Another fine jackalope mask designed by Alice Aroumbeyski, a mask that Yost presented as one of her self-portraits. In the “The Ringer in the Substratum”, Alice has a conversation with her childhood friend Kamlyn about the suitability of wearing this mask to the wedding of a cousin who is essentially a stranger. (Alice had not spoken to her cousin for 16 years.) The two women decide that Alice should save the mask for her own wedding to Jack Loki.
Kamlyn was actually named Alice when they first met, when the girls were four years old. They did not become boon companions instantly, but because “a lamentable conspiracy beyond our control” (Alice’s words) kept throwing them together, they agreed to an alliance. The two girls decided that having the same name was “tiresome and traumatic” (Kamlyn’s words), so one Alice became Gwynne and the other Alice became Kamlyn. After a few years, Gwynne decide to become Alice again, but Kamlyn kept her name into adulthood.
There is a mug ornamented with this mask, available for purchase at my shop:
Today’s post features two interpretations of the Mask of Neivrilyadan. Because of various holidays interrupting the last days of September (including Ghost Hunting Day) the first mask was published on September 28th, 29th or October 1rst. This abstract mask is the work of the Uroonuttag vizardwright, Shyira Brankonnatek, who attempted to depict the demalion Neivrilyadan according to the concept of lemwalta ai-seyhteen*.
Alice Aroumbeyski, who was once a student of Brankonnatek’s, created the second mask, choosing to make a portrait of Neivrilyadan as a person or persona. This second Geranium Lake Properties panel was never published in newspapers, but a black-and-white version of this mask was used to illustrate the letter “Vril” in An Ornate Asemic Alphabet in Monstrose Forms.
Not only do we have more unpublished mask designs by Alice Aroumbeyski in this post, but we have two excerpts from an almost-unpublished book, which exists only as an illegal pirate edition from an unidentified source in Chile:
“The Jackalopian tradition of two-faced masks, called ahnye akammaro, can be expressed in two forms: as a double-headed mask, ilma isseksee, with two masks attached to each other, side-by-side, or as one mask, kwil zirrikam-ku, with one face on the inside of the mask against the face of the wearer, and the other on the outside, visible to others. The double-headed mask is most often worn by two people moving in tandem, walking and dancing as a team, sometimes in a costume that gives the illusion of a common body with only four limbs. This type of mask can also be worn by one person with some kind of harness braced to support the effigy of a second person. The effigy can be elaborate and realistic, or simplified and gestural, or small and doll-like.”
“We can translate ahnye akammaro as “chaos and entropy”, but that is only because this is a frequent practice for jackalopes when they refer to things paired as a [sic] dualities. Cats and dogs, men and women, good and evil, black and white, capitalism and communism, existence and nonexistence – all these things become chaos and entropy. Jackalopes enjoy this reminder that dualities are artificial categories that create unnecessary oppositions, and that the use of the word “versus” should be abandoned.
I have been told by two people that the actual literal translation of ahnye akammaro is “grasping the useless spark”. I have no reason to distrust the words of either person, but they requested to be anonymous in this essay.”
Excerpts are credited to “Liesel Birna Dallasguo, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos”.
We don’t use AI to create the images on this blog. By the word “we”, I mean Wm. Yost, Alice Aroumbeyski and myself.* By the acronym “AI”, I mean Artificial Intelligence. When you see that phrase or that acronym, you might want to remember that the “A” comes first, because “artificial” is the most significant word in that term. (The “Intelligence” part is debatable. Really, it is debated constantly by professionals in the field, your social media friends, your mother and your dog.) In this instance (and like all instances, it is destined to be brief and inconsequential), artificial means “fake” and “machine-made” and “with none of the masterly skills of an art forger who has made a lucrative career by flummoxing the experts”. Artificial also might mean “with none of the fun, drama, mystery, frustration and joy of human creativity, and certainly none of The Agony and the Ecstasy“.
