SHOW LINKS

• UNHOLY ROSARIES

• From Geometric Symbols & Divine Proportions, Douglas C. Youvan, 2024: The pentagram is one of the earliest geometric symbols used by human civilizations, with its origins traced back to Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE. In Sumerian and Babylonian cultures, the pentagram was often inscribed on clay tablets, amulets, and other artifacts. The pentagram was associated with directions and the known world, often used to represent the five regions of the earth or the five visible planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—each of which was associated with a particular god in the Sumerian pantheon. The points of the pentagram were thought to correspond to these celestial bodies, symbolizing the unity of heaven and earth in a single, harmonious design. This use of the pentagram reflects the early Mesopotamian belief in a cosmology where the earthly and the divine were inextricably linked. In Babylonian culture, which inherited much of Sumerian symbolism, the pentagram was also linked to cosmological and astrological concepts to symbolize the movements of the planets and their influence on earthly affairs. The pentagram’s five points may have been seen as a symbol of the cyclical nature of the universe, with each point representing a different phase of a celestial cycle. This interpretation aligns with the Babylonian understanding of the cosmos as an ordered system governed by divine laws.

• As Christianity began to spread in the early centuries of the Common Era, the pentagram found new meanings within the context of Christian symbolism. In early Christian art and literature, the pentagram was used to represent the five wounds of Christ—two on the hands, two on the feet, and one on the side— inflicted during his crucifixion. This association gave the pentagram a deeply sacred significance, symbolizing Christ’s sacrifice and the redemption of humanity through his suffering. In addition to representing the wounds of Christ, the pentagram was also associated with the five senses, which were seen as gifts from god that allowed humans to experience and appreciate the divine creation. The use of the pentagram in this context reflected early Christian beliefs about the sanctity of the human body and the importance of maintaining spiritual and physical purity. The pentagram was also employed as a protective symbol in early Christian communities, believed to have the power to ward off evil spirits and to protect the wearer from harm. This protective use of the pentagram may have been influenced by earlier pagan practices, where the pentagram was seen as a powerful talisman against negative forces.The pentagram’s use as a Christian symbol gradually declined as the cross became the dominant symbol of Christianity. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Douglas-Youvan/publication/383214202_Geometric_Symbols_and_Divine_Proportions_The_Pentagram_Hexagram_and_Their_Religious_Significance_Across_Cultures/links/66c28591145f4d3553663e40/Geometric-Symbols-and-Divine-Proportions-The-Pentagram-Hexagram-and-Their-Religious-Significance-Across-Cultures.pdf 

• • From A Slip of the Tongue In Salutation, Lucian, 2nd Century CE: The admirable Plato would have us reject the salutation Joy altogether; it is a mean wish, wanting in seriousness, according to him; his substitute is Prosperity, which stands for a satisfactory condition both of body and soul; in a letter to Dionysius, he reproves him for commencing a hymn to Apollo with Joy, which he maintains is unworthy, and not fit even for men of any discretion, not to mention gods. The divine Pythagoras, although he did not see fit to leave us any writings of his own, still, as far as can be judged from the writings of his disciples and other companions, did not begin letters with the traditional ‘be joyful’ or ‘do well’, but exhorted them to begin with ‘be healthy’. All of his followers, at any rate, in writing letters to each other, when they were writing something serious, would exhort (each other) to be healthy at the very beginning, as the thing most fit for the soul and the body. And their pentagram, drawn to each other in five lines, which they used as a token for the like-minded, was called ‘health’ by them. They believed that doing well and being joyful were wholly part of being healthy, but not that being healthy was entirely part of doing well or being joyful. Some also called the tetractys — their greatest oath, which for them completes the perfect number — the beginning of health. And it was true wisdom, in my opinion; that all other good things are worthless if health is wanting. 
  • From The Witch, Ronald Hutton, 2016: The distinctive contribution made by Christian Europe to the magical tradition seems to have been geometric: the use of the consecrated circle as the normal venue for a magical operation, with special significance often given to its four cardinal directions, and the identification of the pentagram as the most potent symbol of magic. Pentagrams are found in ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman art or on coins, and also in the Christian early Middle Ages, but without any single tradition concerning their meaning and use: in many contexts they seem simply to have been decorative. There is no real evidence that the pentagram had any special association with magic in the ancient world. It appears once on a warrior’s shield painted on a Greek cup, which may have reflected a belief in its protective qualities…or it may just have been a decorative star. The most careful study of its ancient significance concludes (reluctantly) that its wide distribution in ancient times may have been ‘simply a question of decorative motif, with or without any particular meaning. The magic meaning of the pentagram was not yet apparent before the later Middle Ages. 

