Rabbit in the Moon

The Rabbit in the Moon

I never thought it strange before
How the stars embroider the sky
Painting enigmatic pictures
Of heroes way up high.
We’d gather in the December warmth
Of a flickering fireside
To listen to tales of monsters born
Of curses and patricide,
Of goddesses made of moondust
Of tricksters and ethereal fey
Of quests and haunted lockets
Of magic on display.
The rabbit who lives in the moon
Can arrange the stars at night
But where does the rabbit go
When the moon’s no longer bright?

In Western culture we have the man in the moon, but in the far East it’s a rabbit. The rabbit is said to be a companion of the moon goddess Chang’e, and is pounding a mortar and pestle. The ingredients vary depending on the culture, but it’s commonly either an elixer of immortality for Chang’e, or medicinal herbs for mortals. Both the man in the moon and the rabbit are due to pareidolia, that human habit of interpreting shadows into something recognizable. So it’s not that surprising to find that several Native American cultures also have a moon rabbit. The stories vary, but examples can be found in Mayan, Aztec and Cree mythologies.

And some miscellaneous haiku…

This pulsing horror Blob of bile and appetite When halved there are two	Terraforming failed Native species in revolt This world will kill us
The last thing I saw Lying in my open grave Hellish face revealed	Tentacles questing City in the ocean depths Cthulhu dreaming
Starshine at midnight Footsteps in the bloody snow Black glyphs on pale skin	Captain, do ye ken? Cannae change laws of physics Haggis in the fire

Krampus

I’m ready to get back to the book. I think I’m going to submit some work to magazines as well. I recently wrote a poem with prompts that I really like, but because I posted it, it’s probably going to be considered ‘previously published’, which really rather sucks. I almost didn’t post it but it had been a busy day and I was tired and out of patience.

For the most part I’ve been good about keeping my personal stuff off here, with a recent exception. I debated removing it but eh, it’s there for good or bad. I’ll just do better. Christmas is coming and I’ve been cleaning in preparation for decorating. I’ll finish tomorrow and start digging out decorations. I’m putting up a tree this year. It’s been a while so I’m looking forward to it. I’m almost done shopping too. Tis the season and all that. I’m getting a live tree, which is going to be fun with cats.

Krampusnacht is coming. You may be familiar with Krampus from a spate of holiday movies based on him. Krampus is an Eastern European demon that punishes bad children as opposed to Saint Nicholas rewarding the good.

He appears as a horned demon with a very long tongue, carrying a bundle of birch called a ruten used to whip the children with.

He also carries chains and often a bag or basket to cart children back to Hell in.

The Feast of St Nicholas is on 12/6. The night before is Krampus Night or Krampusnacht, when he visits house to house. It is customary to offer him schnapps. He sometimes travels with Saint Nicholas, but Santa only visits good children, with Krampus taking the bad.

Cards called Krampuskarten have been exchanged since the 1800s with the greeting Grub von Krampus, or Greetings from Krampus. Krampus is sometimes pictured quite lasciviously. New cards picture him as a tamer creature, but I prefer the originals.

I’ll write more this weekend. Christmas is coming up fast.

Ho ho ho. (Now I have a machine gun!)

Bat Week

It’s International Bat Week! I love bats and they are a vital part of our ecosystem that is currently threatened. In honor of bat week, here’s the story of a bat goddess.

There was a Samoan princess named Leutogi. She was ordered to become the second wife of the Tongan King in the hopes that the union would bring peace to the warring nations. It didn’t work, and the people she was Princess of held her in little regard. She was a very kind woman, which they saw as a weakness, and the first Queen in particular hated her. She took to staying away from the town to avoid the animosity.

While out exploring, she found a wounded baby bat. Her guard wanted to kill it but she stood her ground and protected it. She nursed the bat back to health and released it back to its colony when healed. Since she was compassionate, she was ordered to care for the young prince. He died, and she was blamed and was sentenced to be put to death.

A pyre was built and the flames were lit. She thought it was her last moments, but a cloud of bats appeared. Thousands of bats arrived and peed on the flames, extinguishing them and saving her life. The King feared this, so next he banished her to a barren island to starve.

Instead of starving, bats brought her food and colonized the island. They pooped so much that the island eventually became a fertile paradise. In time, she became a fertility goddess and protector of bats, being worshiped as such by her people.

The Bolotnik

There was a new hashtag game on twitter today – #SwampSunday, covering folklore from swamps. One thing I contributed was the bolotnik. The bolotnik is a Slavic shapeshifter. In man form, he appears as an elder covered in dirt, algae and fish scales. In some stories he has excessively long arms and a tail. He’s bug eyed and round bellied with a wide mouth and beard.

