N is for Neptune, Nymphs, Nereids, Naiads...and Nixies!

 

 Statue from the Acropolis Museum.  While the label indicates it may be 

Zeus or Poseidon, I have always preferred to think of it as Poseidon.

Neptune, or Poseidon Earth-shaker, started out as the god of freshwater bodies before moving out to sea.  One of the perks of this divine expansionism was, naturally, picking up more babes.  Especially beach babes.

Among the nymphs, or female godlings, were those associated with water: both the freshwater Naiads and the Mediterranean Nereids.*  Way before the annual Sports Illustrated Swimwear Issue, the association between water and hot women was ineradicably burned into the male psyche.  They were beautiful, elusive, yet dangerous.

by Kinuko Y. Craft

As the godlings of ancient days morph into the faeries of yesteryear, this trend continues.  The nixie is also gorgeous, wet, and dangerous, as the Rhine maidens in the Nibelungenlied demonstrate.  Now, contrast this with Lovecraft's Deep Ones and Deep One Hybrids.  Among them are females, they live in the water, and are dangerous.  But they are repulsive, not attractive.  Leaving the realm of Faerie for a scientific form of horror, we expect and find in Lovecraft science-friendly explanations for the origins of the Deep Ones and their mixed kin, and they behave like biological species are supposed to behave.  Yet the danger now is not a danger of attraction.  The danger is advertised on the surface, and thus represents a different kind of danger.  No longer do we have a wonder-fear, but a disgust-fear.  At the root, are two different forms of desire: the desire of grasping versus the desire of repulsing.  The focus on different desires would seem to produce very different fantasies.

The Birth of Cthulhu by Cyril Van Der Haegen

*NB The exclusion of Oceanids, Mermaids, Sirens, Undines, and other Ladies in the Water is only rhetorical, observed in the spirit of following the promotional support of the letter N, and is not meant to deny their rightful inclusion here.  (Please don't drown me.)

M is for Melchizedek and Merlin

Melchizedek, the priest-king of Salem mentioned in Genesis 14, Psalm 110, and Hebrews 5-7, is a mysterious and attractive figure.  "Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually."  This ancient patriarch appears in the Bible from nowhere, receives homage from Abraham, celebrates a sacral meal with him, and then disappears just as mysteriously.  One cannot help but wonder if the text is hinting that he has been assumed into heaven bodily, like Enoch, Elijah, and Mary.

Now consider the mysterious figure of Merlin.  His origin is a mystery.  One rumor held him to be the son of a nun by a/the devil.  He doesn't die, but is sealed up in a cave or tree, and there is an expectation that he will return with Arthur in the hour of England's greatest need (don't make me wrestle you to the ground and confess that C. S. Lewis' greatest novel is That Hideous Strength).  Now my "What if..."

What if Merlin is Melchizedek? 
A figure whose wisdom has been accrued through the ages.  Perhaps he is one of the nephilim and that's the source of his non-human origin and the taint of a fall.  He could then be a master of angelic powers in addition to the wisdom of the ages.  I have figured for years that someone would have made this speculative or imaginative connection, but I have yet to have found that it has been made before.  If it has, please point it out to me.

L is for Lares [and Penates]

Lar statuette, bronze, 1st century AD (Capitoline Museum, Rome).  Marie-Lan Nguyen (User:Jastrow) 2009

The tutelary deities Lares and Penates have often been pared, thus causing some uncertainty as to the clarity and consistency with which they were imagined by the ancient Romans.  They are often referred to as "household gods."  The Lares may have been heroes or daemons of the family, though they seem to always be represented as boys, and were grouped with an ancestral figure in their niche.  Beyond simply the home association, Lares were associated with any enclosed area.  You can think then of concentric enclosures from the room of the house they were in, then the land the house was on, the vicinity or community the land was in and as far out as one could name boundaries, all the way to the Lares of the Emperor himself.  I am not sure how closely my imagination of Rome corresponds to the imagination of the Romans, but I always think of the domestic Lares first.

Similar to the domestic Lares, the Penates are household deities, associated with the Genius of the paterfamilias and Vesta, the goddess of the hearth.  Their sphere is the larder or pantry, and in shrine at the entrance of the domus, they often flank a statue of Vesta.

I have to admit, I have some difficulty getting my mind around the idea of household gods.  I am too much a monotheistic Westerner, with "but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD [YHWH]" ringing in my ears.  I have to remind myself of some things closer to home to get my mind around statuettes that Rachel steals from her father, Laban, when her husband Jacob flees from him, the teraphim of Genesis 31:25-43.  The little guys suffer the indignity of being sat upon when Laban catches up and demands their return, and Rachel shows herself a worth match for both husband and father when she says she is menstruating.  The belief in the impurity either fooled Laban or it rendered the household gods impure.  What these idols or fetishes represented are uncertain, a matter of largely speculative scholarly debate.  But they certainly do not stand as real conceptual options on a level with YHWH God, though the choice between them is exclusive from the biblical point of view.