• As soon as Western Europeans acquired complex ceremonial magic in the twelfth century, seemingly as the result of their translation of Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic texts, they showed their preference for the pentagram, and it was especially associated with Solomon, the wisest of biblical kings, who had been reimagined in the late antique period as a mighty magician. The Sworn Book of Honorius, from its earliest surviving manuscripts of the fourteenth century, put the pentagram at the centre of the ‘Seal of God’ which was the most important work in the achievement of the divine vision. The pentagram also penetrated popular culture, as it appears in many parts of Western Europe by the end of the Middle Ages, on houses, cradles, bedsteads and church porches, as a protective symbol. The reasons for the new importance of the design are easy to propose: One of the prime concerns of the considerable intellectual ferment of Western Europe in the twelfth century was the reconciliation of ancient learning with creative literature, Christian beliefs, and study of the natural world. Honorius asserted that the human body is constructed on a base formed by the number five, having five senses, five limbs (including the head) and five digits on hands and feet. This made the pentagram an obvious symbol of the microcosm that the human form represented, of the divine image in which it had been shaped. 

• From Sir Gawain & The Green Knight, Anonymous, 14th Century, Translated by JRR Tolkien: Then they brought him his shield that was of brilliant jewels, with the pentagram depicted in pure hue of gold. By the baldric he caught it, and about his neck cast it: right well and worthily it went with the knight. And why the pentagram is proper to that prince so noble I intend now to tell you, though it may tarry my story. It is a sign that Solomon once set on, a figure that in it five points holdeth and each line overlaps and is linked with another, and in this way it is endless; and the English, I hear, name it the Endless Knot. So it suits well this knight and his unsullied arms, forever faithful in five points, and five times under each, Gawain as good was acknowledged as gold refinéd, devoid of every vice and with full virtues adorned. So there the pentangram painted new he on shield and coat did wear, as one of word most true and knight of bearing fair. Faultless was he found in his five senses, and in the five fingers he failed at no time, and firmly on the Five Wounds all his faith was set that Christ received on the cross, as that Creed tells us; and wherever the brave man into battle was come, on this beyond all things was his earnest thought: that ever from the Five Joys all his valor he gained that to Heaven’s courteous Queen Mary once came from her Child: free-giving and friendliness first before all, and chastity and chivalry ever changeless and straight, and piety surpassing all points: these perfect five were hasped upon him harder than on any man else, fixed at five points that failed not at all, coincided in no line nor sundered either, not ending in any angle anywhere. Therefore on his shining shield was shaped now this knot, royally with red jewels upon red gold set: this is the pure pentangle as people of learning have taught. 

• From Medieval Mythbusting Blog, James Wright, 2021: In a recent post on the online forum Mediaeval and Tudor Period Buildings, a user uploaded a photograph of a five-pointed star carved onto a piece of stone at St Mary & St John (Somerset), and asked the deceptively simple question: “Would anyone know what this symbol might mean? If we discard the facetious suggestions by amateur comedians (18.7%), the remaining people had explanations which included: pagan symbol, holy star, Star of David, Satanic symbol, graffiti associated with boredom, builder’s sign to show structural problems, Seal of Solomon, mechanism to express proportional geometry, hobo mark, Knights Templar, Freemasonry or Illuminati symbol, etc. Some of the more outlandish identifications – including signs left by the Knights Templar, Freemasons or Illuminati – can perhaps be laid at the door of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, where Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor in the fictional discipline of “symbology,” intones: “The pentacle is a pre-Christian symbol that relates to Nature worship. The ancients envisioned their world in two halves— masculine and feminine… This pentacle is representative of the female half of all things— a concept religious historians call the ‘sacred feminine’ or the ‘divine goddess.” The pentagram IS a pre-Christian symbol, but in that period it was not associated with the attributes assigned by the fictional Langdon. His explanation seems to more closely align with the thinking of magical practitioners from the late nineteenth century onwards. This went on to influence later neo-pagan and Satanic beliefs. 

• Prior to the introduction of Christianity the pentagram was a symbol variously associated with the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar or Greek notions of health, wellbeing or geometrical purity. However, these explanations do not bear much relevance to how the symbol came to be carved on the walls of a parish church in Somerset. So, what is going on here? In the theology of mediaeval western Christianity, god gave King Solomon a seal ring which had the power to repel demons. This story was originally told by the Jews and, in their iteration, and as the story of the ring passed down through the Abrahamic faiths, the ciphers were subsequently re-interpreted by Arabic Muslims as a six-pointed star and European Christians as a five-pointed star. The mediaeval Christian belief that the pentagram was a powerful repellent of evil was apparently widespread. A reliance on such iconography can also be seen, physically, in fourteenth century ecclesiastical architecture – including pentagrams set out in the great west window of Exeter Cathedral and on the tower at Hannover. The pentagram has been noted as a motif found during historic graffiti surveys of mediaeval buildings. At one site a pentagram has been carved directly over a graffito of a demon – perhaps explicitly linking the symbol to its perceived function of warding off evil. Although the pentagram was an important shape in Classical theories of proportion, its use in mediaeval architectural design was rare. Consequently, when we encounter regular, chisel-cut examples of the pentagram, the symbol is less likely to be part of an architectural drawing and will often be a stonemason’s mark.

