One must ask…what about religious books? For Muslims, no book is more sacred than the Koran. The John G. White Collection at the Cleveland Public Library supposedly holds a Koran covered in human skin. The book was purchased from W. Heffer, a well-known Cambridge dealer in oriental and European books. Heffer claimed that the skin originally belonged to the West Arab leader…

…Bushiri ibn Salim, who revolted against his German allies. Heffer claimed that the story had been authenticated by a Professor Wilson of Cambridge. And what about Christianity? For many Christians, the Bible is the Holiest of Holy Books…

Now although it may well be a hoax, this picture purports to be an image of an 1848 Bible that was re-bound in human skin, and has a value of $3,200. Whatever. As I’m sure you know, one may bring up the Latin Pocket Bible, produced during the years 1240-1255. Yes! BnF, Western Manuscripts, Latin 16,265!

It would be gauche to not cite the position taken by the Abbe Rive, i.e. that the pages aren’t vellum…they’re made from the skin of a woman.

What about the Chinese? Well, they too need a…

…New Testament in their native tongue. According to the story about this book (actual book shown), there is an inscription stating…Previously owned by Robert C.V Meyers of West Philadelphia. This book is from China and bound in human skin.

Prayer books are important too, and it’s really cool when you can connect a…

…morbid prayerbook with the French Revolution, there apparently being no end to the amount of human skin on hand to make bindings in Radical France. The book in question is…L’Office de l’Eglise en Francois. It contains all manner of things for Catholic rituals, and the text is dated to 1671. Yes, the Great Big French Party started much later than it. The story holds that the 1671 text was later rebound, when the Great Big French Party was well-underway. And so why not be morbid? The binding is supposedly that of a priest executed by guillotine.

In my research, I find numerous odd, strange, and bizarre things. Especially when it comes to books. So I would make a passing reference to…

…right! Francesco Morosini, the Duke of Venice (1619-1694). He liked his prayers, but he also seems to have had a considerable amount of paranoia, either rightly so, or not so rightly so…but if, in fact, everyone is out to get you, then you’re not paranoid. And it does seem strange, but I’ll take a shot at it…

Yes! Prayers can be deadly! When the book is closed, and the string is pulled, anyone standing in front of you…dies. Talk about biting the bullet, and it comes in very handy when you find yourself in the middle of a Library Combat Zone.

There have been many great Christian writers. The 22nd edition of…

…Life of Jesus, by Ernst Renan. There was a volume floating around that makes Renan’s book not just spiritually edifying, it also makes the point that skin for skin books can come from anywhere…

The twenty-second edition of Renan's Life of Jesus was bound at Nantes about 1906 in human skin and was known to have been in the possession of an unidentified Parisian collector sorne fifteen years ago, but its present whereabouts is unknown. The skin was allegedly taken from the armpit of an anonymous woman who had died in the Hôtel-Dieu of Nantes shortly before the binding was executed.

So the book was bound in the skin from the armpit of an unnamed woman who died in the Hotel-Dieu in Nantes. So this could be the smelliest skin book in history.

In the mid-15th century, Thomas A Kempis wrote a special Christian devotional book. It was written in church Latin, and was called…

.…De Imitatione Christ…The Imitation of Christ.  It is composed of four small books. Devotional? Yes…but Kempis focused on imitating Christ inwardly, not outwardly. The Latin version of the book was written in the Netherlands, sometime during the years 1415-1428. The book was an overnight sensation, and went through 745 editions by the middle of the seventeenth century, running in second place to the Bible itself. Currently, there are more than 2,000 editions in existence. Book 1 is Helpful Counsels of the Spiritual Life; Book 2 is Directives for the Interior Life; Book 3 is On the Interior Consolation; and Book 4 is On the Blessed Sacrament. The book’s appearance heralded a renewal of apostolic Christian virtues among the clergy and in monastery life, sorely needed in the church at the time. Over the centuries is has been widely adopted by individuals seeking their inward renewal. With someone manuscripts, and so many editions, it is probably comes as no surprise that a copy showed up in Leonard Smithers book shop in London.

And now for another good story. This one involves a book-cover made for the following work…

…The History of Christianity. In 1893, University of Denver’s Iliff School of Theology received a bizarre donation, provided by a Methodist minister. He received the book, or so the story goes, from the family of…

…David Morgan, famous, or infamous, for killing Native Americans. The book came with a cover that was made from the skin of a Lenape (Delaware) Indian murdered by Morgan. It was a proud possession of the Iliff library for 80 years…

…and it was…

…apparently, somewhat amusing. This stopped in 1974, when a group of students and Lenape leaders demanded the removal of the book. The cover was turned over to Arapaho Sundancers who took it to the Wind River Indian Reservation, where it was buried. If this story were true, one would rightly feel aghast that a book about the history of the Christian faith would be covered by the grizzly trophy of a murderer. Apparently, for some at any rate, the faith of Christ isn’t for all people, though He certainly said it was.

In 1599, a book was published called…

The Full Redemption of Mankind by the Death and Blood of Christ Jesus (actual book shown). The author was Thomas Bilson, and he sought to show that the Calvinist interpretation of Hell as exclusion from God was itself excluded because Christ’s descent into Hell after his death can only refer to an actual place. At some point in the history of this volume, the book was bound in human skin.

In 1926, another skin book was revealed to the world in Oklahoma…of all places. The book referenced is…

A Synopsis of Theological Disputations…Which theologians?

I thought I’d show who this group of theologians in Leiden was: Johann Polyander, Andreas Revitus, Antoninus Walaeus, and Anthony Thysius…a bunch of pickle-pusses. Apparently, this book also got a human skin binding. A brief look is worth taking at…

Rare books are hard to find. Good pics of rare books are even rarer to find. This is the Aurora Alegre del dichoso dia de la Gracia Maria Santissima Digna Madre de Dios. …Joyful Dawn of the Blessed Day of Gracious Mary Most Holy, Worthy Mother God. The book was written by Fr. Francisco Antonio de Vereo and printed by Joseph Bernardo de Hogal. Nuestra Senora de Tepapan, a manifestation of the Virgin Mary, appears to have been a bait-and-switch game whereby the original mother goddess…

…Tonantzin was not-so-subtly replaced with Mary. The book purports to detail 30 days of the Virgin Mary’s life, and is associated with the mystic visions of …

…Saint Mary of Agreda, who became one of Christianity’s Wax Mannequins. This particular volume was recently offered for sale for $16,000. And it comes complete with its own human-skin binding. Then there’s…

…Manuale de Praeparatione ad Mortem...A Manual for Preparing to Die…by Martin Moller. The source for the existence of a copy of the book bound in human skin derives from the noted traveler and bibliophile…

…Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach. While he was traveling and looking for books, he also purchased a bunch of stuffed human skins from somewhere. As far as Moller’s book is concerned…

We also saw a little duodecimo, Molleri manual praeperationis ad mortem. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it, and couldn’t understand why it was here until you read in that it was bound in human leather. This unusual binding, the like of which I had never before seen, seemed especially well adapted to this book, dedicated to more meditation about death. You would take for pig skin.”

