Of Epic Proportions: A Blog on Myth and Mankind

Playing Games withe Great Old Ones: A Lecture by Justin Mullis

2011-02-16T12:05:00.000-08:00

Its been a long time time since I've made a post here at Of Epic Proportions. The reason for this is that for the past year my time has been consumed with another project, one that I hope to make a significant part of my academic life's future research in the field of Religious Studies.

The topic which has so consumed me is centered on this question: What is the difference, if any, between traditionally recognized religious groups and pop-culture fandoms? Are Trekkies (or Trekkers) really just Captain Kirk cultists? Would it be more appropriate to refer to "Jesus Freaks" as "Jesus Geeks"?

As a Religious Studies Major at the University of North Carolina and a proud member of nerd culture, this is a question that has long fascinated me. When it came time, last spring, to compose an original research paper for my major in order to graduate I decided to explore this topic in-depth. My geek group of choice? Cthulhu Mythos fans.

As it turned out researching, writing and presenting this paper before my department was one of the most challenging but also thrilling and rewarding experiences ever. My professors were so impressed with my work that they had me submit my paper to the 2010 North Carolina Religious Studies Association; a conference at which the best papers composed by both professors and students from North Carolina universities working in the field of Religious Studies are selected and the presenters invited to share their papers in a public forum. My paper was one of the ones selected and now the video footage shot of it has been uploaded onto YouTube.

Both my paper and lecture are titled "Playing Games with the Great Old Ones: Ritual, Play and Joking within the Cthulhu Mythos Fandom". The video is presented here in two parts.

Part One:

Part Two:

Rare Exports

2009-12-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

In my last blog post on the history of Santa Claus I mentioned how researchers such as Phyllis Siefker and Jeffrey Vallance have argued that the character of Santa Claus derives many of his attributes not only from such figures as St. Nicholas of Myra and the English Father Christmas but from the monstrous Bigfoot-like wildmen of European legend as well.

It is unknown how many people's conceptions of Christmas and Santa have been effected by such theories but one man who clearly has been is Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander. In 2003 Helander and small crew made a short film entitled Rare Exports based on such scholarly conjectures. The film proved immensely popular and in 2005 a sequel Rare Exports: The Safety Instructions was made. Now a feature film slated for 2010 is in the works.

Below I have posted the original shorts films dubbed in English. I would love to tell you more about what you're in for when you view these but frankly words escape me...

You can visit the Rare Exports website here and the feature film's official website here. Also check out their Facebook page for some awesome desktop backgrounds.

Santa Claus: The Man, the Myth, the Monster

2009-12-19T12:16:00.000-08:00

With Christmas just around the corner it seems now is as good a time as ever to tackle what is perhaps the biggest Christmas myth of all. No not the birth of Jesus (sorry, next year) but Santa Claus. Santa Claus, without a doubt, is the most recognizable icon associated with the holiday this side of the Atlantic. But where does old Kris Kringle come from?

Well as it turns out that is a rather loaded question. Santa has one of the most complex, confusing, and utterly fascinating back stories of any mythological character ever. What that means is that there is no way I can possibly cover every facet of St. Nick’s history unless I start writing a book (which I may one day do), so what this really is then is Santa Claus: A Very Short Introduction.

Before beginning however it would be fortuitous to remind readers of two things. One is that Christmas, which Christians first began celebrating in the 3rd and 4th-Centiries C.E., was given the date of December 25th in order to compete with the Roman festivals of Sol Invictus (a day in honor of the Sun) and Saturnalia (a harvest festival in honor of Saturn).

The second is that elsewhere in Europe the time of year we now recognize as “Christmas-Time” originally carried much darker connotations. In Eastern Europe it was seen as a time of great darkness when demons and other monsters roamed the Earth while the people of Northern Europe identified this time with a great supernatural nocturnal hunt which could be equally dangerous to mortal bystanders.

It was in this world that the figure of Santa Claus first emerged.

The Man

As many people probably know Santa Claus is, at least in part, based on a real life person; St. Nicholas of Myra. Nicholas was born in 280 C.E. in Patara, Lycia (what is today modern Turkey) into a wealthy family. As an adult he became the Archbishop of Myra and became famous for his generosity and numerous miracles.

The two most famous stories about Nicolas tell how he once saved a poor man’s three virgin daughters from a life of prostitution by secretly leaving a bag of gold for each of them three nights in a row. The other story is much darker and relates how during a famine a butcher murdered three youths, cut them up and placed their dismembered parts in a pickle barrel to cure; his intent being to pass off their flesh as ham. Nicholas arrived at the butcher shop, however, and sensed that something was amiss. Discovering the boys’ bodies in the barrel Nicholas then performed a miracle to rival those of Christ himself and revived the dismembered youths, restoring them to life.[1]

Nicholas died in 343 C.E. on December 6th and was buried in a modest tomb in Myra. In 540 an ornate basilica was built over Nicholas’ tomb but in 1087 Italian merchants broke into the tomb and spirited Nicholas’ remains off to Bari, Italy where they still reside to this day.

That same year (1087 C.E.) the Roman Catholic Church also officially granted Nicholas sainthood and bestowed upon him the title of patron saint of children, sailors, fishermen, merchants, repentant thieves, pawnbrokers, archers and pharmacists. He was also granted the impressive title of “Supreme Controller of the Winds.”

As a saint, Nicholas’ fame grew quickly and he soon became the most popular figure in all of Christendom, right behind Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. In France and Germany alone two-thousand churches were dedicated to him while another four hundred were consecrated under his name in England. In America St. Nicholas was named the patron saint of New York City in 1809.

Because of his reputation for generosity and gift giving Roman Catholics began exchanging gifts on December 6th, St. Nicholas’s feast day (the anniversary of his death). However, during the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648) Martin Luther, in an attempt to abolish the veneration of saints, moved the day of gift giving from December 6th to December 25th (Christmas Day) and attempted to replace St. Nicholas with the Christ Child, a substitution which did not last.

The Myth

As St. Nicholas’ fame as a yuletide gift giver spread throughout Europe his image and story began to synchronize with other similar characters one of the most important of these being England’s Father Christmas.

Also known as King Christmas, Sir Christmas, or Old Christmas the character of Father Christmas dates back at least as far as the 14th-Century, though many folklorists argue that the tradition goes back even further to pre-Roman times and the Druids. Father Christmas is traditionally depicted as an elderly man with a long white beard, dressed in robes with a crown of holly on his head. He is seen riding either a donkey or a goat; animals traditionally associated with pagan fertility rituals. In exchange for gifts English children would leave Father Christmas an offering of mince pie and alcohol.

In England Father Christmas’ presence denoted a time of great feasting and merrymaking, complete with rowdy drunken behavior. Such behavior incensed England’s Puritan denizens who in 1644, upon seizing control of Parliament, officially outlawed Christmas. It would be sixteen years before King Charles II would finally restore Christmas as a national English holiday and usher in the return of Father Christmas.

Though Father Christmas and St. Nicholas would eventually merge in 19th-Century America helping to give birth to the character of Santa Claus, England would nevertheless still retain their traditional gift giver who, as it turns out, stands apart from jolly old St. Nick quite well in having a much more fiery and combatant nature. Examples of this can be found in both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Father Christmas Letters (1920-1942) and C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) which feature Father Christmas battling goblins and handing out weapons respectively.

Further north in Holland the legend of St. Nicholas arrived via the Spanish (In fact to this day children in Holland are told that St. Nicholas hails from Spain not the North Pole). The Dutch called St. Nicholas by the name of Sinterklaas and depicted him as a bishop dressed in long robes, riding a magical white flying horse and distributing presents with the help of a Moorish assistant named Zwarte Piet (Black Peter).[2]

When Dutch immigrants came to America they brought Sinterklaas with them where 19th-Century American children slurred the name into the familiar Santa Claus. The first written mention of Santa Claus in America comes from famed author Washington Irving (Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, etc…) who in 1809 described Santa Claus as a Dutch burgher, flying over rooftops in a horse drawn wagon dropping presents down chimneys.

In 1821 a children’s book by an anonymous author featured what is recognized as the first modern depiction of Santa Claus, showing a fur clad man with a white beard driving a sleigh pulled by a single reindeer over a snowy rooftop. Where this image came from is one of the great mysteries of modern folklore.[3] Nevertheless the following year this image was codified with the writing and publication of Clement C. Moore’s famous poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas, better known today as Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Following the publication of Moore’s poem the popularity of Santa exploded amongst American children. Popular depiction of Santa from this time – the most famous being those of political cartoonist Thomas “Nasty” Nast – mostly kept inline with the poem’s description. One issue that was left up to the artist’s imagination, however, was what color was Santa’s fur suit. Early color depictions usually rendered it brown, this being a logical color for fur, but it was soon decided that this was too boring a color for a figure as lively as Santa Claus who soon found himself dressed in blue, black, white, orange and purple furs. Green and red fur suits were particularly popular and in the 1940s soda-pop manufacture Coca-Cola officially decided, via a series of popular ads, that Santa Claus’ colors should be red and white; the same colors as those used by the Coca-Cola Company itself.

The Monster

In the 6th-Century in Austria, St. Nicholas was given his first sidekick. No not loveable toy making elves but Krampus, a shaggy demon with curled horns, a long red tongue and a talent for punishing naughty children with switches and chains. Like St. Nicholas the popularity of this Christmas devil soon spread and became a part of holiday traditions in Austria, Switzerland, Bavaria, Slovenia, western Croatia and Italy. In Germany Krampus became Knecht Ruprecht or “Black Rupert.”

Such Christmas monsters were likely inspired by old pre-Christian legends which told of dangerous Bigfoot-like beasts known as wild-men who roamed the dark winter nights searching for children. Researchers like Phyllis Siefker and Jeffrey Vallance have argued that today’s Santa Claus has much more in common with these mythical wild-men of Europe than with the Christian saint whose name he uses. Vallance has even pointed out that the name Nicholas may not actually be derived from the saint at all but rather from Nikolas; a 19th-Century colloquialism for the devil.

Part of Siefker and Vallance’s argument rests on the fact that Krampus and his kin failed make it across the Atlantic and into American Christmas tradition. So where did they go? The answer is that like Sinterklaas and Father Christmas, Krampus was absorbed into Santa Claus. Indeed, beginning in the late 19th-Century (1880s and especially 1890s) depiction of Santa Claus began showing the gift giver performing various Krampus-like acts including not only threatening children with switches but in two remarkable illustrations stuffing a (presumably) naughty child into his sack (to carry off who knows where?) and in another beating a child tied to a tree!

Siefker and Vallance also argue that the amalgamation of the Krampus further explains Santa’s furry outfit. Both Sinterklaas and Father Christmas where always traditionally depicted wearing long robes, so the fur must have come from shaggy old Krampus.

Conclusion

In conclusion one can see that the figure of Santa Claus truly is a complex and multifaceted character. So now that I’ve said my piece about him I strongly encourage readers to go out and learn more about Santa in his many and various forms. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Pictures

At Top: Santa, we hardly know thee.

Second down: A statue of St. Nicholas with the Three Boys in the Pickling Tub. South Netherland, c.1500.

Third: An Eastern Orthodox icon of St. Nicholas.

Fourth: England’s Father Christmas riding a goat.

Fifth: In Amsterdam, Sinterklaas rides into town on a white horse to distribute presents with the help of his Moorish assistants.

Sixth: One of Thomas Nast’s famous drawings of Santa Claus (1881)

Seventh: In the 1940s Santa Claus had his first run in with American consumerism, and it forever changed his life.

Eighth: This German Christmas card shows St. Nicholas and his demon lackey Krampus at work, carrying toys to good children while carting off the bad ones.

Ninth: This giant statue in Lapland depicts the countries' heraldic Wildman. With his red skin, white beard and green leaf garb he looks an awful lot like Santa and is, in fact, probably an ancestor of his.

Last: With Krampus having failed to make it across the Atlantic it was now up to Santa to become the source of both yuletide rewards and punishments as this card from 1907 shows.

Sources and Additional Information (Partial List):

Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies & the Coca-Cola Company: The Origins of Modern Holidays ( 2006) by Gabriella Kalapos, Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia (1996) by Carol Rose, The Encyclopedia of Saints (2001) by Rosemary Guiley, Christmas Curiosities: Odd, Dark, and Forgotten Christmas (2008) by John Grossman, Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origins and Evolution of Saint Nicholas, Spanning 50,000 Years (2006) by Phyllis Siefker, Santa is a Wildman! (2002) and Lapp of the Gods (2005) by Jeffrey Vallance
________________________________________________________
[1] In France the character of the murderous butcher went on to become a traveling companion of St. Nicholas known as Le Père Fouettard (Father Spanky).
[2] Traditionally Zwarte Piet is always portrayed in live parades by a caucasian actor (or actors) dressed in stereotypical Moorish clothes and donning a wig and blackface (See photo number five). As one can imagine this concept is far from uncontroversial in the Netherlands today and is seen by many black citizens as racially insensitive and an open endorsement of slavery. In 2006 attempts were made to substitute the traditional Zwarte Piet with a less racially offensive one. Public outcry however saw the return of the traditional Zwarte Piet the following year and in 2008 the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven canceled a planed exhibit on the racial implications of the Zwarte Piet character after receiving numerous death threats.
[3] Of particular interest to many folklorists is the question where the reindeer motif originated. Some researchers have suggested a connection between Santa’s flying reindeer and the flying reindeer in Siberian shamanism, though this seems to be a bit of a stretch.

Stallo

2009-12-15T16:35:00.000-08:00

Having already introduced readers of my blog to Krampus the Christmas Devil (who I am happy to say is gaining popularity in America, having recently made an appearance on the Colbert Report) it is now time for us to get acquainted with the rest of Krampus' family of dark Old World yuletide monsters.

One of Krampus' close relative is the Stallos; Yeti-like yuletide beasts from the country of Lapland home of the Sámi people.

The Stallos are traditionally depicted as hairy giants (sometimes with horns) dressed in the chain-mail armor of a Viking berserker; a fact which explains the name Stallo which literally means “metal man.” Though the Stallos are never descried as being intelligent they are regarded as cunning and have access to magical powers such the ability to see the future.

Though the Stallos possess the same impressive stature as traditional Scandinavian giants they should not be confused with them. Author Johan Turi notes that the main difference between the Stallos and the giants was that the giants did not “hate mankind like the stallos did.” In Sámi mythology, giants are also regarded as being kin to mankind (both decedents of the Sun god) while the Stallos are described as being “half human and half troll or devil.”

Perpetually plagued by thirst the Stallos roams the countryside on Christmas Eve looking for fresh water to drink. Sámi yuletide tradition involves driving a stake into the ground near the closet body of water so that the Stallos can easily find it. If a Stallo does not find any fresh water to quench his thirst than he will be forced to enter the home and bash in the skulls of the resident children lapping up their brains and blood instead.

On a related note, lakes that lack fish or are covered in a heavy coat of green moss are said to be poisoned by a Stallo body which was evidently buried nearby.

The Stallos could also prove a threat to young women as the monster “delights in macabre acts of genital mutilation of his innocent victims. (Stallo pokes his staff up the skirts of young girls.)” In the myths and legends of the Sámi it is possible for a young girl to be courted and even married off to a Stallo though the marriage will ultimately end badly. Stories like these are used by Sámi parents as a kind of reverse of the traditional Beauty and the Beast fable with the lesson here being that marriage to “a beast” of a man is ultimately a bad idea.

Though a freighting semi-supernatural monster the Stallo was still mortal and could be killed. In the legend of Potto-Podnie a young shepherd boy confronts a Stallo and overcomes the monster beheading the beast with its own sword.

The legends of the Stallo were probably based in part on the Sámi people’s encounters with foreign invaders such as the Vikings. Subsequent Sámi generations kept the legend alive by prescribing the traits of the Stallo to other human invaders such as the Tschudes, Christian missionaries, and in the 1940s the Nazis.

Today the Stallo remains a reminder of Christmas' darker roots in world mythology and legend.

Pictures:

At Top: The Lapland heraldic coat of arms depicts a Stallo-like wildman on it. Similar wildmen can be seen on heraldic shields throughout Europe.

Middle: A knight confronts a Stallo-like wildman in Hans Burgkmair's "The Fight in the Forest ," 1500 CE

Sources/More Information:

Santa is a Wildman (2002) by Jeffery Vallance

The Stallo Throughout Sámi and World History by Andrew F. Besa

Krampus on the Colbert Report

2009-12-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas I introduced readers of my blog to Krampus; Santa's demonic yuletide companion of Old World Alpine tradition. Luckily this year, however, I won't have spread the scary solstice spirit alone as Comedy Central funnyman Stephen Colbert has also decided to share the tradition of Krampus with his many viewers and has even invited Krampus himself to come visit the studio.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Blitzkrieg on Grinchitude - Hallmark & Krampus

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

U.S. Speedskating

"Festival" by H.P. Lovecraft

2009-12-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas time again here at Of Epic Proportions and that means another month full of exciting and frightful holiday myths and legends. To kick things off this year I've decided to start with a poem by one of my all-time favorite authors; early 20th-Century writer
H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937).

Though Lovecraft is best remembered today for his innovative work in the realms of science-fiction and horror, the man was also an accomplished poet and a true lover of Christmas. The following poem by Lovecraft was original published in the December 1926 issue of Weird Tales magazine under the title "Yule Horror."

There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats over the world;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings unhallowed and old.

There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sun’s turning flight,
And chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule-altar fungous and white.

To no gale of earth’s kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the sick boughs entwined
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these powers are the powers of the dark, from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

And mayst thou to such deeds
Be an abbot and priest,
Singing cannibal greeds
At each devil-wrought feast,
And to all the incredulous world shewing dimly the sign of the beast.

Wicked John and the Devil: A Halloween Tale

2009-10-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

Last October readers of my blog were treated to the story of "Jack of the Lantern," an Irish folktale about an unlikeable man who tricks the devil into granting him amnesty from hell only to learn, upon death, that heaven doesn't want him either - seeing how he made a deal with the devil and all. Jack was thus doomed to walk the earth for all eternity carrying with him a lantern made from a turnip lit with a coal plucked from the fires of hell. Jack's turnip lantern was the first jack-o'-lantern which were originally made from turnips by the Irish until coming to America where they discovered the pumpkin, which was much easier to carve. I also told readers last year that the tale of "Jack of the Lantern" is one with many variations, including this one which I have not related before.

"Wicked John and the Devil" as told by Justin M...

A long time ago there was a wicked man named John who worked as a village blacksmith. John took great pride in his wickedness and practiced it with vigor, and it was because of this that no one in the village ever came to visit him, unless they needed a horseshoe made or a tool fixed and even then they never stuck around.

Now because on one ever came to visit and because John enjoyed being wicked so much John took to inviting strangers, who passed by his shop on the way into town, in for a free meal. Every time someone would accept, John would sit them down to a nice hot meal and as soon they were done eating would proceed to play all sorts of nasty tricks of them.

One day John saw an old man walking past his shop. John called out to the old man and asked if he would like a free hot meal. The man said yes but that he was to crippled to make it up the path to John's shop, so John went down the path and carried the old man up. John then took the man inside and gave him some hot soup, but the man said that his fingers were to cripple to lift the spoon, so John had to feed him. Just as John was starting to think that he was going to far to much trouble just to play a few mean-spirited pranks on this old man John's kitchen lit up with bright white light and where the old man had been hunched over a different old man with a long white beard, a rings of keys hung around his waist, and a back as strait as a stick now sat.

"Who the hell are you?," asked John. "I'm St. Peter; heaven's gatekeeper," replied the old man, still glowing. St. Peter then explain to John that because of his kindness to him he would grant him three wishes, thus giving John a chance to turn his life around. But all John could think about was how much more wickedness he could with those three wishes.

First John asked St. Peter for a rocking chair that would rock and rock with the sitter trapped in it and that the only way they could get out is if John had mercy on them. The second wish was for a sledgehammer that wouldn't let go of the user's hands and would keep hammering until John had mercy them too. The third and final wish was for a prickly firebush that would sit out in front of his shop and that would pull anyone who touched it in and not let them go until John had mercy and freed them. St. Peter granted everyone of John's three wishes even though he knew that all three would only be used to create more wickedness. After granting John's wishes St. Peter departed and returned to heaven.

It wasn't long before John's seemingly endless ability to cause wickedness caught up with him and the Devil, not wishing to be outdone by a mere mortal, sent his youngest son to go fetch John and bring his soul to hell. The Devil's youngest son then made his way to John's workshop where John was hard at work on a horseshoe. "You're coming with me," said the little demon to John. "Oh? Alright," said John, "Just let me finish this here horseshoe and I'll come straight to hell with ya, and while you wait why don't you have a seat in my rocking chair over there." "Don't mind if I do." said the little demon and no sooner did he sit down in the chair then did he find himself stuck fast. Then the chair began to rock back and forth, faster and faster rattling the little demon. "Let me go!" he cried out to John. "Only if you promise never to come for my soul again." said John. "Alright" said the little demon and John had mercy and let him go.

The next day the Devil sent his eldest son to go fetch John's soul. He also found John in his workshop hard at work. "You're coming with me," said the eldest demon to John. "Oh? Alright," said John, "Just hand me that sledgehammer over there so I can finish this horseshoe, unless it's too big for ya." And the demon, not wanting John to think he was a weakling, grabbed the sledgehammer only to discover that he could not let go. Then the hammer began to hammer up and down knocking all of the demon about. "Let me go!" he cried out to John. "Only if you promise never to come for my soul again." said John. "Alright" said the eldest demon and John had mercy and let the him go too.

The next day the Devil himself came to fetch John's soul. Again John was found in his workshop hard at work. "You're coming with me," said the Devil to John. "Oh? Alright," said John, "Just let me finish this here horseshoe and I'll come straight to hell with ya, and while you wait why don't you have a seat in my rocking chair over there." "No thank you," said the Devil, "I don't feel like sitting, now lets go." "Oh? Alright," said John, "Just hand me that sledgehammer over there so I can finish this horseshoe, unless it's too big for ya." "No," said the Devil, "I'm not handing you any hammers because you're not finishing any horseshoes, you're coming with me to hell right now."

"Oh? Alright," said John and put down his tongs and headed outside with the Devil. However, as soon as they were outside John gave the Devil a push and knocked him right into the prickly firebush which pulled the Devil in and would not let go. The Devil struggled for what seemed like hours to try and free himself from the bush but the more he struggled the more confined he became. Finally the Devil cried out to John "Let me go!" to which John replied "Only if you promise I'll never have to serve one single day in hell." "Alright" said the Devil and John had mercy and let the him go as well.

Finally the day came, many years later, when John died and found himself standing before the pearly gates with St. Peter looking down at him. "What are you doing here John?" asked St. Peter. John explained that he had died and was here to take his place in heaven. St. Peter took and long, hard look at John and then explained that they couldn't let him in. John had lived a life filled with too much wickedness to be allowed into heaven - plus he had made a deal with the Devil to boot. John tried to argue with St. Peter but to no avail.

So John turned around and headed for hell to see if the Devil would let him in, but when he got there the Devil informed him that their agreement still stood and that John could not enter hell - ever. John asked the Devil what he should do having been denied both salvation in heaven and damnation in hell. The Devil only laughed and then gave John a red hot piece of coal and told him to go make his own hell on earth. John then returned to earth where he found a gourd which he hollowed out and placed the coal inside so he could use it as a lantern to light his path as he wandered the earth for all eternity. And the light from that lantern? Well some say it can still be seen on Halloween night to this very day.

The story of "Wicked John and the Devil" is a variation of the story of "Jack of the Lantern." It is a tale told in both American and on the British Ilse. It is hard to say which tale, "Wicked John" or "Jack," is older. Some evidence which would suggest that "Wicked John" is the older of the two tales include the fact that semantically speaking the name John predates the name Jack, but that doesn't necessarily mean that John's story came first, especially when you can find versions of either story with either man's attached, i.e. "Wick Jack and the Devil."

Another point of interest, which may also help lean credence to John's story being the older version of the two, is the fact that John's profession is that of a blacksmith. The role of blacksmith was once a time honored profession in the days predating the industrial revolution. In the ancient world blacksmiths were revered for their seemingly magical abilities to manipulate both fire and metal. This is why many cultures had gods who specifically looked over the profession of smith. Some of these gods included; Hephaestus (Greco-Roman), Ilmarinen (Finish), Ogun (West Africa), and the Wayland Smith of Scandinavia - just to name a few.

During the medieval period when Christianity dominated the European landscape blacksmiths came to be regarded as having a connection with the Devil, again because of their ability to manipulate both fire and metal. However, this association was not negative and did not make blacksmith a target of medieval persecution but rather resulted in numerous folktales and legends of heroic blacksmiths who defeated devils in various bouts - similar to Wicked John's.

One of these legendary blacksmiths was St. Dunstan, today the patron saint of goldsmiths, who is said to have been visited by the Devil while at work in his blacksmith's shop. The Devil came to Dunstan in the form of a beautiful woman and tried to seduce him, but Dunstan saw through the disguise and with a pair of red hot tongs grabbed the devil by the nose and refused to let go until he promised never to bother him again. Thus one can see that the basic framework for John's tale had already been laid.

Dao of the Undead

2009-10-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

With Halloween at the end of the month people will once again be finding themselves confronted by a seemingly never ending barrage of witches, ghosts, werewolves, Frankenstein monsters, and, of course, vampires. However, with the success of such book series – and now TV and movie series – as Stephanie Myer’s "Twilight" saga and Charlaine Harris’ "The Southern Vampire Mysteries" it may seem as if one has been dealing with blood suckers all year long.

I certainly don’t need to tell anyone that the vampire is without a doubt one of the most malleable mythological archetypes of all time, a fact which has guaranteed their survival and success right down to today. Storytellers of all stripes are constantly reimagining the vampire in a wide variety of ways; from gothic aristocrats hailing from foreign countries to katana swinging trench coat wearing warriors to baseball playing teens with sparkly skin.

However, one variation on the myth of the vampire which I think has failed to get more exposer here in the west is that of the Jiāng-Shī, sometimes referred to as the Chinese vampire. Back in the fall of 2008 I wrote my final paper, Dao of the Undead, for Introduction to Eastern Religions on the Jiāng-Shī and their context within the Taoist religion.

What follows is an abridged version of that same paper. I’ve removed much of the paper that dealt with the nuances of the Taoist faith’s perception of the body and soul. Suffice to say what one needs to know before continuing is that according to the Taoist faith, in particular the Shangqing school of the 4th-Century C.E., every human has two souls; an upper soul or cloudsoul (hun) composed of yang qi (chi) and a lower soul or whitesoul (pò) composed of yin qi (chi). When a person sleeps their souls travel outside of their bodies, the cloudsoul towards heaven where it communes with enlightened spirits and various deities; this being the cause of pleasant dreams. Whitesouls, on the other hand, travel down into the earth where they copulate with the dead and demons causing nightmares and sexual dreams. Keep this in mind while reading the following as such terminology will be used throughout...

Tales of the undead have been with humankind for thousands of years, whether they be Arabian ghouls, Slavic vampires, or Haitian zombies all cultures have some conception of the unquiet dead who refuse to stay in their graves. Chinese myth, legend, folklore, and film also have their own quirky, wholly original variation on this theme called the Jiāng-Shī[1] (pronounced Geungsi in Cantonese), a term which literally means “stiff corpse.”

According to Matthew Bunson, author of The Vampire Encyclopedia, the Jiāng-Shī of Chinese myth and legend are cadavers that return to life when their pò souls fail to leave the deceased’s body due to improper death (such as suicide) or burial (allowing an animal to jump over the body or moon/sunlight to fall on the corpse). Upon returning to life Jiāng-Shī will hop about with its arms out stretched (due to rigor mortis) causing trouble such as draining the life sustaining qi (pronounced chi) out of people. The skin of a Jiāng-Shī will often be discolored (usually green) as a result of mold which has accumulated on the body of the corpse.

