Showing posts with label Christian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian. Show all posts

Tuesday, 6 August 2024

PART IV. THE REPRESSED SUBTEXT OF THE CHANGELING AND LIFE FOR WITCHES AFTER THE ARTIFICIAL APOCALYPSE IN THE FILM: 'SUSPIRIA, 1 SEPTEMBER 2018, PREMIERE AT THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL, 152 MINUTES', DIRECTED BY LUCA GUADAGNINO.

§1.0 - Points 1.0–1.12: THIS BLOG'S CONTENTS:
1.1 - THIS BLOG'S TITLE:
1.2 - PART IV. THE REPRESSED SUBTEXT OF THE CHANGELING AND LIFE FOR WITCHES AFTER THE ARTIFICIAL APOCALYPSE IN THE FILM: 'SUSPIRIA, 1 SEPTEMBER 2018, PREMIERE AT THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL, 152 MINUTES', DIRECTED BY LUCA GUADAGNINO.
1.3 - THIS BLOG'S LISTED SECTIONS AND NUMBERED POINTS:
1.4 - §2.0: Points 2.0–2.12: THE DISCLAIMER /
1.5 - §3.0: Points 3.0–3.3: THE DATES OF RESEARCH, WRITING AND ON-LINE PUBLICATION /
1.6 - §4.0: Points 4.0–4.26: MADAM BLANC'S TROOP OF WITCHES AND MODERN WOMEN /
1.7 - §5.0: Points 5.0–5.18: THE IRON-MAIDEN'S VICE-GRIP OF MATER SUSPIRIORUM /
1.8 - §6.0: Points 6.0–6.31: THE BIBLE, MYTHIC DISCOURSE, CHILD SACRIFICE AND CANNIBALISM /
1.9 - §7.0: Points 7.0–7.30: INFLUENCES OF SATANISM /
1.10 - §8.0: Points 8.0–8.21: RELIGIOUS SOCIETY HAS BECOME A DIFFUSION OF CULTS /
1.11 - §9.0: Points 9.0–9.17: LIFE AFTER THE ARTIFICIAL APOCALYPSE /
1.12 - §10.0: Points 10.0–10.18: COMMENTS ON THE FILM'S SOUND-TRACK: 'SUSPIRIA (MUSIC FOR THE LUCA GUADAGNINO FILM), RELEASED 26 OCTOBER 2018, BY THOM YORKE' /
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§2.0 - THE DISCLAIMER.
2.1 - All rights reserved © Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia. 2.2 - Changing the content or re-publishing this blog is strictly prohibited. 2.3 - This blog is protected by the: 2.4 -Privacy Act 1988 of Australia, against unauthorized access to Craig Steven Joseph Lacey's Samsung Galaxy A05s, and Google account; 2.5 - Cybercrime Act 2001 of Australia, against computer fraud or internet fraud; 2.6 - Copyright Act 1968 of Australia, against intellectual property theft; 2.7 - Universal Copyright Convention, circa 1952; 2.8 - Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 9 September 1886. 2.9 - Fines and/or prosecution will apply according to Australian and International law in reference to unauthorised access and use of this blog published through the Blogger app of Google.com and the author's storage device(s) with the data. 2.10 - There are five images within this blog. 2.11 - Two are composite images, both using a pair of vertically placed film stills from: Suspiria, 1 September 2018, premiere at the Venice Film Festival, 152 minutes, directed by Luca Guadagnino; a film still from Fritz Lang's film: Metropolis, 10 January 1927, 153 minutes. 2.12 - A photograph of an illustration from Mirror of Martyrs and a film still from the film of 2018, that shows Madame Blanc sending dreams to her students.
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§3.0 - THE DATES OF RESEARCH, WRITING AND ON-LINE PUBLICATION.
3.1 - This blog was started 05.08.2024 and completed 06.08.2024. 3.2 - Researched and composed, 31.07.2024 to 06.08.2024, by Craig Steven Joseph Lacey at Brisbane City, Queensland, Australia, 4000. 3.3 - Last up-dated: 04:37, 18.08.2024, Australian Eastern Standard Time.
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§4.0 - MADAM BLANC'S TROOP OF WITCHES AND MODERN WOMEN—Refer to Points 4.0–4.28.
4.1 - Similar to the erased subject of the Anti-Christ within Dario Argento's film: 4.2 - Mother Of Tears, 6 September 2007, Toronto International Film Festival, 141:38 minutes—the subject of the changeling is suggested as mostly censored from the narrative of the Three Mothers' Trilogy. 4.3 - While Alberto, acted by Jacopo Mariani, a fair-haired boy of approximately ten years of age, appears as a changeling and witch's familiar in the film: 4.4 - Suspiria, 1 February 1977, premiere at Italy, 99 minutes—the figure of the child as having no relation to the witches emerges as a repressed discourse in the revised film by Luca Guadagnino. 4.5 - Again, I take an approach I have implemented in my previous blogs of film-based criticism, that the matter of the changeling or some mythic, monstrous male figure, such as Mephistopheles, emerges as an out-standing matter: argumentum ex silentio; that the changeling's absence in the narrative and its filmic treatment causes for a redoubled focus on the subject and the reasons for its censorship. 4.6 - An immediate explanation that comes to mind for such absence is that this film allows a singular focus on the so-called modern woman, who, while not of Nazi Germany exactly, is summoned by the centre-piece, theatrical dance by the dance company at the Markos Tanz Akademie, during circa 1977, to cause for a return of the modern woman as a cultural identity of the Nazi Germans associated with folk-lore and Neo-Paganism / Satanism. 4.7 - Specifically, a particular type of Northern European female warrior and heroine: a valkyrie, a figure from the Old Norse culture, valkyrja, that refers literally to a "chooser of the slain", viz. women who, similar to a chorus, select who is to be slain, such that the film's endorsed version of a modern woman is startlingly different from "the wife" and "mother" of the Christian bible—refer to the point 4.8, directly beneath, regarding the title of the film subject of criticism here: 4.8 - Suspiria, 1 September 2018, premiere at the Venice Film Festival, 152 minutes, directed By Luca Guadagnino. 4.9 - The women who manage the Markos Tanz Akademie, Berlin, Germany, circa 1977, are involved in the "forging" of a modern, rather than anything naturally develop or develop from arts and crafts, viz. a modern woman along the lines and practices of Germany during the 1910s, a time of the first world war and the avant garde Expressionist intellectual and art movement. 4.10 - The dance of the film, Völk, is itself reminiscent of the Expressionistic theatrical piece: 4.11 - Murderer, The Hope Of Women, circa 1909, by the artist Oskar Kokoshka—refer to: ‎Oskar Kokoschka: Plays & Poems, 1 January 2001, Ariadne Press; Britain edition, English Language, hard-cover, 250 pages, ISBN-10 1572410418, ISBN-13 9781572410411. 4.12 - A play that, while involves icons of the city, viz. tower and cage, is invested with expressive, magical primitivism as of the Antediluvian. 4.13 - The dance for which the dancers rehearse and later perform in the film finds a definitive structure of lines of the choreographic, visibly taped-down to the dance-floor, creating an out-line of a diagram such as that used by witches in casting a spell, for example a "magic circle", and the geometry of it bestows an almost machine-type quality to the "troupe". 4.14 - Refer to the two film stills directly beneath of the dancers as they dance Völk on a large hex.
4.15 - The dancing troupe of dance artists is thus transformed from the representation of Catholic German folk-loric witches, that is, of Mother Holle's spinning and weaving spirit world, and they become the troop of warriors or soldiers as referred to in: The Book Of Nahum 3:13: 4.16 - 'Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has devoured your bars'—from: The Book Of Nahum 3:13, English Standard Version. 4.17 - While Nahum's allusion to the Assyrian city of Nineveh is to its being open and vulnerable to attack—phrased in a manner that perceives women as weak—such a line of the bible may be read in a subverted sense to signify a very literal definition that: the women are troops in our midst. 4.18 - The reference to the Assyrian involves ancient history that juxtaposes to this pervasive notion of modernity in the film, unless the Ancient Assyrians, that is the Aryans, who are connected to witch-craft can transcend the limits of time as if by magic! 4.19 - It would seem a plausible enough thought to consider because the film represents Aryans as steeped in Neo-Paganic or Satanic lore, and which find expression in not only constructed art-forms of dance, but further film—the illusory film-still that when repeated 24 frames per second creates a flickering bedazzlement, an alchemy of filmic montage—and further yet, architecture, such as epitomised by the building of the Markos Tanz Akademie in its construction of ancient temple-type forms with bold geometric modernism. 4.20 - That is, women's modernity is not necessarily all about "arts and crafts", though it peculiarly re-finds the art theme of the still life, the vogue of pose or the male dance partner's status as little more than a style of men's bouquet de corsage worn on his jacket on the dance floor—it can be about power. 4.21 - The film's director, Luca Guadagnino, has used the 'Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori / Field of Flowers', at Varese, Lombardy—by the architecture firm: Adolf Loos’s Goldman & Salatsch Building—as the setting of the Markos Tanz Akademie / coven—supposedly it is digitally transposed to Cold-War Berlin—portrays the building's entrance as monumental and powerful, with four pillars, evocative of a temple of Isis, which appear to guard the front door-way, and inside, the foyer is revealed to have a secret observatory deck behind a wall mirror, such that the witches may be considered as looking through walls; looking through looking glasses, both "magically" and politically. 4.22 - Refer to the two film stills beneath of Susie arriving at the Tanz Akademie and inside the foyer.
