THE WHORE IS THIS TEMPLE edited by Nameless, With Art and Illustrations by David Herrerias – SIGNED Limited Edition Hardcover + Bonus Chapbook

This is a limited edition hardcover of only 117 copies plus bonus chapbook “The House of the Moon” and is signed by the editor. Book and chapbook are in fine condition.  Published in 2017. 234 pages.  Book is oversized and heavy.

Published by Mount Abraxas

From the Publisher:

“Pity me! Succour me! Let us go to the temple!”

Gustave Flaubert, Salammbo

There are four gates to one palace; the floor of that palace is of silver and gold; lapis lazuli & jasper are there; and all rare scents; jasmine & rose, and the emblems of death.

As they say on pilgrimage, the candles will fade and this Temple will be left to infinite darkness. Yes, indeed, somewhere, in a crumbling city there is a Temple tattooed on the skin of a Whore and every night a Knight is devoured by his Armour. Yes, indeed.

And the Whore is this Temple is a homage to Temples of all types, whether circumscribed with walls or left open to the radiance of naked starlight. If, under the night stars, the priestess invokes the venerable names without conscience or remorse, her eyes burning with desire and her lips a chalice of depravity, her ardors will unveil the voluptuous heart of every temple, whether stained with the residue of ecstasy or awash with the sacraments of fire and blood.

This is an offering of holy oil to New Jerusalem and Hyperborea, to libraries and archives, and to the temples of the bureaucrats, those holy ministers of great efficiency and expertise. It is a monument to the halls of bedlam and an attempt to chart the sources of the winds, an oblation to the Minotaur in his labyrinth and to the house of ill-repute found in the center of the earth. It is a celebration of the company of ribald soldiers, drunken and inglorious, that raise Kirschwasser-filled glasses to the cardinal directions and to the violated chambers of their once innocent and lofty hearts. It is a canticle to rivers that run underground through illuminated chambers of limestone and basalt, the last refuges of a race of fallen priests that hide their faces in deference to a god whose name has long since been forgotten. It is a tribute to the house of Balzac and to the mansions of the Kabbalists of Castile, a salutation to the night watchmen of the city of the damned and to the pious souls who ring the bells of innumerable churches, their palms stained red with blood from the abrasions of the ropes while their hearts flame like pyres in the blackened night. It is a sacred oath to fires that cannot be extinguished, and to the ever-burning lamps that flame unseen in buried chambers, those immortal beacons ignited by the dying breath of patriarchs and prophets, may their bright sepulchres survive the final sunset! It is a token of esteem to the temples of the aristocracy, and a pittance to those who drink the noble wine of principal from the cracked and venerable vessels of fallen monarchies. It is a toast to the temples of Le Corbusier and to the revelations of Vitruvius, and to the insidious conspiracies of cartographers and architects. Let us raise a glass as well to the lamentations of the stonemason who abandons his work in despair, too broken by the rigors of the empire to put the final stone in place upon his monument to the impossible. It is an adoration of the civil servant stricken by insatiable wanderlust, abandoning his monthly wage for unknown splendors beneath a canopy of foreign stars. It is an appeal to the impenetrable ocean, a benediction to the hopeless souls of shipwrecked sailors driven off course by the irresistible wail of the sirens, an elegy to the drowned and to the lost at sea, and to the navigator betrayed by the positions of the stars. But to worship in the temple is an act divine, whether desolate or paved with gold, immaculate or crumbling into dust, adorned with malachite and lapis lazuli or constructed from the bones of fallen enemies. Our fervid prayers shall irritate the vessels of the earth that they distill strange wine. Let the priest be drunk upon the kisses of abomination! Let the aspirant be shameless in the embrace of the Beloved! Blessed is the blood that stains the fiery feet of foreign Gods! The bells have shattered in the innermost temple! The annunciation is upon us!