But something about the idea that they are like genii loci, but associated with enclosures created by humans, gives me an odd idea.  What if there were spirits or fae who were created by human action?  Household gods would not then be really on the level of, say, Vesta, though perhaps it is through some power and law of hers that they are created by human domesticity.  They would then be more like the English brownie or the Slavic domovoi.  Something less informed by the more advanced conceptions of deity, and something a little more like these guys:

If you don't recognize the property of J. K Rowling and the rights she sold to Warner Bros...

I like the idea.  The offerings left to them would then not be on the level of puja or devotion to deities, or even gifts offered to the spirits of the ancestors, but gifts of appreciation and placation.  Even the size fits: boys are small and teraphim are small enough Rachel can sit on them.  Instead of associating them with a Vesta figure in their origin, perhaps the Faerie Queen's magic is the source of these domestic faeries.  When humans enclose areas of her domain, the Lares or house faeries are created.  The Lady has eyes everywhere!

K is for the King and his Knights

N. C. Wyeth's Frontispiece to The Boy's King Arthur

The image of the king, and especially the ideal king, is as powerful as it is widespread.  One testimony to its power is the popular appeal of this image within modern democracies that are fundamentally anti-monarchic.  Without even turning to Walt Disney, Cartoon Network's Adventure Time provides us with an example.  While there is an abundance of princesses in the setting of the cartoon, the main king that we have seen is the Ice King, one of the major villains of the series who is a serial abductor of princesses and sworn enemy of Finn and Jake, the heroes.

{Spoiler Alert!}

In the episode, "Loyalty to the King," the Ice King shaves his beard after his latest "romance" with a princess has come to an end with her escape from the Ice Kingdom.  Without his major identifying feature, and looking presumably much younger, princesses are suddenly fawning all over him instead of fleeing his sight.  Through his quick-witted capitalization on a misunderstanding, he comes to be known as the Nice King.  Upon hearing of the arrival of a Nice King, the heroes immediately go to offer to enter his service.

{End of Spoiler}

I am sure that my gentle readers can multiple many examples of the ideal King, but in English-speaking contexts today, as well as for much of European history, the example par excellence is the legendary, perhaps semi-historical, Arthur.  He exemplified the virtues of wisdom, learnedness, justice, piety, and courage, skill at arms, and leadership.  Chosen by divine providence, and perhaps other numinous indicators, he had the gift of charisma,* like the Israelite leaders of old did.  The ideal king is worth being loyal too, and so other men of nobility and gifts are attracted to his court and his rule.  Enter the knights.

Is it because even heroes need a hero?  Is it that a bunch of gifted and testosterone-heavy, if not violent, men need an alpha male for social purposes?  Or is it a common human yearning to make a virtue of necessity: if we must have a leader, we yearn for one of nobility, of destiny, one who is worth-ship-ful?  Or is there simply a high degree of success that tended to accrue to past societies who gave immediate and radical obedience to the leader who inevitably has to make difficult and dirty-handed decisions? (A kind of social Darwinian advantage to the theory of the divine right of kings, if you will.  Cue Socrates with the Founding Lie.)  I've been reading James Branch Cabell lately, and he makes a good deal of fun of the human need for the Redeemer figure.  The ideal king can simply be a more secularized version of the Messiah: Jesus had his Twelve Apostles, Arthur had his Knights of the Round Table.  Meanwhile, mythopoets in the Lewis-Tolkien school (continuing a tradition from Christian apologists in the late Roman world) might see this as the way that all mythology reflects the truth at the heart of our world, and Jungians would search for the way that it reflects the archetypes of the Self.  But whatever the reason, his heart or his shoes, Arthur sat there on Whitsun eve with knights in his mews.**  Even Cabell's King Manuel has a Fellowship of the Silver Stallion.

Clearly we expect for knights to be champions of a virtuous king, gathering around him and then dispersing in benevolent errantry throughout the land or being sent on specific quests.  Among them there is a fellowship of loyalty, mutual interest, righteous heroism, and dangerous competition for training purposes and for renown -- tournaments.  That we still yearn for something that the King and his Knights represent, is evident in that fact that they refuse to disappear from our cinemas and television screens, video games, and comics.  To some extent, the Walt Disney empire rests on the foundations of Camelot, as seen by the presence of the storybook castle as the center of his theme parks.  But in recent decades, the multiplication of Societies for Creative Anachronism, for training in medieval martial arts, Renaissance festivals, Shakespeare companies, and even restaurants where you root as opposing factions over a faux, live medieval tournament while dining on hearty fare without knives and forks show that our need or our desire for the King and his Knights may be stronger than ever, even in the land that did away with kings and nobility.  (So, who's planning on watching William and Kate's wedding?)

Medieval Illumination of the Knights at Arthur's Round Table

Whether you build on the assumption that a group of noble, renowned, loyal warriors gather to the banner of the ideal monarch or you choose to question or even subvert it, you are trading on the expectations accrued to this well-known and well-received premise.  With the richness of the institution politically, religiously, historically, and mythically, it has a lot to offer in terms of commenting on these dimensions, building setting, developing characters, and it comes with traditional plot elements built in to it.  But trade on the desire to develop oneself in heroic directions and to belong to an ideal community are powerful, so caution should be used when taking it in non-traditional directions.


