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August 22, 2005
Demons and Repellents
Guest Blogger Azer on the Earls Barton Monstrosities (below):
Although the architectural disciplines of all churches are based on demonographic cartographies just like mosques which swarm with heretical / blasphemous geometric gradients (since they evade presenting humanoid figures in their interior / exterior decorations and are mainly concentrated on complex geometric patterns and arrangements) but I must advise you that these are not demons so much as xeno-agents.
Archeologically / technically these figures cannot be considered as demons; in rigorous archeological investigations faces have minimal demonic capacities; even the most distorted, disfigured, amputated faces cannot be identified as evidence of a demon (xeno-agent) i.e. (de)faciality cannot be an constitutive element in diagramming a demon (esp. in a period from the rise of Mesopotamian civilizations to the end of antiquity and early medievalism). Demons are always delineated by anomalous cartographies / diagrams based on which their bodies, positions, and arrangement of their appendages (organs?) are presented, built and (re)composed; or else they are identified by coming in pairs (one a recognizable entity and the other an obscure twin of the familiar entity: examples are the Phoenician and Etruscanian demons). For example:
1. The right hand upward, and the left hand downward (demons of pestilence)
2. With stretched hands one pointing to east and one pointing to west -" solar demons -" (the Romans ironically borrowed the same diagrammatic position from Babylonians in their crucifixions: most prominent of which are the iconographic portraits of the crucified Jesus)
3. Body organs (appendages) are connected to each other by curved lines and circles which together construct a 'closed' labyrinthine convolution
4. Smaller wings attached to the main wings (or having more wings than what is necessary to fly)
5. Horns forming spirals (in contrast to general belief horns are not satanic members) or horns pointing to each other (arch-demons)
6. Legs are open, far from each other to draw a triangle (three-dotted profanity which is among the most significant diagrams of unlocalizable demons), etc
But this is still a simplistic investigation of demonography as applied in the architecture of churches, holy shrines and mosques, solely occupied by figurative projections and organ-ic hegemony. More immoderate demons are never figurative: the most striking example I recently encountered was located in the interior of Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia), originally constructed in antiquity but rebuilt many times. In the first glance, it is a symmetrical pattern, two lines symmetrically intertwining and reaching each other at the center of the pattern occupied by a dot (not a hollowed circle), more looking like a heavenly plant or a roman pattern than a sinister diagram. It is repeated at the top of each column. Well, it is exactly the neo-Sumerian seal of Tiamat discovered in Halaf complex and Ninevah, a closed draco-spiral / double-helix (parthenogenesis) leading to an unhallowed zero, a bindu (womb? Acephalous mouth? A faceless head? Or a hole to the Outside?).
The faces in these shots could be 'Repellents' (since they are symbolically positioned on archways, at the top of doors, gates or entrances to different sections) guarding the place from demons, and in addition, their emphasis is on faciality traits; this is because after antiquity and following the complete establishment of Christianity, it was believed (based on primitive / tribal exorcism which was imported to Christian doctrines by Christian schools in Jerusalem and by people such as Cyril of Jerusalem) that demons had inner, masked, concealed faces behind their polymorphic compositions and that exposing monstrous (grotesquely reassembled) faces to demons would unleash a symbolic impulse against the demon, resulting in self-empathy (similar to symbolic pomo-militarism, Baudrillard's favorite theme) and taking (or revealing), a unique identity which consequently destroys or repels the demon (a demon with identity is a 'creature' either on the side of the divine and his pro-creationist project or the State's affordance-based society) - the Power of the Gaze.
While these faces (Repellents) are bound to monotheistic authority, they have internal occultural functions (occult entities utilized by religion) so they still possess composite occultural or polytheistic edges threatening the order of the Tetragrammaton from within; by entirely overexposing themselves to occultural horizons, they gradually construct bridges and unlock gates between monotheistic borders and occult entities of the Outside (pulp-horror's obsession with spontaneous disorders caused by such occultural guardians, haunting gargoyles, rebel Lamassus and independent scarecrows).
Posted by Azer at August 22, 2005 11:59 AM