A nearly identical report to Bunson’s is given by early 20th-Century religious historian J.J.M. de Groot who describes the Jiāng-Shī as; “a corpse which does not decay, a horrible or ferocious specter fond of catching and killing passers-by, more malicious than others because, having the body at its service, it possesses more strength and vigor than other disembodied ghosts.” Groot also comments on the physical appearance of the Jiāng-Shī describing it as being “covered all over with long white hair, and its nails are exceedingly long.”

It is not uncommon for scholars (and filmmakers) to compare the Jiāng-Shī to the western concept of the vampire. Even Groot, writing at the end of the 19th-Century, comments on the parallels between the Jiāng-Shī and the European vampire; “In China a vampire generally breaks out of its coffin during the night, as the powers of evil specters are paralyzed by daylight. It commonly kills its prey by sucking the blood out of the body, a proceeding which it completes in a few seconds.” However, Groot also notes that while tales depicting Jiāng-Shī as anthropophagi (man-eaters) are not uncommon, stories depicting them as blood suckers do not appear in China until the 19th-Century, a fact which undoubtedly betrays a western influence possibly even that of acclaimed 19th-Century horror author Bram Stoker himself whose classic novel “Dracula” was given the title of “Blood Sucking Jiāng-Shī” when first printed in China.

Folktales featuring Jiāng-Shī abound and both Bunson and, especially, Groot have collected numerous examples. One story from 1741 tells of a shepherd who took refuge, along with his sheep, in an old temple which was allegedly haunted. Around midnight the shepherd awoke to strange sounds. Gazing around he caught sight of a terrible green skinned cadaver with “eyes like lighting” rising from a grave located beneath three statues. The man attacked the Jiāng-Shī with a whip only to find that the weapon was useless. Fleeing for his life the shepherd took refuge in a tree where the Jiāng-Shī could not reach him. In the morning the Jiāng-Shī returned to its grave and the shepherd alerted the local authorities who immediately traveled to the temple where they unearthed the corpse and burned it “despite a putrid black vapor, the cracking of its bones, and the blood, which gushed forth from the remains.”

Another folktale recounts how a Jiāng-Shī once frequented the village in Ngan-cheu where it would come “soaring through the air, to devour the infants of the people.” In great need of assistance the villages contacted a “Taoist doctor, proficient in magic arts” who, after being showered with money and gifts, instructed the villagers to have the bravest man in town hide in the grave of the Jiāng-Shī with “two bells” which he should ring once the ghoul attempts to return home. The ringing of the bells, explained the Daoist, will paralyze the monster as they “generally fear very much the sound of jingles and hand-gongs.” Trapped outside its own grave, and unable to fly away due to a spell cast by the Daoist, the Jiāng-Shī is then ambushed by the villagers who fight with the corpse until dawn when it falls down dead once more at which point the villagers burn the body.

How dose one become a Jiāng-Shī? Traditionally, there are four ways that one can be created: “a violent death, an improper burial, a need for revenge against the living, or simply a desire to create mischief (sometimes of a sexual nature).” Another way in which a Jiāng-Shī can be created is “improper burial.”

According to Peter Nepstad, of The Illuminated Lantern.com, proper burial is an extremely important facet of the Taoist faith…

“Taoist funerals must be carefully conducted in order to keep the dead happy and at peace. Improper burial procedures may anger the spirit of the deceased and cause ruin or even death to one or more generations of the family. When a person dies, it is believed that the spirit separates from the body, but stays nearby until the body is buried. At the time of death, a Taoist priest is often summoned to the home to oversee the careful ritual preparations needed to ensure the burial is ritually correct. When the body is placed in the coffin, children of the family put the deceased's favorite things in with it. A banquet is prepared, and special charms are written on slips of paper. The charms are burned to send them to heaven and new charms replace them. The burial day is determined by a Taoist priest according to calendrical considerations. The site is also determined by the priest, using feng-shui. The priest must accompany the coffin to the cemetery, chanting and ringing bells. This is an important part of the priest’s duties to the community.”

Groot also confirms this and has dedicated much of his six volume series The Religious System of China, to the subject of death and burial. One way in which a burial can be botched, says Groot, is if sunlight or moonlight is allowed to fall on a corpse, an act which will transform the deceased into a Jiāng-Shī. This metamorphosis, says Groot, is the “natural consequence of the conception that light, fire, warmth, Yang in short, are identified with life.” Bunson also confirms this by noting that “direct sunlight or moonlight” is “capable of infusing the corpse with a supply of yang (a positive force), thereby fortifying the lower soul.” To prevent this, buildings which are used to store coffins must be without windows or cracks, least moon or sunlight spill inside.

Other ways in which a funeral can go so wrong as to wake the dead include burying the body in foreign or unfamiliar soil; which would sometimes happen if the person died while away from home. Also, according to some traditions, allowing an animal to jump over the body before burial will also solicit the ire of the dead since it is thought to literally block the soul’s accent out of the body.

Also according to Groot it is important to allow a body to decompose slightly before burial; “If burial takes place before decomposition, and the corpse obtains breath from the earth, it will after three months be overgrown entirely with hairs; if these are white, it is called a white evil, and if they are black, a black evil. It then enters houses to cause calamity.” Three months, not exactly a speedy process.

With so many things to potentially go wrong and wake the dead Daoist priests were constantly on standby and developed numerous incantations and rituals to deal with these troublesome corpses. This is another important aspect of the legend of the Jiāng-Shī for in none of the stories to we read of either Buddhist monks or parishioners of Confucianism arising to thwart these horrors.

Some of the methods by which a Jiāng-Shī could be stopped or thwarted include things as simple as holding your breath. Because the Jiāng-Shī is usually blind they have to find people by listening to the sound of them breathing, so holding your breath will confuse them. Other tricks involve blocking the Jiāng-Shī’s path as they are not very mobile, being confined to hopping in a straight line. Installing a threshold approximately 15 cm (6 in) high along the width of the door at the bottom can prevent a Jiāng-Shī from entering a household as it is apparently not possible for a Jiāng-Shī to hop that high. Other means of thwarting a Jiāng-Shī include scattering grains, rice, beans, seeds, and other small objects in the path of the Jiāng-Shī who will then have to count them before proceeding. Sticky rice is also believed to draw the evil spirit out of the Jiāng-Shī.

By far the most iconic method of confronting a Jiāng-Shī is to use a paper talismans typically made from strips of yellow paper with words written in chicken blood mixed with ink (or alternatively red ink). These talismans have the power to open celestial gates as well as paralyze evil spirits in their tracks. Today modern representations of the Jiāng-Shī often depict these ghouls with such talismans attached to their foreheads, a sign that they are under a priest’s divine charge.

Beginning in the 1980s movie production companies throughout Hong Kong began producing films featuring Jiāng-Shī as the monster of choice. These films were often a mix of horror, fantasy, comedy and kung-fu, two of the most famous of which were Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980) and Mr. Vampire (1985). Both films stared actor Lam Ching-ying as a sort of Chinese Van Helsing and were highly successful at the Chinese box office, Mr. Vampire so much so that it inspired five sequels and numerous spin-offs. One of the more recent Chinese films to feature Jiāng-Shī (albeit in a supporting role) was 2004's Shaolin Vs. Evil Dead which stared Gordon Liu of Kill Bill (03-04) fame.

Visually, these films tend to depict Jiāng-Shī with blue skin and dressed in the clothing of a Qing Dynasty official from Manchuria; a not-so-subtle social critic on the Qing Dynasty which is widely considered amongst the Han Chinese to have been a bloodthirsty and inhuman rule. Mr. Vampire was also the first film to give Jiāng-Shī fangs in conjunction with the visual aesthetics of Western vampire movies.

Jiāng-Shī have also become popular in other East Asian countries such as Taiwan and Japan. Jiāng-Shī can be found hopping about in numerous Japanese cartoons, comics, and video games most notably Capcom's Darkstalker series which encompasses not only a series of video games, but also Japanese and American comics and cartoons and features an as-kicking female Jiāng-Shī by the name of Hsien-Ko (see center image).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blofeld, John. Taoist Mysteries and Magic. Bolder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1973.

Bokenkamp, Stephen. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Bunson, Matthew. The Vampire Encyclopedia. New York: Gramercy Books, 1993.

de Groot, J.J.M. The Religious System of China. 6 vols. (published with a subvention by the Dutch Colonial Government)., 1892-1910.

Nepstad, Peter. “Taoist Priests and Hopping Vampires”

Whitney, Ian. “Horror, Humor and Hopping in Hong Kong”

“Hopping Mad: A Brief Look at Chinese Vampire Movies” at pennyblood.com

Mr. Vampire. DVD. Directed by Ricky Lau. Screenplay by Ricky Lau, Chuek-Hon Szeto, Barry Wong, and Ying Wong. New York: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment,
2004.

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[1] Though I will be using the spelling of Jiāng-Shī throughout this essay I have discovered that nearly every authoritative source out there offers its own variation on how to render these revenant’s name; author Matthew Bunson calls them “chiang-shi or kiang-si” while sinologist J.J.M. de Groot refers to them as “kiang si or kiong si.” Ian Whitney at GreenCine.com calls them “Gyonshi” as well as Jiāng-Shī and Penny Blood magazine labels them as “Geung-Si (or Chiang-Shih, or Jiangshi).” Another term which I have also come across is "Kyonshi" which means "hopping spirit."

“The Secret Saturdays” Popobawa Toy Pulled?

2009-08-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

The Secret Saturdays is a Cartoon Network original animated series created by two time Emmy-award winning cartoonist Jay Stephens (whose blog can be found in the menu on the right). The Secret Saturdays revolves around a family of cryptozoologists[1] who travel the world seeking out mythical monsters in part to study and in part to protect from those who might wish to do these creatures harm. The show premiered on October 3rd, 2008 and is currently preparing for its third season.

In conjunction with the show’s August second season finale Cartoon Network and toy mogul Mattel have recently released a series of The Secret Saturdays themed actions figures and related merchandise. Among these products are a series of miniature pre-fabricated models of the various “cryptids” or monsters featured on the show.

As a lover of mythology and monsters one of the things that I most enjoy about The Secret Saturdays is Jay Stephens’ use of some rather obscure creatures such as the Hibagon (Japan’s version of Bigfoot), the Buratsche-al-Ilgs (a Swiss lake monster that looks like a stomach covered with eyes), and the Biloko (a mandrill-like swamp monster from the Congo) rather than the sundry choices of dragons, Sasquatches, lake dwelling plesiosaurs, and chupacabras (though this particularly famous Mexican monster does make a cameo in episode #13).

Nevertheless it may just be that Jay Stephens’ love of obscure mythical creatures has actually gotten him into some trouble.

In episode #6 of the first season a pink, one eyed, bat-like creature identified as a Popobawa is featured in the opening scenes. The creature is shown dive bombing the Saturday family, apparently guarding its nest.

Though the Popobawa is only featured for a few minutes (the Saturdays leave it once a distress call is received) its presence on a children’s cartoon show is intriguing nonetheless as the Popobawa is actually a type of incubus from Eastern African folklore. In world folklore and mythology incubi are male demons who rape human women, however in the Popobawa’s case men are actually his preferred targets.

Photos from both the 2009 New York Comic-Con and Toy Fair back in February revealed that first line of cryptid models would include a Popobawa figure among others.

Naturally I began to suspect that the presence of this demonic sodomite not only on a children’s cartoon show but also as a collectible action figure might cause some controversy, for in the age of the internet it would not be hard for any child to quickly learn about the show’s decidedly cute Popobawa’s more unsavory exploits. A Google search for “Popobawa” yields a surprising 18,500 hits the first being a Wikipedia entry on the monster (which as it turns out is hyperlinked to Wikipedia’s The Secret Saturdays entry) and the second an article titled Awesome Or Off-Putting: Popobawa, The Man-Raping Winged Monster. An unfiltered Google Images search also reveals several suggestive artistic depictions of the creature, some of which still showed up when I reset the search to “Strict” filtering.

In the end, I simply considered it a matter of time before some outraged parent contacted Cartoon Network, Mattel or the media upset over their child learning about and or playing with a plastic toy incubus.

But low and behold it appears as if Cartoon Network and Mattel have beaten this controversy to the punch. I went by my local Wal-Mart today and, as is customary for me, decided to take a walk down the toy aisle. I was delighted at long last to see The Secret Saturdays action figures and models out on the shelves and began looking at some of the various plastic monsters. However as I began pulling toys off the rack I noticed that the pink Popobawa was nowhere to be seen. When I flipped over one of the packages to look at the back I discovered that a green sticker had been clumsily placed over one of the cryptid’s pictures. After easily removing the sticker enough to peek underneath it I saw that it was the Popobawa that was being hidden.

Intrigued I returned home where I jumped online and went to several different toy store websites only to learn that none of them were carrying the Popobawa figure. I then did a Goggle search to see if any news had broken regarding the toy being pulled from the shelves or simply delayed. After finding nothing regarding a pull but also nothing to persuade me that this was a simple delay in the toy’s release I decided to check one last source.

On Amazon.com I found The Secret Saturdays Official Cryptid Field Guide book along with a customary peek inside the interior. This peek allowed me to see that even though the Popobawa was plainly featured on the book’s cover no entry for the cryptid existed in book’s table of contents.

Suspecting that some sort of cover up was afoot I decided to e-mail Jay Stephens himself and ask for an official statement regarding the disappearance of the Popobawa from the recent merchandise release. Was it a simple delay or had the powers that be removed the monster after doing a bit of research into its mythology?

Fortunately Jay Stephens was nice enough to e-mail me back the same day and after complimenting Of Epic Proportions stated that he had no official comment concerning the Popobawa merchandise but would like to go on record as saying this regarding the creature’s presence on the show…

"Many creatures from world folklore/mythology are studied by cryptozoologists to determine if a real, live, animal-- unknown to science-- might be behind the legend. Such is the case with the Popobawa. There have been many modern sightings of a bat-like creature that have been identified by locals as the Popobawa. If such an unknown creature exists, it is highly unlikely that the legendary proclivities attributed to the mythical Popobawa are true... it is (if it exists) merely an unknown winged mammal, nothing more or less. This is the view of several real-life cryptozoologists, and the unknown animal (or 'cryptid') that appeared in our cartoon is based upon this research. I chose to dismiss the accounts of rape as pure myth, just as anyone who features a 'Bigfoot' in their cartoon ignores the many reported cases of rape associated with that much more famous cryptid. In any event, the Popobawa in our Secret Saturdays world was portrayed as a female, egg-laying creature, clearly incapable of the deed."

In the end we can not say for certain that The Secret Saturdays merchandise related to the Popobawa has been pulled permanently and will not simply be released at a later date. For now however it appears that something is definitely up.

As for my thoughts on the matter I have long recognized the fact that mythology contains adult content and that we should be careful when relaying such myths to our children to not expose them to themes that they are not yet ready for. I also believe that no matter how you look at it Jay Stephens took a real risk in deciding to include the Popobawa on his children’s television program but that hopefully any repercussions that do come from it will not be too harsh.

***UPDATE***

Turns out an earlier statement (8/12) from Jay Stephens was actually given to "Agent Specter" the owner and administrator of the fan site Cryptid Saturdays regarding the Popobawa but was not publicized outside the site’s forums. This time Stephens went on the record as saying that episode #6 of The Secret Saturdays is going to be re-dub so as to remove the word "Popobawa" and replace it with the less offensive "Devil’s Cave Bird." Stephens says that "the change was last minute, and came as a surprise." However, still no word on how this will affect the potential toy release.

Pictures:

At Top: The Secret Saturdays from top to bottom - Zon (a pterosaur), Fiskerton (a gorilla-cat), Doc Saturday (the dad), Drew Saturday (the mom), Zak Saturday (the son), and Komodo (the Komodo dragon).

Center: The Popobawa toy as seen at the 2009 New York Comic-Con via cryptidsaturdays.com.
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[1] In real life, cryptozoology (lit. “the study of hidden animals”) is a pseudoscientific discipline most notably characterized for its interest in proving the existence is such mythical creatures as Bigfoot, the Yeti, lake monsters (ala Loch Ness), and the chupacabra. Today the world’s foremost expert in the field of cryptozoology is probably Loren Coleman, author of several books on the subject and curator of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Men of Metal: Mini Cooper Robots Attack!

2009-07-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

Having recently done a post dealing with robots, religion, and mythology I've decided to follow it up with, what else, more robots. I was about eighteen-years-old when I found Men of Metal: Eyewitness Accounts of Humanoid Robots by Rowland Samuel in the copy of Esquire (April 2004) I was reading. As the following video explains Men of Metal was a pamphlet created as part of a viral marketing campaign designed to sell mini cooper automobiles by creating an urban legend which claimed that a UK based mini cooper engineer named Dr. Colin Mayhew had turned mad scientist on the world and was building a fleet of giant robots out of the vehicles.

Unfortunately the ad campaign was not a particularly big success, in part because so many people found it so convincing as the ad itself gave no indication at any point (whether in the pamphlet or on the various wed sites it led you to) that the whole charade was nothing more than one big car commercial.

As for myself, at age eighteen I had read alot of 'strange but true' books on various topics (UFOs, ghosts, bigfoot, etc...) and could smell a hoax the moment I read the opening of the pamphlet which quoted Aristotle about being open minded. Nevertheless, I still found the whole thing quite fascinating.

Today the ‘Mini Cooper Robot Myth’ remains a fascinating footnote in the long history of humankind’s relationship with mythical mechanical men.

Sources/More Information:

Pursuing Marketing Buzz at NYTimes.com

Men of Metal: Horror or Hoax and Men of Metal: The Anatomy of a Hoax by Michael Walls

The Art of The Lie: Disinformation in Advertising by John J. Fanning (One man who was not at all amused by the myth)

Links to the various Men of Metal viral websites

“Ave Machina! Deus Est Machina!!”

2009-07-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Raise your hand if you remember Power Rangers…

Ok, now raise your hand if you still watch Power Rangers…

Ok, you don’t really have to answer that. I, myself, don’t watch Power Rangers anymore. I have however recently been taking a look at the original Japanese series which the U.S. Power Rangers was based on; Kyoryu Sentai Zyu-Ranger which in Japanese means “Dinosaur Squadron Beast Rangers.”

Zyu-Ranger was a very different show from the American series Power Rangers. In Zyu-Ranger the titular rangers were actually five ancient warrior priests, as oppose to five “teenagers with attitude,” awaken after millions of years to fight the evil witch Bandora. As priests they served the prehistoric Daijuujin or “Great Beast God.” Since there was no Zordon or Alpha 5 in Zyu-Ranger it was Daijuujin who acted as the team’s instructor and mentor. Western fans will recognize Daijuujin as the Power Ranger’s Megazord.

That’s right ‘the Megazord’ was originally a fully sentient mechanized deity, not just a big toy robot for a group of super-powered teens.

The concept of robotic deities is actually one which is encountered quite often in Japanese popular culture whether it be in Tokusatsu shows like Zyu-Ranger or in the form of anime (Mobile Fighter G Gundam, Evangelion, Shaman King, etc..), video games, or robotic toys like this “God Jesus Robot” which was popular in Japan in the 1980s and lives on today as an internet meme.

But wait, how can a robot be a god?

The answer to this question is actually part of a far greater one, namely why is it that the Japanese view of robots is so much more optimistic than that of Westerners? As is evident the Japanese have a clear fascination with the idea of robotics, which undoubtedly helps to explain why they are also the world’s leading experts in the field and will probably be the first country to possess actual sci-fi style robotic workers.

Westerners, however, have been fascinated with idea of artificially intelligent automatons for just as long as the Japanese have, but with one key difference. While the Japanese have been dreaming up stories about god-like robots that will make our lives better Westerners have been conjuring nightmare scenarios such as those seen in films like Metropolis (1927), Westworld (1973), The Terminator (1984), The Matrix (1999), and I Robot (2004) where such machines ultimately turn on their creators and either enslave or destroy humanity.

What can explain this polar opposite reaction to the idea of robotics? According to a thought provoking essay entitled How Religion Affects Our Views of Humanoid Robots published earlier this year on zyobotics.com the answer may actually lie in both culture’s mytho-religious backgrounds and how such sacred stories have themselves perceived the idea of man-made life.

To begin with, stories about man-made artificial intelligence have never gone over well here in the West. One of the earliest examples is a legend concerning the philosopher Rene Descartes who was said to have constructed a mechanical maiden called Ma fille Francine in 1640. All was well until Descartes took the robot with him on a sea voyage where the God-fearing sailors threw the creation overboard believing it to be the work of Satan.

Another example, even more pertinent to our discussion, is the story of John Murray Spear a former Universalist minister turned spiritualist who in 1853 attempted to usher in a New Age by constructing a mechanized messiah later immortalized under the moniker of the God Machine. Spear’s God Machine excited many people at the time of its completion and the minister proudly took his new deity on tour across New England. Unfortunately, things once again took a turn for the worst when an angry New York mob, torches in hand, set fire to the barn where Spear was housing his synthetic savior, ultimately destroying it.

However, the most famous western myth to involve the creation of artificial intelligence gone bad is not one of metal but of flesh in the form of Mary Shelley’s gothic classic Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818); the basis for every robot run amok story ever written since then.

According to Religious Studies scholar Prof. Robert Geraci in an article for the November 2006 issue of Theology and Science, this distinctly Western distrust of intelligent automatons is based largely in part on the Christian association of physical matter with evil, sin, and death and that in order to be “saved” one must transcend this corporal sphere of existence. Because of this the idea of beings (i.e. robots) whose existence is wholly physical (as oppose to humans who are assumed to have a spiritual component or soul) is a frightening concept. This is, of course, without even touching on the obvious factor that certain religious proponents would also undoubtedly perceive the idea of man creating life as being inherently blasphemous.

In contrast to this are the Japanese Buddhist and Shinto traditions which teach that all things have a soul or kami. This not only goes for people, animals, and plants but for rivers, mountains, forests and even inanimate objects like samurai swords, sandals, and sowing needles. Because of this prevailing idea it’s not at all hard to see why the Japanese would not have the same inherent disdain for robots that many Westerners seem to possess. For the Japanese a robot would have a soul, the proverbial “ghost in the machine,” as do all other things.

Likewise, according to researcher Kristy Boyle the Japanese’ love of robots can also be traced back to their strong affection for puppetry or Karakuri Ningyo which dates back as far as the 12th-Century. Japanese puppets, says Boyle, can take many forms from theater puppets to children’s toys but there is also a special class of puppets known as the Dashi Karakuri which are used in religious festivals. These puppets are used to mediate the boundaries between the human world and the spiritual world and are important ritual tools for ensuring fertility, healing the sick, bringing luck and rain. It is with the same reverence towards the Karakuri that many Japanese roboticists approach the idea of modern day artificially intelligent robots.

But getting back to the original point, how can a robot be a god?

The answer is quite simple from a Japanese point of view. First off Daijuujin (a.k.a. Megazord) meets the Shinto qualifications for a god in that he invokes awe in his mortal subjects, the Zyu-Rangers, and even in his enemies (Bandora is completely shocked when she first sees Daijuujin in his complete form). Secondly, if kami (souls or gods) can be found in all things, even weapons like swords, then it is quite easy to see how a weapon like Daijuujin can also be in possession of a kami. Furthermore, as a humanoid robot Daijuujin recalls the sacred Dashi Karakuri puppets thus making him an ideal mediator between the mortal realm and the spiritual one. In essence Daijuujin as a robot can be a god in Japan because he meets all of the qualifications and invokes all of these sacred ideas.

This concept is one that will be undoubtedly hard to grasp for many Western-minded readers who in my experience have a hard time grasping even the idea of the role of idols in Eastern religions. For these people, whether they are religious or not, the idea that a physical object – be it a fetish, idol, statue, puppet, or robot – can be more than what it appears – that it can in fact be or at least embody a god – is a wholly baffling concept due to Western religions own conception of God as invisible and beyond depiction.

In the end it is nevertheless interesting to see how technological advancements, such as robots, have been and are being interpreted by different cultures. In the recent film Terminator Salvation (2009) the cyborg character Marcus Wright was played out as a messianic figure (he’s even crucified twice in the film) who helps the human resistance in their fight against the evil A.I. Skynet. Then there are the two Transformers films which feature the heroic Autobots in their fight against the evil Decipticons. There’s even a council of god-like robots called The Primes who appear towards the end of the second film in what looks to be some sort of cyber-heaven. Both films have been massive box office hits, so perhaps times are a changing here in the West and a more positive view of robots is on the way in.

Sources:

“Robots!” by Sam Boykin, in Creative Loafing (March 28-April 3, 2001)
How Religion Affects Our Views of Humanoid Robots (April 12th 2009) at zygbotics.com
John Murray Spear's God Machine (May 2002) by Robert Damon Schneck at forteantimes.com
Power Rangers - What you might not have known (May 16th 2009) at retrojunk.com
More on Kyoryu Sentai Zyu-Ranger at http://www.supersentai.com/

Yamata no Orochi: In Legend and on Film

2009-07-08T22:55:00.000-07:00

The Yamata no Orochi is a legendary dragon from Japanese mythology. Described as a beast so gigantic that a cedar forest grew on its back the Orochi possessed eight-heads and eight-tails, had eyes as red as winter cherries and a belly that was always stained with blood.

According to the Kojiki (lit. “Records of Ancient Matters” c. 712 C.E.), Orochi was slain by the Shinto storm god Susanoo, who was one of the three deities born to god Izanagi following his return from the underworld. Susanoo’s brother and sister were Tsukuyomi, god of the moon, and Amaterasu, goddess of the sun. Susanoo resented his role as god of storms and rebelled eventually causing so much disruption that he was banished from heaven and sent to Earth.

Once on Earth, Susanoo encountered an elderly couple who along with their young daughter were all weeping profusely. Susanoo inquired as to what was the matter and learned of the Yamata no Orochi and how the couple had been forced to sacrifice one of their eight daughters every year to the beast and now the time had come to sacrifice the eighth and final daughter.

Susanoo then promises the elderly couple to slay the Orochi if they in turn will let him marry their last daughter. The couple agrees and Susanoo transforms the girl into a comb which he then fastens in his hair. Susanoo then goes to work setting a trap for the dragon. He prepares eight barrels of rice wine and places them on a platform surrounded by a fence with eight openings. When the Orochi arrives to devour the young girl it instead discovers the wine. The monster greedily consumes the wine until it passes out drunk. Susanoo then goes and splits the Orochi open with his sword. When he does this he discovers fabulous Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (lit. “Grass Cutting Sword”) which he gives to his sister, Amaterasu, to make amends for past wrongs.

Amaterasu later passes the sword along to her descendent; the first emperor of Japan. This sword along with the Yata no Kagami mirror and Yasakani no Magatama jewel become the three sacred Imperial Regalia of Japan which still exist today in the emperor’s keep.

Orochi: The Eight-Headed Dragon

Over the years Orochi has appeared in a handful of Japanese comics, video games, anime, and even live action films beginning with 1959’s The Three Treasures and most recently in 2003’s Onmyoji II.

However, perhaps the most famous film to star the titular dragon is the 1994 fantasy epic Orochi the Eight-Headed Dragon. Produced by Toho Studios (home of Godzilla) and directed by 90s Godzilla series veteran Takao Okawara, the film is set in medieval Japan and tells the story of Osus; the younger son of a pair of twins born to the Emperor of Yamato. An evil shaman named Tsukinowa tells the Emperor that if the boy is allowed to live that great misfortune will fall upon the kingdom. The Emperor agrees to kill his infant son and has Tsukinowa throw him off a cliff. However, the child is saved at the last minuet by the intervention of the phoenix-like White Bird of Heaven who deposits the child with the Emperor’s sister who is a priestess of the gods.

Osus is raised by his aunt and grows into a fine young warrior. Eventually his father tells him that he may return to the palace, much to the dismay of Tsukinowa. However, Osus’ return does bring misfortune in the form of the eminent death of both his mother and brother. Angry at his son the emperor sends him away on what must surely be a suicidal task to kill the chieftain of a nearby clan of barbarians.

