragons", Book Two (or Three) of the Launch 1980 story cycle
An earlier Serendipity Now entry on Centauri Island is here
Cellular Savouring
It's just past Lunasa or Lughnasadh Day, so that makes it autumn according to this from the Free Dictionary:
Lammas is a Neo-Pagan holiday, often called Lughnasadh, celebrating the first harvest and the reaping of grain. It is a cross-quarter holiday halfway between the Summer Solstice (Litha) and the Autumnal Equinox (Mabon). In the northern hemisphere, Lammas takes place around August 1 with the Sun near the midpoint of Leo in the tropical zodiac, while in the southern hemisphere Lammas is celebrated around February 1 with the Sun near the midpoint of Aquarius. On the Wheel of the Year, it is opposite Imbolc, which is celebrated on February 2 in the northern hemisphere, and late July / early August in the southern hemisphere.
(NOTE: Even though it's off-topic, one wonders if Litha, which I'd never heard of until I copied and pasted the above, comes from Primeval Lilith, a frequent contributor to so much of the nastiness that goes on in the Phantacea Mythos. Will additionally note that Midsummer's Day is the Summer Solstice. In not just my view, it wouldn't be called Midsummer's Day if it was Start-Summer's Day.)
Harvesting food for the future in mind, here's a headline from CBC Online: World's 1st lab-grown burger cooked and eaten. Here's much the same from BBC Online: What does a stem cell burger taste like?. Clearly, in what's still summer to many, this is what passes for big news. Wouldn't want to upset the celebrity-obsessed selfies and emu-emulating navel-gazers who feel threatened by real news -- not that you get real news from the MSM.
Or MSG from the master chefs hired by one of Google's co-founders (Sergey Brin) for this self-proclaimed publicity stunt: "... which for Monday's event was seasoned with salt, egg powder and breadcrumbs. Red beet juice and saffron were added to help the burger look more meat-like; [Mark Post, the Dutch scientist who led the team that grew the meat from cattle stem cells,] said the lab-made patty had a yellowish tinge." (Is this what the Simpsons eat?)
All of which brings us to this quote from "Feeling Theocidal", which takes place on a single Mithramas Day in 4376 YD (376 AD):
Because the Sarpedons coexisted with devils, as well as Minoan humans in their third of the Island [of Crete], once their descendants began returning to the Inner Earth, starting around the midpoint of the Head’s 4th Millennium, Cabalarkon’s purebloods disenfranchised them.
Their Warriors Elite had been using the coercive qualities of their eyeorbs to keep the so-called Sarpedon underclass successfully enslaved ever since. Machines salvaged from their grounded generational ships generated the same edible slop they always did but fresh food wouldn’t be possible without them and even idiots of Weir enjoyed the occasional naturally grown raspberry.
... from "Feeling Theocidal"
I'm not saying pre-Earth Utopians used stem cells to feed themselves throughout their roughly two hundred thousand (light) year stellar journey to the Whole Earth, or that their Inner Earth descendents in the Weirdom of Cabalarkon -- rather, their version of old Weir's Mother Machine -- used suchlike technology to manufacture meals on a daily basis, but, hey, it saves making up what they did use.
BTW, it seems technology has been steadily progressing such that pretty soon we'll be able to eat and drink just like a Utopian, which is to say badly. Here are a sample of Serendipity lynx re inevitably heading towards replicating Weir's Mother Machine: On Blimps and Brains in Boxes; Cerebrus Now; Still searching for the secret to the Signallers' Silver; Did Edenites or Utopians make the Antikythera Mechanism and Sprinkles as Utopian crud.
All the more so given that St Augustine's feast day's coming up later on in August, which presumably wasn't named after him, and that he's the patron saint of brewers, there's also a particularly apropos one on pHantaBlog: More Mother Machine comes to Earth.
