Teratology

Extrapolation

I have since secured it, and we call it "What is it?" -- P.T. Barnum writing to friend about Zip, April 4, 1860¹ 

Holy Child Hungry Mind

Molech demands the blood. The more innocent the victim, the better the sacrifice -- and the cowled child is a lamb of the purest white fleece. Teratology grew from the search for the cowled child.

Unfortunately, cowled children are rarely delivered. Early in the days following the fall of Rome, an appeal was made to the pope:

"How much longer must we wait? How many more must die while we kneel, prostrated in prayer, pleading for that miracle draped in fleshy robes, kissed by Yahweh in formation and returned to Molech in sacrifice? Why must we wait like the dumb beasts in the field for a carrot from our master? Did the Lord not grant us reason?"

Born Freak, Made Freaks, Novelty Acts, and Gaffed Freaks

In those days gone by, alchemists sought to create gold from lead as the Church sought to turn sinners into saints. The darker arts of alchemy explored poisons; the darker agents of the Church explored abominations of nature. To the determined monks of yore, the lack of “natural” specimens was but a stumbling block. With little in the way of biological understanding, clandestine operations sought to create new life, drawing from legends of bestiality, Greek explorations into homunculi, and Paracelsus’ investigations of poisons.

Teratology was born in these early attempts to wrestle the power of creation from the gods by creating the cowled child. But this goal has proved elusive. Even with modern technology, the cowled child resists an unnatural creation. How much more resistant was the cowled child to the primitive stabs by the unholy ranks of the dark ages?

Less Talk More Sulphur

The middle ages saw a rash of freelance teratologists obsfucating the old myths with a nefarious blend of Dark Ages hocus-pocus and Molechian spin-offs tempting the unclean with arias of hymnal hymen and elixirs of virgin urine under arrest. The boom in false prophets drove the adventure underground where it operated in the metaphorical basements of the world's major religions; the Tridentine Catholics, the Protestants, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims would be horrified to learn that deep in the bowels of their holy sytems there is a secret attempt at the altar of Abraham to right the wrong of God and thus make him real.

In Less Than A Minute

The traveling freak show, with its own important mythologies, may very well be the most well-known of the modern applications of teratology, finding purpose, as it were, for the experimental byproducts of Priory of Goom research. The initiation rites of the League of Gnomes mirror these teratological processes; one could argue that as Gnomic initiates climb the ranks, their conversion from human to monster is more than metaphoric. But there is evidence that suggests that such freak shows may be a poor example of the modern style.

Dubord's immersion into the origins of the twentieth century's variety of this new magic was exceptional in its scope and was radically cross-disciplined (much to everyone’s distaste, thus the short run). A quality sample of his style (provided below) is not only prophetic in both vision and language, but is exquisite in its chrono-universalis as to a point as to be a blueprint for a proper and successful foray into the business of Monstrous Science.

"With clarity one can discern the Molechian influences of our masterful representatives and their protean masters what with their unwavering drive to repress gnostic release and thus create an unholy and eternal cancer that gnaws at the (untranslatable)... of mankind and thus renders him a blind man, a jackass. One would not have to imagine much further than today’s Mental Exo-nauts (Bester, Sturgeon et al) to see that the liberation of monstrous science may soon lay in the holy hand of the new high priests of micro-biology and manipulation of the cellular index. Geomantic Bio-Hacking-the Shellyian frost of the cryptocracy is akin to a new sport."

Stem Cell Indeed

"Cheny is hated as the most cruel monster and blood-thirsty beast, as he has drenched various parts of the world in blood." -- foriegn ministry spokesperson, N. Korea, June 3, 2005.

Though the alchemic analogy fell apart long ago when Joseph Merrick (a.k.a., the Elephant Man) spouted poetry and gawkers found a monster in the mirror, the work continues today. As the public eye is drawn towards genetically-modified foods, stem cell research, and hunimals, Chinese “doctors” promise results to unsuspecting foreign women offering cash for miracle fertilization treatments and North Korean scientists use people as they see fit. And in the US, thousands of children go missing every year -- many victims of lone wolves, others falling to various Death Cults, and a select few; who can say?

In a more PC era we speak of monstrous deeds instead of monstrous appearance. The Koran states that “each soul is the hostage of its deeds” (Sura 74, v. 38), but is the monster’s soul not held by the unseen hand of its creator? Who is the monster: the creation or the creator? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Few are gold, but are only few monsters? What is Satan but an angel transformed?

See Also

• Boer
• Choco

Notes

Note 1:  Zip was the inspiration for the comic strip Zippy the Pinhead. This quote is from: Saxon, A. H. 1983. page 104. 'Selected letter of P. T. Barnum.' New York: Columbia University Press.

Desiderata

The ancient Mayans worshipped conjoined twins, paying them the highest honor of ritualistic death.

Mary Shelley was inspired to create Frankenstein by her father’s unnaturally strong curiosity for the unnatural.

A 1986 survey found that nearly one third of boys aged 13 to 16 living on dairy farms in the US had carnal knowledge of cattle.

Teratology is a common theme in modern and post-modern literature, spanning the gap from Dracula to Spiderman, from Alice in Wonderland to Rambo, from The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Geek Love, etc., etc....

Mr. Dareste? A fall guy -- a victim of psy-ops by the Church whose teratological creations extend back well into the days preceding the Renascence.