Tag Archives: culto

Simone Unverdorben, The False Martyr

Article by guestblogger La cara Pasifae

A little boy went out to play.
When he opened his door he saw the world.
As he passed through the doorway he caused a riflection.
Evil was born!
Evil was born and followed the boy.
(D. Lynch, Inland Empire, 2006)

It was a nice late-summer afternoon, in 2013. I remember well.
A friend had invited me to the opening of his latest exhibition. He had picked an unusual place for the event: an ancient and isolated parish church that stood high up on a hill, the church of Nanto. The building had been recently renovated, and it was open to the public only on specific occasions.
Once there, one immediately feels the urge to look around. The view is beautiful, but it pays the price of the impact the construction industry (I was almost about to say “architecture”) has had on the surroundings, with many industrial buildings covering the lanscapes of Veneto region like a tattoo. Better go inside and look at the paintings.

I was early for the opening, so I had the artist, his works and the entire exhibition area all for myself. I could walk and look around without any hurry, and yet I felt something disturbing my peace, something I couldn’t quite pin down at first:  it kind of wormed its way into my visual field, calling for attention. On a wall, as I was passing from one painted canvas to the next, I eventually spotted a sudden, indefinite blur of colors. A fresco. An image had been resting there well before the exhibition paintings were placed in front of it!

Despite the restoration, as it happens with many medieval and Renaissance frescoes, some elements were still confused and showed vanishing, vaporous outlines. But once in focus, an unsettling vision emerged: the fresco depicted a quite singular torture scene, the likes of which I had never encountered in any other artwork (but I wouldn’t want to pass as an expert on the subject).
Two female figures, standing on either side, were holding the arms of a blonde child (a young Christ, a child-saint, or a puer sacer, a sacred and mystical infant, I really couldn’t say). The kid was being tortured by two young men: each holding a stiletto, they were slicing the boy’s skin all over, and even his face seemed to have been especially brutalized.


Blood ran down the child’s bound feet into a receiving bowl, which had been specifically placed under the victim’s tormented limbs.

The child’s swollen face (the only one still clearly visible) had an ecstatic expression that barely managed to balance the horror of the hemorrhage and of the entire scene: in the background, a sixth male figure sporting a remarkable beard, was twisting a cloth band around the prisoner throat. The baby was being choked to death!

What is the story of this fresco? What tale does it really tell?
The five actors do not look like peasants; the instruments are not randomly chosen: these are thin, sharp, professional blades. The incisions on the victim’s body are too regular. Who perpetrated this hideous murder, who was the object of the resentment the author intended to elicit in the onlookers? Maybe the fresco was a representation — albeit dramatic and exaggerated — of a true crime. Should the choking, flaying and bleeding be seen as a metaphor for some parasitic exploitation, or do they hint at some rich and eccentric nobleman’s quirkiness? Is this a political allegory or a Sadeian chronicle?
The halo surrounding the child’s head makes him an innocent or a saved soul. Was this a homage, a flattering detail to exhalt the commissioner of this work of art? What character was meant to be celebrated here, the subjects on the sides who are carrying out a dreadful, but unavoidable task, or the boy at the center who looks so obscenely resigned to suffer their painful deeds? Are we looking at five emissaries of some brutal but rational justice as they perform their duties, or the misadventure of a helpless soul that fell in the hands of a ferocious gang of thugs?

At the bottom of the fresco, a date: «ADI ⋅ 3 ⋅ APRILE 1479».
This historical detail brought me back to the present. The church was already crowded with people.
I felt somehow crushed by the overload of arcane symbols, and the frustation of not having the adequate knowledge to interpret what I had seen. I furtively took a snapshot. I gave my host a warm farewell, and then got out, hoping the key to unlock the meaning of the fresco was not irretrievably lost in time.

As I discovered at the beginning of my research on this controversial product of popular iconography, the fresco depicts the martyrdom of Saint Simonino of Trent. Simone Unverdorben, a two-year-old toddler from Trent, disappeared on March 23, 1475. His body was found on Easter Day. It was said to have been mauled and strangled. In Northern Italy, in those years, antisemitic abuses and persecutions stemmed from the widely influential sermons of the clergy. The guilt for the heinous crime immediately fell upon the Trent Jewish community. All of its members had to endure one of the biggest trials of the time, being subjected to tortures that led to confessions and reciprocal accusations.