• From the Oral Talmud, Gittin 68, Third Century CE: Why was it necessary for Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, to gather demons? The answer: As the temple was being built, Solomon said to the sages: How shall I make it so that the stone will be precisely cut? They said to him: There is a creature called a shamir that can cut the stones, which Moses brought. Solomon said to them: Where is it found? They said to him: Bring a male demon and a female demon: It is possible that they know where, and they will reveal the place to you. Solomon brought a male demon and a female demon and tormented them together, and they said: We do not know where to find the shamir. Perhaps Asmodeus king of the demons, knows. He is on such-and-such a mountain. He has dug a pit for himself there, and filled it with water, and covered it with a rock, and sealed it with his seal. And every day he ascends to Heaven and studies, but he comes back and checks to ensure that nobody has entered his pit, and then he uncovers it and drinks from the water. Solomon sent for Benayahu, a member of the royal entourage, and gave him a chain onto which a sacred name of god was carved, and a ring onto which a sacred name of god was carved. What did Benayahu do? He went down the mountain, drained the water, and poured wine into the pit. When Asmodeus came and found the pit to be filled with wine. He said that it is written: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is riotous; and whosoever wallows in it is not wise, I will not drink this wine.” But when he became thirsty, he was unable to resist the wine and he drank, became intoxicated, and fell asleep. Benayahu threw the chain around Asmodeus, and when he woke Benayahu said to him: The name of your master is upon you, the name of your Master is upon you, do not tear the chain. And they brought him to Solomon after three days. 

• From Transcendental Magic, Eliphas Levi, 1854: The pentagram signifies the domination of the mind over the elements, and by this sign are enchained the demons of the air, the spirits of fire, the phantoms of the water, and ghosts of earth. Equipped with this sign, you will be ministered unto by legions of angels and hosts of fiends. Spirits are subservient to this sign when employed with understanding, and, by placing it in the circle or on the table of evocations, they can be rendered tractable. The intelligence of the wise man therefore gives value to his pentacle, as science gives weight to his will, and spirits comprehend this power immediately. Thus, by means of the pentagram, spirits can be forced to appear by themselves or their reflection, which exists in the astral light. Pregnant women are influenced more than others by the astral light, which concurs in the formation of the child, and perpetually offers them reminiscences of the forms which abound therein. This explains how it is that women of the highest virtue deceive the malignity of observers. The Kabbalistic usage of the pentagram can therefore determine the appearance of unborn children, and an initiated woman might endow her son with the characteristics of Nero or Achilles as much as with those of Louis XIV or Napoleon.

• We must, however, remark that the use of the pentagram is most dangerous for operators who are not in possession of its complete and perfect understanding. The direction of the points of the star is in no sense arbitrary, and may change the entire character of the operation. At this point, let the ignorant and superstitious close the book ; they will either see nothing but darkness, or they will be scandalised. The pentagram, which, in gnostic schools, is called the blazing star, is the sign of intellectual omnipotence and autocracy. It is the star of the magi ; it is the sign of the Word made flesh; and, according to the direction of its points, this absolute magical symbol represents order or confusion, the divine lamb of  St John or the accursed goat of Mendes. It is initiation or profanation; it is Lucifer or Vesper, the star of the morning or the evening. It is Mary or Lilith, victory or death, day or night. The pentagram with two points in the ascendant represents Satan as the goat of the Sabbath ; when one point is in the ascendant, it is the sign of the Saviour. The pentagram is the figure of the human body, having the four limbs, and a single point representing the head. A human figure, head downwards, naturally represents a demon ; that is, intellectual subversion, disorder, or madness. Now, if magic be a reality, if occult science be really the true law of the three worlds, this absolute sign, this sign ancient as history, and more ancient, should and does actually exercise an incalculable influence upon spirits set free from their material envelope.

• From the Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie, 1940: The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram: Take a steel dagger in the right hand. Face east. Touch thy forehead and say (thou art). Touch thy breast and say (the Kingdom). Touch thy right shoulder and say (and the Power). Touch thy left shoulder and say (and the Glory). Clasp thy hands before thee and say (forever). Dagger between fingers, point up in the air towards the east and, bringing the point of the dagger to the centre of the pentagram, vibrate the deity name, imagining that your voice carries forward to the east of the universe. Holding the dagger out before you, go to the south, make the pentagram, and vibrate similarly the deity name. Go to the west, make the pentagram, and vibrate. Go to the north, make the pentagram, and vibrate. Return to the east and complete your circle by bringing the dagger point to the centre of the first pentagram. The Uses of the Pentagram Ritual include as a form of prayer: The invoking ritual should be used in the morning, the banishing in the evening. The names should be pronounced inwardly in the breath, vibrating it as much as possible and feeling that the whole body throbs with the sound. Also as a protection against impure magnetism: The banishing ritual can be used to get rid of obsessing or disturbing thoughts. Give a mental image to your obsession and imagine it formulated before you. Project it out of your aura with the saluting sign of a Neophyte, and when it is about three feet away, prevent its return with the Sign of Silence. Now imagine the form in the east before you and do the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram to disintegrate it, seeing it, in your mind’s eye, dissolving on the farther side of your ring of flame. It can also be used as an exercise in concentration. Seated in meditation or lying down, formulate yourself standing up in robes and holding a dagger. Put your consciousness in this form and go to the east. Make yourself “feel” there by touching the wall, opening your eyes, stamping on the floor, etc. Begin the ritual and go round the room mentally vibrating the words and trying to feel them as coming from the form. Finish in the east and try to see your results in the Astral Light, then walk back and stand behind the head of your body and let yourself be reabsorbed.’

