Holidays are a time to gather together with friends and family, to enjoy life, and to create lasting memories. With so many to celebrate, how can you not have a favorite? For Opie and me it has always been Halloween, so tonight we'd like to share with you the story of one of our most favorite Dada's...
The Mistress of the Garden...
who was originally created for a past issue of Cloth Paper Scissors and not for the faint of heart.
She came into being one evening as Opie and I wondered what the Mistress of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights would be like… if one existed of course!
As we were contemplating this notion, images of Witches, Vampires, Skeletons and Bats sprang to mind, but something was still lacking. While She was all this… She was more… She was innocence transformed and transcended. The Mother of all nightmares who devours the souls of the wicked and the bones of the damned.
But why her and why here? Did she fall from grace or was this her destiny from the beginning. Some things are meant to remain a mystery.
What we can tell you is she started out an innocent doll that somehow came apart and was put back together with old bits and pieces that oddly enough seemed to fit like a glove. Broken toys, discarded doll parts... Frankenstein’s bride personified with the delicate wings of a bat. Eternal, nocturnal, and insatiable. Empty inside, she exists only too feed, but it’s never, never enough.
Many cultures believe that Halloween or All Hallow’s Eve is the most magical night of the year. A night of ghost stories, tricks or treats, costumes, jack-o’-lanterns and séances. A metaphysical night, when the veil that separates “our world” from the “other-world” is the thinnest, and the dead walk among us. A “spirit night” … when thoughts turn to the supernatural.
It is the one night that The Mistress of the Garden is free to roam our realm. If you are pure of heart, have no fear she will not harm you, but if you are not, then beware the slight movement in the shadows, or the faint almost inaudible whispers in the wind, or a sudden chill in the air that feels as if someone just walked across your grave.
It is she and she is coming. In the dark. In the night. And she will feast on your bones and bring your soul back to her garden… for all Eternity.
Happy Halloween!
