Monday, 4 May 2026
Negroes in Nazi Germany
In Nazi Germany, negroes were employed in various parts of the entertainment industry, such as film studios and touring ethnic shows like the Hillerkus Afrikaschau circuses. By 1940 these operations had been taken over by the SS, who converted them to serve propaganda purposes.
For instance, Propaganda minister Josef Goebbels realized that in order to spread the Nazi Gospel of white Aryan supremacy, he needed to exploit the most popular entertainment medium of the time — German feature films. Propaganda pictures such as Kongo Express, Quax in Africa, and Auntie Wanda from Uganda were made to present Germany as an enlightened, benevolent colonial power. Thus under Nazi control the film industry provided employment for Black Germans.
As Black actor Werner Egoimue explains, “We had an agent then, who had all the addresses of Black people in Berlin. The Reich's Chamber of Commerce was in touch with him, and when they were casting a film, it was fun—inside the studio ... you were as safe as in a bank.”
See: World History Archives
"Rightwing" Gays: The French Exception?
As I say, what the authors have to say about Nazism wears somewhat thin at times. The National Socialist German Workers Party did indeed have it roots in the barmier imaginings of a group of shell-shocked Bavarian veterans of the Great War. And apart from the fact that they were all ex-soldiers there was nothing particularly "rightwing" about them - at least until they were infiltrated by the security forces (in the person of a former Austrian corporal by the name of Adolf Heidler) and had their ideology re-modelled along the lines of Prussian Imperialism. But the presence of the notorious pervert Ernst Röhm amongst the luminaries of the early Nazi Party does not imply that the Party was a "gay" political movement, nor do its early meetings in gay nightclubs. Nor, for that matter, does Heidler's (a.k.a. Hitler's) former sideline career as a Viennese rentboy!
Where the authors are on more solid ground is with the modern "Far Right", not to mention the modern "gay rights" movement. Although the "Gay Movement" has clearly drifted towards the Left in recent years, it has in its time had a significant following on the Far Right - and conversely there is hardly a single Far Right political party in Europe today that has not had more than its fair share of gay sex scandals.
Where the really funny stuff happens, apparently, is on the Nouvelle Droit. David Irving, who is always good for a laugh, has an old news story about a young French student called Michael Caignet in his archive.
ON January 29, 1981, Michel (Miguel) Caignet, a 26 year old doctoral candidate in English-German linguistics, was just leaving his residence in Courbevoie to attend the university when he was accosted by four individuals in the vicinity of his apartment. He was at once knocked to the ground and held down while one of his four assailants poured sulphuric acid over his face and his right hand.OK, most of those Jewish names don't mean much to me. But Michel Caignet was to go on to further notoriety by becoming the founder-editor of Gaie France - which, as the title perhaps suggests, was a rightwing French nationalist gay magazine. Which promoted pederasty!
Mr. Caignet had once belonged to FANE (the Fédération d'action nationale et européene) and been a revisionist. He had been denounced by the daily VSD.
As a result of the acid attack his facial features were so hideously disfigured that only two newspapers dared to publish a photograph. The identity of the main participant in the attack, Yves Aziza, a medical student and son of Charles Aziza (a pharmaceutical company employee at Montreuil) was known to police within one hour of the assault. But the French police, and French justice, allowed Y. Aziza, in circumstances of which the outrageous details are well-known, sufficient time to flee to Germany and then Israel.
At the Justice Ministry, a Mr. Main, (a director attached to the Office of Criminal Investigations headed by Raoul Béteille), adopted a sarcastic tone as he explained why it took all of 14 days before a criminal investigation into the matter finally began. ... Among Y. Aziza's accomplices one noted the name of Daniel Ziskind, son of Michèle Ziskind and sister of Jean-Pierre Pierre-Bloch, and the son of Jean Pierre-Bloch himself.
Last spring the case against French publisher Michel Caignet was finally brought to a close. A Paris court barred him for life from ever publishing again, and sentenced him to serve two-and-a-half years in prison for his role in selling gay videos that allegedly showed actors under the age of eighteen, but over the age of fifteen having sex. Caignet's license to distribute his magazine Gaie France was already revoked in 1993, but Caignet ignored the censors' warnings and continued publishing under new titles. The convictions brought to a close an investigation that began with nation-wide raids in April 1996 against people on Caignet's mailing list. The day the trials opened there were more raids, this time involving some 2500 French police, who conducted 710 searches around the country. Of the 673 persons whose home were searched, 210 were charged with a crime, and 20 were kept in jail. The involvement of Caignet with porn with minors doesn't surprise someone who's familiar with the history of Gaie France. The magazine has always been controversial because the editors used the philosophy of right-wing authors as Hans Blüher to sanction their own interest in very young boys.
So what's the connexion? Alisdair Clarke on his Aryan Futurism blog explains:
The [Euro New Right]’s “paganism” entails a naturalism towards mores and sexuality. Unlike still traditionalists, ENR members have a relatively liberated attitude towards sexuality. Thus [Alain de] Benoist had no qualms about giving an interview to Gaie France, which features homoerotic images as well as cultural commentary. ENR members have no desire to impose what they consider the patently unnatural moralism of Judeo-Christianity on sexual relations.Ummm, Okaaay! It's interesting to read that Judeo-Christian "moralism" is "unnatural" - whereas having it off with little boys is apparently just fine.
Who are we to disagree?
A Different Sort of Scouting?
29th July 1935: Members of the Hitler Youth under flags of the various delegations at the Hitler Youth Jamboree near Rheinsberg in Germany. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)Under the Third Reich, Scouting was of course banned in Germany, and all Scouts were forced (or perhaps just forefully encouraged) to join the Hitler Youth.
