You may have noticed that postings in our Proceedings have slowed down a bit over the last month. The Society has not dissolved. We are, however, in the midst of a few exciting changes. Please bear with us. One new feature that we will over time be adding to this site is a library of essential books on topics of Kircherian interest. The Society’s librarian, MeGo, is heading up the project. Each section of the library will be curated by a guest librarian.

Our first guest curator, Kircher Society Resident Automatist Dug North, has compiled a list of essential books on the history, art, and science of the automaton. Enjoy.

Bailly, Christian. Automata: The Golden Age, 1848-1914. 2nd ed. London: Robert Hale, 2003.

Do not mistake this large volume for a coffee table book with little substance. Christian Bailly recounts the history of seven influential French automata makers of the Victorian era, including Vichy, Roullet & Decamp, Phalibois, and Lambert. Within the hardbound 360 pages, the reader will delight in 150 color photographs and numerous black-and-white drawings and photographs. There are chapters dedicated to automata mechanisms and to the restoration of vintage automata.

Chapuis, Alfred and Edmond Droz, Alec Reid, translator. Automata: A Historical and Technological Study. Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Editions du Griffon, 1958.

Undeniably one of the most important works on the subject of automata, this book was translated from French to English. This 400+ page treatise covers it all: automata in antiquity; clocks with automata; jewelry with automata; mechanical pictures; mechanical toys; watches and snuff-boxes with automata; singing birds and mechanical animals; fortune-tellers and magicians; mechanical music and automaton musicians; automaton writers and draughtsmen; walking and talking automata; animated displays; fake automata; and robots.

Chapuis, Alfred and Edouard Gélis. Le Monde Des Automates: Etude Historique et Technique. 2nd ed. Geneva, Switzerland: Éditions Slatkine, 1984.

This work is widely regarded by the experts –– automata collectors, automata restorers, and automata book authors alike –– to be the most comprehensive work on the subject. This two volume set spans 720 pages and is probably the most technically detailed treatment of the subject. The book is in French, which may be a stumbling block for many readers, but the numerous photographs and mechanical drawings make it useful in any language. While this book is valuable in any condition and in either edition, be careful not to pay first edition (1928) prices for the 1984 reissue.

Frost, Rodney. Making Mad Toys & Mechanical Marvels in Wood. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2007.

Previously published under the title of Whacky Toys, Whirligigs, and Whatchmacallits, this is one of the top books on contemporary automata because it contains actual plans for the aspiring maker. The author’s projects have a wonderful vintage feel and his writing has a friendly, informal tone. The book provides complete plans for 14 projects representing very diverse themes. While not of the step-by-step variety of instruction, the book is filled with color illustrations and important construction details. This is a great gift for someone familiar with woodworking who wants to try their hand at a challenging and unique art form.

Hesketh, Derren A., Penny-In-The-Slot Automata and the Working Model. London: Robert Hale, 2005.

Focused on coin-operated automata from the 1860s to the 1970s, this is comprehensive reference to the type of automata one might have found in amusement parks, fairgrounds, and seaside resorts. These machines represent many themes including haunted houses, drunkards, executions, churchyards, fire-fighters, clowns, locomotives, fortune-tellers, and mechanical music. Targeted towards collectors and would-be collectors, the book includes a price guide and some 200 color illustrations. A rather expensive book, it is worth the price for its thorough treatment of a well-defined genre of automata.

Hiller, Mary. Automata & Mechanical Toys: An Illustrated History. 2nd ed. London: Jupiter Books, 1988.

Of the many out-of-print books on the history of automata, Hiller’s work is easiest to find and most reasonably priced. This book is a great entrée into the subject, covering automata from ancient civilizations, through Medieval and Renaissance Europe, all the way up to toys mass-produced from America. Along the way, the reader is taken on an important detour to the Far East where Japanese Karakuri are covered. This 200 page hardbound book is infused with nearly 200 black-and-white images, dozens of color images, and a useful appendix listing automata and toy-makers with images of their trademarks for identification purposes.

Nishida, Aquio. Automata: Movable Illustration. Tokyo, Japan: Fujin Seikatsu, 2002.