Medieval France was a pretty hard place to be if you weren’t Catholic. Most French people were, but was a small minority of protestants in France known as the Huguenots, who practiced a form of Calvinism. Although a minority, they were able to get one of themselves made king…King Henry IV, who died at the hands of an assassin.  Essentially, Henry decided to renounce Calvinism, and weakly maintain that he was an Errant Catholic who returned to the Mother Church. Nonetheless, he implemented reforms that made life a little easier for the Huguenots. This didn’t go over well with many Catholics, and it lead inevitably to his assassination. A French Jesuit named Louis Richeome pretty much hated Huguenots. He was a prolific writer, and one of the books he wrote is…

…L'idolatrie huguenote, The Huguenot Idolatry (1607). He a rather mind-boggeling attempt to argue that Protestants were idol worshippers, and given the vast number of holy relics and cults of thousands of saints, it was a tough sell. It didn’t take long for Calvinist minister…

…Jean Bansilion, to write L’idolatrie Papistique…The Catholic Idolatry. I know you are but what am I? A strange version of Richeome’s appeared in the Library of the University of Memphis…

…one that was believed to bound in human skin. At one point in time the book was tested and declared to be bound in human skin. A recent test is cited in favor of the belief that it isn’t. The book at UML was treated as the library’s greatest treasure. And it came with a cool backstory. The book had mysteriously appeared in an antiquarian bookshop in Paris, sometime during the late 1940s – 1950s. Then a rich Memphis cotton merchant, named Berry Brooks, bought the book after being assured that the book was indeed bound in human skin. After the death of Brooks in 1976, and the Burk’s Book Store in Memphis purchased the book. Diana Crump, owner of Burke’s Book Store, then, following the first test of the binding, one which affirmed that it was human skin, the book was published by the library. But who’s skin was it? Here, yet again, we find the Huguenot vs. Catholic nonsense. One rumor states that the skin came from a persecuted Huguenot, who donated his skin as an act of his piousness.  yet another rumor holds that the skin is from a pious Catholic who wished to further desecrate the Huguenot tradition.

So who doesn’t like a good brawl? I know I do, and so does Darla, especially if the combantants are theologians. And in the year 1519, there was, in fact such a brawl, though something more like a handicap tag-team match. It’s great to win, but it isn’t when you then proceed to lose. Always pick your fights carefully, and never with two guys at the same time. And something is destinctly noticeable. This is …

…Andreas Karlstadt. Next comes…

…Johann Eck. And finally…

…Martin Luther. Ding! Ding! Ding! Let the match begin. And it is readily apparent that none of these guys took a good picture.  Eck was Catholic, and Luther and Andreas were Protestants. Eck took it upon himself to challenge Luther’s …

…95 Theses. With a few bangs of the hammer, a chain of events would be triggered that led to a complete break between Catholicism and the new Protestantism. What set Luther off?

Yes, indulgences. And although a theological WTF moment, it should be said that they were a pretty good deal. If you paid enough money, or did something really nice, you were given a piece of paper as a receipt. And this receipt meant, assuming you’ve been naughty, you would spend less time in purgatory. I had to buy a hundred of these for Darla. Indulgences would go on to be a serious issue for Luther and his new friends…

…Satan selling indulgences. And Johann Eck, who strenuously opposed Luther, attacked the 95 Theses, and led a counter-reformation…at least, an attempt at one. Following Eck’s criticism of Luther’s theses, Karlstadt felt compelled to challenge Eck to a Theological Duel….with the main subjects being free will and grace.  Initially, the resulting disputation did not really touch on the subject of indulgences. But at some point in the proceedings, Eck invited Luther to attend, seeing how it was his teachings that kicked the whole thing off. Luther agreed, and then opened the disputation to cover such weighty subjects as the actual existence of Purgatory, indulgences, penance, papal authority, and even…the burning of heretics. Thankfully for me, Luther was against the practice, and so I dodged the stake one more time. But oh how quickly I reneged on my vows to the Order of the Knights Templar when Philip of France came to steal my wallet. Eck beat Karlstadt, but many felt that Luther beat Eck, though no official pronouncement about this was made. But Eck helped move the reformation along when he trapped Luther into denying the authority of the pope. Of course, it was a only a matter of time before Pope Leo X excommunicated the wayward monk. “Good riddance!” said Leo; “Good riddance!” said Luther. But the reformation and counter-reformation began in earnest, bringing out some heavyweights on both sides…

…Jacob van Hoogstraten…Jerome Emser…Pope Julius III…and Ignatius of Loyola on the Catholic side, and…

…Desiderius Erasmus…Philip Melanchthon…Matin Bucer…and John Calvin, on the Protestant side. Oh, I almost forgot…Goofy Pope Leo X…

…another guy who took a bad picture. But! Who would hate a Medici Pope who had a…

…a pet elephant named…Hanno? He was a bribe, along with a cheetah, leopards, parrots, dogs, and a Persian horse sent by Manuel I, king of Portugal. Too bad he didn’t send a Jack Ass too. Hanno’s bones were found buried in a Vatican courtyard. Cause of death? Yes! He was given a Golden Enema, the literal flip side, or at least the opposite end, or so one might think, of Danae and Zeus. Still, Hanno received the most expensive enema in history.

The debate involving Eck, Luther and Karlstadt became famous indeed, going down in history as the…

…Leipzig Debate.

So how is all of this relevant to the matter at hand? I’m glad you asked. It comes as no surprise that…

…a book, or rather…books were written about this famous disputation. Enter an unknown Baptist church in Cambridge…March 13, 1925. An eclectic display of antiques and such was held for the public. This included books, many of which were, naturally enough, of a religious nature. One stood out from the crowd…

So, of course, we have another book bound in human skin. The Native American skull is a bit puzzling. However, it does remind me of a very strange thing…

 I myself once owned a dried Indian head won from a Pan-American pilot in a poker game in Oaxaca a few years back…

I suppose you can bet anything. I’ll see your call and raise you…a human head. One might wonder why a Pan-American pilot was flying around with a dried human dead in his pocket. But don’t ask me, I fly Southwest. Still, you need playing cards to play poker…

The Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 was a happy hunting ground for the devotees of articles from anthropodermic leather. Besides a pack of forty playing cards allegedly made of human leather and taken by the U.S. army as loot from an Indian tribe…

Strange, indeed. However, it may be a variation on a theme… 

On the end of a spear? Or a lance? Wouldn’t that reduce the penetration-force of the weapon? Ah, yes. The same mistake made in the novel version of The Exorcist…corrected in the movie…allowing Pazuzu to assume his rightful place.

