After the destruction of my Pirate-themed beach resort by what they tell me, and the insurance company especially, was a tsunami, and my near death due to some strange ocean wave that has no name, I decided to take a vacation and go to a Big City Coastal Resort-area for a little rest and relaxation. A strange thing happened…

That was a close call…so I moved a little further inland…

I seem to be a bit of a jinx. Well, that’s what I get for angering the local shaman, although it would appear that a lot of others are paying the cost of that mistake as well. In the year 479 B.C., and though I was present, this wasn’t my fault…during the great war between the Persians and the Greeks, the Persians decided to attack the Greek city of Potidaea. This city sat beside a bay, making it more difficult to attack than the more landlocked Greek city-states. As the Persians approached, something rather amazing happened…

…the ocean suddenly receded…for quite a distance.  The Persians couldn’t believe their luck, so they marched forthwith, if not forwither, across the dry seabed, intent on wreaking havoc and ruin upon the poor Potidaeans. But then…

I said…luck, not…good luck. A 100 foot tall wall of water came ripping back into the bay…a tsunami, which completely wiped out the Persian forces attacking the city. Bad luck…I suppose. A notable portion of those killed by a tsunami at the shore or beach are people who watch the waters recede, but rather than seeing the fascinating drawback as a warning of an Impending Aquatic Death, they head out into the exposed seabed or riverbed. What did curiosity do the Metaphorical Cat Caught In A Tsunami? For the Persians…they saw the disappearance of the sea as, no doubt, the Persian gods about to give them victory over the Greeks. And a theological explanation also occurred to the Potidaeans, who attributed the events to Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. It was, in the opinion of the Greeks, the Mighty Sea God who lured the Persians into the bay and inflicted upon them a Mighty Watery Death. Another good example of this occurred in 1755, when Lisbon, Portugal was hit by a tremendous earthquake. It was November 1st, and much of the population was attending religious services in honor of All Saint’s Day, including me and my family.  After the 8.8 earthquake hit Lisbon, destroying much of it, a firestorm was generated that burned for days and went a long way toward destroying much of what remained. What a coincidence! God smashed Lisbon on a very important religious holiday! First the earthquake, then a fire that raged hopelessly out of control. When caught in a large earthquake, many people will run outside into the open for protection. That’s not a bad idea, since it prevents the stone roof of the church from falling on your head. Unfortunately, that meant that people ran out into the harbor area. With no experience of this sort of thing, the people seeking safety were completely unaware that…

…three tsunami waves would pummel the harbor area killing all those who sought refuge from the earthquake and fire. The waves flooded the downtown area. So three strikes and you’re out! Having learned our lesson after seeing what happened in Potidaea, naturally my family ran away from the harbor. The tsunami also affected the Tagus river. Shortly before the waves raced into the Tagus, there was considerable drawback of the water from the river. This exposed numerous shipwrecks and, opting to use the opportunity as a chance to claim lost cargoes from these ships, people ran down to the exposed riverbed. I wonder what happened next?

Well, I suppose the people of Lisbon hadn’t read an account of what befell the Persians at Potidaea! If they asked me, I could have told them what Poseidon was going to do next. Of course, part of the problem is that even from the vantage point of the shore, it can be very difficult to accurately estimate the size of a tsunami wave as it rushes toward you.  It is not until it is too late that the true size of the wall of water is something you can begin to appreciate…and wish you had started running sometime before. This problem also occurred during the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, that, leaving aside the situation that ensued at Banda Aceh, the tsunami waves hit several tourist resorts, at which numerous Europeans were celebrating Christmas and Boxing Day. The drawback witnessed in these locations posed a threat completely unknown to the tourists at Khao Lak…

Now you might suggest that whether you are Persian, Portuguese, or European of Some Extraction, you can’t be faulted for offering up yourself voluntarily as a sacrifice to the Tsunami God since you don’t really have the requisite amount of experience with such things. And a tsunami can be a rather unfair thing. In 2004, the arrival of the first wave at Phuket, Thailand, was preceded by…

But people continued to hang around on the beach. Then came…

…the first wave, which struck while many people were walking around the beach, fascinated by the drawback witnessed moments ago. This was most likely a trough wave, which can be, indeed, impressive. But then the water receded again, indicating that the worst was over. Really? So…

…people went outside to survey the damage. After all, that was quite an event to behold! I suppose many of them didn’t learn from the previous drawback. As people milled around down at beach-level, the water continued to recede…dramatically so…

Perhaps one might cite the old saying…once pummeled by a tsunami wave, twice shy of going down to the beach. Alas, it was not to be…

…we only heard the warm-up band before…now it was time for the headliner!

Some bands play on and on if you let them. Several more large waves battered Phuket. The same thing happened at Koh Phi Phi, where the Tsunami gave a similar warning before arriving. But drawback is hard to resist…

That provided an excellent opportunity to go pick things up…

The first wave to hit was what appears to be a trough wave that came in without any real violence, and as such, provided…

…no apparent reason to run like hell. Witnesses indicated that despite the way this wave came in, there was a tremendous amount of pressure in the water, making it almost impossible to move.

It would seem that the tsunami actually gave two warnings to Koh Phi Phi…drawback and a trough wave with enough water pressure to make it almost impossible to walk in it.

But surely there was no way for European tourists to read these warnings and leave the beach. One might object. You don’t have to have been in a tsunami to read the Writing On The Wall, or the Writing In A Book. Meet…

…Tilly Smith, as much a hero as Miki Endo, realizing that numbers saved aren’t really relevant to your attaining hero status. Tilly was present at Phuket on Boxing Day 2004. She saw the drawback too, but, unlike the people who actually ran out toward the tsunami, she immediately raised the alarm. She knew that earthquake + drawback = impending disaster. She warned her parents, who then warned other tourists that what their daughter called tsunami waves would be arriving very shortly…an Oceanic Death Squad if you don’t get back to the hotel, and then run up as many flights of stairs as possible.  Witnesses at one hotel stated that the “old people” had rooms on the ground floor, there being, apparently, no elevator. You guess what happened when the waves crashed into the ground floor. Tilly was 10 years old, and lived in Surrey, England…not a part of the world with much experience of tsunamis. How did she know? She read about tsunamis in a schoolbook. How many parents would love to see their children apply their book-learning to real life! See kids! The stupid things you learn at school can actually…save your life! An estimated 100 people got off the beach in time to avoid joining their metaphorical Persian and Portuguese ancestors at the bottom of the Deep Blue Sea. Perhaps the most puzzling footage from the 2004 tsunami involves a man who never made an attempt to get away…

Still, by this point in time there was no getting away from it anyway…he waited too long before he could appreciate the size of the wave coming at him. So! People…if you are at the beach, and the water is suddenly sucked out to sea, there is no need to hope and pray that Tilly or Miki are present beside you on that day…please…run to high ground. Actually, that was a lesson I too…

…had to learn a second time.

It is strange how similar the events at Potidaea seem to mirror another story featuring two hostile groups…with one group attacking the other.