Written in parallel Japanese and English text, this book reminds us that automata cross all borders. Part journal, part sketchbook, part do-it-yourself manual –– Movable Illustration examines one artist’s process of automata creation and construction. The book manages to offer helpful advice to aspiring makers, while also serving as a portfolio of Nishida’s work. A little tricky to acquire because it was printed in Japan, the detailed plan drawings and full page color photographs of the author’s distinctive automata make this book worth the effort of acquiring.

Peppé, Rodney. Automata and Mechanical Toys. Ramsbury, England: The Crowood Press, 2002.

This book is an essential volume for its comprehensive coverage of contemporary automata. The book begins with a brief history of automata, before moving on to contemporary automata by pioneers such as Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely, Sam Smith, and twenty-one of today’s finest automata artists –– many of whom comprise the UK’s famed Cabaret Mechanical Theatre. For those interested in making automata, the book covers tools, materials, techniques, and mechanisms. The reader will find plans for a mechanical test platform, many scale patterns, as well as advice on designing and painting one’s own automata.

Spilhaus, Athelstan and Kathleen Spilhaus. Mechanical Toys: How Old Toys Work. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1989

The line between automata and toys has never been clear, but the principles of engineering that animate them are the same. This book is an essential addition for someone with an interest in automata for its exploration of how mechanical toys work. The chapters survey the history of toys, material types, methods of construction, sound producing devices, and energy delivery systems. While not overly detailed in its technical descriptions, the reader sees many informative images of automata and toy mechanisms –– without their external coverings. Though the book is barely 150 pages, it is full of black-and-white and color photographs that one is unlikely to see anywhere else.

Wood, Gaby. Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002

Originally published in the United Kingdom as Living Dolls, this book is immensely valuable to those interested in the history of automata. As suggested in the subtitle –– A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life –– the author explores the motives of those who have made automata, androids, and robots through the ages. Wood’s book is an incredibly well-researched account of humankind’s ongoing efforts to simulate, emulate, and duplicate living things in mechanical form. A rich intellectual and cultural history, this book provides a context for understanding why automata have been created in the first place.

About the Curator:
Dug North, Kircher Society Resident Automatist, designs and fabricates contemporary wood automata. His artwork resides in private collections both large and small. He is the creator and voice behind The Automata / Automaton Blog (AutomataOnline.com) –– a site dedicated to the interests of makers and collectors of mechanical automata and mechanical toys.

A remarkable video from the Telegraph:

The 35-year-old Indonesian man is apparently on his way to being cured, thanks to the help of an American doctor who recognized his condition as an uncommon manifestation of the common Human Papilloma Virus. His treatment regimen is simply a daily dose of vitamin A.

[From G Vranova]

A photo series by Richard Barnes.

The Galleria Carnivora is an online museum dedicated to the fine art of carnivorous plant photography. An excellent collection. Shown above: Drosera dielsiana.

In the new issue of Cabinet, a time line of giant spheres:

1984: After a dispute with the Austrian government over the construction of his spherical house, Austrian artist Edwin Lipburger declares his property an independent nation and renames it the Republic of Kugelmugel. Lipburger is sentenced to jail for his refusal to pay taxes and insistence on printing his own stamps. However, a pardon from the Austrian president saves him from serving time.

Doug Skinner is putting on his Cabinet of Musical Curiosities every Thursday night at www.dixonplace.org in New York City. His act includes songs from Freemasonry and Lawsonomy; some “Liszt” by the musical medium Rosemary Brown; a “magic melody” by the 19th c. black Rosicrucian Paschal Beverly Randolph; short pieces by the Count of St.-Germain, Rameau’s Nephew, and Lewis Carroll; tunes printed on playing cards; Piero Aretino translated into Solresol; a Hungarian Esperanto cabaret song; and many other lovely things. Also, Kircher’s rendition of the Harmony of the Spheres (extended following his suggestions). Doug Skinner is on voice, Venezuelan cuatro, and piano; David Gold is on viola. More info is at www.dixonplace.org.

The Secret Science Club’s Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest will run again this year on Nov. 2 at 8pm at Union Hall in Brooklyn. More info at the Secret Science Club.

