Simply phenomenal!

David Sutton finds a treasure trove of fortean funnies in this wonderful collection

Phenomenomix

Hunt Emerson Knockabout Press 2022 Pb, 224pp, £22.99, ISBN 9780861662906

Even after working on FT for well over two decades, some things never, as they say, get old. One of those things is the arrival, every four weeks, of a new “Phenomenomix” strip from our resident cartoonist, Hunt Emerson. Sometimes, if we’ve discussed what’s coming up in the next issue, I’ll have an inkling of what might be in store; sometimes, as with Hunt’s recent strip on fishfalls ( FT420:71), it’s a case of serendipitous synchronicity (or “the hive mind as work”, as Hunt suggests); most often, it’s a delightful surprise. After all, we could be dealing with cryptozoological classics, oddities of history, the miracles of lesser known saints, or, as brought together in a previous (highly recommended) collection of

Hunt’s FT work,

Lives of the Great Occultists.

Whatever the topic, though, the treatment is always pure Hunt: visually, a blend of classic

Mad Magazine- style cartooning and the freewheeling, surrealism of underground comix, plus his unique ability to address the outer limits of human experience with a very down to earth sense of irony.

Hunt has been part of the FT team since Bob Rickard launched the mag (then known as The News) way back in 1973; the story of how the two of them met is retold in a wonderful four-page special Hunt created for our 40th anniversary in 2013 – fittingly, the first strip in this new collection. His earliest work was providing wildly inventive subject headings for Bob’s columns in issue eight (“Strange Encounters”, “Lights and Fireballs”, “Embeddings” and so on); for issue 11 he contributed his first full strip, “Fortean Funnies” (“more or less incomprehensible – I had a lot to learn about drawing comics!”). “Phenomenomix” debuted in issue 30 (1979), and in issue 42 he gave us the first adventure of that dogged but hapless investigator of anomalies, Gully Bull. (My own favourite Gully strip is “A Dreadful Night”, in which our hero’s attempt to solve one mystery results in him creating a host of new ones, as he is mistaken for a lake monster and accidentally creates a simulacrum of Christ on a wall!)

Since then, Hunt has created a full-page strip for nearly every subsequent issue (only missing a couple through ill health). Reading through this collection, I’m struck anew by his sheer invention and ability to transmute wordy fortean subject matter – from old anomalistic chestnuts to current debates – into cartoon gold. Just glancing at the titles of the strips gives you an idea of the range of topics he’s tackled: Men in Black, Ley Lines, Spontaneous Human Combustion, Trepanning, Thunderstones, Mass Panic, The Hollow Earth... There’s so much crammed into these 200plus full-colour pages that you’ll just have to jump in yourself and find your own favourites. My one small complaint is that it would have been nice to have an indication of which issue of FT each strip originally appeared in; just saying.

Two final thoughts: I’m amazed at just how many great cartoons Hunt has created for us over the years, many of which I’d forgotten; and, we really are blessed to have him! ★★★★★

The Rohonc Code

Tracing a Historical Riddle

Benedek Láng Penn State University 2021 Pb, 176pp, £19.95, ISBN 9780271090207

Codes and cyphers have an enduring appeal for professional researchers and amateur sleuths alike. Think the Rosetta Stone, the Voynich Manuscript, Linear A or the Phaistos Disc.

The Rohonc Codex, one of the lesser known and as yet unsolved codes, was discovered in the library of the eponymous Hungarian city in 1838. Since then, researchers have struggled to decode its message, figure out its meaning and divine its real purpose.

The Rohonc Code: Tracing a Historical Riddle is Benedek Láng’s personal account of this 448-page coded document, encompassing how he has sought to understand it and documenting in depth the theories of other researchers who have also attempted to decrypt the code.

He observes in his first sentence, “The success of an investigation depends on how skilfully you can make objects talk,” and goes on to describe his own initiation with the codex of the title. For Láng, as for so many others before him, the subject became an obsession.

As a professor at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, the author avoids the jumps of logic that one might find in similar works by amateurs. There’s a reassuring certainty that we’re not being led on some wild goose chase.