On the way Osus encounters a young priestess named Oto who possesses the nifty ability to shoot fireballs from her palms. The two travel to the palace of the barbarian chieftain and Oto attempts to infiltrate the palace but is captured and bound to a post where she will be sacrificed to the demon-god Kumasogami. Osus storms the palace, kills the chieftain, and rescues Oto but not before Kumasogami materializes and the two duel it out.

Upon returning home the emperor says that he is proud of his son but does not yet forgive him. Tsukinowa, however, is furious and summons a sea monster to kill Osus. Osus battles the monster but goes down for the count until Oto sacrifices herself to save him.

Meanwhile Osus’ aunt learns that Tsukinowa is actually a devotee of the nefarious lunar deity Tsukuyomi who is preparing to return to Earth (he's been floating around in the depths of space in what looks like a UFO made out of crystals) where he will wreak havoc. Osus, distraught over Oto’s death, takes refuge in the temple of the Bull-Headed Judge of the Underworld. The Judge appears before Osus and challenges him to a duel. Impressed by his skills he makes him the gods’ champion and returns Oto to him as well. The Judge then tells Osus that he must travel to the moon where Tsukuyomi has set up base and defeat the evil god.

Together Osus and Oto fly to the moon upon the White Bird of Heaven and attack Tsukuyomi in his palace. Osus and Tsukuyomi sword fight and then eventually transform into giant monsters; Tsukuyomi into Orochi (there was a reason this film was named after him) and Osus into a giant robot armed with light saber, I mean….oh hell it’s a light saber!

Of course, Osus triumphs banishing Tsukuyomi back to the depth of space. In the end Oto asks the Judge of the Underworld why, if Tsukuyomi is evil, the other gods don’t simply just kill him. The Judge responds saying that the next time Tsukuyomi returns to earth he will prove a force of good because “gods are like that.”

Orochi the Eight-Headed Dragon is an epic if flawed film. The film’s story obliviously takes several creative liberties with the original mythology, most notably the fusing of the character of Tsukuyomi with that of Orochi. This aside the film has several other problems. The plot feels episodic and forced. The human fight scenes are well staged as is the fight between Osus and the demon-god Kumasogami which reminded me of something one might see in an old Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movie.

However, director Takao Okawara has often been criticized for his inability to stage a properly choreographed monster fight scene, a fact which is especially true when dealing with Orochi and Osus’ final anemic lunar battle. Part of problem is the fact that Orochi is simply a large mechanized puppet and thus can’t move around very well. Then there is the fact that Osus transforms into a robot reminiscent of something one might see on The Power Ranger. Not that Tsukuyomi and his lunar palace (did he buy it from Rita Repulsa?) don’t also come across as the type of villain one might expect to see on that show.

In the end, Orochi the Eight-Headed Dragon is definitely not one of Toho Studios’ better films. Using the Netflix five star rating system I give it a two and a half; I like it – just not that much.

Ghidorah: Spawn of Orochi

While Orochi the Eight-Headed Dragon was a weak movie in many ways, Toho has nevertheless produced a large number of stellar giant monster films (or “kaiju eiga”) over the past fifty-years. During this time Toho has created a number of iconic creatures including Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and Ghidorah; a golden three-headed dragon dedicated to destroying all life on Earth. A force of nearly unstoppable destruction Ghidorah is the modern day descendent of Yamata no Orochi; in spirit at least.

Having first appeared in the 1964 monster mash Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Ghidorah quickly became one of Toho Studios’ most iconic villains battling such characters as Godzilla, Mothra, and even the superhero Zone Fighter on numerous occasions. Ghidorah was a beast so powerful it often took the combined effort of Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and on one occasion four other monsters to stop him.

In the 90s Ghidorah’s size was increased and he was rechristened King Ghidorah. Ghidorah has also taken on a number of different forms over the years including; Mecha-King Ghidorah (a cyborg form), Desghidorah (a black four legged version), Cretaceous Ghidorah (who was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs), Grand King Ghidorah (a pointer version of King Ghidorah), and Keizer Ghidorah (a four legged shape shifting version).

The connection between Ghidorah and Orochi was always implied, never explicit, until the 2001 film Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack in which it is actually stated that Ghidorah is an immature Orochi having failed to grow its remaining five heads.

Sources:

The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology (2001) by Arthur Cotterell & Rachel Storm
Orochi at www.tvtropes.org

Pictures:

At Top: Susanoo battles Orochi (c. 1870s) by Toyohara Chikanobu.

Center Left: Orochi the Eight-Headed Dragon (1994) movie poster.

Center: Godzilla vs. Ghidorah from Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack (2001)

Bottom: The many faces of Ghidorah. Clockwise from the top left; Desghidorah, Cretaceous Ghidorah, Keizer Ghidorah, and Mecha-King Ghidorah.

R.I.P. John A. Keel

2009-07-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

I just learned that amongst the recent string of celebrity deaths experienced these past few weeks that writer John A. Keel has also died (July 3rd). While Keel may not have been a household name like Michael Jackson he was an important figure for those of us with an interest in mythology, folklore, cryptozoology, and Fortean studies. It was Keel who coined the term “Men In Black” and who made the West Virginia Mothman a famous enough monster to warrant a theatrical film in 2002. Keel published his book The Mothman Prophecies in 1975 based on his first hand investigations of the Point Pleasant, WV Mothman sightings.

While I will definitely be preparing some kind of tribute to the life and works of Keel for now reader of my blog can learn more about Keel and his work by following the link below to cryptozoologist Loren Coleman’s obituary article at Cryptomundo.com.

Photo: Unveiled in 2003 this 12-foot-tall stainless steel sculpture of Mothman stands at the center of town in Point Pleasant, West Virginia where for thirteen months between 1966 and 1967 the creature allegedly terrorized locals.

The Lizard-Man of Lee County

2009-06-29T17:57:00.000-07:00

It was on this date twenty-one years ago that a local legend was born here in swamps of the Carolinas. The Lizard-Man of Lee County, South Carolina (a.k.a. the Lizard-Man of Scape Ore Swamp, a.k.a. the Bishopville Lizard-Man) was first sighted by teenager Chris Davis (1971-2009) on June 29th 1988 around 2:00 am. Davis claimed that the seven-foot-tall, green skinned and red-eyed creature came at him while he was changing a tire on the side of the road. After Davis’ initial sighting others began to pour in as detailed in the following video uploaded from ETVRoadShow via YouTube…

Well first things first, according to CNN the blood samples from the Rawsons’ car turned out to be that of domestic dog, not a Lizard-Man.

Also while “reptilian humanoids,” as they are called, can be found in various forms throughout world mythology I would like to take a moment to reflect on their enduring presence in both sci-fi and horror films and television, the most famous example undoubtedly being the Gillman from Universal Studios' three The Creature from the Black Lagoon films. In 1980 director Barbara Peeters updated the Creature premises in her sexploitation piece Humanoids from the Deep. The Gillman was also featured in 1987’s cult classic The Monster Squad. Then there was the popular sci-fi TV series V which ran from 1984 to 1985 and featured alien visitors who were reptilian in nature. In fact, all these reptilians in the 80s have to make one wonder if Chris Davis’ sighting wasn’t just a byproduct of popular culture. Even Davis’ famous sketch of the Lee County Lizard-Man with its cone-like head and three fingers seems to resemble a Sleestak, the lizard-men from TV’s Land of the Lost (1974-1976), perhaps just a little too much.

Coincidence?

But whatever the origin, the legend of the Lizard-Man of Lee County lives on as a beloved southern urban legend which will certainly continue to be told for years to come.

Pictures:

1) Chris Davis’ original drawing of the ‘Lizard-Man.’
2) A more detailed rendering of the creature as seen in an Atlanta, Georgia newspaper.
3) A Sleestak from the original Land of the Lost TV series, note the cone shaped head.
4) Sleestaks, still with their cone shaped heads and three fingered claws, as seen in the new 2009 Land of the Lost movie.

For More on the Lizard-Man of Lee County:

Unexplained Mysteries of the 20th-Century (1989) by Janet and Colin Bord
Unexplained! (1999) by Jerome Clark
Mothman and other curious encounters (2002) by Loren Coleman
Monster Spotter's Guide to North America (2007) by Scott Francis
Weird Carolinas (2007) by Roger Manley

Mythology in Music: Clutch's "Release the Kraken"

2009-06-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

Clutch is a four man American rock band which has been performing together since 1990. They have had eight CDs released with a ninth, Strange Cousins from the West, set to hit stores next month. Clutch is known for their unique sound which combines both hard rock and blues/funk influences. Their lyrics are also equally thought provoking and often contain references to history, mythology, science-fiction, and religion.

The song "Release the Kraken" off their 1999 album Jam Room draws its influence in part from the actual Greek myth of Perseus but mostly from the 1981 film Clash of the Titans, a loose retelling of the same story. Clash of the Titans was directed by Desmond Davis and featured special effects by Ray Harryhausen, who also produced the film.

Clash of the Titans’ biggest, and perhaps most iconic, addition to the myth of Perseus was that of the Kraken; a monster from Norse mythology, not Greek. It is also interesting to note that Harryhausen’s Kraken looks nothing like its mythological namesake but rather like a multi-limbed version of another one of Harryhausen’s monsters; the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).

The following video was created by YouTube user sidewalkhawg and features "Release the Kraken" played to clips from Clash of the Titans.

The italicized words in found in the "Release the Kraken" lyrics were taken from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1995), page 819.

Sources: "Release the Kraken" lyrics found at http://www.stlyrics.com/.

What's the matter brother, does the drought got you down?

(Open up the bomb shelter, sweep it on out)

Sing to the ocean in the afternoon haze,

Up the iron pillars, rise in the waves.

Andromeda is weeping. Inside one teardrop swims

Brave Useless in training less a millimeter thin.

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

GET THE SACRIFICE ON!

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

GOOD GOD Y'ALL!

Useless the Younger we pray for you.

You know we got your back in whatever you do.

Bathysphere bobbing in Eyeball Bay,

Black lash crashes, forty foot waves.

Cepheus is holding Cassiopeia's free hand

As the Kraken breaks the surface making bee-line to the land.

In Greek legend the son of Zeus and Danae

He and his mother was set adrift in a chest,

But rescued by the intervention of Zeus.

He was brought up by KING POLYDECTES,

Who, wishing to secure Danae, got rid of him by encouraging him

In the almost hopeless task of obtaining the head OF THE MEDUSA!

With the help of the gods he was successful, and with the head,

Which turned all that looked on it into stone, he rescued Andromeda

And later metamorphosed Polydectes and his guests to stone.

Do You Believe In Centaurs?

2009-05-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

The “Centaur Excavation at Volos” is an exhibit which has been on permanent display at The University of Tennessee’s John C. Hodges Library since May of 1994. Located in the Jack E. Reese Galleria, the centaur was brought to the university by two men; art Professor Beauvais Lyons and Neil Greenberg, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. Lyons and Greenberg first began raising funds to have the centaur brought to the university in 1992 and by 1993 the two professors had gain enough financial backing to purchase the centaur. The installation of the exhibit took one year.

Centaurs are mythological creatures featured in the legends of Greece and Rome. They were said to be the offspring of either the goddess Hera (Juno) and Ixion or the children of Centaurus; the deformed son of Apollo who lived amongst the Mares of Magnesium. As a people the centaurs dwelt amongst the mountains of Erymanthus in Thessaly as well as the Clyon countryside. Considered to be kind, hospitable, sporting, generous, and wise the centaurs were well received, the most famous centaur perhaps being Cheiron who tutored many of Greece’s greatest heroes including Aesculapius, Achilles, Jason, Meleagor, Nestor, Peleus, and Theseus. He also instructed the famed necromancer Faust, postmortem.

The centaurs were not without their faults however, having a practically nonexistent tolerance for alcohol centaurs where prone to drunken brawls. In one particularly notable episode a group of intoxicated centaurs manage to get into a fight with the legendary hero Hercules, who was also inebriated at the time. Being little match for the famous strongman the bulk of the centaurs where slain but one named Nessus managed to escape. Nessus would later take revenge on Hercules by attempting to rape his second wife Deianira. Hercules kills Nessus with an arrow dipped in Hydra’s blood before he can do the deed but not before convincing Deianira to smear some of his poisoned blood on Hercules’s cloak which he tells her will insure her husband’s everlasting fidelity. Once Hercules places the cloak on his back he is immediately seized with unbearable pain and kills himself via immolation.

So is the centaur from Volos real?

Well despite the display itself and an impressive accompanying University website the truth is that the centaur is an elaborate fake created from a human anatomical skeleton and the bones of a Shetland pony. The mock excavation itself was created by William Willers, professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh, in the mid-1980s and it was Willers who sold the skeleton to Professors Lyons and Greenberg. According to Lyons the purpose of obtaining and displaying the skeleton on a college campus was to test the critical thinking skills of the students. On the centaur’s official website Professor Greenberg notes that “Our CENTAUR is implausible at one level, but inevitable at another” in that hoaxes such as the centaur from Volos are touted out all the time as being ‘evidence’ of otherwise incredulous claims – just consider last year’s Georgia Bigfoot hoax for a recent example.

In the end perhaps Professor Lyons sums it up best when he asks; “Just because something is in the non-fiction section, does that make it true?”

Sources:

Giants, Monsters & Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth (2000) by Carol Rose.

Don't Know Much About Mythology (2005) by Kenneth C. Davis

Library hails centaur’s 10th anniversary (2004) by Maggie Anderson

The “Centaur Excavation at Volos” Offical Website

Angelic Genitalia

2009-04-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

You read that right! This is an entire blog post dealing solely with the question of the existence of sexual organs on the heavenly host. Why, you might ask? Well what got me thinking about this subject was actually director Kevin Smith’s 1999 comedy Dogma. In the movie Dogma angels are depicted as being “as anatomically impaired as a Ken doll,” as the angel Metatron (Alan Rickman) eloquently puts it. Despite how the rest of their body may appear physically the angels and other supernatural beings in Dogma are repeatedly depicted and described as being both sexless and incapable of sexual activity.

However, this is not always the case. On the other end of the Hollywood spectrum is the 1996 film Michael in which the archangel Michael (John Travolta) is introduced with all his sexual organs intact - albeit concealed beneath his boxer shorts. He is also seen throughout the film engaging in casual sex with a number of different human women.

Then there are those films that opt for a thoroughly different approach. The award-winning HBO miniseries Angels in America (2003) envisions angels as hermaphrodites. In Tony Kushner’s original play of the same name The Angel of America (Emma Thompson in the mini-series) is described as “possessing many phalli and a multitude of vaginas” and engaging in sexual congress with newly ordained prophet Prior Walter.

Likewise the archangel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) in the movie Constantine (2005) is depicted as androgynous, as is the devil (Rosalinda Celentano) in Mel Gibson’s religious blockbuster The Passion of the Christ (2004). Constantine was based on the DC/Vertigo comic book series “Hellblazer” so its interesting to note that while angels in the DC Universe are depicted in the same genitalia-less manner as those in Dogma they are mysteriously also seen as capable of engaging in sexual intercourse (See “Hellblazer” #46 and “Lucifer” #50 for two examples).

Of course, there are a vast number of films about angels where the subject of angelic sexual anatomy never comes up at all. We have no idea what the sexual status of Clarence (Henry Travers), the iconic angel of the yuletide classic It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), is.

But which of the above views is right?

Well considering the fact that angels are mythical beings to begin with, all views maybe seen as in some sense correct. Asking whether or not angels possess genitalia can be seen as tantamount to asking whether or not unicorn horns are hollow – you would first need to obtain a unicorn (living or dead) before you could proceed. Taking this into account then perhaps the question we should be asking is not which “view is right” but which view mirrors the classical conception of angels as found in ancient near-eastern myths and legends.

Though scholars are still in dispute over exactly where the idea of angels came from, for all intents and purposes it is generally agreed that the beings which we today identify as angels first appear in the religious myths of the Jewish people some 6,000-years-ago. In the Hebrew Bible and other related non-canonical literature angels are depicted as being all male[1], something which may come as a surprise to people who are used to seeing angels depicted as female whether it be on greeting cards or in Victoria’s Secret catalogs.

In Hebrew the term for angel (Heb: mal'akh, lit. ‘Messenger’) is masculine, furthermore angels are referred to in the books of Genesis, Numbers, Job, and Psalms as the “sons of God” (Heb: bene ha-elohim). Whenever an angel appears before someone in the Hebrew Bible they are always described as appearing as a “man.” Also all named angels have masculine names: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael (Tobit), Uriel (1st Enoch), etc… and are described as holding what where at the time seen as male jobs: Michael is a soldier, Gabriel a messenger, Raphael a doctor, etc…

Then there is what maybe one of the most controversial passages in the Hebrew Bible. In Genesis 6:1-2 & 4 we read of how in the days before the flood of Noah “the Sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.” The implication here being that angels are capable of sexual intercourse with human women. This theme is further elaborated on in two apocryphal texts; 1st Enoch (c. 2nd BCE to 1st cent. CE) and Jubilees (c. 2nd cent. BCE). Both texts tell of the Watchers (Heb: irin, Lit: “those who watch” or “those who are awake”) a group of angels sent to earth to watch over mankind but whose unbridled lust for human women forces them to abandon heaven so that they may engage in sexual intercourse with them.

In some ways this premises is also revisited in the 1998 film City of Angels in which the angel Seth (Nicholas Cage) falls in love with a mortal woman but must first “fall” and become human in order to be with her.[2] While the angels in 1st Enoch and Jubilees don’t become human after leaving heaven they do manage to spawn the world’s first giants and teach humans the secrets of the occult. Lastly it should be noted that a careful reading of Jubilees 15:27 also seems to suggest that in addition to being fully equipped sexually angels are also created circumcised.

The idea of angels as sexually endowed and potent beings continued on until the 4th-Century C.E. Early Christians apparently shared in the myths found in Genesis 6, 1st Enoch and Jubilees as reference to them can be found in the New Testament. Most notable is the epistle of Jude who quotes from 1st-Enoch directly (see Jude 1:14-15) but also Paul who states in 1st Corinthians (11:10) that women should restrain from vanity least they entice the angels to sin again. However, as Christianity continued to grow as a religion the need to distance itself from both Judaism and Greco-Roman paganism (with its own hypersexual Olympian gods and goddesses) became more apparent. One way of doing this was to redefine angels as celibate.

In the 13th-Century, Catholic theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas declared in his Summa Theologica (1266-73) that angels were without both sex and gender and that though they can assume bodies, as human’s possess, they do not exercise the functions of life in them. This line of thinking about angels has been continued right on through to present day and appears in Protestant evangelist Billy Graham’s best selling book Angels: God’s Secret Agents (1975).

Medieval art likewise portrays angels as androgynous and it is not until the Renaissance that depictions of both male and female angels being to appear. It is interesting to note, however, that while Christian theologians and artists appear to have been troubled by the notion of sexually defined angels they had no problem with the concept of sexually defined demons. Myth, folklore, theology, and art all testify to the pervasive medieval belief in both incubi and succubi; male and female demons whose infernal job was to tempt their human sexual opposites with, well, sex.[3]

As for the tales of Genesis 6 and its related apocryphal texts Christianity saw these stories as best left forgotten. Those theologians who did bother to address these scriptures either explained the story of the “Sons of God” and the “daughters of men” away as the work of fallen angels/demons or reinterpreted the “Sons of God” as referring to the righteous descendents of Seth, Adam and Eve’s third son, and the “daughters of men” as being from the wicked line of Cain; the first murderer. Today many Christian resources on angels, such as Kenneth Boa and Robert M. Bowman Jr.’s book Sense and Nonsense about Angels and Demons (2007), don’t even mention Genesis 6.[4]

In the end, the question of sexuality amongst angels is perhaps one that will never be fully resolved. As was demonstrated at the start of this essay storytellers over the past 20-years have seen fit to reimagine the sexuality of angels in all kinds of new, old, and bizarre ways. Some like Kevin Smith, who is a practicing Catholic, will continue to reinforce the Christian notion of sexless and genderless angels while others will look back to Genesis 6, 1st Enoch, and Jubilees for their cues. In each and every case, however, it is important to remember that some statement is ultimately being made about how we as a culture view our own sexuality….

Bethany: “Sex is a joke in heaven?”

Metatron: “The way I understand it it’s mostly a joke down here too.”

- Dogma

Pictures:

At Top: The Metatron (Alan Rickman) maybe the Voice of God in Dogma (1999) but he's still “as anatomically impaired as a Ken doll.”

Middle: Unlike some angels Seth (Nicholas Cage) has no problem getting down with the ladies.

Films: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) directed by Frank Capra, The Prophecy (1995) directed by Gregory Widen, Michael (1996) directed by Nora Ephron, City of Angels (1998) directed by Brad Silberling, Dogma (1999) directed by Kevin Smith, Angels in America (2003) directed by Mike Nichols, The Passion of the Christ (2004) by Mel Gibson, Constantine (2005) directed by Francis Lawrence.

Sources: The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol. 1 & 2 (1985) translated by James H. Charlesworth, 1 Enoch: A New Translation (2004) translated by George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, Angels A to Z (1996) by James R. Lewis and Evelyn Dorothy Oliver, The Lost Bible: Forgotten Scriptures Revealed (2001) by J.R. Porter, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (2003) by Tony Kushner, Sense and Nonsense about Angels and Demons (2007) Kenneth Boa and Robert M. Bowman Jr., & “Can angels have sex with people?" at http://www.carm.org/

Special Thanks to Dr. Barbra Thiede for pointing out Jubilees 15:27 and to Brent Starnes for pointing me towards Faraway, So Close!

_______________________________________________________
[1] The idea that angels are all male is a concept that Hollywood also seems to find aesthetically pleasing. Considering the numerous films made over the years featuring angels the only two which I could find which feature decidedly female angels were the 1993 German film Faraway, So Close! and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, though interestingly in the latter’s case the angel in question was portrayed by actor Doug Jones. The long running American TV series Touched by an Angel (1994 to 2003) also featured decidedly female angels.
[2] Also released in 1998, The Prophecy II depicts angels and humans as capable of interbreeding. This was the sequel to the 1995 film The Prophecy which stared Christopher Walken as the archangel Gabriel.
[3] Interestingly Fr. Ludovico Maria Sinistrari, in his book Demoniality; or Incubi and Succubi (1879), describes the incubi as; “corporeal angels who allowed themselves to fall into the sin of lewdness with women.” a line which seems to call back to tales of Genesis 6, 1st Enoch, and Jubilees.
[4] A common Christian justification for the view that angels are both sexually undefined and impotent are the gospels of Matthew (22:30) and Luke (20:34-36) in which Jesus tells his followers that in the kingdom to come the resurrected dead will “neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” However, as common sense, and some apologetists, will tell you marriage has never been a prerequisite for sex.

Elves

2009-04-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
Nobody said elves were nice.
Elves are bad.”
- Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies (1992)

Today when people think of elves there is a good chance that one of two images will probably come to mind. One will be the tall, blond, pale skinned and pointed ear elves of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy based on the books by famed fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien. The other image will be that of the diminutive and cute elves of Christmas, such as those seen in Rankin/Bass’s beloved yuletide special Rudolph the Red–Nosed Reindeer.

As it would turn out both images are a far cry from the elves found in the myths and folklore of Britain, Iceland, Scandinavia, and Western Germany.

Originally, the term elf denoted all types of fairies. A classic example of this is the well known German fairy-tale the "Elves and the Shoemaker” in which the diminutive cobblers in question are not actually elves but rather an entirely separate race of supernaturals known as brownies.

Eventually the term elf would come to signify a certain class of tiny, humanoid beings who could shape-shift at will and who dwelled in forests, hollow tree trucks, old long-barrows and ancient burial mounds from which they emerge at night to dance in the light of the moon. It is unclear exactly how small elves were thought to be since many legends describe elves and human interbreeding which gives one the impression that they were at least large enough to properly perform sexual acts with adult humans. In England male elves are described as looking like old men while female elves are described as having the appearance of young beautiful women.

Amongst the many different mythologies which tell of elves it is the elves of Teutonic mythology (called Alfar) which are the most fully developed and of which we know the most about. Teutonic elves are divided into two groups; light elves (Liosalfar) and dark elves (Dökkálfar) or black elves (Svartálfar). Dark elves are described as having been born from the maggots who fed on the flesh of the dead giant Ymir. Their skin was “darker than pitch,” they lived underground, and worked as blacksmiths for the gods. Interestingly these dark elves were also seen as bringers of fertility and were thus the object of religious worship – something we certainly don’t associate with elves today.

According to Prof. Jesse L. Byock of the University of California there is evidence to suggest that elves were seen as being just as important as the gods (especially amongst the common folk) and were the subject of a widespread cult in both Scandinavia and Iceland. The 11th-Century Christian poet Sigvat Thordarson describes being turned away from a farmstead in Sweden where he sought shelter because the farmer’s wife was sacrificing to the local elves. An example of such a sacrifice can be found in Kormak’s Saga, a 10th-Century Icelandic work which describes a healing ritual in which a bull would be slaughtered and the blood smeared upon an elf mound and the meat left as a meal for the elves.

In contrast to the dark elves are the light elves that are described as being “whiter than the sun.” These elves did not live underground or in forests but rather in a celestial realm called Alfheim. However unlike there dark brethren, these light elves are largely undeveloped characters. So undeveloped, in fact, that some mythographers have even questioned whether they were actually ever believed in at all.

Perhaps the biggest misconception about elves is that of their very nature. People today often perceive elves as friendly, cheerful, even noble – very different from the troublesome and even down right malicious characters found in myth and folklore.

In Iceland, for example, elves were routinely blamed for the theft of babies, cattle, milk, and bread. They were also believed to be capable of enchanting young men and keeping them prisoner in their realm for years at a time – ala Rip Van Winkle.

Elsewhere in Europe, elves were blamed for a wide variety of problems, many of which are remembered by the folkloric names they were given. Elves were seen as responsible for much mundane troubles as hiccups, tangled hair (called Elf Locks) and nightmares (Elf Dreams) as well as much more serious issues such as birth defects (Elf Marked), strokes (Elf Twisted), splenomegaly [an enlargement of the spleen] (Elf Cake) and disease amongst farm animals (Elf Bolt).

Even when acting in a manner that some may describe as charitable elves still proved to be a handful, Danish folklore describes elves rewarding housewives who keep a clean home but at the same time not hesitating to pinch some bread from the kitchen.

Like all fairies, elves are vulnerable to iron and may also be driven away by an “elf cross” which can take the form of either a traditional cross or in some cases a pentagram.

So what of our modern day conceptions of elves?

Well to start with the tradition of ‘Christmas elves’, like that of the alleged elves in The Elves and the Shoemaker, is actually something of a misnomer. Actual elves have never been associated with Santa Claus, toy making, or Christmas. The characters which we call ‘Christmas elves’ today with their red and green clothes and pointed hats are actually relatives of the Norwegian nisse (or gnomes) and the Swedish tomtars who do have a connection to the character of Santa.

As for Tolkien’s elves, who since their inception have successfully managed to completely reshape the appearance and behavior of elves in popular-culture, they are something else entirely. Tolkien first began writing about elves as early as 1917 in his Book of Lost Tales and would later incorporate them into both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien’s elves came about as the result of the fluid mixing of various mythological ideas most notably; Teutonic light elves, the Celtic fairy-gods or Tuatha Dé Danann, and the Christian conception of angels. For Tolkien, elves were tall, blond, pale skinned, spoke a variation of Finish, had Celtic-sounding names and, most importantly, possessed pointed or “leaf shaped” ears. If any one fact should convince anybody of the mark Tolkien left on the popular conception of elves it should be that prior to Tolkien there is no mention of elves having pointy ears.