Today’s images are two variations (I can’t decide which color is my favorite) of a mask not published during the eleven year run of Geranium Lake Properties. I have been rummaging through the GLP archives, keeping an eye out for Alice Aroumbeyski’s work, and so far I have assembled a small yet spectacular collection of unpublished masks designs, which I hope to share with you in my upcoming posts.
* In some worlds, two of these three people may be considered fictional, but so what? If you have given even a passing glance at the various philosophies and psychologies of self-identity, you have probably realized that everyone is a protagonist in their own illusory narrative. Which is just another way of saying that we all are our own fictional characters.
If I tried to write a short essay about how the pandemic changed my life, and my views on life, I might begin it like this:
“The pandemic, and the goddess Fortuna, compelled me into unemployment and then into early retirement.”
I edited out the word “forced” from that statement and replaced it with “compelled” but either statement would be no less true than the other. I think “forced” indicates a situation in which I had no choice, while “compelled” implies that there were other choices I could have made. And indeed there were other choices, but they were…
oppressive.
That really is the best word for it.
According to Google Translate, the word arinnirleya (which I think is a lovely word, it sounds like a name you would give to your daughter) is an Inultaru word that means “oppressor” or “nuisance”. Which might cause you to think that jackalopes would never, or rarely, give that name to their daughters. Yet it is the name of a magnificent fairy creature in a book: Queen Arinnirleya of the Wild Weird Clime by Chanthlyn Solutorris (Chatterton & Peck, 1907).
The above image is half of the mandala form for this mask of Queen Arrinirleya. The whole mandala could not fit on the coloring book page, so you will need to print out two halves.
Masks of Queen Arrinirleya do not always feature her fabulous third eye, but Alice prefers to include it in her designs, as an eye or a peacock feather, or as a shape where the eye, as an option, can be painted or attached.
I assume that most fans of Geranium Lake Properties identify this series with the labels L-Bough, Elbow or The Story of L, because those names are slightly easier to pronounce (and spell) than Lettristes. Or maybe that’s just my reason, because of my inability to correctly pronounce French, which I believe is genetic.
Today let us consider the problem of angels in the beliefs of the Inultaru. The problem might be that jackalopes do not believe in angels as existential entities, i.e. persons. Or the problem might be a matter of grammar.
The problem might be the word demalion.
English speakers are familiar with the word demalion when it is stuck on the back end of the word tatter, which means, as a noun, a person dressed in ragged (or tattered) clothing. The tatter part of tatterdemalion is fairly self-evident. It is the demalion part that stumps people. The best guess is that it might come from the French word maillot, for a kind of lightweight shirt or undershirt, like a jersey.
In the language of jackalopes, the word demalion can be translated as “like an angel” or “like a tortoise”. The literal translation of malion is “tortoise”, but malion cannot be translated as “angel”, although an angel can be called a demalion.
A demalion can be any one of the various spirits, ghosts, demons, demigods, household gods, creators and demiurges that make up the pantheon of Jackalopian animism. You might try to imagine Jackalopian animism as a creative writing exercise for atheists. You need characters with substantial personalities to make a good story, but the story has only the realness of literature, like a prose poem version of the universe. Like fishermen spinning a yarn, Jackalopes give personhood to various aspects of the universe for the sake of a better narrative.
(I have seen people defining a demalion as a supernatural being, but that is a crappy definition because jackalopes are not enthralled with the term supernatural. To them, there is no feasible reason why anything in the universe should be more than natural.)
