Transformations

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Last week my colleague James of Idle Musings sent me a review of Stephen Asma’s On Monsters that I’ve been meaning to incorporate into a post for several days now. Since New Jersey has been buried under more snow than it’s seen since the last Ice Age, I’ve been busy shoveling and navigating icy roads to class and only now am finding the time to respond. (Still, I have to say that the snow we have here now is no comparison to good old lake-effect snow where I grew up. Of course, the population back home was much smaller so the media never made a circus of it. After all, it is just winter!) In today’s paper, however, there was a review of The Wolfman that graciously affords me another opportunity to address one of my favorite, if under-represented, areas of religious studies: the monster.

Local film critics haven’t exactly panned the remake of the 1941 classic, although it is noted that the new version tries to avoid the essential subtexts of “alpha-male dominance, sexual repression, compulsive behavior and father-son feuds” (from Stephen Whitty’s Star Ledger review; Whitty also notes, on the cheerful side, that Universal is trying to revive its monster franchise). The werewolf has always been my favorite monster character. Aside from the negative aspects noted by Whitty, the werewolf also represents transformation from the helpless, lost, and confused Lawrence Talbot to a purposeful, confident, and unambiguous wolfman. The werewolf is everyman/everywoman pressed to the limits by a demeaning, heartless society until individualism breaks out in all its savagery and power.

Apart from the religious elements in all monsters (is the werewolf not a paragon of spiritual transformation?), a political subtext also emerges. While the front page declares the financial woes of the state and the continued trouble trying to pass any healthcare reform, page 3 declares “Top 5 health insurers post soaring profits.” One person’s cancer is another insurer’s boondoggle. Meanwhile the Larry Talbots of the world are being told, “give a little more – everyone’s got to share this burden.” Eventually, however, there will be a full moon and transformations will take place. As a student of religions, I can recognize the werewolf as more than a monster and as containing far more symbolism than a Robert Langdon could ever untangle.

Who's not afraid to look in the mirror?

On Monsters

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Long-term readers of this blog (both of you – you know who you are!) are aware of my interest in monsters. Constant companions of my childhood, I spent lazy days and sleepless nights both curious and fearful of these imaginary creatures. Like the concept of the holy, they both repel and attract simultaneously. Back in October, when I first heard of Stephen Asma’s book, On Monsters, I knew I would have to read it. I have commented occasionally during the progress of my time spent on the book, but having finished it I stand in a better position to consider the whole.

Not a monsterologist, I have nevertheless been fascinated by the juncture of monsters and religion, a point that Asma repeatedly emphasizes. His book is a masterful treatment of the subject from many angles, working through a roughly chronological treatment of the changing faces of the monstrous. Although monsters first appear with the earliest civilizations, they have persisted even in the strong light of scientific thinking and rationalism. As we comprehend our world, the monsters appear in deeper and darker corners, in the very folds of our throbbing gray matter, in the microbial world that floats invisibly around us, and in the smiling beneficence of technology. At many points in his historical presentation Asma is difficult to read; human brutality and emotional distancing have made for the most horrific of real-life monsters he cites.

Particularly useful in Asma’s treatment of the subject is his contention that monsters still have a place in our society. The word itself retains its usefulness in describing human, all-too-inhuman treatment of others. Unfortunately, the motivation for such treatment can often be traced to bad religious education. We may not be so fearful of the werewolf or the (supernatural) vampire, but we still fear those who treat others without empathy or human concern. Anyone with the parallel interests in religion and its aberrations owe it to her/himself to take a careful look at On Monsters and consider its implications.

A classic monster

Special Babies

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Roman Polanski has been in the news quite a lot lately. While I haven’t been following the story, his name is perennially associated with Rosemary’s Baby in my mind. In my youth I feared this movie and made no attempt to watch it until I reached my 40s. Like other works conceived by Ira Levin it features a threat to what we value most; the original Stepford Wives is still almost too scary to watch. While Rosemary’s Baby remains a good psychological thriller, the counter-Christmas theme became quite evident the last time I viewed it. I won’t worry about spoilers since the movie was released in the 1960s, but if you’re still waiting to watch it and want a surprise ending, you might want to turn to another post at this point!