For the vast majority of people today elves are no longer a subject of fear or worship but rather simply characters in fantasy fiction and role-playing games, and the elves depicted within are always decidedly post-Tolkien. However, this is not to say that some fantasy authors have not made an attempt to move back to the more traditional, more malevolent elves of myth and legend – as the opening poem by acclaimed British fantasy/humor author Terry Pratchett shows.

It is also of interest to note that according to a June 2004 episode of Journeyman Pictures, a London based independent news site, that 10% of Icelanders currently profess to believe in elves and fairies, while another 80% say that while they don’t necessarily believe in them they still don’t want to mess with them.

And Finally a Bit of Dorky Myth-Science Trivia from Terry Pratchett…

Question: What color is elf blood?

Answer: Elf blood is green. Since iron is lethal to elves (as it is to all fairies) it would be impossible for elves to have hemoglobin-based red blood which contains iron. Copper-based green blood is used by some animals such as arthropods and mollusks so it’s the obvious alternative.

Pictures:

Center: Elves dance through a field in Swedish painter August Malmström's (1829-1901) painting Älvalek (1866)

Bottom: Orlando Bloom as iconic Tolkien elf Legolas from Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films.

Sources: Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia (1996) by Carol Rose, Sagas of the Norsemen: Viking & German Myth (1997) by Jacqueline Simpson, et al., The Prose Edda (2005) by Snorri Sturluson, translated by Jesse L. Byock, The Vikings: Life, Myth, and Art (2004) by Tony Allan, The Annotated Hobbit (2002) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Douglas A. Anderson, Lords and Ladies (1992) by Terry Pratchett, and the "Elves and the Shoemaker" at SurLaLune Fairy Tales.com

The Goddess “Easter:” Fact or Fiction?

2009-04-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Today (April 12th) is Easter[1] the most important holiday for Christians of all orders and denominations the world over; a celebration of the resurrection of their messiah, Jesus Christ, as recounted in the New Testament.

However, for many both inside and outside the faith Easter is also considered one of the most confusing holidays with its traditions of painted eggs and chocolate bunnies which seem about as far away from the ideas of death and resurrection, sin and atonement as one can get.

So where do the eggs and rabbits of Easter tradition come from? For many scholars the answer to this question seems to have a lot to do with pagan spring and fertility traditions. The only question is exactly how much?

Over the years a number of researchers have put forth the theory that our modern Easter celebrations are actually remnants of an ancient Scandinavian and Germanic cult which worshipped a goddess called Eostre, her name itself being the root of the term “Easter.” Eostre is thought to have been a goddess of springtime and fertility, with eggs and rabbits being her sacred symbols. In recent years this theory has gained a lot of backing in the form of Wicca/Neo-Pagan practitioners looking for a way to appropriate an already popular western holiday into their own faith.

However, it is also equally plausible that at least some of these symbols, such as the eggs, were also ‘home grown’ so to speak. Easter is celebrated around the same time as the Jewish holiday of Passover. The cornerstone of Passover is the Seder, a ritual meal where one of the many foods presented is a roasted egg (the Beitzah) which symbolizes the Festival Sacrifice that Jews used to make at the Temple in Jerusalem. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE the meaning of the egg changed to symbolize spring and rebirth. It is therefore possible that the ‘Easter Egg’ may not be pagan at all but rather Jewish in origin.

The degree of certainty with which scholars approach the theory of the cult of Eostre varies as well. Some, such as author Gabriella Kalapos in her book Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies & the Coca-Cola Company: The Origins of Modern Holidays, states with utter certainty that the holiday of Easter gets its name “from the Teutonic dawn-goddess known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostre, Eostra, Eostur, Eastra, and numerous other variations.” This is in spite of the fact that linguists also posit the possibility that the term “Easter” could be derived from the German word “eostarum” which means “dawn” and has no religious or mythological overtones at all.

An example of a more cautious writer is Paganism/Wicca author Patti Wigington who reminds readers in her article Eostre - Teutonic Goddess or NeoPagan Fancy? that historical evidence for the existence of an “Easter” goddess in extremely slim.

“Eostre,” Wigington writes, “first makes her appearance in literature about thirteen hundred years ago in the Venerable Bede’s Temporum Ratione. Bede tells us that April is known as Eostremonth, and is named for a goddess that the Anglo-Saxons honored in the spring… After that, there’s not a lot of information about her, until Jacob Grimm and his brother came along in the 1800s. Jacob said that he found evidence of her existence in the oral traditions of certain parts of Germany, but there’s really no written proof.”

Nevertheless, lack of historical evidence has not stopped the Neo-Pagan/Wicca community from latching onto and championing the idea of an ancient, long forgotten Easter goddess. It has also not stopped fantasy authors like Neil Gaiman from championing the idea either, as he did in his 2001 New York Times bestselling novel American Gods which featured “Easter” as a strong supporting character.

As for scholars, it is sometimes very much the same as with the faithful. Writers and researchers like Kalapos simply feel that Easter, with it’s abundance of fertility ritual iconography, just makes more sense if it was, in fact, originally a pagan goddess festival. Others, like Wigington in spite of her own religious affiliations, would rather err on the side of caution.

And perhaps, as a friend of mine once pointed out, it doesn’t matter. If you buy into the idea that gods and goddesses are only as real as the faithful who follow them then it is possible that Eostre does exist, if not in the past than certainly in the present.

Pictures:

At Top: Ostara (1884) by Johannes Gehrts.

Sources:

Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies & the Coca-Cola Company: The Origins of Modern Holidays (2006) by Gabriella Kalapos

Eostre - Teutonic Goddess or NeoPagan Fancy? by Patti Wigington

Don't Know Much About Mythology (2005) by Kenneth C. Davis

Easter and Passover at History.com

_________________________________________________________
[1] Unless you happen to be Eastern Orthodox, in which case Easter is April 19th 2009.

April Fool's Day

2009-04-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

Today (April 1st) is April Fool’s Day an unofficial and popular western holiday which is celebrated with the playing of pranks and the orchestrating of elaborate hoaxes. April Fool’s Day is a day on which people celebrate trickery and Tricksters – those individuals (be they gods, demons, animals or men) who specialize in the art of deceiving.

The origins of April Fool’s Day are shrouded in mystery, but celebration of the holiday goes back as far as 1582, the year Pope Gregory XIII officially replaced the Julian calendar – which was off by ten days – with the Gregorian. One theory has it that April Fool’s Day arose as a response to this change over since it not only changed the number of days in a year but also the date of New Year’s Day. Traditionally many Europeans had held New Year’s Day at the end of March, but the Gregorian calendar moved the date to the beginning of January. Once this became official anyone still found celebrating New Year at the end of March was branded a “Fool” and had pranks played on them.

April Fool’s Day first caught on in France in late 1500s and then spread across Europe. By the early 1700s it was being celebrated in Britain and soon afterwards in America. Each country also has their own unique customs when it comes to celebrating April Fool’s Day. In France the day is called Poisson d’Avril or “April Fish” and fish are a major decorating motif, being seen as a springtime symbol of fertility. A common French practical joke is to try and pin a paper fish to another person’s back without them noticing. In England all April Fool’s Day pranks are to played before noon, pranks played after noon are thought to cause bad luck to fall upon the pranker. The exact opposite is true in Scotland, however, where April Fool’s Day lasts a full 48-hours with a second day, Taily Day, being devoted entirely to jokes involving people’s posteriors – so break out the “Kick-Me” signs and whoopee-cushions.

In addition to this the archetype of the Trickster is very old with the character of The Fool being one of its many variations. The Fool (and his variants the Joker, Jester, Buffoon, Comedian, Clown, etc…) is important for his ability to speak truth to power. In times past the Fool occupied the lowest position in the hierarchy of the court and yet was the only one with the authority to speak his mind to the King and other important government officials. Furthermore, because of his unique social position the Fool was also beyond reprise and could not be punished for his remarks – this is the reason why The Fool card is worth zero points but at the same time untouchable in the game of Tarot.

April Fool’s Day is a holiday which allows us all to “play the Fool” without the fear of reprisal. It is a day on which we can embrace our own cultural Tricksters as well as our inner ones. It is a day on which we can exercise our wit and have fun…

…No Fooling.

Pictures:

At Top: The Fool, the only card which is worth zero points but at the same untouchable in the game of Tarot.

Bottom: Artist and researcher Jeffery Vallance’s impressive “Trickster Family Tree,” with the Fool branch at its center.

Sources: Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies & the Coca-Cola Company: The Origins of Modern Holidays (2006) by Gabriella Kalapos

The Wolves of St. Patrick

2009-03-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Today (March 17th) is St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick (died c. 460 C.E.) is the patron saint of Ireland and one of Christianity’s best known and most revered figures. The holiday of St. Patrick’s Day marks the day on which tradition says Patrick died and has been celebrated by Irish Catholics since the 7th-Century. Because the holiday falls during the time of Lent – when Christians are suppose to abandon their vices in imitation of Christ – St. Patrick’s Day with its drinking, feasting, partying and more drinking was seen as a welcomed reprieve.

Today St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated not only in Ireland but throughout the United States as well – the first St. Patrick’s Day parade was actually held in New York City in 1762 – and while many people, not all Irish themselves, associate a wide variety of things with the holiday – such as the color green, shamrocks, leprechauns, and, of course, alcohol – one thing which most people probably don’t think of when it comes to St. Patrick’s Day is werewolves. And yet St. Patrick has very much to do with werewolves indeed.

According to an autobiographical letter called the Declaration (Latin: Confessio) written by the saint himself sometime before the 5th-Century, Patrick was born in Britain to wealthy parents. His father, Calpornius, was a deacon, and his grandfather, Potitus, a priest in the Catholic Church. At the age of sixteen Patrick was abducted by Irish marauders who sold him into slavery in Ireland where he was forced to work as a herdsman for six years. During his time as a slave Patrick’s faith did not weaver but grew stronger. One day Patrick received a vision from God in which he was instructed to escape from his master and head for a port two hundred miles away where a ship was waiting to take him back home. Patrick, making good on his vision, escaped and headed towards the northern coast where he did indeed find a ship that ferried him back to Britain.

After being returned home Patrick followed in his father and grandfather’s footsteps and became a bishop. Nearly fifteen-years had passed since Patrick escaped from Ireland when he had a second vision. This time Patrick was visited by an angel carrying a letter from Ireland that cried out; “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.” After this vision, Patrick knew that he was to return to Ireland and spread the Christian faith.

But St. Patrick’s connection with werewolves doesn’t come from history but rather legend. While it is generally accepted that Patrick converted, baptized and ordained “thousands of people” from Celtic paganism to Catholicism with little more than a helpful demonstration on how the Holy Trinity is like a three-leaf clover, this is not to say that he didn’t encounter some opposition from many of the indigenous pagans. One of these individuals was the Welsh King Vereticus who, no matter what St. Patrick preached, refused to humble himself and accept Christ. Finally, St. Patrick grew so annoyed with the king’s boastfulness that he chose to humble him himself by placing a curse upon him which caused him to assume the form of a wolf every seven years – thus giving us what maybe Ireland’s oldest werewolf story.

Other tales that connect St. Patrick with werewolves tell of how the saint’s message of Christianity was met with scorn and mockery. One account describes how St. Patrick was walking along a road one night enjoying the light of the full moon. As he went along he encountered three men who began heckling the saint, mocking his missionary efforts and profaning the name of Christ. With each insult the men’s howling laughter grew loader and St. Patrick’s patience shorter. Finally, irritated by these heathen’s taunting and disrespect St. Patrick spun around and cursed them by the light of the full moon; “If you want to howl and laugh like wolves,” he told them, “then from now on you shall howl every time the moon is full!” After that the three men quickly found that every time the moon was full their bodies were transformed into those of savage wolves. This particular folktale has been cited by some scholars as the first myth ever to draw a connection between the full moon and lycanthrope, something modern day werewolf books and movies have made us accustom to.

One final legend comes from an ancient text called the Giraldus Cambrensis or Geral of Wales; a tome which recounts the confessions made by Irish priests. One confession contained within gives an account by a priest who claims that while on the way to Meath he was approached by a wolf that spoke with a human tongue. The wolf assured the priest that he would come to no harm and that he simply wished for the priest to follow him into the woods where his wife, also a wolf, lay dying in need of the sacrament of last rites. The priest agreed and on the way the wolf explained that he and his wife had once been human and lived in the town of Ossory. One day a traveling bishop had come to their town preaching the gospel. The people of the town, however, only mocked the bishop and his faith. Angry and insulted by the people’s insolence the traveling bishop cursed the entire town, condemning them to assume the form of a wolf every seven years. Eventually the priest reached the wolf’s dying wife and performed the sacraments of last rites thus saving her soul from eternal damnation. In some versions of this tale the traveling bishop who curses the people of Ossory is St. Patrick, in others it is a St. Natalis.

Naturally, these tales about St. Patrick are not ones that are widely known, most likely because they cast the saint in a rather bad light. In fact, some scholars believe that such tales may in reality have actually been invented by the pagan Irish as part of an ancient smear campaign attempting to tarnish not only St. Patrick’s image but also Christianity in general. Of course, it’s also just as likely that they could have originated amongst the early Christians of Ireland who were inspired by other tales of prophets and saints who occasionally loose their tempters with their potential converts and lash out with deadly curses. Some such stories can even be found in the Bible itself.

So in conclusion I just want to say Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Go eat, drink (safely), and be merry. And if you happen to be out late and the moon in full perhaps you can stop and have a pint with these guys….

Pictures:

At Top: Statue of St. Patrick at Hill of Tara, Ireland.

At Bottom: A 19th-Century print shows werewolves gathering at Normandy, France.

Sources: The History of St. Patrick's Day at History.com, Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies & Coca-Cola: Modern Holidays (2006) by Gabriella Kalapos, and The Book Of Were-Wolves (1865) by Sabine Baring-Gould.

Friday the 13th

2009-03-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

Its Friday the 13th, March 2009. This is the second straight month in a row that the 13th has landed on a Friday. But don’t worry we’ll be Friday the 13th free from here till just about the end of the year when the 13th will again land on a Friday in November.

Friday the 13th has had the reputation of being an unlucky day since the mid 19th-Century. However, the notion of lucky and unlucky days is ancient. Calendars from Egypt dating back as far back as 2040-1750 BCE have been found marked with such propitious and ill-fated days.

Friday (which takes its name from the Norse goddess Frigg) has long been consider an inauspicious day in Western culture. Sailors were known not to ship out on a Friday, travellers to stay home, and businessmen not to conduct business. Friday was also thought to be the day on which witch’s held their Sabbaths. Christian tradition also ascribed Friday as the day on which the worse events in their mythology took place; Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden on a Friday, Cain killed Able on a Friday, God flooded the world on a Friday, and Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday.

Even older than the fear of Friday, however, is the fear of the number thirteen, the technical term for which is Triskaidekaphobia. Triskaidekaphobia is so prevalent amongst people even today that we are often told about how businesses and hotels will purposefully “omit” a thirteenth floor, jumping from 12 to 14. The oldest known example of this practice can be found in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1800 BCE) – the earliest known set of written laws – which omits law thirteen.

Other examples of thirteen being an ill-omen come from Norse mythology where the trickster Loki’s presence at a banquet makes thirteen guests and signals the beginning of the events that will lead to the death of Baldr, the much loved god of light, and eventually doomsday called Ragnarok. Likewise in Christian tradition Jesus’ last supper hosts thirteen guests (twelve apostles and Jesus) one of whom, Judas, will betray Christ.

Considering the mythical history both Friday and the number thirteen have its not at all surprising that the presence of the two together should signal certain doom for the superstitious.

However, it should be noted that not all cultures fear Friday or the number thirteen. In both Muslim and Jewish tradition Friday either is or marks the beginning of the Sabbath while in the religion of Sikhism thirteen is seen as holy and thus very lucky.

Source: Friday the 13th (2009) by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer at Fortean Times.com and Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies & Coca-Cola: Modern Holidays (2006) by Gabriella Kalapos.

Steampunk; Myths and Legends

2009-03-05T09:46:00.000-08:00

According to the Oxford English Dictionary’s online Science Fiction Citations site the term “Steampunk” (coined 1987) refers to “a subgenre of science fiction which has a historical setting (esp. based on industrialized, nineteenth-century society) and characteristically features steam-powered, mechanized machinery rather than electronic technology.”

As a genre of science-fiction Steampunk has been very close to my heart for some time now, stemming, it seems, from my on going love of turn of the century science-fiction and fantasy writers such as Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. In essence Steampunk fantasies imagine a hypothetical past where steam powered technology advanced far more than it ever really did resulting in the creation of automobiles, planes, automatic weapons, and even robots long before their times.

It is interesting to note that one of the main functions of myth often seems to be the reimagining of historical events as larger-than-life narratives full of heroes, villains, gods and monsters. In this sense writers of Steampunk science fiction (in fact writers of science fiction and fantasy in general) are very much modern myth makers, retelling the tales of the (not too distant) past but furnishing them with fantastic elements which capture our hearts and minds, even as our modern rationalistic sensibilities are telling us that such things can’t be.

Apparently feeling a similar sentiment CGSociety recently hosted a three month long competition for graphic artists which challenged them “to render traditional myths and legends in the steampunk style using elements of gears, springs, brass and steam power. Re-imagine legendary characters from some of the world’s most ancient stories, such as a steam-powered minotaur, or a Zeppelin-mounted Thor, hurling lightning bolts from the sky.” Very cool.

The contest was sponsored by over a dozen different graphic art companies and offered winners a chance to snatch up “$220,000 in prizes!” Below are some of my favorite pieces from the contest; not all are winners, but all are of epic proportions.

Charles Dickens meets the Bible as a Victorian era David takes on a mechanized Goliath. By Roger Nobs.

One of the contest winners, Fabricio Moraes' robotic Pinocchio, or as he calls it "Steamocchio."

The Fall of Icraus, by Nigel Quarless.

Another contest winner, Guillaume Dubois' very appropriate clockwork Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

In my humble opinion this piece by Jack Zhang should have won simply based on how cool the concept is; The Monkey King Sun-Wu-Kong vs. King Kong!

Winner Marek Madej's take on Don Quixote, the world's first LARPer.

A final peice and another contest winner, "The Fall of Hyperion" by Marcin Jakubowski. Apparently based partly on a science fiction novel by author Dan Simmons and partly on the tale of Zeus throwing the titans (here a giant robot) out of heaven.

Lent: The Story Behind the Tradition

2009-02-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

Today (Feb 25th) is Ash Wednesday, the start of the Christian holiday of Lent. Lent occurs forty days before the major Christian holiday of Easter and is used as a time for fasting. Traditionally, a religious fast involves giving up food and water and relying solely on God’s grace to sustain you. However, today most Christians simply give up something of value or enjoyment such as TV or video games, a certain snack food or even sex.

Ash Wednesday derives its name from the ancient practice of marking ones face with ashes as a sign of humility and penitence. The tradition of Lent itself is derived from the New Testament tale of how Jesus fasted for “forty days and forty night” in the wilderness while being tempted by the devil, though this feat actually took place at the beginning of his ministry rather than forty days before the end of it.

This story, commonly referred to as Jesus’ Temptation, can be found in the Gospel of Mark (1:12-13), the Gospel of Matthew (4:1-11), and the Gospel of Luke (4:1-13). These three gospels, known to scholars as the Synoptic Gospels, are the only places in the Bible where this tale is told. The Gospel of John (circa. 90-100 C.E.) is silent in regards to this story as are Pauline and the other apostolic letters.

Lastly, please note that this essay is written from a scholarly view point. This means that I will not be treating the Bible as the “Word of God” but rather as a collection of myths (sacred cultural stories) and histories written down by mortal men. I will also be championing the current scholarly opinion that the authors of the four New Testament gospels were not the men whose names they bear but were rather anonymous early Christians who neither knew Jesus personally nor witnessed his ministry first hand. Finally, all dates are rendered in the standard scholarly format of B.C.E., Before Common Era, and C.E., Common Era, rather than the traditional Christian inspired B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini.)

Mark’s Simplified Version

The Gospel of Mark (circa. 70 C.E.) is the oldest of the New Testament gospels having been written roughly fifty-years after Jesus’ death. For this reason it is widely considered to be the most reliable of the New Testament writings concerning the factual happenings of Jesus’ life. In addition to being an extremely straightforward work, Mark’s gospel contains no miraculous birth story, very few extravagant miracles (no turning water into wine, killing fig trees by cursing them, or raising the dead) and no account of the resurrection. Over all the author of Mark’ gospel is one who likes to keep things simple.

This is especially evident when it comes to the tale of Jesus’ encounter with and subsequent temptation by the devil, an account which takes up a full eleven verses in Matthew’s gospel and thirteen in Luke’s but only occupies two verses in Mark…

“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

- Gospel of Mark (1:12-13)

It is important to note that Mark’s author dose not tell us how many times Satan tempted Jesus or what the temptations were. What this indicates is that either these details were not known to Mark’s author or that they had not yet been invented. If the latter is the case then we can understand that even though the basic framework for the temptation was in place in the year 70 C.E. the mythological details would not be filled in until ten years later in 80 C.E. with the penning of Matthew’s gospel.

Differences and Discrepancies in Matthew and Luke

As is so common when studying the Gospel of Matthew (circa. 80 C.E.) and the Gospel of Luke (circa. 90 C.E.) we find that both authors agree in theme but not in details. Both agree that Jesus was lead into the wilderness by the “Spirit” for “forty days” where he was tempted by the devil three times. They do not agree, however, on the order of these temptations, the exact challenge of the first temptation, or on how the affair finally ended.

In regards to the order in which the temptation were given both authors agree that Satan first challenges a hungry Jesus to miraculously provide food for himself. However, they disagree on exactly what that challenged entailed. Matthew’s gospel says that the devil told Jesus to; “…command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Mt.4:3). Luke’s gospel, on the other hand, says that the devil told Jesus to; “…command this stone to become a loaf of bread” (Lk.4:3). Jesus, however, refuses to break his fast and quotes the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Deuteronomy; “‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Mt.4:4 & Lk.4:4)

Following this first temptation comes a second. According to Matthew’s author the devil takes Jesus to the very top of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem where he challenges him to “throw yourself down” and see if God sends his angels to catch him. To validate his challenge the devil quotes the 91st Psalm. However, Jesus rebukes him once again with another passage from Deuteronomy; “‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Luke’s author, however, dissents. He writes that the second temptation involved the devil showing Jesus “in an instant all the kingdoms of the world” and offering them to him if he will only “worship me.” Naturally, Jesus declines with yet another quote from Deuteronomy; “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’”

Luke dose not say how the devil showed Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world”, only that he “led him up” to do so. The author Matthew says that the devil took Jesus “to a very high mountain” for this temptation and it is here that we see yet another very strong indication that either Luke is using Matthew’s gospel as a source or that the two are both sharing a common source. Either way, both authors agree on the over all theme of the second and third temptation, one was to tempt Jesus’ loyalty to God, the other his hubris, even if they do not agree on the order in which these temptations took place.

Another interesting contradiction is the way in which Matthew and Luke's authors depict Jesus' adversary; the devil. Matthew's author depicts Satan as a tempter in a manner similar to that of an annoying friend who keeps trying to use peer pressure to talk you into doing something and who Jesus eventually is forced to tell off; “Away with you, Satan!” (Matt.4:10). Luke’s author, on the other hand, stresses the test aspect of Jesus’ encounter with the devil. Luke’s Satan offers Jesus challenges rather than temptations and leaves on his own occurred once Jesus has successfully; “finished every test” (Lk.4:13).

Forty-Days and Forty-Nights: A Homage to the Hebrew Bible

“He was in the wilderness forty days…” - Mark 1:13

“He fasted forty days and forty nights…” - Matthew 4:2

“…where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” - Luke 4:2

One thing which all three of synoptic gospels do agree on, however, is that Jesus was in the wilderness fasting for; “forty days.” However, Matthew’s gospel is just a tad more specific in that it specifies that Jesus was in the wilderness for; “forty days and forty nights”, a phrase which may sound familiar to those acquainted with the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament.

The phrase “forty days and forty nights” appears nine times in the Hebrew Bible. The first time is in the Book of Genesis where we are told that God flooded the Earth for “forty days and forty nights” (Gen.7:4 & 7:12) in an attempt to purge sin from the world. The second time we hear this phrase is in the Book of Exodus where we find Moses atop Mt. Sinai for “forty days and forty nights” (Ex.24:18 & 34:28) receiving the Ten Commandments from God. The third and final time is in the Book of 1st Kings where we read that the prophet Elijah traveled for “forty days and forty nights” (1 Ki.19:8) to Mt. Horeb where he spoke with God.

As has been dually noted by other scholars in the past the author of the Gospel of Matthew has quite a penchant for drawing references between the Hebrew Bible stories and the life of Jesus. More quotes from the Hebrew Bible appear in the Gospel of Matthew than any other New Testament gospel. In addition to this, a careful study of the New Testament’s tales of Jesus shows that from the very beginning a conscious connection was made in the minds of Jesus’ followers between their Messiah and the figures of Moses and Elijah. Thus it is not surprising that in addition to other biblical parallels we should also find Jesus also spending “forty days and forty nights” in the wilderness communing with God just as Moses and Elijah did.

Cross Cultural Parallels

On the other side of the world and some five-hundred-years prior to Jesus’ trial in the wilderness another young religious reformer had a nearly identical experience. This young reformer was an Indian prince who had left his family and wealth behind to seek enlightenment near the Gaya River beneath a Bo tree. Named Siddhartha Gautama, but better known the world over as the Lord Buddha, legend has it that temptation came to him in the form of a powerful demon called Mara (lit. “life stealer”).

Like Satan in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mara offers Siddhartha three temptation in the form of his three daughters; Lust, Restlessness and Greed. Because Siddhartha’s goal was to reach enlightenment and thus find a cure for the world’s greed the third temptation is particularly interesting. According to the Buddhist scripture Samyutta Nikaya. 4:2:10, Mara told Siddhartha to use his spiritual powers to turn the Himalayas into gold so as to quench mankind’s greed. Siddhartha, of course, declines just as Jesus declined to turn stones into bread to quench his own physical hunger.

After failing to tempt Siddhartha, Mara attempts to frighten him with thunder clouds and then by hurling a barrage of weapons at him. However, both of these attempts also fail and Siddhartha reaches enlightenment. Two gods then appear before Siddhartha, now the Buddha, and Mara and demand that Mara depart. These gods then request that the Buddha go forth and preach the revelation that the universe has delivered unto him. This two is similar to the story of Jesus in how we are told by both Mark (1:11) and Matthew (4:11) that Jesus was waited on by angels.

Where This Leaves Us

In the end one can see that the tale of the Temptation of Jesus is obviously a much more complex and highly mythologized tale than many of us give it credit for. Its role in the Gospel’s retelling of the life of Jesus is to show us that all men, no matter how great, struggle with temptation but that it can be overcome if only we look towards God. The holiday of Lent is meant to pull us away from the world, if only a small cherished part of it, and closer to God which has been the quest of great spiritual men of all faiths for thousands of years.

Pictures:

Top Right: A girl celebrates Ash Wednesday by having her forehead marked with ashes drawn in the sign of the cross.

Left: Gustave Doré's (1832-1883) The Temptation of Jesus.

Center: The "wilderness" which Jesus was tempted in has traditionally been identified as the desert Jeshimon, a name which literally translates as "the devastation." The ancient Jews and Helens feared the wilderness not only because of its lack of food and water but because it was also believed to be the haunt of various ghosts, demons and ghouls.

Bottom: The Temptation of Buddha

Sources:

All scripture is quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Holy Bible (1989), Oxford University Press.

The World's Religions (1958) by Huston Smith, Don't Know Much About the Bible (1998) by Kenneth C. Davis, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994) by John Dominic Crossan, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (1994) and Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (2001) by Marcus J. Borg, Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings (1997) by Marcus J. Borg and Ray Rieger, The Birth of Satan (2005) by T. J. Wray and Gregory Mobley.

