“This book is dedicated to the Ancient Ones, to the Lord of Abominations…” – William S. Burroughs (Cities of the Red Night, 1981) The fictional book Nameless Cults, by the German occultist Von Junzt, first appeared in Robert E. Howard’s tales “Children of the Night” (Weird Tales, April/May 1931) and “The Black Stone” (WT, November …
Author: Dave Peterson
Each pleasure that does not forward the soul to God is not so much a pleasure as a calamity.
Battle-Cry, Hot Flanks, and Other Amazons We Can Name
At a gathering some time ago, I had an interesting conversation about the historical reality behind Wonder Woman and how the knowledge of historical Amazons is bolstered by Eurasian archaeology. This led to my plan to create a new video to complement the two I made and posted on YouTube of the Scythians (click these …
Continue reading Battle-Cry, Hot Flanks, and Other Amazons We Can Name
Another New Banner Image
The new banner image for June 2019 of Amazons from a Greek red-figure vase is a hint of blogs to come.
New Banner Image
The new banner image is of H.G. Robley with his collection of Mokomokai heads, an imperial Victorian image if there ever was one. Read more at The Disturbing Story Of The Mokomokai Heads Of The Maori Tribesmen. Previous banner image
The Panther Returns
More than a year ago now (!) when I wrote Black Panther, Black Mane, and Retributive Justice, I said I'd have more to say soon about how the retributive justice scheme pioneered in the writing of Conan creator Robert E. Howard related to the film Black Panther. As a matter of fact, I implied I'd …
Delacroix Does the Scythians
The new banner image is from Ovid among the Scythians (1859), painted twice by Delacroix at the end of his life in 1859 and 1862. This is currently in the National Gallery (London). There is a detailed Wikipedia page about these works, including a simple and accurate characterization: "wildness and ...misunderstood genius were key concepts in Romanticism and …
Warriors of the Wasteland part 2
Robert E. Howard wrote his entire corpus of Conan stories in the early to mid 1930s. The character became a household word with the Marvel series Conan the Barbarian in the 1970s and the John Milius film of the same name in 1982. Meditating on this impacted my archaeological studies and research in the Eurasian …
Warriors of the Wasteland part 1
Something different - my interests led me to a career in Eurasian steppe archaeology and I made this video for an online course on the Silk Road. This has had 83,000 views, please watch it and help me break 100,000. I don’t get paid, my currency is your interest. Also, find the false Easter egg …
Pigeons from Hell
Hey, I've never said so but the banner image is an artist's conception of the Death Pit at the Royal Tombs of Ur, excavated by Sir Leonard Wooley in the 1920s and featured in a newspaper story of the time. The Death Pit was the site of human sacrifice on a massive scale, with before …
Who’s the Leader of the Club? Reflections on cute propaganda in the age of creeping fascism
I once thought the combination of propaganda and crowd control was never practiced more effectively in this country than in the lead up to the Patriot Act. We live in a brave new world in which our bodies, our possessions, and virtually everything we say and do are under a microscope whenever we travel by …
