The Southern Underbelly - Douglas Darden's Fascination with William Faulkner

 

Map of Yoknapatawpha, 1936, from Faulkner's Absolom! Absolom!

Somewhere, and for the life of me I cannot find the original source in my massive collection of Darden materials, Douglas Darden once said something to the effect of: I wish to be for architecture what Faulkner was for literature. Even if he never said anything remotely close to that, it feels like something that could be said about him: he was the William Faulkner of Architecture. Now, I am not specifically referring to Oxygen House, which is based largely on Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, but just the entire essence of Faulkner's writings resonate deeply with Darden's approach to architecture, namely, the Underbelly.

If you are not familiar with Faulkner's work, I highly recommend it. Life is too short to read bullshit, and Darden lived a very short life, thus I doubt he wasted his time reading bullshit, much less designing buildings around shitty literature. The classic works of Faulkner are more than sufficient to understanding why Darden admired him, as well as sought to emulate his approach to literature — or rather the approach to the subject of his literature — in his architectural designs. It might take a week to read The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Absolom! Absolom! to fully comprehend what Darden saw in Faulkner, but it will be a well-spent week.

Faulkner was the Underbelly of literature, and more particularly of the American South. When it comes to physical locations, we rarely use the term "underbelly" outside of cities — e.g. the seedy underbelly of Gotham, or New York's underbelly. We rarely, if ever speak of rural America as possessing any sort of underbelly. We think of rural life as charming, quiet, pious, hardworking, but also one of leisure and ease, where people take their time getting places, &c, all supposed core American values. Yet, films like Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks (television series and movie) by David Lynch illustrate the dark side of small towns. Or again, the recent surge in folk horror, such as the first season of True Detective, &c illustrate that we do in fact know that transgression and wickedness lies in the deep rural areas of this nation. We know incest is an issue on isolated homesteads. We know alcohol, drug abuse, and domestic violence is a massive problem in rural areas. We know the ideal of a quiet life on a farm is as much a wishful fabrication as the country bumpkin moving to the big city in hopes of making it big.

This is what Faulkner explores: the underbelly of the American South post-Civil War, what many literary critics and scholars call American Gothic, and that is certainly a great way of describing Faulkner's work. Most of his novels I believe could be classified as anti-Gone with the Wind. If Gone with the Wind is a banned book — which I personally find weird given how much it tries to whitewash slavery and the reasons for the War itself — then a work like The Sound and the Fury ought to be burned.

It has probably been a while since many of us have actually read Faulkner, or perhaps we were never properly introduced to Faulkner. So we should probably briefly graze over some of Faulkner's writings, especially those that pertain to Darden, Oxygen House, and the Underbelly. I believe the most influential Faulkner novels were As I Lay Dying (of course), The Hamlet, and The Sound and the Fury. I believe some other novels were influential in some ways, maybe to just personal development, but seem to have less direct impact on his work, or at least little to no direct manifestation in his work. Absolom! Absolom!, which might be in my opinion one of the few examples of what I would consider a perfect novel, likely had influence, especially given that the plan of Oxygen House is based on the map of Yoknapatawpha County as found in Absolom! Absolom! However, this really deserves its own separate post.

Let us start with As I Lay Dying, since that might be the work of Faulkner's that impacted Darden's work the most. The Bundren family appears to be a typical, small, simple family in rural Mississippi, yet they are quite dysfunctional and in many ways they are terrible people. The novel begins with Addie dying and then shortly thereafter she dies. While she was dying, her son Cash was building her coffin. She requested to be buried, not on the homestead, but in Jefferson where Addie is from. She wants to be buried with her family, not with her family, if you understand the nuance of what she believed was her family — the one she was born into, not the one she made and raised. Addie in many ways is a terrible woman. She is an adulterer, having had an affair with the local pastor, Whitfield. The pastor himself gets a narration, and in it explains away his own sin, that he is not guilty, but that Addie is still a sinner... in other words, he's a horrible Christian. One of Addie's children, Jewel, is the illegitimate child of Pastor Whitfield, and is Addie's most beloved child. Addie seems to hate, truly hate and despise most of her other children, except for perhaps Cash.

Anse Bundren, the patriarch, is not a great fella either. Their only daughter, Dewey Dell, was impregnated by Lafe, a nearby farmer; likely an older man, and Dewey Dell is about sixteen or seventeen years of age, so this was definitely an illicit affair. Lafe gives her $10 to get an abortion, which is why Dewey Dell agrees to go to Jefferson, as she could not get an abortion at the local pharmacy. However, when Anse finds out about the $10, he steals it, buys himself a set of dentures and gets himself a new young wife. Anse also takes Jewel's beloved horse and sells it. Jewel believes his family is dishonest and dysfunction and seeks to run away, especially since he no longer has his mother's love.

I mean, As I Lay Dying is a messed up story about a messed up family. This is not the quaint, charming country life we imagine. Far from it. And certainly if you have only ever heard of Faulkner, but never bothered to read him, you would not expect such a messed up family to exist. This is the foundation of Oxygen House. This really dysfunctional family and disgusting tale of familial betrayal and dishonor is the central piece to Oxygen House. It is so central that Darden repeatedly quotes portions of the first chapter of the novel in the letter to the architect from Burnden Abraham as published in Condemned Building.

Abraham is the name of the client of Oxygen House. This name comes from The Hamlet, a work I have not read, though I should, but even a Spark Notes briefing is sufficient to illustrate that other inspirations for Oxygen House are of a subversive and even criminal quality. The novel was originally an unfinished work called Father Abraham, though Faulkner would later use pieces of it to form The Hamlet. The novel takes place in Frenchman's Bend, the same site of Oxygen House. Frenchman's Bend was known for a haven of outlaws, lawlessness, and people of lesser socio-economic background. One of the main characters, Ab Snopes — presumably short for Abraham — it is learned, via gossip, to have been a barnburner. The Snopes family goes from being outcasts and disliked to being regarded as dangerous villains throughout the course of the novel. Thus, even the client of Oxygen House is based on a very unsavory scoundrel and the site of Oxygen House based on a den of lawlessness. Perfect Underbelly sort of stuff right there. As mentioned earlier, though cities tend to have underbellies, Frenchman's Bend is an underbelly unto itself.

The Sound and the Fury is not, per se, a direct inspiration on Darden, yet the novel has a few characteristics that resonate with Darden, namely overturning, upheaving, exposing the underbelly. The novel focuses on the Compson family, who were once a Southern aristocratic family in Antebellum Mississippi. Following the Civil War, they have lost everything. They live in a decaying homestead, a life of poverty, and trying desperately to hold on to the last vestiges of decency they once enjoyed. That which was once beautiful and stood proud is now overturned and downtrodden. There is transgression, or at least very questionable things. For one, the son Quentin has an unhealthy relationship with his sister Caddy. He believes he is being chivalrous in protecting her virginity, but when she gets impregnated by another boy, Quentin tries to protect her honor by telling his father that they had incestuous relations. He later commits suicide over the state of total disgrace his sister falls into. Caddy names the child after Quentin, though it is a girl, and they are kept out of sight in disgrace. Their brother Jason is a particular heinous individual, stealing Caddy's support money for the child; their mother Caroline is a hypochondriac... one of the children, Benjy, is mentally ill and attacks a little girl, so Jason has him castrated. (These are all greatly oversimplified for a very nuanced and complex book, but we're not examining the book, we are examining the Underbelly of the book). The entire narrative of The Sound and the Fury illustrates generations of decay within a noble Southern family, which in many ways is symbolic of generations of decay in the South itself. The old world has fallen and given birth to new and terrible things. It breeds generation after generation of rot and dilapidation.

Darden actually comments something to this effect concerning the film Blade Runner in the 1992 interview with Rob Miller, Looking After the Underbelly. He says: "the opening scene, once you pan through the industrial landscape that has been raised to a power of ten; it is the industrial landscape that has bred the industrial landscape so many generations that the thing is consummated as fire. It is the Promethean landscape. Prometheus, it is important to recognize, Prometheus is a god that carries with him the fundament anxiety that we have about change, which is that we are afraid of it."

This notion of an inbred industrial landscape is one of interest to Darden, as I have found references to the industrial landscape in course descriptions of classes he taught, though I am uncertain the full extent of the classes themselves. That said, when Darden looks at the industrial landscape, he sees the same degradation as Faulkner sees in the Post-War South: inbred degradation, a violation, a violence. The Underbelly here is not the incest taboo, which is a societal construct of the forbidden, but incest as a violation of the family unit.

And for Darden, the industrial landscape is this same Underbelly, this same violation of the urban fabric, the built environment, and the natural landscape. The industrial landscape is violence, violated, and degraded. And Oxygen House is this same violation. It is an industrial building. It looks like a silo, the very same silo in the image below.

 

Silo, outside of New Orleans, Louisiana, photo by Douglas Darden, c. 1986, form project files

taken on the edge of Liberty State Park, New Jersey

Oxygen House is the exemplification of the inbred industrial landscape imposed onto rural Mississippi in a fictional place that was a lawless outpost, to house a man based on a scoundrel who is condemned to die there.

Darden emulated Faulkner by exploring the overturning of family, overturning place, overturning morality, overturning norms, overturning habitation, overturning built environment... Both men are exploring the underside of what we don't like to look at. When we think of the American South, we like to think of Gone with the Wind or Song of the South, &c, but Faulkner knows this is not real. He knows these are fictions, so his fiction is to overturn that pretty picture of quaint Southern life before the North came in and ruined it all, to flip over that stone and see the bugs wiggling underneath, expose it for what it is. Darden is doing the same thing with architecture, yet inspired by literature. Darden is looking under the pretty façade of Southern plantations to see the rot within the walls and mildew in the closets and the corpses buried in the cellar.

The pretty veneer of architecture is that "a house is for living," but for Darden, this is to be overturned to see the "house for dying."

There truly is no other author more informative on Darden, or more worthwhile to read than William Faulkner when exploring Darden. To read and sit with Faulkner is like being given one giant key to understand Darden's concept of the Underbelly. Faulkner's work is Underbelly.

Douglas Darden and Transgenderism

 

Douglas Darden, Self-Portrait Frontispiece of Condemned Building

One of the most infamous images of Douglas Darden is his self-portrait at the front of his book Condemned Building, on which I have previous written upon — actually this was the first piece on which I ever wrote on Darden so many years ago. This image is so central to the rest of the book that it is the very first image we see. It depicts Darden wearing a nun's habit and lifting it up to reveal a very large, spherical set of tits, based on a drawing by Jean-Jacques LeQueu.

Darden's fascination with gender and transgenderism is not political. He was exploring gender before transgenderism became heavily politicized in recent years of social and civic unrest. His fascination with transgenderism appears to come from LeQueu, in particular Philippe Duboy's LeQueu: An Architectural Enigma. In this tome, Duboy explores several drawings executed by LeQueu which explore transgenderism, namely gender swapping, transvestitism, hermaphroditism, &c. Obviously LeQueu is exploring genderism long before it was even remotely a political issue. LeQueu's explorations of gender was likely an extension of his studies on character, namely the physical expression of certain parts of the body yield certain qualities in personality and preferences, e.g. phrenology. LeQueu does an extensive set of drawings that geometrical map the physical manifestations of the human body to create an "ideal" human, and deviations from that "ideal" give insight into deviations in the personality. So when he draws himself with a huge rack, he is exploring his own personality but with huge tits.

Jean-Jacques LeQueu with tits

Ultimately LeQueu is not doing anything political, but rather social transgressions, like the divine Marquis de Sade. LeQueu is transgressing when he draws himself with huge tits or wearing a dress; LeQueu is transgressing by drawing pornography. Duboy believes Marcel Duchamp is making an homage to LeQueu, or at least it is easier to understand LeQueu's pornography and transgenderism through the lens of Duchamp, namely in the alter ego Rrose Selavy.

Darden, of course, was familiar with Duboy's book, and clearly is making an homage to LeQueu and Duchamp by drawing himself with huge tits.

But this is not a mere matter of transgenderism and the exploration thereof. It is an exploration in identity and social values. Darden was obviously fascinated by the obscene and transgressive, but he was also an artist. So in looking at Darden's explorations of transgenderism, we must ask some questions.

Firstly, is this pornography? Is this erotic-artistic or is it created for sexual arousal or a sick joke? The first has artistic merit, while the latter two we might define as pornography. To quote Justice Stewart in Jacobellis vs. Ohio concerning obscenity: "I  shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of materials I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."

Obviously Darden is being an artist. Yet, if we take Facebook's algorithm for censorship as any indication, you can see nipples. It is a nip slip. When LeQueu drew his Et Nous Aussi Nous Serons Meres, Car........! he was being obscene; he was also being blasphemous. He is illustrating a nun lifting her habit and revealing, not just tits, but nipples as well. Today we might see this as art, but in the 18th century, LeQueu knew he was creating pornography. Of course, LeQueu is doing this two centuries ago. Our perceptions of pornography and smut changes over time. I believe it was Bataille who argued that the more pornography we make, the less filthy the world is: that is, to increase transgression, we need less porn. In economic terms, albeit not in terms of the Accursed Share, transgression is the value system, and the more scarce the pornography the more valuable/transgressive pornography will be.

If we see big titted skinny bitches in bikinis on billboards making out with half-clad buff dudes, if we see camel-toes and crotch-taco lines on every woman advertised, if we can see the impressions of the mushroom cap of a male sock through Calvin Klein underwear on television... these things make pornography less transgressive. We have become desensitized to these things. The transgression is much less valuable than in LeQueu's day. Thus, while LeQueu was making porn, Darden is making art. The perception of transgression has diminished since LeQueu. Yet, still, Darden is making an homage to porn.

Next, is this a positive representation of transgenderism? Consider for a moment the books and films of Cliver Barker's Hellraiser franchise, which might be one of the greatest queer and kink films and books. However, this is not a positive representation of the queer and kink community, so it is usually not celebrated and sometimes totally ignored. Bernard Tschumi recognizes that architectural theorists are prudes and their discourse is exceedingly tame, and sought to discuss transgression in architecture ("Architecture and Transgression," Architecture and Disjunction). Bataille influenced both Hellraiser and Tschumi. So what is the purpose of transgression in architecture if we are not going to actually transgression or give true expression to sin and horror? Even Tschumi's paper is relatively tame. Some of his Advertisements for Architecture are raw and fucked up, like this one below, but most are still not that transgressive — e.g. the advertisement that suggests that Le Corbusier's Villa Savoy was more Architecture (with a Capital A) when it was abandoned and dilapidated.

Advertisement for Architecture, Bernard Tschumi

Ultimately we have a conflict of perceptions. In recognizing Darden's expressions of transgenderism, we might perceive him as positively representing and expressing transgenderism, or giving artistic expression to gender non-conformity. Yet, at the same time, we have to recognize that Darden is also exploring transgression and depravity. We are in that strange and uncertain area of life and expression that Darden called "the Underbelly."

The Underbelly: that which is underneath, under the clothes, beneath, &c. Everything Darden is exploring in Condemned Building is an exploration of the Underbelly. It is the unconventional, the obscene, the dark, the unexpected, the taboo, the horror. So in a way, Darden has flipped over pornography and found artistic expression within it. Not like what Justice Stewart said, but that it is pornography and it is art. It is obscene and it has cultural merit.

Ultimately, we can see this. We can look at his self-portrait, we can look at Sex Shop, and acknowledge that they are transgressive and artistic, but also an expression of transgenderism (in a political way).

I think the following commentary from Darden in Rob Miller's 1992 interview with Darden, Looking After the Underbelly, best exemplifies his philosophies of transgenderism and gender as a spectrum:

"If I was to truly engage the aspect of the Underbelly through the notion of gender, I think it would probably not be so much a woman per se as to deal with the overlap, to deal with androgyny, its to deal with what is common and in being common it is idiosyncratic that cannot be fit so nicely into the categories of being male or a female. What is most threatening, in other words, for the Underbelly is not the diametric opposite, of saying if you're yin then do yang, or if you're male then be a female. What is truly part of the Underbelly is the threatening relationship we have to our way of thinking about things, that if it broke down would not be able to be only a male or a female, organic or inorganic... 

Although I am not a woman, I think [Gustave] Flaubert did something, achieved something that many men and women, human beings at large understood, which was to be a woman. And I started to do a project called Night School from the standpoint of being a woman. Because what I think is important is to be a human being, and as a man, I don't think its so easy to be a woman. And I don't mean to caricature a woman, I don't mean to dress like a woman, or something like that, I mean to be a woman. And I don't think, from just a hormonal standpoint, that is a domain that is, as a man, a different domain than what it means to be a man. From a hormonal standpoint, men have estrogen and progesterone. They don't have as much as women, proportionally, but they have it. And women have testosterone. They don't have as much testosterone as men, but they have it. So you see... the world isn't divide by men and women, it's just a continuity of a spectrum, of which, that probably at any given moment or any given day you might have more estrogen than another day, a woman might have more testosterone. Because the hormones don't work as quantities, fixed quantities within every person. They're sliding all the time. So if you take it from just the pure hormonal standpoint, we have some women in us as men and we have some men within us as women." (Transcribed by myself)

In other words, Darden views gender as a spectrum, like many queer, transgender, and gender non-conforming individuals believe today. He uses hormone balances as one piece of evidence. Today transgender advocates point to expressions of the chromosomes themselves, or use examples like the multitude of genders in mushrooms, &c. Regardless, Darden probably had a positive and fair perception of transgenderism and expressions of gender long before it became political hot button.

And let us remember that he double majored in literature and psychology at CU Boulder in undergrad. He had a psychology background and probably understood gender on other levels as well, not just a hormonal or physical aspect, but also mental, neurological, and abstract identity expressions.

[Edit: it occurs to me now, later, that there is another example of transgenderism in Darden's work... well, unfinished work: Laughing Girls. Darden writes in his drawings that Poly is Polyxena and Cass is Cassandra, and Helen is simply Helen of Troy. However, the relation of Cass and Poly as twins in Laughing Girls with a girl named Helen leads me to believe that they are feminizations of Castor and Pollux, the celestial twins (Gemini, Dioscuri) and brothers of Helen of Troy. I believe Darden is covering his tracks, misdirecting — what Duchamp called Archaeology of Knowledge. I think Darden is gender-swapping Castor and Pollux, and this is reinforced with their association with the Dardanelles.]

I suppose one question to ask would be: was Douglas Darden transgender? No, I don't think so. I think he was really fucking weird and I wish I was born two decades earlier so I could study under him, but I don't think he was transgender.

[Edit: I was recently revisiting the essay by Chapman and Ostwald in which they explore the concept of Darden needing a female body: "It implies a dissatisfaction with his own diseased body and a philosophical yearning for a new one." They explore how it is the female nurse in Oxygen House that mediates life and death, disease and health for Burden Abraham and then link this to the self-portrait of Darden taking on a female body. Something worth exploring more.]

I think he was a master storyteller, a master narrator. I think he was perfectly capable of getting into someone else's head or working under the guise of someone else. Like an actor getting into their role through immersion, effectively always being that character, this is what I think Darden was doing when he says he designed Night School as a woman. He didn't start wearing dressing or adopting feminine mannerism, but rather endeavored to think and calculate like a woman while designing. I imagine he did these sort of mental exercises a lot. Oxygen House must have been designed from the standpoint of knowing that you are dying, and he was dying; he just didn't know it yet. I can only imagine what other projects were designed as.

I believe Darden accepted a part of himself that was feminine, in a Jungian way, but perhaps also in a hormonal way, and chose to express it in Condemned Building. I think he admired Duchamp and LeQueu in a way that compelled himself to emulate them in his art. I think there was no limit to the kind of personalities and characters Darden could be, and I think therefore that the interpretations of his conceptions and expressions of transgenderism are limitless.

Douglas Darden's Sex Shop - Sadism, Depravity, Fucking

 

Douglas Darden, Sex Shop

There is something inherent twisted and disturbing about Sex Shop that always seems to be glossed over — it is sadistic and depraved. I believe it was Georges Bataille who said something along the lines of "If you clean up Sade, you have removed Sade." It was indispensable that the writings of the Marquis be kept dirty and fucked up. I once heard it said, though I forget where, that to appropriate the Marquis into any moral agenda will fail and anyone who tries can go fuck themselves. It is necessary to keep things dirty and filthy. For Bataille, this was a form of sacredness. And in a way, the taboo, sexual, degenerated, is usually separated, kept a part, and that is in part a definition of the sacred.

Consider this in the kink community. While they are open about their kinks and fetishes, it is still kept separate from public. They do not publicize their fetishes on network television, nor do swingers parties and orgies occur during the Super Bowl Halftime Show. These things and so much more is kept separate from the general public, thus maintaining to some degree a merit of sacredness. Bataille certainly felt that the more pornography and transgression is made public, the less sacred it becomes. Hence why de Sade must remain dirty.

I think this is in many ways exemplified in a precedent of Sex Shop: C. N. Ledoux's Oikema or "House of Pleasures," or more plainly, a whore house. The plan is pretty much a set of cock and balls, while the elevations appear more like a temple. Not only is the Oikema part of the ideal city according to Ledoux, but it is its own temple, a sacred edifice set apart from everything else for the purpose of fucking and sucking.

Claude Nicholas Ledoux, Oikema

Thus, let us be perfectly clear, I think it time to start discussing the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille, William S. Burroughs... and ultimately Sex Shop in the same way they present themselves: depraved, transgressive, explicit, degenerate. All commentary and writings on Sex Shop are so... sooooo... tame. They're academic and proper. It exemplifies par excellence that transgression and taboo is okay to talk about, but don't you ever do it. Or as Foucault puts it: we liberate sexuality from the bedrooms, from behind closed doors, and enslave them into discourse (History of Sexuality, Vol. 1). Sexuality is still not free. Even with the end of obscenity laws in the US, we can freely read Burrough's disgusting and filthy work of Naked Lunch or Nin's Delta of Venus, but don't ever do any of that.

Again, obscenities are fine, just not in our language. The writings of the Marquis were found in French in England, Germany, Spain, and even America, but nowhere to be found in France. Yet German translations were found in France but not in Germany, and English translations were found in France but not England or America. This exemplifies that obscenities are okay, just not in our language. Another example, in The Testament of Solomon, the demon Pterodrakon says that he "coitum habens per nates," or literally "I have anal sex with her" or "I fuck her in the ass." In the Conybeare translation of the Testament (Jewish Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 1, Oct. 1898) this passage is translated from Greek into Latin, while the rest of the Greek is translated into English. This further illustrates that obscenities and filth are okay to publish, just not in our language.

Thus, one will note that I will not be dancing around terms here. I think in discussing sex shop we ought to be explicit. We need to say fuck and tits and cunt and cock... We cannot be like Roland Barthes discussing de Sade's writings in proper and polite philosophical language. One need only look at Schneider and Barbara Ambach's paper "Douglas Darden's Sex Shop: Digital Reconstructions of the Situation of Architecture's Dreams." I have studied under both these individuals at CU Denver, and I must say, it is a very tame and polite paper for such a depraved building design. I kind of expect Peter to dive more into the depravity, but Barbara I am a bit surprised she was involved in this at all.

While I wish to discuss Sex Shop in less academic terms and be more on par with the depravity of it, I also believe that Sex Shop is not as depraved as Darden wanted it to be or he thinks it is. It is known that he Darden had not done any work on Sex Shop when he published Condemned Building, except for a brief narrative of how the drawings were confiscated and a Dis/continuous Genealogy. In nearly the last year of his life, he set to do three drawings for Sex Shop, which as I have previously discussed is exceedingly abstract than all previous works.

Peter Schneider is more certain than I that Darden had worked out Sex Shop in his head between the publication of Condemned Building and 1995, thus the total lack of anything found in the project file except a photocopy of a fann(e)y coupler and the three yellow trace paper sketches and a model are, for Peter, an indication that he completed it in his mind and executed it suddenly one day. That was all. Whereas all his other projects had copious photocopies of images, articles, notes, sketches, letters, postcards, name it. I am not as convinced as Peter.

I personally think Darden just wanted to get it over with. I think by July and August of 1995, just one month before his CML blast crisis began, he must have felt terrible and knew he did not have long. I think he had long departed from his approach and drawing theory he developed for the projects of Condemned Building that he decided to implement his new ideas he was already exploring in Laughing Girls, hence why both projects are exceedingly abstract. He did not have time to build up a proper project, or do proper drawings, or even try to become the person he was five years prior while drawing Oxygen House. I think he just was getting his house in order and decided to finish Sex Shop. That is of course my opinion. I digress.

The language Darden uses on his Sex Shop drawings are probably more childish than degenerate. For instance, the Dis/continuous Genealogy is of a fann(e)y coupler for a train, a male and female glass blow-ers, a sex-tant, and a sketch of the Ins-tit-ute of Debauchery or "Theater of Lubricity" by the Marquis de Sade (as found in Anthony Vidler's The Writing of the Walls, which is the only source I have for this image). He emphasizes dirty words like tit and sex and fanny; he dates the drawings as the "Twenty-Sex of June." These and more are probably childish things he giggled at as he executed them, but really are not depraved.

Ultimately Sex Shop itself is not depraved and taboo; it is merely a stage for depravity to occur upon. 

Yet there is actual porn in the drawings of Sex Shop. He reuses a lot of images in the collage that makes up the Sex Shop sketches, in particular the female glass blow-er and nudes of Adam and Eve. Yet on the third sheet, the building section has an actual nude woman on all fours, looking back at us with desirous eyes, and getting fucked by a sex-tant-like machine. This image in particular is rather graphic, though it does not actually show any devices going into her cunt, but the curved device that rotates on a sex-tant implies movement, which is indeed aimed right at her cunt. Further, in this same building section there is a "Viewing Couch" on the stage, under a pair of spread disembodied legs, with a man reclining and appears to be jerking off. Further, on the first sheet in the sketch of the Theater of Lubricity, there are disembodied legs that are cut from what is presumed photos or porno mag images of an actual nude woman. Thus, Darden works actual pornography into his sketches and collages for Sex Shop.

In a way, Darden's process for designing Sex Shop is still kind of fucked up. The model, being little more than abstract grid of blue and red, is partly constructed with legs cut off a Barbie doll. Even the drawings-collages incorporate cut ups of nude human images. Darden includes notes like in the building section of "De Sade (pulled apart)." Vivisection, dissection, cutting up... disembodied legs and limbs, cut-up people... these are all violent and sadistic things to be doing to another person, though they are really an artistic process here.

Detail of legs, Sex Shop model

Let us not forget that Darden is following much of the violent principles he laid out for Condemned Building in the design and execution of Sex Shop. Darden is decapitating, overturning, cutting up, imprisoning (e.g. the "Inescapable Garden (Trapped)," &c. The very first image seen in Condemned Building is a self-portrait of Darden flashing a very hefty set of tits. He is still being obscene. He is obscene.

And let's not forget that many sources of inspiration for the projects in Condemned Building are controversial, even obscene individuals. Clinic For Sleep Disorders is inspired by Arthur Rimbaud's "Drunken Little Boat," and Darden makes sure everyone knows that he and Rimbaud share a birthday. Augustine of Hippo's Confessions is inspirational to Confessional, and Confessions can be explicit and illicit. Oxygen House embraces dying and living to "stay dead for a very long time" (As I Lay Dying). Saloon For Jesse James focuses on an American outlaw, a thief, murderer, and all around not a great guy. Temple Forgetful focuses on an artifact of fratricide (Romulus and Remus) as well as the destruction of all architecture. Melvilla focuses around Moby-Dick, a novel about an obsessed man, hellbent on destroying an animal at all cost, even his ship and crew. These are the sources of inspiration to Darden. These are not positive role models, yet Darden embraces them completely.

Apart from LeQueu and Ledoux, there are very few architects that have explored sexuality and perversion in architecture. There is also Alberto Perez-Gomez in his work Polyphilo, or, The Dark Forest Revisited: An Erotic Ephiphany of Architecture (1992) and probably Anthony Vidler in some of his early writings. But then again, as stated before, architecture nor architectural theory can be fully depraved; construction and creating is not an immoral act; rather it is the stage for depravity.

Consider Vidler's discussions on de Sade in Writing of the Walls, a work that was influential. In his analysis of Justine, about as architectural as anything gets is comparing the movement through the hall in which Justine witnesses an erotic initiation into a secret society to the movements through the subterranean temple in Abbe Terrason's Life of Sethos. This latter novel would be the source of inspiration for LeQueu's Gothic House as well as Mozart's Magic Flute. Thus, as we can gather from Vidler that, while transgression, fucking, sucking, butt fucking, incest, murder, &c occur within architecture, architecture is not itself obscene; it can only be a house encasing obscenity, a stage for depravity.

Thus, while Darden aims for vice and sin and debauchery, it is exceedingly difficult for him to truly execute transgression in the design of a building. Depravity becomes an inside joke for the architect, a symbolic system of illicit significations in the development of constructed signs: a stage for debauchery. Yet, I must admit, in examining any sort of sexual architecture, Darden might be the one who pulled it off the most. I don't think he succeeded, because architecture is too limiting of a medium to execute depravity, yet, I think Darden's Sex Shop is the best execution of depraved architecture.

Guides to the Rosicrucian Manifestos - Damcar

 

Map of the Arabian Peninsula, Giacomo Gastaldi, 1561

In the Fama Fraternitatis as well as the Confessio Fraternitatis there is a mysterious Arabic city called Damcar that Frater C.R. travels to. In the Vaughan translation (1652) the names Damascus (sometimes written "Damasco") and Damcar get confused, but this confusion appears to be due to the close proximity and similarity of the names of the two cities, and the reader ought to be able to sort out the intended city. Obviously this confusion is properly designated in the McIntosh translation (2016).

So what is this mysterious City of Damcar? Frater C.R. is reported in the Fama to have learned of this city while he was recovering from an illness in Damascus. He learns of it from some Turkish physicians, whom he has impressed with his own knowledge of medicine. It should be noted that the use of the terms "Turk" and "Arab" were more or less synonymous in the 16th and 17th centuries, though today they have different designations of the peoples who speak dialects of Turkish and Arabic. From reports, Frater C.R. learns that it is a city of wise men who study nature directly — a Paracelsian approach — and he wishes to learn from them. Thus, he pays them a handsome sum of money to get him to Damcar, arriving there at the age of sixteen. When he arrives they already know who he is and his name. He learns Arabic while there, furthers is knowledge in physics and mathematics, copies their Book M. and translates it into Latin. He would remain in Damcar for three years.

In the Confessio, the city is called Damar. This may bring us closer to actual name of the city, at least in pronunciation. While perusing the footnotes of the McIntosh translation of the Fama, no guesses are made as to what this city could be, but in the Confessio (note 3), Damar is said to be in Yemen. Likely this is the modern-day city of Dhamar in Yemen. Dhamar was indeed an important cultural center in the Islamicate world, notably in the 7th and 8th centuries.

The Confessio gives a similar description of the city as given in the Fama, namely as a city where wise men congregate, and the city became an inspiration to Father Christian. In Damar, the king permits the wise men to establish laws in addition to the king's. Father Christian decided this same legislative system should be implemented in Europe (Chapter 5, Reason 14).

If it is true that Damar is indeed Dhamar, Yemen, then where did the name Damcar come from?

Likely it is an older European name for the same city. Two 16th century maps illustrate this. In 1561 Giacomo Gastaldi publishes an illustrated map of the Arabian Peninsula in which the name Damcar is clearly seen in the approximate location of Dhamar. In 1570 Abraham Ortelius publishes his map of the Arabian Peninsula, more or less copying Gastaldi, in which he also shows the name Damcar in the approximate location of Dhamar. Thus, we have two maps that were less than fifty years old when the Fama was published. Gastaldi's map was likely not circulated widely in Germany, but Ortelius's map certainly was — Gastaldi being Italian and Ortelius being Brabantian (Belgian). Original prints of Ortelius's map can still be purchased today by collectors.

Map of the Arabian Peninsula, Abraham Ortelius, 1570

Two possibilities exist for why Dhamar was selected as the city of wisdom in the Fama and Confessio. First possibility is the writers of the manifestos knew of its history as an Islamicate cultural center and selected it for its obscurity amongst the 17th century German populace. The second possibility, and the theory I lean toward, is the Rosicrucian authors had a copy of Ortelius's map and threw a dart at it, landing on Damcar.

Besold: "I got Damcar."
Hess: "It sounds kind of close to Damascus, don't you think?"
Andraea: "Eh, who cares. Use it."

Perhaps this is the reason for the name change in the manifestos. In 1614 the Fama calls it Damcar and a year later in the Confessio it becomes Damar. Certainly the authors were looking at map, not a history book. Perhaps over the succeeding year they found the map they used to throw a dart at was inaccurate, and thus used the more contemporary name for the City of Dhamar.

The history of Dhamar is a bit obscure. Certainly we know a lot of scientific developments were made there, as may be gathered by the number of Arab scientists reportedly born there, as well its massive dam, a fine work of ancient engineering. However, the fact that I have trouble finding much on the cultural and scientific history of Dhamar with Google at my fingertips, I must wonder what a few Germans in their twenties could find on the city in their library. I suspect Dhamar was selected at random, probably just to illustrate that Frater C.R. traveled very far to gain wisdom.

Guides to the Rosicrucian Manifestos - Timeline

 

Martin Luther family crest.

It would appear to be essential to provide some sort of linear timeline that provides some insight into the chronology of the Rosicrucian movement. The following is simply a guide for reference to compare important events, persons, and legendary aspects of the manifestos to assist in looking at how these things relate in chronological order. Clearly not all of these directly relate to the composition of the manifestos, but some are extraordinary events that appeal to the European mindset that a new age was dawning.

While the Fama only refers to Frater/Father C.R. and the Confessio refers to him as Father Christian. Only The Chemical Wedding refers to him as Christian Rosenkreuz. However, it should be obvious that the names in the Fama and Confessio intend Christian Rosenkreuz. Thus, he will be referred to as Christian Rosenkreuz here.

Items in red designate events that occur in the legend of Christian Rosenkreuz. Items in blue designate events concerning the manifestos themselves.

TIMELINE:

1135        Joachim of Fiore is born.

1202        (March 30) Joachim of Fiore dies.

1260        Joachim of Fiore's concept of the Age of the Holy Spirit to begin.

1378        Christian Rosenkreuz is born [CF].

1383        Rosenkreuz goes to live at a monastery, age 5 [FF].

c. 1393    Rosenkreuz travels to Damascus on the way to Jerusalem.

1394        Rosenkreuz travels to Damcar, age 16 [FF].
                Translates Book M. into Latin.

1397        Rosenkreuz travels to Egypt, age 19 ["three years," FF].

c. 1397    Rosenkreuz travels to Fez ["short time," FF].

c. 1399    Rosenkreuz travels to Spain, approx. age 20 ["two years," FF].

c. 1400    Rosenkreuz returns to Germany.

c. 1404    Rosenkreuz builds his Temple of the Holy Spirit and writes, age 25 ["five years," FF].
                Brings three monks from his former monastery into his close circle.

1484       Rosenkreuz dies at the age 106 [CF], and is sealed in his tomb.
               Writings of Paracelsus are sealed in the tomb, nine years before Paracelsus is born.

1493        Paracelsus is born.
                (February 15) Christopher Columbus issues a letter of his voyage to the Americas.

1517        (October 31) Martin Luther issues his ninety-five theses.
                Effective start of the Protestant Reformation.

1522        (September 6) Survivors of Magellan's expedition successfully circumnavigate the globe.

1541        (September 24) Paracelsus dies.

1543        (March 6) Simon Studion is born, who would have correspondences with Tobias Hess.

1561        (January 22) Francis Bacon is born.

1577        Christopher Besold is born.

1586        (January 31) Tobias Hess is born.
                (August 17) Johannes Valentinus Andraea is born.                

1602        Comet appears in the constellation of Cygnus (Swan).

1603        (December 17) Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces.

1604        Tomb of Rosenkreuz is opened after 120 years [FF].
                (October 8-9) Supernova appears in the constellation of Serpens.
                Simon Studion publishes Noametria, a revision to Joachim of Fiore's ages.
                Andraea studies theology and natural sciences in Tubingen, Germany.

1605        Simon Studion dies.
                Andraea composes The Chemical Wedding.

1610        Earliest reference to the Fama being circulated, mentioned by Adam Haslmayr.
                The Fama was likely being circulated in handwritten pamphlets in Tubingen by Hess.
                Andraea travels throughout Europe until 1612.

1612        Haslmayr publishes his Answer to the Brotherhood of Theosophers of Rosenkreuz.
                Haslmayr arrested and enslaved by the Inquisition for his reply to the Fama.

1614        German publication of the Fama Fraternitatis.
                Tobias Hess dies.

1615        Latin publication of the Confessio Fraternitatis.

1616        German publication of The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz.

1618        Thirty Years War begins.

1626        (April 9) Francis Bacon dies.

1638        (September 15) Christopher Besold dies.

1646        Andraea joins the Fruitbearing Society, a German secret society.

1648        Thirty Years War ends.

1652        Thomas Vaughan (alias Eugenius Philalethes) publishes English translation of Fama.

1654        (June 27) Johannes Valentius Andraea dies.

Abbreviations:

CF - Confessio Fraternitatis
FF - Fama Fraternitatis

This timeline is subjected to be updated with other events, persons, and aspects as necessary as my research progresses further.

Guides to the Rosicrucian Manifestos - A Prelude

 

Allegorical image of an initiate knocking on the door of R.C.

Recently I began leading a study group in which we are reading the Rosicrucian manifestos: Fama Fraternitatis (1614), Confessio Fraternitatis (1615), and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz (1616). It quickly became apparent to me that many people speak of Rosicrucianism, notably Freemasons and similar fraternal societies, but certainly others of an esoteric leaning, but few have read the manifestos themselves. Furthermore, those who have read them are oftentimes perplexed and confused.

I myself read them in 2013 after reading Tobias Churton's The Golden Builders (2002). Churton spends well over a hundred pages on the initial Rosicrucian movement, and having heard Masons and others speak so much on Rosicrucianism, I felt it was necessary to read the manifestos themselves. After reading the Fama and Confessio, a whopping thirty-six pages of text, I immediately grew perplexed. The Chemical Wedding did not help this confusion.

The Fama read like something one reads at the beginning of a grimoire or some pseudo-Hermetic text — a fanciful story of how ancient wisdom was passed along and is now being revealed, yet the wisdom itself is never fully explained, and only minute bits and pieces can be gleaned sparsely and fragmented throughout the text. The Confessio was very dry and does not feel like it lives up the hype the Fama produced. It reads like a set of guidelines and principles, none of which appear controversial or revolutionary in the way the Rosicrucian movement built its reputation. Then The Chemical Wedding comes along, and is far more fanciful and perplexing than either the Fama or Confessio. It is an alchemical allegorical tale of Christian Rosenkreuz going to a wedding and follows the bizarre events over the course of a week.

Why were these documents considered so enlightening and controversial? Why were they impactful at all?

There was an immense hype around these documents, and I could not grasp why, nor have I yet to meet anyone who initially grasped why these documents were so revolutionary on their first reading of the manifestos. Since that time, I have read numerous articles, books, and various commentary on the manifestos that have given me a useful glimpse into why their content was revolutionary in the first place. However, I have yet to find (in English) any useful guide to reading the manifestos.

One can read Waite's True History of the Rosicrucians, Yates's Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Churton's Invisible History of the Rosicrucians, McIntosh and McIntosh's new translations of the manifestos in Rosicrucian Trilogy, and even Christopher McIntosh's expanded introduction and annotations of the Fama and still not have a better grasp of the manifestos when one reads them. One simply has to gain a working understanding of the history and influences behind the initial Rosicrucian movement and then read the manifestos while wearing that historical pair of glasses.

My aim and research track in these subsequent posts will be to explore the Rosicrucian manifestos, and help to enframe various parts of them in their influences and historical context. At this time, my current agenda is to produce the following (and these are subject to being revised as I progress):

1. Produce a timeline of historical events, influential people, and the chronology of the legend of Christian Rosenkreuz, with some commentary on this chronology.
2. Establish the preliminary enframement of the manifestos that are critical to reading them, namely that they are Protestant, millenarian, and heavily influenced by Paracelsus.
3. The Fama Fraternitatis:
1. Explore the Protestant aspects in the Fama.
2. Explore the Paracelsian aspects in the Fama.
3. Influences of Joachim of Fiore and other millenarian individuals in the Fama.
4. The travels of Fr. C.R. in the Fama and similar journeys by others, particularly Parcelsus.
5. Where is the mysterious city of Damcar in the Fama?
6. The nature of the legend of Fr. C.R. in the Fama and its connection to The Chemical Wedding as allegory.
7. The Confessio and The Chemical Wedding as mentioned in the Fama.
4. The Confessio Fraternitatis:
1. The thirty-six reasons/points of the Confessio as mentioned in the Fama.
2. Expressed ideologies in the Confessio.
3. The legendary aspects of the Confessio that corroborate, enhance, and detract from the Fama.
5. The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz:
1. Explore much of the alchemical legendry and allegory in The Chemical Wedding.
2. Explore previous ideologies and sentiments expressed in the Fama and Confessio as they pertain to The Chemical Wedding.
3. Address whether The Chemical Wedding is a response to the Fama, namely whether it was publish as a statement to the spiritual calling of the manifestos, and not a declaration of a tangible society.

Since November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month), and I am not a very good fictional writer, I thought I would write approximately 2,000 words a day anyway. Instead of a novel, I will write toward this research track on the Rosicrucian manifestos. I hope to complete my research and posts on these manifestos by the end of November. I won't necessarily post every day, just I will write on this every day. The posts will be published when they are done.

What Did the Regalia of Bromwell's Rite of Architects Look Like?

 

Reconstruction of Jewel and Collar design of Bromwell's rite

As mentioned in my previous post, the ritual book of Bromwell's rite of Free and Accepted Architects was held in the Grand Lodge of Colorado Museum at 1614 Welton Street, Denver, Colorado until 1971 when the Grand Lodge moved to Colorado Springs. However, it is uncertain if everything was actually moved to Colorado Springs, or if some items remained in Denver. Along with the ritual book(s), it is also uncertain where the jewels and paraphernalia of the rite are now.

For those who are not familiar with Masonic terminology, by "Jewel" Masons mean the symbolic emblems of an officer. The term comes from the fact that the Three Precious Jewels of an Entered Apprentice (the Square, Level, and Plumb) are worn on the collars of the three principal officers of a lodge. So not only are they seen a precious emblems, valuable like jewels, but also they can be viewed as jewelry worn by officers.

In the minutes of King David's Grand Lodge, there are descriptions of what these jewels looked like, and they are descriptive enough that we can reconstruct them with a fair degree of certainty. There are two descriptions given, the first is before the creation of the Royal Architect Degree, and were adopted three years after the Grand Lodge was organized. These jewels were adopted at a special meeting of King David's Lodge No. 1 (not the Grand Lodge) on August 8, 1865 with the following descriptions:

"At a meeting of K. D. No. 1 Comp. Bromwell as member of committee had, decided upon the following as officer Jewels, as such they were adopted; M. A. Triple triangle with triple tau or architects square suspended in the center. S. A. a double triangle or seal of King David with level suspended in the center. J. A. Triangle with plumb suspended in the center. S. O. a Pentalpha or seal of Solomon formed of the extended compass with sun suspended in the center. J. O. Double triangle or seal of King David formed with the extended compasses with crescent moon suspended in the center. Jewels of Secretary, Treasurer and Tiler same as Master's Lodge."

It is a bit uncertain what is intended by "suspended." He describes the the sun and moon of the Senior and Junior Overseer's Jewels as being suspended, similar to the Senior and Junior Deacons of the Blue Lodge, but typically (at least in all examples I have ever seen) the sun and the moon are not "suspended," but rather superimposed upon or fixed within the extended compasses. They do not swing or dangle freely. However, Bromwell was a lawyer, so we might presume he is very deliberate in the words he is choosing, and may very well intend that they literally dangle or swing within the triangles. One issue with this presumption is that the area within the geometric figures are not equal. The Senior Overseer's pentagram has a small area in the center, whereas the Junior Overseer's double triangle has a much greater area. So the scale of these items is going to differ, or they will be out of proportion with their respective geometric figure in comparison with each other. My best reconstruction of what these Jewels looked like are as follows:

Master Architect

Senior Architect                            Junior Architect

Senior Overseer                                Junior Overseer

Treasurer                                            Secretary

Tiler

On April 7, 1874 the following resolution was adopted concerning the new Jewels of the Grand Lodge officers, since the Royal Architect Degree had been adopted, and therefore changes were being made across the organization:

"Be it resolved by this Grand Lodge of S. & M.E.A. that the Jewels of all the officers in subordinate lodges, and in this Grand Lodge be swung in triple triangles, and that the collar be sky blue, circular in form, and ornamented by silver signs of the Zodiac on stars."

Here we have specific language that states that the emblems are "swung" inside of the triple triangles, though Bromwell does not state what the emblems are that are swinging inside the triple triangle. Presumably the are the same emblems as before. The various arrangements of triangles and geometrical shapes are abandoned in favor of only the triple triangle, which is the Signet of Enoch in Bromwell's rite. Obviously Bromwell is endeavoring to create some standardization or uniformity in his rite. The previous design of the Jewels is not exactly well thought out, nor uniform in any meaningful manner. The Treasurer, Secretary, and Tiler are afterthoughts. The Senior Overseer has a pentagram, whereas the others make use of a varying number of triangles. The Master, Senior, and Junior Architects make sense, as the number of triangles decrease from three to two to one. But why the Junior Overseer has a double triangle is odd. I suppose the Seal of Solomon and Seal of David make them a nice pair, but aesthetically is peculiar and appear inconsistent. The follow are reconstructions of what the revised Jewels may have looked like:

Master Architect

Senior Architect                        Junior Architect

Senior Overseer                        Junior Overseer

Treasurer                                            Secretary

Tiler

A number of other offices had been created with the adoption of the Royal Architect Degree, (e.g. Master Overseer, Master, Senior, and Junior Deacons, Master of Ceremonies, et al). However, their Jewels are never described, if they ever had Jewels at all.

Bromwell's rite was not a well-functioning organization. In fact, it was an utter disaster. I have an essay on just how dysfunctional the rite was that is anticipated to be published in Philalethes late this year. The possibility that these additional offices never had Jewels designed for them would not surprise me in the least. If there were designs created for these other offices, no record survives of what they looked like; another indication of how disorganized the rite was.

Unless by some strange miracle that the paraphernalia was not in Denver during the 1984 fire at the Welton Street Masonic Building, and their location is discovered in Colorado Springs, then these reconstructions may be the closest we will have to what the Jewels of Bromwell's rite look like.

The only other regalia that is given a description is the apron. Masons love their aprons, and each Masonic order has its own apron designs, and each Masonic jurisdiction has its own variations on those designs. There are no records of what the apron looked like in any of the records of the Grand Lodge, but with the publication of the ritual of the rite in Collectanea 4.2 by the Grand College of Rites, a brief description of the apron is given. Based on the language given in Collectanea, the description is given based on an actual surviving apron.

The apron is described in Collectanea as: "there is in existence an apron which was of lamb skin without the fleece having been removed. Therefore, it is possible that at some it may have been actually 'worked.'" It looks like from this concise description that it was important to Bromwell to have a real lambskin apron, and apparently he liked a furry, fluffy apron. It would also appear that those who wrote the introduction to Collectanea 4.2 believed that the individual brothers would "work" or defleece and tan their own aprons. If such is not the case, then I have no idea what they mean by "worked."