Sweet Seals For You, Always
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
The Stonewall Inn
Doug Jones
Keni
macklin celebrini has autism
oozey mess
Mike Driver
PR's Tumblrdome
almost home
Color Me Curious
$LAYYYTER
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Love Begins
🩵 avery cochrane 🩵
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Interview Vampire Daily
ojovivo
ellievsbear
Fai_Ryy
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
seen from Mexico
seen from Iraq
seen from Canada
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
seen from Argentina
seen from Malaysia
seen from Spain
seen from France
seen from Mexico
seen from United States
@racinated-beauty
Well, that media was quickly found! You can view the Miss Martindale submitted video at the 8:31 mark. It appears to be a rather Silly Monkey Wildfire Club video where the notorious Miss M demonstrates some canes on a variety of mystery girls. Finding this so quickly has given me hope that the other Miss M TV segments are out there too! Even if they're more silly monkey stuff like this, they should be archived.
Audio Cassette Recordings: Found!
Through some consistent poking around, a couple of the Audio Dreams cassette recordings have been found in the depths of the APP archives.
Like, deep within the depths.
These appear to be Audio Dreams #10, and The Art of Caning. Absolutely nothing of value, other than the value of preserving them. Upon a quick listen it appears that side 1 of Audio Dreams #10 is narrated by Priscilla, and the other side as well as The Art of Caning is narrated by Miss Martindale. You can find them re-archived here.
But do keep in mind that this is Silly Monkey spanky content.
Further Aristasian Rabbit Holes To Fall Down- The Joanne Carminhow Side-Quest
A treasure trove of once lost media has been uncovered by Inquisitive Outlander here on Tumblr, which has lead to a strange side-quest. But first, a little lot of backstory: As I am sure you all have written down in your research notebooks, the Aristasian Preservation Project (or APP) popped into elektraspace sometime in 2013 when a group of Miss Martindale fans became disgruntled that the elegant Aristasia that they once loved seemed to be descending into anime and video game madness. They bought up the lapsed Aristasia.net domain name, dug deep into history and the Way Back Machine (bless them) and put all the Aristasian dirty laundry and sketchy endeavors that the new Aristasian movement was trying to hide up online. They also did, perhaps, one of the first thorough jobs of attempting to connect Aristasia with their past ventures, including Lux Madriana. Unfortunately, one site that they got some information from was never archived on the Way Back Machine, so we can't see exactly what that was all about, we can just speculate and see what they decided to quote. One of which is an incredibly strange statement about Lux Madriana (which also, importantly, held some clues about one of the non-Aristasian founders of Lux Madriana and a story of an excommunication that turned out to be quite true!)
This book has been a strange little mystery that has left a lot of us wondering. Why would a fictional book just so happen to have exactly the name Lux Madriana ? And it's about Madrians? It wouldn't be the first time that a fictional book mentioned Madrians, but all this drama about mysterious letters and police reports and false identities certainly is intriguing! Mr. Colin W. Field is probably over 100 years old by now, so he probably has no idea how to use Tumblr, and Tumblr doesn't work on the typewriter anyways, so we are probably safe to jump down this rabbit hole and go on this little side-quest. Now that all of that backstory is out of the way, the inquisitive outlander, Inquisitive-outlander, has gone through the effort to dig up this strangely titled book and scan it for us so we can all oogle it and wonder. You can view it here on the Internet Archive!
One of the strangest things about it is the little introduction about the mysterious author who seems to know a lot of strangely accurate things about Lux Madriana, including namedropping Madrian holidays, is this bizarre biography:
What an introduction! Miss Carminhow is a French pagan cave-ologist who lives with a lesbian polycule who seem to meet on occasion with a race of subterranean Amazons. This is fiction? Fact? It's honestly quite unclear, but we are assured that this story is believed to be real in France. The story that follows is one I haven't finished reading, because it's the type of story you would imagine to be self-published subterranean Amazon story, but I have stumbled across some strangeness skimming through it!