And yet the Hitler Youth was in many ways clearly inspired by the Scout Movement - right down to their uniforms and, apparently, their "jamborees".
Norbert Bisky
Norbert Bisky (born 1970) is a German painter based in Berlin, best known for his frescos depicting adolescents.
He was born at Leipzig in the former German Democratic Republic. The son of a Communist official, he grew up in a home in which Communism assumed the power of a religion. He studied from the mid 1990s at the Hochschule der Künste where he was a master student of Georg Baselitz in Berlin and at the Salzburg Summer Academy in the class of Jim Dine.
His work is greatly influenced by the socialist realism which was the official art of the GDR. In recent years he has shifted to darker themes of disaster, disease and decapitation while retaining the consummate painterliness which is the hallmark of his work.
His figures, in many cases are floating, falling, tumbling, without any gravitational axis. The tumult surrounding the figures is punctuated by the cross pollination of cues from Christian ideology, art history, gay culture, pornography and apocalyptic visions. Bisky transmits an impression of instability on the canvas that distinctly resonates with our contemporary state of affairs.
A Connexion Too Easily Made?
'Blond hear [sic] and blue eyes, maybe, but young boys without T-shirts? I would say that the critics that hold these opinions are unconsciously influenced by the connection that we too easily make between homosexuality and fascism.'
Nazi Zionism
This is the medal that was struck to commemorate the cooperation between Zionists and Nazis in Palestine. [H/T: Irving]See also: 'Zionism in the 1930s'
Zionist Colonists
An unauthorized Jewish settler West Bank outpost, Givat EgozIsraeli settlements are residential areas inhabited by Jewish Israelis in the Israeli-occupied territories (lands that were captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War). Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank, which is viewed as occupied by Israel by the international community and partially under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and in the Golan Heights, which is also viewed as occupied by Israel.
The term sometimes includes communities in territory that was captured in 1967, but has since been under Israeli civil law, administration and jurisdiction in East Jerusalem, which is incorporated within the municipal borders of Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, where military rule was revoked in 1981 and has since been under Israeli civil law, administration and jurisdiction under the Golan Heights Law.
An additional eighteen settlements formerly existed in the Sinai Peninsula, twenty-one in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank. They were abandoned as part of Israeli withdrawals from these areas in 1982 (Sinai) and 2005.
Israeli policies toward these settlements have ranged from active promotion to removal by force, and their continued existence and expansion since the 1970s is one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The term sometimes includes communities in territory that was captured in 1967, but has since been under Israeli civil law, administration and jurisdiction in East Jerusalem, which is incorporated within the municipal borders of Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, where military rule was revoked in 1981 and has since been under Israeli civil law, administration and jurisdiction under the Golan Heights Law.
An additional eighteen settlements formerly existed in the Sinai Peninsula, twenty-one in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank. They were abandoned as part of Israeli withdrawals from these areas in 1982 (Sinai) and 2005.
Israeli policies toward these settlements have ranged from active promotion to removal by force, and their continued existence and expansion since the 1970s is one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Givat Egoz, near the Neria settlement, was inaugurated as American emissaries visited the region.
The Three Races
Behold, my child, the Nordic man,
And be as like him, as you can;
His legs are long, his mind is slow,
His hair is lank and made of tow.
And here we have the Alpine Race:
Oh! What a broad and foolish face!
His skin is of a dirty yellow.
He is a most unpleasant fellow.
The most degraded of them all
Mediterranean we call.
His hair is crisp, and even curls,
And he is saucy with the girls.
[Hilaire Belloc]
Little Princes
Marius og Prins Sverre Magnus. Handoutbilde fra Det Kongelige Hoff. Bildet er kun til redaksjonell bruk - ikke for salg. Bildestørrelse: 640x426 px, 179,89 Kb (Foto: Veronica Melå, Det kongelige hoff) 'Little Boy Blue'
One set of [Mark Ryden's] works that is a personal favorite of mine is Bunnies and Bees: Paintings Created To Illustrate Divine Truth In Accordance With The Secret Principals Of Science And Soul. From it comes the story of what would seem to be sugar and spice where nothing is quite that nice. The creatures, some with glassy, complacent stares some with nasty frowns.One in particular comes to mind titled "Little Boy Blue" the subject is the storybook classic we're all familiar with but with a demented twist: clad in pale pink with blue accents donning a baby blue Nazi swastika on shoulder and cap alike. It seems to tell of sweet innocence gone sour, in more ways than one: his slight scowl the foreboding storm overhead and the adorable little blue pistol in it's holster. He's not off to shoot imaginary Indians or be a bank robber, this little guy's out for holocaust! It's paintings like this that really speak to me telling you to look a little deeper than just the surface, question, probe, discover.
[Helium]
Loki and Sigyn
Another artist who has depicted this scene has been W. G. Collingwood, whose line-drawing version is here.
'Tohyrder'
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Something to do with the Shakespearean (Sophoclean) "ages of man", I think, though I've no idea what the title means! (Google doesn't help.)
'Hof in Spejlsby auf Möen'
Same again! This could just about be Bifröst, I suppose. Again, Google's translator is fairly useless.
Mercia
Was Mercia really this militarily agressive and expansionist power?
Or was it really what the very name suggests it was - a lawless no-man's-land, a romantic waste, where kingship and gangsterism were scarcely to be distinguished and hoards-worths of loot just happened to go missing? Where the old pagan ways lasted longest, furthest from the light of Christian civilisation from either south or west!
And indeed the sort of place, even hundreds of years later, where one would expect Beowulf to be written! (Or indeed, over a thousand years later, The Lord of the Rings!)
Or was it really what the very name suggests it was - a lawless no-man's-land, a romantic waste, where kingship and gangsterism were scarcely to be distinguished and hoards-worths of loot just happened to go missing? Where the old pagan ways lasted longest, furthest from the light of Christian civilisation from either south or west!
