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The PHANTACEA Mythos

Alternate Phantacea Mythos pHlogo, prepared by Jim McPherson

- "Feeling Theocidal" - A Provisional Preview -

Summer 2007

1. Summer 2007 Index Page Image-Flip
2. Featured Story: "Grail Knight's Sky"
3. Introductory Remarks
4. PHANTACEA Essentials (Lynx to illustrated mini-essays)
5. Hestia Housekeeping
6. Today's Topic
7. Latest Stories and Synopses
8. Notes on Graphics
9. Sites with Loads of Graphics
10. Previous pHpubs
11. Novels in search of a paying publisher
12. Phantacea Publications available in print and digitally

Detail of Bosch's Haywain, image taken from Web

Image Map: There are number of lynx contained in this graphic. Run your mouse over it. When a hand forms click on it for the Cyberian equivalent of teleportation. All lynx contain quotes taken from 'Feel Theo'.

pH-Webworld

- written by Jim McPherson
- unless otherwise noted the web-design, photographs and/or scanning are by Jim McPherson
- where applicable artwork is as noted in the mouse-over text

© copyright 2007 Jim McPherson

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Logo reads Featured Story, prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2002

"Ah, you're in for a treat," the Male Trickster, Auguste Moirnoir, said to the wannabe supra saviour, Jesus Mandam, in Centurium, the capital cavern of Subterranean Temporis.

"Here comes the lady herself. How's your German? She never did learn to speak French properly. Down here, unlike virtually anywhere else on the Head, the Universal Tongue's considered unauthentic."

"I was going to ask you about that too. Pre-Babel's a form of telepathy, isn't it? Whatever words come out, complete babble even, everyone can understand it. Right?"

"Quit with the questions already, Jess. Just relax and try to enjoy the moment. At least her head's on her shoulders today. Can be very disconcerting trying to carry on a conversation with a beautiful woman whose head's on a side plate. Hope that's food she's carrying. Real food, I mean."

"Angel food."

"What are you talking about? Devils don't eat angel food, not unless it's adulation. Neither do faeries."

"On her platter. It's a kind of cake, Augie."

"Cake? Of course it is. Marie Antoinette herself brings you a mid-day snack, -- what else would it be!"

-- from '"Grail Knight's Sky"', the ninth chapter of 'The Volsung Variations' (NOTE: here's a link to more on Pre-Babel Babble)


Introductory Remarks

Greetings. Welcome or welcome back. Highly disturbingly, the Summer 2007 update of 'pHpubs' comes a season shy of the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of PHANTACEA #1.

(If you're in the slightest curious as to what it looked like, then do be a goose and have a gander at this click.)

To order any of the PHANTACEA Mythos Print Publications that are still available, including returned copies of PHANTACEA #1, click here. (There's still no way to pay online but I'm working on it.)

Next door is the usual Hestia Housekeeping subsection of 'pHpubs'.

Immediately below is an alphabetical list of lynx to a number of typically idiosyncratic mini-essays and/or Character Likeness studies I've prepared over the years for on the Web.

They illustrate some of the peculiar perspectives I've developed while writing the PHANTACEA Mythos.

Contact me [jmcp@phantacea.com] and feel free to ask any questions you might have regarding PHANTACEA. I'll do my best to answer them either directly or right here in 'pHpubs'.


PHANTACEA Essentials

  • Anheroic Fantasy: Who are we supposed to cheer for in PHANTACEA;
  • The Celestial Superior: In both Life and Afterlife she appears (thus far) in many of the 19/5938 serials; arguably an incarnation of Serathrone Hallow, one of the two triplet, firstborn daughters of Thrygragos Byron and the Trigregos Sisters;
  • The Cretan Snake Goddess: Who dresses a little like Pyrame Silverstar, the Perpetual Presence, partial mother of the Sed-sons;
  • Devic Names in the PHANTACEA Mythos;
  • The Demons of Salvador: Consists primarily of excerpts from the 2006/7 Mosaic Novel entitled "Feeling Theocidal" featuring material regarding Tralalorn's Stynx, Multi-Horns, the Bull of Mithras, and 2-Faced Demogorgon;
  • Fisherwoman: The ever-fishifying, deviant daughter of the Dual Entities who features in many of the web-serials thus far presented online;
  • Freespirit Nihila: As the firstborn daughter of Thrygragos Lazareme and the Trigregos Sisters, the eldest female Master Deva; once Harmonia, the Unity of Balance and, initially, the lone Unity of Panharmonium; she becomes Nihila, in the Launch sequences set in 19/5980;
  • Gloriella D'Angelo Dark: Aka Radiant Rider, Rainbow; also of other angels and a devil or three;
  • Gold-Mining for PHANTACEA Factoids;
  • Heliosophos: The recurring Male Entity; in his 1st Lifetime during the 1955 & 1960 web-serials, his 11th during the 19/5938 serials and his 100th during the 19/5980 ones;
  • Primeval Lilith, the Demon Queen of the Night: The immortal, chthonic or earthborn daemon who must possess the birth mothers of mortal Sed-sons at the moment of their conception; without Sed-sons alive on both sides of the Whole Earth the Sedon Sphere would collapse; arguably the Devil Herself;
  • The Moloch Sedon: The skyborn, as in extraterrestrial, lone member of the first generation of devazurkind, the inspirations for the Gods and Goddesses of Mythology; his essence composes Cathonia, the Sedon Sphere; arguably the Devil Himself;
  • The Silverclouds: The two remaining members of Thrygragos Byron's three firstborn; plus shots of an actual Rudra idol and that of an Uma;
  • The Smiling Fiend: Aka Smiler, Ahriman, Sodom, Rhadamanthys, Judge Druj; claims to be the firstborn son of Thrygragos Sedon;
  • The Thrygragos Talismans: The Cross of Mithras, the Mask of Byron and Lazareme's Cloak of Many Colours;
  • The Time-Tumbling Dual Entities: The two most confounding characters in the PHANTACEA Mythos; conceivably the Male and Female Principals;
  • The Trigregos Talismans: The Three Sacred Objects, what may hold the secret to controlling devils and therefore Sedon's Head;
  • Utopians of Weir: Extraterrestrials stuck on the Inner Earth since a decade before the Genesea, the Great Flood of Genesis, those who have them can manifest gargoyles out of eyeorbs attached to the top of their eye-staves;
  • The VAM Entity: Thrygragos Varuna Mithras as Sol Invictus; plus more on the A-Guy who thinks the only thing invincible about Mithras is his presumptuousness;

