And so I come ever closer to my final episode of the Search for the Panther serial essay. That said, we already found the panther…Joseph’s father, a soldier in Egypt and Israel. The only thing left is to discuss the purpose of the Virgin Birth Myth, though it has been alluded to in prior essays. But! Before that, I will present yet another virgin birth story, one both humorous and, possibly, somewhat disturbing.  Meet…

…Alcmene, a mortal woman. She had a pretty good pedigree, being the daughter of King Electryon, and granddaughter of Perseus and Andromeda. Perseus was the one who beheaded Medusa. Alcmene was known for her height and for being the most beautiful woman in the whole universe, human or goddess. Hesiod described her as…shapely-ankled. In ancient Greece, men found women’s ankles sexually arousing. I suppose it’s like a foot-fetish if you didn’t go far enough down the leg. Oddly enough, an ankle-fetish is fairly common, and may be seen in the ankle-strap found on high heels, as well as ankle bracelets. Still, ankles don’t smell nearly as bad feet. Hesiod also said that…

 She surpassed all women in beauty and in height; and in wisdom none could compete with her…from those whom mortal women bore by intercourse with mortal men. Her face and her dark eyes possessed such charm as comes from golden Aphrodite. And she so honored her husband in her heart as none of womankind did before her. 

 Hesiod, Shield of Heracles, Chapter 1. She was married to…

…Amphitryon, who accidentally killed his father-in-law, Alcmene’s dad; sure, you kill a king by accident. Oops! As a result, Electryon’s brother Sthenelus drove him and Alcmene from Mycenae, so Amphitryon and Alcemene sought refuge in Thebes, a city in Egypt. Alcmene told Amphitryon that that she wouldn’t marry him until he avenged the death of her brothers. Alcmene had a large number of brothers…Stratobates; Gorgophonus; Phylonomus; Celaeneus; Amphimachus; Lysinomus; Chirimachus; Anactor; and Archelaus. Electryon, as king of Mycenea, refused to allow the six sons of Pterelaus, king of the Taphians, to have a share of his kingdom. As result, the sons of Pterlaus killed all of the Mycenean princes, and Alcmene was intent on revenge. And so Amphitryon, prior to marrying Alcmene, led a campaign against the murderers of Alcmene’s brothers.

So why is all this important? Perhaps it’s not…but! When Amphitryon was away avenging Alcmene’s brothers as a requirement for marrying Alcmene, a strange thing happened. Ah, yes! Horny old Zeus! He became obsessed with Alcmene’s great beauty, and decided that he would take advantage of her by adopting the appearance of Amphitryon. Alcmene was hesitant to believe that he was Amphitryon, Zeus nonetheless convinced her that he was, in fact, her betrothed. The result? Alcmene conceived the great hero Heracles, known as Hercules to the Romans. Thus, Heracles was the son of the greatest god in the Greek world…Zeus, whom the Romans called Jupiter, or Jove. Heracles was Alcmene’s first son, conceived by Zeus before she consummated her marriage to Amphitryon. One version of the story states that Alcmene was a virgin, and yet another states that she was pregnant before being driven out of Mycenae. So we have parallels to the Virgin Birth myth…

1.    A virgin woman is impregnated by the greatest of the gods

2.    Amphitryon and Alcmene were driven out of their land as a result of persecution, while Alcmene was pregnant (or when arriving in Thebes)

3.    They sought refuge in Egypt

4.    Heracles, the son of the god Zeus, was born

5.    Heracles would go on to perform miraculous deeds, and his name would echo through the millennia, and, as Hercules, there is probably nobody in the modern western world who hasn’t heard his name.

This theme of shapeshifting on the part of Zeus also appears in the story of Alexander the Great, where he disguises himself as a snake to impregnate Olympias prior to her marriage to Philip II, something I’ve discussed in previous essays. The result was the birth of Alexander the Great, who, just like Hercules, went on to perform Herculean-type miracles...by human standards. And, of course, you would be hard pressed to find someone doesn’t recognize his name, putting Alexander the Great, Hercules, and Jesus of Nazareth on the same plane as far as being born of a virgin, wonderworkers, and with names forever etched into the human mind. And it is interesting to note a similarity between paintings of Alcmene and Zeus and those of Olympias and Zeus…