During the preliminary investigations of the Trent trial, a converted Jew was asked if the practice of ritual homicide of Christian toddlers existed within the Hebrew cult. […] The converted Jew, at the end of the questioning, confirmed with abundant details the practice of ritual sacrifice in the Jewish Easter liturgy.
Another testimony emerged from the interrogation of another of the alleged killers of the little Simone, the Jewish physician Tobia. He declared on the rack there was a commerce in Christian blood among Jews. A Jewish merchant called Abraam was said to have left Trent shortly before Simone’s death with the intention of selling Christian blood, headed to Feltre or Bassano, and to have asked around which of the two cities was closer to Trent. Tobia’s confession took place under the terrifying threat of being tortured and in the desperate attempt to avoid it: he therefore had to be cooperative to the point of fabrication; but it was understood that his testimony, whenever made up, should be consistent and plausible.
[…] Among the others, another converted man named Israele (Wolfgang, after converting) was  also interrogated under torture. He declared he had heard about other cases of ritual murders […]. These instances of ritual homicides were inventions whose protagonists had names that came from the interrogee’s memory, borrowed to crowd these fictional stories in a credible way.

(M. Melchiorre, Gli ebrei a Feltre nel Quattrocento. Una storia rimossa,
in Ebrei nella Terraferma veneta del Quattrocento,
a cura di G.M. Varanini e R.C. Mueller, Firenze University Press 2005)

Many were burned at the stake. The survivors were exiled from the city, after their possessions had been confiscated.
According to the jury, the child’s collected blood had been used in the ritual celebration of the “Jewish Easter”.

The facts we accurately extracted from the offenders, as recorded in the original trials, are the following. The wicked Jews living in Trent, having maliciously planned to make their Easter solemn through the killing of a Christian child, whose blood they could mix in their unleavened bread, commisioned it to Tobia, who was deemed perfect for the infamous deed as he was familiar with the town on the account of being a professional doctor. He went out at 10 pm on Holy Thursday, March 23, as all believers were at the Mass, walked the streets and alleys of the city and having spotted the innocent Simone all alone on his father’s front door, he showed him a big silver piece, and with sweet words and smiles he took him from via del Fossato, where his parents lived, to the house of the rich Jew Samuele, who was eagerly waiting for him. There he was kept, with charms and apples, until the hour of the sacrifice arrived. At 1 am, little twenty-nine-months-old Simone was taken to the chamber adjoining the women’s synagogue; he was stripped naked and a band or belt was made from his clothes, and he was muzzled with a handkerchief, so that he wouldn’t immediately choke to death nor be heard; Moses the Elder, sitting on a stall and holding the baby in his lap, tore a piece of flesh off his cheek with a pair of iron pliers. Samuele did the same while Tobia, assisted by Moar, Bonaventura, Israele, Vitale and another Bonaventura (Samuele’s cook) collected in a basin the blood pouring from the wound. After that, Samuele and the aforementioned seven Jews vied with each other to pierce the flesh of the holy martyr, declaring in Hebrew that they were doing so to mock the crucified God of the Christians; and they added: thus shall be the fate of all our enemies. After this feral ordeal, the old Moses took a knife and pierced with it the tip of the penis, and with the pliers tore a chunk of meat from the little right leg and Samuel, who replaced him, tore a piece out of the other leg. The copious blood oozing from the puerile penis was harvested in a different vase, while the blood pouring from the legs was collected in the basin. All the while, the cloth plugging his mouth was sometimes tightened and sometimes loosened; not satisfied with the outrageous massacre, they insisted in the same torture a second time, with greater cruelty, piercing him everywhere with pins and needles; until the young boy’s blessed soul departed his body, among the rejoicing of this insane riffraff.

(Annali del principato ecclesiastico di Trento dal 1022 al 1540, pp. 352-353)

Very soon Simonino (“little Simone”) was acclaimed as a “blessed martyr”, and his cult spread thoughout Northern Italy. As devotion grew wider, so did the production of paintings, ex voto, sculptures, bas reliefs, altar decorations.

Polichrome woodcut, Daniel Mauch’s workshop, Museo Diocesano Tridentino.

Questionable elements, taken from folktales and popular belief, began to merge with an already established, sterotyped antisemitism.

 

From Alto Adige, April 1, 2017.