This is solid historical research, yet written in a style to make the reader want to read on. The chapter “Writing in Cyphers and Codes”, in particular, provides a valuable perspective on codes and cryptographers, especially through the early modern period. Throughout this enthralling exploration, Láng examines the possibilities that the document might be an artificial language or a cypher or perhaps a shorthand system of some kind.

And if it is not a “real” artefact, then is it a forgery or clever hoax? If so, then suspicion might fall on Sámuel Literáti Nemes, a notorious antiquarian, responsible for falsifying documents in the early part of the 19th century. Avoiding spoilers, I won’t reveal Láng’s conclusions on the Rohonc Codex. Marcus Williamson

★★★★★

Supernatural America

The Paranormal in American Art ed. Robert Cozzolino University of Chicago Press 2021 Hb, 346pp, £40, ISBN 9780226786827

Unexplained experiences have been a central and completely overlooked aspect of American art and the lives of countless artists. A pioneering exhibition, Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art (see FT409:67), was the first to examine the relationship between American artists and the supernatural; this weighty, richly-illustrated book from the show is an object of beauty in its own right.

The words “supernatural” and “paranormal” are defined as any experiences or phenomena beyond scientific explanation that suggest an order of existence beyond the visible and observable Universe and that appear to transcend the laws of nature. The survey ranges widely, from 19th-century spirit photography, through neo-classical depictions of angels hovering over the slaughtered on the battlefield, to more modern evocations of voodoo ceremonies. The book takes all of these artists’ experiences

– however bizarre

– seriously, while positing that the works can often be understood metaphorically when placed within the broader spiritual and political contexts of their day.

The problem art historians have had with spirituality is slowly being redressed with the recent re-evaluation of the work of such artists as Hilma af Klint. If religion has been disquieting to largely secular modern art criticism, one can only celebrate the courage it has taken to summon these works out of dark storerooms and to re-cast American art history in a more esoteric light. There are even surprises here from well-known painters, the spectral art of which

may have been suppressed: Whistler’s Arrangement in Black (The Lady in the Yellow Buskin) is an otherworldly portrait of a society woman emerging from, or sinking into, existential blackness; Albert Pinkham Ryder depicts death galloping upon a translucent horse on a race track; Grant Wood offers a premonition of imminent carnage as a large truck bounces round a blind bend. All of the works, whatever the degree of fame of their creators, reveal how deeply ingrained the supernatural and paranormal are in American art and how the fascination with them connects artists whose works have not ordinarily been seen alongside each other.

This book affords art lovers outside America the opportunity to view a truly extraordinary collection of some 160 paintings and objects that we’ve been missing for more than two centuries. Rob Weinberg

★★★★

Spare Parts

A Surprising History of Transplants

Paul Craddock Fig Tree 2021 Hb, 320pp, £18.99, ISBN 9780241370254

In the late 1930s, Soviet scientist Sergei Brukhonenko kept a severed dog’s head alive with the aid of a bypass machine. As Paul Craddock points out in his lively history of transplant surgery, the film of Brukhonenko’s experiment was dismissed at the time as Communist propaganda and never conclusively proved (nor disproved). The film also epitomises many of the themes of Spare Parts, with grand claims of medics bumping up against ethical concerns, where the pantheon of medical discoveries is built upon extremely bloody foundations.

Craddock is aware of the pitfalls of writing on surgery’s past, stating his book is not a triumphant march of “technical progress leading to mastery”, nor one detailing “ghoulish curiosities”. This is hardly a lifeless account, though; its clear narrative contains enough dramatic human detail and lesser-known facts to fully justify the claim to be “a surprising history”.

He is good on social context, too. He shows why long-held thinking on the workings of the body were slow to change after William Harvey’s discoveries on the circulation of blood and Renaissance developments in skin grafting. He frames experiments into blood transfusion in late 17th-century France and England around increasing rivalries between national scientific societies. Most interestingly, Craddock makes a strong case for how the trade in teeth, being transplanted from working-class children to upper-class adults, fits perfectly into the increasing consumerist economy of late 18th-century Britain.

He also examines surgical “heroes” in a more critical light, for instance showing how the egotistical Christian Barnard took advantage of laxer South African regulation to source the heart that became the first to be successfully transplanted.

