Bringing in the work of Robert E. Howard was almost a must here at Culters. Heroic Fantasy and Conan has accompanied us since we were children, at home we devoured, in addition to the adult comics of Totem and Cimoc, the super conan and their wild sword. The cimero barbarian, that rogue-air hero who took on Lovecraftian creatures, demonic armies and sorcerers, had us completely overshadowed. Today we are especially interested in how much of ancient cultures there is built in all that Hyborio universe - which emerged after the sinking of Atlantis - of his stories. Serve this "Conan in heroic times. The Era of Hiboria" as a tribute and reminiscence of all that.

Landscapes of shady lands, winds from the north, peaks and hills surrounded by lush forests populated by tribes and warriors fighting in neighboring countries that take us to a lost era before the Neolithic. In those places we see European barbarians similar to the Celts, Goths, Vikings, Vandals, Cossacks, Tatars ... Druids, mercenaries, invaders, thieves, pirates, sailors, adventurers, savages, kings, civilizations, regions, mountains, jungle and desert, distant places and mythical, mysticism and Nordic beliefs, medieval culture ...

We find a perfectly recognizable cosmos, from north to south, from the West to the Far East, emerged after the decline of the precataclysmic civilizations - dominated by the kingdoms of Kamelia, Valusia, Verulia, Grondar, Thule and Commoria -, after wars, migrations and crossbreeds. Different places populated by the most varied races of the Hyboria era. Here are some interpretations:

Zingara —located on the Iberian peninsula, land of knighthood, chivalry, nobility and conspiracies, you travel through Celtiberian Spain but also Imperial Spain in other passages—, Vanaheim —Nordic town with red hair whose name comes from the Scandinavian god Vanir—, Asgard —Norse inhabitants with blond hair whose name comes from the Scandinavian god Aesir—, Nordheim —constituted by Vanaheim and Asgard, is a snow-covered Norse territory inhabited by peoples similar to Germans and Vikings—, Hyperborea —whose name evokes the mythical land of mythology. Greek, inhabitants of Norse culture that shows similarities with the Finns, Varangians and Russians—, Cimmeria —the land of Conan, the Cimmerians are the ancestors of the Celts, Gauls and Scythians—, Aquilonia —one of the most powerful, cultural and militarily, led by Conan, located perhaps in France, Great Britain or Italy - Argos and Nemedia - along with Aquilonia arose after the collapse of the Acheron Empire by the invasions barbarian ions (similarity to the Roman Empire) -, the Pictish lands - the tattooed Pictish inhabitants of northern Britain, with similarities to Native Americans versus European settlers or perhaps indigenous peoples versus Roman invasions of Britani -, Brithunia - similar to Roman Britain—, the Empire of Acheron —whose name was brought from the Greek mythology of Acheron, one of the rivers of Hades—, Zamora —browned and dark-eyed, semi-made people who recall the inhabitants of Ancient Palestine. , an exotic town of dances and initiation rites—, Stygia —a territory whose inhabitants are versed in magic and secret arcana, worshipers of Set, the Egyptian god—, Shem —Semitic references, resembling Arabia, Palestine, the Middle East, deserts with nomads and city-states, people from whom Phoenicians, Hebrews, Assyrians, Canaanites ... descended, protectorate of Styigia, like Palestine with respect to Egypt, Khitai - think of traditional China - Yamatai - a fantastic and stereotypical Japan—, Ophir —a desert kingdom similar to Arabic, a reference to the biblical region Ofir, perhaps referring to Africa or India, famous for its gold—, Black Kingdoms —primitive African natives—, Corinthia —populated by navigators and philosopher, similar to the land of the ancient Greeks—…

Here is a vulgar but "honorable" gesture of defiance in the face of the barbarism of our time, obviously it is not an oath pose but without a doubt if our good gentleman with his hand on his chest from the Golden Age raised his head he would certainly raise his middle finger with a clenched fist.

Formerly the use of the comb simulated and was linked to the male phallus and its magical power to ward off the evil eye, a kind of phallic amulet against curses.

However, its practice as an obscene gesture comes from Roman times when Caligula offered his hand to his effeminate tribune to be kissed, the delirious and depraved emperor threw his finger in that position to humiliate his subjects.

As a direct insult we must go back to the Hundred Years War that faced the kingdoms of England and France when the French cut off the middle finger of all British archers, who, demoralized, were prevented from using their powerful bow. As the war favored the English, they showed them their middle finger to challenge and mock them.

We leave it to your imagination who to direct such an effective and ancient posture ...