The Summer 2007 Index Page Image-Flip

Two images that appear on a potential cover for


Hestia Housekeeping

- What's New Intro - a Sawtooth Shark - return of the Roatan Boathead - Feel Theo Progress - Elsewhere Conclusion -

Hestia Housekeeping amounts to the 'What's New' section of pHpubs. Consequently I always start it with a 'What's Old' link to where I put its previous update.

Should also mention that the list of lynx I established last time around to the gold-mining boxes found scattered throughout PHANTACEA on the Web now lives here.

Now that that's done, we can get on with this edition of Hestia Housekeeping. So what is new in the Summer 2007 edition of PHANTACEA on the Web?

Actually, with the exception of the aforementioned provisional preview of "Feeling Theocidal", which constitutes the entirety of Today's Topic, there isn't a great deal of it.

That is to say, while there's not much new, what is new is of course great.

The non-pHpubs bulk of it can be found here. Yep, after over a decade of PHANTACEA on the Web I've finally started to do some detailed synopses of the storylines contained in the comic books and graphic novel.

The inspiration was GCD, the Great Comicbook Database, which you're welcome to google up at your leisure. Apparently they've had the covers of some of the PHANTACEA publications up on its comparatively enormous (to my minuscule) portion of Cyberia for years now.

Although it is just a start, what I'll do is provide the meat within the wrap, albeit in point form. I'll also insert some images from the comics' innards, which GCD doesn't do.

If you like what you read or see, kindly click on over to the In-Print Publications ordering page and stock up on what's left.

Top of Page - Top of Hestia - On to Topic


Next door is the latest list of lynx to the illustrated mini-essays and/or Character Likeness studies I've done or redone of late.

Sawshark image scanned in from a newspaper because its expression reminds of that on the nearby boatheadOne image you won't find in any of them is that of the Sawtooth Shark to the right of this paragraph.

I scanned it in from the Vancouver Sun not because it's cute. Sharks aren't cute in my books.

They're not even cute in my novels. Indeed, on the rare occasions they do make an appearance, it's usually to eat someone or get themselves eaten by someone.

Which reminds me of everyone's favourite, ever-fishifying Fisherwoman (born Scylla Nereid) over in 'The Vampire Variations'. She's described as having shark-sharp teeth because she does - two rows of the razorlike things truth told.

Boat head spotted off shore of an Island in Honduras, photo by Jim McPherson, 2003No, I scanned it in because its expression reminds of that on the Roatan Boathead to the left of this paragraph.

And, before you ask, I still haven't reread all of either Vamvar or 'The Volsung Variations', the two Web Wheaties, as in serials, I'm currently presenting out here in Cyberia. Sooth said I haven't read any more of them than I had last time around.

Maybe I'm falling down on the job. Maybe I'm otherwise too occupied writing the follow-up to Feel Theo. Maybe I'm about to go back to Brazil. Maybe all of the above.

The PHANTACEA fact of the matter is I not only haven't finished their teasers yet, I'd barely began adding to Volvar's synoptic summary section when I realized I wouldn't have time to finish it before I left.

At least I managed to spell check and put up its next three chapters. I didn't even get that far with respect to Vamvar. Needles to say, best get to reading what I have put up while they're still online and available for your fee-free perusal.

Top of Page - Top of Hestia - On to Topic


As for "Feeling Theocidal", here's what I thought I'd be typing for this edition of pHpubs:

"Right, you agents, editors and publishers, you've had your chance. Now it begins. Rather, now it begins anew. Yep, for Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA Mythos, it's self-publishing time again."

Obviously I did type it but it's not an accurate statement. I've sent the second draft of Feel Theo off to a paying publisher who, miracle of miracles, claims to consider non-agented, non-edited submissions.

