The Lamb and The Tyger by William Blake: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 The Lamb

Little Lamb, who made thee?

         Dost thou know who made thee, 

Gave thee life & bid thee feed 

By the stream & o'er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing wooly bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice? 

         Little Lamb, who made thee?

         Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee;

         Little Lamb, I'll tell thee!

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb: 

He is meek & he is mild, 

He became a little child: 

I a child & thou a lamb, 

We are called by his name.

         Little Lamb God bless thee. 

         Little Lamb God bless thee.

The Tyger

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies. 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain, 

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp, 

Dare its deadly terrors clasp! 

When the stars threw down their spears 

And water'd heaven with their tears: 

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright, 

In the forests of the night: 

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

“The Tyger” is one of the poems from William Blake’s Songs of Experience. It contrasts with its antithetical companion piece, “The Lamb” in Songs of Innocence. To understand fully both “The Lamb” and “The Tyger,” they should be read side by side, because each is opposed in the images, symbolism, and theme that it conveys and, for this reason, deepens and enriches its opposite’s meanings, as suggested by the companion poem.

In “The Lamb,” the speaker of the poem is obviously a child. (The etching that the poet created as an illustration to accompany this poem also shows its speaker to be a child, a young boy). He speaks as a child, in a lilting, singsong fashion, repeating the same questions over and over. He sees the lamb as “little,” like himself, and identifies with the animal as a fellow creature rather than as a beast of a different species. He also personifies the lamb, addressing the animal as if it were a person:

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee. . . ?

The lamb’s Maker is the one, the child assumes, who has directed the lamb’s innocent, simple, pastoral life—an existence that involves mostly eating in a pleasant habitat, “by the stream & o'er the mead.”

The lamb’s Creator, the child says, made it a delightful creature, giving it both “softest clothing wooly bright” and “a tender voice” that causes “all the vales [to] rejoice.” The description of the lamb is that, almost, of a living, breathing plush animal. This is the lamb as seen through the eyes of the child, through the eyes of innocence.

On a deeper level, the lamb, for the child, symbolizes Jesus Christ, who became a “little child,” making it possible for the speaker of the poem to identify with the baby Jesus:

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I'll tell thee,

Little Lamb I'll tell thee:

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb:

He is meek & he is mild,

He became a little child:

I a child & thou a lamb,

We are called by his name.

The innocent lamb, “meek and mild,” like both the child and nature’s Creator, who both “calls himself a Lamb” and “became a little child,” allows the child to experience a oneness with both nature (the lamb) and God (Jesus Christ). The child is one with the universe. In blessing the lamb, therefore, he blesses himself, nature, and its Creator, all of whom, together in the lamb, are made one. Of course, Jesus is referred to not only as a lamb but also as a lion (“the lion of the tribe of Judah”), and the same person who said he came in peace also said that he would return in judgment. However, the child is unaware of these other aspects of the Creator, just as he seems unaware of the more predatory aspects of nature.

For this knowledge and understanding, the child must become an adult. The vision of innocence must expand to encompass the vision of experience.

In “The Tyger,” Blake provides a snapshot, as it were, of one of God’s fiercest predators. It is important to observe that Blake does not attribute the tiger to a natural origin apart from God, as if the animal appeared as a result of a mindless evolutionary process. 

Rather, the tiger, in all its ferocity, was “framed” by “hand” that “dared” to “seize the fire” in which the tiger’s fiery eye had burned among the “distant deep” of heaven’s stars. Likewise, a “shoulder” was employed in the “art” of twisting “the sinews” of the tiger’s heart.

The predator’s creator was present when the animal’s heart began to beat, and it was the tiger’s Creator who, as a smith, operated the “hammer” and the ‘chain” and the “anvil” that were used to “forge” the animal’s very brain. The tiger is clearly very much, by conscious design, the creation of God, who has given the beast its fierce and predatory nature as much as he has shaped the correspondingly “fearful symmetry” of the great cat’s body, which is “burning bright/In the forests of the night.” That the dark forest was chosen as this creature’s habitat is further evidence within the poem that the animal’s fierce nature was intentional from the beginning, as it is a fitting—perhaps the only-truly fitting—environment for such a fearful beast.

What does the tiger’s “fearful symmetry” suggest about its creator? “Did he smile his work to see?” the speaker of the poem wonders, adding, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” The Judeo-Christian concept of God is that he is almighty, yes, but also a loving and good God. The mighty tiger’s form and nature seem to cast doubt upon the notion that God is benevolent, kind, and loving. Alternatively, it at least challenges readers to remember that divine ways and human ways are not the same and that there is a complexity to God that is beyond human reckoning, for God did also create the lamb. As nature itself demonstrates, God is obviously the author of polarities, of opposites, and, perhaps, at least as viewed from the human perspective, of contraries which, as Blake insists elsewhere, are necessary to progress.

“The Tyger” ends as it began, with the same questions as those with which it began, as if the existence of the fierce, predatory tiger suggest truths about its Creator that are too terrible for the speaker of the poem to accept. Doubts rise, but they seem to be repressed. Insight does not become knowledge; it is merely the catalyst for more and more doubt and fear. Perhaps it is best to ask the same questions again and again than to accept the answers that seem to arise.

