The Crow

“Golden days are so far away.
There’s a black rain up above.
Out on the wind you hear her call,
She’s under your skin and you drift away.

She spreads her wings
When she’s gonna fly, the crow.
If you make her sing,
When she’s coming she will let you know.

Her frozen hand takes your breath away
As she leads your soul through the dark.
You know that she came to break your heart,
But oh, when she moves you fall in love again.

And she spreads her wings
When she’s gonna fly, the crow.
If you make her sing,
When she’s coming she will let you know.
She spreads her wings
And they black out the sun.
You won’t hear her sing
And she’ll leave when the damage is done.

Cold heart, warm gun, a dying sun…
Bright eyes, black soul, she’ll never let you go.

And she spreads her wings
When she’s gonna fly, the crow.
If you make her sing,
When she’s coming she will let you know.
She spreads her wings
And they black out the sun.
You won’t hear her sing
And she’ll leave when the damage is done.”

[ The Crow – Hurts ]

This photo… just happened. Really – and it’s a rarity for me, especially when my long-term projects are concerned – I just shot it, fell in love with it, and it started singing to me this song.

So, I was at BriarRose’s place and, among the bagillion things we end up doing at the same time, we decided to take a few photos with a “boudoir” feel to test my new softbox. We were mostly toying around with laces and silk robes for a few photos inspired by Portishead’s Glory Box, until BriarRose sat down, turned to me to tell me something, and I froze this exact moment, perfect light and all.

And I don’t know, it was just so The Crow it had to be in the project.

 

Just for the record, my original idea envisioned a fashion-oriented portrait from the collarbones up skimming over the keywords in the lyrics, so velied hats, feathers, a pale cyan background, blood-red lips and an innocent look to contrast it all. I think I got the song backwards: I would have gone for an intimidating, fancy outer appearance hiding an inner innocence, while the song is actually about the polar opposite. An intimate portrait of a young woman with such a piercing gaze goes much better with the lyrics and melody.

The reason is probably that I’ve had a weird relationship with this song: for the longest time, I kind of just heard it without really listening. I didn’t quite “get it”, so to say, I drifted off for its running time and didn’t pay it any more than the bare minimum attention. Then something changed, perhaps thanks to this photo, and it’s since become one of my favourites from Exile. I guess it just had yet to speak to me and I had to truly listen.

The Infernal Lords XXVI: Leonard

“See beyond the rationale,
Accept the fate that nothing is meant to be.
Be the least connected,
Stay true to the last original.

Apply layers to reality,
Things only you can see.
Add a beat to normality
To tap the core of insanity.”
[ The Mundane And The Magic – Dark Tranquillity & Nell Sigland ]

Grand Master Marquis Leonard is a former high-ranking Virtue long since turned into a powerful Fourth-Level Demon. He has got the power to bend the laws of both the Astral and Physical Planes at will, which is commonly known as Witchcraft. While many Demons can do so by casting spells of their own, most are only limited to their own elements, while Marquis Leonard’s influence can range to any known field. Thus, humankind cherishes him particularly: he is known as the Demon of Witchcraft and Sorcery and any Mortal willing to sell their souls to him will receive the gift of Magic, which is the power to influence the world around them at will. Marquis Leonard is summoned much more often than any other Goetic Demon due to the formidable powers he can give: Elemental Demons possess full control over their own elements, but they cannot bestow such powers to Mortals unless they directly possess them, while Marquis Leonard can. He can also give passive powers, with which Mortals can achieve a degree of control of the cosmic forces through a certain set of rituals, actions, combination of words, and catalysts such as symbols, seals, herbs, minerals or artefacts. Therefore, he is the main reference to those who wish to become witches or wizards and is often adored as an idol under many Pagan names.
He is often called upon together with his close associate, Marquise Naamah, the Mother of Divination. Along with her and other nightly Demons such as Princess Lilith, Duke Astaroth and Marquis Rosiel he roams the Earth as an Incubus to feed on the energies of sleeping Mortals, targeting in particular dreams of ambition. Thanks to his enormous powers, he is also a member of Duke Beelzebub’s Order of the Great Fly. He and Duke Xaphan share a sort of friendly rivalry, as Marquis Leonard likes shaping the world by bending nature’s laws with his powers while Duke Xaphan prefers studying and applying them to his technology. A particularly learned Demon, Marquis Leonard also shares a good comradeship with Countess Agares and often visits the Infernal Library, whose Magic section was almost entirely compiled by himself.