"Hush And Shush For The Beldam Might Be Listening!"

2009-02-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

Today (Feb. 6th) is the release of the film Coraline, directed by Henry Selick and based on the best selling young adult novella of the same name by author Neil Gaiman. The story revolves around 10-year-old-ish heroine Coraline Jones who lives in a flat with her parents who do not pay her the amount of attention she thinks she deserves. Bored with her parents, her eccentric neighbors, and the black cat that lives in their garden Coraline discovers a secret door in the spare of room of her house. Though the inside of the door is bricked up when Coraline discovers it that night she returns to the room and finds that the door now leads down a hallway to an apartment that looks just like her’s. There she discovers her “Other Mother” and “Other Father” who look just like her real mother and father except they have black buttons for eyes.

At first Coraline is delighted by this alternate world since everything and everyone in it seemingly caters to her every whim. The only one who doesn’t is the black cat who lives in the garden (he also is the only one without buttons for eyes because, in fact, he is the same black cat from Coraline’s world) who warns Coraline that things are not as good as they may seem. Sure enough things quickly begin to unravel for Coraline when her Other Mother attempts to remove Coraline’s eyes and replace them with buttons. Coraline tries to leave the Otherworld but is stopped as the Other Mother slowly begins to transform what was once a dream world into a living nightmare.

So will Coraline escape from the clutches of her sinister new family? I won’t divulge anymore of the plot since I think it would be well worth anyone’s time to go out and read the book and see the film. However, there is one issue that I do think is worth addressing: Just what is the Other Mother?

There is a point in both the book and the film when Coraline is imprisoned in a mirror by the Other Mother. There, inside the mirror, Coraline encounters the ghosts of the Other Mother’s past victims, all children. When Coraline attempts to talk to these children they warn her only to “Hush and shush for the Beldam might be listening!” That world, “Beldam,” turns up several more times in the book though it is never once explained. I do not believe this to be bad storytelling on Gaiman’s part but rather an attempt to get readers to do a little research.

The term “Beldam” steams from a ballad written in 1819 by English poet John Keats called La Belle Dame sans Merci. The title is actually French and means “The Beautiful Lady without Pity.” Inspired by the classic English folktale of Tam Lin, La Belle Dame sans Merci tells of an unnamed knight who encounters a beautiful fairy woman who whisks the knight away to her “elfin grotto.” There the night falls asleep and (like Coraline) encounters the ghosts of “pale kings and princes” who warm him to flee from the “Belle Dame” or “Beldam” as Gaiman has rendered it. The knight awakens to find him self alone on the “cold hill’s side” already condemned for all eternity.

Scholars have debated the meaning of Keats poem for years now, arguing over whether or not the knight and fairy maiden had sex, whether or not that sex was consensual (did one rape the other?), and if in the end the knight is dead or alive? Whatever the case may be it is beyond argument that the Beldam both seduces and traps the knight, in a very similar way to how she seduces and traps Coraline; promising her a wonderful life and her full attention. This ultimately makes the Beldam a type of predator, which is what she turns out to be in the end. The world she has created for Coraline is an illusion, a snare, and it worked. One of my personal favorite lines in the whole book is when Coraline discovers that the Otherworld of the Beldam is, in fact, no bigger than the flat in which she used to live and asks the cat why the world is so small. In response the cat replies; “A spider’s web only has to be big enough to catch a fly.”

At Top: Coraline (2002) by Neil Gaiman

Center: Coraline’s “Other Mother” begins to show her true form in Henry Selick’s Coraline (2009) film.

Sources: Coraline (2002) by Neil Gaiman, and La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) by John Keats.

Setsubun

2009-02-03T01:00:00.000-08:00

Today (Feb. 3rd) is Setsubun in Japan. Setsubun, which literally means “seasonal division,” marks the start of the New Year as well as the beginning of spring (Feb 4th) in Japan according to the old lunar calendar. On Setsubun, Japanese families prepare for spring by cleaning their homes and then by performing a ritual known as Mamemaki in which the oldest male will throw a handful of soybeans outside their front door while shouting “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” a phrase which means “Oni out, happiness in!” or “Oni out, luck in!” Afterwards the family will eat some soybeans, one for each year of their life.

In Japanese mythology and folklore Oni are troll-like demons who often serve the role of the generic villain opposed to the hero, much like giants or dragons do in western myths and legends. On Setsubun the Oni function as a symbol for evil and misfortune which may afflict people in the coming year. Since the 13th-Century tradition has held that Oni can be expelled or driven away by soybeans, which is why they are scattered outside the front door at the beginning of the year.

Prior to the 13th-Century it was custom for families to keep Oni away by making a ritual bonfire outside their homes in which they would smoke dried sardine heads and bang on drums. Others would also decorate a sacred tree with sardine heads, cloves of garlic, or onions. It is thought that after this ritual became too impractical (and possibly too annoying) that the bean-throwing ritual replaced it.

Why soybeans were chosen is a bit of a mystery. Some scholars trace the choice of bean back to a traditional No Comedy play performed at Mibu Temple in Kyoto in which an old woman attempts to steal a beautiful kimono and a magic hammer from an Oni. The Oni catches the old woman, however, and in order to escape the woman throws soybeans at him. Other think the choice was a result of soybeans being cheap and easily obtainable.

Despite not being an official national holiday Setsubun in celebrated all over Japan and everyone from Shinto priests to Buddhist monks to pop-culture celebrities get in on the celebration.

At Top: Celebrities celebrate Setsubun at Ikuta Shrine, Kobe.

Sources: Get Out Ogre! Come In Happiness! Setsubun in Japan; A Lunar "New Years' Eve" (Revised Jan. 2009) by Steve Renshaw and Saori Ihara, Setsubun at japan-guide.com, and Oni at http://www.obakemono.com/

What’s the Deal with Vril?

2009-01-20T23:07:00.000-08:00

Fans of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comic book series have heard of it and it’s name has become synonymous with a popular British food product, but what exactly is Vril?

In 1870 English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton published a science fiction story called Vril: The Power of the Coming Race. The story was told in first person by an anonymous narrator who claimed to have come into contact with a subterranean race of angel-like beings called the Vril-ya. In Bulwer-Lytton’s story the Vril-ya powered their entire civilization with a mystic, infinitely renewable energy source called Vril which could be used for everything from medicine to weaponry to bathwater.

Vril was an immediate best seller, but not for the reasons Bulwer-Lytton had anticipated. As it would turn out people all over Europe thought that the story was true and that there really was a subterranean race in possession of an all powerful energy source. "Vril Societies" began to spring up, primarily in England, France, and Germany. These were groups of people who dedicated their spare time – which they apparently had ample amounts of – to trying to make contact with the Vril-ya, and by 1873 some people began claiming that they indeed had.

The idea that so many people would believe that a work of fiction was fact may strike us as odd today (though one only needs to think of The DaVinci Code phenomena a few years back to see a contemporary example) but the truth was that in the late 19th-Century people were actually used to hearing claims such as those made by Bulwer-Lytton’s narrator, and usually the people making them wanted to be taken seriously.

The most famous example of this is undoubtedly the Russian occultist and medium Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891) who as early as 1870 claimed to be in contact with an advance race of beings known as the “mahātmās” who were hidden away deep within the Tibetan Mountains. Many of Blavatsky’s claims were even more sensational than those found in Vril, however unlike Bulwer-Lytton, Blavatsky meant every word of it and just like with Vril people believed her. In 1875 Blavatsky founded The Theosophical Society, an organization dedicated to spreading the spiritual and religious teachings of the “mahātmās.” Chances are that Blavatsky’s “mahātmās” were no more real than Bulwer-Lytton’s Vril-ya, but just the same before her death in 1891 over twenty-five people claimed to have personally encountered the “mahātmās” and many hundreds more professed to believing they existed.

By the late 1880s businesses even began cashing in on people’s belief in the Vril-ya and Vril, both of which had gained widespread recognition. It was in 1889 that Scottish grocer John Lawson Johnston founded the Bovril Company which produced a thick, salty beef extract similar to gravy. The name of the product, Bovril, was a combination of the words Bovine and Vril which helped the product to become an instant British staple as it was seen as being the “food of the master race” as author Ian Crofton puts it.

Belief in the reality of Bulwer-Lytton’s Vril continued right up into the 1930s and just like in Mignola’s Hellboy comics it wasn’t long before the Nazi’s got involved. In 1938, SS leader Heinrich Himmler organized an expedition to travel to Tibet and attempt to make contact with the Vril-ya. The prevailing idea amongst some of the Nazi Parties’ occult specialists was that the Vril-ya were ancestors of the “Aryan race,” though some in their ranks disagreed. However, even if it turned out that this wasn’t the case the Nazis were still assured that the Vril-ya would at least have some cool Vril powered super-weapons which would help them take over the world.

It should surprise no one to learn that in addition to the Vril-ya, Himmler’s expedition also hoped to make contact with Blavatsky’s “mahātmās” as well. It should also surprise no one to learn that the expedition failed to make contact with either the Vril-ya or the “mahātmās” or any other advance subterranean race on this expedition or the six subsequent expeditions which followed. One thing you can say about the Nazis is that even when their wrong their persistent.

After World War II belief in the literal reality of Bulwer-Lytton’s Vril began to fade and the various "Vril Societies" began to disband. People finally figured out that Vril was indeed a work of science fiction and not fact. Nevertheless, the legacy of Vril – no matter how mythological it may have been – continues on even today. The original book by Bulwer-Lytton is still in print (though it now resides in public domain) and the Bovril Company is still around making their Bovril beef gravy. The Vril-ya themselves also continue to pop-up from time to time in comics, music, TV, books, and yes conspiracy theories in which it is still whispered that they might be real.

…The Theosophical Society persists to this day.

Pictures: Top Left: Vril: The Power of the Coming Race (2008 Edition) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Center: A Bovril advertisement from 1892 depicts Bovril as an "infalible power" on par with the Pope.

Sources: The Totally Useless History of the World (2007) by Ian Crofton, Hollow Earth : The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth's Surface (2006) by David Standish and Lost Lands, Forgotten Realms (2007) by Dr. Bob Curran.

Mythology in Music: Avenged Sevenfold’s “Beast and the Harlot”

2009-01-16T17:46:00.000-08:00

California based rock band Avenged Sevenfold are known for their biblical reference laden lyrics. Even their band’s name is a direct reference to the tale of Cain and Able, where God pronounces that whoever slays Cain will have vengeance poured out upon them “sevenfold” (Gen. 4:15).

Their hit single “Beast and the Harlot” off their sophomore album City of Evil (2005) is a particularly notable example as it is a retelling of the story of the Whore of Babylon from the Book of Revelation (Chapter 17). In Revelation the Whore of Babylon is a key player in the apocalyptic events that are described as unfolding at the end of time. She is imagined as being “clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication” while astride “a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names” and with “seven heads and ten horns.” She will seduce the kings of the earth and will drink “the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.” Some scholars have interpreted the Whore of Babylon as an anti-Virgin Mary, the mother of the Antichrist, and wife of the devil.

In the accompanying music video the Whore of Babylon is depicted as a sexual seductress, the black tar symbolizing sin is taken from Dante’s Inferno.

This shining city built of gold, a far cry from innocence,

There's more than meets the eye round here, look to the waters of the deep.

A city of evil.

There sat a seven-headed beast, ten horns raised from his head.

Symbolic woman sits on his throne, but hatred strips her and leaves her naked.

The Beast and the Harlot.

She's a dwelling place for demons.

She's a cage for every unclean spirit,

every filthy bird and makes us drink the poisoned wine to fornicating with our kings.

Fallen now is Babylon the Great.

The city dressed in jewels and gold, fine linen, myrrh and pearls.

Her plagues will come all at once as her mourners watch her burn.

Destroyed in an hour.

Merchants and captains of the world, sailors, navigators too.

Will weep and mourn this loss with her sins piled to the sky,

The Beast and the Harlot.

She's a dwelling place for demons.

She's a cage for every unclean spirit,

every filthy bird and makes us drink the poisoned wine to fornicating with our kings.

Fallen now is Babylon the Great.

The day has come for all us sinners.

If you’re not a servant, you’ll be struck to the ground.

Flee the burning, greedy city.

Lookin’ back on her to see there's nothing around.

I don’t believe in fairytales and no one wants to go to hell.

You've made the wrong decision and it's easy to see.

Now if you wanna serve above or be a king below with us,

You're welcome to the city where your future is set forever.

She’s a dwelling place for demons.

She’s a cage for every unclean spirit,

every filthy bird and makes us drink the poisoned wine to fornicating with our kings.

Fallen now is Babylon the Great.[x2]

Dogs in Myth and Legend: The Faithful Hound

2009-01-09T01:00:00.000-08:00

This post was written for Deborah Parkhill Mullis at Metrolina Dog Reporter.

Dogs have been the faithful companions of mankind for well over 12,000-years and in that time have amassed their own unique body of legend and lore. Myths about dogs often revolve around one or more of the animal’s well known traits such as their skills as guardians or hunters. However above all it is a dog’s unwavering loyalty which has earned them a place in the annals of myth and folklore.

The “Faithful Hound” motif, one of the major folkloric archetypes, can be found around the world beginning in ancient Greece with Homer’s epic the Odyssey in which it is Odysseus’ faithful dog Argos who is the only one who recognizes the hero upon his return home; Odysseus had aged twenty-years and was disguised as a beggar when he reappeared.

One of the best known folktales to involve a “Faithful Hound” is the 18th-Century Welsh legend of the deerhound Gelert whose master, Prince Llewellyn, left his hound in charge of his infant son while he went out hunting. When the prince returned he found the room destroyed and his son’s cradle overturned, the baby nowhere in sight. It was then that Gelert appeared, his muzzle coated in blood. Horrified the prince assumed the worst, that his once beloved dog had slain his only heir. Drawing his sword the prince slew Gelert. It was only after the fact that the prince began to hear the baby’s muffled cries and proceeded to search the room where he discovered not only his son – alive and well beneath the overturned cradle – but the body of a dead wolf. It was then that the prince realized his horrible mistake.

Today Gelert’s grave, which is located in the village of Beddgelert, serves as a major tourist attraction. According to local folklore even the village’s name, Beddgelert, is believed to mean “Gelert’s Grave,” though this theory is largely dismissed by historians.

Gelert’s story may be based on that of another famous dog; the 13th-Century French greyhound Guinefort. Guinefort’s tale is almost identical to that of Gelert’s; Guinefort’s master, a knight from a castle near the city of Lyon, leaves the hound in charge of his infant child while he goes out. When he returns the room is in shambles and the child is missing, but there’s Guinefort mouth wet with blood. The knight slays the dog only to discover moments after that his child is alive, having been saved by the faithful dog from a deadly viper whose dead body lay nearby.

What makes Guinefort’s story unique from Gelert’s however, is what happens next. Distraught over the slaying of his faithful hound the knight buries the dog and erects a small shrine over the grave. As word spread concerning the events which lead to Guinefort’s death, local villagers began to regard the greyhound as something of a martyr. A local cult quickly began to form around the dog, now called Saint Guinefort, and mothers with ill or sickly children would bring them to Guinefort’s grave in hope of a miracle. The Catholic Church was none to happy about this however and quickly labeled the cult of St. Guinefort as a heresy inspired by the devil. The Inquisition was sent to deal with the cult but despite their best efforts was unable to stamp out the veneration of the dog which (according to some reports) lasted well into the 1940s!

Other examples of the “Faithful Hound” motif can be found in several contemporary near-legendary tales. One of these is the story of Greyfriars Bobby, a Skye terrier whose owner, John Grey, died in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1858 when Bobby was two-years-old. Grey was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard and Bobby attended the funeral. After the funeral Bobby refused to leave his master’s grave except for meals which he received at a local restaurant.

Tales of Bobby’s fidelity quickly spread across Scotland and then overseas transforming the steadfast pooch into a living legend. In order to make sure that Bobby was protected the children of Edinburgh donated their pocket money towards buying him a collar and the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Sir William Chambers, paid for the renewal of Bobby’s license making him the responsibility of the city council. Bobby was eventually awarded the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh; he is the only dog to ever receive this prestigious honor.

After fourteen years of faithfully waiting by his master’s graveside Bobby died on January 14th 1872. He was buried just inside the gate of Greyfriars Kirkyard, as close to his master’s grave as could be allowed. In 1981 The Dog Aid Society of Scotland erected a red granite tombstone over Bobby’s grave. In addition to this a statue of Greyfriars Bobby can be seen atop a fountain in Edinburgh’s Candlemaker Row in front of the Greyfriars Bobby pub.

A similar story to that of Greyfriars Bobby is that of Hachikō, an Akita from the city of Odate, Akita Prefecture, Japan. Hachikō’s owner was Dr. Ueno of Tokyo’s Imperial University. Everyday Dr. Ueno would board the train at Tokyo’s Shibuya Railway Station to go to work. When he returned in the evening Hachikō would be waiting. Then one evening in 1925 Dr. Ueno didn’t return home, he had died of a heart attack while at work earlier that day. Nevertheless Hachikō continued to show up every evening at the Shibuya Railway Station for the next ten years even after it became difficult for him to walk due to arthritis. When Hachikō died on March 8th 1935 at the age of twelve a National Day of Mourning was declared.

The year before, a bronze statue of Hachikō had been erected at Shibuya Railway Station. Unfortunately the statue was demolished during World War II so that the metal could be used for the war effort. After the war The Society for Recreating the Hachikō Statue had a second statue erected in August of 1948, it still stands at the Shibuya Railway Station today.

Sources: DK Eyewitness Books: Dogs (2004) by Juliet Clutton-Brock, The Hidden Powers of Animals: Uncovering the Secrets of Nature (2001) by Dr. Karl P.N. Shuker, and Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (2005) by Sabine Baring-Gould.

Happy New Year: 2009

2008-12-31T01:00:00.000-08:00

The celebration of the passing year and the approaching of the “New Year” is a tradition found in nearly every culture all over the world. Today’s New Year’s Eve celebrations – which are marked by parties, the consumption of alcoholic beverages, kissing, the declaration of vows and resolutions, and noise making – are not at all that different from the celebrations held hundreds of years ago. The tradition of making as much noise as possible at the stroke of midnight, for example, has to do with the once widely held belief that such cacophonies would succeed in driving off malevolent spirits.

In addition to this, there are many other facets of New Year’s Eve celebrations which have mythical roots. One of these is the popular New Year’s Eve figure Father Time; traditionally depicted as an old man with a long white beard, an hour-glass or clock, and a scythe. Most mythographers believe that Father Time is based on the Greco-Roman character of Cronus (called Saturn by the Romans). Cronus was the ruthless leader of the Titans – a race of giants who ruled over the world before the advent of the Olympian gods – and who is most famously remembered for making a snack out of his own children.[1] As Saturn the Romans worshipped Cronus as a harvest deity, which explains the scythe. The Romans also held a popular end of year celebration is honor of Saturn known as Saturnalia which began on December 17th and lasted a week, being something of a cross between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve.

Later on it appears that Cronus was confused or combined with another Greco-Roman god-like being known as Chronos; the personification of time and the source of such modern day words as chronology.

Another element to consider is that of New Year’s Day; January 1st. The month of January draws its name from the Roman god Janus who presided over gateways, beginnings, and endings. Janus is classically depicted in art as having two heads; one to look forward with and one to look backwards with, a gift from Saturn himself. Janus’ temple, which was located in the Roman Forum, was also unique in that it possessed two separate gateways; one to enter the temple and one to leave it. This was in opposition to the traditional temple model which only featured one gateway in and out.

There are very few myths about Janus, the most famous being the tale of how Janus got a wife. According to Ovid’s Metamorphosis there was once a nymph by the name of Carna whose days were spent teasing men with her sexual advances only to run away as quick as a flash whenever said men attempted to make a move. One day Carna made the mistake of teasing Janus, not knowing the god literally had eyes in the back of his head. When Janus attempted to make a move on Carna the nymph once again attempted to run away, only this time Janus saw where she went and quickly gave case and furthermore caught the saucy nymph forcing her to become his bride.[2] According to legend the King of Alba Long was their son.

Sources: The Penguin Dictionary of American Folklore (2001) by Alan Axelrod and Harry Oster, Don’t Know Much About Mythology (2005) by Kenneth C. Davis, The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology (2001) by Arthur Cotterell & Rachel Storm, and the Metamorphosis by Ovid, translated by Charles Martin (2004).

______________________________________________________
[1] It could be speculated that the image of Cronus/Saturn devouring his own children so as to prevent them from overthrowing him is linked in some way to the modern day, sanitized image of Father Time and Baby New Year, though I haven’t done the research to prove this.
[2] As an additional perk Janus made Carna the goddess of doorhinges.

"The Vampire Days"

2008-12-26T01:00:00.000-08:00

In his excellent book Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead, Prof. Bruce A. McClelland has this to say about the curious relationship which exists between vampires and the Christmas holiday…

“In Bulgaria, the ‘twelve days of Christmas,” from Christmas Eve through Epiphany, or Jordan’s Day (January 6), are known as the ‘Unclean Days.’ Other names for this period are quite revealing: they include ‘Pagan Days,’ ‘Ember Days,’ ‘Unbaptized Days,’ and even ‘Vampire Days.’ This brief midwinter period represents a time when, it is believed, evil spirits are able to roam the earth…In South Slavic belief, people who die during this period invariably become vampires. Also, children who are born or conceived during this period have special powers and may themselves become vampires.” (Page 56-57)

Prof. McClelland goes on to add that due to this heightened activity amongst evil spirits and the undead that all Christian rites were to be put on hold until after January 6th since such ceremonies only seemed to succeed in provoking the ire of such monsters. These ceremonies included birthdays, weddings, baptisms, and even funerals - the body, McClelland says, would still be buried, but the service would have to wait. In addition to this, sex and other pleasures of the flesh were also forbidden by the church, which was probably a good idea since according to tradition one of the vampires many powers include the ability to render human couples (especially newly weds) impotent or sterile.

It may also be of some interest to know that in Bulgaria vampires are traditionally disposed of via bottling. A sorcerer will drive the vampire into a bottle using an icon of a saint. Once the vampire is in the bottle, the vessel will be tossed into a raging fire and destroyed.

Also according to some medieval European traditions children born on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day are also equally susceptible to becoming werewolves later on in life.

At Top: "Cute Gothic Bat Christmas Card" by the Order of St. Nick.

Sources: Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead (2006) by Bruce A. McClelland and Dracula: The Connoisseur’s Guide (1997) by Leonard Wolf.

The Eve of the Wild Hunt

2008-12-24T17:54:00.000-08:00

Tonight (December 24th) is Christmas Eve. All over the world parents are hurrying their children off to bed, telling them that they best get to sleep or else Santa Claus won’t come and deliver any toys.

This tradition, that one need be asleep before the arrival of Santa and his team of reindeer, goes back (like nearly all Christmas traditions) to the days of pre-Christian Europe when the reason for the season was not toys, candy and tidings of good will but the fear of the dark and what was lurking within it.

Long before Santa Claus and his reindeer, people living throughout Europe associated what we today call the Twelve Days of Christmas (Dec. 25th - Jan. 6th) with a celestial phenomena they called the Wild Hunt. As the name suggests the Wild Hunt was a great hunt held by a band of supernatural huntsmen who rode through the sky on flying horses (or goats or deer) in the company of fearsome hounds.

To hear the Wild Hunt was apparently a terrifying thing and men and women unfortunate enough to be out during the hunt would fling themselves to the ground or cover their faces when they heard it pass overhead. If one did not take such precautions the results could be dire including by not limited to misfortune, madness, and death. One also risked being “spirited away” by the huntsmen to whatever “otherworld” they hailed from. It is this belief that would later help to influence the idea that children needed to be in bed and asleep before Santa arrived.

While it was clear that one was best off avoiding the Wild Hunt at all costs, what was less clear was who led this great nocturnal event and why. In Scandinavia and Western Germany the leader was often identified as Odin (Wōden in German); King of the Teutonic gods. In Wales it is Gwyn ap Knudd, King of the Welsh Fairies, who leads the hunt. While in England, Scotland, and France the leader of the hunt was is either identified as being the legendary King Arthur himself or some other great national hero. The quarry of the hunt was equally mysterious but often proved to be some sort of mythical creature such wood-elves, trolls, or the nymph-like moss maidens.

With the advent of Christianity the Wild Hunt was demonized and became a hunt for damned souls and unbaptized babies. As for the hunt’s leader; cultural heroes were replaced with infamous villains while pagan gods were replaced by the devil or Death himself. As before it was still considered highly ill advised to look upon the Wild Hunt when it passed by and one rather morbid English folktale tells of how a imprudent onlooker returning from the market one night caught sight of the hunt and called out to the head Huntsman to inquire if he might share in that evening’s catch. In response the Huntsman tossed a small bundle down to the man and galloped off. When the man unwrapped the bundle he found his own dead infant son inside.

And if that doesn’t convince your children to go to bed I don’t know what will.

Merry Christmas!

At Top: Åsgårdsreien by Norwegian painter Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831-1892). Note: The leader of the hunt (adorned with a red cape, crown, and holding a traditional Norse war hammer) can be seen in the center of fray, while on the right hand side two hunters abduct up two beautiful, young, (and naked) women.

Sources: Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia ( 1996) by Carol Rose, Christmas Curiosities: Odd, Dark, and Forgotten Christmas (2008) by John Grossman, and Sagas of the Norsemen: Viking & German Myth (1997) by Jacqueline Simpson, et al.

Political Personalities Spice Up Nativity Scenes In Naples

2008-12-22T01:00:00.000-08:00

According to NBC Chicago shortly after word got out concerning the popular political nativity scene figurines, Italian police stepped in and shut down the vendors who were selling them.

Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins

2008-12-21T01:00:00.000-08:00

Hershel of Ostropol (also known as Hershele Ostropoler), is a prominent Jewish folk hero and trickster figure from Ukraine who is known for his humorous quips and daring adventures and is in many ways similar to the previously discussed English-American folk hero Jack. A vagabond who survived via his wits alone, Hershel played pranks on both the rich and poor, Jew and Gentile.

One of Hershel’s funnier bits tells of how he once attended a Passover feast at which he was given the dubious honor of sitting across from a self absorbed rich man who proceeded to amuse himself by making derogatory remarks about Hershel. However, despite his taunting Hershel remained unfazed. Frustrated the rich man addressed Hershel directly inquiring as to what separated a vagabond like Hershel from a lowly pig? A question to which Hershel quickly replied; “The table.”

Children’s book author Eric Kimmel has written two books featuring Hershel; The Adventures of Hershel of Ostropol and Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, the latter of which is a Caldecott Medal winner. Seeing that the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah begins tonight (December 21st) it seemed appropriate to share the story of Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins which I first discovered at my public library as a small child. At the time I knew nothing about Hanukkah, but what I did know was that artist Trina Schart Hyman’s illustrations of the seven demonic “goblins” were some of the most frightening specters my young eyes had ever seen.

The story tells of Hershel of Ostropol arriving in a small Jewish village where no one celebrates Hanukkah. When Hershel inquires as to why, the villagers explain that the old synagogue on top of the hill is haunted by a band of goblins that hate Hanukkah and won’t allow any one to light the menorah, play with their dreidels or bake traditional potato latkes. The only way to free the village of the goblins is for a person to spend all eight nights of Hanukkah in the synagogue and keep the menorah lit. In addition to this on the eighth and final night of Hanukkah the King of the Goblins (i.e. the devil) must light the candles himself.

Hershel, of course, volunteers to spend Hanukkah in the synagogue and brave the goblins. The villagers decide to let Hershel try; though they are sure he will neither succeed nor survive. Armed with a menorah, a hard-boiled egg and a jar of pickles, Hershel makes his way to the synagogue.

