Monthly Archives: October 2022

Voices from inside the back porch

I am running out of October and I still have so many masks to show you. I thought I would be able to tell you the story of the green roses, and about Aybahjee Torn-Apart, and introduce you to Rulruyah and Kethullurru, but all that will have to wait for next month.

November is my favorite month.

Today we have demons. In the first panel is Atzeeko Takka, and in the second panel is Kuystin Issaltas. When you need a third or fourth player for mah-jongg, these are excellent demons to summon. They are good friends of El Conde Pajaro de Malaguero (his friends call him Picazón), who is the demon in the story about the green roses, which is also about playing mah-jongg to save your soul. But if you lose your soul, the demons always give it back at the end of the play. They are interested only in playing the game. These demons really love mah-jongg.

Here are the last two masks to color for this Halloween season. Tomorrow, on All Hallows’ Eve, I will tell a ghost story, and the only thing you need to know and remember is that pink is the color of terror.

Tones and Shades of the Kolkesplirren

A kolkesplir in tindulmoss colors.

There is a venerable Jackalopian folk song in which the singers taunt a girl-child about her red hair, with a verse revealing that her mother fell asleep in a cornfield in the moonlight, and during the night a demon flew over her head, at an altitude of three furlongs. Nine months later, the women’s baby was born with a full head of blazing red hair. Apparently, the demon’s potency was of the magical sort that can impregnate a woman from a distance of 1,980 feet.

The song is a transcultural interpretation of a nirrina-mulay* myth from the Moss Folk, a story that explains why red hair turns up in some Moss Folk families. Usually their hair is black, seal brown or dark olive green.

*source-of-water or wellspring

In autumn garb, in firruberry colors.

For jackalopes, the word “demon” does not carry the same malignant load it does in human societies. A demon can be a creature or a spirit, with its own needs and inclinations, its own talents and magicks, its own life and destiny. If you hinder it in some way, it may become malevolent. If you give it aid, it may become your friend. Most demons are indifferent to jackalopes; they do not need them, do not bother them, and go about their own demonic business without concerning themselves with whatever the jackalopes are doing.

Compare this to furies, who can be intensely involved in the affairs of men.

Another kolkesplir in winter finery.

The demon in the folk song is sometimes changed to a dragon. In the original myth from the Moss Folk, the father of the red-haired baby is one of the kolkesplirren, a word that is often translated as dragon-people. The Moss Folk dislike translations that describe the kolkesplirren as demons or dragons, but they have a measure of understanding and tolerance for the peculiar manners of ellartinkaju*.

*outsiders, strangers

The kolkesplir arrayed in tindulmoss splendor at the height of summer.

In the wellspring myths of the Moss Folk, there are people who are born with, or achieve, a transcendent quality called imeekoko namye. The literal translation is winged serpent. All kolkesplirren are born with this quality (and they would have to live a very messed-up life before they can lose it), so you can see where outsiders would get the idea that kolkesplirren are dragon-people. Especially since their name can be interpreted as “the fiery ones”, because it evolved from the word berkolkesplarris, which means anything that looks like a cloudy sky at sunset with a wildfire burning nearby.

However, the Moss Folk themselves do not define imeekoko namye as a winged serpent. The winged serpent is the representation, the symbol, of the essence of imeekoko namye. It is a symbol the Moss Folk share with the Mayans and the Aztecs, who use it to represent the Feathered Serpent deities.

Ocean-Eyed Grandmother

For the longest time, I assumed (as did most GLP fans) that this unpublished comic was an image of a kolkesplir. The kolkesplirren array themselves in seasonal colors, in greenish hues called tindulmoss in the spring and summer, and in reddish hues called firruberry in the fall and winter.

Then one day, I found an entry written by Yost in the Black Oxford Notebook:

“Alice’s mask design for Tilleena Ontin Bahjee – is the green form kindred to the Egyptian goddess Wadjet??? The red form to Sekhmet??? Her name comes from the Second House, meaning Ocean-Eyed Grandmother. She is often depicted with eight eyes, one pair floating free of the body.”

Alice Has A Cat

I have two artifacts in the archives that should accompany these panels from Alice Aroumbeyski’s second solo adventure in Geranium Lake Properties. The one artifact that I am not allowed to show you is a letter ostensibly from Betty Ballantine, or at least it is her signature at the bottom of a professional proposal typewritten on the official stationery of Rufus Publications. The letter is dated in the month of October, 1993, and the letter-writer expresses a desire to collect the art of GLP into a book. They are especially interested in the masks, and they happen to mention that the above mask is their favorite.

As far as I can ascertain, we have no other documents or letters about this project in the archives. What we do have is a book cover design by Yost.

Aerial and Unseen

“A tragedy never happens in an empty house, but its echo can invoke fury.” Inultaru proverb.

“Everyone wants a battlefield.” A line from the poem, “Detail of the Fire” by Richard Siken.

