the NachtKabarett

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After close to a year in anticipation, MarilynManson.com was updated circa 11:30pm PST with "11.05.110033 - it's coming" (dark font on solid black background). Then, at about 1:15am PST, the final website was updated with a News section, Artworks, Gallery of Shapes (a multifaceted gallery), Synesthesia Archive (a Warholian view of Marilyn Manson's discography), Prescriptions (the Official store), and a cinema page featuring an animated poster for Phantasmagoria. Most mysteriously is the Gallery of Shapes which was never fully activated, containing three sections, The Slideshow, The Style and The Spectacle. The Slideshow is most traditionally a photo gallery and contains a photo gallery with captions for (s)AINT and Personal Jesus. The Spectacle had yet to be viewable while The Style contains a non interactive version of the MarilynManson.com puzzle splash page which occupied the site for close to 6 months.

Though not an overt plethora of such, there are however a number of bizarre and esoteric symbols throughout the site, outlined as follows. And as the site is updated The NACHTKABARETT will follow suite. Most notable are the Double Crosses of Lorraine which act as the 'back' buttons and often integrated within the site design. Several elements and page backgrounds reproduce the structure of playing cards (especially the edges on Gallery of Shapes page ), using central symetry, much like was done for the Lest We Forget album cover's centrally symetric blackened edges.

The version archived above with the December 2006 picture by Perou showing Manson at home sat on a Victorian sofa in a melancholic pose, surfaced on March 1st, 2007, together with a new 'Performance' page with dates and information about Manson's series of upcoming concerts, which would later be known as 'The Rape Of The World Tour'. Before this version surfaced, two alternate backgrounds were temporarily used : the first one showing Manson's Celebritarian polka-dotted clown persona, the second one featuring an older portrait of Manson in blackface and iron teeth which is strangely reminiscent of the skull illustration displayed in the News section.

Besides a JFK short video segment repeated in loop, one of the most noticeable elements within the new site which is an overt reference is the skull which accompanies the Marilyn Manson news page.

Featured directly below 'The Peoples Forum' of the 'Today's News' section of MarilynManson.com lies that of a dichotomist image, the left portion of the individual's head being of flesh in white, with the background and a gun pointed towards the eye socket being composed of black; whereas the right portion of the individual reveals the skull of and a knife protruding through its socket done in black against a white background and a small patch of white in the immediate area surrounding the eye socket, which is reminiscent of the earlier black Rodent Death Head logo. The illustration is rank in dichotomy, paralleling the themes of life and death, and serving as a potent reminder of mortality.

This rather thought provoking image is an allusion or homage to a drawing done by the illustrator Gustav Gustavovich Klutsis, a prominent artist who served the Soviet Union during the revolutionary times of Marx, Lenin, Engels and Stalin as a forefront of the nationalistic propaganda which circulated during that era.

In collaboration with his wife, Valentina Kulagina, they produced some of the most recognizable and dominant propaganda of their time. While originally creating works of a more utopian or idealistic nature, the constraints placed upon them due to the authoritarian nature of the Red's caused their work to suffer, becoming particularly narrow and focused on Joesph Stalin's cult of personality.

The skull adopted by Manson is that of a Klutsis illustration created for the cover of Aleksei Eliseevich Kruchenykh's "On the Fight with Hooliganism in Literature", Moscow , 1926. Aleksei Kruchenykh was an avant-garde artist perhaps best known for his Futurist opera, 'Victory Over the Sun' and his founding of the Zaum movement.

Zaum translates quite literally to being 'beyond sense' and was marked by surrealistic and experimental language which, instead of focussing on description and explanation, was founded on the principle that emotions, ideas, and concepts could be directly or indirectly transmitted to another individual through sound alone, eliminating the need for conscious understanding, logic, or reason, as it was to move the individual on such a basic human level. These sounds were then believed to convey their own images which would materialize in the mind of whoever heard the reverberations of sound. If translated to the page, Zaum focussed greatly on how words (or portions thereof) were placed on the page as its own art form, thus shackling off traditional art for more abrasive, imaginative and expressive writings.

Such a movement should not be altogether unfamiliar to fans of Marilyn Manson, as the Golden Age of Grotesque drew thematically from many elements of surrealism, DaDa, and other experimental branches of art not bound by the parameters of "realism" or "traditional methods". In addition to such, followers and forefathers of the Zaum movement were fond of creating their own manifestos and sub movements, which serves as another facet paralleling Manson's yet unveiled yet temporarily observed 'Celebritarian Manifesto'. In addition, the Futurist opera "Victory Over the Sun", which premiered in 1913 in St. Petersburg at the Luna Park, was an attempt to bring together literature, music, and painting for expressionary purposes. Manson has made significant mention of the use of all such mediums in the efforts to properly convey what he feels needs to be expressed, rather than stagnating only as a musician, opting rather to create paintings, pieces of music, or writings as is necessary to his purpose.

Collaboration between members of The NACHTKABARETT,
and thorough researcher & contributor, Daisy13

Contained within the Gallery of Shapes section of MarilynManson.com lays a hidden message, blended into the right side of the border of the above image.

