Mythos-Scheme

The Wolken (OEng wolken= 'cloud') is the Deep Mind of the Edhli (Biosphere). It is hight Ozgod (OEng os= 'god').

Gumenn (OEng guma= 'man'; ~Latin 'human') are Dyars (OEng deor/ ONorse dyr/ OFrisian diar= 'animal') with something of the mental, like a god, and so are hight Ozdyars.

Wights of all sorts, on the other hand, are godlike, with something of the animal to them, and so are hight Dyarozzas.

An avatar of or generation out of the Wolken is hight Ingling (Gmc. ing~ 'a generation, offspring'). The Drygand and Neorxna the Boda are Inglings.

The Alfar are a sort of Wight that tends to the manlike and are hight Ingefolk (OEng ingefolc= 'tribe').

Half-Alfs are men who have something of the Alf to them. They are then Gumen-aukinn ('human-plus'; ONorse aukinn= 'augmented, increased').

ETs vs. Faeries: Sky Bum's Rush

You may be pleased to hear that this is the final 'ETs vs. Faeries' piece. I am heartily sick of the UFO/ET phenomenon/enigma by now and I think I've already said everything I wanted to say about it. Basically, whatever it is in reality or unreality, it isn't basically ecological in effect, but incompatible with the ecological or inimical to it. As for ETs and 'Faeries' (~Wights), they are so alien and antithetic to each other that I resent any witless attempt to hybridize them or to hybridize New Age UFO religion with Paganism as well.* There's some of that in Will Peterson's Triskellion trilogy, which I've just discovered and found as possibly 'the next Harry Potter'. But the Mythos will ignore UFOs/ETs and avoid such horrible hybrids. In the 1960s, I saw the same witless indiscriminate mixing-up of everything in search of a vast unified cosmic Aquarian culture, which was in fact so formlessly everything-is-everything that it collapsed and disintegrated as it dashed on the rocks of harsh Reality and came generally to be sneered at by those who came after. I was involved in that search, inchoately, but I could never be a joiner, a true Hippie, though I was definitely Romantic Youth. Decades of trying to sort out or at least leave the 60s behind gradually drew me to conservatively focus on my initial (and so truer?) fascinations, as almost everything else I explored eventually proved wanting-- what a long time it took, because I try to be open-minded and fair. Perhaps as part of the aging process, blessedly, the contrast between what is important and worthy and what is not has become much clearer-- with a glance (well...) I can usually place things as one or the other, which is a relief after having felt so confused about so much for so long. The one thing I was never confused about, though, was the cruciality of the Ecology Movement, but I think that comes from my early bonding with Nature and from the Nature-romanticism in my childhood environment. I wonder if it's possible to really 'get' Ecology without such early shaping-- which is a pretty daunting thought.

Well, I'm still 'In Search Of'. I don't have a lot of answers-- I don't know if there are a lot of answers out there. But there are values and choices that seem to be right, based on feeling and intuition and imagination, with experience and informed thinking providing the reality-check. This detour-foray I've made into another mythos doesn't seem to have resulted in creative inspiration for the Shaggy Mythos so much as in a clarifying, confirming reaction and probably in unconscious shiftings that I can feel still going on. No doubt that will result in a different take on the Mythos, which, finally, is all I have to offer. I'm no scholarly intellectual or canny charismatic leader-type, and by now I thoroughly know my all-too-human limitations, but this is the one (hopefully) helpful thing I have to offer. So, it's back to the Mythos now for me (and you).

* I can't detect any truly religious, sacred aspect in the UFO/ET world (though I haven't really looked into the 'UFO cults') but it's just another of many things lacking in the phenomenon, which together make it seem more a premonition than an epiphany.

ETs vs. Faeries: Sky Bums I

Humans are prone to have a vertical axis in their cosmologies for a number of practical reasons. I think they are particularly prone to this when they have a shifting way of life, not tied to a small territory, as when they wander wide in search of forage and game, or herd their flocks over different pasture-lands seasonally, or raid well into the territories of their neighbors, or rob and pillage over far distances, made easier atop a horse, or when they must emigrate. In short, the less intimately involved a people are in their local environment, and the less they are tied to it by long history, the more likely are they to seek continuity in the Sky, see it as the land of the gods, who send the all-important weather, for good and bad. It is the vast screen on which signs and portents appear, perhaps where their mighty-ones go at death. And mountains are venerated as stepping-stones to the heavens. If this notion is true, I'm sure it's much more complicated than this, but it's a general impression I've gotten. I think, too, that where you have a vertical cosmological axis, the Underworld tends to become the symbolic opposite of the Sky-realm. All of this seems so natural to us, because it's with us from our earliest cultural imprinting, and merely encultures what is hard-wired into our brains and learned from physical experience. But some cultures are more verticalized and sky-oriented than others, for good or ill. I think, particularly when life is harsh, insecure, and Nature seems like the Evil Mother, or if sudden attack and slaughter by invaders can come at any time, a people longs for escape-- to a better, safer place-- to the uplands and mountains, perhaps, even beyond that to the Sky-world after death. Otherwise, I think people naturally will want to cling to their ancient land, and remain in it even after death, to join those who have gone before them.

