EliorArts

Kathee Muzin on the first time she fell in love with a woman, from The Montreal Gazette, 1991

Poetry published in Come Out, 1972

Portraits by Joseph Christian Leyendecker

Yehuda Pen (1854 – 1937) - a Lithuanian Jewish painter and major figure of the Jewish Renaissance in Russian and Belarusian art at the beginning of 20th century.

1. The Get - Divorce, 1907

2. Behind the newspaper, 1910

Okay, so, you know the blue and gold celestial aesthetic that was everywhere in the 90s and early 2000s? That maximalist Victorian gothic vibe meets 90's pop color?

Think if the Practical Magic house and Sabrina the Teenage Witch's bedroom had a baby.

That.

If it was a person it'd be this:

It's coming back into fashion at the moment, which is great news for me because I never got rid of any of my things 😂

• Day Suit.

Retailer: Stennessy's

Petticoat

1860-1865

United States

During the nineteenth century, women had an extensive array of underpinnings, which could include a chemise, drawers, corset, corset cover, camisole, skirt supports and petticoats. Although to the modest nineteenth-century woman, it would be scandalous for any of these items to be seen, some underclothes were made of sumptuous silks and beautifully decorated with embroidery, ribbons and lace. This petticoat features whimsical eyelet embroidery with birds, the form of which is inspired by folk embroidery, and fruit on the vine. A well-loved form of decoration on nineteenth century clothing, eyelet embroidery is a time-consuming process which involves cutting holes out of the fabric to form the desired motif, then meticulously stitching around the hole to complete the design.

here are my Ninth House prayer beads. i’m afraid i was short on knucklebones, so they are in fact actual beads. true Ninth rosaries are primarily knucklebones, but the medallion and charm are often carved or engraved from larger bones or sometimes metal. now, onto the structure of the beads and how to pray them:

so this is an explanatory diagram i made for the beads. praying the beads starts with the charm, which replaces the crucifix on a catholic rosary and represents the Tomb. it is most often a carving or depiction of the Tomb, but can also be a padlock without a keyhole, a length of heavy chain, an unassuming rock, or something even more abstract. the prayer associated with this bead is the canonical intercession— “i pray the tomb is shut forever. i pray the rock is never rolled away,” etc.

from there, we move to the house announcements and the tomb sealing prayer. these replace the glory be and the our father on a rosary and are represented by the large beads and the lengths of chain surrounding them. the large beads, by the way, i have decided to call “fingers” (they are nameless on an og rosary), and while they are usually just knuckle bones set apart by lengths of chain, they will sometimes be molars or occasionally infant vertebrae. the house announcements are pulled from the poem at the start of HtN that gives four lines to the First and one to each subsequent house. with every large bead, you say a new section of the poem (for example, the sixth house announcement is “six for the truth over solace in lies”). the Nine Houses replaces the mysteries as the subjects of meditation during one’s prayers. the tomb sealing prayer is one i wrote, though i haven’t properly named it. it goes as follows: “O King of Nine Renewals, you who conquered death and sealed it away, I thank you for this holy abjuration. Grant me the strength to be a worthy guardian of the Locked Tomb. I seek your blessing and your guidance, that I may keep at bay the forces of death and be a preserver and beneficiary of your unending life.”

after that, we’ve got the decade beads, which i’ve renamed “gestures” as they no longer appear in groups of ten. there are eight in the first house segment of the rosary, one for each Lyctor, and five in each remaining group. the prayer associated with them replaces the hail mary on catholic beads and goes as such: “Hail to the King Undying, and blessings upon the Tomb. Today and always, I serve them. I will aspire to boundless thanksgiving, as I have been shown the boundless kindness of the Necrolord Prime.”

Tefillin bag, Romania, circa 1915, beads and velvet