And indeed the sort of place, even hundreds of years later, where one would expect Beowulf to be written! (Or indeed, over a thousand years later, The Lord of the Rings!)
Aryan Son
I
He of flax, of lapis lazuli, coral skin,
Leviathan proportion. Adonis of those
Lancastrian hills, a young god that got
Hold of my imagination, and thus a
Replication in acrylics. I was nothing more
Than a magnolia stretch of canvas. And
Yet your expanse is now only a figment,
A stem, a jewel, a piece of sea debris, an
Unwashed brush, kept within the soft wood
Box, locked and secreted.
II
Only in this are you a constant.
Sevenfold winters pass, each less cold
Than the last. Snow falls so seldom now.
In a glass carriage this time, not you, but
The you imagined. It is to him the seven
Years have been kind. Without actual proof
Of your flesh I know not the truth of age.
For you do not age, but look younger,
Handsomer, flaxen-haired and cobalt-
Eyed. At least my heart can still recognise.
You’re a butterfly in casement, formaldehyde
Child in a bell jar, embalmed Egyptian.
You have been pickled by my subconscious.
You sometimes flash, zoetrope image in
A dream, butterfly net over your elusive
Visage. I know the passage in which this
Carriage sits. That place is as forgotten as
Atlantis. I pass you, unseen, my burnt eye
And rusted-hair, an impurity too ugly
For you to look on. A Romany Czech or
A Slovak, a Polack or a Nordic. I have
Too many countries within me. Thus you
Dissolve, a Nazi boot in the throat as I
Wake up, regurgitating black blood and
Things you once said.
Don't ask me!
This was on Sky News's website on a link to a photo-article about the Copenhagen lying competition.
Perhaps all those rumours from ten years ago about the international elite being a bunch of paedos had something more to them after all.
'Portrait of T E Lawrence'
Actually Rory Stewart's mini hagiography of Lawrence, of which I saw the second part this evening, was quite engaging and he himself comes across as an impressive figure. On the other hand, there was more than a whiff of not just self-justification from Stewart, given his own small part in Britain's most recent balls-up in Iraq, and even a spot of exorcising of personal demons.
'The Slave Market'
I'm sure there's some sort of libertarian capitalist pun here, but I can't quite work it out at the moment. The above is by Boulanger. I recently noticed this in Westminster Cathedral, when I was there on Whitsun with the Squirrel. With St Augustine's Day being round-and-about, it struck a chord.
'The King's Ankus'
It's my favourite of the stories in the two Jungle Books. I recently watched 'Rumpole and the Judge's Elbow' again on DVD with Richard. Rumpole quotes from the poem.
The illustrations are of course by the excellent Pierre Joubert.
THE SONG OF THE LITTLE HUNTER
Ere Mor the Peacock flutters, ere the Monkey People cry,
Ere Chil the Kite swoops down a furlong sheer,
Through the Jungle very softly Hits a shadow and a sigh —
He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear!
Very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade,
And the whisper spreads and widens far and near;
And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now —
He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear!
Ere the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed with light,
When the downward-dipping trails are dank and drear,
Comes a breathing hard behind thee — snuffle-snuffle through the night —
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!
On thy knees and draw the bow; bid the shrilling arrow go;
In the empty, mocking thicket plunge the spear;
But thy hands are loosed and weak, and the blood has left thy cheek —
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!
When the heat-cloud sucks the tempest, when the slivered pine-trees fall,
When the blinding, blaring rain-squalls lash and veer
Through the war-gongs of the thunder rings a voice more loud than all —
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!
Now the spates are banked and deep; now the footless boulders leap —
Now the lightning shows each littlest leaf-rib clear —
But thy throat is shut and dried, and thy heart against thy side Hammers:
Fear, O Little Hunter — this is Fear!
Psycho-Sexual Healing
I just read an interesting post from last week on the Gay Banker blog, in which the eponymous GB publishes a little ("semi-psycho-") analysis by a reader who has gone back and digested the whole blog - no mean feat, considering the number of years it's been going. Would that all bloggers were so lucky, one might think, even to have the stamina, let alone such devoted readers!
Suffice it to say, it wasn't too long before I identified the two opposite aspects of myself - the rational and the sensual, caught up as they were in a seemingly never-ending conflict with each other. More importantly, I realised that each side to a certain extent needed the other and they both needed the conflict, even if the conflict itself was having long-term psychological side-effects. Finally I accepted that in the end only some sort of peaceful settlement between the two sides was going to help me.
And perhaps that was indeed my turning-point back towards some sort of comparative spiritual health. It's been a process, since then, that could perhaps be called psycho-sexual healing.
Of course, no human being is ever entirely healthy, either physically or spiritually, and there are some scars that are too deep even for the Sacraments to heal them entirely. But provided one's conscience is at work, with the aid of God's grace, then Final Victory in the spiritual battle should never be thought of as an impossible aim.
Your blog is a kind of therapy during a trauma or crisis in your late 30s (you don't say this but I am reading between the lines) when the two sides of you came into conflict with each other. One side of you is the guy who visited the saunas and gyms, the gaydar/gay.com personals looking for no strings fun. This guy existed mainly outside the relationship with S. The other side is the guy who was asexual at college, wants stable relationships, likes family orientated Asian men, lived with S for 16 years. There is a third side perhaps, the guy who is a judge, enforces fair play and correct behaviour (we can call thus conscience).Actually, the reason I mention it is because I have myself, in my time (albeit briefly), been "in" psychoanalysis. It was during a thankfully comparatively short dark period in my life, between university and paid employment, when my lack of progress on the qualifications and jobs front, not to mention my nocturnal activities, was giving cause for concern.