Which is the true representation of God, the “meek and mild” Creator who made the lamb or the conscious artisan who crafted the fierce and predatory tiger? Neither is complete or, by itself, an accurate depiction of God, for God is not what he appears to human beings, either as they envision him through childhood’s innocence or adulthood’s experience. He is, instead, both/and and neither/nor. However, the recognition of such complexity, which arises from the mental, emotional, and spiritual shock, of an awareness of the conflicting polarities, or contraries, within one’s own view of nature and God, may be the beginning of a wisdom that knows, at least, what God is not.

By accepting these antitheses, the opposites themselves are not reconciled, but the whole idea that they must be reconciled is transcended in the acceptance of a transcendent God who is beyond innocence and experience and beyond all other polarities that mark the boundaries of human understanding. Thus, contraries make progress in understanding oneself, one’s world, and one’s place in one’s world possible.

Horror Story Survival Tactics

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

One would suppose that, to a demon that has taken up residence in the corpse of a recently deceased man or woman and has a penchant both for sucking the blood of the living and transforming as many of them into fellow vampires as possible, a clove of garlic would be the least of its concerns. Such is not the case. To vampires, as such bloodsuckers are more commonly known--to devotees of horror, if no one else--a bit of garlic is itself a horror, ranking with the cross of Christ or holy water, to be avoided at all costs. Sure, garlic, after it’s eaten, can be pretty funky, but, then again, so can a body that’s been buried for a few days, especially when, as during the days of Dracula, the deceased wasn’t extended the courtesy of having been embalmed first. Nevertheless, it seems that it was the vampire’s fear of the stench that led to garlic’s use as a means among the living to ward off the unwelcome advances of the undead. According to “Garlic and Vampires”:

Garlic has been used in Romania for centuries to ward off evil. In Romania, garlic is a weapon of choice against vampires. Romanians used to make certain that they ate some garlic every day for their personal protection. . . . They also smeared garlic on the windows. . . [and the] doors of their houses, on the gates to their farmyards, and even on the horns of their cattle. They believed that the undead had a great fear of garlic. . . . The stuff tastes divine but smells awful! In Romania if a corpse was thought to be in danger of becoming a vampire, one of the most common [means of] protection was stuffing some pieces of garlic into the orifices of the corpse, especially the mouth. This was done in order to prevent evil spirits from entering the dead body. . . . Another interesting vampire practice is smearing the corpse with a mixture of oil, fat, incense, gunpowder and--of course--garlic. That was probably a pretty good embalming method.

Garlic was also used, according to “Vampires and Werewolves,” as a means of identifying suspected vampires:

People would hang it outside their doorways to keep evil spirits from entering their homes. The ancient societies got a little carried away with garlic[,] condemning anyone who had an aversion to garlic as a vampire. Garlic was also passed out during church ceremonies so that church official could be sure that no evil spirits were attending.

For demon-possessed cadavers, vampires are, in many ways, a rather timid lot, fearing not only garlic but also sunlight, fire, crucifixes, holy water, and mirrors.


“Vampires and Werewolves” points out that vampires’ alleged fear of ultraviolet radiation is a recent addition to the lore concerning these creatures of the night, as is the idea itself that vampires, like werewolves, are necessarily nocturnal:

It's believed that sunlight will destroy vampires. It burns and scares [sic; no doubt, the writer means “scars“] their flesh. If they stay in the light long enough it will burn them completely to ashes. This is not a traditional belief of early cultures. This belief that sunlight kills vampires caught on less than sixty years ago in pop culture and movies and has since become a standard way of destroying a vampire. In traditional times vampires could come out in the sunlight without fear of being harmed by the light itself. However, their powers would be severely weakened in the daytime hours so most vampires probably wouldn't risk being exposed in the day. Smart vampires would stay hidden and sleep until nightfall when they would have all their supernatural powers at their disposal.

It seems that vampires fear the Roman Catholic, rather than the Protestant, idea of God, for they are frightened by the crucifix, not the cross--but only if, as humans, they were God-fearing members of the Christian community; crucifixes didn’t faze Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim vampires, as “Vampires and Werewolves” makes clear:

A crucifix, not a cross! There is a difference. A crucifix has the likeness of Jesus Christ on it while the cross is just a cross. The power of the crucifix comes from the Christian religion and Jesus Christ's ability to combat and force out evil. Vampires are considered to be demonic agents. The crucifix will only have power over evil if you believe in its power. If you don't believe in the power of the Christian faith then the crucifix will have little use.

It’s pretty obvious as to why vampires fear fire. It burns. Apparently, they fear holy water for the same reason; blessed by a clergyman, it has the same effect upon vampire flesh as acid has upon human skin. As “Vampires and Werewolves” observes, wine can have the same effect as holy water upon vampire epidermises, since wine symbolizes Christ’s blood.



If sunlight, fire, crucifixes, holy water, or mirrors happen to be unavailable, one can slow down a vampire by throwing seeds at it or a rope tied with a lot of knots, preferably in a variety of styles:

Vampires are said to have personality defects that most of us regular mortals would consider odd or even crazy. Vampires are known to have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). OCD is a neurobiological disorder where the affected have recurrent, intrusive thoughts, impulses, and obsessions of repetitive behaviors and mental acts.