On the first night Hershel lights the menorah, an imp like goblin appears to threaten him. However, using his wits, Hershel frightens the goblin off by threating to crush him with his bare hands. To show off how strong he is Hershel crushes the hard-boiled egg, telling the goblin it’s a stone. On the second night a slightly larger goblin appears. This time Hershel tricks the goblin into getting his hand stuck in a jar of pickles, humiliated the goblin leaves. On the third night an even bigger and uglier goblin appears, but Hershel challenges this goblin to a game of dreidel in which he manages to steal all the goblin’s gold. This pattern continues with each succeeding goblins being bigger and uglier and Hershel outwitting each and every one.

Finally on the eighth and last night the King of the Goblins himself arrives. When the king attempts to frighten Hershel (who is already frightened beyond all reason by the mere presence of the king) away Hershel tells the king that he is not scared because he can not see the king’s face in the low light of the synagogue and suggests the king light a candle. The King of the Goblins, wishing to show Hershel how truly terrifying he is, strikes a match and lights a nearby candle, but Hershel still complains that it is to dark. The king continues lighting candles until at last he has lit all nine candles atop the synagogue’s menorah, thus lifting the curse. Defeated by Hershel’s wit and bravery the king and his goblins leave the town allowing its denizens to once again partake in the celebration of Hanukkah.

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus

2008-12-18T16:19:00.000-08:00

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by beloved children’s book author L. Frank Baum is something of a forgotten classic of the yuletide season. Baum, best known for his timeless fantasy classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), published The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus in 1902, in which he transforms the legend of St. Nicholas into a story of truly epic proportions.

Abandoned as a baby, the infant Santa is found in the mythical Forest of Burzee by the immortal Ak; Master Woodsman of the World. Ak places the infant in the care of the lioness Shiegra and later the wood nymph Necile. It is Necile who names the child Neclaus or Nicholas, a term meaning “Necile’s little one” in old Burzee.

As time passes Nicholas grows up amongst the fairies, elves and sprites who instruct him in all kinds of magic. Upon reaching young adulthood Ak informs Nicolas that he is growing too old to stay amongst the magical beings of Burzee and must go and live amongst mortals once again. Nicholas settles in the nearby Laughing Valley of Hohaho, where he is visited frequently by the elves and fairies of the forest. To keep him company Necile gives her foster son a little kitten named Blinky.

Upon returning to the mortal world Nicholas soon encounters the horrors of war, brutality, poverty, child neglect and abuse. Upset by the cruelty and hate around him Nicholas decides to try and find someway of bringing joy into the world. One day a boy, named Weekum, from the village near Nicholas’ house gets lost in a snowstorm and blacks out. Nicholas finds the boy and takes him back to his cottage to recuperate. When the boy wakes he finds Nicholas carving of wooden model of Blinky. Enraptured by the toy cat Weekum asks Nicholas if he can have it, to which Nicholas naturally says yes. It is then that Nicholas realizes that a simple way to bring joy to the world is to make and deliver toys.

With the help of the fairies and elves, Nicholas begins creating toys for all the boys and girls in the village, secretly traveling by night and placing them in their homes. However, Nicholas’ plan to spread cheer is soon threatened by a group of evil beings called Awgwas (essentially Baum’s version of Orcs) who steal Nicholas’ toys so they can make children sad.

Nicholas complains to Ak about the Awgwas and Ak attempts to settle things with their leader through talk, however negotiations break down and war is declared. The Awgwas assemble an army of goblins, giants, demons and dragons to fight Ak and his band of fairies, elves and sprites.

You can watch this scene below as imagined by stop-motion animation studio Raskin-Bass who adapted The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus into a one hour television film in 1985:

Though outmatched in size, the fairies’ magic proves strong enough to defeat the Awgwas and their army, making it safe once again for Nicholas to deliver his toys.

As time passes, and Nicholas grows older, there are more and more children that have heard of him and wish to receive toys from him. To accommodate the growing number of children and the longer distances he must now travel, Nicholas acquires a team of reindeer from the sprite of the deer Wil Knook. However, Wil Knook fears that Nicholas will wear out the reindeer with his constant trips back and forth every night and threatens to take the reindeer away. To keep this from happening Nicholas agrees that he will do his work all on one night and allows Wil Knook to pick the night. Wil Knook picks December 25th since it is at the end of year and gives the reindeer a chance to go a whole year without working.

The story ends with Nicholas approaching the end of his mortal life. Ak calls a conferences with all the immortals of the world at which he petitions for Nicholas to be bestowed the “Mantel of Immortality” as a reward for his life of selflessness. After much debate the immortals eventually agree that Nicholas is indeed worthy of this great gift and bestow immortality upon him, transforming him into Santa Claus.

Merry....Atheist?

2008-12-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

The Order of St. Nick, an online greeting card company, recently unveiled a new line of seasonal prefabricated parcels just in time for the holidays. However, rather than dealing with the sundry traditions of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza, the Order of St. Nick has instead decided to embrace the season’s most neglected group of yuletide practitioners; atheists.

By “atheists” the Order of St. Nick appears to be specifically referring to people from the Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris vein of atheism, people whom I shall refer to as Darwinian Atheists for lack of a better term. Darwinian Atheists are individuals who argue that the Theory of Evolution as proposed by 19th-Century naturalist Sir Charles Darwin disproves the existence of God, by providing a completely natural explanation for the origins of life on Earth. In fact, seven out of the eight cards in the Order of St. Nick’s “Atheist Christmas Cards” collection either reference Sir Charles Darwin or the Theory of Evolution directly.

Though atheism in and of itself is actually a form of religious belief – many eastern religions like Buddhism and Taoism are atheistic in that the belief/worship of a deity is not a mandatory requirement of a devotee – Darwinian Evolutionists deny/refuse to allow their “beliefs” be categorized as such. In fact, Sam Harris in his book Letters to a Christian Nation (2006) even goes so far as to arrogantly declare that "atheism is not a philosophy, not a worldview…it is simply the way things are."

Nevertheless, while the jury may still be out on whether or not atheists of the Dawkins and Harris variety constitute a “religion” the introduction of atheist Christmas cards – such as the one above which depicts Darwin as Santa – in addition to such things as Darwin Fish magnets and the formation of an official Darwin Day holiday (2/12) only help to further the case for some scholars that, at the very least, Sir Charles Darwin is on the way to becoming a mythical, quasi-religious figure.

On a related note it is worth mentioning that the copy of A Dictionary of Creation Myths (1994) by acclaimed Prof. David Leeming of the University of Connecticut which sits upon my book self includes both “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution” and “The Big Bang Theory” amongst its extensive catalog of myth with the simple justification that "myths are considered truth by the cultures from which they first emerge - at least until they are 'exposed' as 'mere myth.'

Krampusumzüge on YouTube

2008-12-05T20:49:00.000-08:00

Happy Krampus-Day Everyone!!!

As it would turn out YouTube has a ton of footage of the Krampus Day celebrations from overseas which help to give you a pretty good idea about what exactly Krapus Day and the Krampusumzüge or "Krampus Run" looks like.

Above; the Krampus getting into a wrestling match out on the street.

Above; Krampus with green eldritch fire.

Above; And you thought Santa only paled around with elves...

Above; Don't take your dog to a Krampusumzüge.

Thanks to burgy99 for uploading these videos, whoever you are....

Krampus the Christmas Devil

2008-12-04T15:23:00.000-08:00

With the exception of a lyric from the popular Christmas carol, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” the devil is a mostly forgotten character when it comes to the holiday season here in the U.S. Children living in the States grow up knowing that if they are good Santa Claus will bring them toys and gifts. They are also occasionally told that if they are bad Santa will punish them by leaving them coal. But this is rare now a days as it is now considered improper to threaten children with such reprisals. The same is not true in mainland Europe however, where they have forgotten the coal in favor of a far more devilish threat.

In the Old World countries of Austria, Switzerland, Bavaria, Slovenia, western Croatia and Italy children learn that they truly must be “good for goodness sake” because if they are not they will be paid a visit not by St. Nick but by Krampus the Christmas Devil. Originating in 6th-Century Austrian folklore, Krampus is a demon covered in shaggy hair and donning curled horns with a long red tongue. A companion of Santa, Krampus roams the cold, dark nights of December carrying a large sack and sliding down chimneys seeking naughty children to stuff in his bag and beat with his switch.

How did a demon come to be a companion of old St. Nick? The legends are unclear, though as you will notice in many of the pictures and photos Krampus is typically depicted dressed in chains, a symbol that he is under St. Nicolas’ charge. According to one legend those chains are the same ones which once bound St. Peter, thus fueling them with enough divine power to bind the devil himself - or at least one incarnation of him anyway.

In Europe Krampus has become a certified Christmas celebrity, rivaling Santa himself. Every December 5th (the day proceeding the Catholic Church’s feast day in honor of St. Nicolas) children and adults of all ages all over Europe celebrate Krampus in a festival that is equal parts Christmas, Halloween and Mardi Gras. There is food and drink and vendors of all kind. People wait along the streets for the Krampusumzüge or “Krampus-Run”, the main event in which dozens of individuals dressed as Krampuses run through the streets threatening and menacing children as well as occasionally smacking a pretty young girl on the rear with their switches.

Unfortunately Krampus has had little success infiltrating the highly commercialized Christmas of the U.S. with San Francisco being the only city in America to have a (strictly adult oriented) Krampus Day celebration. Still Krampus has occasionally popped up in other places. He appeared in the season one Christmas episode of the popular Adult Swim animated series The Venture Bros. as well as in a G4 Christmas commercial.

So tomorrow don't forget to wish everyone you meet a Very Merry Krampus-mas!!!

Sources and Additional Information:

Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia (1996) by Carol Rose

Christmas Curiosities: Odd, Dark, and Forgotten Christmas (2008) by John Grossman

The Devil in Design: The Krampus Postcards (2004) by Monte Beauchamp

Santa's Not-So-Little Helper (2002) by Clay Risen

Krampus: The Sinister Sidekick of Santa (2008) by R.J. Evans

Krampus: A (Funny) Overview of the Character

San Francisco's Krampus Day Site

All Postcard and Photo Images from Monster Brains

Krampus, as seen on The Venture Bros., from The Mantis Eye Experiment

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T22:22:00.000-08:00

Anya: “I love a ritual sacrifice.”

Buffy: “It’s not really... a one of those.”

Anya: “To commemorate a past event you kill and eat an animal. It’s a ritual sacrifice, with pie.”

- Anya, a demon, on Thanksgiving. “Pangs,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 4.

Harpies in Myth and Film

2008-11-26T20:16:00.000-08:00

Harpy, derived from the Greek word harpazein which means “to snatch.”

Harpies are terrifying monsters from Greco-Roman mythology who possess the torso (head and breasts) of a woman and the body (wings, legs and tail) of a bird, typically a vulture. Natives of the islands of Strophades (or Salmydessus) in eastern Thrace the Harpies feed upon human flesh.

The most famous myth to involve these femme fatales was that of King Phineus of Thrace who possessed the gift of prophecy. So great was Phineus’ gift that he was able to divine all the plans of the gods, a fact which greatly displeased the fickle Olympian deities. As punishment Zeus struck Phineus blind and placed him on the Harpies’ island. Zeus then laid out a great banquet for Phineus; however every time the blind prophet tried to take a piece of food the Harpies would swoop down and snatch it up.

Eventually the seafaring hero Jason, who had use of Phineus’ gift, came to the island and slew the Harpies. The most famous adaptation of this myth is undoubtedly the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts directed by Don Chaffey and with special effects by Ray Harryhausen. While Jason is a brilliant film in every way, Harryhausen’s depiction of the Harpies leaves something to be desired in that they look more like archetypal bat-winged demons than bird women.

A much better example of a cinematic Harpy can be seen in the surreal 1979 Belgian short film Harpya which is itself an adaptation of the Phineus myth. Written and directed by Raoul Servais, it stars Will Spoor, Fran Waller Zeper and Sjoert Schwibethus. Harpya won the Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.

Source: Giants, Monsters & Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth (2000) by Carol Rose.

Special Thanks: To Riki for showing me Harpya.

God and Golden Cows on Wall Street

2008-11-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

It’s not often that I get to do topical blog posts…

The picture up above was taken on Wall Street on October 29th, but it’s not exactly what you might think it is. Yes, the people in the picture are praying. Yes, they are standing in front of a seemingly giant golden bull. Yes, some of them are apparently laying hands on said bull. But are they praying to the bull? The answer, they say, is “No.”

The sculpture in question is the “Charging Bull” (a.k.a. the “Wall Street Bull” or the “Bowling Green Bull”), a 7,000 pound bronze (not gold) sculpture which sits in Bowling Green Park near Wall Street in New York City. The sculpture is symbolic of “aggressive financial optimism and prosperity” or "Bull Marketing," the economic trend currently in practice on Wall Street. The sculpture was created by artist Arturo Di Modica in 1989 as a “Christmas gift” for the city of New York following the 1987 stock market crash.

The event being witnessed in the photo at top was organized by self proclaimed Christian “prophet” and author Cindy Jacobs who claims that in January of 08’ “the Lord” spoke to her saying; “Cindy, the strongman over America doesn’t live in Washington, DC – the strongman lives in New York City! Call My people to pray for the economy.”

Moved by her most recent revelation Jacobs immediately set about writing a new book, The Reformation Manifesto (pub. 3/1/08), to sell to people. This, however, apparently wasn’t good enough for God who spoke to Jacobs again telling her to rally together a group of Christian believers and have them converge on Bowling Green Park on October 29th in order to pray for the economy and to stop “Satan” from causing another “Black Tuesday.”

The reason for Bowling Green Park, Jacobs says, was the “Charging Bull” statue. “We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the 'Lion’s Market,' or God’s control over the economic systems,” stated Jacobs, “While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without [divine] intercession, economies will crumble.”

On October 29th, Jacobs got her rally with a turn out of what looks like a few dozen people – I was unable to find any concrete numbers, but this is what I’m guessing based on photos and one video. The group prayed, sang ‘God Bless America,’ waved around American flags, and prayed some more.

Naturally, as soon as photos and YouTube footage got out people immediately misinterpreted what they were seeing. The vast majority of viewers took the sight of a few dozen Christians praying and worshiping in front of a statue of a bull as a sign of mass idolatry in progress. Blog and news articles with titles like “Christians are full of bull – on Wall Street,” “Where’s Charlton Heston when you need him?,” and “Jesus People Pray That False Idol Will Save God’s Economy” jumped on Jacobs’ rally and invoked imagery from Exodus 32 (as well as Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film The Ten Commandments) in order to brand Jacobs and her group as heretics.

For those who may have forgotten Exodus 32 tells of how Moses’ brother Aaron cast a statue of a golden calf and set it up in opposition to the Hebrew god Yahweh. When Moses discovered this he smashed the original copy of the infamous Ten Commandments on the ground causing an earthquake which swallowed the idol and its misled devotees.

Now on the one hand, its nice to see that the Book of Exodus and its legend of Moses and the golden calf has not lost its place in the public consciousness after all these years. On the other hand, it’s a bit disturbing to see so many people use this kind of religious myth to attack someone based solely on misperception. As for Jacobs and her rally it is interesting to see how times of crisis drive people to religious and mythological solutions for problems which seemingly have no direct worldly answer, reminding one of the comfort as well as the distress which can be gleamed from both myth and faith.

Photos:

At Top: The "Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies" on Wednesday, October 29, 2008.

Middle: The "Charging Bull" as seen in Bowling Green Park, NY.

Bottom: Cindy Jacobs, Christian "prophet", takes the bull by the horn.

Jack of the Lantern

2008-10-14T22:38:00.001-07:00

“To a new world of gods and monsters!”
- Dr. Pretorius in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Happy Halloween everyone!…ok so it’s not actually Halloween yet but the day is fast approaching as we all well know. It may come as no surprise to some of you to learn that my absolute favorite holiday is that of Halloween, what with all the myth and legend that surrounds the date.

One of the things about Halloween that sets it apart from most other holidays, however, is that it has no largely recognizable mascot. Christmas has Santa Claus, Easter the Easter Bunny, Valentine’s Day Cupid, etc…even Thanksgiving (which isn’t even a religious observance here in America) has turkeys and pilgrims to represent it. Halloween however has no one. Most stores that I go into to look for Halloween-themed goods (which I then keep out all year long) usually represent the holiday with a motley assortment of witches, ghosts, vampires and monsters. And while all of these characters are certainly important reasons for the season (especially ghosts) none of them really seem like the holiday’s actual mascot.

But then there is the Jack-O'-Lantern. The carving of Jack-O'-Lanterns is a time honored tradition and one of the most easily recognizable pieces of iconography associated with Halloween. The tradition of Jack-O'-Lantern dates back hundreds of years to Ireland where Halloween first originated in the form of the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). Originally Jack-O'-Lanterns were carved out of turnips, it wasn’t until Irish immigrants came to America and discovered the pumpkin that anyone realized that a giant gourd would definitely be a whole lot easier to carve than a tiny turnip

Like all icons the Jack-O'-Lantern has a story behind it explaining its origins and where it comes from. In this case, the story of the Jack-O'-Lantern is related directly to the Irish folktale of Jack of the Lantern; a less than likeable fellow who was forsaken by both God and the devil. There are many versions of the tale of Jack of the Lantern (which will be discussed later) but the one that follows is my personal favorite…

The Tale of Jack of the Lantern as retold by Justin M...

There once lived an unsavory Irish-man by the name of Jack. Now Jack was never much good when it came to actual work, but when it came to drinking or gambling or dancing with pretty girls well then… Jack was your man. One night, after having quite a bit to drink, Jack found himself wandering home through an old apple orchard and it was there, in that orchard, that Jack found himself face to face with none other than the devil himself.

Of course, everyone knows the devil is a real sucker for an apple so when he asked Jack if he wouldn’t mind giving him a leg up into one of the apple trees so that he could pick a few fresh ones for himself Jack was not at all surprised. Now Jack may have been a gambler and a drunker but he was certainly no fool, as soon as he got the devil up into that tree he whipped out his pocketknife and carved a cross into the trunk of that tree, trapping the devil.

The devil pleaded with Jack to show him some sympathy and to let him down but Jack would hear nothing about it until the devil struck a deal with him. Jack wanted the devil’s word that when he died he would never have to send so much as one day in hell. Finally, the devil agreed to Jack’s terms and promised that under no circumstances would Jack ever have spend so much as one day in hell. With that Jack took his pocketknife and scrapped the cross off the tree trunk and let the devil go.

Well it wasn’t long until Jack’s wild ways caught up with him and he died. Upon dieing Jack found himself in the presence of St. Peter at the pearly gates of heaven. There Jack promptly requested to be let in but St. Peter refused saying that heaven did not admit drinkers and gamblers and especially those who made deals with the devil. Jack protested but no matter what he said St. Peter stood firm on the issue.

Finally Jack grew tiered of arguing and decided if he wasn’t going to be let into heaven than he would have to take his place in hell. So Jack trotted down to the fiery gates of hell and again requested to be let in. However, the devil appeared and told Jack that he was not going to let Jack into hell, a deal was a deal and the devil was a man of his word. Jack lamented his fate and asked the devil what it is he should do if was not to be allowed into either heaven or hell. The devil, is response, just laughed and told Jack that all that was left for him to do was to wander the earth as a restless spirit. The devil then picked up a piece of burning brimstone and tossed it to Jack telling him to put it in a hollowed out turnip and use it as a lantern to light his way in his long and endless wanderings across the earth, and that is exactly what Jack did and is still doing to this very day.

…as noted earlier the tale of Jack of the Lantern is one with many variations. In some versions of the story, for example, Jack doesn’t meet the devil until after he has drunk himself to death and it is on their way back to hell that the devil stops for an apple and is tricked by Jack. Another notable version of the tale features the devil appearing in a bar and making a bet with Jack that he can transform himself into any object Jack can think of. Jack tells the devil to turn into a coin, which the devil does, which Jack then picks up and places in his pocket along side a cross trapping the devil in Jack’s pocket. There is also a version of the tale which forgoes the turnip lantern aspect for a more wholly gruesome approach in which the devil tosses the burning brimstone straight into Jack’s mouth transforming his head into a living lantern.

Nevertheless, all these stories ultimately serve the same purpose, to explain where the name and idea of the Jack-O'-Lantern come from. There are those theorists who also suppose that the tale of Jack and his lantern helped people to explain swamp gas which can ignite and create strange lights which are commonly known in folklore and mythology as will-o'-the-wisps. There general reason behind the making and lighting of Jack-O'-Lantern is the belief that their presence will deter evil spirits who will associate it with Jack who once imprisoned their master the devil.

I say all this to make the case that perhaps Jack of the Lantern is really the mascot of Halloween, albeit a highly unfamiliar one. Perhaps if more people could become familiar with his legend this fabulous character from Irish folklore would have something of a fighting chance against such widely recognized figures as Santa and the Eastern Bunny

Images…

Top Right: Traditional Jack-O'-Lantern carved from pumpkin.

Middle Left: The devil trapped in a tree curtsey of www.jack-o-lantern.com.

Bottom Right: Jack-O'-Lantern carved from a turnip.

Sources: The Field Guide to North American Monsters (1998) by W. Haden Blackman & http://www.jack-o-lantern.com/.

You Don’t Know Jack!

2008-09-18T21:01:00.000-07:00

…Well actually, you probably do seeing how Jack is arguably the most well know character in all of western folklore. The character of Jack (he has no definite last name) has appeared in nursery rhymes, folk and fairytales, legends, plays and literature going back as far as 1414. Geographically speaking, folklorists and mythographers find the greatest concentration of Jack tales to be in England and then the American Appalachian mountains where they were imported by immigrants from the British Isles.

The Larousse Dictionary of World Folklore (1995) characterizes Jack as a "hero [who] is generally unpromising at the start of the tale, young, poor or foolish, but through a combination of luck and craftiness… triumphs against the odds.” The “odds” in question here typically take the form of supernatural threats such as witches or demons, though Jack’s most common and persistent adversaries are giants and it is these tales which will be the focus of this entry.

One reason for this narrow look at the world of “Jack Tales” is simply focus and space constraints. Attempting to discuss every “Jack Tale” ever told is simply out of the question – there are just far too many of them. Another thing that will not be discussed here are several Jack related characters that are, for our purposes, far too complex to be summarized here and now. These characters include: Jack of the Lantern, Jack Frost, Jack in the Green, and Spring Heeled Jack. All of whom will be discussed at a later date, I promise…

The most famous "Jack" Tale is undoubtedly that of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” To sum up the story – which hopefully everyone reading this blog already knows – Jack is a poor farm boy who lives with his mother in the countryside. One day Jack’s mother tells her son to go into town and sell the farm’s only cow for money. Jack does as he is told and takes the cow to town; however when Jack returns later that same day he has not money but five magic beans which he obtained from a mysterious man in exchange for the cow. Jack's mother is furious with him and in a fit of rage throws the beans out the window and sends her son to bed.

That night a massive beanstalk sprouts from the ground and grows all the way up into the sky. Jack, upon awakening, discovers the beanstalk and decides to climb it. At the top of the beanstalk Jack discovers a castle which is home to a man-eating giant and his wife. Jack befriends the giantess who helps to hide him from her flesh-eating husband. Later Jack discovers that the giant is also the owner of several bags of gold as well as a magical hen who lays golden eggs and a golden harp. Jack decides to “steal” these three treasures and make his way back down the beanstalk. However, the harp calls out for help from the giant who discovers Jack and pursues him. Jack being smaller and faster manages to outmaneuver the giant. Reaching the bottom first Jack takes an ax and chop the beanstalk down causing the giant to fall to his death.

According to folklorists Peter and Iona Opie, the oldest known written version of this tale is an English reprint of a text called Round About our Coal-Fire: or Christmas Entertainments (1730) which features a tale entitled "Enchantment demonstrated in the Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean." This version of the tale is intended to be light hearted and comedic, severing simply as entertainment.

It would be seventy-years later before the more serious, more familiar version of the tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk” would be written down, this time by London author Benjamin Tabart under the impressive title of The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk, Printed from the Original Manuscript, Never Before Published (1807). Tabart’s version of the tale was lost for many years after its original publication until anthropologist Andrew Lang recovered it and republished it in his Red Fairy Book in 1890. That same year folklorist Joseph Jacobs published a different version of the story in his book English Fairy Tales.

It is important to note that while the Tabart/Lang and Jacobs’ versions of the tale are similar, if not identical, in many ways they do differ in one major area – justification. In Jacobs’ version of the tale Jack is simply a cunning trickster with no direct justification for his thieving actions other than the fact that he and his mother are poor and the giant is apparently less than human which makes the theft of his goods and later murder alright. In contrast to this is Tabart's version which justifies Jack’s actions by explaining that the castle and its good once belonged to Jack’s father who was murdered by the giant.

Of course the most striking aspect of the tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk” is undoubtedly the beanstalk itself. The idea of ascending to the heavens via some sort of tower (either man-made or natural) is as old as mankind. Mythographers refer to these devices as axis mundi and they are found across cultures. One terrific example, which may have even served as the basis for Jack’s beanstalk, is that of the Norse-Germanic ash tree Yggdrasil which spanned the cosmos and connected the three realms of Ásgard (Heaven), Midgard (Earth), and Niflheim (Hell). Maria Tatar, Harvard’s Chair of Mythology and Folklore, notes that the idea of massive tree-like beanstalk “has a certain whimsical inventiveness, for beanstalks are notoriously unstable and usually require staking to remain propped up.”

Having looked at Jack’s beanstalks exploits we now move on to Jack’s adventures as a professional giant killer. These stories, which may date back as far as 1557, are often known as “Jack the Giant Killer” tales. There are literally hundreds of variations of said tales though the most famous narrative involves Jack’s struggle against five giants and links Jack with none other than King Arthur himself.

According to the story Jack is young man from Cornwall who manages to thwart a cattle raiding giant named Cormoran by catching him in a pit trap and then killing him. For this feat Jack becomes famous and receives a belt engraved with the words: “This is the valiant Cornish man, who killed the giant Cormoran.” The second giant Jack encounters is named Blunderbore and like the one living at the top of the beanstalk has a taste for human flesh. Blunderbore manages to catch Jack while sleeping and abducts the hero taking him back to his lair to devour. Once at the giant’s lair Jack awakens and quickly assesses his situation. Fortunately the giant has stepped out in order to fetch his brother who he wishes to have dinner with. Jack manages to find some strong cord from which he makes a set of nooses which he then loops over the rafters. When Blunderbore and his brother return Jack throws the nooses around the giant’s necks. The two giants immediately begin to pull at the nooses in an attempt to break free and instead only end up strangling each other instead.

Jack’s third encounter is with a two-headed Welsh giant who invites Jack to spend the night at his castle but then tries to kill him in the middle of the night with a club. Jack survives the night thanks to some trickery and in the morning uses some more in order to get back at the brute by challenging him to a pudding eating contest. In order to compete with the giant Jack stuffs a leather sack under his shirt and then sits down to the meal. While the giant is really stuffing his stomach, Jack is merely filling the leather sack with pudding. Soon it appears that Jack has eaten just as much as the giant, much to the monster's humiliation. Wanting to know how Jack is able to consume so much pudding the giant asks him at which point Jack tells him that he has magic powers which he demonstrates by stabbing himself in his fake stomach with a knife and then suffering no ill effects. The giant not wishing to be outdone (and being quite stupid) also stabs himself in the stomach and promptly drops dead.

The fourth giant Jack encounters has three heads and thus is able to see in all directions. In order to defeat it Jack dons a coat of invisibility, which he received in the castle of the third giant, and attacks the three-headed giant unseen. Jack’s final encounter is with the savage giant Galligantus who is allied with the evil sorcerer Hocus-Pocus. Again Jack uses his cloak of invisibility to sneak inside the giant and magician’s castle where he discovers a magic trumpet with the inscription “Whoever can this trumpet blow, will cause the giant’s overthrow.” Jack picks up the trumpet and blows it causing the castle to fall down. Jack then cuts off Galligantus’ feet causing him to fall to the ground allowing Jack to reach his head which he then cuts off and sends to King Arthur who rewards Jack with his daughter’s hand in marriage.

