The Etruscan Evil of Mantus and Mania: Celebrity Couple of the Underworld

23 Thursday May 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Anthropology, Demons, Ghosts, Gods, Harbingers, Monsters, Mythology, Occult, Spirits, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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afterlife, Akkadian, Anatolia, Arnobius, Asia Minor, Carthage, Cerus Manus, Charon, Charun, death, Dispater, Divination, Etruscan, Gauls, Greeks, Hades, Haruspices, Human Sacrifice, Indo European, Iron Age, Italy, Kadrey, Lares, Lydia, Manes, Mania, Mantus, Persephone, Pluto, Roman, Rome, underworld, Villanovan

The Etruscans are a bit of a mystery. This is largely due to the Romans. And those meddling kids. Etruscan civilization emerged in the Italian peninsula around 800 B.C. We don’t know for certain where they came from, but the two prevailing theories are (1) they developed out of the indigenous, Iron Age Villanovan culture, or (2) they were a Near Eastern people that colonized ancient Italy, possibly migrating from Anatolia (studies of Etruscan mitochondrial DNA from 8^th Century bone fragments supports this possibility), and according to Herodotus, the Etruscans arrived in 1200 B.C., escaping a famine in Asia Minor—unfortunately, even some of Herodutus’ contemporaries disagreed. At any rate, before those industrious Romans appeared and went on to conquer everybody and their brother, starting somewhere in the 3^rd Century B.C., it was pretty stylish to be an Etruscan. The Etruscan language, as reported to us through the Greeks and Romans (the Etruscans left no literary record, apart from various inscriptions—incidentally, they may actually have had an extensive literature, but when Rome went all Christian-crazy, Roman pantheism’s deep roots in Etruscan mythology must have irked them, and it is suspected that this led to a systematic destruction of all extant Etruscan literary records), bore no resemblance to Italian, Anatolian, or any other Indo-European language. This is pretty weird, since everyone around them spoke something derived from an Indo-European base. For a while, the Etruscans traded with the Greeks, but by the 5^th Century, pressure from Gallic invasions into northern Italy, a short-sighted alliance with Carthage against the Greeks, and the initial stages of Roman expansion and annexation of Etruscan cities, meant that the Etruscans as an independent political entity had pretty much vanished by the 3^rd Century B.C., absorbed into the greater expanding sphere of prosperity that was the Roman Empire. Consequently, much of what we know about the Etruscans (which is not much, and unsurprisingly not considered good fodder for dissertations in ancient history) comes from Etruscan art and second-hand interpretations from Greek and Roman historians. The rough sketch we have of Etruscan religion tells us one thing for certain. They were pretty wacky and death obsessed.

Mantus and Mania, 2nd Century BC, Tomb of Orcus II – Etruscan Mural

According to what we understand of the polytheistic Etruscan religion, every person’s destiny and every natural phenomenon was the expression of some divine will, and expressed a theological message that could be properly interpreted by specialized seers called Haruspices (these auguries frequently involved inspecting the bumps on the livers of sacrificed sheep, no longer considered a statistically reliable method). Even the Romans had a lot of respect for the adherence of Etruscans to a complex set of daily rituals which was referred to in Latin as the disciplina etrusca, and predictions from the Haruspices were taken very seriously. So seriously was Etruscan religion held in high regard and in fact incorporated into Roman religious mythology and practices, that even Christian apologist and Numidian rhetorician Arnobius (c.300 A.D.) referred to Etruria (the land of the Etruscans) as genetrix et mater superstitionum (“the birthgiver and mother of beliefs”). The Etruscans, typical for a religious folk, were especially concerned with dead stuff i.e. what happens when you die, where you go, and who you report to.

It was in the unseen world beneath the earth, the place to which men went after death, and where the souls of their ancestors resided, that the Etruscans devoted the chief portion of their religious thoughts; and with this were connected the bulk of their religious observances. Over the dark realm of the dead ruled Mantus and Mania, king and queen of Hades, the former represented as an old man, wearing a crown, and with wings on his shoulders, and bearing in his hands sometimes a torch, sometimes two or three large nails, which are thought to indicate the inevitable character of his decrees (Fradenburgh, 1891, p122).

Mantus and Mania were the Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie of the afterlife. No Brangelina or Bennifer here. Mania was said to be the mother of all ghosts, undead, spirits of the night, Lares and Manes (deified dead ancestor spirits). Mantus (for whom the city of Mantua is presumed to have been named) was the big Kahuna of the underworld, and neither of them was regarded as particularly pleasant. There seems to be some confusion about what Mantus looked like, as descriptions of him vary, often confusing him with a figure called Charun (who appears to have been a Satyr-like employee of Mantus and Mania, charged with leading the dead to the underworld. Note the similarity to the guy who served the same purpose in Greek Mythology, Charon, not to mention the fact that scholars have long found correspondences between Mantus and Mania, and Pluto and Persephone).

Mantus is often represented on the Tuscan funeral urns in the act of leading away the deceased, who is generally on horseback and veiled. He has the appearance of a four-hoofed man, with wild features and satyr’s ears, often winged, and in a high and tight tunic, sometimes armed with a sword, and very often with a hammer. In the same way in Rome, Dispater was represented when carrying off the corpses of those slain in the gladiators’ games, namely, armed with a hammer; and though this idea was comparatively modern, in the games they borrowed for it the old Etruscan costume (Gray, 1843, p193).

Mania, as her name would suggest, was a little more nutty, apparently demanding human sacrifices, particularly young boys. It’s no surprise that we’ve come to accept the term “mania” as descriptive of all manner of uncouth behavior.

Mania, the mother of the Lares, was a still more fearful deity, propitiated by human sacrifices. In connection with these words must be taken the mundus, the pit at Rome which was considered to be the mouth of Orcus, and the manducus, a symbolic effigy with gaping jaws which was borne aloft in Roman games and processions to represent the underworld (Taylor, 1874, p121).

We know so little about the Etruscans, but we do know they had some pretty scary gods of the underworld.

“The real god of the world below among the Tuscans, or Tusker,” writes

Ottfried Muller, “was called Mantus, who was therefore compared with Dispater. In Etruscan histories the name of Mantua was derived from him. With him was worshipped a goddess of the lower realms—the Mania. . . . This was a truly Etruscan divinity. … To the strange and terrible gods to whom the Tuscan libri fatales give human sacrifices . . . belong Mantus and Mania. Terrible to the old Italians seemed Mania . . . who is inseparable from the Tuscan faith of the Lares, being allied to the Manes. She was an awful divinity to whom, under Tarquinius Superbus, boys were offered. Her fearful image—afterwards a child’s toy—was in early times hung on doors to avert contamination. This Mania was the mother or grandmother of the Manes, also the mother of the Lares.” Muller indulges in much speculation as to this chthonic goddess, or deity of darkness. And she still lives in Tuscany, and is called Mania della Notte (Mania of the Night), but regarded simply as the Nightmare, and Succuba, and as a mysterious nocturnal spirit inspiring wanton dreams (Leland, 1892, p51).

Linguists have tried to parse out the origins of the names Mania and Mantus, and have come to some rather odd conclusions.

In connection with ausel, “the mild light of the morning,” I may be pardoned a digression on a Latin word, mane, “the early morning,” and this will introduce the old Italian deity Matuta, ” the goddess of the dawn,”Mantus and Mania, the Etruscan god and goddess who presided over the Underworld, and cerus manus, an expression used in the old Salian hymn, and translated by Festus as “the good creator.” If manus means “good,” then the manes are the “good ones,” and their mother Mania is the “good lady.” Now, is there any connection between the morning, mane, Matuta, and the spirits of the dead, manes. Mania, Mantus? We are at first inclined to say that there is none, but let us look into the matter. At the outset, I shall take four things as granted: — (1.) That the word manus found in the old priestly hymns of the Salii means “good”; for this we have the authority of Festus, who quotes to that effect the testimony of an earlier writer, Aelius Stilo, a learned grammarian, the preceptor of Varro; this carmen Saliare is probably as old as the foundation of Rome, (2.) That this word manus is the root of Manes, and, through it, of Mania and Mantus ; for this also we have the authority of Festus. (3.) That Mantus and mane, “morning,” are different forms of the same root-word; so says Varro. (4.) That the Etruscans were sun-worshippers or, at least, fire-worshippers (Fraser, 1879, p150-151).

And still stranger connections have been made to ancient Akkadian gods.

Mantus and Mania are the Latin forms of the names of the Etruscan king and queen of the Under-world, and whilst any dogmatism on so obscure a subject would be altogether unwarrantable, I cannot but remark that in Akkadian Man tu =”King-of-Darkness,” and Ma-na ” Land-of-eclipse.” Mr. Taylor has already observed that ma is “land” alike in Etruscan and Akkadian (Victoria Institute, 1881, p353).

Mantus and Mania were inseparable, and in fact were always pictured together in Etruscan art. We don’t really know the details of what residence in the Etruscan underworld entailed. I think we can assume it wasn’t pleasant. Kind of dark, probably. Presided over by an angry dude with a hammer and his child-sacrifice loving wife. The Etruscan language was completely superseded by Latin, so we have very few original Etruscan documents to give us a lot of clues, and keep in mind that most of what we know has been run through a Roman filter. It is nonetheless a fascinating thought that entire civilizations have lived and died, leaving nothing but remnants and echoes in the memory and mythologies of the cultures that followed them. Makes one wonder what civilizations existed that we know nothing about because none of their neighbors had a written language. As Richard Kadrey wrote in Sandman Slim “The ashes of your existence will fertilize the universe that follows”.

References
Fradenburgh, J. N. 1843-1914. Departed Gods: The Gods of Our Forefathers. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe, 1891.
Fraser, John, of New South Wales. The Etruscans: Were They Celts?: Or, The Light of an Inductive Philology Thrown On Forty Etruscan Fossil Words Preserved to Us by Ancient Authors; With Incidental Notices of the Etymology of 2000 Words In the Classical And Modern Languages, And Discussions On Greek And Roman Antiquities And Mythology. Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart; 1879.
Gray, Elizabeth Caroline Johnstone, 1800-1887. The History of Etruria With an Account of the Manners and Customs, Arts and Literature of the Etruscans. London: J. Hatchard and son, 1843.
Leland, Charles Godfrey, 1824-1903. Etruscan Roman Remains In Popular Tradition. London: T. F. Unwin, 1892.
Taylor, Isaac, 1829-1901. Etruscan Researches. London: Macmillan and co., 1874.
Victoria Institute (Great Britain). Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, Or Philosophical Society of Great Britain. London: The Victoria Institute, v14, 1881.

No Turtle Is an Island, Except for the Fastitocalon Called Aspidochelone

21 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Animals, Anthropology, Demons, Dragons, Monsters, Mythology, Sea Serpents, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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Alex Haley, Alexander the Great, Anglo-Saxon, Arrian, asp-turtle, Aspidochelone, Babylonian Talmud, Bestiary, Cynewulf, Fastitocalon, Gamera, giant, hafgufa, Imap Umassoursa, Indica, Isaac Bashevis Singer, island, Jasconius, kraken, megafauna, midgard-worm, Naturalis Historia, Nearchus, Physiologus, Pliny, Pristis, Saint Brendan, Seuss, shield-turtle, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, turtle, Yertle, Zaratan

“The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.”
–Ogden Nash

Novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer once said, “Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of non-knowledge”. This nugget of wisdom is particularly germane if one is on a ship at sea and encounters what they believe to be an uncharted island, especially in the age of satellites, geospatial mapping, and Google Earth, where “uncharted” can generally be equated with, “did not exist yesterday”. A good rule of thumb regarding such a discovery is to conclusively establish that said island is not actually a commonly reported, mythological monstrosity variously called a Fastitocalon (Old English), Aspidochelone (Latin “asp” or “shield” turtle), Zaratan (Arabic), Pristis (Greek), Imap Umassoursa (Greenland), or Jasconius (Irish), an island-sized turtle (possibly some strange sort of fish, opinions vary among medieval bestiaries) that many an unsuspecting sailor has landed upon, envisaging a tropical paradise, only to be unceremoniously drowned when the massive beast submerges beneath the waves, as marine critters the size of a small land mass are occasionally wont to do. Turtles are not usually prime fodder for monster archetypes, no doubt something to do with their defining qualities that involve glacial slowness and hiding inside one’s shell until threats get bored (notable exceptions being Godzilla’s Gamera, who has the general shape of a turtle, but the evolutionary advantages of being bipedal and able to fly, as well as being the size of a skyscraper; the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who can fall back on their ninja training and are rather fond of humans anyway, despite living in the sewers with a giant rat for a mentor, no doubt a very confusing adolescence; and the various mythological turtles reputed to hold the world on their back, and consequently are a little busy; and that terrible Seussian warlord Yertle the Turtle). This of course, makes the Fastitocalon particularly fearsome, since its species has had to endure countless millennia of association with sloth and cowardice (or more positively a reputation for being laid-back and easy-going, more or less the patron saint of stoners), and this has no doubt resulted in a certain antipathy or annoyance towards humans. Alternatively, the Fastitocalon is so enormous that it really takes no notice of us, until we do something obnoxious like try to have a luau on its back.
Charming accounts of our Fasticocalon friend are found in a variety of translations of the Physiologus, a natural history text by an unknown author, originally written in Greek during the 2^nd Century A.D. in Alexandria, Egypt. The Physiologus was translated into Latin, Ethiopic, Syriac, a number of European and Middle Eastern languages, and is generally considered to be the fundamental foundation for many of the foremost medieval bestiaries. The Latin translation of the Physiologus quoted below is believed to have been produced in roughly 700 A.D., and of course has certain Christian sensibilities that equate Fasticocalon (Aspidochelone) with the Devil, or at least a symbolic warning to be wary of the Devil’s tricks. Those pesky medieval Christians. Everything is a devil with them.

: Fastitocalon, 14th Century Dutch Woodcut

: Carving of Fastitocalon in Washington National Cathedral

: Hide in my shell? Inconceivable!

: Aspidochelon, 1663 A.D.

There is a monster in the sea which in Greek is called aspidochelone, in Latin “asp-turtle”; it is a great whale that has what appear to be beaches on its hide, like those from the sea-shore. This creature raises its back above the waves of the sea, so that sailors believe that it is just an island, so that when they see it, it appears to them to be a sandy beach such as is common along the sea-shore. Believing it to be an island, they beach their ship alongside it, and disembarking; they plant stakes and tie up the ships. Then, in order to cook a meal after this work, they make fires on the sand as if on land. But when the monster feels the heat of these fires, it immediately submerges into the water, and pulls the ship into the depths of the sea. Such is the fate of all who pay no heed to the Devil and his wiles, and place their hopes in him: tied to him by their works, they are submerged into the burning fire of Gehenna: for such is his guile (Physiologus Latinus Versio B, Chapter XXIV).

