| ormondroyd's encyclopedia ESOTERICA MichaelFountain.org "All the Stones the Builders Rejected" Mythology, Esoterica, Politics, Art, Fiction and Wombats |
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A AMMUT (Egyptian) ANGELS (Hebrew, Christian, Islamic) Angels are winged spirits who act as messengers between Heaven and Earth. They are especially important in the Christian, Islamic and Hebrew traditions. During the Middle Ages, angels were given names and ranks and specific jobs to do, just as if they worked in a factory. Most powerful of all were the archangels. The archangel Gabriel is said to have brought the news of Jesus’ birth to Mary, and to have dictated the Koran to Mohammed. At the end of the world Gabriel will blow his horn to raise the dead from their graves, the “Tromp of Doom” literally “loud enough to wake the dead.” As metaphor, Gabriel is an angelic alarm clock, a spiritual wake up call. He shakes a sleeping humanity awake to the possibility of a spiritual life. Archangel Michael was the warrior angel, usually shown bearing a sword. It is said that at the end of all things there will be a final battle between Michael and a monstrous dragon that will bring an end to al the evil in the world. This resembles a story from Norse mythology of the final battle between Thor and the Midgard Serpent. This correspondent shares the opinion of the poet Robert Bly: “The world will not end; that would be too easy.” Most mythologies and religions have some sort of messenger flying between the physical and spiritual worlds: the houris of Persia, the Norse valkyries, the eagle spirits of the American Indians. Birds and winged beings were often chosen for this task because they live in both the earth and sky. ARGUS, CANINE VERSION (Greek) ARGUS, MONSTROUS VERSION (Greek) Argus was also a giant with one hundred eyes. He was the perfect watchman, because only two of the eyes ever slept at the same time. Jealous Hera, queen of the gods, commissioned Argus to imprison and guard her rival Io. It may be that Hera and Io were rival goddesses, both connected with the moon. Io was disguised as a white cow, white as the horns of a new sickle moon-- transformed by Zeus in order to hide her from Hera, who was angry because Io had become another of Zeus’ many lovers. Zeus sent the trickster Hermes to steal Io away from Argus. Argus sat there with his hundred eyes, ever watching, never sleeping. Hermes borrowed a flute from the goat god Pan and played soft music until all one hundred eyes were asleep. He then crept in, crushed Argus beneath a stone, and cut off his head. In anger Hera sent the gadfly to sting Io—and Io, still in the shape of a cow, went running half-mad across all the lands of the earth, changing color as she ran, from white to red to black. Wherever she rested— in Ethiopia, in India, along the coast of the Ionian Sea, later named after her, and all along the coast of the Nile-- people began to worship the moon-cow goddess under all her many names: as Io, Isis, as “cow-eyed” Hera, as Astarte, Ishtar, and a hundred other names. In our own time, Io name is given to one of Jupiter’s moons, “Jupiter” being the Roman name for Zeus. In memory of the murdered Argus, Hera used his hundred eyes to decorate the peacock’s tail, a bird associated with Hera as the owl is connected with Athena. ASURA (Hindu) Asura are powerful demons, constantly at war with the gods of Indian mythology. Like the titans of the Greek mythos, the asura were primordial gods themselves until overthrown by the new gods. Unlike the titans, the asura have never been completely subdued, and so they continue to wage war on heaven, and scheme to disrupt the balance of the universe. The asura are almost as powerful as the gods themselves, but they are stupid, greedy, selfish, and unable to do good even for themselves; this is usually enough to defeat them. -B- BAD TRANSLATIONS (Hong Kong) Aficionados of Hong Kong films (and of the café menu across from the Hall of Justice in Nice) become inured to the bizarre translations that appear in their English subtitles. Sometimes the logic of the mistranslation is easy to decipher: hairs become rabbits and ants become aunts. In Nice, the Salad Chevre Chaud is served in English as a heaping helping of Goat Heat Cheese. · “Same old rules: no eyes, no groin.” · “Gun wounds again? · “The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?” · “I have been scared shitless too much lately.” · “How can you use my intestines as a gift?” · “I got knife scars more than the numbers of your legs’ hair!” · “You daring lousy guy.” · “Quiet, or I’ll blow your throat up.” · “Ya-hah, Evil Spider Woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you to your gynecologist for a thorough extermination!” · “Beat him out of recognizable shape!” · “Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected.” · “Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some