Clockwerk Sorcery

An Arthur Cullipher Blog: For those that share my interests and those interested in what interests me.

[erikag59]

[walmart-the-official]

Hey, don’t cry. Free online database of Japanese folk lore

[bleu-guacamole]

Might I add, free database of mostly European folklore and myths

[bogleech]

A Book of Creatures by @a-book-of-creatures doesn't update these days but is another thing along these lines, really huge, fully illustrated all by the author and cites all sources

[st-dionysus]

Free database of Native American folklore, sorted by tribe.

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

And again I ask, as Spare did, is there no food beyond corpse?

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

Me in '24 pretending to be a yard decoration (in designer sheets no less), but you can see my damned white soled shoe! My 'hands' are those skeleton hand salad tongs from the dollar store. If you cook, they rule bcuz it's like having an extra little set of hands... also, Halloween... 99 days...

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

At some point in the distant past, I made these overly specific things to make someone laugh... or something...

[spindlebone]

100 Days

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

The Promise of Euryale - Arthur Cullipher - Daemon Portraiture 2015

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

Something

The visual aspects of WE ARE NOT FROM HERE also require me to create new band members.

The album was initially going to be specifically about The Flatwoods Monster incident that took place in Braxton County, WV on September 12, 1952.

The album that emerged is maybe more of a precursor to the actual incident, from the 'alien' point of view.

I have a script that I've been werking on for several years that is a sort of retro 1958 atomic age sci-fi flick inspired by the Flatwoods Monster called SPACE WITCH. I've been playing around with several different iterations of what she might look like.

In this version, the true form of her species looks like it might have evolved from some type of mushroom or shelf fungus. Also, bringing in some root-like vine tubes, corrugations, and slug/snailskin textures. I think I'm going to give the back of her head/helmet like a doubled ammonite texture, with thin ribs going into a spiral on each side.

In the picture, I'm a bit less than halfway there. This may not be the version I use for SPACE WITCH, but she'll be perfect for the purposes of WE ARE NOT FROM HERE.

I'm going to borrow a lot of the visual ideas I have from SPACE WITCH for the music videos. Yantry will, of course, take the position of Lead Space Witch and the lovely lady pictured above will actually be her twin sisters. I'll give them different Halloween tribal paint jobs.

To some degree, Yantry is to Spindlebone what Eddie was to Iron Maiden. She is the quintessential shapeshifting witch, allowing me to reference and explore all manner of myth in my visuals. From the Norns and Fates to Lechuza and Baba Yaga, I'm smooshin em together and tossin in some spiritism stuff for seasoning. I've got this ouija board control panel design thing... it'll be boss. You'll dig it.

I don't want to tie the story of the album down too securely. The aim of Spindlebone always is to get you into your own head, werking your brain to decode what's being presented with your own imagination. I want Spindlebone to become part of the soundtrack of your life, to use in your study and your spells because of what it means to your life, not just the narrative I tell you it means.

I was werking on both WE ARE NOT FROM HERE and SPIDER BASKET simultaneously. One day, WANFH was pretty well finished and SPIDER BASKET still has a ways yet to go. Transitioning the focus now to the more polished one allows me to get to werk on the sets, models, and puppets and hopefully get vids out before year's end.

I'm thinking I'll release the album on September 12, 2026. It is a little before the autumnal equinox and it is the conceit of Spindlebone that 'we' release every autumn... however, it's 74 years after the initial incident. This is our 7th album, but our 4th year of release. Also, I'm a '74 model and I'm 52 this year. These are all things I have to consider when releasing. It is some sort of spell after all.

What? Like I'm gonna release just cuz it's new music Friday?

If you've made it this far, you care, at least a little. Maybe you're even one of those rare individuals that listens to Spindlebone... even rarer still, one of those truly waiting, antici... pating our next release...

So, how are you folks feeling about it? Are you disappointed that it's not Spider Basket for '26 because you're more swamp witch than space witch?

