#la-bas

[weaselandfriends]

1 OVER X. Chapter 11: Uh Oh! Bad Place to Be!

AO3

RoyalRoad

How far removed one is when confronted by this bloody and tear-stained Calvary from those debonair Golgothas adopted by the Church ever since the Renaissance! This lockjawed Christ is no Christ of the rich, no Galilean Adonis, no dandified picture of health, no handsome youth with curly brown tresses…. This is the Christ of the poor, the Christ who is one and the same with the most wretched of those He has come to save, the beggars and outcasts….

The Breakers is full of what we call Sacred Geometry, such as the Flower of Life and the Fibonacci Sequence. Recurring patterns symbolize the connection between the material and the spiritual realms, bridging the finite with the infinite. And it's said when humans engage with spaces infused with these designs, they subconsciously align with a sense of cosmic order, balance, and harmony...

[brightestandbest]

The Devil's Mass: From Fiction to Reality

Our Mass of Blasphemy is one of the central rituals of the Church of the Morningstar. Though it has become a real and magically effective rite, its roots are in literature. The variant you will see tonight borrows from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Charles Baudelaire’s Litanies of Satan, and Aleister Crowley’s Hymn to Lucifer. But it owes more to one source than to any other: namely, a decadent…

[rherlotshadow]

“It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the demon will be satisfied.” Yukio Mishima: 'Confessions of a Mask'

[sacredwhores]

The rules of money are precise and invariable. Money attracts money, money seeks to accumulate in the same places, money is naturally attracted to scoundrels and those who are entirely bereft of any talent. When, by an exception which proves the rule, money finds its way into the hands of a man who, though wealthy, is neither a miser nor has any murderous proclivities, it stands idle, incapable of creating a force for good, incapable of even making its way into charitable hands who would know how to employ it. One might almost say that it takes revenge for its misdirection, that it undergoes a voluntary paralysis whenever it enters into the possession of someone who is neither a born swindler nor a complete and utter dotard. (...) But the real height of monstrosity is attained when money, hiding the splendour of its name under the dark veil of the word, calls itself capital. At that moment its action is no longer limited to individual incitations to theft and murder, but extends across the entire human race. With a single word capital grants monopolies, erects banks, corners markets, changes people's lives, is capable of causing millions to starve to death.

Joris-Karl Huysmans, The Damned (Là-bas)

[rotgospels]

Cristina Mazzoni, Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture

[improvisateur777]

Mon billet d’humeur !

Quand on va bien on se lève de grand matin et tout de suite un projet de journée magnifique s'esquisse en la tête. Quand on va bien, la vie se pare de couleurs d'exception qui donnent envie de se secouer, de se laver, de s'habiller, de partir respirer à l'extérieur, dire bien fort aux gens de dehors qu'on va bien et puis on fait semblant d'avoir une destination rêvée vers laquelle on se dirige d'un pas alerte et déterminé: j'y vais que je me dis content, J'y vais que je fais comprendre aux autres qui eux piétinent devant chez eux et qui stupéfiés, un brin envieux me regardent partir vers là bas... Je marche, les oiseaux chantent en mes oreilles, je marche vite et longtemps longtemps longtemps vers là bas... Ce là-bas que je n'atteindrai jamais car j'aurai beau marché jusqu'à ce que mes chaussures soient tout trouées, j'aurai beau marché jusqu'à ce que la nuit tombe, jusqu'à ce que moi aussi je tombe de sommeil, les routes n'en finiront pas de se dessiner sous mes pieds et les horizons de se tracer sous mes yeux à l'infini et au delà de là-bas...

[theaffrontofeverything]

“I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. Just look around you and see. Society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities. Everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance. And you think you can make any progress against a stream like that? No, man has never changed. His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present. Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices.” ― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Là-Bas

[caveatemptor]

“This fetid naturalism eulogizes the atrocities of modern life and flatters our positively American ways. It ecstasizes over brute force and apotheosizes the cash register. With amazing humility it defers to the nauseating taste of the mob."

Joris-Karl Huysmans, La-Bas (Dedalus, 1973).