Viral Mythology
Page 14
Fairytales are also one of the categories of folklore referred to as “Märchen,” folktales characterized by elements of magic or the supernatural, with lead characters that often are endowed with magical powers or special knowledge; variations expose the hero to supernatural beings or objects. Märchen often begin with a formula such as “once upon a time,” while remaining quite vague as to when and where. The main theme is triumph over adversity for the hero/heroine, who may be beautiful or incredibly handsome, and can involve the aid of magical creatures or powers, often against a very stylized enemy such as wicked stepmothers, stupid ogres, and mean witches. More ancient tales expose the social conditions of their times, such as matriarchy, primitive birth and marriage customs, and distributions of royal wealth and power. Often the poor and lowly hero meets the princess of the king and, through luck, cleverness, or magic, wins her hand in marriage and automatically inherits the kingdom—or vice versa, as in the Cinderella story of a poor, abused young girl who wins the heart of the prince with the help of a fairy godmother, a pumpkin coach, and a magical glass slipper.
Fairytales all over the world are identical in content, even though their country of origins may be unknown. There are two main theories as to how this may have happened. One theory points to an original story that was then spread throughout centuries to other countries and cultures as people repeated them orally when they traveled. The second theory suggests that these stories arose at generally the same time with the same content because they reflect common human experiences that cross cultural boundaries.
Two Grimm Guys
Though fairytales did originate orally, the first systematic attempt to transcribe and record them from the oral tradition was the collection
Kinder-und Hausmärchen, or Children’s and Household Tales (1812–15) of the Brothers Grimm, popularly known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, had a much darker edge to them and were often intended just as much for adult audiences as for children. Themes of sexuality, violence, and even cruelty that were a part of the Grimm tales may have served a useful psychological purpose for children and adults as a means of solving deeper, often subconscious, issues.
Figure 4-1: The Brothers Grimm: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
Some of the more popular Grimm tales included:
Hansel and Grethel (Hansel and Gretel)
Rapunzel
Snow White and Red Rose
Cinderella
Rumpelstiltskin
Tom Thumb
Mary’s Child
Brementown Musicians (Town Musicians of Bremen)
The Wedding of Mrs. Fox
The Elves and the Shoemaker
Little Briar-Rose (Sleeping Beauty)
The Golden Goose
Grimm tales influenced a host of other writings and to this day are retold and reworded as television shows, fantasy/sci-fi novels, and motion pictures.
According to Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, author of The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, fairytales can even include such Jungian concepts as the shadow, the anima and the animus, and the heroes and heroines, as well as other key figures, and may take on archetypal qualities that make these stores resonate with us on a deeper, subconscious level. Another concept she explores is the possibility that primitive peoples might have been projecting their own internal states into these symbolic stories, and that a Jungian approach to analyzing them reveals insights into our own psyches and the challenges that are specifically human. Fairytales, Franz suggests, speak not just to the Self, but to the Collective Self as well, and have meaning and messages for both.
Ballads, Songs, and Nursery Rhymes
Not every story had to come down to us as spoken word or written text. Sometimes, you could convey more meaning by singing your story than writing it. Ballads have a long history, dating back to the wandering minstrels, or servants of the courts, of medieval Europe in the late 14th century, and became highly popularized as a form of love story told in verse. By the late 13th century, many court minstrels had become adept at entertaining the lords and ladies of the court with song and performances. Later ballads in the 16th century sometimes took on a very vulgar tone, called “broadside ballads,” and later ballads of the 18th century often involved lyrics about economic and class struggles. Ballads, like any other form of communication, provided a unique means of expressing what was on the minds of the people at the time.
Folk songs, like folklore, allowed stories to be transmitted to music or in song, and date back before the 19th century, incorporating a number of genres such as sea shanties, holiday carols, Wassail songs, traditional children’s songs, ballads, and even drinking songs.
The most popular folk song of all time and the most recognized song in the English language is “Happy Birthday to You,” the melody of which was written back in 1893 by two sisters, Patty and Mildred Hill, who then fashioned it as “Good Morning to All.” The song was first put in print form in 1912 with the lyrics we continue to sing today.
The most popular form of folk song is the nursery rhyme, one that most of us have grown up with and continue to pass on to our own children. These silly children’s songs, which were often used during games like jumping rope and dancing, sound completely fantastical and may not make any sense at all, yet even these served a purpose as reflections of historical people, times, and events.
Some nursery rhymes were even thought to be cheeky parodies of political and royal officials hidden inside their rhythmic lyrics and beats. English nursery rhymes in particular often suggested more historical origins that were instilled in the memories of those living at the time, such as “London Bridges,” “London Bells,” and “Oranges and Lemons,” which are said to re-create the chimes of old London churches.
