Exquisite Watercolors of Demons, Magic & Signs: Behold the Compendium Of Demonology and Magic from 1775

Noli me tan­gere, says the title page of the Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic: “Do not touch me.” For the book’s tar­get audi­ence, one sus­pects, this was more entice­ment than warn­ing. Writ­ten in Latin (its full title is Com­pendi­um raris­si­mum totius Artis Mag­i­cae sis­tem­a­ti­sa­tae per cele­ber­ri­mos Artis hujus Mag­istros) and Ger­man, the book pur­ports to come from the year 1057. In fact it’s been dat­ed as more than 700 years younger, though to most 21st-cen­tu­ry behold­ers a book from around 1775 car­ries enough his­tor­i­cal weight to be intrigu­ing — espe­cial­ly if, as the Pub­lic Domain Review puts it, it depicts “a var­ied bes­tiary of grotesque demon­ic crea­tures.”

The spec­i­mens cat­a­logued in the Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic are “up to all sorts of appro­pri­ate­ly demon­ic activ­i­ties, such as chew­ing down on sev­ered legs, spit­ting fire and snakes from gen­i­talia, and parad­ing around decap­i­tat­ed heads on sticks.”

Grotesque­ly com­bin­ing fea­tures of man and beast, these hideous chimeras are ren­dered in “more than thir­ty exquis­ite water­col­ors” that still look vivid today. In fact, with their punk­ish cos­tumes, insou­ciant expres­sions, and often inde­cent­ly exposed nether regions, these demons look ready and will­ing to cause a scan­dal even in our jad­ed time.

Near­ly two and a half cen­turies ago, we might fair­ly assume, a greater pro­por­tion of the pub­lic believed in the exis­tence of demons — if not these spe­cif­ic mon­strosi­ties, then at least the con­cept of the demon­ic in gen­er­al. But we’re sure­ly lying to our­selves if we believed that nobody in the 16th cen­tu­ry had a sense of humor about it. Even the work of this book’s unknown illus­tra­tor evi­dences, beyond for­mi­da­ble artis­tic skill and wild imag­i­na­tion, a cer­tain comedic instinct, seri­ous busi­ness though demon­ic inten­tions toward human­i­ty may be.

With its less humor­ous con­tent includ­ing exe­cu­tion scenes and instruc­tions for the pro­ce­dures of witch­craft from div­ina­tion to necro­man­cy, the Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic belongs to a deep­er tra­di­tion of books that elab­o­rate­ly cat­a­log and depict the vari­eties of super­nat­ur­al evil. (A much old­er exam­ple is the Codex Gigas, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, a “Dev­il’s Bible” that also hap­pens to be the largest medieval man­u­script in the word.)

You can behold more of these delight­ful­ly hell­ish illus­tra­tions at the Pub­lic Domain Review and even down­load the whole book free from the Well­come Col­lec­tion. (See a PDF of the entire book here.) And no mat­ter how close­ly you scru­ti­nize your dig­i­tal copy, you won’t run the risk of touch­ing it.

The Com­pendi­um of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic is one of the many texts fea­tured in The Madman’s Library: The Strangest Books, Man­u­scripts and Oth­er Lit­er­ary Curiosi­ties from His­to­ry, a new book fea­tured on our site ear­li­er this week.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Foot-Lick­ing Demons & Oth­er Strange Things in a 1921 Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script from Iran

1,600 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Help a Library Tran­scribe Mag­i­cal Man­u­scripts & Recov­er the Charms, Potions & Witch­craft That Flour­ished in Ear­ly Mod­ern Europe and Amer­i­ca

Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Man­u­script in the World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Grateful Dead Fan Creates a Faithful Mini Replica of the Band’s Famous “Wall of Sound” During Lockdown


A few years ago we told you about the Wall of Sound. Not the one cre­at­ed in the stu­dio by Phil Spec­tor, but the one cre­at­ed by Grate­ful Dead tech engi­neer Owsley “Bear” Stan­ley out of over 600 speak­ers. Before the Dead worked to rev­o­lu­tion­ize how rock con­certs could sound, the speak­ers at live shows were tre­bly, under­pow­ered things, hav­ing not been designed for the sud­den change in musi­cal tex­ture and sound dur­ing the 1960s. In the ear­ly days, speak­ers were most­ly used to make sure the drums didn’t drown out the oth­er band mem­bers. Stanley’s three-sto­ry, 28,800-watt mas­sive wall, with columns of speak­ers ded­i­cat­ed to each musi­cian, promised crisp fideli­ty more so than pure loud­ness. In devel­op­ing the set-up, Stan­ley and his fel­low engi­neers helped intro­duce ideas still being used in live sound today.