Common symptoms of vampire OCD include bizarre checking and counting rituals. For example, a traditional method of escaping from a vampire was to throw down a handful of seeds. The vampire is powerless against its obsession to stop, pick up and count every single seed that was thrown down before doing anything else. An ancient method of stopping a vampire involved filling up its coffin with seeds. The vampire would never be able to escape from it's own impulses [to]. . . check and [count]
. . . the seeds.

Vampires also have [to] . . . [untie] every single knot that they come across. If you were to tie one thousand knots on one thousand strings a vampire would have to stop and untie all one thousand knots. It's sounds crazy to many people, but OCD is a real disorder that affects millions of people and vampires all over the world (“Vampires and Werewolves”).

Although authorities disagree, some claim that vampires also fear looking-glasses, because of a phobic dread of mirrors. As “Holiday Insights: Halloween Vampires” observes, “the phobia is known as eisoptrophobia.” Perhaps it springs from the fact that vampires have no reflections and they would give themselves away if they stood before a mirror.

Since the protagonist (or any other character) in a horror story might be accosted by a vampire, a werewolf, or some other sort of monster at any time, it is better to be safe than sorry. A little research could save one’s life, as Rupert Giles, mentor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, often reminded his protégé, albeit to little or no avail (Buffy was killed--three times--after all.)

Most of us know that werewolves can be killed by a silver bullet, so it’s doubtful that the Lone Ranger and his trusty sidekick Tonto had much to fear from wolfmen. Perhaps that’s the real reason that the Indian brave followed the masked man around; maybe the Wild West was wilder than we realize, with hirsute werefolk running around the plains and prairies. With regard to werewolves, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, to be sure, and, fortunately, as “Vampires and Werewolves” points out, there are a number of signs by which one can identify these beastly beasties, including “pale skin,” “excessive thirst,” “howling until dawn,” “obsession with walking in cemeteries,” “excessive hair,” “unpleasant odors,” “skin that gradually changes color,” and “the mark of the werewolf,” which is “the pentagram, a five[-]pointed star and magical symbol. . . found somewhere on the werewolf. . . . usually found on the chest or hand (palm) of the werewolf.”

We’ve given you the dirt, so to speak, on vampires and werewolves. There are many other otherworldly, paranormal, and supernatural monsters abroad in horror fiction, many as bad, of not worse, than one’s mother-in-law, as hard as that may be to believe, so a textbook or two in the subject of how to survive these threats might be a good investment. One such book is How To Survive A Horror Movie: All the Skills to Dodge the Kills, which offers such tips as:

1. Don’t consume recreational drugs.
2. Never say “I’ll be right back”; if you do, you won’t.
3. Turn on the lights upon entering a room.
4. Avoid reciting spells concerning the invocation or summoning of demons.
5. Never go into an attic or a basement, especially alone.
6. Check your back seat before getting into your automobile.
7. Be prepared to kill your cat.
8. Flee from mad serial killers (or any other kind) by exiting the house, not by dashing upstairs or into the interior of the house.
9. Never separate; the monster knows the strategy of divide and conquer.
10. The monster is never dead, not even after it’s been decapitated, crushed, shot, stabbed, and strangled, so don’t check to see if it is.

The Vagabond Menace

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The Ancient Mariner relates his tale to the Wedding Guest.

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the character of the same name is presented as a world-weary old man who has the uncanny, perhaps supernatural, ability to hypnotize his listeners, to whom, as an act of penance demanded by a deity, he must recount the cautionary tale of what befell him and his fellow sailors after he shot and killed an albatross for no reason. Many critics consider the bird to represent a symbol of God’s grace, making the ancient mariner’s act similar to the crucifixion of Christ and the mariner’s fate like that of the proverbial, anti-Semitic Wandering Jew, who was punished, as the story goes, for having mocked Jesus as he was hanging upon the cross by having to wander the earth until Christ’s second advent.

This type of character, the vagabond menace, although not necessarily common in horror fiction, has appeared in several stories of this genre. Often a male, this character has no home of his own. Instead, he travels from place to place, under an assumed name, causing havoc and misery (or, less often, averting the same), sometimes as a result of a curse (or as the result of having been assigned a mission). He is not the same as another type of itinerant character, the herald, for he does not go before another, greater character, announcing or otherwise preparing the latter’s way, as, for instance, the Silver Surfer scouts planets for his master, Galactus, to consume. Many times something of a trickster, the vagabond menace almost always has specialized, usually occult, knowledge or wisdom, which he uses to effect his covert plans or, less often, enlighten or rescue others, saving them from the same or a similar doom as that which has befallen them. He may be a force of good, but, more frequently, he is an agent of evil. He may represent a higher power, but he often acts merely in his own interest, according to his own plans, which usually remain unshared until the end of the story if they are revealed at all, although the reader may surmise the motives for the vagabond menace’s actions from clues provided by the writer.