Or are you titillated by the prospect of trancier, more alien tribal pieces?

Let us know your opinions in the comments...

Maybe it'll be a perfect match for your Halloween costume this year!!

You know what? Ya wanna do a poll? Let's do a poll!!

What are you dressing as for Halloween?

A Dead

A Creature

Voting ended onJul 27

[bowlby4]

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

Ever read this one?

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

I WAS A TEENAGE VAMPIRE

I Was A Teenage Vampire

arthurcullipher

The folks I was hanging out with back then are the folks I'm making Spindlebone for now. Mostly that one guy.

It's fun to laugh at yourself like other people do. The pictures are quaint, the hair is what it is, but the times they were filled with sex, drugs, blood, magick, and musick!!

I keep hearing Gen Xers talking about hose water and streetlights.

I guess those are the things we have in common. Elementary school stuff. Not so much the other stuff that I don't hear anyone talking about...

Not the massive amounts of acid or the whole ounce joints or the jimson weed or the graveyards or the churchyards or the abandoned mental institutions or the consensual blood drinking or the roof hopping or the naked rituals in the deep dark woods. Not the witches and queerwolves and theater kids and poets. Not the getting it all back together and putting on Rocky Horror every Friday and Saturday night at 12:45 for years, then on to the after party til dawn. Not the constant harassment from "adults", cops, and passers by.

One of my favorite "insults" is when a friend and I were walking downtown, in full regalia, near where we hung out at Wall Street Plaza. We got stopped at a streetlight and a yellow low rider pulls up beside us. We look at each other, give each other the universal hello nod and we wait. The light turns green and as they drove out of sight, in a thick Transylvanian accent, I heard one cholo exclaim, "Homos of the night!"

We nearly missed the light we started laughing so hard.

Anyway, I put a Deezer link to a 15 hour playlist I made that has a lot of the music I was into at that time. For anyone just getting into this kind of music, it's a good history lesson with quite a few out of the way bands to impress your friends.

The youtube video is Cardinal Points by Coil, which was considered to be my theme song during this period.

If I had a top 5 of the most influential bands of my life so far - Coil, Negativland, Nine Inch Nails, Portishead, and Tom Waits. And it's not because every song of theirs is necessarily my favorite, but mostly because these are the bands that in my formative years caused me to investigate them and their influences and seek out everything they had ever done.

I do my best not to be a victim of style mongering. I explore a lot of new music, but most bands still today, I might know and playlist and really dig a couple of songs, even champion the band to someone interested, but... you gotta be something fucking special for me to track down your whole damned discography... and then your influences and their discographies.

I want to find more musicians like that.

I want to be a musician like that.

Do you have a band that was like that for you?

Have you found a music that has changed you into something else?

Will you share it with us in the comments?

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

WE ARE NOT FROM HERE has officially pulled ahead of SPIDER BASKET in the race to be the Spindlebone autumnal release of '26... and it is going to be out of this world!!

At the end of September, we'll open on a beach... Venusian Beach... where quickly crashing, rosy pink waves and bobbing, visceral purple vegetation obscure the unfathomable ruby black depths of an ominous ocean from the setting sun. On its twilit shores, a weird woman is listening to the sounds of her homeworld, divining that it might be time to leave it.

If you're into my rambling, this next part's for you.

The swampy sing-a-longs of SPIDER BASKET will come along by the by. I won't compromise on the absolute Halloween hootenanny it has become. WE ARE NOT FROM HERE has been in the werx since I was gathering the cobwebs of songs for BEATS IN THE WITCH HOUSE back in '22. At least 3 of the songs, IT WAS DUSK WHEN THEY SAW IT, INCIDENTAL, and MISSING TIME have been fully completed, waiting patiently since then. Whatever they are ultimately named on the album.

AZATHOTH has been waiting since before then. May the Dreamer ever sleep.

I admit that, much to the chagrin of how I may be perceived, I often feel like an alien, myself. Even among those closest to me. A hard person to get to know no matter how long you may know them rings true from some tarot card somewhere or other.

