Mark R. Vickers's Blog

What Does Supernatural Mean in a Natural World?

Super cool. Super duper. Superimpose. Supersede. Superscript. Superhighway. Superhuman.

Those are many supers in our lives. But let’s focus on just one: supernatural.

The Supernatural as Invisible

Merriam-Webster defines supernatural as “of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe.”

It’s an intriguing definition because it is strangely focused on the concept of sight. Does this mean that everything that is not visible or observable is supernatural? Because, if so, then we can include things dark energy and dark matter, which are by definition invisible to us. Does it include quarks, since they are never directly observed or found in isolation? For that matter, does it include gravity or wind?

Perhaps it depends on what we mean by the observable. Things that consistently show up on some detector might be construed as observable and therefore natural, even if we don’t understand them well. In fact, we often need to guess about what we are detecting. For example, we can detect particles, but what if it turns out there aren’t any actual particles in nature, only superstrings (there’s that word super again) that only seem to be particles according to our most recent models?

The Supernatural as Abnormal and Transcendent

The truth is, we could do this all day, delving into the deep waters of ontology, epistemology and experimental physics. So, let’s try out another Merriam-Webster definition:

departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature

Hmm. So if it’s usual or abnormal, then it’s supernatural? That doesn’t seem right. How about transcending the laws of nature? After all, nature is the key word here, and one definition of that is “the external world in its entirety.”

Weird. I guess that suggests that our internal world is not natural. Does that mean it’s supernatural? And since we can never directly observe the external world (everything being mediated by our sensory organs), does this mean that our entire existence is supernatural?

“Oh, come on,” you say. “You’re just being a pedantic ass. By supernatural we mean things like ghosts or faeries or gods and the like.”

Good point. But what if we were to find out that faeries really do exist? Do they then become natural rather than supernatural? Do the boundaries of what is and isn’t supernatural change as we discover more about the universe? Is the definition of supernatural a force that we don’t currently think is real?

And we aren’t even getting into modern religion yet. Millions of people believe in a monotheistic God. Is God supernatural? Some would say so, others would say that God is not supernatural because God is real, even if God is beyond nature as we understand it.

See? Tricky stuff.

The Supernatural as Incomprehensible

Allow me to offer my own definition:

Supernatural refers to forces or objects that we think do not exist or, if they do, that are beyond our understanding and generally beyond our ability to control

I like the definition but it doesn’t seem quite right, does it?

For example, there was a time in the not very distance past that scientists figured, or at least postulated, that there was something called luminiferous aether, aka ether. They thought that since light travels in waves, it has to travel through some medium, just like waves move through water. But ether turned out not to exist because somehow light is both a wave and particle. No ether needed.

So, does this mean ether is/was supernatural?

Probably not, because supernatural seems to imply some kind of intelligence.

The Supernatural as Alive and Embodied

Therefore, supernatural refers to creatures or gods or spirits that exist beyond our ken.

Yes, sometimes it can be more abstract. For example, magic is often viewed as supernatural. But magic does not work by any natural laws, at least none that we can understand. Moreover, it is employed by magical or magic-wielding beings. Wizards, magicians, unicorns, trolls, etc.

If I’m leaving you more confused than ever, then join the group. In truth, I don’t think Merriam-Webster does a good job of defining supernatural, so let’s have a go at it ourselves:

Supernatural refers to some being–or to a force used by or embodied in some being–that cannot be explained by natural laws.

The Blurring of Supernatural and Natural

Pretty good, huh? Except for one thing: by that definition, every creature we know about is supernatural.

That is, there’s so much that we don’t understand about our own existence, from the quantum makeup of our bodies to the ways that our minds operate. Nor do we know that much about the lives and biology of our fellow creatures. Exactly how and when did life emerge? What are the codes behind protein folding? What is the function of whale song? How can we measure the intelligence of corvids? What neurobiological processes cause laughter?

In short, our existence contains countless mysteries that cannot be currently explained by natural laws. We tend to assume that eventually we will solve all these mysteries via the scientific method, and it’s that very assumption that keeps us from viewing ourselves and our fellow creatures as supernatural.

Perhaps this is why some mythologies are peopled by our fellow animal: crows, coyotes, rabbit, spiders, and so many more. In some ways, the religious tradition called animism is one based on the idea that all nature is supernatural, or that the lines between the two can blur to the point that we can no long distinguish between them.

What will happen in the future? I think it’s widely assumed that the concept of the supernatural will slowly recede before scientific understanding. But maybe the opposite is true: that we will evolve to the point where the entire universe is viewed as holy and mysterious, when nature disappears and only the supernatural remains.

Feature image: Bertalda, Assailed by Spirits c.1830, from Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...

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Defining Mythology for Our Modern (Yet Still Mythic) World

What is mythology? There are plenty of possible answers to this question, but I want to highlight some I’ve come cross lately.

First, here is an academic summary from Efrat Tseelon that I find both lovely (in a jargony, academese kind of way) and expansive.