“Aerial, and unseen by human kind, and swiftly coursing, rapid as the mind.” A line from number 68 of the Orphic Hymns, “To the Furies”.

These panels are the three attempts by Yost to portray another member of the Seven Sisters of Indifference (the top panel is the one selected for publishing as a GLP comic). “Sisters of Indifference” might seem a misnomer for a group of avenging angels, all daughters of Neraka Ikuzimu, the Mother of All Furies, but in this case, indifference means that the Sisters ignore human claims and appeals. They do not bother with human justice, which they recognize as an illusion disguising the vengeance taken legally* by the bureaucracy of a political authority.

This mask depicts Lissagu Yamarrautta, also known as the Guyma-Immal (Iron-Faced), who avenges women disfigured by men obsessed with jealous love. According to tradition, her face was scarred by vitriol thrown by a mortal lover named Kish. She castrated him in retaliation.

*The Inultaru have a wonderful phrase for describing anything to do with human legal systems: Ahtimmal mumkincilligi sonnellissu. An unlikely opportunity for happiness.

Eve of Deconstruction

There is no mask for today. We are halfway through our Month of Masks, and I have several more masks to show you, but today we are taking a bit of time to appreciate the tradition of Artim-nageem. Tomorrow is the start of the big holiday season for jackalopes: the first day of the Procession of Entropy. If there was such a thing as the Eve of Entropy, today would be that day, but there is no such thing. Instead, today might be called Uncursing Day, or maybe the Day of the Uncursed, but this small holiday does not actually have a name. It is just the best day of the year for undoing a curse, according to the To-inen-wa clan.

It is a remarkably simple ritual. If you wish to lift a curse on someone, perhaps a family member or a friend (or even an enemy, even if you cursed them yourself and now regret it), wait for October 14th, then do this: 1. Center yourself, in whatever way you customarily center yourself. 2. Picture the person you wish to decursify in your mind’s eye. 3. Fill yourself with committed intent. The To-inen-wa have a name for committed intent (of course they do) it is suwadjek-eetmeht. 4. Speak the words, “Azim azim mazim” plus the name of your person.

And that’s it! That’s all it takes for the usual garden-variety curses. Not an effective method, I think, for giant portentous dooms dropped on legendary heroes by demiurges and other kinds of supreme beings.

To lift a curse on yourself, the words are “Azim artim nageem azim”, no need to add your name.

Martian Pulchritude

For the last day of the Cephalopod Jamboree we have this never finished, never published Geranium Lake Properties panel featuring the exquisite beast known as Therrukthon. Who (as you may remember from yesterday’s post) is one of the Ondu Dodda Dippa.

You can see that it was quite the challenge for Yost to fit the splendor that is Therrukthon into the not over-large frame of a GLP comic – but you will not have that problem! Here in the most sumptuous isojatti avojallo style is the complete monster for you to print out and color. Feel free to embellish Therrukthon with any colors you wish.

Big Giant Heads

Another example of the vibrant cultural exchange between jackalopes and Martians is the tradition of isojatti avojallo, which is the making of giant masks, often eight feet tall, representing the Ondu Dodda Dippa, legendary cephalopod-like Martians who emigrated to Earth, probably during the Gelasian Age.

According to stories of the Inultaru (as reported from a Martian source), the Ondu Dodda Dippa were the results of an attempt by Martians to create an artificial intelligence capable of nurturing the shared consciousness of the entire Martian species in a single biological life form. The Martians had evolved to a point where their conscious selves were joined into a mutually beneficial coalescence, while their bodies were headless life forms with just enough brain to efficiently function as separate physical units. (An individual Martian body has five mini-brains located in places the Martians call “chakras”, blithely filching the word from Hindu meditation practices.)

The Martians were quite happy with this arrangement, in fact, they had helped their own evolution with a delicate amount of bioengineering whenever it seemed appropriate. However, they eventually found themselves with a mostly sentimental yearning for some kind of “headness”. (In their efforts to explain this nearly inexpressible feeling to the Inultaru, the Martians called it umnaalom.) This led them to conceive of a project in which they would create a single giant head that would house the consciousness of the entire Martian race, along with the complete knowledge of their history and culture.

The project would become both an immense success and an immense failure, but I think that’s enough of the story for now. I will leave you here with another mask to print out and color. Four of the Ondu Dodda Dippa appeared in the panels of Geranium Lake Properties: Rulruyah, Therrukthon, Kethullurru, and today we are looking at Kuthurraltur…

Mother Jackal as the Gray Fox Spirit

In the above panel, Mother Jackal is manifesting as a daughter of Neraka Ikuzimu, the Mother of All Furies. A frowny face or a down-turned mouth denotes fierceness in ancient masks of the Inultaru. You can see the same characteristics in another classically-styled mask by Alice Aroumbeyski, representing three gorgons who are members of the Hilkahilleevinn, the Seven Sisters of Indifference (although some tribes of the Second House call them the Disowned Sisters of the Blue-Eyed Son):

On the front of the mask (February 27th) are the twins: Elmaht, vengeful against those who master skills (or teach them to others) of beguilement, seduction, enchantment and entrapment, and Oseilu, vengeful against people who overindulge in izurunee alkagga*. Which are prayers for salvation and love made by adults who are old enough to generate these things for themselves.

