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Happy Halloween! I am celebrating by taking the day off and presenting nothing other than a gallery of amazing old prints of epic snake monsters! Be sssssafe and have fun!
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Happy Halloween! Here at Ferrebeekeeper we continue working through a list of snake monsters from around the world. Today’s monster is from South African lore—but it is a little unclear what tradition it hales from. Maybe, as in the case of, say, Bigfoot, the legends of indigenous people got mashed together with the aspirations and fears of European explorers, miners, and settlers to create an unsettling hybrid being…At any rate, this creature, the Grootslang, is said to be a colossal hybrid of an elephant and a serpent left over from the primordial building of the world. The gods created a creature of enormous size, colossal intellect, dark cunning, and insatiable greed…oh and bendiness. Grootslangs were soon destroying the newly created world, and the gods realized they had made a terrible mistake. They separated the beings into different categories, giving size & intellect to the great elephants and supple cunning and greed to snakes.
Yet some (or one?) Grootslang escaped and lived on to trouble humankind. Myths assert that the Grootslang was even more avaricious, parsimonious, and cunning than diamond prospectors and Dutch colonial merchants (so obviously the stories are fake). The Grootslang is said to live in a cave filled with infinite diamonds somewhere in the Richtersveld of South Africa. It is enormously wealthy and delights in cruelly torturing unwary prospectors to death, however its greed is it weakness and victims can prolong their life by offering it treasure and deals. Alas, the Grootslang kept not just the cruelty strength and wealth of the ancient gods it also had their unearthly acumen and cunning, so deals made with it tended to go horribly wrong, in the manner of dragon curses from medieval tales. So, if you run into the Grootslang you can potentially save yourself by offering it diamonds, but probably everything will come apart and you will be in a worse situation than you were originally.
Hmm, maybe this thing is actually a metaphor for DeBeers…
In Hindu mythology there was an entire class of intelligent beings who were snakes—the nāgas (a male is a nāga: a female is a nāgī or nāgiṇī). In contemporary Hinduism the nagas are regarded as the protectors of springs, wells, streams, and rivers. Sometimes nagas assume human form (with all of the abilities, appurtenances, and liabilities) but largely they are huge beautiful king cobras. The nagas tend to live in their own realm, Pātāla, the seventh of the nether kingdoms, yet they appear in other places too and interact with gods, mortals, demons, and animals. Neither evil nor entirely good, the nagas have their own enmities, problems, and tales (although these intersect sometimes with the human protagonists of Hinduism’s great epics and myths).
A particular problem of the nagas is the swift and terrible eagle god Garuda, who is an enemy to the serpent people. He despises them because once he was their slave (through a complex family geas which you will have to look up on your own). Garuda escaped this servitude by bringing the potion of immortality to the nagas, but, as soon as he presented it to them and escaped his servitude, he spilled the potion upon the sword grass. The nagas desperately licked up the remnants from the razor grass…but it is a bit unclear whether they attained immortality or not—the grasss certainly cut their tongues most cruelly and nagas (and snakes) have forked tongues up to this day.
The world itself rests on the head of a naga. The naga prince Shesha practiced such astringent asceticism that Brahma became amazed by him. Shesha’s body (which was already that of a snake) became so knotted and powerful and slender that he slipped downward into a hole which lead all the way to the bottom of the world. There Brahma entrusted him with the sacred burden of holding the entire planet and all of us.
With this in mind, it is unsurprising that in certain parts of India, Bali, and Nepal, the naga are worshiped. Nag stones are a particular object of cultic reverence. Cobras likewise are venerated.
My grandfather grew up in West Virginia (where snakes are taboo in accordance with longstanding Judeo-Christian cultic practice) but his work took him around the world–which was not quite so homogeneous in the 40s, 50s, and 60s! When I was a child he used to tell me stories of the nagas and their struggles. He also told me that one of the defining moments of strangeness in his life was when he was passing through South India and saw a woman put out a saucer for (what grandpa assumed was) a pet. He was surprised when she squeezed some breast milk into it, but stunned when a huge glistening cobra crawled out of a wall and lapped up the milk.