If you have seen women running through the streets from one place to another being chased by some half naked guys in wolf skins who whipped and whipped them with bloody strips of ram, do not be alarmed! they are just remembering an old pagan festival, something lewd that yes, but it was a sacred rite of purification and fecundity celebrated in Ancient Rome every February 15 called the lupercales or Lupercalia.

The word comes from lupus, that is, wolf and its Roman god of fertility and male sexuality Fauno Luperco (Greek mythological deity Pan, the one who protected the wolf), a strange, hairy being, with legs and horns of a goat and large, pointed ears with a voracious and infinite sexual appetite.

One of the legends tells that in the ancient city of Alba Longa, the evil Amulio after deposing his brother Numitor from the throne, ordered to kill all his first-born, turning his daughter Rea Silvia into a virgin so that she would not have successors, but The god of war Mars was enraptured by the girl and they procreated the brothers Romulus and Remus, who managed to escape from the clutches of their uncle Amulio, managing to survive in the forests thanks to the woodpecker and the she-wolf Luperca who nursed and raised them. Years later they would return to their homeland to take revenge and kill him.

Due to the shortage of fertility and women in Rome, the oracle of the goddess Juno announced that the mothers of Lazio would be fertilized by a male goat. For this purpose, a ritual was held every February 15 in the Lupercal cave - there where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf - where the most virile young men were selected - those ephebos who, on their initiation path, had lived in the forests as human wolves—, called loberos or luperci (friends of the wolf), and their faces were marked with the blood of a dog and a sacrificed male goat.

To make the rite more fun and interesting, virile members were created in the form of strips with the skin of the goat ... The libido to the surface, the lustful participants launched themselves in the carnal search for women eager to be impregnated, who agreed in a Shameless sexual play, whipping and spanking included, in a depurifying act that increased fertility.

Christianity erased with a stroke of the pen this fun bacchanal, so beneficial to health and to the women of Ancient Rome, moving it to February 14, Valentine's Day.

Ashes of Classical Culture that take us to beautiful legends and mythological stories of Antiquity. In the distance the mysterious lands of the west that the Greeks called Hesperia, the Hesperides, that wonderful garden that the Melides or nymphs of fruit trees looked after and that Hercules, the hero of mythology, came to do two of his works on the edge of the earth, perhaps in the lost Tartessos or Atlantis, who knows, in any case they spoke and thought then of the cradle of our ancestors, the one that the historian Strabo baptized as “Iberia.” Many were the classic texts that placed places fabulous like Hades or the flowery Champs-Elysées on our peninsula, the end of the world, where the sun didn't set...

Iberians, Celts, Celtiberians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths ... ancestral civilizations, ancient peoples that left their trail, their substrate scattered on the Iberian skin, on the island where metals were forged. From Tartessos to Hesperia, "Hiberia", Celtiberia, Hispania, Hispania Gothorum, Al-Andalus, Sepharad... melting pot of cultures that watered this fertile land of knowledge and wisdom. On these ashes of legendary kings such as Hispalo and his son Hispan, descendants of Hercules, villages, towns, cities, kingdoms and Empires were raised. Too much blood, between shadows and darkness, a glance towards the light, towards the light of the Ashes of Hesperia that germinates on wasteland and rises, under its ruins, a not alien world that feeds our horizon...

[In the image the representation of the Iberian warrior from Porcuna or warrior with double armor, from the 5th century BC, whose sculptural remains come from the Cerrillo Blanco site in Jaén].

Ashes of Classical Culture that take us to beautiful legends and mythological stories of Antiquity. In the distance the mysterious lands of the west that the Greeks called Hesperia, the Hesperides, that wonderful garden that the Melides or nymphs of fruit trees looked after and that Hercules, the hero of mythology, came to do two of his works on the edge of the earth, perhaps in the lost Tartessos or Atlantis, who knows, in any case they spoke and thought then of the cradle of our ancestors, the one that the historian Strabo baptized as “Iberia.” Many were the classic texts that placed places fabulous like Hades or the flowery Champs-Elysées on our peninsula, the end of the world, where the sun didn't set...

Iberians, Celts, Celtiberians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths ... ancestral civilizations, ancient peoples that left their trail, their substrate scattered on the Iberian skin, on the island where metals were forged. From Tartessos to Hesperia, "Hiberia", Celtiberia, Hispania, Hispania Gothorum, Al-Andalus, Sepharad... melting pot of cultures that watered this fertile land of knowledge and wisdom. On these ashes of legendary kings such as Hispalo and his son Hispan, descendants of Hercules, villages, towns, cities, kingdoms and Empires were raised. Too much blood, between shadows and darkness, a glance towards the light, towards the light of the Ashes of Hesperia that germinates on wasteland and rises, under its ruins, a not alien world that feeds our horizon...