Suffice it to say, it wasn't too long before I identified the two opposite aspects of myself - the rational and the sensual, caught up as they were in a seemingly never-ending conflict with each other. More importantly, I realised that each side to a certain extent needed the other and they both needed the conflict, even if the conflict itself was having long-term psychological side-effects. Finally I accepted that in the end only some sort of peaceful settlement between the two sides was going to help me.
And perhaps that was indeed my turning-point back towards some sort of comparative spiritual health. It's been a process, since then, that could perhaps be called psycho-sexual healing.
Of course, no human being is ever entirely healthy, either physically or spiritually, and there are some scars that are too deep even for the Sacraments to heal them entirely. But provided one's conscience is at work, with the aid of God's grace, then Final Victory in the spiritual battle should never be thought of as an impossible aim.
Pagan Thoughts
I sat an exam last Tuesday. For various reasons - not the least being that I'd actually attempted it before, twice - it was quite a stressful experience. In the end though I felt that it had gone quite well, and ever since I've been floating around in a sort of de-mob happy daze. Last Saturday was my first free Saturday in what felt like months, and after going to Confession and a requiem for deceased friends it felt like Christmas morning.I actually haven't masturbated for five days now, which these days seems like quite a while. I can go for much longer, of course, and in theory we can all go indefinitely. In that time of course I have found my conscious thoughts taking a more "sexy" turn - muscular young men with big penises in tight white pants (guys like this beauty, for example) and so on. In fact my imagination's even been taking a semi-pagan turn, in that yesterday I found myself thinking of the Horned God, with big muscles and a big dick, all dark and hairy, full of living energy and hot semen, and so on. So I've now signed up to a couple of gay pagan "tribes" on tribe.net - though at the same time I don't really imagine much will come of it.
So what's going on here? I think subconsciously I'm still intrigued by Damian Thompson's claims during Hallowe'en, about how not all pagans are left-wing rug-munchers and actually a lot of them are right-wing head-bangers who connect it with race and nationality and so on (as well as, presumably, sexuality). The other creature haunting my thoughts though is definitely the unforunate Emperor of Exmoor. I'm pro-hunting, of course, partly because I don't see how you can enjoy ham sandwiches and KFC and not be. But I prefer proper hunting, with hounds. The idea of shooting animals with guns somehow has never really appealed.
On the other hand, I actually had a dream about a girl a couple of nights ago. I wonder if subconsciously my sexuality might be trying to heal itself. Again, it seems hopeless at the moment, but you never know.
I don't watch X-Factor...
... for the simple reason that I don't like pop music.
But if there was more stuff like this on it then I might slip it a guilty glance every now and again.
To be fair, I probably do have a long buried thing about star-spangled bums. (I'm inclined to blame Lynda Carter.)
But if there was more stuff like this on it then I might slip it a guilty glance every now and again.
To be fair, I probably do have a long buried thing about star-spangled bums. (I'm inclined to blame Lynda Carter.)
Sleeping Naked
Swimming naked is called "skinny dipping". I don't know what you'd call sleeping naked though. James Bond never wears pyjamas. Neither, if Homer Simspon is to be believed, did Thomas Eddison.I have tried it a couple of times. The problem I find though is that I wrap myself up in the bedclothes to compensate and then wake up covered in sweat - and smelling! It makes the bedclothes damp and smelly too.
It is sort of sexy though.I remember the first time I masturbated "properly" I was sleeping naked in a double bed in a friend's house. The first time I saw myself ejaculate was in the room's en suite bathroom. I used to be pretty sure that the main reason en suite bathrooms at college were more popular with boys than with girls (strangely, you'd have thought) was so that the boys could masturbate in them without being disturbed - and it still makes a certain amount of sense.
Well, I masturbated a bit last night but did not actually ejaculate. I did discharge a certain amount of pre-ejaculate, but, to use the moral theology terms, my pollution was not completed. Morally of course that's hardly any different, though it does feel different, because the body retains a certain sense of integrity, even if the soul doesn't, and of course there's no refraction either.
The point James C made a couple of posts ago is quite right. The real problem though is that unnatural acts, such as sodomy and masturbation, almost by definition do not have positive outcomes. With sex, at the very least, you're left naked and feeling very un-sexy, and if you've been doing it with a guy on the padded floor of a dark little room somewhere far from home, where you had to pay to get in in the first place, then you just feel a bit of a fool. At least the jizz in one's jim-jams doesn't cost anything. But it's still pointless and useless.
It is sort of sexy though.I remember the first time I masturbated "properly" I was sleeping naked in a double bed in a friend's house. The first time I saw myself ejaculate was in the room's en suite bathroom. I used to be pretty sure that the main reason en suite bathrooms at college were more popular with boys than with girls (strangely, you'd have thought) was so that the boys could masturbate in them without being disturbed - and it still makes a certain amount of sense.
Well, I masturbated a bit last night but did not actually ejaculate. I did discharge a certain amount of pre-ejaculate, but, to use the moral theology terms, my pollution was not completed. Morally of course that's hardly any different, though it does feel different, because the body retains a certain sense of integrity, even if the soul doesn't, and of course there's no refraction either.
The point James C made a couple of posts ago is quite right. The real problem though is that unnatural acts, such as sodomy and masturbation, almost by definition do not have positive outcomes. With sex, at the very least, you're left naked and feeling very un-sexy, and if you've been doing it with a guy on the padded floor of a dark little room somewhere far from home, where you had to pay to get in in the first place, then you just feel a bit of a fool. At least the jizz in one's jim-jams doesn't cost anything. But it's still pointless and useless.
A Victory for the Faith
I know this is long, and you can see why Boccaccio used to be on the Index, but I think it's great.