The 1960s were times not only of a strong counter-culture but also a period of fear. Many popular evangelists were warning of the coming of the Antichrist and the Time article entitled “Is God Dead?” is featured in the movie itself. Although it is unclear until the end, upon first watching, who fathers Rosemary’s baby, the child-spawn of Satan is presented with many of the trappings of the first Christmas as Rosemary herself makes the discovery. In fact, Christmas comes as Rosemary is pregnant, and the film carefully accentuates the contrast between Mary and Rosemary. The suffering of the expectant mother still makes the film difficult to bear at points.

As Christmas nears in this very commercial and recession-ridden season, many lawns are sporting “Keep the Christ is Christmas” type displays. Isaiah is being taken out of context and the Religious Right continues its attempt to make Christmas a political petard. Babies represent new beginnings. And while Rosemary’s baby was born six months after (diametrically opposed to) the celebration of the birth of Jesus, in both cases the infant represents a radical change. Any human parent knows that babies are special and that knowledge demonstrates that a young Roman Polanski recognized a theme that would scare audiences for at least forty years.

Dog-Headed Saints

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Eastern Saint Christopher

In Stephen Asma’s recent book, On Monsters, he discusses the role of early Christianity in perpetuating or perhaps even inventing various monstrous creatures. As is clear from sources going all the way back to Sumerian times, ancient religions are the spawning beds for monsters. One of the monsters Asma mentioned that caught my attention was the familiar St. Christopher. According to sources as orthodox as St. Augustine, there lived races of dog-headed people in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. These Anubis-like cynocephali were barbarians in the extreme, eating human beings like the more familiar werewolf.

In some Eastern Orthodox traditions, St. Christopher was said to be among the cynocephali. Converted to Christianity, the dog-headed saint was martyred and entered the great kennel in the sky. The message proclaimed by this strange story is the tolerance of the early Christian movement. While battles raged over Orthodox vs. heterodox vs. Gnostic vs. pagan, there was still room to allow dog-headed humans into the fold. (They could be quite useful in rounding up straying sheep as well, one supposes.)

One of the hallmarks of modern Christianity is its exclusiveness. Naturally, not all Christians fit this profile, but many of the current movements define themselves by those not permitted to enter. In the sordid history of the Religious Right there are many chapters demonstrating a stark mistrust of non-Anglo believers. Roman Catholicism maintains that it is the only historically correct version of the faith. Other religions also erect barriers to keep others out. If religions truly promoted tolerance we might see a few more dog-headed saints in the news today instead of those who earn headlines for their exclusive claims on the truth.

On Faithful Monsters

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From the moment I saw Stephen Asma’s On Monsters summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education, I knew I had to read it. Having been fascinated by monsters as a child, and then having grown out of that fascination, this book is a respectable way to indulge my juvenile interests while learning something. The book’s subtitle, An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, reveals perhaps why I was so compelled by this particular volume. Those of you who follow this blog know that I contend that religion and fear are very closely related, well nigh inseparable even. As Asma delves into the origins of our monsters, he pauses for a while on the Bible.

The Bible hosts its share of monsters. From lengthy descriptions of Leviathan and Behemoth to tantalizingly creepy references to Azazel and the night hag, the writers of holy writ were as aware of monsters as we are. Asma focuses on the fantastic beasts described in the apocalyptic material, Daniel and Revelation. Obviously not intended to be taken literally, the descriptions of these fantastical beasts represent various ancient empires that threatened the early Jews and Christians respectively. Their monstrosity rests in their intent to destroy, not their hideous physical form. To quote from our host, “monsters are not creatures of natural history but symbolic warnings of a horrifying life without the Abrahamic God (or, in the case of Christians, without his son).”

The ancient fascination with monsters very likely has religious roots. These beings appear to stand outside the rationally created order and lurk in places where the divine is not. The fear they engender leads to the very religion that shuns them. Vampires fear a crucifix, demons are banished at the name of Jesus, and even the headless horseman shuns a church. People run to their faith to protect them from monsters, and monsters, in their turn, provided early believers with a rationale for their faith.