In both paintings, there is someone peering in as Zeus makes love to Olympias in one instance (right), and Alcmene in the other (left). In both, we see the snake…obviously in the image of Zeus and Olympias, but note the Caduceus next to Asclepius. This theme is also found in the Arthurian legends…

…Uther Pendragon, who seems to be somewhat of a…

…Peeping Tom, becomes obsessed with Igraine, wife of Gorlois…the Duke of Cornwall. While Gorlois is busy fighting a battle, Merlin changes Uther’s appearance to that of Gorlois. He then makes love to Igraine, resulting in Igraine’s conceiving King Arthur. In the above prints, Garlois argues with Igraine; Uther meets Igraine under the guise of a knight named Pellas; Gorlois sneaks up to see Igraine with Uther; and then, following the death of Gorlois, Uther comforts Igraine. However, it was bittersweet as far as Uther was concerned. Merlin would only perform the miracle if Uther promised to give him the child which resulted from this Great Act of Adultery. In this story, one may see a very important theme…validation. Igraine was the mother of Arthur. The problem? Igraine was married to Gorlois at the time she became pregnant by Uther. So this should make Arthur a bastard, i.e. an illegitimate child. However, history is not kind to this type of men, and in order to save his reputation, the Igraine-Gorlois-Uther myth was created. The same was true of the Mary-Joseph-Jesus myth, and probably the Aclmene-Zeus-Heracles.

And it’s time for a very strange story that will leave most people giggling, if they’re immature that is. Or, they may be horrified and disgusted. Still! Meet…

…Danae…a gal who wasn’t big on wearing clothes all the time. She was the only child of King Acrisius of Argos. Danae’s father had no male heir to succeed him on the throne. He consulted the Pythia, a great prophetess and oracle of Delphi. And it was a double whammy. First, Acrsius would not father a son. But…good news…his daughter would! But! Bad news…it was prophesied that his grandson would kill him. Some people just can’t win. The reaction of Acrisius was somewhat predictable…he would make sure that his daughter remained childless…that is, well, he made a good effort at it. He built a bronze chamber under the palace. It had no doors or windows, but it did have a sky-light to allow light and air to enter the chamber. In some depictions, the event is placed outside, in a regular bedroom, and even…

…at the gate or in a jail cell. However, these adaptations are not the original story. We must go into the underground bronze chamber if we are to get the full story. And one must say that Acrisius never saw what was coming. Zeus, the Viagra King, had been running around looking for new conquests, that being his favorite pastime.

Ok, the swan thing involved Leda, Queen of Sparta, but the idea is the same. Zeus did not even spare…

…a young boy named Ganymede, who he kidnapped and raped. If all of this wasn’t bad enough, one day Zeus up and decided that he wanted to marry his mother, Rhea. Shocked, she refused. What did Zeus do? Yes, he raped her.

But in this account, Zeus just so happens to notice…Danae…stuck in her bronze pit. As we all have come to expect, Zeus wanted to have sex with her. Now you might think that the most powerful god in the universe could simply appear in the chamber. But if you thought that, you are wrong. Simply entering this strange chamber wasn’t on. So he found another way to get to Danae…

…and no, those aren’t gold coins, and Danae did not get lucky at the casino. Zeus entered the chamber in the form of a Golden Shower. A Golden Shower? Ok, here we go…

Well, that’s out of the way...though not for long. It’s too bad that Danae didn’t have a Golden Umbrella. But it was definitely Zeus who sent the Golden Shower…

And it is interesting to note that in this famous painting…

…there’s a shower curtain. And it would seem that Zeus is a pretty good shot…

Bullseye! Right-On-The-Money-Zeus, although in some instances, he got a little help…

 Oh come on! Make him work for it! And he certainly could make it rain…

…a lot. A Golden Storm? As the old saying goes…you only borrow beer. What is a little strange is that although a golden shower is a way of getting a gal pregnant, it doesn’t seem to involve any actual intercourse, so I’m not sure why Zeus didn’t look for someone else. But! This Golden Rain was so precious, it couldn’t be allowed to go down the bathroom drain…

If you were an advertiser like me, then you might take a crack at a little bit of tongue-in-cheek art when attempting to get people to buy your menopause pills…

Still, this element is very strange, seeing how the golden rain was Zeus himself…Liquid God…meaning that parts of him would be lying around in buckets. Even stranger, if Danae actually…

…swallowed it, then Zeus would not be whole again until Danae made her own golden rain to add to the bucket. This illustration seems to suggest…

…Urolagnia. Ah! But can it be that Zeus’s Golden Shower is what the modern usage of the word would suggest? We may indeed have an answer! At least, a good parallel.

