Tame and Quite Elderly

"And Miramon Lluagor, too, that under Manuel had been the Lord Seneschal of Gontaron, had now gone out of Poictesme,—sedately and unmysteriously departing, with his wife and child seated beside him upon the back of an elderly and quite tame dragon, for his former home in the North. It was there that Miramon had first encountered Dom Manuel in the days when Manuel was only a swineherd. And it was there that Miramon Lluagor hoped to pass the remainder of as long a life as his doom permitted him, in such limited comfort as might anywhere be possible for a married man.

Otherwise, he could foresee, upon the brighter side of his appointed and appalling doom, nothing which was likely to worry him. For Miramon Lluagor had very wonderfully prospered at magic, he was, as they say, now blessed with more than any reasonable person would ask for: and the most clamant of these superfluities appeared to him to be his wife.

They tell how Miramon was one of the Léshy, born of a people that was neither human nor immortal, telling 63how his ancestral home was builded upon the summit of the mountain called Vraidex. To Vraidex Miramon Lluagor returned, after the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion had been disbanded, and Miramon had ceased to amuse himself with the greatness of Manuel and with the other notions of Poictesme.

They narrate that this magician dabbled no more in knight-errantry, for which the Seneschal of Gontaron—who through his art was also lord of the nine kinds of sleep and prince of the seven madnesses,—had never shown any real forte. He righted no more wrongs, in weather as often as not unsuited to a champion subject to rheumatism, and he in no way taxed his comfort to check the prospering of injustice. Instead, he now maintained, upon the exalted scarps of Vraidex, the sedate seclusion appropriate to a veteran sorcerer, in his ivory tower carved out of one of the tusks of Behemoth; and maintained also a handsome retinue of every sort of horrific illusion to guard the approaches to his Doubtful Palace; wherein, as the tale likewise tells, this mage resumed his former vocation, and once more designed the dreams for sleep.

Thus it was that, upon the back of the elderly and quite tame dragon, Miramon returned to his earlier pursuits and to the practice of what he—in his striking way of putting things,—described as art for art’s sake. The episode of Manuel had been, in the lower field of merely utilitarian art, amusing enough. That stupid, 64tall, quiet posturer, when he set out to redeem Poictesme, had needed just the mere bit of elementary magic which Miramon had performed for him, to establish Manuel among the great ones of earth. Miramon had, in consequence, sent a few obsolete gods to drive the Northmen out of Poictesme, while Manuel waited upon the sands north of Manneville and diverted his leisure by contemplatively spitting into the sea. Thereafter Manuel had held the land to the admiration of everybody but more particularly of Miramon,—who did not at all agree with Anavalt of Fomor in his estimation of Dom Manuel’s mental gifts.

Yes, it had been quite amusing to serve under Manuel, to play at being lord of Gontaron and Ranec, and to regard at close quarters this tall grave gray cockeyed impostor, who had learned only not to talk.... For that, thought Miramon, was Manuel’s secret: Manuel did not expostulate, he did not explain, he did not argue; he, instead, in any time of trouble or of uncertainty, kept quiet; and that quiet struck terror to his ever-babbling race, and had earned for the dull-witted but shrewd fellow—who was concealing only his lack of any thought or of any plan,—a dreadful name for impenetrable wisdom and for boundless resource.

“Keep mum with Manuel!” said Miramon, “and all things shall be added to you. It is a great pity that my wife has not the knack for these little character analyses.”

- The Silver Stallion, James Branch Cabell

Fantasy vs. Reality: The Eternal Struggle

Miramon sighed. “That is true. There is no marriage for the maker of dreams, because he is perpetually creating finer women than earth provides. The touch of flesh cannot content him who has arranged the shining hair of angels and modeled the breasts of the sphinx." - The Silver Stallion.

Wish Fulfillment: Five Years of the Wish List (Cabell, Davies, White)

I suppose if there are any connections between these three authors all I can think of are three personal one. I think of them all in connection with what might be called Academic or Humane Letters, their quirky intellects, and they all remind me of San Marcos, probably because that's where I was most deeply introduced to them.

