A real musical oddity from the French Baroque: Tableau de l’Opération de la Taille, i.e. Scene of Cutting for the Stone by Marin Marais.

Tableau de l’Opération de la Taille begins with a somber section in the key of E minor and tempo marking Lentem (slowly), freely performed. It is followed by a contrasting lively piece titled Les Relevailles in the key of E major, tempo marking Gay, joyously celebrating the patient’s return to life. The score is annotated in considerable detail, guiding the performer in what the music is attempting to convey. As Joseph Kiefer accurately observes: “The music successfully depicts the apprehension, fear, agitation, and other emotions of the patient as well as the mounting tension of the operation itself, building up to the climactic extraction of the stone.”Les Relevailles is etymologically of particular interest. It refers to an ancient ritual that designates a period after delivery when the mother needs to regain her strength. Historically this period lasted 40 days and may be related to the religious ceremony known as “churching.”

What Tenochtitlan looked like

HT: Languagehat

 Dealing with dinosaurs: Darren Naish recounts cassowary wrangling.

Including a note for the speculative fiction crowd: "Cassowaries themselves might think of us as slightly unusual members of cassowary kind. Keep this in mind when imagining a hypothetical zoo housing non-bird dinosaurs. At least some such animals would likely become sexually fixated on humans."

 The smurfs are an obvious reference to the Barallot heresy. Gargamel represents the Dominicans.

Huchen and taimen appetites have also found their way into folklore. Ainu stories from Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido speak of monstrous taimen (known as chirai in Ainu) large and voracious enough to eat deer, bear, and humans whole. In Mongolia, legend tells of an especially harsh winter when starving herdsmen discovered a giant taimen trapped in river ice. Relieved to find food, the herdsmen chopped off pieces of its flesh. They survived the winter, but when the river ice melted in spring, the giant taimen came onto the land, tracked them down, and ate them all.

More taimen lore and biogeography here.

 2024 total eclipse map

 Sundial for a binary star system.

 "Two or three years ago they were just another snake cult."

To believe that psychedelics had a central role in our evolution I would need to see them at the center of religious iconography regarding knowledge and creation worldwide. And this would have to be the case from the beginning. This seems like an impossibly high bar to clear.

And yet, this is true of snakes, which are worshiped all across the globe, and have been from the beginning. One strange coincidence is how often they are associated with knowledge, despite having a peanut for a brain. What no one has noticed is that snakes themselves contain a hallucinogen: their venom. I argue that there was an ancient psychedelic snake cult concerned with selfhood from which modern snake symbolism descends.

 Filed under "sure, why not?".

Anniversaire de Tintin: cinq mots qui ont changé de sens sous la plume d’Hergé