First of which is this page, which seems to just directly quote the The Coming Age, particularly the "Amazon Drispeal", which is something that seemed to later be rolled up in Mother-God style Filianism and doesn't seem to be an outlander word. It goes on to name drop some Madrian Holidays! I think it's quote clear that whoever wrote this, either Mr. Field or Miss Carminhow (assuming she is real) was a subscriber of The Coming Age, or at least had issue 15, because they also copy the Amazon March song straight from the inside cover. Is this the case of a honest-to-goodness Madrian attempting to write a fictional story and weave in what they learned about the faith into their own story? Is this someone who was attempting to legitimize their own alternate-matriarchal-occult-history because they believed what was written in The Coming Age? Is this someone who was just writing pure-fiction but wanted to do a little research to make it seem more real and picked up an Amazon history magazine that just so happened to be TCA #15 and accidentally did an "octorok eyeball"? If any of these were true, why did someone who seemed to mostly write local history research guides publish user Miss Carminhow's name? Was she a real (ly strange) person? Or was she a nom de plume so a man who wrote fairly mundane history research could also publish his stranger fantasies? If that is the case why did he seem to publish so many books under her name that seemed to be the same historical topics he also wrote under?
Was she an imagined author he could test the water with some stranger theories with? Tossing out odd little theories and claiming they were the theories of his French pagan lesbian cave-ologist friend's wacky ideas.
Oh, obviously.
It's all very strange! I would be quite surprised to find out that Miss Joanne Carminhow was a real person, but we do have some clues to finding her, or not.
Surely a fatal car crash on a major highway in the 1980s would have some sort of newspaper coverage.
Miss Martindale’s ‘The Silver Vixen’ Column in ‘The Chap’ Issue 27.
I will upload the PDF to Internet Archive as soon as possible.
Note: I cannot remember if Miss Martindale missed an issue or if Issue 26 wasn’t in the archive.
Also note: Apologies for the unsightly red boxes on the cover. Unfortunately, there were stickers identifying the institution I accessed these through on the front of each. For privacy’s sake I have redacted this.
From: S.A. Morrigan June 5, 2024 While I no longer actively follow whatever the chatters may be found among the detritus of the internet as
It appears as if Sarah Morrigan herself has stumbled across my post about her version of the scriptures and made a blog post to clear up some misconceptions and discuss what her place within Aristasia and, later, the independent Filianist community exactly was. I appreciate this post immensely, as I was previously only left with a few scraps of the old forum posts, book reviews by other people, and the aforementioned apology to fill in the information. So perhaps there wasn't nearly as much strife as it seemed like there was. I am also aware that Sarah Morrigan was one of the first people, in the internet age, to bring the Filianic scripture online and make it available to people. Even if it's something she no longer believes in. But, truthfully, the Aristasians/Chelouranyans/original Filianists themselves have done a lot to dissuade others from pursuing Filianism. Miss Sarah Morrigan's linked blog does point out that nearly all of those who were leaders in the earlier online Filianist movement, who fought hard to compile their versions of the scripture and learn the history and authorship are simply no longer Filianists. Their own research into what was taught at that big old house in Donegal seems to have turned them away from Filianism. If Miss Morrigan is still poking around my blog, I would love to talk to her about her time in Aristasia, if it's something she's still willing to talk about. It's no secret on my blog that I've admired her old posts, where she was so vocal about her distaste for where Aristasia went after Bridgehead. My inbox is always open.
This is very interesting. I noticed during my time in the Aristasian/Chelouranyan community that it seemed to change "vibes" and names a fair bit. Then again, I was like that back then myself, so I cannot complain, but merely observe in post: just when I had gotten used to one version of the community, it shifted into another phase. I was fine with it then, but now that I've grown, it's conspicuous how often it changed and in what ways. Seeing Miss Morrigan's perspective is enlightening -- and I hope she's doing better these days than she was at the time she's describing here.
The Aristasian and proto-Aristasian community certainly did seem to shift vibes quite a bit! I'm not sure when your era was, but it seemed like there was a bit of drama in the late 2000s to early 2010s while they tried to strip the "old" Aristasia, that was founded on retro girly fashion to a more kawaii oriented vibe. Miss Morrigan has some writings from that era, still online, that express a frustration that many at the time seemed to have. I would love to hear any stories you have about your time in Aristasia and Chelouranya, by the way!
I remember reading some time ago that there were some frustrations at the general direction the community was taking, but I can't remember who in particular was expressing them. However, I'd heard that some members had decided to split off from the new iteration of Aristasia because they preferred the "previous version" (this all makes it sound like a computer program!). I want to start this story too by declaring that I have no intention to step on any toes or "expose" anyone who was or still is in that community. This is just my own personal experience.