I was only 5 years-old at the time, so my memory is a bit hazy. This is, of course the dramatic parting of the Red Sea…really…the Suph Sea (Yam Suph), as only Charleston Heston can do it. The basic idea that God created a passage between two massive walls of water, through which the Israelites passed, making it through safely, whereas the Egyptian army, finally going in after them, was caught up in the water when God made the passage disappear, is the standard view. But, what happened at the Suph Sea is remarkably similar to the description of the events at Potidaea.

And as cool as the image of people walking between two massive walls of water is…the Egyptian reaction is puzzling. As they stood there watching the Israelites boldly walk through the passage, with Moses standing on a prominence with his arms outstretched, well…I am given to wondering how they understood what was happening. If the above image is accurate in its basic elements, then this is something that the Egyptians would have never seen or, even heard of, before. And one would think that this caused considerable thought about what they should do…follow the Israelites in…or refuse to do so. Clearly the Israelites got there first, and then this most dramatic Previously-Unknown-Event occurred. Remembering that everything in the ancient world was usually interpreted theologically, two thoughts could have occurred to the Egyptians. The first would be…the Egyptian gods were doing this. Why? To destroy the Israelites! When the last of them were moving between the two walls of water, the Egyptian gods would let the water cover the Israelites and they would drown. However, given the posture of Moses, and the fact that it was the Israelites, not the Egyptian army, who needed divine intervention, there is no way that the Egyptian army would have gone in after them…the Israelites’ god would let the two walls of water come together and drown them. Thus…

1.  The Egyptian gods had parted the water-  No need to follow the Israelites into the passage

2.  The Israelites’ god had parted the water- It would be stupid to follow the Israelites into the passage

So in both possible interpretations, the Egyptians would not have followed the Israelites into the passage between the two walls of water. Yet they did. So perhaps one must look to a more secular conclusion by the Egyptians. Either of both sides’ gods could be causing the parting of the waters, but that conclusion would follow only if the story in Exodus is accurate in all its details. If the Two Walls Of Water With A Passage In-between is what really happened, then a theological interpretation is the only possible one, and we’re left with the Egyptians not following the Israelites into the Suph Sea. But if the detail is simply described from the perspective of later redactors who put the story together, and they didn’t understand the real explanation for what happened because they had never experienced it, then a different image suggests itself. Rather than a passage between two massive walls of water, perhaps there was a sudden drawback of the waters of the Suph Sea…emphasizing…drawback. The water simply disappeared. And the Egyptians had seen this before…and knew that this dramatic drawback would be followed by a massive wave that would destroy anyone and everyone who walked into the now-dry-ground. In other words…a tsunami. Tsunamis have hit the Nile Delta, one example being a tsunami which followed the 365 B.C 8.0 earthquake off the coast of Crete. That date is, of course, a thousand plus years after the time of Moses, but illustrates that tsunami waves could, and did, make their way into the Nile Delta. Still, the Israelites had nothing to lose and so they decided to take a chance that they could make it across in time. And they did. Why? Well, my answer is that God withheld the tsunami wave until He had brought His people safely across. The Egyptians knew that a giant wave was coming, but didn’t know when. Usually, it wasn’t long after drawback occurred before it did. Let the Israelites be destroyed by it! But, as the last of the Israelites were reaching the other side, the Egyptians, who had never expected the drawback to last so long, were in danger of letting the Israelites get away. So they began a quick march and attempted to follow the Israelites before the inevitable happened…God’s Tsunami Wave came roaring in and, like the Persians, the Egyptians found themselves obliterated by it. And hey! A miracle is a miracle, at whatever form.

Now I’m sure that everyone has heard of the…

…Twilight Zone…sure they have…it’s a cookbook! Who could possibly forget the Gremlin Of All Gremlins…

Or how beauty is, indeed, in the Eye of the Beholder. We learn that this…

…is a serious form of…ugly, in a world where people should look like…

And let none forget the epic battle between Eric Streator and a doll named Talky Tina! The ogre of a step-father, displeased by his wife’s decision to buy a fancy talking doll for his step-daughter Christie, picks a fight with the…

…ever-so-cute doll who says, “I’m Talky Tina, and I love you very much.” What a wonderful for a little girl’s doll to say to your daughter! Could anything be more wholesome? However, Eric learns that Tina had a bigger vocabulary and a far more disturbing bad-side. Taking the doll from Christie, he decides to…

…give it a hard time. It’s just a doll, or so Eric thought, until he heard, “I’m Talky Tina and I don’t think I like you!” “So I can hurt you?” Eric asks. “Not really,” Tina says, “but I can hurt you.” The threats don’t stop there…

Things quickly escalate, “I’m Talky Tina and I’m beginning to hate you!” Then, finally, “I’m Talky Tina, and I’m going to kill you!” And that is exactly what she does, sending Eric tumbling down the stairs in the middle of the night. And thus Eric lost his epic battle with Talky Tina. The show ends with Eric’s wife finding his body, with Talky Tina lying next to him.

“I’m Talky Tina, and you better be nice to me!”

And the sweet but deadly Talky Tina became the metaphorical mother of all creepy dolls. Her daughters appeared in that most cerebral of movies…Barbarella…where their bite was clearly more dangerous than their bark…

Still, they did help facilitate Jane Fonda going through the movie…

…on her back, and with characters bearing names such as that of the Commander of the Revolutionary Forces…

…Dildano…movie history was made. All thanks to the murderous Talky Tina. And only in such a Twilight-Zone-World would you encounter…

…Bob and Millie, who spent the previous night drinking too much and then found themselves waking up, with hangovers, in a house they didn’t recognize, in a town they had never seen before…a town where they appear to be the only two people…Centerville. Sounds good…I’m looking to buy a house there. After all! It’s nowhere near the sea! Not having made this episode would have deprived humanity of that Most Enigmatic Philosophical Question, as posed by Millie…

What would anybody want with a stuffed squirrel?

How many times I’ve asked myself that question! Philosophers, Plow-Men, and Theologians have been debating that one for centuries. And this episode led me to create my own Twilight Zone Game…How Many Things Does Bob Break?