For example, he appears as a houseguest in W. W. Jacobs’ short story “The Monkey’s Paw.” In this tale, he is a traveler who has come to visit parents who have recently lost their son Herbert. He has with him the monkey’s paw of the story’s title, a talisman, or charm, that grants its user three magic wishes.

The wise (or at least knowledgeable) traveler also appears in Stephen King’s novel Needful Things as a shopkeeper who offers customer’s their hearts’ desires--in exchange, if not for their souls, a steep spiritual price that involves both sin and cruelty to their fellow townspeople. That this stranger may be the devil himself is hinted at rather strongly by his past and present, especially his ability to perform supernatural feats. Of course, he is also a wedge between the residents of Castle Rock, Maine, where, in the novel, he most recently sets up shop.

Another King story, Storm of the Century, features a villain of supernatural powers who, again, it is hinted, may be something on the order of a demon, who, getting along in years, visits the island town in search of a protégé who can, when properly trained, take his place.

The vagabond menace also makes an appearance in Shirley Jackson's quirky short story "An Ordinary Day, With Peanuts." This character goes about her day creating as much havoc as possible in as many individuals' lives as she can. At the same time, her husband does the opposite, playing, as it were, the angel to his wife's demon. They discuss their respective days when they get home, and the husband reminds his wife that, the next day, it's his turn to play the loving, caring role and hers to play that of the hateful, malevolent part. (Or maybe it's the opposite; it's been some time since I've had the pleasure of reading this clever tale, and it's not easily found, but the point is that the spouses switch roles, alternately playing the angel and the demon every other day.)

Even Mark Twain makes use of a vagabond menace in his short story “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” a tale that has suspiciously strong similarities to King’s Needful Things. In Twain’s story, the vagabond menace is a stranger who, in passing through Hadleyburg, which has a reputation as an “incorruptible town,” is offended by the deeds of one of its residents. To avenge himself, he offers a bag of gold worth $40,000 to the person who gave him $20 in a time of need and some invaluable advice. To claim the gold, one need only to submit, in writing, to Hadleyburg’s Reverend Burgess, the advice that he or she offered to the traveler. Unknown to the others, each and every resident receives an anonymous note from the stranger that reveals the advice that he was given, and they all submit the same remark to the minister, thereby claiming to be the rightful claimant of the stranger‘s reward. They all run up enormous debts, buying merchandise on credit, knowing that they can easily repay the debts once they have been awarded the gold.

At a public meeting, the townspeople are shamed when Burgess, reading the submitted slips of paper, reveals that all the residents of Hadleyburg have submitted the same bit of advice, but that none of them has submitted the entire statement that the stranger says he was told. They have submitted only the first half: “You are far from being a bad man--go, and reform.” The complete statement is “You are far from being a bad man--go, and reform--or, mark my words--some day, for your sins you will die and go to hell or Hadleyburg--try and make it the former.” Finally, another note in the sack of gold is opened and read. It offers some advice of the stranger’s own to the townspeople whom he has duped and humiliated. They should not be so quick to claim incorruptibility, he suggests, because it is easy to do so when one’s virtue has gone untested. The gold turns out to be lead.

One couple, the Richardses, submitted the same note as all the others in Hadleyburg, but theirs is never read, and they receive the money that the sale of the sack of lead earns at an auction, but they are unable to enjoy their newfound wealth, as they live in constant fear that their duplicity will be revealed. However, their note is never read aloud, the stranger claiming to have prevented this occurrence in honor of a favor the couple did for him long ago. Before the old couple die, Mr. Richards confesses their guilt in hiding the secret that they, too, like all the other residents of their town, lied as to their advice to the stranger. They never gave him any advice or money, but merely wrote the same statement on the slip of paper they submitted in claim of the gold as everyone else had done. Twain ends his tale with the ironic statement, “It is an honest town once more, and the man will have to rise early that catches it napping again.”

The prototypical vagabond menace is Satan himself, the slanderer who appears before God, arriving from his wanderings in the earth, to accuse Job of false piety and devotion to God and afflicts God’s “good and faithful servant, Job” with a series of distressing conditions, including the loss of servants, livestock, and offspring and painful boils all over his body:

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.

And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down
in it.

And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?

Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?

Hast not thou made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.

But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face (Job 1: 6-11).

A Dictionary of the Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Otherworldly (V - Z)

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Note: Unless otherwise noted, definitions are courtesy of dictionary.die.net, an Internet dictionary in the public domain.

V

Vampire--a corpse that rises at night to drink the blood of the living.

Vanishing--the sudden disappearance of an object that may or may not reappear or be seen again; many such vanishings are said to have occurred in the so-called Devil’s, or Bermuda, Triangle; see “Bermuda Triangle” and “Saladin balloon” (the author).

Veronica cloth

Veronica cloth, miraculous image of Christ on--veils or other cloths upon which the image of Christ’s face appears or is a part, as a result of a miracle; see “holy relic”) (the author).

Victor, wild boy of Aveyron-- “a boy who apparently lived his entire childhood alone in the woods before being found wandering the woods near Saint Sernin sur Rance, France (near Toulouse) in 1797” (Wikipedia); see “feral children.”