Strange, indeed. However, it may be a variation on a theme. Of course, this isn’t the only book about religion unfortunately mired in contention and divisiveness. This takes us to…

…Scrutinium Scripturarum, by Paul of Santa Maria, formerly known as Solomon ha-Levi. Solomon was a Jew, a Talmudic scholar and a student of the Rabbical tradition, and quite wealthy. He went to Burgos, and was there baptized a Christian, adopting the name Paul of Santa Maria. He claimed that it was reading the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas that prompted his conversion, though others have suggested far less noble reasons, perhaps linked to the significant importance he came to hold. Paul supported the forced conversion of Jews, and if that didn’t work, to humiliate and impoverish them. There is, in a basic sense, some parallels between Solomon and Saul, who in the New Testament, had been zealous Talmudic Rabbi, who converted to Christianity and demanded that the Jews likewise convert. Enter…

…Otto Vollbehr, a bibliophile who amassed a phenomenal collection, stated that Paul’s book was bound in human skin, though Thompson, not so inclined to credit Vollbehr’s claim, suggested that… it might be weIl for Govemment anatomists to check the binding for vestigal remnants of human hair and correlate their findings with Dr. Vollbehr's dossier. If the leather of the Scrutinium scriptuarum at the Library of Congress is actually of human origin, it is in a form that is a convincing imitation of pig skin.

Now it is a good time to discuss…

Your enemy and mine! To know him is to…hate him. We might call him the flip side of religion. Certainly, many religious people in Germany backed him, and, in the end, regretted it. But he does bear mentioning at this point. As we all know, Hitler’s Mein Kampf became the Nazi Bible. You can probably guess that copies of Hitler’s opus were supposedly bound in the skin of concentration camp victims. A lousy book it was, though Germans kept a copy in a gute Stube (a neat and tidy front room). It was, of course, unread. The claim was also made that copies were actually being printed at Buchenwald, where skin was plentiful. Another story, and a far more satisfying one, states that Maurice Hamonneau had a copy of Mein Kampf bound in skunk fur…

Ein skunk? Ein skunk! What happened to gute Stube?

An attempt was made to connect…

…Ilse Koch, the Bitch of Buchenwald not only to the infamous skin lampshade, but also the use of murdered inmates for binding books, most likely…Mein Kampf. But the claim was also made that Ilse had a Koch family album bound with the skin of a Buchenwald prison named Jean. Such a supposed human-skin photo album appeared in 2020. The book was given to the Auschwitz Memorial Museum, who declared its authenticity. Independent examination should be carried out on this book, and it’s very strange that it was found in an antique market. She was also accused of making lampshades out of prisoners’ skin. However, the American investigators admitted during Koch’s trial that the lampshade shown as an item on the famous Buchenwald Artifact Table…

…was not the lampshade investigators supposedly found in Koch’s house. The lampshade proved to be goatskin, and then it completely disappeared, and as a result, it was not entered into evidence. Very few would come to Isle Koch’s aid, but at least two men did…

…American General Lucius D Clay, military governor of the American Occupation Zone following the defeat of the Nazis (left), and SS Judge and lawyer Georg Konrad Morgan. At the end of Koch’s trial, she was given a sentence of life in imprison. However, Clay stepped in and changed the sentence from life imprisonment to four years. Why?

"There was absolutely no evidence in the trial transcript, other than she was a rather loathsome creature, that would support the death sentence. I suppose I received more abuse for that than for anything else I did in Germany. Some reporter had called her the "Bitch of Buchenwald," had written that she had lamp shades made of human skin in her house. And that was introduced in court, where it was absolutely proven that the lamp shades were made out of goat skin."

Georg Karl Conrad was a top SS investigator and judge. Later, he was a lawyer. He was originally sent to Buchenwald to investigate alleged murders of inmates by the commandant…

Karl Otto Koch, Ilse’s husband.  But then a whole slew of allegations arose including theft, extortion, corruption, fraud, embezzlement, and drunkenness. His behavior may have been aggravated by the fact that he suffered from syphilis. He was arrested, tried, convicted, and then executed. His body was burn in the incinerator at Buchenwald. Conrad indicated that he had investigated Ilse as well, for about eight months. Like Clay would, he dismissed the charges, stemming from complaints made by the inmates, that Ilse had used the skin of dead prisoners to, among other things, make lampshades. During Koch’s trial, an Buchenwald inmate named Herbert Froboess testified that he had actually seen the Koch’s photo album with a tattoo on the cover. He claimed to have the known the inmate who had this tattoo. One might ask how a prisoner would have the Koch family photo album which, no doubt, was kept in the Koch home, and not circulated among the camp inmates. A pathologist named Sir Bernard Spilsbury stated that there was evidence to support this. However, any and all lampshades said to have been made of human skin were nowhere to be found, and the one lampshade they did find turned out to be made of goat skin. Ilse was not liked by the SS investigators, there being widespread rumors that she engaged in sexual activity with numerous men, including SS officers and Buchenwald inmates. If true, this would go beyond what one may expect given her husband had syphilis, and rumors that circulated that her husband was really a homosexual. It was also said that although…

…Hermann Goering showed up in conquered countries with a shopping list of pieces of art he wanted to steal and take back to his hunting lodge, he nonetheless made books out of human skin.

Magic, anyone?

Trinum Magicum, by Caesar Longinus, published in 1673…a strange book on magic said to be bound in human skin. But let’s not move on from magic just yet…witches perform magic, so they are relevant here. In 1927, it was said that a skin-book that was…the first printed book on witchcraft. No title is given, of course. That said, there are two plausible candidates…ut what about philosophy? Are we dealing exclusively in theological terms? By no means. A strange book is…

…Fortalitium Fidei…The Fortress of the Fate, whose main targets are really Jews and Muslims. The work was first published in 1471. Or, it could be a reference to the much more well known and infamous…

…Malleus Maleficarum…Hammer of Witches. A book by a psychopath for psychopaths…torture and kill in the name of the Lord, as an act of love and righteousness. Of course, this book set off waves of false accusations and gave the Inquisition what it needed to turn on the Christian meat-grinder. And it is rather strange, because the book was really a vengeful act of an emotionally disturbed priest. In 1485, Helena Scheuberin went on trial for witchcraft, two years before the hammer fell. The author…

Heinrich Kramer was involving himself in this case. The local bishop expelled Kramer for being “senile and crazy” not long after the investigation belonged. But the bishop noted something odd Mr. Hammer…he seemed obsessed with Helena’s sexual habits. Ah, yes! Of course! Christians and sex. Kramer wasn’t really interested in Helena for being accused of witchery, she was after all acquittal, he wanted to hear tales of sex…a man not cut out for celibacy. Kramer was hurt and angry, and so he lashed out at woman under the pretense that he was protecting Christ’s church…by labelling women as witches. So without this sexually frustrated crazy and senile male, the Hammer may have never fallen. But it took papal action to set the whole thing in motion. And that was obtained…from one of the biggest dimwits in papal history…

…the quite guilty Innocent VIII. He hated to work, admitted to fathering who knows how many illegitimate children, gave papal funds to his son and daughter, drank blood believing it was a transfusion, and, as the image to the far left shows, became an obese glutton. However, he became sick and lost much of his body weight, and as he lay dying, a wetnurse was sent to him so that he could be breastfed. He is one of the biggest embarrassments in the history of the papacy, and Kramer couldn’t have had a better pope to go along with his plans than Pope Guilty VIII.

