(20) CATHERINE JOHNS –

S€X OR SYMBOL: ER0TIC IMAGES OF GREECE & ROME (2002)

It is one of my rules in my top tens to throw in a kinky entry amidst my wilder special mentions, usually as my final (twentieth) special mention, at least where the subject matter permits.

And here it certainly does – it is not surprising given how large sexuality looms in human biology that it similarly looms large in our mythology.

I remember in high school that it was a running gag among my friends of drawing d!cks in each other’s textbooks, kind of like the end credits of the 2007 film Superbad. Juvenile, yes I know, or rather adolescent.

The Greeks and Romans were a lot like that – they had art of d!cks everywhere. Well, erotic art in general, but mostly a lot of d!cks. And no, we’re not just talking the ubiquitous nudity of classical art – we’re talking hardcore d!cks, literally in the sense of what is termed ithyphallic.

So much so that when Victorians – the prissy British of the historical Victorian period that is, not the residents of the Australian state – collected classical art in galleries or museums, they found themselves inundated by d!cks, like my high school textbooks or those Superbad end credits, which they then hid in restricted sections or basements.

And these were mythic d!cks! No, seriously – “many had a religious and apotropaic function”. Apotropaic, as in good luck charms or warding off evil, because nothing does that like a d!ck, albeit often depicted with wings or feet. We’re talking things like herms, statues with male genitalia used as boundary or crossroad markers, often invoking the (phallic) god Hermes or Mercury.

And this book has the extensive images of Greek or Roman art to prove it. Like looking through my high school textbooks…

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(18) WIL HUYGEN & RIEN POORTVLIET –

GNOMES (1977)

“Yeah, Rien Poortvliet just called. He wants you to pose for him…Oh come on, beloved illustrator of Gnomes? Jesus, read a coffee table book!”

Archer, “Sea Tunt: Part I”

It always surprises me that gnomes are of such recent vintage, compared to other legendary creatures – “A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century”.

He introduced them as earth elementals – to match sylphs as air elementals, undines as water elementals, and salamanders as fire elementals. Note to self – air and water are the s€xy ones.

Anyway, they were “widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature” and “typically depicted as small humanoids who live underground”.

So what’s the difference from dwarves? The short answer is not much, at least in depiction (as opposed to origins in folklore), and any difference is really a matter of stylistic choice. Apparently kobolds or Germanic mine spirits also overlap with gnomes.

Although probably the most famous gnomes are garden gnomes – garden or lawn ornaments crafted as statues of gnomes, typically with beards and pointed conical caps (in the style of those old school dunce caps), that originated in the nineteenth century.

Essentially, Poortvliet’s illustrations of gnomes in this book, written by Wil Huygen, follows the visual depiction of gnomes in the style of diminutive garden gnomes. Ironically, it distinguishes gnomes as always bearded from dwarves as always beardless, which is the opposite of their most popular contemporary depiction as character races in Dungeons and Dragons – arguably following the books of Tolkien, except with gnomes as similar to hobbits or halflings (without the hairy feet).

As for the book itself, it “explains the life and habitat of gnomes in an in-universe fashion, much as a biology book would do, complete with illustrations and textbook notes” – often with astonishingly intricate fictional detail. The titular gnomes are also depicted as living harmoniously with animals and nature, evoking contemporary environmental themes.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(17) BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS (1983)

Eternal salvation or triple your money back!

Similar to Discordianism – with which it is often compared (and with which it arguably overlaps) – the Church of the SubGenius is either a joke disguised as a religion or a religion disguised as a joke, although in my opinion it doesn’t lend itself as much to the latter as Discordianism.

“The Church of the SubGenius is a parody religion described by some of its own members as an ‘insane bogus UFO mind-control cult’…elements of self-help groups, UFO cults, Scientology, apocalyptic Christianity, and utterly shameless money-grubbing antics”.

It purportedly originates from its revered prophet, J.R. Bob Dobbs, usually known simply as “Bob”. (When printing “Bob”‘s name, the “Bob” must always be surrounded by “quotes”). “Bob” is the prophet (as well as avatar and embodiment) of Slack, the cosmic spiritual quality as ineffable as the Tao for which the Church and all its members strive – and to which the Con or Conspiracy is opposed. Which conspiracy? Why, all of them of course – as the Conspiracy represents them all.

The ultimate goal of all SubGeniuses (SubGenii?) is to survive until X-Day, when godlike aliens “will arrive and Rupture all the dues-paying SubGenii to a never-ending tour” (pleasure tour?) “of the universe, while converting Planet Earth into the intergalactic equivalent of a greasy-spoon truck-stop”. For those left behind (anyone who isn’t a paid-up SubGenii), it’s not going to be fun as “human pain is apparently a very high-priced drug among the various gods, demons, and alien beings of the complex and ever-growing SubGenius Pantheon”. X-Day is prophesied to occur on 5 July 1998, at 7 AM – “the fact that that date apparently passed without the arrival of the Alien Fleet has forced SubGenii to come up with a multitude of excuses”.

The Book of the Sub-Genius is of course its foundational text, although the New(er) Testament, Relevation X, comes close!