• From The Purpose of Your Altar Pentacle, Sable Aradia, Patheos, 2018: I make and sell altar pentacles at my Etsy store.  I started doing this several years ago because I noticed that you couldn’t find them anywhere.  There was a plethora of wands, numerous chalices, and even a handful of athames available at most metaphysical stores in the late eighties and early nineties, and there were hundreds of silver jewelry pentacles available, but pentacles intended for your altar were nowhere to be found.  At the time I chalked that up to the Satanic Panic; the pentacle is the most obviously “Wiccan” of the four traditional altar tools, and big pentagrams made people nervous. I was taught that there is a difference between a pentagram and a pentacle, though a dictionary will often give them as synonyms: a pentagram is an equilateral five-pointed star, and a pentacle is such a star within a circle, or a similar object used in magic, such as the Earth Pentacle used by the Golden Dawn and various of the Seals of Solomon. Typically Wiccans and witches use the upright pentacle, and Aleister Crowley made use of the inverted pentagram in Thelema.  The association with the Horned God of Wicca in the inverted pentagram is largely due to tradition, stemming from the Goat in the Star from The Key of Black Magic, an 1897 grimoire. This was [incorrectly] thought to be a secret symbol of the Templars in their (alleged) secret worship of Baphomet.  The pentacle is usually placed at the center of the altar; and some books will tell you to place objects on it when you’re consecrating or enchanting them because you’re using it as a focus to direct all of those energies into your sacred and magickal work; manifesting the powers of the gods and the cosmos into physical reality. Sometimes the pentacle is used as a tangible, magical shield to protect you against danger and attack.  Just as vampire hunters in all the movies present crosses to the Undead boldly in order to drive them away through the power of faith, witches can aim their pentacles boldly against psychic attack. This is a simple method of calling upon the gods and the Universe to lend their formidable powers to your protection. You could use it as a focal point for meditations that make use of the pentagram; such as the Iron Pentacle or an elemental pathworking; you could hold it aloft towards Venus at sunset or sunrise to invoke the Goddess, Lucifer, or any goddess associated with Venus; you could hold it to your body with a point directly facing the ground to invoke the Horned God. It is a holy symbol of the powers of the Universe coming together, a celebration of the integration of spiritual and material. 

• From Satanism Today, James R Lewis, 2001: Richard Ramirez, better known as the Night Stalker, was a sadistic serial murderer who terrorized the Los Angeles area in the mid-1980s. He was captured by civilians on August 31, 1985, following an all points bulletin in which his mug shot was broadcast on television and printed in newspapers. After a fourteen-month trial, he was convicted of thirteen murders and thirty other felonies. A self-identified Satanist who had read Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible, Ramirez’s crime spree was one of the few cases that might legitimately be called “Satanic crime.” His “calling card” was the inverted pentagram, which he left drawn on a wall, or, in one case, carved into the body of a victim. In 1983, he made a special trip to San Francisco to meet LaVey personally. LaVey was later reported as commenting that, “I thought Richard was very nice—very shy. I liked him.” Because Ramirez was a fan of the rock group AC/DC—a group that at one stage of their career adopted Satanic imagery and incorporated infernal references into their music—the case was given special attention from people concerned about the negative influence of rock music. Ramirez would engage in such antics as flashing a pentagram he had drawn in the palm of his hand, shouting “Hail Satan!” and holding up his fingers alongside his head in imitation of devil’s horns. It is clear that Satanic ideology is not an independent motivating factor that somehow transforms otherwise nice people into criminals. Rather, as reflected in the remarks Ramirez made at his sentencing, such individuals are criminals who adopt Satanism as a way of justifying their antisocial actions. Many police officers ask what to look for during the search of the scene of suspected satanic activity. The answer is simple: Look for evidence of a crime. A pentagram is no more criminally significant than a crucifix unless it corroborates a crime or a criminal conspiracy. If a victim’s description of the location or the instruments of the crime includes a pentagram, then the pentagram would be evidence. But the same would be true if the description included a crucifix.

• From No Converse Didn’t Replace Its ‘All-Star’ Logo with a Satanic Symbol, Bethania Palma, Snopes, 2021: In July 2021, Christian news outlets reported that sneaker brand Converse had replaced the iconic “All-Star” label on its shoes with a satanic symbol. “Converse Unveils Designer Shoes with Satanic Symbol Replacing Brand’s Star Logo,” Faithwire reported. “More Corporate Satanism: ‘Converse’ Unveils New Occult Shoe Line,” the Media Research Center reported. Converse hasn’t replaced the All-Star logo, which famously adorns its classic Chuck Taylors. The new symbology is instead the result of a collaboration between Converse and DRKSHDW, the brand run by goth-inspired fashion designer Rick Owens. The logo for DRKSHDW contains a pentagram, or five-point star. A spokesperson for Nike, which owns Converse, told Snopes in an email: “Converse’s collaboration with fashion designer Rick Owen’s DRKSHDW brand incorporates the DRKSHDW pentagram logo design, which has been used in his line for many years. The pentagram, which has many different associations, is in no way a comment from Converse on religion, nor does it replace the iconic All Star logo on our shoes.” In an Instagram post promoting the brand collaboration, Owens explained why he uses the pentagram in his own work: “I’ve been using this pentagram for a long time because obviously, it has adolescent occult associations. But I like geometric diagrams like that because, in a very primal way, they are a culture’s grasp for control. And a way to organize thoughts and systems. And a pentagram, in this day and age with all of its associations… I like the fact that it refers to an alternative system. And that suggests openness and empathy. It suggests the pursuit of pleasure, this pursuit of sensation. But one of the main things that I think it suggests is empathy and a consideration of systems of living that might not be standard. So that leads us to be more accepting and tolerant of other systems, which I think is a good thing.” 