Unfortunately my memory isn't very good, especially in terms of being able to remember specific years/dates, spans of time, and names or events, but I think I found the community around the tail-end of its days on Heartbook, in that transitionary stage between neo-Aristasia and Chelouranya. I don't even remember how I'd found them, really -- similarly to Miss Morrigan, I was having an extended existential crisis in my twenties and my mental health was rather fragile, so I think I was just sort of floating around the internet quite literally searching for a place to belong, and eventually I found Heartbook. I found the energy of the community comforting so I joined and after not too long I became a regular contributor… though I was very clumsy in terms of my etiquette. I don't think I quite made it into the innermost circle: that part of the community felt like a rather exclusive club that only three or four ladies had made it into, and after hearing about the speculation that several of those ladies may have in fact been the same person, I can see why it felt that way! They were all, however, very polite and kind to me whenever I slipped up. I'm still really grateful for that.
After a little while, maybe a year or two, the community shifted over to Daughters of Shining Harmony and from there rebranded itself as "Chelouranya". I remember the shift from a more "mature" idea to the more childlike-innocence focused one, and at the time I enjoyed it because my own childhood was sort of corrupted. It was a nice second shot at something that was missing from my life. Over the next leg of the community's evolution there was more and more talk of Japan (specifically its etiquette and many of its social philosophies). But with even more time came the focus on things like anime and "kawaii" culture. Now to be clear I didn't hate this, and I partook in it in my own way, but even then I felt the very palpable difference between how things were when I'd first joined and how they had changed. I enjoyed the new direction of the community enough but I also rather missed the "old days" (I say as though I was a member for ages), when the philosophical structure was a bit more… measured? That isn't to say that I found no dignity in the new version of things: I merely missed the past.
Around this time I began to fall off the map a bit, and so for this time I have no idea what went on within the community or with any new direction they were taking, but I fell off I think around the cusp of the "Cure Dolly" era (this is the only term I remember in order to distinguish this era). I was experiencing a surge of C-PTSD and it made me behave very inconsistently and I had a hard time sticking with things and keeping track of time: a year would pass before I realized I hadn't spoken to these or those people the entire time. I tried to sneak my way back into the community but because I was embarrassed at having fallen out of touch I tried to do so invisibly, I might even say deceptively, telling only one person of my identity. Needless to say they were frustrated with me, and I still don't blame them. This clumsy re-entering of the society made me even more standoffish and ashamed to partake, and so I fell off the map again.
By the time I felt I'd healed enough and become stable enough to be part of the community again, it had vanished from the internet. Everythying was now on archival sites and though I dug and dug, I found no evidence of it online. I was pretty crushed, but at the same time, I knew it was my own doing for not savoring my time there and for being unwise in the ways I did interact with it. I'd never agreed on absolutely everything about Chelouranya's philosophies and social ideas, but I recognized that it existed to make a space for those who were too wounded, or otherwise simply not naturally emotionally equipped, to fully live in the abrasive modern world; and that it did an excellent job of that. I thought -- and still do think -- that it's fine for them to have rejected many parts of "Tellurian" society while embracing that which was good about it. Sometimes that needs to be done. Unfortunately there were just so many inconsistencies in the way the community presented itself that after a time it began to feel less tangible and a bit more alienating. I don't really know how to explain this any better. That being said, I think they were alright with this: they had always prized quality over quantity, so if people left because they no longer felt connected, then it was for the best of the community -- as many know, Chelouranya prized the needs of the group over the needs of the individual. I don't feel that it's a completely wrong way to think, it's just very different, and something a lot of people would struggle to grasp, especially when it goes too far in one direction.
I have no idea where they are now but I do wish them well. I was pretty immature during my time there and it was an era of struggle in my own life, but I also felt that it helped me heal many wounds that little else could heal. I can also completely understand the frustration others have felt with the evolution of the community: when something precious is that mercurial and subject to change with little to no warning, it's painful and feels very much like an entire world Lost to time and whims.
I'm sorry this isn't really very helpful in terms of mapping Aristasia's history and is more of a personal account: this is all I can really remember, and I know it's a bit more feel-y than concrete, and that it doesn't really contribute anything new to the timeline of events. I know it's also a rather long account, and I apologize for all of this. I guess it was a story that I needed to tell: thank you so much for asking about my experiences there, and for listening to to that story.
Hail to the Sun in you! -Elfi
This is incredibly interesting! Thank you for sharing Miss Elfi! I'm not necessarily hoping for any secret information to be revealed with people's stories, I simply like hearing about people's time in Aristasia.
I was mostly only ever viewed them from the outside, but I appreciated what they were doing at the time, even though I frequently found the inconsistencies that you also noted, too frustrating to ever really join in on their conversation. The Aristasians seem long gone from the internet, certainly in any form that people would recognize as the classic Aristasians, so all that's actively left is people's personal accounts, and I'm always happy to hear them!
