![\"lunar](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/lunar-eclipse-300x225.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1\")
<\/span><\/strong>\u201cThings need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman- Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country <\/em><\/p>\nA faery moon rises over the\u00a0 San Francisco Bay and I am wandering through our house after the Lost Chord Awards concert contemplating the dark sky. On January 23\u00a0 music and tales of another realm filled the historic Haver Hall at Northbrae Community Church as the Society for Ritual Arts and Coreopsis Journal<\/em> presented the inaugural Lost Chord Award. It was a \u201ccoming out\u201d party for the Society for Ritual Arts wherein we presented ritual art in a ritual context: the\u00a0 four winds were called, tales unfolded and music played. Within this issue are to be found windows into that night\u2019s magic: The King of the Faeries, a Wizard, Writer of Renown, a bard, a shaman, a harper and a band of – possibly\u00a0 dangerous – musicians opened the doors and we entered.\u00a0 Please join us at \u201cCoreopsis Central\u201d in supporting this year\u2019s Awardees on their journey here:\u00a0Portals Project<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Faery Dreams\u2026 and Dreaming of Faery<\/strong><\/p>\n This issue is about dreams. Dreams that take us into other realms. Dreams of fancy, dreams that inspires, dreams that stay with us with troubling visions.\u00a0 From Arthur Rackham\u2019s evocations of an other-world of grinning trees and winged fae to the shamanic-inspired images of Christina Pateros.<\/p>\n In ragged deep of an El Nino winter, the full moon rises and I think of faery.<\/p>\n A certain breed of faery haunts the alleys and byways this time of year.\u00a0 Several years ago I did some research into the darker \u201cLadies of Faery\u201d for the The Internet Review of Science Fiction.<\/u>\u00a0 I present it once again here, for your inspiration\u2026 and dreams.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n By Lezlie Kinyon, Ph.D.<\/p>\n Published: <\/u>March 2005: Ladies of the Darkness, Trows, Rusalki, Vampires, and White Ladies of Literature and Folklore <\/em>The Internet Review of Science Fiction.<\/u><\/p>\n The seminal Gothic novel featuring a woman vampire is Carmilla: A Vampyre [1]<\/sup><\/strong><\/sup><\/a><\/em> written in 1872 by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.\u00a0 It is an acknowledged influence upon both Stoker\u2019s Dracula<\/em> and that other, more recent, sojourner in faery<\/em>, W. B. Yeats, in his widely published \u201cOil and Blood\u201d from The Winding Stair<\/em>:<\/p>\n In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli<\/p>\n Bodies of holy men and women exude<\/p>\n Miraculous oil, odour of violet.<\/p>\n But under heavy loads of trampled clay<\/p>\n Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;<\/p>\n Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.\u00a0 <\/em>(1933)<\/p>\n Arguably, while Stoker\u2019s Dracula<\/em> is the literary prototype of modern male<\/em> vampires, Le Fanu\u2019s Carmilla: A Vampyre<\/em> remains the archetype women vampires.\u00a0 Like Dracula<\/em>,\u00a0 Carmilla<\/em> is a gothic fantasy with darkly erotic overtones.\u00a0 In his novel, Le Fanu\u2019s protagonist Laura, is corrupted by the ancient and mysterious Carmilla.\u00a0 For Le Fanu, Carmilla<\/em> is the contrast of pure innocence \u2013 Laura, the archetypal \u201cgood woman\u201d \u2013 with an exquisitely sexual but wholly depraved being, Carmilla.\u00a0 His classic novel provides the basis not only for a good vampire tale, but also for social criticism of a very high order.<\/p>\n In Stoker\u2019s novel Dracula,<\/em> the \u201cwhite ladies\u201d who torment Jonathan Harker with forbidden pleasures are also cannibals who devour the flesh of babies.\u00a0 Female vampires and their close relations bring sexual freedoms and depravity; they reverse the natural order by giving death where living women give life.\u00a0 Even the most casual encounter will result in hag-ridden nightmares and madness.<\/p>\n In the recent film Van Helsing<\/em> released by Universal Pictures and directed by Stephen Sommers, the image of the female vampiric creatures called \u201charpies\u201d is one of the most memorable moments in this Hollywood retelling of Dracula<\/em>.\u00a0 (Albeit, one that Bram Stoker certainly would not have recognized.)\u00a0 Stoker\u2019s novel has been the genesis of a good many films featuring vampires both male and female, wicked and tragic, over the past half-century since the classic Kinski silent film, Nosferatu<\/em>.