OK! Today’s serpent monster is from Zambia from stories told by the Lozi people. This manufactured supernatural snake is called the llomba (in no way to be confused with a llama) and, according to lore, it can be constructed by a powerful witch doctor from his (or her?) own fingernails, skin and blood. When these disgusting ingredients are properly mixed with magical herbs a baby llomba is born. The witch doctor must feed the serpent with eggs and porridge until the monster’s fangs develop, whereupon the sorcerer can sic the creature upon their enemies. To disinterested third parties, the llomba merely looks like a giant terrifying snake, however it appears as a snake version of the witch doctor to the designated target (and to the witch doctor himself). When the llomba finds its prey, it consumes their soul in an orgy of primal serpentine terror! Woah!
So far all of this sounds great (uh, insomuch as black magic homicide goes), yet there are drawbacks for the witch doctor as well. The llomba stays hungry and must constantly be fed. Once it has tasted human souls, eggs and porridge and Zambian breakfast foods no longer do the job. If the witch doctor lets it starve, he dies too. If the witch doctor gets weary of constantly feeding souls to a giant snake which looks like a snake version of himself, he can kill it through magic, but then he will be forever haunted by the llomba’s victims (not that this would necessarily bother someone killing people with evil power). Also, you may want to take this talk of magic snakes made of fingernails and dark wizardry with a grain of salt: my sources identified the llomba as a sea snake and Zambia is extremely landlocked.
Here is a very beautiful painting by Pre-Raphaelite luminary Evelyn de Morgan. This work is titled The Angel with the Serpent and it was completed between 1870 and 1875. Although the work is a religious allegory, its meaning is surprisingly elusive. In Judeo-Christian myth, the serpent represents sexuality, subversiveness, knowledge (and evil). These meanings certainly pertain to this work, yet the angel’s tenderness for the snake seems to suggest that God has wrought these aspects of existence too.
Admittedly this painting might depict a world before the fall (the sumptuous flowering bush and the bare lands beyond hint at this possibility). Is the handsome angel in the red robes Lucifer before he was cast down? Even if this painting does depict the time of Eden, it still suggests that the snake was always part of God’s plan and is dear to the Divinity and his agents (a forbidden idea which raises numerous troubling questions).
I am presenting the painting not just so you ponder the metaphorical meanings of Genesis (although I hope you are doing so), but also to introduce my Halloween week theme of supernatural snakes. Ferrebeekeeper is no stranger to snake deities and monsters at all levels, but snakes have always been part of every mythos except for those of the farthest north and so there are plenty more to get to. Enjoy Evelyn de Morgan’s lovely painting and get used to numinous snakes–we are going to see some amazing scales and forked tongues before next Tuesday!
Apples (Malus pumila) originated in Central Asia somewhere around Turkey/Georgia/Armenia–where the wild apple (Malus sieversii) still grows. These delightful members of the rose family have been continuously cultivated, hybridized, grafted, and cloned since prehistory. Apples are shockingly promiscuous and their seeds are different (sometimes extremely different) from the parent, so varieties (“cultivars”) are cloned and grafted. There are more than 7500 cultivars of apples grown and each is really a clone—or a still living clonal scion–of the original tree they come from. The history and meaning and delight of the apple is beyond my ability to even begin to discuss, however I want to talk about the best variety of apple which is widely available in the United States, the Golden Delicious, because it comes from the same place as me. The first Golden Delicious tree comes from Clay County, an obscure county in West Virginia where my whole family hales from (well, at least for the last 250 years or so, I guess we are from Africa by way of Europe originally).
Golden Delicious apples are a bright yellow (or yellow green) apple which are extremely sweet and fragrant. The original tree was found on the Mullins’ family farm in Clay County and the fruit was locally known as “Mullin’s Yellow Seedling” and “Annit apple” until 1914/15 when it was renamed the Golden Delicious by Stark Brothers Nursery to whom Anderson Mullins sold the cultivation rights and the tree (for the then princely sum of $5000).