Halloween All Year

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Despite the obvious consanguinity with the Dawn of the Dead, I am not a mall person. Last week, however, I had a job interview and I discovered that most of my white shirts would be appropriate garb only for the undead, so my wife forced me to look around the local mall for some new apparel. As we walked down the interior boulevard crowded with people younger than us, we couldn’t help overhearing the conversation of some young women behind us. “Yeah, it’s so cool! He’s a vampire; he’s got fangs and everything!” And they weren’t discussing Edward or Lestat, but a (presumably) flesh-and-blood beau one of them knew. Yes, Halloween season is upon us again.

An early Celtic turnip Jack-o-lantern
(An early Celtic turnip Jack-o-lantern)

I loved Halloween when I was growing up. Despite the innate conservatism of my family, we always enjoyed dressing up, trick-or-treating, and being just a bit scared. When I reached college, however, I discovered that Halloween was perceived by many to be satanic, and I had to dig deeply into the past to argue that it came from Christian tradition and was, itself, nothing to be afraid of. Still, my friends looked at me askance. When I reached Nashotah House, a perfectly Gothic setting for the twilight of the year, I discovered that despite the theological conservatism there, Halloween was a time-honored tradition. My first year there while driving home after picking my wife up from a conference in Madison, I drove the familiar road into campus only to see a single, ghostly white face float across the road in front of us. I was so astonished I pulled the car to a stop to look back and could just make out several of the students I knew, dressed fully in black cassocks and cappa negras, only their faces showing, painted white. They stood alongside the lonely road and “floated” across it as slowly approaching cars rounded the bend. (I guess that, being potential priests, they were not too concerned with eternal consequences of metal meeting mere flesh in the dark of night.) On the campus, until the takeover by a Fundamentalist administration, All Hallows Eve was a bone fide sacral event.

The reason for Halloween’s popularity, I believe, is that deep down people really are frightened. At some level we know that we aren’t really in control of our lives and we seldom have a say about them ending. Halloween, with its dark Celtic origins, is the acknowledgment that it is acceptable to be afraid. Each year as more and more elements appear beyond our control, our pantheon of Halloween specters grows. One of our neighbors’ houses has a fake cemetery in its front yard. One of the headstones reads “The Stockmarket / 2008.” Even with the economy dipping and reeling like a drunken bat, lawns sport larger, more expensive and expansive Halloween displays. Halloween represents the pulse of fear than animates religions. We should all be afraid!

Moral Monsters

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trees

Everyone likes to feel vindicated. From my childhood I have felt marginalized because of my interests in monsters, and now a book has just been released from Oxford University Press that vindicates my interest! Stephen Asma, a philosophy professor at Columbia College, Chicago, has written a monograph entitled On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. Further vindicating my idiosyncratic interest is the fact that the Chronicle of Higher Education even has an electronic front-page article on the book this week. I am overcome with credulity! I haven’t been able to lay my hands on the book yet, but I hungrily read the article and look forward to the whole product.

Readers of this blog know my assertion that monsters originate in a mental space shared by religion. Both are responses to the unknown. Asma writes in his Chronicle article, “The monster concept is still extremely useful, and it’s a permanent player in the moral imagination because human vulnerability is permanent.” Indeed, his article is entitled “Monsters and the Moral Imagination.” The thesis he promotes is that our morality (again tied to religion for many people) benefits from its struggle with monsters. We imagine our moral responses to being faced with the truly horrific, and the monsters themselves are less frightening than our imaginary responses. The top box-office winner this past weekend was Paranormal Activity, a movie noted for not showing the menace, but implying it. There is an evolutionary advantage here; we learn about coping with real danger by imagining danger.

So as I look out the window on yet another cold, gray, rainy October morning, and see the trees swaying in the wind, my imagination takes flight. Those Saturday afternoons and late nights filled with cinematographic visions of even worse things that could happen are cast in a new light. Instead of scaring myself, I was building moral character! As my friend K. Marvin Bruce likes to say, “monsters are only mirrors.” Sometimes the mirror reflects a truly untamed world, and Dr. Asma informs us “inhuman threats are great reminders of our own humanity.” I would simply add, “and of our religions.”