* Note that the common usage of the word (1) is actually derivative from the earlier, more technical usage (2).  We have Max Weber to thank for the reintroduction of the term in scholarly discourse outside of theology (further down in the article).

** Eat your heart out, Theodor Geisel.

J is for Journey

A classic journey story that dominated my young imagination. 20th C Fox, 1959.

The Journey is a powerful motif, everywhere you look.  We conceive of life itself as a journey from our mother's womb to the womb of the earth...and perhaps, for those who believe in a final eucatastrophe, beyond that.  Dante journeys from Earth to Paradise, via Hell and Purgatory.  Bilbo journeys from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain and back again.  Frodo journeys from the Shire across Middle Earth to Mount Doom and returns to the Shire, only to discover he must journey out of Middle Earth forever, to the Undying Lands in the West.  The Aeneid tells Aeneas' journey from Troy to Rome.  The Bible tells of humanity's journey from the Garden into exile in the dying lands back into a recreated Garden.  Even in the prosaic literature of America, Huck and Jim journey down the Mississippi River.

As much as we talk now of the hero's journey (there's just no getting away from that Campbell fellow these days), we each strive to be the hero of our own story.  It's an excellent question to ponder when other questions fail.  In the story, where are the characters going?  In a game, where are the player characters going?  And of course in life, where are you going? 

Wherever you find yourselves on your journeys: Bon voyage, my fellow ramblers.  If we learn anything from our furry-footed friends, it's a good idea to make the trip with true friends.  On the other hand, a model poet may not be a bad choice for a guide, either.

"In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost."

*

* Dante Alighieri, Inferno I.1-3.  Illustration by Gustav Doré. Things start looking up once he finds Vergil.

I is for Initiation

An Epiphany of Dionysios, who is called Dithyrambos

The epitaph of one of the central Mystery figures seems to connect him with "two doors," and is applied not only to the hymns dedicated to him, but to the god himself as well.  If this is correct, it is not surprising: Dionysios was born twice: once from his mother, and once from his father, Zeus.  (By some accounts, he was even thrice-born!)  His devotees are those who are likewise born a second time through the initiation into his Mysteries.

Joseph Campbell, in his enormously popular proposal of the so-called monomyth, makes much of initiation as one of the stages in the universal meta-story of the hero.  "The traditional idea of initiation combines an introduction of the candidate into the techniques, duties, and prerogatives of his vocation with a radical readjustment of his emotional relationship to parental images... Ideally, the invested one has been divested of his mere humanity and is representative of an impersonal cosmic force.  He is the twice-born: he has himself become the father." (136-137).  This passage nicely sums up Campbell's view, and also evinces some of its weaknesses.

(cc) NID chick

In Hinduism, Upanayana or investment with the sacred thread is the initiation ceremony, traditionally restricted to boys of the three upper castes -- the castes known as "Twice-born."  Campbell might well point out the importance of the roles of the parents in the investment, but while the rite does bring boys into the first stage (ashrama) of life, Student, it does so as members of a larger social structure (the caste system).  Further it is the basis in some areas for future investments: at graduation by one's guru and again at marriage -- the husband taking on the thread that the woman could not take on for herself.  Campbell shows a bit of a tin ear when it comes to the gender and class issues, undoubtedly in part due to his focus on the individual hero.

As I've mentioned before, our knowledge of the Dionysiac rituals are minimal and subject to a good deal of uncertain speculation.  For the images of the villa in Pompeii, see this website.  One must always be cautious in making broad statements about phenomena across the religions, but this much seems safe: To be initiated means to mark a milestone in one's personal development, to join a particular group, to become the keeper of a special doctrines and a special story that one previously had limited access to, responsibilities for, or privileges in, and to partake of the realm of the unseen, of numinous power, in a new and inward way. These empower one to undertake new actions or a new way of life.

One must imagine waiting in the dark, being led by others in unseen paths, and then emerging into a secret world--like a womb--lit for the passing of hidden knowledge...where one sees what can be revealed only to those who belong on the other side.*

* For more information, you may see this article, which will also suggest alternatives to the theory that I think is plainly correct.

H is for Heart

(C) Konrad Schuhmann

We English speakers have a particular usage for "heart."  For contrast's sake, we have only to notice the Hebrew usage: the heart is where you think things.  (The phrase, "says in his heart" and its equivalents is common in the Bible.)  In English, it is the seat of the emotions, which seems to reflect a distinction between feelings and thoughts.  I'm all for distinctions, but this may have the disadvantage of cutting things off from one another, so that, following certain Greeks, we shall have warfare between the heart and the head, with the prejudice that it is the head that should always win.  (Which inevitably gives rise to those who say in response, "Follow your heart.")

