The PHANTACEA Mythos

- The Winter 2004/5 Collection of Character Likenesses -

Winter 2004/5

Featured Story: Cain, Slayer of Abel
Introductory Remarks
Hestia Housekeeping
Anheroic Coyotes (FAQ)
Today's Topic
Stories and Synopses
Notes on Graphics
Sites with Loads of Graphics
Previous pHpubs
Novels in search of a paying publisher

PHANTACEA on the Web

written by Jim McPherson
unless otherwise noted the web-design, photographs and/or scanning are by Jim McPherson
where applicable artwork is as noted in the mouse-over text

© copyright 2005 Jim McPherson

Lynx to complete novels within the PHANTACEA Mythos whose potential covers, background information and introductory chapters are still online

| 2002: "The Moloch Manoeuvres" | 2003: "The War of the Apocalyptics" | 2004: "Decimation Damnation" |

Sixty-five years after the death of Alorus Ptah, eight after Droch Nor's, in what was therefore 4661 BC, the Golden Calf, the idol Plathon/Serapis had Cain construct, was finally complete. Perhaps realizing what its heart contained, the Anti-Patriarch, in his eight hundred and eighty-fifth year, applied one last time for permission to visit the Tree of Knowledge. Yet again Amemp Tut, no doubt appreciating how old, how desperate, Cain was becoming, turned him down flat.

He finally forced the issue. For the first time in many ordinary human, as opposed to extraordinary Edenite, generations he and his three wives left Enoch City. Stealing a page from Droch Nor's non-violent advocacy, he marched towards Power Point Sumeria, amassing thousands of followers as he did so. Significantly but hardly unexpectedly given who he was, he did not bring Enoch-Cain nor any of his direct descendants with him.

They were massing too, though: Enoch's armies, Jared's navies and Mehujael's air force. With all of them nearby, Methusael's pilot-less drones overhead, Lamech-Cain firmly in charge of Enoch City, and carrying the Golden Calf, the Anti-Patriarch strode up the hill towards the Gates of Eden.

-- from 'Cain, Slayer of Abel', the latest installment of "Coueranna's Curse"

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Anheroic Fantasy Coyotes

Coyote #1: Huh? Run that by me again, will you? (How Cliff Heads morphed into Coyote Headgames);
Coyote #2: What's all this then - Part 1? (Images of the first batch of Cliff Heads, and a sign-head, from the Autumn 2003 installment of 'pHpubs');
Coyote #3: Okay, I get the cliff heads. Y-Coyotes? (Includes a titularly topical BLOCKQUOTE from 'The Moloch Manoeuvres', both versions of it);
Coyote #4: To self-publish or not to self-publish? (Currently Conundrum #1);
Coyote #5: I do self-publish, what do I self-publish? (1st Corollary to Conundrum #1: 'The Moloch Manoeuvres' versus 'The War of the Apocalyptics');
Coyote #6: How do you spell 'plagiarism'? (What's fair game to use in 'pH-Webworld', what isn't, -- at least in my humble);
Coyote #7: What's all this then - Part 2? (Images of the second batch of Cliff Heads);
Coyote #8: How to get going on a Today's Topic for 'pHpubs'? (Advice for those tempted to try doing something like PHANTACEA on the Web themselves);
Coyote #9: Coyotes of a Conundrum is a good name for a FAQ page, isn't it? (Except 'pH-Webworld' doesn't have have a FAQ page);
Coyote #10: Are two heads better than one? (2nd Corollary to Conundrum #1: Hiring an editor);
Coyote #11: How personal dare you be on the Internet? (A spooky sighting);
Coyote #12: Can a Clump of Contents Content a Coyote? (The dangers of fay-saying, or not);

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Introductory Remarks

Greetings. Welcome, or welcome back.

The usual 'Hestia Housekeeping' section is immediately below. (Click here to find out why I call it such.) On the other side of the table, below the Feat-Story seciton, is what I hope will become the equivalent of a PHANTACEA on the Web FAQ sheet.

In it are lynx to a number of questions I asked and answered myself in the Fall 2003 and Spring 2004 editions of pHpubs: Web-Publisher's Commentary.

Contact me [jmcp1749@hotmail.com] and feel free to ask any questions you might have regarding PHANTACEA. I'll do my best to answer them either directly or right here in ...

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Hestia Housekeeping

By this troth I hereby invite thee to peruse, immediately, one of seminal chapters in the entire PHANTACEA Mythos.