ass of the giant lizard person.” · “Damn, I’ll burn you into a barbecue chicken!” · “Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep.” · “Take my advice, or I’ll spank you without pants.” · “You always use violence. I should’ve ordered glutinous rice chicken.” · “I’ll fire aimlessly if you don’t come out!” · “Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?” · “This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your manhoods and leave them out on the dessert flour for your aunts to eat.” · “A normal person wouldn’t steal pituitaries.” “I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.” BAKU (Japanese) The baku is a helpful creature who eats the bad dreams that torment the human race. Children threatened by a nightmare are instructed to call out, “Devour, oh Baku!” BANDERSNATCH (The works of Lewis Carroll) The bandersnatch is mentioned in “Jabberwocky” and The Hunting of the Snark. They are always to be shunned, especially when frumious. BANSHEE (Celtic) This the bean sidhe, the old woman of the Shee, who wails at the death of a member of the old families of Ireland. She may be found washing the clothes of the one who is about to die, and if captured she must reveal their name. BASILISK (Roman, Medieval European) BELLOW, SAUL Whenever I need bracing-- fairly often, with melancholy Scots-Irish genes riding herd on a soupcon of French sensuality-- I can turn to this from "Humboldt's Gift": “For after all, Humboldt did what poets in crass America are supposed to do. He chased ruin and death even harder than he had chased women. He blew his talent and health and reached home, the grave, in a dusty slide. He plowed himself under. Okay. So did Edgar Allan Poe, picked out of the Baltimore gutter. And Hart Crane over the side of a ship. And Jarrell falling in front of a car. And poor John Berryman jumping from a bridge. For some reason this awfulness is peculiarly appreciated by business and technological America. The country is proud of its dead poets. It takes terrific satisfaction in the poets' testimony that the USA is too tough, too big, too much, too rugged, that American reality is overpowering. And to be a poet is a school thing, a skirt thing, a church thing. The weakness of the spiritual powers is proved in the childishness, madness, drunkenness, and despair of these martyrs. Orpheus moved stones and trees. But a poet can't perform a hysterectomy or send a vehicle out of the solar system. Miracle and power no longer belong to him. So poets are loved, but loved because they just can't make it here. They exist to light up the enormity of the tangle and JUSTIFY THE CYNICISM [emphasis mine] of those who say, "If I were not such a corrupt, unfeeling bastard, creep, thief, and vulture, I couldn't get through this either. Look at those good and tender and soft men, the best of us. They succumbed, poor loonies." (from HUMBOLDT'S GIFT) The Van Goghs of this world are to get their reward in Heaven. Do we despise Andy Warhol for making self promotion and factory art production pay off? Or do we admire him as a trickster who sold the emperor new clothes? American as apple pie. Why is Elvis recycled constantly and Big Mama Thornton forgotten? Five bars of her "Hound Dog" will blow out any Elvis left in your system. There is some truth in the complaint "'It's 'cause Elvis's white!"-- there is more than one kind of "whiteness" in America. There is a kind of blandness of the spirit that lets us stay asleep, pretends to be authentic but in fact doesn't upset anyone. This was most evident in Pat Boone's covers of Little Richard and Bill Haley being given credit (still!?) for the 'first rock and roll recording'; Elvis was an acceptable compromise to the culture between Boone and Big Mama. \Does anyone really believe that Elvis was "transgressive" because Ed Sullivan wouldn't show his hips moving? Censoring Elvis was a masterpiece of PR; nothing sells faster in America than shocking your grandma. When Elvis was swallowed up by Vegas, it was a fulfillment of prophecy. (Joss Whedon wondered if part of "Buffy's" artistic success was based on its unwillingness to not be "comfortable" relationship with the audience's expectations.) Is this entirely the fault of capitalism and a world where perception is formed by advertising skills? A system that says the 40th most popular song or film or book in America is not as worthwhile artistically as the top ten? They had the opposite problem in Soviet Russia, or Revolutionary France, where the "successful" artist was the one who pleased the most people in power. The painter David and his "Death of Marat" or "Liberty Leading the People"-- my god, he's got the chops still, but my god what a monster. Power loves flattery; the crowd craves reassurance, even if it's a cynical crowd being reassured by "Sin City" that we indeed live in a corrupt