"The Three Mothers"
In Thomas DeQuincey's underground tome "Suspiria de Profundis", he introduced the concept in a segment entitled "Levana And Our Ladies Of Sorrow". According to this narrative, he professes that there are Three Sorrows, just as there are Three Fates or Three Graces.
The story of the Three Mothers begins at the dawn of the 11th century, when three sisters created the pernicious art of witchcraft on the coast of the Black Sea. In the years that followed, they wandered the world and amassed great personal wealth and power, leaving only death in their wake.
In the late 19th century the women commissioned E. Varelli, an Italian architect based in London, to design and construct three stately buildings. From these enchanted, bastion-like homes the Three Mothers "rule the world". According to Varelli's memoirs, entitled The Three Mothers by an anonymous colleague, the architect learned too late of the women's evil nature. (At least six copies of the book are known to have existed. Four may have been destroyed at the end of Inferno.) The residences he designed will become so corrupted that eventually the land they were built on will become pestilential. An unpleasant, bittersweet smell of evil already pervades the area surrounding Mater Tenebrarum's home.
Both Mater Suspiriorum and Tenebrarum have claimed that the Mothers are Death personified.
Mater Suspiriorum , Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops forever, forever fastens on the dust.
She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy and frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamors, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless.
Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest.
This sister is the visiter of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys; of the English criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England; of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes forever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be availing, whether towards pardon that he might implore, or towards reparation that he might attempt.
Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him a step-mother,-as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered26 ;—every woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will judge; every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace,—all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs.
She also carries a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads.
Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady Of Darkness Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybčle, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground.
She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace.
Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But. this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all.
Mater Lachrymarum , Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation,—Rachel weeping for her children, and refused to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet were stiffened forever, which, heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven.
Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. Arid I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard that sobbing of litanies, or the thundering of organs, and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds.
This sister, the elder, it is that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sate all last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward. In the spring-time of the year, and whilst yet her own spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns forever over her; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness that is now within a second and a deeper darkness.
This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the power of her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides a ghostly intruder into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let us honor with the title of " Madonna."
Suspiria
Her given name is Helena Markos. She was also known as The Black Queen.
Markos, a Greek émigré, was exiled from many European countries and had written several books on a variety of arcane subjects. In 1895 she founded the Tanz Akademie ("Dance Academy" in German), a school for dance and the occult sciences, in the Black Forest outside Freiburg, Germany. The locals feared her, having intuited that she was a witch. As Markos' wealth grew so did suspicions about her true nature. To avert this unwanted scrutiny, she faked her own death in a fire in 1905. Control of the academy, which became solely a ballet school, was said to have gone to Markos' prize pupil. In reality, this was Markos herself. (The Akademie bears a plaque stating that Desiderius Erasmus once lived there.)
In Suspiria Markos is the Directress whose presence is concealed by her coven, headed by Madame Blanc. A young American, Suzy Banyon, discovers the hidden chambers beneath the school after several pupils are killed by Markos' proxies. The aged witch attempts to use her magic to kill the girl, but her powers — including those of invisibility, illusion casting, and telekinesis — prove insufficient due to her enfeebled state. Banyon defeats Markos by stabbing her through the neck. The witch's death causes the foundations of her home and coven to fall.
The story involves a young American ballet student, Suzy Banyon, who arrives in Germany to attend a prestigious dance academy. On the night of her arrival, there is a torrential downpour, and she is unable to gain admittance to the school. But she witnesses one student, a young blonde girl, flee the building in a panic.
The fleeing student is horribly murdered, and Suzy begins having suspicions that all is not as it seems at the school. She begins experiencing inexplicable dizzy spells, and other deaths occur, such as that of the school's blind pianist, who is killed by his own guide dog the night after he is fired from his job.
Suzy ultimately discovers the school is a front for a coven of witches who practice a diabolical black magic. The headmistress of the school turns out to be a legendary black witch over a century old, who has kept herself alive through satanic rituals. Suzy uncovers the school's secret chamber where the rituals take place, and manages to kill the ancient witch.
Inferno
Rose Elliot, a poet living alone in New York City, discovers an ancient book called The Three Mothers. It tells of the existence of three evil sisters who rule the world with sorrow, tears, and darkness. The book, written by an architect named Varelli, reveals that the three dwell inside separate homes that had been specially designed and built for them by the architect in Rome, Freiburg, and New York. Rose suspects that she is living in one of the buildings and writes to her brother Mark, a music student in Rome, urging him to visit her. Using clues provided in Varelli's book as a guide, Rose searches the cellar of her building and discovers a hole in the floor which leads to a water-filled ballroom. After accidentally dropping her keys into the water, she enters the flooded room. Swimming under the surface, she sees a portrait bearing the words "Mater Tenebrarum" and is able to reclaim the keys. A putrid corpse suddenly rises from the depths, frightening her. She escapes, although a shadowy figure watches her leave the basement.
In Rome, Mark attempts to read Rose's letter during class. He is distracted by the intense gaze of a beautiful student. When the class ends she leaves suddenly; Mark follows, leaving the letter behind. His friend Sara picks up the letter, and eventually reads it. Horrified by the letter's contents, she takes a taxi to a library and locates a copy of The Three Mothers. While looking for an exit, Sara is attacked by a monstrous figure who recognizes the book. She throws the book to the ground and escapes. Later that night, she seeks the company of a neighbor, Carlo and both are stabbed to death by a gloved killer. Mark discovers the bodies and two torn fragments from Rose's letter. After the police arrive, he walks out of Sara's apartment and sees a taxi slowly driving by. In it is the music student, staring at him intently once again.