The post Episode 205: Oops, All Pentagrams Edition appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

SHOW LINKS

• •  
  • Biography of Lord Byron, The Poetry Foundation, 2017: The most flamboyant and notorious of the major English Romantic poets, Byron created the immensely popular namesake Byronic hero—defiant, melancholy, haunted by guilt—for which, to many, he seemed the model. Born with a lame leg, he was the son of an impoverished Scots heiress and “Mad Jack” Byron, a fortune-hunting widower. The captain squandered his wife’s inheritance, was absent for the birth of his only son, and eventually decamped for France as an exile from English creditors. Catherine Byron raised her son in an atmosphere colored by her excessive tenderness, fierce temper, insensitivity, and pride. With the death in 1798 of his great-uncle, the “Wicked” Lord Byron Fifth, George became the Sixth Baron Byron. He excelled in oratory, verse, and sports. He also formed passionate attachments with other boy, and; there can be little doubt that he had strong bisexual tendencies. Living extravagantly, he began to amass the debts that would bedevil him for years. In March 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords. Though in debt, he gathered resources to allow a tour of the eastern Mediterranean, which reinforced for him the contrast between the glory of ancient Greece and its contemporary disgrace. Between June 1813 and February 1816, Byron completed and had published six extremely popular verse tales, five of them influenced by his travels. His  “Byronic Heroes” descended from Prometheus, Satan, and the sentimental heroes of Rousseau and Goethe. Among their traits are romantic melancholy, guilt for secret sin, pride, defiance, restlessness, alienation, revenge, remorse, moodiness, honor, altruism, and pure love. The drawing rooms and salons of Whig society vied for Byron’s presence and lionized him. In 1813 Byron began an affair with his 29-year-old half sister, Augusta. While no legal proof exists, the circumstantial evidence in Byron’s letters strongly suggests an incestuous connection. Throughout his life Byron was a fervent reader of the Bible and a lover of traditional songs and legends. As a champion of freedom, he may have responded instinctively to the oppression suffered by the Jewish people. He married an heiress in 1815 but by 1816 his wife considered him insane and separated, taking their daughter with her. Heavy drinking drove Byron into rages and fits of irrational behavior. 
  • In 1816, Byron sailed for Geneva, where waiting for him were Claire Clairmont (pregnant with his child), Percy Shelley, and Mary Godwin. They passed the time agreeably by boating on Lake Leman and conversing at the Villa; in this environmen,t Mary wrote Frankenstein. In 1819, Byron’s publisher, after some hesitation, cautiously published his “Don Juan.” Typical was the review in Blackwood’s Magazine, which branded Byron as “a cool unconcerned fiend” who derided love, honor, patriotism, and religion in his “filthy and impious poem.” Not all the reviews were negative: Goethe praised Don Juan as “a work of boundless energy.” In October, Byron presented the manuscript of his memoirs, not to be published during his lifetime, containing, among other things, “a detailed account of his marriage and its consequences.” His publisher had the memoirs burned to protect Byron’s reputation. Byron began work on his play “Cain” and challenged accepted religious beliefs in good, evil, death, and immortality, and Robert Southey virulently attacked Byron as the leader of the “Satanic school” of contemporary writers whose works exhibited “a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety.” Shelley proclaimed Cain “apocalyptic— a revelation not before communicated to man.” His was a minority opinion. Resolving that “he who is only a poet has done little for mankind” Byron devoted himself to the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and agreed to loan 4,000 pounds to the Greek fleet. In 1824 he joined the moderate revolutionary leaders on the mainland and was enthusiastically welcomed by shouts, salutes, and salvos, hailed as a “Messiah.” But his constitution deteriorated under the strain and the cold winter rains as well as the frustration of his unrequited love for his handsome 15-year-old page boy. By April he was seriously ill and on the evening of Easter Monday, April 19, 1824, Byron died. In memorial services throughout the country, he was proclaimed a national hero of Greece and his death proved effective in uniting the many Greek factions and eliciting support for their struggle. Byron’s body arrived in England on June 29, and for two days he lay in state in a house in Great George Street. 
  • From The Byronic Hero, Princess Weekes, PBS, 2020: Edward Cullen; Han Solo; Lestat–what do all of these characters have in common besides being heartthrobs? They share a common ancestor: the Byronic Hero. Brooding, sensual, violent, a little too single-minded, the Byronic Hero has been a staple in literature dating back to the 19th century. I see you, Cloud Strife, all sad and angsty with your giant sword. According to Professor Peter L. Thorslev, the characteristic Byronic Hero has borrowed characteristics from the gothic villain in his looks, his mysterious past, and his secret sins, and from the Man Of Feelings archetype  in his tender sensibilities and in his undying fidelity. He is a romantic rebel. He chooses his values in open defiance of the codes of society. That’s right, you defy the codes of society by being sad and hot and with your slightly stalker-like tendencies. The Byronic archetype allowed for more complicated male characters to form, and without him we miss out on the development of the anti-hero. Gothic and romantic fiction writers and readers of the 19th and 20th centuries ate this up: Victor Frankenstein, Captain Ahab, The Phantom of the Opera, The Count of Monte Cristo, Mr. Rochester, Megamind–even James Bond is pretty Byronic. Debate me in