Two Miles High

Precious Bodily Fluids

The Code Duello and Shakespeare's London

Elizabethan England owed some of its newfound civilized behavior to Italian (and a few Spanish) fencing instructors. In Italy and Spain, nobles already had the right to carry weapons, and this had fostered a sense of responsibility and a sense of honor. They no longer had to settle scores by

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

'The Confidence Man'

Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade was published on April Fools' Day in 1857 and unless you are fascinated by Melville, it's utterly unreadable. But it's my favorite. The setting is the Fidèle, a Mississippi steamboat, in an era when a boat or railroad

Alice's Mirrors

'The Conjurer'

London’s celebrity art world was rocked by controversy in 1775. The glamorous Angelica Kauffman, whose self-portrait is shown above, had arrived in London a decade earlier, shortly after Casanova’s misadventures there. Like La Charpillon, she was born in Switzerland and already had a professional career as a painter

The Whore's Revenge

The Count of Saint Germain

The Count of Saint Germain was in London in 1760 and it was there he lost the Elixir of Life to the courtesan la Charpillon, or so the theory goes. Casanova encountered the Count later that year in Switzerland and learned what had happened. Casanova determined to prise it from

Alice's Mirrors

The Courtesan and the Libertine

This naked, reclining woman shown below could be Nell Gwyn, the mistress of Charles II. Or not… Nowadays, art historians alternate between her and the King’s earlier mistress, Barbara Villiers, shown above, who had several children by the King. You be the judge. Is it the same woman? This

The House of Incest

House of Incest

The use of incest in the title is metaphorical. The actual story is a study of narcissism.

Loki's Children

The Cult of the Goddess

The most striking thing about the Norse and Germanic goddesses is that they disappeared for a millennium, from the onset of the Christian era until the late 20th century. Why do they appear so infrequently in European art and literature, when there are so many paintings of Aphrodite and Venus

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

The Cult of the Virgin Mary

To paraphrase Voltaire, if the Virgin Mary had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent her, to compensate for Christianity’s male bias. Her house - shown above - was "found" at Ephesus, Turkey (Efes in Turkish) late in the 19th century, but it's

Sacred Prostitute

'The Da Vinci Code'

The Da Vinci Code had its home in Cathar country. With Dan Brown’s runaway bestseller, Mary’s legend spread far and abroad, begetting new pilgrimages to Paris and beyond, both secular and religious. In the West, Mary became a metaphor for the modern spiritual woman in search of herself

Oz is China

The Dainty China Country

In L. Frank Baum's original novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, there is a chapter called “The Dainty China Country.” When it begins, Dorothy Gale and friends have encountered a Great Wall of China. Sitting on top, they are surprised to see a country of shining white, a

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

The Dark Madonnas

There are hundreds of Dark Madonnas (Virgin Marys) all over Catholic Europe, from Portugal to Poland, and a debate rages to this day about why they are so clearly Black. Some see them as echoes of a pre-Christian and pagan era, as if she is an incarnation of the Egyptian

The Age of Consent

'The Dead Lovers'

So much for love beyond the grave. So much for Adam and Eve. The late Renaissance German painters were not sentimentalists; they were moralists. This extraordinary oil painting is Les amants trépassés (also known as The Deceased Lovers, The Dead Lovers, and even The Rotting Pair), associated with an unknown

Beauty & the Beast

'The Death of Hyacinth'

Who needs women anyway? Below is The Death of Hyacinthos, by French painter Jean Broc in 1801. The god Apollo cradles the dying Hyacinth, who has been struck fatally by the discus at their feet. Apollo had thrown it but it was blown off course by Zephyr, the god of

Splendour in the Grass

The Death of Shelley

Shelley was drowned off Viareggio in 1822 when his boat went down. If I may quote an excellent article in The Guardian: "By 1889 Louis Fournier's celebrated painting "The Cremation of Shelley", showed a miraculously undamaged corpse offered up to Heaven on a martyr'

Alice's Mirrors

The Death of Tchaikovsky

Aside from the mysterious death of Jesus Christ, or Rasputin perhaps, it's hard to think of another figure whose death has been so controversial or so colorful. Whether it was an accidental death from cholera, or suicide via arsenic, theories abound. Tchaikovsky's homosexuality and his supposed

The Judgment of Paris

The Devil

The Devil only emerged as a strong character in his own right in the late medieval period - the late 1300's or early 1400's in northern Italy when he took on a garish appearance. (He has his own lineage separate from Satan; for another image here.

Poison Pen Letters

The Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson

It is curious to think that in 1926, only 7 months before Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days, the famous evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared in Los Angeles for 35 days. Was it a trend? Born in Canada, McPherson based herself in Los Angeles from 1918. Her fame spread rapidly,

Poison Pen Letters

The Disappearance of Margaret Mead

American Anthropologist Margaret Mead went through a similar evolution to Christie but there’s more sex, more anthropology and less mystery. Born in 1901 she married her first husband (there were three) in 1923 after a lengthy engagement. It was all over by 1927 and the divorce was finalized in

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

The Divine Elevator

If religious architecture evokes the pathway to and from Heaven, or down to Hell, there are lots of stories and paintings about it too: Jacob's Ladder, angels visiting earth (Genesis 28), praying monks climbing a ladder toward Jesus and the light (here), distant clouds in the sky seen

Letters from Africa

The DNA Wars

The past is indeed an unknown country. A frenzy developed after 2000 in the now current vogue for DNA analysis in ancestry-tracing. It reached a low point with DNA testing of the Beta Israel and we still see articles like this: "Are Ethiopian Jews descendants of the ancient Israelites?

Alice's Mirrors

'The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife'

Sex between humans and other species obviously occurs. There’s simply too much evidence. In 2013, Scientific American stated: "DNA analyses find that early Homo sapiens mated with other human species and hint that such interbreeding played a key role in the triumph of our kind." But most

The House of Incest

The Electra Complex

According to Freud, a girl child identifies early on with the father but around age five she realizes she doesn’t have a penis, which creates a “castration complex.” So she is forced to identify herself with her mother and, symbolically speaking, attempts to seduce her father. The castration complex

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

'The Emerald Tablet'

The Emerald Tablet (or Tabula Smaragdina) is the alchemists' Bible and, brief though it is, it is allusive and magical. No wonder it inspired medieval alchemists... I will tell you a thing that is without falsehood and most certain. That which is above is like that which is below,

Oz is China

The Empress CiXi

Empress Dowager CiXi in a photo (above) and in a painting (below) began as a concubine and rose to control the Chinese government for almost 50 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. CiXi was popularly known as the "West Empress Dowager" (西太后) because she lived inside

The Woman in the Bower

The English Rose

The rose became the floral symbol of England with the marriage in 1236 of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, who was associated with the Golden Rose of Provence. From this rose was derived the red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of