Golem

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GolemReduxI read a lot of books. About a hundred a year. At the end of the year I go over them all again and many of them, I see, failed to make a deep impression. Some, I know, before I close the back cover, will stay with me. Maybe even haunt me. I count Elizabeth R. Baer’s The Golum Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust Fiction among those that will linger long. My regular readers will know of my predilection for monsters, so a golem book will hardly be a surprise. I realized, however, upon completing my academic paper on Sleepy Hollow, that my reading on the golem was rather slim. I’m no longer sure that it’s even a monster. As a goy who’s spent a good deal of his life among the Hebrew Scriptures, there’s a natural resonance, it seems, with those oppressed for being who they are. Golems are created in times of crisis but have unexpected, or at least unwanted, repercussions. Baer offers a thoughtful, intertextual study of the golem, largely through the lens of Jewish fiction.

Having dealt with the Bible as portrayed in Sleepy Hollow, I treated the episode where its significance truly unfolds (“The Golem”) as the entryway into the culmination of the first season. Now it appears likely that season three will be the erasure of the aleph, it seems appropriate to give golems their due. The story begins with the oppression of the Jews in early modern Prague. Rabbi Loew makes a golem from mud to protect the beleaguered community. This soulless, selfless protector becomes an archetype for various superheroes and literary characters ably summarized by Baer. The book put me in mind of my only visit to Prague, too brief and too ill-informed to truly appreciate what I was seeing. To see you have to learn to read.

While some writers have fun with the golem, others understand it in more serious tones. Those who can’t forget the Holocaust see things in a way that others cannot. Not that only Jews can summon a golem, but its origins and reuse have a special place in a community that longs for a protector. I’m reminded of the book of Job, and there’s a good reason for that. While reading The Golem Redux on my commute, I came home to find a copy of Pete Hamill’s Snow in August on my wife’s stack of books to read. As it is one of the titles studied by Baer, I felt an odd synchronicity at play. The book had been recommended by one of the booksellers at our local indie shop just a few weekends back. Tied in with all the other golem-based thoughts in my head recently, I’m inclined to think that this was no mere coincidence.

Cthulhu’s Tea Party

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It was in the eldritch-sounding Oshkosh that I first came across H. P. Lovecraft. The web was still somewhat of a novelty then, and I’d run across a Dagon symbol that I couldn’t identify. My researches led me to the old gods of Lovecraft’s atheistic imagination. Even non-believers are haunted, it seems, by deities. Dagon, about whom I’d published an academic paper, always seemed to be a divinity to whom very few paid attention. Little did I know that in popular culture this god, along with others made up by Lovecraft, were slowly gathering an immense following. Now, about a decade later, Cthulhu is everywhere. I was reminded of this when I came across a website advertising Cthulhu tea cups. As you drink your tea, Cthulhu emerges. These novelty items, along with many, many others, are easily found. Cthulhu is running for president. The creature that Lovecraft described with such terror is now available in a cute, stuffed plush. Board and card games come in Cthulhu varieties.

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What I find so interesting about this is that the following of Cthulhu has taken on religious dimensions. Not that writers haven’t invented religions before—L. Ron Hubbard came up with Scientology after a career of science fiction writing, and Jediism is considered a religion by some—but Cthulhu represents the darker aspects of religious thought. As Lovecraft described him, he is a horror. Not the kind of thing you’d want to discover peering out of your teacup. I wonder if this is precisely why the fictional god has become so incredibly popular. In a time when some real presidential candidates are really scary, suggesting that an evil deity take on the job may only be natural. Cthulhu is, after all, really more an alien than a god, but to puny humans the point is moot.

Mainstream religion is not about to disappear any time soon. There is, believe it or not, a strong resistance to the materialistic reductionism that presses in on us from all sides. People are not becoming less religious—they’re becoming differently religious. The old sacred texts are being replaced by the fictional Necronomicon. Ethereal beings that have always been there are bowing before ancient aliens who aren’t really eternal or omnipotent, but who feel more real in our culture of might makes right. Whether a religion is factual or fictional has come to matter less than the feeling that there is something, anything, larger than humanity that demonstrates the vanity of our striving after material gain. That actually sounds quite biblical. Anything believed with adequate passion stands a chance, it seems, of becoming a religion.