the comments. They have a mixture of monstrous yet alluring personalities. Frollo from Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starts off as a good man but is gripped by a lust for a woman he cannot have and tips into madness; Heathcliff is such a compelling romantic lead because the text makes it clear that he was forced into becoming a bitter, hateful man by society, but his deep, toxic love for Catherine draws the reader to him. Rochester has a kindly nature and a deep love for Jane but is still capable of locking his wife in the attic. Byron himself had a huge capacity for love, intelligence, and an appreciation for beauty but was chaotic and emotionally aloof. More recently we see more female characters who possess some Byronic qualities, like Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Regina from Once Upon a Time, and Catra from She-Ra. But those characters are punished more by both the audience and the writers. Sometimes, the alluring aspect of female and non-white Byronic characters is seeing them have the freedom to be more complex as  Byronic heroines take on the characteristics of the rebellious, ambitious, narcissistic, individualistic, and ultimately self-destructive Byronic male. All of the tortured romantic bad boys of literature, film, and television have a little bit of Byron in them. So the next time you get deep in your feels for Kylo Ren, cheer for Prince Zuko, or secretly pop on Twilight for the 200th time, maybe pour one out to Lord Byron, to whom we owe all of this angsty goodness to. Or James Dean, either one will do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4wNZDIH8d8 
  • • Portraits Of Lord Byron In Order Of Lord Byron-ness, Daniel Lavery, The Toast, 2015: 
  • Lord Byron & His Manservant, 1810: At first glance, you might be tempted to think, “Not very Byron,” because there are other people in the picture, and his alabaster brow isn’t the focal point. This is an error. “You there, boy, fetch into this dinghy and sail into yon exhilarating storm while I stand here and clench my fist over this rock. If you drown in the background it will make for a very exciting painting.” He’s wearing like eighteen ascots and they’re all flowing in a tempest, plenty of Byron here.
  • Portrait of Lord Byron, 1813: SOLID POUTY BYRON. He’s got some secret freaky brocade vest on under his cloak, which is probably full of dildos, his brow situation is ferociously organized, his out-of-frame hand is probably jerking off the devil.
  • Byron’s Dream, 1874: Eight out of ten Byrons. Look at his SEXUAL SNEERING. “What is this woman doing in my portrait? is her hair more luxurious than mine? I hope she falls down this hill and dies so I can be alone with my dog. what is she LOOKING at even? why isn’t it me.”
  • Coloured Print of Lord Byron, Date Unknown: Medium Byron, which is perhaps the least amount of Byron you can get. It’s better to be almost no Byron than just regular Byron, so this is actually zero Byrons. He’s almost smiling?? And like, reading letters, like someone with a job would do? Why don’t you just paint KEATS and DIE.
  • Lord Byron in Albanian Dress, 1813: ONE BILLION PERCENT would Byron grow a mustache and demand that everyone notice it. He would never come out and say “What do you think of my mustache?” but he would make it clear in a thousand small ways that you were expected to notice and compliment it, and if you withheld that pleasure from him, you would never be invited to dinner again. 
  • The reception of Lord Byron, 1861: “Hello, are you Greece, I am here to run your army? Don’t worry, I’m a poet.”
  • Lord Byron on His Deathbed, 1826: Obviously the lute and the laurel wreath and the funereal sheet draped like a Roman toga are sick touches, but you can’t even see his death erection, which I feel like would have been really important to him, that even in death people were thinking about his dick.
  • 
  •   
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  •  
  • From The Vampyre, John Polidori, 1819: Hitherto, Aubrey had had no opportunity of studying Lord Ruthven’s character, and now he found that his companion was profuse in his liberality;—the idle, the vagabond, and the beggar, received from his hand more than enough to relieve their immediate wants. But Aubrey could not avoid remarking that it was not upon the virtuous that he bestowed his alms;—these were sent from the door with hardly suppressed sneers; but when an addict came to ask something to allow him to wallow in his lust, or to sink him still deeper in his iniquity, he was sent away with rich charity. All those upon whom it was bestowed, inevitably found that there was a curse upon it, for they were all either led to the scaffold, or sunk to the lowest and the most abject misery. Aubrey was surprised at the apparent eagerness with which his companion sought for the centres of all fashionable vice; he always gambled with success, except where the known sharper was his antagonist, and then he lost even more than he gained; when he encountered the rash youthful novice, or the luckless father of a numerous family, his eyes sparkled with more fire than that of the cat whilst dallying with the half-dead mouse. In every town, he left the formerly affluent youth in the solitude of a dungeon, whilst many a father sat frantic, amidst the speaking looks of mute hungry children, without a single farthing of his late immense wealth. Yet he took no money from the gambling table but immediately lost, to the ruiner of many, the last gilder he had just snatched from the convulsive grasp of the innocent. Aubrey’s guardians insisted upon his immediately leaving his friend, and urged, that his character was dreadfully vicious, for that the possession of irresistible powers of seduction, rendered his licentious habits more dangerous to society, and all those females whom he had sought out apparently on account of their virtue, had, since his affair, thrown the mask aside and had not scrupled to expose the whole deformity of their vices to the public gaze. Aubrey determined upon leaving one, whose character had not yet shown a single bright point on which to rest the eye. He resolved to invent some plausible pretext for abandoning him altogether, purposing, in the mean while, to watch him more closely, and to let no slight circumstances pass by unnoticed. Aubrey determined upon leaving and immediately writing a note, to say, that from that moment he must decline accompanying his Lordship in the remainder of their proposed tour. Ruthven next day merely sent his servant to notify his complete assent to a separation.