\u00a0 While the case is made for Stoker\u2019s Dracula<\/em> as the prototype of all modern male vampires, the earlier figure created by John Polidori in The Vampyre <\/em>has precedence in presenting the aristocratic, mesmerizing, and ultimately tragic figure of the Hollywood vampire. Polidori\u2019s vampire was a literary revenge upon the romantic poet, George Gorden, Lord Byron, who later said, \u201cI have a personal dislike to Vampires, and the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce me to reveal their secrets.\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n But what of the ladies<\/em>?\u00a0 <\/em>Did the ghostly trows or the wicked Cailleac Bhuer<\/em> practice their mischief on our ancestors?\u00a0 There is a certain untamed quality about the female vampire and her close cousins that suggests such a connection, one that can be found by examining some of our ancestors’ stories and folk beliefs.<\/p>\n The end of October and beginning of November was once a time when the culling of the cattle took place.\u00a0 It is because this coincides with the annual rut in elk and deer, it was also a time when hunters entered the forest for wild game to supplement the winter larder with preserved meat.\u00a0 The custom of mincemeat [3]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> pie during the holidays is a holdover from the preservation of wild game in the days before grocery stores.<\/p>\n In some places, such as the midlands of England, a specific night is the official date of the Hunter\u2019s Moon, in 2004, it was October 24.\u00a0 Although any full moon on a clear night is a \u201chunter\u2019s moon\u201d, the late autumn full moon that rises red (particularly during a lunar eclipse) in late autumn can be referred to as hunter\u2019s moon, that is, a brightly lit night with excellent conditions for hunting wild game.\u00a0 The Hunter\u2019s Moon is the night when the full moon rises crimson on the horizon, and especially when the moon takes on the famous deep red of a full lunar eclipse.\u00a0 The blood red Hunters Moon is still revered with great caution in parts of the word.\u00a0 This is the night when ordinary folk stay indoors with the windows tightly bolted because the Wild Hunter or the Horned King and his Furious Horde go abroad.\u00a0 Sometimes the Wild Hunter is considered to be a Pagan deity, as in\u00a0 Scandinavia, where he is it is Odin, the Wild Huntsman, who rides the night sky with his Wild Hunt.\u00a0 In other places, such as Scotland and the Northern Isles, the participants of the Wild Hunt are denizens of fairy in the persons of the Unseelie Court or \u201cunholy\u201d court and the Wild Hunt is referred to as the \u201cFairy Raed\u201d.\u00a0 The Horn\u00e9d Man and the Queen of Air and Darkness preside over the Fairy Raed, and woe it is to he or she who meets them on the night of the Hunter\u2019s Moon!\u00a0 Made up of ghosts, corpses and dark fairy creatures and the vampire-like Cailleac Bhuer<\/em>, called equally the Blue Hag, White Anna or Black Annis and described in Robert Graves\u2019 poetical allegory, The White Goddess<\/em>, as a vampiric, bone-white creature who stole British children in medieval times and ate them.\u00a0 She rides with the dead and in Paris in 1092, was seen and recorded with the Faery Raed:<\/p>\n At other times, Black Annis lives in hillsides in the Scottish Highlands and has the appearance of a hideous hag dressed in rags and bones of her victims.<\/p>\n There is a chill wind blowing.\u00a0 Bolt your windows and bar the door, for Black Annis is about.\u00a0 This highly dangerous faery hag grabs children through open windows and takes them back to her lair to devour them.\u00a0 When horrid Black Annis is hungry, her howls can be heard for miles.\u00a0 (Froud, 1998)<\/p>\n There is a British hag, Annis, who lives in a cave in Leicestershire called Black Annis\u2019 Bower in the Dane Hills<\/a>.\u00a0 This area has been recently built over, but stories still circulate amongst the residents of Black Annis and her victims, whose screams, it is said, can be heard on stormy winter nights for miles around. [4]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 This fearsome creature came to the New World in tales of cannibalistic hags and haints<\/em> that haunt the lonely byways of Southern Appalachia, including that of the wicked boo-hag who combined elements of both African and British culture.\u00a0 On the Night of the Hunter\u2019s Moon, she rides abroad with the Wild Hunt, a fearsome sight, indeed!<\/p>\n In England it is Wotan, Herne, or the ancient Welsh deity, Gwynn ap Nudd who heads the Wilde Horde.\u00a0 In Ireland, it is the Aes Sidhe<\/em>, the hosts of the Sidhe, who ride \u201cabride\u201d on Samhain night, October 31, one of the four fire festivals of the Celts that has become \u2013 along with other influences \u2013 our modern Halloween.<\/p>\n By the time the Wild-hunt tradition became rooted in Britain it developed into an altogether more elaborate affair.