Daily Archives: April 26, 2024

Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (Special Mentions) (10) Maioranus

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Youtube channel banner as at 26 April 2024

 

(10) MAIORIANUS (GERMANY 2021)

 

“This channel is dedicated to Julius Valerius Maiorianus, the hero emperor who almost managed to restore the Western Roman Empire, against all odds. He truly deserves a channel, that has the goal to increase his legacy so that his deeds shall be remembered. In many videos, we shall explore how and why the Roman Empire fell, and how it could have been saved by heroes like Majorian, many times”

Yes – it’s another Roman history channel, albeit a somewhat recent latecomer (heh) aptly enough with a focus on the late Roman Empire, a niche among historical Youtube ch .

And what can I say? I do have a soft spot for Majorian (to use the less Latinized version of his name), wildcard tenth place in my Top 10 Roman Emperors. I also have a soft spot for the late Roman Empire, something of a niche on Youtube as Maiorianus himself laments, finding its decline and fall fascinating – as I do for most empires but particularly the Roman Empire.

I’m not sure whether the later Roman Empire could have been saved, by Majorian or otherwise, as the channel banner profile proclaims, or indeed whether it should have been. Perhaps more prolonged than saved?

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention) (10) Xenomancy

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Illustration of the Dutch explorer Joris van Spilbergen meeting King Vimaladharmasuriya I of Kandy (in modern Sri Lanka) from a 1602 book – used for the Stranger King article in Wikipedia

(10) XENOMANCY

 

“A prophet is never accepted in his home town”

The divination and magic of strangers, stranger kings, stranger things…and aliens?

Unlike gynomancy, Wikipedia’s list of methods of divination includes xenomancy or divination by strangers, but there is nothing beyond its mere inclusion in the list.

Similarly to gynomancy, however, it might be defined in one of two ways – as divination of strangers, or as divination by strangers. In other words, the stranger as omen or oracle, portent or prophet – the stranger as divinatory object or the stranger as divinatory (or magic) figure.

In the first, the querent divines their answer from the appearance or characteristics of strangers. And to be honest, it doesn’t seem to offer much as a method of divination, much less a school of magic, except as something akin to that game of anticipating the color of the next car one sees driving past.

Of course, strangers arriving at one’s home have more of an import, but it would probably be a safe bet for a diviner to foresee trouble, particularly if the strangers are armed.

The latter – where the stranger is the diviner or magical figure – has far more potential. The wandering stranger was basically Odin’s schtick – and he was hardly alone among gods, angels or kings in that. Even Jesus pulled this trick, accompanying two of his followers unrecognized after his resurrection, only to vanish when they recognised him.

My featured quote was also by Jesus, who turned out to be the biggest stranger prophet of all for the Roman Empire, among various cults of mysterious strangers from the east, and of course beyond that to the world.

In the Bible, Jonah played a similar role on a smaller scale as stranger prophet to the Assyrian Empire – everyone remembers him being swallowed by a “fish” but forgets why he was swallowed in the first place, because he was trying to shirk his role as a stranger prophet.

And then there’s the theory of stranger kings, a theory developed by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, essentially as to ‘native’ peoples accepting foreign rulers (particularly in the context of European colonialism) – a theory which may well overlap with stranger prophets or strangers as magical figures.

Xenomancy has intriguing fantasy narrative potential as underlying either divination or magic – that people can practice divination or use magic but only as strangers away from their homeland, but the most common trope involves them being in another world altogether, from portal fantasy in literature to isekai in Japanese manga or anime. Two examples spring readily to mind – Narnia (although there they are more stranger kings or heroes) and the Thomas Covenant Chronicles.

It even has intriguing SF narrative potential, particularly when one uses xeno- for its most common contemporary application to aliens – aliens as divinatory or magic figures to humans (or perhaps vice versa). One could even conjure up a contemporary form of xenomancy of divination (or magic) using alien or UFO sightings or lore.

Of course, fantasy often does much the same, but for particular fantasy races with respect to humans – elves effectively being a magical or semi-divine race to the more mundane humans or hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. For that matter, divinatory or magical aliens in SF often tend to be effectively space elves.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (Special Mention) (10) Fairies

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“Faeries” by Brian Froud & Alan Lee – 25th anniversary edition. The second best reference work on fairy folklore after Katherine Briggs’ A Dictionary of Fairies. Certainly better illustrated – reflecting its coffee table book style – with Alan Lee’s characteristically fey art

 

(10) FAIRIES

 

Fairy, faery, fay, fey, fae – the stuff of folklore, most distinctively in British and Irish folklore, but also throughout wider European folklore. And perhaps beyond, as some historians argue for their origin from the peris of Persian mythology – and there are analogous beings (or ‘godlings’) elsewhere.

Of course, the term fairies now conjures up images of cute little gossamer-winged pixies like Tinkerbell.