Friday Fiction: Of Morlakor Shyreen and the Youth Doravor

OF MORLAKOR SHYREEN AND THE YOUTH DORAVOR

 

I. Disquieting Disappearances of Some Deities

 

Things were definitely not correct in Elrinster. The gods did not answer when invoked, nor did any devil have the civility to appear when conjured. The priests and magicians both made their separate complaints to the divinely appointed Gorsach of Elrinster, but the Beloved of Heaven was as baffled as the lowest hedge wizard in his kingdom.

"The gods are silent," moaned the priests. "The oracles are mute, no message can be determined by the cast of stones or the flight of birds; any amount of human blood merely stains the altar or befouls the floor. Do you help us, Favored of Lords!"

"The demons are gone," the magicians whined, in a somewhat less public interview. "The crystals are clouded, and all meaning has left the cards. No pentacles, nor any amount of incantation, can draw even the smallest imp forth. Do you aid us, Commander of Devils!"

The divinely appointed Gorsach, whose communications with Heaven were rather one-sided affairs (he praying, the gods presumedly listening), and whose power over devils was limited to charms given him by the priests, wisely nodded his head and said nothing to either embassy.

And so the priests and wizards left, rather uneasily, with this vague reassurance. But, even with the concerned attention of the Grand Gorsach, things went from bad to worse. Soon even the little spells, and the little comforters of life, failed or disappeared.

Pregnant women stayed fat and sickly because the stork never arrived, and people continued insomniac through the nights, waiting for the sandman. Even the bogeyman failed to carry away several enterprising boys who had stayed out late in defiance of parental dictates. These imbalances caused the people to grumble, and eventually an envoy was sent to the Gorsach.

The Gorsach, wisely, said nothing.

And so it went on, and then things began to be whispered about the disreputable mausoleum on the outskirts of the city, wherein lived Morlakar Shyreen, a reputed sorceror, who, as yet, had made no complaint.

 

II. Mysterious Magics of Morlakor

 

This dreadful potentate lived in numinous estate, let it be repeated, in an abandoned mausoleum on a high hill on the outskirts of Elrinster. The slopes directly below his dwelling were strewn with tombs and dark yew trees, and even in the brightest of sunlight the hill seemed to be deep in shadow. An iron gate ran all around the foot of the hill, to keep unwary adventurers out and the restless dead in.

As has been said, rumors began to circulate about this Morlakor and his doubtful dwelling. Belated travellers reported that odd, shining persons were passing up the cobbled path to Morlakor's door, and that pale ghosts still walked slowly in Morlakor's garden. So it seemed, to discerning persons, that the hill of this seldom-seen wizard was the last outpost of any magical activity whatsoever.

To which assertion, of course, both priests and magicians disagreed. The gods, the priests contended, were disgusted at recent disbelief among the people and had withdrawn, while the magicians claimed the demons were all off attacking the moon, and would soon return with plunder for those faithful during their absence. Of course, the priests hastily added, heavenly rewards awaited those who obeyed the priests and offered sacrifice for the gods' forgiveness.

And so these went on, discounting the idea that Morlakor now had the approval, company, and blessing of all gods and demons, as was generally held by most discerning persons.

Indeed most inhabitants of the city would go at dusk and wait as near as they dared, to see these shining persons as they passed on to Morlakor Shyreen's house. The priests and magicians execrated and confuted the wisdom of watching these processions, and they spoke of the unutterable and blasting sin that such watching was, and foretold the horrible and inescapable dooms that would come to those thus gazing on beings that were surely mere phantoms devised by Morlakor to mislead the faithful.

Then they disguised themselves as peasants, and went thus to to witness the gods and demons proceeding on their way to the house of Morlakor Shyreen.

So it was that on the sixty-sixth day of the crisis the priest Bolorhayn and the magician Jorg received a message from a passing god, that caused a little hope and much cogitation.

 

III. Subsequent Search for a Savior

 

This message, or rather, as Bolorhayn righteously put it, this revelation, placed an entirely new face on the matter. It was duly relayed to the Grand Gorsach, who received it with pious exclamations and no little relief.