\u00a0 Its leader became Gwynn ap Nudd, followed by his read-eared white hounds (the appearance of these \u201cGabriel Hounds\u201d became known as portents of doom).\u00a0 The tradition that the hunt was led by Herne the Hunter (another Wild Huntsman; hence the possible connection?) is common in Southern England where as I have mentioned it also became said to be led by Arthur.\u00a0 (Towrie, 2004)<\/p>\n The \u201chounds\u201d mentioned by Towrie above are not dogs or even wolves, but something far more sinister to the folk imagination:<\/p>\n The northern name Gabriel Hounds or Gabble Retchets (dogs) had nothing to do with the Angel Gabriel but contained an old word for \u2018corpse\u2019, explained by the traditions concerning them.\u00a0 Sometimes it is the Devil who leads them, hunting lost souls, while in Devon the hounds were themselves thought to be the souls of unbaptized children.\u00a0 According to Henderson, in the neighbourhood of Leeds the Gabble Retchets were likewise thought to be the souls of infants who had died before baptism, doomed forever to flit round their parents\u2019 homes.<\/p>\n These packs of spectral hounds with their huntsmen are manifestations of the Wild Hunt, which in Germany, too, included the souls of unbaptised babies in the train of \u2018Frau Bertha\u2019, who sometimes accompanied the Wild Huntsman, and which in the Franche Comte was believed to be King Herod pursuing the Holy Innocents.\u00a0 The Wild Huntsman everywhere was a demonic figure, who would throw unsuspecting peasants their share of \u2018game\u2019 with horrific consequences This savage and tricky being is generally thought to be an aspect of Woden, a god who was characterised by his duplicity, as in parts of Germany and Scandinavia the Wild Hunt was known as \u2018Woden\u2019s Hunt\u2019.\u00a0 (Boxell, 1985)<\/p>\n Today, we know that the red moon of the late autumn is caused by atmospheric conditions, such as smoke from forest fires, but the sight of the brilliant red moon rising over the dark horizon, as the smoke from burning fires rose on the autumn wind, would have awed our ancestors.<\/p>\n The Furious Horde also contained other ladies of the shadows: the trows of the Orkney Isles.\u00a0 As the winter began, death was \u201cin the air.\u201d\u00a0 Who could refuse a good scary story as night fell?\u00a0 It was believed, as reported by Shetland folklorist, Jessie Saxby, that the seven days before another fire festival, Yule, occurring on the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, were the nights when the dead returned.\u00a0 This was also when the \u00a0were free to leave their underground homes and harass anyone who left a window or shutter open.\u00a0 Counting backwards seven nights from winter solstice was Tulya\u2019s E\u2019en<\/em>, a particularly dangerous night for encountering trows.\u00a0 Trows are said to be able to pass for human, although some tales state that they are stunted and ugly.\u00a0 A trow could never venture into daylight, and the Orkney Isles are rife with precautions against their mischief.\u00a0 This \u201cmischief\u201d consisted of shape-changing, and luring fiddlers away into their mounds to play music for their endless athletic dancing.\u00a0 Trow magic causes madness, sickness (the \u201cwasting disease,\u201d tuberculosis, long associated with vampirism), and death in both cattle and humans.\u00a0 Trows also steal newborns and indulge in the troll-like practice of eating humans.<\/p>\n An Irish sidhe, the descendant of Jukel Frosti, a Viking elf, who has entered our modern seasonal folklore, is Jack Frost, whose kiss will either cause death or cause one to \u201clive forever\u201d. [5]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Yule\u2019s strong association with mischievous spirits stems from its origins as a feast for the dead.\u00a0 Much like the Celtic Samhain, Yule was a festival for honouring the ancestors who were thought to be vital for luck as well as the well-being of the livestock and family.\u00a0 Over time the memories of these powerful ancestral spirits, who were permitted out of their gravemounds into the land of the living at Yule, degenerated into the creatures we know as trows today.\u00a0 (Towrie, 2004)<\/p>\n This is a very different picture of Yule feasts than the decking of the hall with holly and ivy, Yule logs, feasting, dancing and storytelling.\u00a0 Yet, as we peer closer, we find the medieval tradition of telling \u201cghost stories\u201d on December 24 just before Christmas.<\/p>\n Let us begin with the flying vampiric creatures in Sommer\u2019s Van Helsing: Harpies<\/em> are not vampires.\u00a0 Harpies display vampiric behaviors; they are connected with the dead and the underworld and are known to eat the flesh of the living, and they fly.\u00a0 Half-bird and half-woman, the Harpies are folk memories of ancient deities who dispensed justice in Greece.