What is a myth? There is a diversity of modern approaches to myth and a fragmentation of its study. According to the dictionary of literary terms (Cuddon, 1991) a myth is a story which involves supernatural beings. It is always concerned with creation, often with explanations of the natural order. In fact its nature is not as clear-cut as this definition implies. Myth has been defined as a metaphorical form of explanation of natural or social phenomena (Kirk, 1974), which reveals and shapes fundamental values of the society and attitudes toward life (Halbertal and Margalit, 1992), as a form of poetic symbolic expression (in the work of Cassirer), as validating social institutions (Malinowski), justifying a ritual (Frazer, Raglan), creating and maintaining social cohesion (Durkheim)(Cohen, 1969), as expression of individual unconscious fantasy and the collective unconscious (Freud, Jung, Fromm), and as a device for resolving contradictions or oppositions (Lévi-Strauss, 1958; Leach, 1969; Kirk, 1970). In terms of its validity it has occupied the whole range from being considered a primitive pre-scientific mode of thought and contrasted (in pre-socratic times) with logos, to being considered an alternative mode for investigating areas of reality that cannot be explained by discursive language or scientific method. In eighteenth century Enlightenment an evolutionary mode of thought (e.g. Tylor, Frazer) viewed primitive pre-scientific thinking as characteristic of the “savage mind” and contrasted with scientific rationalistic thought (Fischer, 1963). In nineteenth century Romanticism mythic thought was treated as a source of knowledge of a non-scientific kind, a high mode of mystical truth, poetic truth, a creative process and a symbolic expression of fundamental existential insights (Bidney, 1967). The twentieth century saw a second revival of sympathetic interest in myth in the works of Nietzsche and Freud including acknowledgement of the Dionysian, violent, irrational side in the work of Sorel (Rouanet, 1964).

Second, here is a more succinct and less academic definition from World History Encyclopedia:

Mythology (from the Greek mythos for story-of-the-people, and logos for word or speech, so the spoken story of a people) is the study and interpretation of often sacred tales or fables of a culture known as myths or the collection of such stories which deal with various aspects of the human condition: good and evil; the meaning of suffering; human origins; the origin of place-names, animals, cultural values, and traditions; the meaning of life and death; the afterlife; and celestial stories of the gods or a god. Myths express the beliefs and values about these subjects held by a certain culture.

This third definition is one I appreciate because it touches on an idea I often espouse about the relation of myths to modern life:

Myths are stories that are based on tradition. Some may have factual origins, while others are completely fictional. But myths are more than mere stories and they serve a more profound purpose in ancient and modern cultures. Myths are sacred tales that explain the world and man’s experience. Myths are as relevant to us today as they were to the ancients. Myths answer timeless questions and serve as a compass to each generation. The myths of lost paradise, for example, give people hope that by living a virtuous life, they can earn a better life in the hereafter. The myths of a golden age give people hope that there are great leaders who will improve their lives. The hero’s quest is a model for young men and women to follow, as they accept adult responsibilities. Some myths simply reassure, such as myths that explain natural phenomena as the actions of gods, rather than arbitrary events of nature….Each generation of storytellers adds another layer of fact and fiction to the myths, such that the themes and characters of myths are timeless, and endlessly relevant, as they are reinvented and reapplied to the lives of each new generation.

The previous definition is closest to my own, which is even more inclusive:

Mythology refers to the narratives that give, or have given, people their systems of belief or that express their viewpoints about existence. In other words, myths are the stories we tell ourselves about how the cosmos works, what it means, and our own places within it.

Sure, many myths refer to supernatural beings (at term that deserves its own post) but not all of them. Some are origins stories, but not all. Some a pre-scientific explanations for what we today think of as natural phenomena, but not all. Some are ancient, but many are modern as well.

In short, there are exceptions to nearly every rule you can apply to the word mythology. That’s why I think a simpler and more inclusive definition is better. We need one that fits our modern lives, one that–if you will–expels some of the myths about mythology.

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Modern Art, Ancient Myths and the Waters in Which We Swim

There is a rich tapestry of modern works of art that are about or inspired by myths and folklore. The list of such works is so long that it would be tedious to put into a blog post, but some of my favorite works of fiction in this vein include:

American Gods by Neil Gaiman The Centaur by John Updike Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker Grendel by John GardnerThe Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill The Once and Future King by T.H. White The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller Ulysses by James Joyce

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I’m sure there are many more I could add to my own personal list if I devoted more time to it, and this does not include fiction in which the authors create their own mythologies that reflect or influence their main characters.

My own fiction often has these linkages as well. Of course, The Tollkeeper is packed with such references, but my short story Phoenix is not only named after a mythological creature but reimagines the myth in the context of a not-quite-yet-invented technology. My story The River of Long Shadows invents a mythology for the Niagara River. My story The Municipality alludes to the ravens of Odin, Huginn and Muninn, and pivots on the archetype of corvids representing death.

I’ve only mentioned works of fiction so far, but mythology is the water in which all artists swim. Consider all the sculptures, paintings, musical works, poems, plays, television shows, films, graphic novels and more that are based on or inspired by mythologies. One could create an entire encyclopedia of such works.

Yet even these works represent only a fraction of ways in which myths play a role in our lives. Our religions may represent an even more potent source of mythology. Even our dreams appear peopled with cultural references and archetypes, especially if the Jungians are onto something.

Why does this matter? Because understanding the role of mythologies in our lives helps us better understand ourselves, our societies, our histories and probably our futures as well. And striving to make sense of the world is what humanity is all about.

What works of art can you think of that are based on or inspired by mythologies?

Image source:  Wikipedia: Myths and legends of Babylonia & Assyria

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The Meaning of Mermaids from the Male Perspective (Part 2)

Let me start by saying that it’s a tad dangerous to divide an analysis of mermaid mythology into two gender categories. We’re all humans conditioned by our cultures. Therefore, people of all gender identifications will share a lot of the same concepts and feelings about mermaids and other mythical women of the water.

So, why do it?

Because I think it sheds light on the dualistic nature of mermaids themselves and on the complex history surrounding them. For the purpose of this post, I refer to all the mythical women of the waters: mermaids, nymphs and selkies.

Mermaids Created by Men

Most mermaid tales have been told from the male perspective up until very recently. The most famous mermaid story of our age, The Little Mermaid, was originally conceived of by a man, Hans Christian Anderson. And the screenplay written for the Disney animated version? Written by two men. How about the screenplay for Splash, perhaps the most popular live action movie about mermaids? Also two (different) men.

You get the idea.