4.23 - Later, the secret spaces of the coven are revealed whereby a shift of focus from the political tensions incurred by the Cold War—with moments of back-ground news reporting on the true, historical terrorist attacks of "The German Autumn" of circa 1977—to a cultural, spiritual focus that provides a divide / wall between the two categories of life: political / cultural, that may be merely conceits of sociological theory: at least, that is inferred by this film. 4.24 - At the monumental Markos Tanz Akademie women are forged in to different sorts of women as: dancing warriors and witches, but the transformation occurs in the secret spaces of Berlin, Germany, such that a particular matter of conspiratorial complicity is required—and it is this "keeping stüm", this secrecy that is quite a different scenario displayed by another film based in Germany also celebrating modernism: 4.25 - Metropolis, 10 January 1927, 153 minutes, directed by the German expressionist film-maker, Fritz Lang. 4.26 - In the film, the female robot is constructed, originally out of a love for a deceased sweet-heart: the robot resembling her is shown constructed in a temple of Moloch, an Ancient Assyrian god of child sacrifice, where it is all upon the city's public stage to show and witness. 4.27 - Refer to a film still from: Metropolis, 10 January 1927, 153 minutes, directly beneath, in which Satanic iconography, viz. a luminous sign of an inverted pentagram is on the wall behind a shrine used by the city's wealthy elite.
4.28 - The women of: Suspiria, 1 September 2018, 152 minutes, are far from the dehumanised, iron-clad form of the robot; rather their "humanism" is retained, no matter how questionable, by the practice of their folk-lorism and dancing within the modern contexts, as post-modernism during the 1970s, the period during which the film is set, and yet the film is stark for its absence of children at the Markos Tanz Akademie, as though the children are hidden away somewhere, because I have always found: wherever there are women, there are children.
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§5.0 - THE IRON-MAIDEN'S VICE-GRIP OF MATER SUSPIRIORUM—Refer to Points 5.0–5.18.
5.1 - In reference to the vision of the future, modern woman—a subject of Luca Guadagnino's film of 2018—as constructed from the metaphorical substance of iron, there exists a recurring symbol of iron as impervious to the human condition yet lived by humans as though beyond guilt, such as by the famed iron-man, the über-mensch, viz. the super-human being imparted by the iron machine the perception that he (or she) himself (or herself) is as an extension of the iron machine. 5.2 - The ancient Roman / Phrygian / Trojan god: 'Vulcan', is associated with the fire of volcanoes, deserts, and particularly metal-working and the forge, and is the focalizer of the life-giving and destructive force of fire with iron—the explosive force that shapes the weapon and explodes through the weapon—such that from the Christian perspective, Vulcan is yet another permutation of Satan. 5.3 - The modern woman constructed from iron, other than the robot, is thus the weapon of Satan: the witch, whose approach to motherhood and love is void. 5.4 - There is a pagan reference to iron in the feminine as the torture device of the iron maiden supposedly of the 19th-century that derives from the Punic city of Carthage—as described in the Carthaginian execution of Marcus Atilius Regulus, a general who opted for an honourable execution rather than flee his punishment per Tertullian's An Address To The Martyrs, Chapter 4: 5.5 - 'Regulus, a general of the Romans, taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, when he would not have his single self ransomed at the price of many Carthaginian prisoners, preferred being given back to the enemy, and being crammed in to a sort of chest, and pierced on every side with nails from without, experienced so many crucifixions, page 156'—refer to the website: 'Tertullian.com' the web-page: An Address To The Martyrs, accessed 12 March 2024, from the URL: <https://www.tertullian.org/articles/lof/martyrs.htm>. 5.6 - For corroboration refer to: 5.7 - Saint Augustine of Hippo's The City of God, Book 1, Chapter 15, in which a similar description of an iron maiden used on Regulus is discussed to exert the most painful of deaths upon him or her whom choses nobility above the advantageous. 5.8 - Refer to: The City Of God by Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, republished circa 2000, New York: Modern Library, xx, 903 pages; 21 centimeters, ISBN: 0679783199. 5.9 - Arguably, the Punic / Hunic peoples sought to erase hope in their enemy, to affect soullessness, that is, the state of being undead, and this is analogous to the effects of the vice-grip of "the iron maiden" as Mater Suspiriorum constructs impossible circumstances from which suicide or execution must suffice, or an act of conversion in becoming the opposite of what one truly is. 5.10 - In further reference to: Suspiria, 1 September 2018, 152 minutes, an iron is used as the object of punishment to Susie by her mother who slams a clothes iron on to her hand after being caught masturbating in a closet—the narrative is aligned to perceptions of Christianity as part of an ideology that imprisons women in to domesticity, (ironic, since the dancers are ensnared by a coven)—but iron is such that it spans both cultures to act as a medium through which the construction of girls' and women's psychology is achieved. 5.11 - Yet to turn attention to iron as properly a Satanic symbol, the iron of the Holy Nails of the "Arma Christi": the instruments of: The Passion Of Jesus Christ, represent the nails that bound Jesus Christ to the crucifix, used for inflicting torture, as a subversion: a conversion of the Christian relics for Satanic purposes. 5.12 - Susie is a young woman whose life is about to launch upon a dancing career, rather than she be shown in the midst of things, the prime of her life, and she has that uncanny know-how, or demonstrates special abilities, viz. "talent", such as in reference to dance, and changelings are known for their strange difference, that is, other than a birth-mark, deformity or impairment of some kind. 5.13 - There is no conclusion to draw exactly on the question as to whether she is a changeling, because Dakota Johnson also later acts as Mother Suspiriorum to signalize she is a "witch convert"—remarkably from an Amish family: Susie releases her Amish mother to become motherless, and subsequently, herself the great mother, Mater Suspiriorum. 5.14 - The inference is, Christian girls are not only poached for becoming part of the dance troupe and coven, but the Christian women accept the burden to hold the evil in its controlled form, the iron maiden's vice-grip of circumstance that attempts to prevent unwanted creativity and change. 5.15 - Implicit to this iron maiden's control over acts of conversion and change or transformation is the "preconceived child", the precocious child; the changeling—such as to deem: who is a witch; who is a familiar; who is a satyr, etc., though the satyrs arguably stay behind the scenes as perennial scene shifters. 5.16 - For a definite sense of the preconceived child refer to the film: 5.17 - The Baby Of Mâcon, 17 May 1993, 122 minutes, premiere at Cannes Film Festival, directed by Peter Greenaway. 5.18 - In the context of the cult, the preconceived child is an obvious aspect of life, though exists in contemporary society in less obvious ways.
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§6.0 - THE BIBLE, MYTHIC DISCOURSE, CHILD SACRIFICE AND CANNIBALISM—Refer to Points 6.0–6.31.