Virgin Mary--the mother of Jesus Christ; according to the gospels, she conceived as a virgin, impregnated by God, and bore and delivered his son, the founder of Christianity, in which religion he is considered “the only begotten son of God”; see “Fatima, Virgin Mary appears at” (the author).

Vitalism--a doctrine that life is a vital principle distinct from physics and chemistry.

Voodoo--a religious cult practiced chiefly in Caribbean countries (especially Haiti); involves witchcraft and animistic deities.

W

Wandering Jew (by Gustave Dore)

Wandering Jew--according to legend, a Jew who was cursed to wander the earth forever because he taunted Jesus on the way to his crucifixion (the author).

Warlock--a male witch or demon.

Wells, H. G.--science fiction author (see his story in the column to the right) (the author).

Werewolf--a monster able to change appearance from human to wolf.

Witch--a female sorcerer or magician.

Wizard--one who practices magic or sorcery.

X

Xenophobia--an irrational fear of strangers (the author).

Y

Ying-yang

Ying-yang--a Chinese symbol of opposites united or reconciled (the author).

Z

Zen Buddhism-- “school of Mahayana Buddhism that asserts that enlightenment can be attained through meditation, self-contemplation, and intuition rather than through faith and devotion and that is practiced mainly in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. (Answers.com).

Zombies

Zombie--a dead body that has been brought back to life by a supernatural force; a spirit or supernatural force that reanimates a dead body; god of voodoo cults of African origin worshipped especially in West Indies; someone who acts or responds in a mechanical or apathetic way.

Zombie, philosophical--a a human body without consciousness which would nevertheless behave like a human body with consciousness (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

A Note on the Dictionary Entries

Many short stories, novels, epic poems, television series, and motion pictures that involve elements of Gothic romance or horror are based, in part or in full, upon the concepts, beliefs, theories, legends, or folklore mentioned in the definitions of the terms in this blog’s “Dictionary of the Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Otherworldly.” Here is a sample:

Ad hoc analysis: many stories, in print and on film, make use of the ad hoc hypothesis as a means of explaining, explaining away, or diverting attention from the cause of the bizarre series of incidents that have been taking place of late.

Aliens populate many stories, including H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and countless movies, from Invaders from Mars to Alien and Independence Day.

Dracula nearly always wears an amulet.

The Argo and its crew, the Argonauts, appear in several movies of the 1950’s, including Jason and the Argonauts.

Stephen King alludes to auras throughout Insomnia.

Willow Rosenberg channels spirits in several Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes, as do several of the series’ characters in “Conversations with Dead People.”

Close Encounters of the Third Kind occur in the movie of that title and in many others in which human characters encounter extraterrestrial aliens.

Crop circles occur in Signs.

In Stephen King’s Children of the Corn and other films and stories, cults are central to the plot.

Curses are featured in many films, one of which is Curse of the Mummy.

Buffy Summers has a déjà vu experience in “Becoming, Part I.”

Demons appear in countless stories, in print and on film, including, perhaps mist notably, in William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist and the movie based upon it.

Dinosaurs still walk the earth (or part of it) in such films as The Lost World, King Kong, One Million Years B. C., and plenty of others, and they’re brought back in Jurassic Park.

Stephen King’s novel, Desperation, includes an encounter with the divine, as do many other horror stories, such as Bentley Little's novels, University and Revelation.

Prophetic dreams are plot elements in a number of horror stories, including Nightmare on Elm Street.

The protagonist of the film 1408, based upon Stephen King’s short story by the same title, has evidence of the haunting he experienced in the tape-recorded voice of his deceased daughter, an example of electronic voice phenomena.

Poltergeists appear in Poltergeist and many other movies and in some novels.

What would The Exorcist be without demonic possession and exorcism?

Feral children are the adversaries in Cat People and other films, and, one might argue, appear, in a sense, in H. G. Wells’ novel, The Island of Dr, Moreau.

The theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung inform virtually every horror story every written, but are especially discernable in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Ghosts are plentiful in the fiction of horror, appearing in a myriad stories, not the least of which by any means is Henry James’ classic, The Turn of the Screw.

Hallucinations appear frequently as ad hoc hypotheses to account for the mysterious doings that characters perform and the bizarre beliefs they hold.

Without hell, Dante couldn’t have written The Inferno any more than John Milton could have penned Paradise Lost.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel is about a lamia.

Lycanthropy and full moons underlie every story ever written or filmed in which a werewolf appears, from The Wolfman and I Was a Teenage Werewolf to The Howling and An American Werewolf in London.

It’s largely thanks to lucid dreaming that Nancy is able to confront Freddie Kreuger in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Logical positivism, as a convenient ad hoc hypothesis, underlies the initial rejection of supernatural realities in movies such as The Exorcist and countless other movies that include demons, vampires, and other things that go bump in the night.

A fungus, delivered courtesy of a meteorite, is the death of the character in the “The Lonesome Death Of Jordy Verril” segment of Stephen King’s Creepshow.

Numerology is at the heart of the psychological thriller, The Number 23.

Ouija Board is about, well, a Ouija board. So is Ouija.

Psychics appear in Poltergeist, Rose Red, The Psychic, The Shining, and many other horror stories, in print and on film.