Quite an interesting find! The brief news snippet from the day St. Bride’s School opened. I’ve heard this day described before, but never saw footage from it before!
A quick guide to who's who in The Coming Age / early Madrian writing.
Sister Angelina, Lady Alethea FiaMoura - Priscilla Langridge, later known as the Mushroom Princess or Cure Dolly. Sister Chrysothemis - Maureen Evans, one of the earliest Madrians, who lived in the same flat as Priscilla when the early volumes of The Coming Age were published, under the same address. The BBC Podcast about St. Bride's believes that she was the programmer of the mid 1980s video games. Sister Julia - Uncertain, but presumably she would be either Miss Langridge or Miss Evans. But this is based entirely on my own personal feelings and could be entirely wrong. She is the Maidrian being interviewed in the Filianism Origins blog post. Madria Moura, Phoebe - The only annointed Madrian priestess at the time, Priscilla would have been her understudy, given the last name "FiaMoura". Mary Scarlett - Later used the much more well-known name "Miss Martindale". Sources for identifying these individuals is the Madrian Deanic Resources blog and associated Facebook page, which was penned by a woman who lived with the Madrians in the mid to late 1980s and appears to be personally familiar with the people she was speaking of, as well as the Filianism Origins interview. Other associated names can be found in this blog post, however, not all of them were used for The Coming Age.
Sister Julia is likely not Priscilla/Angelina. The person who created that one blog clearly had an anti-Filianism agenda going on (although she said literally nothing the majority of us didn’t already know) and I doubt she’d be a double agent in that way because Angelina was basically still running the whole show until CoMG and Shining World both went radio silent a couple years ago. There’s been talks of both sites returning too, so I don’t think ‘Julia’ would’ve made the Filianism Origins blog post effectively calling it all some big scam whilst leaving the website up which makes plenty of tall claims (both of these extreme are wrong. They lied about a lot but the intelligent among us already accepted they invented a lot of pseudo history as pagan religions of the last century were wont to do, but this doesn’t mean there is no perennial Truth in the religion or that no one actually believed in it. They did) But in typical OG Madrian fashion ‘Julia’ was a pseudonym shared by several people so it’s possible Angelina did write under that name a few times too.
Oh, very interesting! Are you saying that the Filianism Origins blog was believed to be posted by a rogue original Madrian? Or that it is entirely a fabrication by someone who was completely uninvolved?
Which are the tall claims? I feel like I need to dive deeper into this interview. I’d always assumed it was legitimate, from the ECE crew’s interactions with it, and the work of the core Aristasians, practically by default.
The format, of both the blog, the interview, and the replies, have always struck me as fairly typical of official Aristasian online activity (and thus, typical of Priscilla’s online activity).
An edit: my personal feelings on the interview, and this is based mostly on vibes, is that the interview is Priscilla asking Maureen questions.
So, I've just gone back and read through the interview again.
I'm not sure if I'd describe her as 'rogue', but for whatever reason, it feels like she saw that there was a new generation of Filianists popping up (first gen were the Madrians, second gen were the Chelouranyans and the CoMG, third gen are the 'independent Filianists' who largely congregated on Tumblr, message boards and mailing lists) and decided she needed to say something about it.
Sorry, I think maybe I worded that a little confusingly. I'm not saying the interviewer was lying about anything. She's telling the truth. What I'm suspicious of is why she chose to come forward at that time. By 'tall claims' I meant the ones made by the Madrians. The 'tall claims' made by the original Madrians and to a lesser extent the CoMG were those mentioned in the interview: basically worldbuilding for an ancient lineage of Madrians that was unbroken and can be traced back to the ancient matriarchal proto-Celts (the 'Rhennes', whose queen/demi-goddess was called Rhianne, sometimes given as the name of the Divine Daughter, based on the Welsh goddess Rhiannon and reconstructed *Rigantona meaning 'Great Queen' and popularity in Celtic regions of horses as a solar sovereignty symbol) and an idea that the scriptures were somehow an ancient intact scripture. The vast majority of us, especially us 'third gens', have always known this wasn't true. We weren't/aren't Filianists because we believed there were secret Madrian households that survived from the cradle of civilization up until now which was the claim that was made, we were/are Filianists because we believe the thealogy is true in a way that transcends time, space and material history. I could be wrong about this, but it feels like that interview was posted purely to cause a crisis of faith in the community. But it didn't, because it was preaching to the choir. No one actually believed, for the most part, in the things I mentioned taught by the early Madrians and to a lesser extent CoMG.