Despite the fact that the Pope had forbidden the cult, pilgrims kept flocking. The fame of the “saint” ‘s miracles grew, together with a wave of antisemitism. The fight against usury led to the accusation of loan-sharking, extended to all Jews. The following century, Pope Sistus V granted a formal beatification. The cult of Saint Simonino of Trent further solidified. The child’s embalmed body was exhibited in Trent until 1955, together with the alleged relics of the instruments of torture.

In reality, Simone Unverdorben (or Unferdorben) was found dead in a water canal belonging to a town merchant, near a Jewish man’s home, probably a moneylender. If he wasn’t victim of a killer, who misdirected the suspects on the easy scapegoat of the Jewish community, the child might have fallen in the canal and drowned. Rats could have been responsible for the mutilations. In the Nineteenth Century, accurate investigations proved the ritual homicide theory wrong. In 1965, five centuries after the murder, the Church abolished  the worship of Saint “Martyr” Simonino for good.

A violent fury against the very portraits of the “torturers” lasted for a long time. Even the San Simonino fresco in Nanto was defaced by this rage. This is the reason why, during that art exhibition, I needed some time to recognize a painting in that indistinct blur of light and colors.

My attempt at gathering the information I needed in order to make sense of the simulacrum in the Nanto parish church, led me to discover an often overlooked incident, known only to the artists who represented it, their commissioners, their audience; but the deep discomfort I felt when I first looked at the fresco still has not vanished.

La cara Pasifae


Suggested bibliography:
– R. Po – Chia Hsia, Trent 1475. Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial, Yale 1992
– A. Esposito, D. Quaglioni, Processi contro gli Ebrei di Trento (1475-1478), CEDAM 1990
– A. Toaff, Pasque di sangue: ebrei d’Europa e omicidi rituali, Il Mulino 2008

Spirits of the Road: The Cult of Animitas

The traveler who exits the Estación Central in Santiago, Chile and walks down San Francisco de Borja street, after less than twenty meters will stumble upon a sort of votive wall, right on the side of the train station on his left, a space choke-full of little engravings, offerings, perpetually lit candles, photographs and holy pictures. A simple sign says: “Romualdito”, the same name present on every thankful ex voto.

If our hypothetical traveler then takes a cab and heads down the Autopista del Sol towards the suburb of Maipù, he will see by the side of the opposite lane an altar quite similar to the first one, dedicated to a young girl called Astrid whose portrait is almost buried under dozens of toys and plush bears.

Should he cross the entirety of Chile’s narrow strip of land, encased between the mountains and the ocean, maybe crossing from time to time the border to the Argentinian pampas, he would notice that the landscape (both urban and rural) is studded with numerous of these strange little temples: places of devotion where veneration is not directed towards canonical saints, but to the spirits of people whose life ended in tragedy. This is the cult of the animitas.

An expression of popular piety, the animitas are votive boxes that are often built by the side of the road (animita de carretera) to remember some victims of the “mala muerte”, an awful death: even if the remains of these persons are buried at the cemetery, they cannot really rest in peace on the account of the violent circumstances of their demise. Their souls still haunt the places where life was taken from them.

 

The Romualdito at the train station, for instance, was a little boy who suffered from tubercolosis, assaulted and killed by some thugs who wanted to steal his poncho and the 15 pesos he had on him. But his story, dating back to the 1930s, is told in countless versions, more or less legendary, and it’s impossible to ascertain exactly what happened: one thing is sure, the popular faith in Romualdito is so widespread in Santiago that when it was time to renew and rebuild the station, his wall was left untouched.

Young Astrid, the girl with the plush toys altar, died in 1998 in a motorcycle accident, when she was just 19-years-old. She is now known as the Niña Hermosa.

But these funeral altars can be found by the hundreds, mostly installed by the roadside, shaped like little houses or small churches with crosses sicking out of their tiny roofs.

At first they are built as an act of mercy and remembrance on the exact spot of the fatal accident (or, in the case of fishermen lost at sea, in specific sectors of the coast); but they become the center of a real cult whenevert the soul of the deceased proves to be miraculous (animita muy milagrosa). When, that is, the spirit starts answering to prayers and offerings with particular favors, by interceding bewteen the believer and the Holy Virgin or Christ himself.

 The cult of the animitas is an original mixture of the indigenous, pre-Hispanic cult of the dead (where the ancestor turned into a benign presence offering protection to his offspring) and the cult of the souls of Purgatory which arrived here with Catholicism.
For this reason it shows surprising analogies with another form of folk religiosity developed in Naples, at the Fontanelle Cemetery, a place to which I devoted my book De profundis.
The two cults, not officially recognized by the Roman Church, have some fundamental aspects in common.