No doubt this tradition of predominantly male-crafted mermaids goes back a long way, probably back to the earliest surviving narratives, not to mentions paintings, sculptures and the like. Anderson’s original story is definitely “problematic” by modern standards. If you’d like to hear a simultaneous retelling and critique of the original, I recommend the The Myths and Legends podcast episode on it.

The Meaning of Mermaids

So, why exactly have mermaids become such an enduring tradition? I think it is largely because of the rich dualism that they represent: land versus sea, domesticated versus wild, human versus animal, beauty versus monstrousness, lover versus destroyer.

According to mythologist Joseph Campbell, mermaids represent both the life-threatening and the the life-furthering aspects of water. The Mermaid’s Spell cites psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s concepts in relation to this mythology.

The mermaid represents Jung’s Dionysian consciousness: oceanic, unrestrained, primitive, ecstatic, orgiastic, sensual, euphoric, and transcendent. The human represents Jung’s Apollonian consciousness: dry, restrained, rational, subdued, mundane, puritanical, and civilized. When these two opposing forces come together, there is disruption, even disaster. Yet there is the possibility of a more positive outcome: the creation of a divine balance. This balance is delicate at best as we find ourselves to be wandering souls caught at the border between sea and land. We are all part land and part sea, part male and part female, part pride and part humility, part mortal and part divine.

The Sexy Sea of the Subconscious

When thinking about mermaids, it easy to slip into a web of symbols and archetypes. Here’s an example: The mermaid represents the sea which represents the subconscious which represents our hidden fears and desires which inevitably focus on death and sex, which in literature are often conflated with one another. (Whew, deep breath.)

First, let’s think about the sea or, for that matter, any significant body of water. It is both beautiful and dangerous. Alluring and terrifying. Necessary for life but easily ending in death. Sailing away on a ship is an exercise in freedom but we pay for that freedom by putting ourselves at risk.

So, from a male perspective, mermaids are as alluring as the sea and, perhaps, as sex itself. To that extent, the old trope about horny sailors seeing women in seals and manatees may have a nugget of truth. But, if mermaids represent sex, why do they so often symbolize disaster as well?

Because in Western cultures sexuality has long been a guilt-ridden pursuit associated with damnation. NorthStarGallery reports:

[Beatrice] Phillpotts in Mermaids states: “Faced with the mass of accumulated stories and reported sightings relating to a patent sinner who nonetheless clearly commanded a large popular following, the Western Roman Church countered by enlisting the mermaid as a spectacular propaganda aid in the cause of religious duty. Moralized, she now existed solely as a siren eager to lure the upright citizen from the straight and narrow. The censorious Church attitude reflected a central repressive approach to sex in general. Writing to St Augustine in 601 AD, Pope Gregory adopted a stern stand on the matter, declaring that ‘Lawful intercourse should be for the procreation of offspring, and not for mere pleasure’…for when a man’s mind is attracted to those pleasures by lawless desire, he should not regard himself as fitted to join in Christian worship until these heated desires cool in the mind, and he has cease to labour under wrongful passions.'”

Mermaid Misfortunes

Sex has often been associated by males as both alluring and dangerous. On one hand, they are predisposed by nature and, in many cases, culture to crave sex. On the other hand, sex can lead various dangers, from jealous rage to disease. They can also result in pregnancies that, in many cultures, lead to social, family and financial commitments that some men wish to avoid.

Psychologically, these may be all be viewed as disasters. Therefore, mermaids and their associated entanglements can sometimes be a stand-in for women in general. Every woman may be seen as dangerous from a certain male perspective. All women may leave to shipwrecked lives.

Domesticating Mermaids

Some mermaid stories wind up in domestic bliss. The mermaid saves the prince from drowning, they overcome obstacles together, and then she trades in her fishtail, the very symbol of her former wildness and freedom, for a pair of conventional human legs. From the male point of view, this is a happy ending. The alluring woman of the water is tamed, de-tailed, and starts producing children. A happy ending, at least from society’s conventional viewpoint.

But is this also a tragedy? The selkie stories present an interesting twist on the conventional mermaid tale. In this case, the story often involves the man literally stealing his wife’s freedom by finding her seal skin and hiding it away. This version of the mermaid does not voluntary submit and so is always seeking a way to find her original skin and return back to the wilderness of the sea. And she often does, abandoning her husband captor and even her own children to gain back what was stolen from her.

Mermaids Beyond the Troubling Male Gaze

As we can see, the traditional tales of mermaids were mightily shaped by men’s views of women, western religion and nature itself. Although the focus of this male gaze may be intriguing, the gaze itself is often troubling. There’s lots more that could be written on this topic, but let’s leave it there for now and move on the topic of mermaids from the female point of view.

Features image from File:Nymph of the Spring MET DP159773.jpg

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Melville, Vaudeville, and the Gallows Humor That Always Leaves You Hanging

How Moby-Dick Invented American Humor

Some books become so much a part of the literary canon and larger culture that their stories become, for all intents and purposes, part of the cultural mythos. Moby-Dick is one of those books.

This post is an argument for the idea that Herman Melville invented modern American black comedy. In the literary world, this is sometimes known as black humor, dark humor, dark comedy or gallows humor. I believe such comedy is the foundation of most great American literature.

Call me Ishmael

If they know anything about the book at all, most people know the famous three-word opening. But they’re a lot less likely to know the rest of the opening paragraph, during which Herman Melville, tongue firmly in cheek, recounts why he’s thinking about joining a whaling crew.

Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

This is so beautifully written that at first you might miss the depth of its gallows humor. We will get into those specifics momentarily, but first let’s back up and discuss humour noir.

On Humour Noir

A lot of scholarly types will tell you that Mark Twain invented American humor. But Mark Twain’s masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, wasn’t published till 1885. By comparison, Moby-Dick was published in 1851, a full generation before. And, I think Melville’s humor is in many ways more genuinely modern and American.