In Paris, gracious ladies, as I have heard tell, there was once a great merchant, a large dealer in drapery, a good man, most loyal and righteous, his name Jehannot de Chevigny, between whom and a Jew, Abraham by name, also a merchant, and a man of great wealth, as also most loyal and righteous, there subsisted a very close friendship. Now Jehannot, observing Abraham's loyalty and rectitude, began to be sorely vexed in spirit that the soul of one so worthy and wise and good should perish for want of faith. Wherefore he began in a friendly manner to plead with him, that he should leave the errors of the Jewish faith and turn to the Christian verity, which, being sound and holy, he might see daily prospering and gaining ground, whereas, on the contrary, his own religion was dwindling and was almost come to nothing. The Jew replied that he believed that there was no faith sound and holy except the Jewish faith, in which he was born, and in which he meant to live and die; nor would anything ever turn him therefrom. Nothing daunted, however, Jehannot some days afterwards began again to ply Abraham with similar arguments, explaining to him in such crude fashion as merchants use the reasons why our faith is better than the Jewish. And though the Jew was a great master in the Jewish law, yet, whether it was by reason of his friendship for Jehannot, or that the Holy Spirit dictated the words that the simple merchant used, at any rate the Jew began to be much interested in Jehannot's arguments, though still too staunch in his faith to suffer himself to be converted. But Jehannot was no less assiduous in plying him with argument than he was obstinate in adhering to his law, insomuch that at length the Jew, overcome by such incessant appeals, said:—"Well, well, Jehannot, thou wouldst have me become a Christian, and I am disposed to do so, provided I first go to Rome and there see him whom thou callest God's vicar on earth, and observe what manner of life he leads and his brother cardinals with him; and if such it be that thereby, in conjunction with thy words, I may understand that thy faith is better than mine, as thou hast sought to shew me, I will do as I have said: otherwise, I will remain as I am a Jew." When Jehannot heard this, he was greatly distressed, saying to himself:—"I thought to have converted him; but now I see that the pains which I took for so excellent a purpose are all in vain; for, if he goes to the court of Rome and sees the iniquitous and foul life which the clergy lead there, so far from turning Christian, had he been converted already, he would without doubt relapse into Judaism." Then turning to Abraham he said:- -"Nay, but, my friend, why wouldst thou be at all this labour and great expense of travelling from here to Rome? to say nothing of the risks both by sea and by land which a rich man like thee must needs run. Thinkest thou not, to find here one that can give thee baptism? And as for any doubts that thou mayst have touching the faith to which I point thee, where wilt thou find greater masters and sages therein than here, to resolve thee of any question thou mayst put to them? Wherefore in my opinion this journey of thine is superfluous. Think that the prelates there are such as thou mayst have seen here, nay, as much better as they are nearer to the Chief Pastor. And so, by my advice thou wilt spare thy pains until some time of indulgence, when I, perhaps, may be able to bear thee company." The Jew replied:—"Jehannot, I doubt not that so it is as thou sayst; but once and for all I tell thee that I am minded to go there, and will never otherwise do that which thou wouldst have me and hast so earnestly besought me to do." "Go then," said Jehannot, seeing that his mind was made up, "and good luck go with thee;" and so he gave up the contest because nothing would be lost, though he felt sure that he would never become a Christian after seeing the court of Rome. The Jew took horse, and posted with all possible speed to Rome; where on his arrival he was honourably received by his fellow Jews. He said nothing to any one of the purpose for which he had come; but began circumspectly to acquaint himself with the ways of the Pope and the cardinals and the other prelates and all the courtiers; and from what he saw for himself, being a man of great intelligence, or learned from others, he discovered that without distinction of rank they were all sunk in the most 
disgraceful lewdness, sinning not only in the way of nature but after the manner of the men of Sodom, without any restraint of remorse or shame, in such sort that, when any great favour was to be procured, the influence of the courtesans and boys was of no small moment. Moreover he found them one and all gluttonous, wine-bibbers, drunkards, and next after lewdness, most addicted to the shameless service of the belly, like brute beasts. And, as he probed the matter still further, he perceived that they were all so greedy and avaricious that human, nay Christian blood, and things sacred of what kind soever, spiritualities no less than temporalities, they bought and sold for money; which traffic was greater and employed more brokers than the drapery trade and all the other trades of Paris put together; open simony and gluttonous excess being glosed under such specious terms as "arrangement" and "moderate use of creature comforts," as if God could not penetrate the thoughts of even the most corrupt hearts, to say nothing of the signification of words, and would suffer Himself to be misled after the manner of men by the names of things. Which matters, with many others which are not to be mentioned, our modest and sober-minded Jew found by no means to his liking, so that, his curiosity being fully satisfied, he was minded to return to Paris; which accordingly he did. There, on his arrival, he was met by Jehannot; and the two made great cheer together. Jehannot expected Abraham's conversion least of all things, and allowed him some days of rest before he asked what he thought of the Holy Father and the cardinals and the other courtiers. To which the Jew forthwith replied:—"I think God owes them all an evil recompense: I tell thee, so far as I was able to carry my investigations, holiness, devotion, good works or exemplary living in any kind was nowhere to be found in any clerk; but only lewdness, avarice, gluttony, and the like, and worse, if worse may be, appeared to be held in such honour of all, that (to my thinking) the place is a centre of diabolical rather than of divine activities. To the best of my judgment, your Pastor, and by consequence all that are about him devote all their zeal and ingenuity and subtlety to devise how best and most speedily they may bring the Christian religion to nought and banish it from the world. And because I see that what they so zealously endeavour does not come to pass, but that on the contrary your religion continually grows, and shines more and more clear, therein I seem to discern a very evident token that it, rather than any other, as being more true and holy than any other, has the Holy Spirit for its foundation and support. For which cause, whereas I met your exhortations in a harsh and obdurate temper, and would not become a Christian, now I frankly tell you that I would on no account omit to become such. Go we then to the church, and there according to the traditional rite of your holy faith let me receive baptism." Jehannot, who had anticipated a diametrically opposite conclusion, as soon as he heard him so speak, was the best pleased man that ever was in the world. So taking Abraham with him to Notre Dame he prayed the clergy there to baptise him. When they heard that it was his own wish, they forthwith did so, and Jehannot raised him from the sacred font, and named him Jean; and afterwards he caused teachers of great eminence thoroughly to instruct him in our faith, which he readily learned, and afterwards practised in a good, a virtuous, nay, a holy life.
