Madgic #2: Psycho Pomp is FOR SALE!

[lb_lee]

56 pages, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, black and white! Available on paper for $8, or as an ebook for $4! ​

​Everyone knows that crazy people have symptoms, not spirituality. So, what happens when you can't ignore it anymore and have to make up religion as you go? Join LB Lee on their stagger-dance through sanity and spirituality: * Dealing with madness and mortality with more of the same! *Otherordinary entities that won't leave you alone! * Murdering the god in your head for mental health purposes! *Many, many illustrations of skeletons!

NOTE for paper buyers: due to a print error, one page of this zine had to be manually corrected. The zine is still perfectly readable and fine, but folks who buy from the imperfect initial print run will get their book signed and adorned with a sticker of their choice as compensation. (Sticker options include: emoticons, travel, winter stuff, or Kink Pride stickers.) If you want a sticker, please make sure to say so, either in the comments here or in the Etsy order notes section!)

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

Ooh, nice! That looks interesting!

[sinistmer]

Congratulations on getting it out! Looks great! :D

[stealthsystem]

Plan on buying the ebook. :D

[talewisefellowship]

looking forward to reading this.

production question: I assume you do the lineart at a high resolution to make it look good on print, is it 300 dpi?

-J

[lb_lee]

Yup, I do 300. Other colleagues of mine are more hardcore, do 600 or even more, but 300 has always been fine for my needs.

[talewisefellowship]

good to know. Also the book is excellent, the history of death as a folkloric figure was really interesting

-J

[lb_lee]

There was so much I had to cut, I realized I was getting distracted wanting to share ALL the skellydeath trivia and it's like, no, bad Mori, zine's not about that!

[talewisefellowship]

yeah it's so interesting to learn that apparently the grim reaper as the personification of death goes back to the black plague which makes so much sense. I focus mostly on the early middle ages, so long before the black plague, and at least in norse culture I don't see any similar figures. The only comparable one is Hel, who is never depicted as skeletal, and is a neutral figure as I understand, though I haven't researched her specifically much.

-J

[lb_lee]

Mori: Yeah, the grim reaper imagery DID make it up to Scandinavia, but it was later, by the start of the Renaissance, I think. I've seen Hel depicted with a half skeletal face, but I feel like it's mostly been in modern depictions; is that right, or am I totally offbase?

I didn't even GET to plunge into the huge tradition of death and skeletal depictions in Mexican art, and the Aztecs and other peoples before them. (We have Popol Vul on our To Read pile and will probably get to it while recovering from surgery. That's Quiche Maya/K’iche’, not Aztec, but they have a bat deity, Camazotz, associated with death.) It's on the list, I assure you, especially since we grew up in an area with a fair amount of cultural influence from Mexico, and I want to track what we picked up.

[talewisefellowship]

Descriptions of Hel where they exist are vague, in Snorri's Prose Edda she is apparently described as having one half skin color and the other half blue (the text literally says blá 'blue' in old norse though some translations interpret this as black). Modern artists seem to have taken this to mean that her blá half looks like a rotting corpse, but it's unclear to me if it's meant to be interpreted this way. Either way I'm not personally aware of any instances of her being described as appearing skeletal to any degree.

(bear in mind that Snorri was Christian so he filtered his understanding of norse lore through that lens)

Hel kastaði hann í Niflheim ok gaf henni vald yfir níu heimum, at hon skyldi skipta öllum vistum með þeim, er til hennar váru sendir, en þat eru sóttdauðir menn ok ellidauðir. Hon á þar mikla bólstaði, ok eru garðar hennar forkunnarhávir ok grindr stórar. Éljúðnir heitir salr hennar, Hungr diskr hennar, Sultr knífr hennar, Ganglati þrællinn, Ganglöt ambátt, Fallandaforað þresköldr hennar, er inn gengr, Kör sæing, Blíkjandaböl ársali hennar. Hon er blá hálf, en hálf með hörundarlit. Því er hon auðkennd ok heldr gnúpleit ok grimmlig.

Hel he cast into Niflheim, and gave to her power over nine worlds, to apportion all abodes among those that were sent to her: that is, men dead of sickness or of old age. She has great possessions there; her walls are exceeding high and her gates great. Her hall is called Sleet-Cold; her dish, Hunger; Famine is her knife; Idler, her thrall; Sloven, her maidservant; Pit of Stumbling, her threshold, by which one enters; Disease, her bed; Gleaming Bale, her bed-hangings. She is half blue-black and half flesh-color (by which she is easily recognized), and very lowering and fierce.

translation by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916)

It would have been really cool to hear about depictions of death in mexican and aztec art, shame you had to leave it out. Also cool to see the bat motif show up again.

--J

[lb_lee]

Yeah, iirc the Aztecs in particular had a ton of death gods and rituals around blood and death. And common vampire bats are so common in Mexico that "vampiro" has become slang for all bats (the proper term for that is "murcielago," I think). So when Merlin Tuttle, bat conservator, got a Mexican philanthropist on board with Bat Conservation International, the philanthropist's secretary dutifully wrote down that he was involved with Vampire Conservation International.

[talewisefellowship]

I love that

--J