world where beautiful noir women wear sidearms (and sleep with horribly scarred men.) If we operate instead on a patronage system for artists, do we cross our fingers and hope that the Medici just thrown money at us and leave us alone? The MacArthur grants are a good idea-- I love what John Sayles has done with his-- but you're still counting on knowing someone who knows someone who... Maybe the best art in America is going to always be the stuff that relies on happy accident, like Louis Armstrong shooting off a gun on New Year's Eve, and then being sent to a Waif's Home where someone had donated a trumpet. Or combinations of people coming together to mold "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca". Or the Hernandez Brothers making us "fall in love with ink and paper" because of the "Archie," Kirby and Ditko comics their mother brought home? There is a great deal of the bird singing because it must in American art. Muddy Waters' voice carries across the fields and then transfers to success on the Chicago stage because it's in his nature. Our cynical side is not surprised when the scorpion stings the frog because "it's in his nature". Perhaps our inner optimist should trust that the artist or the art form will break through the rubble to reach the sun. I've got it easy; nothing stops me from writing or drawing except a want of ink and paper. The frustration I feel is caused by not winning "The Smile of the World" as Warhol or the Beastie Boys have. I would be a happier fellow if I concentrated on the work and let the selling, getting and spending take care of itself. My artistic frustrations should be based on whether I got the work done and done well, not whether it sells or not. I ought to be more concerned about craft, whether my sentences are polished or my drawings as anatomically skilled as they should be. And almost everyone you know, including yourself, is going to try and distract you from that. They don't know how else to measure your worth, except to ask if it's been published or not, if it's sold or not, and if so, how much has it sold? It's a bit easier for musicians or magicians to focus their energy on craft and less on the audience. If I don't start worrying about the audience-- readers and editors-- I end up writing on the inside of a closet in my own blood, and in a language that only I can read. The poor bastards i feel sorry for are those whose art depends on a group effort and lots of money: dancers, actors, playwrights, filmmakers... I knew a New York actor who was rejected three times for the same role in a play: the first time because he was "Too Young", the second time because he was "Too Old", and a third time because he looked "Too Young" again. (Producers and directors ought to be licensed, like psychotherapists; the power their subconscious wields in American culture is frightening to behold.) Bracing words from Saul Bellow, the streetwise zaydeh I never had-- except that by writing it down, he does indeed pass it on to those who need it. "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." "Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize." "You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that." "I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'" "A man is only as good as what he loves." BERGFOLK (Scandinavian; see also FAERY) Bergfolk are the faery-folk of Scandinavian countries. They are fallen angels, too bad for Heaven but too good for Hell. BISON (Native American; see also WHITE BISON) There was a time when a squirrel, heading west, could travel through the trees from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. Swimming the river, he would reach the Great Plains and then travel from the Mississippi to the Rockies on the backs of the buffalo herds, again without touching the ground. The largest animal on the continent once traveled in herds that looked like thunderstorms on the horizon, taking days to pass by. There may have been 50 million of them at one time. In 1850 there were 20 million bison on the Great Plains; by 1889 there were 551 left. The bison was at the center of daily life for many Plains Indian nations—the Kiowa, the Sioux, the Osage and others—and is still at the center of their mythology. Just as the bear represents our relationship to wilderness, so the bison represents the relationship with the natural world that feeds and clothes us. This is a marriage contract or covenant between the human species and the earth around them, a relationship described in the story called: “The Buffalo’s Wife” Retold by Michael Fountain There was a time when the buffalo would throw themselves off a cliff and let their bodies be broken on the rocks below, so that we could have their meat for food and their hides for clothing… But the people grew lazy and self-satisfied because it was so easy; they did not appreciate the gift the buffalo