Beyond this generalized usage, we talk about people with true hearts and good hearts; people with their heart in the right place and people who do things whole-heartedly.  So the heart stands especially for loves and loyalties, the desire, bond, and intentionality directed toward their objects, and the strength of these loves and loyalties.  When we want to measure the strength of the heart in adversity, we switch to our Norman French word: courage.  But in the concrete, we are just as likely to say, "Take heart!" 

If myths and Faerie are all about the heart's desire, then it is just as much about the testing of the heart to see if it is worthy of attaining its desire.  "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

For the Egyptian Afterlife, the Heart must not outweigh the Feather of Maat

So, ramble forth, Mythopoets!  Faint heart never won fair lady (or lord)!

Addendum: It might have been hoped by some of my non-Texan readers that I would finally and fully parse "Bless your heart" for them.  I despair of every succeeding in this instance, but I assure you that the widespread assumption that it is disingenuous or even malevolent is simply false.  Its usage is very broad and is dependent on context and intonation.

G is for Gandiva and Glamdring

Balinese Statue of Arjuna with Gandiva in hand.  Photograph by Ilussion.

I believe this is one of John Howe's earlier attempts at The Bridge of Khazad-dûm.

Heroes do not get their weapons at Walmart.  Their weapons are not mass-produced in some Chinese factory.  As unique as heroes are, so unique are their weapons.  In mythopoesis, in sub-creating, nothing should be wasted.  The hero's weapon should be a part of world-building, a contributor to characterization, and an element of the plot.  Today's blog is dedicated to famous, named weapons.

We all know that Penelope's suitors do not stack up as men, because none of them can string Odysseus' bow.  And it is this failure that is one of the elements that will allow Odysseus to both reveal himself and slaughter them all.  Elric of Melniboné's evil sword Stormbringer allows him to overcome his genetic weakness and become a great swordsmen, while also dooming his soul and the souls of his loved ones.  Arthur's Excalibur symbolizes his kingship and his otherworldly patronage.  When Gandalf draws Foe-hammer against the Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, we remember its discovery in the troll hoard, and the fear it inspires among goblins (orcs), but the real Middle Earth fanatic will tell you this sword of Gondolin was wielded by Turgon, the only elf to be King of Gondolin, in his wars against the orcs.  It is ancient, it is powerful, and it confirms Gandalf's -- or Mithrandir's -- connections with the elves as well as his own nature as an ancient power.  It is notable in this case that it is not given to him, but found as an apparent accident.  Where other writers make a point of handing such weapons over to their heroes in a weighty scene, Gandalf bumbles into Glamdring.  (Try counting up the accidents that make all the difference in The Lord of the Rings sometime.)  And finally, Gandiva: the bow of gods and heroes, against whom no foe can stand, whose release resounds with thunder.  When it slips from Prince Arjuna's hand as he stands across the field from the Dhritarashtran forces in the Bhagavad Gita, we know that the power to make war has slipped from the mighty warrior's hands, until it can be restored to his limbs by a god, just as the bow itself came to him by the hands of a god.

These weapons, have names like important characters do, and they have a history of their own that makes them a feature of their worlds-of-origin.  They compliment the characters they are paired with: interacting with their strengths and weaknesses, fulfilling our desire to wield part of the enchantment of Faerie in our hands through our identification with the character, providing the character with motivations.

Anybody looking forward to Marvel's film version of Thor?  I recently saw that the toys are already out in anticipation of its release.  Guess what I saw at Walmart?  Yeap.  Two different versions of Mjölnir.  I mean, what wouldn't I do if I had Thor's hammer...

F is for Fairy-Stories

"Faerie is a perilous land,
and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the over-bold."

J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892-1973

Tolkien's 1939 Lang lecture, "On Fairy-Stories," is justly popular and was revised for publication (1947) and has been reprinted many times.  In it, Tolkien defends the act of fantasy production and enjoyment against its modern despisers, and explores the nature of fantasy or fairy-stories.  Together with the earlier poem "Mythopoiea," (1931) it should be thoroughly delved, meditated upon, and inwardly digested. I returned to it for this post with profit, and recommend it to both artists and critics of all types, as well as gamers.  But for fantasists or mythopoets, failure or refusal to come to terms with it will result in a portion of dishonesty or poverty, although hopefully not always of the scale and anger of Moorcock's "Epic Pooh."*  Enough of the haters within out ranks; let us turn to the haters outside Faerie.  The professor tries to deal with the disdain that some feel for stories set in the realm of Faerie, but his attempt is more likely to inform the faithful while failing the infidel: ultimately, hate that is not based on reason cannot be answered by reason.  So while those lines of reasoning are insightful, we will set them aside for the main issue: the nature of these stories.