  • From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lord Byron, 1818: Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more; though fallen, still great! Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth, And long accustomed bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilome did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae’s sepulchral strait— Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas’ banks, and call thee from the tomb? Spirit of Freedom! Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain, But every carle can lord it o’er thy land; Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned. In all save form alone, how changed! and who That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, Who would but deem their bosom burned anew With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty! And many dream withal the hour is nigh That gives them back their fathers’ heritage: For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh, Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage, Or tear their name defiled from Slavery’s mournful page. Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not Who would be free must strike the blow? By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye?  No! True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, But not for you will Freedom’s altars flame. Shades of the Helots! triumph o’er your foe: Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same; Thy glorious day is o’er, but not thy years of shame. But ne’er will Freedom seek this fated soil, But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil. Though turbans now pollute Sophia’s shrine And Greece her very altars eyes in vain: Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng, All felt the common joy they now must feign; Nor oft I’ve seen such sight, nor heard such song, As wooed the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along. And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, Land of lost gods and godlike men. Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, Proclaim thee Nature’s varied favourite now; Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow, Commingling slowly with heroic earth, Broke by the share of every rustic plough: So perish monuments of mortal birth, So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth.
  • • From Cain: A Mystery, Lord Byron, 1821: I have a Victor––true; but no superior. Homage he has from all––but none from me: I battle it against him, as I battled In highest Heaven––through all Eternity, And the unfathomable gulfs of Hades, And the interminable realms of space, And the infinity of endless ages–All, all, will I dispute! And world by world, And star by star, and universe by universe, Shall tremble in the balance, till the great Conflict shall cease, if ever it shall cease, Which it ne’er shall, till he or I be quenched! And what can quench our immortality, Or mutual and irrevocable hate? He as a conqueror will call the conquered [one] Evil; but what will be the Good he gives? Were I the victor, his works would be deemed The only evil ones. And you, ye new And scarce–born mortals, what have been his gifts To you already, in your little world? But few; and some of those but bitter. Dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in His everlasting face, and tell him that His evil is not good! He is great–– But, in his greatness, is no happier than We in our conflict! Let him Sit on his vast and solitary throne–– Creating worlds, to make eternity Less burdensome to his immense existence; Let him crowd orb on orb: he is alone, Indefinite, Indissoluble Tyrant; Could he but crush himself, ’twere the best boon He ever granted: but let him reign on! Spirits and Men, at least we sympathise–– And, suffering in concert, make our pangs Innumerable, more endurable. The Maker––Call him Which name thou wilt: he makes but to destroy. He, so wretched in his height, So restless in his wretchedness, must still Create, and re–create––perhaps he’ll make One day a Son unto himself––as he Gave you a father––and if he so doth, Mark me! that Son will be a sacrifice! I have nothing in common with him; I dwell apart, but I am great. I tempt none, Save with the truth: was not the Tree a Tree Of Knowledge? and was not the Tree of Life Still fruitful? Did I bid her pluck them not? Did I plant things prohibited within The reach of beings innocent, and curious By their innocence? I would have made ye Gods; and He who thrust ye forth because “ye should not eat the fruits of life, And become gods”–were those his words? Then who was the Demon–He Who would not let ye live, or he who would Have made ye live forever, in the joy And power of Knowledge? 
