your daily demon: sitru

This twelfth infernal prince governing from today until 20 May presents as a griffon and is also known as Set or Bitru—the former possibly a conflation with the god of ancient Egypt. Ruling sixty legions and countered by the angel Hahaiah, Sitru’s sigil is an aphrodisiac of sorts and it can compel people to disrobe, if so desired.

the incredible hulk

First appearing in the first issue of the comic published on this day in 1962, the super hero’s co-creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby lists their influences for the character including Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for their dissociative alter-egos, Frankenstein’s monster and the Golem of Jewish mythology. An accidental exposure to gamma radiation received whilst trying to save a colleague from an experimental munitions blast causes his transformation, often uncontrolled and triggered by emotional distress with these unplanned destructive rampages disrupting civilian life. Initially cancelled after just six instalments in March 1963, Dr Bruce Banner / the Hulk made an immediate cameo appearance in an issue of the Fantastic Four and went on to become a founding member of the Avengers team.

your daily demon: buer

Ruling from this day through 9 May, this infernal president of the grimoire Pseudomonarchia Dæmonum and its appearance when the sun is in Sagittary and like his archer compatriots embraces some of the characteristics and conflation associated with Chiron, chief of the Centaurs, who taught moral and natural philosophy and revealed to humans the balm and bane of plants and herbs.

Buer, opposed by the angel Aladiah, also shares some of the mythology of Ixion, father of the Centaur race first pitied by Zeus, as a King Lear-like figure, and given a seat at the table of the gods but then cast out of Olympus for lusting after Hera. Zeus ordered Hermes to bound Ixion to a fiery wheel that was always spinning, wandering the heavens for eternity. This tenth spirit presents as an asterisk (*) or triskelion, this chimeric demon has the face and mane of a lion and five goat legs capable of motion in all directions and commands fifty legion.

mappi mundi

On this day in 1507, humanist and cartographer Martin Waldseemüller—whom also went by the Latinised form of his name Hylacomylus (forest-lake miller)—together with his collaborator Matthias Ringmann, published their map featuring the new world, significantly portraying South America as a continent separate from Asia and naming portions of the New World America after explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The academy that Waldseemüller and Ringmann founded in Saint-Dié with the patronage of the Duke of Lorraine came in possession of a booklet that gave a rather heroic and sensational account of the voyages of Vespucci in the western Atlantic and the two scholars carried forward that credit in a short treatise with atlases and a world map as a primer on cosmography (Cosmographiæ Introductio) that spanned from the familiar to the antipodes that were predicted in Antiquity. Ringmann actually, persuasively championed the toponym America, arguing: “I see no reason why anyone could disaaprove of a name derived of that Amerigo, the discoverer and a man of sagacity—with suitable forms being Amerige, meaning land of Amerigo, or America, especially since both Europe and Asia have women’s names.” Europa was raped by Zeus in the form of a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur. Hesione was a Trojan princess and distressed damsel for Hercules to save from a sea monster and blamed indirectly for the Trojan War—Hercules helping himself to the fine horses that Zeus sent in compensation for the abduction of Ganymede and causing strife among the gods. Classically referred to as Libya, Africa was considered to have a feminine ethnonym as well. The original world map was believed lost until a copy was found in Schloss Wolfegg in Austria in 1901 and purchased by the US Library of Congress (pictured)—though other uncut gores to be assembled into globes survive.

robigalia

One of a number of Roman celebrated during this time of year to ensure a good growing season and bountiful harvest, the feast of the for the god Robigus was held on this day in the agricultural outskirts of the city.
The god, which was designated as the divine representation of fungal blight or rust needed to be propitiated in order to ensure that the crops wouldn’t spoil in the fields. Understood as a separate, corrupt manifestation of the same infestation that could be harnessed for fermentation, the games held at this time with their attendant feasts (see also) were also marked by rather dark sacrifices that expressed their anxieties over crop failure—especially for one this late in the growing seasons that wouldn’t be easy to recover from. Whereas animal sacrifice generally was reserved for livestock that was part of the Roman diet and was shared in a communal meal, Robigalia rather gruesomely demanded a dog with a red coat—that matched the rust disease—as form of homeopathic magic.
Other observations included a celebration of—for whatever reason—of male sex-workers, professional female prostitution having had their own honours in the previous days, specifically on Vinalia urbana, the grape harvest on 23 April. Though without the cruel bits, thankfully—or the fun bits either, I suppose, the holiday is preserved in Western Christianity with the same day of prayer and fasting known as Rogation (from the Latin to beseech—to ask God for protection from calamity) and was done to cleanse the body and mind in anticipation of the Ascension and farmers often had priests bless their crops, often holding mass and processionals in the fields.