\u00a0 Known as the \u201ckindly ones,\u201d they are also called the Furies, Erinyes <\/em>\u00a0or Eumenides<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>Three sisters, Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, were born from the blood of Uranus when he was castrated. They live in the anterooms Tartarus, the Underworld, as the invited guests of Hades, its king.\u00a0 The Erinyes are charged with inflicting a conscience upon mortals and to punish crimes outside the reach of ordinary men.\u00a0 They are particularly interested in matricide. Aeschylus\u2019 play Erinyes <\/em>or Eumenides <\/em>is the final piece of a group of tragedies concerning the House of Atreus and the sins of Agamemnon and his family.\u00a0 In the play, the Erinyes intervene in the case of Orestes, who kills his mother, Clytaemnestra, Vampires, the sort that Sommers was attempting to portray, began during a \u201cscare\u201d in Eastern Europe\u00a0 in East Prussia and the and in the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1721-1734.\u00a0 During this scare, people reported seeing their dead relations and being attacked by \u201ccannibalistic undead.\u201d\u00a0 Two famous cases of vampire attacks were documented at the time, those of Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole:<\/p>\n Plogojowitz died at the age of 62, but came back a couple of times after his death asking his son for food.\u00a0 When the son refused, he was found dead the next day.\u00a0 Soon Plogojowitz returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.<\/p>\n In the other famous case Arnold Paole, an ex-soldier turned farmer who had been attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying.\u00a0 After death people began to die and it was believed by everyone that Paole had returned to prey on the neighbours.<\/p>\n These two incidents were extremely well documented.\u00a0 Government officials examined the cases and the bodies, wrote them up in reports, and books were published afterwards of the Paole case and distributed around Europe.\u00a0 The controversy raged for a generation. \u00a0The problem was exacerbated by rural people having an epidemic of vampire attacks and digging up bodies all over the place. Many scholars said vampires didn’t exist; they attributed reports to premature burial, or rabies which causes thirst.\u00a0 (Richardson, n.d.)<\/p>\n After some investigation, the Empress Marie Theresa decreed that vampires did not exist and that graves of the dead were to be left undisturbed.\u00a0 This effectively ended the scare.<\/p>\n Another precursor of the female vampire can be found in medieval clerical lore of the succubus: a demon said to come to a man; especially those living under a vow of chastity; and give him dreams that would ensure \u201cnight emissions.\u201d\u00a0 The succubus would take these \u201cnight emissions\u201d and, with them, the life and health of the man.\u00a0 Succubi have no corporeal form, and are minions of \u201cthe evil one\u201d sent to tempt priests in holy orders.\u00a0 The cure was to flagellate and to pray.\u00a0 The male equivalent was called an incubus.\u00a0 Milton equated succubi and incubi with ancient deities in Paradise Lost<\/em>:<\/p>\n Of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male, One kind of female vampire in Romany lore is called mullo<\/em> (one who is dead); they return to wreak mischief in the lives of their relatives.\u00a0 They may also return from the dead and lead normal lives to marry and keep house, but they exhaust their husbands, stealing his life each night in succubus-like sexual pleasures.\u00a0 This could be a folk memory of the Hindu goddess Kali, who has been connected to Gypsy-lore through the beliefs of Black Kali, called Black Ana or Sara, or Sara-la-Kali or Sara the Black, the saint of the Romanies revered throughout Europe. Although she is a saint of obscure legend, her chapel and crypt are in the church of Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in southern France. From a travelogue by\u00a0 writer, China Galland upon meeting the caretaker of the chapel:<\/p>\n In the language of the Gypsies, the word Kali means both \u201cgypsy woman\u201d and \u201cthe black one,\u201d he explains.\u00a0 It is Sara-Kali, Queen of the Gypsies, who resides in the crypt of this ancient church by the sea.<\/p>\n Each year in late May, Gypsies from all over Europe gather here to venerate St. Sara.\u00a0 \u2026\u00a0 In a grand procession culminating in days of praying and feasting, they dress the statue in layers of clothes and jewels and take her down to the sea.\u00a0 (Galland, 2004)<\/p>\n Another female vampire of note is the mara<\/em> from Slovenia.\u00a0 She is said to be an unbaptized girl who died of unnatural causes: murder or suicide.\u00a0 She visits her victims at night and crushes them with a terrible weight.\u00a0 This idea of a night visitor has a modern sequel in Canada among the Kashube and the rural population of Newfoundland.