Believe it or not, the Physiologus was one of the most widely read texts of the Middle Ages, which of course is not saying much since literacy rates in medieval Europe are estimated to have been somewhere in the 5-10% range. Nonetheless, experts agree that it is rather uncharitable to pretend to be a nice place for some surfing and a cookout, when one is in fact a monstrous sea creature. Downright mean, when the rest of the turtle species is generously referred to as “charismatic megafauna” – code for cute animals that are useful in conservation marketing. The Old English translation of the Physiologus (thought to have been written in the 9-10^th Century by a Anglo-Saxon poet awesomely named Cynewulf, one of only twelve Anglos-Saxon poets known by name) tried to hip it up a bit, by writing in something approaching verse, but definitely expands upon our already expansive turtle.

This time I will with poetic art rehearse, by means of words and wit, a poem about a kind of fish, the great sea-monster which is often unwillingly met, terrible and cruel-hearted to seafarers, yea, to every man; this swimmer of the ocean-streams is known as the asp-turtle. His appearance is like that of a rough boulder, as if there were tossing by the shore a great ocean-reedbank begirt with sand-dunes, so that seamen imagine they are gazing upon an island, and moor their high-prowed ships with cables to that false land, make fast the ocean-coursers at the sea’s end, and, bold of heart, climb up. Now will I spur again my wit, and use Poetic skill to weave words into song, Telling of one among the race of fish, the great asp-turtle. Men who sail the sea Often unwillingly encounter him, Dread preyer on mankind. His name we know, The ocean-swimmer, Fastitocalon. Dun, like rough stone in color, as he floats He seems a heaving bank of reedy grass Along the shore, with rolling dunes behind, So that sea-wanderers deem their gaze has found An island. Boldly then their high-prowed ships they moor with cables to that shore, a land that is no land. Still floating on the waves, Their ocean-coursers curvet at the marge; on that island; the vessels stand by the beach, enringed by the flood. The weary-hearted sailors then encamp, dreaming not of peril. On the island they start a fire, kindle a mounting flame. The dispirited heroes, eager for repose, are flushed with joy. Now when the cunning plotter feels that the seamen are firmly established upon him, and have settled down to enjoy the weather, the guest of ocean sinks without warning into the salt wave with his prey, and makes for the bottom, thus whelming ships and men in that abode of death (Cook, 1921, p12-14).

Some scholars trace the origins of legends about the Fasticocalon to Pliny the Elder’s (23-79 A.D), Naturalis Historia directly citing his description of the Pristis (which they assume to be the Fasticocalon), but Pliny had very little to say on the subject, except that the Pristis is definitely not a whale, and is one of the biggest marine animals. People who spend a lot of time looking at medieval bestiaries, no doubt a diagnosable mental condition awaiting the next revision of psychology’s Diagnostics and Statistics Manual, love Pliny, as he pretty much started the whole natural history craze and combed through the works of his literary predecessors, a roll call of historically inclined writers that makes most Classical scholars wet themselves, including such notables as Varro, Livy, Euclid, Eratosthenes, Aristotle, Archimedes, Cato the Censor, Augustus, Valerian, Dionysius, Aristides, Xenophon, Herodotus, Alexander the Learned, Alexander the Great, Seneca, Virgil, Hippocrates, Lucilius. Basically, the Naturalis Historia is a 37 book set of cliff notes to the biological observations of the ancient world. So, the oldest bestiaries borrowed from Pliny, including the Physiologus, and the later bestiaries relied more heavily on the Physiologus, which resulted in both some fanciful elaborations based on very thin data, as well as the addition of information that turned up from later traditions, or ancient traditions that re-emerged. At any rate, Pliny only seems to have dedicated a line or two to the Pristis (aka the Fastitocalon).

The largest Creature in the Indian Sea is the Pristis and Balsena (Whale). In the Ocean of Gaul the largest is the Physeter, which lifteth itself up in the Manner of an immense Pillar, higher than the Sails of Ships; and spouteth forth almost a Flood. In the Ocean of Gades there is a Tree spreading abroad with mighty Arms, to such an extent that it is believed to be the Cause why that Arm of the Sea is never entered. There are to be seen also what from their Shape are called Wheels, distinguished by four Rays; with their two Eyes closing over the Naves on each Side (Pliny the Elder, Natural Histories, Book IX, Chapter iv).

It seems that somewhere along the way, confusion entered the picture, and it started to become unclear whether the Fastitocalon was a fish or a turtle. This is of course, inevitable when things are translated across multiple languages over several hundred years. I’m no zoologist, but I’m pretty certain I can distinguish between a turtle and a fish (I may of course be giving myself too much credit), but when the specimen is larger than your average bear, I would hope that either its fishlike or turtlelike characteristics would be proportionate, and thus more easily recognizable. This simply highlights the fact that the authors of most bestiaries were merrily plagiarizing or citing previous sources, and not giving verified eyewitness account of monsters. Hey, we give them props for being interested in our favorite subject, and when a text has been cribbed from ancient Greek, rewritten in Latin, copied in German, interpreted into Old English metrical verse, and then to something recognizable as modern English, things inevitably get lost in translation. Correspondences to culturally familiar stories and symbols are drawn, mistakes are made, and names are changed to protect the innocent. The earlier versions of the Fastitocalon do seem to emphasize its relative turtleness, whereas later scribes seemed to want to relate the monster to a gargantuan sea creature of which they were no doubt aware i.e. the whale.

The original Physiologus was most probably compiled in Egypt: the animals of the first collection are Egyptian. Later versions show, through words strangely corrupted, how the creatures themselves have been transformed: thus the whale by its name Fastitocalon, in the Anglo-Saxon poem, proves its identity with the original sea-turtle, the aspidochelone, whose broad back is mistaken for an island and turned to a convenient and successful allegory, though the whale, later, usurped the turtle’s claim (Ker, 1904, p94-95).

So, if you can’t call Pliny, who you gonna call? Accounts of something similar to the Fastitocalon seem to derive not from Pliny, but from two curious sources–The Babylonian Talmud and Arrian’s description of a report from Nearchus.

Albert S. Cook, who has written on the legend of the aspidochelone, or shield-turtle, has traced the germ of the Physiologus chapter to an account by Nearchus, admiral of Alexander the Great’s fleet. His experience with a disappearing island can be found in the Indica of Arrian (xxxi) and in Strabo’s Geography (xv.2.13). A new element enters the story in an apocryphal letter of Alexander to Aristotle which appears in the romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes. Here it is reported that the occupants of a boat drowned when the supposed island which they were approaching proved to be an animal and sank. Finally, the Physiologus tale is quite similar to that told in Hebrew by Rabbah bar Hana, a Babylonian rabbi of the late third century A.D. As for calling the sea monster a turtle, there are numerous and widely spread legends about the size and habits of turtles which might have led to the apparent confusion. No explanation has been given for the odor attracting fish, but it should be noted that the aspidochelone in the oldest Latin texts follows the chapter on the panther where a similar trait is attributed to that animal (McCulloch, 1962, p91-92).

The Babylonian Talmud contains a description that is fairly consistent with other tales of the Fastitocalon. This is fairly handy, since between the 3^rd and 5^th Century A.D., various parts of Mesopotamia (more or less modern day Iraq) were centers of Jewish learning, and produced the voluminous Talmudic commentary called the Babylonian Talmud.

Once, while on a ship, we came to what we assumed was a large island, since we saw on it sand and growing grass. We disembarked the ship, went on to the island, built a fire, and cooked our meal. Yet what we assumed to be an island was really a fish. When the fish felt the heat, he rolled over and we were plunged into the water. Had the ship not been nearby, we would have drowned. (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Basra 73b).

Then there is Arrian of Nicomedia (86-160 A.D.), an ethnically Greek, Roman historian, more celebrated for his military history than his natural history, but considered an authoritative source on Alexander the Great. Arrian had access to a lot of works that are now lost, including the accounts of Nearchus (360-300 B.C.), Admiral of Alexander’s fleet, who voyaged to India, and reported an encounter with a disappearing island that has frequently been equated with the Fastitocalon. While we would be hard pressed to identify either a turtle or whale in the Arrian’s description of Nearchus’ experience, certain elements resonate with later stories, suggesting perhaps that a measure of symbolic merging went on in subsequent interpretations.

While they were coasting along the territory of the Fish-eaters, they heard a rumour about an island,’ which lies some little distance from the mainland in this direction, about a hundred stades, but is uninhabited. The natives said that it was sacred to the Sun and was called Nosala, and that no human being ever of his own will put in there; but that anyone who ignorantly touched there at once disappeared. Nearchus, however, says that one of his galleys with an Egyptian crew was lost with all hands not far from this island, and that the pilots stoutly averred about it that they had touched ignorantly on the island and so had disappeared. But Nearchus sent a thirty-oar to sail round the island, with orders not to put in, but that the crew should shout loudly, while coasting round as near as they dared; and should call on the lost helmsman by name, or any of the crew whose name they knew. As no one answered, he tells us that he himself sailed up to the island, and compelled his unwilling crew to put in; then he went ashore and exploded this island fairy-tale. They heard also another current story about this island, that one of the Nereids dwelt there; but the name of this Nereid was not told. She showed much friendliness to any sailor who approached the island; but then turned him into a fish and threw him into the sea. The Sun then became irritated with the Nereid, and bade her leave the island; and she agreed to remove thence, but begged that the spell on her be removed; the Sun consented; and such human beings as she had turned into fishes he pitied, and turned them again from fishes into human beings, and hence arose the people called Fish-eaters, and so they descended to Alexander’s day. Nearchus shows that all this is mere legend; but I have no commendation for his pains and his scholarship; the stories are easy enough to demolish; and I regard it as tedious to relate these old tales and then prove them all false (Indica, Arrian, Chapter XXXI).

Later descriptions call Fastitocalon by the name Jasconicus and relate it directly to other myths of island sized critters like the hafgufa, kraken, and the Midgard-worm. The account of a monster masquerading as an island is found in the tales about the voyages of Saint Brendan of Clonfert or Bréanainn of Clonfert (484 -577 A.D.), an Irish monk, recorded in tale appropriately called The Voyage of Saint Brendan (over 100 manuscripts of the story have been found throughout Europe, the earliest dating to about 900 A.D.).

We have here a combination of two mythical features. One is the great fish of the “Navigatio Brandani,” on which they land and make a fire to cook lamb’s flesh, when the fish begins to move, and the brethren rush to the ship, into which they are taken by Brandan, while the island disappears and they can still see the fire they have made two leagues away. Brandan told them that this was the largest of all the fish in the sea; it always tries to reach its tail with its head (like the Midgard-worm) and its name is Jasconicus. The same myth is referred to in an Anglo-Saxon poem [Codex Exoniensis, ed. Benj. Thorpe, London, 1842] on the great whale Fastitocalon, where ships cast anchor and the sailors go ashore and make fires, upon which the whale dives down with ship and crew. The idea of such a fish resembling an island is also found in the northern myth of the hafgufa [cf. the "King's Mirror"], or krake, and is doubtless derived from the East. Tales of landing on an apparent island which suddenly turns out to be a fish are found in Sindbad’s first voyage, in Qazwini (where the fish is an enormous turtle), and even in Pseudo-Callisthenes in the second century (Nansen, 1911, p234).

Turtles are not generally known for aggression. I mean, there are those nasty little snapping turtles, but turtle avoidance protocols are easy to follow. Step slowly to the side. You don’t need to hurry. This has to bother turtles a little bit. Nobody is afraid of them. Consequently, I have a sneaking suspicion that these legends have been invented by turtles or their representatives. Do not assume I am dismissing the existence of the Fastitocalon out of hand, as he seems to have a fairly robust presence in the monstrous literature, rather it seems prudent to consider Alex Haley’s observation that, ““Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help”.

References

Arrian. Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander And Indica. London: G. Bell & sons, 1893. Cook, Albert S. 1853-1927, James Hall Pitman, and Cynewulf. The Old English Physiologus. New Haven: Yale university press, 1921. Ker, W. P. 1855-1923. The Dark Ages. London: Blackwood, 1904. McCulloch, Florence. Mediaeval Latin And French Bestiaries. [Rev. ed.] Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962. Nansen, Fridtjof, 1861-1930. In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration In Early Times. New York: Frederick A. Stokes company, 1911.

A Foray into Demon Linguistics: What Language Do Devils File Their TPS Reports In?

08 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Anthropology, Demons, Gods, Harbingers, Monsters, Mythological Races, Mythology, Occult, Spirits, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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angel, Aramaic, Bishop Usher, Catholic, Claves Angelicae, Damned, Devil, Edward Kelley, english, Enoch, Enochian, exorcism, exorcist, glossalia, Heavens Gate, Indonesian, Jesus, John Dee, Korowai, Lake of Fire, Latin, Letters From the Earth, Liber Loagaeth, linguistics, magic, Mark Twain, medium, Millennium, natural language, New Guinea, Phoenician, ritual, Roman, scrying, speaking in tongues, TPS Report, University of Maryland

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to Women, French to Men, German to my Horse, and Enochian to My Demons
—misattributed to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, demonic attribution addition by Yours Truly.

The Coffee Break of the Beast

Okay. Let’s assume you’re a good ol’ Christian demon. According to Usher’s calculations, you’ve been around for 7000 years, tops (as of 2013 A.D.). One has to assume that demoniacal things get together every once in a while to discuss who has the best temptation to condemned soul ratio and pass along tips on the most efficient way to get some chump eternally damned. I mean, sometimes you have to blow off a little steam, sipping a mojito under an umbrella on the shore by the Lake of Fire. If Hell is a bureaucracy, then they have to have some sort of human resources protocols. All work and no play, after all. Incidentally, a great theatrical representation of this can be found on the TV Show Millennium (Season 2, Episode 21, “Somehow, Satan Got Behind me”), where four demons meet at a doughnut shop after a long night of messing with humans, and swap war stories. If you never see any other episode of Millennium, this one stands alone as pure genius. It is one of the few episodes where a monster is actually seen—in the rest of the series the monsters are generally implied, but never actually pass into the field of vision. And in this vein, speaking of the classics, if you want to imagine how demons regard us, pick up a copy of Mark Twain’s Letters From the Earth, where a baffled Satan incredulously describes the beliefs and behavior of mankind for friends at home. I assume it’s a pretty fair and balanced representation. You know what? Screw that, Twain’s been dead for a while. Inexplicably, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland (incidentally my undergraduate alma mater. Go Terps! Who the hell chooses a turtle as their mascot?) posted a full text copy at http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/ltrs-from-earth.pdf. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

: Enochian Alphabet

: Edward Kelley

: Table from the Dee and Kelley’s Liber Loagaeth

: Dr. John Dee

Back to the matter at hand. Demons. And what they speak when they aren’t busy confusing exorcists. At some point, even a demon is off the clock. The question that occurred to me lately (which may tell you a little something about my own particular pathologies, and the fact that I tangentially work in computational linguistics) is when demons chat amongst themselves, what language do they speak? Luckily, I’ve committed to this bizarre hobby that allows me to pursue such inquiries, albeit for no pay, and the vague sense of accomplishment that comes from exposing the weirdness of the human race to the light of day. It helps if you drink. Latin is too painfully obvious, and ethnocentric, to say the least. Who speaks Latin, after all? Dead Romans and Catholic priests. While I’m sure the Roman Empire as well as the Catholic Church sent a fair share of unrepentant degenerates straight to Hell, there is no reason to assume that the lingua franca of the infernal set is Latin, unless of course the Catholic Church has been theologically accurate all along, as opposed to oh, every other religion that has ever existed. What are the odds? With humanity’s luck it will turn out that Heaven’s Gate had it right. Personally, I keep a pair of black high-tops around just in case. Aramaic? Well, supposedly Jesus had a few conversations with demons, but rumor has it the devilish crowd is multilingual when it comes to messing with humans. Also, it assumes a certain Middle Eastern flavor to demonology that just doesn’t sound reasonable, given the ubiquity of demons in mythology. Aramaic wasn’t even particularly original, with even its alphabet largely being based on Phoenician. French has been suggested, but we’ll chalk that one up to cultural bias. The Korowai of Papua New Guinea consider Indonesian to be a “demonic language”, but that’s a bit to local to extrapolate to the demon population in general. Still the question remains. What language do demons file their TPS reports in?

Occult scholars appear to come down on the side of a language called Enochian (sometimes referred to as Angelical, Celestial Language, or Adamical i.e. the language spoken by Adam in the Garden of Eden). Enochian, thus named because according to Welsh mathematician and occultist John Dee (1527-1608 A.D.), who claimed the language of the angels was revealed to him during a late night of scrying (staring into some sort of translucent material until you get groovy) and general loopiness with his spirit medium buddy Edward Kelley (1555-1597 A.D.), got word from on high that the Biblical patriarch Enoch was the last living man who could understand the language of the angels. Dee never called it Enochian himself, but his contemporary magicians, who in the 16^th Century England were pretty much indistinguishable from scientists thought it sounded catchy. Those sourpuss, modern comparative linguists who have taken a look at Enochian call it a “constructed” language, basically mimicking a mix of ancient languages with grammar derived primarily from English. Yes, Mr. Esoterx, I hear you saying, but that’s what angels speak, and we’re talking about demons. Work with me here, Gomer. Angels are thought to have been around pretty much forever. Demons are generally thought of in the Abrahamic tradition and its direct precursors as some form of fallen angels. So, bam, you’re in the Pit, having just gotten the mother of all smackdowns from the big guy. You stand up, look around and say…well, probably a witty catch phrase like, “Strange things are afoot at the Cricle-K” if Milton is to be believed, but you probably said it Enochian, because that was the language you were speaking when you got your hat handed to you at the Pearly Gates. This is actually a fairly amusing idea, that is, that angels and demons share a common language.

First, a little about Enochian. Its consist of 21 letters received from on high (take that as you will), we are told, on exactly March 26, 1583 by Edward Kelley, followed by a book in Enochian consisting of ninety-eight 49 X 49 character tables (magic squares for those of you who hadn’t figured that out already, and c’mon, how do you expect to get anywhere without a little sympathetic magic?), that together comprised what was called the Liber Loagaeth (“Book of Speech from God”). Rudely, the angels didn’t bother to translate the Enochian into plain English. So you end up with 98 texts and an alphabet, none of which mean anything. A year later and apparently in order to correct this celestial oversight, angels reportedly sent Kelley an additional forty-eight 49 X 49 magic squares, which Dee called the Claves Angelicae. Luckily, our winged friends were kind enough to provide English translations. Turns out it was actually titled “To Serve Man”. Just kidding. Unfortunately, there were a lot of discrepancies between the Enochian in the Liber Loagaeth and Claves Angelicae, generously referred to as “stylistic differences”, so a basic Enochian vocabulary was possible, but there are thousands of Enochian words in Dee’s diaries as well as the Liber Loagaeth that we have no clear idea what the intended meaning was. Either that or the dialect spoken in West Heaven differs from that of East Heaven. You just can’t have a good eternal mystery without, well, a little mystery. A particularly salient point brought up by those pesky linguists, other than the fact that Enochian pretty much seems to use English syntax despite its funky characters, is that it doesn’t seem to share phonetic features of natural languages (and when a linguist says that, they’re pretty much saying it was “synthesized” i.e. “made up”), and more interestingly, that it seems to share a lot of features with glossolalia, also called “speaking in tongues”. Lots of magical societies involved in Western Occultism, have since decided that Enochian is the true language of ritual magic.

It’s never been clear to me why angels would share this language with us. It’s a little like a lawyer explaining what the Latin in the contract means. Not likely to happen, and certainly not in their interest. Far be it from me to accuse Dee and Kelley of charlatanism, since ultimately they were just trying to answer the same question I am – if the divine menagerie speaks, what language is it in? I just don’t have the attention span to stare into a bowl of water until the angels talk to me. The only voice I hear keeps telling me “Get a horse”, and I’m pretty sure there are no theological implications behind that. I don’t even really have the patience for cooking anything in the microwave that takes longer than three minutes, which puts severe limitations on the career as a 16^th Century English wizard that I’ve always thought would make a good Plan B. I find the answer that Demons speak Enochian when talking amongst themselves strangely unsatisfying. I think I’ll fall back on French.

References
Dee, John, 1527-1608. A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee … And Some Spirits: Tending, Had it Succeeded, to a General Alteration of Most States And Kingdomes In the World … As Also the Letters of Sundry Great Men And Princes … to the Said D. Dee … Out of the Original Copy Written With Dr. Dee’s Own Hand, Kept In the Library of Sir Tho. Cotton, Kt. Baronet. Glasgow: Antonine Pub. Co. , 1974.

The Theriomorphic Arabian Hâmah: An Angry Bird Before it Was Cool

05 Sunday May 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Animals, Anthropology, Demons, Ghosts, Gods, Harbingers, Monsters, Mythological Races, Mythology, Occult, Spirits, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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afterlife, Angry Birds, Assyria, Babylon, birds, Blood, Book of the Dead, Celtic, deceased, Egypt, Finno-Ugaric, Greek, Hadith, Hameh, Hâmah.Arab, Henry Muir, Innana, Ishtar, Iskoonee, Islam, judgment, Koran, Kurt Cobain, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, metempsychosis, Moore's Law, Muhammed, Murder, owl, Phoenix, polytheism, revenge, Ruh ateşi söndü, Semitic, Slav, Soul, Sumeria, The Crow, Vampire, vengeance

And ere the repeated word
From the boughs again was heard,
Spake he, in calm,—”O hameh-bird,
“Well I know thy voice: I heed;
So would I, though girdling steed
Of the dauntless Nejdee breed;
“So would I, though borne serene,
Where the air is cool and clean,
A roc’s mighty wings between.
“Sound no more thy ‘Iskoonee’
Thou shalt have thy drink of me—
Wait but till the stars I see.”
Zafir slew himself that night
With his sword of flaming light,
And the hameh-bird took flight.
–Excerpt from poem “Hameh” by Henry D. Muir

Grunge-Rock God Kurt Cobain once philosophized, “Birds…scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth. They know the truth. Screaming bloody murder all over the world in our ears, but sadly we don’t speak bird.” Although I’m pretty sure he was not referencing pre-Islamic Arabian mythology, he gives a fairly accurate description of the Hâmah (sometimes “Hameh”), a murdered soul returned in the form of a bird to torment his murder until death and drink his blood.

A bird in the hand…or homicidal birds in a bush?

Some believed a metempsychosis, and that of the blood near the dead person’s brain, was formed a bird named Hameh, which once in a hundred years visited the sepulchre: though others say that this bird is animated by the soul of him that is unjustly slain, and continually cries ” Iskoonee! Iskoonee!” (that is, Give ye me to drink! give ye me to drink!), meaning, of the murderer’s blood, till his death be revenged; and then it flies away (Lane, 1843, p35).

Islam took hold in the Arabian Peninsula in roughly 630 A.D., but until that time, a robust Arabian polytheism dominated, which like many other Ancient Semitic religions, arose from murky origins in Mesopotamian mythology (much the same as proto-Judaism and proto-Christianity, as well as the lion’s share of ancient mythology in the Near East and North Africa). The Sumerian story of the fertility god Ishtar’s descent into the Lower World (the afterlife) suggests the idea that the souls of the dead lead a somewhat gloomy existence in the underworld as birds or bird-like creatures.

To the land of no return, the land of darkness,
Ishtar, the daughter of Sin directed her thought,
Directed her thought, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin,
To the house of shadows, the dwelling, of Irkalla,
To the house without exit for him who enters therein,
To the road, whence there is no turning,
To the house without light for him who enters therein,
The place where dust is their nourishment, clay their food.’
They have no light, in darkness they dwell.
Clothed like birds, with wings as garments,
Over door and bolt, dust has gathered.
Ishtar on arriving at the gate of the land of no return,
To the gatekeeper thus addressed herself.
(Jastrow, 1915, p453-454. Excerpt from Cuneiform Texts, XV, Pl.45-48)

This no doubt influenced later Arabian polytheism and even carries over into later Islamic traditions talking about all the souls of the martyred dead remaining peacefully in the form of birds until the Judgment Day, as mentioned in the Hadith (recorded sayings of the prophet Muhammad), “The souls, of the martyrs live in the bodies of green birds who have their nests in chandeliers hung from the throne of the Almighty. They eat the fruits of Paradise from wherever they like and then nestle in these chandeliers. Once their Lord cast a glance at them and said: Do ye want anything? They said: What more shall we desire? We eat the fruit of Paradise from wherever we like. Their Lord asked them the same question thrice. When they saw that they will continue to be asked and not left (without answering the question). they said: O Lord, we wish that Thou mayest return our souls to our bodies so that we may be slain in Thy way once again. When He (Allah) saw that they had no need, they were left (to their joy in heaven)” (Hadith, from ‘The Book on Government (Kitab Al-Imara)’ of Sahih Muslim). This is especially puzzling since Mohammed specifically calls out the Hâmah, involving the folk belief that the bones of deceased souls could return as predatory birds, as something to be rejected by Muslims. Luckily, nobody’s theology requires Aristotelian logic as a prerequisite. Hence, even today we have the Turkish euphemism for death, Ruh ateşi söndü (“His soul bird has flown away”). The cross-cultural ubiquity of the depiction of the human soul as a bird is astonishingly consistent. Greeks, Celts, Slavs, and Finno-Ugric peoples thought the dead could reappear as birds and that birds were connected with carrying away souls. Hindu mythology symbolizes the soul as a bird. “One of the most widely-known symbolisms of birds is the representation of the soul. The oldest testimony of the belief in the bird-souls is, undoubtedly, in the myth of the Phoenix, the purple bird of fire; that is, made of living strength. In the frescoes of ancient Egypt we see how a bird with the head of a man or woman symbolizes the soul of the deceased or a god who visits the Earth. The conception of the bird-soul and, therefore, the identification of death with a bird are already attested to in the religions of the archaic Middle East. The Book of the Dead describes death as a falcon ascending in flight and in Mesopotamia the deceased are represented in the form of birds. But also in the Christian system of symbols we see how at the moment of death the soul leaves in the form of a bird” (Roque, 2010, p99).

But the Hâmah is more than a happy little bird, flapping a soul away to heaven. The Hâmah is a tremendously angry bird, bent on bloodthirsty revenge and cries for vengeance due to the unnatural death of his mortal shell. I do not believe that they have an App for that. Maybe they do, or will in 18 months—only death, taxes, and Moore’s law appear to be inevitable.

Another curious belief of the Arabs is in the existence of a bird called the Hameh. This uncomfortable creation of the Arab fancy is said to spring from the blood of a murdered man. Its weird cry is continuously “Iskoonee,” a word signifying “give me to drink,” and it rests not, day nor night, till its thirst is quenched in the murderer’s blood. When the death of the victim is avenged it flies away to some place left altogether indefinite in the Eastern legend, but probably it wends its way to the spirit-land with the welcome news that the victim’s blood no longer cries in vain for vengeance. To an Arab already suffering from an evil conscience the belief in the Hameh must be a terrible one, as he hears in fancy the troubled air filled with the wailing cry and fierce demand for vengeance, and knows that, day or night, the haunting sound will never leave his ears until the desert feud be avenged and his own life blood be poured out like water upon the burning sand (Hulme, 1886, p141-142).

I don’t know about you, but if I happen to hear the cry of “Iskoonee”, my intention is to get the heck out of the way since it signifies one aggressively pissed off spectral avian out for blood. The hâmah has often been associated with the owl, albeit one incredibly vicious and blood-drinking owl with a serious grudge.

Before Islam, Arabs believed that the predatory bird hâmah or the owl had a very bad omen. If such a bird dies near someone’s house, the house’s owner should expect that one of the residents will die. In addition, Arabs believed that the bones of the deceased or their souls would turn later into predatory birds as one way of incarnation; as a result, the Prophet emphasized the falsity of the mythical basis of such a belief…Until this day, the owl is viewed as a bad omen by many Arabs. In addition, the hâmah was believed to be a worm leaving a man’s skull if he was killed without being avenged. It would circle around the man’s tomb saying: ‘water me’, asking for vengeance. Jews in Arabia used to think that the hâmah would circle round a man’s tomb for seven days before departing (Al-Rawi, 2009, p59)

You will no doubt recognize the same motif used in movie The Crow. Guy is murdered. Bird ushers his soul back and forth from the afterlife to seek revenge for the death of his true love (not to mention himself). A very Hollywood Hâmah. Even Shakespeare got in on the action when he had Hamlet utter the words, “The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge”. Apparently, vengeance is a poultry dish best served cold, and a popular waiter is the monster. The Hâmah is the horrific equivalent of take-out, and highlights our need for swift and certain retribution for sins here on Earth, regardless of what our religions suggest to us about turning the other cheek, or letting our Gods sort it out at some unspecified day of judgment in the future. Then again, that’s probably what the roots of law and religion are all about in the first place. As Victorian horror novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon observed, “That he will haunt the footsteps of his enemy after death is the one revenge which a dying man can promise himself; and if men had power thus to avenge themselves the earth would be peopled with phantoms”. We really are an insufferably nasty little species. For some reason, I feel like chicken for dinner.

References
Al-Rawi, Ahmed. “The Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture”. Cultural Analysis 8. Univeristy of California, 2009, p45-69.
Hulme, F. Edward 1841-1909. Myth-land. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1886.
Jastrow, Morris, 1861-1921. The Civilization of Babylonia And Assyria: Its Remains, Language, History, Religion, Commerce, Law, Art, And Literature. Philadelphia: Lippincott company, 1915.
Lane, Edward William, 1801-1876, and George Sale. Selections From the Ḳur-án: Commonly Called, In England, the Koran; With an Interwoven Commentary. London: J. Madden, 1843.
Muir, Henry Dupee 1870-. Songs and Other Fancies. Chicago, 1901.
Roque, Maria Angels. “Birds: Metaphor of the Soul”, Quaderns de la Mediterrània 12. European Institute of the Mediteranian: IEMED, 2010, p96-1008.

The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: A Netherworld between Food Groups

04 Saturday May 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Animals, Anthropology, Monsters, Mythological Races, Mythology, Occult, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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Adnei Ha-sadeh, Agnus scythicus, agriculture, Barometz, Bestiary, Bigfoot, Borges, Borometz, categorization, Chia Pet, Cotton, cryptozoology, Demetrius Danielovich, Faduah, farming, Folklore, Foucault, Friar Odoric, Han Dynasty, Herodotus, Hybrid, India, Jan de Langhe, John Mandeville, Kilayim, Medieval, Muppet, Paula Deen, Planta Tartarica Barometz, Scythian Lamb, Sigismund von Herberstein, Tang Dynasty, Tartary, taxonomy, travel, tree-lamb, Vegetable Lamb, watersheep, Yeduah, zoophyte

“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty” –Abraham Lincoln

All monsters are in some sense a categorical error, that is they represent a gaping chasm on our classification of things, and since as a species we spend a lot of time pretending to have a good grasp on the fundamentals of reality (I make no such claims, nobody would believe me anyway), violations of our sacred ontologies are cognitively dissonant (or for those who hate technical jargon, “somewhat disturbing”). Philosopher Michel Foucault, paraphrasing Borges, mentions “a certain Chinese encyclopedia in which it is written that animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camel hair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that by means of fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that” (Foucault, 1970, pXV). When faced with a critter that is starkly impossible in the system of thought currently in vogue, we call it a monster (alternatively we identify it as supernatural, paranormal, occult, anomalous, or perhaps just plain weird). Bigfoot doesn’t fit comfortably in our current model of primate evolution, therefore we invent sciences like cryptozoology to keep track of him, since obviously sightings of a bipedal ape wandering the Pacific Northwest and unfashionably not wearing flannel or working for Microsoft, are not something plain old zoology wants to account for. Such considerations lead us to the Vegetable Lamb, who is neither a Muppet gone bad, nor a strange appetizer at a hip fusion restaurant, rather a hybrid monstrosity that has been the subject of much discussion among classical, medieval, and modern scholars.

: aka Sir John Mandeville’s depiction of the Vegetable Lamb, 14th Century

: Illustration from Henry Lee’s 1887 “Vegetable Lamb of Tartary”

: This is Cotton. Hard to mistake for a Vegetable Lamb.

: Oceans of sheep. Hard to say if they are rooted.

Greek Historian Herodotus (484-425 B.C.) makes mention of a plant that produces wool in India somewhere around 442 B.C., commenting “They possess likewise a kind of plant, which instead of fruit, produces wool of a finer and better quality than that of sheep: of this the natives make their clothes” (Herodotus, Histories, Book 3, Chapter CVI). Terminally boring historians say he was obviously talking about cotton, but we need not feel burdened by the necessity of sober reality, often neither especially sober, nor overtly real. The Mishnah Kil’ayim section of the Jerusalem Talmud (a collection of Rabbinic commentaries on Jewish oral traditions dating from the 2^nd Century A.D.) in attempts to practically expand on agricultural prohibitions mentioned in Leviticus and Deuteronomy and makes an odd foray into cryptozoology when it discusses the Adnei Ha-sadeh (or Faduah, with a vague, unspecific reference to a slightly more animalistic Yeduah). A number of luminaries have jumped on the description of the Adnei Ha-sadeh as indicative of knowledge of the vegetable lamb, but this is another example of wishful thinking and poor research, since the Adnei Ha-sadeh is clearly described as a human-plant, or rather a humanoid that grows rooted to the ground like a plant, and the Mishnah Kil’ayim concludes the Adnei Ha-sadeh should be classified as a “beast” rather than a plant. Despite being somewhat creepy, this is clearly not a vegetable lamb. The shared characteristics seem to be that it is a creature that grows from the ground like a plant, stays attached to the plant by some kind of umbilical cord, harvests food around the plant (and in some stories aggressively snatching people who get too close), and the beastie dies upon being severed from its stem. I’m not some kind of wacked out monster purist that demands direct correspondence between folktales, but I just can’t wrap my head around this one. And I’m no stranger to logical leaps (I use them all the time to justify my own bizarre behavior) and I’ve wrapped my head around some pretty dubious connections, but this oft reproduced trope makes no sense to me unless a biblical citation lends credence in your book. At any rate, since I spend a lot of time doing research and trying to track down original sources, I get particularly offended when someone latches on to an idea, and it is reproduced as gospel across the internet. Although, if we were to attempt classification of the vegetable lamb in the tradition of the Jerusalem Talmud, we would have to conclusively land on the side of “beast”. The jury is out on whether it is kosher or not. This is of course, neither here nor there. Well, mostly there, but the first clear report of the vegetable lamb comes to us from Medieval bestiaries and reports of European travelers in Central Asia. Interestingly, the Chinese appear to have independently recorded something strikingly similar that they referred to as “The Watersheep”. As a woman named Alice who I truly admire once said, “curiouser and curiouser.”

The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, also referred to as the Borametz, the Scythian Lamb, Agnus scythicus, or Planta Tartarica Barometz, was described most basically as a plant that bore sheep as fruit, the little lambs remaining connected by an umbilical cord to the plant, grazing the land nearby until there was nothing left to graze, and then both lamb and plant died, presumably from starvation in a peculiarly tragic life cycle. One can hope this is truly just an extended metaphor for cotton, since otherwise the universe seems relatively cruel, and decidedly unconcerned with maintaining reasonable species boundaries. But along come puzzling documents from Han Dynasty (5^th Century A.D.) China where reference is made to the “down of the watersheep”, and then more robust descriptions of the watersheep critter itself in the Tang Dynasty (10^th Century A.D.). The Tang Dynasty depiction is pretty straightforward, translated by Gustaaf Schlegel.

There are lambs which grow in the ground. The natives wait till they are about to sprout, and then build a wall to enclose them in order to prevent beasts coming from outside devouring them. Now their navels are connected with the earth, and if these are cut, they will die. But the people (i.e. the shepherds) don their cuirasses, and gallop about on horseback, beating (all the while) on drums, in order to frighten them. The lambs then get afraid and, with a shriek, they rend their navels, and are then driven into the waterpasturages (Schlegel, 1892, p23).

Apparently, something about the vegetable lamb appealed to the authors of medieval bestiaries, as the vegetable lamb seems to have been an important figure in them.

Amongst the curious myths of the Middle Ages none were more extravagant and persistent than that of the “Vegetable Lamb of Tartary,” known also as the “Scythian Lamb,” and the “Borametz,” or “Barometz,” the latter title being derived from a Tartar word signifying” a lamb. This “lamb” was described as being at the same time both a true animal and a living plant. According to some writers this composite “plant-animal” was the fruit of a tree which sprang from a seed like that of a melon, or gourd; and when the fruit or seed-pod of this tree was fully ripe it burst open and disclosed to view within it a little lamb, perfect in form, and in every way resembling an ordinary lamb naturally born. This remarkable tree was supposed to grow in the territory of “the Tartars of the East,” formerly called “Scythia”; and it was said that from the fleeces of these “tree-lambs,” which were of surpassing whiteness, the natives of the country where they were found wove “materials for their garments and headdress.” In the course of time another version of the story was circulated, in which the lamb was not described as being the fruit of a tree, but as being a living lamb attached by its navel to a short stem rooted in the earth. The stem, or stalk, on which the lamb was thus suspended above the ground was sufficiently flexible to allow the animal to bend downward, and browze on the herbage within its reach. When all the grass within the length of its tether had been consumed the stem withered and the lamb died. This plant-lamb was reported to have bones, blood, and delicate flesh, and to be a favourite food of wolves, though no other carnivorous animal would attack it (Lee, 1887, p1-2).

The 14^th Century popularization of the vegetable lamb is credited to Sir John Mandeville, who‘s Travels of Sir John Mandeville was on Oprah’s book list somewhere around 1357-1371 A.D, and is itself a bit of an oddity. First of all, supposed English Knight John Mandeville didn’t exist. The book is actually believed to have been written by a Flemish Benedictine monk and compiler of travelogues named Jan de Langhe and details the travels of someone through the Middle East, Central Asia, and India—whether it is a compilation of the observations of others is subject to debate. The Travels gives us an interesting account of our elusive ovine quarry. The original was written in Anglo-Norman French, but we have plenty of translations. Note that the description is very nearly the same as Herodotus.

Wherefore I say you, in passing by the land of Cathay toward the high Ind and toward Bacharia, men pass by a kingdom that men clepe Caldilhe, that is a full fair country. And there groweth a manner of fruit, as though it were gourds. And when they be ripe, men cut them a-two, and men ﬁnd within a little beast, in ﬂesh, in bone, and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool. And men eat both the fruit and the beast. And that is a great marvel. Of that fruit I have eaten, although it were wonderful, but that I know well that God is marvellous in his works (Mandeville, 1900, p174).

It is thought that the account provided by the non-existent Sir John Mandeville is almost entirely cribbed (and garbled) from the 1330 A.D. work of (the real) Franciscan Friar (and later Saint) Odoric of Pordenone, who travelled extensively in India. Of course, it turns out that The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary is thus named due to confusion about where Tartary was geographically.

Thus arose the fable of a vegetable lamb, or zoophyte, an animal growing on a tree. The name of this fabulous creature finally became fixed as the Scythian lamb, through confusion of Scythia with Indo-Scythia; and subsequently also as the Tartary lamb, both because “Tartary” was loosely used to denote Scythia, and also because nomadic Tartar merchants brought with them in their caravans, together with the fleece of Tartary sheep and goats, “the fine white wool that grew on trees” in India (Scherer, 1916, p8).

Baron Sigismund von Herberstein (1486-1566 A.D.) was a diplomat for the Holy Roman Empire, particularly when it came to Russian affairs, in his major work Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (“Notes on Muscovite Affairs”), generally a pretty reasonable guy with deep knowledge of Slavic languages (that being important since he could question witnesses directly), claimed to have discussed the vegetable lamb with many creditable sources who suggested it was common to an area in the region of the Caspian Sea.

In the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, between the rivers Volga and Jaick, formerly dwelt the kings of the Zavolha, certain Tartars, in whose country is found a wonderful and almost incredible curiosity, of which Demetrius Danielovich, a person in high authority, gave me the following account; namely, that his father, who was once sent on an embassy by the Duke of Muscovy to the Tartar king of the country referred to, whilst he was there, saw and remarked, amongst other things, a certain seed like that of a melon, but rather rounder and longer, from which, when it was set in the earth, grew a plant resembling a lamb, and attaining to a height of about two and a half feet, and which was called in the language of the country ‘Borametz,’ or ‘the little Lamb.’ It had a head, eyes, ears, and all other parts of the body, as a newly-born lamb. He also stated that it had an exceedingly soft wool, which was frequently used for the manufacturing of head-coverings. Many persons also affirmed to me that they had seen this wool. Further, he told me that this plant, if plant it should be called, had blood, but not true flesh: that, in place of flesh, it had a substance similar to the flesh of the crab, and that its hoofs were not horny, like those of a lamb, but of hairs brought together into the form of the divided hoof of a living lamb. It was rooted by the navel in the middle of the belly, and devoured the surrounding herbage and grass, and lived as long as that lasted; but when there was no more within its reach the stem withered, and the lamb died. It was of so excellent a flavour that it was the favourite food of wolves and other rapacious animals (Herbertein’s Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii ,1549).

Now, most historians are wet blankets for those of us curious about monsters. The standard conclusion is that obviously the description of the vegetable lamb is a fabulous attempt to depict cotton plants. Cotton has been used in India and Central America for several thousand years, but it was introduced to Europe during the 8^th Century A.D. conquest of Spain and Sicily by the Moors. Prior to that, we were all about sheep’s wool in the West. I don’t mean to suggest that assuming the vegetable lamb actually refers to a cotton plant is any more unreasonable than assuming a half-sheep, half plant exists somewhere in Central Asia. Okay, actually, I do mean to suggest that. Here’s why. Medieval Europe certainly was a superstitious place, but the vast majority of folks were involved in some kind of agriculture, requiring rather intimate knowledge of plants. That doesn’t mean that your average Medieval peasant, when presented with an exotic plant wouldn’t say, “hey, that’s pretty weird, and maybe from the Devil”, but odds are he would be fairly certain it was a plant, and that there were no zoophytes wandering about attached to it by an umbilical cord. Of course, the guys who wrote the travel guides and botany textbooks in the Middle Ages, were likely a little more educated, and would be less inclined to say, misidentify a cotton plant as a monstrosity, particularly if they thought they could make some money off it. Also, there is the odd correspondence with the Chinese descriptions of “the watersheep”. The problem with examining folklore is that it is rarely acceptable to assume our forbearers (1) had some idea what they were talking about, and (2) weren’t complete and utter idiots. Sure, they didn’t bathe as much, and would burn an iPhone at the stake, but that doesn’t make them stupid, just unaware of certain categories of things. The average peasant across time, history, and cultures knew far more than the average modern human does about plants and animals. Maybe not the specifics, but when eating depends on understanding your livestock and crops, a certain amount of common sense goes a long way. I’ve inadvertently murdered far too many houseplants to believe differently. Folklorists seem to like to find real correspondences for mythical critters. I guess it validates their dissertations or something. Plus, it’s hard to get tenure if you work suggests the world is an enchanted place with mysteries that defy explanation. I mean, what we expect students to pay tuition for defied explanations? Identifying the monstrous critters lurking around the edge of civilization as misidentifications of things we do know how to categorize, is the folklorist behaving just like an anthropologist faced with an unidentifiable tool – if it doesn’t make sense to modern people, it must have been a religious object. I prefer to remain suspicious, and even more so when Celebrity chef Paula Deen, not frequently credited with occult knowledge of monsters, mentioned, “Down South, even our vegetables have some pig hidden somewhere in it. A vegetable isn’t a vegetable without a little ham hock.” And I’ll never look at a Chia Pet the same way again.

References
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1970.
Herberstein, Sigmund, Freiherr von, 1486-1566. Notes Upon Russia: Being a Translation of the Earliest Account of That Country, Entitled Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii. London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1851
Herodotus. Histories. London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley translation, 1830.
Lee, Henry, 1826-1888. The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: a Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant. To Which Is Added a Sketch of the History of Cotton And the Cotton Trade. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1887.
Mandeville, John, Sir. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville: the Version of the Cotton Manuscript In Modern Spelling With Three Narratives In Illustration of It. London: Macmillan, 1900.
Scherer, James Augustin Brown, 1870-1944. Cotton As a World Power: a Study In the Economic Interpretation of History. New York: Frederick A. Stokes company, 1916.
Schlegel, Gustaaf, 1840-1903. The Shui-yang Or Watersheep In Chinese Accounts From Western Asia, And the Agnus Scythicus Or Vegetable Lamb of the European Travellers. Leiden, 1892.

The Nightmarish Nuckelavee: A Homicidal Orkney Unseelie

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Animals, Anthropology, Demons, Faeries, Ghosts, Harbingers, Monsters, Mythology, Occult, Sea Serpents, Spirits, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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Bill O'Reilly, Celtic, Denmark, Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti, Hamish Blair, Kelp, Kelpie, Knoggelvi, Nokk, Norse, Norway, Nuckalavee, Nuckelavee, Nykur, Orcadian, Orkney, Picts, Scotland, Seaweed, Sir George Douglas, Tammas Taylor, Teutonic, Unseelie, Vikings, Water Horse

Best bloody place is bloody bed,
With bloody ice on bloody head,
You might as well be bloody dead,
In bloody Orkney.
–Captain Hamish Blair, Royal Navy (WW II)

The Orkneys are archipelago of 70 islands north of northernmost mainland Scotland, occupied by humans for some 8500 years, first by Mesolithic and Paleolithic tribes, followed by Picts, used as a base for Viking raids on Scotland and Norway, annexed and settled by Norway in 875 A.D., and turned over to Scotland in 1472 A.D. after a default on a dowry payment by Denmark. Despite being pretty far north (enough to see the Aurora Borealis and experience “nightless summers”), the climate is fairly temperate, due to the warming effects of the Gulf Stream. Natives of the Orkney Islands (called Orcadians) are known to be a fairly agreeable bunch of folks. This makes it especially puzzling that they managed to come up with what is considered one of the most horrific representatives of the faerie species, with none of the ambivalent, friendly, or prankish attitudes towards humans common among other fairies. The Orkney Nuckelavee just plain hates us and wants us dead, by hook or by crook. The Nuckelavee is a hybrid monstrosity, combining the traditional Celtic “water horse” (a horse with fins for some of its legs) with a human torso grafted onto its back, seemingly not because it is two creatures, but because it makes it that much more horrible, all in one huge, pulsating, skinless mass of unbridled animosity towards humans. Pretty much Bill O’Reilly.

Nuckelavee (by Kurt Komoda / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND)

Nuckelavee—Without speculating on the derivation of this name, which will be pretty obvious to those acquainted with northern mythology, it may be said that in plain English the name means Devil of the Sea. While many of the supernatural beings were looked upon by the people with a kind of sympathetic regard, this being was looked upon with unutterable horror, was regarded with mortal terror, and spoken of with bated breath. He was a monster of unmixed malignity, never willingly resting from doing evil to mankind. He never played a trick for the mere love of fun. Indeed, if not restrained by the Mither of the Sea in summer and in winter by his terror of fresh water, he would long ago have made Orkney a manless desert. Nuckelavee was a spirit in flesh. His home was the sea; and whatever his means of transit were in that element, when he moved on land he rode a horse as terrible in aspect as himself. Some thought that rider and horse were really one, and that this was the shape of the monster. Nuckelavee’s head was like a man’s, only ten times larger, and his mouth projected like that of a pig and was enormously wide. There was not a hair on the monster’s body, for the very good reason that he had no skin. The whole surface of the monster appeared like raw and living flesh, from which the skin had been stripped. You could see the black blood flowing through his veins, and every movement of his muscles, when the horrid creature moved, showed white sinews in motion. What a study for an anatomist! If crops were blighted by sea-gust or mildew, if live stock fell over high rocks that skirt the shores, or if an epidemic raged among men, or among the lower animals, Nuckelavee was the cause of all. His breath was venom, falling like blight on vegetable and with deadly disease on animal life. He was also blamed for long-continued droughts; for some unknown reason he had serious objections to fresh water, and was never known to visit the land during rain. The burning of sea-weed for kelp gave terrible offence to Nuckelavee, and filled him with diabolical rage. He vented his wrath by smiting with deadly disease horses in the island of Stronsay (for that was the island where kelp was first made in Orkney), and that disease spread over all the islands where kelp was made. That disease was called Mortasheen (Sir George Douglas, The Scottish Antiquary, 1891, p131-132).

The name Nuckelavee, in the original Orcadian dialect was “Knoggelvi”, itself thought to be a variant of the Norse/Teutonic “Nokk”, with an Icelandic variation in “Nykur”, but the Nykur is much more sedate (although still psychotically homicidal) creature, pretty much a literal “water horse”, who only makes the occasional half-hearted attempt to drown people.

Nykur lives both in rivers and lakes, and even in the sea. In shape he most resembles a horse, generally grey in colour, but sometimes black, all his hoofs point backwards, and the tuft on the pastern is reversed. He, however, not conﬁned to this one shape, but has the property of being able to change himself at once into other forms at his pleasure. When cracks come in the ice in winter, and cause loud noises, it is said that Nykur is neighing. He begets foals, just like stallions, but always in the water, although it has happened that he has got mares with foal. It is the mark of all horses that have sprung from Nykur that they lie down when they are ridden, or bear packs, over water that wets their belly. This property they have from Nykur, who haunts lakes and rivers that are difficult to cross; he then appears quite tame, and entices people to ride across on him When any happen to mount him he rushes out into the water, lies down there, and drags his rider down with him. He cannot bear to hear his own name, or any word resembling it; at that he changes shape, and springs into the water (Craigie, 2010, p233-234).

Most mythological critters find at least some redeeming quality in humans. Zombies think our brains are a tasty treat. Vampires find our blood particularly scrumptious. Typical faeries love pranking us. Even the average demon has a hankering for our souls. The Nuckelavee, on the other hand is exclusively concerned with ushering in our doom. It’s unclear what we ever did to merit such inconsiderate attention. There are stories regarding his hatred of burning kelp, but I’ve rarely heard of cooked seaweed inducing centuries of homicidal (and according to some legends, genocidal) rage. According to myth, the Nuckelavee’s distaste for the smell of burning kelp (a bit of an industry in the Orkneys until the 1800’s – the ash is rich in marketable products like potash and soda) has resulted in his attacking us with plagues, epidemics, killing all Orkney horses, and ruining entire season’s worth of crops . Seems a tad bit of an over-reaction. Consider the old Scottish folktale of Tammas Taylor, incidentally the only direct encounter with a Nuckelavee ever recorded.

Nuckelavee was a monster that hated mankind, and never rested from doing them harm. His home was the sea, but he often appeared on land, riding on a horse as terrible in appearance as himself. This was only in appearance, however, for the monster was the body of a man and the body of a horse united in one. He was the cause of every outbreak of disease among man and beast, cattle falling over the rocks, and of long-continued droughts. This last was explained by his hatred of fresh water, which had one advantage, that he never came ashore during rain; and it was the salvation of the poor man in the following tale: Late one moonless, though starlit night, as a man named Tammas Taylor was returning home by a narrow path between the sea-shore and a deep loch he saw a huge creature rushing towards him. Tammas was certain that it was no earthly creature that was upon him, but he knew that to turn his back to any evil thing meant destruction, and as he could not get away on either side for the sea and the loch, he kept steadily on breathing the prayer: “The Lord be about me, an’ tak care o’ me this nicht.” On came the monster, whom to his horror Tammas now recognised as the Nuckelavee, the lo’A'er part of which was the body of a giant horse, and the upper that of a skinless man, whose arms reached almost to the ground. His mouth was as wide as a whale’s, from which came breath like steam; and he had one eye, which flamed like fire. In spite of his terror, Tammas remembered that the monster was afraid of fresh water, so he sprang to the lochside, when his feet splashed up some water on the monster’s forelegs. With a snort like thunder it swerved to the other side of the road, whilst Tammas fled on like the wind. On, too, came the Nuckelavee, with a bellow like the roaring of the sea. In front now there was a burn running from the loch into the sea, and Tammas knew that if he could once cross the running water he was safe. With a desperate spring he reached the other side, leaving his bonnet only in the monster’s clutches. Giving a wild unearthly yell of disappointed rage, it disappeared just as Tammas fell senseless on the safe side of the burn (Blackwood, 1913, p144).

Suprisingly, monsters that just plain hate us are not all that common. Sure, sometimes we’re a food source, raw material, even an incidental inconvenience to larger monstrous concerns, but abject hatred doesn’t usually make for a good story when there isn’t a good back story. Celtic fairies are often classified into Seelie vs. Unseelie Courts. The Seelie Court of faeries enjoying messing with humans, but generally angry retribution only results from some kind of offense. Those faeries considered “Unseelie” are regarded as malicious, and don’t seem to need a reason to behave with extreme prejudice towards human. The Nuckelavee is considered an example of an Unseelie faerie, but has really stepped up his game, reaching beyond maliciousness and striving for a straight up malevolence. I suppose if you are a half-human, half-water horse with no skin, a certain amount of bitterness is to be expected, but really, even the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are just doing their job. Maybe the Nuckelavee just understands us a little too well and has embraced the words of Italian-born, English literary critic Giuseppe Marc’Antonio Baretti, “I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am”. Why shouldn’t a monster hate us? We’re kind of unpleasant as a species.

References
Blackwood, Isabella. “Scottish Fairy Tales, Part II”. From Dickson, Nicholas, 1830-1912, and William Sanderson. Border Magazine: an Illustrated Monthly v.18. Galashiels [etc.]: A. Walker & son, ltd. [etc.], 1913.
Craigie, William A. Sir, 1867-1957. Scandinavian Folk-lore: Illustrations of the Traditional Beliefs of the Northern Peoples. Charleston, SC: BiblioLife, 2010.
Douglas, George, 1856-1935. Scottish Fairy And Folk Tales. London: W. Scott, 189(?).
The Scottish Antiquary, Or, Northern Notes & Queries 1890-1891 Volume 5. Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1891.

Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones: The Monster So Nice They Named Him Twice

22 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Animals, Anthropology, Demons, Faeries, Ghosts, Monsters, Mythology, Occult, Spirits, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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American South, Bloody Bones, bogey, bogeyman, Boggart, boogeyman, Bugbear, Buggbear, Charles I, Clive Barker, Devil, England, Fin MacCoul, G.K. Chesterton, George Gascoigne, Hobgoblins, Humfrey Powel, Ireland, Jenny Green-Teeth, John Jefferes, John Locke, King Edward VI, Lancastershire, Missouri, Nightmare, North Carolina, Nursery Rhyme, Old Betty, Old Rawhead, Ozarks, Rawhead, Rawhead Rex, Razorback, Scotland, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Social Control, Thomas Lunsford, Tommy Rawhead, water demon, WIill of the Devil, Yorkshire

Rawhead and Bloody Bones
Steals naughty children from their homes,
Takes them to his dirty den,
And they are never seen again.
–Traditional Nursery Rhyme, Yorkshire, UK

Life as a nursery bogeyman is tough. Other monsters are out there facilitating the apocalypse, eating brains, sinking ships, wreaking all manner of mythological mayhem, and generally menacing society. The nursery bogey is used to threaten unruly children. This is the kind of thing other monsters make fun of in gym class. Every once in a while a shining example of a nursery bogey gets in touch with his inner insidiousness, rises above his humble origins, and establishes himself in the pantheon of creepier creatures. Sometimes they overcompensate, as in the case of Tommy Rawhead, for whom one descriptive moniker was not enough, so fearsome a creature was he, that he has for several hundred years been known by his unwieldy full name of “Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones”. Bonus point for use of a conjunction in a proper name.

: Clive Barker’s Rawhead Rex (based on our Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones)

: Dear Diary: Decided to do something about the “raw head”

Tommy Rawhead, as one would expect, literally had a raw head, that is, in his most basic incarnation he appeared as a disturbing critter whose skin had been stripped from his skull. Apparently, lack of skin frightens kids. Inexplicable if you’ve ever looked at a toddler’s knees after an hour on the playground. Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones makes his first official literary appearance in the 1548 “Wyll of the Deuyll” (“Will of the Devil”), an anti-Catholic tract published by the man who introduced printing to Ireland under a grant from English King Edward VI in 1550, Humfrey Powell (but probably written by English poet George Gascoigne), that takes the form of the last will and testament of the devil, listing the things he gives to unscrupulous folks, supposedly dictated to none other than our nightmarish friend “Rawhead and Bloody Bone”, who is described as a faithful secretary to the Devil in the Court of Hell. The relevant excerpt from the Devil’s Last Will is reproduced below. I recommend reading it in your best imitation of a Shakespearean monologue for the full effect. They had neither invented dictionaries nor standardized spelling in 1550, so be warned – such linguistic fanciness had to await the invention of obsessive-compulsive disorders and Ph.D.’s in English to fully flower. I didn’t bother to normalize the spelling because; hey I had to read it. And I have a day job.

Item, I geue to the Goldesmithes, brasse and copper inough to myngle with their rynges and plate, to make them to woye for aduauutage. Item I geue to the Peuterers and all other that occupy weights and measures, to haue false and contraryvweights, to bye with one and sel by another. Item to the Apothyeariee I geue leaue, that when a man asketh them a thyng, and haue it not, to bring them another thing and say it is that. Item, I geue to my Dearlynges the priuy papistes, Images, Crucifixes, and other lyke puppet maumettry, to worship secretly in their Oratoryes and bed chambers, because they may not worship them openly abrode in Temples and Churches. Ouer this my Testament and Last Wyll, which I haue here made, in my ragious mind and spightful deuilish memory, in the presence of my gret counccllours Minos, Radamanteus, I do make the furyes of hell Executors, that is to say: Megera, Alecto, and Tisiphone: all Massemongers and Papistes, with the Author of Heresyes Will and Testament, being faithfull Ocerseers of the same–Written by our faithful Secretaryes, Hobgoblin, Rawhed, and Bloody bone: in the spitefull Audience of all the Court of Hell. Teste Meipso (Gascoigne, 1548, “The Wyll of the Deuyll”).

Apparently there is a brief reference to Mr. Rawhead and Bloody Bones in a 1564 A.D. adaptation of an Italian comedy of errors by John Jefferes called Buggbear, which reads, “Hob Goblin, Rawhead & Bloudibone the ouglie hagges Bugbeares, & hellhoundes, and Hecate the nyght mare”. This is not of course, especially informative, unless you have some notion of what “ouglie hagges Bugbeares” are – fear not, as I always keep my Old English dictionary handy (translation: “ugly, slimy Bugbear”). Doesn’t help much, does it? At any rate, Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones seems to have been a well-known figure as early as the mid-16^th Century in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Scottish reference is made to Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones as the traditional bogeyman.

Perhaps the mountain mists in like manner impeded the view of the dwellers on the mountain and the plain, for Fin MacCoul was a “God in Ireland,” as they say, and is a “rawhead and bloody bones” in the Scottish lowlands now (Campbell, 1850, pXC1X).

And, he maintains his historical role as a creature used to frighten children, mentioned in the same breath as a historical British Officer named Thomas Lunford, an English officer “of a very small and decayed fortune, with no good education; of a lawless disposition a violent temper” who led a regiment of foot soldiers against the Scots for King Charles I.

Amongst the objects to terrify children, we must not forget Rawhead and Bloodybones, who twice occurs in Butler’s Hudibras: “Turns meek and secret sneaking ones/To Raw-heads fierce and Bloody-bones.” And again: “Made children with your tones to run for’t/As bad as Bloody-bones or Lunsford.” Lunsford was an officer’s name, said to have been cruel to women and children (Brand, 1849, p516).

Thus do we see Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones begins to emerge as a figure of some prominence in terms of terror, and for some odd reason he begins to be associated with water. In Lincolshire, England he was considered a “kind of ghost that haunts wells (Gutch, 1908, p58), and in Yorkshire, England he became a full blown water demon.

In some parts of the country, instead of Jenny Green-teeth, the boggart of the ponds is a masculine water demon called Rawhead, Tommy Rawhead, Bloody-bones, or Rawhead and Bloody-bones, e. g. Keep away from the marl-pit or Rawhead and Bloody-bones will have you. This personage is often mentioned in our earlier literature. Dr. Johnson has: ‘Rawhead. . . .The name of a spectre, mentioned to fright children (Wright, 1913, p199).

No less important personage than philosopher John Locke had a few unkind words for Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones, objecting to his use as a means to control children on the grounds that it implanted unhealthy ideas upon their little brains, and perpetuated irrational fears. Empiricist bastard.

But even then and always whilst he is young, be sure to preserve his tender mind from all impressions and notions of spirits and goblins, or any fearful apprehensions in the dark. This he will be in danger of from the indiscretion of servants, whose usual method is to awe children, and keep them in subjection, by telling them of raw-head and bloody-bones, and such other names, as carry with them ideas of something terrible and hurtful, which they have reason to be afraid of, when alone, especially in the dark. This must be carefully prevented; for though by this foolish way they may keep them from little faults, yet the remedy is much worse than the disease; and there are stamped upon their imaginations ideas that follow them with terror and affrightment. Such bugbear thoughts, once got into the tender minds of children, and being set on with a strong impression from the dread that accompanies such apprehensions, sink deep, and fasten themselves so, as not easily, if ever, to be got out again; and whilst they are there, frequently haunt them with strange visions, making children dastards when alone, and afraid of their shadows and darkness all their lives after (Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, p49).

Turns our Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones had some staying power, so much so that he literally “jumped the pond” and appears in the folklore of the American Southeast, losing some of his nursery rhyme trappings and emerging as a truly horrific addition to our phantasmagoria, although, he was still used to frighten children into compliance with societal standards. A collection of North Carolina folktales mentions still mention him as a standard in nursery bogeydom.

Children were told that unless they did so and so “Old Raw-Head and Bloody Bones” would get them (Frank C. Brown Collection, 1952, p155)

A folktale from Missouri gives us an origin story for Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones as the companion Razorback (wild boar) of a backwoods Missouri conjuring woman named “Old Betty”. The poor old pig was gunned down by a hunter, and in despair over the death of her only friend, Old Betty raised the boar from the dead with a chant of “Raw Head and Bloody Bones. Raw Head and Bloody Bones.” The results being an upright walking hog skeleton with a skinless head, wandering the Ozarks. This is in stark contrast, except for the skinless head, with the traditional non-porcine version of the British Isles. Tommy Rawhead and Bloody Bones has entered modern pop culture as everything from the central figure in the B-Movie Rawhead Rex to a song by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Now that’s achievement for someone who started out as a nursery bogey.

There is something vaguely twisted about 500 years of telling children that unless they behave, a monster with a flayed head will kidnap them. Then again, if it makes the kids go to sleep…back me up here recent parents. Perhaps we’re just too sensitive to child psychology these days. God forbid they hear a fairy tale where the monster is, well, monstrous. My four year old has no fear of monsters. He knows they don’t exist and even if they do, the more you know the safer you are (from the mouths of babes). Mostly he thinks the stories are pretty cool. Sometimes he helps me choose pictures. Adults are the ones who ascribe real malevolence to monsters. Kids get it. AS G.K. Chesterton observed, “Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon”. Unless of course, the monsters are real.

References
Brand, John, 1744-1806. Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of Our Vulgar And Provincial Customs, Ceremonies, And Superstitions. new ed. London: H. G. Bohn, 1849.
Campbell, J. F. 1822-1885. Popular Tales of the West Highlands. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1860.
Gascoigne, George (disputed). Chetham Society. “Collectanea Anglo-Poetica”. Remains, Historical And Literary, Connected With the Palatine Counties of Lancaster And Chester. Manchester: Chetham Society. “Wyll of the Deuyll”, originally written 1548.
Duke University. Library. Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore: the Folklore of North Carolina. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1952.
Gutch, Eliza, Mrs. Examples of Printed Folk-lore Concerning Lincolnshire. London: Pub. For the Folk-lore society by D. Nutt, 1908.
Locke, John, 1632-1704. Some Thoughts Concerning Education: And Consequences of the Lowering of Interest And Raising the Value of Money. London: Ward, Lock, 18^th Century edition.
Wright, Elizabeth Mary, 1863-1958. Rustic Speech And Folk-lore. London: H. Milford, 1913.

Death Be Not Salaried: Seasonal Grim Reaping with the Breton L’Ankou

06 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Animals, Anthropology, Demons, Faeries, Ghosts, Gods, Harbingers, Monsters, Mythology, Occult, Spirits, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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Ankou, Armorica, Breton, Britannia, Briton, Brittany, Celt, Celtic, Cornwall, Corpse, death, Dysentery, Employment, funeral, Gaul, Grim Reaper, Ireland, Isle of Man, Job, L'Ankou, Land of the Dead, Lesser Britain, Omen, Personification, Plague, Roman Empire, Scotland, Scythe, Skeleton, Soul, Thanatology, The Agony, Wales

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure” — Clarence Darrow

We’ve all heard of Great Britain. Have you heard of Lesser Britain? Blame the fall of the Roman Empire. One of the advantages to dominating the Western world for a few centuries is that you get to name lots of stuff, although when the tides of fortune ebb and the empire crumbles, the folks you conquered tend to resent that kind of thing, and merrily set about applying new (or old names) to their favorite spots. At any rate, while you are in charge, you can call things what you like and organize your empire however you darn well geographically please, often eschewing obvious cultural similarities among peoples in favor of administrative divisions that make the paperwork easier. Surprisingly, the Latin name for the British Isles (Britannia), kind of stuck. The Latin name for the northern Brittany Peninsula (Armorica) did not. Brittany (or “Lesser Britain”) was only actually united with the Kingdom of France in 1532 A.D. In fact, culturally, Brittany is considered one of the six Celtic “nations” (along with Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, and the Isle of Man), and the Breton language is closely related to Cornish and Welsh. It is thus no surprise that Breton, Cornish, and Norman French folklore share a common respect for a creepy crony of death called L’Ankou, literally translated from Breton as “The Agony”.

: Carving of L’Ankou in Brittany

: Take me now Grim Reaper. Oh, wait, is that you Bob?

L’Ankou is described as an old man (sometimes a skeleton) in a black robe, hat that covers his face, carrying a scythe, drives a cart for collecting the souls of the dead, and travels with two spectral companions to help load the souls onboard. Pretty standard fare for personifications of death. Strangely, Breton mythology maintains that the L’Ankou is a temp job, and that there is an assigned L’Ankou for every parish. If you have the misfortune to be the last man to die for the year in a Celtic parish, you are stuck with the job of L’Ankou for the next year, after which Death will sign your time card and you can move on.

Amongst them all none was more interesting than a certain figure once commonly found all over Brittany, now rarely to be met with, though still remembered and held in reverence in some remote districts. Sometimes this figure took the form of a tall thin man with long white hair and face shadowed by the broad felt hat of the country, sometimes of a skeleton, draped or undraped, whose skull turned on a pivot as though to signify that in a single glance it beheld the whole district over which it ruled. But whether man or skeleton, it always held in its hand a scythe, the blade of which was turned forward, and it signified 1′Ankou or Death. Many are the beliefs and superstitions connected with 1′Ankou, and though the representations of him have, as I have said, all but disappeared from the land, the people in many parts believe in and fear him as their ancestors did in the past. They believe, for instance, that the last man who dies in the village during the year becomes 1′Ankou for the year ensuing. That he has his chariot or cart in which he makes his royal progress, spreading terror and desolation wherever he goes. That he is usually drawn by two horses, one fat and well-to-do, the other lean as Death himself. They say that he uses a human bone to sharpen his scythe, and goes about quite silently—he, his horses, and his cart. His great friends and helpers are supposed to be Plague and Dysentery, the former of whom being lame cannot move over flowing water by herself, but has to be carried by someone (Gosling, 1906, p274).

Dying in Brittany has to be something of a let-down. I mean, after all the effort put into giving up the ghost, I’m expecting a visit from some fearsome representation straight from the abyss to usher me into the afterlife with a little pomp and circumstance. Instead, it turns out to be my neighbor Bob, whose fatal fast-food induced coronary improbably occurred on December 31^st last year. Of course this can’t be fun for Bob either. He is after all basically a corpse with an uncompensated job collecting the souls of people he knows. And maybe that’s the point. Death is considerably less frightening when you’re likely to have your disembodied soul scooped up by an unlucky former drinking buddy (albeit just a little bit smellier than usual what with the decaying flesh), than it would be if some hideous incarnation was sweeping in to drag you away kicking and screaming.

The Celtic spirit of the modern Breton has preserved the legend or superstition of “L’Ankou,” the spirit of death. In many villages one may interrogate a peasant or a fisherman, who will affirm that it is “Ankou” who leads the way for the funeral-car and who waits at the grave to carry the soul of the departed away with him after the others have left. Among the superstitious signs which presage the coming of the ”Ankou” are, a ball of fire, which rests upon the tiles of the roof over the stricken one, — a most unlikely thing, one would think, — the theft of grain by crows, the tapping of a window-pane by the beak of a seabird, the prolonged bellowing of cattle by the light of the moon, a candle which will not light, or for a peasant to split or cleave two pairs of wooden shoes in one week (Mansfield, 1906, p357-358)

The omens presaging the arrival of L’Ankou are certainly numerous, but mostly he’s just hanging around waiting for the official funeral ceremonies to be over so he can get on with his work. Seeing as there is a L’Ankou for every parish, one can imagine some excellent opportunities for unionization. And let’s face it, the working conditions of the average L’Ankou are substandard – no pay, long hours, rotting body parts, your co-workers are Plague and Dysentery, and the only equipment you are provided with is a scythe. There’s like nine kinds of occupational health and safety violations there. Scholars have noted that a lot of Celtic fairy behavior is also attributed to L’Ankou, but with a similar sort of ambivalence, a properly respected L’Ankou is a far less fearsome creature, who having recently expired himself, is able to enjoy the hospitality of his living friends, as he takes his turn in the soul-transport business.

Without setting down here in detail numerous other death-legends which we have collected, we may now note how much the same are the powers and nature of the dead and spirits in Brittany, and the power and nature of the fairy races in Celtic Britain and Ireland. Thus the Breton dead strike down the living just as fairies are said to do; the Ankou who is a king of the dead, and his subjects, like a fairy king and fairies, have their own particular paths or roads over which they travel in great sacred processions; and exactly as fairies, the hosts of the dead are in possession of the earth on November Eve, and the living are expected to prepare a feast and entertainment for them of curded-milk, hot pancakes, and cider, served on the family table covered with a fresh white table-cloth, and to supply music. The Breton dead come to enjoy this hospitality of their friends; and as they take their places at the table the stools are heard to move, and sometimes the plates; and the musicians who help to entertain them think that at times they feel the cold breath of the invisible visitors (Evans-Wentz, 1911, p218).

Lower Brittany has often been referred to as the “Land of the Dead”, as there is an intermingling of the living and dead. “The graveyard is as truly the centre of the commune as the dolmen was of the prehistoric tribe. The dead who lie there are by no means cut off from the world; the voices of the living reach them in muffled tones; they know that they are not forgotten; they are associated with every event of importance in the family. Nowhere else, and at no period, have people lived in such familiarity with Death. The consciousness of the presence of the dead never leaves the people. The evening of a wedding is like a funeral wake. The betrothed meet at the graves of their dead, and seal their vows over the tombs” (Baring-Gould, 1901, p25). It is perhaps the close association with the dead that breeds a certain familiarity. It Brittany, you don’t just understand Death. You literally know him. Maybe dated his daughter, shared a beer, played soccer together, or stole his cows.

La Mort is in Breton the Ankou, who travels about the country in a cart picking up souls. At night a wain is heard coming along the road with a creaking axle. It halts at a door, and that is the summons. A spirit passes, and the Ankou moves on. Marillier, who wrote a preface to M. le Braz’s work, says that Lower Brittany is before all else the Land of the Dead. ‘Souls do not remain enclosed in the tombs, they wander at night on the high-roads and in the lonely lanes. They haunt the fields and the moors, thick as blades of grass or as grains of sand on the shore. They revisit their former habitations in the silence of the night, and from the lisclos they can be observed crouched around the hearth, where the brands are expiring.’ Certain mysterious rites are observed to which the cure is not invited, and where some old man is ministrant, on All Souls’ even, on some granite-strewn height, about a fire. M. le Cure is discreet enough not to inquire too closely what goes on. The wagon of the Ankou is like the death coach that one hears of in Devon and in Wales. It is all black, with black horses drawing it, driven by a headless coachman. A black hound runs before it, and within sits a lady (Baring-Gould, 1928, p66-67).

Some may find it disconcerting that death is neither eternal rest, blissful repose, nor stern judgment. There’s a certain purity to those extremes. You’re good you get rewarded. You’re bad you get tortured. And for the atheist set, you just get to stop worrying and enjoy the absence of everything. Unless you happen to die on the wrong day in a Breton parish. Then, death is a day job. But take solace. Things can always be worse, or as American writer David Gerrold observed, “Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.”

References
Baring-Gould, S. 1834-1924. A Book of Folklore. London: Collins’ clear-type press, 1928.
Baring-Gould, S. 1834-1924. A Book of Britanny: London: Methuen & Co., 1901.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y. 1878-1965. The Fairy-faith In Celtic Countries. London: H. Frowde, 1911.
Gosling, Frank. “L’Ankou”. The Celtic Review 2:5-8, 1906.
Mansfield, Milburg Francisco, 1871-. Rambles In Brittany. Boston: L.C. Page & company, 1906.

Hungry Ghosts: The Diet of the Dead among the Grigori, Preta, Yidak, Gaki, and Egui

20 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Animals, Anthropology, Demons, Ghosts, Gods, Monsters, Mythological Races, Mythology, Occult, Spirits, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Apocrypha, Bible, Book of Jubilees, Buddhism, Canaan, Confucian, Dead Sea Scrolls, death, Dharma, Egui, Enoch, Ethiopia, funeral, Gaki, Garuda, Garuda Purana, Grigori, Hinduism, hunger, Hungry Ghosts, Ippolito Desideri, Jainism, John Steinbeck, Karma, Mu-lien, Nephilim, Numbers, Petavatthu, Pret, Preta, rites, Sanskrit, Sikh, Slavonic, Slavonic Enoch, Sraddhas, Taoism, Theravada, thirst, Tibet, Vishnu, Yidak

John Steinbeck once observed, “Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.” Stretch that time to eternity, and you may run into one of the many phantasmal foragers that are collectively known as “hungry ghosts”. If you are foolish enough to live a mortal life of insatiable greed your recompense, in several mythologies, appears to be condemnation to wander the earth for all time, insanely hungry, but unable to eat, and desperately thirsty, but unable to drink. By this logic, Wall Street should look like a scene from the Walking Dead, but unfortunately the Abrahamic Western deity is a cruel, desert God and all indications are that there is very little justice in the universe. And it’s kind of an obvious punishment. I like to credit supreme beings with a little more originality, or at least a supernaturally twisted sense of humor (“Yeah, so I told him to build a boat and collect two of every living creature. Can you believe he took me seriously?) This does not change the fact that the notion of “hungry ghosts” is well-represented cross-culturally. Perhaps one day they will make a comeback, and foreknowledge is forewarning. Smart to be prepared for any eventuality, up to and including inundation with ravenous spirits.

: Gaki. From Gaki-Zoshi “Scroll of Hungry Ghosts”, 12th Cent. Japan

: Angel + Woman = Grigori

: Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, Hindu/Buddhist

: Hungry Ghost Statue, Phuket, Thailand

: Hungry Ghost Festival, Vietnam

: Hungry Ghost?

Like a lot of good horror, traces of our hungry ghosts can be found in biblical Apocrypha, particularly the psuedepigraphical and apocalyptic Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) and the Slavonic Enoch (2 Enoch or “The Secrets of Enoch”), called Slavonic as the full text was only found preserved in Old Church Slavonic (the first literary Slavic language), with a few Coptic fragments identified as late in the game as 2009 A.D. The bulk of the Book of Enoch itself is generally attributed to Jewish sectarians in the 1^st Century B.C. The Slavonic Enoch is regarded as a 1^st Century A.D. Christian work. Interestingly, the portion of 1 Enoch that we are most interested in (“The Book of Watchers”) is thought to date to roughly 300 B.C, later redacted along with five other books into what we now know as the Book of Enoch. Basically, older than dirt. Now, hungry ghosts don’t figure all that prominently, but the Book of Watchers purports to describe the fall of the angels that fathered the Nephilim (dad’s an angel, mom’s a human), referred to as giants inhabiting Canaan in Numbers 13:33. So, we all know what happened to the divine baby daddy’s – cast down into the eternal gloom of Tartarus. Another bit of biblical Apocrypha (canonical for Ethiopian Jews and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church), The Book of Jubilees, probably written somewhere 150 B.C., suggest that God sent the Flood largely to wipe out the Nephilim, but strangely decided to keep the disembodied spirits of 10 percent of the nasty giants around to use for tempting humanity. How humane. At any rate, the Book of Enoch explains their fate.

But you from the beginning were made spiritual, possessing a life which is eternal, and not subject to death for ever. Therefore I made not wives for you, because, being spiritual, your dwelling is in heaven. Now the giants, who have been born of spirit and of flesh, shall be called upon earth evil spirits, and on earth shall be their habitation. Evil spirits shall proceed from their flesh, because they were created from above; from the holy Watchers was their beginning and primary foundation. Evil spirits shall they be upon earth, and the spirits of the wicked shall they be called. The habitation of the spirits of heaven shall be in heaven; but upon earth shall be the habitation of terrestrial spirits, who are born on earth. The spirits of the giants shall be like clouds, which shall oppress, corrupt, fall, contend, and bruise upon earth. They shall cause lamentation. No food shall they eat; and they shall be thirsty; they shall be concealed, and shall not rise up against the sons of men, and against women; for they come forth during the days of slaughter and destruction. And as to the death of the giants, wheresoever their spirits depart from their bodies, let their flesh, that which is perishable, be without judgment. Thus shall they perish, until the day of the great consummation of the great world. A destruction shall take place of the Watchers and the impious (1 Enoch, XV – XVI).

Not nice. The Nephilim (equated with the Grigori in 2 Enoch, Grigori being a direct Slavonic transcription of the Greek word “egrḗgoroi”, meaning “watchful”, which itself was translated from the Aramaic “iyr” or “to watch”) who were suffered to survive the flood, were literally “disembodied” and condemned to hang around on earth for an eternity of hunger and thirst. It’s not like they asked to be born, so all things considered this seems a tad harsh, but that’s those stern monotheistic father gods for you. Clean your room or I’ll smite you, suck out your soul, and send you on a starving walkabout for the rest of existence. Spare the rod you nut, for heaven’s sake. Much as it would amuse me to lay this kind of theological monstrosity at the doorstep of monotheism, we have ample examples of hungry ghosts from a variety of traditions. Take for example, the Hindu preta (a Sanskrit term meaning “departed, deceased, a dead person”). Classical Sanskrit used this term to refer to any ghost, but especially in reference to one of our hungry phantom friends and versions are extant in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and in most incarnations they are basically walking corpses with disturbingly specific needs.

First some basic Hinduism. Five elements constitute the universe: Air, Water, Fire, Earth, and Dark Matter (there are other karmically determined elements, but these are the essentials). Preta are held to be bodies made of only Air and Dark Matter (either due to an unnatural death or not having the appropriate funerary rituals – which incidentally, are thought of us “destroying” all remnants of the physical impression on the world), and because they are missing the other three elements representing the physical world, no intake of food or drink is possible for them. Sucks to be a preta, which is why appropriate treatment of the dead is way important in Hinduism. The Garuda Purana, a Hindu text dating to about 500 B.C. in the form of a dialog between Vishnu and the King of Birds (Garuda), deals with a lot of afterlife issues and instructions on appropriate treatment of the dead, and includes discussion of the preta.

The forty-eight Sraddhas destroy the condition of the ghost-life. He for whom this series is performed becomes a member of the assembly of the forefathers. The three sixteens should be performed so that the departed may join the assembly of the forefathers; if deprived of Sraddhas the ghost remains as preta always. If the performance of the three sixteens of Sraddhas is not carried out, either by himself or another, then he certainly does not join them (Garuda Purana, Chapter XII, lines 67-69 trans. Naunidhirāma).

Now, I’m a big fan of karmic retribution, but even I have to admit that the typically mellow Buddhists brought their mythological horror “A-Game” when they tackled the notion of the hungry ghost. Buddhism inherited much of its mythology from Hinduism. Whereas Hinduism largely attributed the existence of the preta to failure to properly observe funeral rites, Buddhism more explicitly linked the preta to excessive possessiveness or desire in a previous life, essentially translating the preta into one of the six possible states of rebirth, relegating unfortunate, ethically-challenged people to “The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts” represented in the Dharmic Wheel. The Petavatthu (“Stories of Ghosts”) is a Theravada Buddhist scripture in verse, and discusses the life of the preta as an entire realm of existence, wholly dependent on ours for sustenance.

They stand outside our dwellings, at our windows, at the corners of our streets; they stand at our doors, revisiting their old homes. When abundant food and drink is set before them, by reason of the past sins of these departed ones, their friends on earth remember them not. Yet do such of their kinsmen as are merciful bestow upon them at due seasons food and drink, pure, sweet and suitable. Let this be done for your departed friends, let them be satisfied. Then, gathering together here, the assembled spirits of out kinsmen rejoice greatly in a plentiful repast. “Long,” they say, “may our kinsmen live through whom we have received these things: to us offerings are made and the givers are not without reward” for in the land of the dead there is no husbandry, no keeping of flocks, no commerce ad with us, no trafficking for gold: the departed live in that world by what they receive in this. As water fallen upon a height descends into the valley, so surely do alms bestowed by men benefit the dead. As the brimming rivers fill the ocean, so do alms bestowed by men benefit the dead. Let a man consider thus—” Such a one gave me this gift, such a one wrought me this good deed; they were my kinsmen, my friends, my associates.” Then let him give alms to the dead, mindful of past benefits. For weeping and sorrow and all manner of lamentation are of no avail, if their relatives stand thus sorrowing it benefits not the dead. But this charity bestowed by you, well secured in the priesthood, if it long bless the dead, then does it benefit them indeed. And the fulfillment of this duty to relatives to the dead is a great service rendered, to the priests a great strength given, by you no small merit acquired (Petavatthu, Khuddaka pátha XII-XIII, trans. R.C. Childers)

Tibetan Buddhism calls it a “yidak” and adds a little more corporeal reality to its descendant of the Hindu preta, assigning it very specific anatomical characteristics, which ultimately result in its unquenchable thirst and insatiable hunger. We have an adequately graphic account related to us by Jesuit missionary to Tibet, Father Ippolito Desideri.

By Yidak they mean a certain kind of living being that has a very small and narrow mouth exactly like the eye of a needle, and a neck that is similarly narrow and constricted. Their eyes emit noxious and fiery exhalations that dry everything up, and their stomachs are huge and capacious…Their principal torments are a perpetual and extreme hunger and painful thirst. Their skin and flesh is dry and scorched like a firebrand half burned and quenched, their hair is bristly, their mouths extremely dry, and their tongues are like those of exhausted and thirsty dogs. To relieve their thirst they run anxiously and panting towards springs and pools, but as soon as they reach the longed-for water and eagerly stretch forth their necks and are about to drink, they are thwarted, and the torment of their thirst grows greater than ever…To relieve their hunger they run around from place to place in search of something to eat, suffering the intolerable pain of total exhaustion and finding nothing; or if they do find something, it is either instantly consumed by sudden flames or changed into the most revolting and stinking filth so that it is totally inedible. Even should they finally manage to swallow a little something, it cannot allay the great hunger and insatiable appetite of their huge bellies, and instead exacerbates their torment all the more, increasing beyond measure the inconsolable and incurable pain…Finally, to sum this all up in a few words, the state of such unhappy living beings is very similar to that of Hell. Such a birth and the enormous sufferings that accompany it are primarily the penalty and punishment for avarice” (Desideri, 2010, p349-250)

Oh Japan. When we want to get truly wacky with our folk freaks, we can always turn to you. Japanese strains of Buddhism elaborated thirty-six different classes of preta (which were called “Gaki”), ascribing specific desires for specific sins. A few examples of Gaki: the shikko-gaki (defile a grave, hunger for dead flesh), the kwaku-shin-gaki (allowed the poor to freeze, bodies continually scorched by fire with fuel they themselves are forced to collect), the gakimushi (mindless killers, condemned to be giant insects ripping up everything in their path until slaughtered by angry villagers), the jiki-kwa (arsonists, eternally forced to seek out and eat fire), and the doku-gaki (poisoners, forced to forever eat poison), to name just a few. They get pretty specific about the sins committed. For instance, if out of greed you sell bad incense, you are eternally damned to insatiable hunger for the smoke of incense.

Although the power of making visible the forms of the dead has been claimed for one sort of incense only, the burning of any kind of incense is supposed to summon viewless spirits in multitude. These come to devour the smoke. They are called Jiki-ko-ki, or “incense-eating goblins;” and they belong to the fourteenth of the thirty-six classes of Gaki (pretas) recognized by Japanese Buddhism. They are the ghosts of men who anciently, for the sake of gain, made or sold bad incense; and by the evil karma of that action they now find themselves in the state of hunger-suffering spirits, and compelled to seek their only food in the smoke of incense (Hearn, 1906, p54-55).

Chinese Buddhists offer their own version of preta, called the “egui”, exemplified by the story of Mu-lien and his mother in the Kuei wen mu-lien ching (“The Sutra on the Ghosts Questioning Mu-lien”). The hungry ghost found fertile ground among Chinese Buddhists, as it meshed well with existing folk concepts in traditional Confucian ancestor worship, this despite fierce resistance to Buddhism from Confucians. The result was an interesting holiday called “The Hungry Ghost Festival” (15^th Day of the Seventh Lunar month in the Chinese Calendar), when restless spirits are released from the lower realms to roam the earth, and the living can ameliorate the suffering of the hungry dead by offerings of food and gifts, still celebrated to this day.

As soon as he [Buddha] arrives, the magic radiance that shines from the down between his eyebrows dissolves Hell. The Tree of Swords and the Forest of Knives turn to dust, and all the demon-gaolers fall on their knees, and do homage to Buddha. The damned are all transferred to Heaven. Not, however, Lady Leek Stem; she becomes a Preta, a Hungry Ghost. If in the distance she hears the sound of water, by the time she gets near it has turned into a river of revolting pus. Food the moment it touches her lips turns into fire. She implores Mu-lien to take his begging-bowl and collect some rice for her, thinking apparently that rice given as alms to a monk will not be subject to the laws of the Preta world. And he must be quick about it, she says, for she is in desperate need of nourishment. Mu-lien goes off to the city of Rajagriha and begs from a man of substance, who is at first shocked at a monk begging at so late an hour in the day. ‘Monk,’ he says, ‘you must already have had your early meal. The time for eating is over. What are you going to do with this rice?’ Mu-lien explains, and the man of substance tells his servants to bring rice immediately. Mu-lien hurries back to his mother and begins to feed her ‘with a golden spoon’. But all the torments of Hell have not cured her of her inveterate covetousness and greed. She is terrified that the other Hungry Ghosts will snatch away the food. ‘The monk who has come’, she says to them, ‘is my son. It is for me that he has brought this rice from the world of men. Just calm yourselves, and perhaps when I am feeling better I will do something for you. …” Looking round anxiously in every direction she protected the bowl with her left hand, while with her right she rolled the rice into balls. But before it entered her mouth, it turned into fire. She then implored him to get water to put the fire out, and he took her to the great river to the south of Rajagriha. When the people of the common world see this river, it is as pure, clear water that they see it. When gods see this river, it is as a stream of crystal that they see it. When fish see this river, to them it is a mountain brook. But when Lady Leek Stem saw it, to her it was a river of foul pus. Mu-lien was obliged to go back once more to Buddha who explained that not till the Avalambana Festival had been celebrated could his mother eat (Waley, 1960, p231-232).

Let’s face it. It sucks to be a ghost. All that haunting and insubstantiality has to wear you down after a while. Maybe you get a little jealous of the living, rattle a few chains, even go poltergeist in a ghostly tantrum. Boring, yes, but at least you are not consumed by unquenchable thirst and insatiable appetite, often for the most unsavory of items (decayed flesh, fire, human excrement, etc.). The theological lesson is obviously, “don’t be greedy, you might get stuck that way”. There’s a reason that hunger and thirst make up the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. When they are not satisfied, we are fairly unpleasant creature. Compound that across eternity. Doesn’t make for a happy afterlife. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, who spent a fair share of time in Soviet Gulags, acquiring expertise in hunger observed, “The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.” And all he wanted was some more bread.

References
Childers, Robert Cæsar, 1838-1876. Khuddaka Pátha: a Páli Text, With a Translation And Notes. [London], 1869.
Desideri, Ippolito [18^th Century] Mission to Tibet: The Remarkable Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri S. J. Wisdom Publications: Somerville, MA, 2010.
Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904. In Ghostly Japan. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1906.
Laurence, Richard, 1760-1838, and Charles Gill. The Book of Enoch the Prophet: Tr. From an Ethiopic Ms. in the Bodleian Library.
Naunidhirāma. The Garuḍa Purâṇa (Sâroddhâra). New York: AMS Press, 1974.
Waley, Arthur. Ballads And Stories From Tun-huang: an Anthology. New York: Macmillan, 1960.

Dog Days with the T’ien Kou: China’s Heavenly Hound Eats the Moon (and Your Children)

17 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by EsoterX in Animals, Anthropology, Demons, Dragons, Gods, Harbingers, Monsters, Mythology, Occult, Spirits, Strange, Symbols, Weird

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Accadia, alien, Ancient Aliens, astronomy, celestial, Celestial Dog, Celestial Wolf, Chaldea, Chang Hsien, child eating, China, CNN, comet, Dog, Dog Star, Dogon, Eclipse, Egypt, Elvis, Erh Lang, Greece, Jade Emperor, Johnny Bravo, Lady Fei, liver, lunar, Mali, moon, Rome, Shan Hai Jing, Sirius, star, sun, Sung Dynasty, T'ien Kou, Xiao Tian Quan

My toddler has learned the sublime art of arguing with me. Rather than attribute this to my complete naiveté regarding the finer points of childhood development and the ultimate result of spoiling an only-child while filling him with my bizarre ideas (just yesterday I instructed him on theological importance of Elvis, significant to him only in so far as he understands him as the archetype for the Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo, can sing Heartbreak Hotel word-for-word, and that he should refer to his mother as “little mama”, much to her dismay), I prefer to think that China’s T’ien Kou is to blame. The T’ien Kou in mentioned in the Shan Hai Jing (“Classics of the Mountains and Seas”), a 4^th Century B.C. compilation of geography and myth (and for god’s sake, it was written in the 4^th Century, clearly out of copyright, and nobody’s digitized an English translation! – Amazon wants 40 bucks and this is a shoestring operation until some billionaire heiress recognizes its awesomeness or my obvious charms). This is why academics tend to have a leg-up on the information market. They have easy access to well-stocked research libraries. Bastards. They ain’t all that. That aside, enough generous, learned folks have commented on the T’ien Kou that we have a good handle on his biography. The T’ien Kou is reputed to have been the gigantic guard dog for nephew of the Jade Emperor (ruler of all existence in Chinese folk culture), Erh Lang, who used him to detect evil spirits that tried to approach the emperor’s palace and in association with Erh Lang our doggy pal is often referred to as Xiao Tian Quan (啸天犬 – “Howling Celestial Dog”). How does this relate to toddlers? Well, the evil spirit connection should be obvious, but Chinese folklore also maintains that ill temper and petulance in children is caused by the T’ien Kou. Oh, and every time you see an eclipse, that would be the T’ien Kou swallowing the moon (and in some accounts, the Sun). Bad dog. Although, if you happen to be missing a planet, the fetching opportunities are endless. Before you consider adopting a T’ien Kou, please do understand that they have a rather unpleasant reputation for munching on children as light hors d’oeurves, and when it can’t get that, has a fondness for adult livers, this is of course in addition to their predilection for satellite consumption. Plus they are reputed to be as big as elephants, and that’s not something you want to be cleaning up after. Or maybe you do. I try not to be judgmental of other people’s fetishes.

: Chang Hsien shooting arrows at T’ien Kou

: Drawing of T’ien Kou, Shan Hai Jing, 4th Century BC.

This mythical dog is quaintly described in a popular work on the Chinese minor deities. The How Tien Ch’uan, or Heavenly Barking Dog (belonging to the deity Erh Lang), when sublimed from the earthly state, became a thin-bodied or coursing dog, having the size of an elephant, and the likeness of the strong and fierce owl which eats its parents. Its head is as brass and its neck as iron. Terrible in battle, its antagonist, however fierce and powerful, is quickly consumed, even unto the last of his bones. To this idea of the existence of a celestial dog may be due the practice, said to be current in parts of China, of carrying in processions praying for rain in time of drought, a big dog housed in a palanquin and dressed like a man…It is probable that this celestial terror is identical in Chinese mythology with the heavenly dog which has the sinister reputation of trying to snatch children from their homes. In many temples there is an image of the god Ch’ang Hsien, and near him are his children. He is represented as shooting an arrow at a dog appearing in a cloud (Collier, 1921, p34-35).

Association of monsters with real celestial objects is common enough not to raise an eyebrow. T’ien Kou is often linked in Chinese mythology to the star Sirius (yes, that would be the “Dog Star”), which oddly enough is a star that seems to have cross-cultural significance with respect to the humble hound. The fact that everyone on the planet seems to ascribe mythological import to Sirius is a little puzzling in itself, but plausible accounts for this fact have been offered. Sirius is bright blue-green, extremely large, and very close to Earth, relatively speaking. “Aside from the fact of its surpassing brilliance, the fact that Sirius is visible from every habitable portion of the globe has served to make it from time immemorial the nocturnal cynosure of all the nations of the earth” (Olcott, 1911, p97). The dog connection is a little harder to get one’s head around. Sirius is symbolically associated with dogs among the Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Accadians, the Dogon people of Mali in West Africa, to name just a few. Calm down, Ancient Aliens fanboys. Plenty of cultures recognize the significance of Sirius without ascribing canine qualities to it, so I think we can skip over the suggestion that dog-headed aliens visited Earth. Or rather, we await more clear evidence, such as a dog-headed alien on CNN, or at least a pile of kibble with a non-terrestrial origin. Other accounts directly associate the T’ien Kou with a 6^th Century “dog-shaped” comet noted by Chinese historians at the time. It also seems that efforts were made to appease the T’ien Kou through the involuntary donation of human livers.

We must not dismiss the dog in its character of demon without saying a few words about the so-called t’ien kou or “heavenly dog”, a mysterious devil, mentioned frequently enough in books to convince us that it has fascinated superstition for a long series of centuries. It appears as early as the sixth century in the Standard Histories: “in the thirteenth year of the Tien kien period (A.D. 514), in the sixth month, there were stories abroad in the Capital (the present Nanking) that ch’eng-ch’eng (?) stole the livers of men, as also their blood, to feed the celestial dog therewith. The people were in great consternation for twenty days. And in the fifth year of the Ta t’ung period (AD. 539) the story was circulated in the Capital that the Son of Heaven took livers out of men for food for the celestial dog. Old and young thus affrighted each other so much, that after sunset they shut their doors and armed themselves with clubs; this panic ceased after several months”. The origin of the belief in that bloodthirsty anthropophagous monster we are not able to trace. Evidently, as its name indicates, it is related to the sky. We read indeed that in the second year of the Hwang kien period (A.D. 561) a celestial dog came down, and ceremonies were performed to counteract the ill resulting therefrom, on which occasion the emperor fell from his horse which was scared by a hare, and expired soon after. Looking into Chinese uranographical works, we find mention made of a luminary, called the heavenly dog, placed somewhere about Cancer. Sze-ma Tsien has the following notice concerning it: “It has the shape of a large moving star, and produces a noise. When it descends and reaches the earth, it resembles a dog. Whatever it falls upon becomes a flaming fire; it looks like a fiery light, like flames flaring up to heaven. Its base is round and covers a field of several acres; its upper part is pointed and spreads a yellow colour over a thousand miles; it may defeat armies and kill the commanders”. Evidently the great historian here describes an enormous dog-shaped meteor, which some time had come down somewhere and was confounded with a comet in the sky. Perhaps it is to this same thing that the Shan-hai king refers, which states: “Midway in the large plain or desert there is a red dog, called the celestial dog. Wherever it descends, armed violence will prevail”‘ (Groot, 1892, p574-575)

The T’ien Kou is strongly associated with problems in childbirth, credited with lurking around, waiting to devour a newborn child, unless drums are beaten or stones thrown to scare him away. Although, this dog is reputedly a moon-swallower, so not quite sure why it would be scared by a little drumming. Culture Hero Chang Kung takes a slightly more aggressive stance, and shoots arrows at the T’ien Kou, which might be slightly more effective.

When the birth is delayed it is put down to Lo Hou and the master of the house fires a gun over his shoulder towards the heavens to drive away the evil influences. These influences are believed to come from the t’ien-kou hsing or heavenly Dog-star. In some houses a picture of Chang Kung is hung up; he is depicted as carrying a sling and stones; he is supposed to throw at this heavenly dog which comes to devour the expected child. It is said that Chang Hsien-Chung was an incarnation of this heavenly Dog-star, which is also the devourer of the moon in lunar eclipses (Huston, 1921, p1).

In a slightly more detailed account, Chang Hsien (Chang Kung) takes full credit for preventing the T’ien Kou from devouring the sun, moon, and your children, although the implication is made that Chang Hsien’s mythological significance is the accidental result of an emperor’s concubine covering up for a former love.

In the family sleeping-apartments in Chinese houses hang pictures of Chang Hsien, a white-faced, long-bearded man with a little boy by his side, and in his hand a bow and arrow, with which he is shooting the Heavenly Dog. The dog is the Dog-star, and if the ‘fate’ of the family is under this star there will be no son, or the child will be short-lived. Chang Hsien is the patron of child-bearing women, and was worshipped under the Sung dynasty by women desirous of offspring. The introduction of this name into the Chinese pantheon is due to an incident in the history of Hua-jui Fu-jen, a name given to Lady Fei, concubine of Meng Chang, the last ruler of the Later Shu State, A.D. 935-964. When she was brought from Shu to grace the harem of the founder of the Sung dynasty, in A.D. 960, she is said to have preserved secretly the portrait of her former lord, the Prince of Shu, whose memory she passionately cherished. Jealously questioned by her new consort respecting her devotion to this picture, she declared it to be the representation of Chang Hsien, the divine being worshipped by women desirous of offspring. Opinions differ as to the origin of the worship. One account says that the Emperor Jen Tsung, of the Sung dynasty, saw in a dream a beautiful young man with white skin and black hair, carrying a bow in his hand. He said to the Emperor: “The star T’ien Kou, Heavenly Dog, in the heavens is hiding the sun and moon, and on earth devouring small children. It is only my presence which keeps him at bay” (Werner, 1922, p177-178).

The Celestial Dog T’ien Kou has some bad habits, for sure, but one of his most salient qualities is his loyalty to his master Erh Lang, reflecting our ambivalent attitude towards dogs – they love us unquestioningly, but they are still animals, only a few generations removed from the wolf. T’ien Kou is just a dog after all, and as the popular saying goes, there are no bad dogs, just bad dog owners. A little obedience training, perhaps the introduction of a new dog chow with less child or liver content, and a smack on the nose with a newspaper when he goes to swallow the moon, and I’m confident T’ien Kou would be an upstanding canine citizen. There is a Native American saying, “God Made the earth, the sky and the water, the moon and the sun. He made man and bird and beast. But He didn’t make the dog. He already had one.”

References
Collier, V. W. F. Dogs of China & Japan, In Nature and Art. London: W. Heinemann, 1921.
Groot, J. J. M. de 1854-1921. The Religious System of China: Its Ancient Forms, Evolution, History And Present Aspect, Manners, Customs And Social Institutions Connected Therewith. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1892.
Hutson, James. Chinese Life In the Tibetan Foothills. Shanghai: Far Eastern geographical establishment, 1921.
Olcott, William Tyler. Star Lore of All Ages: a Collection of Myths, Legends, And Facts Concerning the Constellations of the Northern Hemisphere. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911.
Werner, E. T. C. 1864-1954. Myths & Legends of China. London [etc.]: G. G. Harrap & co., ltd, 1922.

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