6.1 - In the structure of the folk-lore of Mother Holle, similarities exist in the structure of the film: Suspiria, 1 September 2018, 152 minutes, where the hulden are to Mother Holle, what the dancing troupe are to Madame Blanc, as acted by Tilda Swinton. 6.2 - The folk-lore of Mother Holle may not be known to everyone and it is worth commentary to reveal the mother figure of Madame Blanc as similar to the goddess to whom children who died as infants go—possibly as an effect of mütterrecht / mother right: the witches' dance is for electing who is to be slain, regarding which refer to: 6.3 - Johann Jakob Bachofen's anthropological text: Das Mutterrecht, circa 1861—refer to: Das Mutterrecht: Eine Untersuchung Über Die Gynaikokratie Der Alten Welt Nach Ihrer Religiösen Und Rechtlichen Natur, circa 1993, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 416 pages, ISBN:  3518277359, ISBN: 9783518277355—and Madame Blanc is alternatively known as both the 'Dunkle Großmutter / Dark Grandmother' and the 'Weisse Frau / White Lady': characters more associated with the Grimms' fairy tale in: 6.4 - Children's And Household Tales, circa 1812, Number 24, Aarne-Thompson Type 480, also known as the tale of The Spinning Women By The Well—refer to: The Grimm Brothers' Children's and Household Tales (Grimms' Fairy Tales), compiled, translated, and classified by D.L. Ashliman, circa 1998–2020, sourced 05.08.2024, at the URL: <https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimmtales.html>6.5 - The character of Tilda Swinton's Madame Blanc is an androgyne—markedly different to Joan Geraldine Bennett's Madame Blanc as an older femme fatale styled mistress of Dario Argento's film circa 1977—yet neither really not motherly at all, but she is considered a variation of Mother Holle / White Goddess, that in the Ancient Ayran / Punic terms may be a permutation of Molech ('MLK' in Punic language; pronouced: 'milk') to whom children are sarcificed, as attested by the bible's books of: Leviticus, 1 Kings, 2 Kings and Jeremiah—for example: 6.6 - 'And [Josiah] defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech'— from: 2 Kings 23:10, English Standard Version; a line that bears greater significance in relation to: 2 Kings 23:13, in which the noun: 'abomination' refers to an omen, that may be a sign itself taken to represent the loathed thing, supposedly necessitating destruction. 6.7 - There is the other allusion recalled here of: The Book Of Nahum 3:13, of the women seen as going through the "open gates" to bring the magic of fire with them to the land of the enemy, as a sort of disguised acceptance of the enemy, that is an inversion of the rejection of the child abomination. 6.8 - Yet the Berlin Wall portrayed in the film: Suspiria, 1 September 2018, 152 minutes, remains a concrete reminder to the witches that the division of Western and Eastern Worlds remains in place, unless it is asked: "was the Berlin Wall merely another case of the painted veil—another illusion created by illusionists?" 6.9 - The rite of "passing through fire" such as involved in the rites of worship of Molech suggest a spiritual belief of fire's "purifying effects", of the returning of substance to ashes and dust, and further in this context, is equivalent to an exorcism of "the abomination" that is in their culture, the child of mixed ethnicity, often born out of prostitution; the so-called illegitimate or bastard child is involved in a rite of cleansing—while furnished in religious terms, it is nonetheless indicative of ethnic genocide. 6.10 - Fire symbolizes the destructive aspect of "mother nature", 'Demeter / Ceres / Isis', to which Molech is associated; as the bull, the feminine aspect of death expressed in Molech is similarly manifested in the rites and myth of the minotaur. 6.11 - The King Minos punished the Athenians for the death of his son, Prince Androgeus, by demanding regular sacrifice to the Minotaur at the labyrinth, Crete, viz. seven male youths and seven maidens; Athenian children—refer to the film for a narration of the myth: 6.12 - Minotaur, 11 March 2006, the United States of America, 93 minutes, directed by Jonathan English. 6.13 - The bull's horns create a shape of the crescent moon and is believed to be the son of the white, moon goddess: 'Selene / Luna / Men' Madame Blanc. 6.14 - There is further the symbol of the crocodile as the great beast of the waters, 'Leviathan / the Kraken', lurking beneath the surface, similar to Mater Suspiriorum who is revealed only a few times during the film of 2018, who is further Demeter in her destructive aspect—unleashed by the god of the waters, 'Poseidon / Neptune' as the hulking fish / creature that devours the sacrifice, that is of a mythos that informs more recent, celebrated narratives for children, such as in: 6.15 - Peter Pan; Or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, circa 1904, often known as "Peter Pan", a play by J.M. Barrie. 6.16 - Later written as the novel: Peter and Wendy, circa 1911, by J.M. Barrie, in: Peter Pan: Peter And Wendy And Peter Pan In Kensington Gardens, circa 2004, Penguin Books Limited, 272 pages, ISBN-10: 014243793X, ISBN-13: 9780142437933. 6.17 - The accursed child is comparable to the boy, the character of Damien in the film: 6.18 - The Omen, 6 June 1976, premiere Britain, 111 minutes, directed by Richard Donner—at least as the text entertains a Catholic inspired interpretation, the destructive force of Satan is symbolically invested in Damien, who is swapped at birth in the place of a dead child, similar to how the changeling is always swapped during infancy, to connect both the Anti-Christ and changeling to the status of the accursed child: as the unwanted or orphaned child, who are really symbols of the unknown that presages of change, albeit abhorred. 6.19 - Such mythos of the child sacrifice, as mentioned, is repressed, wholly or partially, for a focus on the witch, such as in the film: Suspiria, 1 September 2018, 152 minutes—thus, to excavate such repressed aspects of the narrative, it is logically inferred, the changelings are kept until a certain age, viz. Alberto being ten years old, partially hidden at another "secret secret" space—similar to the "holiest of holies"—possibly as a type of unrecognised slave labour performed by children. 6.20 - To return to arguably the founding narrative of: The Spinning-Woman By The Spring, also known as: The Kind And The Unkind Girls—suggested as derived from the Parable Of The Wise And Foolish Virgins, a parable from Jesus Christ, according to Matthew 25:1–13there is a division in the narrative between two girls who attend the witch's house, that is done consecutively, to work, often having to perform impossible tasks; the kind girl is rewarded for speaking to the animals—and the girl who is not so kind, is indicated as the accursed, destined to a lot of slavery, and possibly the one deemed the changeling, is defective in some secret way other than temperament. 6.21 - The folk-tale suggests that Susie has had an earlier version of herself attend the Markos Tanz Akademie and "go through" similar ordeals, only to find herself failed and trapped in a slave's existence—and somehow the witch is able to keep Susie and the other girls ignorant of the fact; it is after all a huge building with various spaces, revealed and concealed. 6.22 - Alberto's counter-part in the third film, Michael Pierce's abducted son, Paul Pierce, acted by Luca Pescatore, is later eaten raw by the coven of the catacomb—presumably quenched by the fire of their bellies. 6.23 - As obscene as many moments are in Luca Guadagnino's film of 2018, the old woman of the German folk tale: Hansel And Gretel, surfaces because that old woman is revealed to be a witch, who entices both children in to her forest cottage to eat—for a filmic version refer to: 6.24 - Hansel And Gretel, 31 January 2020, 87 minutes, directed by Osgood Perkins, based on the eponymous tale compiled by the Brothers Grimm and published circa 1812 as number 15 of Grimms' Fairy Tales. 6.25 - The obscenity of cannibalism is not shown in the film of 2018, but it is shown in Luca Guadagnino's later film: 6.26 - Bones And All, 2 September 2022, premiere at the Venice Film Festival, 130 minutes, that centers on the subject of cannibalism, to comprise the ambit of Luca Guadagnino's reportoire. 6.27 - I return to that subject discussed in my blogs in reference to the Irish film: 6.28 - You Are Not My Mother, 13 September 2021, premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, 93 minutes, directed by Kate Dolan, viz. the Pied Piper of Hamlin, in which a "magic pipe" is used in a falsely established premise of revenge upon a township to beguile the town's children to their fall, viz. sexual abuse; abductions for trafficking to foreign places; early death. 6.29 - On this last point refer to: <https://thoughtsdisjectamembra.blogspot.com/2022/06/craig-steven-joseph-laceys-part-v.html>. 6.30 - The pied piper is perhaps that fatalistic satyr of Dionysus, viz. Silenus with a tibia / flute? who is paraphrased in Aristotle's Eudemus / Of the Soul, as commenting to King Midas after being captured by him and interrogated: 6.31 - "Ephemeral offspring of a travailing genius and of harsh fortune, why do you force me to speak what it were better for you men not to know? For a life spent in ignorance of one's own woes is most free from grief. But for men it is utterly impossible that they should obtain the best thing of all, or even have any share in its nature (for the best thing for all men and women is not to be born); however, the next best thing to this, and the first of those to which man can attain, but nevertheless only the second best, is, after being born, to die as quickly as possible." It is evident, therefore, that he made this declaration with the conviction that existence after death is better than that in life"—from: Plutarch's Moralia, Consolatio ad Apollonium, §XXVII, 1st century A.D., Volume 10, Loeb Classical Library Number 321, circa 1936, Greek and English Edition, hard-cover, 491 pages, ISBN-10: 0674993543, ISBN-13: 9780674993549, or: at Bill Thayer's website, sourced from the URL: <https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Consolatio_ad_Apollonium*.html>.