\u00a0 Several cases of night visitations by what is called \u201cthe night hag\u201d or \u201cMara\u201d were documented in a somewhat controversial article called The Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis, and Witchcraft Accusations<\/em> by Owen Davies (2003).<\/p>\n \u2026[in] European societies people complained of being physically oppressed at night by witches and other supernatural beings, the victims of these nocturnal assaults describing a similar set of symptoms.\u00a0 Contemporary English authors termed the experience the \u201cmare\u201d or \u201cnightmare.\u201d\u00a0 In the twentieth century, it has been identified as a manifestation of \u201csleep paralysis.\u201d\u00a0 Medical studies and surveys of the condition help us make better sense of the historical accounts, while an awareness of the historical evidence illuminates modern reports of sleep paralysis experiences. (p. 1)<\/p>\n One of the most interesting vampiric creatures is the rusalka of the Carpathian Mountains. Made famous by Antonin Dvorak’s opera The Rusalka<\/em>, rusalki are water elves from Slavic folklore.\u00a0 A rusalka is said to be a young girl who has been murdered or who has committed suicide.\u00a0 She loses her soul to a Vodany, a dark creature who eats the flesh of drowned humans he lures into rivers and keeps the rusalka\u2019s soul in a golden cage.\u00a0 Like the vampire, she is an odd combination of fairy and undead folklore.\u00a0 The tales concerning rusalki are often love stories with tragic endings: a soldier leaves and a girl is found dead.\u00a0 Later, she is seen haunting the village.<\/p>\n \u201cRus\u201d means river in Russian.\u00a0 A rusalka<\/em> lives in rivers and she tied to a yearly cycle that includes an annual festival, the Rusal\u2019naia nedelia<\/em>\u2026during which people played music, danced and sang to celebrate new vegetation.\u00a0 It was during this week that the rusalka<\/em> was believed to leave her watery home to wander in the forests and fields, and bring moisture to the crops.\u00a0 Peasants decorated their homes with fresh green birch branches (the rusalka’s <\/em>tree), and young girls often went to the woods and decorated actual trees with cloth, thread and garlands, and then danced the khorovod<\/em> (circle dance) and swore vows of friendship and sisterhood.\u00a0 But the water creature was also feared at this time.\u00a0 To appease her, peasant women left offerings in the woods of scarves and linen.\u00a0 Others attempted to minimize the rusalka<\/em>‘s harm by using the sign of the cross, magic circles, garlic, wormwood, incense, pokers and charms.\u00a0 (Rappoport, 1999)<\/p>\n Toward the end of Rusal\u2019naia nedelia<\/em> unmarried women once wove garlands of flowers and threw them into rivers, evoking the rusalki to find them husbands.\u00a0 In some places, they created an effigy of a rusaka and threw her into a river during a khorovod designed to bring life-giving moisture to the fields.<\/p>\n Rusalka live in the rivers through the year, emerging only to dance on full moon nights in wheat or barley fields.\u00a0 Joining in the rusalki\u2019s dance is a cause of madness and will lead to death.\u00a0 Sometimes they are to be found in willow or birch trees along riverbanks where they scream at travelers, or lure them into \u201cplaying\u201d in the river, a game that usually ends in the death of the unlucky victim.\u00a0 They are known, in some regions, to be cannibals who eat their victims, and to haunt their relations, begging for vodka and red eggs.\u00a0 A person can be safe from the rusalki by carrying wormwood in a coat pocket while travelling or by wearing a gold cross around his or her neck. Rusalki are beautiful pale young girls with wild red eyes and often have claws instead of fingernails.<\/p>\n The rusalka<\/em> of traditional beliefs is a powerful and enticing figure.\u00a0 She is described as a pale, lithe, often beautiful female spirit who lives in the water, forests and fields.\u00a0 She sits with other water spirits on the shore, yelling and laughing, or dancing and singing in the moonlight of clear, summer nights.\u00a0 She is known to swing on tree branches, waiting to entice an unsuspecting male passer-by, whom she often attacks and (perhaps inadvertently) tickles to death.\u00a0 The rusalka<\/em>‘s characteristic physical attributes are her long, light-brown, blond, or green, loose hair, her blazing eyes, and her magnificent breasts.\u00a0 She is noted for her beautiful voice and melodious laugh.\u00a0 On the rare occasions when the rusalka<\/em> is dressed, she wears white.\u00a0 In addition, some sources report that if the rusalka<\/em>, and especially her hair, ever dries out, she will perish.\u00a0 (Philippa Rappoport, 1999)<\/p>\n Fears of uncontrolled female sexual desires are evident in the stories of the rusalki.