August 2022
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The Power of the Land beneath our Feet
Sharon Blackie recently wrote an article on Substack about what she terms "psychogeology", the way in which the land upon which we live influences our entire being. In her case, she relates most strongly to the granite of Donegal and gneiss of the Isle of Lewis - strong rocks which have been formed by intense pressures over millenia:
A Mermaid Moment
Somewhere I read that each era gets the cryptid/monster it deserves. So the Enlightenment gave us Frankenstein, embodying the fear of the new sciences; the 19th century produced Jekyll & Hyde alongside the exploration of the psyche; the fall of empires at the beginning of the 20th century saw the rise of The Mummy, the revenge of colonised people; mid-century UFOs mirrored the space race; and the hedonistic 80s/90s were the era of the sexy vampire.
Embroidering Venus
Last year, I took an online class with the excellent Morbid Anatomy which focussed on the history of the Anatomical Venus. Their site explains her best:
"Reclining on velvet cushions with Venetian glass eyes, strings of pearls, and golden tiaras crowning their real human hair, Anatomical Venuses were created in eighteenth-century Florence to teach the general public about the mysteries of the human body. The Venus also tacitly communicated the relationship between the human body and a divinely created cosmos; between art and science, nature and mankind."
Tales from the Circus - Hellige
Once upon a time, Hellige was not the hirsute vision of loveliness that we now know & adore, but just another pretty little rich girl.
When not playing in the chateau grounds she was taught by a veritable battalion of tutors, schooled in the vital feminine arts of hairstyling & harpsichord, watercolour & waltz, floristry & fencing.
Thus it was at vast expense that young Hellige was moulded into the finest marriage material and looked upon as a grand investment by a father intent upon using her to advance himself amongst the creme of the aristocracy.