The hidden text reveals quite discernibly 'Inferioris'; while what is written prior to it cannot yet effectively be made out, there exists suspicion to believe this may or may not be a reference to Aleister Crowley's "Nemoris Inferioris".

On a single cream colored page, a letter addressed to IX° (Initiate of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis) Roy Leffingwell of the O.T.O, by Aleister Crowley, announcing the Word of the Equinox, was written. Emblazoned in red with a Sevenfold Star of the Beast, the letter began with "Ex castro Nemoris Inferioris", which translates to "From The Camp at Netherwood".

This rather enticing introduction was in fact referring to Aleister Crowley's final dwelling place. Accompanied by four acres of trees and shrubbery, Crowley lived out his final days in a Victorian guest house in Hastings, England, known as 'Netherwood'.

There are a few records of letters being written at the time of Crowley's stay in Netherwood which begin in similar fashion or variation:

"Celebritarian Corporation engraving 11:26 Selecids" can currently be found on the 11th slide of the (s)AINT slideshow, while "The codes mean something. It hasn't been solvved." can currently be found on the 26th slide of the Personal Jesus slideshow.

While still in speculation, a few pertinent pieces of information can be drawn from the slides.

In relation to 11:26, it is worthwhile to note the number 11:26 appears in several locations. Firstly, the slides in which the clues are given are located on the 11th, and 26th pictures of the slideshow. One of the most famous passages relevant to the Eucharist and Celebritarianism can also be found in Corinthians 11:26 of the Holy Bible, in which Jesus informs his disciples of the reward for the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood. (see "Eat Me, Drink Me for the biblical passage).

11:26 (November 26th), 1789 was also the first national Thanksgiving Day; another reference to the Eucharist, as the term 'Eucharist' is derived from Eucharistia, which translates to 'Thanksgiving'.

'Selecids' is also a variation of 'Seleucids'. The Seleucid Empire, an age of 30 kings, was founded by Seleucus, who settled in Babylon in 312 BC. Babylon has also recently been evoked by Manson through a new shirt design which features the seven pointed star of Babylon.

"The codes mean something. It hasn't been solvved" appears to be nothing more than validation of what the Manson community had already known for months on end: that the elaborately cryptic series of codes previously displayed on Manson's website had not been solved (to date the code remains unbroken).

Manson's gallery of personal watercolors was also added to the new site design to display a massive body of 126 artworks. As an introduction, a road sign containing only two words (Art / Ennui) reflects on Manson's own statements made over the past year and a half regarding the perpetual boredom and weariness with the music scene that he fell into, leaving him at the proverbial crossroads of having to determining whether or not to continue stagnating in ennui, or to break away from that path and make an artistic revival and return to the music scene.

'Ennui' is a French word meaning 'boredom'. Most notably, and as a past connotation to Manson's past work in The Golden Age of Grotesque, it was a great ennui and complacency in the world around them which inspired the Dadaists to form the movement which they termed "anti-art", the spiteful and vindictive lash against the establishment which was too timid and too uninspired to create anything meaningful, with real substance.

The whole composition itself seems to be an allusion to a 1920 collage by Raoul Hausmann, co-founder of Berlin Dada movement in 1917 and creator of the photomontage technique. Manson would later use another Hausman montage from the same year for the Eat Me, Drink Me incarnation of MarilynManson.com.

Added symbolisms include an ironically blind Manson begging the question, "How do I look?" as he cannot see himself; it's his own personal works, not a band effort, lain out before the world for adoration or vilification.

Strands of Manson's hair lays fallen underneath his great skull. Leading into The Golden Age of Grotesque, 2002 Manson had posted in his Journal in early 2002 that as a part of his transformative molting process to usher in the new era, he cut his hair yet again, making references to the story of Samson and Delilah, to then with those amputated locks hi then used in his lifesized portraits of Elizabeth Short, The Black Dahlia, to make her pubic hair.

Two paintings of Angelina Jolie surfaced - the latter sharing many similarities with the poster for 'Taking Lives', the 2004 adaptation of the book by Michael Pye. 'Taking Lives' follows the exploits of Illeana Scott (played by Jolie), an FBI profiler attempting to catch a serial killer who assumes the identity and the life of his victims wherever he goes.

The Artworks section menu, which presented links to the Body of Work subsection discussed precedently, an Art store page which remained under construction, and the Celebritarian Corporation Gallery page, revealed an already familiar picture in its background, intermittently enlightened by flashes that reproduced a photocopier's lamp.

This animated version of the bandaid stigmata image that had surfaced within a painted collage printed in 2004 on the Lest We Forget booklet, and later on Manson's site during its Celebritarian resurrection in January, 2006 now incarnated even more evidently a morbid interpretation of Manson's "xeroxed hands" mentioned back during the Mechanical Animals era, in the lyrics for the song "The Last Day on Earth":

Collaboration between The NACHTKABARETT, and Daisy13, who provided the NK with the fruits of his research and has been a frequent contributor, also aiding to translate The NACHTKABARETT into his native German

Danzig. No, not a nod to the 1992 metal ballad "Mother", former Misfit or Marilyn Manson's 1995 tour partner but the European city, or at least a potential reference to a piece of the city's antiquity. One of the stranger, and more esoteric, inclusions to the new site is a bizarre coat of arms which adorns the Art Gallery page. Though it is currently unidentified in an incontrovertible and concrete manner, frequent NACHTKABARETT contributor, Daisy13, has found at least a potential parallelism of the origins of this edifice and has done so via a very subtle quote with the newly launched Performance page for tour dates.