were giving them; they thought it would go on forever. They wasted meat, sometimes taking only the tongues and hides and leaving the rest to rot. The buffalo became angry because the people did not know how to behave, and so they went away, and the people were growing lean with hunger. One day a young girl was walking along the base of a cliff when she saw a herd of bison standing at the edge high above her. Her family was very hungry, and on impulse she called out, “If only you would throw yourselves down to me, I swear I would marry one of you!” Her words hung in the air for a moment and then the entire herd came pouring over the cliff, the bison tumbling from the steepest ledge falling dead at her feet, the rest rumbling down the sides of the cliff and surrounding her. A great chief of the buffalo, humpbacked and wooly, trotted forward and said, “Now you must be my bride.” The girl had no choice but to leave behind her family and tribe and vanish out into the prairie with the bison. Her father, searching for his daughter, found the tracks and carcasses and knew where she had gone. Following the trail for days and nights, he finally came upon the herd as they slept, the night air heavy with the fog of their breath, and the girl asleep among them. He crept up and woke her, calling her to hurry away and come back to her tribe—but she begged him to leave, because if the herd awoke and smelled the man scent he would be in danger. The girl’s warning came too late; her father had come into the wilderness unprepared, and now the buffalo awoke and with a great roar they stampeded over the girl’s father, crushing and breaking him, smashing him into the ground so fiercely that when they had passed, there was no sign that a man had ever stood there. For most of a day she lay sobbing and choking on her father’s killing ground. Then a magpie, jet-black and ivory, lit nearby and told her that he knew a magic that would bring her father back to life. The magpie had the girl search on her hands and knees for some pieces of her father. When she had found a bit of bone and a scrap of cloth, she did as the bird instructed her and covered the fragments with a blanket. Then she began to dance and chant in words the magpie taught her, and underneath the blanket the body of her father began to take form, and then the breath of life came back into him. When the buffalo saw this they were amazed, and the girl’s bison husband trotted forward and said, “Now you must do this dance for us. Do you not know that we grieve for our fathers and mothers and children when you kill us? If you will do this dance for us, and give us back our bodies after you have taken what you need, then we will be happy to die for you. But if you forget to honor us, we will be angry with your thoughtlessness and will go away and you will starve to death.” The girl agreed, and the herd showed her how to do the buffalo dance that is still done today as a covenant with the earth that feeds us. BLACK DOG (British) The "Black Dog" is an ambivalent apparition peculiar to the villages of England. Black dogs may indeed be protective spirits that appear whenever a traveler must walk through a dark and dangerous place alone. They are fierce in appearance, sometimes as big as a calf, with strange fiery eyes but with a mild manner. Ormondroyd's is frankly unable to say whether the "black dog" entity is a thing of God or the Devil. A Mr. John Greenwood of Swancliffe, England was walking late through a dark wood when a strange dog appeared on the path and began to walk alongside him. At times it was so dark he could not see the animal but only hear its heavy step beside him. When he reached the edge of town, the dog vanished. Some time later, two criminals confessed they had lurked in those woods that night, intent on robbery and murder, but had been frightened off by a ghostly dog that escorted every traveler. Black dogs seem to frequent places where innocents have been put to death. A black dog is often seen in Hertford, England, in the parish of Tring, on the spot where an old woman was drowned for being a witch in 1751. Another black dog haunts the village of Lyme, on a street called Dog Lane, the site of a house destroyed by Cromwell’s men in the Parliamentary Wars. I would also remind the skeptic that Winston Churchill referred to his bouts with depression as “Black Dog”. Churchill was known to spend at least an hour alone with his thoughts and his fish pond, where the black dog may have appeared not as the cause or a symptom of depression, but as a figure of solace. BOGGARTS (British; see also BROWNIES; FAERY) Boggarts are brownies gone bad, usually after they’ve been offended in some way. England had a good deal of trouble with boggarts after the battle of Bosworth Field; the brownies had picked the losing side in the War of the Roses. Brownies can be mischievous, but boggarts