Granted, that some of the particulars of the redemption of all the gods and devils were a trifle stringent. After all, children born of virgins were rare enough to come by, but to find one that was male, born at the spring equinox, and come at least to manhood, was, as even the priests and magicians agreed, almost impossible.

"Nevertheless, such a person must be found," proclaimed the Gorsach, who had a happy gift for recognizing the subtly hidden.

And so a quest and a reward were announced, and the Gorsach's heralds and ambassadors descended on the land like a plague of locusts, scouring the countryside for the needed man.

Finally, at a little village on the far rim of the Gorsach's realm, a herald was benighted along the highway, and had to perforce seek shelter in a crude hut some way off the path. Inside he met a humble woodcutter, of perhaps twenty years of age, who invited him to remain the night.

In return for this kindness, the herald modestly proclaimed his purpose and position as a duke (a slight exaggeration) on a mission for the Gorsach. After a little coarse wine and a rough but hearty meal, he even disclosed that he sought a man, and of what sort.

"Now that is odd," remarked the woodcutter thoughtfully. "For my mother always averred that I had no human father, and certainly, my birthday is in the spring."

The herald, a substantial man and of about middle-age, choked, and nearly expired in a fit of surprise. As soon as he recovered, however, he plied the youth with questions.

It seems that his mother had been visited by an apparition by night, and nine months later had been delivered of a son. Such escapades, of course, upset the neighbors, who promptly stoned her as a harlot, and took the boy away to be raised in the most polite and civil atmosphere available.

So it was that the youth Doravor had grown up to be a woodcutter.

Notes

Now this little fragment goes straight back to my Junior days in high school. I had just discovered the work of James Branch Cabell, in the Del Rey editions, and was rather besotted with his writing style. I had to try it out. The result was ... difficult and indifferent, and I never completed the tale. Morlakor Shyreen (whose name echoes Cabell's figure of Miramon Lluagor, and which name would later go on to be appropriated for the omnipotent being in the Ortha/Goldfire/Morg stories) would be revealed to be the ultimate power in this universe, with Doravor to take his place as his begotten son before he moved on to another venture. For this to happen Doravor would have to slay Morlakor's incarnate self, so becoming the God of his world. Thus I tried to work out a 'mythic' tale, while turning my hand to some 'Cabellic' irony. I would not try this style again until The Gods in Flight, which see elsewhere in this blog.

Into the Archive: A Comedy of Injustice

I suppose this one is really on me: on my greed, my folly, and my haste. This will make the fourth copy of Jurgen I have bought.

The first was the terrible paperback by a publisher that thought of it as an erotic classic; the second was a cheap Dover reprint (though it came with all of Frank C. Pape’s illustrations); and then there was the rather plain volume from the Storisende edition. I came across this copy on eBay while I was researching prices for Cabell books, and it caught my attention. Fifty dollars? That was much cheaper than the $100 that it had been going for. Illustrated? Who could that be by, other than the great Frank C. Pape himself?

Well, it could be by Ray F. Coyle, that’s who, and if I had slowed down a bit and done a little more research I might have realized it. Ray Coyle was a short-lived (1885 – 1924) artist whose work in pen and ink has been compared to Aubrey Beardsley. Not a style I’m particularly fond of. Only when I have one of those black hardcovers by McBride with pictures by Frank C. Pape can I finally stop buying Jurgen.

The Real McCoy (Not McCoyle)

It’s not like it’s even my favorite Cabell (that would be The Silver Stallion), nor do I reread it often. Although it might be Cabell’s most famous book, its reputation is, indeed, a little embarrassing.

Also arriving today was the copy of The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis that I had been considering. A little battered, but inexpensive and serviceable; it only needed a little care to make it presentable.