Animitas, built with recycled material, are folk art objects that closely resemble the carabattoli found in the Fontanelle Cemetery; not only for their shape but also for their function of making a dialectic, a dialogue with the Netherworld possible.
Secondly, the system of intercessions and favors, the offerings and the ex voto, are essentially the same in both cases.

But the crucial element is that the objects of veneration are not religious heroes, those saints who accomplished miraculous feats while they were alive, but rather victims of destiny. This allows for the identification between the believer and the invoked soul, the acknowledging of their reciprocal condition, a sharing of human misery – a feeling which is almost impossible when faced with “supernatural” figures like saints. Who of course have themselves an apotropaic function, but always maintain a higher position in respect to common mortals.
On the other hand the animitas, just like the anime pezzentelle in Naples, are “democratic” symbols, offering a much easier relationship: they share with the believers the same social milieu, they know firsthand all the daily hardship and difficulties of survival. They are protective spirits which can be bothered even for more modest, trivial miracles, because they once were ordinary people, and they understand.

But while in Italy the cult developed exclusively in one town, in Chile it is quite ubiquitous. To have an idea of the tenacity and pervasiveness of this faith, there is one last, amazing example.
Ghost bikes (white-painted bicycles remembering a cyclist who was run over by a car) can be seen all around the world, and they are meant as a warning against accidents. When these installations began to appear in Chile, they immediately intertwined with popular devotion giving birth to hybrids called bicianimitas. Boxes for the ritual offerings began to appear beside the white bicycles, and the funeral memorials turned into a bridge for communication between the living and the dead.
Those living and dead that, the animitas seem to remind us, are never really separated but coexist on the city streets or along the side of dusty highways stretching out into the desert.

The blog Animitas Chilenas intends to create an archive of all animitas, recording for each one the name of the soul, her history and GPS coordinates.
Besides the links in the article, I highly recommend the essay by Lautaro Ojeda, Animitas – Una expresión informal y democrática de derecho a la ciudad (in ARQ Santiago n. 81 agosto 2012) and the in-depth post El culto urbano de la muerte: el origen y la trascendencia de las animitas en Chile, by Criss Salazar.
Photographer Patricio Valenzuela Hohmann put up a wonderful animitas photo gallery.
Lastly, you should check out the Difunta Correa, Argentina’s most famous animita, dedicated to the legendary figure of a woman who died of thirst and fatigue in the Nineteenth Century while following her husband – who had been forced to enroll in the army; her body was found under a tree, still holding her newborn baby to her breast. The cult of the Difunta Correa is so widespread that it led to the construction of a real sanctuary in Vallecito, visited by one million pilgrims every year.

De profundis

The second title of the Bizzarro Bazar Series is now available for pre-order.

After exploring the Palermo Capuchin Catacombs in the first volume, now we enter another unique place, the Fontanelle Cemetery in Naples, where one of the most peculiar and fascinating devotional cults has developed.

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Buried in the heart of the city, the Sanità quarter is an authentic borderland between the world of the living and the world of the dead. You only need to distance yourself from the hustle and bustle, from the megaphones of the fruit and vegetable stalls, the mopeds ridden by fearless street urchins darting between the cars, and reach the top of the area: here on the right of the church of Maria Santissima del Carmine, is the Fontanelle cemetery.

Situated within an ancient tuff quarry, the cemetery is an imposing underground cathedral, hovering between darkness and the swathes of light cutting through it.

Thousands of bones and skulls are piled up for all to see, the remains of at least 40,000 anonymous human beings. In this evocative and peaceful place, death is no longer insurmountable: the living and the souls of the deceased communicate with each other by means of the so-called capuzzelle, which embody the ancestral obsession with the skull as an icon of transcendence and the promise of eternal life.

 

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Here the skulls are spoken to, touched, and cleaned. They are taken care of. Candles are lit, offerings are given and favours asked for in a do ut des of worship.

This is the cult of the anime pezzentelle, abandoned and anonymous souls, in need of the compassion of the living to alleviate their suffering in Purgatory. In return, they promise to be kind to the devout believer, helping out with health problems, finding a husband for young unmarried girls, solving financial issues or providing the winning lottery numbers. Although the cult is now almost completely abandoned, it still resists, and its traces are well visible in the Cemetery.

