tw: violence unto animals, blood and dismemberment, body horror, bigotry
The Letter of Severin to a Juvenalian Fellow
Dearest friend,
Be tranquil, and be sure that I have received your most recent letter describing your gentlemen of Wiltshire, and their induction into the Mysteria Spiral. I need not tell you that I feel no insignificant disgust in the workings of Snail— a philosophy I find crude and simple to the extreme —and, as such, that you have made a strange and unwelcome blunder in bringing this matter to my attention. I do not think of anything which displeases me, and yet, you, in your uniquely ill humor, have made to take my soul by storm through the use of the proverbial battering ram of these two amateurish initiates and their workings. The account was as obscene as it was banal, and I shall not respond to it.
Practitioning, I need not tell you, is a gross and idiotic thing. It is the demesne solely of pagans, catholics, and children. Magick was not offered so that it might be worked. God did not make wine for the communion. If, in your myopia, you insist on conducting or making any note of rituals you do not understand for motives you are incapable of articulating, I would thank you to forget me, and not to contact me again.
I trust, however, that this is nothing more than the puerile fascination you take with all things. I admire this in you, and should it not affect me any further, I may even be persuaded to go so far as to tolerate it. I long for civil and intelligent conversation on our shared interests— which your last letter did not represent —and so I will end the matter here. Do not idly bring to me the workings of ill-mannered and decadent somdomites again.
If we instead attend to the parts of our correspondence which I am sure are mutually delightful, I shall offer unto you an account which was forwarded unto me by A., who did so in the hopes that I might share it with anyone I know of a Juvenalian inclination. You might note that, while the following account is wholly the province of insane aesthetes, and does involve what appears to be true working, I do not offer it idly. It is a topic which will stimulate you, and may, pray, serve to illustrate to you the indignities of the path to which you are increasingly showing signs of having committed yourself.
I have included the relevant details of their letter precisely as they were sent to me, and as translated by A.— the only preface which may be useful to you is that they are unsure of the provenance of the following. I know that shall disappoint you, but the context which I provide to you now is all the context which exists. Anything further, I suspect, would have been destroyed sometime during the Tuscan Affair. If any further records do exist, I should think that the Vatican has them unnoticed and unread in some unassuming place. As you are a left-footer, perhaps you could consider sating yourself through the utter devotion of your life to the God-Mother, and roundaboutly taking advantage of the pontifical archives, if this matter proves to be of sufficient interest to you. Certainly, it might help you to get out of the house.
I might add to this text only the obvious. I do believe it is religious, in the sense that it was written by a worshipper, for worshippers. Where it was made available, I do not know. I expect the account would have been circulated by gentlemen in circles like ours until one of them compromised an address. My analysis suggests it is no older than three centuries: the author is not sufficiently petulant about the Ghibellini for it to be older, in my opinion. Anything else shall flower from your reason and what little might be said of your experience.
If I receive another letter mentioning Wiltshire, I will have it burned, I will change my address, and we will not contact one another again.
Thank you,
Severin
The Account of What Occurred in a Florentine Carnevale
What I shall relate to you happened during the Carnival.
The Carnival! What a time! The word, Carnevale, I need not explain to you. You have heard the jokes, and a few of you, still, have heard the scholars, and know joke from Unjoke, and know, a few of you, that they are the same. It is the end of meat, of flesh, and of all things which are stol’n by Lent.
I mean no petulance in this! I am glad for Lent. Without it, man might spend his days fat and content. We are taught, our people, to revile fasting, for man was not made hungry so that he might know the joys of vacancy, but instead the joys of fullness. We, our people, are taught never to say, carne vale, goodbye to meat, farewell to flesh, for we are meat, and we are flesh, and the greatest sins are done by those who have released their own hands, and left themselves to die on the road to the Fourth Birth. But is our meat not the flesh of the ash of the First Death, which, smiling, swallowed the Once-Born in sevens as his heart wrothe and wroth on the cold mud? We bid farewell to flesh, and our flesh is painted upon the forehead the day just following— upon the forehead, as fair Athena erupted from the forehead of Zeno, and in so doing, kept beating the heart of the Prince of Cosmophagy from the First Death to the Third Birth and On.
You are no higher than the Christians, friends. Admire them this: They know not what they do, true, but they do not what they know. You are made of the meat of the flesh of the ash of the First Death, just as are they, and your salvation shall be just as arduous.
The walker on the path bears no credit for his direction.