That is, Moby-Dick is a more classic classic example of black comedy. The term was actually coined in French–humour noir–by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while discussing the writings of the great Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift. Breton was striving to identify some of Swift’s writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism, often relying on topics such as death. Not just death, of course. You’ve also got other hilarious topics such as violence, disease, discrimination, harmful stupidity and even moronic opinions on human sexuality.

Although the term was invented by a Frenchman to describe the humor of an Irishman, the greatest practitioners of the form are, arguably, American writers. Some say that Nathanael West, the author of Miss Lonelyhearts, was the original practitioner in the US. In 1965, which is years after West published his novel, an anthology called Black Humor was published, and the editor, Bruce Jay Friedman, assigned the term to authors such as Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, and Thomas Pynchon. Of course, there are many more: Kurt Vonnegut and Philip Roth come to mind. In the stand-up comedy world, the most famous practitioner is probably Lenny Bruce.

But here’s the thing: Moby-Dick was published about 80 years (80 years!) before Miss Lonely Hearts. And those other guys in the 1960s, they were writing over 100 years after Melville. I argue, in fact, that Melville was the original and greatest practitioner of gallows humor in American literature.

The Seeds of Melville’s Dark Humor

The first paragraph of Moby-Dick contains the seeds of Herman Melville’s dark humor, a humor that he came by the hard way. Consider this sad fact: Moby-Dick wrote what is arguably the greatest American novel, but it was panned in his own lifetime. But that’s not the worst of it. He had a difficult time making ends meet and earned his steadiest living as a customs inspector. His writing career eventually fizzled, his family life was often tumultuous, and some historians think he suffered from bipolar affective disorder, alcoholism, and a variety of other ailments.

So, Herman knew a thing or two about darkness, but within Moby-Dick he was able to transmute that darkness into some of the richest humor in American literature.

I already took you through the opening sentences of Moby-Dick, but I want to remind you of topics that those few sentences covered:

First, poverty, saying he had “no money in my purse”Second, “grimness around the mouth” and the “drizzly November in my soul”; in other words, depressionThird, suicidal thoughts that included the line “pausing before coffin warehouses”Fourth, there’s the intense anger that makes him want to go around “methodically knocking people’s hats off”

So, before we’re through that first paragraph, we’ve got poverty, depression, death, anger and violence. Yet, he makes us smile through it all.

Too Many Heads in the World

That first paragraph is, of course, just the appetizer. Let’s get into some other sections. Maybe some of you remember when Ishmael can’t find a place to bed down for the night but finally comes upon the Spouter-Inn where the landlord can only offer him half a bed to be shared with a harpooner who was still roaming the streets. Here’s how part of Ismael’s conversation with the landlord goes:

“Landlord!” said I, “what sort of a chap is he—does he always keep such late hours?” It was now hard upon twelve o’clock.

The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. “No,” he answered, “generally he’s an early bird—airley to bed and airley to rise—yes, he’s the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don’t see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can’t sell his head.”

“Can’t sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?” getting into a towering rage. “Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?”

“That’s precisely it,” said the landlord, “and I told him he couldn’t sell it here, the market’s overstocked.”

“With what?” shouted I.

“With heads to be sure; ain’t there too many heads in the world?”

Let me stop there. As much as I’d love to provide the whole Abbott-and-Costello-like scene here, the short version is that Ismael gets increasingly worked up, accusing the landlord of what pulling his leg and demanding that he “be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I’ve no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.”

And the landlord, seeing maybe he’s taken the joke too far, explains that “this here harpooneer I have been tellin’ you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of ’balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he’s sold all on ’em but one, and that one he’s trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow’s Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin’ human heads about the streets when folks is goin’ to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin’ out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions.”

Okay, so what makes this kind of gallows humor so rip-roaringly American?  Well, the premise of the routine is that our friend Ishmael should just calm down because our mysterious harpooner friend, who turns out to be the Queequeg, of course, is not really a madman but is just trying to sell the shrunken head of some deadman out of New Zealand to the good folks of New Bedford before Sunday morning, when suddenly those good Christian folks will be less likely to acquire an item that, the other six days of the week, they’ll be quite interested in.

Darkness Within Darkness

Here we have Melville poking fun at the notorious hypocrisies of Americans–who are still among the most religiously devout peoples in the world. The joke gets darker if you know the whole story of mokomokai, which are what the so-called shrunken heads were called. The mokomokai is what they called the preserved heads of Māori, who were the indigenous people of New Zealand, whose faces were often covered by tattoos. What we don’t remember, but what many of Melville’s readers would have known, is that mokomokai actually became valuable trade items during the so-called Musket Wars of the early 19th century.

How did that happen, you may ask? Well, as you may surmise given our topic, it had a dark beginning. When the Maori tribes came in contact with European sailors, traders and settlers, some of them were given muskets, which of course gave some tribes a military advantage over their neighbors. Other tribes became desperate to acquire muskets to defend themselves. Thus, the Musket Wars.

Amid all this European-caused chaos, the mokomokai became commercial trade items that could be sold as curios, artworks and museum specimens, and of course these fetched high prices in Europe and America. Those high prices could then be bartered for more weapons. 

So, you see, this whole Abbott-and-Costello scene is predicated on a dark and bloody example of European colonization, where human heads literally became a form of currency.

Therefore, when the innkeeper asks “ain’t there too many heads in the world?”, it may sound to some of us like just a modestly funny throwaway line. But in truth it is a devastating critique of what Melville recognized as a horror. Yes, there are too many mokomokai because there’s far too much death and destruction being wrought by traders in New Zealand. And, taken a second way, there are far too many cunning, manipulative European and American heads in the world as well, since it is those heads that are willing to trade deadly weapons for the horrifying skin-covered skulls of fellow human beings slain in the wars.

And, of course, there’s a third meaning as well. Aren’t there too many humans in a world stained red by our viciousness toward one another?

