Lady Fenneca, True North

14” x 21”, collage, acrylic, oil pastel

  • Lady Fenneca is the current Chair of the International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS)—the official global agency that manages and monitors direction (up, down, left, right, here, there, over there, etc.).

    One of Lady Fenneca’s many duties is to select the representatives of the four Cardinal Directions: North, East, South, West. You thought they were just directions? No, direction is arbitrary and thus it must be carefully managed otherwise it’ll go wherever it wants. The fact that there is an East, let alone that you are able to move in an easterly direction, is due to the diligence of the Cardinal of the East. If the Cardinal of the East fell asleep, for instance, everything East of you? Gone. No more East.

    Lady Fenneca awarded the Cardinal directions to four of her closest colleagues: North to the Monkey Queen, South to the Trouser Trout, East to her Red Aunt, and West to the Elephigeon—each the Deputy of their Direction.

    Lady Fenneca is also the incarnation of True North, aka the North Pole. Since the North Pole is currently under a 10-foot-thick layer of shifting ice in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, Lady Fenneca manages True North from an ITRS Station, a submarine base that hovers in the frigid water column at a depth of approximately 2,000 meters, anchored to the Pole site on the bottom. Lady Fenneca lives and works with her lifelong friend and assistant a small mushroom named Kim. Kim says, HI!

    The ITRS Station was the site of the Cardinals’ first Directional Orientation Session.

    “I am always True North,” Lady Fenneca explained to her four gentle Cardinals, “and thus I am the foundation of your frame of reference. Wherever you see me, you are seeing True North. Whenever you call for me—and I will always be able to hear you—my response will come from the True North, and that is how you will know where you are.”

    They all nodded indicating they understood. Directional Orientation could begin. It wasn’t long, however, before the first Directional Orientation lesson descended into chaos. Everyone forgot the Direction they were assigned and all assumed that they were South.

    “I’m South!” screamed The Monkey Queen.

    “You can’t!” bellowed the Red Aunt, “because it’s me the ant!”

    “I’m South!” cried the Elephigeon.

    “I live south of the very surface you all live upon,” the Trouser Trout declared, “Trout is South!” The Trout was, of course, the only one who was correct, but he didn’t know that.

    Lady Fenneca recognized the cause of the problem immediately: if she is North, anyone facing her must be South of her. Lady Fenneca apologized and politely asked the four Cardinals to get out of their seats and rearrange themselves in their Cardinal positions around her. But no matter where Lady Fenneca’s gentle Cardinals stood, they were always facing her and thus South of her.

    “I’m looking right at her,” screamed the Monkey Queen, “so it would follow that I am South!”

    “Oh dear,” Lady Fenneca sighed…

    Hopefully the Sun can find its way to its proper setting on today’s Winter Solstice.

Centaur Witch 2

21” x 24”, collage, acrylic, oil pastel

  • Another ancient Centaur Witch rock carving has been discovered in a remote Siberian cave known for hosting shamanic activity. We don’t know much about the witch in this carving because, like all Centaur Witches, she resides in another dimension, one that is similar to—or even the same—as the one inhabited by the Green Man of psychedelic lore. For centuries, people who have ingested large doses of tryptamines (such as psilocybin or DMT) have reported encountering a mysterious Green Man, or even a group of Green Men, during their journeys through the realms of inner space. The Centaur Witches seem to occupy similar psychic territory in that they, too, have only been encountered by subjects under the influence of tryptamines. And while it’s easy for us to pass these experiences off as hallucinations, or chemically-induced madness, they have been a part of the historical record since the dawn of humanity and those who have experienced them insist these Green Men, these Witches, these otherworldly creatures are very real, autonomous beings that exist in some form, dimension, somehow, somewhere, somewhen.

    While we don’t know specific details about this witch, there is much we can infer from her image (reimagined and restored, above, by an artist to what we imagine was its brightly pigmented, near-original state when it was carved at the end of the last Ice Age—the carving in its current condition can be seen below). Some centaur witches aren’t true centaurs, in fact most come in a variety of shapes and sizes that are not technically centaur. Very few are fully equipped with a complete humanoid torso and a statuesque equine body, the majority have compositions that, while dualistic, are a little less tidy. This one, for instance, appears to have some sort of equine body with four legs for its lower half, but it’s obscured by a dress, or a kilt—meaning, it probably isn’t pretty. I’ve read depictions that describe many of the witches are born “inside out,” with their organs on the outside, held together with sinewy tendons and sheaths of mucus-lined fascia. There’s a reason the Centaur Witches have terrified anyone who has come into contact with them: they’re terrifying to behold.

    The recently discovered ancient rock carving of a Centaur Witch outside a cave in Siberia is the source for the artist’s reproduction above. The Centaur is facing to the right, its tail to the left, and you can just make out the teeth of the goat-jaw bone at the bottom right with the stick extending up and to the left.

    One thing we do know about this witch is that she is playing the classic Centaur Witch game of Pazuzu. I have to assume all Centaur Witches play it since we have yet to encounter an illustration or text that doesn’t include Pazuzu in some way. Do they ever stop playing Pazuzu?