Repressed memories are vital to The Turn of the Screw and the movie, The Innocents, based upon the Henry James ghost story.

Urban Legends is based upon urban legends.

Mummies, trances, vampires, voodoo, witches, and zombies are in movie after movie and book upon book, including The Mummy, Trance, Dracula, Burn, Witch, Burn!, and Night of the Living Dead.

Sources

The following sources were used in compiling this dictionary:

About.com

American Heritage Dictionary

Charles Fort Files, The

Dictionary.die.net
Famous Scientologists (Church of Scientology)

Skeptic’s Dictionary, The
Wikipedia

Note: Unless otherwise noted, definitions are courtesy of dictionary.die.net, an Internet dictionary in the public domain.

The Appeal of the Esoteric

Copyright 2008 by Gray L. Pullman

Your fingers weave quick minarets,
Speaking secret alphabets

--Doors, “Ship of Fools”

Everyone likes secrets. We all want to know them, harbor them, divulge them. Secrets make us powerful. They put us, and not others, “in the know.” They generate curiosity, envy, fear, and a host of other, not always subtle or decent, emotions. They also make us holy, in the literal sense of the word, which is “set apart.” Secrets set us apart from others. Secrets make us stand out. They make us special, in our own minds if not in the minds of others. This is the appeal of the esoteric--or part of it.

But in horror fiction, the esoteric takes on another dimension as well. In horror fiction, the esoteric is dangerous. It threatens. It could harm or even kill. It is, therefore, in some sense, evil. The esoteric is blasphemous or heretical or treasonous, and it--and its devotees--must be put down, must be put to the stake, if necessary; they must be crushed that we may stand; they must be slain that we may live. The esoteric separates those who know, the initiates and the masters or adepts, from those who want to know, the uninitiated, the ignorant, the unenlightened.

The esoteric has been with us always. In Judaism, the Cabbalists claimed secret knowledge. They alone, they said, understood the true, the mystical, the actual meanings of the Hebrew scriptures. In Christianity, mystics and others also claimed to know what others of the faith did not know. The Gnostics crippled, and nearly killed, the early church by insisting that only they knew the secrets of the Gospels and, therefore, how to be saved from death and damnation. Even Jesus, in the Gospels, says that the knowledge of some scriptures are hidden and may be revealed only to those he elects to know and understand them. Some have ears, but they may not hear, and some have eyes but they may not see.

Throughout the Middle Ages, secret societies organized around esoteric doctrines and texts; many, perhaps in altered forms, are with us still: the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Although many may laugh at the absurdity of such secret orders, others are curious about them, or envy their members, or are afraid of them. They fear their secret alphabets, their hidden texts, their clandestine meetings, their strange symbols and rites and rituals. In many cases, outsiders, peering in, see Satan in their midst and conclude that these cults are composed of devil worshipers.

When one examines many of the esoteric texts of secret societies, one finds not so much doctrines to fear as teachings that amuse. It is difficult to read many of these sects’ secret writings without smiling or even laughing out loud. For example, “The Esoteric Philosophy Homepage” offers its visitors a perplexing welter of strange ideas, half-baked notions, and assorted trivia, perhaps with a few lotions and potions thrown into the pot--or cauldron--for good measure, offering tips on such seemingly profound matters as:

• “Esotericism: Energy in the Universe” (something conventional physicists will want to read, no doubt)
• “The Nature of Consciousness” (answers to age-old questions about which psychologists admit continued confusion)
• “Education in the New Age” (for staid professors, perhaps, who still labor under the influences of Benjamin Bloom, John Dewey, and their ilk)
• “Esoteric Healing” (for physicians who’ve yet to heal themselves)
• “Esoteric Laws” (for lawyers to argue about)
• “The Process of Evolution” (for neo-Darwinists)
• “The Nature of Illusion” (for the David Copperfields among us)
• “Reincarnation, Karma, and Past Lives” (written, perhaps, by Shirley McLaine)
• “The Christ and the Buddha” (for two-thirds or so of the planet’s faithful)--

and dozens of more articles concerning claptrap and nonsense. The site truly offers something for everyone--and that, it seems, is another appeal of the esoteric. It’s all things to all people. As the Freemasons say, one’s faith doesn’t really matter among lodge members; anyone of any religious background, or none, may be a member of the Craft. The esoteric is something like the child (or puppet) in the Pinocchio song:

When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do

Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing

Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true

However, such fulfillment is available only to the members of the cult, the sect, the inner circle, the secret society. To others--namely, the world at large--the opposite conditions apply: ignorance, disappointment, failure, despair, death, and destruction.

As one might suspect, horror fiction makes good use of secret societies.

A hooded figure scurrying about dark, subterranean chambers among shifting shadows in pursuit of God-only-knows-what are frightening because, well, they’re nameless, they’re faceless, and theyre hip to God-only-knows-what dark secrets and may, who knows?, be hell-bent on taking over the world. Often, their haunts are the dungeons of medieval castles, catacombs, caverns by the sea, or mountaintop retreats, protected and remote, situated, at times, upon unhallowed ground whereupon even angels fear to tread.

