The legend of Melusina finds its best expression in the 14th century French version by Jean d'Arras called Le Roman de Melusine (1393). The book was written for Jean, Duc de Berry, best known for his patronage of one of the most beautiful Illuminated Manuscripts of the Middle World: Les Tres Riches Heures. The d'Arras version of the Eurotale follows the medieval dynasty of Lusignan from its founding by the "enigmatic shape-shifting faery figure" Melusine thru its flowering in the Crusader Kingdoms of the Eastern Mediterranean. Like Skippy, the author freely wove bits of myth and folklore with real history. It was part Crusader narrative, part Chivalric romance, with a healthy blending of both Pagan and Christian doctrines. Of course the real purpose of the book was to advance the "proprietary claims to Lusignan" of the Duc de Berry. The tale was the Covertext for a powerful hombre to make powerful claims of heredity and property rights.
Elinas, the good King of Albany - which is a Fairy word for what we call Scotland - has lost his wife to sickness. So to salve his soul he goes hunting. Nothing like killing things when you're down. He comes across a beautiful Fairy in the forest whose name is Pressyne. This was at a fountain because these things of magic often happen near springs and pools and enchanted lakes and isles. They talked all thru the dark night and Elinas dearly wanted to rub her nubs. She agreed to marry the King but the union of mortal and fay is always problematic and always with conditions. Pressyne's conditions were simple - the beautiful fairy and the King of Sorrow could be wed but only if the King agreed that he would never enter her "chamber" when she birthed or bathed herself or her children. The Nuptuals were held and quickly the couple had 3 daughters: Melusina, Melior, and Palatina. Like Job's 2nd 3 daughters: Turtle Dove, Cassia, and Mascara, the 3 offspring of the fay Pressyne were destined to be World Shakers. When Elinas, the King, heard that Pressyne had foaled & that he had 3 daughters he - "without reflection" - rushed into his wife's room to covey his great joy. Thus breaking his vow and crossing over into Taboo. Pressyne was either outraged or broken-hearted - different versions of the tale disagree - and she had no choice but to leave the Kingdom of Albany with her 3 daughters and repair to the Blessed and Lost Island of Avalon. Here the 3 girls grew up and when they were 15 and Ripe, Melusina asked why they had been carried off to the Apple Isle. When she heard of her father's transgression of the Taboo, Melusina grew angry and promised revenge. So the 3 Little Bitches, Melusina and her sisters, hatched a plan. They flew to Albany where they "charmed" the grieving king Elinas, who had now lost 2 wives, and seduced him, and all his wealth, to enter into a mountain called Brandelois wherein Melusina slammed the fairy door and locked him inside with his stuff. Fuckin' lil' Lulu Bravos. When they returned to Avalon and told their mother what they had done she was pissed and since the plot was Melusina's the mother cursed her like this: Every Saturday - which I guess is a kind of archetypal fairy bath day - Melusina's lower body would change into a serpent, or a fish, from the waist down. A very effective Chastity belt if you think about it. She would stay this way, half fairy, half human and now half changeling until she herself should meet a mortal man who would marry her but also promise never to "see" her on a Saturday. And he, unlike their father, had to keep that promise.
To the right is David Delamare's Undine. Gnomes are elemental spirits of Earth. Salamanders are the elementals of Fire. Sprites rule the Air. Undines are the elemental spirits of Water and especially the waves. In the Tarot the Knight of Cups is referred to as the King of the Undines and also the King of Sorrow since Water is the symbol of Melancholy and the Intoxication of the Mind. Undines are always highly Sexual. They are especially good at luring men away from their goals. Witness how easily Melusina "charms" her own father until he's rigid and stiff enough to lock inside a mountain. When a Fairy freezes a human man in his tracks it is a Jungian symbol of Spirit thickening into Matter and losing itself therein. The Upper Phallus of the Mind is given wings just so it can escape that fate. In Fairy Tales and in History when the Lower Phallus thickens all higher cognitive powers freeze.
Melusina's goal is to find a mortal man who can live up to his oath. So she leaves the Blessed Isle of the Dead and the Rising we still call Avalon - which means "Apple Orchard" in Fay - and she sets trail, roaming, like Percevale, thru the world of the living searching for her Grail - a Man who can set her free from her mother's curse. Her heroic journeys take her thru the Black Forest in Bavaria, thru the thick Ardennes with all of its future bones, and finally they empty her into the forest of Colombiers in the Poitou - a western part of France which is also called the Charente. The forest lies on the 45th Parallel North. Skippy was in the Army in the Charente-Maritime in a village called Croix-Chapeau, so called because in 1200 the men of the village left to Crusade in the Holy Land with small crosses sewed to their hats. Melusina was welcomed into the forest by all the fays in the hood who circled her in withershin spirals while chanting that She was the Fairy that they had been waiting for and therefore she was the Queen. Skippy fell into Lust with a village girl and it ended badly. All love stories which happen in Broken Places end like that. It was the same for Melusina.