Mark telephones Rose but is unable to hear her clearly. He promises to visit just before the connection fails. Cut off, Rose sees two shadowy figures preparing to enter her apartment. She leaves through a back door, but is followed. In a decrepit room, she is grabbed from behind by a clawed assailant and brutally murdered.
The music student is actually the Mother of Darkness. Upon arriving in New York, Mark meets some of the residents of Rose's building, including a nurse who is caring for the elderly Professor Arnold, a wheelchair-bound mute. Mark learns from the sickly Countess Elise that Rose has disappeared. Elise explains how Rose had been acting strangely. After the two find blood on the carpet outside Rose's room, Mark follows the stains. He suddenly becomes ill and falls unconscious. Elise sees a black-robed figure dragging Mark away, but the figure suddenly stops and gives chase to Elise. She is attacked by dozens of cats, who bite and claw at her flesh. The hooded figure then stabs her to death. Mark staggers to the house's foyer where the nurse and caretaker (Valli) put him to bed.
The next day, Mark asks Kazanian, the antique dealer who sold Rose The Three Mothers, about Rose. However, the man provides no information. That night, Kazanian drowns several cats in a Central Park pond and accidentally falls into the water. Hundreds of rats from a nearby drain crawl all over him, gnawing his flesh. A hot dog vendor hears Kazanian's cries and rushes over. The man kills Kazanian with a knife.
Carol, the caretaker, discovers the horribly mutilated corpse of Elise's butler in the Countess' apartment. Shocked, she drops a lit candle which starts a fire. Attempting to put out the flames, she becomes entangled in burning draperies and falls from a window to her death. Meanwhile, Mark uses a clue from Rose's letter to discover that beneath each floor is a secret crawl space. He follows the hidden passages to a suite of rooms where he finds Professor Arnold. The old man reveals, via a mechanical voice generator, that he is in fact Varelli. He tries to kill Mark with a hypodermic injection. During the struggle, Varelli's neck becomes caught in his vocal apparatus, choking him. Mark frees him, only to be told by the dying man, "Even now you are being watched." Mark follows a shadowy figure watching him from the doorway to a lavishly furnished chamber, where he finds Varelli's nurse. Laughing maniacally, she explains to him with growing intensity that she is Mater Tenebrarum. She suddenly transforms into Death Personified. However, the fire that has consumed much of the building enables Mark's escape from the witch's den. As the structural integrity of Tenebrarum's home fails, debris crashes down on the fiend, destroying her.
Mother Of Tears: The Third Mother
Like Tenebrarum, her true name is unknown. Inferno suggest that her home in Rome, Italy may be located near No. 49 Via Dei Bagni - the Abertny Foundation's Biblioteca Filosofica - when Sara notices a strange smell in the air. In The Mother of Tears Lachrimarum's home is revealed to be the Palazzo Varelli.
Sarah Mandy, an American studying art restoration at the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome, examines an urn found at an ancient, decrepit grave near Viterbo. Bound within are the relics of a witch known as the Mother of Tears, Mater Lachrimarum. Breaking the seal heralds the return of the beautiful yet malefic sorceress' powers, and the world is plunged into chaos. A wave of suicides and crime sweeps over Italy's capital as witches congregate to pay homage to their reborn queen. Sarah must eventually discover her latent supernatural powers with the help of her deceased mother and confront Lachrimarum at the opulent Palazzo Varelli.
In Inferno Lachrimarum attempted to spellbind Mark Elliot during a music lecture in Rome.
The witch has been hibernating for centuries in Rome, and is awakened when Sarah Mandy opens the urn in which her most powerful relic, a red tunic, is stored. As her minions wreak havoc on the city above, Lachrimarum hides below ground in the catacombs of her Palazzo, regaining her strength. She is defeated when Sarah Mandy discovers her subterranean lair and rips and burns her tunic, causing the Palazzo to collapse. Lachrimarum is killed when an ornamental obelisk from the top of the building crashes into the ceremonial chamber, impaling her.
If I say simply, "The Sorrows," there will be a chance of mistaking the term; it might be understood of individual sorrow,—separate cases of sorrow,—whereas I. want a term expressing the mighty abstractions that incarnate themselves in all individual sufferings of man's heart; and I wish to have these abstractions presented as impersonations, that is, as clothed with human attributes of life, and with functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them, therefore, Our Ladies of Sorrow. I know them thoroughly, and have walked in all their kingdoms.
Three sisters they are, of one mysterious household; and their paths are wide apart; but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about myself. Do they talk, then? O, no! Mighty phantoms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They may utter voices through the organs of man when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst themselves is no voice nor sound; eternal silence reigns in their kingdoms. They spoke not, as they talked with Levana; they whispered not; they sang not; though oftentimes me thought they might have sung: for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ.
Like God, whose servants they are, they utter their pleasure not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. They wheeled in mazes; I spelled the steps. They telegraphed from afar; I read the signals. They conspired together; and on the mirrors of darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols; mine are the words.
What is it the sisters are? What is it that they do? Let me describe their form, and their presence; if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline; or presence it were that forever advanced to the front, or forever receded amongst shades.