I think that Melville’s philosophy was put pretty succinctly by Ismael early on in the book: “I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.”

On Melville, Vaudeville and the Original Odd Couple

Sometimes Melville will start his comedies with a bit of Vaudevillian slapstick, such as when Ismael wakes to find himself deep in the embrace of Queequeg:

“I lay only alive to the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse him—“Queequeg!”—but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! “Queequeg!—in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!” At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me.”

There has, of course, been plenty of writing about homoeroticism in Moby-Dick. But even if you think that, to misquote Dr. Freud, sometimes a tomahawk is just a tomahawk, this bit of farce has a very long fuse, comedically speaking.

First let’s note that scene between Ismael and Queequeg marks a kind of honeymoon bonding. This marriage conceit is deep in the text itself and not just a matter of our modern interpretation. Not only does Ishmael himself refer to Queequeg’s bridegroom clasp, but just a few chapters later, Ismael refers to himself and Queequeg as being “in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.”

Which is pretty sweet, isn’t it, but why does it matter from the perspective of dark comedy? Because, as you may remember–and spoiler alert here if you have never read the book–when Queequeg becomes deathly ill aboard their ship the Pequod much later in the novel, he requests that a coffin be built for him. Quote: “he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel.”

But Queequeg recovers and so the coffin is left unfilled, which is lucky for Ismael. After Moby-Dick sinks the Pequod, “liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main.”

That seemingly yuk-yuk Vaudevillian joke about the odd couple comes full circle. What begins on a honeymoon bed in New Bedford finally ends on a wooden coffin, a literal deathbed. Till death do they part. Ishmael inherits his best mate’s last offering, a black coffin amid the chaos of destruction. And this becomes the final punchline at the end of the immensely dark and yet beautiful cosmic joke known as Moby-Dick.

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The Alluring Creatures Swimming Through Our Global Folklore (Part 1)

This is a first in several blog posts about water-dwelling women from folklore and mythology. Because they tend to be very popular creatures in the literary world these days, I’m starting with mermaids, the female variety of merfolk. Then I discuss their close mythological cousins.

Mermaids

Merfolk have been swimming through the collective human imagination for millennia, dating at least as far back as Mesopotamia and Ancient Babylon. Male merfolk (what we’d call mermen) dominated the earliest stories, but by 1,000 B.C. mermaids started taking over the narratives. Around 100 B.C., the ancients depicted the goddess Atargatis of northern Syria on a coin as a fish with a woman’s head. 

You might find it strange that mermaids have a Middle Eastern origin, but we need to remember that the Mediterranean Sea was the source of many of humankind’s original notions about life at sea. Mermaids filtered into Western European folkore much later. The English, for example, first depicted them around 1078, when an image appeared in the Norman chapel in Durham Castle.

Merfolk and mermaids in particular are an amazingly cosmopolitan part of folklore, appearing in the Far East, Southeast Asia and Africa. Long before mermaids made their way into the folklore of Britain, they were part of Chinese folklore. In fact, the Chinese mentioned merfolk dating back as far as the 4th century B.C.

Some folktales depict mermaids as benevolent, others as malicious. The idea that they lure sailors or other men to their deaths is common, but so are other stories of mermaids rescuing, helping and/or falling in love with human men.

The Nereids and Oceanids

The Nereids are sea nymphs in Greek mythology, a nymph being a minor female nature deity. There are fifty of them, all daughters of the Greek gods Nereus and Doris. Some artists depict them with mermaid-like tails, but my sense is that Greeks typically viewed them as beautiful women with normal features, including legs.

In a way, the Nereids are like mermaids with none of the fascinating downsides. The Greeks typically viewed them as benevolent, helping sailors survive deadly storms. They dwell with their father in a golden castle in the depths of the Aegean Sea and they are specifically associated with the Mediterranean Sea.

In contrast, the Oceanids are less well-defined, being nymphs living in many different bodies of water, though often associated with oceans. They are the daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys and appear to be innumerable. Some view them as the personification of springs. The poet Hesiod gives them a much wider range, saying they are “dispersed far and wide” and everywhere “serve the earth and the deep waters.” Some associate them with salt water; like I said, the nature of these beings is hard to pin down.

The Naiads

Compared with the Oceanids, the Naiads are easier to define, being nymphs who live in bodies of fresh water such as fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks. Like many people, the Naiads can be dangerous if you cross them. There is the case of Nomia, who blinded her shepherd lover for being unfaithful to her. There’s also the case of Heracles’s companion Hylas. The Naiads kidnapped him, fascinated by his beauty. It’s unclear what happened to him, though some say he stayed willingly with the Naiads.

Some sources classify the Naiads according to the bodies of water in which they dwell:

The Crinaeae – Fountains and wells



The Limnades – Lakes



The Pegaeae – Springs



The Potameides – Rivers



The Eleionomae – Wetlands

Naiads are are not necessarily immortal. Some sources say, for example, that the destruction of their water source could kill them. For example, if a spring dries up, the associated Naiad was thought to die along with it. 

Sirens

In Greek mythology, the Sirens are like mermaids gone bad, luring nearby sailors toward sharp rocks with their enchanted singing in order to cause shipwrecks. In more modern times, many stories and illustrations portray them as having fish tails, like mermaids. The original sources, however, showed them as a combination of women and birds.

Selkies

Selkies are part of Scottish mythology. They can change from seals to humans (a form of therianthropy) by removing their seal skins when they come up onto land. There are also male selkies, just as there are mermen, but most tales focus on the female varieties.

In selkie folktales, a human man typically steals a female selkie’s skin and then, once he finds her naked on the sea shore, forces her to become his wife.  After years of captivity, the selkie wife discovers the skin that her husband has been hiding and then returns to the sea, abandoning her family.