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§7.0 - INFLUENCES OF SATANISM—Refer to Points 7.0–7.28.
7.1 - The notion of "Satanists" operating clandestine cults within various church affiliated organisations—in fact, the church—remains shrouded as a matter at all to consider. 7.2 - The modern position and role of Nuns' Convents and Orphanages are very far from sight in the context of the Three Mothers' Trilogy, including this fourth re-make of the first film, but representation of the Satanic within such places of the Church is found in films such as: 7.3 - Black Narcissus 24 April 1947, premiere at London, Britain, 100 minutes, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and more recently: 7.4 - The Nun, 4 September 2018, premiere at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre / TCL Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, 96 minutes, directed by Corin Hardy and the sequel: 7.5 - The Nun II, 8 September 2023, 110 minutes, directed by Michael Chaves. 7.6 - The corrosion of Christian (and Jewish) institutions of care of children has been a subject of films such as: 7.7 - Spotlight, 3 September 2015, premiere at the Venice Film Festival, 129 minutes, directed by Tom McCarthy. 7.8 - In Australia the Royal Commission In To Institutional Responses To Child Sexual Abuse, 13 January 2013 – 15 December 2017, established by the Prime Minister Julia Gillard, published findings which showed that child abuse was pervasive in almost all forms of child care—upon the Forgotten Australians—not only the Catholic Church: 7.9 - 'More than one in three survivors (36.0 per cent) said they were sexually abused in pre-1990 out-of-home care – primarily in residential institutions, such as children’s homes, missions or reformatories. Just under one-third (31.8 per cent) said they were abused in a school, and 14.5 per cent said they were abused while involved in religious activities, such as attending a church or seminary. More than one in five survivors (21.0 per cent) said they were sexually abused in more than one institution'—from: FINAL REPORT, Preface and executive summary, circa 2017, by the Royal Commission In To Institutional Responses To Child Sexual Abuse, 228 pages, ISBN 9781925622485. 7.10 - There are few films on this deplorable history, though one is: 7.11 - Oranges And Sunshine, 8 October 2010, premiere at the Pusan International Film Festival, Pusan, South Korea, 105 minutes, directed by Jim Loach, with a script by Rona Munro, based on: 7.12 - Empty Cradles, circa 1994, by Margaret Humphreys, Doubleday, hard-cover, 329 pages, ISBN-10: 0385404522, ISBN-13 9780385404525, in which the abuses are narrated of "Home Children", viz. white, vagrant children from Britain, after their re-location to nations, such as Australia—for child slavery. 7.13 - As to how Irish Catholic institutions, such as the Congregation of Christian Brothers, to which "Home Children" were sent at Bindoon, Western Australia, were left unquestioned as places without corruption from within by Neo-pagans or Satanists, possibly remains a matter that is part of a larger conspiracy of persecution against mostly white, Irish Christians. 7.14 - When such matters are questioned, it is with partial or improbable evidence, subject to censorship and repression, when it is often said: "it is too late," that is, to infer genocide has already taken place, otherwise the persecuted people would be able to petition against any future occurrence: "lest we forget." 7.15 - The general consensus is that through the modernism of the 20th-century the Christian church and possibly Jewish Synagogues fell to forms of the Satanic attached to notions of secular, State liberalism and technology's so-called modern conveniences, for a subversion of mostly Christian organisations. 7.16 - The Satanic malapropriation of Catholic Christianity has been recognised in the 'Black Mass' as documented in texts dating from the 4th century, as detailed by Epiphanius of Salamis in: 7.17 - Panarion, circa 375, a treatise of heresies that treats eighty religious cults, either organized groups or philosophies, in which their histories and beliefs, that is, Satanic heresies of Christianity are nothing new. 7.18 - Refer to: The Panarion Of Epiphanius Of Salamis, 310–403 A.D., re-published circa 1987, by Saint Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia, Cyprus, Leiden; New York: E.J. Brill, 704 pages, ISBN 9004079262, ISBN 9789004079267, ISBN 9004098984,
ISBN 9789004098985. 7.19 - Arguably, the Satanic heresies re-emerged at approximately the time when the French aristocrat, the Marquis de Sade published: 7.20 - Justine, Or, The Misfortunes Of Virtue, circa 1797, republished circa 2012, Oxford: Oxford University Press, xiiv, 273 pages, ISBN 9780199572847, and: 7.21 - Juliette, circa 1801, republished circa 2007, Arrow Books Limited, hard-cover, 1216 pages, ISBN-10: 0099517671, ISBN 13: 9780099517672—that accompanied de Sade's text Justine: one text, a biography of a virtuous woman, the other a biography of Justine's sister: Juliette, an immoral hedonist: perhaps, yet another permutation of the parable of ten virgins? 7.22 - In the anthropological text: The Golden Bough, circa 1890, by J.G. Frazer, re-published as: The Golden Bough: A Study In Magic And Religion, 13 Volume, circa 1976, Britain: Macmillan, Third Edition, ISBN: 0333012828. ISBN/EAN: 978033301282, James Frazer described an unusual French legend of the Mass of Saint-Sécaire that contains similarities to the Black Mass. 7.23 - Further along fictional premises: 7.24 - Là-Bas, / Down There, circa 1891, by the French author, Joris-Karl Huysmans, re-published 20 April 2017, Read Books, 282 pages, ISBN: 9781473337190, a novel that praises Satan for his rationalism.
7.25 - Refer to the film: The Devils 16 July 1971, the United States of America, 111 minutes, produced and directed by Ken Russell, based on the non-fictional text by Aldous Huxley: 7.26 - The Devils Of Loudun, circa 1952, re-published: 7 April 2005, Random House, Imprint: Vintage Classics, 22nd Edition, English Language, 376 pages, 9780099477761, that narrates the persecution of Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century Roman Catholic priest accused of Satanism, after a series of dæmonic possessions at Loudun, France, a persecutory attack devised by Sister Jeanne des Anges, a nun who despite being a nun, uses a bone to curse blameless Christian men. 7.27 - Arguably, Satanic primitivism is only truly revealed by Georges Bataille, a past priest given over the Satanic, who published texts of Satanic ritual, such as: 7.28 - The Blue Of Noon / French: Le Bleu du Ciel, circa 1937, pages 155, ISBN: 9780893960049, in which necrophilia is the subject of the narrative.
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§8.0 - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY HAS BECOME A DIFFUSION OF CULTS—Refer to Points 8.0–8.21.