Top of Page - Top of Hestia - On to Topic


Beyond all of the above, about the only other new material this time around can be found in Serendipity Now. There's three additional entries there: "Bad Rhad Gets Planetarily Demoted Even More Humiliatingly"; "Is the Signallers' Silver really Black (Widow) Silk?" and "Helios on Mars".

In my humble, the gist of this last (made when I googled up Sedonia and came up with Cydonia) is right up there with some of the spookily serendipitous discoveries I discussed years ago on the Sedon's Head: Inspiration or Destination? webpage.

Feedback encouraged. Oh and, lest we forget, as always, good reading.

Lynx to complete mosaic novels within the PHANTACEA Mythos whose potential covers, background information and introductory chapters are still online

'Feeling Theocidal' - A Provisional Preview

Top of Page - Top of Topic - On to Potential Cover for 'Feel Theo'

Potential Cover for "Feeling Theocidal". constructed by Jim McPherson using his own copy and photos, 2007

Image Map: There are number of lynx contained in this graphic. Run your mouse over it. When a hand forms, click on it for the Cyberian equivalent of teleportation.

Top of Page - Top of Topic - On to Origins of 'Feel Theo'


"Feeling Theocidal" began life in the mid-80s as a 2-part backup strip for the PHANTACEA Phase One Project. As noted on the 25 Years Plus webpage, I abandoned Phase One after only one issue due to a suddenly once again precipitous market. (I collected the backup strips that Ian Fry did complete in the 1990 graphic novel entitled "Forever & 40 Days - The Genesis of PHANTACEA", which can still be ordered.)

I wrote a prose version of the basic story for Feel Theo in the early 1990s. Again a 2-parter, I thereupon serialized it as the first and the last chapters of "The Trigregos Gambit". (Entitled Thrygragon, their synopses remain online.) Indeed, 'Thrygragon - 4376 Year of the Dome' is Feel Theo's subtitle.

Top of Page - Top of Topic - On to Backcover Blurb for 'Feel Theo'


Backcover Blurb

Most of the text on the reproduction of the potential full cover for 'Feel Theo', above, is impossible to read without a magnifying glass .Therefore, as a community service, what follows is a big print version of the copy on the backcover. The lynx internal to the blurb take you to more details than you might want to know right now but they'll still be here after the novel's published in case you do want them then.

Image reads "The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories - Book One", prepared from his own photos by Jim McPherson, 2006The Great God, Thrygragos Varuna Mithras, has named the day. Let it be called Thrygragon, as in gone, gone his Thrygragos Brothers.

He’s reacquired his Godly Glory from his half-son, Taurus Chrysaor Attis. He’s claimed the Godly Glories of his two brothers and knows how to obliterate All, Incain’s fearsome Gynosphinx. Nothing can go wrong.

Image reads "From the Creator/Writer of the Graphic Novel - Forever & 40 Days, prepared by Jim McPherson 2007Call it what you will, Jordan Tethys is having a lousy day. His wives have discovered he’s both a deviant and a perfidious polygamist. They not only keep killing him, they’re determined to sink his soul forevermore.

No one’s happier about Thrygragon than the never remembered, ever-smiling Fiend. At least he has enough sense to stay away from his mothers’ talismans, the thrice-cursed Godly Glories.

Smiler’s myrionymous. He has many names. One of them might be Demogorgon, the Devil-Eater!

NOTE 1: The collage in the upper left hand corner of the backcover consists of a number of images previously used out here in my minuscule portions of Cyberia. The big, shiny blue eye in the background is a metallic fixture I photographed in Mexico City in 2005. I took the shot of the Lilith figure at the British Museum in London, England. The Susasword is actually an engraved elephant's tusk I spotted in Delhi, India in 2005. I shot the flower down the block from my house. Fortunately the owner wasn't around to shoot back. Additional description can be found here.

NOTE 2: Behind the blow-up of the 'Forever & 40 Days' logo in the upper right hand corner of the backcover is the main image for the VAM Entity piece I did for the Winter 2006/7 edition of phpubs. Additional description can be found here.

NOTE 3: A larger version of the Anheroic Fantasy logo on the bottom of the backcover can be found on the ordering page More details and a couple of additional lynx can be found here.

Notes on some of Feel Theo's Characters and Concepts

There are two Image Maps on this page. One's in the masthead whereas the other is here. Run your mouse over either/or then click on any of the magically made manifest, handy-dandy hands. You'll thereupon end up in any one of the three sections making up Today's Topic.

Even easier, especially if you're not interested in interactivity, here's a cheat sheet list of the lynx. (Other than notes at the bottom of some of these entries, all of the copy is taken from 'Feeling Theocidal'.)

| Angelycs | Djinn Domitian (The Masochist) | Saudi the Steg Sari | The She-Sphinx & Attis's Pegasus | Valkyrie Swan Maidens - The Choosers of the Slain | Taurus Chrysaor Attis | Jordan Tethys - the Legendary 30-Year Man | Garden (Yeast) Tethys | The Rajput Nutcracker | The Deadly Dryads | Tee-Tee Tales & Tails |

ANGELYCS:

Indentured yazata Angelycs built the Whole Earth’s original Mithraeum for Thrygragos Varuna Mithras late in the first century of the Dome. They’d done so atop the antediluvian, multi-stepped mastaba that surmounted Theopolis Hill on Apple Isle, Sedon’s Human Eye-Isle. Mithras had taken over the then flat-topped mastaba, renamed it the Mithradium, and made it his home, as well as the centre of his worship, shortly after the Flood.
For payment they naturally wanted to consume him. Angelycs were like that. To satisfy them he contrived the doctrine of transubstantiation and fed them bread and wine, alongside what subsequently became a frequently repeated, ritualistic feast of bull braised in its own blood. The bull in particular seemed to fit the bill. After all, it was the Age of Taurus.