In folklore – particularly British and Irish folklore – fairies were much different, most aptly styled as the Fair Folk, itself a euphemism for things that would flay you and walk around in your skin, because you sure as hell didn’t want to draw their attention or conjure them up by using names more true to their nature, or worse yet, their true names. In fairness (heh), they weren’t always as extreme as to literally flay you and walk around in your skin, only on occasion and only some of them. Some of them were more neutral or even nice, although even the nice ones were usually weird or had weird alien morality. Indeed, alien is an apt description, as in a manner of speaking, the fairies of European folklore have been replaced with the aliens of modern folklore, which uncannily resemble their fairy predecessors in many ways. Hence a whole array of apotropaic magic or protective charms to ward them off.

Their origins are myriad, both those attributed to them by folklore or folk belief, and the historical origins of that same folklore or belief . “The unworthy dead, the children of Eve, a kind of demon, a species independent of humans, an older race of humans”. Demoted or semi-fallen angels. Demoted pagan deities or ancestors. Spirits of the dead. Hidden people. Elementals.

As for the classification or types of fairies themselves, that could be the subject of its own top ten – even by broader classifications, let alone all the variations of individual types. The Seelie and Unseelie Courts of Scottish folklore. The classification of trooping and solitary fairies proposed by William Butler Yeats (to which Katherine Briggs added domesticated faires). Heroic faires. Diminuitive faries. Irish Tuatha de Danaan and sidhe. Scandanavian elves. Changelings. Goblins.  Pixies (lending themselves to one of my favorite fairy expressions – pixy-led)

And then there’s all the various fairy objects. Fairy animals – fairy cats and fairy dogs (or black dogs). Fairy trees. Fairy godmothers. Fairy gold. Fairy hills and forts. Fairy paths. Fairy riding (or elfshot). Fairy time. And of course the Fairy Queen and Fairyland (or Otherworld).

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention) (10) Paul’s Robichaud – Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return

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Reaktion Books 2021

 

 

(10) PAUL ROBICHAUD – PAN: THE GREAT GOD’S MODERN RETURN

 

Io Pan! Io Pan Pan!

Pan, the original horny god with the groin of a goat or as Bill Hicks styled him, randy Pan the Goat Boy. God of nature, mountains, shepherds and sexuality – also the source of our word panic, for the divine mad fear he could inspire in people, including as savior of Athens, the invading Persian army at Marathon.

As a Capricorn goat boy myself, I’ve long been a Pan fan. And so too is Paul Robichaud, a devotee of Pan. Well perhaps not the Capricorn part, but he has written a whole book as a paean to Pan.

Ironically, the only classical Greek god reported as dead – in a historical legend by Plutarch, with a sailor during the reign of Tiberius reporting a divine proclamation from an island that “the great god Pan is dead” – but reports of his death, to paraphrase Mark Twain, were greatly exaggerated. Pan was the one god that endured more than all the others, even to the extent of embodying in horned and hooved form all classical paganism as a whole in modern romanticism and neo-paganism. Perhaps aptly enough, given the pun on Pan – as the word for “all” in Greek also being Pan.

Robichaud comes from a background as an English professor – it shows in his fluent prose style, but also a focus on literature as he explores how Pan has been imagined in mythology, art, literature, music, spirituality, and popular culture through the centuries. The chapter titles best demonstrate this odyssey of Pan from mythic Pan – through medieval and early modern Pan, Pan’s romantic rebirth, Pan in the twentieth century (and his Edwardian height of popularity) and Pan’s occult power – to contemporary Pan.

All the usual suspects are here as cultural or literary devotees of Pan, but most notably those from Edwardian children’s literature of all places – prompting Bill Hick’s joke about his Goat Boy being available for children’s parties (“Mommy, I want Goat Boy to come play at our house”). Kenneth Grahame’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Peter Pan’s namesake, as well as much of his persona – with the Lost Boys as his satyrs.

Sadly, no C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, despite its deliciously Dionysian portrayal, maenads and all. Pan did often pal around with Dionysus after all, but generally not so much the other gods – not to mention all those fauns in Narnia. Wait a minute…Mr Tumnus is Pan! Spread the word.

Of course, there are bound to be omissions – Bill Hicks’ Goat Boy for one, Rhys Darby’s fleeting Pan-like figure in Flight of The Conchords’ Prince of Parties song for another. There’s just too much Pan – or is that too many Pans? – out there.

Also sadly, Rochibaud does suggest one of my favorite historical legends of how Christianity embodied Pan as its devil – as being just that, a legend dating back only to the nineteenth century (following the hypothesis of Ronald Hutton to that effect).

I still prefer the legend. In one of my story ideas, a somewhat lost and forlorn Satan muses to the protagonist (with whom he has occasional chats) of his origin from Pan (as one of his multiple-choice origin stories). The protagonist calls him out on his conflicting origin stories, to which Satan replies “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am legion, I contain multitudes”. But then he becomes sadly wistful “I would give anything just to dance in the moonlight again, when I was not evil but only wild and free”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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