So there you have the answer. And we learn the very important thing that Shirley Temple was really a 100 foot tall alien girl whose father was flying over Riverdale and…

…scooped up Bob and Millie, and gave them to the Pint-Sized-Giant to become part of her…

…enormous Not-Riverdale-and-Not-New-York-City play-town and railroad…ah! Life in Centerville! What follows might just deserve a theme song, and I found one indeed…

Heavenly shades of night are falling, it's twilight time.
Out of the mist your voice is calling, it's twilight time.
When purple colored curtains mark the end of day,
I'll hear you, my dear, at twilight time

I found a very interesting thing called, in German…Daemmerschlaf…Twilight Sleep. And I will show a picture that may appear to be rather disturbing at first…

…and what may make this yet more disturbing is that this woman is going into labor…without Pazuzu nearby. This was part of a radical new procedure that was invented in 1899. After donning the straightjack and overly-large blindfold, the lady is put into a…

…canvas tent, where she will give birth. The child would be born in a haze of Twilight Sleep. After the end of WWI, many women found themselves with a lot more freedom during the Roaring Twenties. This led many women to decide that they simply didn’t want to experience the pain of childbirth like their mothers and grandmothers had. They wanted freedom from pain…a noble goal indeed. And that’s what Twilight Sleep offered. It had many champions, including…

Dr. J. W. Williams was a gynecological surgeon employed by Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore, MD). Dr. J.W served as Chief of Obstetrics from 1899 to 1911, Dean of the JH School of Medicine from 1911 to 1919, and full-time professor of obstetrics from 1919 until his death in 1931. What does a man know about the pain of childbirth? Ok, meet…

…Martha Van Hoosen…an American surgeon devoted to women's health issues and the advancement of fellow women surgeons. Among other notable achievements, Van Hoosen was the first president and a founder of the American Medical Women’s Association in 1915 and the first woman to be head of a medical division at a university. She too championed Twilight Sleep. And it became very popular…

The procedure in some form continued in existence until the early 1960s…having produced millions of Twilight Sleepers. Like all revolutionary medical procedures, it was applied to other uses…

Twilight Sleepers and Dope Fiends! Now that’s a combo! Twilight Sleep fell out of use as better methods of childbirth became apparent. That said, it will be remembered that Twilight Sleep was a tremendous advance as far as medieval methods of childbirth are concerned:

And…

Peek-a-boo! And…

This one I like because it includes the ever-present…

…Death…all cultures throughout time had their manifestation of Lamashtu. Now for a slight comparison with my gal-pal Tlazy…

Yes…Medieval medical practices weren’t the best, but they did have…

…dentistry. They also had…

…stop right there! There is no need to censor this essay! If you look closely, you’ll see that the seated chap is performing some sort of…

…Brain Salad Surgery. There was also the science of…

…Urology. Turn your head and cough…please. Medical interest in the back of the front was also present in the Medieval period. Indeed. Including…

…enemas. And as Shrek’s mother always said…

…better out than in. Bestiary flatulence I suppose.

Well, when you gotta go. They were particularly keen on the…

…the human backside…no butts about it!

Whatever.

…ok, one of the best albums ever made. And here, one certainly finds a fitting statement for this website…

Many times I’ve lied, and many times I’ve listened;
Many times I’ve wondered how much there is to know.
Many is a word that only leaves you guessing,
Guessing ‘bout a thing you really out to know.

Medieval interest in bodily fluids leads me to… Riddle me this…what is the best way to Regan MacNeil’s heart?

…through her stomach!

And there are certain things, as strange as it will seem, Medieval nuns were allowed to do that more modern nuns aren’t allowed to do…

That can lead to no good. But there was a very strange type of tree that grew during the Medieval period. And like lots of trees, they needed tending if they were to remain…shall we say…fruitful. And only nuns could tend them…

Yes, nuns picking phalluses from a phallus tree. A what? See if you can find the hidden objects!

Riddle me this…what arrived at the door of the convent?

A special delivery for Mother Superior.

The secret to Twilight Sleep was a strange cocktail comprised of…

….Morphine? It seems like quite an extreme to give something as powerful as Morphine to women for the pain of childbirth. Ah! Twilight Sleep didn’t have a lot of Morphine. Instead, it was combined with…

…a plant-based alkaloid that had a very mixed reception…called Angel’s Trumpet…and…Devil’s Breath, at the same time. Pick one! We know it as Scopolamine…something most often used for nausea, particularly Sea-Sickness…or Mal de Mer, I’m not sure which. It produces a powerful dissociative mental state. So a little White Lady mixed with a little Devil’s Breath created a dissociative state that made childbirth easier to endure. But doctor’s who used it noticed a strange side-effect. Twilight Sleepers would suddenly start talking…but not just talking. No, they start to tell the doctors and nurses very intimate and indeed…embarrassing and compromising things about what they’ve done in their lives. Medical professionals realized that these Sleepers would never have divulged such things to them, and it was the case that they had not been asked for awkward details about their lives. And then! Once they became Twilight Wakers…they didn’t remember it. That is a very powerful dissociative state. Behold!

…Twilight Sleep. Much of the dissociative mental state was due to the Scopolamine, which was eventually used by…

…this doctor…who also came in another manifestation…

…the name probably rings a bell. But don’t race to judgement too fast. The Soviets used it, the CIA used it, and it continued to be used by law enforcement in the United States until the Supreme Court finally got around to ruling that nothing anyone says while under chemical interrogation is admissible in court…for the obvious reasons. The apparent willingness to divulge information that normally the subject wouldn’t, first noticed with the Twilight Sleepers, led to Mengele’s use of Scopolamine as a truth serum for interrogations. Other drugs were found to have a similar application…

And…

The thing about Twilight Sleep and other Truth Serum Type Drugs is that they produce a hypnotic, sedated, dissociative mental state, and one which the subject may remain awake throughout…awake and talking. But talking doesn’t mean divulging the truth…and it was very easy to get someone to admit to something that they never did…much easier than beating it out of them.

Now I must say that my favorite thing is being right. But my next favorite thing…second-favorite-thing, is being wrong. Being wrong means you’re one step closer to being right. So now I must correct what I said in a previous essay. What’s that? That St. Roch drank his infected copepods in the Holy Land. That, or so it would seem, is not correct. Or, alternatively, it was wrong. Roch was a pilgrim, there is no doubt about that. But he made his pilgrimage to Rome…intent upon praying at the Tomb of the Holy Apostles. This put him in Italy during a severe outbreak of plague. If it is true that Roch never went further east than Italy, then he got his Dracunculus while in Italy. And that is an interesting thing, since I have not seen any indication that the Guinea worm was endemic to Italy specifically, or Central Europe in general. Italy was, however, the point of departure, and point of return, for many pilgrims and crusaders traveling to, and returning from, the Holy Land in Palestine. My theory is that returning pilgrims passed through Italy, inadvertently contaminating water with Guinea worm larvae, such as by bathing in streams…water that made it into the supply of drinking water. So much for Central Europe. But! Central Europe and Central Asia are two different matters! For all that can be about Africa and Fiery Serpents, no place on earth was more worthy of the title…Capital of the Greater Dracunculian Empire than…

…Bukhara…located in Uzbekistan. The Guinea worm was known there as the…Rishta…and even…the Bukhara Boil. The problem was so bad in Bukhara that local people would pray for a cure at the…

…grave of Imam Kozi-hon. During the Rishta Hey-Days in Bukhara, there were special Rishta-doctors…also called Rishta-drawers, or rishtagirs. However, most of these guys were really…barbers, who cut hair and beards with one hand, and twirled Rishta-sticks with the other. Now one would think that it would be utterly impossible to determine just who it was that invented the very advanced surgical procedure of rolling a worm on a stick. No, it wasn’t Moses. Actually, it was Oostad Nuzzeer! He was a barber in Bukhara, and he is credited by one fanciful source as the inventor of the Worm-On-A-Stick. He went by the name Rishta Kush…the Extractor of Rishta, and is credited with being able to remove Fiery Serpents at a rate of eight people per hour. And what apocryphal story would be complete without…Three Special Rishta Removal Assistants? This crack Four Person Guinea Worm Removal team once removed as many as 50 worms in one day! What? 50 in one day? What a wimp!