[In the image the representation of the Iberian warrior from Porcuna or warrior with double armor, from the 5th century BC, whose sculptural remains come from the Cerrillo Blanco site in Jaén].

Naked, in front of oneself, next to the oak, the sun awaits us, it plays night vigil.

Let the log burn, let us burn the old,

and with its ashes we purify our soul,

their fertile sowing give us an abundance of heart and wisdom.

May the ancestors join us in the great banquet until dawn.

The life that sleeps under the earth will be reborn after darkness.

Yule.

The last Iberian was a human comet that crossed this world until it was lost in the Iditarot, that distant place of which the natives of Alaska spoke. Its splendor left us with a blast of light that, like the ancient shamans of the tribe, deeply connected us with the forgotten memory of the true meaning of life and its mystery, its cosmic meaning. An invitation to reconnect with that ancestral past in which we beat in harmony with Mother Earth, which desperately urged us to strengthen ties with nature as keys to living in the future, to embrace and save Gaia - who reacts when we mistreat her. , and not be carried away by the drift of modernity that tries to dominate it to maximize material growth.

He wanted to be a wolf to live in unpolluted lands. It was that lupus that was part of mythology - where Palaeolithic man, fully integrated into nature, merged with the wolf in a rite of passage - turned into a warrior to face aggression ... Our archetype was a A rebellious, indomitable, visionary, free and wild hero who did not allow himself to be tamed and who fought tirelessly for life, forests and threatened fauna. The spell of his word, his energy, his enthusiasm, his vitality, his strength, his message and his codes captivated and transformed with his light a lineage, that of the line of the free, that like cranes stretched by the lash of the winter know, if not to return, at least feel, perceive and look out to that lost paradise that you dreamed of, so that in the Iberian nights the beautiful howls of the wolf will not stop being heard.

[Text and Design inspired by Felix Rodríguez de la Fuente and the masterful Cuarto Milenio program: “Felix, the last hero” by Iker Jiménez]

Tartessia or Tarshish is considered the first civilization in the West ruled by the legendary Argantonio and located, it is believed, to the south of the Iberian Peninsula, on the riverbed of the Guadalquivir. The echo of a wonderful city, rich in agriculture, livestock and precious metals (silver and gold), is collected in texts, chronicles, stories, biblical episodes, myths and legends. It was the scene of Nórax, Gargoris, Habis and also Hercules, who traveled there, to the Garden of the Hesperides to finish his work, killing the mythological king of Tartessian, the three-headed giant Geryon.

Explorers, archaeologists and researchers continue to search, unsuccessfully, for this lost kingdom of Tartessos, leaving those vestiges in the collective imagination of a unique and mysterious city, of a cultured and happy people, perhaps fused with the Phoenician civilization or extinguished by the Carthaginians. Although it is possible that the classical texts and the sages warn us about the cyclical history of the world... when the very Atlantis that Plato tells us, that wise and advanced humanity was annihilated through a great catastrophe, an implacable divine punishment...

Image: Bronze Carriazo (Astarte, marshes & estuaries' goddesses).

The representation of the wolf in Iberian iconography, as a cult totemic animal, with strong roots in pastoral populations, related to myths and religious symbolism, represents ardor, heroism and warrior mysticism. Combat scenes between wolf and man are common, some symbolize death threat, lineage of power, protection in combat ... and the cult of the night, the path or initiation rite, in the passage to the afterlife, lupus as a guide in the afterlife ...

So recurrent in Iberian art, we find it in the sculptural ensembles of "El Pajarillo", in the Elche-Archena style ceramics, in the mints of the Iltirta and Iltiraka mint, in the "Copa del Carnassier", in the "Torso de Guerrero de la Alcudia"... and in the "Pátera de Perotito" where a young man, his hands are raised in a ritual position, is devoured by the wolf, merging with him, in his transit with the beyond ...

Because the wolf is also death, dying to live, dying to resurrect, when we are eaten we will renew our spirit, as a different being that is reborn as a new man. A journey of the initiate to the world of spirits, a descent to the bottom of the caverns, twinned with a wolf guide who will transfer us his great qualities...