Which brings us back to the problem of Jackalopian disbelief in angels. Angels are not entities to jackalopes because angels do not appear as persons in the Abrahamic religions. (Jackalopes do not even recognize the word angel as a valid noun.) Like the rest of us, jackalopes will sometimes identify themselves according to what they do. I will say, “I am an artist.” Jack Loki will say, “I am a bryologist*.” Alice Aroumbeyski’s business card will identify her as “Alice Cordelia Morisk-Rorifer Aroumbeyski, Vizardwright” (Alice’s legal name refers to ancestors of both her mother and her father, but she dislikes the name Zlessim because of her personal history with an uncle, a story we will not be telling here). However, my occupation as an artist, and Alice’s occupation as a vizardwright, are not who we are. Being is not doing. Angels have no being, they are only doing, and they only do God’s will. These messengers of God are regarded by jackalopes as verbs, or maybe an action clause. Or at most, they might be considered the more vigorous appendages of God. There is a popular, and rather rude, tradition among jackalopes that God sent the angel Gabriel and the Holy Ghost to impregnate the mother of his son, because He was lacking that one essential appendage a male needs for procreation.
*A Slightly Later Edit: Jack Loki identifies himself as a bryologist during the course of Geranium Lake Properties, and yes, I am aware that he also identifies as a lichenologist. Plus several other identities and/or occupations.
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.
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:
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.
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.
I would like to address the erroneous notion that this panel somehow depicts the extinction of Polyphylla elutus, a type of June bug, in the fires of Burning Man. Come on, people! This GLP comic was published more than a month before Yost’s first encounter* with the Burning Man event in late August, 1991.
Polyphylla elutus is more commonly known as the Asinnuya or Salty Salt Ghost Beetle, although I don’t know if one should say that it is commonly known at all, since it is a rare little beast. It is closely related to the Death Valley June beetle, and its native habitat was a type of grass known as Uyashegara that grew only in a few places near the playa in the Black Rock Desert. People recently noticed (in a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, August 2019) that the Uyashegara grass has seemingly disappeared, along with the Salty Salt Ghost Beetle. It is not certain if the two species are now extinct; the beetle had been barely studied, and the grass not at all.
Yost became familiar with the playa landscape in both the wet and the dry seasons during visits to his Aunt Rhy as a boy. The woman Yost knew as Rhy MacChesney was born as Baliye Casutti in a repressive society governed by an authoritarian Fascistic regime that was not the United States. Yost’s father had accidently helped her escape to America before Yost was born. His aid had been mostly inadvertent and rather involuntary, yet Ralph Yost still felt partly responsible for her situation, so he helped her forge a new (and illegal) identity as his half-sister.
The woman became Rhy MacChesney, widow of a fictitious husband she would sometimes call “my dear Herbert” or “my dear Hank”. She disappeared into the wilds of the American West for many years, but one summer when Yost was six years old, she resumed contact with Yost’s father. She wrote him a letter bragging that she was now a “wealthy woman of property” and he should visit her and bring his family. She had somehow acquired the deeds to a ghost town and an old sulfur/opal mine, and she was living near the playa in an abandoned house, which she called “a quaint Victorian fixer-upper”.
Above is the face of a Salty Salt Ghost Beetle interpreted as a mask by Alice Aroumbeyski, then adapted as a part of a composition for a stained glass window. Aroumbeyski’s greatest fame as an artist was built on her designs for stained glass, masks, tattoos and printed fabrics.
*Yost’s first Burning Man experience was a positive one, but in subsequent years the joys of the event sharply declined. He attended a total of four festivals over five years, until his last Burning Man in 1996, which he described as “mostly tedious, occasionally horrific”.
Another mask designed by Alice Aroumbeyski. Since that day when I kinda promised I would share more examples of Alice’s creations, they have been jumping out at me as I browse the GLP archives. This mask represents Yasuylottee Byatsin, who is somewhat like the Green Man for the Moss Folk. Except he is not gendered as a male, nor a female, but as a lovely combination of both, as befits a deity of the plant kingdoms. Most English-speaking people use the male pronouns when talking about him, because of his apparent resemblance to the Green Man. The Moss People do not have gendered pronouns in their language; they actually have only one pronoun, ilku, and its plural, ilko.
The season of straw and lichen, imeekokonnamye, is the long, lingering end of summer that stretches into fall. It has nothing to do with wearing straw hats (instead of felt), a season that traditionally ends on Labor Day.
Vraicking 