So much for Oostad Nuzzeer! Amateur! Of course, I needed my own Three Special Hair-cutting and Rishta Removal Assistants too…

Hey! You three were supposed to give’em haircuts…not turn them into Jack-O-Lanterns! Try again!

Well, ok…you guys are getting closer. Let’s hold off on Rishta-removal and Bikini Waxing for now.

Bukhara will never be the same! I would point out that I am not opposed to a little competition. Having outdone Oostad by removing 51 Rishtas and popping 100 Bukhara Boils in one day, I found that Oostad had turned over his business to fellow rishtagir, and chip-off-the-old-stick…Meerza Umr…who took over Daddy’s business and got down to business…to coin a phrase. So a tall-tale-teller, named William Moorcraft, would have us believe that he met the actual inventor of the worm-stick. He would also have us believe that a merchant friend of his had 60 Guinea worms removed from his wife, and Meerza himself told the local press that he knew a man who had 90 Guinea worms removed! Now I would not want to make something that seems so believable to become a tad bit less so, but yet another writer tells us why a barber has to be the one who removes Dracunculi…

 If the skin covering the worm be hairy, he cleans its surface by two or three strokes of the Razor.

Hairy Guinea worms in need of a shave! Three strokes of the razor…Rishtas like a close shave! Actually, since it is only female Guinea worms who burn their way out of your body…I might just market bikini waxing services to Fiery Serpents emerging Bukhara Boils! Oh, you think he’s talking about the victim’s skin? Same thing applies…it’s just not as entertaining. Gruesome tales should always be made more gruesome…for the entertainment value…of course. A resident of the nearby town of Khiva…still within the jurisdiction of the Rampaging Guinea Worms of Bukhara, actually had 120 worms all at one time! That’s a record! Yes! And 50% of Bukhara’s inhabitants walked around the city with 10 to 20 Guinea worms hanging out of them at any given time. That’s a horrible sight to see! But we can do better than that! These people walked around Bukhara with the Guinea worms hanging out of their faces! No Guinea worm in Nigeria, Chad, Mali, South Sudan, Ethopia, etc. was ever describing as hanging from her victim’s face, although I have seen a picture of a hapless boy with one emerging from his scalp. Africa has it easy compared to Bukhara! I have shown that they do come out of the stomach. Our Teller of Fictional Horrid Bukhara Boil Stories saw this too, and thought it significant enough that he drew a picture…

Meet Mookeem…a little guy who makes Pazuzu look like a big shot! And I suppose we know why our witness was spinning yarns rather than Dracunculus-sticks. But! The details are in the devil! Wait! It might be…the devil is in the details. In the 17th century, Europeans trading along the coast of West Africa, who had the misfortune of drinking the Delicious Waters of the Gulf of Guinea, came back to Britain with, or so I will claim so as not to be outdone by William Moorcroft…thousands of 80 foot-long Guinea worms hanging out of their eyeballs! At any rate, they needed treatment. So too the unfortunate British soldiers who, in the 20th century, were stationed in the British colony called…

…The Gold Coast, and I am still trying to determine what they could possibly have had along that coast that would lead to such a perplexing name like…The Gold Coast…and something that, as comes as no surprise, the British wanted to steal. I’ll let you know what the mystery thing is when I find out. Currently, this area is called…Ghana.

I am also attempting to solve the mystery of the name…The Ivory Coast. Unfortunately, both share the same sad tendency toward…

…civil war and mutual destruction that, in Northern Uganda, took the form of a militia originally formed by a spirit-medium named…

…Alice…who claimed that the spirit of a dead Italian soldier who drowned in the Nile spoke to her from the Other Side. Why get high on life when you can get high on witchcraft? Holy anointings would stop bullets, and if you threw rocks, they morphed into Persian Magi Proto-grenades. From this movement…guided by the Spirit Lakwena…came forth the most secretive African militia known to Africa…

The LRA…better known as…The Lord’s Resistance Army, a name not too surprising if the Army of the Holy Spirit Movement was its progenitor, which is led by the enigmatic…

…Joseph Kony. The spirit named Lakwena is one that I will return to in another posting since, as we all know, Father Merrin supposedly, if Tom, priest and President of Georgetown University is to be believed, performed an exorcism for a boy in Africa. The assumptions made by viewers of The Exorcist no doubt will fail to take into account that in Acholiland in Northern Uganda, the spirits speak their messages through a medium who is trained on how to be possessed by such spirits, highlighting the enormous misunderstandings of Americans when it comes to the concept of spirit-possession as understood in a totally foreign culture like that of the Acoli. I think that the makers of The Exorcist picked Africa particularly for this reason, highlighting the inability, or unwillingness, of Americans to step outside of their own context in order to understand something they don’t understand.

What bedeviled European traders partaking of the fine waters of the Gulf of Guinea in the 17th century equally bedeviled the British colonial troops stationed in The Gold Coast…Guinea worms! But what happened to these hapless European sailors? They sought treatment…obviously. From the Stick Twirlers of Africa? From Oostad Nuzzeer? No! The Infirmary of Liverpool! British sailors suffering from the Fiery Serpent apparently descended on Liverpool, that regal city that gave us…

…Rock music’s most famous group of Liverpudlians. You try singing Rain backwards! Yes! Liverpool was on the Twirling Edge of Drucunculus Removal…or so the Story Teller from Bukhara would have us believe. But there is more! The most prestigious group of Liverpudlian Barbers in the Best Traditions of Oostad Nuzzeer just so happened to be the practice known as Park, Lyon, and Alanson. Strange…they sound more like lawyers than Shavers of Hairy Guinea Worms. Bukhara’s Plague of Bukhara Boils was correctly attributed to its…

…perpetually putrid supplies of drinking water. And there is an old saying, which I know you know well, but I will quote it anyway…

If one drinks holy water in Bukhara, the Rishta on his leg will break through.” 

Odd, calling the putrid and worm-larvae infested drinking waters in Bukhara…holy water.

Sorry! I just can’t resist a good nun-pun. Besides…I left out the phallus trees, didn’t I? But now it’s time to play….

…How Can That Possibly Be Relevant To Anything That Has Been Said Thus Far? Don’t know the answer? You are not a good player of this game! Copepods are also known as the…

Cyclops! And just to make sure Ctesias is sufficiently represented…

So one can’t have Ctesian Creatures of the Bestiary without a Cyclops…

…and we all know that the cyclops Polyphemus, the son of the god Poseidon, Sender of Persian-drowning Tsunamis, was tricked and blinded by Odysseus, who masqueraded as the Enigmatic Mr…

Ro-man? No, that’s not right. I mean…Mr. No-man. I’m sure that copepods infected with Guinea worm larvae do not appreciate the comparison to…

Yes! Riddle me this…what is a Cyclops favorite food group?