are downright mean. One family was so tormented by a boggart, they packed up everything they owned and moved miles away. When they got to their new home, they found that the boggart had smuggled himself along in the butter churn. BOOJUM (works of Lewis Carroll) The boojum is the worst variety of snark. If the snark that you meet is a boojum, you will softly and suddenly vanish away. BORGES, JORGE LUIS BROWNIES (British; see also FAERY) Brownies are friendly, helpful little creatures, the most domestic of the faery-folk. Brownies are small, extremely hairy, and have no nose. Brownies are most common in Scotland, Wales, and Northern England. They sweep crumbs off the kitchen floor, turn milk into butter, cause bread to rise, and help with the fermentation of beer. They are great collectors of dust and debris found in corners, and the crayons, hairpins, and potato chips found under couch cushions. They will not accept any payment for their services other than a little bread and milk. They may become offended if more is offered, and turn into boggarts. Brownies manufacture felt out of belly button lint. The actress Merle Oberon possessed a fedora made of felt saved from the navel of Adah Isaac Menken, first American chorine to bare her legs during the 1861 production of Manzeppa. BUGBEAR, BOOGEYMAN (world-wide) These are wicked creatures that inhabit the nightmares of children; they take delight in human fear. This is the creature that lives under your bed, the “boogey-man” of childhood legend. You already know what he looks like and what his habits are and have enough sense to look in the closet tonight before you turn out the light. BULL (world-wide) The bull appears in many ancient cultures as a symbol of fertility and power. The Donn of Cualgne (Bull of Cooley) in Ireland, for one, was so potent that cows would become pregnant just from the sound of his lowing. Bulls have lost some of their power as a symbol, but the bull and cow were among the first domestic animals, and their fecundity once meant the difference between starvation and prosperity. Cultures as varied as the Irish and the Masai have measured wealth in cow instead of cash. The bull became especially important in the ancient religions of the Levant and the Mediterranean. In Babylon, the Winged Bull of Heaven challenged the hero Gilgamesh, and the rising and setting of the constellation Taurus was linked to the changing of the seasons. Later, in Persia, the bull was a sacrificial animal for the god Mithras, a sacrifice that nourished the world as the bison’s sacrifice served the Native American. In ancient Greece, athletic rituals sprang up around the bull. Female gymnasts used a live bull as a vaulting horse. These memories were worked into Greek stories of Europa and the bull and the Minotaur in the labyrinth. BUSH. G.W. Read multiple blog entries *Lessons Pancho Villa Taught Me* *In an Infinite Universe Filled with Alternate Realities, It's Hard When You Realize You're Living in the Evil One* *President Snerd* AND MANY MORE |
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| Argus was the loyal dog of the wanderer Odysseus. Forgotten by the household, Argus slept on the dung heap near the gate and waited for his master. When Odysseus came home after twenty years, Argus was the only one to recognize the traveler. Odysseus paused, fearful of giving away his disguise-- but as aged Argus rose to finally greet him, he died at Odysseus' feet. |
| "Blind Man, Tiger, Labyrinth: Portrait of Borges"; Michael Fountain, courtesy Dr. Don Troyer |
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Ammut is the Eater of the Souls of the Dead. When a person died in ancient Egypt, their hearts were weighed before judging by the great god Osiris. If their hearts, heavy with wickedness, weighed more than a feather from the goddess Truth, then Ammut—part lion, part crocodile, part hippopotamus— would gobble them up. |
The metaphor of the basilisk is wasted on the current architects of our Middle Eastern policy. Our mission is to preserve that metaphor until such time as wisdom is wanted again. The basilisk is a creature so malignant , so full of poison and hate, that just a glance into its baleful eye is enough to kill. Its poison will run up through any weapon used against it and kill its attacker. |
BEAR (World-wide; Ainu, Native American) The bear is one of the most important animals in the study of world mythology. Some of the earliest signs of human religion, 70,000 years or older, are altars and cave shrines dedicated to the bear. In art the bear is used as a symbol of the relationship between our world and the world of the wild things. He is the animal that walks like a man, but he lives in the wildest of wild woods, out of man’s control. An ordinary forest becomes a wilderness when the bear lives there. |
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