Golden delicious apples are wonderful for cooking, salads, and sauces, but their sweet taste makes them perfect for eating too (although their bright crisp flesh and nearly transparent skin makes them susceptible to bruising). Wikipedia tells us that “In 2010, an Italian-led consortium announced they had decoded the complete genome of the Golden delicious apple. It had the highest number of genes (57,000) of any plant genome studied to date.” To my eye, Golden Delicious apples also look like the golden apples of Aphrodite which sometimes play a saucy role in Greek mythology or even the forbidden apples of the Hesperides which conferred immortality (if you could get past Hera’s dragon). Anyway I picked a bunch of them upstate this past weekend and I can’t stop thinking about them…or eating them. After Halloween week is done, I will share my favorite apple pie recipe. However next week is not about apples…it is about snakes!
We are coming up to Halloween time and Ferrebeekeeper always features a special theme week to celebrate the spooky season. Start getting ready for next week’s dark excitement! For today though I want to present a half-spooky, half-beautiful Gothic post (since it has been too long since we visited that category).
One of my favorite things are fountains—the aesthetic (and, usually, the actual) focal point of gardens and town squares. Fountains represent vitality, comfort, and healing—they are the place where people go to quench their spiritual thirst (and, you know, get water).
The most famous fountains tend to be in Baroque, modern, and Greco-Roman styles, but there are also many lovely Gothic fountains throughout Europe. Some of these are almost wholly religious in character, but others are spidery and ornate or feature dragons, monster, and gargoyles.
Here is a little gallery of random Gothic fountains. Most of them are real, but it seems like a couple may have been built by computer programmers to enliven online worlds of magic and fantasy. They are all exciting and interesting and they provide an early taste of Halloween fun (and hopefully quench your need for Gothic hydration).
Two years ago, the world astronomy community first directly detected gravitational waves when two black holes collided. The ability to “listen” to gravitational wave noises has now come in extremely handy as the international astronomy community witnessed (or “detected”?) a new category of astronomical event—the “kilonova”! This August (2017) astronomers around the world observed two neutron stars in a nearby galaxy collide in a high energy event which distorted spacetime and was detected via both the media of electromagnetic radiation and gravitational waves.
Neutron stars have 10 to 20% more mass than the sun—but all packed into a ball with 15 kilometers of diameter—about the size of a city. It has been postulated that two of these super dense monstrosities can spin into each other in a bizarre high energy event, but such a thing was never properly detected and observed…until August 17. You can listen to it here!
These events actually happened 130 million years ago during the early Cretaceous, but it took the gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation 130 million years to cross from the nearby galaxy where they were observed (this galaxy is located in the southern constellation of Hydra).
The idea that most (or all?) of the universe’s extremely dense metals such as gold and platinum came from neutron stars is a fairly recent concept. It was largely theoretical and seemed a trifle…preposterous (since neutron stars are not exactly everywhere to fall into each other) yet the recent kilonova has proven the concept and has provided a bonanza of information for astronomers. Of course it has provided a literal bonanza too—the universe now has the equivalent of several earths worth of newly created gold and platinum. Admittedly that vast treasure trove is 130 million light years away in the southern sky—yet that still seems closer than the Federal Reserve Depository or some Swiss vault.
Has anyone noticed the rash of giant snake attacks in Indonesia? These alarming stories of giant snakes follow a very ancient (and horrifying) narrative pattern: a lone villager or traveler chances across an enormous predatory reptile from 20 to 30 feet in length. Mayhem ensues. Usually the human survives and fights off the monster with a machete (or with aid from a torch wielding mob), but sometimes the human vanishes…only to be found being slowly digested inside a reticulated python.