It's certainly possible it's Maureen Evans, but I doubt Angelina/Priscilla would want to publish an interview 'debunking' the pseudohistory she'd helped write, especially since CoMG is still up and running and there have been pockets of activity since they went radio silent.
I hope that makes sense!
That does make a lot of sense! I think I just misunderstood a couple things from your post (largely “tall claims”, which I took to mean “tall tales”!).
I read through it a bit again, because I had recalled some of the conversations around it, and realized I was remembering this, now deleted, post from the Madrian Deanic Resources blog which seems to heavily imply it was Priscilla who made the post. However, the blog has since been deleted and I’m unsure why, perhaps she changed her mind.
Please read the previous post: 4th December 2018 An Interview with Suraline aka Sister/Madria Julia author of the Madrian Filianic Deanic Sc
I’m still unsure what to think! On one hand, it would be a very odd statement for one of the foundresses to come out and make, on the other hand the Madrian Deanic Resources blog seems to show Sushuri herself agreeing with the interview and I tend to trust that blog’s opinion on who’s who in Lux Madriana because if the authoresses personal history with them.
Oh sorry, to be clear, I wasn't saying the interview featured 'tall claims', I was saying the original Madrian sources, and the CoMG do.
Okay, now that you've said that I vaguely remember Sushuri saying something about it, but I vaguely remember her saying something along the same lines as me, basically 'yes, this is not news, but it doesn't invalidate the religion' which is my stance. But this is made very confusing by all the 4D chess LARPing the first and second gens always did with making up different pseudonyms and taking on multiple different personas, which is why you made this post to begin with. Honestly, I feel like someone needs to release one of those deep dive videos where they have photos and names up on a wall with string connecting them 😂
Maybe you're right and it was Angelina, but that would be an extremely weird move because she'd be effectively debunking her own life's work, and if she really wanted to debunk it that badly she could've just done so on the CoMG website or did the interview as Sister Angelina herself, or Priscilla etc, seeing as she was one of OG Madrians.
Do you know whose blog this is? I feel like it may be my friend Sophia who maintains some ties to the community, but I'm not sure.
Oh I definitely do agree that the Filianism Origins blog interview is an incredibly strange post to make! If it was indeed Priscilla (or Miss Evans), it was a bizarre statement to come out and officially make, especially on an unaffiliated blog, when it could have been a very official “History if Madriana, exclusive interview” styled post if it was posted to CoMG.
As you said, it’s nothing the modern independent Madrians didn’t already know, and it’s strange that Priscilla would have felt compelled to make a post like this, through several layers of LARP.
My personal opinion is maybe it was something Priscilla wanted to “get off her chest”, so to speak, since the independent Madrian community seemed to be growing and attention was being drawn to the authorship of the texts. It allowed her to both claim authorship, as well as clear up any misconceptions about the reality of their history, even if no one really had those misconceptions.
I do also agree that the authorship of the text, and much more limited scope of the history of Madrianism doesn’t diminish the faith. As is evidence by it’s staying power and how far it’s spread in the nearly half a century!
My understanding is that the Madrian Deanic Resources blog was maintained by Sophia, which is why I trust her instincts on who’s who. But also I’m unsure why she deleted this blog post and realize it could perhaps be because she changed her mind or was unsure. I also will admit that her blog posts will sometimes beat around the bush and not quite make definitive statements, and this post is one of those that is simply implying something. So she doesn’t outright say who the authoress is.
Good news, everypette! Filianic Studies appears to be back online for the time being! This doesn't appear to be just a reupload of the archived Wayback Machine either, because I see pages that never got archived are available again. This is an incredible resource to have available again, and I encourage everyone to save copies of whatever they're interested in for themselves, as well as manually save these pages to the Wayback Machine, just incase.
Reblogging this because in a shocking turn of fate, now it is the Internet Archive that is offline! The Wayback Machine is still available to view archived webpages on, but the vast library of books on the Internet Archive is currently unavailable. This is just a reminder how fragile some of this information is, and how close to being lost completely so much of it is.
Country Life - Thursday 23 September 2004
In 2004 there was a lot of activity in Aristasia-in-Telluria! I have seen this event referenced in their elektraspace archives, the 2004 Goodwood Revival races, but did not know Miss Martindale (herself? This looks suspiciously like it was perhaps one of the pettes acting under the Miss Martindale name! As she would have been living in the US for a few years by this point) was the announcer for the races!
You can read about the races, from the Aristasians' point of view, in the archives here. It's quite exciting the the old pictures work!