8.1 - In reality the girls and women of such cults, of which finds representation in Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria, 1 September 2018, 152 minutes, are often inter-related as aunts, half-sisters, and cousins of varying degrees, an aspect that the Three Mothers' Trilogy of films disguise, and on that basis of blood ties, rather than secular law preside, familial house rule presides. 8.2 - Comparisons can be made to the infamous cults of "The Family"—a phrase often used as an euphemism for "the mafia"—led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne at Ferny Creek, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and included others at a psychiatric hospital, Newhaven, Kew, London, Britain, from circa 1964 to circa 1987—various members were found liable for embezzlement, illegal adoptions, abuses of psychiatric and psychological treatments, malnourishment, etc.—a history of which is used as the basis of an Australian psychological-thriller genre mini-series: 8.3 - The Clearing, 24 May 2023–, directed by Jeffrey Walker and Gracie Otto, produced for Disney+ and Hulu, based on: 8.4 - In The Clearing, circa 2020, by J. P. Pomare, Little, Brown, 352 pages, ISBN: 0316462950, ISBN:  9780316462952—that narrates of the cult's coercive, brain-washing culture. 8.5 - There is a similar use of the verb / noun: 'clear'—also a synonym to the Chinese term: "xinao", to: "clear the brain"—used in reference to the title of the documentary about the cult-type organisation of The Church Of Scientology: 8.6 - Going Clear: Scientology And The Prison Of Belief, 25 January 2015, premiere at Sundance Film Festival, 120 minutes, directed by Alex Gibney—the organisation was criticised for being a criminal organisation by the Australian senator, Nick Xenophon, that the New South Wales Police were supposed to investigate—refer to: "Xenophon attacks Church of Scientology, 22:00, 17.11.2009 up-dated, 06:57, 18.11.2009", Australian Broadcasting News website, accessed 06.08.2024, from URL: <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-11-17/xenophon-attacks-church-of-scientology/1146154>. 8.7 - Further there is the infamous Californian 'The Manson Family, circa 1967–circa 1970'—in which the charismatic leader, Charles Manson, organised for terrorist crimes, including assassinations, for example, of the actor Sharon Tate. 8.8 - Regarding which, refer to: Helter Skelter, 16 May 2004, 137 minutes, D.V.D., a television film written and directed by John Gray. 8.9 - In Luca Guadagnino's film of 2018, the Soviet dancer, Olga Ivanova, acted by Elena Fokina, is cruelly rejected by the Markos Tanz Akademie, supplanted by Susie Bannion (the dazzling new-comer), and Olga then is subjected to a violent death—prima facie, Olga suffers for no longer being part of "the dancing family", an epithet regarding which must be considered only superficially familial because of Olga's murder. 8.10 - Arguably, Olga is considered vain because her murder occurs in front of the dance hall's mirrors, and prior to Olga's murder, another dancer, resembling her as might a double, gazes at her and laughs hysterically: a moment that again alludes to the Parable Of The Wise And Foolish Virgins8.11 - Olga supposedly has become foolishly involved in under-ground political activism at Berlin, possibly itself considered vanity—but vanity is no reason for execution, yet the radicalism of the witch religion is shown to kill. 8.12 - The more plausible suggestion is, Olga is considered by the Satanist cult to be a martyr as set forth in the Anabaptists' text of pacifist Christians: 8.13 - The Bloody Theater Or Martyrs Mirror Of The Defenseless Christians Who Baptized Only Upon Confession Of Faith, And Who Suffered And Died For The Testimony Of Jesus, Their Saviour, From The Time Of Christ To The Year 1660 A.D., regarding which refer to an illustration from this text directly beneath:
8.14 - Acknowledge that this text differs from: Actes And Monuments Of These Latter And Perillous Days, Touching Matters Of The Church, circa 1563, known as Foxe's Book Of Martyrs by John Day, because the Anabaptists were strictly pacifists and demonstrated no resistance to their torture or killing. 8.15 - This is an interpretation that confers with the film's other subtext regarding the division of the Amish and Mennonites that emerges because Susie's character is from an Amish home, often portrayed by inter-woven sequences in the flash-back convention of film. 8.16 - Presumably, Olga was from a dedicated commune of Christian families, similar to Susie, such that the Markos Tanz Akademie, a cult of Neo-pagans witches, are indicated as poaching girls from Christian families around the world for professional dance, only to terrorise them. 8.17 - It ought to be commented that under the thinly defined similarities of kinship and the career and business of dance, abuse is only thinly perpetrated: when brought out of the hidden places the difference of religious identity provides for grounds to argue that abuse is defined as persecution, such that the terms of terrorism is shifted to politics. 8.18 - As only briefly mentioned, the film is set during that specific epoch of "The German Autumn" of circa 1977, when a series of terrorist attacks caused for the murders of Siegfried Buback, the attorney-general of West Germany, and the banker, Jürgen Ponto, and further, the deaths of ten Red Army Faction members at Stammheim Prison, Stuttgart, Baden Württemberg, Germany. 8.19 - The politics and history is narrated in the film as a peripheral concern to the mysterious occurrences of the Markos Tanz Akademie: with a newspaper on the matter shown during one scene; a television incidentally over-heard reporting the matter; the palette of autumnal colours to define the look and feel of the film, allude to the title of the historical events of "The German Autumn". 8.20 - The leap to make in perception that classifies one style of terrorism as terrorism and the other style of terrorism as thrilling and artistic, involves the acknowledgement that Christians are really persecuted within such contexts. 8.21 - The concern of Satanic subversion to Christendom was prevalent during the time represented by the film, circa 1977, but as a widely accepted concern now appears to have been diffused, that is, diversified in to many different cults of different cultural definition of which Western World democracies are tolerant.
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§9.0 - LIFE AFTER THE ARTIFICIAL APOCALYPSE—Refer to Points 9.0–9.17.
9.1 - At some point in time the artificial apocalypse occurred and I am not necessarily referring to the second world war or Vietnam War, but something along the lines of: 9.2 - Le Dernier Homme / English: The Last Man, circa 1805, republished 15 January 2003, Wesleyan University Press; English Language‎, hard-cover‎, 220 pages, ISBN-10‎: 0819565490, ISBN-13‎: 978-0819565495—a French science fiction novel in prose poem form by Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville. 9.3 - Censorship and the control of culture has caused for a collective amnesia of an artificial or human-made apocalypse to cause for post-apocalytic times. 9.4 - Memory erasure in varying forms is normative for some classes of people due to prevalent abuses within the family, religion or from governmental institutions, and such practices are often involved with brain-washing: an aspect of the cult represented in Luca Guadagnino's film of 2018. 9.5 - Madame Blanc's control, with Miss Tanner, acted by Angela Winkler, over the dancers is facilitated through dance instruction / indoctrination upon the women's minds and bodies, but that level of control extends to intrusion in to space, camera shots are taken outside of scenes of intimate conversation, as to indicate some-one is always over-hearing or observing on as relentless surveillance, to the umcanny activity of Madame Blanc indicates to "telepathically" send dreams to each of the women, an experience they may believe through their exposure to laudanum, or other drugging, suggested as committed by the witches—and refer to a 50 seconds clip from the film beneath of the sent dream from us, the witches.
9.6 - "Brain-washing", or the more recent term: "re-education", is often considered to occur along the lines of those narrated in films such as: 9.7 - The Manchurian Candidate 24 October 1962, 126 minutes, directed and produced by John Frankenheimer; 9.8 - that is based on the eponymous novel of circa 1959 by Richard Condon, re-published: circa 1981, Charnwood, hard-cover, 408 pages, ISBN-10: 0708980112, ISBN-13: 9780708980118. 9.9 - "Brain-washing" occurs in cult types of social organisation, which are supposedly wide-spread throughout many nations of the Western World, and that are detached from the Church in seemingly undirected chaos, may implement psychological forms of war-fare: humiliation, ostracism, isolation, threatening, slandering, over-surveillance, exposure, sleeplessness, frightening, aggrandising, misinforming, sexual and physical violence, torture, etc., that outrageously have been, to an extent, normalised through cult-type "hazing", abuse rituals and endorsement of coercive forms of peer-group pressure, such as portrayed and exploited in the: 9.10 - Big Brother, a reality television franchise created by John de Mol Junior, broadcast at the Netherlands, circa 1999 and subsequently syndicated internationally—with various other reality television shows. 9.11 - Refer to: Brainwashing: The Science Of Thought Control, 16 December 2004, by Kathleen Taylor, Oxford University Press, English Language, hard-cover, 336 pages, ISBN: 0-19-280496-0. 9.12 - Arguably, a key attribute to the group's mentality that transforms everyday competitive taunting or teasing in to abuse or persecution are belief systems which irrationally elect some-one as the cause of all problems; as the person responsible for bringing unwanted change, such as "the changeling", who is made the scape-goat, rather than leadership be found to examine its own forms of moral disengagement and take responsibility for the injustices permitted to be committed by the counter-part of the changeling: Asterion / Lucifer, the minotaur, part-man / part-bull, who is a half-blood or changeling too—the existing system of so-called traditions is illusory for its balances, because behind it another system exists that is far greater in freedoms of thought and act. 9.13 - Perhaps the most soulless of films is: A Clockwork Orange, 19 December 1971, premiere at New York City, 136 minutes, adapted, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick?—based on: 9.14 - Anthony Burgess's eponymous novel circa 1962; re-published: circa 1987, W.W. Norton And Company, 192 pages, ISBN-10: 0393024393, ISBN-13: 9780393024395—that heralds a new era of soulless, tribal instinctualism and violence with allusions to the Satanic that astrides the film's rationalised discourses of medical and governmental control as smothering and mortifying. 9.15 - Yet, when the existence of Saint Nicholas "Santa Claus" is represented as at stake, the attack on love and the gift of charity, portrayed in the film: 9.16 - Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, 24 September 2010, premiere at the Austin Fantastic Fest, 82 minutes, directed by Jalmari Helander—there is an over-riding sense that we live in the times after the artificial / human-made apocalypse. 9.17 - There are many texts of the dystopia of now, as though hope and faith were folly or madness and my remembrance of being persecuted as a changeling is quite normal, though on the latter point, there are few texts, or if there are texts on the subject, they are censored to myself.