In his natural form, he lives in the swamp. You may mistake his bulk for a stepping stone, but once you step on it, he will quickly pull you down to drown below the stagnant water. The bolotnik dislikes noise, so it is wise to be quiet as you pass through his marsh.

A bolotnik is one of the creatures populating my book. My book pulls from Slavic, Celtic and Nordic mythology. Slavic folklore is rich and has a wide variety of creatures both good and bad.

I’m working my way through the first edit. I imagine it will go through at least a couple more edits before it’s through. This edit is cleaning up some dangling threads, rewriting a few parts, tweaking story lines. It’s time consuming. While I do this, every fear and insecurity I’ve ever had about my writing rears its ugly head. I don’t know if other writers do this as well, but I start doubting it and questioning what I’ve written. I push those doubts away and try to soldier on. If I give in to it I’ll never finish and never have the nerve to try submitting it to a publisher.

Below is an excerpt from when they run across the bolotnik. Feedback appreciated! I haven’t edited this section yet so it’s raw.

Brynn and Raina had changed places during the slog so it was Marrok that helped her onto the next rock. She braced herself with the branch she had been using and held a hand out to help Brynn. Brynn stepped up, planting one foot on the rock beside the one Raina stood on. As she straightened, the rock shifted beneath her, sending her backwards into the swamp. Raina watched in horror as Brynn splashed beneath the water. She started screaming for Marrok to help her as she stepped back into the mire.

Marrok and Larkin both yelled out “No!”

Brynn was struggling and Raina reached out a hand to help her up, but the other girl wasn’t coming up from the water. It churned as she fought and Raina had a moment of confusion before she felt something grab her ankle and yank her beneath the water. Oh, she thought stupidly.

Panic set in and she fought madly against the inexorable pull dragging her through the mucky bog. Everything was a murky green and it was difficult to see what was going on but she felt Brynn nearby. She looked down to see what had her ankle and was met by the malevolent eyes of a creature that looked like it was half frog. Its body was a shapeless blob in the swamp water, but she saw webbed fingers wrapped around her ankle. The creature had large, protruding eyes that stared up at her with reptilian indifference and an unnaturally wide mouth. Its head was bumpy and hairless, with vestigial ears lying flat against its rounded head. Unthinking, she opened her mouth to scream and swallowed the muddy water. She fought it with every ounce of her strength and will. She heard a roaring noise and then a large splashing.

Marrok’s claws swiped at the creature to force it to let them go. He yanked Brynn up out of the water and onto a boulder, then reached down to help Raina up. The two girls rolled over on the rock, sputtering, coughing and shaking with spent adrenaline. Raina suddenly puked, then groaned in misery. Larkin stood with axe in hand, kneeling and peering into the water while cursing as Marrok smacked Brynn’s back, sending her into a coughing fit and earning a reproachful look for his trouble. He stood snarling and pacing as he waited for her to recover. Larkin stood and helped Raina to her feet.

“Are you both ok?” Raina glared at him but nodded.

“What the hell was that?”

“Bolotnik.”

Little Red Riding Hood

I promote my redbubble shop on twitter. Specifically, I participate in #MythologyMonday, #FairytaleTuesday and #FolkloreThursday. This week’s #FairytaleTuesday theme was Red Riding Hood. It’s always been a favorite of mine, and I carry a good bit of Red Riding Hood art, from pre-Raphaelite to Golden Age artists. My biggest complaint about twitter is trying to compress information into what twitter allows in a tweet. Each character counts. This gets frustrating and really sort of kills the story telling cadence I want to get into.

First, a brief history of the tale. The first recorded version we have was a poem written down by a Belgian priest in the 10^th century. In this version, a five year old child was wrapped in a red baptismal gown. A mother wolf carried the child back to her den to feed her cubs, but the cubs did not harm the girl. The child called upon God to save her, with the moral being that God soothes savage souls. Since then, various versions have been told. They usually go like this:

Red Riding Hood, named for her cloak, is sent with a basket of food to her grandmother’s. To get there, she must pass through the forest. Along the way, she meets a wolf, and tells him what she is doing. The wolf goes ahead of Red, eats the grandmother, and dressing as her, waits for Red Riding Hood to arrive. She does, only to find her grandmother in bed. The frail grandmother calls for Red to come closer and the obedient girl does. Red comments on how big her grandmother’s eyes are, and how big her teeth are, only to get eaten up by the wolf. Some versions end here.

Others continue with a huntsman coming along, slicing open the wolf, and saving Red and her Grandmother. Another version has Red running away. A washerwoman helps her escape by stretching a sheet over a stream and allowing Red to cross. However, when the wolf tries to cross after her, she drops the sheet and the wolf falls into the water and drowns.

In still other versions, before the wolf eats her, he prepares her grandmother in a stew and feeds her to Red. He then has her strip before getting into the bed with him. As she removes each piece of clothing, he tells her to throw it in the fire as she won’t need it any more.