But with the advances of the project of civilization, we have sought security and welfare apart from the mercies of the landscape; in short, we have sought to control things to our benefit, apart from Nature, and live in unnatural defensive settlements, where Nature, as it hasn't come under our direct control and use, no longer means much to us other than as a means to our benefit. And on and on, to our present state, where the vast hordes of humanity are unmoored from Nature and place, even the immediate physical environment, to the point at which we live in our cultural head-world and even feed off video-screens much of our waking time. No wonder we can't respond to our destruction of the real world. We have escaped from Nature, and so Nature writ largest-- the Biosphere. We want to be safe, happy, independent, removed into our own comfortable wish-fulfilment head-world, to stay youthful and beautiful, and grow ever more godlike forever. And damn the consequences for Nature, which we have no more feeling for than any other deracinating screen-entertainment.

Some other person could write volumes expanding on this damning critique, but I can't, and I've still got to get to 'Sky Bums', which term I tend to apply to those guilty of this monstrous Sky-orientation-- but how do you differentiate when present-day human culture is so shot-through with it? Who isn't a Sky-person? Well, there are those of us who at least have qualms about what we have, are, and will do to others, from individuals to the human community at various magnitudes, or even to non-human others from individuals to the natural community at various magnitudes, even to the whole of earthly Life. But for purposes of this 'ETs vs. Faeries' series, which seems to go on without end in sight, I focus on New-Agers and ETs as 'Sky Bums'.

It's easy to attack New Agers, and as easy to be dismissed by them for it, I suppose. I don't criticize individuals, though, but their mind-set, in which a strong urge toward escape in the form of 'spirituality', 'purity', idealism, metaphysics, mentalism (non-physicality), holistic erasure of inconvenient differences, optimistic self-delusion, and in general, a wish-fulfilment head-set and supportive ideology that is Sky-orientation taken to the omega-point. How can such genuinely nice people be so wrong-headed? Well, they aren't all of a piece, I'd like to say, and they're hardly more wrong-headed than the generality of humans, sad to say. But if the 'better' people, which they often are, are so hopeless, what hope is there, one asks. I might also say that even when their idealism includes 'ecological concern', it seems idealized, metaphysical, purified of earthly dross-- in short, deracinated, unmoored. It's better than nothing, maybe, and the best they can do, but does it contribute to practical efforts to save the world? And 'Ecology' is often 'harmonized (lumped) with all the other 'liberal' worthy causes which one must affirm and support, though they be mutually contradictory and competitive, in reality. But again, I don't want to condemn the entirety of New-Agedom, and there may be forms, offshoots, of the movement which might actually be 'deep green' in effect and hold promise for the future, but which I would expect, rather, from the more earthy, pagan, wing. But as I have said, in the Age of Ecology, everything must be rethought-- reexamined and evaluated for it's ecological effectiveness and fittingness for a realistic ecological civilization, but as complex as the human mazeway now is, how can you objectively evaluate cultural manifestations under this criterion? Very problematic. So even what might seem to be Biosphere-friendly in real effect may not be. But one must try. Sigh.

Well, now that I've trashed the New Age, I'll take on those darlings, the Extraterrestrials, in 'Sky Bums II'.

New Wights for Old

If, in our time, the ancient wights are gone from the land, then we have a clear field for invention, to get them right-- that is, ecological. Reinvent them? Why not. We need them, but in the right form.

The conscious mind and the Deep Mind, however you want to see it, need to cooperate on this project, in a Jungian way. Images come to us, and if we sense they are right, if they work, if they're strong, and magical-mystical, we go with it. It has to be acceptable to the Deep Mind as well as to the conscious mind, and so there's a cycling between them, forming something that meets the common need.