I will tell you this account in a fictitious, phantasiacal way. It shall give me pleasure to do so, and our people, we are taught to do that which gives us pleasure. But I am certain it is a true thing. Upon my heart, the one in my chest and the one which wroth and wrothe and writhes ever still upon the cold mud, what I shall tell you is absolutely true. If in my account, I might be swallowed into the great ecstasies of the rending, envy me. And if I might be swallowed into the narrow belly of Saturn, into the nihilisms of Moth, into the lies of the Unfeeling, Unliving, and Undying, I pray, friends, that you shall find me, and kill me.
And in so killing, we shall, the both of us, know birth again.
I invoke for my muse only You, Kóre, who is known by every man, and knows the thrumming of their blood and the creaking of their bones better than they themselves. I invoke for my muse great Kóre, architect of the First Birth, patron of all things, protector of all things, and destroyer of all things. I take for my muse— take, as Zeno took her mother, take, as she shall take me, in her arms, in her teeth, and rend me— rend, rend as her son was rent from her arms— rend, rend as her son was rent, his heart from his chest, his limbs from his torso, his body into sevens— I take her, for my muse, Dead Kóre, Living Kóre, Wandering Kóre, Daughter of Zeno, Mother of the Thrice Born’s First Birth, whose arms touch the dawn and in so touching bear dusk, and whose fingers— long, swaying, like the trembling of cattails —touch the dusk, and in so touching, breathe dawn, rose-sleeved. She is mother of the Thrice Born, Daughter of Zeno, as I am son of Zeno, son of Her, Brother of the Thrice Born, and flesh of Titan. I invite her here— I walk with her in the Garden, for all the world is my Garden, and here I walk with her, as Her Father, the Serpent of Zeno, met with the Serpent of Eden, and mingled in the Garden, and in so doing bore Her, bleary Kóre, yawning Kóre, who so borne, bore the first of the Thrice Born’s bearings, who was rent in sevens, and in sevens devoured, and in sevens were his devourers Immolated, and in sevens did man emerge from the crackling ash. I am the dancing sparks of Zeno— I am the cooling ash of Titan, of the Thrice Born, and nurtured in the womb of Kóre, who is called Cosimo, and in Cosimo I am born, I eat, in sevens I eat, and in sevens am eaten, and I die, and in so dying am born seven thousand times over.
I feel her now, writhing in the provinces of my veins as writhed and wrothe and wroth and writhes ever still the ever beating heart of Wine upon the mud, between the First and Second Births, I feel her, lifting by the scruff of my neck this shadow of her First Son, as lifted fair Athena her son’s one and every heart into a sepulchre from silver carved, that in it we may find our salvation, silver and red and writhing, I feel her, burrowed in the pit of my heart as burrowed the worms of the earth and the flesh and the ash into the limbs of our lord, the Thrice Born, the worms who reached his limbs ever-faster than far-reaching Apollo, for none work faster than you, my lady, Kóre, Cosmophagy, who devours the world, and in so doing, is devoured eternal.
I feel her. I do not lie, friends. I feel her ecstasies as surely as I doubt them. She plays at the periphery of my vision. She writhes in the provinces of my veins. She burrows in the very pit of my heart. She is always just out of me, for I am not of the spirit, and the spirit abhors me in turn. But in my minor way, I have her with me— her hand upon mine —and I may continue with her blessing. If what follows is lacking, it is my error. If what follows has any pale shadow of Her, Kóre, then it is only by her grace and mercy.
What I shall relate to you happened during the Carnival, in Florence.
I will not explain to you this ritual, for even the most wretched among us will not fault the Christians the one holiday we might be said to share. Even those among us who loathe to bid farewell to the flesh will still delight in some minor show of the same, that we might enjoy all the desperate and frenzied satiety that emerges in the face of a goodbye. We will not, our people, reject any chance for a festivity, for it is contrary to how we were taught. Suffice it to say that it is a time for revelry, and drinking, and the great consumption of meat. Suffice it to say, also, that these things have never been out of fashion in our fair city since that great and wicked bastard— undeserving a name, but whose name I shall remind you of that you might curse him also —Savonarola, was merciful enough to die.
Two gentlemen of Florence— these things always seem to happen to gentlemen in pairs, don’t they? —were sitting in the revelry.