Monster Epistemologies

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A friend ensures that I see internet stories of hidden monsters. Not hidden in that you can’t find them, but hidden in that my freedom to explore the web entails only weekends and even some of those are very busy. In any case, a bestiary from Mental Floss landed on my virtual desk recently and I couldn’t wait until the weekend to check it out. A bestiary is a list of strange creatures, what we might today call monsters, some of which reflect a world not well explored and others which reflect religious, or—admit it—superstitious ideas. In the days when travel was limited and news was slow and unreliable, garbled accounts of strange beasts were compiled in bestiaries. The tradition continues today, as is evidenced by this article by Paul Anthony Jones.

Whenever I see monster stories like this I ask the question: did they really believe such things “back then”? Some of these monsters clearly have analogues in the natural world, but part of my brain reminds me that we are destroying species faster than we can count them in the rainforest, and who knows what we have yet to uncover? Is it really a matter of belief or is it actually a matter of knowing how we know? The fancy word for the latter is “epistemology.” As I used to ask students: how do you know that you know? Has that changed since the days of the bestiary? Knowing about medieval monsters seems to have been the acceptance of the reports of those who, if they hadn’t actually seen the beast, had at least talked to someone who knew someone who had. It is the authority of the senses. Or of reliable reporting. Seeing is believing.

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Fast forward to a day of popular cryptozoology. We have monster hunters of many sorts on television. Some claim evidence for what they have seen. Lighthearted laughter is the common response. Monsters just don’t fit into our worldview anymore. Our epistemology has become more circumspect. If it doesn’t come from a lab, like a genetically modified organism, we have no reason to believe it exists. We’d like to create our own monsters, thank you. It’s at times like these that I like to reflect that a bestiary doesn’t sound so different from a breviary. Both are medieval sources of knowledge. Our modern epistemology seems to have grown a little too narrow to see a world that is full of wonder. Unless, of course, it’s on the television. Seeing is believing.

Modern Vampires

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VampiresTodaySometimes I feel guilty. A grown man reading about vampires? Then I think of such puerile things as television and the stock market over which other adults waste their time and my pituitary gland releases endorphins and I carry on. I must say, however, after reading Joseph Laycock’s Vampires Today: The Truth about Modern Vampirism, that I’m not a vampire. Nor have I ever wanted to be. I am fascinated by the idea, however. The more I read—as is the case with most good academic books—the more I questioned definitions. Laycock does a good deal of that questioning himself in this book, and I came away wondering what indeed defines a vampire? As a child it seemed pretty clear. The vampire was a blood-sucker who came out at night. Fangs, a thirst for blood, and a faded aristocracy seemed to be the essential characteristics. But I was only a child.

Before you get the wrong idea about Laycock’s book, I need to say that his is a serious study of modern day vampires. Yes, they exist. No, they’re not easy to define. As an academically trained scholar of religion, Laycock is keenly aware that self-definition is crucial to categorization. Religious believers self-identify. We have no way of categorizing an adult (and some would say no way at all of children) without their own affirmation of what they believe. Vampires Today, however, raises the pointy question of whether those who self-identify as vampires constitute a religion. Or if vampire communities may be considered religious groups. In case you’re confused: many people identify themselves as vampires—sanguinarian and/or psychic. They believe they require the life energy of others to live and prevent illness. They sometimes drink blood—with permission—or siphon the life force of other people. Like all adults, they should be treated as self-identified. Probably not, as Laycock carefully spells out, a religion.

As in his other books, Laycock takes seriously groups that would, based on numbers alone, be considered fringe. Nevertheless, these groups are a part—sometimes an influential part—of larger society. We live in a world where we’re authoritatively told there is nothing but matter and energy, and as biological beings our purpose is reproductive success and then death. Is it any wonder that vampires and others are seeking something more? I’m no vampire. I read the occasional, thoroughly pulp, Dark Shadows novel to recapture a little of that after-school wonder I felt watching the waves pounding on the Maine cliffs while Barnabas Collins lurked inside. And he bore a strange truth that was perhaps instilled in those young years. Age is only partially a biological matter. Defining it any other way is, I have to believe, immature. So I read about vampires and wonder.