On the back (February 28th) of this reversible mask is Allivaeyem, who can be invoked as a general all-purpose avenger, but she is particularly effective for achieving vengeance for raped women.

*Not the same as praying for comfort. Asking for comfort in times of trouble and hardship is always sensible.

The Cephalopod Jamboree is going on right now. I hope you are getting some quality hang time with your favorite octopuses, squids, cuttlefishes and nautiluses.

The Devil’s in the Details

This mask does not actually represent the Devil/Lucifer/Satan, but it is an interpretation of one of the venerable Horned Deities or Daemons who are often mistaken for the Devil by Christians, Wiccans and other occult magic practitioners. Created for an event during the Imbolc festival, this hand-held mask was made by Alice Aroumbeyski as a modern accessory matched to an antique costume representing a member of the Wild Hunt. The costume was made in the nineteenth century, in Aberystwyth, Wales, by an unknown artisan; it was regularly displayed in the collections of the Habiliments Guild Muotimuseo. Oliverio Matagati, brother to Haleya Matagati, borrowed it (for a fee) from the Muotimuseo and hired Alice to make the mask. The mask portrays a character named Jicamyladrewlta (please don’t ask me to attempt a pronunciation), a cunning, slightly deranged, yet surprisingly generous ghost rider and part-time psychopomp.

Here’s a little more of the story we started in my last post, about Oliverio Matagati’s sister:

No one was surprised when the Matagati matriarch huffed herself out of Alice’s studio in a dudgeon, leaving without the costume Alice had made for her, and without paying the price she was contractually obligated to pay. Haleya Matagati may have felt perfectly entitled her feelings caused by Alice’s affront to her dignity; however, she was committing a serious breach of etiquette within the Killikunda Mahun. She had flouted two major rules of the Habiliments Guild. First, she had insulted the work of one of their artists, directly to their face. (You can, if you are clever enough, and witty enough, insult their work, but not in their presence.) Second, she had failed to pay.

Under such circumstances, according to the rules, Alice Aroumbeyski was permitted to take revenge suitable to the offense.

There are a few panels in the published annals of Geranium Lake Properties that include a reference to the retribution Alice Aroumbeyski exacted from Matron Matagori, but the story was never actually told. I have come across pieces of that story in Yost’s journals, and I have begun an attempt to put them together into a cohesive narrative. We will have to see if I can make a satisfactory tale out of it.

As part of this October’s Halloween fun, I will be posting a few masks for you to print out and color:

A Confab Between Carmethene and Alizarin

This gorgeous mask began as part of a commission from a member of the Killikunda Mahun (five Bostonian families who trace their ancestry back to jackalopes living on the island of Saaremaa in the eighth century). The woman who hired Alice Aroumbeyski was Haleya Matagati, an atijo-noyta* with a patrician pedigree, who asked Alice to design her regalia for the Erityisen Erikoista Biennial Ball. Which was a ridiculously extravagant fancy-dress party held every other year, the premier event at the center of high society for the Killikunda Mahun.

Haleya Matagati was pleased with the finished costume, except for the mask, which she hated, and she had no qualms about telling Alice how much she disliked it. She also told Alice she would gladly pay for the costume without the mask, with a thirty percent discount off the agreed-upon price. Alice contemplated the women in silence for a few moments, but before the matriarch could say another word, Alice carefully set the rejected mask on a chair and whisked the ball gown onto her sewing table. With a few deft twitches of fabrics and furbelows, she arranged the costume into a beautiful display of all its delightful details. Then she picked up a large pair of scissors.

“Let me show you what you will purchase with your thirty percent discount,” she said to Matron Matagati. Then Alice quickly, efficiently, without hesitation, cut out a third of the gown, from collar to hem, tossing the hacked-off piece, with a flourish of expensive embellishments, into the nearest scrap bin.

*atijo-noyta literally translates as house-mother, but matriarch, matron, grande dame or old witch are all suitable interpretations.

A Month of Masks

October snuck up on me. I was sufficiently happy to meander along in September-mode, when half way through my day, I realized that it was the first day of October. The Halloween Month! A month that provides the perfect thematic excuse to post some of the many masks found in Geranium Lake Properties.

So many masks, so little time.

In today’s post we have two masks designed by Alice Aroumbeyski for Hoccurnan Towissakos, a chieftain of the Moss Folk, self-styled as the Druid King.