Jersey Vampires

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Subscribers to the New Jersey Star-Ledger receive a periodic local-interest magazine called Inside Jersey. Since I’m already inside Jersey and have too much to read as it is, I generally ignore the freebie unless a story catches my eye. Anyone who has followed this blog for long knows of my contention that what truly frightens us is related to religion, or lack thereof, including fictional movie monsters such as vampires and werewolves. Despite the claims that such interests are juvenile and immature, this month’s Inside Jersey features a story reflecting just how serious such issues can be. When my wife showed me the cover, I knew it was blog-worthy.

VampireJ

There are vampires among us. Not Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee-type Draculas, but actual blood-imbibing vampires. Only those who have shunned bookstores like a crucifix will not be aware that the Twilight series of teen romances have dominated middle and high school female reading lists for the last few years. The vampires in this magazine story, however, are not conflicted teens, but conventional young adults. The story covers what religionists call a New Religious Movement, or NRM. It is a religion, growing in the larger New York City area (as well as in other parts of the country), where consenting adults don artificial fangs and sip blood from willing donors. According to the story these groups, which include professional people who join under pseudonyms, engage seriously in religious rituals not unlike traditional Christianity’s sacramental rites. Now before snatching up your holy water and fresh hawthorn stakes, consider for a moment that adherents to this sub-culture are actually exercising their religious freedom.

Older, established religions are often quick to judge newer religious rivals. The fact is, however, that every religion on the planet was once a new religion. Believers often attribute the origin of their species of religion to the divine: special revelation, enlightenment, or a growing-up of humanity. All other religions, therefore, must be false. The difficulty here is that there are no final arbiters who can stand outside human religious institutions to tell us which is the right one. Lessing’s three rings have reached mass production and still there is no Ragnarok so that one religion might brag “told you so” to all the others. While I’m no vampire — I’ve been a vegetarian for over a decade — I have to accept the claims of those who are that this is their religion. The article ends with a revealing quote from a member of a local Court, so I give the final say to an actual interview with a vampire: “So many people think being into a certain lifestyle, you cut yourself off from the divine. It’s quite the contrary. To me, when you become more attuned to yourself, who you are uniquely, it brings you closer to God.”

The Life Is in the Blood

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Finally, after a couple of decades, I got around to watching Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As viewers know to expect of a Coppola film, the cinematography is stylish and artistically exaggerated. It has been even more years since I’ve read Stoker’s novel, the book that gave birth to the modern vampire, but I am pretty sure that the many oblique references to the Bible count among the film’s innovations. Coursing like an artery through the movie is the phrase “the blood is life,” taken from Leviticus 17. I’ve posted earlier concerning the biblical outlook that life is equated with breath, and so it is. The Bible does not always remain consistent on this point — natural enough for a book with multiple authors living centuries apart. Blood and breath obviously share crucial functions in maintaining life.

Stoker

Ancient peoples believed in a world peopled with unusual, quasi-supernatural beings, including blood-drinkers and nocturnal baby-snatchers. Theirs was a world of harsh realities where death was more closely observed than it tends to be in many parts of the world today. The fascination, often coupled with religious underpinnings, continues to engage our imagination today, as can be seen in any given Halloween season or on el Día de los Muertos.

Whether el chupacabra or Bela Lugosi, the fascination with mythical creatures of the night that thrive on the life-source of others is a concept never far from religionists. No matter how many stakes we pound through undead hearts, the unholy bloodsuckers continue to show up in our theaters and on YouTube. A childhood penchant for Dark Shadows books has recently been reactivated in the restless gray-matter in my head. As the days grow shorter and shadows become an increasing element of daily experience, I marvel at how the human imagination parodies our daily experiences, dressing them up in fanciful garb to parade about with the other ghosts of October. What is perhaps even more unusual is that money is still to be made in this business of selling the parasite. How else can we explain Buffy and all her cohort? The life is indeed in the blood.