Todmorden & District News - Friday 12 March 1982
A bit more information about a TV programme about the Rhennish that was part of Hebden Bridge. This appears to be referencing a different program than the last one posted about. This particular program appears to be from a series about women in religion called "Behind The Veil", and the particular episode the Rhennish were featured in was called "God The Mother". It appeared to be a half hour programme that ran on March 13th, 1982.
Aristasia (and their earlier incarnations) in the news, a timeline.
I've been accumulating a rather large collection of digital newspaper clippings about Aristasia and their various early incarnations and a little project I've been working on is organizing them into a timeline. This is still a work in progress, so as I add more newspaper clippings to the list, I'll be updating this post. The Aristasians, particularly their earlier incarnations, have a rather large analog footprint, and some things I've left off the list, particularly the majority of their many advertisements or anything they would have published themselves, and instead tried to stick to mentions of them in more mainstream publications. Please excuse my inconsistent formatting! Sister Angelina with Lux Madriana Gnostica October/November 1977
Heil Lux Madriana Peace News March 21st 1980
Machpelah cult goes back to the Celts Hebden Bridge Times Friday 06 November 1981
Older Than Christ Hebden Bridge Times Friday 13 November 1981
Rhennish community missionary activity Hebden Bridge Times - Friday 20 November 1981
The Rhennes Invite You To A Public Meeting Hebden Bridge Times - Friday 27 November 1981
World's last hope Hebden Bridge Times - Friday 04 December 1981
'Most ancient religion' claim Hebden Bridge Times - Friday 11 December 1981
TV Series Examines God as the Mother Todmorden & District News - Friday 12 March 1982
The Rhennes Farewell to Hebden Bridge Todmorden & District News - Friday 17 September 1982
A mention at last Derry Journal - Friday 17 December 1982
The Light of the Mother Womanspirit 1983
Women's rule sect settle in Donegal Derry Journal - Tuesday 13 September 1983
Therapy Advertisement
The New Statesman, November 1983
Women get gym slip holidays Aberdeen Evening Express - Friday 20 January 1984
Classroom capers for adults Liverpool Daily Post - Friday 20 January 1984
Gymslip gals relive the past Evening Telegraph - Friday Jan 20 1984
The belles of Saint O'Trinians The Daily Telegraph Mon Apr 2 1984
Hidden lessons at St Bride's… Evening Standard April 02 1984
'Back-to-School' Women Whipped
Daily Star, 03 April 1984
Shocking hidden lessons at St Bride's school… Liverpool Daily Post - Tuesday 03 April 1984
The secret of St. Bride's Sinclair User December 1985
Playing games with censorship The Guardian 1987 11/26
Ding Dong Belles Your Computer Magazine December 1987
Aspic and old lace The Telegraph March 6 1988
Champions of Victorian values condemn lack of grace Sunday Tribune - Sunday 03 July 1988
Is this your cup of tea? Evening Herald (Dublin) - Monday 04 July 1988
A Romantic Manifesto The Spectator December 1988
A journey back in time… Sunday Life, November 5, 1989
Kinky? Not Us Says Caning Guesthouse Lady
Sunday World (Dublin) - Sunday 24 December 1989
The 1980s: A Retrospect Spearhead Feb 1990
Window Into a Bygone Age
Financial Times, March 03 1990
I was a slave in the house of Scarlett Sunday Mirror, Sunday 11 March 1990
Gardai probe 'cane' school Sunday World (Dublin) March 18 1990
Vulgarity of coping with life in the dreary old 1990s Cambridge Daily News - Wednesday 31 October 1990
Victorian caners move out Sunday World (Dublin) 4th Nov 1990
Victorian re-enactments ad
Cambridge Daily News, December 7th 1990
Spanking schoolma'am gets back in full swing Sunday Mirror, Feb 3, 1991
Silver Sisters pupil stripped and birched Irish Independent, February 13 1991
"Cult leader" fined for assault Derry Journal - Friday 15 February 1991
Ma'am lashed bare servant Sunday World - February 17 1991
A caning for Miss Scarlett SUNDAY MIRROR Feb 17 1991
Screamers what to give spanking misstress boot! Sunday World, December 15 1991
Spanking lady linked to Nazi and kinky sex contacts Sunday World (Dublin), 12th Jan 1992
We'll Cane You for £75 offer by spankers Sunday World (Dublin) - Sunday 19 January 1992
Lifting the lid on reaction The Scotsman, 11th Jul 1992
Inside the secret world of the sisters of St. Bride's The Sunday Telegraph, January 3rd 1993
Spankers run kinky calls Sunday World, January 10 1993
Sisters: no sex, no Nazis Sunday Telegraph Jan 10, 1993
Swish society of Oxford's hits and misses Sunday Telegraph Sun Feb 7 1993
Glad to be bad? The Guardian Feb 6, 1995
What does Miss Martindale serve with coffee? Cream and punishment The Observer Feb 26 1995
The tortured past of Miss Marindale The Guardian March 1 1995
Whips? Canes? Silly Monkeys! The Independent 1995 03/03
The Rise of Miss Martindale The Guardian March 8 1995
Noble Response, from Miss Martindale The Guardian March 10 1995
Harrowing book- The Corporal Punishment of Schoolgirls Evening Standard Fri Nov 17 1995
Aristasia, The Feminine Nation The Independent Tue, Feb 3, 1998
A firm hand behind Sweethearts The Guardian March 18th 1998
Of sweethearts and villains The Guardian London - Fri, Mar 20, 1998
How I Was Drawn To Life In A Cult
Telegraph & Argus - Feb 16 1999
Miss Marianne Martindale and Miss Camellia Cadogan at the Goodwood Revival Races Country Life - Thursday 23 September 2004
A glowing review of Romantia, courtesy of a bunch of fascists.
