Ἀποκάλυψις

from THE FACE OF THE DEEP/Christine Rossetti Miss Rossetti's commentary on ...the Book of Revelation:

"""""4. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet
colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication :

5. And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.

The beast is scarlet, and the woman wears scarlet. He is full of names of blasphemy, and her names are of the same sort. He is scarlet as sin. She is both scarlet and particoloured, decked with such gauds as St. Paul warns us women against. As it seemed possible to study the sun-clothed exalted Woman (ch. xii.) as a figure of the all-glorious destiny awaiting the Virtuous Woman, so now I think this obscene woman may (on the surface) be studied as illustrating the particular foulness, degradation, loathsomeness, to which a perverse rebellious
woman because feminine not masculine is liable.

Execrable, for aught we know, as any devil, beast, man, of them all, the resources and so to say the tactics of Babylon differ from theirs : she and they proceed to a common goal by
distinct paths. They have (such as it is) counsel and strength for war : she less astute in counsel, less hardy in war, makes of her own self a trap, a bait, a ruinous prize. She seduces, not coerces. She tyrannizes by influence, not by might. Filthy
she is, but she proffers filthiness in a golden cup. """"

Enough of that for now ---

waka jawaka
Zappa's birthday it is, on Nivôse 1 on French Revolutionary Calendar and final day of Zappa-Dan of CCXIX.