…Persians! And! I hope Mr. Cyclops cooks his Persian long enough! Why? Persia, now Iran and Iraq, was teeming with Guinea worms. The Persian town Bushehr is one such example, but so too is the city called…Resht….

 Resht bears the unpleasant reputation of being the most unhealthy city in Persia. Its very name, say the natives, is derived from the word rishta, “death.” “If you wish to die,” says a proverb of Iraq, “go to Resht!”

Dracunculus was also called The Reshteh in Persian. So if you travel through ancient Persia, and you make a Resht-stop in Resht…bring your own water!

The name…Guinea worm…was obviously coined by the aforementioned 17th century The Gold Coast traders referred to earlier. The popular wisdom states that It was not until the 18th century that Carlus Linnaeus suggested that the disease was caused by a worm. But that is perplexing, since in Good Ole Bukhara, it was known hundreds of years earlier…or so we are told…

 The old traveler Jenkinson, who visited Bokhara in 1558, has the following curious remarks: "The water of the little river that runs through the city is very bad, breeding in the legs of those who drink it worms an ell long, between the flesh and the skin, which, working out about an inch every day, are rolled up and thus extracted; but if they break in the operation, the patient dies.

Of course, I always felt it was a bit odd that one couldn’t tell that a worm was a worm, although in Medina, Saudi Arabia, they actually believed it was a vein…the Medina Vein…or nerve tissue. And even in Africa, some people believed that it was related to waste from the blood. It just goes to show that Africa must admit that Bukhara was far more Dracunculus-savvy than they were…there is simply no way to wriggle out of it. So what befell the Guinea Worm Capital of the Universe? Well, they became Rishta-free around 1932. How? When the Bolsheviks came to power, they got so sick of hearing about Guinea worms that they did something that boggles the mind! They drained the Pools of Putrid Water, and piped in fresh-water

And to think! All it takes to get rid of Guinea worms is a little communist revolution! Who knew? As it stands, the Soviets were ahead of the rest of the world at that time in some things, including…

…that’s not something you’ll find in any other army during WW2.

And this officially ends my nonsensical ravings about Guinea worms and Rishta. Almost. I have related the strange tale of Moses’s Fiery-Serpent-On-A-Stick…later associated with…Nehushtan who, or so I think, originally had nothing to do with Moses’s Red Sea Dracunculus Image. However, the people of Bukhara have a claim about another Biblical figure…

…Job! These illustrations from illuminated manuscripts show various rather strange-looking Satans striking the Man From The Land Of Uz with boils, leaving Job with nothing else to do than scratch his boils with a pottery sherd. Now we all know that Job became came down with an mysterious skin affliction, with the primary symptom being his body becoming covered in itchy boils. Boils? Yes…boils! Bukhara Boils! The grave of Job is said to be located in Bukhara, and it is also believed that it was Rishta which caused the boils that afflicted the Man From The Land Of Uz.

It may seem to be a rather strange thing to say, but the Dreaded Fiery Devil Serpent isn’t the worst thing out there.

A somewhat relaxed, European-looking guy appears to be snoozing peacefully as a native woman seemingly gives him a much welcome pedicure. Who doesn’t like a pedicure? But it’s not as it seems.

Yes! The Santa Maria of Christopher Columbus fame! The ship sank off the coast of Haiti, and the butchers on-board made it to the beautiful beaches of Haiti. Can you think of a more pleasant place to be shipwrecked? As far as the climate goes, that is. And it would seem that the Spaniards from the ship decided to take off their shoes and enjoy the feeling of the cool sand between their toes. Who doesn’t? That depends…the beaches weren’t chemically treated way back then. A later report about the foreign interlopers related that the poor Spaniards had come down with a terrible affliction. They came, to their chagrin, to meet with that which is known as the Jigger…

No…not that kind of Jigger, although the feet part of it is correct. I mean this little lady…

As you can obviously tell…she is a flea. And aren’t flees a real nuisance? Itchy bites, but the fleas we know and love bite you and then go looking for your cat or dog…and that’s not nice! But not the Little Lady of Haiti! The female, ready to mate and lay her eggs, burrows into the skin, and expands her abdomen until she looks like…

Sure, it doesn’t look very comfortable, but she won’t complain. Her backside…the back of her front, is actually sticking out of your skin, while the front of her back enjoys your delicious bodily juices. This is an excellent image…

Ok…she won’t win any beauty contests! And she will certainly win no popularity contests either. She is now well burrowed into your skin, with the Little Flea Backside visible as a small black dot in the middle of the swelling in your skin. Oh…

That’s the Little Lady in action and doing her thing. Fleas bite…you say.

Not the Jigger flea…also known as the Chigoe…and a dozen other names cursed around the globe. She burrows into your skin…and stays…laying egg sacs and clusters. Many of the eggs fall out of the crater in your skin, but not all. And! She has something in common with our Dracunculi Friends! It is the feet that are targeted…

Those awful looking holes in the feet are no exaggeration. Originally, it was native to South and Central America…

…it’s hard to feel sorry for people who meddle in other people’s countries. The Jigger flea was accidentally introduced to Sub-Sahara Africa in 1872 when a ship, named after the explorer Thomas Livingston Mitchell, dumped ballast-sand from Brazil in the Angolan port of Ambriz. From there it penetrated…sorry…throughout Africa. The sand-flea lives in over 88 countries in the world, and once an infestation starts, the only relief comes from a scalpel…and since these are usually wielded by doctors, much of Africa and other parts of the Impoverished World live with terrible Jigger infections. The removal of the sand-flea and its egg sacs leave the feet and toes covered in dozens of bizarre-looking craters…many of which are quite deep. So heed my warning…

…wear socks and shoes!

Now that I’ve been revived from my Twilight Zone, or Twilight Sleep, and leaving Bukhara as nothing more than a bad memory, I return now to a subject that I thought I had said all I had to say about. Unless, of course, I found that there was still yet more to say. And as it turns out, I just came upon the True Culmination Of My Analysis of Pazuzu. Now he may seem rather small…

…when compared to his brother…Humbaba. Who?

And the thing about Humbaba is that he is very habit-forming…and he’s the gift that…

…keeps on giving…from an entertainment perspective…I mean. True, he may be the goofiest-looking spirit-being whoever existed, but he certainly wasn’t the ugliest. So now it’s time play…Name The Ugliest Deities Of All Time! Of course, as I’m sure you already know, we must turn to the Aztecs. So now it’s time to guess who is number 5!

