Click here to listen to Mythic Animals: wonder and shadow in the Other in the season 2 archives on buzzsprout
“Our identity is shaped not only by our differences from the Others but in the alchemy by which assimilating them informs the genesis of self. They are both the reciprocal and the constituents of our consciousness.”
–Paul Shepard, “The Others, How Animals Made Us Human”
Dragons, griffins, chimeras, unicorns, talking horses, and helpful toads– images of fantastic creatures like these typically come to mind when we think of “mythic animals” and yet animals, the first companions and teachers of early homo sapiens, have always been an essential part of human myth-making and the evolution of human consciousness and culture.
This podcast is a mini-exploration of connections between mythology, science, animals, and the fantastic, with some storytelling about the unicorn, one of my favorite “mythic animals.”
“Wonder Is Not Precisely Knowing.” —Emily Dickinson
Transcript of Mythic Animals: wonder and shadow in the Other
Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and why myth matters to your life today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
Today I want to tell you a little bit about mythic animals. And I’m going to focus specifically on one of my favorites, the unicorn. This is a topic that was requested by Sabrina Fox, who is a patron of the Myth Matters podcast on Patreon. And I want to thank you Sabrina for offering up this rich topic and also mentioned that one of the benefits of providing some modest financial support to the podcast via Patreon is that you can commission so to speak, a podcast that addresses your specific needs and interests.
Now, the term mythic animals usually refers to the fantastic creatures, the ones that we find in what we recognize as myths, or the category of fairy tales called wonder tales. Mythic animals are animals that never walked the literal earth as far as we know. This category also includes animals that exist in material reality, but have abilities in our stories that we don’t imagine they have in so called “real life,” like the talking horse who saves the huntsman in the “Valiant Horse” fairy tale, for example, or the great toad who provides the simpleton brother with the beautiful rug and ring and princess that he requires to win the throne, or the great white bear Valmont, who bore the closely guarded and cloistered princess away to a larger, more satisfying life in a kingdom of her own. The list goes on and on, and on.
Mythic animals then, like these talking creatures, or the dragons and the unicorns, and the flying lions, tend to be relegated to childhood and childhood stories. Today, we primarily tailor our
stories and offerings and other cultural artifacts toward children, who are presumably, in their innocence and naivete, open to the magic of these creatures in a way that adults are not. And yet, we all have the capacity for wonder. And in fact, our poets and visionaries have urged us for centuries, not to leave this capacity behind. When you give up the ability to wonder you miss a lot. You create a world that is much duller than it needs to be. You don’t see the possibilities, nor do you ask the most important questions.
And I also want to suggest that it’s part of our collective unconsciousness about the natural world and animals. Giving up wonder is a form of repression, and unconsciousness. In the case of animals, well, all animals are mythic in the sense that they are integral and essential to our narratives, our symbols and meanings, our sense of order, and quest for significance through the long slow evolution of what we call human consciousness. This is a little digression perhaps, from an exploration of a lighthearted topic like fantastic creatures, and yet, it has everything to do with our cultural moment. So, I want to take just a moment to unpack this.
As Paul Shepard writes in his brilliant book titled “The Others,” animals made us human. That is homo sapiens found a self, made a self, and continue to construct both self and culture through what is largely an unconscious conversation at this point, with the so called natural world and animals in particular. It is through comparison, through comparison of our capacities with those of our fellow creatures, that we have truly discovered who we are, and have made our stories about what belongs and doesn’t belong, in human nature and in human culture. How animals are viewed and treated then, by culture and by each of us as individuals, is truly a litmus test of the state of our humanity and commitment to compassion.
Animals are our mirror. And we’ve made them so because we must define ourselves, as one animal among many, through those continuous comparisons to them. For most of recorded history, animals have been trapped in our myths and our meanings. And especially here in the West, this has meant that they’ve been stripped of their first and primary sacredness, which is simply that they are alive, that like us, they are part of this mystery of life. And like us, they are eating others in order to survive.
Now, you might attribute this to Christianity, and that’s true, but it’s also our secular humanism that has put humans at the center or at the top of constructed hierarchies. I believe that all of these theories about the natural world and our place in it are in fact myths that reveal our deep insecurities about our own nature and place in the world. Myths that paradoxically, have worsened it over the centuries, moving us further and further from our place in the natural world, and from our instinctual selves.
When you look then, at animals, through your ideas about them, you are seeing the human psyche and our projections upon these important Others.
Turning now to myths and stories that are recognized as such, Joseph Campbell, among many others, traces the history of human involvement with the natural world and our mythmaking through a series of phases, which begin with animals. In the beginning, in the early days of our species, of course human beings not only were one animal among many, but they also saw themselves as one animal among many, and there was no distinction between worlds, the world, the natural world, there was only nature and the natural world. As far as we can tell from what has been left behind, animals were the earliest embodiments of the sacred, of the mystery of being alive and the mystery of the forces that shaped it. Over time, as deities were created to represent these various forces– that could include the weather, elements of the natural environment, cycles that the earth goes through– animals were seen as important intermediaries between the mundane human realm and the sacred forces. This gave rise to the creation of a wide range of symbols that are frequently amalgamations of various animals. As far as we can understand it, these amalgamations were attempts to distill skills and capacities, both practical and social, that the early humans observed in their animal companions, and to bring those together to create multivalent symbols of the sacred forces, these so called “gods and goddesses” that ensured their survival.