Religion, theology, and magic…sure. But what about…spiritism? That’s a sort-of religion and a sort-of magic, all at the same time. Much of spiritism is based on the need to find out what the future holds for us, something that the world’s major religions can’t provide.  And there are so many ways to learn about the future.

Crystal balls are good, and there’s the old stand-bys…Ouija board and Tarot cards.  Then there’s…

…spirit trumpets, astrology, and tasseography, i.e. the art of reading tea leaves…

…the obligatory séance, which just so happens to be suitable for children ages 7 to14. One must not forget…

…Automatic Writing…you take dictation from the spirits, perhaps the good ones, or maybe even…the bad ones. Tea leaves? There is another edible thing that can be used to tell the future, and it’s one that set in motion a chain of events leading to the death of many innocent people…

…the Salem Witch Trials. A very complicated case, one involving property disputes and girls who suddenly found themselves having far too much power. But, the whole thing appears to have started because of…

…a Venus Glass, essentially a jar of hot water with an egg added. Then you read…whatever…and conclude…whatever. It was shortly after using the Venus Glass that Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams began behaving in a bizarre manner. Now a Venus Glass is a silly thing involving hot water and an egg, and something one might expect silly little puritan girls to play with. The adults, however, took this kind of thing with deadly seriousness. One is tempted to postulate that the girls were afraid that they would get into trouble for fortune-telling, and decided to head this off by acting as if others were afflicting them with witchcraft. So I will make my eggs sunny-side up, tell Darla to put away her Venus Glass, and look for something else the puritans would have hated even more.

Certainly nothing’s more likely to tell you what will happen than…

…boardwalk fortune telling machines, such as Alexander, who’s pretty great, the Bearded Lady, Confucius, or the Great Nokanduski (No can-do-ski). Are these real? Hmm. But one must not stop with these guys. So…

…Zultan, the Mystick Mirror, Zoltar, and Zelda. Also…

…Sofia, and three other guys. And…

…the Amazing Karnak, an unnamed oracle, Merlin, and the Medicine Man.

…another gipsy, though spelled incorrectly, Princess Doraldina, Madam Isis; and Buddha.

Also, Puss in Boots, Cato, the Mystic Swami, Cartomante, and…hmm. The Great Epyttnelis? Who can pronounce that? It’s seems that it might be Silent Type, backwards of course, and is meant as a contradiction…The Great Silent Type Speaks. At any rate, it would appear that someone wasn’t too pleased with what the Silent Type had to say, so they smashed the glass. There is, of course…

…Esmeralda, Cassandra, Brigid, Sabrina, and Yellow Sorcerer. Some even…

…speak. Perhaps it would just be easier to…

…stuff your grandmother into a cabinet and let her tell the future. It would seem rather strange to ask…

…the Devil…

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

John 8:44. So he’s not the most reliable of guys, and you can bet that what he tells you is something you don’t want to hear. I’ll stick with grandma. If you prefer something flashier…edgier, then you could go with…

…necromancy, a tried and untrue way of obtaining important information from the Dearly Departed. I will stick to two examples, namely the Witch of Endor and the Greek witch known as Erictho. There is no end to the portrayal of Samuel being raised from the dead…

And this story was very popular in the Middle Ages…

And so we also find something that the puritans, who so eagerly murdered people at Salem, not realizing that the whole thing started with an egg in a jar of water, would really hate…

…the Witch of Thessaly, who went by the name of Erictho. And here we have a very remarkable parallel story. By way comparison, Erictho is described, in Pharsalia, as a dreadfully horrible entity. This is not the case with the Witch of Endor. Erictho is, among other things, a necromancer. During the Roman civil war, Sextus Pompey, son of Pompey the Great, found himself in trouble militarily. Wanting to know the outcome of the coming battle, he went to Erictho, who raised a dead soldier to prophesy. The response from this ghost about the upcoming Battle of Pharsalus, the decisive battle in the civil war, was not encouraging. When the battle was fought, Pompey was resoundingly defeated. In the book of Samuel, King Saul is about to engage in battle with the Philistines. Wanting a message from God about the outcome of the battle, he seeks out a necromancer, and thus the Witch of Endor steps to the fore. She raises Samuel from the dead, and empowered to speak, Samuel tells Saul that he will lose the battle, and that David, an ally of the Philistine king, would reign over Israel.

So both stories are essentially the same. And! There is a very subtle merging of Erictho and the Witch of Endor.

…the two images on the left are depictions of Erictho, second from the right is the Witch of Endor. The image to the far right is Jesus being tempted by the devil. Erictho is shown with notably sagging breasts, so does the image of Satan, but also the image of the Witch of Endor has this element, linking these images together. It’s too bad bras weren’t invented yet…Satan seems to be in need of one. Erictho is also shown with snakes, carrying them, or wearing them on her head. If you look closely at the picture on the far right, you will see a small snake on the ground.

So much for Erictho, the Witch of Endor, and necromancy in general. And that leaves only one thing…

That’s right…Palmistry, the art of reading the lines on your hands, also called Chiromancy. Sorry about the image on the far right, Darla put that there. But what connection is there between Palmistry and books bound in human skin? I pondered that until it dawned on me that I have missed an important someone…

Yes, Kismet! Now the title…Court Palmist Royal…means nothing, it’s just a gimmick. A book of Nature bound in human skin? Ok, but who was Kismet?

Ok, so Kismet was an entertainer who put on shows of Chiromancy. And clearly, things went well that night. But what else is known about Kismet?

So Kismet was actually Donald Cornwallis. But he was so much more than that! To put it bluntly, he was a fraud…

…so much so that he resorted to having his employee stand on the street tossing advertisements all around. And that’s littering! Let’s keep England beautiful!

So if Kismet gets busted again, he’ll fare worse than he did before.

…apparently, “general tendencies” is like saying…it might rain, but it might not. So what is the book about Nature bound in human skin? We’re never given a title. But given that Kismet was a crook, any book about nature that he had was bound in something other than human skin. But, he will have more time to interpret it in jail.

But what about philosophy? Are we dealing exclusively in theological, magical, and spiritualistic terms? By no means. A strange book is…

…the Collected Works of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the famous Italian philosopher. The actual book is shown here. A note!