But then, they've never bothered to check my tumblr...

Not like you have, my beloved tumblr community...

I've spent a hideous array of hallucinogen fueled evenings and wee early morning hours, braving vibrations, at personal and psychic peril, from the wells of night to the gulfs of space, seeking out the most alien textures I may devour to return to you now with them woven as the finest extra-terrestrial fabrics of sound available to ears on Earth.

I say! This is no mere beep boop, boop bop robotic technobabble! No 21st century cyberpunk boots and pants electro-bippity bap! No autoerotic AI techbro 2026 wienie dribble or what have you!

This is a cultivation of absolutely foreign sensation! An overwhelming fumptness of ultra-hunuality! A celebration of xenogothic witch tribes and the psychedelia of sonic carniv-alien spellcraft brought forth from the inner and outre dimensions! Fucking bonkers shit, duder!

The ones I'm most proud of are the ones most likely to be misunderstood... and the least likely to end up on anyone's playlist.

That is the nature of the alien, the other, I suppose, after all...

These are songs from somewhere else and THIS ALBUM IS GOING TO MAKE YOU FEEL DANGEROUSLY FUCKING PROFOUNDLY WEIRD OR I'LL EAT MY FUCKING WIDE BRIMMED CONICAL HAT!

I mean I've built a lifetime on tolerance to this shit... What's gonna happen to YOU people!?

HAHA!!

GUESS WE'RE GONNA FIND OUT!!

(mad cackling and the sounds of further preparation)

Here's a poll. You folks seem to like polls.

Do the kids of today still seek music that aims for a total derangement of the senses and might summon strange entities/open weird portals and stuff or...?

Yes

No

Voting ended onJul 23

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

[witchesversuspatriarchy]

Moving image

[nodynasty4us]

Liberty and Justice for All

In past years I posted excerpts from the Declaration of Independence on July 4. But I’m not feeling it this year.

I am old enough to remember the Bicentennial observations in 1976. There were celebrations and commemorative events around the country, not just in Washington. Most notable was the flotilla of tall ships sailing into New York’s harbor. There were historical programs, “Bicentennial minutes” on TV, and decorations on local public buildings and fixtures, right down to red-white-and-blue fire hydrants. At noon on July 4 we went out on the streets and rang bells.

The mood of the country is different now. There are fewer events for America’s 250th birthday and the crowds are smaller.

That’s not to say things were better in the United States 50 years ago. The divisions of the Vietnam War years had not healed. There were plenty of people who thought that some Americans should be second-class citizens based on the color of their skin or their gender. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people could rarely live their lives publicly. Transsexuals (the term used at the time) were even more oppressed.

But in some important ways things are worse today. There are many who maintain that some Americans shouldn’t be Americans at all, based on where their ancestors came from, how they speak, or how they worship. The gains that racial minorities, women, and LGBT people have made since 1976 are uncertain and under threat. And there are still those who think their wealth buys them more privileges than everyone else.

When I quote from the Declaration, I have to omit the slur against the so-called savage Indians, which decries their cruelty in warfare, when in fact everyone is cruel in war. And I have to talk around the fact that many of the men who signed it were slaveholders and the rest condoned slavery. When they said that all men are created equal, they really meant free white men, primarily landowners. But they used broad, general terms for their stirring rhetoric. Later generations found inspiration in what they wrote that went beyond what they really thought at the time.

So this year I am quoting from a later and much shorter document, the Pledge of Allegiance. Its last line, “with liberty and justice for all,” has never been a true description of what we actually have in America. But it is a plainly stated, unqualified goal that we should strive for.

This Independence Day, I call you to join me in opposing anyone who wants to make liberty and justice available only to some.

[diana-andraste]

The Black Sun, Bill Mayer, 2017

Gouache, with gold leaf, on watercolor paper

[thatsbelievable]

[clockwerksorcery-blog]

This is what I've been saying!!