Serendipitous Stuff this Season on pHantaBlog
As per here, pHantaBlog and webpages associated with Jim McPherson's Phantacea Mythos now count the seasons in accordance with the Pagan Wheel of the Year
- Nuclear Aardvark: Not just about the Cerebus phenomena
- Evil Eye-Tems -- Warning: Uses the word 'apotropaic'
- Beer can dragon: Honestly, the inspiration for “Nuclear Dragons” did not come from a beer can
- Nuclear Non-Dragons: Includes the "Jesse, we hardly knew you" quote from “Nuclear Dragons”
- Foreshadowing Phantacea’s Finale:
Also speaking non-astronomically of Nemesis, Sedna and dragon poop
- Prip + Yat = Pripyat: Quoting from both
"Janna Fangfingers" and "Nuclear Dragons"; is that the Soviet Supracity's real name?; of course not, I made it up
- Word of the week: Except Nihila’s last name is not Tikels
- Marketing Muggles: Featuring Ian Fry's late Seventies' sketch of the irrepressible faerie tricksters: Young Life (Pandora 'Hush' Mannering, from, most recently,
"Nuclear Dragons") and Young Death (Auguste Moirnoir, Hush's Gush of an ex-hubby, born Augustus Nauroz, from, most recently, "Goddess Gambit")
- Look out below! Nuclear Dragons are on their way; contains a shot of Ian Bateson's final covers for Nuke-Drags
Summer 2013
Demios Sarpedon's Pagan Secret - and it isn't the Wheel of the Year
For Vancouver we had some wonderfully pleasant weather at the beginning of May this year (2013).
- More than a few folks remarked that it was just like summer. (They probably hadn't been in town very often during the last couple of summers.)
- Others happily mused that it sure beat the rain, which was undeniable; not to mention moot. What doesn't beat near constant rainfall?
As to the second, it didn't last. Sunshine never does in this blighted burg in the midst of probably the biggest rain forest left on the planet; not for more than a week or two at a time, it doesn't. As for the first, that's because, duh, it was summer.
For proof that May Day is the first day of summer, and May or Beltane Eve (Witch Night) marks the end of the spring season, I always refer to Shakespeare vis-à-vis the Summer Solstice. It isn't called Midsummer's Day because it's Start of Summer Day. But there's more to it than that.
Readers of "Goddess Gambit" know the Sarpedon Family (Morgianna, Demios and daughter Andaemyn) did not have the best early mid-winter at the beginning of Tantalar, Year of the Dome 5980. Readers of "The Death's Head Hellion" know that the Sarpedons were a Utopian underclass in 4825 YD.
In fact, as per here, Thrygragos Lazareme made an, um, serendipitous discovery on Midsummer's Eve in that year. Hence all the excuse I needed to make this an entry in Serendipity Now.
Demios Sarpedon makes an interesting observation while flying over Damnation Island in the beginning of December 1980. As per here, it survived the cut and will find its way into "Nuclear Dragons" when it's released:
Regardless of whether it was Morg and her Athenans’ doing, Strife once again went into forced retirement; presumably, though hardly for the first time, irrevocably. Perhaps because of her loss, that September Jesus Mandam called for a colloquy of supras to be held in Vancouver Canada on the upcoming Equinox.
(Demios found it curious how often the quarter and cross-quarter days of the eight-armed Sun Cross – symbolic of the Wheel of the Year pagan calendar – became significant dates in the 17-year, not-to-him Secret War of the Supranormals. A lot of that probably had to do with the pagan gods, though that was something else neither he nor Morg bruited about out here.)
... from "Nuclear Dragons", Book Two (or Three) of the Launch 1980 story cycle
As I write this, I'm in the process of editing (call it reducing, for that's the main aim of the exercise) Nuke-Drags. It'll be the last time before finally moving it over to In Design and hence into a printable as well as e-readable PDF.
(There's a spate of stuff that won't find their way to the PDF on the Nuck-Dregs page here. The entries are still valid but they're soooo wordy. The mockup cover, below, prepared over Ian Bateson's b/w original intended for pH-7 should serve as a hint as to who is in the process of colouring same for Nuke's cover. Thankfully, he'll also be doing the back cover, though the text probably won't change.)
Look out below!