In Paris, gracious ladies, as I have heard tell, there was once a great merchant, a large dealer in drapery, a good man, most loyal and righteous, his name Jehannot de Chevigny, between whom and a Jew, Abraham by name, also a merchant, and a man of great wealth, as also most loyal and righteous, there subsisted a very close friendship. Now Jehannot, observing Abraham's loyalty and rectitude, began to be sorely vexed in spirit that the soul of one so worthy and wise and good should perish for want of faith. Wherefore he began in a friendly manner to plead with him, that he should leave the errors of the Jewish faith and turn to the Christian verity, which, being sound and holy, he might see daily prospering and gaining ground, whereas, on the contrary, his own religion was dwindling and was almost come to nothing. The Jew replied that he believed that there was no faith sound and holy except the Jewish faith, in which he was born, and in which he meant to live and die; nor would anything ever turn him therefrom. Nothing daunted, however, Jehannot some days afterwards began again to ply Abraham with similar arguments, explaining to him in such crude fashion as merchants use the reasons why our faith is better than the Jewish. And though the Jew was a great master in the Jewish law, yet, whether it was by reason of his friendship for Jehannot, or that the Holy Spirit dictated the words that the simple merchant used, at any rate the Jew began to be much interested in Jehannot's arguments, though still too staunch in his faith to suffer himself to be converted. But Jehannot was no less assiduous in plying him with argument than he was obstinate in adhering to his law, insomuch that at length the Jew, overcome by such incessant appeals, said:—"Well, well, Jehannot, thou wouldst have me become a Christian, and I am disposed to do so, provided I first go to Rome and there see him whom thou callest God's vicar on earth, and observe what manner of life he leads and his brother cardinals with him; and if such it be that thereby, in conjunction with thy words, I may understand that thy faith is better than mine, as thou hast sought to shew me, I will do as I have said: otherwise, I will remain as I am a Jew." When Jehannot heard this, he was greatly distressed, saying to himself:—"I thought to have converted him; but now I see that the pains which I took for so excellent a purpose are all in vain; for, if he goes to the court of Rome and sees the iniquitous and foul life which the clergy lead there, so far from turning Christian, had he been converted already, he would without doubt relapse into Judaism." Then turning to Abraham he said:- -"Nay, but, my friend, why wouldst thou be at all this labour and great expense of travelling from here to Rome? to say nothing of the risks both by sea and by land which a rich man like thee must needs run. Thinkest thou not, to find here one that can give thee baptism? And as for any doubts that thou mayst have touching the faith to which I point thee, where wilt thou find greater masters and sages therein than here, to resolve thee of any question thou mayst put to them? Wherefore in my opinion this journey of thine is superfluous. Think that the prelates there are such as thou mayst have seen here, nay, as much better as they are nearer to the Chief Pastor. And so, by my advice thou wilt spare thy pains until some time of indulgence, when I, perhaps, may be able to bear thee company." The Jew replied:—"Jehannot, I doubt not that so it is as thou sayst; but once and for all I tell thee that I am minded to go there, and will never otherwise do that which thou wouldst have me and hast so earnestly besought me to do." "Go then," said Jehannot, seeing that his mind was made up, "and good luck go with thee;" and so he gave up the contest because nothing would be lost, though he felt sure that he would never become a Christian after seeing the court of Rome. The Jew took horse, and posted with all possible speed to Rome; where on his arrival he was honourably received by his fellow Jews. He said nothing to any one of the purpose for which he had come; but began circumspectly to acquaint himself with the ways of the Pope and the cardinals and the other prelates and all the courtiers; and from what he saw for himself, being a man of great intelligence, or learned from others, he discovered that without distinction of rank they were all sunk in the most 
disgraceful lewdness, sinning not only in the way of nature but after the manner of the men of Sodom, without any restraint of remorse or shame, in such sort that, when any great favour was to be procured, the influence of the courtesans and boys was of no small moment. Moreover he found them one and all gluttonous, wine-bibbers, drunkards, and next after lewdness, most addicted to the shameless service of the belly, like brute beasts. And, as he probed the matter still further, he perceived that they were all so greedy and avaricious that human, nay Christian blood, and things sacred of what kind soever, spiritualities no less than temporalities, they bought and sold for money; which traffic was greater and employed more brokers than the drapery trade and all the other trades of Paris put together; open simony and gluttonous excess being glosed under such specious terms as "arrangement" and "moderate use of creature comforts," as if God could not penetrate the thoughts of even the most corrupt hearts, to say nothing of the signification of words, and would suffer Himself to be misled after the manner of men by the names of things. Which matters, with many others which are not to be mentioned, our modest and sober-minded Jew found by no means to his liking, so that, his curiosity being fully satisfied, he was minded to return to Paris; which accordingly he did. There, on his arrival, he was met by Jehannot; and the two made great cheer together. Jehannot expected Abraham's conversion least of all things, and allowed him some days of rest before he asked what he thought of the Holy Father and the cardinals and the other courtiers. To which the Jew forthwith replied:—"I think God owes them all an evil recompense: I tell thee, so far as I was able to carry my investigations, holiness, devotion, good works or exemplary living in any kind was nowhere to be found in any clerk; but only lewdness, avarice, gluttony, and the like, and worse, if worse may be, appeared to be held in such honour of all, that (to my thinking) the place is a centre of diabolical rather than of divine activities. To the best of my judgment, your