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There are countless ossuaries around the world, but the suggestion of the Fontanelle Cemetery is quite specific. On one hand, the compassionate and sober disposition of the human remains shows no sign of macabre or baroque taste, introducing the visitor to a suspended quiet as if he was entering a real sanctuary; on the other hand, the devotion of the people has somewhat mitigated the memento mori effect – not just on the account of those colorful, often ironic legends and myths surrounding the skulls, but also by elaborating the cult of the souls of Purgatory in a peculiar way, through unprecedented rules and rituals. Thus, adding to the wonder of thousands of piled up bones under the immense vault, one can feel a palpable devotion, transforming the skulls from figurations of mortality to symbols of transcendence.

Carlo Vannini‘s photographs plunge us into the enchanted atmosphere of the underground cathedral, revealing its gloomy charm and bringing us so close to the capuzzelle – bare or adorned with various votive offerings such as handkerchieves, little holy pictures, coloured rosary beads etc. – that their eyeholes seem to meet our eyes with a glance which is not less alive.

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De profundis, with texts in Italian and English, will be available in Italian bookstores (and online retailers worldwide) from May 18th and will be officially launched at the Turin International Book Fair, with book signing sessions on May 16 th and 17 th.

If you are not going to attend the book fair, you can order your signed copy here, which will be shipped after the book fair is over, by May 25th.

For further info, please check out the official bookstore for the Bizzarro Bazar series and our Facebook page.

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I soldi dei morti

Per i cinesi, ogni uomo è composto da diversi spiriti: fra tutti, i due più importanti sono quello materiale, chiamato po, con sede nel fegato e nutrito dal cibo, che al momento della morte rimane nella tomba; e l’anima spirituale, chiamata hun, con sede nei polmoni e nutrita dal respiro, che al trapasso si stacca invece dal corpo e va incontro al suo destino.
Un destino che è ovviamente conseguenza delle azioni terrene, della virtù e delle qualità del morto. Così, nell’oltretomba, esiste una gamma di possibili mutamenti che attendono lo hun del defunto: il più difficile e prestigioso è ovviamente divenire uno xiandao, un Immortale taoista – oppure raggiungere Jing-tu, la Terra Pura, se si è buddhisti. Ma, qualora in vita le azioni del morto non siano state per nulla virtuose, l’anima può finire per incrementare le fila degli egui, “spiriti affamati” che arrecano danni e problemi ai viventi a causa della fame e della sete insaziabili che li divorano.
Tutti coloro che stanno nel mezzo – né spiriti eccelsi, né peccatori senza speranza – vengono destinati alla “Via dell’Uomo” (rendao), vale a dire a reincarnarsi fino a che non saranno finalmente degni di lasciare questo mondo. Queste anime, però, prima di potersi reincarnare dovranno passare per una sorta di regno di mezzo chiamato diyu, assimilabile al nostro purgatorio.

Il diyu non è altro che una terribile “prigione sotterranea” che in qualche modo riflette specularmente la burocrazia del nostro mondo. Qui le anime vengono imputate in un vero e proprio processo in dieci differenti stadi, i Dieci Tribunali dell’Inferno: alla fine del lungo dibattimento giudiziario, il defunto viene assegnato ad un supplizio specifico a seconda delle sue colpe e mancanze. Si tratta di pene e torture dantesche sia nella crudeltà che nel contrappasso, che l’anima patisce provando dolori atroci, proprio come se avesse ancora un corpo. Fra lame che mozzano la lingua ai bugiardi, seghe che tagliano in due gli uomini d’affari scorretti, stupratori e ladri gettati in calderoni d’olio bollente o cotti al vapore, gente macinata e ridotta in polvere con mole di pietra, il diyu è una fiera degli orrori senza fine. Le anime, una volta subìto il supplizio, vengono ricomposte e la pena ricomincia.

Una volta scontato il periodo di “carcere duro” previsto dai giudici, all’anima è somministrata una pozione che le fa dimenticare quanto ha visto, e infine viene rispedita sulla terra… spesso con un bel calcio nel sedere (il che spiega le voglie violacee all’altezza delle natiche che a volte mostrano i neonati).

Dicevamo però che il diyu è una sorta di versione ribaltata del nostro mondo. Non crediate quindi che le delibere del Tribunale dell’Inferno siano infallibili: proprio come accade nei Palazzi di Giustizia terreni, nell’oltretomba cinese possono verificarsi degli errori giudiziari; c’è una mole impressionante di pratiche burocratiche da sbrigare, e anche fra i demoni esistono corruzione e nepotismo.
Ecco perché i cinesi hanno sviluppato uno dei rituali sacrificali più particolari e bizzarri: quello delle qian zhi, le “banconote di carta”.