- Nuclear Dragons are on the way -
Double-click to enlarge; back cover text is here; Ian Bateson's original sequence for pH-7 is here; a b/w version of the cover intended for Phantacea Seven is here; another iteration of the same cover is here
It's a few weeks following May Day (aka Beltane, the night before's a bonfire night sometimes called Walpurgis Nacht or, especially in the Phantacea Mythos, Witch Night.) The rain's falling again; worse, the temperatures are back into the mid to lower teens Celsius.
It occurred to me I better make a note about the pagan Wheel of the Year somewhere on pH-Webworld. So I looked it up online and found this. (It double-clicks.)
NOTE 1: Demios wouldn't have used Mabon Day to refer to the Autumnal Equinox because, according to the article, the word wasn't even coined until around 1970.
NOTE 2: He might, however, have reflected on it as Michaelmas Day if only because, as per here, early Christians associated the Archangel Michael with Varuna Mithras.
NOTE 3: Did, as per here, a ditto with St George. Did so because, apparently, Mithras strove against Ahriman or Aryanman just as George did the Dragon and Mike did Satan.
NOTE 4: There's a collection of lynx to what others make of Mithras and Mithraism on the Online Bibliography page here
Reckon I'm going to date the summertime entries in Serendipity Now accordingly, from Start May to End July, from now on.
That's Pareidolia, not Paranormal nor even Paraphernalia
Bollocks BBC, it's fay (never to be confused with fey).
Much to my personal amazement (since I'm susceptible to the phenomenon ), I've never heard the word before. Seems it's legit, though.
Pareidolia = a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.
Serendipity Now has a few of them: Sed's Head on the Giza Plateau in Egypt for 4500 Years; Helios on Mars; and, perhaps most remarkably of all, An Actual Eye-Mouth in the Sky. The cliff heads here and here are just as interesting, all the more so since I took the shots.
Years and years ago I put up a bunch of images of House Heads. (Never got around to bringing it back but, just in case I ever do, the lynx will be here and here.)
Still up is the Faeries and phantacea page. I'm particularly fond of the clothes shot and this mouthy rock formation. A couple of the faeries caught in trees are either in my yard or across the street.
The Faeries page illustrates my basic point: The BBC must stand for Baloney, Balderdash and Cobblers, Claptrap or plain old Crap. Why else try to rationalize suchlike delightful niftiness. Sometimes faeries do get stuck in trees or cliffs or clouds or even on Mars, though that was Heliosophos, the Male Entity.
Along with Miracle Memory, his much prettier distaff half (aka the Female Entity, whose given name is Mnemosyne, after the Titanic Moon Goddess and mother of the nine Muses), they are clearly stuck on a BBC page entitled: Pareidolia: Why we see faces in hills, the Moon and toasties.
It's here and, as a public service, its shot of (what may be) the Entities smooching is reproduced right here (where from it double-clicks to enlarge in separate window):
So what makes this article worthy of a Serendipity Now entry? The Google Connection answers that. Phantacea Publications just made all three mini-novels comprising "The Thousand Days of Disbelief" freely available for reading on Google Books. The lynx are here, here and here.
German design studio Onformative is undertaking perhaps the world's largest and most systematic search for pareidolia. Their Google Faces program will spend the next few months sniffing out face-like shapes in Google Maps.
Google Faces will scan the entire globe several times over from different angles. So far the program has pinpointed an eerie profile in Russia's remote Magadan Oblast region, a fellow with hairy nostrils next to Priory Road in Ashford, Kent, and a mangy creature in the mountains of Alaska, among others.
It's certainly not the first to uncover faces where they don't actually exist.
Bollocks again, BBC. Of course they exist. How could you see them if they didn't?
Serendipitous Stuff this Season on pHantaBlog
In keeping with advice given myself earlier this Summer here are some lynx to a selection of Serendipity-style entries from May, June and July 2013
Spring 2013
Celestial Slingshot
Occasionally I come across material that is so outlandish, so far out there, yet so near to notions propagated in the Phantacea Mythos, which is supposed to be pure fantasy, that I can't resist noting them in Serendipity Now.