Craddock’s history of transplantation brings out both what we have in common and what makes us unique, leading to questions about what makes us more than the sum of our replaceable parts. It’s clearly a story that’s far from over, but also one with resonances from the past: is there that much difference between 18th-century teeth transplantation and the more globalised 21st-century bio-economy of illegal organ trafficking?

However, it is a pity that Craddock’s adept reading of how 17th and 18th-century culture was influenced by transplantation is not matched in his discussion of the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s odd that there’s no mention of, say, The Island of Doctor Moreau, nor, given how increasingly common it became, of other uses of the transplantation trope in the science fiction and horror genres. Ross MacFarlane

★★★

Philosophy of Psychedelics

Chris Letheby Oxford University Press 2021 Hb, 272pp, £24.99, ISBN 9780198843122

A growing body of medical studies suggest that careful administration of psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) and mescaline (as popularised by Aldous Huxley) provides significant and lasting benefits in the treatment of depression, anxiety and addiction. Moreover, these studies have also found that clinical efficacy is strongly correlated with the subject’s “mystical experience” – variously described as a sense of ego-dissolution, direct encounter with the divine, or simply a glimpse into what Alan Watts called the “Joyous Cosmology” underlying everyday reality. Having a good trip really seems to matter, and is often a better predictor of treatment outcomes than more objectively quantifiable variables including dosage strength. And this raises some puzzles. Does the success of psychedelic therapy provide evidence for some deep metaphysical truths? Or is it merely a comforting delusion for those unable to cope with reality?

Letheby’s book attempts to develop a naturalistic explanation of psychedelic therapy – but one that nevertheless takes the phenomenology seriously, rather than dismissing it as mere drug-addled hallucination. In his account, psychedelics work not by revealing hidden truths about ultimate reality, but by challenging some of our entrenched views about ourselves; or more technically, by disrupting the deep-rooted predictive models the brain develops to systematise experience. Psychedelics disturb these models, and our conceptual distinctions really do dissolve into the “oceanic boundlessness” often described by patients. But only a positive, subjective engagement with the experience – having a good trip – will enable the patient to “rebuild” the ego in a more positive manner.

Philosophy of Psychedelics is primarily intended for an academic audience; the discussion of neurological mechanisms probably offers more detail than the casual reader desires. But it is clearly written, with an accessible overview of a wealth of recent studies, and while it explicitly undertakes to naturalise the “mystical” elements of psychedelic usage, it is nevertheless refreshing to see the phenomenological data taken seriously. There is much thoughtprovoking material here for those interested in taking a more conventional journey through the doors of perception. Paul Dicken

★★★★

Witchcraft ed. Jessica Hundley & Pam Grossman Taschen 2021 Hb, 520pp, £30, ISBN 9783836585606

Witchcraft is the third in Taschen’s Library of Esoterica series, and is as stunning as its predecessors, Astrology and Tarot.

“Witchcraft is culled from countless cultural and ancestral influences,” says series editor Jessica Hundley. “Rituals can be passed down or self-created. We hope to showcase and celebrate witches in all their multiple manifestations.”

The book is gorgeously illustrated in colour on almost every page, with mediæval woodcuts, PreRaphaelite paintings (John William Waterhouse’s The Magic Circle and Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses, just in the first few pages) and a wide range of photographs, including from Stewart Farrar’s coven. The text is well-researched and thoughtfully written; the opening chapter on History sensibly says that 50,000 to 80,000 people, “a large percentage of them women”, were executed for witchcraft between 1500 and 1660, rather than the often-touted fictional figure of millions. The development of modern witchcraft is briefly but clearly put in its setting of the 19th and early 20th-century occult movement: the Golden Dawn, Crowley, Margaret Murray, Gerald Gardner, Dion Fortune, up to more recent figures like Starhawk.

The text covers a vast amount, from the witch’s year to varieties of magick to the Elements – but it’s the illustrations that are the heart of this book: engravings by Albrecht Dürer, paintings by Henry Fuseli, William Blake, Evelyn de Morgan, Arthur Rackham and 20th-century occult artists including Austin Osman Spare, Ithell Colquhoun, Leonora Carrington and Cameron. The book finishes with a section on the influence of modern witch concepts on fashion, pop culture, film and TV. David V Barrett

★★★★★