by Veronika | Filed Under Articles, Muse Lore
Part 1 of our essay on fantasical, mythological, and supernatural Muses
Half-Women/Half-Beast Enchantresses and Nocturnal Charmers and Changelings
Throughout world literature and mythology – from ancient Greco-Roman myths to the Grimms Brothers’ fairy tales; from Japanese folk traditions to artists’ renditions of fantastic creatures that are hybrids of humans and something else – people have been endlessly fascinated with the idea of transformation, mythological beings, changelings, human-animal monsters, beasts, or goddesses, and people who act normal by day but turn into another being – or behave under the command of a charm — by night. In many of these myths and stories, one reason for their importance and their persistence in our culture is because those of us “ordinary people” both long for and fear those touched with otherness – a phenomenon that can be as divine as the instant when the priest consecrates bread so as to make it into the body of Christ at Catholic mass, and he feels one with God; or, at the other end of the spiritual spectrum (and hopefully purely fictional) as crude and petty as when an insatiable, vengeful demon-woman turns an innocent man into a pig.
Still, even in the latter case, more is going on than the relegation of a man to “the level of beasts”; indeed, these tales show how much power and what advantages can sometimes be gained, if only temporarily, by being changed from the supposedly “higher species” of man (“granted dominion by God over all creatures”) into a swallow, a swan, or even a laurel tree: escape, sexual liberation, the self-discovery sometimes brought on by disguise, freedom from patriarchy (or, in bad scenarios, entrapment within it). Humans who suddenly sprout horns or wings are not regressing to Gregor Samsa outcast status in these myths or tales; they are passing over a threshold to learn more about what it means to be truly human, and how to transcend that condition. And by reading about them, we can at least shadow their journey into the human heart and, at times, the bark of a tree.
Still, the subject is so vast, and so many of the myths and fairy tales have innumerable variations from around the world, that the reader knows he or she is in the presence of a universal and deeply powerful archetype in these interrelated subjects. The bodies of the creatures in this essay are not the only things to transform; the legends and mythological creatures themselves changed and were modified – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot — as they crossed cultural borders. And the tales were relayed across a variety of genres. Countless poems, plays, short stories, ballets, operas, fairy tales, paintings, and just about every other form of art attests to this. All of this reinforces the fact that we are inspired by the thought of change, even when it is not for the best (see, for example, Arachne’s story).
Whether they are good or evil, we are beguiled by these half-human/half-beast enchantresses: both for who they are, and for what they hint we just might become. But exactly why are they so entrancing – how close can we get to the reason in a culture that pretends to shun ancient myths and fairy tales (yet is addicted, if not to Disney films anymore, then at least to pastiche films of them, like “Shrek”)? What nerve is it that these stories of hybrid creatures and sudden metamorphosis touch deep within us that sends us back again and again to hear their narratives of transcendence and entrapment, spellbound loyalty and release, betrayal and clever revenge, again and again? Even when the story details a change that is a punishment doled out by a jealous Juno, turning some innocent pastoral maiden into a cow or whatever it is that day, it may still remind us of something positive: perhaps a sense of being beyond the quotidian body, especially in our childhood dreams of joining the stars, or turning into a flower or tree, or just being someone different. Or maybe the tales, happy or not, simply allegorize our growth, from childhood to adulthood, replete with both magic and tests and toils only the gods could dream up.
I can think of several reasons like these ones why we treasure these tales, but I wasn’t being rhetorical when I asked why we keep coming back to them, like Circe’s pigs to their trough: I do not have the comprehensive understanding I seek in this enchanted kingdom. Perhaps I am drunk on fairy wine. As I said above, we are drawn to these shapeshifting woman-beasts, and sometimes man-beasts, because we fear them, representing as they do the element of chaos the universe refuses to relinquish. As long as these new breeds embellished by magic reside in the pastoral bliss of ancient Greece (interrupted by occasional clashes between the gods), or in the whipped-cream, swan-boat castle-confections of mad Bavarian Kings that fairy tales describe, we will ask to hear their stories over and over as a means of reigning in our terror at their oddities and the trolls and witches and other others who stalk their crossroads and cemetaries. However, along with the fear comes a wave of fascination we are helpless to resist, particularly with many a she-beast: whether it’s the Greek goddess Iris, who drew rainbows across the skies because multi-colored radiance was her very essence, or a more modern seductress, such as Cocteau’s rose-lovely Belle in his classic cinematic retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story, we would fall to our knees to catch a glimpse of these ladies – princess or fairy, nymph or goddess – on the picture book, or in our mind’s eye. The women in the tales are quite often the very embodiment of the term “bewitching” and we are helpless to their powers, as were the men in the stories (in most cases; we will see some exceptions/gender inversions).
These tales we will examine tell of bodies winding their way through miraculous permutations of which we can only dream. These stories tap into a deep unconscious. This is not about a mental evolutionary regression — remembering what it felt like to be a bird or bear or “lesser creature than man” — these stories are signposts pointing us toward a pathway that, if followed deep into the woods (without the safety of breadcrumbs, of crumbs) might lead us toward answers to some of life’s greatest puzzles. Of course, one of these would be, what does it mean to be human? But even more importantly – and more fun — what does it feel like to be wild, god-like, omnipotent, immortal, unstoppable, irresistible, and strange in the most intoxicating, charmed-fairy of senses? Can we mortals learn anything from our literary celestial betters?
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