Taken from an individual human perspective, it is hard not to think of the pythons as the insatiable villains of such stories, but the real narrative is more complicated. Palm oil is made from fruit of the palm oil plant, a tropical generalist. Not only is this oil a lucrative (and delicious) additive to desserts and other processed foodstuffs, it is also extensively used in cosmetics, shampoo, and soaps. Indonesia has the third largest rainforest in the world, but palm oil growers are destroying these forests at an unprecedented rate. Indonesia’s tropical rainforests are vanishing even more quickly than the rainforests in Brazil or the Congo. These forests are cut down and replaced with palm oil plantations, enormous monocultures where most traditional rainforest animals cannot live, however rats can and do live there on the oily palm fruit. The pythons are hunting rats in these plantations because their forests were destroyed.
Humankind the great hive organism is swallowing these forests whole (in the form of delicious candy and aromatic toiletries). The animals which live there are likewise being eradicated. Indeed the most recent giant python to attack a villager who molested it was literally cut into pieces, fried, and devoured by hungry villagers. It makes one wonder if the Saint George and the Dragon pictures were not so much about humankind surmounting evil as about the tragedy of deforestation in medieval England.
There is nothing that Ferrebeekeeper loves more than an enormously ornate 18th century edifice—unless it is a touching story of unification and healing! This story has all of those things—but it also drives straight through one of the darkest episodes of twentieth century history.
This is the Dresden Frauenkirche, one of the two great churches of Dresden. The Frauenkirche is Dresden’s great Protestant church: the Catholic church–the Hofkirche of Dresden—has its own history (though it could be argued that both churches form a larger story of faith and schism in Germany especially since Dresden is part of Saxony, which was Martin Luther’s diocese). At any rate the Frauenkirche was designed by Dresden’s city architect, George Bähr and built between 1726 and 1743. The defining feature of the church was its 96 meter tall stone dome. The 12,000-ton sandstone dome rested on eight slender supports, and yet was famous for its solid resilience and strength. During the 7 Years War, Prussian cannonballs bounced harmlessly off the sandstone dome like acorns bouncing off of a church bell.
Unfortunately, the 20th century saw the advent of more terrible weapons than cannons (and more terrifying German leaders than Frederick the Great). In the final stages of World War II, the Frauenkirche was destroyed by the 1945 Allied fire bombings which burned down Dresden (and killed 25,000 of its citizens). All that was left was a pile of rubble and melancholy broken walls which looked for all the world like a Friedrich painting. The Cold War also took its toll on Germany and Soviet hegemonic aggression prevented the nation from uniting and fully rebuilding. East Germany was unable to fulfill its potential or govern itself (on the opposite side of the Cold War, the United States was and is the dearest friend and ally of Germany…although maybe it is best not to look too closely into the circumstances of that firebombing or ask a lot of questions about our own recent embrace of the crazed strongman theory of misgovernment).
So, for half a century the Frauenkirche was a nightmarish burnt fragment—an ever-present revenant reminding the people of Saxony of the terrible destruction of the war. It became a locus of the German peace movement (and a site for passive resistance to the East German government). Then, in the nineties, circumstances in Germany changed very quickly. Reunification brought forth a project to rebuild the Frauenkirche. The original church was destroyed, but the original blueprints were not. In 1992 construction began on the new Frauenkirche. In an effort to recreate the church as thoroughly as possible, chemists tested burnt remnants, historians pored over ancient receipts, archivists collected endless photos and artworks, and the citizens of Dresden saved pfennigs in order to pay for the undertaking. About 3800 stones from the original church were recovered and used. The old stones have a patina of age…and they were darkened by the fire.
The project was finished in 2005 (ahead of schedule) and today the Frauenkirche looks almost exactly the same as it did in 1744 or 1944, except the smattering of original stones give it a speckled appearance like a magnificent baroque toad. Touchingly, the golden cross at the apex of the tower was funded officially by “the British people and the House of Windsor” and wrought by a British goldsmith whose father was a pilot in the bombing.
If you have ever tried to fix or restore anything, you will recognize that this is a monumental accomplishment which indicates the proficiency and excellence of German manufacture (not that anyone had any doubts anyway). Even more importantly, the story is a reminder to everyone that reunification, rebirth, and rebuilding to Golden Age glory are entirely possible. The full story of the church however also remains to remind us of the horror of war and the tragic history of mistakes which caused so much devastation.
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