One of the most disturbing stories from Greek mythology is that of Venus and her son Cupid…

Mom and son kissing and making out in the nude can only lead to trouble. And it certainly did, with Cupid’s friends joining in the action…

I wonder what’s under here! Cool!

Oh, boy! I’m a big kid now!

As if we need an arrow pointing to the Gold-Coin-Money-Zone.

Surely, if we were a painter who found this as amusing as a tenth grader, or a middle-aged adult would, it could only get worse…

There’s nothing like a good close-up view. And Cupid had some naughty friends…

Hey, guys, check those out! Yes, and this, in turn, could only lead to…

A good spanking for being naughty. I hope for Cupid’s sake that isn’t a rose-branch. So yes, we have another fetish…let’s add spanking to the ankle-obsession, and quite possibly, the disturbing fetish alluded to earlier. Now I can’t help thinking that Venus is being a little hypocritical here. So, she, in turn…

…gets spanked by her naked son.

Why bring up all of this stuff about Venus and Cupid? After all, I started with Zeus of the Golden Shower and Danae, the One Who Wants A Different Bucket. Now many people will say that it couldn’t be that Zeus peed on Danae, it’s only golden water, not a Golden Shower. Surely, the Greeks wouldn’t go that far! Oh really? We had spanking, but that’s a pretty common fetish. We must go back to Venus and Cupid…

That’s right! Mom might spank you, and you might spank her…but it would be so much better if you urinated on her! So here we have an answer to the Zeus-Alcmene question. If Cupid can pee on Venus, then Zeus can pee on Danae. And peeing on Venus isn’t such a bad thing…

You have to look very closely to see it. And if you were really gutsy, you might even…

…urinate on the helmet of the God of War. Good luck, kiddo…you’re on your own. And if you were peeing on the helmet of the God of War, you just might find another little kid intensely watching the action. No one could fault me for proudly showing the sooper-dooper and sooper-mature images I made …

Ok, Darla helped a little. And this leads to an even more bizarre element. If you we’re a scientist or a physician, you might study and analyze…

…urine samples. We’ve all heard of the Wheel of Fortune, but have you heard of the…

…Wheel of Urine? Your friend gives you their urine in a glass specimen cup. Then you shake it up until you get a good color, checking it against the Wheel of Urine. Then you’ll know what horrible disease your friend has. It’s probably urological. But you can certainly do better than that. Gastromancy, also known as ventriloquism, is the means of divination by interpreting the sounds your stomach makes. And you can even interpret…

…in the same way…just ask Benjamin Franklin. But the study of urine led the rise of humanity’s greatest oracles…

…the Piss Prophet! Or, you could go and talk to Cupid and Venus. And that’s a strange thing to be, and I must say that I am highly tempted to attend the Piss-Pot lectures. If you chose to stick to science you could be…

…a Piss Doctor. In the modern age, we can use urine to find out whether you’re…

…pregnant. But in earlier days they could do this too…in a very strange way…

So here, a woman finds out that she is pregnant, which she’s not supposed to be. How do you read the results of the old-fashioned urine test for pregnancy?

…a tiny, tiny baby appears in the sample. How does the Pisse Prophet arrive at his diagnosis? Some compare the color of the urine to the Wheel of Urine. But is that the only way? It can be somewhat worse, especially if Dr. Cameron’s involved. He was a pisse-pot prophet who could use a simple urine sample to diagnose everything. It’s too bad that he turned out to be a quack. A patient had a friend take a urine sample to Dr. Cameron, who he believed to be a fraud…

The doctor tasted the urine, and concluded that the sufferer was in a bad way, but could be cured. By asking questions about the age of the patient, how hard he worked (lots of heavy loads) and whether he was a drinker (a pail of water twice a day), Cameron diagnosed a bad back, at which point the friend revealed that the urine was from his donkey.