... for more on Angelycs, click here; their devic god is Djinn Domitian, aka the Masochist;

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DJINN DOMITIAN (The Masochist):

Mithras returned his attention to the Sedon Sphere.
He expected to spot a falling star and, sure enough, one star was twinkling almost as luminously as Star Sedon, the Moon’s after dark competitor for intensity above the Hidden Headworld.Trumpeter from Temptation of St Anthony, Bosch, Lisbon, scanned in from a calendar Did that indicate it was falling? Not precisely. His masochist, his angelic courier and most reliable Heliodromus, Djinn Domitian as Illuminaries had him, was merely returning from his Mithras-mandated, mailman mission to the Moloch.
The Great God hoped the Mighty Eye-Mouth in the Sky hadn’t chomped on him too severely. Messengers weren't supposed to enjoy themselves until after they returned with their responses.

... there's more on the Masochist's most common seeming here and a shot of Sedon as the Mighty Eye-Mouth in the Sky here

... Djinn Domitian is sometimes referred to as the Trumpeter because, by the time of Thrygragon, he's long doubled as Mithras's herald;

... Lisbon's Temptation Trumpeter in this panel double-clicks to enlarge; Madrid's Haywain Trumpeter double-clicks to enlarge here; both are by Hieronymous Bosch and were scanned in from a calendar

Cluttered and Uncluttered Versions of the Images in Frontcover Frame, prepared by Jim McPherson from his own photos, 2006/7

NOTES re ROLLOVER

SAUDI THE STEG SARI:

The assassin rumbled out of the Weird. At least Helena presumed she was an assassin. That she was a young Saur Tsarina was manifest. Her being an anthropomorphic stegosaur gave that away. Worse yet, she was a Sari Witch, had to be.

Otherwise she couldn’t have come off one the witch-stones Helena habitually kept about her person even though Masters of Weir in their own Weirdom were, approximately, infinitely more powerful than any Ant Nightingale.


Worst of all, stegs were omnivorous. Plus, they were always hungry.


Although reptilian, anthropomorphic Saurs did not have a dinosaur’s size. Rarely more than 10-feet tall and maybe three or four hundred pounds, they were nevertheless mammoth for a vaguely humanoid specie. Stegs were still stegs, though.
The Sari had double rows of cartilaginous plates or extruding disks running up and down her backbone. They culminated in a bulky, formidable tail tipped with what looked to be iron pitons but were presumably exceedingly sharp shards of bone.

She didn’t wear much in the way of clothing. What did drape her seemed little more than strategically placed rags that might once have been an actual sari. There was no mistaking her gender. Feminine anthropomorphism required breasts, proportionately huge in her case.


Top of Page - Back to Lynx List

ALL + PEG:

Awe, reverential fear, dread mingled with veneration: comparatively commonplace stuff on a hidden continent that virtually everyone who dwelt on, in, above or below it knew was a hidden continent.

Nonetheless, after a while there was something of the ho-hum about seeing an immortal god or goddess walking amongst you.

A Pegasus-psychopomp bearing a familiar, head-to-toe-armoured rider in front of an unfamiliar, for most, and apparently oppositely unarmed passenger flying out of the blue, even if was the grey of between-space? Yawn-inducing that.

Seeing a gigantic, winged sphinx emerging behind Peg? That was so unusual it qualified as awe-inspiring.

How could something that size fly? And was she really made of stone?

... for more on All of Incain (aka Ginny the Gynosphinx) and her moribund boyfriend, Andy the Androsphinx, click here

VALKYRIE SWAN MAIDENS - THE CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN:

“By daddy and old man, Master,” Hopi replied to Helena’s unspoken query, “I mean your hubby. And mine! And hers!”

The ‘her’ in question, Helena had realized, was a Valkyrie. The shapely, even muscular, nicely preserved and therefore only vaguely older-looking woman following Georgie and the teenager had to be the latter’s mother. Swan Maidens, minus a maid’s claim to maidenhood, could still ride swan-psychopomps when they went to work.

Valkyries were choosers of the slain. They hailed from Valhalla, Hell’s Halls, a Mithradite territory in the Head’s north, within or just below the Mystic Mountain Range, Sedon’s Crown. Helena didn’t need an introduction.

She didn’t care what her given name happened to be. The Valkyrie’s surname didn’t matter either. Seeing her, the Master of Weir knew right away whom they, jointly, would shortly choose to slay.

TAURUS CHRYSAOR ATTIS:

"A statue of Mithras or Attis slaying the bull, as photographed in the British Museum by Jim McPherson in 2005Father?"