your daily demon: amon

Ruling from today through 24 April, the first degrees into the House of Taurus, this seventh spirit is an infernal marquis presenting as a fire-breathing wolf with a serpent’s tail but will assume human form if compelled by his sigil and facilitates the reconciliation of feuds and smooths relationships between friends. His name is thought to be a conflation of the Punic (Carthage) deity Baal-hamon, he who induces to eagerness, though others source him as the Egyptian sun god Amun Ra, the deified pharaoh and his later fusion with hawk-headed Horus. Countered by the angel Achaiah, Amon commands forty legions.

he who waits behind the wall

First invoked by name in a 2004 on-line form for creepypasta and attributing it to the influence of the eldritch, Lovecraftian primordial deities, Zalgo text, epithet above, refers to the certain aesthetic of overly adorning and stacking text with diacritical marks to produce a glitchy, destructively (sometimes maliciously in the form of copy-bomb and can result in transmission errors) cursed, spooky effect (see also)—with the reader either interpreting their computer or brain malfunctioning, overcome by the preternatural and unfathomable.

liber legis

Though with the arrival of the Æon of Horus humanity is supposed to have spiritually evolved to the phase where the precept and obligation to oneself and others was to “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” Aleister Crowley (previously) in 1904 along with his new bride, Rose Edith Kelly, was accountable for a bit more clarification and codification as mediums for a supernatural visitor—a disembodied voice—called Aiwass whom dictated to the newly married couple on their honeymoon in Cairo the three chapters of The Book of the Law of Thelema. Thankfully, each day from the eighth through the tenth of April, sessions only lasted an hour from noon, concluding the with the final volume published five years later, with the couple able to resume their vacation once Crowley emerged from his trance in the part of the hotel suite designated as the “temple,” though it seems that they had already done quite a bit of sight-seeing at this point, with a night spent in the Royal Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza two weeks earlier having the spirits in the first place. While the messenger for the whole of the transcript was Aiwass, each separate character was the first person narrative of the avatars represented by the Egyptian goddess and gods Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khnuit and despite the title contain more revelations and prophesies rather than anything proscriptive, with Crowley claiming to disavow the magical document and only having it published to exorcise the weight it held over him.

ioc

Courtesy of our faithful chronicler, we are reminded how on this day in 1896, Charles Pierre de Frédy, Baron of Coubertin revived the Olympic Games, held for the first time since they were banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I upon his decree that pagan practises be eliminated.&Held every four years at the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, the festival (Ὀλυμπιακοί Ἀγῶνες, agony—that is, contest) was a religious and athletic event imbued with a mythological origin and significance held among all Greek city states. While untrue that there was a general secession in fighting whilst the Games were held, there was a truce and pilgrims were allowed free-passage through belligerent lands to attend. Legendarily, a race of ten spirit males called the Dactyls or Daktyloi were spontaneously generated when the Great Mother Rhea dug her fingers into the earth as she prepared to give birth to Zeus. These lesser gods who taught the arts of metal smithing and healing were also happy to help entertain the infant Olympian with sports competitions. Different traditions exist with multiples thereof but the hand of the Idaean Dactyls (see also) pitted Herakles, the thumb, against his brothers Aeonius (forefinger), Epimedes (middle finger), Iasus (ring finger) and Idas (little finger).

7x7

treasureland adventures: an arcade game made for McDonald’s that’s a lot better than most licensed vehicles—see also  

campfire tales: Haunted Tik-Tok (see also) and the art of the scary narrative in new media  

self-defence for cowards: our social skills have atrophied but we still bid our time before we get back to old, awkward habits  

die frankfurter küche: more on the modern kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky—see previously  

cave à vins: incredible wine collection hidden beneath a chicken coop 

look at me: heretofore unseen footage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono 

catch it if you can: a McDonald’s employee training video from 1972

your daily demon: aguarès

This second spirt on the calendar of demonology is an infernal duke ruling from today until 29 March, presenting as a wizened old man with a hawk perched on his forearm and riding a crocodile—sometimes a cockatrice, a mythical beast that is a bipedal dragon with a rooster’s head, thus making the bird of prey superfluous. His office is languages and honourifics and can also be compelled to trigger earthquakes. His own title as subordinate to the Lucifuge Rofocale (Assistant to the Regional Manager)—that is the demon in charge of Hell’s government and appointed by Satan. Commanding thirty-one legions, Aguarès was formerly a member of the heavenly host of Virtues and is countered by the angel Jelial.