I wonder if donkey urine tastes as bad as human urine. And there is no doubt that urine can be weaponized. We’ve all heard of…

…Socrates, history’s greatest philosopher, who originated the idea of…dialectic…coming to the truth by a give-and-take debate with someone. So did Socrates become a philosopher because he was smart? Or did he become a philosopher for some other reason? Well, it may well be that the latter is true. He married Xanthippe, a woman who could be called by many epithets…fishwife…battle-axe…harpy…hag…shrew, and many others. She is often portrayed as domineering, argumentative, and over-bearing…

Xanthippe not only used an imaginary whip and the sharpness of her tongue. Angry one day, she decided to teach Socrates a lesson…

Poor Socrates! A Piss Prophet, indeed! His wife emptied her chamber-pot on him, an event that proved to be enduing in art. So yes! Xanthippe gave Socrates a Golden Shower…she imaginatively peed on her husband. So why did Socrates become a philosopher?

The best of philosophers become philosophers to escape their horrible wives. So it would be better not to marry. Except, you wouldn’t become a philosopher. And! We owe so much to Xanthippe! Socrates is a key character in the development of the human intellect. How stoopid we wood all bee if Xanthippe waz nicer. And for Socrates, and we now know why, he gave us a catch 22 on the subject of marriage…

Oh, well. I guess you just can’t win. I think it should be pointed out that Socrates and Xantippe’s gave us yet another fetish…

…B&D…which you can’t deny if your wife, wearing only stockings and carrying a whip, rides you around the house. And we can’t have S&M yet, since de Sade is still aways away. As odd as it seems, this fetish was popular among I-Have-To-Get-Away-From-My-Wife philosophers.

Ah, yes…Aristotle. And Phyllis took a page from Xanthippe’s playbook…

Yes…Phyllis rides Aristotle. Who was Phyllis? It’s a cautionary tale in which a mistress of Philip II of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, triumphs over Aristotle, who was Alexander’s tutor. This story was so popular that it made its way into…

…carvings in all manner of materials. It was popular in…

…in paintings. It is also to be found in…

…illuminated manuscripts. No one would forget…

…statuettes, or…

   …stained glass. And it never hurts to give the story…

 …a more modern twist. So there seems to be a strange intersection involving philosophy, kinky things, and urine. Who would have thought it? Well, you know what they say about truth.

And now for the worst part. Good dental hygiene is very important. And, at the present, there are a myriad of mouthwash brands available to those want to keep their mouth clean and healthy. But what about the ancient world? How important preventative care was! After all, the only thing that could be done with a bad tooth was to yank it. It hardly needs saying that one thing that is expected from mouthwash is fresh breath, though Listerine is somewhat medicieny. Ah, yes…the Romans. They too had mouthwash…

…they gargled with urine, called Portuguese Urine in some sources. There developed a lucrative urine-mouthwash import industry, one so lucrative that Nero levied a tax on the importation of urine known as the Vectigal Urinae. The Roman poet…

…Catullus wrote that… 

Now you're a Celtiberian: and in the Celtiberian land early in the morning they piss and scrub their teeth and pinky gums with it, so that the higher the polish on your teeth, the more it proclaims that you have drunk your piss.

C. Valerius Catullus, Carmina, Poem 39.

Nero taxed urine? Or did he urinate on taxes? He taxed it indeed, but he wasn’t the only one. Following Nero’s suicide, four men, in quick succession, claimed the Imperial Purple. However, Vespasian came out on top. And he was always looking to make a quick buck…

He levied a tax on the use of Rome’s public restrooms, essentially creating history’s first pay toilets. When he was confronted by his son and successor Titus, he famously declared…money doesn’t stink. And that’s true, but…

…urine does, something that the Toilet Businessman…

…Thomas Crapper knew quite well. Talk about a shitty product! Still, you could say that Mr. Crapper was number 1 at number 2. However, one might rightly question how anyone could think that urine would make your breath smell fresher than it was before?

…very true. And no other example would be better than…

…Henry IV, king of France. Yes! A man known for so many interesting things! Having survived several attempts to assassinate him, he found himself, nonetheless, assassinated. He was also famous for being one of the stinkiest French kings, seeing how he rarely bathed, something that his grandson, Louis XIV, took to an even higher rancid level. But, Henry IV was also known for being quite amorous. He didn’t let being a powerful, Defender of Catholicism get in the way of his philandering. So he liked sex with different women. And he had reached a very strange conclusion to the problem of fresh breath during intimacy. Mouthwash? No. Toothpaste? No. Urine? No. Eat something fruity…like cherries? No.

