|
Post by merlin on Jan 20, 2018 20:59:38 GMT
Did Kenneth Grant ever elaborate on the "Desmodus" drawing that appears on the cover, and as a plate, in Outer Gateways?
|
|
|
Post by Michael Staley on Jan 21, 2018 19:37:33 GMT
Did Kenneth Grant ever elaborate on the "Desmodus" drawing that appears on the cover, and as a plate, in Outer Gateways? No, he didn't. However, he was an honorary member of Zivorad Mihajlovic Slavinski's group, and took the name 'Desmodus' for that. The drawing is not dated, alas, but I would say that it comes from the late 1940s or early 1950s. In a portfolio for many years, it was framed a couple of years ago for the most recent iMage exhibition organised by Robert Ansell.
|
|
|
Post by stephen on Jan 22, 2018 15:04:44 GMT
"Desmodus" is a remarkable and intriguing, and to a certain degree, a disturbing image.
Desmodus is the name of the genus of bats usually known as vampire bats. Given Kenneth Grant's considerable interest in Bela Lugosi and the Nosferatu, this probably should not come as any great surprise.
He gives the number of Desmodus as 489. The other correspondences of this number given in The Ninth Arch might throw some light on its meaning to him.
|
|
|
Post by merlin on Jan 23, 2018 18:47:02 GMT
I must confess that I find Desmodus (apart from being a remarkable drawing) a bit haunting, and that I was more than a bit scared by this image, when I first saw it, some 12 or so years ago. I still am, in some degree. I was unaware of the vampire connection. There is some resemblance, in my view, with the "grey aliens". What do you think?
|
|
|
Post by stephen on Jan 25, 2018 15:18:52 GMT
The shape of the head is very similar to that of Lam, with its narrow face and huge cranium. Its become an accepted norm to identify Lam with the Grey Aliens, or at least to identify him as their precursor, (I've done it myself in a review in KHABS, back in the late 1980s), but while the shape of the head is usually the same, the Greys are generally shown with very large eyes.
There is certainly a suggestion of the Vampire about the face of Desmodus with its sinister intelligence and its bat-like, winged appendages. But what to make of the tormented face above is another matter.
I've just pinned down the literal meaning of Desmodus, it is Latin for "two thirds way" - whether or not Kenneth Grant knew this we shall never know and how it relates to vampire bats remains another question.
|
|