Above is Edvard Munch's rendition of Melusine. Skippy saw Munch's The Scream in Vienna about a year before Barber Perfect ripped it off. The Musée was full of school kids being herder thru the Kultur while their fat teachers told them what was good and what was bouge. The classes would clump up at Munch's signature piece which seemed to be repellent to the Kinder. Their noses scrunched up in that universal gesture of disgust. When the Dominicans were in charge of EuroEdukashun they would whip chillin' with cane switches if their faces vacillated from the pious. Today, the chubby lesbians and hash-smoking faggots who find their places in teaching are quick to point out that Munch's image is Transpersonal. It's Archetypal. The wailing wraith in Munch's image is the Shekhina after waking up SoulSick after Auschwitz & Hiroshima. "But wait," some little Art Chick said. She was dressed in black from head to toe and had studs and spikes sticking out of her ears and her nose and her lower lip. "Munch painted that 50 years before WW2." Poor ignorant little savage. Eurolandia would rip her apart. That's not the point, the lesbos corrected, their asymmetric pouts giving them away. What Munch had captured, they told the little Krauts, was the Zeitgeist. The Spirit of the Times. That shut the Art Chick up and the hash-faggots did that nose-snort which means: See?
Raymond has accidentally killed his uncle, the Count of Poitou, while they were hunting. And now he is wandering in the forest of Colombiers. He comes to a "fountain that rose at the foot of a high rock." This is the Fay Fountain and local mythos places it at the center of all neighborhood magic. It was 0-Dark-30 and only the moon lighted the scene. There were 3 beautiful fairies dancing - again, withershins - around the fountain. Raymond was enchanted by the one called Melusina. By dawn they were betrothed. One condition - Ray had to promise that he would never try and see her on a Saturday when she took to her bath as a changeling. No problem, said Ray. They were married and Melusina, who like all Fay, always knew where Treasure had been buried, built for them the Castle of Lusignan and the city of La Rochelle and many other places and things.
The myth of Melusina is a favorite in Europe, especially in Germany and France and places where the Celts lived. It appears many times, always elaborately illustrated, in Euro-manuscripts and carved on church walls, choir stalls and pulpits. The young village girl from Croix-Chapeau took Skippy into La Rochelle often. And Skippy remembers her pointing out places in the Heraldry of the City where the figure of a Mermaid held pride of place. The village girl finally moved to Paris where she was going to study drama. Skippy rotated back to the Great Satan where he wrote a book about her called The Broken Places. He pocketed that title from Hemingway who was all about stealing.
Ray and Melusina had 10 children - just like Job and his wife. But each of the ten children of the mortal and the halfling was somehow flawed. The oldest child, for example, had one red eye and the other was blue. One had only one eye. Another had the paw of a lion growing out of his cheek. Jeff with the Great Tooth was their 6th child and had a Boar's Tusk crowding out his other molars. Still the Kinder were not stupid or mentally wrong, so they were well loved - little deformed princes and princesses. Harelip Royalty. Now Ray had a brother who was always filling Ray's head with his suspicions on what went on with Melusina on Saturday. "She's probably Pulling a Train at the Holiday Inn," Ray's brother said. So Ray spied on his wife thru a crack in the door on a long, hot Saturday Night. When he saw the half-fish/half-wife he did a silent kind of Psycho-Munch-Scream but he knew enough to shut up, because he had given his vow and he knew the consequences. Then Jeff-Great-Tooth attacked a monastery as wild boars often do and he killed 100 monks, including, accidentally, one of his own brothers. So the family's all together in the rec-room - the 9 little mutants are drooling out of their cleft-palletes and bumping around with their club feet, as they comfort each other about their brother's death. When Ray, wracked with anger at his fate - I mean he was rich, but the family was a fucking mess - suddenly accuses Melusina in front of her courtiers: "Out of my sight, thou pernicious snake and odious serpent! Thou contaminator of my race!" Which she did. Because she had to. It was her destiny, her Wyrd, to leave when the blinders fell and the true nature of her kind had been revealed. "No Man May Lift My Veil" - Was tattooed above her Butt Crack, on the days of the week when she had a Butt Crack. Before the Melusina left and quit our lives forever she told us that from here on in we would see visions of her, and there would be rumors of her, and prophecies. Then she turned into a 15 foot Serpent, circled the castle 3 times - withershins - wailed like Munch's Screamer and Popped Smoke. Ray died, alone, in a cold Monastery, knowing the Secret and babbling to himself about never, ever ,ever to try and see the hidden face of god.
The tale of Melusina was "worked into a collection of `Spinning Yarns,' as told by ladies at their spinning. In Poland she became the Udine of the river Vistula and is said to have built cities along the river in the late 13th century. In Mythic Heraldry, her children included the Kings of Cyprus, Armenia, Bohemia, and the Duke of Luxembourg. She has promised that the noble line which originated from her fishy loins would reign in both real and hidden kingdoms until the end of the world. In Franco-Celtic myths she appears as the Lady of the Lake who took the child Lancelot and raised him in magic. When Arthur acts rashly and emotionally, without thinking of the consequences, he breaks his sword Excalibur - symbol of the Intellect - and she repairs it. Excalibur means "out of the Stone," and it is interesting that in a Luxembourgian version of this tale, when the husband spies Melusina in her bath with her Veil down that immediately the bath waters sink into the solid rock below taking her with them. Every 7 years Melusina will rise with her waters from the Stone either in the guise of a Beautiful Woman or a Serpent, holding a small golden key in her mouth. If you can grab the key you can set her free and have your way with her as you will. Except on Saturdays.
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