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§10.0 - COMMENTS ON THE FILM'S SOUND-TRACK: 'SUSPIRIA (MUSIC FOR THE LUCA GUADAGNINO FILM), RELEASED 26 OCTOBER 2018, BY THOM YORKE'—Refer to Points 10.0–10.18.
10.1 - The score titled: Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film), released 26 October 2018, for the film: Suspiria, 1 September 2018, 152 minutes, directed by Luca Guadagnino, was produced through the independent record label: 'XL Recordings', owned by the Beggars Group, that has worked with the British musician, Thomas Edward Yorke, known as "Thom Yorke", for his band Radiohead, is a partnership again established here, in which Thom Yorke provides a dystopic, deconstructed mix of the electronica and experimental rock genres. 10.2 - Thom Yorke has cited for inspiration the ambient, new age and electronica genre-based sound-track: Blade Runner: Original Motion Picture Sound-track, 6 June 1994, 57:39 minutes, by the musician Vangelis' for the film: 10.3 - Blade Runner, 25 June 1982, United States of America, 117 minutes, directed by Ridley Scott. 10.4 - With haunting ambience, yet seductive sounds, such as a lone saxophone, these sounds are of the atmospherics of the mystery-requiring-a-solution: the basis of all film noir and giallo. 10.5 - The artists of Musique Concrète, a style of which the composer Irwin Bazelon referred to as a "sound collage" first used in the film: 10.6 - Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, 24 December 1931, premiere at Los Angeles, 96 minutes, directed by Rouben Mamoulian—to include artists, such as: 10.7 - Pierre Henry, 9 December 1927 – 5 July 2017, such as: Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul / Symphony For One Man Alone, circa 1950, also by Pierre Schaeffer, in which raw sounds are integrated in to the composition10.8 - The modern electronica, such as: 10.9 - the trance and minimal techno of the British disk jockey: James Holden, 7 June 1972–; such as his album: The Idiots Are Winning, circa 2006, 43 minutes. 10.10 - The music from the Berlin setting of the first film: Suspiria, 1 February 1977, premiere at Italy, 99 minutes, directed by Dario Argento that includes the "Kosmische Musik" / cosmic music acts: 10.11 - 'Faust', Germany, circa 1971 – circa 1975—distinguished by dissonance, improvisation and experimental electronic approaches, which later influenced ambient and industrial music, such as: Faust, circa 1971, 34:07 minutes, Polydor Records. 10.12 - 'Can', circa 1968 – circa 1991, known for flare in psychedelic rock / funk, with the album: Tago Mago, circa 1971, 73:27 minutes, United Artists10.13 - Further, Thom Yorke has integrated sounds of Ennio Morricone, 10 November 1928 – 6 July 2020, the composer of the sound-track for the first film: Suspiria, 1 February 1977, premiere at Italy, 99 minutes, directed by Dario Argento, and its pop music genre style of structure to the tracks. 10.14 - The sound-track's theatrical dance-piece: Völk, 6:24 minutes, for the dance scene towards the end of the film, is an example of mise-en-abîme, a structural trope of which seemingly authenticates the illusory, filmic system in which it is represented, that is, it reinforces the audience's perception that the witches' magic is plausible. 10.15 - The specific track: Völk, 6:24 minutes is reminiscent of the sound-tracks to late-1970s giallo, for example: Oedipus Orca, 4 April 1977, 100 minutes, directed by Eriprando Visconti, in the use of slow-creeping, droning Moog-tube and key-board sounds contrasted to high-pitched, unsettling "industrial noise", all of which unite in momentum as a cacophony off-set by low-toned, muffled, repeated acoustics that fall off to silence—is there a sense of the unified mission and longing for its fulfilment representative of the troupe / troop? 10.16 - When such musical interpretation is considered with the semantics of the main track title: Völk, 6:24 minutes, the music evokes the mission of the "hoi polloi" / Ancient Greek: οἱ πολλοί: the people, troops, witches, legion—and inasmuch is further suggestive of the Red Army, viz. the Chinese Communist Party, that is otherwise invisible in the film. 10.17 - The sound-track follows post-modernistic immersion in to the tectonic with shifting acoustics and a resistance to melodic sentimentality: rather it is full of anxiety, apprehension and terrible awe, as the dancers come under greater degrees of control through the witches' indoctrination, terror and omnipotent-type surveillance. 10.18 - It could all be "movie magic" for what a show—or as the angel said: “Why are you so amazed?”... “I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and ten horns"—from: The Book Of Revelation 17:7, English Standard Version
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Saturday, 18 June 2022

Craig Steven Joseph Lacey's Part V. A Further Commentary On The Film: 'You Are Not My Mother', Premiered, 13 September 2021, at Toronto, Canada.

1.0: Blog Contents:
2.0–2.7: Omitted /
3.0–3.5: The Bridge Builder /
4.0–4.4: "Blud Und Boden" /
5.0–5.3: Making Use Of Sociological Methods /
6.0–6.4: Treating The Symptoms And Not The Cause /
7.0–7.4: The Sexes /
8.0–8.7: The Case Of Bridget Cleary /
9.0–9.5: Persecuting White Christians /
10: Cannibalisation /
11.0–11.2: Disclaimer //.
☆☆☆
2.0 — Omitted: Until now my series of blogs on the film: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, by Kate Dolan, have treated the 'Faustian bargain' as part of an hitherto undiscussed cultural complex that I will tentatively call: "the macabre tax", viz. the forced taking of one's own life or children, such as implicated "by signing one's own life away [to the devil]" or "by making a pact with the devil". As such phrases are often stated and inasmuch are readily at hand: point towards an already existing wide-ranging awareness of such macabre tax, the quite obvious concern that is unofficially represented is irrespectively treated as marginal, or irrelevant history, or part of fanciful folk-lore. The question begging an answer: is that how the perpetrators perceive such matters?
2.1 — It is mostly omitted from serious social analysis and instead is found among lulling children's tales, such as: 'The Pied Piper Of Hamelin', based on a rat-catcher, who introduces rats to the town later to demand a fee for removing the vermin, is accused of extortion, then, out of revenge for no receipt of payment, re-appears on the Feast Day of Saints John and Paul, 26 June, to take the children with him—and note, the narrative is, in fact, recorded by 'The Lüneberg Manuscript', circa 1440 / circa 1450, of Lower Saxony—refer to 'The Herzog August Bibliothek' web-site, accessed 18 June 2022, at: <https://www.hab.de/en/digitising-the-medieval-manuscripts-in-the-ratsbuecherei-lueneburg/>.
2.2 — The specific narrative has been a recurring literary theme, not losing relevance, such as demonstrated by Robert Browning's poem: 'The Pied Piper Of Hamelin', circa 1842, for which the abduction is dated circa 1376; or the tale of: "The Rat-catcher" in 'The Red Fairy Book', ‎Dover Publications; a new publication: 1 June 1966, [Longmans, Green And Company, London, circa 1890], ‎367 pages; ISBN-10: ‎048621673X; ISBN-13‎: 978-0486216737, by Andrew Lang, 31 March 1844, Selkirk, Britain, until 20 July 1912, Banchory, United Kingdom—the renowned cultural critic, folk-lorist and anthropologist.
2.3 — The concern of the truth being of such horrorific proportions that it can only be told through fantastical contexts, viz. folk-lore, or super-natural / horror, or super-realist / psychological thriller genres, is the main point to be made: paradoxically, the truth can only be told through a fabulous lie; but the further question required an answer is: to whose benefit is that fictitious arrangement, exactly?
2.4 — In historical or report-based texts, such modern histories are generally absent of the horror: euphemistically referred to here as "the macabre tax"; and the assumption to make is: if there is no such horrific news then such events do not take place—surely, a logical deduction to make due to the pervasive surveillance culture of many cities, that is, when such surveillance can be contrived, controlled by who taxes.
2.5 — The point is, the matter of such tax appears hitherto officially discussed, particularly in any theoretical context, that is, unless the holocaust of Northern Europe during the 20th century is the one and only time such horrors occur in rarity; as a one-off trait of wide-scale war. It simply could not occur regionally or regularly—a point that contemporary French literature appears to confute by numerous authors telling of an experience of holocaust-like character, such as exemplified by: 'Le Rapport de Brodeck / Brodeck's Report', circa 2007 / English translation by John Cullen, 7 January 2010; a novel by Philippe Claudel; Quercus Publishing: London; 288 pages; ISBN-10: 1906694680; ISBN-13: 9781906694685; or the post-holocaust night-mare of: 'Le Non De Klara / Refusal', circa 2002, by Soazig Aaron, publisher Maurice Nadau, ISBN 2862311723, 9782862311722, in which "Klara", a pronoun and noun re-encoded dialectically to refer to a Nun, such as of the once pervasive order of Saint Clare of Assissi, portrays a protagonist who is refused entry back in to society because the cultures of caritas and such cultures' representatives are rejected, that is, within the new—or perhaps very old?—system of the macabre tax.