I will provide you no portrait of it, for, for all my talk, it is a ritual which proves of great disgust to me. The noise and the indulgence of the ecstasies is one thing— a visitation by Noise, by Indulgence, not from the hearts of men, but from the Heart which underlies them —but I can not tolerate at all, in my anxiety, the clamor and uproar of the city at Carnival time. I make, ordinarily, every effort to withdraw to my estate during the season. If I am unsuccessful, I sit quietly in the revelry, as did these two gentlemen, and with my pitiable smile, I regard. To even think of it renders me nauseous. The crowd, the revelry, the noise and the singing of bells, the deep and rancid scent of sweat, beef, and wine, let us discuss them no more. Do you suppose these gentlemen took notice of such things? I will tell you what they took notice of.
The one gentleman, the primary gentleman, we might call Vittorio. This was, near enough, his actual name. Vittorio took notice of his steak. If you have had the flesh of the Chianina, my friends— you Toscanos certainly have, I can not be sure as to the experience of any foreigner on the subject —then you know how usual it is for a gentleman to take interest only in his steak. The world did not exist, besides. He sat there, with his aged steak, rare to the point of excess— and this, friends, with the rarity which is our custom kept well in mind —and he took notice of nothing else. I dare say he had forgotten the gentleman across from him, until he spoke.
Our secondary gentleman speaks, now! He enters the scene not from stage left, nor stage right— he drifts, in his leviathanic magnitude, built, perhaps, most like a churchdoor than anything else, he drifts like some porphyrian whale out of the black fog surrounding Vittorio, who next to him is a stoat, a housecat, a little, carnivorous, woodland thing, and, Umberto, gazing into the now empty glass, of which he has himself been taking sole notice of, Umberto speaks. Umberto licks, desperately, the rim of his glass, and raises his eyes to Vittorio, and the steak which Vittorio is taking great pleasure in cutting, and says to him,
“More wine, then?”
The wall is shattered— the two gentlemen return to the world. Their notices become extensive. They notice one another, first.
Vittorio makes no response, but by some signal of his hand summons more wine, and a sharper knife, and returns to his steak. But he may not so easily dismiss Umberto. Umberto watches with the sort of dull interest a child might have, watching the work of his father. Umberto does not touch the new wine. The revelry returns to the black fog— the table is the only truly lucid place in creation, now. Vittorio is sharpening one knife upon the other, and his eyes are closed with the weary tranquility of a martyred saint. Umberto speaks again.
I do not know the precise inanities of Umberto’s comments. Certainly, he understood nothing of sharps, or steak, or omophagy. He did not say anything terribly offensive— but Christians never do, do they? They are simply too dispassionate. Our people, we are taught that there can be no offense in insincerity. It is our great weakness that we are only ever absolutely sincere. Umberto commented, I assume, that the steak was too raw, or that sharpening a sharp at the dinner table was impolite, or that Vittorio’s eyes gleamed in a frightening way even when closed. It is of no real significance, for no response of Vittorio’s could bear any real relevance to a comment of Umberto’s— Umberto was a Christian, and Vittorio was one of our people. Vittorio sighed, and without answering Umberto’s comments, or opening his eyes, he cut the steak into sevens, and put down his sharps.
“Do you know, my friend,” said Vittorio, “the meaning of Carnival?”
Umberto blinked.
“Carnival,” continued Vittorio, “is the most frenzied time of the year. That is the meaning of Carnival. Frenzy. Orgy.” and, hissing, his eyebrows— imposing and dark, like caterpillars —knitted firmly together, Vittorio whispered: “Ecstasy.”
Vittorio took up the duller of his two knives, and with all grace and elegance in the world, began to pierce the sevens of his miniature (overpriced, also, while we’re on the note) steak, and raised them, one by one, to his mouth. He placed them between his lips— lips which were, in both shade and shape, vermillion —and his eyes glistened a little brighter as he drank the blood off of these pieces of a living creature, and swallowed them whole. He raised the seventh of the sevens in the air, dangled it off the tip of his knife, and said,
“Tomorrow, Umberto, you will go before your God, and you will partake of his body, and of his blood, and of his dust. Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. That’s it, isn’t that right, Umberto? You are his dust. Tomorrow you will eat of his body, and drink of his blood, and wear of his dust. I do not fault you for this, Umberto. Your God is your own. My god is not very different from yours. Both our gods know death as intimately as they know life. So allow me, pray, the body of my god, and the blood of my god, and the ash of my god. I do not deny you yours.”