Lovecraft Legacy

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CarterLovecraftHistory can be a funny thing. Take the way it treats some people. H. P. Lovecraft wasn’t famous in his lifetime. In fact, his isn’t exactly a household name even now. His creation Cthulhu lurks grandly in the internet, and even Lovecraft himself is finding mention in some literature courses, despite his lack of literary finesse. Yet, fiction is being written about him. I just finished Jonathan L. Howard’s new novel, Carter and Lovecraft. While H. P. doesn’t appear as an acting character in the novel, he is related to one of the protagonists in a way that is essential to the story’s plot. I won’t give away any spoilers here, but the novel takes over where Lovecraft, the non-fictional character, left off.

Lovecraft, famously, was an atheist. Nevertheless he spun a mythic world of Old Gods that has become canonical in its own right. His stories veritably teem with religious themes as well as monsters. In fact, in Howard’s treatment of the mythos, the religious elements still show up. As I’ve noted before, one need not be a theist to be a capable theologian. Fiction like that of Lovecraft, or that of Howard, inherently holds a kind of numinous quality. In fact, fiction frequently does. In reading, we allow ourselves to be drawn into another world. What could be more religious than that? The beliefs of the writer, it seems, may not ultimately matter.

At one point, at least, in Carter and Lovecraft the sentiment becomes explicit. One of the characters contemplates starting his own religion, only to realize that he’d have to write a holy book. That, he decides, would be a lot of work. As one who dabbles in various forms of literary art, I can take his point. There is something wondrously exhausting about giving birth to words. And those words make worlds. When you stop to think about it, that’s kind of a religious thing to do. I’d recommend Carter and Lovecraft to H. P. L. fans. It’s not a Cthulhu-fest, but it is an enjoyable, compelling tale that raises questions which, if not handled carefully, will quickly turn theological.

Mere Monsters

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While my colleagues and I wait to hear if our monster session will be approved, my thoughts naturally turn to the taxonomy of monsters. One of the perennial problems in the study of monsters is that definitions vary widely. We might all agree that a werewolf is a monster, but what of Cthulhu? Or of a horribly deformed, but completely natural animal? What about demons? Should we all agree that we know what a monster is, how do we divide them into categories for easy study? One way of doing this might be to rely on binaries. For example: natural monsters versus unnatural monsters, living monsters versus undead monsters, monsters from earth versus monsters not from earth, monsters created by humans versus naturally occurring monsters, fictional monsters versus monsters reported in nature. It soon becomes obvious that monsters are a widely divergent group of creatures.

Monsters have won an enduring place in popular culture. I think of The X-Files. Apart from the “mythology” of the series, many episodes featured a weekly scary monster. The same is true of Sleepy Hollow, now in its third season. Monster movies, although perhaps taking a back seat to super heroes of late, are regulars on the silver screen. We just can’t seem to live without our monsters. I’ve mentioned in my many posts about monsters that the connection with religion is so obvious that it hardly requires apology. But a deeper question has occurred to me. It has to do with the nature of religion (itself not well defined).

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Religions exist to deliver people from the trials they face. Offering Nirvana to break the endless cycles of reincarnation, or Heaven when we die after one go-round, religions claim to give us something of an assurance that things will work out. (Mostly.) In the light of this, why does religion give us monsters as well? Surely they are more than mere metaphors for the misfortunes of daily life. There has to be something more to it. What that more is, I’m not certain. I’m not even sure of how to approach the question. Monsters will, for me and many other Monster Boomers, remain a guilty pleasure that we are pleased to be able to address as adults. I am becoming more and more convinced that the more we learn about them, the more we learn about religion itself. And perhaps also about those who give shape to religious thought.