Consider this extract from the 2005 Revision of "The Trigregos Gambit". It's still online; plus, with virtually nothing in the way of substantial changes, it also made it to the final cut of "Goddess Gambit".
The speaker is Smiler, aka all sorts of things, including Bad Rhad. He's telling some of his incredible story to Jordan Tethys, the legendary 30 Year Man. They've come together on Sraddha Isle in early Tantalar 5980. The other 'we' he's talking about is Pyrame Silverstar. Tethys has accused the never-remembered fiend of being Sedon's Stooge.
(Myself, I've always thought of Smiler as Sedon's Surrogate; perhaps even Sedon himself, when he's become so bored with being a mighty Eye-Mouth in Sky that he sends an aspect of himself downstairs to cause trouble.
(Then again, what do I know? I'm only the writer/creator of the Phantacea Mythos.)
On the Headworld our court is in Grand Elysium, what’s now Pettivisaya, the City of Wailing Souls, in the Ghostlands. In time we divided our court on the Outer Earth between the twin cities: my Sodom and her Gomorrah.
Ironically enough we’re both happy, Sedon and I, he in the Night’s Sky and me down here, in a share-and-share-alike manner of speaking. So maybe I do become his surrogate. Or his stooge, if you wish to call me that. As you might expect, I have a different perspective.
Consider our relationship as follows: his is the heavenly kingdom whereas mine is the earthly kingdom. That’s certainly how I thought of it. And she’s as content as we are; maybe even more so. Because she’s the Perpetual Presence whereas we both need and cherish her.
And that remains our situation for damn near two millennia. Then the Unities come time-tumbling back into our ever-linear time-space. Then they seek to assassinate us, they with their tri-peaked asteroid, their Trans-Time Trigon.
... from the 2005 version of "The Trigregos Gambit"
Now consider this. It's from what's become Serendipity's Old Faithful, the Fortean Times (2013 Special - FT300). The title of the article is "Meteoric messages?". The writer is Thomas N Hackney.
By the way, a bolide is meteoric fireball. It's similar but way bigger than a blazing skull, the likes of which both Mars Bellona and Nakba Ramazar fire off during "The War of the Apocalyptics" or as depicted, particularly in the case of Headless Ramazar, in the graphic novel "Phantacea Revisited 1: The Damnation Brigade".
"Is somebody trying to tell us something?
"The Chebarkul meteor [of 15 February 2013] ... was the largest bolide to bellyflop into the planet's atmosphere since 1908 [the Tunguska event].
"... [It] packed about as much explosive energy as several Hiroshima type bombs.
"The very idea that these events were 'messages' [from extraterrestrials] would have seemed utterly ridiculous ... [but] nobody died and ... the 15 February events were captured on film by a large number of automated video recorders. [Which explains the flight path.]
"... [Possible conclusion:] "They were [deliberate] actions ..."
Leaving aside the reference to the Tunguska event of 1908 (which pHant pHans should recall was Trans-Time Trigon returning to the Whole Earth for the start of the Dual Entities' 11th lifetime together), let alone the reference to the Hiroshima A-Bomb explosion of 1945 (which was when OMP-Akbar appeared on the Outer Earth), surely even someone name Shirley can nevertheless appreciate why I count sighting this article as serendipitous.
Evidently, if the FT writer's right, the Dual Entities aren't the only ones who like to send messes in a bolide. (BTW, apologies to whoever wrote The Police song about that message in a bottle.)
Zero Public Tolerance for Supranormals in France -- Still?
A moderately odd sequence, its cover story in fact, entitled 'Apocalypse Not' in the same issue of Old Faithful (2013 Special - FT300) brings to mind another phantacea staple: namely, how the eventual Damnation Brigade became the Last of the Supranormals and ended up in what they called Limbo for a quarter century.
Recall that supras are called deviants on the Inner Earth of Sedon's Head then recall that, after KOC eliminated the last supras but for themselves in 1955, it became their turn. Note now the translation of a French governmental department that exists to this day: 'Mission interministerielle de vigilance et de lutte contre les derives sectaires' (MIVILUDES).