Origin of Dragons

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The ancient Greeks often take the credit for concepts they borrowed from the Ancient Near East. When casting about for the origin of dragons, a staple, if unstable, element of ancient Semitic myths, the credit often lands in ancient Hellas. Those of us influenced by western culture prefer the Greek versions of myths because they tend to be (mostly) coherent and do not have large gaps like those scrawled on fragmented clay tablets. Also, the word “dragon” traces it etymology to ancient Greece where it apparently derives from the verb drakein, “to see clearly.” Often commentators suggest that the rationale for the name is that dragons guard treasure and need to see clearly to do so.

Babylonian dragon

Babylonian dragon

Dragons, however, actually first appeared, like so many western civilizations concepts, in Sumer. In the ancient world, what we would recognize as dragons are always associated with water. Water is an uncreated element, existing as the primordial substance from which everything emerges. It is personified as a dragon that must be subdued for creation to take place. Images of the dragon from somewhat later time periods in Mesopotamia already depict the familiar form we still recognize as draconian.

Marduk astride Tiamat

Marduk astride Tiamat

The Bible has its share of dragons as well, although they never actually existed. Tannin, whose name probably relates to serpentine features, is regularly cited as a biblical dragon. Leviathan, as described in Job 41, has scaly skin, lives in the water, and belches fire (perhaps having taken lessons from televangelists). These characteristics probably played into modern conceptualizations of the dragon. Fire breathing, however, is first attested with Humbaba, the Cedar Forest guardian of the Gilgamesh Epic. Humbaba is not a dragon, but he may be the ancestor of our fire-breathing Leviathan. Some ancient iconography may also show fire projecting from the mouths of dragons as well.

Humbaba (center) on a bad day

Humbaba (center) on a bad day

Traditional Mesopotamian dragon

Traditional Mesopotamian dragon

I would even venture to suggest that the origin of the name dragon could go back to ancient West Asia. The idea of seeing clearly reminds me of the ancient cherubim. According to Ezekiel, they are full of eyes. This complements their role as guardians of the thrones of ancient deities. Cherubim are Mischwesen composed of lions, eagles, humans, bulls, or any other spare parts lying around. In my imagination it doesn’t take much to shape them into dragons, the original watchers.

A true cherub

A true cherub

No matter who coined the word, dragons have been with us from the beginning of human civilization and continue to live on in popular culture. Maybe they are, like the unruly waters, truly uncreated.

Hallowed Be Thy Wolfbane

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Anti-pesto to the rescue!

Anti-pesto to the rescue!

With autumn in the air and the harvest season looming near, my family recently watched Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Quite apart from the inspired improbability of Aardman Studios productions, the central role of the village vicar in this film aroused my interest. Confirming an oft-cited proposition of this blog that mythical creatures burst from the same mental regions as religion, at Lord Quartermaine’s inquiry as to what might kill a were-rabbit, the vicar promptly pulls down a monster book from his shelves to reveal the secret. It is the church that knows about monsters.

In my continuing research into religious reactions to death and the afterlife, I constantly run into the name of Montague Summers. Summers was the author of the definitive books, in his period, on vampires, werewolves, and witches. He is best known for his translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, “the hammer of witches,” the main witch-hunting tome of the Middle Ages. A deacon of the Church of England before converting to Catholicism, Summers was a believer in the phenomena that he researched. Styling himself a witch-hunter (he lived from 1880 to 1948), he tried to live the fantasy world he helped to create.

The more that neurologists study the brain, the more we discover how deeply embedded religion can be. Any number of researchers have suggested various “God-shaped nodules” in the gray matter that provide for continuing religious belief in the face of advancing scientific knowledge. I would suggest, as a “religionist,” that perhaps nestled next to our mental menorahs, crucifixes, and statues of the virgin, there are also ghosts, witches, werewolves, and vampires lurking in the dark corners of the God node.

Religion or Death

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Researching traditions about death can lead to some occluded avenues shunned by many Ancient Near East scholars (generally anything after about the rise of the Roman Empire is irrelevant). It has long been my contention that death and religion are intricately intertwined, well nigh incapable of being teased apart. I’m also very interested in the research of writers on popular culture. Findings, no matter how erudite, if they don’t reach the public will only fail to impress. Mary Roach, ever masterful, wrote a morbidly fascinating account of the afterlife, so to speak, of corpses. This work (Stiff) was followed shortly by Spook — her foray into the science of ghosts. Anyone who can have you mortified one minute and laughing out loud the next deserves to be read.