Last Word

Those are the fundamentals of mythological women in the water. There are other categories we could add, but I think this covers the most commonly known legends. In Part 2, we’ll start looking at the symbolic meaning of these myths and what they can tell us about the human condition.

An Addendum

By the way, I stumbled over a post that contains an alphabetical list of water creatures. I like it as a basic primer for those who want a quick overview of the many water creatures inhabiting our collective consciousness. 

The images used in this post are from the following sources:



Mermaid



 A mermaid sits on a rock by the seashore

Nymph of the Spring

Selkie statute

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On the Complexities and Mysteries of Norse Magic

We know very little about Norse magic. The fact that there various words for it suggests, however, that the Norse themselves had a nuanced understanding of it.

What follows is a barebones outline of some of the key words and concepts, based on what I’ve been been able to cobble together through several books, articles, blogs and vlogs.

Fjolkyngi versus Trolldomr

The most generalized word for Norse magic seems to be fjolkyngi, though some believe the word intimates a meaning more along the lines of the English word sorcery.

But if does have a dark magic feel to it, then how should we interpret the word trolldomr? The distinction between the two words is discussed by Arith Härger in a YouTube video here.

Härger, an artist who vlogs on issues related to Norse culture and mythology, states that fjolkyngi is indeed the “most common and general word you will find to designate magic or sorcery in general.” He translates it as “much knowledge” and suggests that the various other words associated with magic in the Old Norse literature fall under this umbrella term.

Härger then discusses the nuances of trolldomr, noting that there is so much cultural meaning packed into it that it’s difficult to properly translate it into an English. The word is, of course, related to “troll,” which infers a kind of magical being.

As a side note, he states that the modern understanding of the word troll is often associated with giant creatures but that a more proper designation for such giants are jotnar. Since jotnar also possess the capability of magic, they can be viewed as magical creatures, or trolls. But trolls is broader term that can includes a wider range of magical creatures.

Härger suggests that trolldomr has a more negative connotation than fjokunnigr. It became widely used after the Norse Age ended, and it implies witchcraft. In the 16th and 17th century, the witchcraft trials were called trolldomsprosesser. The term trolldomr is also associated with having “troll’s blood,” which was viewed as having a tainted nature.

So, if we boil it all down given the imperfect nature of translations, fjolkyngi means sorcery or magic while trolldomr means witchcraft.

Seidr versus Galdr



The Fateful Magic of Seidr

Daniel McCoy, author of The Viking Spirit, refers to seidr as a form of magic focused on discerning the course of fate. Practitioners sometimes engaged in such magic while wielding a symbolic distaff, which is a stick or spindle onto which wool or flax is wound for spinning. This, of course, alludes to what the Norns themselves are thought to do, weaving the fates of humankind.

Seidr could be used for divination and for revealing the hidden and secreted. It could also be used both for healing the sick and cursing the well, for bringing good luck or causing bad luck. It was typically practiced by women and deemed “unmanly,” though there were male practitioners. The women most expert at the art were typically known as völva.

Neil S. Price, author of The Viking Way, discusses the wide range of seidr practices:

There were seidr rituals for divination and clairvoyance; for seeking out the hidden, both in the secrets of the mind and in physical locations; for healing the sick; for bringing good luck; for controlling the weather; for calling game animals and fish. Importantly, it could also be used for the opposite of these things – to curse an individual or an enterprise; to blight the land and make it barren; to induce illness; to tell false futures and thus to set their recipients on a road to disaster; to injure, maim and kill, in domestic disputes and especially in battle.

More than anything else, seidr seems to have been an extension of the mind and its faculties. Even in its battlefield context, rather than outright violence it mostly involved the clouding of judgement, the freezing of the will, the fatal hesitation. It was also closely linked to the summoning of spirits and other beings of various kinds, who could be bound to the sorcerer’s will and then sent off to do her or his bidding. In line with the ‘invisible population’ …, an important category of these beings were also extensions of the individual in its manifestations of a multiple soul – the fylgjur, hamingjur and so on.

The Incantations of Galdr

Galdr seems to have been less gender specific. It tended to use incantations in order to create spells in combination with certain actions or rites. The word is, in fact, derived from a word for singing incantations, gala. McCoy states that galan is a verb meaning “to crow.” Apparently, some incantations were composed in a special seven-line meter. Runes were key to galdr, and Odin was said to be a powerful practitioner. (He was also a powerful practioner of seidr, contract to the gender stereotype.)

In the poem Hávamál, for example, which is from the Poetic Edda, Odin talks about the 18 spells he knows, starting with one called “Help”:

Those songs I know, which nor sons of men
nor queen in a king’s court knows;
the first is Help which will bring thee help
in all woes and in sorrow and strife.

Professor Jackson Crawford, an expert in Old Norse, states that there are no existing incantations from the Old Norse period. The book Galdrabók appeared hundreds of years later, around 1600. Although it contains incantations that are intended to be magic, Crawford warns against the conclusion that such works authentically reflect what was practiced by pre-Christian Norse.

Other Words Denoting Magic

There are various other words expressing some form of what we would call magic, though I’ve generally located less information on them. Here’s are some terms taken from The Viking Way:

Gerningar, ljod and tauf all seem to bear some resemblance to galdr in that they may be kinds of chants or charms related to runes

Oiutiseta, or sitting out, seems to have involved sitting outside at night in special places such as burial mounds in order to receive spiritual power.

Gandr seems to have been an ancient, primal form of magic that is associated with the the concept of Ginnungagap, which is the void in which the world was created. There’s some indication is was used to summon certain spirit beings.

A General Impression

I am far from an expert in Norse magic, but reading about it does leave me with several impressions.

First, much of Norse magic centers around the idea of fate, relating to either seeing the ultimate destiny of individuals or actually being able influence those destinies. In other words, it focuses on gaining insight into or control over what is the typically unchangeable course of fate. This suggests that magic is a way to nudge, it not actually shape, destiny. Seidr is most closely associated with these notions.