Clearing aside the misconception that fairy-stories have mainly to do with the fae, Tolkien locates the nature of the tales in Faerie, or more technically, in Secondary Worlds created by acts of literary subcreation which are characterized by an "inner consistency of reality" such that they command Secondary Belief.  He has suggestive lists of some of the denizens of Faerie: Elves, fays, dwarves, witches, trolls, giants, dragons, removable hearts, swan robes, magic rings, arbitrary prohibitions, wicked step-mothers, enchanted bears and bulls, cannibals, and taboos on names.  But in addition to these marvels, Faerie includes potentially everything contained in our mundane world, even and especially human beings, when we are enchanted.

"The dragon has the trademark of Faerie written plain upon him.  In whatever world he had his being, it was an Other-world.  Fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of the desire of Faerie.  I desired dragons with a profound desire."

Human beings are enchanted by a play upon our most primal, marvelous desires: freedom in space and time, communion with other life forms, recovery of things lost, escape from the ugliness of a servile life and from death, and, above all, the consolation of the happy ending that turns the story, suddenly and gracefully, to piercing joy.  When the construction of an internally verisimilitudinous world in literature draws the reader in by an artful expression that causes her to seek these desires within and whose enchantment is not broken by failures in sustaining her secondary belief, then the Tolkienian vision of a fairy-story has been achieved.

*Signs are reported that my now fellow Texan has moved on somewhat.   May it be so.

E is for Edmund

EDMUND OF EAST ANGLIA!

NO, NOT EDMOND OF NARNIA...

  

Edmund, King and Martyr, 855-869 or 870.

There was a campaign several years back to replace the cosmopolitan, nay global, George with one of the two homegrown boys he had displaced on his way to adding Patron of England to his rather lengthy resume.  Whether or not he suffered the same perforated end as the apparently sexier-to-many-people Sebastian, his symbol is often given as this:

Emblem of King Edmund, stained glass, St Peter and St Paul's Church, Hoxne, Suffolk. Artist: Derek Anson

However, something closer to the flag of Sweden or the arms of the University of Oxford, sans arrows, seems to have been more common until recently.  Compare the flag of East Anglia, where is it superimposed on George's cross:

It is the three crowns in particular that interest me.  Is it one crown for each county?  The Oxford website linked above notes that three crowns are associated with him, just as they are with Jesus Christ and King Arthur.  One could have wished for a fuller comment.

Montague Rhodes James, 1862-1936

I first ran across the legend of the three crowns that protect England in the story, "A Warning to the Curious" by that master of mood M. R. James.  The legend resists further archaeology.  Did James make it up?  If so, it's a wonderful conceit.  If you are not familiar with the antiquarian ghost tales of this scholar and Anglican clergyman, knock over some Old Etonians if you have to and get to the local bookstore or library and correct this misfortune as soon as ever you can.  James counts among his fans H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Stephen King.

For a helpful instance of synchronicity, see this Clerk of Oxford.

D is for Dungeons & Dragons

In 1981, my mother surprised me with something she had seen on her errands.  "I thought it looked like something you'd like."  I looked at the box she placed before me, the box you may see above.  I had the vaguest idea what I was looking at -- I had never heard of Dungeons and Dragons.  In the eldritch purple gloom of a dungeon, a sorceress and a warrior prepare to do battle with a dragon who has just surfaced from his subterranean lake to protect his treasure.  In short, this was a game that promised Everything.  Apparently my mother knew me well.

Little did I realize that I was about to be caught up in one of America's historic cultural crazes.  Little would I have cared at that moment that it would come to bear the weight of cultural stigma by marking one not simply as a nerd, but as Nerdosaurus Rex (heck, I thought dinosaurs were cool back then, too.)  How far I was from predicting that in the days to come, hysterical mothers, ignorant and mendacious people from the margins of American religious life, and sensationalist media would perpetrate their own campaign associating the game with Devil worship or its secular equivalent, Mental Illness.  For the moment all I knew was love and the opening of another imaginative gate.

Over the years, a game one played with friends, imagining heroic characters in a fantasy world exploring, braving dangers, killing monsters, and finding treasure grew increasingly complex in terms of the details of story world, characterization, plot, themes and fantastic elements.  It also turned one unto fantastic fiction on the one hand and ancient and medieval history on the other.

Years later, I still wonder at the social anxieties that seem so real to many of our supposed fellow adults, that is, that these anxieties are about something substantive and real (the Cool vs the Uncool*) rather than that they are merely social fictions used for social control, likely masking something going on in the Shadow of the Unconscious of the people attempting to control others (whether you want to take these as technical Jungian terms or apt metaphors for their psyches.  See my first post on this blog, Texans, Gods, and Monsters.)   I know of highly successful people who hide their love for the game, if not because they have internalized the shame, at least because they don't want to have to deal with the social consequences.  It makes me think about how I might pick up and perpetuate popular cultural assumptions and impose them on people without really being aware of what I am doing.  But back to happier matter.

If you loved the game as a kid and have nostalgic longings for it, or if you were one of those people who were always curious about it, you may be surprised to learn that it is still around.  The current official incarnation of the game, now owned by Hasbro, is something I cannot recommend, not only because I do not like it, but because it will not be the game you remember or that you remember other people playing.  (These are fighting words for fans of the current game, but I stand by the statement, ready to delete comments as necessary.)  The old editions of the game are still out there, whether you want to find and re-purchase your old game materials or find people who can teach you how to play.