\u00a0 A well-documented psychological connection between the act of sex and death exists in the human psyche connected by some cultural anthropologists with folk lore concerning \u201cuntamed\u201d or \u201cwild\u201d women whose sexual attributes will destroy as well as give pleasure.\u00a0 Vampire women and fairy creatures like the rusalki or mara embody the fierceness of untrammeled sexuality; a frightening prospect to our ancestors, who believed that sex was only appropriate within sanctioned relationships such as marriage.\u00a0 A woman who chose her partners freely was bad and even dangerous in the folk imagination; these images became rusalki, mora, mullo or vampires.\u00a0 When Stoker created his vampiric ladies in Dracula<\/em>, he made them wholly corrupt by reversing the social norms of his age: destroyed by a male, Dracula, they fed upon the flesh of children.\u00a0 In Stoker\u2019s day, the weaker sex, women, were to be protected by men.\u00a0 Children by their mothers: women.\u00a0 To behave in any other way was to act against the natural order of things, at least for bourgeois males of Stoker\u2019s class and education.\u00a0 He borrowed from the ancient folktales of Eastern Europe and the storytelling tradition of the Romantics of a generation earlier.\u00a0 Polidori\u2019s The Vampire<\/em> and Byron\u2019s The Gaior<\/em> would have informed his story of Dracula<\/em>.\u00a0 It has also been documented that Stoker studied the symptoms and folklore surrounding the epidemic of tuberculosis occurring during his lifetime.\u00a0 The symptoms of vampiric attack and the \u201cwasting disease\u201d are too similar to be coincidental.\u00a0 Stoker himself had tuberculosis as a child and lost a lung to that disease.<\/p>\n Is there a romantic (small \u201cr\u201d) side to this lady of the shadows?\u00a0 Perhaps.\u00a0 In every country there is a place where a White Lady haunts a deserted ruin, a dark grove or hollow, a well or waterfall, or a lonely crossroads.\u00a0 Sometimes a tragic story accompanies this haunt: a noble lady who died for love or heroism, or a murdered girl wandering the roadsides.\u00a0 In Slovakia, White Ladies are called wild women; they live in underground houses and are given to ecstatic It is tempting to see the rusalka<\/em> as a remnant of a pre-Christian deity, forced Speculation aside, the story of the haunting lady of the shadows is enduring, and one especially suited to the autumn of the year, with its darkening skies and promise of winter ahead.\u00a0 A member of the Wild Hunt, and the stalker of the shadowy realms of our psyches, she comes the bringing wicked promise.\u00a0 Like all shape-shifting denizens of fairy, she is both fair and perilous.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Arrowsmith, N. (1977).\u00a0 A Field Guide to the Little People<\/em>.\u00a0 New York.: Farrar Straus & Giroux.<\/p>\n Boxell, G. (1985).\u00a0 Albion – A guide to Legendary Britain<\/em>.\u00a0 London: Jennifer Westwood, Granada Publishing.<\/p>\n Galland, C. (2004).\u00a0 Queen of the Gypsies.\u00a0 Common Ground<\/em>, September, 2004. \u00a0San Anselmo, CA: Dragonfly Media<\/p>\n Davies, O. (2003).\u00a0 The Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis, and Witchcraft Accusations.<\/em>\u00a0 Routledge,<\/em> Taylor & Francis Group Issue<\/em>: Vol. 114, Number 2 \/ August: Froud, B. (1998).\u00a0 Good Fairies, Bad Fairies. <\/em>\u00a0New York: Simon & Schuster.<\/p>\n Graves, R. (1948).\u00a0 The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic myth.\u00a0 <\/em>New York: Farrar Straus Cudahy.<\/p>\n Gundarsson, K. H. (1992).\u00a0 The Folklore of the Wild Hunt Kononenko, N. (1994).\u00a0 Women as Performers of Oral Literature: A Reexamination of Epic and Lament.\u00a0 In Women Writers in Russian Literature<\/em>, edited by Toby W. Clyman and Diana Greene.\u00a0 Westport, Connecticut, and London, England: Greenwood Press 1994.<\/p>\n Keightley, T. (1789\/1872).\u00a0 The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves & Other Little People<\/em>.\u00a0 Repr. London: Gramercy, 2000.<\/p>\n Le Fanu, J. S. (1872).\u00a0 Carmilla: A Vampyre Tale.<\/em>\u00a0 In: In a Glass Darkly. <\/em>Repr: Oxford, UK: Oxford Paperbacks, 1999 (Originally published in Dark Blue<\/em>, Vols. 2 & 3, December 1871-March 1872)<\/p>\n Polidori, J. (1819).\u00a0 The Vampyre<\/em>.\u00a0 Retrieved May 6, 2003 from http:\/\/www.sff.net\/people\/DoyleMacdonald\/l_vampyr.htm\u00a0 (originally published: 1819 in the New Monthly Magazine, <\/em>London)<\/p>\n Stoker, B. (1897).\u00a0 Dracula<\/em>.\u00a0 Repr. New York: Tor Books, 1997.<\/p>\n Towrie, S. (2004).\u00a0 The Wild Hunt<\/em>.\u00a0 Retrieved October 17, 2004: from <a href=\u201chttp:\/\/www.orkneyjar.com\/index.html\u201d> Orkneyjar: The Heritage of the Orkney Isles<\/em>.<\/p>\n ——— \u00a0(2004).