Si tratta di imitazioni di banconote su cui è impresso il volto del sovrano dell’Aldilà, simili ai soldi finti dei giochi in scatola, stampate su carta di riso ed emesse dalla Banca degli Inferi, Yantong Yinhang. I tagli variano (anche a seconda dell’inflazione!) da diecimila a centinaia di miliardi di yuan – anche se ovviamente il prezzo d’acquisto è infinitamente inferiore a quello nominale. Si possono comprare in svariati empori e negozi.

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Le banconote vengono bruciate in falò rituali accesi vicino alle tombe, così che il fuoco le “trasporti” oltre il confine fra vivi e morti, recapitandole al caro estinto. L’anima del defunto potrà quindi usare i soldi inviatigli dalla famiglia per acquistare beni di consumo, per “comprare” i favori delle guardie, oppure per guadagnarsi rispetto e status sociale, o magari addirittura per corrompere un giudice e ottenere così uno sconto di pena.

Vi sono regole strette e tabù collegati al modo in cui le banconote vanno bruciate, così come ad esempio regalarne una ad una persona ancora in vita è altamente offensivo: insomma, i soldi dei morti sono un affare serio per molti cinesi.
Il defunto è in definitiva considerato come un parente vivo e vegeto, che si trova in un luogo lontano e sta attraversando un periodo di difficoltà. Quale famiglia amorevole non gli manderebbe un po’ di soldi?

Se questo approccio, tipico della pratica e concreta mentalità cinese, ci sembra strano ad un primo sguardo, si tratta in realtà di una pratica non molto distante dal nostro atteggiamento verso i cari estinti: compriamo una bella lapide, raccomandiamo a Dio la loro anima, in modo da ottenere la loro benevolenza; in cambio, li preghiamo per avere intercessioni, protezione e favori.
Il culto degli antenati è pressoché universale, e la versione cinese delle qian zhi non fa che rendere evidente il meccanismo che lo sottende.
L’appartenenza alla società è di norma sancita dallo scambio (economico, di lavoro, di sostegno e di aiuto) fra i membri della società stessa: la barriera della morte, che in teoria dovrebbe interrompere questo commercio, non è affatto insormontabile, perché in tutte le culture lo scambio fra vivi e morti non viene mai meno, diventa semplicemente simbolico.

La peculiarità non sta quindi nel tentativo di regalare qualcosa ai morti, poiché è proprio questo il nocciolo del culto dei defunti, in ogni epoca e latitudine: vogliamo continuare a proteggere i nostri cari, e a dimostrare attraverso il dono sacrificale quanto forte sia ancora l’affetto che ci lega a loro. Il vero aspetto singolare di questa tradizione sta nella somiglianza quasi comica dell’Aldilà cinese con il nostro mondo.


Con il passare del tempo e con l’evolversi della tecnologia, ormai anche all’Inferno le semplici mazzette non bastano più. Forse i diavoli sono diventati più esigenti, o forse nell’Aldilà – dove comunque è indispensabile darsi un tono – le stesse anime dei defunti si fanno influenzare dalle mode consumistiche; fatto sta che nei negozi, accanto alle banconote, sono oggi esposte delle raffigurazioni cartacee di bottiglie di champagne (conquistare la simpatia del carceriere con un goccetto funziona sempre), prodotti di bellezza, completi in gessato, ciabatte contraffatte di Louis Vuitton con cui pavoneggiarsi, carte di credito, addirittura ville in miniatura, macchine di lusso, televisori al plasma, laptop, cellulari, iPhone e iPad taroccati con tanto di custodia. Tutto in carta, pronto da bruciare, in vendita per pochi euro.

Un oltretomba fin troppo familiare, che rispecchia vizi e problemi per i quali nemmeno la morte sembra essere un rimedio sicuro: non c’è da stupirsi quindi che, fra i vari gadget che si possono inviare nell’oltretomba, vi siano anche le repliche delle scatole di Viagra.

La maggior parte delle informazioni sono tratte dall’illuminante e consigliatissimo Tre uomini fanno una tigre. Viaggio nella cultura e nella lingua cinese (2014) di Nazzarena Fazzari.