In addition to the out-of-print material in the secondhand market, there are two important sources of support for the game that are keeping its spirit alive.  One is a professional publisher, Paizo, whose Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a sleek and shiny, but more complex, version of the game.  However, keep an eye out because soon they will offer their own basic introductory version of the game in a boxed set.  The other source is a group of do-it-yourselfers and self-publishers that are very active online, and not only sell their wares but give tons of gaming material away for free, especially in the form of legal clones of the old D&D games (in electronic form.  Print copies will cost you.)  They are collectively referred to as the OSR, but like the cantankerous settlers of the Old West, they can't agree on what OSR stands for (or what it is or whether they belong to it), and they have no central organ, but they are generally talented and generous, if highly opinionated.  These old school gamers are all over the web and it is hard to know how to introduce an outsider to their sprawling online network (rather like an enormous dungeon complex), but perhaps this guide to free resources would be the best place to start.  Maybe others will make their recommendations in the comments.

I will close today with a literary selection:
"If the days of chivalry have really passed away, let us try to hope that it is more because dungeons and dragons have become rare than because swords and arms have become craven."
An Artists Proof, by Alfred Austin (1864)**


Some of us, at least, are still bearing them boldly in our imaginative play and creating because, happily, dungeons and dragons are always in supply in just the quantities needed in the realms of the imagination.

*And so I neatly avoid the incessant terminological debate over the meanings of Nerd vs. Geek.
** I am beginning to suspect that the majority of problems in Blogger seem to be caused by the use of italics.  Hence no apostrophe.  Curse you, Blogger, how are we supposed to live without italics?!

EDIT: Here is a more updated list of free gaming materials.

C is for Chesterton: A Colossus in Fairyland

The popularity of Professor Tolkien has ensured that his ideas about Faerie, eucatastrophe, subcreation, and the "inner consistency of reality" that should characterize secondary acts of creation are spreading among world builders from novelists to gamers.  This is a development that can't happen with enough speed and intensity, as far as I am concerned.  But there is another theorist of Faerie that I would like to recommend: Gilbert Keith Chesterton.  There are areas were Chesterton may rub hard against many judgments of this age, but that he was a fan of George MacDonald and numbered C. S. Lewis and Tolkien among his fans should be enough to recommend him to our attention.  If he and George Bernard Shaw could put up with one another (they were close personal friends as well as public opponents), then there's something to be said for widening our circle of associations in this age of the tribalism of the like-minded.

Chesterton (1874-1936) was a journalist, critic, novelist, poet, apologist--among other things--whose collected works in the Ignatius Press edition run to 36 volumes.  I am aware of two extended treatments of what Chesterton calls fairyland or elfland in his works, both originally published in 1908 and closely related: the essay "Fairy Tales" in All Things Considered and chapter IV, "The Ethics of Elfland" in Orthodoxy.  I would recommend reading them in this order, to digest the shorter treatment first.  Both works are in the public domain and readily available online.

In Chesterton's eyes, the terrible arbitrariness of the rules of Faerie mirror the apparent arbitrariness of the rules of the real world.  Instead of an utterly random realm of nonsensical, wild freedom, there is an ethical or moral principle at the heart of the nonsense and wildness.  From a Tolkienesque point of view, one might say that this is one of the points that governs the verisimilitude of fey worlds.  We may not understand why we mustn't eat the apple or dip our finger in the pool, but this hole in our understanding is itself important and not childish.  Chesterton seems more suggestive at this point to me than definitive, but what I tease out of him is this: 1. This lack of understanding adds to our sense of mystery and wonder and 2. It increases our sense that we are guests visiting in someone else's realm; that there is a will behind the law.  There is law in faerie, insists Chesterton, and that law is based on the principle that happiness depends on human choice and on not breaking the magical and mystical law that rules the place.

Clearly, this is not the last word on the matter, for Chesterton doesn't seem to have thought as much about the attraction, one might almost say the compulsion, to break the law in those stories; a phenomena that seems much more two-edged that Chesterton suggests.  Struggling with this aspect will, I presume, drive us to thinkers like Tolkien and Jung--and perhaps Augustine, who first gave it a name: felix culpa.  But this is likely because Chesterton was, in the final analysis, more interested in how our world is like Faerie than in understanding Faerie on its own terms--or perhaps in terms of our world.  I recommend him as a stimulant to thought and a tonic to the wit.  Reading him must at the very least improve one's prose.

Link:
A Chesterton page that is not pretty, but seems pretty useful.

B is for Beauty and the Beast

by Allen Douglas

Ampersand
The fairy tale Beauty and the Beast (or La Belle et la Bête) is one of the traditional fairy tales that everyone knows.  It has had the mixed blessing of being made into a film by the Walt Disney Co., so while it would be difficult now to find anyone unfamiliar with the story, their imaginations will be dominated by one version of it and by Disney-style animation to the almost exclusion of the rich tellings and imaginings that proceeded it.