On second thought, please feel free to finish reading Hestia Housekeeping first. Then go ye to peruse it forthrightly.

What's so seminal, or germinal, about the 8th chapter of "Coueranna's Curse". It is after all, at least by my count, the 9th complete novel I've serialized during the course of web-publishing PHANTACEA on the Web? Does its title help: 'Cain, Slayer of Abel'?

Yep, that'd be that Cain, the farmer, though not that Abel, the shepherd, who's already long slain by the time this story sequence ends. That'd be in the 885th year of Cain's post-insemination upon, well, maybe, Lilith, the Demon Queen of the Night.

And, yep, in another oddball case of Serendipity, that'd be that Lilith; the same Lilith I did a peculiar perspectives essay on last time up, in the Summer 2004 update of 'pHpubs'.

No, I'm not attempting to rewrite, yet again, a small portion of the oft-rewritten Bible. All I'm really doing is adding a few details that for some reason have been omitted from the current version of said stately tome as it's been handed down to us.

It's not like I haven't done this before either. Sooth said I published a comic book version of this selfsame storyline in the graphic novel entitled "Forever & 40 Days - The Genesis of PHANTACEA". Did so way back in late 80s.

It's still available by the way. But the prose version is free for all, albeit if only for now. So is the appendix taken from pH:4-Ever & 40. That's where I chart the birth and death dates of the 10 Patriarchs of Golden Age Humankind.

Where I also, thereby, demonstrate that #8, Methuselah, my Mythos's Amemp Tut, died in the same year as the Great Flood.

I have to admit it was fun putting words into the mouths of the likes of #s 2, 8 & 9. Providing a more 'PHANTACEA factual' explanation of the final moments of #6 was fun too. I'd like to tell you that making Cain's line of Anti-Patriarchs sound a lot like today's militarists was fun as well but, hey, there's nothing funnny about today's militarists.

So, what else is new this time up? Ah, as to that, besides the swap-over at the top of this webpage and a couple of additions to Serendipity Now, there are three more candidates for my ever-growing gallery of Character Likenesses down below in the Topic section of pHpubs.

There's also a revisited and now wholly revised webpage I decided to rename: "The 2005 Covers Gallery". As its name doesn't imply, it's where I placed a giveaway poster I never got around to giving away to anyone until now, albeit only on the Web.

It's also, as its name does imply, where I placed an assortment of potential covers I've designed over the years for some of my not-as-yet print-published novels. Perhaps PHANTACEA perversely, one of these last is a dust-cover for a novel I'm still writing.

It's called 'Wilderwitch's Babies, Part Two: Tsishah's Twilight' and, yep yet again, no heart attack here, it's what comes after 'Babies Part One'. Does it end the same way 'Psycho drama', the now-concluded, and perhaps final, online PHANTACEA serial set in the 1980s ended?

Does it end with the Second Coming of the Great Flood? Tell you what, although I do detail a fair amount of Two's plot beneath its potential cover, as soon as I find that out I'll make a point of first announcing it right here in pHpubs.

Feedback encouraged. And, as always, good reading.

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Stories and Synopses

'Coueranna's Curse'

"Cry Chaos"
"Cain, Slayer of Abel"
"Cry Helios"

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Jim McPherson's Latest Collection of Character Likenesses

Freespirit Nihila (Once Harmonia, the Unity of Balance) ***/ Cel-Spook* (In death, as in life, the Celestial Superior) */ Manifesting Gargoyles*** (Utopians from the Weirdom of Cabalarkon)

Freespirit Nihila, once Harmonia, the Unity of Balance

Although by the time 'The Trigregos Gambit' and 'Helios on the Moon' came along to finish up 'The Launching of the Cosmic Express' Tetralogy her appearance, if not her aggrieved attitude, had much improved, in the serialized version of 'The War of the Apocalyptics' Freespirit Nihila did not make the most favourable of first impressions:

Yet another female devil manifested herself. Even more wasted-looking than the vampire, this one was at least flesh and blood, -- though there wasn't much left of the former and far too much of the latter. Not a pretty sight, especially with a great gash in her chest through which they could clearly see her heart pumping. She had a dirty, perhaps once golden torc around her neck and was dressed in a hole-riven smock made out of rusted chain mail. Both the torc and smock sparkled only slightly with the telltale glimmer of Gypsium.