  • From The Devil’s Drive, Lord Byron, 1813: “And what shall I ride in,” quoth Lucifer then? “If I followed my taste indeed, I should mount in a wagon of wounded men, and smile to see them bleed. But these will be furnished again and again, and at present my purpose is speed; To see of My manor as much as I may, And watch that no souls shall be poached away. I have a state-coach at Carlton House, A chariot in Seymour place; But they’re lent to two friends. Then up to the earth sprung he, And making a jump from Moscow to France, He stepped across the Sea, And rested his hoof on a Turnpike road– No very great way from a Bishop’s abode. The Devil has reached our cliffs so white, And what did he see there, I pray? If his eyes were good, he but saw by night What we see every day. Satan hired a horse and gig With promises of pay; And he pawned his horns for a spruce new wig, To redeem as he came away: And he whistled some tune, a waltz or a jig, And drove off at the close of day. The first place he stopped he heard the Psalm that rung from a Methodist Chapel: “‘Tis the best sound I’ve heard,” quoth he, “since my palm Presented Eve with her apple! When Faith is all, tis an excellent sign, That the Works and Workmen both are mine.” The Devil got next to Westminster, And he turned to the room of the Commons; But he heard as he purposed to enter in there, That “the Lords” had received a summons; And he thought, as a fallen aristocrat, He might peep at the Peers, though to hear of them were flat; And he walked up the House so like one of his own, That they say that he stood pretty near the throne. He saw the Lord Liverpool seemingly wise, and Jockey of Norfolk—a man of some size—And he saw the tears in Lord Eldon’s eyes, Because the Catholics would not rise, In spite of his prayers and his prophecies; And he heard—which set Satan himself a staring— A certain Chief Justice say something a-swearing. And the Devil was shocked—and quoth he, “I must go, For I find we have much better manners below. If thus he harangues when he passes my border, I shall hint to friend Moloch to call him to order.”
  • • From Romantic Satanism, Peter Schock, 2003: By 1820 Byron’s satanic Aura had lost its glamor and was now almost exclusively the channel through which conservative voices expressed criticism. In 1820, Reginald Heber added a new dimension to the attacks on Byron, writing “By a strange predilection for the worser half of Manichianism, one of the mightiest spirits of the age has apparently devoted himself in his genius to the adornment and extension of evil.” This was saying in Elegant terms that Byron was a Satanist, and that was precisely how he interpreted it. Thus prominent writers for the journals and the Tory Ministry applied to Byron the brand of satanic, grouping him with infidels. It should come as no surprise then that a blaspheming Satanic figure looms so large in “Cain.” Unleashing such a character in a religious drama must have seemed especially opportune as a Counter-Strike, the Fulfillment of Byron’s great threat. Shelley probably encouraged Byron to do this when he visited him in August of 1827, leading Byron to heighten the Satanism of the work by shaping Lucifer into the adverse ideal of Christian mythology. Through his drama Byron struck at the tyrants attempting to trample upon free thought, and his target extended Beyond his assailants in the Quarterly Review to all who contributed to the assault on free thought at his time, from Tory ministers who authored repressive legislation to Crown lawyers who prosecuted infidels. The Eclectic Review speculated that Byron wrote Cain to test for himself the limits of the freedom of the press.A peer of the realm, living in England or Italy, had little reason to fear prosecution. Publishers, not writers, were most at stake.He therefore must have assumed that his play would become part of this controversy and that he would be perceived as an aristocratic provocateur in the struggle over the authority of the Bible. Before writing Cain, Byron had worried frequently about the consequences of publishing irreligion. In 1817; Shelley lost the custody of his children over the anti-christian diatribes he wrote in Queen Mab. This chronic anxiety about court judgments meant Byron probably took some care in writing his play, especially in the construction of its superhuman Infidel. Because biblical myth was contested in the blasphemy controversy, because the brand of satanic had been fixed to all transgressive writers, and because publishing blasphemy carried consequences, to write a biblical drama involving satanic myth was to enter into an ideological conflict.
  • From Little Lucifers of the Satanic School, The Satanic Scholar, 2016: Romantic Satanism was not about Devil worship, but rather identification with Satan the magnificent rebel angel out of Milton and adoption of his mythic/poetic revolt against the absolute authority personified in the Almighty as a sociopolitical countermyth. Romantic Satanists were essentially little Lucifers—Miltonic Satans in miniature. When English clergyman Reginald Heber identified in Byron “a strange predilection for the worser half of manicheism,” this, “being interpreted,” reflected Byron himself, “means that I worship the devil…” Heber would go on to explain that “Lord Byron misunderstood us. He supposed that we accused him of ‘worshipping the Devil.’ We certainly had, at the time, no particular reason for apprehending that he worshipped anything.” Byron’s failure—or refusal, rather—to bend the knee in worship of anything, however, was what made Byron so Satanic, and the same goes for Shelley, the militant atheist who imagined himself very much like the heroically unbowed Satan: “Did I now see god seated in gorgeous & tyrannic majesty as described, upon the throne of infinitude – if I bowed before him, what would virtue say?” Just as “narcissists” are simply individuals who bear the likeness of the mythical Narcissus, Byron and Shelley were “Satanists” not because they worshipped the Devil, but because of their likeness to the arch-rebel—an image they often deliberately donned. Satanism was certainly at the heart of Byronism, the cultural phenomenon that saw Byron hurled haphazardly into the limelight. Byron’s dogged sense of sin was mostly the product of the perverted form of Calvinism literally beat into him as a young boy. Being “Majestic though in ruin” was part and parcel of the Byronic persona, however, and so Byron seized for himself the starring role of fallen angel. Like Satan, Byron wished to experience the feeling of being struck with full force by the vengeance of Heaven.

The post Episode 201: Lord Byron Still Fucks appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.