In 1881, Kate Greenaway published the seminal Mother Goose nursery rhymes, also called The Old Nursery Rhymes, which included some of the very first print appearances of far older nursery rhymes and is probably one of the most important books in most older generations’ childhood bookshelves, introducing us to such classics as “Hickory, Dickory, Dock,” “Little Miss Muffet,” “Jack Sprat,” “The Cat and the Fiddle,” “Georgy Porgy,” and “Little Bo Peep.”
Some argument and debate continues over the veracity of some nursery rhymes as true events. Let’s take “Three Blind Mice,” for example. Could this have been alluding to 16th-century Queen (Bloody) Mary I, who enjoyed torturing and killing? The three mice may have been three noblemen who decided she was a bit crazy and were prosecuted for conspiring to take down the Bloody Queen!
How about that egghead, Humpty Dumpty, who sat on a wall, had a great fall, and couldn’t be put back together again? “Humpty Dumpty” originated in printed form for the first time in 1810. At the time, a “humpty dumpty” suggested a klutz or clumsy person, and may have been referring to King Richard III of England falling off his horse. Another suggestion is that the hapless egg refers to the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey at the hand of King Henry VIII.
And what of “Ring Around the Rosie,” which has been suggested as alluding to the Black Plague? So apparently, this little ditty about joining hands in a circle, sneezing one’s brains out, and then falling down as ashes might have been all about people dropping dead from the Plague. Dating back to 1347, the lyrics to this particular nursery rhyme have gone under more scrutiny than any other, including a tongue-lashing by a Website called Snopes.com that claims to debunk and find the truth about anything.
“Ring-a-ring o’ roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.”
Snopes.com dissected the silly song, and showed that there were many variant forms and dates of the song, many of which had no references at all that might even suggest it was describing death by plague. That the written form of the song didn’t appear until 1881 also made it difficult to believe that the song even began back in 1347, about the time of the plague, at all.
/> Interestingly, many folklore scholars think these little ditties might have been a way to get around the ban on dancing imposed by Protestants in the 19th century in Britain and North America. By creating these “ring-games” or “play parties,” as they became known, children could get around the ban and dance to their content because there was no musical accompaniment to label their activities actual dancing.
Or just maybe, as with most modern song lyrics, these nursery rhymes were just words thrown together without any regard to meaning, and were purely imaginative, catchy, and fun excuses for partying under the noses of those who disapproved.
Nursery rhymes point to the difficulties of interpretation, which occur with any transmission of ideas, concepts, and stories, because unless we know the exact motive of the person or persons responsible for creating them, we can guess until the cow jumps over the moon what they were meant for and if they held any grains of historical truth whatsoever.
And there is the Big Question: No matter their format or structure, were these stories trying to tell us something, other than just purely entertain us? Were they hiding within their structure and plot and character, their drama and fantasy and humor and terror, actual scientific knowledge and historical events? And aren’t we doing this very thing today, with our novels and movies and TV shows that depict realistic situations in fictional formats?
From All the President’s Men to Patton to Office Space, movies tell us grand stories on a big screen, and sometimes they tell us about actual historical events, even as we chow down on the popcorn, Milk Duds, nachos, and Diet Coke. From The West Wing to Mad Men to Breaking Bad and The Office, television series present us with fictional series every week set in places or times or situations that not only really exist, but that we may be personally familiar with. Yet we call them “television shows” and disregard them as the modern folklore we are passing on to the future.
Novels like North and South, Hawaii, 11/22/63, The Hunt for Red October, and even The Da Vinci Code weave their spells on us—pure fiction yes, but with history, science, and religious truths woven into the fabric of the story. And even those highly fantastical science fiction and speculative movies and TV shows and stories, like The X-Files, Walking Dead, Star Trek and Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Twilight series, Lost, Fringe, and every sci fi and fantasy novel ever written—all hold a grain of truth, whether historical or spiritual or scientific, that might even become the fact of tomorrow.
Yet we also have non-fiction books and true-to-life documentaries that depict actual, factual events and people. We have personal journals and blogs and news stories now that document our own times for us, and for those who one day might look back and wonder what we were trying to convey—what was important to us. Separating the fact from fiction is hard enough today, with so much potential for information to be spread that sounds accurate but isn’t, or is based upon false witness, or downright disinformation. Even the hard news and journalism we once thought we could rely on as truth, and the scientific and academic textbooks that lay out the facts as we knew them, are open to change, adulteration, and interpretation.
We shouldn’t turn away from fables and fairytales, folklore and legend, nursery rhymes or chivalrous romances, ballads or folk tales, as if they are nothing but purely imaginative fluff and the stuff of entertainment. Encoded deep within are things we need to know and to pass on when we leave this place, in the form of our own offerings on the written page.