It is of note that Vittorio, in keeping with our custom, for he was one of our people, had at this point had rather too much wine. This is, of course, how we were taught, our people. It is contrary to how we were taught to so openly discourse on our faith— but Vittorio had rather too much wine, and a gentleman who has had rather too much wine is as near the Fourth Birth as ever he shall be in this life. Umberto had not had nearly enough wine, so he blinked, and looked Vittorio up and down, and leaned in, as though they were discussing some grand and secret conspiracy, and whispered,
“…Are you a Jew, Vittorio?”
There is nothing to be said of it. It is a predictably Christian error. Vittorio swallowed the seventh of his sevens of steak, and whispered, with some tone of bemused condescension,
“Umberto,” and he blinked, and whispered, lucidly, “Umberto,” and he lost his train of thought, and he swore, and he grabbed Umberto’s massive, gargantuan, terrifyingly square hand, and whispered, desperately, “Umberto,”
“Vittorio?”
“I do not care for this holiday or for God anymore. Let us go.”
And with that, Vittorio pulled Umberto from the table, and Umberto, laughing, let himself be pulled along, and through the streets of our fair city.
In this time, which is not very distant at all, it was a little easier than it is now to get into the countryside from the Palazzo Vecchio. Surely the oldest of my readers will remember how trivial a thing it was, to find some other young thing during the Carnival, and run the length of the city, and one would be, simply as that, among the maenads and the satyrs, in the beautiful countryside which our fair city adorns like a ruby brooch. This was in those days, and though now the old people keep better eyes on their charges, and the Grand Duke keeps a better eye on his holdings, and the Christians keep better eyes on us, then it was a very trivial thing to go into the countryside, winedrunk, with other young people. Vittorio, with a severe expression adorning a face which was already quite severe at its lightest times, tore through the streets, with Umberto pulled behind him, giggling despite all his great and horrendous size, and soon, the two gentlemen were in the countryside, and Vittorio stopped, in a narrow copse, and for a moment, they breathed, and heaved, until Vittorio took up Umberto’s hand again, and inspected it as if he was seeing it for the first time.
“Your hands,” spake Vittorio, “are like the hooves of a bull. Your shoulders…” this he said, drifting his hands over Umberto’s shoulders, “You are a little like a Chianina, Umberto. Do you know this?”
In this time, it was a little more usual than it is now for young men to fraternize with one another in the woods, so Umberto only laughed, and put his massive hands out for Vittorio to take, and he stood there and giggled, for Vittorio’s eyes were narrow and carnivorous, and Umberto assumed in this a gesture of some great romantic interest.
Indeed, there was something romantic about Vittorio’s interest, in that the stoat has a sort of romantic interest in the mouse which they devour, but Umberto was a Christian, and so could comprehend none of this. Our people, of course, understand this implicitly.
Umberto laughed, loud and rumbling, like the bellowing of Phalaris’s bull, and this agitated Vittorio, but he thought to himself, there was a day when our god commanded us to tear bulls, to tear them like flesh, to rend them, to rend them into sevens and eat them alive, but that day is well past, and I shall not rend Umberto, for he is my friend, and so was calm.
“I have to show you something,” said Vittorio.
At this, Umberto’s auspices became serious, and though his smile was still playful, he nodded, gently, and did not protest when Vittorio used his fingers to brush shut his eyes. He stood, in great patience, as Vittorio dropped his hands, and he listened, silently, with his charming, boyish, Umbertine grin, to the great rustling accompanying whatever Vittorio was doing. He had the natural assumptions about what Vittorio intended to show him, and so perhaps it was unsurpising for him to be docile, as he was.
He waited this way, utterly patiently, for some impressive length of time, until at last Vittorio again brushed his eyes open, and Umberto observed with some confusion that Vittorio was entirely dressed, and clutching in one hand a terrified squirrel.
“You are my friend,” mumbled Vittorio, “and I like you, and I do not want for you to lose any chance at salvation only because you are a Christian when you should not be.”
“You’ve a squirrel,” said Umberto.
“You’ve large, vicious, ogreine hands,” said Vittorio, “and surely you could tear this squirrel into sevens if you so chose. There is no reason,” and he blinked, and swayed, but stayed upright, “there is no reason at all you should be forbidden to eat this squirrel in sevens.”
“You wanted to show me the squirrel,” said Umberto, laughing, “is that it?”