…Xipe Totec...apparently we caught him during a bathroom-break. When nature calls! However, he has somewhat more disturbing manifestations…

What ails Xipe Totec? Well, you’d be feeling under the weather too if you were known as…The Flayed God. But! 4rth place goes to…

Ok…so you guessed that one. Behold Xochiquetzal! After all…it takes the Goddess of Beauty to be…

…that ugly! There’s no doubt that 3rd place goes to…

…Tzitzimitl…Star Goddess. And when you look like…                            

…her, one can easily see how you would be a goddess of fertility and femininity and childbirth! Moving on to…

…Xiuhtecuhtli…the Aztec Turquoise God…also called…Old God.  Of course…

…is he green because he is Lord of Turquoise? Or maybe he’s naseous after having lunch with me and my gal-pal Tlazy? Who is number one? That’s easy…

Meet Smoking Mirror…Lord of Obsidian. Actually, he’s pretty cool-looking, except for his prosthetic foot. But there is another manifestation of Tezcatlipoca. Drum roll, please!

And so he wins the Ugliest Spirit-Being Whoever Existed award! And I might point out that Lord of Turquoise and Lord of Obsidian appear to be enrolled in two very different dental plans…

So, it is readily apparent that Humbaba may be goofy-looking….and none-too-handsome, but he’s by no means the ugliest spirit-being. And I almost forgot! My very favorite representation of Humbaba is one that fits in well with The Exorcist. Allow me to demonstrate…

Regan’s best performance of…I’ll Punch Your Face! I guess Humbaba shouldn’t have shown up at 3600 Prospect Street NW on that fateful night! Now in comparing him with his Little Brother Pazuzu…one can ask…what is Humbaba’s only claim to fame?

Getting killed! How hard can that be? And he doesn’t always seem to be quite the giant we hear so much about! Now it is simply the case that, in the movie, Merrin has a strange hallucination involving Pazuzu, set off, no doubt, by a certain discovery he made at the dig-site in Hatra…

I have noted many times on this website that these Pazuzu heads were common in Mesopotamia, and were used in rituals aimed at combatting Lamashtu. But Merrin, soon after finding this charm, will see…

This can only be a hallucination. There never was a Pazuzu statue of this size, although Merrin will see it one more time before the Final Metaphorical Defeat of the Metaphorical Lamashtu…

…this very cool scene has been almost universally misunderstood. It is not Regan welcoming Pazuzu, and it is not Pazuzu welcoming his nonexistent statue…it is Lamashtu howling in pain and defeat when her ancient nemesis shows up in time to defeat her. Or so Merrin perceives it. There were no cultic statues of Pazuzu because there was no cult of Pazuzu…no priests of Pazuzu…no temple of Pazuzu. But! Why make Pazuzu so much bigger than he ever was? Well…because he was so much bigger than I ever gave him credit for being! His importance went beyond just a supposed endless battle with Lamashtu. I will show again that which I will no longer call…

…a Lamashtu plaque…I will now call it a…Pazuzu plaque. I have commented elsewhere upon the importance of strange, mythical beings called the…

…Apkallu. The most ancient form of the Apkallu is that on the far right…Fish-Men.

…which I interpret to indicate the idea of man emerging from fish. There is clearly a Proto-Evolutionary theme present here. This idea is also reflected in the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Anaximander of Miletus, a student of Thales, who believed that fish emerged from water as the primary life-form. Humans developed within fish, living within the fishes’ mouths, until they were ready to emerge, finally losing their scales. The notion is a fascinating one, seeing how there is a class of fish which actually incubate their young in their mouths…mouth-brooders…

The eggs develop in the mouth, and the young fry are protected in the parent’s mouth as well, reducing the number of young eaten by other sea-creatures. A similar situation exists with the species of frog called…Darwin’s Frog. What is even more fascinating is that with many of the species of mouth-brooding fish, it is the male who incubates and protects the young. This is also true of Darwin’s Frog.

That’s my Dad! So if you lived in ancient times, and you were familiar with mouth-brooding fish, it would appear that it is the male who gives birth to their recognizable offspring. It is impossible to believe that Anaximander was not familiar with mouth-brooding fish, perhaps…

…the Egyptian Mouth-brooder. It is well-established that Egypt was a source of early Greek religion. But that isn’t enough…mouth-brooding fish have never, as far as I can tell, spit out human beings. Wait! I’m wrong about that! Time to meet…

…Jonah and His Giant Mouth-brooding Prophetic Fish!

And the bestiary produces yet another mouth-brooder, though I’m not sure what species…

Still, one is very tempted to believe that the concept of the ancient Sumerian Apkallu…Fish-Men…men who emerge from fish, was also known to Anaximander. Thales taught that the originating principle of nature was water. Combine these ideas, and you arrive at Anaximander’s Evolutionary Hypothesis…strange to us, but not so strange when the ancient underpinnings are noted. That takes one to Eridu, the most ancient Sumerian city, first settled some time during the period 5400 – 5000 BC. Yes, that’s old. And I have suggested elsewhere on this website that it was founded by refugees from the Pre-Egyptian empire of Helel Ben-Shohar...the Bright Shining Son of the Dawn, who built the Great Pyramid in order to…as recorded by the Prophet Isaiah…ascend to Heaven and take his place as God. The failure of the Great Pyramid…the Great Artificial Sun built to imitate the movement of the sun as it rose in the sky until it reached the highest point in the heavens, thereby taking him to the Very Gates of God, resulted in the collapse of his empire, and, as the Tower of Babel myth in Genesis indicates, large-scale movements of people away from what would later become Egypt. Then, after a long Dark Ages Period, we find the founding of the unified Kingdom of Upper and Lower Egypt by King Scorpion II, or possibly King Narmer…King Catfish. There was a freshwater table surrounding Eridu, and freshwater would simply rise up out of the ground…without Guinea worms…I hope. That would suggest that Eridu was founded by people who formerly lived around the Nile…which delivers freshwater effortlessly, and the flooding of the Nile left behind silt deposits that enabled people to raise crops in the middle of the desert. So the people who settled at Eridu managed to find a source of water that simply appeared regularly without any effort made by humans. The later development of irrigation allowed city-states such as Ur and Uruk, independent cities with their own laws and governments, which was also the structure of ancient Hellas before Alexander the Great unified the city-states into a recognizable Greece, allowed for the utilization of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to bring water into the desert. But Eridu was in the desert too, and the freshwater table around Eridu was, in my humble and no doubt incorrect, opinion, utilized by the Eriduians to re-create the situation involving the Nile. At Eridu arose a most fascinating religious concept...Abzu. In Egypt, there developed the notion of a god named Hapi…

Here's an illustration…

Prior to the development of the idea of gods and goddesses in a fully anthropomorphic form…looking just like humans…

…the Twelve Great Olympian Gods and Goddesses…They come in twelve, the ancient Tribes of Israel come in twelve which was really thirteen seeing how there was no tribe of Joseph, but rather a tribe of Manasseh and a tribe of Ephraim, said to be the sons of Joseph; Christ had twelve apostles, which appears to be a borrowing from the Twelve Disciples of John the Baptist (Book of Acts 19: 2-7). Originally, or so I believe, there existed the concept of the Elementals…forces in nature that were revered, not worshipped as gods and goddesses as we understand those terms. The Ancients sought ways to commune with Elementals for their assistance in obtaining what was necessary for life. Such an Elemental existed in what later became Egypt in the form of the Sphinx…the original Sphinx…not the stupid looking one that has had the original head removed so that some idiotic, self-aggrandizing ruler could, in the Trumpian manner, simply stick his head on it.  It originally looked like…