Spearhead June 1990
I genuinely hate running across articles like this in the archives, but I think it's important to share them. I found this while searching for the "BM Perfect" mailing address associated with many Aristasian endeavors. In fact, I found several articles from the various Romantia publications being reprinted in Spearhead magazine, a long-running fascist magazine.
There always seems to be room for "we had nothing to do with this!" among the Aristasians, and true, we don't know if they gave a fascist magazine permission to repost their published articles, and this introduction to the Romantia movement goes at great lengths to say that Romantia and the British National Party are unaffiliated with each other and the author does not imply that the Romantians are supporters. However, when a fascist magazine publishes a glowing review of what you do, and your world views, perhaps most people would reflect on what their worldview is that makes them so appealing to neo-Nazis. But then again, most people are not admitted pen pals with neo-Nazis. On a much lighter note is the reference to the "Imperial Home Service", which appeared to be a monthly subscription to tapped proto-Aristasian radio programmes. There is so much talk of Aristasian tapes being sold, it's shocking that none of them seemed to have turned up over the years! This particular one appears to be fantasy news reels pertaining to Novaria, as well as olde timey popular music.
The RTÉ Archives videos, in one location, for your convenience.
The RTÉ Archives currently host 4 different videos of life at St. Brides in the 1980s. These offer a glimpse into 4 distinct eras of the proto-Aristasians: Classic Lux Madriana, post-men Lux Madriana, the fantasy roleplay school, and ultimately the Victorians from the fantasy realm known as the Romantia.
Maids of the Silver Sisterhood 19 November 1982
A Matriarchal Society in Donegal 12 July 1983
School for Young Ladies 4 May 1984
Victorian Values in Donegal 25 March 1988
What was Novarhennya?
Womanspirit, Fall Equinox 1980
Book of Rhianne, version 2 1983
Novarhennya is a strange word mentioned a couple times in Rhennish literature in the early 1980s. It's referred to as a "holy nation" by Lady FiaMoura, but also as the evangelical branch of the Rhennish community in an article by John Avision included in the Book of Rhianne, so presumably this was correct enough for the Rhennish to want to include in their self-published booklet about their life and faith. The concept of it being a "nation", as well as even the very name itself, is very reminiscent of Novarya in Aristasia, which was the futuristic district that the Aristasians seemed to imagine Telluria would one day be on the track to becoming. It is worth noting that Miss Langridge (which was later who Lady FiaMoura would be known as), as her Aristasian persona of The Mushroom Princess, claimed to hail from Novarya. "Novarennya" seemed to only be mentioned this handful of times, at least in print.
In the previous post, I mentioned that the wording surrounding penance in an article was eerily similar to wording that would later be used to talk about corporal punishment. This lead to an interesting comment in the notes by @tenebrouscandor-blog that, back in the Madrian days, they had a form of confession, and it was discussed in the old group. I went searching for it and found this anecdote by David Kay. David Kay was involved with the Madrians, back in the early days, and seemed to have a close relationship with the Madria Moura half of the Madrians.
The Evolution of the map of Aristasia
Thinking about the unveiling of Aristasia to Chelouranya had me thinking a bit about some of the terminology that had been used to describe their lands over the decades. While the name of the world changed, the districts have remained the same. So let us have a little peek at how their iconic map has changed over the decades.