Religious Monsters

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Some colleagues and I are working to meet a deadline. I suppose I use the word “colleague” rather grandly, since they both have teaching positions, nevertheless, we have a common goal. We are fascinated by monsters and we’d like to see the American Academy of Religion dedicate a small section of its large annual meeting to them. We’d do all the work. At first glance, this might seem an odd topic for the serious study of religion. The fact is, however, that monsters are a part of human experience—at least in our imagination—and the conceptual space overlaps considerably with religion. Many monsters have their origins in religious thought. Some theorists go further than that and suggest the very concept of “monsters” comes to us, courtesy of religious beliefs. We can see it time and again in popular culture; the movie or television show, or novel that features monsters ventures into the territory of religion.

The reason for suggesting that this relationship be formalized is the fact that, although this connection exists, it has not be given adequate study. Monsters are the denizens of childhood imagination. When we grow up we leave our monsters behind. But not really. We just stop talking about them. With our mouths. The film industry knows that a horror film will generally draw in the lucre. Halloween has become a major commercial holiday. Stephen King is a household name. I’m not sure why all of this is so, but I think it might have something to do with repression. When we grow up we are taught there’s no such thing as monsters. Those who refuse to relinquish those beliefs are ridiculed. We have more important things to do. Things like making money. Deep down, however, we may still believe.

The fantastic and belief are intimate companions. In fact, belief is at the root of much of our experience. That’s not to say there are really monsters in the night, but at some level we believe there are. And we also believe that infinite deities control this infinite universe that may be only one of many multiverses. It just seems likely. Evidence may point in the other direction. Empirical proof is lacking. And yet, we believe. I’ve discovered a number of colleagues over the years who share this academic fascination with monsters and religion. I don’t know if we’ll be approved by the powers that be, but at least we will have begun to raise the question. What lurks behind it is a matter of belief.

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The Witch

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The Witch, by Robert Eggers, is a parable. The movie accepts, and to appreciate it the viewer must too, that there is actually witchcraft in New England. Unless the witch too is a parable. Set in the days before the Salem Witch Trials, the movie is worthy of Lars von Trier on history. William and his family are exiled from their unnamed community due to differences of religious opinion. William and Katherine are a devout couple, steeped in the Puritan belief that all people deserve Hell and those who are good have no choice in the matter. They have a family of four children, and after they set up homesteading in exile, a fifth comes along. When the baby disappears, the eldest daughter, on the cusp of sexual maturity, is blamed. Portraying well the boredom of children raised in a world with no diversion, the girl, Thomasin, tells her little sister that she is a witch. In reality, she is a fearful, sin-sick girl, frightened for her future salvation. There is a witch, but it is not she.

Tragedy follows tragedy for the isolated family. Their religion permits them to believe it can only be punishment from God. They pray, recite Bible, and work hard. Their oldest son, abducted by the witch, returns home to die. The two youngest children begin to have fits, claiming that Thomasin has confessed to being a witch. Her mother, Katherine, believes them. Her father too, convinces himself that she is a witch and urges her to confess. The paranoia grows and Thomasin accuses her two younger siblings of witchcraft, speaking to the family’s black goat as their familiar. Confused, angry, and out of hope, the father locks the children in with the goats for the night, determined to find the truth in the morning.

I won’t add any spoilers for the ending here. Suffice it to say, this is a parable. Thomasin’s very name suggests “sin,” and her doomed brother is Caleb, the Hebrew word for “dog.” His recitation of the Song of Songs is distinctly creepy. God is absent from the movie, despite the family’s constant prayers. The only voice heard is that of the Devil. This is a parable of what happens when a religion goes wrong. The family left England to exercise their religion freely and the free exercise of it turns them against each other. The only ones who seem to find peace are those who leave their faith behind. It is a movie that I’ll ponder for many days, I suspect. Less a condemnation of religion than an open probing of what it’s logical outcome might be, The Witch is one of those movies that demonstrates the ongoing power of parables.

Grim Where?

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An inordinate amount of my childhood time was spent on television. While the device of the day had been around for a decade already, I was among those who grew up learning that watching was easier than reading. Like most children, I took the path of least resistance. I watched. As a teen, however, I rediscovered reading and from that time television began to take a back seat to books. When the great switch-over to digital occurred we didn’t get a conversion box, and we could never really afford cable for as little TV as we watch. When a program gets commended, or if nostalgia takes too great a toll, we can always purchase programs—the price of watching television without the commercials. So it was that I began watching Sleepy Hollow. Very quickly in the first season the monster of the week trope was established as the plot grew more and more tangled. The Bible was so prominent in that season that I wrote an academic paper on it.