Famous Columbus Book. This volume was in the possession of Christopher Columbus after his third voyage to the New World. It was at that time presented by Cardinal Ximenes, who was chief advisor and confessor to Queen Isabella. He had done much to influence favorably the mind of Ferdinand and Isabella toward the projected expeditions of Columbus. The book passed, after the death of Columbus, into the possession of the Columbian library of the Cathedral of Seville, and was afterwards taken by some Spanish monks to Peru, South America, then leading the life of an adventurer, procured it by stealth during the Peruvian War. For over twenty or more years, Senor Coralla led the life of a recluse at Port Bryan on the Mississippi. This volume was presented to the University of Notre Dame by Coralla, as stated on the flyleaf. It is bound in the skin of a Moorish Chief (who was hostile and ever unmerciful to the Christians in Spain).

Wow! Now that’s a story. At some point, the book belonged to Christopher Binder (sum Christopher Binderi), and many doubt the tall-tale told in the letter.

In…If I Should Wake, I recounted the grisly fate of Marco Antonio Bragadin, flayed by the Turks. But let’s not let the story end there. Turnabout is fair play. Cruelty, sadism, and all manner of gruesome things appeared during the war between the Christians and the Turks in central and Eastern Europe. This was total war, meaning that there was no distinction between soldiers and civilians, and nothing to prevent atrocities committed against anyone.

Ah, Ferenc! Ferenc Nadasdy…crusader against the Turks fighting on behalf of Christendom, and husband of Elizabeth Bathory. He was said to have flayed his Turkish captives, stuffed their skins, and then danced around with them. No doubt worse than Dances with Death. In a certain way, this reminds my of one of my favorite…

Popes…Stephen VI, to be precise. He had the corpse of Pope Formosus dug up, dressed up, and then put on trial. Talk about holding a grudge. At least the dead pope received a public defender. Ferenc? He also beheaded captives and played catch and soccer with their heads. Soon, poisoners were supposedly running around Europe, especially France, selling and using Inheritance Powder…also known as arsenic. No roasted apples here. The selling of poison became associated with the practice of the Old Ways, contemptuously labelled… witchcraft. This, in turn, strangely became connected to the ceremony of the Black Mass, something that developed over time from bawdy masses performed by jobless clerics, to a more diabolical, set ritual. That said, most of what was said about the Black Mass was no doubt false. How easily the imagination runs away with us! Still, in 1675, the Affair of Poison was kicked off with the execution of Madame de Brinvilliers for murder. However, when Magdalaine de La Grange was tortured she began naming names.

…Madame de Brinvilliers (left), Catherine Deshayes, known as La Voisin (center) and Madame de Montespan (right), the mistress of King Louis XIV, one of history’s stinkiest rulers…unless you overlook his putrid body odor, bad breath, and flatulence. Or, perhaps…oversmell. Like my obsession with the Marquis de Sade and the Empress Messalina, I have developed one for Louis XIV. But not a complimentary one…

So, can you fix it?
Can I fix it? Of course! I developed a special surgical device just for you.

So what happened?

… Louis developed a perianal abscess that after a series of failed treatment attempts, including with the use of a red-hot iron, developed into an anal fistula. The doctors were powerless, and after several months of cogitation the king underwent surgery that proved successful. 

Ouch. But if you have an anal fistula…well, good things come in twos…

 Sometime later, in 1677, the king was again affected by these same pains, finding his right cheek and his gums particularly swollen. His doctor noticed that an abscess had formed and had begun to fester. But, Charles Boisguérin made a huge mistake one day. By pulling out several painful teeth, he completely ripped through the palate of Louis XIV. The wound remained open and was not treated, so a fistula appeared.

How many fistulas is this guy gonna get? And, Louis XIV couldn’t even bother to brush his teeth, resulting in the extraction of most of his mouth. Food became trapped in the puncture in his palate, leaving rotting food stuck in his mouth. Every orifice? Louis ate numerous meals every day, and once his teeth were gone, he had to swallow his food whole. This led to him being the fartiest king in history, and, due to his use of laxatives, he was on the toilet up to 15 times a day. The king, or so it would seem, gave the Roman emperor Galerius a run for his money. But he may have outdone him in the bathroom…Louis XIV had a Groom of the Stool, a much sought after position responsible for wiping the king’s ass after defecating. Louis even held audiences while using the crapper.

So we have Louis XIV the Toilet King! Now I went book-shopping, looking for human skin books and any other weird and crazy things I might find. And I found one that has Louis’s name written all over it. Well, not literally, but I couldn’t help thinking of Sunking when I found it. The book is called…

…Histoire des Pays Bas…History of the Lowlands, written in 1728. Except it isn’t, and it wasn’t. Another shot…

Still confused? Well, here’s yet another view…

This is by no means an actual book…the book is there simply to disguise the fact that it is really a portable toilet. In reality, this clever invention dates well after the death of Louis XIV. I suppose that’s a good thing…although he’d like the commode, he’d probably find the book to be pretty crappy. You’ve heard of taking a book with you when you use the toilet, this book takes care of both. But Louis XIV? Perhaps we could build him a toilet disguised as a throne…

Not now…I’m busy!

A couple of centuries later, another absolute ruler was not just a cocaine and methamphetamine addict, he suffered from…

…flatulence that could clear a room. But his competition with Louis XIV didn’t stop there. Hitler was not keen on oral hygiene, leaving him with bad teeth and gum disease, and, consequently, breath that could clear a room almost as quickly as his flatulence. In the end, Hitler had only four teeth….

…leading to numerous implants and bridges.

Where was I? Oh, yes…the accusation against Montespan was a big deal, and, moreover, La Voisin accused the King’s Main Squeeze of participating in Black Masses with herself and a bizarre priest named Etienne Guilberg, colloborating on who to poison next. Enter…

…Olympia Manchini. As a young woman, she became a powerful figure at the court of Louis XIV and, apparently, one of his mistresses, and had a habit of getting involved in things better left alone.  She was then linked to La Voisin, and thereby to …

…the King of the Black Mass…Etienne Guilberg.

No! I said DON’T get caught!

However, Olympia’s position made it impossible to move against her. She even intimidated the Sun King himself…

…come back to me, or you’ll be sorry!!!

Of course, I can’t resist pointing something out about Big Bad Stinky Louis XIV…

…wasn’t he just the cutest little girl you ever saw? Wouldn’t you just love to pinch those cheeks! And it’s true, one might expect that a king, with a personal army at his back ready to go to war and die in his name, would look like a bad ass. You don’t expect…

…unless you do. Darla said he should be called the…Sunking.