I've tried to do this with the Mythos. I've imbibed ancient and folk models, and tried to engage in this cyclic process of culture-creation, reforming old wights and gods and such to be deep-ecological, as well as fitting and workable elsewise. It's a 'way', a questing, in a time of mazeway resynthesis-- which is completely not what early cultures did, with their self-evolved stable mazeway. But we've lost the religiousness-- a sense of awe, of the magical-mystical, of greater wiser powers than our own. And we need the spiritual power of religiousness to help us save the Biosphere. The old, established religions just aren't ecological, and they are fading away almost everywhere because they don't fit with the modern world. But then, pre-civilizational, tribal, animist-shamanic religion doesn't fit, either. We need to find what will better fit with the modern, but moreso, with the culture-civilization we must have if we are to support rather than destroy the Biosphere, but that also helps drive us towards it, now and in the near future. So we need to rethink the spiritual/religious in a rational, practical way; but without the cooperation of the Deep Mind, it just won't work, and the Deep Mind can't be forced. We must stay in quest mode, sensitive to unconscious promptings, open to numinous sendings, inspirations of ideas, of images, of communications of beings. And if it fits a new ecological mazeway, if it has great draw and power and potential, then we should try it and see if it proves-out. But these things grow and change, or are replaced by more promising models. The idea is that we progress through the changes, and that it doesn't just work for our ownself, but, as it has a richness of the Deep Mind, is of finer substance and allure, it has resonance in the wider world-- New wights for old, and the newfangled really is better than the antique.

'If there were no wights, we would have to invent them.'

Ets vs. Faeries: 2c the Symbolic Meaning of UFOs/ETs

UFOS/ETs, symbolically, act as a two-edged blade. One way lays open dread and warning as alarming as a gory saber-wound. The other way cuts-away the bonds constraining freedom and hope-- we can move out of our terrible plight into a better future. The image of a daimonic herald bearing this sword comes to mind. But we don't believe in daimons of whatever sort anymore, and we get our mythic imagery through mass culture, which has been presenting us with post-Enlightenment science-fiction spaceships and extraterrestrial beings since Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. In fact, all the characteristic features in the UFO/ET mythos seem to have appeared first in mass culture, from pulp fiction to cinema to radio-plays and then television. We live in the age of reason, science, and technology, and the age of irrationality, supernatural belief, and magic, while stubbornly persisting in the mass mind, survives openly mainly in the world of entertainment. And in that, science-fiction seems more real-world than 'fantasy'. So, ETs have it over Faeries. If UFOs/ETs have been designed to influence the mass mind, as some claim, they have been cast in the science-fiction mold, rather than the fantasy mode, for a very good reason. Fantasy, which draws on the myth of the previous age, has a nostalgic appeal for those who are rather horrified by the science-fictiony real-world we live in. Many yearn to go back to a simpler, more human, more natural world-- without of course sacrificing all the technological advantages-- but it is likely that that world is gone forever, barring catastrophic nuclear holocaust, ecological disintegration, or some geologic/cosmic onslaught-- which is precisely what ETs warn of, and they should know whereof they speak. But faeries, who were exterminated by the modern world, have no credibility in it. Faery warnings would be laughed out of court!

But instead of earthly (chthonic) daimons such as faeries urging us to retreat from our relentless course toward inevitable planetary catastrophe through scientific/technological/economic progress and growth, we have aliens-- masters of 'advanced technology'-- at best, perhaps, showing us what we are becoming (but unfortunately not giving us specific, practical advice on how to go about saving our world). But all the 'species' of aliens seem like some sort of future-human archetype that has developed in the mass unconscious-- representing mostly what we fear, deep down, we are becoming-- as we are drawn fatally, helplessly, into our hi-tech science-fiction dystopian future. But even if ETs tell contactees/abductees that we've got to transform to a 'higher' stage to prevent ecological disintegration, that stage, as exemplified by themselves, is a product of the very civilizational drive that is destroying the Ecosphere! Which is a profoundly contradictory message! Did they manage to preserve their own ecospheres? How? Tell us!

While it is tempting to believe that we can save a functioning Ecosphere while continuing our drive toward ever higher technology and all the goodies it provides us, only a little clear-headed assessment shows the nonsensical, wish-fulfilment nature of this cherished belief. So, are ETs just a confused, spontaneous creation of the dream-like deep human psyche, then? If, as Jung thought, they are archetypal messengers from the collective unconscious responding to terrific but suppressed modern trauma, they just aren't doing a proper job of it-- the message is WRONG, and they're the wrong messengers. Maybe we should fight back, sort out the collective unconscious, bring on the Eco-faeries! This is their planet, and they've seen human hubris, baseness, and folly bring us to the brink. With a competent mass-media campaign, we can display these nature-folk's forest-cred! Send the ETs back where they came from!

Next instalment-- "Sky Bums".