From Imperial Angel issue 2, late around 1990 Perhaps this is the earliest published map of the lands of Romantia/Aristasia/Sai Herthe (although it's very possible an earlier concept was published in Artemis, which introduced the Poppitops and their kingdom of Poppitopia and the concept of Blonde and Brunette). In this era The Pit was called Babylon, or Carcanimæ, and this map was a "psychic territory", the issue of Imperial Angel goes at great lengths to discuss each of the districts and the symbolism of their placement on the map.
From The Children of the Void, published in 1996 The next known version of this map comes from the Children of the Void novel and cements a few of the ideas that would stick for a while. The "quarantine" is replaced with "Infra Quirinelle", an island that represented the very early 1960s. Other than that, Vintesse and Novaria have switched places, the capital city is now called "Ladyton" instead of "Romantiana", the hard lines between the Kadoria and Quirinelle and the rest of the map have been standardized, as I believe that Romantia had something to say about the 1940s and 1950s being only just barely acceptable, and the providence of Arcadia has been split in two: Arcadia and Amazonia. The little fancy lady in a long dress has been replaced with... a heiling Amazon soldieress. If you recall, in 1995 there was a bit of a kerfuffle beween Miss Martindale and some newspapers when they found an article she wrote about her distaste that a televised sporting event censored some roman salutes straight up Nazi salutes. This seems to have been a sticking point, and perhaps that's why Little Miss Amazonia is heiling her heart out.
An updated map from early elektraspace, late 1990s or early 2000s perhaps.
When the Aristasians moved to elektraspace, this version of the map was presented to signify their lands, and it seems to go from a "psychic territory" to a real alternate world with the addition of the lands and seas surrounding Aristasia, as well as the little "100 Miles (Arist.)" scale. A whole gaggle of new cities have sprouted up and the decade signifiers have vanished, perhaps cementing it more as a real place. Little Miss Amazonia is still doing her little Nazi salute from the Great Eastern Lands.
An even further updated map, posted on their blog in 2007
The final Aristasian map appears on their Aristasian Treasure Trove blog in 2007. It is almost the same as the previous elektraspace map, but there are a few notable differences: Vintesse and Novaria have once again swapped places and Novaria snakes into Amazonia, but Lempicka (perhaps named after Tamara de Lempicka, the Art Deco artist that the Aristasians had a penchant for) stays in more or less the same map location, so that it remains, rightfully so, in Vintesse. Perhaps because of the swap, all the other Vintesse cities have vanished from this map. Maybridge travels a little bit south, close to the lands of Novaria. If I recall correctly, Maybridge was the name of the districts, AKA the houses the Aristasians lived in. Perhaps the move from within Trent but nearby to Vintesse, to right the border of Trent and Novaria was a symbolic change in the aesthetics of said household. The final change, that I noticed right away, was our little heiling Amazonia has changed her arm to a much more friendly little wave. It was around this time that the Aristasians seemed to be in some sort of Wikipedia editing war to clean up their image and were absolutely appalled that people would dare dig up their past actions and bring them to light, so perhaps that's why Little Miss Amazonia has changed her pose.
Source Deep in the elektraspace archives, on what is probably one of the earliest Aristasian elektrasites, is a page called "Invisible Dollies". Aristasians were known for throwing everything at the wall and seeing, well, not what sticks, but which girls bend down and pick it up. Otherkin, lolita fashion, BDSM, religion, science fiction, fascism, stockings, aliens, fairies, the 1950s, just about anything was posted about as a thinly veiled attempt to catch just the right girl who wanted to join Aristasia. While this page seemed to have been made deep into their Wildfire Clube era, which was more known for BDSM and stockings than anything else, you can clearly see they were fishing for a different type of girl than one that the Wildfire Club might attract.
All this "there is a girl who wants to be good, deep inside you" talk is something that was often repeated by Miss Martidale when she discussed dressing the girls who showed up to her schoolhouse in vintage fashions and giving them new personas for their time visiting. The answer to the first magical task, which Google has helped me answer, is that "The Miracle of Any Century" is a lyric from the song "You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby". This particular magical task asks "Can you put it in context by quoting the preceding lines?" Well, the preceding lines are:
Does your mother realize the stork delivered quite a prize The day he left you on the family tree?
Does you dad appreciate that you're merely super-great The miracle Of any century? If they don't then send them both to me This paints a very strange picture of what type of girl they were hoping to catch with this post. Clearly they weren't fishing for an actual child, what child would know about the pop hits of the 1930s to 1950s? But rather it seems they were searching for other older women who desperately longed to revisit their childhood, but relive it with a new, magical, family.