2.6 — The silence on the matter of such tax may be caused by the register of a degree of poetic license whenever it is spoken of; in saying some-one has made a pact with the devil, hyperbole is said to be demonstrated, if only to convey the feeling of cost involved by establishing a particular contract—on which point the discourse refers to that interminable matter of exploitation in which the pay rate is incommensurate with the demands of a type of employment: really enslavement.
2.7 — The tyrant / dæmon as the merciless boss is subject to an extensive examination in cultural texts, such as in reference to C.S. Lewis's text: 'The Screwtape Letters', [circa 1942] 12 April 2012, 224 pages; ISBN-10: 0007461240, ISBN-13: 9780007461240; often in these contexts the religious and profound are displaced to the secular terms of exploitation found in employment law and the great machine of civilisation turns it's cogs as part of an impersonal system supposedly permitting an attitude of indifference.
2.8 — Or where the arena of the court ought to be the bastion of counter-action against the oppressions of society, it regulates the mechanisms of persecution: the whole-scale elimination of quite blameless folk, trundled in a conspiring system of persecution. Franz Kafka's 'The Trial', Tribeca Books, 11 October 2011 [circa 1915], 160 pages, ISBN-10: ‎1612931030; ISBN-13: ‎978-1612931036, is one of the so-called existential or "demythologized" fictional musings on the court system gone awry; a textual treatment found more tangibly examined as disability discrimination in the film: 'Let Him Have It', 4 October 1991, by Peter Medak, produced by Canal+ et al., Britain—refer to: the Internet Movie Database web-site, accessed 18 June 2022, at: <https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0102288/?ref_=m_tttr_tt>.
2.9 — Filmic texts of American popular culture, such as the: 'Devil's Advocate', circa 1997, by Taylor Hackford, produced by Regency Enterprises—refer to: the Internet Movie Database web-site, accessed 18 June 2022, at: <https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0118971/>, are seen to portray the courts and legal firms as the very places where the devil him-self can be found; a cloaked figure who betrays his privileged position to wrought ruin upon people's lives in the name of greed.
3.0 — The Bridge Builder: There is, then, the under-pinning Christian-Judaic religious symbolism, viz. of "the devil": the Slanderer or Satan who obstructs freedoms of movement, both literal and figurative, to prevent particular classes of people from flourishing: it is the case that the classes of people must be oppressed and kept destabilised by interference and sabotage.
Figure 1. 'Die Teufelsbrücke Saint Gotthard / The Devil's Bridge Of Saint Gotthard', circa 1804, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, oil on canvas, 76.8 cm x 62.8 cm, Kunsthaus Zürich.
3.1 — Yet what I argue of, the macabre tax, that under-scores the narrative of: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, is some-thing else: atrocity in the back-yard; the maniacal amid the every-day; yet it is still a matter apparently out-side rational thinking or discussion because psychology must place it's devils on it's particular bridges to work within the over-all system of "civilisation".
3.2 — The folk-lore of The Devil's Bridge / Teufelsbrücke serves as an illustration of the crossing of traditional oppositions that the devil figure is often considered to demand remains opposed and obstructed. With construction of the bridge "new ground", that is, new knowledge, will be gained, of which the devil would prefer remained inaccessible. The bridge builder must endure unbearable conditions to construct the bridge, in which case the bridge builder emerges as a hero, rather than a traitor who has betrayed even his own family to attain power, such as in the cases of Faust or Aaron.
3.3 — The notion of "the pact with the devil" was, during Wolfgang Goethe's time of 19th century Germany one of freely made choice; whereas the narrative of 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, indicates a family over-taken by an insidious influence foreign or super-natural to the regional community.
3.4 — I have already discussed how Mephistopheles disappears in: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, to leave behind no trace of his presence—expert criminal that he is—to reveal a male presence in the family home, the character of Aaron, left-over instead, as an index of a demeaned masculinity; as an adult son who is coerced in to copulating with his sister, and further, demeans her and her daughter too: significantly in ways which are inimical to the family and the father's natural culture.
3.5 — The case seems that regarding: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, that the devil has not waited for the bridge builder to emerge out of one of the homes of the village to go to the river to construct his juncture between the opposite points of land; the devil has anticipated the movements of the potential bridge builder; the devil has entered the home to derange the family members and further apply an unspeakable and, or, or immemorable macabre tax; possibly to the extent the devil has promised a better way of life to the immediate father or father substitute, such as Aaron.
4.0 — "Blud Und Boden": The phenomena may have a less fantastical correlation with the practice of "blud und boden / blood and soil", of spilling blood in to the earth in order that a people may be able to claim it as truly their own; as a type of naturalising, except that often revised or contemporary texts interpret the phrase as referring to the abstracted notion of the "national body".
4.1 — The German Nazi were of Aryan, that is, Iranian-Median or Scythian / Hunic racial supremacism, rather than Anglo, Nordic or Saxon, as is often confusingly reported as white supremacy—there are different whites—such that the highly militaristic society of the Aryans is found expressing the loss of life as a necessary sacrifice; whereas genuine Northern European Christian cultures bear heavily any loss of life.
4.2 — The holocaust and genocide of the Jewish Semites and Christian Slavs are extensively documented, but the killing of children is some-thing else that must be told through the lulling effects of the fantastical—religion is often kept out of the discourse because tensions mount in regard to specific enmities, such as the Israeli against the Palestinians, or vice versa, at which point the context of genre has changed and matters are taken more seriously, if not cynically.
4.3 — The religious texts are subjected to the cynical reader who reads a pseudo-history, yet the truth nonetheless is found as an illumination and enlightenment of the nature of humankind.
4.4 — The accounts of the Old Testament state according to: 1 Kings 11:7, that Solomon erected a high place for [the idol of Molech] on the Mount of Olives, and from that time till the days of Josiah his worship continued, 2 Kings 23:10, 13. The calf-type idol sculpted of brass, hollow and heated by fire within, Molech, is the fire god of child sacrifice; is similar to that other demi-god, the Minotaur, to which seven youths and seven maidens were sacrificed as the fulfilment of King Minos's tax, applied every nine years on the people of Athens as recompense for the loss of his son: such occurrences echo through the halls of time, in mystified symbolism, to resist having the semblance of a precise relevance to now.
5.0 — Making Use Of Sociological Methods: An amount of blind faith is required to give credence to the claims such horrors occur now, when people are more willing to place faith in what is hopeful, unless fear is a type of hope in reversal and that which is goodly is too paradoxical to conceive: a point of not so much cynicism but faithlessness and Godlessness.
5.1 — Faith, of course, is insufficient "sola fide"; there is the matter of proof of faith, a work, in this case of reconstruction, that is, with what little structure that is available to reconstruct a glimpse in to the family life of North Dublin, the film: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, a type of psychological interpellation must be applied that more realistically perceives triggers of external occurrence as the cause of Angela's depression, rather than accept the often touted notion, mental illness or disabilities of a physical category are similar to the stigma of a changeling as incurable or innately defective, automate abjection and persecution.
5.2 — The film: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, reveals a perspective in which the world is flat, that is, before the so-called Copernican Revolution, that proved the earth to be spherical: to extend upon the analogy, then using psychological interpellation, I have rendered through these series of five blogs the narrative of the film that is portrayed flatly in three-dimensions by examining the assumptions, which are all too easily and readily accepted—the first assumption being that the filmic text is completely fictional.
5.3 — While I refer to psychological interpellation as part of the deductive method that anticipates behaviours caused from triggers rather than an innate causation, I substantiate this approach in reference to applying both a standard set of intertextual analyses focused on a comparative method; such as found in the most basic structural anthropology espoused by Claude Lévi-Strauss or folk-lorist Vladimir Propp, who are credited with the notions of the mytheme or narrative unit, as a narrational set of relations, and as it correlates with a psycho-social complex, in which there is located the psychoanalytical concern of foreclosure, viz. Mephistopheles——Faust, or Mephistopheles——Grand-mother, and daughters——Faust or daughters——Grand-mother, and not: daughters——Mephistopheles or the Law; such that it can be asserted the over-all faculty of the work exists within the disciplines of sociology, viz. literary / cultural discourse analysis based on anthropology / psychoanalysis through an intertextual analytical method.