I did not make that up, though presumably the French did. It's straight out of the article. According to FT 300 it means: 'Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combating Cultic Deviance'.
So, being a Great Power (at least in their minds), did the French collaborate with the USA and USSR in 1955's failed effort to rid the world of supranormal deviants on Damnation Island?
They certainly knew about them since Satan St Synne exposed his daughter Sophia's family to the devaray (aka the devil-ray) in Vichy back in 1943. (Thalassa D'Angelo (maybe also Thanatos) is Sea Goddess; Hush Mannering is the little trickster known as Young Life on the Inner Earth; His Enormity isn't either Alpha Centauri or Alfredo Sentalli, he's an homunculus.)
“And our SOS wasn’t the Society of Saints, Sea Stuff. Not the first one, recall.”
That took Thalassa aback. Then she too broke into a huge grin. Like her adoptive aunts, sisters and nieces to this day, like Mnemosyne, Gloriel, Claudia and Belificent in their days, when a female D’Angelo smiles the heavens alight. “The Sorority of Sausages. I’d forgotten about them.”
Then her visage darkened, as if remembering what had happened to many of them over the succeeding years. Hush braced herself for the storm. “Of course I did, didn’t I?”
His Enormity caught the reference immediately. “You wiped her.”
“And un-wiped her,” Hush protested. “Any number of times.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” snarled Sea. No tsunami ensued, though. Instead, like a calming side eddy off a raging river, she jumped back onto her original train of thought. “Vichy France 1943, five years after the Sausages had their lone outing against Count Molech and his genie, that unmitigated old satyr Sedon St Synne, the legitimate D’Angelos’ grandfather, hit almost everyone in our immediate family with his devaray. It set some of the others off on their supra careers but it only increased our abilities.”
“Enough to survive twenty-five years unaged?” wondered Sentalli-Centauri.
“A lot more than that,” Thalassa put to him.
... from "Nuclear Dragons", Book Two (or Three) of the Launch 1980 story cycle.
Then there was the never-noted fate of Clair du Lune (Camille Dugas) from the Heliodyssey series of novels set just before the outbreak of World War Two. Did the French do in one of their own for perceived deviancy?
"Up here!" shrieked a voice from topside. It was Will Tombstone. When they reached the upper deck it looked like it was too late. A distant figure, had to be Camille Dugas, was floating high into the sky.
"I'll get her," volunteered Aires. Sundown clamped a hand on his shoulder. The Aerod did not appear, his skin did not change to blue, he did not become his element.
"What's that?" shouted his twin sister.
What it was, appeared to be anyhow, was a huge bird, a grey eagle, flying towards Camille. Then a perhaps even more amazing thing happened. With its beak, it took hold of the lofting-away Summoning Child's clothes and flew her back towards the ship.
Whereupon Sundown, letting go of Aires, took her by the ankles, hauled her down and pinned her the deck. The eagle took off ...
... from the synopsis to Odd 10: Supras Awakening
As for the article itself, it tells of the extraordinary measures MIVILUDES took on the urging of the Mayor of Bugarach, a man whose last name was Dulord. (And no, I didn't make that up either.) Apparently 'concerned by the resurgence of paganism and ... growing spiritualism ..., [he] let it be known that if any more freaks blew into town he would called in the Army.' And he did.
It was called, howsoever disgustingly, "Operation Controlled Freedom". As for what it entailed, I'll leave it to you to track down the article but it's very scary. The 'most pointless, policing exercise the Languedoc had ever seen [was] a resounding non-event that cost the French taxpayer hundreds of thousands of Euros'.
Serendipitous Stuff this Season on pHantaBlog
Winter 2012/13
Feel that Pteradonna
I'm always on the lookout for character likenesses. Usually they're shots I've taken or drawings made for Phantacea by various pHartists over the decades I've been doing this. I also scan stuff in from books or magazines, or even download from the web, but these I mostly I keep in files for future reference. Once in a while, though,the likeness is so bang-on I can't resist putting them online.