Leonard: development and symbolism

Credits:

Photo, concept, manipulation, frame design, styling: GothicNarcissus

Model, hair: Davide Marcuzzo

Additional resources: Amptone-stock (texture)

Oh, hey, the Infernal Lords are still progressing! I feel kind of bad for taking more than a year between the last work and this one, but 2014 has been quite contrived, both outside and inside photography, and the project had to wait.
First things first: I wanted a Demon of Magic and Witchcraft in my series. Provided that this project draws quite strictly from Jewish an Christian mythology, in my continuity witches and wizards call upon a Demon to receive their powers (and I don’t care if it is not Wiccanly accurate, that’s an entirely different mythology), so such a Demon was quite necessary. Despite Leonard not being from the Lesser Key of Solomon, I found him quite easily in Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnare Infernal as a nightly Demon who presides the Sabbath and bestows the gift of black magic to humans. I was a little puzzled by his name, as it is a real given name, but I also found a very inspirational illustration of him which cleared any doubts.

Leonard from the Dictionnaire Infernal.

Purged of the monstrous features, the whole idea of the pose, the staff (or, in my case, a wand) in his right hand and the beard to keep close to the goatish theme stuck. I came up pretty quickly with the idea of using a wand I purchased back in my teenish wiccan days and an as of then yet unused notebook with a fancy cover I found in Malta some eight years ago (you can also see it in The Narcissist Song, and it has now become my tarot journal). Also, a few years ago my mother sew me an amazing black and red cloak, which would perfectly fit the theme.
Much more troublesome was the casting of Leonard because I could not find someone who fit the “wizard” type. I had a few ideas which didn’t work out for several reasons, and then I met Davide, the lead singer of the progressive metal band SoulStorm, who fit perfectly. We initially scheduled a shoot in August, but even if we did it, I had to scrap all the photos I took because the light was pretty awful, too much even to try to fix it in Lightroom and Photoshop. At least, the experience with Decarabia has taught me something. Due to my summer break at my mother’s and other stuff, a new shoot had to wait until November, when I stopped at Davide’s place for an afternoon on my way back from Lucca. As I had done some paid work at the Comic convention, I spent much of November working on those photos and I could not find the time and concentration to work on Leonard until yesterday. The postproduction was smooth and quick, so here it is at last. On a side note, I had toyed with the background very long ago (at least as early as 2011); even though it didn’t fit the photo because it was too distracting, here you can see the original texture I had come up with.

The symbolism is pretty immediate: the wand, the grimoire and Solomon’s Seal projecting from the crystal represent witchcraft, as does the cloak. As I mentioned, I took most of the pose directly from the illustration in the Dictionnaire Infernal, but I decided to give it some sort of “fallen saint” theme to represent Leonard’s huge powers. I decided to make his seal (actually borrowed from Volac) into the halo because Leonard is quite dressed up and there wasn’t much skin for it; but most of it was covered by his head anyway, so I engraved it on the grimoire back cover too. I also decided not to give him wings because, on the one hand, he can just poof anywhere magically and, on the other, they would be redundant and clashing with the cloak. I chose liver as the main colour because I wanted some muted sepia-ish tones which would recall a dusty painting. I had some trouble choosing a song, but eventually The Mundane And The Magic by Dark Tranquillity featuring Nell Sigland stuck for pretty obvious reasons.