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Over the past few months my wife and I have been working through season two. The DVD version was delayed and we only watch on weekends. Recently we finished the eighteen episodes of the second installment. Clearly the budget had improved over the first season, but the Bible, it was also clear, had diminished. Throughout the first season the driving motif of the story was that biblical “prophecy” (from the book of Revelation) was unfolding in Sleepy Hollow. This is what one scholar has termed a “local apocalypse.” Throughout season two, however, the end of days is shut down. Molech, its architect, is killed. The headless horseman is less Death than a jilted lover. The second horseman, War, loses his armor and dies.

Magic, however, along with special effects, take on an increased roles. Instead of turning to the Bible to solve problems, the most helpful book to have on hand is a grimoire. Sleepy Hollow, which is anything but what its name suggests, is full of monsters. Powerful magic is required to contain them, and, it seems, the Bible is no longer needed as a tool to take down evil. Perhaps there is a parable at work here. I was drawn into the series by its biblical literacy, as well as its literacy in general. More action has been introduced, and fewer books. It’s a pattern I’ve seen before. I suspect I’ll watch season three presently. When I do I’ll be casting a wistful eye on the stack of books I have yet to read, and I’ll be wondering if reading may not have become easier than watching.

Monstrous Intentions

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Atlas Obscura is one of those websites where you could spend all day and feel like you’ve just traveled the world. Featuring less know locations, and strange spots that you might like to visit, sometimes it also has stories about monsters. Well, at least one story about monsters. A friend of mine recently shared Cara Giaimo’s story about thirteen lesser-known monsters from history. While none of these are likely to keep you up at night, they do demonstrate the endless imagination people devote to the unknown. Monsters, like religion, defy easy categorization. Is something that’s “too big” or “too small” for its type a monster? Is it a monster if it is a mix of things that don’t normally come together? Or is it merely a matter of baleful intention? What doth a monster make?

Taking a page (almost literally) from John Ashton’s Curious Creatures in Zoology, the Atlas Obscura page runs down some monsters once believed to have existed. Some of them, despite our flattened world seen only through the eyes of rationality, were actually reported to have existed. The “monster” of Ravenna, for example, was apparently a sad case of a medieval/early modern birth defect that, in the popular imagination took on monstrosity. We now know that birth defects may contain throwbacks to earlier stages of evolution, or that genetic coding may contain mutations. None of this suggests any evil intention on the part of anybody. Accidents of nature may be the saddest kind of monster of all.

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A surprising number of the monsters from Ashton’s sampler here are mixes between human and animal. Indeed, that mix is still a potent force, theologically. One of the loudest voices speaking out against evolution is the one that says people are “not animals.” Having grown up with that belief, it took a couple years of college to convince me that we fit into the greater biological scheme of things. We fear that which resembles us, but is not quite us. Perhaps part of the mystique is that we haven’t quite yet learned to be humane to one another. Being a monster may just have more to do with what one does with prejudices than it does with physical features of their bodies.

What You Pay For

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VampireHunterWhen a friend pointed out the easily missed 2001 film, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, (well before Seth Grahame-Smith came up with the same role for Abraham Lincoln) I knew I was duty-bound to see it. As regular readers know, although I’m not a fan of gore or violence, I have a soft spot for vampire movies. Vampires, although often evil, are frequently presented as conflicted characters. As former humans they have some level of sympathy for their victims, while at the same time, all people are objectified for the vampire. We are food. This low-budget, independent film didn’t promise to deliver on many levels, but as the end credits show, they did shoot enough film to be able to cut out a few bloopers. The story, in as far as there is one, has Jesus fighting lesbian vampires in modern-day Ottawa (where the film was shot).