 

Mithras raised his head. The speaker entering his tent unbidden was a near giant, six and a half feet tall and almost as broad as he was wide. Not an inch of his skin was visible. Metal-plated gauntlets with raised knobs on their knuckles and topsides covered his hands. A fearsome war mask hid his face. From the top of his head to the tip of his toes, a hooded, multi-coloured cloak obscured the rest of his body.


Postcard bought at the British Museum in 2003, it's of a Pictish warrior, painting by John White (active c. 1575-93), scanned in by Jim McPherson, 2004The cloak was cinched around his waist by a belt that seemed to be constructed from human vertebrae. From his right shoulder hung a satchel or solitary saddlebag that held much more than would seem outwardly possible. Strapped to his right side a scabbard contained the standard sabre of a legionnaire officer. It had a P-shaped grip and an X-shaped guard.


The mask was hinged onto a Hellene helmet reminiscent of an ancient gorgonian. Fringed by long spikes and plumed with the Garuda-like feathers of a female sphinx, it protected his entire head. In addition to a pair of boggle-eyes and a protrusive tongue, the mask featured two long horns like those of a bull and the gruesome caricature of a boar-demon’s head complete with up-turned tusks.


Chartres Cathedral's Fall of Lucifer, taken from WebLooped around his neck was a circlet inlaid with glowing rubies or fully red bloodstones from which depended a blazingly golden sun-shape embossed with a lion's head. Strapped to his right arm was a shield burnished to a mirror's sheen. In his left hand he held a slender yet solid, metallic javelin pointed at either end.


His hooded garment had so many colours to it, the fabric itself might have been fashioned out of stars forged in the night’s sky. The Great God didn't need his devic eye to know that, underneath it, his remarkable child was wearing a tunic made from the hide of an enchanted elephant or some such near-impervious beast, a front and back plastron, greaves and talarial winged sandals.


His every shred of clothing, every ornament and armament he had, shimmered with Brainrock. They were devic talismans won in single combat, the spoils of glorious battle against undying foes. To Attis, his legions’ Taurus or Boss Bull for more than half his latest succession, victory and defeat were meaningless concepts. Dead or alive, he would survive: He, Chrysaor, the ‘Golden Sword’, the Universal Soldier.
Mithras said nothing.

Collage entitled "Jordan Tethys", b/w artwork by Ian Fry, prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2007

Top of Page - Top of Topic - Back to Lynx List


JORDAN TETHYS - THE LEGENDARY 30-YEAR MAN

“Your big brother Jordan still alive, son?” he [the Legendarian] asked Glee [aka Gordon Tethys], hoping to mollify Volsanga [nee Nibelung] by showing some degree of interest in their family.

Jordan Tethys as he appeared in  4Ever + 40 Days, artwork by Ian Fry circa 1988 “His name’s Jotan, dad. Or should I call you granddad. Jotan’s wife’s due today.”

“You do know what a wife is, don’t you, dad?” contributed Ute, whose voice and looks seemed the only pleasant things about her. She probably wasn’t a Hellion, yet, but attitudinally she struck him as more of a chip off the maternal blockhead than off the paternal one.

“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Ute?” said Hopi [Tethys, a brew master]. “Jordy’s an unmitigated jerk. Make that a perfidious polygamist, to fay-say some. His problem isn’t what a wife is, it’s what a husband’s supposed to be. He couldn’t spell faithful even if Aerial [Tethys, a sylph or air sprite] gave him back his quill.“

“You should be thankful Master Helena’s such a do it by the book type, taleteller,” provided Durga [Tethys, a Rajput princess from Ophir/Moorset]. “Because, if it was up to me and a few others here, Georgie would have been right about you being dead already. You do recall my father’s recipe for roasted nuts, don’t you?” Tethys winced involuntarily. “Ah, I see you do. Well, so do I!”


Garden (Yeast) Tethys

(Jordy doesn't realize he's looking at George Masterson, an earlier born son)

Their talented eldest – Garden to his mother, Yeast to him – was not only present he seemed to have taken up the recorder. The lad must be past twenty by now or close to it. Oddly, he looked somewhat older than that. He was also much plumper than he’d been the last time he saw him three or four years ago.

Hieronymous Bosch's "The Wayfarer", scanned in from the Web Tethys himself had reddish hair and fair skin, prone to burning. So, in that respect at least, Yeast and his siblings were far more like mom than like him. In every other respect, though, he was a regular chip off the old paternal blockhead. Partying heartily, while swilling Hopi’s pilsners, likely accounted for his unexpected maturation and expanded waistline. Nonetheless, Tethys was surprised to see him favouring a totally different instrument.

Adults, men only moderately less so than women, got as teary eyed as post-pubescent girls did when Yeast strummed on a lyre while ardently intoning romantic verses, much of which he’d either composed himself or stolen from his father. Plucking was always preferable to blowing. You can’t tongue and mouth melodies instrumentally at the same time you’re emoting poetry passionately.

Additionally, it being well before noon, it was a mite disappointing to see him awake and making music rather than in bed making love. He should be out sowing his wild barley. Every Tethys, male or female, inherited a procreative imperative. One only had to look around the canvas enclosure to appreciate just how successful he’d been at attending to his obligations.