But the gem of the day must be Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch. Put together by Terry Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna and Gabrielle Kent, an author of juvenile fantasy, and copiously illustrated by Paul Kidby, it’s a beautiful little book in both a slipcase and a book jacket. I’m wondering exactly where it fits on Terry Pratchett’s dictum ‘no more Discworld when I’m gone’; it seems to be a kind of a gathering of everything he wrote about Witches on the Discworld compiled into a sort of a scrapbook, just put together a little more seamlessly into the form of, well, a written guide (rather than a novel or a story) by one of the characters within that world. I imagine there must be some kind of new writing not by Terry to segue everything together. “I could not wish it undone, the issue of it being so proper.” Or at least, proper looking. It’s surprising to realize Terry Pratchett has been gone for almost a decade.

The Letters of James Branch Cabell

 

The Letters of James Branch Cabell, Edited by Edward Wagenknecht (1975)

Published by the University of Oklahoma Press. The copy I have lacks this cover, but the picture is included as a frontispiece inside. Cabell was undergoing a bit of a renaissance in the Seventies, which I can't help but connect to the reprinting of several of his more fantastic 'romances' in the Ballantine Books classic fantasy series. There are letters from 1915 until his death in 1958; they are arranged, not in chronological order, but as to whom they were sent. Cabell kept no copies of his letters; these are all collected from his correspondents. There are three sections of photos, including Cabell, his haunts, and his family and friends. 

As for the body of the book itself ... well, it is a university press production, and from the Seventies at that. The cover is sort of a plastic pressboard, glossy and brown, of a texture that will be quite familiar to those of a certain age who purchased school almanacs or cheap religious literature from the time. It has library stamps declaring it was withdrawn from the "Zug Memorial Library/Elizabethtown College/Elizabethtown, Penna".  This amuses me, because 'Zug' is not only the name of a town and canton in Switzerland, it is also "a Lovecraftian-like monster from the fictional universe of Marvel by Marvel Comics." -H. P. Lovecraft Wiki.

When I unwrapped it I was dismayed to find that the spine had detached along one side. A quick and careful patch with transparent packing tape, however, soon rendered it fit for handling again. I haven't read any in it yet; it fact, I am in a delightful dilemma that has seldom if ever happened to me: I have almost too much to read at the moment!

Quiet, Please

 

Quiet, Please (1952) by James Branch Cabell, is a short (at 105 pages) sort of autobiographical follow-up to As I Remember It. Partly a defense of his latest work - The Nightmare Has Triplets: Smirt, Smith and Smire – and the literature of dreams, and partly a memoir of how the ladies in his life inspired his work. Or rather, how it inspired the person he used to be in his youth, whom he looks at with dispassionate eyes as another fellow entirely. At this point of his life, the being who is now James Branch Cabell hears the present generation, the literary world, and even Death, telling him “Quiet, please.”

The book has a frontispiece illustration of a bust done of Cabell, and Marjorie L. Burke bulks out the little volume with an introduction, a rather leaden Cabellian pastiche, featuring a conversation of the author with his image. I turned with relief from this production to Cabell’s actual words. It may say something about his status at the time (though I found his skill still impressive) that it was published by a university press. I tried reading The Nightmare Has Triplets in college and found it impenetrable; perhaps (inspired by this book) it is time to give it another shot.  

Two New Cabell Books

"As I Remember It is a volume of reminiscences, in the most elegant Cabell manner, looking back over his life, his career, and the literary scene of which he was a part. An important source for the study of fantastic literature, and also the literature of the American South." - Amazon. To be more precise, this 1955 work of autobiography is about his "collaborators" - in the first half of the book his first wife Priscilla Bradley Shepherd and in the second half his many literary friends (which included H. L. Mencken, Ellen Glasgow, and Sinclair Lewis).