…The Great Lioness. Later, there would be 2 war goddesses…one in Upper Egypt and one in Lower Egypt…

Meet Sekhmet..The Great Lioness, and…

…Bast…also known as…Bastet, The Great Cat. Both were manifestations of the Elemental Great Lioness. But the original Elemental Lioness was not associated with war. She was a symbol of fierceness, but also being at peace with the other animals living around her. Lions are lazy…it is the lionesses who set out on the hunt. And they take only as much as they need…and no more. At the same time, she was a symbol of tenderness and care…as clearly shown by the way she tends her cubs. It was only later that the blasphemy of turning the Elemental Great Lioness into a violent war deity took place. There is a class of deities that exist between Pure Elementals…who had no anthropomorphic manifestations, and fully fledged anthropomorphic deities. Who are these Divine Beings? Sekhmet and Bast are excellent examples…part deity and part Elemental. Proto-dynastic rulers in ancient Egypt tended to bear animal names, no doubt due to being closer in time to the Age of Elementals…

King Falcon’s Mouth; King Scorpion II; King Catfish.

King Double-Falcon; King Crocodile; King Elephant. Not to mention King Gazelle; King Stork; King Bull; King Fish; and King Finger-Snail. Among others. Wait…I did mention them…sorry. But of what of Hapi? He was the Egyptian deity who caused the Nile to flood…without which Egypt couldn’t have existed. Technically, he wasn’t the god of the Nile…he was the god who caused the Nile to flood. And thus one can explain Hapi’s bizarre iconography…

Hapi is the ultimate fertility deity…and so he has female breasts and a pregnant belly…yet He Is Still A He. And the following image also shows that Hapi is the bringer of the things that the flooding of the Nile makes possible…

…including fish. Mouth-brooding fish? With Hapi, the male is the one who gives birth to, and suckles, the Great Flooding of the Nile. Well, that’s my interpretation…for what’s it worth. In Eridu, the concept of Abzu was established…the Great Elemental Source of Freshwater around Eridu. Abzu was not represented in anthropomorphic or anthropomorphic/Elemental form until much later in history, when the Enuma Elish was produced. The name means…Deep Water…the source of which is below the world of men (underground). Abzu was neither male nor female…Abzu was an Elemental which remained an Elemental for ages until the Enuma Elish committed its blasphemy. Although the Sumerians developed a dizzying array of gods and goddesses in full anthropomorphic form, some of whose statues were smashed by Little Kid Abraham when his father Terah, who ran Ye Olde Sumerian Idols Shoppe in Ur, left him in charge of the store while he went out on an errand, Sumerian culture refused to desecrate Abzu by anthropomorphizing the Last Great Elemental. There was a great ziggurat-temple at Eridu dedicated to Abzu, whose population had abandoned the city by the third century B.C. It was considered an important religious duty for the rulers of other city-states to further build-out the House of Abzu in the remains of Eridu. But! The very oldest levels of the House of Abzu were simple structures, which I believe were built at the spot where the Eriduians believed they could commune with Abzu. And what offerings were made to Abzu? The oldest levels of the House of Abzu contain piles and piles of fish bones. A fitting offering. But it is clear that fish come from Abzu, and so Thales is right in that water is the Great Primordial Substance, and Anaximander is right that, essentially, humans come from mouth-brooding fish.

Now the Apkallu have a very key task that maintains all life on earth…

Two Bird-Headed Apkallu stand on either side of the Tree of Life. And what are they doing? They are fertilizing it. Each holds a…

…pale in one hand, and an…

…object resembling a pinecone in the other. They dip the cone into the pale, which contains pollen or some such thing, and then they apply it to the Tree of Life. And thus it remains fertilized…should this fail, then all life in the universe will come to an end.  Here is another illustration of this Most Important Eternal Event…

The Bird-Headed Apkallu is commonly portrayed as that Apkalluian Manifestation which keeps the Tree of Life fertilized…

However, there is one last development. In the Assyrian empire, the king became central not just to the military campaigns that led to the largest Mesopotamian empire up to that time, but his religious importance grew and grew until he himself became…

…an Apkallu. Well, sort of. Apkalluish, maybe. The transition was from Winged, Bird-Headed Apakallu to Winged, Human Apkallu…the Assyrian king, who, or so I think, came to be regarded as the one who fertilized the Tree of Life, both as an Apakllu, and as himself without his wings. There was probably a ritual involving the king fertilizing an imitation Tree of Life. Of course, the winged humans seen above may be gods…but could they also be a manifestation of the Assyrian king? If the Winged Ones were really gods, then they are clearly helping the Assyrian king tend the Tree of Life. And if they were gods, I wonder why they stand BEHIND the king of Assyria, rather than the other way around.

Still, the most ancient Apkallu-Form responsible for fertilizing the Tree of Life was the Fish-Man…

There may have been a connection between fish, Fish-Men Apkallu, and the Elemental Concept of Abzu…the source of all life…as it developed at Eridu. This same concept, at least in form, was preserved in…

…the Merman and Mermaid characters.  How about French…

…Melusine? What do you mean you haven’t seen her before? Anyone in the mood for a…

…cup of coffee? Ctesias is alive and well, enjoying a latte. You can take a mermaid and add…

…a Monopod! In a strange way, we could turn a mermaid into a Sort-Of-Monotail…

And there are so many cool mer-people…

A curious tale is told in 1 Samuel 5. During the time of the judges, and then notably during the reign of Saul, Israel’s most notorious enemies were the Philistines. As you will remember, the young David began his heroic military career by killing…

Goliath…a Philistine warrior and possibly the…King’s Champion…not to mention being a guy without a good head on his shoulders. The Philistines lived along the Phoenician Coast, and Ashdod was one of their principal cities.

After the Philistines had captured the ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then they carried the ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon.  When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the Ark of the Lord! They took Dagon and put him back in his place. But the following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the Ark of the Lord! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained. That is why to this day neither the priests of Dagon nor any others who enter Dagon’s temple at Ashdod step on the threshold.

 Behold Dagan!

Sure looks like a Fish-Man Apkallu to me! How about the…

…Bishop-fish? Or maybe you would prefer a…

…mer-monk! Simply another form of the Fish-Man Apkallu. The Dogon people of Mali include, within their mythology, the Nommos…

Dogon? Sounds a lot like…Dagan. Who could forget…

And:

Ah, yes! The Hindu Matsya…the Apkallu form of the god Vishnu.

Meet…Amabie…from Chinese mythology.