The power of the tale lies in its treating themes of duality, a subject already raised in this blog.  But what makes Beauty and the Beast stand out is that it layers duality on top of duality:

• Beauty vs. Ugliness
• Humanity vs. Beastliness
• External Appearance vs. Interior Reality
• Female vs. Male
• Revulsion vs. Love
• Safety vs. Danger

(It wouldn't surprise me if I'm missing one or two, for which I will defer to the aid of the perceptive reader.)  Depending on which retelling of the tale you are reading, the appearance, emphasis, and alignment of these dualities will vary.  In my judgment, the more interesting versions avoid simple and absolute alignments (for example, Beauty always tracks on Appearance always tracks on Female) but explores and plays with them.

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know?
Beauty and the Beast is one of those fairy tales that raises feminist concerns.  I know of no way to satisfactorily quantify this, but I bet we all know far more women who have tried to tame the beast to their sorrow than we know men who can say the curse was lifted from them by the love of a good woman.  First, I would want to urge a truth that is often lost in these kinds of discussions: something that is powerfully destructive is, first of all, powerful.  As long as something is not inherently evil, its power to work harm could just as well be turned to work weal.  Throwing away something that is powerful just because it is powerful is reactionary and short-sighted.  While anything powerful is dangerous, it is equally beneficent, given the right use.  Retrievals and reinterpretations are the way to go.  Further, taking a lesson from the tale itself, layering and opposing these multiple versions are more entertaining and enjoyable, as well as the means to harness its power for good and ameliorate harmful effects.

By Walter Crane

The Power of Friction
Besides subject matter, how do these dualities make for compelling story telling?  By playing with expectations, misleading, and deceiving.  Building on or creating audience expectations allows the story-teller to establish rapport, build comfort, and then question or shock them.  They are an important element of surprise.  Dualities are great also great for ambiguity, which creates mystery and builds tension. In these ways, they make for great drama.  From a structural side, this should not be surprising, since narrative theory tends to reveal story's structures as opposing sets of conflicting parties, problem and solution, rising and falling tension, etc.

I leave much untouched here, of course.  This story is a great way to explore gender anxieties, and if Jung is right, then it is an expression of and magnet for women's animus issues and men's anima issues.  (See the illustration of Jung's view of the Self from below.  For more on the transgendered region of our unconscious, see here and here.)

I'll leave you with an image from my childhood*: the moment that Beauty finds the Beast collapsed.  It has received many touching renditions, for more, start in the Beauty and the Beast illustration gallery at SurLaLune.

by Warwick Goble

*1913, is the date of the illustration, so it was already quite old by then, wise-crackers.

A is for the Archetypes, April Fool, and Apollo

Welcome to the first installment of the 26 alphabetic entries of April!  Today's post will deal with two different archetypal figures, Apollo and the April Fool.


A Note on Archetypes
The concept of archetype is older than its Jungian developments.  Even if you don't buy-in to much of Jung, there is a strength, a primal-ness, and ubiquity of certain images, and this what I am looking to trade on.  I won't be worrying so much about the Jungian category that these images fit in (which archetype or blending of archetypes they are) as much as reflecting and playing with the images themselves.  I think tropes (in the sense of the addictive TVTropes, click on link below at your own peril) are a good sign that we are likely dealing with the expression of something archetypal, with something that has some serious symbolic heft.

Image by Willem den Hertog

Apollo
The Greek solar god suggests the Self as it blazes in power and the will, but this is desire civilized and cultivated, guided by the light of the intellect and giving light and warmth to all those so blessed to be in its orbit.  The Intellect is in the driver's seat of this chariot, carrying a cargo of knowledge, truth, oracular prophecy, medicine and health, music, poetry, and the arts, herding and colonial settlement, youth and athleticism.  Many are the gifts of this bright god, but they generally burn beneficently and not out of control.  (Negative scenes are not unknown, but there is a strong tendency to shift such things away from Apollo and towards Dionysios, the god of ecstasy, drunkenness, and madness: the desires let loose.  This is certainly evident in Nietzsche and Jung.  Cf. my post below on duality)  Apollo thus is the expression of many ideals of classical Greece and was later adopted at the dawn of France's obsessive classicism by Louis XIV, the sun king.  Even when not named, the anthropomorphized sun is a popular and persistent image.  In this part of the United States, its popularity in Hispanic contexts is especially evident.

April Fools
I'm struck by the solar imagery in the popular Rider-Waite Tarot card of The Fool.  This fair-haired youth, resplendently arrayed, is walking the path of doom, oblivious to danger and warning.  While not all those who wander are lost, the Fool obviously is.  But what of the solar imagery?  The golden youth, decked with laurels, his head in the clouds we see above clearly has solar elements of his own.  Is this a comment on the follies possible for the extreme Apollonian?  That one could dwell in one's head, in the realm of ideals, so much that one loses touch with earthly realities?

