Marie- Angeligue Memmie Le Blanc (1712) Amal and Kamala 1918
Witchcraft (present location)
Empty Space?
When you’re mind is filled with calculations whirring away. It seems like you have no room for anything else. Considerable empty space.
Locating it is something of anti climax, all this stuff moving around suddenly you just seem to be hanging about with nothing to do. Mis- observation and you can now observe what you are doing and start to fill the space. Free from the number crunching you can engage in other matters like working out exactly where you are. How you can use the space now you have a measure of it. etc.
Sometimes you mistake an obstacle in the way for that space and begin to fill it.
Taking a dance lesson and turning it in to something else. Not sure how wise that is. I certainly don’t like how it sounds and reads at the moment.
Confusious say feel to it.
I can sketch out some of what is going on. I need to work on my etch a sketch skills and scale here.
My grandmother, who I find was born on the 6th of January, 1726, used to tell me, that when a girl at school she was taken some distance to see a frog that was exhibited as a show…”
Note
I should be reading. Should have started two days ago. Not thinking about something that is affecting balance. Catching the nonsense that drifts in and out of my head while thinking helps to a degree.
Still an empty space everything is heading towards.
Need to get a flash light, go down and investigate the cellar.
Leadership first emerged when the first person made the decision to sit over there and shit over here.
The great leader was born.
The great leader went to great lengths to dispel the oldest great leader joke, which developed when this ordered relationship, sit at location A. shit at location B. first broke down and became somewhat confused.
Whats got three legs and an asshole? The great leaders stool (this is long long ago before thrones were invented).
Thus was the tale that it was not the great leader but the great leaders evil advisor born.
Notes & References
Medieval Etymology class Ia. Find a foundation legend for word.
A footstool, a decoy, a seat used for urination and defecation
Lenny Bruce
Shit Happens
‘Dumb Drummer gag’
Iconic urinals
“all the things I know but of which I am not thinking-1:36 P.M, June 15, 1969″
Its really hard to detect cultural origin in archeological assemblages. Get a large uniform spread of objects extending across cultural boundaries making specific cultural identification difficult.
Increased recourse to ethnographic inscription on objects is associated with cultural stress, as 20th century ethnological survey suggests.
On comparative grounds its less clear as you can get a large spread of non-uniform objects, sites with a range of goods and range of cultural markers, leaving identity impossible to determine.
Fluid aspect to identity rather than the fixed and clear markers associated with later findings.
Take another theory a folk one from Haiti
Its an observation in regard to hard manual labor, ‘if work were a good thing then the rich would have taken it for themselves long ago’
Modify that and note the Irish frog is clearly a ‘good thing.’ To good to leave in the hands of one side of the community.
Cultural identification is not difficult here as plenty of evidence is available to see the differing ways its weaponized.
What happens when the war is over? What would the immediate landscape look like?
Presuming if I hit you over the head with a frog in a short lived and frenzied attack, once the situation is resolved its going to look more ‘frog like’ and less ‘imp like’ in short order.
Removal of hazards objects from the site of battle (ritual cleansing of the site, a hazard with long term re-use ritual spaces: archeological short- hand for we found nothing) .
One thing I have to do much further down the road is define what exactly a Puritan is. Its an historical rolling argument. Its not exactly clear.
One answer would be its basis is polemical in origin rather than signifying major doctrinal differences within the wider protestant family.
The frog in its Irish post- counter reformation form as object of miracle is deployed in this manner.
Polemical origin questions aside can I make another transformation?
Can I completely alter the inflection of the imp?
Its a move made in the counter reformation in relation to the frog, ‘a venomous creature.’
Does this transformation from object of evil to object of miracle represent the full potential inflection range of these objects in this period?
How low or high you go determined by local conditions? i.e in Ireland the frog is a sign of post-war optimism. The Catholic church re-drawing its institutional identity and connecting with wider population, the imp clearly is not the product of the same conditions (It shares some potential features).
The relationship drawn between these objects and God in this period will provide the answers.
In late 19th century debate the frog seems to be regaining ground as creature of horror. Its miraculous aspect is not exactly clear to see. The audience did not have to think about it. Its extensively deployed in polemical newspaper articles of the period. Irish famine, let them eat frog etc.
Unlike the imp the frog in this context a significant historical survivor. The imp does not have the same range in time, much flatter inflection.
Conclusion
Significant contextual detail required. I can take a speculative leap, if I fall I am still landing deep within an aspect of the counter-reformation that is under-explored and extends well into the 19th century in a scientific origin of species debate.
My grandmother, who I find was born on the 6th of January, 1726, used to tell me, that when a girl at school she was taken some distance to see a frog that was exhibited as a show…”
Reference
W. Thompson, ‘Natural History of Ireland’, Vol. IV., 1856
Note
With out context its rather difficult to see what it is. No different from this.
“you don’t take a bone saw to an interrogation.”
A Substantive point that needs no development sentence. i.e. in the case of frogs the development sentence would be, the well known scientific thesis “you can’t teach my grandmother to suck eggs.”
This ‘killer point’ was deployed in an exceptional heated debate on the nature and status of the Irish frog. Was it a native of Ireland or an invasive species?
A nativist v. anti- nativist argument in 19th century natural history.
Heated as Ireland’s long relationship with conquest and colonization had sustained the frog as symbol of horror/ creature of miracle. It contains a particular perception of time past/ present/ future are not distinct from each other as qualities of time. Each is discovered in the other.
Its time scale is mythical.
As a creature of ill omen, a venomous object. Snakes, frogs, toads which traditionally were all subject to the same form of reproductive origin (spontaneous generation) they were the same kind of thing ‘venomous creatures.’ These creatures had been cast out of Ireland by Saint Patrick. They could not reproduce in Irish soil ( the frog becomes central to this idea of the miraculous during the counter-reformation) .
Frog Horror
W. Thompson’s grandmothers surprise at seeing a frog displayed as an object of wonder, is demonstrable proof that the frog is not a native of Ireland. As it has no deep historical relationship, it is an object of no account, worthless for a subject that requires historical depth.
Difficulty to retrospectively see what it is, emphasis on people and places.
Qualities I am looking for in relation to the imp
“Emphasis on people and places……..” fragment from a much longer descriptive sentence. General historical observation on some specific characteristics associated with early modern society and the witch-hunt in particular.