“Listen to me,” hissed Vittorio, and he began to cry, and pout, for he always did this when he was drunk. “You’re not listening, you never listen to me…” and he raised his one free hand to his eye, and rubbed it like a schoolboy, and Umberto cooed, and apologized, and took in his great hand the trembling squirrel.
“What would you like me to do with the squirrel?”
Vittorio dried his eyes, and made some minor and futile effort to remove the pout from his face, and mumbled all that is quite obvious to our people, that Umberto should tear the squirrel into sevens and eat them alive, all except the limbs and the heart.
Umberto asked Vittorio to repeat this, three times, and Vittorio did, and at last, Umberto repeated what Vittorio had said, and Vittorio affirmed that he had it just correct, and Umberto blinked, and made some comment or another suggesting that Vittorio was absolutely out of his mind.
And Vittorio explained, in increasing accents of agitation, everything of our faith, and of our people, and of what we were taught, and Umberto listened, his hand wrapped around the trembling squirrel, and when Vittorio had finished, Umberto knelt to the ground, and released the squirrel from his exceedingly gentle grasp.
For a moment, the squirrel knew not what to do. They idled. This was their gravest mistake.
In all panic and desperation, while Umberto roared to Vittorio about Christendom, and right and wrong, and madness and sanity, and all the other binaries which we were taught to dance upon, wildly, like the maenads and the satyrs which shadowed the gentlemen in the copse, and all other young people in the countryside which our fair city adorns like a ruby brooch, while Umberto roared, and found his hand nearing to the sword upon his waist— for in this day, it was still the fashion for gentlemen to carry little dueling swords, and it was not yet against the law in the Grand Duchy —while this occurred, Vittorio, in all panic and desperation, leapt upon the squirrel, and ripped them, with a speed as awesome as it was horrifying, ripped them into sevens. With practiced grace, he rent the limbs, and pulled out the heart, and cast it upon the cold mud, where it wrothe and wroth and writhed and took its final beats, and he tore the body into sevens, and ate each piece whole, and Umberto, a gentle creature, yes, but a Christian, and so unflinchingly myopic and hateful of that most basic reality, the flower of all which our people have been taught— Cosmophagy —tore his little dueling sword from his waist, and drove it downwards, perfectly, expertly, into the prostrate, feasting Vittorio’s back, and through his beating heart.
And Vittorio, whose heart was slain, but who has two hearts, for he is one of our people, and has a heart in his chest which may be killed, and another heart upon the cold mud which writhes still, and shall writhe forever, Vittorio laughed, and he coughed his blood onto the cold mud and the patchwork grass, and he lapped it up just as readily, for he knew his blood was the gift of his god, of the Thrice Born, of Zeno and of Kóre.
The Aegyptians refuse to drink wine— they say it is the blood of blasphemers, growing only from the ground on which righteous men have murdered them, and that it is for this reason that it drives men mad.
Umberto looked down in horror at the beast he had slain, and he saw his friend, licking desperately at his own blood, as if he were starving for it, and he did not see that from where his sword had pierced Vittorio’s heart, his blood crawled in great drops upward, writhing closer and closer to Umberto’s grotesque hand, as caterpillars climbing to a rotten fruit.
Higher and higher climbed these rolling ruby beads, red as our fair city’s skyline— and when they reached Umberto’s hand, clasped, still, paralyzed, around the hilt of his sword, they brushed his knuckles like a flirtation, and they pulled him, playfully, to the earth, that he might kiss the blood he had spilled, and give Vittorio another birth.
With those grotesque, massive, titanic hands, Umberto tore the limbs from Vittorio’s writhing body, and they came apart in his hands like boiled meat,
And with those same hands, he clawed through Umberto’s back, and pulled out the beating heart, and cast it, deflated, impaled, but uneaten, upon the cold mud,
And with those same hands, he pulled and tore and rent Vittorio into sevens,
And eagerly, lifted them to his mouth, and devoured each piece whole,
And in so doing, devoured and slew Vittorio,
And in so slaying, was with him born again.
When the ecstasy came to an end, and all that was left was the twitching limbs and the slowing heart, Umberto looked, with those bull-like, bleary, Christian eyes, and saw what he had done, and was disgusted.
And he returned to the city, and washed himself, and went to his God, and repented,
And the next morning, he partook of the body of his God,
And the blood of his God,
And took the dust of his God upon his forehead,
And, his eyes cast down, his sins absolved, the taste of our people upon his tongue, salvatory, there, at the dusk of the Shrovetide— Umberto welcomed the Seventh King.