Ravi (The Multi-Stringed Lutenist) + Mom

“Isn’t war wonderful?” said the Rajput princess. Durga would say that. Even on the Outer Earth Rajputs belonged to a warrior caste. Hieronynmous Bosch's Outer Wings of the "Haywain" triptych, scanned in from the Web“Otherwise we never would have had the opportunity to get together like this.”

“We’ve different hair and skin colours, dad,” said her son, the lutenist he’d identified as one of the worst sufferers of last night’s after-effects.

Tethys avoided hangovers. He approved of lutes, however. He turned his quill into a lute almost as often as he turned it into a lyre.

“Some of us are even from different species. But we all look sort of alike. I’m Ravi, as in rave, by the way, and, no, we’ve never met. You abandoned mom and me before I was born.”

“Funny,” Tethys observed, eying his cap and quill. Aerial held them as if a snake in a nest. She wasn’t far wrong. There was still a chance. “You don’t look like a grapevine, Ravi, or an Ophidian or a Steg.”

“I don’t look like a chair either.”

The chair in reference developed arms, the better to hug him tightly. She didn’t let go, pinning his hands to his lap.


Mama Sylvia + Wooden Tethys (The Deadly Dryads)

“I’m Wooden,” the chair introduced herself, “As in Wooden Tethys. But you can call me Woody, everyone else does. I hear you’ve been a very knotty boy.”

 

The Suffolk Chair, image taken from web

Double-clck to enlarge image in a separate window.

 

Woman  Face in Tree, taken by Jim McPhersonMan's Angry Face in Tree, taken by Jim McPherson“You’re barking up the wrong tree on that, Woody,” he protested, lamely.

Usually trees didn’t grow so fast. Then again trees, even oak trees, usually weren't dryads.

“And my bark’s every bit as bitter as my bite,” she fay-said. “I’m Sylvia, in case you haven’t figured that out yet. Saudi tells us you’re a deviant, in all senses of the word.”

BTW, Saudi is of course the Steg Sari described here. Despite some remarkably sympathetic first impressions, she and her Pteradonna turn out to be anything but pleasant, um, folks. (Being Saurs, they're certainly not people.) As for Wooden and Mama Sylvia, they are not referred to as 'Deadly Dryads' because they're tree-huggers. Or even, necessarily, they're trees that hug.


Every Tee-Tee Has 2 Tales to Tell - One Tale's Their Tail

Tee-tees were a rat-like, possibly chthonic by-product of old Eden’s discredited science.

In the centuries prior to their comparatively small continent, or big island, sinking into the Atlantic Ocean – where the flotsam-choked Sargasso Sea has been bedevilling shipping lanes ever since – these Edenites deposited the living, breeding results of their biological experiments on the opposite side of the planet from their homeland. Eden’s dumping grounds were the thousands of islands dotting the then archipelago of Pacifica, the Places of Pieces as the joke went, in what was the North Pacific Ocean of today’s Outer Earth.

Wax rat spotted on Faerie Tree near Kensington Palace in London, photo by Jim McPherson, 2003In addition to having vocal chords, a highly selective memory and the triggering device of pulling their tails, tee-tees were almost as good swimmers as they were stowaways. They rapidly overran Pacifica and thereafter, in boats embarking from the archipelago, spread across much of the rest of the world. That there weren't any left outside came down to one thing: Tee-tees made better eating than storytellers.

Some of them recorded in the nodules of their tails – tails some of their descendants inherited much as humans do the colour of their skin, eyes or hair from their ancestors – the arrival of a devic scouting party on the Whole Earth over seven hundred years before the Great Flood of Genesis. They further recorded how many of the devils accompanying the expedition’s leader, Thrygragos Lazareme, fused together with dozens of daemons to order to launch an assault on the nowadays millennia-moribund Androsphinx of Egypt’s Giza plateau.

Successive incarnations of Jordan Tethys could read tee-tee tails. Most devils, Utopian Illuminaries, Ant Nightingales, most other tiptop witches and most of the Head’s wise men or wizards, for want of a better word, could as well. Despite many puzzling gaps in them, virtually everyone agreed Demogorgon was the name tee-tee tails ascribed to the form the initial Devil Eater took.

Notes on Graphics - Footnotes and off-page links:

  1. Detail of Bosch's Haywain, scanned in from a calendarThe web-shot in the masthead at the top of 'pHpubs' is an Image Map; run your mouse over it and, when a hand appears, click there to take you to one of eight elsewheres on this page;
    clockwise, they are: a cheat sheet list of lynx to entries on some of Feel Theo's Characters and Concepts; The Deadly Dryads (Sylvia and Wooden Tethys); Hellion Valkyrie (Volsanga nee Nibelung and her teenage daughter, Ute Tethys); The Masochist (Mithras's non-swan trumpeter, messenger and sun-runner); descriptions of Garden (Yeast) Tethys (actually George Masterson), his father (the Legendarian) and the Tethys Family's procreative imperative; Angelycs and the Rajput Nutcrackers (Durga and Ravi "Rave" Tethys);
    the mouse-over message reads: "Detail of Bosch's Haywain, image taken from the Web"; the image in this panel was scanned in from a Bosch calendar, double-click it to enlarge in a separate panel; you can see the 'Haywain' itself at Madrid's Prado Museum, though I didn't take a picture of it when I was there in 1999; return to masthead; the outer wings (closed) of the Haywain triptych can be found here ==>
  2. The mouse-over message reads: "Sawshark image scanned in from a newspaper because its expression reminds of that on the nearby boathead"; The newspaper was the Vancouver Sun, June12, 2007. The headline read: "Australia wins UN ban on sawtooth shark trade". Click to return; Click to go to the nearby boathead; Double-click to enlarge calendar dea
  3. The mouse-over message reads: "Boat head spotted off shore of an Island in Honduras, photo by Jim McPherson, 2003"; the island was Roatan; Click to return; Click to see the boathead image in its original setting;
  4. The Potential Cover for 'Feeling Theocidal' is another Image Map; run your mouse over the graphics incorporated within it and, when a hand appears, click there to take you to one of a number of entries in the cover area; clockwise, they are: the collage in the upper left hand corner of the backcover; the collage and blow-up of the 'Forever & 40 Days' logo in the upper right hand corner of the backcover; a quick reminder as the origins of 'Feel Theo' in terms of the PHANTACEA Mythos; the roll-over of a couple of alternative versions of the framed picture on the front cover; the blue PHANTACEA logo ("Anheroic Fantasy Illustrated - Since 1977") and a reiteration of the Backcover Blurb; the mouse-over message reads: "Potential Cover for 'Feeling Theocidal', constructed by Jim McPherson using his own copy and photos, 2007"; Click to return;
  5. The mouse-over behind the blue PHANTACEA logo ("Anheroic Fantasy Illustrated - Since 1977") is: "Logo reads Anheroic Fantasy Illustrated - PHANTACEA - Since 1977"; as for the two heads, one is of course a colourized version Sedon's Head as it appears on the places page; the other, though, isn't a head at all; it's a weird confection of light on the parking lot near the Giza pyramids and All's pal, Andy the Androsphinx, as photographed in the late twenties or early thirties; I've used in on the Serendipity pages ever since I first discovered its existence in the late 90s; there more info on it here and there, among other places; additional notes re the graphics on the backcover can be found starting here; return to image;
  6. The mouse-over message for the collage in the upper left hand corner of the backcover reads: "Image reads "The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories - Book One", prepared from his own photos by Jim McPherson, 2006"; click to return;
  7. The mouse-over message for the collage in the upper right hand corner of the backcover reads: "Image reads "From the Creator/Writer of the Graphic Novel - Forever & 40 Days, prepared by Jim McPherson 2007"; click to return;
  8. The mouse-over message for the roll-over of a couple of alternative versions of the framed picture on the front cover reads: "Cluttered and Uncluttered Versions of the Images in Front Cover Frame, prepared by Jim McPherson from his own photos, 2006/7"; additional notes are here; click to return to image;
  9. The mouse-over message behind the familiar image of Mithras slaying the bull reads: "A statue of Mithras or Attis slaying the bull, as photographed in the British Museum by Jim McPherson in 2005"; I've used it and an earlier shot of the same statue a number of times out here in Cyberia, most recently here; click to return to image;
  10. The mouse-over message behind another image familiar to long time visitors to PHANTACEA on the Web reads: "Postcard bought at the British Museum in 2003, it's of a Pictish warrior, painting by John White (active ca. 1575-93), scanned in by Jim McPherson, 2004"; most notably I used it as part of the potential cover for "The Trigregos Gambit" but it's also here; click to return to image;
  11. I went to the justifiably famous Knights Templar cathedral in Chartres, France in 1996; I haven't been back since but, while there, I took stack of shots, including one of the 'Fall of Lucifer'; it wasn't brilliant so I took this image of it from the Web; the mouse-over message reads: "Chartres Cathedral's Fall of Lucifer, taken from Web"; the non-religious, PHANTACEA Mythos version of much the same storyline is part of Feel Theo's generously large ladling of lathering (storyline) layers; email to remind me to tell it to you someday; click to return to image; more on one of a number of PHANTACEA's Lucifers can be found here;
  12. This is not an Image Map; it is something of a collage, however; the mouse-over message reads: "Collage entitled "Jordan Tethys", b/w artwork by Ian Fry, circa 1988; rest prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2007"; click to return to image;
  13. The mouse-over message reads: "Jordan Tethys as he appeared in 4Ever + 40 Days, artwork by Ian Fry circa 1988"; click to return to image;
  14. The mouse-over message reads: "Hieronymous Bosch's 'The Wayfarer', scanned in from the Web"; my Bosch-book states this version 'The Wayfarer' was done about a decade after the one in the Prado; it can be seen in Rotterdam, which is in the Netherlands, at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen; I prefer this one to that one because the Wayfarer is holding onto a cap with what looks to be something like a quill stuck into it; Jordy's Brainrock quill, which once belonged to the devil, Rumour of Lazareme, is what grants him stacks of his knacks, to quote him directly; click to return to image;
  15. The mouse-over message reads: "Hieronymous Bosch's Outer Wings of the "Haywain" triptych, scanned in from the Web"; my Bosch-book states this version 'The Wayfarer' was done about a decade before the one found at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Holland; as noted above, you can see the 'Haywain' itself at Madrid's Prado Museum; click to return to image;
  16. I believe this is referred to as the Suffolk Chair. I further believe it's very ancient. In both cases I'm not sure since I swiped image from Worldwide Web and forgot to write down source. Maybe someone can enlighten me. Click to return to image; double-click it to enlarge in a separate window;
  17. Here's a couple of other long time residents of PHANTACEA on the Web ; they're also presumably pre-me residents of my front yard; that means they've been stuck in the same tree for the better part of 30 years, poor faeries; although I identify one fay as female and the other as male in the mouse-over, in the entry above I identify them both as female; the mouse-over in the first one reads: "Woman's Face in Tree, taken by Jim McPherson"; click to return to images; here's a link to another webpage where they live;
  18. The mouse-over (rat-over?) reads: "Wax rat spotted on Faerie Tree near Kensington Palace in London, photo by Jim McPherson, 2003"; the rat, albeit as a rat and not tee-tee, has also done double duty; it's also not a rat, as noted in the rat-over it's a wax figurine deposited on the Fairy Tree in London's Hyde Park, beside what's nowadays the Lady Di Children's Playground just off Bayswater Street; you can see it here as well as here; as a perfidious polygamist I'm sure Jordy qualifies as a rat but the image is here because the entry is about tee-tees;
  19. Notes on the tiled image of some of the Saturna Island cliff heads, the ones behind the Sites with Loads of Graphics section, can be found here ==>
  20. The tiled image making up this page's background is of All's pal, Andy the Androsphinx; the first feature done on the two sphinxes found most prominently within the PHANTACEA Mythos is here ==>