Over the years the tales of Jacks exploits have delighted readers and listeners both young and old. There are numerous children’s books which retale the tales of Jack as well as some outstanding anthologies of the original folktales for older readers. In 1962, United Artists made Jack the Giant Killer into a feature film. The story revolves around Jack (Kerwin Mathews) in his quest to rescue young Princess Elaine (Judi Meredith) from the evil sorcerer Pendragon (Torin Thatcher). Along the way Jack not only fights giants but also sword wielding skeletons and a frightening band of witches. At the film’s climax Pendragon transforms himself into a dragon and Jack battles him as well. Joining Jack on his quest is an old Viking named Sigurd (Barry Kelley) – perhaps the same Sigurd of Germanic mythology? – and a wise-cracking leprechaun imprisoned in a bottle named Diaboltin (Don Beddoe) who steals every sceen he’s in. The film stays true to the spirit of a fairy-tale and contains many throwaway references to other classic pieces of fairy-tale lore such as seven-league-boots which aren’t talk about enough in my opinion. Unfortunately the giants, dragon and other monsters (including a giant googly-eyed dinosaur-octopus thing) are all brought to life via some very sub-par stop motion animation. The work of Ray Harryhausen this is not. Never the less the film is still highly entertaining and sources tell me can currently be purchased at most Big Lots stores for three dollars!

Images: All art by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), Jack the Giant Killer movie poster by United Artists.

Sources: The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar (2002), Larousse Dictionary of World Folklore by Alison Jones (1996), Southern Jack Tales by Donald Davis (1993), The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (1966) & SurLaLune's Annotated Fairy Tales.com.

Granddaughter of the Monkey King

2008-09-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

Ever since its composure in the 16th-Century, the timeless Chinese epic Journey to the West has been a source of creative inspiration for writers, artists and filmmakers throughout Asia. There have been books, plays, comics, manga, anime, movies, TV shows and video games all based off the story of Sun Wukong and his fabled traveling companions.

One of these games was the 1984 Capcom arcade game Sonson. Loosely based on the actual legend, Sonson allowed players to play as the Monkey King or Songoku as he is called in Japan. Along with Sanjo Hoshi (Tripitaka), Hatskai (Pigsy) and Sagojyo (Sandy), players had to do battle with a never ending onslaught of pixilated monsters, demons, and gods drawn from both Chinese and Japanese mythology. Naturally, the game proved a big success and a sequel, Sonson II, was made. However, this was the last game in the Sonson series…sort of.

As it would turn out, in the world of Capcom some characters never truly go away. In 2000 Capcom released the highly anticipated Marvel vs. Capcom II, the second game in what is undoubtedly one of Capcom’s most successful series. Marvel vs. Capcom pits characters from the Marvel Comics Universe (Spider-Man, Iron-Man, X-Men) against characters from the Capcom Universe. In Marvel vs. Capcom II one of these characters is Sonson; the granddaughter of Songoku! Essentially a female version of her granddaddy Sonson is on a mission to discover the source of a mysterious plague that struck her native village. Sonson has many of the same powers as Songoku including his magical size-changing Bo staff and the ability to create clones via strands of hairs. However, some abilities are truly special such as one attack in which Sonson tries to cook her opponent in the Shinka Hakke Jin and turn them into sake.

Of course, nothing in the original Journey to the West myth ever suggests that Sun Wukong ever sired any offspring, much less had a granddaughter. However, it’s still nice to think that if the Great Sage Equal to Heaven had, that she might be something like Capcom’s Sonson.

Top Left: Sonson from Marvel vs. Capcom II.

From Chernobog to Chernobyl

2008-09-01T01:53:00.000-07:00

In 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine suffered a fatal meltdown which resulted in the deaths of 56 people. Over 600,000 people were exposed to high doses of radiation as a result of the meltdown; 4,000 of whom would later be diagnosed with some form of cancer. In addition to this, the disaster poisoned the city’s atmosphere with radioactivity resulting in the entire city being declared uninhabitable to this day. The Chernobyl Disaster, as the incident has come to be called, remains the worst nuclear power plant accident in history.

There are those who believe that part of the reason this terrible accident befell the city of Chernobyl is the because of the city’s name. In Russian the name Chernobyl literally translates as “Black Grass” and is semantically linked with the name Chernobog; the Slavic god of death, darkness, and destruction.

The fascinating world of Slavic mythology (which encompasses the mythological beliefs held by the people inhabiting the areas of Europe located between Poland, Siberia and Macedonia) is an area of the mythological map about which much is speculated and little is actually known. As it stands, mythographers still know more about Slavic folklore – with its infamous witches, vampires, werewolves and immortal warriors – than they do about the ancient Slaves’ gods and goddesses.

The reason for this has to do with the fact that the Slavic people did not start keeping written records of their mythological and religious beliefs and practices till after the 9th-Century, by which time Christianity had already infiltrated the culture and gained many converts thus tainting the pre-established systems of belief.

One of these post-Christian records is the Chronicle of the Slavs (c. 1170), composed by Saxon historian Helmold of Bosau (ca. 1120–1177). According to Helmold, the Slavic people had, in times past, worshiped a very peculiar deity who embodied both life and death, creation and destruction, heaven and earth, light and darkness and would shift between one personality and the other depending on the time of the year.

During the months of spring and summer this god was known as Belobog (lit. “White God”); a benevolent, white cloaked figure who carried a staff. However, when the seasons changed to fall and winter Belobog would also change into Chernobog (lit. “Black God”), a demonic figure shrouded in darkness. However, as soon as winter ended and spring returned so would Belobog. This cycle naturally repeated itself every year and those worshippers who prayed and scarified to this god – Helmold says that Belobog/Chernobog’s cult was particularly strong amongst the Baltic Slaves – would alter their services depending on the time of year.

Outside of this, little else in known about this most intriguing of deities. Mythographers seeking to learn more about the Belobog/Chernobog cult have often come up stumped and some have even postulated that the entire thing maybe a farce dreamed up by Helmold. Nevertheless, some intriguing clues remain. One is a Slavic idol depicting a two-headed deity with a single body, possibly a depiction of Belobog/Chernobog. There is also the Slavic folk hero Belun, a Gandalf the White-type character who appears during the daylight hours during spring and summer and helps farmers tend to their crops. Belun will also help travelers lost in the dark Slavic forests by leading them back to the light of day. Is Belun a thinly veiled variation of Belobog?

Then there is matter of the 10th-Century Primary Chronicles, a Russian text which records the rooting out of heretical beliefs amongst Slavic Christians. The most prominent of these heresies was a type of dualism which taught that there were two gods; an unnamed god of light and a god of darkness called Tsar Santanail. The two gods made the world together but parted ways when creative differences arose in regard to the creation of humankind. The unnamed god of light wanted humans to be purely spiritual beings but Tsar Santanail wanted to make men and women out of dirt, thus confining them to the mortal realm. This disagreement eventually lead to a celestial battle which lasted seventy-seven days. In the end, the two gods decided to compromise. Man was made of dirt but also was endowed with a soul which would be free to ascend to the spiritual realm after death. The two gods also divided the world into two halves, night (which would serve as Tsar Santanail’s realm) and day (which would serve as the god of lights’ realm).

The Christian influence in this myth should be very clear; the war in heaven and man being made out of dirt are both elements of the Christian creation story. Also the name Santanail seems too close to the Christian Satan to be mere coincidence. However, there are other elements which are clearly drawn from Slavic paganism (seventy-seven is a sacred number in Slavic mythology) and may even suggest a sort of reinvention of the Belobog/Chernobog cult. Tsar Santanails’ fondness of dirt and darkness after all certainly seems similar to Chernobog’s own love of all things earthbound and murky.

Nevertheless, lack of evidence has not stopped the myth of Belobog/Chernobog from gaining a foot-hold in the popular imagination both abroad and at home in the Slavic nations of Europe. In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster speculation arose that not only establish a link between the names Chernobyl and Chernobog but also attempted to link the disaster to the biblical Book of Revelation and its prophesies foretelling the coming of the demon Wormwood who will fall from heaven, “burning as if it were a lamp” and poison the waters where it lands (Rev.8:10-11).

On a less ominous note, Chernobog also served as the inspiration for Russian composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881) classic piece “A Night on Bald Mountain” (1860). Walt Disney Pictures later featured “A Night on Bald Mountain” in their acclaimed animated film Fantasia (1940) which combined classical music with modern animation. The “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence is particularly notable as it is often considered the most frightening segment of the film with its demonic, gargoyle-like Chernobog conducting an infernal orchestra of demons, witches, ghosts and harpies who fly and cackle through the night.

Chernobog’s most recent appearance in popular culture, however, is as a main character in British fantasy author Neil Gaiman’s 2001 best-selling novel American Gods where is he depicted as a cantankerous old man desperately seeking his next ritual sacrifice. And just incase you were wondering Belobog shows up too.

Below: Chernobog in “A Night on Bald Mountain,” Fantasia (1940).

Sources: Forests of the Vampire: Slavic Myth, by Charles Phillip and Michael Kerrigan (1999) and Illustrated Dictionary of Mythology, by Philip Wilkinson (2006).

"Instructions" by Neil Gaiman

2008-08-26T20:32:00.000-07:00

A poem by beloved fantasy author Neil Gaiman, on what one should do if one ever happens to find themselves in a Fairy-Tale...

Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never
saw before.
Say "please" before you open the latch,
go through,
walk down the path.
A red metal imp hangs from the green-painted
front door,
as a knocker,
do not touch it; it will bite your fingers.
Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat
nothing.
However, if any creature tells you that it hungers,
feed it.
If it tells you that it is dirty,
clean it.
If it cries to you that it hurts,
if you can,
ease its pain.

From the back garden you will be able to see the
wild wood.
The deep well you walk past leads to Winter's
realm;
there is another land at the bottom of it.
If you turn around here,
you can walk back, safely;
you will lose no face. I will think no less of you.

Once through the garden you will be in the
wood.
The trees are old. Eyes peer from the under-
growth.
Beneath a twisted oak sits an old woman. She
may ask for something;
give it to her. She
will point the way to the castle.
Inside it are three princesses.
Do not trust the youngest. Walk on.
In the clearing beyond the castle the twelve
months sit about a fire,
warming their feet, exchanging tales.
They may do favors for you, if you are polite.
You may pick strawberries in December's frost.

Trust the wolves, but do not tell them where
you are going.
The river can be crossed by the ferry. The ferry-
man will take you.
(The answer to his question is this:
If he hands the oar to his passenger, he will be free to
leave the boat.
Only tell him this from a safe distance.)

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.
Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that
witches are often betrayed by their appetites;
dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;
hearts can be well-hidden,
and you betray them with your tongue.
Do not be jealous of your sister.
Know that diamonds and roses
are as uncomfortable when they tumble from
one's lips as toads and frogs:
colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

Remember your name.
Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found.
Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped
to help you in their turn.
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and trust your story.

When you come back, return the way you came.
Favors will be returned, debts will be repaid.
Do not forget your manners.
Do not look back.
Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall).
Ride the silver fish (you will not drown).
Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur).

There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is
why it will not stand.

When you reach the little house, the place your
journey started,
you will recognize it, although it will seem
much smaller than you remember.
Walk up the path, and through the garden gate
you never saw before but once.
And then go home. Or make a home.

And rest.

Above: Red Riding Hood by artist Jessie Wilcox-Smith (1863-1935).

Teeth (2007)

2008-08-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

Dawn O’Keefe was just your regular everyday teenage girl, until the day her boyfriend tried to rape her. It was on that day that Dawn learned that she, unlike other girls, was in possession of an extra little anatomical feature: a fanged vagina.

Teeth (2007) is a dark-comedy/horror movie directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein and staring Jess Weixler as the pictures’ heroin Dawn O’Keefe. Teeth originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 07’ and later hit theaters in New York and L.A. that same month. It eventually reached North Carolina in late April/early May where it played the art houses for roughly two weeks.

Now I fully understand that for most people – most men in particular – Teeth does not sound like a film that anyone would ever want to go see. But trust me, it’s worth it. Not only is Teeth a good movie but it also funny and strangely touching in addition to being downright scary. The picture received largely positive reviews from critics (80% on Rotten Tomatoes) and when I told my friends, both male and female, to go see it all of them really liked it.

Now why did I go see Teeth? Well the reason is simple; as the film itself points out time and time again the motif of “the toothed vagina” is one that can be found in myths, legends, folktales and even religious lore all over the world. The technical term for these mythological femme fatales is the Latin phrase vagina dentata and frankly they are rather fascinating. World mythology is, after all, filled with all kinds of “bad girls.” There’s Eve and Lilith, Delilah and Jezebel, Circe and Medea, Morgan le Fay and Queen Mab, the Baba Yaga and the Wicked Witch of the West. There’s even the Poncan’s Deer Woman whom I just previously wrote about. But none of these girls can even hold a candle to how scary the vagina dentata is.

If you don’t believe me, consider this: variations on the vagina dentata myth can be found all over the world. In India, the vagina dentata are the daughters of the Rakshasas (demons who oppose the gods) while in South America the vagina dentata takes the form of a primeval mother-goddess who embodies the waters of chaos and whose vagina is home to a man-eating fish. Similarly, the Maori of Polynesia tell of Hinenuitepo; the goddess of death and darkness whose vagina is equipped with fangs. Even into the 16th-Century legend circulated the Queen Elizabeth I of England was a vagina dentata and had castrated Thomas Seymour, thus earning her the moniker of the “Virgin Queen.”

The most famous myth to concern the vagina dentata, however, comes from the Apache Indians of North America. According to the Apache, in the beginning no women were equipped with vaginas at all. The first women to actually have vaginas were the four daughters of an evil ogre called Kicking-Monster. Each of Kicking-Monsters four daughters looked like normal human females except for the fact that their vaginas were equip with razor sharp teeth and that after sex they had the preying mantis-like-habit of devouring their male suitors - via their fanged vaginas.

Now, in order to end these vagina dentatas sexual reign of terror the champion of the Apache people, a young brave known as Killer-of-Enemies whose father was none other than the Sun God, set out to stop them. When Killer-of-Enemies arrived at Kicking Monster’s lair he went inside were the four sisters who immediately tried to seduce him. However, Killer-of-Enemies was smarter than the men who had gone before him and first asked the sisters what had become of all the other men who had had sex with them. The sisters, being honest monsters, told the truth: “We ate them up, because we like to do that,” they said. Upon hearing this Killer-of-Enemies, now very much alarmed, cried out saying: “Keep away! That is no way to use the vagina!"

Killer-of-Enemies then set to work making a special sour jam out of four different kinds of berries. When he was done with the jam, he fed it to the four sisters who were then each instantly overcome with an orgasm so powerful that all the teeth in their vaginas feel out and it was in this way that Killer-of-Enemies domesticated the vagina, making it safe for use by men everywhere.

Of course, Killer-of-Enemies’ triumph over the frightful specter of the vagina dentata is typically the way all of the above stories end; the one exception being the Maori myth in which the hero falls victim to the dread goddess. The reason for this, as well as the reason these myths exist in the first place, is undoubtedly to provide a way for the male leaders of a society to justify the ruling patriarchal government, a means of maintaining the status quo. Which is another reason why Teeth is such a fascinating picture. It takes what was original a burden upon women, a means of keeping them down, and uses it to create an empowering and likeable heroin.

Lastly, I feel that it probably necessary to point out that myth of the vagina dentata is not always just a myth. As it turns out there is a rare medical condition known as a dermoid cyst which can cause hard deposits of calcium to grow out of the tissue inside the vagina. You can read about it here and here.

Teeth is now available on DVD from Dimension Extreme.

Sources: The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983), by Barbara G. Walker, Primitive Mythology (1991), by Joseph Campbell, The World of Myth (1992), Goddess: Myths of the Female Devine (2001), and Myth, Legends and Folktales of America (2003), by David Adams Leeming

Deer Woman (2005)

2008-08-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I found myself with some free time, a laptop and a Netflix account that was being seriously underused. While browsing through Netflix’s large selections of movies that can be watched on one’s computer, I soon discovered that nearly every episode of Showtimes’ Masters of Horror series was available on-line. I had missed the Masters of Horror series when it had originally debuted back in 2005 and was anxious to watch some of the episodes which had been directed by some of my favorite cinematic storytellers. Among these directors was John Landis who is best know for his films An American Werewolf in London (1981) and The Blues Brothers (1980); both of which are favorites of mine. Landis’ entry in the Masters of Horror series was called Deer Woman, a title which immediately caught my interest.

You see the Deer Woman is actually a little known monster from Native American mythology. A legend amongst the Poncan Indians of Nebraska; the Deer Woman is a seductive killer who appears as a beautiful woman with long, black hair and deep, dark eyes. She wears a long, white buckskin dress which conceals her torso, legs, and feet all of which are those of a deer. The Deer Woman will come out of the woods during festivals in order to seduce men who she will then lure away from the group and trample to death with her hoofed feet.

Now in case you’re afraid that I just ruined the whole movie for you by giving away the monster, don’t worry. Much like Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, the director makes no attempt to hide what this film is about and is overt about the whole thing from the get go. All of which is a good thing, because when you really think about it, being up front is really the only way to deal with a premises this ridiculous.

The plot of Deer Woman revolves around Detective Dwight Faraday (Brian Benben) a disgraced homicide detective who spends most of his time behind a desk handling “animal attack” cases. One morning, Faraday is asked to go out to the scene of a possible murder and look over things until another more qualified detective can be sent out.

Faraday is joined by Officer Jacob Reed (Anthony Griffith) and both men drive out to a truck stop where they find the pummeled remains of a trucker who appears to have been trampled by a deer. Faraday is intrigued by the bizarre nature of the murder and begins to question witnesses who say that the victim was last seen with a beautiful Native-American girl. However, no sooner does Faraday begin to get somewhere than does rival Detective Patterson (Alex Zahara) show up and force Faraday off the scene. Faraday then returns to his desk job handling animal attacks, but can’t seem to forget about the strange murder from that morning. Faraday then pays a visit to the coroner who informs him that the victim from the truck stop died in a state of sexual arousal, deepening the mystery.

The next morning, Reed informs Faraday that a second body, identical to the one found yesterday, has turned up. Faraday and Reed head out to the crime scene without authorization where they find a set of mysterious deer-like tracks leading away from the body. The only problem is that the creature that left them appears to have been running on two legs. Patterson then catches Faraday at the crime scene and reports him to the Chief of Police who then confronts Faraday asking him what he thinks he is doing investigating a case he has not been assigned to. Faraday tries to defend himself but only ends up sounding crazy when he starts espousing his “minotaur” theory concerning the murders. After the meeting with his boss, Faraday and Reed head down to a local casino where cops eat for free. While there Faraday and Reed discuss the murders and are overheard by a Native-American pit boss who tells them that what they are talking about sounds like the legendary Deer-Woman. After hearing the legend, Faraday and Reed part ways, Reed thinking the story is ridiculous while Faraday believes it could be true.

On his way out of the casino, Reed picks up a lovely young Native-American girl and after some flirting decides to take her back to his place. Then just as two are about to get it on, Faraday calls Reed telling him that he’s found evidence of the Deer Woman and that she has been slaying men in this area for hundreds of years. Reed tells him he can’t talk because he’s with a lady to which Faraday responds; “Have you seen her legs?”

So, can Faraday save Reed? Can he stop the Deer Woman from killing again? For that matter how do you stop a thousand year old Native-American myth? To find out you’ll have to watch Deer Woman for yourself. However, before leaving I will say this…

Overall, Deer Woman is a great little film. With a running time of roughly 60-mins, the whole thing feels like it could be an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker or The X-Files. Another thing which is great about Deer Woman, or any of Landis’ horrors films for that matter, is the amount of humor he is able to inject into it. There is a great scene early on in Deer Woman where Faraday is laying in bed trying to fathom how the first murder could have taken place, and manages to come up with three separate scenarios all of which are absolutely hilarious. Of course, more than anything Landis deserves a round of applauses for his handling of the legend of the Deer Woman. There has been a popular trend in monster movies for the last several years to try and give the creatures featured within (especially vampires and werewolves) a scientific explanation. Landis forgoes all of that nonsense in favor of a straight-forward mythological approach. When Faraday and Reed ask the pit boss at the casino where the Deer Woman comes from and why she seduces and kills men he responds by saying; “Why does everything have to have a why with you people? You know, it's a woman with deer legs, motive really isn't an issue here,” end of story.

Below: The trailer for Deer Woman.

John Landis’ Deer Woman is available on DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

Source: The Field Guide to North American Monsters (1998), by W. Haden Blackman.

East Meets West: A Christian Take on Journey to the West

2008-08-12T14:22:00.002-07:00

As some of my readers may remember back in June I did a post on Monkey: Journey to the West, the contemporary Chinese opera based on the famous 16th-Century Chinese legend. When I saw Monkey back in June at the Spoleto Arts Festival in South Carolina I was blown away. Having been a big fan of the original Journey to the West myth I have almost always been thrilled by anything – from comics to film – that even made reference to Sun Wukung the Monkey King; the tales’ titular hero. That being said it should come as no surprise to anyone that I was naturally quite excited when a friend of mine showed me a graphic novel he had recently picked up which featured the Monkey King as a prominent character.

The graphic novel in question was Gene Luen Yang’s award-winning, critically acclaimed American Born Chinese (2006) which tells the tale of Jin Wang, a teenager living in San Francisco who is ethnically Chinese but was born and raised in America, just like the book’s author. American Born Chinese is primarily a story about the struggle that every teenager goes through in trying to find out who they are. In Jin’s case, coming to terms with what he sees as a conflict between his ethnicity and nationality. It is also a story about racism and a good portion of the book deals with a character called Chin-Kee; the living embodiment of every negative Asian stereotype one can possibly imagine and the novel’s most controversial character. However, in addition to the exploits of both Jin and Chin-Kee, American Born Chinese also stars the Monkey King as the book’s third protagonist and it was this aspect which originally drew my attention to the novel itself and kept it there.

American Born Chinese actually opens with a retelling of the Monkey King’s origins – ‘born from a stone atop the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit’ – before spinning off into the modern-day tales of Jin and Chin-Kee. Periodically, the book’s narrative would return to the Monkey King’s tale explaining how he was the greatest warrior in all the land and master of numerous mystical martial arts from cloud surfing to shape-shifting. Eventually, the Monkey King grows so powerful that he becomes uncontrollable and begins to run amok terrorizing the other gods, goddesses, demons and spirits of China.

What is supposed to happen at this point in the story is that the goddess Guan-Yin calls upon the help of the Buddha. The Buddha appears and challenges the Monkey King to a bet, saying that he can not jump across the entire breath of heaven. Sun Wukung arrogantly accepts the bet and takes a mighty leap, landing at what he believes to be the far end of heaven where nothing exists except for five mighty pillars. To prove that he has actually been to the edge of heaven the Monkey King takes a leak on the pillars and then leaps back to the feet of the Buddha who then shocks him by revealing that not only did he fail to leap across heaven, he never even left the Buddha’s palm. The five pillars that the Monkey King saw (and soiled) were actually the Buddha’s own fingers.

Now, I say that this is what is supposed to happen because on page 67 of American Born Chinese something rather different begins to happen instead, as can be seen below:

At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this sudden abrupt deviation from the original legend. Perhaps I was looking at an alternate version of the tale that I had not heard before but with which the author was more familiar. However, as I stared at the page and the four “emissaries of Tza-Yo-Tzuh” something weird occurred to me. I knew these four creatures from somewhere else, from a different mythological system. The lion, eagle, ox and man (here a woman) were classical symbols of the Judeo-Christian god. They appeared in both the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel (1:10) and the New Testament Book of Revelation (4:7). They were also representative of the four gospels, each one personifying a different aspect of Jesus Christ’s nature: the man his humanity, the eagle his divinity, the lion his regality and the ox his servitude. In fact, to make matters weirder, the same week I was in Charleston to watch Monkey I had toured one of the city’s historical churches and seen these same four creatures carved into the frame of the church’s front door.

Then there was this mysterious Tza-Yo-Tzuh character whose name the page’s footnote told me meant “He Who Is” in Chinese. It was a name that I not only didn’t recognize from the traditional Chinese pantheon of deities, but one which sounded hauntingly similar to the infamous “I Am Who I Am” declaration made by the Jewish god Yahweh in the Bible’s Book of Exodus (3:14).

The next page then introduced me to Tza-Yo-Tzuh who with his flowing red robe, long white beard and shepard’s staff looked like a Chinese version of Moses. I continued to read as Tza-Yo-Tzuh confronted the Monkey King and challenged him to same bet that the Buddha does in the original legend. Like the original the bet plays out the same way; Sun Wukung attempts to leap to the end of the universe, finds the pillars, pees on them and then returns to the feet of Tza-Yo-Tzuh only to discover that he never even left the opposing deities’ hand.

Following this on page 80, Tza-Yo-Tzuh then inform the Monkey King that he is the creator of the universe, of all life, of all things – even Sun Wukung. It was at this point that I knew for certain who this guy was; he was the god of Judeo-Christianity reimagined as a Chinese deity. What confirmed it for me wasn’t simply his declaration of being the maker and shaper of the universe but the fact that he did it by essentially quoting Psalm 139 straight out of the Bible. You can take a look for yourself below:

As I finished the chapter, which ended with Tza-Yo-Tzuh trapping the Monkey King beneath a mountain in the same way the Buddha had in the original myth I decided to flip to the back of the book and take a look at the author’s bio which was printed on the inside flap of the back cover. There I learned that author Gene Yang was not only an independent comic book writer and artist, but also a computer science teacher, a resident of San Francisco, a husband, a father and a Roman Catholic. My suspicions confirmed I immediately returned to reading wanting to see where this decidedly Christian variation on the story of the Monkey King was heading next. In the original myth, the Monkey King is freed from the mountain by the goddess Guan-Yin who enlists him as the bodyguard of the monk Tripitaka who has been sent on a ‘journey to the west’ to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures and bring them back to China. In American Born Chinese, however, it is the monk who frees the Monkey King after having been tapped by the four emissaries of Tza-Yo-Tzuh and told he has been chosen for a sacred mission of an undisclosed nature. No surprises this time, the entire thing was laced with Christian ideas and phraseology and it had become apparent that the author had decided to almost completely break away from the original Monkey King myth.

Nevertheless, surprises or not, as I kept reading I began to find myself growing more and more irritated with the author’s rewriting of the Journey to the West. Soon irritation turned into anger and I began to find myself upset that Gene Yang would dare to bastardize what was arguably the most important story in the history of China. Wasn’t this book, American Born Chinese, supposed to be about coming to terms with your ethnicity and embracing your native culture? If so, why was Yang rewriting the legend of the Monkey King turning it into something decidedly non-traditional, non-Buddhist, non-Eastern? By this point I was so angry, I was seriously considering not finishing the book at all. I told my friend who had given me the book about the problems I was having with it and he told me to calm down and finish it, that it would all make sense in the end.

Well, he was right.

I’m not going to tell you exactly how American Born Chinese ends because I think everyone should go out and read it for themselves. I will tell you that, in the end, all three characters – Jin, Chin-Kee, and the Monkey King – do end up meeting in a spectacular closing scene. I’ll also tell you that the author makes no apologies regarding his Christian take on Journey to the West. The story remains unabashedly Christian to the end, going so far as to even change the goal of the heroes’ journey altogether:

However, the book is never preachy and at no point – even when I was upset with it – did I feel like Gene Yang was trying to force his faith on me. You see, what I realized in the end was that American Born Chinese is not just about Jin trying to reconcile his Chinese ethnicity with his American nationality, it also about the author trying to reconcile his own ethnicity and nationality with his religious faith, and the way he manages to do so is devilishly clever.