From National Geographic News:

A female shorebird was recently found to have flown 7,145 miles (11,500 kilometers) nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand—without taking a break for food or drink. It’s the longest nonstop bird migration ever measured, according to biologists who tracked the flight using satellite tags. The bird, a wader called a bar-tailed godwit, completed the journey in nine days. In addition to demonstrating the bird’s surprising endurance, the trek confirms that godwits make the southbound trip of their annual migration directly across the vast Pacific rather than along the East Asian coast, scientists said.

Previously in the Proceedings: The Arrow Stork of Mecklenburg

[See Neatorama]

From Wikipedia:

Jellyfish Lake is a well-known dive site in the Pacific island of Palau. It is one of the rock islands, a series of small, rocky, uninhabited archipelagos off the coast of Koror. Jellyfish Lake is completely isolated, but in the distant past, it had an outlet to the ocean. The outlet was closed off and the high jellyfish population was isolated and started to feed on quickly-reproducing algae. Contrary to popular belief, the jellyfish of Jellyfish Lake do have small stinging cells, or nematocysts. However, because the stinging cells are so tiny, their sting is not detectable on most human tissue, so tourists can enjoy swimming with them much closer than would be possible anywhere else.

Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Stalin, Sahkarov, Mayakovsky… The Virtual Musem of Death Masks in Kiev has copies of an enormous number of famous Russians.

* Previously in the Proceedings: L’Inconnue de la Seine, Library of Death Masks

The Sultan’s Elephant is a giant marrionette show put on by the French street theater company Royal de Luxe. It has been performed in several European cities.

The Museum of Hoaxes‘ Alex Boese has written a new book, Elephants on Acid, about history’s most bizarre scientific experiments. He’s excerpted twenty of them on his web site. No. 3 on the list is Vladimir Demikhov’s Two-Headed Dogs:

In 1954 Vladimir Demikhov shocked the world by unveiling a surgically created monstrosity: A two-headed dog. He created the creature in a lab on the outskirts of Moscow by grafting the head, shoulders, and front legs of a puppy onto the neck of a mature German shepherd.

Demikhov paraded the dog before reporters from around the world. Journalists gasped as both heads simultaneously lapped at bowls of milk, and then cringed as the milk from the puppy’s head dribbled out the unconnected stump of its esophageal tube. The Soviet Union proudly boasted that the dog was proof of their nation’s medical preeminence.

Over the course of the next fifteen years, Demikhov created a total of twenty of his two-headed dogs. None of them lived very long, as they inevitably succumbed to problems of tissue rejection. The record was a month.

Demikhov explained that the dogs were part of a continuing series of experiments in surgical techniques, with his ultimate goal being to learn how to perform a human heart and lung transplant. Another surgeon beat him to this goal — Dr. Christian Baarnard in 1967 — but Demikhov is widely credited with paving the way for it.

A Russian video about Demikhov’s experiments:

* More: A 1955 Time magazine article about Demikhov

* Previously in the Proceedings: Experiments in the Revival of Dead Organisms

Hole punch or fallstreak clouds, like this one sighted recently over Nashville, occur when high-altitude ice crystals fall through lower clouds. They can be seen from space:

* Previously in the Proceedings: Uncommon Cloud Formations

Gregory Barsamian creates beautiful sculptures that play with persistence of vision effects. They’re like three-dimensional zoetropes.

Nate True played with persistence of vision effects at this year’s meeting of the Athanasius Kircher Society.

Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG updates us on the subterranean cities of Cappadocia in central Turkey. From Alan Weisman’s new book The World Without Us:

No one knows how many underground cities lie beneath Cappadocia. Eight have been discovered, and many smaller villages, but there are doubtless more. The biggest, Derinkuyu, wasn’t discovered until 1965, when a resident cleaning the back wall of his cave house broke through a wall and discovered behind it a room that he’d never seen, which led to still another, and another. Eventually, spelunking archeologists found a maze of connecting chambers that descended at least 18 stories and 280 feet beneath the surface, ample enough to hold 30,000 people – and much remains to be excavated. One tunnel, wide enough for three people walking abreast, connects to another underground town six miles away. Other passages suggest that at one time all of Cappadocia, above and below the ground, was linked by a hidden network. Many still use the tunnels of this ancient subway as cellar storerooms.