6.0 — Treating The Symptoms And Not The Cause: Confronted with the almost impossible conditions of joining a point of impasse of the super-realistic æsthetic—subtly infusing the social scientific discourses through the quality of it's subject with implausibility—and a societal "establishment" that may function to discourage the building of bridges between the sexes, cultures and classes of people; I nonetheless argue that this macabre tax is extolled; that the agitator, the Mephistopheles, has slipped away, a shadow cast as quickly as it has faded from the action of the narrative, to perform his greatest trick yet, to leave the blameless behind and let accusation fall upon them. 
6.1 — From the out-set, 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, portrays an elderly woman as a suspected murderer of an infant, that is as much as the super-realist æsthetic will permit the consideration to be made: the immolation is it-self omitted as a mark of the foreclosed suspicion that the style plays with.
6.2 — The elderly woman is seen to limp with a pram to a bushy area away from the neighbour-hood where a fire is lit and the baby, placed on the pile of dead branches, watches the elderly woman stare back at the infant; the old woman, Rita, acted by Ingrid Craigie, stares with suspicion, disbelief and welled-up eyes, as the flames suffuse her face with an orange glow.
Figure 2. Film still at 03:15 of 93:00: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, by Kate Dolan.
6.3 — It would be presumptuous to blame the elderly woman of immolating the child—there is the fact, an infant is not reported as missing or burnt dead later in the film. The trap would be to confer credence to the fallacy of: 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc', that is: 'because of this, therefore that': because of this scene, the elderly woman immolates children. The assumption is coaxed, that some-one is guilty because of an happenstance placement amid circumstantial evidence; condemnation occurs at the risk of a complicity with the devil's deception.
6.4 — Could the arrangement, the set-up, not be a trick of the devil? The devil, that master illusionist, demands from the arrangement, that on-lookers confer to his trick of controlling the people to perceive a blameless person as guilty for the devil's own crimes: he has ordered one of the mothers to do that which he would do, but for the fact, he must evade a direct connection to the collection of his tax.
7.0 — The Sexes: The structural elements of a narrative based on a witch often involves a pact with the devil: the narrative of Washington Irving's 'The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow', circa 1820—adapted to film: 'Sleepy Hollow', 17 November 1999 at Mann's Chinese Theatre, Los Angeles—portrays the character of Lady Van Tassel as pledging her soul to Satan: a moment that is found in the film: 'Belladonna Of Sadness', circa 1973, directed by Eiichi Yamamoto, in which the character of Jeanne makes a pact with the devil who is a spirit of the wilderness rather than a tycoon.
7.1 — The devil is considered to bestow a woman with her witch status as a matter of an agreement; such that the division of the sexes cannot exonerate one side and only blame men.
7.2 — The world that comes in to view through the film, 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, is mysterious as much for the expression of an adolescent girl's brain-washed perspective, as the decontextualisation of greater causes of historical significance: if not God versus the devil, then, what?
7.3 — The further point is: to be disconnected to the causes of true history is to establish a position neither interactive with or consequential to the changes of history: what occurs in Char's world is of no consequence to any-one else.
7.4 — The primary concern is, rather than treat the symptoms, the cause is seen to be treated: which comparatively refers to the Mephistopheles who has slipped away from sight and accountability, as exemplified by the Irish narrative of: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021—he will return and cause the recurring patterns of strife when measures of intervention lack.
8.0 — The Case Of Bridget Cleary: To cross the thresholds of the fictional to the historical, the further argument is made: 'You Are Not My Mother', circa 2021, is based, at least in part, on the Irish case of Bridget Cleary, a young woman who was immolated, at Ballyvadlea, County Tipperary, Ireland, on 15 March 1895, for allegedly being either a witch or changeling. 
8.1 — Bridget Cleary disappeared and returned to her family no longer her-self; was ill and three days later, her husband, Michael Cleary, and father, Patrick Boland, and seven further family members, burnt her alive.
8.2 — Three extensive case studies of Bridget Cleary have been published:
8.3 — 'Murder Of Bridget Cleary', by Carlo Gébler; Hamish Hamilton, circa 1994; 160 unnumbered pages; ISBN: 0241132061, 9780241132067, 9780349103150, 0349103151.
Figure 3. The cover of Angela Bourke's 'The Burning Of Bridget Cleary, A True Story', circa 2006—refer to point 8.4, directly beneath.
8.4 — 'The Burning Of Bridget Cleary', by Angela Bourke; New York: Penguin, circa 2001; 279 pages; ISBN: 0141002026, 067089270X, 9780670892709. 
8.5 — 'The Cooper's Wife Is Missing: The Trials Of Bridget Cleary', by Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates; New York: Basic Books, [circa 2000], reprint circa 2006; online 477 pages; ISBN: 9780465030880, 9780465012084, 0465012086.
8.6 — A further text shows the case of Bridget Cleary as a witch trial, not a matter regarding a fairy's changeling, that is titled: 'The Tipperary, Or Clonmel, Witch Case: transcripts of newspaper reports etc., concerning Bridget Cleary, burned as a witch, and the trial of her husband and neighbours for murder, circa 1895', by Doctors William Osler and George Foy, circa 1917. 
8.7 — Because all nine family members were convicted, five of murder, the further four, of wounding, the social science of law demonstrates that the stigmatising mechanisms of folk-lore, such as the applied label of the changeling, is found only to motivate hatred, violence and murder.
9.0 — Persecuting White Christians: The folk-lorist of the state of Idaho, the United States Of America: Dee L. Ashliman, refers to the German folk-lorists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimms' accounts: '... of changelings being thrown in to water, beaten severely with a switch, left unfed and crying in an open field, or placed on a hot stove', and further notes, that such ordeals are reported as common, told in reference to the changeling legends of Northern Europe, which: '...do not misrepresent or exaggerate the actual abuse of suspected changelings': in 'Changelings;
An Essay', copyrighted circa 1997; refer to the web-site of The University of Pittsburgh, accessed 18 June 2021, at <https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/changeling.html>.
9.1 — Dee L. Ashliman reports: 'Court records between about 1850 and [circa] 1900 in Germany, Scandinavia, Great Britain, and Ireland, reveal numerous proceedings against defendants accused of torturing and murdering suspected changelings'—in 'Changelings; An Essay', copyrighted circa 1997; refer to the web-site of The University of Pittsburgh, accessed 18 June 2021, at: <https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/changeling.html>.
9.2 — The cruel and unusual punishments meted to children based on a stigma constructed through the changeling myth, to confer the superstition that a child had not developed a deformity or disability, but had been replaced with a child not of the parents, that is by other-worldly beings, has allowed the vilest cruelties known, not only to children but adults with fair complexions of North Western Europe and colonial regions, often Christians.
9.3 — Within the discourse emerges the problem of racism against white-skinned folk of a Northern European heritage—as distinct from white-skinned Berber, Iranian, Hun or Han ethnicities—and that is predicated against Christians, viz. is Christaphobic or of the Anti-Christ.
9.4 — Where domestic abuse might be terms of reference, as though family members are involved, the motivation being racist and religiously intolerant, more correctly applies persecution; the matter is not simply white against black.
9.5 — The figure of the adult changeling, as discussed in Part IV. of my blog, regarding the film of 2021 and music, such as by the band Toyah, involves a reduction of white-skinned Christians to the status of children; who might be considered unborn, that is, fœtal; are held to be the equivalent to souless flesh; as live stock raised, as cattle are raised, for ingestion.
10.0 — Cannibalisation: In regions of Ireland the thought of cannibalisation may be startlingly or one of disbelief, when truthfully the matter is old; such as demonstrated by the text 'A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children Of Poor People From Being A Burthen To Their Parents Or Country, And For Making Them Beneficial to the Publick' ("A Modest Proposal"), circa 1729, in which the Irish clergyman and author Jonathan Swift, 30 November 1667, Dublin, Ireland until 19 October 1745, Dublin, Ireland, ironically advises the poor Irish to sell their children to the rich as food.
11.0 — Disclaimer: This blog post is the exclusive intellectual property of Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–; Google email: craigsjlacey@gmail.com; by way of law, no hacking, copying, editing or disseminating of it is permitted.
11.1 — Three photographs have been used within this blog: Figures 1 to 3; each of which is identified to a resource and is used within the editorial rights' context.
11.2 — Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia; 189 Leichhardt Street, Spring Hill, Queensland, Australia, 4000; Ⓒ 2022, Craig Steven Joseph Lacey. 
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