For all that, how­ev­er, the Wall only got used for sev­en months of tour­ing in 1974. It took hours and hours to assem­ble and dis­as­sem­ble. For those who heard it, the sys­tem lived up to its hype. And it was immor­tal­ized in the Win­ter­land, San Fran­cis­co shows filmed for The Grate­ful Dead Movie (watch it online).

Now, near­ly 50 years lat­er a ded­i­cat­ed fan has rebuilt the wall as a 1/6th scale mod­el in his base­ment. While some of us took up bak­ing dur­ing 2020’s COVID lock­down, Antho­ny Cos­cia began to work four hours a day, every day, for two months, on this mod­el. He post­ed his progress on Insta­gram and Dead­heads, most of which hadn’t seen the real thing in per­son, lost their minds. (See this video to get a good taste of things.) Cos­cia also had nev­er seen the fabled Wall in real life—he would have been a tod­dler at the time. But he made up for it lat­er in the late ‘80s, see­ing the band 35 times, and the Jer­ry Gar­cia Band 25 times.

 

An archi­tect by day, Cos­cia insist­ed on the small­est details being repli­cat­ed, urged on by social media. The fin­ished mod­el is 6 foot, 8 inch­es tall and 10 feet wide, and fea­tures 390 work­ing speak­ers. It pumps out a not-exact­ly-Win­ter­land-wor­thy 800 watts.

“It’s a mas­sive glo­ri­fied clock radio but it sounds bet­ter than I thought,” he told the Wall Street Jour­nal.

And although he spent $2,000 in total, he’s already been offered $100,000 for it from an anony­mous donor.

The obses­sion with the band con­tin­ues a half-cen­tu­ry lat­er. A just announced series of shows by Bob Weir’s Dead & Com­pa­ny in Jan­u­ary 2022—in Can­cun, of course, where it’s warm—have sold out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Grate­ful Dead Slip Past Secu­ri­ty & Play a Gig at Colum­bia University’s Anti-Viet­nam Protest (1968)

Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Live Grate­ful Dead Per­for­mances (1966–1995)

The Grate­ful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Listen to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” Played on a 1914 Fairground Organ

To tru­ly appre­ci­ate the spec­ta­cle of ABBA’s “Danc­ing Queen” played on a 1914 Hooghuys fair­ground organ, we rec­om­mend you read Angus Harrison’s 2016 VICE essay, “Why Abba’s ‘Danc­ing Queen’ Is the Sad­dest Record Ever Made”:

Make no mis­take. This song is about the danc­ing queen, but it is most def­i­nite­ly not sung by her. Here­in lies the tragedy. Our nar­ra­tor has real­ized that she is no longer the Danc­ing Queen. She is no longer young, no longer sweet, no longer 17. Now, instead, she watch­es from the bar; the dance­floor a mael­strom of lost faith, mem­o­ries, and missed oppor­tu­ni­ties. She was once 17, and as such was total­ly obliv­i­ous that the moment would ever end.

Could such sen­ti­ments apply to the above instru­ment, whose carved fig­urines, ornate scroll­work, and dis­tinc­tive sound def­i­nite­ly sug­gest that how­ev­er lov­ing­ly it’s been main­tained, its prime is long past.

This 105-year-old organ was already 62 when “Danc­ing Queen” was released at the height of the dis­co craze in 1976.

The tune quick­ly soared to the top of the charts world­wide, as fans raced to the record store to pick up a 45, or the full album, Arrival, on vinyl, cas­sette, or 8‑track.

But pro­duc­tion of punched, card­board scrolls such as the ones these metic­u­lous­ly hand built instru­ments — no two alike! — use had long since ceased.

site ded­i­cat­ed to Hooghuys organs ties their decline to the end of WWI, cit­ing the neces­si­ty of cheap­er post-war pro­duc­tion. When the founder of the fam­i­ly busi­ness died, short­ly there­after, the firm ceased to exist.

Flash for­ward to this mil­len­ni­um, when a mechan­i­cal music afi­ciona­do named Alex­ey Rom used MIDI — Musi­cal Instru­ment Dig­i­tal Inter­face — to give the aged organ new life, pro­gram­ming his own arrange­ment, then using an auto­mat­ic punch to cre­ate card­board cards the instru­ment was capa­ble of read­ing.

His first such tri­umph came when he equipped a sim­i­lar organ to cov­er Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” “Danc­ing Queen,” and many oth­er pop­u­lar favorites that didn’t exist in the organs’ hey­day fol­lowed. (We’re pret­ty par­tial to “Mack the Knife” played on an 81-key Marenghi organ from 1905…)

Below Rom shares a tiny peek into his process.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1910 Fair­ground Organ Plays Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and It Works Like a Charm

When ABBA Wrote Music for the Cold War-Themed Musi­cal, Chess: “One of the Best Rock Scores Ever Pro­duced for the The­atre” (1984)

Bach’s Most Famous Organ Piece Played on Wine Glass­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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