Still, I doubt that there were many people at the time who would have said something like that which Olympia Manchini said to the Sunking. But, exiled from France, she landed on her feet. She went to Spain, but was then exiled from Spain because of accusations of poisonry. Then she ended up in Brussels. And she was fortunate enough to be the mother of…

…Prince Eugene of Savoy. He was never accused of poisoning, and apparently didn’t give the Black Masses of his mother much thought. No, he wanted to fight, and fight he did. He and Ferenc Nadasdy would have got along together like a house on fire. Eugene became the icon of the Christian warrior fighting bravely to free Christendom of the infidel Turks. Ferenc, when not playing football with Turkish severed heads, or dancing around a fire with stuffed Turkish skins, was also a Christian hero. And Vlad III Tepesh impaled his Turkish prisoners on stakes. But Prince Eugene was more refined than that. He flayed Turkish captives and used their skin to bind books.

Hey! Look at all those Turkish books down there just waiting to be bound!

And Columbus? He was fortunate enough to never get a whiff of Louis XIV. But I think he sailed the ocean blue in the year 1493, or something like that. I’m sure he wasn’t around on July 15, 1585. I bring it up merely because of the connection of Spain and sailing, or Sailing Spain, because of an…

…odd book, one to be found in a side-show, that purports to be a captain’s logbook, linked to Cordoba, and dated July 15, 1585. Of course…bound in human skin. And found in a side-show? Wouldn’t you expect a genuine skin-book to be found in a library? A museum? The private collection of a rich bibliophile? How about…

Well, a road side museum…Nicolas Deny’s Museum! And what can one find there?

…this is their famous skin book. The Spanish book is the third book of a trilogy and is one of only 3 in the world. The book is covered in human skin and again is one of only 3 in the world. What’s the title? What’s it about? I don’t know because it doesn’t say. But a mystery! A book found somewhere by Chapel Island Indians, and given to the Rev. Leo Keats in 1753…bravo!

Who could talk about philosophy without mentioning Niccolo Machiavelli? His work…

…The Prince, is loved by some, and hated by most. Not surprisingly for a work such as this, rumors in the bibliophile-world that a version bound in human skins exists.

And the French Revolution…Viva la France! The revolutionaires had a high opinion of the philosopher John Locke. Who doesn’t? Anabelle reads his books all the time. And as I’m sure you already know…

…who Ethel Barnett is. You thought I was going to ask if you knew who John Locke is…but he’s less important than Ethel Barnett. John Locke’s An Essay on Human Understanding (Libri IV de intellectu humanu) was highly influential among the thinkers of the French Revolution, and one special edition has an inscription inscribed by Ethel Barnett…

This ancient book has Latin within and it is bound in a nice little piece of my skin.

Ethel’s the kinda gal that’s comfortable in her own skin…assuming that Libri IV de intellectu humanu is on the coffee table.

Science shouldn’t be left out of such a discussion as this. Welcome…

Essai sur L’electricite des  Corps…Studies On Electrical Bodies, by Jean-Antoine Nollet…a pioneer in the early study of electricity, and was famous for carrying out some pretty cool experiments. And I love it when images in books hide funny things…

Here! Let me pick your nose for you.

It’s safe to assume that Nollet…

… would never have let children perform electric experiments. But what about nuclear experiments? The toy shown above is infamous for being the Most Deadly Toy Ever Made. And since it went on sale in 1950, Nollet didn’t live long enough to see this insanity. Yes! The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab! The goal of the set was to allow children to create and observe nuclear and chemical reactions using real, radioactive material. It came complete with four uranium-238 ores, the ability to utilize radiation sources, among other things children should play with five years after dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Top billing…the Cloud Chamber allowed your children to see electrons and alpha-particles spinning around at 10,000 miles per second. Of course, the experiment-set came with…

…60-page instruction booklet. And we all know that children will hold-off playing with radioactive material until they’ve read a 60-page instruction booklet.

And I feel safe to assume that this was not marketed in Japan. Somehow, Darla got her hands on one, and my basement is in full melt-down stage right now. Apparently, she didn’t read the 60-page instruction booklet.

And what about Nollet’s super cool book? They said this in 1910…

The library of Macon is in possession of a copy of Essai sur L’electricite des Corps by Abbe Nollet (the 1746 version), which according to an old note, was bound in human skin. The skin is grainless, and has an amazing softness and is slightly soapy to the touch.

I think it’s safe to assume that we will all need a good dictionary if we read books with such big words. If it is an English dictionary you need to look up words about skin, then you must turn to…

…Samuel Johnson. Sure, he was erudite and studious, but he was also a guy who didn’t fare well at the hands of those who made images of him. In 1755, he published an all-but hallowed English dictionary. Someone told him that he was a…lexicographer. Even Samuel Johnson will have to look up a word once in awhile…

Oh…here it is...L-e-x-i-c-o-g-r-a-p-h-e-r…a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words. Wait…a drudge? Did I write that?

Fortunately, we’ve been given a good recounting of one particular volume of his dictionary…

But the first authenticated case of a binding in a criminal's skin was Samuel Johnson's dictionary bound in the integument of one James Johnson (degree of relationship to the great lexigrapher unknown), publicly hanged on Castle Hill Norwich, in 1818, before 5,000 spectators. The volume was owned by a Norwich book seller named Muskett and subsequently passed to the possession of one of his brothers. Mr.George Hayward, city librarian of Norwich, has been unable to locate the present whereabouts of this volume or to identify the Muskett family.

But, as That-Old-Drudge Samuel Johnson, would no doubt agree, English aren’t the only words that need to be looked up. No, indeed. William Dorbils of Vancouver had purchased a true gem. It was, of course, a book, but one that weighed 10 pounds. And its dimensions were 16” x 10”. But if that wasn’t strange enough, check this out…

 The specimen weighs about 10 pounds, and is completely bound, 15 inches long and 10 inches wide, with a waxen yellow cover which does indeed seem to bear human pores.

We had books by de Sade with nipples, and a famous theological book bound with the skin of a woman’s underarm, now we have pores, making…

…The Graeco-Latinum Lexicon the sweatiest book in history. And it was compiled by Johannis Scapulae, notable because it sounds dangerously close to…scapula, the bone that connects the clavicle to the humerus, which I find rather funny, to say the least. Where was this book found, you may ask? Where else other than the home of Steward Edgar of Council Bluffs Nebraska…

And Mr. Dorbils went on to comment on the use of human skin for books…

Mostly the French and Germans did it to counter sacrilege. Say a thief robbed pewter from a church altar. He was flayed alive if caught. Then his skin was sliced and used as neat binding for holy books.

 Flayed alive for stealing some knick-knack made of pewter? One thing that goes well with the lexigraphical drudges is…

Oh, here it is… G-r-a-m-a-r. Good heavens! I misspelled it!

True…everybody needs some of that good gramar thur. And if you’re French, you need good French gramar. And thankfully, I found Elmo Brickman. And he’s important because he obtained something that the French doppelganger of Samuel Johnson is in sore need of…

…The Compleat Franch Master for Ladies and Gentlemen. I’m not sure about the word…compleat, but if I have some time, I’ll check with Samuel Johnson. But Elmo Brickman’s copy was handed down through the generations until it got to him. Still, why would anyone bind a gramar book in human skin?