In most cases, cults, sects, and secret societies don’t really threaten society (as far as we know, anyway) (although Germany has outlawed Scientology), but, occasionally, as in the cases of the Jim Jones mass suicide at Jonestown, Ghana, the FBI’s murder of the Branch Davidians in the massacre at Waco, Texas, and the Heaven’s Gate members’ mass suicide in San Diego, California, such secret orders do do harm, albeit mostly to themselves--to date, at least. They have proven that they can be dangerous, even deadly. By not being open about who they are, what they believe, and what they are about, secret societies perpetuate the mystique that makes them feel special and unique, a self-appointed elect.

As long as the devotees of such organizations skulk about among rats and bats and cats, or whatever it is that they do skulk about among (the imagination is one’s only limit when one considers secret societies and their doings), they will appeal to outsiders and to horror fiction, which, more often than not, is concerned with the plight or the perspective, or both, of the outsider. Their mystery is their appeal, and their secrecy makes them mysterious. They have a secret, and they won’t tell. We want to know what they know, to know their secrets. It’s as simple, and complex, as that.

A History of Hell, Part III

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In their exhaustive survey of human civilization, historian Will Durant and his wife Ariel introduce many topics, including some that touch upon matters of interest to the writer of horror fiction, such as hell. This post provides a brief summary of the points that Will Durant (not yet joined in his venture by his wife) makes concerning this rather otherworldly theme in Volume IV, The Age of Faith, of The Story of Civilization:

• Al Ghazali claimed that theists considered heaven and hell to be “spiritual conditions only,” rather than actual places.
• The Sufi Moslems held that hell is but temporary and that, ultimately, salvation is universal.
• Arab descriptions served as part of the basis for Dante’s vision of hell in The Divine Comedy.
• For their inspiration for hell, the Hebrews referred to He Hinnom or Sheol, a valley in which rubbish heaps were continuously ablaze to prevent the spread of disease. Sheol, Durant observes, “was conceived of as a subterranean region of darkness that received all the dead.” The Hebrew hell consisted of seven stories , “with graduated degrees of torment.” It was a place of temporary torment for all but adulterers, those who shamed others publicly, and those who slandered or libeled others.
• Irishman Johannes Scotus Eringena believed that heaven and hell were spiritual conditions, not physical locations.
• Pope Gregory the Great held that hell is a physical place, wherein fire eternally burns the damned, tormenting them without destroying them; their suffering is increased, he maintained, by their being made to witness the torment of any of their loved ones who have also been damned and by their despair at ever being liberated or delivered from their suffering.
• Durant says that medieval Catholic men and women “hoped vaguely for heaven, but vividly feared hell.” The Bulgarian king, Boris, was converted, it is said, by seeing a mural of hell that an artist painted upon his palace wall. Mystics claimed to have visions in which they saw the “geography of hell.” Satan, chained upon “a burning gridiron,” was alleged to snatch suffering sinners and crush them in his teeth, swallowing “them down his burning throat,” as “assistant demons with hooks of iron plunged the damned alternately into fire or icy water, or hung them up by the tongue, or sliced them with a saw, or beat them flat on an anvil, or boiled them or strained them through a cloth.” A sumptuous stench permeated the damned and their environs, and the flames gave no light, the darkness adding to the terror and the suffering of the damned. Christ was feared in his aspect of the judge of the living and the dead, for he could send or deliver the souls of the dead to eternal bliss or to everlasting damnation. “The devil,” Durant points out, “was no figure of speech but a life and blood reality, prowling about everywhere, suggesting temptations and creating all kinds of evil.” He was also quite the ladies’ man, fathering monstrous children, one of whom is alleged to have had “a wolf’s head and a scorpion’s tail.” His many assistants also tempted people and liked to lie with women as incubi, or sex demons. Although the people feared the greater demons, “a saving sense of humor saved this demonology, and most healthy males looked upon the little devils rather as poltergeist mischief-makers than as objects of terror,” and one exhausted demon, resting “on a head of lettuce. . . was inadvertently eaten by a nun.” Limbo was introduced as the abode of the unapprised infant, although St. Augustine had believed that they also went to hell. There was debate as to whether more souls would be saved and go to heaven or more souls would be damned and go to hell, and Moslems believed most Christians would go to hell, while Christians believed the opposite. No soul could be saved, the Roman Catholic Church contended, except through itself. Volcanoes were assumed to be “the mouths of hell,” and “their rumbling was a faint echo of the moans of the damned.” According to Pope Gregory, “the crater of Etna was daily widening to receive the enormous number of souls that were fated to be damned.” Pope Gregory IX held as heretical Raymond Lully’s assertion that the greatness of Christ’s love ensured the salvation, rather than the damnation, of the vast majority of souls. “The last moment of life” was considered to be “decisive for all eternity,” which added to the terror of life that many felt. Purgatory offered slight hope to the living. According to a legend, St. Patrick had a great pit dug, into which monks descended; “some returned. . . And described purgatory and hell with discouraging vividness.” Many other travelogues of hell also existed. As Durant notes, “Apocalyptic literature describing tours or visions of heaven or hell abounded in Judaism and Christianity,” and priests, such as Peter Damian, delivered “fiery sermons on the pains of hell.” Nevertheless, some challenged these doctrines of the faith--and, indeed, the faith itself, asking, for example, why God should have created the devil if he’d known in advance that the devil would sin and fall, whether a just and loving God could “punish finite sin with infinite pain,” and whether hell-fire would not at some point render the damned insensitive to its pain.
• The doctrine of original sin was a theological attempt to account for “the biological theory of primitive instincts” and “the preaching of this doctrine” led to a diminishing of the “fear of hell. . . till the Reformation,” when it was “to reappear with fresh terror among the Puritans.”
• St. Anselm said that only the “infinite atonement” of Christ could atone for the “infinite offense” of Adam and Eve, their sin being “infinite” because it had been directed “against an infinite being,” God. Therefore, only “the death of God become man could ransom humanity from Satan and hell. . . . and restore the moral balance of the world.”
• For medieval people, “the earth was the chosen home of Christ, and the shell of hell, and weather was the whim of God.”
• Roger Bacon endorsed the study and use of mathematics because this subject “should aid us in ascertaining the position of paradise and hell.”
• Dante used many Arab sources as inspirations for his descriptions of hell, including the Koran, “the story of Mohammed’s trip to heaven and hell in Abu-l-Ala a;-Ma’arri’s Irisalat al-Ghufran. . . . and Ibn Arabi’s Futubat.
• The hell of Dante’s Inferno is entered through an opening in the earth near a forest. The opening leads to the gates of hell, where an inscription reads, in part, “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” In the poem, “hell is a subterranean funnel, reaching down to the center of the earth,” imagined by the poet as featuring “dark and frightening abysses between gigantic murky rocks; steaming, stinking marshes, torrents, lakes, and streams; storms of rain, snow, hail, and brands of fire; howling winds and petrifying cold; tortured bodies, grimacing faces, blood-stilling shrieks and groans.” The funnel leads through nine levels. Nearer the surface, the lesser sinners reside, whereas the greater sinners dwell at the lower levels. At the lowest level, the ninth circle of hell, traitors are housed, and, at the lowest of all points, “Lucifer lies buried to the waist in ice, flapping enormous wings from his shoulders, weeping icy tears of blood from the three faces that divide his head, and chewing a traitors in each of three jaws--Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.” Dante included actual people among the damned, including, in addition to popes. His Divine Comedy also describes purgatory and heaven, or paradise.