From “The Story of Ink,” an article that appeared in a 1930 issue of the American Journal of Pharmacy:

Iron tannin inks are sometimes formed naturally; such a phenomenon has been observed in Algeria, a country in northern Africa, where there exists a “river of ink.” Chemical examinations of the waters of the streams combining to form this river revealed that one of the streams is impregnated with iron from the soil through which it flows while the other stream carries tannin from a peat swamp. When the two streams joined, the chemical action between the tannic acid, the iron and the oxygen of the water caused the information of the black ferric tannate, making a natural river of ink.

We’ve been unable to find the name of this inky river or its exact location. Perhaps someone could locate it on Google Maps?

Very Kircherian: Artist Judith Fegerl has created a beautiful mechanical reproduction of the Chinese nightingale’s chant.

Watch the video.

* Previously in the Proceedings: The Musical Notation of Bird Songs, The Lyrebird’s Song, The Kinetic Sculpture of Arthur Ganson

On the small mountainous island of La Gomera, one of the Canaries, the children speak to each other from miles apart using one of the most unusual languages in the world. Known as Silbo, the whistling language of Gomero Island has a vocabulary of over 4,000 words, and is used by “Silbadors” to send messages across the island’s deep valleys. Though Silbo was on the verge of extinction in the 1990s, the Gomerans have made a concerted effort to revive their language by adding it to the public school curriculum. Today 3,000 schoolchildren are in the process of learning it.

A video describing the island of Gomera entirely in Silbo.

* More: Learn Silbo, CNN Article

* Previously in the Proceedings: Languge Week at the Kircher Society

In 1900, the body of an unidentified young woman, an apparent suicide, was pulled from the river Seine in Paris. Enchanted by the mysterious corpse’s beauty, a morgue worker made a plaster cast of the woman’s face. Copies of this “drowned Mona Lisa,” as Camus would later describe her, soon proliferated across Paris, appearing first in the city’s salons and finally in its literature. Nabokov wrote a poem titled “L’Inconnue de la Seinne.” Rilke mentioned her in his only novel. Man Ray photographed her. A character in Louis Aragon’s novel Aurélien tries to resurrect her.

In the The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, Al Alvarez writes, “I am told that a whole generation of German girls modeled their looks on her… the Inconnue became the erotic ideal of the period, as Bardot was for the 1950s.”

In 1958, the Inconnue was used as the model for the face of Rescue Annie, a popular CPR training mannequin still in use today. Hers is perhaps the most kissed face of all time.

More on in the influence and authenticity of the Inconnue in this essay by Anja Zeidler.

* Previously in the Proceedings: The Auto-Icon of Jeremy Bentham, Victorian Post-Mortem Photography, Library of Death Masks, A Library of Collectible Life Masks

Sixty-five-year-old Thai Ngoc of Vietnam reportedly hasn’t slept since 1976. Despite nearly 12,000 consecutive days of wakefulness, he seems to suffer no major negative effects. Though it’s unclear whether this claim has been scientifically validated, several news organizations have confirmed that he can go at least several days without sleep. From a recent article on Thai Ngoc:

His biggest dream is to have a dream.

His claims have stirred up curiosity, even outside of Vietnam. Local authorities confirmed this year two foreign news agencies, one from the UK and another from Thailand, visited him.

The UK group followed him for two continuous days while the Thai group watched him for four days around the clock with three cameras. The cameras followed him from his bedroom to his rice-field. At night, he continued to work alone, bailing out water from the paddies or pulling out grass or weeds. To check his alertness, the reporters placed nine objects such as glasses, a rice bowl, a hat and some clothes on a table in his sight before hiding them later on. Then they asked Thai Ngoc about the objects. He described the objects in perfect detail. The UK group took him to Danang City’s Polyclinic to check his encephalogram and mental status and the results were normal.

More in Thanhnien News.