If that is one kind of fool, I don't see the connection with April Fools Day.  We are faced with a problem right away: Who is the April Fool?  Is she the person oblivious to the schemes of the merry prankster or is he the obnoxious prankster himself, who observes the day by trying to trick people all day long with outrageous and even humiliating pranks?  It might be an interesting normative dilemma, but I'm going to resolve it by distinguishing between the Fool who Pranks as the Trickster and the Fool who is Pranked, calling the latter the April Fool.  Dwelling in himself, the April Fool is insensitive to external realities that are unimportant to him.  He knows the date, but that the trickster is operative on this date is not duly weighed.  He doesn't see the trickster coming, and he is oblivious to the setup of the prank.  Someone has cut down the rope bridge at the mountainous chasm, but the Fool doesn't look.  Is he contemplating the reflective glory of Apollo in the vault of the mind or the vault of the sky?  Again, I don't think, most April Fools are so Apollonian.  They are focused actually on practical matters at hand like the yawning chasm in front of them.  Season aside, April Fools are apt to look more like this:

Image by Charles M. Schulz

The April Fool thinks the dog, if there is one, is barking a warning -- a warning it doesn't need to pay attention to because he's already hard at work on the case of the chasm.  He doesn't realize the barking is to lull him into forgetting about the dog as an important factor.  This will allow the dog to time its move perfectly, whether leaping at his back when AF is precariously balanced, or doing a run under the feet and tripping AF.  Hilarious! barks the dog.  I never saw it coming until it was too late, bemoans the April Fool.

What I've been groping towards is a distinction between the April Fool and the Apollonian Fool.  The distinction comes down to this: while the Apollonian Fool doesn't need a Trickster to fall off the mountain, the April Fool isn't a fool until the Trickster makes her into a fool.  The April Fool's is made a fool by someone else. This is different from a kind of Apollonian autism or absent-minded professorship.

Apollo is a big help, but not a big help when it comes to dealing with the Trickster.  Baby Hermes shakes him up one side and down the other.  Come to think of it, Apollo himself is more of an April Fool than an Apollonian Fool.  The difficulty is not being distracted, but of dealing with a master manipulator.  Apollo is fine as long as people are honest and is only in trouble when the smooth Trickster shows up and sets to work.  This is all starting to sound like cautionary tale for April and Apollonian Fools, so lest we forget, these fools are normally very happy folks...until they fall off the mountain in the case of the Apollonian Fool or are pushed off of the mountain in the case of the April Fool.

Whatever way you go, I wish you all joy of your archetypes, a happy April, and happy Abecedaries!

April is the Cruelest Month for Lazy Bloggers

 ...and perhaps for overtaxed readers.

I have accepted the A to Z Blogging Challenge for April 2011 (see badge in the right side panel).  This means I will be blogging on subjects, and often a confluence of subjects, according to the alphabet and my mythopoeic interests each day of April, Sundays excluded.  I've had a loose plan in place for almost a month (it's tighter in some places), but I might consider reader requests if I get them with enough lead time and they strike my fancy.

What is he rambling on about?
Maybe this is a good time to say what I consider the (rather rambling, of course) territory of my blog: anything that touches on mythic themes or features.  Art, music, literature, religion, philosophy, psychology, popular culture -- I don't consider anything out of bounds if I think I can find grist there for my blogging mill.  They might be right out there in the open or hiding in the nooks and crannies, but if I see them and I can use them to pull a reflection together, you can hear my thoughts on them.  While I write them on one level for the joy of my own exploration and talk, I offer them here to contribute to your own cognizing or cloud-castle construction.  I'm certainly interested in hearing readers thoughts on either my reflections or the objects, occasions, or excuses for my reflections, so feel free to comment.  Over time, it will become clearer who my influences are, but let me name several biggies: Carl Jung, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton.  Maybe Origen, Philo, and the Alexandrian tradition deserve a shout-out, too.  I'll let you judge when it comes to T. S. Eliot.  Does it depend on how obscure I truly am or whether you like Eliot?  As a member of the guild of religious studies, I actually did my work in a more philosophical field, for those who are curious.

Mythopoeic?
Yeah, you know academic types.  We love words.  Especially special words.  Words we make up are especially special (sorry though, most folks need a license to do this, unless you're Shakespeare or something).  Mythopoeic means "having to do with myth-making," and thus applies to both the analysis and the creation of "lies breathed through silver tissue."  Compelling lies that are sometimes also knowing and complex, of interest for the sake of the truths they may hide as well as the fun and satisfaction that they offer, are my aim.  Maybe they offer fun and satisfaction because they're the truest lies of all.

Extra
Many years ago, when Jung was terra incognita to me, I watched Joseph Campbell's Mythos on PBS with a friend who had been in Jungian analysis for years.  She drew me this handy little guide which I will now share with you.  Maybe it will be of use to readers who are unfamiliar with Jung's view of the Self (the circular diagram in the middle of the page).  I'll eventually see about getting a graphically savvy person to put it into a clearer format.

TOMORROW: April Fools and Apollo