Her torc and/or her vestment must be her power focus; the chains wrapped around Wilderwitch and Akbar, -- though manacled to each of her skeletal wrists --, merely extensions of it. What hair she had was white and clung to patches of scalp on her largely skinless skull. She yanked on her chains. Both the Witch and Akbar felt instantly weaker. Before their eyes her chest began to knit itself back together. She was debilitating them in order to rehabilitate herself.

In the 'Disuntion of the Unities' aspect of the serialized version of PREGAME-Gambit, we came to know Nihila as Harmonia, one of Thrygragos Lazareme's Unities, the Unity of Balance. That was also where we met her two fellow firstborn brothers, Lord Yajur (Order) and Unholy Abaddon (Chaos). As Balance she stands between them.

Long before events described in the Web serial, she was in love with a human, one Cadmus by name. In standard mythology, Cadmus was a Phoenician prince who brought the phonetic alphabet to Europe, founded Grecian Thebes and led the Spartae or Dragon's Teeth.

In the PHANTACEA Mythos he's all of that as well as, among many another thing, the destroyer of Strongyne (modern day Santorini) and, with it, the Goddess Culture so prevalent throughout the Mediterranean Basin circa 1500 BC. Among those other things King Cadmus of Thebes was of course the Male Entity in his second lifetime.

98 lifetimes thereafter, here's how we last saw Freespirit Nihila.

A few minutes later, when Freespirit Nihila finally arrived on the planetoid, all she found was the decapitated body of Helios called Sophos the Wise. It was buried in a big old hole full of moondust and covered by the still warm rubble of the Lunar Citadel. That was ruined but the decapitated remains of her lover from nearly thirty-five hundred years earlier weren't.

The gods, devils that they were, that she was and continued to be, had celebrated their wedding. They had celebrated his death as well, years later. Now though, they were nowhere in evidence."Why didn't you truly die then?" she cried to the stars.

They gave no answer but someone else did. The voice came from a dark, ectoplasmic ghost in a human form. More, in a devic shape. Hers!

So what, you may ask, has become of her since then? I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I finish writing 'Wilderwitch's Babies, Part Two: Tsishah's Twilight'.

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Cel-Spook: In death, as in life, the Celestial Superior

Even though I didn't start writing it until the mid-90s, I consider 'The Moloch Manoeuvres' to be the first novel in the PHANTACEA Mythos. Here's an abridged version of how it began:

The silver-haired, seven year old Sicilian awoke knowing something was very wrong.

The only other one actually awake was a fifteen year old Prussian girl whose first name she could not recall but whose last name sort of rhymed with cow dung. She was opening the window above her bunk. It was a foggy night and odious wisps of the city's choking smog wafted into the dorm.

Then they took shape, became a man, -- a night creature, a Black King, shrouded in darkness, with glowing red eyes and bright, impossibly sharp teeth. That was when the little girl was sure she was not dreaming, though she now wished she was.

This was a Blood Beast Prime -- a vampire!

The year was 1895. The little girl's name was Celestine D'Angelo. Less than a decade later she was on the Inner Earth of Sedon's Head, had acquired a new name, Celeste Mannering, and a first born daughter, Pandora Mannering.

This Pandora was the product of generations of genetic manipulations on the part of the Witches of Weir. Witch-which of course meant so was Celestine-Celeste, Her having her, shortly after the latter-her's birth, was the main reason the former-her became the Celestial Superior.

Pandora was bred to bear triplet daughters, incarnations of the Trigregos Sisters. Instead her firstborn was a boy, Saladin Devason. Consequently the Celestial Superior was forced to call the Simultaneous Summonings of 1920 (5920 on the Hidden Headworld). Hence the Summoning Children who dominate so much of the goings-on in the PHANTACEA Mythos.

Too bad, since she was killed in 1923, the Celestial Superior didn't live to see them to grow up. Death hasn't particularly slowed her down, though. Which-witch is why she's known as Cel-Spook throughout the 1938 story sequences.

As for why she's also known as the Horny Ghost, hey, that's why you read them!

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Utopians from the Weirdom of Cabalarkon

There are distinctions, albeit not so much so in physiognomic terms, to be made between the Utopians of Cabalarkon and the Utopians of either the first or second Weirworld (as featured in the PHANTACEA comic books and the graphic novel: "Forever & 40 Days, the Genesis of PHANTACEA"). The primary one is of course that the Weirdom of Cabalarkon is on the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head whereas the two Weirworlds are (or was in the case of the first Weirworld) far, very far, some 170,000 light-years faraway from the Whole Earth of the PHANTACEA Mythos.