* Previously in the Proceedings: 266 Sleepless Hours, The Girl Who Won’t Grow Up, The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei, More Strange Disorders, The 28-Hour Day, Chronic Hiccups

Of all five fingers, to choose that one. And to keep it in the manner of a saintly medieval relic… Today it seems a loud gesture. Galileo Galilei’s middle finger is preserved in the History of Science Museum in Florence, Italy. From Curious Expeditions:

It is a remarkable bit of irony, that finger. Venerated, kept in reliquary, subjected to the same treatment as a Saint. But this finger belonged to no Saint. It is the long bony finger of an enemy of the church, a heretic. A man so dangerous to the religious institution he was made a prisoner in his own home. It sits in a small glass egg atop an inscribed marble base in the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, or the History of Science Museum in Florence, Italy. … As with a fine wine, it took some years for Galileo’s finger to age into something worth snapping off his skeletal hand. The finger was removed by one Anton Francesco Gori on March 12, 1737, 95 years after Galileo’s death. Passed around for a couple hundred years it finally came to rest in the Florence History of Science Museum. Today is sits among lodestones and telescopes, the only human fragment in a museum devoted entirely to scientific instruments. It is hard to know how Galileo would have felt about the final resting place of his finger. Whether the finger points upwards to the sky, where Galileo glimpsed the glory of the universe and saw God in mathematics, or if it sits eternally defiant to the church that condemned him, is for the viewer to decide.

Radio-Guy Steve Erenberg collects “Oddball and scary scientific stuff, globes, industrial masks and helmets, motors, contraptions, classroom demonstration models, tools, nautical, medical, early advertising, electrostatic devices, telephones, telegraph, planetaria, patent and design models, toys, small steam engines, sewing machines, microscopes, salesmen’s samples, anatomical models, x-ray tubes, and of course early radio equipment.” Exceptional stuff. Don’t miss the 2004 New York Times write-up on his collection.

* Previously in the Proceedings: Thomas Sandberg’s Cabinet of Scientific Curiosities, Finch and Co.: Objects for a Wunderkammer, The Mathematical Wonder Cabinet

[Acknowledgments to akacurator]

Cypress knees, the part of the cypress tree’s root system not submerged below water, come in a variety of evocative shapes and sizes. The greatest knee poacher of all time was a man named Tom Gaskins, proprietor of the Cypress Knee Museum in Palmdale, Florida. He collected hundreds of knees from 23 states, and held the only US patent on cypress knee manufacture. His collection included one knee that resembled Joseph Stalin and another described as a “lady hippo wearing a Carmen Miranda hat.” Cutting off knees kills the cypress tree, so today, thanks to the Lady Bird Johnson Law, knee poaching is illegal. Gaskins’ collection was destined to be the last of its kind. Unfortunately, following Gaskins’ death in 1998 and a major burglary in 2000, the museum closed.

* Previously in the Proceedings: A Short History of Arborsculpture, The Last Tree of Ténéré, Jokes of Nature

Earlier this week, the world’s tallest man, 7.9-foot Bao Xishun, shook hands with 2.4-foot He Pingping, who claims to be the world’s shortest. From the Daily Mail. Plus, pictures from Bao Xishun’s recent wedding.

[Acknowledgments to Jonathan]

This light bulb, located in a firehouse in Livermore, California, has been running almost continuously for 106 years. Wikipedia also keeps track of the second, third, fourth, and fifth longest burning bulbs. Naturally, the Centennial Bulb has its own web site.

* Previously in the Proceedings: Longest Running Scientific Experiment, Millenial Music, The Clock of the Long Now

Charles Bombaugh’s Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-fields of Literature describes a remarkable book, apparently dating to the 16th century, whose every letter was hand-cut in vellum with a penknife:

The most singular bibliographic curiosity is that which belonged to the family of the Prince de Ligne, and is now in France. It is entitled Liber Passionis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, cum Characteribus Nulla Materia Compositis. This book is neither written nor printed! The whole letters of the text are cut out of each folio upon the finest vellum; and, being interleaved with blue paper, it is read as easily as the best print. The labor and patience bestowed in its completion must have been excessive, especially when the precision and minuteness of the letters are considered. The general execution, in every respect, is indeed admirable; and the vellum is of the most delicate and costly kind. Rodolphus II. of Germany offered for it, in 1640, eleven thousand ducats, which was probably equal to sixty thousand at this day. The most remarkable circumstance connected with this literary treasure is, that it bears the royal arms of England, but it cannot be traced to have ever been in that country

A Dartmouth librarian spent twenty years trying to track down this impressive object, to no avail. However, the Dartmouth library does own a miniature book measuring 92 mm by 68 mm that was created in a similar manner in 1600. Two pages of that book are shown above.