Second, some Norse magic depends on borrowing power from other spiritual beings via summoning. These spiritual beings can influence others, but sometimes those influences are subtle, such as when clouding a person’s judgement. This is another kind of “nudging” of fate and, as such, is also linked to seidr.

Third, some Norse wielded magic in order “manifest” something, often with the help of written runes and/or chanted words. By giving voice to the correct words and pitches, a person was thought to be able to manifest what he or she most desires. Incantations are key. Galdr and similar types of magic are used for this.

In truth, though, the lines between these types of magic were probably blurred. “In several instances,” writes Price, “there are references to sorceresses using gandr in conjunction with seidr in order to prophesy, for example in Voluspd.”

Although we’ll never know exactly how Norse magic was used, it appears that the Norse used it, in part, as a weapon in an ultimately futile existential battle against time and destiny.

Image is of a depiction of Oðinn riding on his horse Sleipnir from the Tjängvide image stone. Within Norse paganism, Oðinn was the deity primarily associated with Seiðr. In the RAÄ Fornsök database.

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Moderns Lessons Taught by the Trickster Coyote (Part 4)

One of the reasons for this blog is to show how mythologies continue to play important roles in our modern lives. So, having written a series of other posts about coyote the animal and the trickster deity, I wanted to devote this last one to thinking about the meaning of coyote to the world circa 2020.

Coyotes Evolving as a Idiom

We’ve already touched on coyotes as used in idioms in Mexico and the US. I believe that as coyotes continue to spread across the United States and the rest of North America, they will increasingly creep into our English idioms. One especially cruel example in recent years is the term coyote ugly. Let’s hope future idioms are a tad less gothic.

Kai-oat versus Kai-oat-ee

The secular American mythologies surrounding coyotes have begun changing since the start of the environmental movement. Whereas before they were almost universally viewed as a varmint that should be shot on sight, now Americans are more culturally divided between the pro- and anti-coyote camps. This even shows up in how the word is pronounced, with those in the rural West (where more livestock is raised) saying “kai-oat” whereas those in more urban areas elsewhere saying “kai-oat-ee.”

This is not a hard and fast rule, but the way the word is pronounced is often indicative of the stories told about coyotes. “Kai-oat” folklore tends toward viewing coyotes as villains, whereas “kai-oat-ee” folklore is often viewed as more neutral and might involve tales of how they’ve crawled up onto a freezer to cool off in the summer or taken a ride on public transportation. One form of the word tends to infer villainy while other has other inferences, such as victimhood or charm.

Future pronunciations may tell us a lot about status of coyotes in our collective, cultural imaginations.

Coyote in Modern Media

How will Old Man Coyote live on in our mythologies? Of course, stories will continue to be told orally in some traditions and will live on books such such as Barry Holstun Lopez’s Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter: Coyote Builds North America, not to mention the Internet.

But will there be new narratives about Coyote, ones that deal with the modern world? Does Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner count? Even if not, I’m sure new tales are constantly being created both within and outside the Native American cultures (and, yes, this also raises the cultural appropriation question.)

My guess is that Old Man Coyote still has a long future ahead of him. Like so many mythological characters, he may well get his own movie, television, video game and the like. I’m hoping so. The media is already saturated with legendary creatures such as vampires, werewolves, and zombies, not to mention a variety of Norse gods. I hope Coyote’s time is coming (if such stories can be done well).

Apparently, there is already a show called Coyote in the works, which stars Michael Chiklis  and is about a border patrol agent who discovers an underground tunnel used to smuggle black market goods in from Mexico. This usage of the word coyote, of course, refers to people paid by migrants to help them illegally cross the U.S.–Mexico border. So, it sounds like the coyote-as-villain trope, but I hope it’ll be more nuanced than that.

Coyote at the End of the World

Coyotes were evolved for prairie lands and deserts. As such, they may be a perfect animal to survive and thrive in an era of global warming. We will see how this plays out. In what could turn out to be one of life’s great ironies, humanity may be creating an environment in which it, as a species, struggles yet its long-time nemesis prospers.

If Coyote can be seen as a stand-in for the wiliness and resiliency of Nature, then this particular trickster deity might well, in a case of abiding poetic justice, have the last laugh.

Images:

Elymus cinereus and coyote by Matt Lavin from Bozeman, Montana, USA; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Leymus_cinereus_and_coyote_(5823379836).jpg

Coyote walking on iced-over pond at Sherburne National Wildlife Refugee, Minnesota. From Wikimedia Commons: By Lorie Shaull - https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/49700054243/in/photostream/

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The Prankster Deity within the Prairie Predator (Part 3)

U.S. folklorist John Barre Toelken that the Navajos did not make much of a distinction between coyote the predator and Old Man Coyote the trickster deity. That is, the former contains the essence of the latter (or maybe it’s the other way around).

So, what are the characteristics of coyotes, aka, Canis latrans, that make for an appealing animistic deity?

Immortality

In the original stories, Coyote is immortal–or at least he returns from death with the ease of a deity. Real coyotes are not immortal, of course, but they are remarkably difficult to kill as a species. We know because the U.S. government — as well as countless ranchers, farmers and hunters — has spent decades trying to exterminate the coyote population.

Despite this, and probably even because of it, coyotes have spread into virtually every part of the continental United States. Individually, coyotes have died in gruesome ways by the millions. But the species has grown smarter, more adaptable, more capable of prevailing against the calculated cruelties of humankind. Native Americans must have understood the incredible resiliency of the species thousands of years before the first Europeans tried to obliterate them.

Playfulness

Like most canines, coyotes are playful, both in groups and by themselves. When younger, they will give chase to one another, as you would expect from predators. But they’ll also figure out ways to play even while by themselves. They’ve been caught on camera playing with sticks, balls, chew toys, socks and whatever else comes happens to come their way. This sense of playfulness often shows up many Coyote myths.

