# Book Bound in Human Skin



## Writ-with-Hand (Nov 28, 2010)

Apparently it's an Englishman thing. I can only image what they wear for coats.

Satan is probably wearing that Englishman's rearend as a cabbie cap now. The one that made the book that is.

CNS STORY: Book bound in skin of executed Jesuit sells at auction in England



> [FONT=Arial, Helvetica]*Book bound in skin of executed Jesuit sells at auction in England*
> 
> By Simon Caldwell
> Catholic News Service
> ...


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 28, 2010)

You would be surprised how bloodthirsty we can get when it comes to Jesuits, we still burn them ritually every year on the anniversary of that plot. My tiny village has a Bonfire Society, headed by the stalwarts of the village and dedicated to just that. Once a year the road is closed, there is an influx of thousands of people, and a night of near pagan celebration. Read up on the Glorious Revolution of 1688, we would rather be invaded than have a Catholic King.


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## Scarlett_156 (Nov 28, 2010)

You mean you burn actual Jesuits....??? in rituals...????!!!!! WOW!!!!! And to think I've been lukewarm about visiting the British Isles until now.


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## Baron (Nov 28, 2010)

Sadly we're not sacrificing so many virgins these days as they're getting increasingly hard to find, specially in Essex.


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## garza (Nov 28, 2010)

You think you have a problem in Essex? Come to Belize to see a _real_ shortage.


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## Elric Randall (Nov 28, 2010)

And what's wrong with a lack of virgins?


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## JosephB (Nov 28, 2010)

I've heard of skin mags, but books are a new one.


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## Writ-with-Hand (Nov 29, 2010)

You have a talented way of telling very, very short stories, Olly. Maybe I'll have to read up on this revolution of 1688.

By the way... a book I have titled _Rivers of Blood and Rivers of Gold _recounts British scientist taking body parts of the last Tasmanian man as souvenirs or relics of sort. One scientist made a tobacco pouch out of the skin of the corpse.  :|

You Brits are somewhat like Ed Gein when you don't like a bloke.  

Ed Gein - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## FalconsHonour (Nov 29, 2010)

There was an article in the Independent on Sunday a week or two back about a lampshade covered in human skin. Supposedly, loads of things like this exist -- the lampshade had some connection to an especially bloodthirsty woman who was connected to some high-up in the Nazi regime, as I recall. I'll try and track the article down if anyone's interested. I remember the author wove a wonderful story about the psychological aspects of owning such an item and how uncomfortable it made him, but despite his fairly impressive wordsmithing, I don't doubt the veracity of the facts he presented.

Me, I love my leather jacket, but I'm pretty sure it came off a cow.


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## Baron (Nov 29, 2010)

FalconsHonour said:


> There was an article in the Independent on Sunday a week or two back about a lampshade covered in human skin. Supposedly, loads of things like this exist -- the lampshade had some connection to an especially bloodthirsty woman who was connected to some high-up in the Nazi regime, as I recall. I'll try and track the article down if anyone's interested. I remember the author wove a wonderful story about the psychological aspects of owning such an item and how uncomfortable it made him, but despite his fairly impressive wordsmithing, I don't doubt the veracity of the facts he presented.
> 
> Me, I love my leather jacket, but I'm pretty sure it came off a cow.



That was Hitler's girlfriend, Eva Braun, who apparently liked lampshades made from the tattooed skin of concentration camp victims.


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## Bruno Spatola (Nov 29, 2010)

FalconsHonour said:


> Me, I love my leather jacket, but I'm pretty sure it came off a cow.



I've seen those hoodlums, mooing on street corners with their fancy threads. Animals, the lot of em'.


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## FalconsHonour (Nov 29, 2010)

Baron said:


> That was Hitler's girlfriend, Eva Braun, who apparently liked lampshades made from the tattooed skin of concentration camp victims.



Indeed it was; thank you very much. I remember now that the article mentioned tattoos too.

Morbidly enough, I'm now considering donating my skin for any soul macabre enough to want a skin lampshade after I cop it. I think the treble clef I'm planning would make quite a nice wall-hanging. Or maybe I should just paint a version to enjoy in my own lifetime...