Now it’s true that I haven’t really touched on the subject of entertainment, apart for the mythological-magical Antone Kaufmann who dances, plays piano, and fences…when he’s not busy parting the Red Sea. If it’s music and theater you want, then it’s music and theater you get…

…Benito Jeronimo Feijoo y Montenegro, a Spanish monk born in 1676. He wrote on a plethora of subjects, including theater and music. His seminal work the Teatro Critico Universal, with one volum supposedly bound with human skin. The human-skin-bound copy was donated to the El Paso International Museum in 1957. The donor was a Col. Barron who had received the book from the former president of Mexico…E.F. Cardenas. Well, that’s the claim at any rate.

How more apropos is it that a book made with dead human skin should come complete with the good ‘ole skull and crossbones. One such good example is…

…Essai sur les Lieux et les Dangers des Sepultures, a French translation of an Italian work that later appeared in English as Essays on the Dangers Posed by Tombs to Public Places. In 1896, the book was presented to the Belgian government, which rings true given the carnage released against the people of the Congo by King Leopold II. Meet…

…Hans Holbein. He did many things, but only two are particularly relevant to this discussion. The first book is a classic…

…Alphabet of Death…cool name! The book consists of each letter of the alphabet, illustrated with a theme based on skeletons, along with a Latin quote and an English quote for each.  Enlarging some of the letters is as easy as…

So if you know your A-B-Cs, then you might want to obtain a copy of the Alphabet of Death. And if you do, you’re in luck! There are three different…

…delightful covers. Collect them all! And yes they are completely bound with human skin. However! It is time to take a look at Holbein’s best known book!

…The Dance of Death. The book features skeletons interacting with various types of people, and scenes from the Bible…

And we all know what trouble-makers skeletons can be! In this case, the following was inevitable…

…on the left is the actual book bound in human skin, along with the note attesting to it. And I offer a larger view…

…of the book; I’d hate to have you miss the sublime beauty of the cover. And…

…this volume was bound in 1816…in human skin, by George Sutcliffe, and appeared at the Boston Book Fair. But it is not certain how many copies of this work were produced. Another story states that in 1891, Edwin Zaehnsdorf bound a copy of the book in the skin of a woman that was tanned by Sweeting of Shaftsbury Avenue. Another copy is said to have been found in the Susan Minns collection that was sold by the American Art Association in 1922. Edmond Halphen had Firmin-Didot bind a copy in the skin of a sailor with tattoos portraying exotic love themes next to portraits of the sailor’s commanding officers.

How about the military? That’s important too. We could note…

…Oscar Metenier’s…Le 40e d’artillerie…The 40th Artillery. Speaking of the skin of a tattoo of a woman on a copy of this book, it is said…

 She is the cocotte of Grévin and Draner, between 1875 and 1880, wearing a large, feathered hat, a light boa floating around her neck, seen up to the waist or at the foot, raising her dress with a gesture provocative on The 40th Artillery, by Oscar Méténier.

 The word…cocotte, has two meanings when applied to a woman…sweetheart, and prostitute. I suppose you better watch your context carefully guys! I think that what is intended is a play on both meanings. Grevin and Draner? I think the writer intends…

…Alfred Grevin, who liked to draw women, some rather seductive. In the prints shown above, some of the women are seen pulling up their dresses. And then…

…Jules Joseph Georges Renard…known as…Draner. He too liked to draw women, but he also drew funny images of military guys as well. So the reference to Grevin and Draner is apt indeed.

From drawing women to writing about them, well…their darker side. In 1874, the short story writer Barbey d’Aurevilly published his seminal work…

…Les Diaboliques…The Devils, a book consisting of six short stories each featuring a woman who commits some act of violence. In 1932, an interesting article was written called…

…the Corpse Dealers, not to be confused with…

…a Death Dealer…Selene on the right. The two pictures to the left were part of the article featuring dead body parts and other assorted fun things to play with. A Corpse Dealer reminds one very much of the strange phenomenon of…

….grave-robbing, sometimes for doodads buried with the deceased person, or the deceased person’s very body…usually to sell to anatomists, doctors, surgeons, etc. And at first I was very surprised that this was a problem in Indiana, though as I thought about it, I was less surprised…it’s Indiana after all…

…always protect your dead from moisture, water, rats, vandals, ghouls and graverobbers. But what of The Devils? Returning to the French article…

As regards the remaining skin…Mr. Octave did not keep it for long. It was around the date of the monthly visit that an old amateur arrived, who indiscriminately bought everything he could find made of human skin. Thus ends the chest of Augustine, part of it a Muse’s shop window, and the rest of it became binding…full leather…for The Diaboliques de Barbey d’Aurevilly.

True? Or an interesting fiction? I’m not sure.

But if we’re given more than one devil, then perhaps a slight digression on this point is merited, and though it doesn’t involve a skin book, it does involve one of the strangest documents in human history. In 1634, Father…

 …Urbain Grandier was murdered in France, burned at the stake for sorcery. All of this was a set up. He made a couple of significant enemies. Grandier was opposed to clerical celibacy, and he was known to have slept around, so to speak. In 1632, a group of weird Ursuline nuns in Loudon, France, began putting on an act similar to what would be seen later in Salem, Massachusetts. Essentially, they put on the…I Shouldn’t Get In Trouble Because I was Possessed routine. In may be that was partly linked to their sexual behavior. That would hardly surprise anyone. The Mother Superior was…

…Jeanne des Anges, who had become infatuated with Grandier, but became enraged when she found out that he did not feel the same way toward her. In addition, Cardinal Richelieu was one of the most powerful men in France. Grandier did not like his policies, and even wrote a book lambasting the cardinal…making a powerful enemy. In what became known as…

…the Loudon Possessions, the nuns, who were nobodies, became somebodies, after attention was focused on them. The exact same thing would happen in Salem. The Rite of Exorcism requires that the officiating priest make every effort to discover the identity of the demon or demons causing all the trouble. And like what would happen in the Anneliese Michel possession case, the sisters weren’t sure what to say, so they threw out ludicrous names…Asmodeus makes sense, but they also named an obscure demon named Zabulon (Zebulon was the name of one of the sons of Jacob), and, of all people, the Apostle Peter. I doubt those particular Ursuline nuns knew much about Christianity in general, or Catholicism specifically. But suddenly, they blamed Grandier. And as this grew, Richelieu saw his chance to eliminate his detractor, and Grandier was burned at the stake.