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(11) H.A. GUERBER –

MYTHS OF GREECE & ROME / MYTHS OF THE NORSEMEN (1908-1909)

“Hélène Adeline Guerber…also known as H.A. Guerber, was an American writer of books, most of which were lively retellings of myths, legends, folklore, plays, epic poetry, operas and history.”

There are scant details about H.A. Guerber herself, apart from being an American teacher and writer – even though her books, mostly retellings of myths or legends such as The Myths of Greece and Rome, remain in print as classics. Of course, her occupation as teacher would account for her books being accessible to children, as they were for me.

Her Myths of the Norsemen is one of my favorite books for Norse mythology – and a vintage one at that. It owes its status as my favorite to being one of two books I first read to learn about the Norse myths as a child – the other being Bulfinch’s Mythology, but to be honest this did it better, not least because of its exclusive focus and the art plates throughout the book. It still boggles my mind that they had this vintage book in my school library – although one advantage of its vintage publication is that it is freely available online.

The full title of this book is Myths of the Norsemen from the Eddas and Sagas – and Guerber shows her own poetic sense in the book:

“Northern mythology is grand and tragical. Its principal theme is the perpetual struggle of the beneficent forces of Nature against the injurious, and hence it is not graceful and idyllic in character, like the religion of the sunny South, where the people could bask in perpetual sunshine, and the fruits of the earth grew ready to their hand.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(10) MARINA WARNER –

NO GO THE BOGEYMAN: SCARING, LULLING & MAKING MOCK (1998)

Marina Warner – or Dame Marina Warner to give her title as well – is an English mythographer, typically writing about mythology, folklore or fairytales.

Typically her focus is on female figures – literally in her book Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form. Indeed, she started with the ultimate female figure of Catholic veneration, the Virgin Mary (well, after a book on the Empress Dowager or Dragon Empress of the Qing Empire, Tz’u-his), which she followed with a book on Joan of Arc.

Perhaps her leading book on female figures of folklore and fairytales was the evocatively titled From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers).

In a sense, this book is the companion to that one and something of an exception to the rule of her usual female lens, focusing as it does on the figures of male terror in folklore, fairytales, and fiction – “ogres and giants, bogeymen and bugaboos” (which sadly omits my personal favorite terms of bugbear and bete noire).

Although of course Dame Warner has been prolific enough I could compile a top ten books just of those written by her. She also gets bonus points being identified as the “lady writer” of the Dire Straits song of that name – as the writer the singer sees on television “talking about the Virgin Mary” and who reminds him of his former lover.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(8) MIRCEA ELIADE –

THE SACRED & THE PROFANE / SHAMANISM (1957 / 1964)

“The nostalgia for Paradise…the desire to find oneself always and without effort in the center of the world, at the heart of reality”.

Behold the monomyth!

Campbell’s term of monomyth may be somewhat unfair for Eliade, since he established multiple paradigms in mythology or religion “that persist to this day” – hierophany, sacred space and time, the nostalgia for Paradise, the axis mundi or Center of the World, all myths as creation or origin myths, the eternal return, the terror of history, the coincidence of opposites, deus otiosus, and homo religiosus.

On the other hand, all of his paradigms might be considered permutations of his core concept of hierophany, the manifestation – or intrusion – of the sacred in the world, including but not limited to the earlier concept of theophany or manifestation of a god. In turn, it is hierophany that creates sacred space and time, or rather, divides the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time.

And the rest of his paradigms really flow from that. The mythic or religious connotes the nostalgia for Paradise or desire to return to sacred space or time, which is also the axis mundi or center of the world.

“Myth, then, is always an account of creation” – the primordial time “when the Sacred first appeared, establishing the world’s structure”. By enacting myths and rituals, one doesn’t simply commemorate them but participates in them – one “detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time”, or the eternal return.

On the other hand, “yearning to remain in the mythical age causes a terror of history” – the desire “to escape the linear succession of events” – “Eliade suggests that the abandonment of mythical thought and the full acceptance of linear, historical time, with its terror, is one of the reasons for modern man’s anxieties”.

As for the coincidence of opposites, “Eliade claims that many myths, rituals, and mystical experiences involve a “coincidence of opposites” or “twofold revelation” – “they express on the one hand the diametrical opposition of two divine figures sprung from one and the same principle and destined, in many versions, to be reconciled…the very nature of the divinity, which shows itself, by turns or even simultaneously, benevolent and terrible, creative and destructive, solar and serpentine, and so on”.

Deus otiosus – the inactive (or leisurely) god – is perhaps my favorite paradigm by Eliade. Contrary to those who proposed that religions evolve from polytheism to monotheism, Eliade argued that supreme heavenly beings were less common in advanced cultures.

“Eliade speculates that the discovery of agriculture brought a host of fertility gods and goddesses into the forefront, causing the celestial Supreme Being to fade away and eventually vanish from many ancient religions. Even in primitive hunter-gatherer societies, the High God is a vague, distant figure, dwelling high above the world. Often he has no cult and receives prayer only as a last resort, when all else has failed. Eliade calls the distant High God a deus otiosus (idle god)”.

His book on shamanism, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, is the second of his landmark duo of books after The Sacred and the Profane. It applied his ongoing ideas to shamanism, whicn in turn he saw as the ongoing death and resurrection of shamanic figures.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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