 

There is one version that has echoes of both Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs. That one is “The Wolf and the Seven Kids”. In this one, a mother goat must leave her seven children alone. She warns them not to open the door for anyone but her. The wolf comes along, but they won’t open the door. The wolf grows cunning and tricks the kids into opening the door, whereupon he promptly eats them. He’s so full he falls asleep by the stream. The mother goat comes home and is quite distressed to see what has happened. She cuts open the wolf’s stomach and rescues her children, replacing them with stones. The wolf wakes and goes to take a drink, but the weight of the stones pulls him under and he drowns.

 

Red’s age varies from a small child to a young woman, but most versions have her as a 12 or 13 year old girl. Red’s journey can be seen as a puberty rite. She begins as a child, but must pass through the dangerous forest of puberty to become a woman. Along the way she is met with sexual temptation and the possibility of rape. It’s a warning to young girls not to trust the men they meet, and not to trust appearances. The girl must learn this to become a woman. The red cloak can represent menstruation or sexual desire. This tale was a popular warning to well bred young ladies to guard their virginity, as it was necessary for them to gain a good marriage.

Red Riding Hood is certainly no anomaly. A thread of sex and violence ran through most if not all fairy tales before they were rewritten for children. Rapunzel was pregnant, Cinderella’s sisters cut parts of their feet off, Snow White was raped while unconscious, and her stepmother was forced to dance in red hot shoes until she died. The forgotten tale of Catskin involves incest. Bluebeard is about a serial killer and a bloody chamber full of dead women. Sleeping Beauty wasn’t woken with a kiss. She was woken to find she’d had twins in her sleep. This is what real fairytales are. They are full of horror and warnings and have been around for as long as we’ve had civilizations.

I’ve had a lifelong love affair with them. There is always more to learn. When I was eleven I found my first collection of original fairytales. I was in love with the 398 section of the library and had already gone through all the King Arthur books they had. Fairytales was on the bottom shelf below the medieval section, and I remember sitting on the floor, reading this thick old book. I was enamored with them from the start. I think the first one I read was Beauty and the Beast, and I remember being surprised at how much there was to it compared to the children’s books.

I’ve dressed up as Red Riding Hood a few times on Halloween. There are multiple songs with a Red Riding Hood theme that I love, and if you haven’t seen 1984’s “The Company of Wolves”, it’s a gorgeous, surreal and symbolic take on the story. It’s a character I relate to, but I think a lot of women do. On the occasions that Red saves herself, it is deeply satisfying. What she loses in innocence, she gains in courage.

  Rosaleen meets the wolf

The Minotaur pt 2

My back is hurting a LOT today, and I’m quite frustrated because it’s nice out and I want to be out doing stuff. However, it hurts to even sit up so I’m not feeling very capable at the moment. I did some more writing yesterday, and then today just wrote a few paragraphs. I really hope I can pick up the pace at some point soon.

So, I was talking about the minotaur. Has anyone read “House of Leaves”? It’s been a couple of years since I read it last but I remember the minotaur being in red, I think? It was symbolic of course, and being lost in the expanding hallways of the house would correspond to the labyrinth. I’ve read that book twice. It is quite a task to read for those uninitiated, but worth it. It builds such a sense of creeping dread throughout it, and his use of all the visual tricks helps put you in his frame of mind. Anyway, that’s me going off on a tangent.

What strikes me about the minotaur is how he must have felt. I am empathizing with him, of course. He is portrayed as a monstrous beast to be killed, and he is monstrous, but maybe not always. He was born a prince, born Asterion, of the stars. As a child he was loved by his mother, but shunned by the man he thought was his father. Or did he think and feel like a human child? Even if his thoughts were alien and strange, all creatures deserve kindness. He did not sin to be born such as he was. Could he speak or were his vocal cords only capable of producing the bleats of a calf?

As a child, he would have been lonely, chasing the other children through the palace, wanting to play. And they would have run screaming. As he got a little older, his shunning more complete, that loneliness would have curdled into hate. His hate would grow with his hunger, until he attacks.

The first child was found crumpled in the courtyard, and they turned to him. Asterion was blood drunk and innocent, and spoke of his hunger. He was just a child. Pasiphae wept, but the King was adamant. Such a creature had no place in his kingdom, growing stranger with the years.

So he was thrown in the labyrinth, with moving walls, kept prisoner by the same magic of his birth. Alone in the dark for so long, I wonder how he reacted with the first sacrifice of seven boys and seven girls. I wonder if he feasted or if he rationed them. Did he try to befriend any of them there in the dark? If he did, it wouldn’t have lasted. By the time of the second sacrifice, he had plans. Either eat them or ally them, if he could control his hunger.

