Peculiar Mythology

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Peregrine Confession: I love books like Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Ambiguity in fiction is under-appreciated at times. Of course, I’m not formally trained in fictional literature outside the confines of ancient mythology, but I do know what I like. This wondrous story of paranormal children in an alternate universe could almost have been drawn from Celtic mythology, and indeed Riggs provides a mythology to explain how things got this way. And every mythology is a kind of religion. In this world there are peculiars—not far removed from real life, for those willing to accept it—who have unusual powers. Miss Peregrine’s home, one where the children are under the guardianship of ymbrynes, houses those with special gifts. Some ymbrynes, however, wanted their godlike powers to make them into actual gods and in addition to causing the Siberian explosion, gave birth to hollowgasts, a kind of living damnation monster. “Rather than becoming gods, they had transformed themselves into devils.” Sounds a touch like Lucifer’s fall, n’est-ce pas?

It might be supposed by cynical readers of this blog that I select my reading based on the potential for finding religion in fiction. If that is true it is so only on a subconscious level, I assure you. I read about religion for many hours every day and I taught the subject for nearly two decades. When I turn to fiction it is generally for escape. I have found, however, that there is hardly any escape from religion. When I find it in fiction, therefore, I ponder some of its implications. Religion is so much a part of our lives that it can’t help working its way into popular culture. Maybe I just see it everywhere. That doesn’t mean that it’s not really there. But back to our story…

Hollowgasts, like Ugaritic devourers (sorry, couldn’t help myself), are powerful hungry. They must constantly feed their voracious appetites. Their favorite food, which actually transforms them a slight step back toward humanity, is the blood of peculiars. Blood is their salvation. The depth of this idea trickles down to the very roots of religion itself. Transformation is not possible without somebody paying the cost. Religion is bloody business. I won’t throw any plot spoilers in because I want to encourage you to read this strangely moving book. I will say that it is a strikingly well executed mythology for a world where God is not present, but where monsters and peculiars both partake in their own kind of divinity. And the strange photographs are real.

Vampire Jesus

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It was a dark and stormy night. Well, so far that could describe most any night in April or May of this year. Anyway, I had just read about vampire-bots for the first time. Robots, like all machines, require a power source. Those I’ve witnessed up close require rechargeable battery-packs that are surprisingly heavy. I’d read that some robots were being designed to consume their own energy sources—mechanical and chemical eating, if you will. One dreamer figured that blood could work as a source of energy. A robot could be designed to take energy from blood, and thus arises the concept of the vampire-bot. I don’t think such an insidious machine was ever really built, but it is theoretically possible. It is also a reflection of a biblical idea—the life is in the blood. Ancient people tended to associate life with breathing. With no CPR, an unbreathing body was a dead body. Blood obviously played into the picture too, but precisely how was uncertain. Clearly a person or an animal couldn’t live without it. To say nothing of robots.

One of those dark and stormy nights I watched The Shadow of the Vampire. Surprisingly for a monster movie, Shadow had been nominated for two academy awards. Not really your standard horror flick, it is a movie about making a movie—specifically Murnau’s Nosferatu, the classic, silent vampire movie that really initiated the genre. The actor cast as Count Orlock, however, is really a vampire. The premise might sound chintzy, but the acting is very good with Willem Dafoe making a believable Max Schreck (vampirized). Stylistic rather than gory, the story plays out to the fore-ordained conclusion and the vampire disappears in the cold light of dawn.

When I was an impressionable child I was told what is likely an apocryphal story about Leonardo da Vinci. The story goes that the man who posed for Jesus in the Last Supper was also the model for Judas, after living a life of dissolution. Willem Dafoe, of course, famously played Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ. From Jesus to vampire. Both characters are bound by the element of blood. Christianity still celebrates the shedding of divine blood symbolically while the vampire takes blood (also symbolically). Although the vampire cannot endure the sight of the cross, the same man effectively played both sides of the mythic line, almost as if the apocryphal story came true. There are implications to consider here, and not all of them insinuate Hollywood. On these dark and stormy nights, we have something to ponder.