This entry is one such:
 “Jotan!” sputtered Ute Tethys, between heaves. Even when they were wholly swan maidens, ravens cawed comprehensibly to Valkyries.
Volsanga née Nibelung heard it too. Responsive to her honk-like blat, her psycho-swan flew out of the Weird. Volsanga was on it and back between-space before
anyone had time to react.
Then something else came out of the same interspatial nowhere. It was a psycho-pterosaur, a Terror Donna.
“Sorry, Durga, no nuts,” said Saudi, as her soul-self-animated psychopomp – another reason for the mnemonic, psyche-prompt – gobbled up as well as down Tethys’s body in a couple of gulps.
“Want her to lick the mess off the floor while she’s at it, Hopi? Or should we wait until everybody’s done spewing?”
I scanned this fellow in from Fortean Times #296 (January 2013 - p 57). It's attributed to Richard Svensson, who also drew this fellow here. As for whether the fleeing figure might represent Jordan 'Q for Quill' Tethys, I'll leave that up to you.
The Feel Theo quote mentions that 'ravens cawed comprehensibly to Valkyries'. Curiously – hey, this is Serendipity and phantacea, what isn't curious? – according to the article, which is written by Karl Shuker, the grim depicted isn't a pterodactyl. It's a 'nattraven or leharven'.
And what might that mean? Why, 'night raven' of course.
Winter 2011/12
The House of Auranja
Consider this for starters:
She (Fisherwoman, Queen Scylla of Godbad in this excerpt) flew in on a contraption (High Priest Thartarre's father) Holgat, who had a talent for technical precision, helped to both design and engineer. It was a prototype whirlybird, the like of which the Godbadian military perfected years later, during the subcontinent’s Civil War. Centauri Enterprises not yet in existence, it was made by one of the aristocracy’s most Outer-Earth-modern companies: Royal Byronic Volant, RBV for short.
Like most members of the imported aristocracy that owned almost everything worth owning in the subcontinent in those days, as CE did now, her husband’s ancestry was Bandradin, meaning his extensive family hailed from the Cattail Peninsula. Nevertheless he, Achigan Auranja, was Godbad’s hereditary king, hence the ‘Royal’. Godbad’s gods, devils that they were, were Byronics, hence that. The Volant part – ‘Volant’ just meant flying – came from PV, Pyçonja Volant [Fish's presumed devic half-mom].
... from Game-Gamibit: 'Freespirit Nihila', the sixteenth chapter of "Goddess Gambit"
Now consider this, as taken from Atlantis Rising #91 (January/February 2012)
After the death of Jesus, his wife Mary Magdalene sailed to France and settled in Tarascon, just south of Gellone (the City of Orange). "Orange was known in antiquity as the Latin Aurania ... But the family of Jesus ... was also called Aurania ... In the original Greek, the name Aurania (or Ourania) referred to the Heavens above ..."
The article then notes that "that same name has been transferred to all things golden — 'aur' in Latin, 'or' in French ... Like King Louis XIV of France, the Ouranian royal family were known as Sun Kings ... The humble orange fruit was the obvious similitude for the sacred Sun itself ... Thus she (Mary Magdalene) invariably wears golden or orange clothes, and she is always depicted with ginger or golden hair.
... Atlantis Rising #91 -- Mary Magdalene and the House of Orange, written by Ralph Ellis
And to think I came up with the name just because it sounded a lot like 'naranja' (Spanish for 'orange') whereas the name Achigan (French for 'bass') just because Fish, who's prawn-prone to spouting 'fishisms', tended to refer to her oft-times estranged husband as 'her big bass-ass'.
As for pHant's Magdalene
Going back to the Web Serials of bygone years, specifically to the never-completed (online) Vampire Variations, here's a quote from one of its chapter synopses:
 In life she was Mary Magdalene born Ryne become Mandam (old Joe's wife).