Pastor, and by consequence all that are about him devote all their zeal and ingenuity and subtlety to devise how best and most speedily they may bring the Christian religion to nought and banish it from the world. And because I see that what they so zealously endeavour does not come to pass, but that on the contrary your religion continually grows, and shines more and more clear, therein I seem to discern a very evident token that it, rather than any other, as being more true and holy than any other, has the Holy Spirit for its foundation and support. For which cause, whereas I met your exhortations in a harsh and obdurate temper, and would not become a Christian, now I frankly tell you that I would on no account omit to become such. Go we then to the church, and there according to the traditional rite of your holy faith let me receive baptism." Jehannot, who had anticipated a diametrically opposite conclusion, as soon as he heard him so speak, was the best pleased man that ever was in the world. So taking Abraham with him to Notre Dame he prayed the clergy there to baptise him. When they heard that it was his own wish, they forthwith did so, and Jehannot raised him from the sacred font, and named him Jean; and afterwards he caused teachers of great eminence thoroughly to instruct him in our faith, which he readily learned, and afterwards practised in a good, a virtuous, nay, a holy life.[Boccaccio, Decameron (Rigg trans.), Day I, Novel 2]
Spreading the Happiness
For some reason last Saturday I had the song Spread a Little Happiness going round and around inside my head. It was featured in the early 1980s film-version of a 1970s TV-play called Brimstone and Treacle, in which it was performed (over the credits at the end) by Sting. (He's the one singing it in the video above: he also starred in the film, but the film is not a musical and this video is not part of it.) Another song featured in the film though was Up the Junction by the Squeeze, whose title was inspired by a cutting-edge '60s novel and kitchen-sink drama of the same name set in Battersea - the eponymous "Junction" of course being Clapham Junction. Interestingly though, whereas the original Up the Junction was pro-abortion, depicting a morally degenerate Clapham and Battersea working class for whom illicit sexual encounters and unplanned pregnancies were mere facts of life, the song is (at least by inference) anti-abortion. The original television version of Brimstone and Treacle was eventually broadcast in 1979 - the year I was born and brought home to grow up in the area - but only after having been kept back for a long time – since before my parents moved into the area, in fact - due to concerns at the BBC about taste and decency.
Sting himself was brought up a Catholic. As a boy he was taught to serve as an altar-boy and could recite the responses for the Latin Mass off by heart. He is also a fairly committed family man. On the writing of Brimstone and Treacle, Dennis Potter said in 1978
I had written Brimstone and Treacle in difficult personal circumstances. Years of acute psoriatic arthropathy—unpleasantly affecting skin and joints—had not only taken their toll in physical damage but had also, and perhaps inevitably, mediated my view of the world and the people in it. I recall writing (and the words now make me shudder) that the only meaningful sacrament left to human beings was for them to gather in the streets in order to be sick together, splashing vomit on the paving stones as the final and most eloquent plea to an apparently deaf, dumb and blind God. [...] I was engaged in an extremely severe struggle not so much against the dull grind of a painful and debilitating illness but with unresolved, almost unacknowledged, 'spiritual' questions.One of the characters in the play spends most of the time in a coma after surviving a car accident. She recovers only after she has been sexually abused by a mysterious visitor (the Sting character in the film). Mixing fantasy and reality was a trademark of Potter’s writing, and it is suggested in the play’s title that the visitor is the Devil. Potter himself had had similar experiences when, as a 10-year-old boy in 1945, between VE Day and VJ Day, his uncle used to come into his bedroom at night and give him blowjobs.
The director of the film-version of the play was Peter Collison, whose of directorial credits included The Italian Job and a politically corrected film-version of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Niggers that starred two former Bond villains and Oliver Reed (who, it is said, once dated one of my aunts – which sometimes makes me vaguely wonder about my own Christian name, which I also share with one of my cousins). Collinson's last film, which he directed whilst he was dying of cancer, was The Earthling, and was about a man dying of cancer. It co-starred a very young Ricky Schroder, whose career had been launched by Franco Zefirelli with his re-make of The Champ – which is possibly the greatest tear-jerker of all time.
Schroder himself, finally, is something of a remarkable figure, having been the ultimate TV sitcom moppet in Silver Spoons in the 1980s and then gone on to be not just a serious actor but also one of Hollywood’s token right-wingers, converting to Mormonism, raising a large family, and publicly addressing Republican rallies in support of President George W Bush. He was last seen on TV in the popular right-wing political thriller serial 24, appearing opposite Kiefer Sutherland - who, let's not forget, despite 24's supposed endorsement of socking it to the goddamn terrorists (and even supposedly endorsing torture at that) just happens to be Hollywood A-List liberal Donald Sutherland's son.
It takes all sorts, I suppose.
The Straw Bear of Whittlesea
The Whittlesea "Straw Bear" is now part of a local folk-festival happens every year in Cambridgeshire on the second weekend after the Epiphany. The modern festival's website is here.
What's particularly interesting though is not just the strong völkisch air to proceedings but also that a few years after the Straw Bear custom was finally revived (after about seventy years of abeyance due to a ban by the police in Edwardian times), quite by chance the locals involved heard about a very similar "Straw Bear Festival" that takes place ever year round about Shrovetide at Walldürn near Frankfurt in Germany.
Parallel evolution? Or is the Cambridgeshire Bear a distant Protestant cousin of a more authentic, Catholic animal who's celebrations back in Germany are part of the run-up to Lent?