Not that the film was serious enough to invite critical dialogue, I did wonder what Jesus had to do with the whole thing apart from the shock value. There were a few cute moments, as when the “atheists” pile, clown-like, out of a car for an extended fight scene, but the lead could have been any character apart from one scene where a miracle does occur. Jesus fights with his fists, not with supernatural power. Tossing in Mary Magnum and “professional wrestler” El Santo, the movie came close to the screwball level of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. It’s difficult to critique a film where logic isn’t held accountable for the plot—the only thing to keep the film going is the action of a particular scene. And that, as I’ve intimated, can’t be counted on.

Interestingly enough, Jesus is treated throughout the film in a positive way. Although he doesn’t use supernatural powers, he is the “good guy” and is even tolerant of alternative lifestyles as long as love is the basis of relationships. The movie is biblically literate, using the Good Samaritan in a scene that underscores the accepting nature of the new millennium Jesus. The vampires don’t add much to the lore of the monster. They can be out in daylight because it is cheaper to shoot film that way, but the plot does come up with an explanation for it. Vampirism, at the end, can be healed by prayer, and when Mary Magnum, El Santo, and Jesus go their separate ways at the end, we are left wondering what all the fuss was about.

Dead of Winter

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WinterPeopleOne of the commonalities of all religions, I used to tell my students, is the concern with death. Not that all religions react to it in nearly the same way, but the fact is no religion ignores it. For people, obviously, our awareness of our own mortality marks us as indelibly as our birth does. Once we become aware of death, we will never be able to forget it. This inevitability fuels many horror stories, whether literary or cinematic. When I saw Jennifer McMahon’s The Winter People, I knew that I would read it. Like most book consumers, I had to wait for the paperback edition, and once it was on offer I got a copy and waited for winter. Well, this year I’m still waiting for winter, but I began reading the story once the nights were long enough to qualify. It is an appropriate story for the season and it introduces what might be considered a kind of monster as well. Like most monsters, however, sleepers are not evil. The undead, however, have to find a way, ironically, to live.

The Winter People is a sad story, and tangled in the way that makes for successful novels. The main issue at play, however, is that with which all religions are concerned. Death is perhaps the most noble of literary subjects. Since we all have to face it, it is universal and yet somehow frightening. Fear of the unknown. The dead, unlike in the stories, don’t really come back to tell us what it’s like. Even those who do, in fiction, give us a distorted view. Theirs is a world inverted from our experience of it. It lacks finality. It is a place between. There is a macabre logic to it.

The living have never been comfortable with the dead. Memory reminds of who they were. McMahon is clear, in her vision, that memory is not who they are. We put them underground, but theologically we can’t let them go. Heaven, Nirvana, Purgatory, reincarnation, or even Hell—we feel that we need to give our dead a sense of place in a life after life. McMahon builds a sober mystery into her non-final afterlife. There are some, I’m sure, who will be kept up at night by her imagination. For me, I now have something to ponder. Many are the stories, like Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, that warn of resurrection. We can’t keep the departed with us, and winter, when it comes, is a season of harsh reality.

O Come Let Us

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During the height of the zombie craze a meme went around the internet proclaiming “zombie Jesus.”  It was funny because the salient feature of zombies is that they come back from the dead.  Noting the resurrection and the easily annoyed trigger finger of Fundamentalist Christians, some wag brought Jesus and the undead together.  We had a good laugh and forgot about it.  A guy in Ohio with a sense of humor, took the zombie Jesus meme and constructed it into a zombie nativity scene in his yard.  None of us knew about it, of course, until it caught the attention of the news.  A story in the Washington Post notes that the man was required to take the scene down for violating zoning laws.
 
People take their religion very seriously and have a hard time laughing about it.  Religion is under constant fire from angry atheists and it already suffers a complex from having so many liberals pointing out the historical and logical faux pas from within the tradition.  Some people take advantage of American gun laws to stock up against the day when they’ll step over the line and join those who shoot up offices where they think Mohammad is being mocked.  Then we’ll sit around and wonder if we should classify them as terrorists or just deranged.  And we’ll post a take-down order, just in case any zombies remain.

