578 g Pyrite Cthulhu Octopus Skull – Idol, All Saints’ Day, Halloween – 5.8 x 4.6 x 11.0 cm Skull- 578 g
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Pyrite skull sculpture, a skull-shaped item (mineral form: Schädel) from Peru, weighing 578 g and measuring 5.8 x 6.4 x 11.0 cm.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Seven to eight inches tall was the idol that Inspector Legrasse brought to the annual meeting of the American Archaeological Society in St. Louis in 1908. So runs H. P. Lovecraft's tale in “The Call of Cthulhu.” The scholars saw a figure with a cephalopod-like head, its face a single mass of feelers. It crouched on a rectangular pedestal full of indecipherable signs, and clung to its front edge with long, curved claws. No one in the hall could even remotely imagine with what language those signs might be related. Legrasse had seized the figure months earlier in the wooded swamps south of New Orleans. On November 1, 1907, All Saints’ Day, the police had received a desperate plea for help from that swamp-and-lagoon country, and his men there stumbled upon an ancient cult.
This skull is such an idol, all in golden glory. An octopus has wound itself around it. Its arms flow down from the face like a beard of feelers, wind around the base, and curl along the sides. They are lined with rows of suction cups, and at their tips are fine, articulated patterns cut as if the marks of a forgotten script. Already the form is a gift. The pyrite is masterfully worked, with wide, mirror-polished surfaces that are traversed by only a few accompanying minerals, delicate light veins like tides’ lines. It is precisely this mirror gloss that lends a surprisingly pure, almost graceful quality to the dark figure.
Pyrite has its own link to the depths. In oxygen-poor mud, at the bottom of ancient seas, microorganisms decompose the remains of buried animals and release sulfide. Where iron is present, pyrite precipitates: it coats shells, fills their inner cavities, and replaces even delicate structures. Thus arise gold-glittering fossils, such as ammonites from the early Jurassic. These are extinct cephalopods and thus distant relatives of the octopus. What the depth holds, it sometimes turns to gold, though only into fool’s gold.
Material: Pyrite (iron disulfide, FeS₂) with fine pale veins and scattered dark accompanying minerals
Origin: Peru
Dimensions: 5.8 x 6.4 x 11.0 cm
Weight: 578 g
Special features: Sculpture of a skull with an octopus, whose arms flow down from the face and wind around an oval pedestal; finely cut rows of suction cups and patterned tentacle tips, some with drilled holes; large areas of mirror-polished surfaces; fine pale veins and a fine natural fracture pattern, inter alia across the face and arms; Care: store dry, do not clean when wet
631 g Green Moss Agate
Seller's Story
Ich lasse mich immer wieder von der Schönheit der Natur überraschen und berühren. Mineralien und Edelsteine empfinde ich als Verkörperung jener Perfektion und Harmonie, die allem Sein zugrunde liegt. In ihnen verdichtet sich die Essenz der Erde – kristallisiert für die Ewigkeit und doch in jedem Stück einzigartig.
Jedes Mineral, das ich anbiete, ist von mir persönlich ausgewählt. Nicht nach bloßem Glanz, sondern nach dem Gefühl von Wahrhaftigkeit, das es in mir hervorruft. So findet nur das seinen Weg in meine Hände – und weiter in Ihre –, was ich selbst als würdig empfinde, in seiner Schönheit weitergereicht zu werden.
In meinem Handeln leiten mich Ehrlichkeit, Sorgfalt und die Freude am Teilen dieser Schätze. Ich verstehe mich dabei weniger als Händler, sondern vielmehr als Vermittler zwischen der Natur und den Menschen, die bereit sind, ihre Geschenke mit Achtsamkeit anzunehmen.
Seven to eight inches tall was the idol that Inspector Legrasse brought to the annual meeting of the American Archaeological Society in St. Louis in 1908. So runs H. P. Lovecraft's tale in “The Call of Cthulhu.” The scholars saw a figure with a cephalopod-like head, its face a single mass of feelers. It crouched on a rectangular pedestal full of indecipherable signs, and clung to its front edge with long, curved claws. No one in the hall could even remotely imagine with what language those signs might be related. Legrasse had seized the figure months earlier in the wooded swamps south of New Orleans. On November 1, 1907, All Saints’ Day, the police had received a desperate plea for help from that swamp-and-lagoon country, and his men there stumbled upon an ancient cult.
This skull is such an idol, all in golden glory. An octopus has wound itself around it. Its arms flow down from the face like a beard of feelers, wind around the base, and curl along the sides. They are lined with rows of suction cups, and at their tips are fine, articulated patterns cut as if the marks of a forgotten script. Already the form is a gift. The pyrite is masterfully worked, with wide, mirror-polished surfaces that are traversed by only a few accompanying minerals, delicate light veins like tides’ lines. It is precisely this mirror gloss that lends a surprisingly pure, almost graceful quality to the dark figure.
Pyrite has its own link to the depths. In oxygen-poor mud, at the bottom of ancient seas, microorganisms decompose the remains of buried animals and release sulfide. Where iron is present, pyrite precipitates: it coats shells, fills their inner cavities, and replaces even delicate structures. Thus arise gold-glittering fossils, such as ammonites from the early Jurassic. These are extinct cephalopods and thus distant relatives of the octopus. What the depth holds, it sometimes turns to gold, though only into fool’s gold.
Material: Pyrite (iron disulfide, FeS₂) with fine pale veins and scattered dark accompanying minerals
Origin: Peru
Dimensions: 5.8 x 6.4 x 11.0 cm
Weight: 578 g
Special features: Sculpture of a skull with an octopus, whose arms flow down from the face and wind around an oval pedestal; finely cut rows of suction cups and patterned tentacle tips, some with drilled holes; large areas of mirror-polished surfaces; fine pale veins and a fine natural fracture pattern, inter alia across the face and arms; Care: store dry, do not clean when wet
631 g Green Moss Agate
Seller's Story
Ich lasse mich immer wieder von der Schönheit der Natur überraschen und berühren. Mineralien und Edelsteine empfinde ich als Verkörperung jener Perfektion und Harmonie, die allem Sein zugrunde liegt. In ihnen verdichtet sich die Essenz der Erde – kristallisiert für die Ewigkeit und doch in jedem Stück einzigartig.
Jedes Mineral, das ich anbiete, ist von mir persönlich ausgewählt. Nicht nach bloßem Glanz, sondern nach dem Gefühl von Wahrhaftigkeit, das es in mir hervorruft. So findet nur das seinen Weg in meine Hände – und weiter in Ihre –, was ich selbst als würdig empfinde, in seiner Schönheit weitergereicht zu werden.
In meinem Handeln leiten mich Ehrlichkeit, Sorgfalt und die Freude am Teilen dieser Schätze. Ich verstehe mich dabei weniger als Händler, sondern vielmehr als Vermittler zwischen der Natur und den Menschen, die bereit sind, ihre Geschenke mit Achtsamkeit anzunehmen.
Details
Main mineral
578 g Pyrite Cthulhu Octopus Skull – Idol, All Saints’ Day, Halloween – 5.8 x 4.6 x 11.0 cm
Mineral form
Skull
Weight
578 g
Country of origin
Peru
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