# faustianfriday 1880s 1980s rooster spirits lucky witches


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The plot of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” revolves around the initiation into the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, seen from Tamino’s point of view. Mozart was a member of the Viennese Masonic lodge and died shortly after the debut performance.

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2022-06-11

Those Underworld Can-Can Dancers (not typed that before!) include Samantha Hughes, who was one of the dancers at the start of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Cutting from the Bexhill Observer 30.6.1984. I met a Thuggee once... 2.2.1887.

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2022-06-10

Bath's Theatre Royal has a ghost butterfly. The 1948 Christmas pantomime was butterfly themed with dancers in butterfly costumes, when a real (unseasonal) butterfly fluttered across the stage. This ghostly butterfly has appeared almost every Christmas since...

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2022-06-10

In East Asia there is a type of black magic conducted by women that is known in China as 'gu' and in Japan as 'kodoku.' It involves sealing several venomous insects (eg. scorpion, centipede) in a jar & allowing them to kill each other until only one survives.

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2022-06-03

< As detection & technology increased in efficiency, prospective poisoners needed to understand how poisons worked & have the ability to develop logical crimes. Some slipped their chosen toxins into food; others committed their crimes over tea… >

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2022-06-03

In Greek mythology it was said that poisonous wolfsbane (aconite) fell from the saliva of the three-headed dog Cerberus. Its name reflects its original use as poisoned wolf bait. It was also used to poison people and was associated with witchcraft.

🎨William Blake

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2022-06-03

Western civilization is no longer Faustian. It is Saturnian.

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2022-06-02

In Finland the jackdaws who lived in the church towers were seen as the omens of death. If the bird landed on roof of the house, it meant that somebody living in the house would die.

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2022-05-28

"Jesus said to him, 'Assuredly, I say to you that this night, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.'" St. Peter's betrayal of Jesus was foreshadowed by the crowing of a "Prophetic Animals"

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2022-05-27

A witch is spotted in the shape of a hare sucking her neighbor's cows dry 🐇
"The hare started off at a brisk pace, squirting up the milk she had sucked from her mouth and nostrils, and the dogs making after her rapidly."

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2022-05-27

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!" (TS. Eliot)

🎨 Dappermouth

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2022-05-27

"Then did his animals think the time had come to speak unto him.

“O Zarathustra,” said they, “now hast thou lain thus for seven days with heavy eyes: wilt thou not set thyself again upon thy feet? Step out of thy cave: the world waiteth for thee as a garden"

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2022-05-27

In the Korean legend “Sageumgap” the crow appears as a divine harbinger delivering the message that the king is about to be killed, saving his life. After this, the king designated an Ogiil (Crow Commemoration Day), observed with a ritual offering sticky rice.

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2022-05-27

Dogs scratching holes in the earth was looked upon by country folk as grave digging, & t'was believed that a neighbourhood death would soon follow. So great was the belief in this omen, that many would follow a dog to fill up the holes it had made.

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2022-05-27

In Wales premonitions of death included the Deryn Corph or Corpse Bird which might hover around a house or tap on the window of the room where a sick person lay, it sometimes called out “dewch, dewch!" (Come, come!).

🖼️: via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

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2022-05-27


Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance
–W B Yeats, The Cat and the Moon.

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2022-05-27

In one version, the Wolf tricks Little Red Riding Hood into eating and drinking part of her grandmother by preparing it like regular meat and wine in the kitchen. A talking cat warns the girl what she's truly eating, but Red Riding Hood ignores the warning.

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2022-05-27

Revamping my Top 10 Mythology (Special Mention)



(14) FAUSTIAN

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it"

An entry for legendary deals with the devil, whether made at crossroads or otherwise

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2022-05-25

Donating your body to science could be involuntary. In late-18thC & 19thC Britain, “resurrectionists” or body snatching grave robbers illegally stole cadavers from graves for “anatomists” in medical schools & hospitals for a fee -medicine was never dull 😱

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2022-05-21

Medicinal preparations using bats asserts that bat’s blood can call evil can allow people to see in the dark, can make one invisible, make you in card games & gives the power “to do anything.”

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2022-05-21