…Henry IV thought it would help his lovemaking if he chewed raw garlic first. So I wonder whether urine or raw garlic leaves the worst taste in your mouth. Smoking leaves your breath somewhat offensive. So what would be really helpful is…

…the ability to smoke and freshen your breath at the same. Still, Listerine Cigarettes were an improvement on…

…after smoking radioactive cigarettes, you can freshen your mouth with radioactive toothpaste. If you were really daring, or remarkably stupid, you could use…

…radioactive suppositories and radioactive condoms. Maybe just live in a Uranium reactor. Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

But in finally concluding a very strange discussion of a bunch of very strange, to put it lightly, things, and keeping with the Golden Shower Zeus and the Hapless Danae, I conferred with the doll manufacturing industry in order to prove that…

…Betsy Wetsy takes the cake. She cries tears from her eyes, snot runs out of her nose, and she pees like a champ. And what else could a mother ask for than a doll that leaks, from every orifice, all over the house?

It’s strange how things tend to repeat themselves. Some imagery must live on and on. What of Danae and the child of Zeus? His name was Perseus, and thus Danae’s father came face-to-face with the prophetic outcome he had feared so much…no son, but a grandson who would kill him. However, he couldn’t bring himself to kill them, so he put the two in a big chest, and threw them into the sea…

As luck would have it, they were found by an old…

…fisherman who lived on the island of Seriphos. However, his brother, Polydectes, was king, and he developed a somewhat unfriendly relationship with the Danae and her son, though initially, things weren’t so bad…

A young Perseus resolved to bring the head of Medusa to Polydectes.

It was an epic battle to be sure, but we all know that Perseus defeated Medusa, the only mortal Gorgon. So he brought the head of Medusa back to Seriphos, like he promised. It is obvious that the first part of the Danae-Perseus story is very much like…

Moses, Jochebed, Miriam, and Pharoah’s unnamed daughter. But unfortunately for Polydectes and his inner circle…

This wasn’t exactly how Polydectes planned on this playing out. Still, Perseus would go onto use the Gorgon’s head as an unfair advantage in many of his adventures. But there was one prophecy that needed to be fulfilled. Unfortunately for Acrisius, Danae and Perseus returned to Argolis. Fortunately, he had travelled to Larissa for a funeral. Unfortunately, Acrisus didn’t know that Perseus was there. Fortunately, Perseus didn’t know Acrisus was there. But that didn’t matter. Perseus decided to compete in the funerary games. He hurled the discus, seeking to win by throwing it the furthest distance. And so it was that it flew off into the crowed, hitting Acrisus in the head. And thus did Perseus kill his grandfather. It was just a round about way of doing it.

One last virgin-birth oriented tale is worth a quick look…

…Neith. Quite possibly the earliest known proto-Egyptian deity, whose worship lasted for millennia. She was the first goddess, who came into existence by an act of self-generation…autogenes. In Gnostic theology, the entity named Barbelo is described as autogenes, She Who Generates Herself, i.e. the Virgin Mary, in the Apocalypse of Adam. But Neith was not just a self-created deity. She also bore children: Sobek; Ra; Apep; Tutu; and Serket. And yes…

…Tutu is an unfortunate name, and he didn’t take a great picture either. I’d rather be Sobek instead. Anyway, in the later period of Egyptian religion, she was paired with Ptah-Nun; Khnum; and Set. However, in the old Egyptian religion, she was not paired with a consort, and in some texts she brags that no one had ever lifted her dress…she never engaged in sexual activity. It’s also interesting that Neith was also a war goddess, since Athena remained a virgin and was a powerful goddess of war. The image of Neith as a warrior goddess has popular in pop culture…

Neith shows that a virgin goddess can also procreate, but as far as this goes, without sexual activity, and, to Venus’s chagrin, not allowing anyone to peek under her dress.

A virgin goddess who is yet a very fearsome one is a familiar theme….

Yes, our lady of victory. You can make it plural, but that does not break the connection with the events at…

…Lepanto. The Venetians had established a colony on the island of Cyprus. Muslim Turks had laid siege to the colony. The siege ended after Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha assured the Venetians that they would leave the colony unharmed. However, once they surrendered, Pasha promptly imprisoned the Venetians. The commanders were beheaded, and Marco Antonio Bragadin was skinned alive. Pasha hung the skinned body of Bragadin and the heads of the commanders on the bow of his ship. Pope Pius V put together a broad coalition of Catholic states to attack the Turks. This happened on October 7, 1571, and took the form of a massive naval battle.