Theseus came with the third batch of tributes. He was arrogant and vain, assured of his own immortality. He would not have been curious about Asterion. He would have seen him as a trophy to his own greatness, no more. By that time, all those years alone in the dark, the minotaur had gone ever stranger and I wonder how much of a fight he would have put up. Sure, our hero claims to have fought a mighty battle with the beast, but he would, wouldn’t he? Maybe he wound his way through the moving halls to find Asterion already dead by his own hand. Maybe he didn’t find Asterion, but was found by Asterion, taken by surprise, and surprised again when the minotaur asked for death. I think the last one is more likely.

The Minotaur

I don’t feel like I got a lot done today. I’m tired and sore and depressed. I did some rewriting and got a few new paragraphs written. Ah well, at least it’s something.  Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep tonight and do better tomorrow.

I’m not sure why, but the story of the Minotaur has been on my mind. Last time I saw my brother I told him the whole story of Icarus. The minotaur involves some of the same characters so maybe I’ll tell him this one next time. I wish when we were little I had spent time instilling in him the love for reading and curiosity about things that I’ve always had, but honestly, we were just trying to survive, and reading was my escape.

So anyway, Pasiphae was the daughter of the sun god Helios and sister to the sorceress Circe. She was a skilled sorceress in her own right. She married King Minos of Crete, becoming Queen. King Minos asked the sea god Poseidon for a magnificent bull, which he would then sacrifice. He asked for the bull to prove his right of rulership. Poseidon granted this wish and a pure white bull rose from the sea. This was such an awesome animal that King Minos decided he was going to keep it and sacrifice another bull in its stead. Of course this pissed off Poseidon. (These mortals are painfully stupid at times. )

So, at this point we have two versions with the same result. Either Poseidon or Aphrodite, depending on the version, cursed King Minos’s wife Pasiphae to have an uncontrollable lust for the bull in question. Yes, the woman wanted bull penis. That’s a pretty nasty curse, especially since the Queen isn’t the one who pissed off the Gods. So, the bull, being a bull, wasn’t much interested in her. She had the craftsman Daedelus, father of Icarus, build a wooden cow and cover it with cow skin. This allowed her to get inside it in a “receptive” position. They wheeled the thing out to the meadow, and the white bull was turned on by the funny looking cow and mated with it, and thereby Pasiphae inside it. I do not know if once she did the deed her lust subsided or if this was an ongoing affair. I also do not know if there were splinters involved for either party.

As a result of this union, Pasiphae gave birth to the minotaur; half man, half bull. King Minos was tipped off by the birth that something wasn’t kosher and was quite unhappy. However, Pasiphae, being a badass sorceress, put a curse on him that caused him to ejaculate scorpions, snakes and other venomous creatures, which would then kill his lovers. Only she was immune. I suppose that’s one way to insure fidelity. Anyway, she named the minotaur Asterion, meaning “starry one”. I like that quite a bit.

She fed and took care of the minotaur when it was a calf, but as it got older, it started eating people. King Minos, who had locked up Daedelus and Icarus for their help with his wife’s unnatural desire, trotted them back out and put them to work building the labyrinth. Meanwhile, King Minos’ only human son Androgeos was killed in Athens. This had to do with his prowess at the games. King Minos held Athens responsible for bringing his line to an end. (I shudder to think what sort of offspring would arise from scorpion ejaculate) So he demanded from them a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens either yearly or every nine years, depending on the version. The Delphic oracle told Athens to do as the King wanted so they did. In the third batch of tributes, King Aegeus’ son Theseus volunteered as a tribute.

King Minos had two daughters named Ariadne and Phaedra, both of whom fell madly in love with the studly Theseus. Ariadne begged Daedelus for the secret of the labyrinth and then ran to tell Theseus. She gave him a ball of string to help him find his way back out. Theseus kills the Minotaur, escapes the labyrinth, and runs off with both daughters on his ship back to Athens. Along the way, he abandons Ariadne at an island. Some versions say he did this on his own, while others say he did it at the behest of the god Dionysus, who wanted Ariadne for himself. Either way, dick move.

Theseus was supposed to put up white sails on his way home to let his father know he lived. He forgot (or so he said), and seeing the black sails, King Aegeus jumps to his death into the sea, which is ever after known as the Aegean sea.

So. That’s the story of the minotaur, including all the bits your middle school mythology book left out. I actually had some things to say about this whole story, but I’ve run out of time so I’ll pick up again tomorrow. For now, there’s the myth, and attached are a few works of related artwork I have listed in my redbubble shop. I hope you enjoyed the story and now you can regale your friends with stories of scorpion semen at the next party.

Ariadne – Herbert James Draper

Ariadne – John William Waterhouse

The Minotaur – George Frederick Watts