As first detailed in Manoeuvres and as repeated, howsoever
suggestively and howsoever often, in its continuations (Helioddity and Curse), she died on April 13, 1933. That would be the same
day, Good Friday out there, and probably to the second, that Aranyani
Nightingale and Gloriella D'Angelo were born in Rome.
That the Magdalene died giving birth to Thea we've already determined.
She wouldn't be a lamia if she hadn't. That Thea's was a phantom pregnancy, and the Magdalene
had herself a phantom midwife (Granny Garuda) ...
Jesus
Mandam may have been her Summoning Child. So too might have been Virginia
Mannering. Even though she looked somewhat like her mother, Athena born Kinesis, Barsine Mandam probably wasn't her daughter.
... from the chapter synopsis to "Grave Gravy", the third chapter in "The Vampire Variations" web serial
Barsine, old Joe's Sunshine, during the Heliodyssey story sequences set in 19/5938, appears throughout "Goddess Gambit", which is set in 59/1980. She does so not in her serial-familiar role, however, and, as one might expect from Thartarre's story, which is still online, especially not in the sunshine.
Nevertheless, that she does at all qualifies the following for Serendipity and Phantacea, though it might be more appropriate (given Gambit's arrival on the shelf as of Imbolc aka Candlemas Day) for Synchronicity and Phantacea if there was such a thing.
"But the family of Jesus ... was also called Aurania — for they were the descendents of the Egypto-Persian Queen Thea Muse Ourania ..."
... Atlantis Rising #91 -- Mary Magdalene and the House of Orange, written by Ralph Ellis
Sort of, um, bad-ass-backwards, I'll admit, Magdalene being a descendent of a Thea (meaning 'Goddess'), rather than as the mother of one, but it struck me as worthy of an entry.
All the more so when ones considers the Ryne Family (named after the legendary Rhinegold, supposedly the source of unlimited wealth) considers itself Iraryan (Persian).
As for Egypto-Persian Queen Thea Muse Ourania, she googles, hence the purloined image. Perhaps suspiciously, though, she shows up more usefully as Helena of Adiabene.
(Not to be confused with Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, or Helena Somata, who in phantacea-fact are one and the same. Unless, that is, 4376's Master of Kanin City in Feel Theo was named after Helena Adiabene.)
Utopians in China
Here's something from 1000-Daze:
For Bosco it was something else to paint: a three-eyed, dark-skinned, bearded
yet shaved-bald god or demigod sitting up there amidst a veritable nimbus of Gypsium glory. He wouldn’t call it ‘The Last Judgement’ but the slimy jerk who sold his best paintings to the Church, for a much bigger cut than he deserved, probably would – after insisting he change Sraddha to Christ of course.
I have actually seen Bosch's 'Last Judgement'; rather, there being more than one, I've seen the one attributed to him in Bruges, Belgium. Got right up close to it and snapped some neat details that I'll put online once I acquire more space for my Travels website.
At any rate, hey, Bosco was right. The slimy jerk who acted as his agent did insist he change Sraddha Somata, sitting atop a mushroom cloud on his Brainrock throne, to Christ on high. And it's Sraddha, the Depilated Dand of the Hoodoo Hamlet circa 5476, who inspired this entry.
He's described in the two aspects of 1000-Daze that he appears in ("Contagion Collectors" and "Janna Fangfingers") as being a black-skinned hybrid Utopian, a living god champion of Life itself. He eventually grew a big beard and shaved his head bald. (A style, mostly minus the beard, the Sraddhite Warrior Monks of the phantacea comic book series and 2012's "Goddess Gambit" continue to emulate in the Dome's 60th Century.)
In other words, he's supposed to look like an African or African-descended imam (a Muslim prayer leader).  I've never taken any pictures of such a sort, though there are plenty of them around online.
Which (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17370170) is where I saw this in mid-March 2012:
[China's 11,000 year old] Red Deer Cave people have a mix of archaic and modern characteristics. In general, the individuals had rounded brain cases with prominent brow ridges. Their skull bones were quite thick. Their faces were quite short and flat and tucked under the brain, and they had broad noses.
