M.J. Rose

M. J.’s  novel THE MEMORIST centers around the hunt for an ancient flute made out of bone that looked just like these and were just about as old…

9,000 year-old-flutes found in China

(www.ancient-origins.net)

“Researchers in China have discovered six complete ancient flutes made of bone belonging to the Neolithic period carbon dated to about 9,000 years old. Fragments of many more flutes were found in the same area too. The flutes are complete playable flutes made of the bones of the red-crowned crane with five to eight holes. The area that they were discovered is Jiahu of the mid-Henan Province.

What is interesting is that the music played through the seven holes correspond to a tonal scale extremely similar to the eight note scale used today. Although this sounds like a minor detail it is a very important discovery that is also quite amazing. The seven musical notes that we use today and the tone scale used have harmony that is distinct and is based on complex acoustic properties. Is it coincidence that whoever made those 9,000 years old flutes and generally people from all over the world (Africa, Asia, and Europe) were able to come up with scales reflecting all these acoustic properties just by simple chance?…”

See more here.

Wow! This is huge news…

Hitler Shows Off
German art – purged of modernism, impressionism and cubism – is shown off by Adolf Hitler and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (far left) in Berlin in 1939. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Modernist art haul, ‘looted by Nazis’, recovered by German police

About 1500 works, including pieces by Chagall, Klee, Matisse and Picasso, had been considered lost until raid in Schwabing

by Philip Oltermann in Berlin, The Guardian

“About 1,500 modernist masterpieces – thought to have been looted by the Nazis – have been confiscated from the flat of an 80-year-old man from Munich, in what is being described as the biggest artistic find of the postwar era.

The artworks, which could be worth as much as €1bn (£860m), are said to include pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann and Emil Nolde. They had been considered lost until now, according to a report in the German news weekly Focus.

The works, which would originally have been confiscated as “degenerate art” by the Nazis or taken from Jewish collectors in the 1930s and 1940s, had made their way into the hands of a German art collector, Hildebrand Gurlitt. When Gurlitt died, the artworks were passed down to his son, Cornelius – all without the knowledge of the authorities…”

For the complete piece click here.

Old Icelandic sorcery & witchcraft appears to have some very interesting magical customs. In particular, the concept of Necropants…

The Horrifying Necropants Of Iceland

By JacobSloan

“The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft houses the only known intact pair of necropants, a beyond-disturbing item popularly used for purposes of traditional magic in seventeenth century Iceland. To make your own (and thus reap good fortune), strike a deal with a friend than whoever dies first will allow the other wear the lower half of their corpse as a pair of pants, day and night:

If you want to make your own necropants (literally; nábrók) you have to get permission from a living man to use his skin after his death.

After he has been buried you must dig up his body and flay the skin of the corpse in one piece from the waist down. As soon as you step into the pants they will stick to your own skin.

A coin must be stolen from a poor widow and placed in the scrotum along with the magical sign, nábrókarstafur, written on a piece of paper. Consequently the coin will draw money into the scrotum so it will never be empty, as long as the original coin is not removed…”

For the rest, click here to go to Disinformation.

…And if you’re truly curious about the sorcery behind such a thing, click here for the “stave” for Necropants on the website for the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft.