While the Atlantis legend is obviously the most famous lost continent myth, it is hardly the only one. Its closest equivalent in the Indian Ocean is Lemuria, the existence of which was proposed in 1864, the name coming from the lemurs, an infraorder of primates native to Madagascar. I remember being somewhat intrigued by the lemur as a kid. For Halloween one year, my mom made me a panda costume, which she later converted into a cat costume by adding a tail. I decided that, if I wore the panda mask with the converted costume, the closest actual animal match was a lemur. Later, I knew a guy in college who was a huge fan of the animals. The name of the animal actually came from that of the lemures, restless spirits of the dead in Roman mythology. Presumably zoologists of the time thought that their eyes and wailing sounds had a haunted air to them.


Anyway, while lemurs are only found in the wild on Madagascar, fossils of similar animals were found on the Indian subcontinent. So biologist Philip Sclater proposed that India and Madagascar were once part of the same continent, which he named Lemuria because it would have been home to the ancestors of modern-day lemurs. This was hardly the only such conjecture of its day, but this kind of idea was pretty much put to rest once the theory of plate tectonics gained wide acceptance. That way, India and Madagascar could have been near each other at one point WITHOUT having to account for a whole lot of extra land.


Like Atlantis, Lemuria made its way into the occult, and not surprisingly ended up not having much to do with Sclater's proposal. In Helena Blavatsky's complex Theosophical history of the world, the Lemurians were the third of the seven root races. They were hermaphrodites who grew to about seven feet tall, reproduced by laying eggs, and weren't particularly bright. The gods eventually sank the continent after they turned to bestiality, and started again in Atlantis. Later occult writers would associate Lemuria with Mu, a lost continent in the Pacific with origins dating back to an 1864 mistranslation of Mayan writings. How a submerged continent in the Pacific would have explained similar fossils in India and Madagascar isn't entirely clear, but the original point is often lost when people think they can make cool connections between things. I've seen some occult sites link Mu and Lemuria because of their names, even though the former was a mistranslation and the latter seemingly just a bit of cuteness on Sclater's part. I mean, it's not like a lost civilization would have given lemurs the same Latin-derived name that they'd come to have in a later century, right? That would have been stupid.


A book called A Dweller on Two Planets, written by Frederick Spencer Oliver and published in 1894, proposed that people from Lemuria were living in caverns inside and under Mount Shasta in California. Why there? No idea, and it was probably just an example of Oliver seeing the mountain, thinking it looked really impressive, and figuring he had to connect it to some kind of spiritual belief. According to the Wikipedia entry, Shasta has attracted people of many religious faiths. It has a Buddhist monastery, and native beliefs held that it was the dwelling place of the spirit chief Skell.


I make no secret of the fact that my interest in this topic was largely spawned by Frank Black, whose Pixies song "Velouria" (a strong candidate for my favorite song by anyone) and Catholics song "Velvety" both reference the idea of Lemurians living at Mount Shasta. Frank's Lemurians are furry, implying he was thinking more of the association with lemurs than of Blavatsky's egg-laying hermaphrodites. ("Hermaphroditos" is a totally different, and not as good, Frank Black song.)

This week, I thought it might be fun to look at elementals, which are basically nature spirits. Many cultures believed in such beings, but the most famous classification is probably that determined by the sixteenth century physician and alchemist Phillip von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus. He was a believer in the four classical elements as known in Greece, India, and Japan. These, of course, were earth, fire, air, and water. There was sometimes also a fifth element added to the mix, but contrary to what Ted Turner and Captain Planet might have told you, it wasn't "heart." Rather, Aristotle decided that the fifth element was aether, also known as quintessence, an immutable substance from which the gods and the heavens are made. In Japanese thought, the fifth element was known as Void. The Chinese had slightly different classical elements, counting metal and wood but not air. These elements have, throughout history, been linked to everything from planets to months of the year. Since the discovery of actual elements, however, it seems that the classical elements are typically viewed symbolically rather than literally. Some sources suggest that Paracelsus associated each of the classical elements with a real atomic element (carbon for earth, hydrogen for water, oxygen for air, and for some reason nitrogen for fire), and he also proposed intelligent beings dwelling in each of these elements. His names for such creatures came from mythology, although he sometimes changed details from older descriptions of nature spirits. Earth was ruled by the gnomes, diminutive dwarfs from European folklore. The term "gnome" might have been original with Paracelsus, and probably derives from the Latin and Greek for "earth-dweller," although it was commonly believed at one point that it was connected to the term for knowledge. Undines are water spirits, the term being the French name for mermaids. Some legends had it that an undine had no soul unless it married a mortal, an idea that showed up from time to time in post-Christian folklore. I guess the idea is that it gives humans a certain amount of superiority over traditional immortals, since they can go to Heaven while the minor deities are stuck on Earth forever. That also presumably means they can't go to Hell either, but I'm not sure the myth writers addressed that. Fire elementals are salamanders, the association likely coming from how salamanders would hibernate in logs and scurry out to escape when the logs were set ablaze, giving the impression to a casual observer that the flames created them. They were also thought to be able to withstand heat because of their moist skin. We now know such tales are no more true than the ostrich hiding its head in the sand, but since the idea of a fire lizard is still intriguing, some modern fantasists think of the elemental as a completely different animal than the amphibian of that name. The air elementals are sylphs, and don't have as many mythological associations, but are generally regarded to be quite similar to winged fairies.


The idea of elementals has stuck around through the ages, and a Google search reveals that they're fairly popular within the neopagan movement. They're also often associated with the occult, and mystical philosophies like Theosophy incorporate beliefs in such beings. And, not surprisingly, they've also made their way into fantasy. In the days to come, I hope to discuss the use of characters associated with the classical elements in the Oz books and the video game world, and perhaps other media as well.

Since it is Thanksgiving, I feel pretty much obligated to write something related to the holiday, but it can be hard to come up with ideas. I could always say what I'm thankful for, but that's a bit trite, isn't it? So what is Thanksgiving actually about? Sure, it's about feeling grateful, and about how English pilgrims couldn't have survived without the help of the Native Americans, whom they eventually killed off through war and disease. But more than that, it's a harvest festival, and such occasions are known throughout the world. It's actually a bit late in the year when compared to other harvest celebrations, but George Washington sometimes declared days of thanksgiving in December. It was Abraham Lincoln who made Thanksgiving a national holiday and set it in November. Regardless, seeing as how it's intended to honor the harvest, we can perhaps say that the people who insist on calling it "Turkey Day" are actually right in a way, because it's about food. Many holidays are, really.


One item that tends to be associated with Thanksgiving in this country is the cornucopia, or horn of plenty. This is actually a quite old symbol, which Wikipedia informs us dates back at least as far as the fifth century BC. Back then, it was commonly associated with Amalthea, the goat who suckled Zeus in his childhood. The Romans would later depict it as a property of Fortuna, the goddess of...well, I think you can figure that out from her name. Christians also use it, although some evangelicals think horns are of the Devil.


The cornucopia probably appears in some fairy tales, but I can't think of any examples offhand. I do remember a story about a magic grinder that could produce any food, and ended up filling the entire ocean with salt. Tales involving objects that can produce unlimited amounts of something often extol the dangers of not giving them specific instructions. Two of my favorite fantasy series definitely used cornucopias in particular. In Ruth Plumly Thompson's Handy Mandy in Oz, one of Nox the Ox's golden horns produces whatever the person turning and removing it asks for. The term "cornucopia" isn't used, but the literal translation "horn of plenty" is. And in Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith, Tiffany Aching receives a cornucopia. If I remember correctly, it would obey instructions, but only if given in Ephebian (the Discworld equivalent of Greek).

In honor of the discovery of water on the Moon, I thought I'd look into the mythology of Earth's favorite natural satellite. (Yeah, I know it's our ONLY natural satellite.) The best known mythological conception of the Moon is probably that of Greco-Roman lore, in which both the Sun and Moon are gods riding in chariots across the sky. In earlier mythology, these gods are the Titans Helios and Selene, but they are gradually replaced by members of the Olympian pantheon. Apollo came to be associated with the Sun, which means that his twin sister Artemis took over the Moon. There is some speculation that the Moon was represented by a woman because of the connection between the lunar phases and the menstrual cycle, but apparently male lunar deities were actually more common. The interesting thing, however, is that the Sun and Moon were pretty much inevitably opposite genders. In Norse mythology, for instance, Sol (the Sun) and her brother Mani (the Moon) are pursued across the sky by wolves. The Sumerians, however, seem to have considered both heavenly bodies to be male.



Some versions of the myth of Hercules and the Nemean Lion say that the lion, who in this telling was the son of Zeus and Selene rather than Typhon and Echidna, fell from the Moon. That seems to indicate that, at some point in the history of the ancient Greeks, they started thinking of the Moon as a location instead of just a chick in a chariot. What different ancient cultures thought about the size of the Moon, and how many of them thought the Moon actually was a person as opposed to there being a person living IN the Moon, would definitely be an interesting subject of study. I have to admit I don't know a whole lot about it, but the concept of the Man in the Moon suggests that said Man lived there, rather than actually BEING the satellite itself. The Man in the Moon is an example of pareidolia, the phenomenon in which humans see pictures where none were intended. The human mind is particularly fond of faces, and the full moon does resemble a person's face, with Mare Imbrium and Mare Serenitatis as the eyes. Other interpretations, however, saw the image of a person carrying something. Variations on this theme identify the figure as the guy stoned to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath (see Numbers 15:32-36), a sheep or tree thief, Cain carrying a pitchfork, a witch carrying wood, and an old man with a lantern. Many of these associations are to Judeo-Christian culture, but it's said that the Haida of modern-day northwestern Canada and Alaska saw the moon-person as a disobedient boy gathering wood.



In Asian cultures, it seems to have been more common to see a toad or a rabbit in the Moon. I remember being intrigued when, in junior high school, I read a mention in Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings to a Lunar Hare that kept the herbs used to make the elixir of immortality. The association of the Moon with immortality elixir appears to be pretty common. Hindu mythology holds that the life-granting elixir known as soma was stored in the Moon, and the satellite waned because the gods were drinking it. A Chinese myth involves Chang'e, who swallowed the immortality pill meant for her husband, and ended up living on the Moon with a rabbit companion. According to Wikipedia, the command center at Houston referred to Chang'e (as Chang-o) in a conversation with the Apollo 11 astronauts. The rabbit or hare himself was also sometimes said to manufacture elixirs.



Before we leave the Moon for the time being, I'd like to look at one more ancient belief about the Moon, which is that it's made of green cheese. Not surprisingly, the evidence suggests that no one ever actually DID believe this, but rather made fun of other people by claiming that THEY did. It was sort of a quick and easy reference to hoaxes and superstitions in general. So why green cheese? The Moon certainly doesn't LOOK green, after all. That, at least, might well have an easily explained answer. In 1546, John Heywood recorded the proverb, "The moon is made of a greene cheese," but "greene" probably actually meant new and unaged.

Today, we take a look at the end of the world. More specifically, it's the final war of Norse mythology, Ragnarok. One fascinating thing about the myths of Ragnarok is that the descriptions are so specific, and the gods know all about them, but they're simply resigned to carrying out their roles. No point in messing with fate, I suppose.



According to the myths, the great war will be preceded by three years of harsh winter, during which morality will break down. Then the bonds holding some of the most fearsome monsters will break, and the creatures that have been trying to cause chaos for centuries will finally succeed. The wolves that have been chasing the Sun and Moon will devour them, and the serpent Nidhogg will chew through one of the roots of the World Tree. The monsters will join forces with the frost and fire giants, including Loki, who will escape from his prison. Sources mention two ships, one made of the nails of the dead, that will convey the giants and their allies to the final battleground; as well as the giants invading Asgard by way of the rainbow bridge Bifrost, which would break behind them. The gods will be assisted by the Einherjar, the virtuous dead who had been dwelling at Valhalla. The exact order and location of the events seems to vary from one source to another, but the last battle will be fought on the plain of Vigrid, which is ten thousand square leagues in area, and fills the same basic role that Armageddon does in Christianity. While we know that Armageddon refers to Megiddo in Israel, where many battles have been fought over the centuries, I haven't seen any speculation as to whether Vigrid might be a real place. At some point in the fighting, the wolf Fenrir will kill Odin, who will in turn be avenged by his son Vidar. Thor and the Midgard Serpent Jormungand will take out each other, with the thunder god killing the serpent but falling to the dead snake's venom. Eventually, after many more deaths on both sides, the giant Surtr will end the whole thing by setting all nine worlds on fire with his magic sword.



As is generally the case with mythology, this death of everything is followed by a rebirth. Some of the younger gods will survive the destruction, as will two humans, who will repopulate the world. In the new world, crops will grow by themselves, and peace and happiness will reign. The main dwelling place of the new gods will be Gimli, a hall that shines more brightly than the sun (and the source of the name for the main dwarf in Lord of the Rings). I seem to recall seeing some different takes on the new world from after Christianity started to gain prominence in Scandinavia, in which there's only the one god after the Aesir die. While an interesting way to try to reconcile old and new beliefs, wouldn't that mean Ragnarok would have to have happened already without anyone noticing? ("Hey, did you hear that a giant wolf ate the sun the other day?" "No, I was inside all day.")



The Norse apocalypse has become a popular theme, and the name "Ragnarok" has also been used for things that don't have an immediate connection to the end of the world. Indeed, most of the Google results I found when searching for the term did not refer to the battle, but to the RPG Ragnarok Online. Other references that come to mind are the Esper Ragnarok from Final Fantasy VI, Ragnarok Canyon in Battletoads, and the avian villain Ragna Roc in Piers Anthony's Two to the Fifth.

Continuing with the bear theme, today's mythology post is about two constellations always visible in the Northern Hemisphere (meaning that they're visible year-round, that is, not in the daytime or anything), Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The association of these two groups of stars with bears was common in and around the Middle East, and apparently among some Native American tribes as well. I've read that most of the constellations we know were originally conceived by the Babylonians, so the idea might well have spread from there to Greece and Judea (the Great Bear is mentioned in the Book of Job), but that doesn't explain how the Iroquois had the same idea. In Western Europe, the most recognizable part of what is considered Ursa Major is more commonly seen as a plow or wagon, or sometimes a cleaver or saucepan. Some Africans (ones in the Northern Hemisphere, I suppose) identified the seven main stars as a drinking gourd, which is presumably where we get the modern American idea of the Big Dipper.



The Greek myth surrounding the two Ursa constellations involves a nymph named Callisto, daughter of Lycaon of Arcadia, and part of the retinue of Artemis. Our horny old pal Zeus was attracted to her, and some versions of the myth say that he took the form of his own daughter in order to rape the girl. Regardless of the details, Zeus and Callisto had a son named Arcas, and Hera took her revenge for her husband's infidelity by turning the nymph into a bear. When he'd grown older and become a hunter, Arcas almost killed his ursine mother, but Zeus saved both of them by turning the hunter into a bear as well. He then pulled them into the heavens to become constellations, stretching out their tails in the process. Some other takes on the myth say that Arcas was not transformed, but that he became the constellation Bootes. Anyway, the reason the two bear constellations never move below the horizon was that Hera made it so they could never have access to water.

Happy Halloween to all my readers! I've always liked Halloween, what with the dressing up and all the images. The candy never thrilled me quite as much as it apparently does other kids, and I eventually reached the point where I preferred to stay home and hand out candy instead of going out and begging for it myself. I'm not sure what I'm going to do this year, although I do think bethje and I are going out to eat at some point.



The origins of Halloween tie in with the widespread idea that at least some dead people are still hanging around, usually in a non-corporeal form. This idea is an ancient one found in many cultures. The Romans performed sacrifices in honor of the Manes, who were the spirits of dead loved ones. Ancestor worship is also a concept that's seen throughout the world. This all ties in with the idea of the soul. But what exactly is a soul? Even today, the idea is pretty vague, yet a large number of people believe in them. Essentially, the belief is that a spirit version of a person, with the same personality and sometimes even the same appearance, lives on in some way. Considering that consciousness seems to be connected to the physical brain, I really can't see the soul idea as being much more than wishful thinking. I can understand the desire for it, though, as I do find the idea that death totally ends everything to be somewhat disturbing. Perhaps to some people, even an afterlife of eternal torment would be preferable to nothing at all. And there's the whole reward and punishment issue, but I won't get into that right now. Anyway, from what I've seen, it looks like the Egyptian Book of the Dead regards people in the afterlife as having physical bodies that are essentially the same as the ones they had in life, which is probably why preserving the corpse was so important. You wouldn't want to hang out in the underworld as a mere skeleton, would you? Well, actually, that sounds kind of cool. Greek mythology has the underworld inhabited by shades, existing in shadow and despair. These shades still maintained personalities, though, and they could be summoned and consulted by magicians.



While a bleak existence for the spirits of the dead was the general belief in many cultures, this was often coupled with the idea that the truly virtuous would be spared this fate. Most dead people in Greek mythology end up in the boring Plains of Asphodel, but some would be allowed into the Elysian Fields. The noble warriors among the Vikings would end up in Valhalla instead of Niflheim. Elijah was carried bodily into Heaven on a chariot when his time on Earth had ended. Along with this, there's the belief that the truly BAD end up punished for eternity, or at least long enough to learn their lesson. The Greek Tartarus, where Sisyphus was forever pushing a boulder up a hill and Tantalus wasn't able to get his hands on any food or water, was a major influence on the Christian version of Hell. Many of the tales of torments pretty much require that there's some physical component to the soul. After all, why would Tantalus have been tantalized at all if he was merely a non-corporeal being who had no need of sustenance? The typical image of fire and brimstone accompanied by demons poking pitchforks into people's butts becomes much less effective if the dead have no nerves. I believe some concepts of the soul also thought it was physically manifested as breath, which I guess is where the idea that sneezing can let your soul escape originates. So is a ghost or spirit a physical being or merely some form of energy? I'm not sure anyone really knows.



Since ghosts are often thought to live a bleak existence, it's not too surprising that they'd envy the living. And a lot of tales of haunted houses and the like basically consist of the dead being jerks to any living people who happen to come around. One popular variation is that of the poltergeist, which is essentially a spirit that can move physical objects around. Irish folklore includes the idea of the fetch, a ghost of a person who's still alive. Seeing a fetch is often thought to be a harbinger of one's own death, but there are variations on the theme.



Oh, and happy birthday to doktor_x! I've always thought it would be kind of cool to have a Halloween birthday, but what do I know?

The use of the term "undead" to refer to certain sorts of monstrous creatures might well have originated with Bram Stoker, who applied it to vampires. The actual definition of the term is a bit vague, so some types of beings sometimes count as undead and sometimes don't. Werewolves are sometimes grouped in with the undead, but I don't think they were originally, as there's no real connection between turning into a wolf and acting alive after death. Legends of vampires and other monsters eventually merged with those of werewolves, however. While Dracula's most famous alternate form is a bat, the novel clearly states that he could also turn into a wolf. The common ideas of lycanthropy being communicable and its victim becoming indestructible unless killed in a very specific way (silver being one popular killer of both werewolves and vampires) turned the werewolf into a sort of undead being, but not all modern werewolf stories hold to these concepts.


Zombies are very popular these days, although I'm not entirely sure why, as they have no real personalities. I guess there's a certain appeal to mindless grunts, though. Zombies are sort of like Goombas from the Mario series, or the Foot Soldiers from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons and video games. There are millions of them, and even though they're pretty dumb and not too hard to defeat individually, they just keep coming. And there isn't a whole lot of guilt involved in killing people who are already dead. The idea of zombies originates in Voodoo, and is thought by some to be based on the results of drugs. As voodoo zombies are said to be under the control of a sorcerer, I suppose they pretty much have to be mindless drones. I have seen attempts to give personalities to zombies, with my personal favorite being Reg Shoe from the Discworld series, who spends his spare time campaigning for rights for the undead. Can Discworld zombies, who have their own minds, often hold down steady jobs, and seem to achieve their undead state due to determination rather than magic, truly be considered zombies in the traditional sense? Maybe not, and there are a few lines in Reaper Man that suggest even the characters realize this, but "zombie" has come to be a pretty generic term for the animated undead. If you want to get technical about it, "revenant" is a more generic term for a reanimated corpse. There's also the lich, which developed by way of Dungeons & Dragons into a person who became undead by choice, and retains his or her original mind. I've seen it suggested on an Oz mailing list that the Wicked Witches of the East and West, kept alive only by means of their magic, could count as liches, but that might be a bit of a stretch.


I believe the idea of mummies as undead monsters originated with horror movies. While mummification was presumably intended to preserve the body for a person's journey to the next world, I don't know of any indication that the ancient Egyptians thought the bodies themselves would come back to life. The embalming process does add a certain amount of flavor to the zombie concept, though. And speaking of classic horror characters, I'm not exactly sure how to categorize Frankenstein's monster, who was brought to life through a scientific process, and was quite capable of human thought and emotion despite his hideous appearance.


Finally, we come to ghouls, and if the Wikipedia page is to be believed, they were originally demons from Middle Eastern folklore. They're known for eating the flesh of dead bodies (and apparently sometimes living ones as well) and taking the forms of the people they eat. The idea that zombies eat flesh as well was presumably borrowed from ghoul stories, and George Romero played a major part in popularizing the idea of reanimated corpses eating human flesh. I think it makes more sense for demon to eat bodies than for a revenant to do the same. Do zombies even have functioning digestive systems? Oh, well. As long as the rules are internally consistent and your vampires don't sparkle, you can pretty much do what you want with these undead monsters in your own fiction.

Items that were allegedly used by celebrities are often worth obscene amounts of money, and this only becomes more ridiculous when the celebrity in question is the founder of one of the world's largest religions. Somehow, holy relics of a certain first century Galilean carpenter have been showing up in various places for centuries, and are often held at churches for pilgrims to see. Is there any authenticity to these claims? Well, not all that much, but some of them haven't been officially DISPROVED, if that counts for anything. Here are a few of the more interesting stories behind purported relics of Jesus.


True Cross - I'm sure there are enough alleged pieces of this that the True Cross would have to have been the height of a skyscraper in order to accommodate all of them. I once heard a joke that the reason there are no more cedars in Lebanon is that every Crusader had to bring back a piece of the True Cross. The legend associated with the cross says that it, along with those of the two revolutionaries executed alongside Jesus, was discovered in Palestine by Helena, the Christian mother of Emperor Constantine. There's more to it than that, though. The Golden Legend, which was first recorded in 1260 but probably predates that as an oral tradition, has it that the wood was from an offshoot of the Tree of Life, which was used to build a bridge that the Queen of Sheba crossed to visit King Solomon. The king buried part of the timber, and it was eventually used by the Romans to construct the crucifix on which Jesus died. I'll give the framers of this legend major points for creativity, but how likely do you really think all that is?


Shroud of Turin - This was actually in the news recently, as just this month, a professor named Luigi Garlaschelli managed to reproduce the artifact using technologies that would have existed in the Middle Ages. Radiocarbon dating was performed on it back in 1988, and the conclusion was that it originated in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The first unequivocal mention of the shroud was in 1357, and even in those days it was widely considered to be a forgery. But believers in the shroud are keen to point out potential flaws in such evidence, and maintain that it actually was worn by Jesus. The shroud is one of many cloths said to have made prolonged contact with the body of Christ at some time or other. A church in Spain keeps the Sudarium of Oviedo, which is said to have been wrapped around the head of Jesus' lifeless body. Other purported cloth relics of Jesus' life and death include a seamless coat kept in Germany, a baby blanket located in the same country, Veronica's Veil, and the Image of Edessa. The shroud is probably the most popular today, yet apparently the Catholic Church hasn't even made an official pronouncement on its authenticity.


Holy Chalice/Grail - Sometimes thought to be the same thing and sometimes two different ones, the basic idea behind both legends is that the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper was preserved through the ages. One version of the Chalice story says that it was kept by St. Peter, then by the popes and the kings of Spain, before finally being turned over to the Cathedral of Valencia where it can be found today. There is, however, a competing claim for the chalice being kept in Genoa. The Holy Grail is thought by some to have been based on confusion between magical dishes from Celtic mythology and the Holy Chalice of Jesus. The Christian version of the story, as related by Robert de Boron in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, has it that the Grail was taken to Europe by Joseph of Arimathea. It is, of course, the object of a quest for King Arthur's knights, and later Indiana Jones and his father.


Spear of Destiny - The Gospel of John adds a detail to the description of Jesus' crucifixion that isn't mentioned in any of the Synoptic Gospels. According to John 19:34, in order to make sure Jesus was dead, a soldier pierced him in the side with a spear. In Christian tradition from outside the Bible itself, the soldier was named Longinus, and the spear the Holy Lance or Spear of Destiny. In the sixth century, Antoninus of Piacenza claimed to have found both the spear and the crown of thorns at Mount Zion. There are several claims for spears being the one used by Longinus, and some stories that say the point and the shaft are now two different relics. The point of this version of the lance was stolen from Paris not long after the French Revolution, while the rest of the spear is being kept in Rome. Another possible Spear of Destiny is the one kept in Austria, which was said to have been used by Constantine, and then handed down by the Holy Roman Emperors. It was part of the Imperial Regalia, and was briefly possessed by Adolf Hitler.

Holy Prepuce - Proving that some of these relic-hunters would go after literally anything they could potentially associated with Jesus, several people claimed to have found the foreskin of Jesus. After all, being Jewish, he WOULD have been circumcised, right? I think the chances that this would have been preserved are even lower than those of the other relics, but since mainstream Christianity holds that Jesus ascended bodily into Heaven, it presumably would have been one of the few earthly remains he would have left. Wouldn't he also have lost a significant amount of hair over his lifetime, though? Seems like searching for that would have been considerably less disturbing, but what do I know?

Relics of Jesus aren't so much in vogue nowadays, although there remain some devotees to the idea. I have to wonder why, even if some of these items legitimately ARE from the time of Jesus, why they would be more likely to have been associated with him than with anyone else. How do the keepers of the True Cross know that it wasn't actually a piece of the instrument of death for some OTHER would-be Messiah? I suppose the most likely explanation would be that, since Jesus is a form of the Almighty God, he would have preserved these items and guided people to find them when the time was right. The story of Helena and the cross, as recorded on Wikipedia, says that she actually found a few different crosses, and God had to indicate which one was the True Cross. But if you DON'T believe in Jesus using miracles to reveal these items (and really, if you were all-powerful, would you want anyone finding your foreskin?), then the odds are very much against finding them. That's one reason why I'm quite skeptical about any story involving the discovery of Jesus' bones. While not universally accepted, the idea that Jesus' body was resurrected and brought bodily to Heaven is the most commonly believed one within Christianity, so Christians presumably think Jesus didn't leave behind any bones. And if you think Jesus was an ordinary guy who died like every other mortal, then his bones WOULD still be somewhere, but how in the world would anyone today be able to tell them apart from any other bones? For some reason, there was a lot of media exploration around two years ago of the possibility that some bones found in an ossuary in Jerusalem could be those of Jesus and his family. The ossuaries were actually discovered in 1980, though, which means this seems to be yet another case of the mainstream media jumping on a really old story as if it's something new and revolutionary.

One common archetype in folklore and mythology is that of the trickster, an often comic figure who breaks rules in order to achieve his (or her, although tricksters are predominantly male) own ends. Tricksters vary in their conception, with some being fairly harmless practical jokers, others playing tricks in order to achieve a greater good, and still others being downright malicious. While tricksters tend to be intelligent in their actual tricks, they are often seen as generally foolish in other respects. The idea of tricksters has lasted over time, still being quite prominent in modern media, especially in cartoons. Some animals, like foxes and rabbits, are commonly shown as having the personalities of tricksters. Among others, Reynard from French folklore, Brer Rabbit, and Bugs Bunny all fit into that role. One of the most famous mythological tricksters, however, is the Native American figure of Coyote.


There are actually several tricksters in Native American lore, with Coyote being the most significant in the Great Plains and parts of the Pacific coast. The Raven is also a major trickster character in the Pacific Northwest in particular, with deeds like the creation of Multnomah Falls sometimes attributed to either one in different Wasco stories. I've seen other myths with the Rabbit as a trickster, and even one with a crafty Sandpiper. Coyote seems to be the best known character in Native American mythology, though. His character can be quite different from one myth to another, but he's often shown to be a shape-shifter, and to have had powers to alter geography. He's been credited with slaying monsters (sometimes from inside their bodies), creating mankind, bringing fire to humans, and inadvertently making death permanent. For a trickster, he's sometimes shown to be quite easily tricked himself, and not unlikely to make a fool of himself.


One of the nastier tricksters in classical mythology is Loki, a giant who joined the Norse pantheon at the invitation of his friend Odin. Some myths show Loki as a willing helper of the Aesir, as when he helps Thor to retrieve his lost hammer, and accompanies him to the land of the giants. Others, however, have him trying to spread discord among the gods, and I have to suspect that he might just be someone who takes whichever side would be more fun for him. The last straw as far as the Aesir are concerned is when he is responsible for the death of Odin's son Baldur. As punishment for this, Loki is bound with his son's entrails under a poisonous snake. His wife Sigyn manages to catch most of the snake's venom in a bowl, but when she empties the vessel, the poison drips down onto Loki and makes him cause earthquakes. The story has it that he will remain bound until the time of Ragnarok, during which he will fight against the gods and end up dying. Like Coyote, Loki is a shape-shifter, sometimes even taking female form, and once becoming pregnant with a foal after turning into a mare in order to distract a stallion.


In Western Africa mythology, the most prominent trickster character is Anansi, a god who is sometimes portrayed as a spider, and has a lot of the same traits as tricksters in other cultures. One of the most significant Anansi tales involves his capturing various dangerous animals in order to purchase the very concept of stories from his father Nyame, god of the sky. The story of Brer Rabbit and the tar baby is thought to have originated as an Anansi story in which the god himself ends up being tricked. In Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Anansi (who goes by the name "Mr. Nancy" while in the United States) plays a major role, and relates a particularly smutty story about his stealing large testicles from a tiger.


Greco-Roman mythology has several figures who fit the trickster model. Perhaps the best choice would be Prometheus, whose role is somewhat similar to that of Loki in Norse mythology. Like Loki, he was a member of an enemy tribe (in this case the Titans instead of the giants) who defected and helped out the gods, but also went against them in some significant situations. The two most important are both occasions of his helping out mankind at the expense of the Olympians, once tricking Zeus into not taking the best meat in sacrifices, and another time stealing fire for humans (as Coyote is also said to have done). As punishment, he was chained to a rock, and a vulture would eat his liver (which, seeing as how its bearer was immortal, would automatically regenerate) every day; but he was eventually freed by Hercules. As my fellow Terry Pratchett fans probably know, Discworld had its own version of that myth, with Fingers-Mazda as the thief of fire and Cohen the Barbarian as the hero who rescues him from bondage. But getting back to the actual Prometheus, unlike with the other tricksters I've mentioned, I don't know any stories of his ever becoming the butt of the joke. That role might, however, be fulfilled by his slow-witted brother Epimetheus, through whom Zeus punishes all mankind by means of Pandora and her box (which was probably actually a jar). Hermes is also sometimes portrayed as a trickster (as, for instance, when he stole Apollo's cattle during his childhood), while Loki's role of sowing discord is attributed to Eris.

Yesterday, vilajunkie alerted me to a kind of magical black cat that I had omitted from my recent post, the Cait Sith of the Scottish Highlands. From what I've seen, this is pronounced "cat shee," and hence has no connection to the Sith from Star Wars. Then again, I've read that a giant green rabbit is a significant character in the comics based on the franchise, so I suppose a feline Dark Lord wouldn't be out of place. But I digress. The Cait Sith is a fairy cat, distinguished from an ordinary black cat by its size and a white spot on its breast.


(Okay, maybe Reagan is too small to be a Cait Sith, but she DOES have the correct marking.)

The general consensus online seems to be that the Cait Sith could be dangerous and ferocious, but I can't find much about what they were actually thought to DO. But a few tidbits I was able to pick up included that the Cait Sith was sometimes thought to be a transformed witch, that some Scots also believed in a demonic cat called Big Ears that could be summoned by burning other cats, and that the canine equivalent is a typically silent green dog known as the Cu Sith. It seems that the legend of the fairy cats probably came from the Kellas Cats, Scottish hybrids between wildcats and domestic cats.



Nowadays, the name Cait Sith is more likely to be associated with a character from Final Fantasy VII, a robotic cat with a megaphone that rides around on an animated stuffed Moogle. It turns out that the cat is actually under the control of Reeve, head of Urban Development for the Shinra Corporation, who is operating as sort of a double agent. This Cait Sith differs from its namesake in that it has an entire white underbelly instead of simply one white spot, but it DOES sometimes speak with a Scottish accent. A few other Final Fantasy games have either a generic enemy or a summoned creature called Cait Sith. In the original English translation of Final Fantasy VI, the summoned Cait Sith was translated simply as "Stray."

Having a wife who has a fondness for black cats (we have two, Wally and Reagan), combined with Halloween approaching, I thought a post on the connection between black cats and witches would be appropriate. Conventional superstition has it that a black cat crossing your path is bad luck, but like most beliefs involving luck, there are a lot of local variations. It's traditional in the United Kingdom for black cats to be considered GOOD luck, and other cultures think it varies depending on which direction the cat is walking. Sailors also considered it lucky to have cats on board ships, and this superstition actually has a logical explanation, as they'd kill the rats. The Egyptian goddess Bast was often portrayed as a black cat, and while the general belief is that the Egyptians considered ALL cats to be sacred, I've seen some suggestions that black ones were particularly revered. There's a legend associated with King Charles I of England that he was tried and executed not long after his pet black cat died, implying that the cat itself was lucky.



So how did black cats come to be associated with evil, and with witches in particular? I don't think there's any one official explanation, but it seems to have something to do with the association of darkness with evil, which was particularly prevalent in medieval European Christianity. Cats are nocturnal, like owls and bats, and black cats have the misfortune of having dark fur as well. Felines also have a reputation of being sneaky, and of possessing psychic abilities, like being able to see ghosts. As such, it wasn't too much of a stretch for black cats to be considered the familiars of witches, and sometimes even alternate forms of the witches themselves. There were several periods in history of people killing black cats en masse due to their link to witchcraft, which could be why they're not as common nowadays. At least, most black cats I've seen are actually a really dark brown if you look at them in the right light, but maybe that was always the case. Incidentally, it's supposedly good luck to find a white hair on a black cat, and our vet says that all black cats have at least a few white hairs. Reagan has a rather large white spot on her front, so I guess she's especially lucky. {g}

Since I haven't been keeping up with my Bible-based posts on Sundays, I might as well just go ahead and write my intended post on the Virgin Mary now. Mary is, of course, the celebrated mother of Jesus, who gave birth to the avatar of the Lord without having to go through all that pesky sex first. Well, at least that's the story that developed, but it's generally believed that the earlier written Gospel was that of Mark, and it makes no mention of Jesus having been born of a virgin. You'd think that would have been kind of important, wouldn't you? The idea of a virgin giving birth to the child of a god was a pretty common one, so it's certainly possible that later Christians grafted this idea onto the story of the founder of their religion. But that would be a blasphemous suggestion, wouldn't it? :P The verse from Isaiah that Matthew quotes as prophetic support was actually mistranslated into Greek (the more accurate translation is simply "young woman," not "virgin") and most likely refers to a contemporary of Isaiah. The Catholic Church took this a few steps further, saying that Mary was conceived without sin, and that she remained a virgin even after the birth of Jesus. Even if we accept that the Biblical story of Jesus' birth is true, this is a rather untenable idea. According to Matthew 1:24-25, "Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS." If Mary never had any other children, why specify that she remained a virgin until after the birth of her FIRSTBORN? Later passages give Jesus four brothers and at least two sisters, giving the impression that he was actually the first of many children for Mary and Joseph. How did the Catholic Church get around this? Well, one of the first documents to address the matter was the second century Protoevangelium of James, which claimed that Joseph was a widower who was much older than Mary, and had already fathered several children before becoming engaged to her. I think changing James from Jesus' younger brother to older stepbrother changes the dynamic somewhat, but that's another topic. Other Catholic thinkers decided that the "brothers" and "sisters" were actually some other sort of relatives. As much fun as it is to play theological games like these, keep in mind that this debate wasn't even intended to resolve one of the many contradictions in the Bible, but rather to harmonize the Bible with the rather disturbing and misogynistic extra-Biblical idea that Mary could only be "pure" if she remained a virgin throughout her whole life. While the Catholic and Orthodox Churches still hold to this idea, many Protestant denominations have discarded it.



Critics of Catholicism have said that the veneration of Mary is a holdover from paganism. The official Catholic doctrine is that Mary, like angels and saints, isn't actually worshipped as such, but I'm not sure the distinction makes a whole lot of difference outside Catholic theology. I believe Muhammad mistakenly thought Mary was part of the Catholic Holy Trinity, which Muslims reject. Why monotheism is now typically viewed as superior to polytheism seems to me to be due more to politics than to what's actually more likely. Still, the critics have somewhat of a point in that there might well be a connection between strong mother goddess traditions and the veneration of Mary. I remember learning in my Russian History class, for instance, that the worship of the traditional Great Mother Goddess sort of morphed into a cult of Mary when Christianity became the national religion.



Even without taking the doctrines of perpetual virginity and Mary being the highest of all women into consideration, there's a lot about Mary that isn't really consistent. The story of Jesus' mother and brothers arriving to see him suggests that Mary didn't yet believe that her son was the Messiah, yet this would have been after his miraculous birth, as well as presumably after the wedding at Cana that John mentions, at which Mary seems to know of her son's powers. The Gospels do appear to be consistent on the point that Mary was present at the crucifixion, although none mention Joseph being there, suggesting he might have already died by this point. The Catholic belief is that Mary was eventually taken bodily into Heaven, while other denominations think she died normally. Really, most of what was written about her is far from first-hand, so we'll probably never know what she was like in real life, if indeed she existed. And her husband Joseph is even more elusive, to the point where scholars aren't even totally sure he was actually a carpenter.

For today's mythology post, I turn your attention to Scylla and Charybdis, two monsters who live on either side of the Strait of Messina in Italy. They're positioned so that it's pretty much impossible not to run into one or the other. At one point, both of these hideous monsters were nymphs. The sea god Glaucus was in love with Scylla, but she didn't return his love. When Glaucus sought the assistance of the witch Circe, she fell in love with Glaucus herself, and transformed Scylla into a monster to get her out of the way. In another version of the myth, it's Poseidon who was in love with Scylla, and his wife Amphitrite who turned her into a monster. Her monster form is described as having six heads, each with three rows of teeth, and a body made up of various animals. She is unable to move, and devours sailors who try to pass by.



As for Charybdis, she was a daughter of Poseidon who flooded lands for her father. Zeus was angry over how much land she was taking, and so transformed her into a monster as well. Her form was basically that of a whirlpool, which would suck in ships and then spit them out again.



"Between Scylla and Charybdis" became a phrase that meant a choice between two undesirable options, and is said to have eventually morphed into "between a rock and a hard place." Not that this expression is exactly parallel, since Scylla would almost certainly be the rock, but I'm not sure a whirlpool would count as a hard place. Well, maybe if you use "hard" in the sense of "difficult." I don't know.

bethje suggested that I should write some posts about the mythology and history behind different aspects of Halloween, so I'm starting that with this post. This time, I'm going to be covering Jack O' Lanterns and trick-or-treating, and I'm considering writing another entry later on regarding the association between witches and black cats. Suggestions for any other topics I should address are definitely welcome.



You probably already know how the origins of the Jack O' Lantern are associated with an Irish blacksmith named Jack, known as "Stingy Jack" due to his greed. When he died, he was refused entrance to either Heaven or Hell, instead being forced to wander eternally between them. There are a few different explanations as to why the Devil wouldn't let him into Hell, but the most common seems to be that Jack had tricked and trapped Satan on an earlier occasion. I've seen stories about people being too bad for Heaven and too good for Hell in other places as well (I think Ibsen used it in Peer Gynt), which certainly isn't in line with the modern fundamentalist Christian idea that everyone goes to Hell by default. Then again, these fundamentalists also tend to believe that the origins of Halloween and the Jack O' Lantern have to do with human sacrifice among the Druids. I'll get back to that idea later, but I should really finish the story of Jack first, shouldn't I? Although the Devil won't let him into Hell, he gives Jack an ember to light his way in the darkness, and Jack carries this around inside a turnip. When the Irish brought the tradition of making lanterns out of vegetables to North America, they began using pumpkins instead, as they were better suited to the task. It seems that carved vegetables were associated with the harvest season for some time, but it wasn't until the nineteenth century that they were specifically linked to Halloween.



Turning our attention back to the fundamentalists, our old friend Jack Chick paints the rather absurd notion that Jack O' Lanterns were left by the Druids in exchange for human sacrifices, which in turn means Halloween is of the Devil. There is some evidence that the Celts practiced human sacrifice (although the main sources for this are from their enemies, the Romans), but I don't know of any indication outside fundamentalist propaganda that it was associated with Samhain. The autumnal festival was about the harvest and the slaughter of cattle, not children. It was also the beginning of the dark half of the Celtic calendar, and the time when the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead break down. (That kind of seems to me like it would be the WORST time to practice human sacrifice, as it would just result in more ghosts to terrorize the land.) Bonfires and costumes were used to drive off or placate the invading spirits.



Trick-or-treating, of course, started with the tradition of Druids going door to door to kidnap children for sacrifices. No, wait, that's another Chick idea. It's actually more likely to derive from a practice originally associated not with Halloween or Samhain, but with Christmas. During the Middle Ages, Christmas was a time when peasants would beg for food at the homes of wealthy lords. The beggars could get quite rowdy and violent, which is a significant part of why Oliver Cromwell banned the celebration of Christmas. It wasn't until later that Christmas evolved into a much calmer holiday, and the door-to-door rowdiness was transferred over to Halloween. The Wikipedia article on trick-or-treating states that there was also a similar practice known as "souling," when the poor would go out on All Saints' Day and beg for food door-to-door in exchange for prayers. The article also says, however, that there's no evidence that souling was ever practiced in North America.

Earlier, I expressed the possibility of writing a post about the fish-god Dagon, and I suppose now is as good a time as any to do so. Yeah, I know I usually write mythology posts on Saturdays, but I don't know if I'll have access to a computer this Saturday, so I'm just taking care of it today. Anyway, simply looking at the Wikipedia entry for the deity calls into question the whole idea of his being a fish-god. The identification is supported by coins and other iconography bearing pictures of fish-men, as well as the connection between the name Dagon and the Hebrew word for fish. On the other hand, the name is also similar to the Ugaritic term for grain, and Dagon is sometimes said to have been a grain deity, credited with the introduction of the plow. The god was worshipped by several peoples, and some suspect that it was when his cult spread from Babylonia to the maritime Phoenicians and Philistines that the association between Dagon and fish began. It seems that pictures of fish-men from the time of these civilizations include humans with fish tails (like the Greek Triton and the contemporary concept of a mermaid), humans draped in fish skin (the usual portrayal of the Babylonian god Oannes), and reverse mermen with the fish part on top. The Catholic Encyclopedia claims that the Syrians often abstained from eating fish, which it links to the idea of a cult for a fish-god, but could be for a different reason.



In addition to the several fishy deities I've mentioned, there are some others who deserve notice. One is Matsya, the first incarnation of Vishnu in Hindu mythology. Matsya started out as a tiny fish, but continued to grow ever larger under the care of Satyavrata, King of the Dravidians. Once Matsya reaches gigantic size, he reveals his true identity, and tells Satyavrata to build a boat that he can use to avoid an upcoming flood. Sound familiar?



Fish are also often associated with mother goddesses, and said to be representative of the vagina. As the fish as a fertility symbol remained popular in Roman times, it's often speculated that it was later adapted by Christians into the Jesus fish. Sure, people try to claim that the fish is based on a Greek acrostic for a description of Jesus, but who doesn't love the idea that a lot of pious Christians are driving around with vaginal symbols on their car bumpers? In fact, it's so amusing that it gives me some cause to doubt its truth, although it's probably true that it was adapted from a pagan symbol. Most Christian iconography was, after all. I've also seen it suggested that the miters worn by bishops (including the Pope) are based on the icthyan headgear of the priests of the Semitic god Ea, as seen in this rather sloppy graphical comparison.

As per rockinlibrarian's request, today I'm taking a look at angels. Everyone has heard of angels, but just what ARE they? Well, the earliest Biblical references portray them as basically messengers of God, and in fact the term "angel" is based on the Greek translation of the Hebrew term for "messenger." I forget where I read it, but I remember seeing a mention that one difference between the theorized Elohist and Yahwist authors is that, while Yahweh generally shows up to talk to his creations in person, Elohim tends to operate through messengers. The Bible also mentions "sons of God," as in the tale of the Nephilim and the framing story of Job, and these are also usually regarded as angels. Daniel, a book commonly dated to the second century BC, refers to two angels by name (Gabriel and Michael), and makes references to angels as heavenly princes representing different nations, with Michael being the guardian of Israel. Sources from around this time were more likely to give specific functions and identities to angels, bringing Raphael and Uriel in as other named messengers, and introducing the concept of Satan (sometimes called Azazel, presumably after the enigmatic figure mentioned in Leviticus 16 as the recipient of a goat during Yom Kippur) as a fallen angel. I think it's also around this time that angels came to be associated with stars and planets. Christianity incorporated many of these Jewish ideas about angels, and both of the named angels from Daniel reappear in the New Testament, Gabriel as the herald who predicts the births of both Jesus and John the Baptist in the Book of Luke, and Michael as the heavenly war leader who casts Satan to Earth in Revelation. The latter book also incorporates the idea of angels being charged with specific tasks, perhaps somewhat akin to demigods or minor deities in polytheistic religions.



So how did the Jewish concept of angels change over time? Obviously the details aren't entirely known, but it is quite likely that the Jews took some ideas from the Persians, who conquered the Babylonians and allowed Judea and its temple to be restored. The change in the view of Satan from a divine prosecuting attorney to the source of all evil, for instance, might well have roots in the Zoroastrian concept of the light god Ahura Mazda being locked in eternal combat with the dark god Angra Mainyu. Zoroastrian scripture also referred to the Yazatas, heavenly beings who came to be associated both with days of the calendar and specific natural features and tasks. While these beings would probably be minor gods in pagan religions, and even the term "Yazata" signifies that these Zoroastrian angels were probably worshipped, the monotheistic Jews saw them as servants of the one and only God.

The idea of a hierarchy of angels most likely began in Judaism in the later BC years, and was developed even further by early Christians. The lists of angelic ranks aren't consistent, and I'm not sure where the Church Fathers came up with such ranks as Dominions, Virtues, and Powers. Both Jews and Christians, however, retroactively added other heavenly beings mentioned (or at least inferred) in the scriptures to the ranks of angels, those being the Cherubim, Seraphim, and Ophanim. Cherubim are winged creatures with features of humans, lions, oxen, and eagles. They bear some resemblance to sphinxes and other composite mythological beings that are said to have been employed as guards, and not only are Cherubim represented in art as attendants at God's throne, but they are also set by God to keep humans out of the Garden of Eden. In one of the Psalms, there's a reference to a Cherub being used as a battle mount by Yahweh. The confusion of Cherubim with Putti seems to have arisen around the Baroque period, but I'm not sure how this came about. Seraphim, as referenced in Isaiah, are six-winged beings that fly above God's throne; while Ophanim are the many-eyed wheels that support the throne in Ezekiel and Daniel. I'm not sure it was ever specified whether these bizarre forms are authentic or merely how these powerful beings show themselves to mere mortals, but I would imagine that not too many people today believe that some angels are literal wheels.



In Islam, angels are formed from light, and while humans (made of dirt) and jinn (made of fire) both have free will, the angels do not. Iblis, the Islamic equivalent of Satan, is mentioned in the Quran and other literature as both a jinn AND an angel. While this is confusing, I suspect that the reason for it is that Muhammad used the idea of Iblis rebelling against God, and such a thing would obviously require free will. So if Iblis is a jinn who was promoted to the ranks of angels, it would explain how he could be the one self-willed angel in the bunch.



The idea of angels has survived into the present, and might be experiencing a revival in fiction. Like many other mythological beings, however, it's not entirely clear what an angel really is, giving some leeway to writers. Are angels physical or ethereal in form? Can they actually dance on pinheads? If angels are asexual, as they're generally portrayed and as Jesus himself stated, what's with the story of the Nephilim? The idea of individual guardian angels most likely comes from Greek philosophy, and might well also have some roots in the national angels of Daniel. I'm not sure where the idea of angels as the spirits of dead people, as seen in numerous cartoons, originates. Jesus compares the spirits of the dead in Heaven to angels in that they're asexual and don't marry, but doesn't actually say they'll BECOME angels. Enoch is said by some sources to have become the angel Metatron, but it's commonly believed that he ascended bodily into Heaven, and hence never really died. The idea definitely predates animation, however, because Joseph Smith used it in Mormonism, not only giving an account of the earthly life of the guiding angel Moroni, but regarding Michael and Gabriel as posthumous forms of Adam and Noah, respectively. According to Wikipedia, dead people becoming angels also features in Bahá'í, another religion originating in the nineteenth century.

Everyone knows what an elf is, right? Well, you probably think you do, but in truth you could have a very different idea from someone else. As I mentioned here, the traditional elves of Scandinavian mythology, the Elves of Middle-Earth, and Santa's diminutive and industrious helpers are actually pretty different. Traditionally, elves were essentially regarded as demigods, human in form but more attractive than normal people, and with connections to nature. Really, they probably aren't too different from nature spirits from other traditions. As with other mythological elements, it's probably a case of similar stories originating in different parts of the world, then being combined when the cultures come into contact with each other, and later fantasists picking and choosing from both the older and newer myths. If you're going for mythological authenticity, it appears that J.K. Rowling's house-elves are really more like hobgoblins or kobolds than traditional Scandinavian elves, and Santa's staff has more in common with dwarves than elves. Then again, the Norse dwarves, or dvergar, are often pretty much interchangeable with dark elves. They mine and forge (jobs that trolls and gnomes are also sometimes given), while the light elves are associated more closely with fertility. Really, it seems that the old Norse records are too contradictory and incomplete to really paint a clear picture of the earliest concepts of elves or dwarves. What we know comes more from later folklore, which portrays elves as mischievous and nasty. To writers like Spencer and Shakespeare, the terms "elf" and "fairy" were basically synonymous, and they were thought of as tiny creatures with human shapes.



While the concept of elves as miniature people with magic powers still lives on today in such forms as the Keebler Elves and Rice Krispies' tiny mascots, much of their role in modern fantasy literature derives, not surprisingly, from Tolkien. His elves reflected, in some ways, those of the earliest known Scandinavian sources, being noble, beautiful, human-sized, functionally immortal, and in tune with nature. They aren't petty and vindictive like the elves of folklore, but instead basically have an Übermensch role in Middle-Earth. Despite Tolkien's obvious prejudice in favor of his Elves, they do have their flaws, like their long-standing enmity with the Dwarves (and it's Tolkien who popularized that plural, although he didn't invent it; I personally prefer it to "dwarfs"). Was Middle-Earth the first fantasy world to show elves and dwarves as traditional enemies? If it was, it might have been based on the references to dwarves as "dark elves," and it's carried over into other universes that include both races. It's not always the case, however. In Dragon Quest III, it's necessary to give yourself the form of a dwarf in able to conduct business with the elves, as the two peoples are friendly. In the Discworld series, it's the dwarfs and trolls who are traditional enemies, although both groups also hate elves, who are glamorous but malicious beings in Terry Pratchett's world. Their glamor allows them a lot of power in harming humans, but dwarfs and trolls can see right through it.



I think Tolkien was also the first to devise the idea that male and female dwarves look the same to non-dwarves, which implies that the women also have beards. Pratchett ran with this concept in the Discworld books, using it for both humor and social commentary. Other fantasy worlds have made female dwarves more traditionally feminine in appearance, without the beards. Come to think of it, Disney's Dopey doesn't have a beard, so is he actually a woman? {g}

When the Bible goes on to describe the beginnings of the Jewish monarchy, it portrays Saul and David fairly realistically, telling of their flaws as well as their successes. David, for instance, is a guy who served an enemy state as a mercenary, and after becoming king thought it gave him the power to have sex with any pretty girl he saw. There's little archaeological evidence for any of this, and even the Bible itself gives hints that some of the stories might not be entirely true. One of the most famous tales of David is that of his victory over Goliath, but Chronicles credits someone named Elhanan with this feat. Once we get to the reign of David's son Solomon, however, most of the semblances of realism are dropped. Sure, the account of Solomon's kingship might well be BASED on historical fact, but I think even an apologist would have a hard time believing it was correct in all details. Solomon is said to have ruled an empire stretching from the Egyptian border to the River Euphrates, which is historically unlikely. Also, he carried on a robust trade with many other nations, some of which can't be positively identified today. Tarshish is often considered to be the same as Tartessos, a now lost city in modern-day Spain, but the location (and, indeed, even the existence) of Ophir is much less clear. Writers like H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs would go on to place it in southern Africa. Also of somewhat disputed location is Sheba, although the most common idea seems to be that it was in modern-day Yemen. The unnamed Queen of Sheba is said to have had an affair with Solomon after he impressed her by answering a bunch of questions (hey, she was hardly the only woman to have a thing for nerdy Jewish guys [1]), and Ethiopian sources credit this union for producing their own royal family. Goods that Solomon is said to have acquired through trade include gold, ivory, wood (cedar from Lebanon was used to build the Temple of Yahweh, but there are mentions of Israel receiving wood from other places as well), chariots, horses, apes, and peacocks.



It wasn't until some centuries later that Solomon was said to have been a sorcerer, but this tradition appears in both Jewish and Islamic sources, and has made its way into a good deal of fiction, mostly prominently the Arabian Nights. He's said to have had control over demons (or jinn, in Islamic terminology) through the use of a ring emblazoned with the Star of David. One story told of the ring has the head demon Asmodeus tricking the king into giving it up, and the demon throwing it into the water, only to have it show up again inside a fish that Solomon catches. This basic idea has shown up in various places, but I believe its earliest known occurrence was in the Greek myth of Polycrates of Samos. Other powers ascribed to Solomon include the ability to communicate with and command all living things, and control of the wind. His possessions included a flying carpet, a mechanized throne that followed him around, and a grimoire known as the Key of Solomon. In building the temple, he is said to have received assistance from a shamir, a kind of worm that could cut through stone.



Despite King Solomon's wisdom and initial favor by Yahweh, he isn't portrayed entirely positively even in the Bible. He's said to have had 600 wives and 400 concubines, including some foreign women, and these women made him go a-whoring after other gods. Sure, blame the women! It's not like the Bible doesn't do that about twenty million other times. It's not too hard to imagine this as a case of Solomon simply offering religious freedom, regardless of his own beliefs. But the authors of the Books of Kings were in favor of theocracy, so their monarchs of choice were those who forbade the practice of religions other than Judaism, like Josiah.



[1] bethje, for one, whom I didn't mention at first because I didn't know if she'd want me to, but she says she wants it known.