The full-blooded males are still black-as-midnight on a starless night whilst the full-blooded women are white-as-light on a sunny day; in other words, they're statuesque to an extreme. Hence, full-blooded female Utopians such as Melina nee Sarpedon (1938 serials) Zeross (1980/1 serials) and the Chryseis-clone, Gethsemane Nauroz (both serials), are oft-times described as ambulatory alabaster.

By contrast, Saladin Devason, the Master of Weir during the 1980 serials, is a hybrid. He's 60, has a beard, has to work out in order to maintain his gorgeous physique and, yes, both Hot Rox (1938) and the Witch (1980) get to know him in the Biblical sense. It's a damn shame he's such a jerk but, hey, nobody's perfect.

Which is part of the problem with him being in charge. Utopians think they are perfect; wouldn't call themselves Utopians if they didn't. They're extraterrestrial. Came to the Whole Earth ten years before the Genesea, the Great Flood of Genesis, and have been stuck here ever since.

Only some of their extraterrestrial gadgetry works anymore and no one has any idea why or how. Has something to do with the collective willpower of the Idiots of Weir, who are in the majority in Cabalarkon, as funnelled through the Master, though.

Among the gadgets that still work are their eyeorbs, which they mount on eye-staves. Eyeorbs can be used as devic prison pods. That is to say they can capture and hold devils. Except they don't work in devic protectorates, which is where most devils hang out.

They can also manifest gargoyles. These gargoyles are the physical forms taken by the force shields they project. There's lots of prison-podding and gargoyles-manifesting in 'Coueranna's Curse' if you're curious!

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4. Graphics: Footnotes and off-page links:

The swap-overs in the masthead at the top of this time up's 'pHpubs' are of a pair of potential front cover I prepared for the latest novel, 'Decimation Damnation'. A potential dust cover, front and back, for this novel can be found on the entirely revised Covers Gallery.
The 'Alt Txt' mouse-over for the first graphic in the Nihila-Harmonia essay reads: "With chains and scales-of-justice earrings suggestive of Freespirit Nihila, aka Harmonia, the Unity of Balance, scanned in from a newspaper and adjusted on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2003"; although I did not write down the date, the original picture ran in the Vancouver Sun; I believe the chained woman is supposed to represent the disputed territory of Kashmir, torn as it is between India and Pakistan;
The mouse-over behind the second Nihila-Harmonia graphic reads: "Part of a mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros, woman struggling against chains, reminiscent of Harmonia, the Unity of Panharmonium, photo taken in 2005 by Jim McPherson, graphic prepared on PHOTOSHOP, 2007"; in the 1938 'Heliodyssey' serials there's a character often described as "Not that Diego Rivera"; this mural is by a contemporary of that Diego Rivera; along with my favourite, Carlos Orosco Romero, many consider Siqueiros and Rivera the big three of Mexican muralists; a different rendition of the same painting, as well as more on Nihila, can be found in synopses prepared for 'The Trigregos Gambit' and 'Helios on the Moon'; as per here, I also used a web-shot of the same painting in a graphic I prepared for The Cretan Snake Goddess mini-essay:
The mouse-over in the Cel-Spook essay reads: "Rainbow overlay suggestive of Cel-Spook; underlay part of a painting by Paul Delvaux, from a postcard purchased at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; rainbow overlay prepared by Jim McPherson on PHOTOSHOP, 2004"; there's yet another entry re the Horny Ghost on the Witches webpage;
I prepared the graphic shown in the Utopians essay for the backcover of 'Decimation Damnation'; its mouse-over is as follows: "The caption reads: Mythos Utopian Eyeorbs Manifesting Gargoyle; images of Caduceus and Gargoyles were taken from the Internet and put together by Jim McPherson, using PHOTOSHOP, in 2004"; the caduceus, as opposed to an actual gargoyle, is the preferred manifestation of white-as-light Illuminatus (Melina Sarpedon in the 1938 serials, Zeross in the 1980 serials); funnily enough, in the 1938 serials Mel's black-as-midnight twin brother, Demios Sarpedon, manifests a Quasimodo; in 'Decimation Damnation' Thobruk Grudal, another Trinondev Warrior of Weir, manifests a baby seal and uses it as a club.