Sites with Loads of Graphics:

Google.ca supplies what amounts to a pH-Webworld web gallery. Just go to http://www.google.ca/, hit the images link and type in PHANTACEA. Pasting into the address area of your browser the following Url might work as well: http://images.google.ca/images?q=phantacea&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&start=100&sa=N&filter=0

PHANTACEA on the Web is chock-a-block with visuals. Good places to ogle artwork from the comic books and graphic novel are One to Six, 'Twenty-Five Years Plus' and what began as 'The Genesis of PHANTACEA' webpage. Most of the other graphics are scans I did of my own photographs or material I put together using PHOTOSHOP. All the essays are loaded with images. Try out the framed version of the Main Menu. You won't go anywhere else but, then again, you won't get lost either.

  • The PHANTACEA Mythos: Beehive Ghost Houses

  • The PHANTACEA Mythos: Heliodyssey

    WARNING: Graphic Summary -- Might take awhile to load!

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Latest List of Lynx to some previous Web-Publisher's Commentaries

| Winter 2006/7 | Summer 2006 | Winter 2005/6 | Summer 2005 | Winter 2004/5 | Summer 2004| Spring 2004 | Autumn 2003 | Summer 2003 | Autumn 2002 | Summer 2002 | Autumn 2001 | Spring-Summer 2001 | Winter 2000/1 | February 1999 | November 1998 | August 1998 | Samplings from other Not So Recent Commentaries | June-March '97 | February '97-July '96 |

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Phantacea Publications in Print

- The 'Launch 1980' story cycle - 'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' Fantasy Trilogy - The '1000 Days' Mini-Novels - The phantacea Graphic Novels -

The 'Launch 1980' Story Cycle

The War of the Apocalyptics

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

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

Nuclear Dragons

Nuclear Dragons front cover, artwork by Ian Bateson, 2013

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

Helios on the Moon

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

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

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

Top of Page Search Engine - pHantaPubs in Print - Page Highlights - Upwards - Downwards - Fresh Graphics - Bottom of Page Ordering Lynx

'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' Epic Fantasy

Feeling Theocidal

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

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

The 1000 Days of Disbelief

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

Published as three mini-novels, 2010/11; main webpage is here; ordering lynx for individual mini-novels are here

Goddess Gambit

Front cover for Goddess Gambit by Verne Andru, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The '1000 Days' Mini-Novels

The Death's Head Hellion

- Sedonplay -

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

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

Contagion Collectors

- Sedon Plague -

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

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

Janna Fangfingers

- Sedon Purge -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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phantacea Graphic Novels

Forever and Forty Days

- The Genesis of Phantacea -

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

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

The Damnation Brigade

- Phantacea Revisited 1 -

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

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

Cataclysm Catalyst

- Phantacea Revisited 2 -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Webpage last updated: Spring 2015

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

Ordering Information for PHANTACEA Mythos comic books, graphic novels, standalone novels, mini-novels and e-booksSun-moon-kissing logo first seen on back cover of Helios on the Moon, 2015; photo by Jim McPherson, 2014

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

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

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

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Takes you to the cheat sheet list of lynx Takes you to the Deadly Dryads Takes you quote re the two Hellion Valykyries in Feel Theo Take you quotes re Djinn Domitian, Mithras's herald Takes you to notes on the Head's cannibalistic Angelyics Takes you to notes on the Tethys troubadours and lovers all takes you quotes re the 2 Rajput nutcrackers