\u00a0 \u201cTulya\u2019s E\u2019en;The Return of the Dead.\u201d Retrieved October 17, 2004 from <a href=\u201chttp:\/\/www.orkneyjar.com\/tradition\/yule\/yule2.htm\u201d>Orkneyjar: The Heritage of the Orkney Isles.<\/p>\n Rappoport, P. (1999).\u00a0 If it Dries Out, It’s No Good: Women, Hair and Rusalki Beliefs.\u00a0 <\/em>University of Virginia Journal of the Slavic and East European Folklore Association<\/em>, 4(1): 55-64.<\/p>\n Richardson, B. (no date).\u00a0 Vampires in Myth and History.<\/em>\u00a0 Retrieved October 17, 2004, from <a href=\u201chttp:\/\/www.chebucto.ns.ca\/~vampire\/vvault.html\u201d<\/u>>The Vampire\u2019s Vault; The Gothic Society of Nova Scotia<\/em>.<\/p>\n Westwood, J. (1985).\u00a0 The Wild Hunt or Fairy Raed.\u00a0 Additional information by Geoff Boxell.<\/em>\u00a0 In Albion – A guide Legendary Britain<\/em>.\u00a0 London: Granada. Retrieved October 16, 2004: http:\/\/www.geocities.com\/Athens\/Aegean\/3532\/hunt.htm<\/p>\n Yeats, W. B. (1933).\u00a0 The Winding Stair.\u00a0 <\/em>London: Macmillan.<\/p>\n [1]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> \u00a0“Carmilla – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” 2011. 14 Feb. 2016 <https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Carmilla><\/p>\n [2]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> In a letter to \u201cGalignani\u2019s Messenger\u201d, April 27, 1819.<\/p>\n [3]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Author\u2019s aside: For a pretty good recipe: Aunt Jewel’s Venison Mincemeat #42874 by Aroostook.\u00a0 <\/strong>http:\/\/www.recipezaar.com\/recipe\/getrecipe.zsp?id=42874 (use wild crab apples in place of tart apples, and it\u2019s very tasty; you can also make this vegetarian, just omit the venison & suet & add pears.)<\/p>\n [4]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Here is a link to this tale: http:\/\/www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk\/folklore\/blackannis.html<\/p>\n [5]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Singer-songwriter Heather Alexander (noe James Alexandre) has a haunting and lovely seasonal tune called Kiss me, Jack Frost<\/em> worth mentioning.\u00a0 Available at: http:\/\/www.mindspring.com\/~cornerd\/quicksilver\/music.htm<\/p>\n![\"Faery](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/faery-owl_sm-768x1024.png?resize=266%2C355&ssl=1\")
Faery dreams are the dreams of the shadowed realms of the imagination. From these dreams come tales that spark creativity and even change lives change. Faery is a place; deep, moist, verdant and fertile. In winter, fae emerge with icy fingers and trace paintings on windows and lakes, pale fingers sift hoarfrost over the forest, an owl hoots and is heard across a silent landscape.\u00a0 As we wait for spring, let us not forget the beauty of winter: the snowy path, the warmth of the hearth fire, a good book, a glass of brandy to keep the cold winter\u00a0 away.\u00a0 Friends gathered for celebration and the healing rains of an El Nino year fall steadily over the hills of this place where I live. In weeks, the hills will be green and wildflowers will abound as spring comes to the West. Meantime: let us dream of Faery.<\/p>\n
\nLadies of the Darkness<\/u><\/h3>\n
Trows, Rusalki, Vampires, and White Ladies of Literature and Folklore<\/u><\/h3>\n
![\"1st](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/1st-image-vampires-300x228.jpg?resize=300%2C228&ssl=1\")
Something about the crackle of autumn’s dying leaves, the hoarfrost, and the rising of the crimson Hunter\u2019s Moon lends a certain credence to the supernatural.\u00a0 This is the time of year when trows emerge from their underground burrows, ghostly White Ladies haunt crossroads and lonely byways, the fearsome rusalki return their rivers, and vampires appear in dark urban alleyways.\u00a0 These ladies of the shadows are beings that straddle the realm between fairy and the undead of Hollywood movies.\u00a0 Often pictured as ghostly pale, richly dressed, and beautiful, these perilous ladies offer forbidden pleasures, madness, and death.\u00a0 They are untamed and wild, where their male counterparts are mesmeric and debonair.\u00a0 Where did this image emerge into popular culture? Did Bram Stoker\u2019s demonic ladies in white who haunted his protagonist Jonathan Harker so fiercely, beget the modern vampire woman?\u00a0 In this short essay, some literary, cultural and historical sources are explored as I try to trace the image of these haunting ladies who people our nightmares.<\/p>\nSome Literary Sources<\/h4>\n
In Our Folkloric Past: Red Moons, Hags and Corpses Riding the Night Sky<\/h4>\n