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 29, 2010)

I think there are two different dynamics at play in cases like this. On the one hand there is the desire to dimean and de-humanise those one is mis-treating, thereby giving some justification to one's actions, that would be the Nazis and the Tasmanian exterminators.
People like Ed Gein strike me as a different case altogether, he reminds me of research a Frenchman did on the brains of murderers. The French method of capital punishment, decapitation with a sharp blade, leaves the brain relatively undamaged compared to hanging for example, and he was looking for physical differences in the brain. The only case in which he found it was in a guy who lived in the woods outside Paris and kidnapped women, partially cannibalised them, and kept body parts in a most gruesome way, he was caught because he couldn't live with himself, he said he did it from a compulsion, his brain did not have the usual crenelations on the surface, it was smooth.
Very, very few of us need to worry about the second type. We are all, potentially, the first type and need to recognise that every one is human, regardless of things like race or intelligence, or, indeed, whether they commit atrocious acts.


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## Scarlett_156 (Nov 29, 2010)

Native Americans carried pieces of their enemies' skin around with them, usually taken from the scalp, and usually attached by the hair.  I've seen some of these items up close and been allowed to touch them.  I have one relative who has some--or he used to have them, don't know if he still does, along with a lot of American Indian arrowheads, spearheads, etc.--and he is very proud of them, as they came down through the family.  To have collected lots of coup back in the "good old days" meant you were a kick-ass warrior.  (Women collected scalps, too.  I won't go into detail about how that happened, though.  You can probably guess.) 

I don't consider keeping relics of one's kills around abnormal or horrifying, necessarily (though I'll admit I was just joking about sacrificing Jesuits--I have nothing in particular against the order and I think they made sacrificing them illegal a few years ago, anyway).  

Wanting to collect things made of human skin is somewhat of a different subject, but in my opinion it's sort of a mistake to make too much of an issue out of it.  For the same reason it's no use to cry over the death of the cow whose hide got turned into your favorite riding leathers, it's no use to lament those poor victims of war or atrocity who get made into party favors for bad people to play with. They're dead, they're not comin back. 

Just try to avoid doing things like that yourself, is my advice--skinning people, that is, and making book covers and lampshades out of them. Even if he was already dead when you found 'im, there'll be consequences! Trust me on that.


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 29, 2010)

Scarlett:- In that context it probably was a product of employing mercenaries, you don't want to take their word for how many they killed so you start off with a head count, but heads are cumbersome and get smelly quickly in summer so ...  No doubt when the white men stopped paying for each other to be killed it became a trophy thing. So that's three reasons for hacking bits off people afer killing them, complete nutters, practising some sort of magic over them, to diminish them or de-humanise them and for money. Cute little primates aren't we?


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## Scarlett_156 (Nov 29, 2010)

Actually different tribes did it (collecting coup) for different reasons, and as a practice it goes back an incredibly long way; apparently the Sythians did it, which is one reason--that and the distinctive style of their jewelry--some anthropodopo types claim that the first humans to cross from Eurasia into North America were the adventuresome, bloodthirsty Scythians.  Scythians also kept other body parts as mementos around the camp, and decorated themselves, their beasts, and their homes with hands, feet, heads, etc.  They played that game where you get on your horse and knock your enemy's severed dome around with a stick.  (I had dreams about doing that when I was little; it was a trip! Then I read that the Scythians did it, and that some science guys think they were the first humans in the Americas. That was pretty cool.) 

But now that you mention it, one teacher I had in grade school claimed that it was the French who actually taught the "Indians" to collect scalps and that "they" didn't do it before then.  Her argument sounded plausible, but she had learned it in college.  My great-uncle had learned his stories of coup-collecting from his mom; therefore I tend to place more belief in my relative's account than in a schoolteacher's.  (Just this once! lol) 

I know the stereotype is of Native Americans all living idyllically together in peace, harmony, adventure, and love, before Whitey showed up, but the sad fact is that nearly all the different tribes of Native Americans warred on each other constantly, which is one reason among many that Whitey found it so gosh-darned easy to come fumble-footing in and just sort of take over in less than a century.  

All the coup that I have ever seen--including those that were in a museum--that had hair still attached and you could tell the person's race, were taken by Native Americans from other Native Americans.  I would compare the situation to the one you see in Central and Southern Africa today, with populations weakened and decimated first by constant tribe-vs-tribe conflict and the famine and disease that inevitably follow (allowing unprincipled business and governmental interests to exploit those weaknesses, naturally). Yep, tribalism: A bunch of poor misguided human beings killing, torturing, and raping their own family, friends, and neighbors, while their kids starve and die of disease, and Mr. Corporate Executive and Mr. Fascist Dictator sit there waiting to take over once the dust has settled and just about everybody is dead. 

Er, we're sort of getting off topic and I apologize for that.  All I was really trying to say was that a book bound in human hide is no great shakes, really.  I consider it laughable that someone would pay that much for a book JUST because it's bound in human hide, but it's his money, ya know?