When Let Me Lie was first published in 1947, most reviewers missed the double meaning of the book's title. Deaf to James Branch Cabell's many-layered ironic wit, they read the book as a paean to the old South. Readers of this edition are unlikely to repeat the mistake. Let Me Lie is indeed a carefully researched and brilliantly written historical narrative of Virginia from 1559 to 1946―focusing on Tidewater, Richmond, and the Northern Neck―but as a fictional scholar remarks in the book, Cabell's history is "both accurate and injudicious." Virginia's story of itself, Cabell claims, depends on illusion and myth, and his skill as a satirist allows him to construct and deflate these myths simultaneously. Ranging from Don Luis de Velasco and Captain John Smith to Edgar Allan Poe and Ellen Glasgow, from Confederate heroes to the oddities of the post-Civil War Old Dominion, Let Me Lie remains compulsively readable, as history, entertainment, or both.  – Amazon. My copy lacks this cover.

I little thought when I picked up that Del Rey edition of The Silver Stallion back in 1979 what an interest I was sparking. But here it is, forty-two years later, and still being fed, having passed beyond the fantasy.

The Shadow Library: Remembrances

Louie Anderson, the comedian, died on the 21^st of this month at the age of 68, thus beating the trend of overweight funny men to self-destruct in their thirties. His passing reminded me that I used to have this book, Good Bye Jumbo … Hello Cruel World. It is a wry but hopeful look at his childhood and his struggles with family and food.

Back in the Nineties, Mom was more or less in the thrall of an array of prosperity preachers and their ‘name it and claim it’ teaching. She didn’t want money, however, so much as she wanted healing for her crippling arthritis. She clung to the ‘Christian teaching’ she was being offered more because of attractions to a cult of personality; for instance, she somehow identified with Tammy Faye Baker. In her desperation, Mom believed if she could somehow hit the right level of repentance and obedience and chant the magical mantras of televangelists, she would be healed. She loved Jesus, but she was not being offered much spiritual food, just prosperity schemes.

The one exception from these hucksters on the religious channels was Dr. Gerald Mann, founding pastor of Riverbend Church in Austin, Texas, whose gentle teaching and advice actually helped her come to grips with many problems. I enjoyed watching them with her, and her purchase of his books was one expenditure I never felt wasted. When she passed away, I kept them for a while and received comfort from them.

I got this copy of The Way of Ecben by James Branch Cabell from Yesterday’s Warehouse. It was one of the books damaged by Mike’s dog Nippy; I kept it (repaired by tape) until I got a better replacement.

Items from the Wish List: Grab Bag

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley, Melody Newcomb

A Crow alone is no Crow.

Dar Oakley—the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own—was born two thousand years ago. When a man learns his language, Dar finally gets the chance to tell his story. He begins his tale as a young man, and how he went down to the human underworld and got hold of the immortality meant for humans, long before Julius Caesar came into the Celtic lands; how he sailed West to America with the Irish monks searching for the Paradise of the Saints; and how he continuously went down into the land of the dead and returned. Through his adventures in Ka, the realm of Crows, and around the world, he found secrets that could change the humans’ entire way of life—and now may be the time to finally reveal them. – Amazon.

Boneland by Alan Garner

(The Concluding Volume in the Weirdstone Trilogy 3)

Evolution Man: Or, How I Ate My Father by Roy Lewis

 Containing an eyewitness account of the first human courtship ever, a study of the lives of an everyday, ordinary cave family includes portraits of Mom, the ape woman; brother William and his attempted animal domestication; and Dad, the inventor. – Amazon.

Book of Dreams by Jack Kerouac, Robert Creeley

Book of Dreams is Jack Kerouac's record of his dream life, a parallel autobiography of the soul, the sleeper's On the Road:

"I got my weary bones out of bed & through eyes swollen with sleep swiftly scribbled in pencil in my little dream notebook till I had exhausted every rememberable item … "

Awake of asleep, Jack's mind spun the web of relationships that were the substance of almost everything he wrote:

"In the book of dreams I just continue the same story but in the dreams I had of the real-life characters I always write about."

"Lost love, madness, castration, cats that speak, cats in danger of their lives, people giving birth to cats, grade school classrooms, Mel Torme, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Tolstoy and Genet all make repeated appearances,

Book of Dreams is Jack Kerouac's record of his dream life, a parallel autobiography of the soul, the sleeper's On the Road:

"I got my weary bones out of bed & through eyes swollen with sleep swiftly scribbled in pencil in my little dream notebook till I had exhausted every rememberable item …"

Awake or asleep, Jack's mind spun the web of relationships that were the substance of almost everything he wrote:

"In the book of dreams I just continue the same story but in the dreams I had of the real-life characters I always write about." – Amazon.