Pasha had Bragadin’s skin stuffed with straw, attached Marco’s military insignia, and drug it around the streets of the former colony at Cyprus. Originally, Bragadin’s skin was sent to Turkish Constantinople, and then eventually made its way to…

…Santi Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice. A bust was placed above an urn containing Bragadin’s skin (above left). I don’t know how he managed to not be canonized and made a saint. The claim is worth questioning, or so I think, since the same claim was made about the Roman Emperor Valerian, which would appear to be apocryphal. But who else was present at Lepanto?

O Virgin most powerful, loving helper of the Christian people. How great thanks do we not owe thee for the assistance thou didst give our fathers, who, when they were threatened by the Turkish Infidels at Lepanto, invoked thy maternal help by the devout recitation of thy Rosary! From heaven thou didst see their deadly peril; Thou didst hear the voices imploring thy compassion; And their humble prayers, enjoined by the great Pope, St. Pius V, were acceptable unto thee; and thou camest quickly to deliver them.

And beat flat to the ground the pride of those wretched men, who in their insolence blaspheme Almighty God, and would destroy His Church, against which, according to the infallible words of Christ, the gates of hell shall never prevail. Let it be seen once more, that when thou dost arise to protect the Church, her victory is sure. Amen.

We might expect Michael the Archangel…a military angel if there ever was one. No, this is Mary, and with all her love and tenderness, she is not adverse to taking the field against the infidels.

A slight digression, but one that will soon be anything but that, involves the purported fate of Marco Antonio Bragadin. The apostle Bartholomew is also said to have been flayed alive, and a rather gruesome iconography…

…became standard. Yes, the Apostle Bartholomew holding his flayed skin, being shown in mid peel. Of course, modern people tend to find this rather revolting. So the iconography has been cleaned up a bit, showing only…

…Bartholomew holding the flaying knife. It is a very strange thing. What is? That the skin of Marco Antonio Bragadin, who was not a saint, became a relic. And though there are relics of St. Bartholomew, including his…

…skull in Pisa; his skull cap in Frankfurt; an unspecified bone in St. Bartholomew’s Basilica in Benevento, Italy; and a whole…

…red bathtub full of bones, I can find no credible claim as to what became of the skin of the great Apostle. They weren’t the only people to suffer such a gruesome end. No, it’s a theme found repeatedly in human, or perhaps I should say…inhuman, history.

John Vlachos of Crete (Daskalogiannis); Saint Dionysius the Philosopher; Moisi Golemi; and Imadeddin Nasimi. We must not forget…

 …John Ratcliffe; Krokideilos Kladas; Stephen I of Iberia; and Saint Theodore of Vrsac.

…Francesco Zirano; Yahu-ibdi of Hamath; Sisamnes of Persia; and Rabbi Akiva. Also…

……Saint Charalambos; Saint Herculanus; the prophet Mani, and the widely beloved brilliant Neo-Platonist philospher and mathemetician named Hypatia, who was flayed alive by a rampaging mob of Christian monks.

…Peter Basile, who fired the shot that killed King Richard I, Jo-Ed Edwards (by the KKK in 1964, most likely apocryphal) and Vlad II Dracula, whose face was skinned before he was buried alive. And the latter’s son, Vlad III the Impaler, was known to have the feet of criminals skinned, salted, and then had them licked by goats.

Vla-a-a-a-a-a-d! Sorry about that. One of the most bloodthirsty empires known to history was the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and they were known to punish rebels…

…by skinning them alive. And the subject even appears in the Divine World as well…

In Greek mythology, Marsyas made the mistake of challenging Apollo to a music contest, firmly believing that he could outdo the great god. He, of course, lost. His punishment? Being flayed alive, with his skin being nailed to a sacred tree. In Aztec mythology, the god Xipe Totec flayed himself alive as part of the story of creation. Surely only primitive people, and a few sadistic, more modern people, would have taken a morbid fascination with human skin. We more modern people could have no such interest in the truly macabre matter of human skin. Is that so? Time for a digression that will seek to answer this question. But, of course, we must go to a rather dark place.