Their jaws jutted forward but they lacked a modern-human-like chin. Computed Tomography (X-ray) scans of their brain cavities indicate they had modern-looking frontal lobes but quite archaic-looking anterior, or parietal, lobes. They also had large molar teeth.
Might they be Utopians, the males black and the females white? After all it was a mere 11,000 years ago and Utopians, they in their millennial ships, had been chasing devils, they on the Sedonshem, throughout the cosmos for many tens of thousand Earth-years before then.
Who's to say they didn't land on the Whole Earth centuries before devils did circa 4669 BC? Not me, that's for certain. It would definitely explain the remnants of some of old Eden's disgraced technology, as depicted in the graphic novel, "Forever & 40 Days -- the Genesis of PHANTACEA", that Golden Age Patriarchs and Anti-Patriarchs were still using way back when.
Bosco gets his own comic
[INTERRUPTIVE NOTE: As per here and here, in Spain and in phantacea, Bosco's an alias or nom-de-brush used by forever pHant-favourite, and possibly the greatest painter of pure weirdness ever: Jheronimus van Aken.]
Not only that, it's called ...
Wait. Let's first recall this observation made re what went on at the awards ceremony of the 5 Blades Championship of Weir, which was held in the Weirdom of Kanin City on the 21st of Azky, 5456 YD.
In truth, [Harmony's] two immediate brothers [Chaos & Order] were so surpassingly powerful many feared not even Sedon had the clout required to cathonitize them should their rage reach the point where they went at each other unrestrained.
That happened, the Hidden Headworld itself might be terminally endangered. That apprehended, the mere fact they were seen together in Kanin City, let alone seen smiling amidst the same company, was an occurrence noteworthy for its close-to-unprecedented matchlessness.
It must have struck the crowd gathered as a pure wonderment they could look at each other without drawing weapons and spilling blood. Yet, significantly, not to mention retrospectively suspiciously, as if the day’s startling events had been prearranged, ever so callously, heads didn’t instantly fly off shoulders.
Not only that, Harmony being otherwise occupied, they did it again. Then they smiled at each other.
The collective whoosh of relief must have seemed, if not necessarily sounded, cyclonic.
Run your mouse of the immediate link in the above blockquote. It goes to a text anchor that has existed out here in pH-Webworld for years, perhaps even a decade or more. The anchor reads 'Lorder', short for Lord Order. So, where were we?
 Oh, yes: What's the album called? (Despite their hard covers, suchlike aren't considered books in Belgium.) Answer's "L'Ordre du Chaos — I. Jérôme Bosch"!
It's in French, duh, but as you might have guessed it means 'The Order of Chaos'. (Not sure if there's an Order of Harmony, let alone an Order of Order, in the, um, album but it wouldn't surprise me.)
 Now that's a doubly or trebly serendipitous sighting if ever I've seen one. (And I've seen plenty, hence Serendipity and Phantacea.)
I don't read French very well but I couldn't resist buying it. Won't tell you how it ends as I'm not sure myself but I can tell you that it speculates Bosch, his wife (who's mentioned in Contagion, albeit as his wife-to-be), and his brother (who isn't mentioned in Contagion) are involved with the Adamite sect, something I've already addressed in these very pages.
Can also tell you what painting appears at the end. Yep, it's the central panel of 'The Last Judgement', albeit the Vienna version, not the Bruges (which bears his signature or something like it) or the Munich one, which apparently isn't by Bosch after all. (A shame that, as I once took a bunch of detail shots of it, too.)
The scenario is by Damien Perez & Sophie Ricaume. The dessin et couleur is by Geto and the publisher is Delcourt. Read French, want to order it? Don't read French, either, but still want to buy it?
Here's the link: http://www.editions-delcourt.fr/content/search/?keywords=l%27ordre+du+chaos&isbn=ISBN&SearchText=l%27ordre+du+chaos
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![[Blow-Up of aerial shot taken by Egyptian Air Force, circa mid-30s, of the Gizeh Plateau, photograph of Something Like Sedon's Head by Jim McPherson, Year 2000]](graphicimages/sedhead2.jpg)
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