Hard Reading: Learning from Science Fiction (Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies LUP) by Tom Shippey

The fifteen essays collected in Hard Reading argue, first, that science fiction has its own internal rhetoric, relying on devices such as neologism, dialogism, semantic shifts, the use of unreliable narrators. It is a "high-information" genre which does not follow the Flaubertian ideal of le mot juste, "the right word", preferring le mot imprévisible, "the unpredictable word". Both ideals shun the facilior lectio, the "easy reading", but for different reasons and with different effects. The essays argue further that science fiction derives much of its energy from engagement with vital intellectual issues in the "soft sciences", especially history, anthropology, the study of different cultures, with a strong bearing on politics. Both the rhetoric and the issues deserve to be taken much more seriously than they have been in academia, and in the wider world. Each essay is further prefaced by an autobiographical introduction. These explain how the essays came to be written and in what ways they (often) proved controversial. They, and the autobiographical introduction to the whole book, create between them a memoir of what it was like to be a committed fan, from teenage years, and also an academic struggling to find a place, at a time when a declared interest in science fiction and fantasy was the kiss of death for a career in the humanities. – Amazon.

Pensées (Penguin Classics) by Blaise Pascal, A. J. Krailsheimer

Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. The Penseés is a collection of philosophical fragments, notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in psychological, social, metaphysical and - above all - theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal's analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but who can be transformed through faith in God's grace. – Amazon. 

The Life of Merlin, Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth

Vita Merlini, or The Life of Merlin, is a work by the Norman-Welsh author Geoffrey of Monmouth, composed in Latin around AD 1150. It retells incidents from the life of the Brythonic seer Merlin, and is based on traditional material about him. Merlin is described as a prophet in the text. There are a number of episodes in which he loses his mind and lives in the wilderness like a wild animal, like Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel. It is also the first work to describe the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, as Morgen. Geoffrey had written of Merlin in his two previous works, the Prophetiae Merlini, purported to be a series of prophecies from the sage, and the Historia Regum Britanniae, which is the first work presenting a link between Merlin and King Arthur. The Vita Merlini presents an account of Merlin much more faithful to the Welsh traditions about Myrddin Wyllt, the archetype behind Geoffrey's composite figure of Merlin. Whereas the Historia had Merlin associating with Arthur, his father Uther Pendragon, and his uncle Ambrosius in the 5th century, the Vita's timeframe is during the late 6th century, and includes references to various figures from that period, including Gwenddoleu and Taliesin. Geoffrey attempts to synchronize the Vita with his earlier work by having Merlin mention he had been with Arthur long before. – Amazon.

Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman: Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Magician by Ingmar Bergman

TABLE OF CONTENTS: * Preface by Carl Anders Dymling, Ingmar Bergman's Producer -- * Introduction: Bergman Discusses Film-making -- 1.) Smiles Of A Summer Night -- 2.) Seventh Seal -- 3.) Wild Strawberries -- 4.) Magician - The Face -- * A Chronology of Films Directed by Ingmar Bergman -- * Major Prizes Won by Bergman Films.

Sex and society in Shakespeare's age: Simon Forman the astrologer by A. L Rowse

An intimate look at Elizabethan social & sex life as seen through the diaries of Simon Forman, a famous astrologer who was consulted by hundreds of people from great court ladies to sailors' wives & whores. – Amazon.

Smart: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) by Christopher Smart, Karina Williamson

A selection of poems from the 18th-century poet Christopher Smart. This book includes his four most famous works. – Amazon.

The Book of Saints and Heroes by Mrs. Lang

The first Christians to visit Europe and the British Isles met pagans who told tales of fairies, talking beasts, and other wonderful things. To these marvelous stories, they soon added new ones about the Christian saints. These marvelous legends and exciting true stories of Christian saints and heroes will provide many hours of delightful reading to believers and non-believers alike! – Amazon.