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Germanic and Scandinavian peoples considered November a \u201ctime of the dead,\u201d possibly because harsh winter conditions that resulted in more deaths among the very young, old, and infirm before the age of modern medicine.\u00a0 Tales of the \u201cdeath\u201d of the year at the start of winter, such as the Pagan \u201cOak King\u201d who dies at Midsummer, or Lugh the Irish sun hero who is cut with the grain, and the venerable John Barleycorn.\u00a0 As the snow begins to fly over most of the Northern Hemisphere others figures appear: the Russian Father Frost who brings death to winter travelers, the Nordic Frost Giants or even the enchanting Snegoorotchka,\u00a0 the \u201cLittle Snowmaiden\u201d from the Ukraine inform our dark ladies.\u00a0 One tale worth consideration here is that of the Wild Hunt.\u00a0 A modern survival of this myth is the wild ride from cowboy folklore, immortalized in the standard written by Stan Jones in, Ghost Riders in the Sky<\/em>.<\/p>\nFolk, Historic and Even Medical Precursors<\/h4>\n
![\"image](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/image-3a-269x300.jpg?resize=269%2C300&ssl=1\")
and her lover, Aegisthus.\u00a0 The pair had, in an earlier tragedy, killed Agamemnon in his bath as revenge for the death of Iphegenia, Clytaemnestra\u2019s daughter and Orestes\u2019 sister.\u00a0 This all started with a curse on Atreus for feeding his children to the gods at an opulent feast; just the sort of inter-generational misbehavior the Erinyes would be interested in.<\/p>\n
\nThese feminine; for spirits, when they please,
\nCan either sex assume, or both; so soft
\nAnd uncompounded is their essence pure,
\nNot tied or manacled with joint or limb,
\nNor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
\nLike cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they chose,
\nDilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
\nCan execute their aery purposes,
\nAnd works of love or enmity fulfill.
\n(Ll. 420-31)<\/em><\/p>\nA Romantic Side?<\/h4>\n
![\"image](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/image-3-vampires-300x204.jpg?resize=332%2C226&ssl=1\")
dancing.\u00a0 Akin to Les Dames Vertes<\/em> of Brittany and the Seligen Fraulen<\/em> of Germany\u2019s Black Forest the wild women have knowledge of the secret forces of nature and know \u00a0whether magic.\u00a0 The most famous White Lady of all is the faery of Dosmary Pool in Cornwall\u00a0: The Lady of the Lake, Nimue, Niniane or Vivianne, who guards Excalibur, the sword of Arthur.\u00a0 She presides over a fabulous realm at the bottom of the lake, and warns away travelers and can cause madness if challenged for her secrets to this day. It is said that it is Vivianne who holds Merlin in a crystal cave as her prisoner and her lover.<\/p>\n![\"4th](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/4th-image-vampires-300x200.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1\")
In Eastern European lore is another figure of fairy, the villa or vilishkis, who are beautiful, fiercely independent, and wild.\u00a0 She shares all the characteristics of the vampire, including her untamed sexual appetite and willingness to kill or cause madness in humans, especially men, who come upon her uninvited in her forest home.\u00a0 Puccini, made use of this tale in his opera Le Villi[6]<\/sup><\/strong><\/sup><\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em>They are shape-shifters and can appear as wolves, horses, and even as a fall of ![\"5th](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.org\/coreopsis\/spring-2016-issuewp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/5th-image-vampires.jpg?resize=175%2C234&ssl=1\")
light through a rainstorm.\u00a0 In parts of Bosnia, villages celebrate spring with dances to the villa. Donning red and white, the men of the villages once believed that a beautiful villa taught these dances to them to bring fertility to the earth and to women.\u00a0 Like the many other folkloric beings connected to the earth, it is tempting to tie the White Ladies, villi and the rusalki, and even the mara, Black Annis and the mullo to ancient Pagan goddesses and this is an area of important research.\u00a0 It is also rife with speculation, in the words of Natalie Kononenko:<\/p>\n
\nunderground, or, more literally, underwater by a new religion.\u00a0 It is also tempting to see the rusalka<\/em>‘s life as a reflection of an early social order where there was no
\nmarriage and women accepted men into their domain to father children.\u00a0 Speculation aside, folk belief articulates clearly that a woman who resists marriage, especially one who gets pregnant outside marriage is bad.\u00a0 A woman who does not submit to the symbolic death of the wedding must accept the literal death of the rusalka<\/em>.\u00a0 A woman who does not become spiritual as a married woman should, must become a spirit and a bad one at that.<\/p>\n
\nand the Furious Host.\u00a0 Mountain Thunder, <\/strong>The Independent Pagan Magazine<\/em> 7. Retrieved October 20, 2004 http:\/\/www.vinland.org\/heathen\/mt\/index.html<\/p>\n