* Previously in the Proceedings: The Feather Book of Dionisio Minaggio, Anthropodermic Bibliopegy and the Highwayman’s Confession, Papercuts of Peter Callesen, A Minor History of Miniature Writing

Joscelyn Godwin, author of Athanasius Kircher: A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge, recently returned with photographs from his visit to Mentorella. Mentorella is the spot where St. Eustace, a first-century Roman general, received a vision in the antlers of a stag and converted to Christianity. Father Kircher restored a chapel at this ancient pilgrimage site and spent the better part of his last decade caring for pilgrims there. Though Kircher’s body is buried in Rome, his heart is buried in the chapel. Godwin has uploaded his annotated photos to flickr.

At 7:00 am on May 20, 1910 weather balloons floated into the sky all across Central Europe, collecting data on temperature, barometric pressure, and wind speed at a variety of altitudes. Seven years later, an ambulance driver in the French army named Lewis Fry Richardson would use that data to build the first ever dynamic model of the weather. Working with only pencil, paper, and a slide rule, Richardson engaged in a complex and laborious battery of calculations with the aim of retrospectively predicting how conditions would evolve in one location, southern Germany, over a six hour period. Though Richard’s model proved false — it predicted that barometric pressure over Munich would rise 1,108 millibars, a world record, when in fact it remained steady — his methods form the the basis of modern weather prediction.

In his 1922 book Weather Prediction by Numerical Processes, Richardson proposed the creation of a global weather prediction facility, which he dubbed the “forecast factory.” It would employ some 64,000 human computers sitting in tiers around the circumference of a gigantic globe to calculate the constant flow of differential equations. A conductor situated on a pedestal in the center of the sphere would keep the human computers working in unison. From Richardson’s description of the factory, as it appeared in the January/February 2001 issue of American Scientist:

The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circles, and the Antarctic in the pit. A myriad of computers [humans, that is] are work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits…. From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre…. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a rosy beam of life upon any region that is running ahead of the rest, and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand.

Apparently, even by Richardson’s own criteria, the task would have required closer to 200,000 human calculators.

[Acknowledgments to Margaret]

From National Geographic:

From Charles MacKay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds:

Artephius, a name noted in the annals of alchymy, was born in the early part of the twelfth century. He wrote two famous treatises; the one upon the philosopher’s stone, and the other on the art of prolonging human life. In the latter he vaunts his great qualifications for instructing mankind on such a matter, as he was at that time in the thousand and twenty-fifth year of his age! He had many disciples who believed in his extreme age, and who attempted to prove that he was Apollonius of Tyana, who lived soon after the advent of Jesus Christ, and the particulars of whose life and pretended miracles have been so fully described by Philostratus. He took good care never to contradict a story, which so much increased the power he was desirous of wielding over his fellow-mortals. On all convenient occasions, he boasted of it; and having an excellent memory, a fertile imagination, and a thorough knowledge of all existing history, he was never at a loss for an answer when questioned as to the personal appearance, the manners, or the character of the great men of antiquity.

[Acknowledgments to Ed]

Scattered throughout Northern Japan are two dozen mummified Japanese monks known as Sokushinbutsu. Followers of Shugendô, an ancient form of Buddhism, the monks died in the ultimate act of self-denial.

For three years the priests would eat a special diet consisting only of nuts and seeds, while taking part in a regimen of rigorous physical activity that stripped them of their body fat. They then ate only bark and roots for another three years and began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, normally used to lacquer bowls. This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids, and most importantly, it killed off any maggots that might cause the body to decay after death. Finally, a self-mummifying monk would lock himself in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, where he would not move from the lotus position. His only connection to the outside world was an air tube and a bell. Each day he rang a bell to let those outside know that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the tube was removed and the tomb sealed.

Not all monks who attempted self-mummification were successful. When the tombs were finally opened, some bodies were found to have rotted. These monks were resealed in their tombs. They were respected for their endurance, but they were not worshiped. Those monks who had succeeded in mummifying themselves were raised to the status of Buddha, put on display, and tended to by their followers. The Japanese government outlawed Sokushunbutsu in the late 19th century, though the practice apparently continued into the 20th.

* Previously in the Proceedings: The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei, Mellified Man, Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, The Self-Portrait of Hananuma Masakichi,