The excerpts contained within the audio track on the Performance page of marilynmanson.com are in actuality small passages of a considerably longer speech given by der Führer, Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of the Reich, addressing the Reichstag on September 1st, 1939:

This speech, followed by the subsequent invasion of Poland (which began the very same day) marked the beginning of WWII; and, within the short period of nine days, six countries (U.K, Canada, France, New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia) retaliated, declaring war on Germany.

The double cross served as a prominent symbol of The Free City of Danzig, and was also appropriated by the Nazi party in the construction of medals and awards for Danzig citizens who helped establish the NSDAP during WWII.

While large portions of Manson's coat of arms currently remains a mystery, the double cross and implied Double Cross / Cross of Lorraine presented below the crown, along with the inverted lions at the bottom of the crest, further suggest a relationship between Marilyn Manson and the City of Danzig. The skull is aptly placed; the result of war held an enormous impact on the city of Danzig, with at least 90% of its structure reduced to ruins and the majority of its citizens killed, wounded, or fled during the onslaught of WWII.

The Cinema section basically uses the same Phantasmagoria animated poster with Manson's interpretation of Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum that had surfaced on February 5th on Manson's site, except one of the twins periodically flashes into a blurred, yellowish and phantomatic mirrored image of herself.

Manson's Phantasmagoria has a lot in common with Disney's 1940 masterpiece Fantasia, besides the similarity both titles bear. Indeed, both ambitious projects deal with imagination, revolve around music, visions, and the surreal that can be qualified cinematographic inovations, and both consist in a series of short films. Paralleling this, a very à propos sample can be heard amidst the cacophony of manson's most intense live moments and subliminal Danzig-related messages: extracts from Modest Mussorgsky's 1867 witches' sabbath-themed composition 'Night on Bald Mountain', more precisely Leopold Stokowski's 1940 arrangement specially produced for the eponymous segment from Disney's Fantasia. The sequence focuses on the terrifying winged demon Chernabog, whose name derives from a mysterious 'Black God' from Slavic mythology, and whom Disney actually referred to as "Satan himself", making him the most powerful and terrible Disney villain ever created.

Parallelling Manson's "Inauguration of the Mechanical Christ" introduction segment which can also beheard on the performance page, the Disney sequence shows the awakening of Chernabog/Lucifer on Walpurgis Night, on the top of Bald Mountain, from which he summons the spirits of the dead and other ghoulish abominations for an horrifying and fiery Sabbath. Note that Béla Lugosi himself, soon to be mentioned by Manson as an influence for the upcoming Eat Me, Drink Me vampiric era, served as a live action model for the character's animation.

The Synesthesia Archive section reveals a peculiar look at Manson's discography : an interactive version of the Manson-esque parody of the Marilyn Monroe cascading portraits by Andy Warhol which was revealed on March 15th of the same year under the form of a printed T-shirt, each picture revealing the logo of a released album or EP when hovering on it.

Besides being a direct allusion to fame and suicide, the montage also evokes Manson's "Frankensteins" or past incarnations he successively impersonated throughout the eras in the manner of a chameleon, an ability he proved to master. Most notably, even though it's not directly associated with the corresponding era in the pattern, the green-faced Manson is quite evocative of the Smells Like Children Roald Dahlesque cover.

The title 'Synesthesia', designating a neurologic condition in which one's senses are coupled in their perception (for instance colors and graphemes), describes the montage very well, as the different colors are associated with moods, symbols and sounds of the different eras. It is also noteworthy to mention that the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov, whom Manson later quoted as an inspiration on his upcoming album Eat Me, Drink Me, was himself afflicted with this condition.

Amongst the several logos of past and upcoming eras, a detail catches the attention : a stylized version of the Mechanical Christ's TV cross set on fire à la KKK that appeared on The Last Tour on Earth album cover, thus confirming the fact that this element, in its shape, signification and utilization, can be considered as a prototype for Manson's gun crucifix and Celebritarian Double Cross. It is noteworthy to mention that the now aborted upcoming album, to which the link was thus never activated, is here associated with the Celebritarian Seal, thus confirming the fact that the monogram was indeed meant signify that new era.

Hidden amongst the page's attached files, two other logos are present but weren't used in the final montage. They were the gothic MM initials used for Lest We Forget and the Against All Gods tour, which probably were replaced by the more meaningful Personal Jesus Christogram, and the Grotesk Burlesk's Rodent Death Head. It is unknown whether its presence here suggests an aborted project of a release including live material from the Golden Age era, or just a funny easter egg dissimulated to the attention of Manson nerds. The absence of the gun crucifix among those well hidden references is nevertheless surprising.