After reading and re-reading American Born Chinese as well as several interviews with the author – including one where he humbly and cleverly defends his right to write a Christian version of Journey to the West – I have come to really love this book and have already recommended it to several people. It is a book that will challenge you on many levels and hopefully lead you to think about some of the bigger and harder questions in life regarding not only the role of faith and myth, but also about racism, ethnicity and nationality and how all these things effect our lives and our cultures.

Also check out Gene Yang's essay on American Born Chinese and his Monkey King fan-site.

Mr. Sandman

2008-08-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

When I was a little kid my mom used to make up lullabies to help me fall asleep. One of these lullabies was a rift on the 1954 song “Mr. Sandman” by The Chordettes. It wasn’t until I was older that I eventually realized just how creepy the prospect of some guy coming into your room and throwing sand in your eyes to make you go to sleep really is.

A fixture of Western folklore, the sandman’s origins can be traced back to ancient Greco-Rome and the god of sleep; Hypnos. Hypnos was the twin-brother of Thanatos, the god of death, and the husband of Nyx; the goddess of night. Together Hypnos and Nyx gave birth to Morpheus; the god of dreams. As a family Hypnos, Thanatos, Nyx and Morpheus demonstrated the very real relationship held between nighttime, sleep and dreams, as well as the symbolic relationship held between sleep and death. Today these gods are remembered via words drawn from their names; Hypnos being the source of both ‘hypnotic’ and ‘hypnotism,’ Morpheus the root of the drug ‘morphine,’ while Thanatos in Latin becomes Mors the root of such words as ‘morbid.’

With the advent of Christianity in Europe the gods of the old pantheons were forced to take on less threatening forms in order to survive. Thus they became the saints, demons, fairies and nursery bogies of European folklore and legend. One of these nursery bogies was the sandman who put children to sleep by sprinkling sand in their eyes. Scandinavian folklorist Hans Christian Anderson’s (1805-1875) Danish folktale Ole Lukøje (“eye-closer”) is one of the earliest recorded tales to deal with the sandman. In Ole Lukøje, the sandman visits a boy called Hjalmar every night for a whole week and tells him stories. At the end of the tale (Sunday) the sandman reveals himself to, in fact, be the Greek god Morpheus, the brother of Ole-Luk-Oie (Death). Anderson’s tale shows that even in the 19th-Century the memory of the old gods still lingered with the common people, though they had confused Morpheus with his father Hypnos.

In stark contrast to Anderson’s sandman is the sandman of German fantasy author E.T.A. Hoffman (1776-1822). Hoffman’s tale, known as Der Sandmann (1816), tells of a sinister sandman who comes into children’s rooms at night and throws coarse sand into their eyes causing them to fall out of their sockets. The sandman then scoops these eyes up, places them in a bag and takes them back to his home in the crook of the crescent moon where he feeds them to his bird-like progeny. As terrifying as this tale may be it was actually told to European children by their caretakers in the 18th and 19th-Centuries as a warning as to why they should go to bed when they were told.

Today, the sandman is still an important figure in western folklore and pop-culture appearing in films, books, comics, and songs. Some of these depict the sandman as a benevolent being and other as a freighting demon. A noteworthy example of the later is the 1991 animated short The Sandman, directed and animated by Paul Berry (The Nightmare Before Christmas) and based off Hoffman’s tale. In 1992, the film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.

Sources: Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated by Charles Martin (2004) and Giants, Monsters, & Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth (2000) by Carol Rose.

At Top: Bust of Hypnos, the Greco-Roman god of sleep, reconstructed from fragments.

The Chinese Zodiac

2008-08-07T15:03:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Christa, who always felt sorry for the cat.

Anyone who has ever been interested in astrology or gone out for Chinese food is undoubtedly familiar with the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Hare, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. In the West, the Chinese zodiac is largely seen as merely a superstitious novelty, but in China is taken with utter seriousness. Along with a myriad of other astrological signs and symbols the Chinese zodiac can play apart in deciding everything from a person’s job, where they live, and on what day they should have their funeral. Another thing which many Western may not know is that the twelve animals on the zodiac wheel were not simply picked at random but rather earned their place as guides of mankind.

According to Buddhist legend the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac are the twelve creatures that appeared at the Buddha’s funeral to wish the great teacher farewell. As a reward for their piousness the twelve were made into symbols to help guide mankind in the Buddha’s absence. However, while this tale maybe sweet it is undoubtedly a product of a post-Buddhist China in an attempt to synchronize the ancient zodiac of China with the new religion of Buddhism.

An older and more authentic legend, tells a different and more complex story of how the twelve earned their place amongst the zodiac. In this tale the Yellow Emperor of Heaven devised the zodiac as a compass to guide mankind through life. When it came time for the Yellow Emperor to choose twelve animals to represent the twelve months of the year he decided that the only fair way to pick who should be placed amongst the zodiac was to have a great race. The first twelve creatures to cross the finish line would be the winners.

The main competitors for the prize were the; Rat, Ox, Tiger, Hare, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig and Cat. Naturally, most people have never heard of the cat before because (if you look above) he is not on the zodiac wheel. The reason for this is because he was tricked out of his place. The night before the race, cat and rat made a deal that when the one awoke in the morning he would rouse the other so that they could start the race together. Later on that same night, ox awoke and knowing that he was the slowest of the thirteen competitors decided to cheat a little and get a head start. As ox was setting off he woke rat who realized that with his short legs he would never be able to keep up with the bigger animals and decided to jump onto ox’s back and hitch a ride, completely forgetting about cat.

When the sun rose, the other animals saw that ox and rat had already gone and quickly began to rush after them. Cat was particularly angry because rat had broken his promise to him, and it is because of this that cats and rats, to this day, do not get along. As the other animals raced along they soon came to a raging river on the other side of which was the finish line.

Ox, with his great size and strength, had to no problem crossing the river but just as he was about to cross the finish line, rat jumped off his back and in front of him, which is why rat is the first of the twelve zodiac signs and ox is second. Following rat and ox was tiger and then hare and dragon. Hare managed to cross the river by jumping from rock to rock, but at one point slipped and fell in. Dragon could have passed hare, but felt sorry for him and helped him out of the river, which is why dragon is fifth and hare is forth.

Next came snake and horse and once again some trickery was involved. Snake, like rat, had decided to hitch a ride on horse without horse realizing it and when horse was just about to cross the finish line snake slipped off the mare given her such a fright that she stopped dead in her tracks allowing snake to place sixth and giving horse seventh. Sheep, monkey and rooster arrived eighth, ninth and tenth because they had helped each other build a raft to make it across the river. Dog placed eleventh because he had stopped to take a bath and pig was twelfth because he had stopped for dinner. Unfortunately, the poor cat did not make it into the zodiac because he was last, due in part to rat not waking him up and on account that cats are poor swimmers.

Source: Year of the Dragon: Legends & Lore (2000), by Nigel Suckling

Ereshkigal: Ishtar’s Big Sister

2008-07-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Alexis, so that you can “know what you don’t already know.”

While not nearly as famous as her younger fertility goddess sister Ishtar, as ruler of the netherworld Ereshkigal was a goddess with a mystique and reputation all her own. Worshiped throughout the Middle East, Ereshkigal ruled over the realm of Irkalla; the land of the dead in Mesopotamian cosmology. Unlike Ishtar, who got to choose her own destiny amongst the gods, Ereshkigal was “given the underworld for her domain” according to the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1850 B.C.E.). In another myth, which shares elements in common with Ovid’s tale of Hades’ abduction of the goddess Persephone, Ereshkigal is kidnapped by her half-brother, the dragon Kur, and taken to the underworld where she is made queen. As with Ovid’s tale, Kur’s abduction of the goddess is motivated primarily by loneliness, not lust.

As a goddess of the dead, Ereshkigal had no appetite for food or drink and sustained herself by eating clay and drinking dirty water. However, while Ereshkigal may have not have cared for food and drink, she – like her sister – did love sex. Aside from the tale of Ishtar’s decent into the underworld, the most famous myth to involve Ereshkigal is undoubtedly the tale of how Ereshkigal obtained a husband.

It’s a story that begins with a party in heaven thrown for and attended by all the gods and goddess. All that is except Ereshkigal, who is confined to her realm beneath the earth and can not leave it. Not wanting to appear rude, however, Ereshkigal sends an envoy to go to the party in her place. While at the party, Ereshkigal’s envoy is insulted by the bull-like god of war Nergal. Since insulting an envoy in ancient times was as bad as insulting the person they represented, Ereshkigal demands that Nergal travels down to the underworld and apologize to her in person.

It is usually assumed that this incident takes place chronologically after the tale of Ishtar’s decent into the underworld and subsequent imprisonment there. If so then it is understandable why Nergal is terrified when he hears Ereshkigal’s demand for an in person apology. Nergal seeks consol from the other gods who tell him that the only thing he can do is to make sure not to eat or drink any food offered to him in the underworld, for if he does he can never leave. Not eating the food of the dead is a universal motif found worldwide in myths from Greco-Rome, Japan, Africa, and North America and probably reflects the commonly held religious taboo against eating the food offerings left for dead ancestors.

Nergal then descends down to Irkalla, passing through its seven gates and finally arriving in Ereshkigal’s courtroom. There he offers up his apologies which Ereshkigal accepts. Ereshkigal then offers Nergal food and drink – which he politely declines – before finally offering him sex. Having been given no warning pertaining to having sex with Ereshkigal, Nergal gladly accepts and the two proceed to make love continuously for the next six days until Nergal finally begins to grow tiered. However Ereshkigal, forever the nymphomaniac, only wants to keep making love as she is still “unsatisfied.”

Nergal, needing an out, tells Ereshkigal that he will return to her after he has traveled to heaven and announced their betrothal to the rest of the gods. As all men and most women who have heard variations of this line know, Nergal is lying. Once back in heaven Nergal sets about his business with no intention of ever returning to the underworld. When Ereshkigal realizes that Nergal isn’t coming back she is furious and sends another envoy to heaven who proclaims that unless Nergal returns to her she will “send up the dead that they might devour the living.” Clearly the ancient Mesopotamians had the idea for Night of the Living Dead long before director George A. Romero.

Having learned to take Ereshkigal’s threats seriously the other gods immediately begin to search for Nergal, but the war god has disguised himself as a bald, palsied crippled and this makes him harder to find. Eventually, however, Nergal is discovered and forced to return to Ereshkigal. On the return trip to the underworld Nergal, like Ishtar, is stripped of his clothes and articles of power as he passes through each of the underworld’s seven gates. Finally, arriving back in Ereshkigal’s throne room naked and humiliated Nergal is made the goddesses’ begrudging husband for the rest of time.

Sources
The History of Hell (1993) by Alice K. Turner
DK Illustrated Dictionary of Mythology (1998) by Philip Wilkinson
The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology (2001) by Arthur Cotterell & Rachel Storm

Ishtar: The Lady of Heaven

2008-07-29T12:38:00.000-07:00

Ishtar, also called Inanna, is the “Lady of Heaven,” a goddess of fertility, love, and war. She was the patron goddess of the city of Uruk, prostitutes, and ale houses. She was worshiped throughout the ancient Middle East in Babylon, Sumer, Assyria, Canaan, Anatolia and elsewhere and was identified with the planet Venus; the brightest object in the night sky. Her symbols are the eight pointed star and the lioness.

Piecing together Ishtar’s history has been a challenge for mythologists over the years as there is no one definitive text that tells her story. Different cultures – each often calling her by a different name – tell various stories about her, some of which overlap. What is so fascinating about Ishtar, however, is how these tales still manage to fit together so nicely, like a puzzle forming a very complete, complex and interesting picture of one of the most powerful and influential goddesses in all of history.

Ishtar: Origins

Ishtar’s divine origins are a bit sketchy. The Sumerians, calling her Inanna, often attributed her parentage to the moon god Sin, but never seemed too sure about this. One reason for this might have been because Ishtar may not have originally been born a goddess. Once upon a time, she may have been a mortal…

According to what Prof. Howard Schwartz describes as a Hebrew “fairy-tale” found within the pages of the Beit ha-Midrash (5:156), Ishtar (Heb: Istahar) was once a mortal woman who lived on earth during the antediluvian period. It was during this time, prior to the Great Flood, that the fallen angels known as Watchers descended upon mankind, having been lured away from Heaven by the beauty of human women. The leader of these rouge angels was Samyaza; one of the Christian Satan’s many Jewish predecessors. Once on Earth, Samyaza soon fell in lust with the woman Ishtar.

Like all the Watchers, Samyaza promised to reveal to Ishtar the “secrets of heaven” if she would only give herself sexually to him. However, Ishtar was more cunning than the other women and desired more than just heavenly wisdom. When Samyaza propositioned her, she in turn requested that Samyaza remove his angelic wings and let her “try them on,” that this was the price of her ‘favors.’ Samyaza, at first, refuses, denying that his wings even come off. Ishtar, in turn, winks and pouts, teases and toys with the angel until he eventually gives in. Samyaza then removes his wings and presents them to Ishtar who then places them on her back and ascends into heaven, escaping the lustful fallen angel.

Ishtar: In Heaven

After ascending to heaven and becoming a “star maiden,” Ishtar finds herself to be a goddess without a purpose, without power. She personifies nothing, is the patron of no one and quickly decides that this must change. In a Sumerian myth dating back to the end of the 3rd-Millenium B.C.E., Ishtar visits the crafty water god Enki at his home in the ancient city of Eridu (located in modern Iraq), with the intention of stealing the me – the primeval source of all civilization – from him.

Once at Enki’s place, Ishtar offers to prepare a grand feast for the god. Enki, of course, gladly accepts the offer of a free home cooked meal from a beautiful goddess and the two soon sit down to a delicious meal that also includes ample alcohol. Soon Enki finds himself so inebriated that he can’t think straight, a state which leads him to simply hand over the sacred me to Ishtar without a second thought.

With the me in her possession and Enki passed out on the floor, Ishtar makes a break for it. Like any good thief, Ishtar has her get away vehicle waiting outside in the form of a splendid “boat of heaven” with her handmaiden Ninshubur at the wheel. It isn’t long before Enki wakes up, sobers up, and realizes what has happened. He quickly sets out with a band of sea monsters to retrieve the me, but Ishtar has a head start. Whenever, Enki and his monsters catch up to Ishtar she quickly gets away from them using either her cunning or magic. The chase ends when Ishtar makes it back to her hometown of Uruk (also located in modern day Iraq) and plants the me there, declaring herself goddess of the city, a fact which Enki is forced to acknowledge.

Ishtar: Sex and Marriage

Ishtar is now the patron goddess of the city of Uruk, but still is unsatisfied. Wishing to understand the mysteries of sex and fertility and to possess power over them Ishtar contacts her brother, the sun god Shamash, who knows of a special plant that can provide her with the knowledge and power she seeks.

After eating the plant and learning the mysteries of sex and fertility, Ishtar decides that she also wants to know about good and evil and descends into the underworld to find out about that. Upon returning from the underworld Ishtar’s head is spinning with all her new knowledge and she decides to lie down in a garden and take a nap. While she is napping a Sumerian man wanders by and spies the beautiful sleeping goddess and decides to take advantage of her. When Ishtar wakes up – that’s right she slept through being raped! – and discovers what has happened she is furious. She attempts to find the man responsible but is unsuccessful and, in the end, decides it would just be easier to smite the entire city of Sumer instead. Ishtar then purifies her body in the sacred abzu spring of Enki and returns to heaven armed with her new knowledge and power and assumes the role of one of the four most powerful deities in all the ancient Middle East.

As part of her new role the other gods tell Ishtar that she must pick a husband. Ishtar accepts this condition and asks for any suitors to come forward. Two gods then present themselves before her: Enkimdu; god of farmers, and Dumuzi; god of shepards. At first Ishtar favors Enkimdu, but Shamash convinces her that Dumuzi is the better pick. Ishtar and Dumuzi are then married and, like any new couple, gladly engage in impassioned lovemaking while on their honeymoon. Nevertheless, the honeymoon comes to an end all to soon for Ishtar, and Dumuzi soon begins complaining that he must “get back to work” and is unable to simply lay around with his bride making love “fifty times” a day.

With Dumuzi now ignoring his wife’s carnal needs, Ishtar’s eyes begin to wander. Soon, Ishtar has contracted over 120 extramarital lovers, some human and some divine, some guys she just randomly hooked up with in bars. Typically, all of these relationships would end badly for the men, with Ishtar either cursing or smiting them. This, however, did nothing to discourage other male suitors. There was no man who Ishtar could not seduce – or so she thought.

Ishtar: Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh was first written down circa 1850 B.C.E. It is an epic poem which tales of the exploits of Gilgamesh; the fifth king of the city of Uruk and the most famous hero in all of ancient Middle Eastern lore.

By all accounts Gilgamesh was a good looking guy; buff with long hair, a full beard and a well oiled body, Gilgamesh was faster, stronger and smarter than anyone else. Furthermore, he was a man of action; a king who took the problems of his people seriously and often handled them himself. One such problem was the ogre Humbaba who was terrorizing the cedar forests which supplied the city of Uruk with all of its lumber. Gilgamesh, along with his best friend Enkidu, go into the forest and kill Humbaba, cutting off his head with a sword.

All this macho-male action naturally catches the attention of Ishtar who decides that she would like Gilgamesh as a new lover. So one day as Gilgamesh is getting out of the shower, Ishtar appears before him and attempts to seduce the hero-king. Gilgamesh, however, is privy to who Ishtar is and wants nothing to do with her and politely declines her offer. Ishtar, ever persistent, keeps on trying to woo him. This, in turn, leads Gilgamesh to angrily call Ishtar an “old, fat whore.” Her pride hurt Ishtar storms out of Gilgamesh’s bed chamber and up to the court of the gods where she demands that the sky god Anu release the Bull of Heaven on Gilgamesh so it can kill him. Anu at first refuses but eventually gives into Ishtar demands when she threatens to disrupt the natural cycle on Earth by halting fertility.

The Bull of Heaven attacks the city of Uruk and Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight the beast. It is an epic battle which the heroes finally win when Gilgamesh literally grabs the Bull by the horns, yanking his head back far enough for Enkidu to run under and stab the monster in the throat, killing it. Ishtar, who is standing nearby atop the city walls, is awestruck. Enkidu, on the other hand, is livid that Ishtar would make an attempt on his best friend’s life. In his rage Enkidu rips the Bull’s right thigh off and throws it at Ishtar’s face, threatening to kill her with his own hands. Ishtar, defeated and insulted, calls together her priestesses to mourn the Bull, before returning to heaven. Lastly, it should be noted that though Ishtar was not directly responsible for Enkidu’s later death, the insult he had dealt her would play a part in his coming demise, an incident that would devastate Gilgamesh and forever change the hero’s life.

Ishtar: Decent into the Underworld

Following the events recorded in Gilgamesh, Ishtar’s final tale takes the form of a hymn and tells of her descent into the underworld, the realm of her sister Ereshkigal, where she plans to mourn for the Bull of Heaven. Before descending into the underworld, Ishtar first puts on her mourner’s best: a turban, a lapis lazuli necklace, beads which rest upon her breasts, a fancy dress, a pectoral, a golden ring, and a lapis lazuli measuring rod which she carries.

As Ishtar begins her descent into the underworld, word reaches Ereshkigal of her sister's arrival. Ereshkigal, who always reclines naked upon her throne, is insulted that Ishtar would try to enter her realm decked out in such elaborate clothes. She thinks Ishtar is just trying to show off, or maybe is even thinking about taking over the underworld. Determined to humble her sister, Ereshkigal concocts a plan; as Ishtar descends into the underworld she is stopped at each of the seven gates that lay outside the land of the dead and informed by that gate’s keeper that in order to pass through she must remove one article of clothing.

Naturally, by the time Ishtar has passed through the seventh gate and arrived in her sister’s court room she is completely naked. Furious at Ereshkigal for the insult, Ishtar leaps at her sister, determined to kill her. However, while Ishtar is still in mid-flight Ereshkigal releases the “sixty misers” upon her, knocking Ishtar flat on her ass. Ishtar is then bound to a stake for three days and three nights, a prisoner of the underworld. During this time, the natural cycle on Earth comes to a grinding halt as fertility amongst plants, animals and people ceases.

The rapid decline in fertility on Earth naturally alarms the gods who petitions Ereshkigal for Ishtar’s release. Ereshkigal agrees to release her sister, but demands a ransom. As it turns out, Ishtar knows just who the ransom should be; Dumuzi. Word on the street is that Dumuzi, her husband, has rather enjoyed his wife’s absence, not even shedding a tear when he heard she was captured. When Dumuzi hears about Ishtar’s plan to use him as ransom, however, he is none to pleased and refuses. Soon the gods of the Middle East find themselves in the ancient equivalent of a massive hostage negotiation. After much debate and bartering an agreement is finally reached in which Ishtar and Dumuzi will each have to spend half the year in the underworld with Ereshkigal. Naturally, the half of the year that Ishtar is in the underworld will leave the world unfertile (fall and winter), while the half she is free for will be a time of great fertility (spring and summer), thus creating the four seasons.

Ishtar: Conclusions

Worship of Ishtar lasted some 2,000-years in the ancient Middle East, and was practiced by a wide variety of peoples including the Babylonians, Sumerians, Canaanites, Anatolians, Acadians, Hebrews (at one point or another), and possibly even the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Ishtar’s story, as seen above, is by far one of the most fascinating of all the gods of any pantheon. Ishtar stands out as an example of an ambitious and powerful woman, fully in control of her own destiny. She is not without her faults – she has a temper and sleeps around to much for her own good – but for the most part is an example of female strength and cunning.

Many of the myths retold here also have parallels with actual ancient Middle Eastern history. The tale of Ishtar stealing the sacred me from Enki and the city of Eridu and relocating it to her city of Uruk is actually a mythologized record of the decline of the city of Eridu (where Enki’s temple was located) as its population relocated itself to the city of Uruk (where Ishtar’s temple was located). It is also widely accepted today by mythologists and historians that the myth of Ishtar and Dumuzi’s wedding reflects an actual religious ritual practiced by ancient Middle Eastern people in which the king of a city would make love to a priestesses of Ishtar on New Years. On a similar note, some historians have also put forth the theory that both Dumuzi and Gilgamesh were real kings who actually ruled in ancient times. However, while Dumuzi appears to have been a fan of Ishtar worship, historical evidence seems to suggest that King Gilgamesh frowned upon it, a fact that would explain his mythological counterpart’s refusal to sleep with the goddess.

Lastly, all of the myths and stories retold here are not without their own variations. There is an alternate version of the Hebrew tale of Ishtar and Samyaza in which it is not the angel’s wings but the secret name of the Hebrew god which is required for transformation into a goddess. There is also an alternate version of the tale of Gilgamesh and Ishtar which is itself worthy of a blog entry all its own (it involves Ishtar, Gilgamesh, Lilith, and a magic tree). Also I ask readers to keep in mind that Ishtar was a goddess who went by many different names, most notably Inanna, so some of the sources listed below do not refer to Ishtar as Ishtar but rather as Inanna or some other title. Nevertheless, they are all talking about the same amazing goddess.

Sources:
The History of Hell (1993) by Alice K. Turner, The World of Myth: An Anthology (1990) and Jealous Gods & Chosen People: The Mythology of the Middle East (2004) by David Adams Leeming, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism (2004) by Howard Schwartz, The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology (2001) by Arthur Cotterell & Rachel Storm, Don’t Know Much about Mythology (2005) by Kenneth C. Davis, Man, Myth & Magic Vol. 10 (1983) edited by Richard Cavendish, & World Mythology: An Anthology of Great Myths and Epics 3rd Ed. (2001) by Donna Rosenberg

Monsters of Legend: Bigfoot

2008-07-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

Never fear, new posts are coming. But until then, check this out. Brought to you by MSN Video and The History Channel, this is just one of four new mini-documentaries chronicling the history of four of the worlds most infamous Monsters of Legend. The mythical creatures in question include; Bigfoot (see below), The Loch Ness Monster, Mermaids, and Dragons. Enjoy!

The Tall Tales of Rabbah bar Bar Hana

2008-07-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

Complied at the end of the 6th-Century C.E., the Babylonian Talmud is one of the major religious texts used by all practicing Jews today. Making up the Babylonian Talmud is a collection of discussions held by various learned Rabbis over a wide variety of religious, philosophical, ethical, and legal topics that were themselves previously covered in the Mishnah (200 C.E.), another book of rabbinical commentary this time focusing on the Jewish Torah.

Naturally, all of this makes for some very dry reading and not the sort of place you would expect to find some of the most fascinating bits of Jewish myth and folklore. However, as it would turn out, it appears that even the Rabbis doing the commentary in the Babylonian Talmud knew how boring some of this stuff was and so decided to every once in awhile spice things up by veering off topic and telling some really great stories.

One such rabbi is Rabbah bar Bar Hana whose tall tales of giant beasts and strange monsters can be found in Tractate Baba Bathra (73a-77b), a section that initially deals with how to properly sell and or buy a boat.

In Tractate Baba Bathra, bar Bar Hana begins telling about his many travels around the world and the strange and freighting creatures he’s seen. The first beast he speaks about is an antelope who was the size of Mount Tabor and who cast a dung ball so big that it damned up the River Jordan. Next, bar Bar Hana describes how he once saw a frog the size of sixty houses, which was then swallowed by an even bigger sea monster. The sea monster was then plucked out of the ocean by a giant raven which then preached itself on the branch of a massive tree which can still seen by any who wish to look.

Bar Bar Hana then sets in with some lively fish tales, one about the time he saw a fish so large that when it was cast upon the shore it destroyed sixty towns and provided food for another sixty. When the rabbi returned a year later he discovered that the towns’ people were cutting rafters from the giant fishes’ ribs which they were then using to rebuild the towns that had been destroyed.

On another occasion while out at sea, bar Bar Hana said that he encountered a fish so large it took three days and three nights for him and several other men to sail a fast ship from one end of the monster to the other. And in case you doubt it was a fast ship, bar Bar Hana adds that when an archer shot an arrow the ship easily outstripped it.

Then there was the giant fish that had sand and grass growing on its back. When bar Bar Hana and his crew saw the beast they thought it was an island and landed on it. However, when they started cooking their food the fish woke up and rolled over forcing the men to make a mad dash back to their ship in the nick of time.

Bar Bar Hana then rounds out this set of tall tales with two more. One about the Ziz; a giant bird whose head reached the heavens and whose legs were in the sea. Thinking the water were the bird was standing must be shallow the men decided to go for a swim when a ‘voice from heaven’ (Heb. Bath Kol) called out saying; “Do not go down here, for a carpenter’s ax was dropped [into this water] seven years ago and it has not reached the bottom.”

Lastly, bar Bar Hana tells how an Arab merchant once took him to see the Dead of the Wilderness; those Jews who had died in the desert while wandering for forty-years looking for the Promise Land. The Dead of the Wilderness were truly an impressive sight, for bar Bar Hana did not even realize when they had reached them on account of the fact that they were so big he thought they were mountains and even rode his camel under one of their raised knees. Bar Bar Hana also tells his fellow rabbis how he tried to take a piece of the beautiful blue-purple fabric the Dead were wearing as proof of what he had seen but when he cut a piece of the cloth off and tried to ride away he found himself paralyzed. The Arab explained that one can not take anything from the Dead and expect to leave.

Prof. Timothy K. Beal of Case Western Reserve University says in his fascinating book Religion and its Monsters (2002) that stories such as those told by Rabbah bar Bar Hana are intended to inspire fear and awe in both the listener and reader, much the same way that scary stories around a camp fire still do today. The difference here is that since the stories are told in what is considered a religious context, the fear and awe they inspire is that of the infinite mysteries of God and the universe, rather than the dark.

Center: Giant fish, mountain sized bulls and the Ziz (here depicted as a griffin) were just some of the larger than life creatures that appear in Jewish myth and legend. Illuminated manuscript page from Germany circa 1238.