Maybe with stories we are not always meant to understand their meaning on a conscious level, or even a personal one. Some stories will no doubt affect our hearts, our souls, and our psyches, even if we don’t quite “get” their meaning. Some stories will hold incredible meaning to us as a collective, yet not so much as an individual—and vice versa, of course.
Even as we attempt to analyze to death what our ancestors meant for us to know from these methods of transmission of information, we might be forgetting that some messages were not meant for the analytical brain at all.
They were meant for the humanity in us.
Chapter 5
Archeoenigmas: Things Out of Time and Place
The researches of many eminent antiquarians have already thrown much darkness on the subject; and it is possible, if they continue their labors, that we shall soon know nothing at all.
—Artemus Ward
All over the world, enigmatic objects exist that seem out of place, even out of time, as if they were placed there by unseen means, and not at all an organic outgrowth of their environment. All over the world, there are edifices that look similar, have the same shapes, and share the same structure, as if the same designer were responsible for them all.
“Archeoenigmas” are archaeological objects and structures that are of a mysterious nature or origin. They are enigmas that we have yet to fully understand, or explain by simple means. Often, otherworldly explanations are attached to such objects and structures, as if we have been given gifts from other civilizations from other worlds that have come here, leaving behind mysteries we have yet to unravel.
Why do similar images appear on pyramids in Bolivia as on steles in Central America and the edifices of Egypt? What does it tell us about our past when the same strange entities and objects show up again and again, pointing to a history hidden in symbolism? Why are stone carvings on a pot in ancient Greece exactly like those found in ancient China?
Some people believe that everything we think we know about history is wrong, and that the traditional dogma regarding antiquity is but one tiny piece of a much larger puzzle. Our written history was forged from verbal stories and legends passed down from generation to generation, which begs the question: What if there were bits and pieces that were accidentally—or purposely—left out?
American naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson coined the term OOPart to describe objects that seemingly defy conventional historical chronology. These objects and articles pose a mystery—and are of great interest and importance as they challenge everything that we think we know.
According to conventional history, human beings were not present on earth 65 million years ago, yet how can we explain semi-ovoid shaped metallic tubes that have been dug out of 65-million-year-old Cretaceous chalk in France?
Back in 1912, employees at an electric plant discovered a large chunk of coal, which, when broken open, revealed an iron pot. Nails have been found deeply embedded within chunks of sandstone rock dating back to the Mesozoic Era. Beyond these, there are many, many more examples of such anomalous objects that seemingly defy traditional explanations.
What could these finding possibly mean? Well, there are a number of possibilities:
1. Our actual history dates back much, much further than recorded reports would allow.
2. There is the possibility that other intelligent beings or civilizations existed on earth before our recorded history.
3. Perhaps our dating methods are wholly incorrect, and stone, coal, and fossils may form much more rapidly than we have estimated.
In this chapter, we will focus on several of the more popular archeoenigmas and OOPart’s that have been discovered throughout the world. Though fascinating in their own right, these findings should prompt the reexamination of the true history of human life on earth.
Baghdad Battery
In 1936, while workers were excavating the ruins of a 2,000-year-old ancient village near Baghdad, a mysterious small clay vase was discovered. This bright yellow clay vase contained a cylinder of copper sheet 5 inch by 1.5 inches. The edge of the copper cylinder appeared to have been soldered with a 60–40 lead-tin alloy, which is quite comparable to modern solder. The bottom of the cylinder was capped with a crimped copper disk and sealed with asphalt or bitumen. On the top of the cylinder, another layer of asphalt was utilized to seal the top, and also to hold an iron rod suspended in the center of the copper cylinder. The rod showed indications of having been corroded with an acidic substance.
After studyin
g the enigmatic object, German archaeologist Will-hem Konig came to the stunning conclusion that this seemingly innocuous clay pot was actually an ancient electric battery! But how could this be? According to our accepted history, the viable use of electricity for technological means was not discovered until 1831 when English scientist Michael Faraday created the first electric dynamo—a crude predecessor to today’s modern power generators.
In 1940, an engineer named Willard F.M. Gray, who worked for the General Electric High Voltage Laboratory in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, read of Konig’s theory and developed a replica of the battery. Using a copper sulfate solution, it generated about. 5 volts of electricity!
In the 1970s, German Egyptologist Arne Eggebrecht also built a replica of the Baghdad battery and filled it with freshly pressed grape juice (which he speculated would have been the same substance that the ancient Egyptians might have used), and it generated 0.87 volts. Eggebrecht’s model produced enough electricity that he was able to electroplate a silver statue with gold!