    There was a wonderful description of Pazuzu rules and gameplay in the first research paper I coauthored on the subject and I think a summary of it here would be beneficial: ...

    To read more about Centaur Witches, click here.

Dos Islas, Thrig and Tefl

18” x 23”, collage, acrylic, oil pastel

  • Abstract from a recent academic article, “The Dacchanalian Dossier,” that details Dacchus’ exile on Tefl and Thrig Islands:

    Dacchus could easily hop from island to island, but he chose to spend the majority of his time on Tefl. The giant rock was far from comfortable for sitting/standing/sleeping due to its pyramidal shape, but it was otherwise a paradise compared to Thrig Island, which continually endured a thunderous buffeting of gale force winds. Dacchus got used to the uncomfortable, but fair, Tefl Island and spent hundreds of years alone there with the sea, its winds, its storms, and its creatures (we briefly investigate claims that he was Shakespeare’s inspiration for Prospero).

    One day a horse skull with an acorn in its jaw washed up on Tefl’s shore. Dacchus had the brilliant idea to use the two castaways to seed the inhospitable Thrig Island. He hopped across the channel, buried the acorn in a stone depression at the highest point on Thrig, placed the horse skull over the hole, performed some Dach Magic over the arrangement (spells and powders provided by Alnilam’s Scarlet Daughters), and, a number of years later, Thrig Island was covered by a massive, verdant oak forest that sheltered a mighty herd of majestic equines who would become the ancestors of unicorns, kelpies, hippogriffs, pegasuses, and centaurs (one of those centaur descendants was, Plato C. Biscuits, Dacchus’ closest friend and guide).

    A land bridge eventually connected the islands and, over the course of millions of years, the two islands merged into one island that we suggest may have been the site of the ancient city of Atlantis.

Red Bear Captures Space Honey

22” x 29”, collage, acrylic, oil pastel

  • The ancient papyrus scrolls may shed light on a mysterious Germanic/Celt tribe that have long been thought ancestors of the mysterious Berserker warriors of Norse culture. Before the discovery of these texts we have known little to nothing about a fearsome Germanic tribe known as the Harii. The only mention of them previous was a brief passage by Tacitus in his work, Germania:

    “As for the Harii, quite apart from their strength, which exceeds that of the other tribes I have just listed, they pander to their innate savagery by skill and timing: with black shields and painted bodies, they choose dark nights to fight, and by means of terror and shadow of a ghostly army they cause panic, since no enemy can bear a sight so unexpected and hellish; in every battle the eyes are the first to be conquered.”

    This was the only extant description of the Harii until 2022 when this recent collection of scrolls was discovered during renovation, hidden inside the walls of the St. Catherine monastery in the Sinai Desert, Egypt. While much of this unique and fragile cache (dated to c. 111 BCE) is still being carefully examined, scanned, and deciphered, some of the better-preserved specimens have been published and nearly a dozen feature the writing of a virtually unknown Roman historian named Dedrater Epicanius.

    Prior to this discovery Epicanius was only known from a few sparse references by Plutarch and Sabo. These are the first texts we’ve ever encountered authored by Epicanius, and a small, but significant portion of them are dedicated to the Germani and, in particular, the Harii. While Epicanius may have traveled to the region himself, it is more likely his accounts of the Harii are based on interviews with traders and soldiers who had ventured beyond the Rhine and Danube borders as well as with Germani mercenaries in Rome.

    Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Epicanius’s texts is his assertion that the Harii were indeed a bear cult practicing ritual sacrifice of bears and worshipping honey—much like the later Berserkers. The Harii insisted that their sacred elixir, or “Space Honey” (Spazo Honiig) as they called it, is delivered to them by their ancestors, the Star Bears, a race of bear-like creatures that live on a planet that orbits a star, called Dubhe, in the Ursa Major constellation (aka the Big Dipper—Dubhe is the junction of the top and side of the bowl). Epicanius describes the elaborate rituals the Harii perform to acquire the Space Honey.

    Their quest begins when the tribe captures a bear cub, a practice they undertake every few years, and then raise it in the village alongside their children as one of their own.

    “The captive cub was treated as an honored guest in the Harii village and everyone had to be nice to the bear. The women would even proffer their breasts for the little cub to suckle. Nearly every day the villagers would stage elaborate performances designed to amuse the bear: the men would wrestle, the women would race dogs, they would pour water on each other and slap their bare buttocks with sticks, boys would dance in circles with pans tied to their penises, all conducted in an effort to entertain the bear and make it happy before it was sacrificed and sent on its journey to its ancestral land in the sky. The hope was that the little bear would deliver the Harii’s message: more Space Honey, please.”

    One moon cycle after the bear’s sacrifice, the Harii would then perform another elaborate ceremony that was said to be a reenactment of the delivery of their beloved Space Honey. Epicanius wrote: …

    To read the complete Red Bear story, click here.