What can we learn from this part of the survey of the ideas of the afterlife and the underworlds? Many sources have formed the idea of hell, including mythological, pagan, Jewish, and Christian ones.

For the first time, the idea is formed that hell may signify a spiritual condition, rather than a literal place. Theology seems to be losing out to psychology as an explanation of human behavior.

The idea that hell is permanent and eternal rubs some the wrong way, and the doctrine of universal salvation appears, both in Moslem and Christian faith, only to be condemned in Roman Catholicism as heretical. However, Limbo is allowed for unapprised infants, to spare their innocent souls from hell. For those who maintain faith in the existence of an actual, physical hell, the torment of the damned becomes more extreme, the imagination supplying many details as to the nature and effects of the suffering that the lost souls must endure there, forever, as if the catalogue of horrors somehow ensures their reality and, therefore, the reality of the hell in which they occur.

Many write of their supposed journeys to heaven and hell, as if they are reporting trips to foreign lands. Locating heaven and hell becomes a motive for the study of science and mathematics.

Satan and the lesser demons are believed to be incarnate and to be able, in fact, to have sexual relations with women, as incubi (and with men, as succubi). Lesser demons are considered mischievous rather than malignant.

Churchmen argue whether more souls will be saved or damned, with more supporting the latter over the former view.

Dante’s Inferno, borrowing from many earlier sources, Christian and otherwise, offers the most detailed geography of hell, populating it with both imaginary and actual historical figures, including popes, suggesting that hell is a real place to which anyone, including leaders of the church itself, may be tormented in a variety of real and agonizing ways.

Today, the imagining of hell continues in sermons and in books written by people who claim to have undergone near-death experiences, and the debate continues as well as to whether a literal hell exists or, whether, for that matter, literal demons live and stalk the earth.

Those who appear as damned in literary texts represent the values of the society or the poet or other writer in whose work the damned appear, for the values of the lost souls are the values that are rejected by these creators of hell. Therefore, hell can be thought of, in the Jungian sense, as representing a psychic reservoir, akin to the universal mind, in which humanity’s collective shadow archetype lives, in bits and pieces, disguised as this or that individual or type of person. For example, in Dante’s hell, from least (closest to the surface) to the greatest (farthest down), these are the damned; whose values represent the opposites of those embraced by the poet himself:

1. Unbaptized infants
2. Lustful
3. Gluttonous
4. Greedy and wasteful
5. Wrathful and sullen
6. Heretical
7. Violent
8. Fraudulent
9. Treacherous

Plus, did anyone notice the historical references to "mouths of hell"? Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, apparently did, because at least two are mentioned in his television series, one of which was located beneath the Sunnydale High School library (or, in the high school later built on the same site, the principal's office)!