The Corridor - Chiara Gaggiotti , 2021.

On the Origin of (Phallic) Tree Worship

Picture is text from EMPT which reads: “As I did so I struck against an elderly, deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I picked them up, I observed the title of one of them, The Origin of Tree Worship, and it struck me that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile, who, either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes.”

The Public Domain Review

*Cultus Arborum: A Descriptive Account of Phallic Tree Worship* (1890)

Offering hundreds of examples from religious history, this book was part of a larger Phallic Series of treatises by Hargrave Jennings.

Just casually looked up Victorian tree worship (as you do) and came across this…

“…A Descriptive Account of Phallic Tree Worship, published anonymously in 1890. The fourth entry in a ten-volume “Phallic Series” printed privately in limited number…”

Obscure volumes, indeed…

More than 1000 people have been killed in a horrific 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar and Thailand, and the devastation is enormous. To help survivors:

World Central Kitchen are en route to the affected areas.

MSF/Doctors Without Borders also have teams on the ground to aid the injured.

Candies - Matias Quetglas , 1975-76.

Spanish , b. 1946 -

Egg tempera on board , 46 x 53 cm.

The thing about every modern Sherlock Holmes story is that it doesn’t understand that “disdain for the existing criminal justice system” is not only a fundamental part of the themes of the ACD stories it’s vital to making the whole concept work.

Holmes, when we first meet him, is on the bleeding edge of forensics for the 1880s, and this continues on into the ‘90s (the planted thumbprint in ‘The Norwood Builder’! the Sherlock Holmes test for hemoglobin in A Study in Scarlet! the use of pigs as substitute cadavers in ‘Black Peter’!) and beyond. He’s flippant about and disrespectful toward the police because he knows how criminology is a science and forensics matter and the cold hard facts are significantly more important than intimidating witnesses to extract coerced confessions, or deciding on a theory and bending the facts to make them fit, or relying on racist stereotypes to explain how people act and who’s most guilty (all things that really happen in the canon, btw). He’s smarter than everyone else because he’s doing things no one else understands yet, he’s made a study of crime and he understands how and why policing is a flawed institution.

This is why he’s not a cop, only occasionally allied with cops, and so often complaining or explaining that a moral injustice and a legal one are two different things. There are multiple antagonists (Sir George in ‘The Beryl Coronet’, Charles Augustus Milverton, Dr. Roylott, the parents in ‘A Case of Identity’) who he can’t catch in the jaws of the law but wishes he could, and at least one criminal he overlooks because he knows prison would only force them deeper into crime.

But. But.

In the 21st century, forensics are not only the backbone of police investigation they’re common knowledge to any average police procedural enjoyer or true crime fan. Holmes’s once-cutting-edge chemistry and geology are passé and ordinary now. If he’s going to be smart, he’s got to be looking ahead.

And what does that look like? It looks like knowing about the flaws in forensic analysis, like knowing about fingerprints maybe not being totally unique, like arguing over DNA evidence being misinterpreted and innocent people being sentenced for crimes they didn’t commit, like calling for the defunding and dissembling of police forces, like siding with the underclasses every. single. time.

Holmes shouldn’t be working with the cops, he should be trying to destroy them, and fighting to prove why they’re obsolete with science and quick thinking and research. Not doing that is spitting in the face of his roots and missing the whole point of what he’s working for.

🛑Save my family from death🙏

me and my five-member family، who live in Nuseirat, Death surrounds us 😭😭 from everywhere, missiles, bombs, and Quads, and the occupation informed us of the immediate evacuation. Unfortunately, the transportation is very expensive, and I cannot pay enough money. My little girl Ten months you need food, milk, pampers and winter clothes to protect them from the cold, please donate $50 or more or any amount you can donate to save my family from death.

Thanks 🙏

This is very important

— Virginia Woolf

Holmes you aren't exactly beating the allegations™ here...

This monologue oh god

THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

2.06 The Final Problem

The Shore - Barry McGlashan , 2023.

British, b. 1974 -

Oil on paper over panel , 12 1/4 x 8 1/8 in.