Well all's fair when it comes to speculation about these things, and given that the English are good at keeping popular folk-traditions going but not so good at reviving things (especially in our own ghastly day and age) I say long may it continue!
Knots and Crosses... and Crossings
think I started to follow up my investigations into paganism last Saturday when I went looking for a Tarot pack for my friend Madge, I went to Treadwells. I think I would also have been interested to find a copy of this book. I went there thinking a lot about symbols - of the faith, of grace, and in the non-Christian or "secular" sphere.One symbol I saw a lot of at Treadwells was the Tree of Life. Another was of course the pentagram, which is actually more interesting than you'd think. Tolkien and Gordon have notes on it in their commentary on Gawain, where it features on the hero's shield and is referred to as the seal of Solomon (cf. Solomon's knot, which isn't really a knot, the Buddhist Endless Knot, and of course the star of David). In Gawain obviously it also symbolises virtue and the Five Wounds of Our Lord. I have read that there is a tradition that Solomon wore his seal on his ring, like a signet-ring, and it gave him power over demons. (A Ring of Power, anyone?)
The inverted cross was of course originally the symbol of St Peter, who was crucified upside down, and hence of the Popes. My suspicion is that it is nowadays associated with the Antichrist partly because of ludicrous claims by protestants that the Pope is the Antichrist (even though, of course, there have been lots of Popes whereas there is only ever going to be one Antichrist).
There are other old folk-tale characters who have been "haunting" me recently, so to speak. One is of course the Wild Huntsman, whom modern pagans refer to as the Horned God. (He's very popular with pagan gays.) Another, of course, is Wade, who was either a sort of secular St Christopher or indeed his "pre-Christian predecessor" - someone, perhaps, to be invoked at river-crossings just as St Christopher would have been. The chap's name means exactly what it sounds like, and he's portrayed in Denmark as doing just that, except that the little boy he carries on his shoulder is not the Christ Child but his son Wayland the Smith. We know so much and yet so little about him (from Chaucer et al.) that it's like living in five hundred years' time and only knowing about Luke Skywalker from in-jokes in The Simpsons.
Another thing! Do these people actually have anything to do with the Grail? Presumably they do - although, given that even in the Middle Ages, when the Church and the Grail romances were at the height of their influence in real terms, the romances were still not officially acknowledged by the clergy, it seems the quintessence of bad taste. (And what's with their translation of the Psalter?)
Gays, Fascists... and Otters
Henry Williamson and Gavin Maxwell both wrote storybooks about otters. Williamson's most famous book was Tarka the Otter and Maxwell's was Ring of Bright Water.In 1935, Henry Williamson visited the National Socialist Congress at Nuremberg and was greatly impressed, particularly with the Hitler Youth movement, whose healthy outlook on life he compared with the sickly youth of the London slums. He developed a great admiration for Hitler which he never really lost. He subsequently joined Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in 1937.
At the start of World War II Williamson was briefly held under Defence Regulation 18B for his well-known political views, but was released after only a weekend in police custody.
Williamson's publisher was a man called Michael Seymour Sewell, usually now known by his religious name Brocard Sewell. Sewell became a Catholic convert in 1931 and a Carmelite friar in 1952. In his subsequent career as editor, publisher, printer and writer, he commemorated and wrote up a number of lesser literary lights, including the gay Catholic paedophile Frederick Rolfe and the pederastic Catholic occultist Montague Summers. He also wrote on distributist figures and the circle of the Catholic paedophile artist Eric Gill. As noted by Oswald Mosley biographer Stephen Dorril, Sewell was himself a member of the Distributist League and the British Union of Fascists. He engaged during the 1960s in a high-profile controversy, speaking out against the Catholic Church's teachings on contraception.
Gavin Maxwell was "privately homosexual" and had affairs with various teenage boys in Morocco and at his seaside cottage on the west coast of Scotland.
The Alvarez Hypothesis
The infamous meteor that supposedly did for our planet's most splendid ever land animals is actually briefly visible in the trailer for The Tree of Life. The Alvarez hypothesis also did sterling work in one of the more memorable Doctor Who serials of the 1980s when it served as an excuse for the then producer, in a moment of rejected gay spite, to kill off the Doctor's twinkiest ever male companion - for which the whole of geekdom can do doubt be eternally grateful.
Sadly, there's only one slight problem with it.
Which is that it's bollocks.
The hunt for the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs is back on, after a NASA mission indicated that the current suspected space rock is not the likely culprit.Real science strikes again? You'd like to think. Sadly, "science" textbooks are unlikely to start printing truth - rather than what scientists would like to believe is true - any time soon, and all manner of extraterrestrial drivel is likely to stay very much within the margins of respectable "science" for a long while to come.
A study in 2007, which used visible-light data from ground-based telescopes, had suggested that a fragment of a huge ancient asteroid known as Baptistina had been the one to plunge to Earth and annihilate the ancient reptiles. But NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has figured out that Baptistina broke up just 80 million years ago, which doesn't give the remnants enough time to make it to Earth and plunge the dinos into extinction 65 million years ago.
"The original calculations with visible light estimated the size and reflectivity of the Baptistina family members, leading to estimates of their age, but we now know those estimates were off. With infrared light, WISE was able to get a more accurate estimate, which throws the timing of the Baptistina theory into question," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object Observation Program at NASA.
At last, a sensible review of Parade's End... from Den of Geek! (And by "sensible" I mean compared with those in The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday from such literary luminaries as Peter Hitchens, the Hefferlump... and Janet Street-Porter. They're still clearly fuming about Benedict Cumberbatch's criticising Downton Abbey, so they've decided that Parade's End is for posh people and elitist and they can't even understand it because it's got lots of long words in it so it must be really stupid. So there!)
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