Can't have one without the other

Can't have one without the other

I recently finished Matthew Beresford’s From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth (Reaktion, 2008). I was pleasantly surprised that Beresford ambled back to the Neolithic Period in his quest for vampire origins. A number of unexpected facts jumped out at me from his pages — vampires historically have very few traits that last through the folklore about them over the ages. Primarily all they share is being improperly dead. This horrific concept is among the most deeply rooted of human terrors. We prefer the properly dead who stay dead, thank you. Whether revenant or still alive, the vampire somehow threatens the lives of the living and must be dispatched by making him (or her) properly dead.

More rat than bat

More rat than bat

Having been a youngster and woefully unaware of international news at the time, I had never heard of England’s Highgate Vampire of the 1970s. A disjointed and confusing account involving an actual vampire-hunting Catholic priest, a rival vampire-hunting occultist, and ending with the actual staking of a corpse (in 1970! CE!), the tale in Beresford’s book is almost incredible. A little web research demonstrated that the story still has a much wider following than this blog will ever have. Overall, however, it convinced me that my inklings of the danse macabre between religion and death were as accurate as a vampire hunter’s stake.

The Fear of the Lord Is Pure

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This is the 9th podcast for this blog. The topic under consideration here is why fear is so closely associated with religion. I ponder the origins of the concept of deity and try to make a connection with other dark areas of the imagination.

What the Devil

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Podcast number seven is now available. The topic of this cast is the origin of the concept and imagery of the devil as it developed in the western world.

Biblical Black Lagoon

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During my summer-term courses I feel it is only fair to break the lecture time up a bit. Rutgers summer courses can run four hours at a stretch, and no matter how valiant the student, no one can pay attention to me for that long. I have long had an interest in the Bible in popular media, so for each class session I show a brief clip of a movie that features the Bible, often in a pivotal role. We then discuss how it is presented. As a personal pork barrel I give the students a multiple choice question on their exams as to which movies we have watched (it also gives them incentive to be in class, I hope). One summer, after sending the exam off to the print office, I realized I’d made a mistake. As usual, my interest in 1950s sci-fi flicks led to trouble. One film I hadn’t shown a clip from, and which I thought was Bible free (I hadn’t seen it in a long time) was The Creature from the Black Lagoon, a perennial favorite for both camp and kitsch.

Of course, The Creature from the Black Lagoon does have the Bible in it. The movie begins with a narrator reading Genesis 1.1. Well, I had to give all the students credit for that question, because there was no wrong answer. Nevertheless, the easy association between beginning the film with the Bible and its evolutionary plot-starter seemed worthy of comment. Back in the 1950s evolution was already a hot-button issue (so I’ve read). Forces lined up on the scientific and biblical fronts faced off like angry hockey players as they swung at that hard black puck of the truth. It does seem odd in a country so heavily reliant on science that the foundation of biology and its benefits (if scientists hadn’t recognized and reacted to the swift evolution among microbes I’d likely not be here typing this sentence) that one particular interpretation of a very small section of the Bible should have the power that it does. I’ve seen carnivorous, chrome-plated bumper Jesus fish eating the peacefully walking Darwin fish! Old metaphorical Moses would be scratching his head, I’m sure.

The Creature was, of course, also a metaphor (if I’m not shoveling out too much credit where it isn’t really due). The sequels to the original film grew progressively worse, but those who have the patience to sit through The Creature Walks Among Us discover that the gill-man is a man after all, under all that green rubber. The beast is us. Not too weighty of a revelation to be sure, but it isn’t too weighty a movie. Like any discriminating Bible reader I choose what to accept and what to explain away. When I watch The Creature from the Black Lagoon, it ruins the story for me to think ahead to the denouement of the gill-man being a real man. It is a passage I simply choose not to accept. (This is, of course, a metaphor.)

What might this be a metaphor for?

What might this be a metaphor for?