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## Writ-with-Hand (Nov 29, 2010)

Actually, Scarlett, while the Jesuit order has a history (and present day) of being antagonized if not despised by Protestant and Catholics alike, the order has one of the most remarkable histories in Catholic Church and Christendom as a whole.

Kicked out of China and disband by the Pope twice, it was not for being denoted for epitomizing Eurocentric views or for failing to adapt to non-Western peoples ways of life. That does not mean every single Jesuit that ever went on missionary or walked the face of the earth was the kindest and most empathetic man on earth. However, as a rule of thumb I think they more often than not epitomized the best of humanity. From what I have read so far, as best I can tell, they seem to appreciated locals ways of life and multiculturalism far better than the Franciscan order in Asia or America. It was a Franciscan I believe - if I remember correctly - that set a peaceful Pueblo Indian on fire for witchcraft. No Inquisition. A single man judge and jury.

The Jesuits not always loved by Protestant and Catholics in the West were beloved in Russia, Asia, and the Americas by the indigenous. 

Their mission and adventure throughout the Americas were particularly noteworthy From their Reductions (regarded as socialist paradises by some) in Latin America to their Mountain Man journeys through Oregon Country of the now United States. The Jesuits also trained and operated the largest standing Army (made of Amerindians) in Latin America at one time. The Jesuits provided for (fun, gun powder etc.) and treated Amerindians throughout the Americas, in general, better than the white Spaniards treated each other, or the Brits treated each other, or the French treated each other.

These Jesuits in the United States would often times travel _alone_ through hostile Indian country, through winter mountains, and live as the Indians lived gaining their trust and affection. Known widely as "Blackrobes" they had a courage I know in few if any men. Some Indians in Oregon Country could be quite barbaric in their fighting (just with one another let alone against whites). 

The best source on the Amerindians of the Northwest in the United States today are from the Jesuits.


Semper.


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## Writ-with-Hand (Nov 29, 2010)

Scarlett_156 said:


> But now that you mention it, one teacher I had in grade school claimed that it was the French who actually taught the "Indians" to collect scalps and that "they" didn't do it before then.  Her argument sounded plausible, but she had learned it in college.  My great-uncle had learned his stories of coup-collecting from his mom; therefore I tend to place more belief in my relative's account than in a schoolteacher's.  (Just this once! lol)
> 
> I know the stereotype is of Native Americans all living idyllically together in peace, harmony, adventure, and love, before Whitey showed up, but the sad fact is that nearly all the different tribes of Native Americans warred on each other constantly, which is one reason among many that Whitey found it so gosh-darned easy to come fumble-footing in and just sort of take over in less than a century.



As you note, some Indian tribes warred damn near genocidal with one another, but Amerindians were not one monolithic group either. The "do-gooders" reduce them the Indians to a genetic Adam and Eve living in paradise and all sharing the same cultural traits and thoughts from Central America up into Canada. Not so, as you know.

Some societies were rather peaceful while others were built on the ethos of violence, honor, and warriorism. 

I read a book a checked out from the library of my community college a few years ago about some mixed-race Indian artist in late 1800's or early 1900's USA. If I recall correctly she was from the Ho-Chunk, or Ojibiwa, or Onieda people. One of those nations that had roots in Wisconsin. It was an interesting book because I got a different glimpse of my home state of Wisconsin before it became part of U.S. territory. Apparently her people preferred the French (who often intermarried with them) to the Americans. They were particularly fond of the "Blackrobes" too. Her people spoke French and their native tongue and many eventually became mestizo (I forget the french word for it). In fact within her nation her particular clan (the "White Clan" I think) were almost all mestizos and the clan that provided chiefs or leaders or whatever they were called.

I'm no expert on it but I got the impression most the French were single men involved in trade - especially trade in fur - and were less on war mission than the Spanish "Conquistadors" ("Conquers") that came over and less into ethnic isolation so to speak than the Puritans that arrived on the East Coast. 

Not trying to make the French sound like a great people but I just got the impression that most of their single men came with a different set of goals than the Spanish or Puritans. That's the impression I got anyways. 


(FYI: The Jesuits in North America were a mix of Europeans kind of like the E.U. or to a lesser extent the U.N. military forces)


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 29, 2010)

> Her argument sounded plausible, *but* she had learned it in college



Curious, why 'but'?


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## Writ-with-Hand (Nov 29, 2010)

Olly Buckle said:


> Curious, why 'but'?




:lol: I guess Scarlett trusts her great-uncle more than member of academia. And I can't say I entirely blame her irrespective of who is right or wrong on the issue.


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