In our eagerness to recover the ancestral memory of ancient peoples, we are trying to collect as much graphic material as possible about the Iberians found in ceramics, vessels or glasses, found in deposits in Azaila de Teruel, in San Miguel de Liria, in Tosal de San Miguel, in Acudía de Elche, in the Serreta de Alcoy, in Verdolay, in Archena ... in so many places on the peninsula, to recreate it digitally, trying to be as precise and rigorous as possible in that recreation process to contribute our little granite of sand in the recovery and dissemination of the Iberian Culture.

How could it be otherwise, we begin this new one with the spectacular discovery, found in the South Countryside in an olive grove of the Rambla, of an Iberian lioness - it is still to be determined, but everything indicates that it is so, those last fierce lions of the caverns that survived until their contact with the Iberian people— along with a ram that they have captured and are devouring. They place it between the 5th and 4th centuries BC. C, and apparently it could express a funerary symbol where the injured animal would correspond to the soul of the deceased person.

In the Illustration it can be read in a non-dual system of Iberian signs: León Ibérico

You can't breathe
You can't run
You can't get away
The bell will not save you... 

A custom-made pine suit
Grand Duke without pulse asleep,
The box and the crypt are closed
You can't escape with your keys
And with fogged glass
Who will see you? 

Gelineau Syndrome
Excess Narcolepsy
In a deep sleep you will fall
Flowers on your grave
No spider nails, you scream and bang
To a coffin they won't listen to

Pests, epidemics and cholera
taphephobia does not help you
Two metres below ground
Tight burial
Sealed stone slab
In a matter of hours your choking

Premature funeral
Fear of the dark
Sepulchral silence...
Buried alive you are

The Old Skull present in our logo, symbolizes the echoes from the past: the bones, the gravestones and the wounded land that speak to us and tell us ancient stories, some of them stunning and beautiful but others forged with iron & blood. Used also in the old traditions of satirical and ridiculous poems making social criticism and protest. And the second mark of our brand identity, the New Moon, the mysterious female powers of the great goddess mother during the harvest, that means —in old Celtics beliefs— a opportunity to start over, a new beginning after death —after the full moon—.

The Old Skull present in our logo, symbolizes the echoes from the past: the bones, the gravestones and the wounded land that speak to us and tell us ancient stories, some of them stunning and beautiful but others forged with iron & blood. Used also in the old traditions of satirical and ridiculous poems making social criticism and protest. And the second mark of our brand identity, the New Moon, the mysterious female powers of the great goddess mother during the harvest, that means —in old Celtics beliefs— a opportunity to start over, a new beginning after death —after the full moon—.

You can't breathe
You can't run
You can't get away
The bell will not save you... 

A custom-made pine suit
Grand Duke without pulse asleep,
The box and the crypt are closed
You can't escape with your keys
And with fogged glass
Who will see you? 

Gelineau Syndrome
Excess Narcolepsy
In a deep sleep you will fall
Flowers on your grave
No spider nails, you scream and bang
To a coffin they won't listen to

Pests, epidemics and cholera
taphephobia does not help you
Two metres below ground
Tight burial
Sealed stone slab
In a matter of hours your choking

Premature funeral
Fear of the dark
Sepulchral silence...
Buried alive you are

The irreverent and revolutionary Old skull, the spirit of fun. Skulls were used in the old traditions of satirical and ridiculous poems making social criticism and protest, dates 500 years ago. Also had been used in different plays like the ”Dance of Death” in the 14th century. People needed satire to help deal with the grim world (plagues and diseases) around them. But the symbol emerged in Mexico as a means of expression especially used with roguish and ironic tones against the nobles and powerful of the viceroy times. It is also used during the celebration of the day of the death.

Breath Souls. Breath of life. Last Breath... The old skulls, bones, stones and the earth whisper to us ancient amazing stories, but also too many forged with iron, blood and death....

Life is an adventure and we must not let it escape, do not you want to discover everything that this world offers you? Do not wait for the deathbed to look back and regret what you have not done all this time. Now is your opportunity, it is your moment, throw yourself on the horizon, take flight and cross borders, navigate to the beyond with the decision and courage of an eagle. Fortune favors the andes and daring, rest assured that the gods will reward you.

We are the horsemen who ride with beasts of pipes and steel based on black fuel, in this hostile land, the roads are nightmares, the cities are deserts and humanity feeds on men... the leaders cannot stop this avalanche, the storm from fear…

Driven by this confusion full of frustrated dreams, we unscrupulously take revenge on the burdens, we will annihilate with our sword, with hunger, with death and with the beasts...

The great earthquake dyes the sun black and the blood moon, the stars fall from the sky...

The great day has come... in the midst of this chaos hope will resurface...