The Young Wizard's Hexopedia: A Guide to Magical Words & Phrases by Anthemion Deckle Buckram, Craig Conley

The Hexopedia is a one-of-a-kind story of magic words—what they’re made of, where they came from, where they can take you, and how they interact with the world and with each other. It is a whimsical training manual on speaking, writing, and listening magically. It is a treasure chest of hands-on techniques to access the full wisdom and power for beginning things, attracting things, protecting things, and bestowing things. It reveals how to assemble, paint, and manipulate words, even invisible words. It teaches how to become fluent in the language, or rather languages, of spellcraft, and how to interact on a magical level with the elements, the animals, and the trees. It is meant to enlighten its young readers and inspire them to create pure wonder and awe whenever they speak. Sources range from the hierophants of ancient Egypt; to the high priests, medicine men, sorcerers, and alchemists of the Middle Ages; to the necromancers and wizards of legend and fairy tale; to the workers of wonders and miracles throughout history. The Hexopedia showcases those powerful words and spells that give shape and form to ungraspable feats.

The Hexopedia was inspired by the fact that the shop windows of Universal Studios’ Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Los Angeles and Orlando) display genuine-looking tomes of magic but don’t offer them for sale. The Hexopedia looks, feels, and reads like an authentic artifact of wizardry, appealing to young fans of Harry Potter, Oz, Lord of the Rings, and other sword-and-sorcery books, films, and video games.

Magic words are naturally as old as conjuring itself, echoes of the rhythm and vibration of creative power. A great many of these words have stood the test of time, passed on from master to apprentice, generation through generation. These ancient, musical, poetic incantations have a profound—but not necessarily unfathomable—mystique. For example, there is profound meaning in the clichéd image of a magician pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat with the word abracadabra. The magician is speaking an ancient Hebrew phrase that means “I will create with words.” He is making something out of nothing, echoing that famous line from Genesis: “Let there be light, and there was light,” only in this case the light is a white rabbit and perhaps a flash of fire. The magic word, whether it be abracadabra or another of the magician’s choosing, resonates with us because there is an instinctive understanding that words are powerful, creative forces.

Unlike with so many magic books on the market, parents need not fear any nefarious intent or ideological subtext; The Hexopedia promotes a deliberately positive, universal message about empowering one’s communication skills for beneficial results. This is not an indoctrination into any system of belief or religious practice; rather, the book encourages readers’ imaginations as it slyly teaches ways to choose words carefully. The book offers text and diagrams that seem mysterious and occult yet are constructive and purposively devoid of religious overtones of any kind. The Hexopedia is expressly designed to foster treasured youthful experiences, inspiring a love of literacy and learning as it promotes intellectual growth through enchantment and entertainment. – Amazon.

Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice  by James Branch Cabell. Illustrations by Frank C. Pape.

The darkly comic allegory Jurgen caused quite a stir when it was originally published, with several jurisdictions deeming it obscene and calling for it to be pulled from store shelves. After his wife mysteriously vanishes, middle-aged pawnbroker Jurgen sets off on a not-so-heroic quest to find her, traveling through a series of strange lands in the process. – Amazon.

Items from the Wish List: James Branch Cabell

 

The Letters of James Branch Cabell. by James Branch Cabell.

As I Remember It by James Branch Cabell

Let Me Lie by James Branch Cabell

THERE WERE TWO PIRATES: A Comedy of Division by James Branch Cabell

Hamlet Had an Uncle: A Comedy of Honor by James Branch Cabell 

James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) wrote many of the Twentieth Century's finest fantasies, including the controversial Jurgen, which was famously banned by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. It was only after the furor died down that readers and critics were fully able to appreciate this was no mere sensationalist, but a literary artist of very high calibre. Cabell was, above all else, an elegant stylist, whose gently caustic, beautifully fantastic comedies struck a chord in the Jazz Age and still resonate today. He was an important influence on subsequent writers as diverse as Fritz Leiber and Neil Gaiman. – Amazon.