The Tiger Lillies

Band di culto formata a Londra nel 1989, i Tiger Lillies sono tra i più originali e sconcertanti gruppi musicali in circolazione. Il loro stile unico è un misto di cabaret gitano, di rimandi brechtiani e di black humor, il tutto condito dall’uso di strumenti talvolta inusuali e da arrangiamenti rétro.

I loro testi, spesso controversi, esplorano l’universo oscuro dei depravati e dei perdenti, raccontando sordide storie di violenza, morte, sesso e blasfemia. Il loro mondo è una sorta di bassofondo crepuscolare e post-apocalittico in cui prostitute, freaks, ubriachi e assassini incontrano sorti orribili. Ma l’incredibile espressività facciale del cantante Martyn Jacques, il suo look da clown “andato a male” e la sua voce in falsetto (sgradevole, inquietante, eppure magnetica) contribuiscono a stemperare i toni delle liriche, calandole in una dimensione teatrale e surreale.

Così quando i Tiger Lillies ci cantano le loro fiabe macabre piene di bambini che sanguinano a morte, prostitute ubriache dalla pelle di serpente, accoppiamenti con animali e altre simili atrocità, l’umorismo nerissimo riesce comunque a distanziarci e a lasciarci turbati, sì, ma anche ghignanti.

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Sito ufficiale.

Culti del cargo

I culti del cargo sono movimenti religiosi sviluppatisi in Melanesia e osservati dalla comunità scientifica fin dalla fine del XIX secolo. I “cargo” sono i carichi di beni spediti per via aerea: i membri di un culto del cargo credono che questi beni occidentali provenienti dall’industria siano stati creati in realtà dagli spiriti degli antenati e fossero destinati alle popolazioni melanesiane. I bianchi, al contrario, avrebbero slealmente preso controllo di questi oggetti mediante precisi rituali magici. I culti del cargo quindi sono indirizzati a purificare le comunità indigene, secondo modalità bizzarre e alquanto originali.

Il processo logico alla base di un culto del cargo è il seguente: abbiamo visto i bianchi fare certe cose, e dal cielo sono arrivati i cargo. Gli spiriti degli antenati devono essere stati ingannati dagli uomini bianchi, perché quelle provviste scese dal cielo erano sicuramente destinate a noi. Noi non sappiamo quale segreta magia abbiano usato i bianchi per far arrivare i cargo, ma se facciamo esattamente quello che hanno fatto loro, riguadagneremo il favore degli spiriti, nuovi cargo arriveranno, e questa volta saranno nostri.

Così i membri creano finte piste di atterraggio, assemblano false radio fatte di noci di cocco e paglia, nella speranza che siano quelli i “rituali” giusti per attrarre aerei da trasporto pieni di cargo. I credenti inoltre inscenano finte trivellazioni e marce, dotandosi di martelli pneumatici e fucili costruiti con del legname, usando finte insegne militari e dipingendosi il corpo con la scritta “USA”, per camuffarsi da soldati. Eseguono ritualmente il saluto militare, innalzano bandiere americane, marciano come hanno visto fare ai bianchi.

Sull’isola di Tanna i credenti adorano la mitica figura di John Frum, un soldato dell’esercito americano della Seconda Guerra Mondiale. Questo soldato aveva promesso case, vestiti, trasporti e cibo agli abitanti di Tanna. Ancora oggi il culto è vivo: John Frum porterà ricchezza e serenità a chiunque lo segua. I membri di questo culto del cargo sono convinti che John Frum ritornerà tra di loro il 15 febbraio – ma di quale anno, non è dato sapere. Così annualmente in quella data viene osservato il John Frum Day, in cui si svolgono diversi rituali e parate.

Va notato che nessun soldato con un nome simile risulta essere mai stato iscritto nei ranghi dell’esercito americano. E’ possibile che “John Frum” sia una corruzione dell’espressione “John from America”. Alla fine degli anni ’50, il leader del movimento religioso istituì una sorta di armata (non-violenta e ritualistica) chiamata T-A-USA (Tanna Army USA) con il solo scopo di inscenare finte parate militari. Ogni anno il 15 febbraio l’armata USA di Tanna esegue queste marce, con i corpi dipinti in colori rituali, e indossando delle T-shirt bianche con l’acronimo del plotone: tutto questo nella speranza che il benevolo John Frum li riconosca come suoi protetti, e scenda dal cielo con il suo aeroplano carico di inestimabili doni.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfSC6RDyVA0]