peau d’âne

With the folktale classification of Aarne-Thompson 510B—unnatural love—the 1695 poetic adaptation of the French fairy tale Donkeyskin by fabulist Charles Perrault already promises to be unhinged but this 1970 cinematic version (see also) by Jacques Demy starring Catherine Deneuve seems to be a veritable masterpiece. With fantastical filming locations as the Château Chambord made even more surreal by the talented production team, the recently widowed king of the realm is being pressured by his advisors to take a new wife and produce an heir.  The king promised the dying queen, however, he would only remarry if he found another as virtuous as herself. Royal counsel convincing the king that the only course of action is to marry his daughter. Duly horrified, the princess tries to put the king off his plan, at the advice of her fairy godmother, by requesting increasingly impossible wedding (see previously) gifts.  The king manages, nevertheless, to fulfil the bridal registry with dresses the colour of the Moon and Sun and weather and finally the enchanted pelt of a donkey that sweats jewels, the kingdom’s Golden Fleece and source of its wealth. The princess flees disguised with the donkey skin. In a faraway land, the princess earns her keep as a managing a pig sty but captures the attention of that kingdom’s prince, whom marry—the party crashed by Donkey Skin’s father the king and fairy godmother arriving to announce their engagement. Much more at Messy Nessy Chic at the link above.

release the kraken

Though popular culture dictates that the head of Medusa was retrieved for one specific purpose, another variant myth has Perseus going through the ordeal as a sort of fool’s errand, with King Polydectes of the island of Seriphos wanting to rid himself of an over-protective son after he became enamoured with Danaë after she and Perseus were salvaged by the king’s brother the fisherman Dictys (this aprotonym means Mister Net), the king of Argos Acrisius having cast his daughter and the infant Perseus to sea in a wooden chest to avoid the prophesy that he would be killed by his grandson. Polydectes announced his betrothal to a certain Hippodamia and ordered everyone in his kingdom to supply him with suitable wedding gifts, mostly on the registry were horses but Perseus came late and was assigned by his presumptive step-dad the head of the gorgon after bragging he was fit for a task so demanding. Perseus departed on his quest and Polydectes proceded to woo Danaë who tried her best to reject his advances. Using his shield as a mirror to avoid the gorgon’s gaze, Perseus slew Medusa and returned to Seriphos. Disbelieving that Perseus accomplished this trial, Polydectes demanded to be shown the head, which Perseus produced at court, turning the king and his nobles into stone and rescuing his mother. As for Acrisius who banished mother and son and exiling them to the elements, the old king did eventually die at Perseus hand albeit an accident when he was hit in the head by a stray discus that Perseus threw during a tournament.

holy lance

Prior to the reforms of 1969 to the Calendar of Saints, a Roman soldier and first convert to Christianity was venerated on this day, since observed on 15 October. The soldier is anonymous in the Gospels and started out more as a Promethean figure, confined to a cave where a lion would maul him nightly only to have his body restored in the morning and condemned to this fate until the end of time for having stabbed Jesus on the Cross, and was given the name Longinius in the apocraphal testament of Nicodemus, Latinising λόγχη lonche, the Greek for lance—thus the Lance of Lance (see previously). The story is further developed in the legendarium of the Holy Grail and is considered to have made the fifth of the Holy Wounds of the stigmata.

favola in musica

The early Baroque adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice by composer Claudio Monteverdi and librettist Alessandro Striggio premiering on this day in Mantua in 1607 to ring in Carnival season and L’Orfeo is considered one of the first true and fully developed operas.