Now, the Apkallu were also known as the Seven Sages of ancient Sumeria…advisors to the antediluvian, pre-Noah’s flood, kings, beginning with Aluluim of Eridu, and ending with Ubara-tutu of Shuruppak. Now I will show an illustration of the Pazuzu Plaque that allows for a better view of what is happening…

I would start with the figures in the second-to-top register. And since I love to count things, let’s count the number of guys in this register…

So there would appear to be the 7 Apkallu Sages, in one particular manifestation, marching along in the register second from the top. There is, however, something else worth noting…

The following is a fragment dramatically similar to the one on the Pazuzu plaque…

There is an obvious, and dramatic difference between the two…the pose of the figures is significantly different…in the second image, the figures have their arms down, whereas in the first image, one arm is raised. I will emphasize the importance of this pose below. And, for what it’s worth…the first being in the above image seems to have lost his pet parrot. If it is true that Pazuzu was one of the Apkallu, or Annunaki, then he is far more important than he is given credit for being. It is also possible that the seven figures are a group of deities called the Annunaki. However, they were usually regarded as chthonic, or underworld deities, although there were said to be seven. Some have equated the Annunaki with “those who decree,” making them major gods and goddesses. It seems odd that they would be represented with animal heads, and all with the pose as described below. In fact, the gods are represented by the symbols in the top register…

Number 1 could be Ishtar (Innana), who bears 6 spears…3 on each shoulder. Number 2 would seem to be Shamash (Utu)…the sun god. Number 3 looks like the Assyrian god of war, the solar disc, and commander of the king of Assyria. Number 4 is Sin (Nanna)…the moon deity, and number 5 may represent Enlil, represented by seven celestial bodies. If the image on the far left is meant to be a mountain, it may represent Ninhursag…the Lady of the Mountain and a fertility goddess.

But now, what about the next register?

There is only one set of figures that are facing each other, having clasped their hands. In fact, it is as if Pazuzu is looking at his reflection in a mirror…creating 2 Pazuzus! They are united in victory…they have won. Against whom?

Pazuzu and Lamashtu are the two largest figures on the plaque. Lamashtu is busy with her Four Great Dracunculi Controllers of the Universe. Actually, though I will have to say that I believe that the so-called Snake Goddess or Snake Priestess figure of Minoa was actually a secondary creation from different pieces found in a rubbish tip, the following is nonetheless interesting…

Both have highly visible breasts and both clutch snakes in a very similar positioning of the arms. So what of the Minoan Figurine? Is it a Cat on the Hat…or is it a…Top Dog? As we know, Lamashtu suckles a dog. If there is any parallelism, which there appears to be…then is the Minoan Goddess really the Minoan Lamashtu? Or someone playing the part of Lamashtu? Alas, I will leave it there…for now. The positioning of Pazuzu’s arms matches that of the 7 Apkallu, one of whom is himself. Is this pose one of battle…the battle against Lamashtu? And we see so too Pazuzu and his Mirror Image clasp with hands clasped in unity…and victory. Victory? Indeed. I will now show how important this pose is…just how old it is…and just what it really means…

…this is the Narmer Palette…Narmer as in…King Catfish, considered to be the first king of the first dynasty of a Unified Kingdom of Upper and Lower Egypt, who may, or may not have been, successor to King Scorpion II. Notice his pose as he prepares to execute a defeated foe. Now…what about Pazuzu?

What about the Seven Apkallu Sages?

Old? Narmer is usually dated to around 3150 B.C. But the Narmer-pose is probably much older than him. And no! the 7 Apkallu sages are not hitch-hiking. This pose would appear to be more than just combat…it is the ritual killing of a defeated enemy, not defeating an enemy in combat. Pazuzu will not simply distract Lamashtu…not simply defeat her…she will be defeated and then dispatched…and with considerable religious significance.

And how is this victory to be understood?

The Fish-Men Apkallu are standing on either side of the woman giving birth. Each has a pale and a cone…as the woman is about to give birth, they are fertilizing her…but don’t take that the wrong way. What I think is happening is that the Woman In Child-birth has taken the place of the Tree of Life. She has become the Center of the Universe…really, she is metaphorically bringing the Tree of Life into existence, and the Fish-Men Apkallu are set to fertilize it. There are only two humans on the plaque…the woman giving birth, and the man who stands to the right of Pazuzu and his Mirror Image, facing the other way. He holds his arms in the same pose as Pazuzu and the Seven Apkallu. Who is he?

The Assyrian Royal Family has become almost co-equal to the Tree of Life…they become the Tree of Life. And as the Queen of Assyria gives birth to a royal prince, who could turn out to be the Crown Prince of Assyria, the king of Assyria joins Pazuzu in the fight against the one force that threatens the life of the soon-to-appear royal prince…Lamashtu. Two priests dressed as Fish-Men Apkallu mime the ritual of fertilizing the Tree of Life. Lamashtu will attempt to interfere with the ritual. Only Pazuzu can stop her. If Lamashtu is able to kill the infant prince…she might also destroy the Tree of Life…she threatens to destroy the Created Order of the Universe. And that means that not only does Pazuzu protect the birth of the prince and keeps the Fish-Men Fertilization Ritual from being disturbed…Pazuzu is also protecting the very existence of Life in the Universe. It isn’t simply Pazuzu protecting the life of a baby…Pazuzu is saving Everything…the Universe can only continue to exist if Pazuzu, aided by a much smaller king of Assyria, joins battle against Lamashtu. She’s no wimp, so Pazuzu’s power increases…is magnified…in his Mirror Image…and he is victorious. The Fish-Men finish the ritual, and an Assyrian prince is born. But yet more…the Universe can continue to exist. That is a very different Pazuzu altogether! A little apotropaic guy becomes the essential component of Life on Earth. And an even larger-than-the-universe-Pazuzu peers over the top of the plaque, ensuring that the metaphorical Tree of Life remains safe.

And you can be sure…there is no Twilight Sleep for the Queen of Assyria. But don’t worry…I hear she’s a pretty tough lady. After all, who needs Twilight Sleep when you have Seven Apkallu Sages, Two Fish-Men Apkallu, and a powerful Pazuzu all set to give Lamashtu a head-pounding worthy of King Catfish? And the thing between Lamashtu’s legs looks like a scorpion…I certainly hope, for the Horrid Lady’s sake…that it’s not a Jigger flea! And having survived so many tsunamis throughout human history, next time I face such a series of harbor-waves, I will simply dive as deep as I can, and hopefully find Jonah’s Giant Mouth-brooding Fish. That should please Anaximander, not to mention a few mer-people along the way. I suppose a little Twilight Sleep from the Twilight Zone might help quicken the journey…no pun intended. And where is it that the Giant Fish took Jonah? Yes! To Nineveh…the age-old stomping grounds of the once little Pazuzu, but who is now the Most Important Divine Being In The Universe…well, from the perspective of the Tree of Life as symbolically realized through the Queen of Assyria. And seeing how Merrin believed that the demon tormenting Regan MacNeil was a manifestation of Lamashtu, the Good Father brought a powerful ally with him back to Washington D.C., to be sure. Still, there is yet one last installment of the Terror of Demons serial essay. That will take us back to the Quiet Man of Nazareth…but will end in a way that blurs the lines of distinction between The Terror of Demons, The Dreams of Avarice, and The Shadow Among Us. But until that time, I feel it incumbent upon myself to let the Star Of Our Show bask in the limelight…