True Terror, Just In Time For Halloween...

Isn't this a pretty picture? I thought so, too, once I cropped out the SCARY PARTS. This is a small section of one of the most frightening images I have ever seen. I would have included the whole thing, but I just didn't dare. Copyright considerations aside, I was pretty sure Our Lady of Chaos would STRIKE ME DEAD if I did so.

WHY, you ask? It's hard to even type about. Let me collect myself a minute here.

I tell you this because the uncropped version of this photo, brought in by our clipping service, was snapped by Craig Cutler for the Halloween edition of Martha Stewart Holiday. Do you see what I'm driving at here? Can you picture it yet?

Yes, people -- Martha appears inside the back cover of the magazine (available now on newsstands everywhere) tricked out as none other than Eris/Discordia, the Goddess of Confusion, with a golden laurel wreath in her hair, swathed in white and posed with the bucket of Holy Projectiles shown above, poised and ready to lob them at unsuspecting passersby. OK, OK, a lot of them are golden POMEGRANATES but this only underlines what I've been saying all along about the link between Persephone, the Maiden Goddess From Hell, and Discordia, the Goddess of Confusion. The fruits of temptation come in many colors, my friend. And some of them splatter better than others.

To think that this smirking blonde individual, who has dedicated her life to imposing method on madness and leaving nothing but color-coordinated, home-baked, tidily-gift-wrapped ORDER in her wake could ever entertain the idea of dressing up as Eris...Sort of the same principle as the most experienced streetwalker on the block going to a Halloween party dressed as Mother Superior. But MUCH, MUCH SCARIER. I've been thinking for years that there's not a Halloween trick left that can really scare me. Was I ever wrong.

This is the very essence of the Erisian experience. Just when you thought you'd FINALLY LEARNED TO DUCK, she shows up WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECT HER and gets you right between the eyes with that damned apple. Then she vanishes, with a hearty cry of "PSYCH!"

Is there any faith more sublime than this?