Now the Devil has gone through many PR campaigns in the last four thousand years. And as far as he is concerned, he wants no return to the first image of him as found in the Gigas Bible, also known as the Devil’s Bible…

…I suppose that he was only too pleased to get a few make-overs in his long career. But he wasn’t just funny looking. As part of the fraudulent charges made against Grandier, he was accussed of making an offical pact with Goofy Guy. And as we all know, you should get a written contract, with signatures and everthing. And so this was entered into evidence…

…so apparently Gardier did not keep his legal papers locked-up securely in a desk drawer, allowing someone to find this ridiculous document. It’s in backwards Latin, and this may be the beginning of the whole theme of possessed people writing or, as in The Exorcist, speaking…backwards. And there you have the Devil’s very own signature, though I don’t know which one, because Leviathan, Astaroth, and other evil entities also signed. And I’m puzzled by the whole thing, not least because if what people think about the personality of the Devil is remotely true…why would he stick by the terms of a contract? He’s called the Father of Lies…and perhaps…The Father of Breaking Contracts. And if he did break the contract, what would you do? Though Pope Stephen VI might be willing to try, you can’t take the Devil to court. So you can’t sue him. Besides, if Gardier really made a written pact with the devil, then wouldn’t Gardier have been saved from his fate? Why else sign a deal with him? So yes, Satan broke the contract. Go figure. Maybe he should be prosecuted for fraud. Oh, and one more thing…the Devil has lousy penmanship. And Jeanne des Anges…what of her? Well, she’s been given some make-overs too…

It can be said that the whole idea of skin books has proved conducive to exercises of creativity. In 1924, author…

…H.P. Lovecraft wrote a short story called…The Hound. A mysterious book, supposedly written by an arab named Abdul Alhazred, appeared. It was called The Necronomicon, or Kitab al-Azif. The book…

And a strange, mysterious book should have a suitable cover…

…bound in human skin, maybe a skull or, even better…a face. What Lovecraft did do, and this has led conspiracy theorists to find conspiracy theories about this book…Lovecraft invented a…

…backstory that appears to be somewhat plausible, complete with all the types of details that one might expect of such a book. Sure, it’s just a well-constructed story, but there have been many, many advocates asserting that the book is real.  

What about something more mundane? Something more mundane masquerading as something else? It should be said that all human skin books are easily translated from whatever language they happen to be written in, and then easily read by people of this language and that language. Well, not all. There is, of course, a strange book…

…held in Kazakhstan, written in a language identified as ancient Latin, though I find that questionable. The book, like America’s Horse, has no name. And who knows who wrote it. However, the book supposedly is made up of 330 pages, and only 10 have been deciphered, purportedly at an institution in France. I suppose this means that ancient Latin was actually used as a code of some sort, given how easy it is to translate Latin. The book cover is made of human back-skin. According to legend, the book was written in 1532, and had been owned by an Italian scribe named Petrus Puardus. The book was held by a private collector until 2014, when it was donated to the National Academic Library in Astana, Kazakhstan. Now I said that no one knows what the book’s about. That partly only true, apparently, it is about accounts, loans, and mortgages, among other topics. Loans and mortgages? I just can’t shake the feeling that this all really a hoax. If so, it isn’t the only well-constructed one…

The Voynich Manuscript…the bizarre book written in an unknown language that first appeared in 1912, is basically a book heavy with imagery, including plants, astrology, and the zodiac. However, the book seems to be an excuse for drawing…

…drawing naked women. Well, de Sade would be impressed.

Being very close to the end at this point, it should be noted that although books bound in human skin aren’t just collectible, exciting, gruesome…whatever your view may be. They also have a utilitarian feature about them…you don’t have to actually have to be able to read the book…indeed, you don’t even need to know that the book is bound in human skin. In fact, you don’t even have to be able to read or write at all. But you can still profit by it, in more ways than one…

What a story! A brief story, true, but an interesting one nonetheless. I don’t know why this woman’s home is called a…shack. There aren’t many 2-story shacks. And it’s a good thing that the collector, who is actually described as an art collector, but not a bibliophile, was out-of-shape to the point that he could barely climb the stairs. Yet, fortunately for all involved, he managed to get up the stairs. Then this woman, who couldn’t read or write, not wanting the art collector to die in her shack, offered him a chair in which to rest his weary bones. As he sits there, he notices that the nearby table has been steadied by sticking a book under one of the legs. Examining this book, he found that it was bound in human skin, and was able to sell it for $20,000. This amount of money is staggering. The article was written in 1925. $20,000 in 1925 dollars is $343,817.14 today. But a different version of this article provides additional details that may indicate that the book was valuable…

So, the book is in Latin, and there are only two known specimens of the book. And there may be something ironic about a person inheriting a book when they can’t read or write.

Ok, it’s time to truly go to a truly weerd and dark place, relatively speaking. Do you have a favorite library? No? Well, I do…the Indianapolis Public Library. Why? Because Miss Ruth Harry and Miss Mary Jo Woods worked there. In October 1967, they held an event called…Gold in Our Attic. And I don’t know if they actually found gold, or meant it in a figurative sense. But the two ladies I just mentioned made it into the press, possibly being Gold Atticers themselves.

And there they are. To the left is Miss Ruth Harry, showing off her pride and joy…her most favorite book…a scrapbook featuring the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra…known far and wide. But I think that Mary Jo Woods, on the right, trumps Ruth’s scrapbook. She too has her favorite book. And what can that be? Yes!

Indeed, it is. The Indianapolis Public Library’s cookbook bound in human skin…perhaps…a cannibal’s cookbook? Leave the skin on mine, please. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a cannibal was running around Indianapolis in 1967 enjoying the local delicacies. If so, Miss Woods stole his cookbook. I think I’ll skip dinner, and head out for the symphony instead. However, Miss Wood’s favorite cookbook becomes even stranger. Certainly Betty Crocker wouldn’t publish a cookbook of this nature. And we can forget about the Indianapolis Cannibal for the moment.  Who was the source of this cookbook? It was…

 …written by a physician of Antwerp in 1645, and somehow came into the possession of a “lady” in 1746.

I suppose that a good name for Mary Jo’s human cookbook would be…

And yes, we can one-up Mary Joe Woods. Before being known as Benin, the country was known as the African Kingdom of Dahomey. This kingdom became powerful because of the slave trade, becoming one of the main sources of slaves sold to the Europeans. Wars were intended to take captives from among their enemies for three reasons…to sell, to work as slaves in Dahomey, and as human sacrifices for the great Annual Customs. King Glele ruled the Kingdom of Dahomey during the years 1858-1889. Glele found himself at odds with Great Britain, which outlawed slavery in 1833, and hoped to stamp it out in Africa itself. Dahomey would go on to develop hostilities with France. In 1864, Sir Richard Francis Burton went to Dahomey to see…

…Glele himself, here represented as a two legged, zoomorphic, lion. While there, Sir Richard wrote an account of his visit to Dahomey. And that’s a book, to be sure. But! the people of Dahomey practiced cannibalism, or they were good enough at it to no longer have to practice at it. At any rate, a story was told by a book-collector named Fred Hankey, which states that Fred, being a friend of Burton, requested that his friend bring back a book bound in human skin…a book about cannibalism, of course. To add to the story, we are told that the king of Dahomey had a…canoe floating in human blood.