hellenism baby

Transporting a whole ass body back then was expensive and so most ppl would only bring a femur or a skull, Hence the big ass hut looking thing behind the crest pictured above. That's nothing but femur on top of femur on top of femur with some skulls added in for spice. And they have 4 FOUR of those suckers iirc.

here's a look inside of one

The Chapel wasn't built until over 100 years later and the bones exhumed at the time of construction and stored inside because.... well what else were they gonna do with them. It was only about 150 years ago that the piles of bones got fancy tho. the family whose crest is depicted above paid some woodcarver to make the sculptures and bone mounds because rich Czech ppl in the 19th century were gothic af.

when I was there in 2016 they were in the process of trying to fix the Chapel, because the foundation was sinking or something idr, point was there was an issue with the foundation. This was problematic because the bone huts and really all the other bone sculptures were so fragile that if they tried to move them they would have crumbled completely. Also even tho there were tons of bones inside the ossuary there were still and incredible amount of bones still buried in the graveyard outside.

Any and all construction was very slow going. Cause as you can see

you couldn't go a meter

without hitting a bone.

I believe they closed for a while the following year and are back open again, but I don't want to think about what they had to do to make sure the bones didn't just turn to dust during construction.

But yeah,one of the wildest places I've ever been. Now I just need to visit the Czech hell hole and I will have seen everything I want to see while living here.

That beautiful cathedral in which Maria and Captain von Trapp get married in The Sound of Music?

That’s the Mondsee cathedral in Salzburg. It’s truly magnificent. And, because Catholics have ABSOLUTELY NO CHILL regarding the Communion of Saints, it’s chock full of bejeweled skeletons.

This is Abbot Konrad II:

He lives (haha) right behind the altar and they had to put a statue in front when shooting the wedding scene because...well...bedazzled crown-wearing skulls grinning at you weren’t quite the vibe they were going for.

In fact the ENTIRE ALTAR is a giant reliquary and in addition to Konrad, there are 4 other skeletons (the “catacomb saints”) reclining on little red cushions in glass cases just beneath his perch.

Yeah. That’s the highest human ideal that we Catholics aspire to: living such a radically holy life (or dying a martyr like Konrad did in 1145) that you end up with your skeleton covered in gold and jewels and venerated by people for centuries.

Major Historical Events During the Saturn/Pluto/Jupiter Conjunction

“the gods are everywhere.”

that’s what grandma would always tell me, but at some point, i stopped caring.

Imagine being a black, gay drag queen in the 1800s after being born into enslavement AND having the style and cachè to throw soirées that the girls had to come to! That’s why I don’t want to hear this “we’re not our ancestors stuff.” You’re right!

From The Very Black Project Page- William Dorsey Swann was a gay liberation activist. Born into slavery in 1858, he was the first person in the United States to lead a queer resistance group and the first known person to self-identify as a “queen of drag”. Imagine the queenery of this icon.

He was a slave in Hancock, Maryland and was freed by Union soldiers after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. During the 1880s and 1890s, he organized a series of balls in Washington, D.C. He called himself the “queen of drag”. Most of the attendees his gatherings were men who were former slaves, and were gathering to dance in their satin and silk dresses. William was arrested in police raids numerous times,including in the first documented case of arrests for female impersonation in the United States, on April 12, 1888. In 1896, he was falsely convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail for “keeping a disorderly house” (running a brothel). After his sentencing, he requested a pardon from President Grover Cleveland. This request was denied, but but he was the first American on record who pursued legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community’s right to gather.

He was known to have been close with Pierce Lafayette and Felix Hall, two men who had also both been slaves and who formed the first known male same-sex relationship between enslaved Americans.

When William stopped organizing and participating in drag events, his brother continued to make costumes for the drag community. Two of his brothers had also been active participants in his drag balls.

Imagine how intelligent and ambitious this man had to be to come up with drag balls in the 1800s! Imagine how many terrible concepts he had to unlearn by himself to be a confident gay black man who does drag in the 1800s! Imagine how courageous he had to be to fight for lgbt people as a former slave in America in the 1800s!