Presented in five acts, action is split between the fields of Thrace and the Underworld and follows the legendary musician and poet whose song is all to charm all things (speaking to virtuosity of the collaboration, I suppose)—even the stones and beating the Sirens as part of the Argonaut crew beat the Sirens at a sing-off to save them from wrack and ruin—fell in love with the beautify and graceful Eurydice (Wide Justice) and lived a happy but short time together. Calling upon Hymen, the god of matrimony, to bless their union but was foretold that the marriage was to end in tragedy. Fleeing from a lusty shepherd called Aristaeus, Eurydice was bitten by a serpent and died instantly—causing Orpheus great sadness and his outpouring moved the whole world and the heavens towards grief and sorrow. Resolving to descend into Hades to visit his wife, Orpheus was able to tame the fierce Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hell that prevents the living from entering the realm of the dead. Hades and Persephone, impressed by his playing and devotion, tells Orpheus he can take Eurydice with the caveat that he cannot look upon her until they’ve emerged into the light of day, lest he loose her forever. As a reasonable and patient individual, Orpheus was confident that he could resist temptation and rescue his wife, but as a disembodied shade, Eurydice’s footfalls made no sound, and thinking he was fooled by Hades, turned to check after her. Zeus strikes down the mourning Orpheus with lightning, fearful he might reveal the secrets of the Underworld.

your daily demon: belial

A Hebrew term synonymous with worthless (and unyoked, in the sense of without a master) that became a personification of wickedness and conflated with Satan or others among the host of fallen angels, this sixty-eighth infernal king, created immediately after Lucifer, rules from today through to the end of February—according to the Ars Goetia and other sources that include Belial on the Calendar of Demons—and has the virtue, office of curry political favour and secure titles for the exorcist, for which demands a high tribute. Opposed by the angel Hanhniah, Belial commands eighty legions of spirits.

ferālia

Marking the end of a nine-day festival honouring familial ancestors called Parentalia (dies parentales, ancestral days), as historian and poet Ovid records in his book on Fasti, Romans across the Empire were prohibited in worship of the gods and instead were to visit the tombs of their departed and lay wreaths and leave offers of violets, salt and wine-soaked bread. More elaborate votives were permitted but this was sufficient to appease the spirits and the practice was strictly enforced, lest Rome return to a time when Ferālia was neglected and restless ghosts haunted the streets. As with most Roman holidays, observance was mostly a domestic, private affair and what public rites were held are an obscured and confused accounting, the only surviving description involving a drunk woman holding seven black beans (see also) in her mouth and lighting incense over the grave of a mouse, and sewing shut the mouth of a fish—then proclaiming, “Hostiles linguas inimicaque uinximus ora,” I have gagged spiteful tongues and muzzled unfriendly mouths.

cult of personality

Along with the birthday of his father, founder of the nation of North Korea, this Day of the Shining Star (광명성) falling on the anniversary of the birth of its second leader Kim Jong-il, 16 February, 31 Juche, according to party lore, is among the most important public holidays, codified since his 2012 death. While Kim was likely born in Siberia during his father’s exile for inciting an uprising, the foundational mythos places Kim’s birth at a secret guerrilla camp (run by Kim Il-sung) on the slopes of Mount Paektu, a place in antiquity considered holy and the origin of the Korea people, his nativity heralded by a shooting star. With celebrations spanning two days including mass gymnastics, fireworks and military demonstrations, many couples also choose this day to marry. Like a Communist version of Lent, the two-month gap between the birthday of the founder (see above) and second leader is known as Loyalty Festival Period and is interspersed with spontaneous acts of devotion and festivities throughout.

hungry like the wolf

The three-day pastoral festival traditionally ending on the ides of February (the instruments of purification, februum, bunches of branches used like a broom and in the extended sanctified sense below, is the name gives the month its name and is the source of the modern inheritance called Spring Cleaning) called Lupercalia is a syncretism and has been assimilated into Christian traditions of Saint Valentine’s Day, but originally focused on mysterious annual rites and sacrifices that a special priesthood performed in the cave below the Forum where the She-Wolf nursed Romulus and Remus and the site where Rome was founded. Young men of the city’s patrician families formed a collegia (association) called the Luperci (Brothers of the Wolf), performing various cleansing rituals and ablutions—sacrificing a herd of goats plus a dog at the altar. Following the feast, the men fashioned girdles out of goatskin (also called februa) and paraded wearing only these thongs along Rome’s original boundaries and circled the Palatine Hill in an anti-clockwise procession, lashing marriageable women with surplus stripes of flayed skin for fertility.

your daily demon: andrealphus

Possibly conflated with a similarly plumed Babylonian god called Adrammelech whom apparently was only appeased by child sacrifice, this sixty-fifth spirit and infernal marquis ruling thirty legions presents as cacophonous peacock. Once in control of the exorcist, Andrealphus’ virtue is to make people wise in geometry, mensuration and astronomy and can also conjure others into the form of a bird. Governing from this day until 13 February, Andrealphus’ foil is the Gabrieline archangel Damabiah.