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As an academic (at least erstwhile) I noted how little religion scholars reveled in the humor of their traditions.  There’s funny stuff in the Bible, believe it or not, and many religious traditions allow for a Mona Lisa smile every now and again.  A far more common stance, however, is that of taking offense.  Something that most critics just don’t realize is how much religions mean to those who believe.  I chuckle once in a while, but I never belittle the beliefs of others.  I have been in this religion thing since I can remember, and I know what it can mean to people.  The best way to avoid offending, I think, is to keep our jokes among the crowd of those who have a sense of humor.  Of course, the undead obey no rules and the media (and its unruly accomplice, the internet) can’t resist spreading memes that might earn a buck or two of advertising revenue.

Naming Evil

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WetikoBooks don’t tell us what is true; books tell us what could be true. When I was growing up, under the influence of the Bible, I thought that non-fiction books were the truth. I came to understand that people disagreed about the truth, but it took a long time before I realized that books were merely the attempts of their writers to argue their version of the truth. If someone knew the actual truth that person would be a god. These thoughts came to me as I read the fascinating and mystical Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, by Paul Levy. In many ways this is a mind-altering book. For one thing, Levy has made me reconsider how real evil is. Looking at what’s going on in the world it is increasingly difficult to deny the reality of objective evil. Levy’s book gives it a name and even attempts to analyze whence it comes. He calls it “wetiko.”

For several years now I have tried to find information on the monster known as the wendigo. Wetiko is a version of the same word, and it was this that drew me to Levy’s book. The wendigo is a shape-shifting creature that preys on humans. It is mentioned or featured in a few fictional books, and most recently featured in an episode of Sleepy Hollow. Since most academics don’t treat monsters seriously, it is difficult to find accounts of the beast. It is often discussed as a fictionalized version of cannibalism. It is a monster always hungry. The more it eats, the hungrier it becomes. It is this aspect that leads Levy to use it as his main metaphor for evil.

The evil that Dispelling Wetiko focuses on is the extreme selfishness our society has come to embrace. For example, our entire economic system is a fiction propagated by the ultra-wealthy. By defining a fiction as valuable and making it available to everyone else by a system of debt, the one-percenters keep everyone else, literally, in thrall to them. There is no gold to back up the fictional value they claim they have, and yet they consume others constantly in their evil greed. In a nuanced argument Levy suggests that this evil is real. Becoming conscious is the only way to combat it. There’s so much going on in this book that it has to be read several times, I’m sure, to get it all figured out. As I finished this one, however, I thought I had read a book that may actually be true.

R’lyeh Reality

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It’s always a sign that I’ve been too busy when I lose track of Cthulhu. Few created deities receive the attention of the web like the terror dreamed up by H. P. Lovecraft. The internet has created an environment, like the bottom of the sea, where the old gods may lie dead but dreaming, ready to reawaken. It was with great pleasure that I was pointed to Cthulhu for America. At last, a presidential candidate who is willing to admit that he is merely a myth. His agenda of destruction and domination is not at all hidden. If only real politicians would be so honest!

In a world with millions of diversions, it amazes me that Lovecraft’s nihilistic creation has taken on such popular interest. Perhaps it’s because those of us who grew up with monsters have now reached a dubious sort of adulthood where we are bossed around like children and given only those limited freedoms that capitalism will allow. We can’t go into public places without seeing heavily armed guards in fatigues. We can’t get into work without electronic chips in cards to keep us safe from those of our own nation. We can’t fly without being scanned like a week-old loaf of bread. We can’t even store our own files on our own personal computers any more since some software company would rather charge us for the privilege. At least Cthulhu says what he wants. Orwell may have had his Big Brother, but Cthulhu is an obvious overlord who wants nothing but his own satisfaction.

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Watching the circus of candidates vying for position, I can’t help but think of Rome before the fall. Historians are still debating the causes—lead poisoning may be too easy a way out. Perhaps it is, as Lord Acton declared, the result of power itself. Those who taste it can’t stop eating it until every microscopic crumb is devoured. It’s shameful to watch. I’m embarrassed when Dumb and Dumber sounds intelligent next to the utterances from political talking heads. Cthulhu would have none of it. Although the website is a parody, it, like all myths, is truer than what we often call reality.