Shrewdness

Coyotes are known for their intelligence. There are stories of coyotes creating diversions in order to get away with thievery, luring prey animals away from their territory so they can be attacked, scaring rabbits into traffic to avoid a chase, or teaming up with badgers to catch burrowing animals.

Coyotes can be notoriously difficult to trap and poison. Indeed, the many attempts have led to an evolutionary advantage among coyotes, who can often suss out human machinations. “Southwestern Hispanos have a rich folk tradition about coyotes and have long said that the only thing smarter than a coyote is God,” writes Dan Flores in his book American Coyote.

Trickiness

This one almost goes without saying since Coyote is a trickster god who is constantly conniving. Sometimes the tricks are for his own sake, such as the time he tricks the chief’s daughter into sleeping with him by pretending to be an inventor. Sometimes his tricks serve a larger purpose, such as when he steals fire to help humanity.

Real coyotes are also known for their wily ways, of course. Every time people think they have coyotes figured out, they find they have once again underestimated them. One widely used phrase concerning the coyotes was coined by specialist Fred Knowlton, who says, “Coyotes will make a liar out of you every time.”

Individualism

Coyote the god is an independent sort, often out adventuring on his own. But how does this jibe with coyotes the canids? Aren’t they, like wolves, pack animals? Not necessarily. Like human beings, coyotes developed what’s referred to as the  fission-fusion adaptation. As National Geography reports:

This enables them to either function as pack predators or as singles and pairs. When they’re persecuted, they tend to abandon the pack strategy and scatter across the landscape in singles and pairs. And the poison campaign was one of the things that kept scattering them across North America.

In short, coyotes can easily operate as individuals. Experiments reveal that some are bold, others incredibly cautious. They have unique characters, which makes it hard to generalize about them. 

There are, of course, other similarities between coyotes and Old Man Coyote: their adaptability, their quickness, their elusiveness, their amoral nature and more. In the end, though, it really comes down to this: Old Man Coyote is what happens when human imagination meets the astonishing resiliency and character of North America’s most unique, pervasive, successful and yet surprisingly familiar native canid. It is a kind of magical realism; Humanity looks in a mirror and sees a coyote visage staring back at us with shrewd eyes, a mocking smile, and mischief animating an immortal heart.

About the images:



A drawing of Huehuecoyotl, one of the deities described in the Codex Borgia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu%C4 huecoy%C5%8Dtl#/media/File:Huehuecoyotl_CB.jpg

Anthropomorphic Coyote trickster, from North American Indigenous mythology, canoeing up the river. Source is Curtis, Edward S. Indian Days of the Long Ago. Yonkers-on-Hudson: World Book Company, 1915. Page 84.



Playing coyote pus from Western Washington State by VJAnderson, April 6, 2019

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Coyotes: Reviled Varmints or Constant Compatriots? (Part 2)

Are coyotes varmints to be reviled or reflections of transcendent beings worth worshiping? It depends on whom you ask.

Humanity is conflicted, and perhaps always has been, about coyotes. On the pest side of the ledger, coyotes have probably always been at least a nuisance to humans who raise domesticated animals. Not long ago I watched The Biggest Little Farm, a documentary about an idealistic couple who decide to develop a sustainable farm on 200 acres outside of Los Angeles. 

These folks faced a lot of different problems, but one of biggest was the coyotes that massacred their chickens. It’s one thing to hear about such events in the abstract, but the movie helps you realize just how devastating such events can be to farmers. By the time our narrator John Chester finally shoots one of the coyotes, we understand his frustration.

In the end, though, John comes to realize that if he can keep the coyotes out of the hen house (he seems to succeed by using a combination of dogs and fencing), then those same varmint animals can help control the gopher population on the farm, which is wreaking havoc on their orchards.

These sustainable farmers are far from the only people battling coyotes. Some sources suggest coyotes may result in considerable lost livestock per year. What makes coyotes so dangerous as predators is their intelligence and adaptability. It’s said coyotes will observe landowners, watching their comings and goings, to time their raids to when they’re least likely to encounter human resistance.

On the other hand, the United States Department of Agriculture reports that “the majority of the coyote’s diet is comprised of rodents and other small animals” and that “many coyotes do not prey on livestock.” It notes killing livestock appears to be a learned behavior not shared by all coyotes. In some cases, coyotes may even become “an asset to landowners by defending a territory against other coyotes and keeping other predator numbers low.”

And not just other predators. Even as far back as 1887, the Salt Lake Weekly Tribune ran an article which noted that the locals had killed off the coyotes via poison, only to watch the wild rabbit population grow to such a degree that they devastated crops. The Tribune reported that “the farmers pray for coyotes now.”

So, again, we see that coyotes can be beneficial to farmers…especially if they’re the right coyotes.

Benefits can even appear in urban settling. A study of the coyotes in Chicago’s Cook County suggests that coyotes “earn their keep eating small rodents, especially rats and voles.” Indeed, it’s thought that one reason coyotes can often be found around humans is that they’re after the rodents that inevitably come with human habitations, a tradition that dates back to at least the Aztecs.

So, despite the fact that they are still regularly poisoned, shot and trapped (a recounting of the long war waged on them is too horrific to detail) , coyotes keep finding their way into human towns and cities because that’s where they can prosper. They’re not likely to become “man’s best friend” as are domesticated dogs (which are descended from wolves), but they are likely to continue to be our compatriots, like it or not. Indeed, this relationship is an aspect of how they became such a deep part of the American mythos, as we’ll discuss next time. 

Note: Featured image by USDA - USDA Wildlife Research Center media database Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User: Quadell using CommonsHelper., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...

Note: Image of sitting coyote by Frank Schulenburg, Coyote (Canis latrans) in Bernal Heights, San Francisco, California. 

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