Animals were also teachers, because human beings observed the ways that animals lived and learned from them. Now, some of you may have heard podcasts that I’ve done on the Trickster, where I’ve talked about the interesting use of coyote has one face of the Trickster, because coyotes and ravens, another common face of the Trickster, have this capacity as well. The capacity to learn and a tremendous flexibility in terms of the various ways that they can learn, to adapt as a species, and this is something that human beings have in common with them.
Now today, we would say that these mythic animals, the amalgamations, the figurines, these various embodiments of the sacred, were seen to be magical, that they had the power to transcend limitations, to transform reality, and to take human beings to realms beyond the material. And here I am speaking of shamanism, and other practices that seem to go back as far in time as our investigations of our species.
So, where did these mythic creatures, these embodiments of the extraordinary come from? Well, there are many possible sources: dreams, hallucinations, extraordinary experiences that often become myth, erroneous perceptions of naturally occurring mutations. Whatever the source, human beings have found teachers and signs, both beneficent and threatening, in our animal companions for a very, very long time, and they have frequently functioned as a source of awe, and wonder and mystery. And I remind you that contact with the awesome frequently includes an element of fear.
So, I looked for stories about some of the better known mythic or fantastic animals. And believe it or not, there are not many about them, because for a very long time, people believed that these animals existed and what you find is descriptions of them in natural histories. And it’s mostly these descriptions that served then, as the basis for images, especially in the Middle Ages when fantastic animals were especially popular images, both religious and secular.
The Griffin, for example. The griffin is a four-footed bird with legs and claws like those of a lion, and it was presumed to be about the size of a wolf or large dog. The descriptions say that the Griffin was very difficult to capture and lives in regions rich with gold. The ancient Greeks tell us that the Griffin was originally from India, and it’s at least in part due to the enduring confidence that people placed in the Greek experts like Aristotle, that animals like the Griffin, were believed to be literally real for millennia. Aristotle wrote a history of animals that includes a number of animals that don’t exist, or don’t have the qualities that he ascribed to them. For example, Aristotle says that a salamander can survive fire. Well, we do have salamanders but they don’t survive fire. These descriptions did evolve, in the case of the Griffin, over time. The location of this land rich with gold became the desert, and Christians said that the Griffin, with a beak and eyes like an eagle that burned with fire, built its nest of gold.
Another source of information about mythic animals over time is travelogues, tales of adventure and the wonders that were seen by those on the journey. Homer’s Odyssey is one example that has itself become myth. You may recall that Odysseus tells about his meeting with giants and cyclops, Scylla and the sirens. Another such travelogue is Marco Polo, and this was assumed to be factual for centuries, though accounts like Marco Polo’s were based to a very large extent on hearsay, and stories that were exchanged with fellow travelers. Certainly, human beings have an enduring capacity for gullibility and yet this acceptance of hearsay and the passing on of untested information does remind us that we really believe what we want to believe, to a very large degree. And we believe things that support our value system, a value system that is not usually subject to the kind of rigorous reflection that one would hope.
Now I brought Aristotle into the conversation and I want to use him as a further example, because Aristotle was very interested in abnormalities that occur in nature, and he was interested in abnormalities because he was very interested in the forms. Now, Aristotle is distinguished from Plato because of the debate that they had ongoing, about forms and ideals. Plato believed that these were transcendent. Aristotle believed that they were found in nature. The point being that Aristotle felt that one could define and identify the essential, that is the perfect, of any given species and that what didn’t fit was monstrous or inferior. So, he was very interested in both sides of this and in cataloguing what he considered to be inferior. Aristotle’s influence has been very important and lasting, as he’s considered by many to be the father of Western science, of empiricism, and of our notion of objectivity. And yet, Aristotle’s quest for the essence, for the ideal form of the human being, led him to claim that man, the male is the ideal. And so, the female is inferior, incomplete, or perhaps not human at all.
Now, another one of the animals that Aristotle included in his natural history is the unicorn and this has always been a favorite of mine. Aristotle and others tell us that the unicorn was originally found in India, although there are similar animals in China and Japan and other parts of the world. The proof of the existence of the unicorn was found in these very elaborate seals that were left behind by rulers in the Indus Valley. Rulers in the early Indian kingdoms, unlike the Egyptians, did not build themselves huge monuments. What they did do is create these elaborately carved stone seals which they use to impress on clay or wax, and they bore many images of many animals. The most common of them was the unicorn. The discovery of these seals and the image of the unicorn was presumed to be evidence that the animal itself existed.
Now there was also an animal, similar to or referred to as a “unicorn,” mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, that is the Christian Old Testament. For example, in Psalms you read, “Save me from the lions mouth, for thou hast heard me from the horns of unicorns.”
One of the things that’s most fascinating about the unicorn is the horn. The horn, which was a very early symbol of power, because the horn is the means by which the animal defends itself and attacks its enemies. The horn became a symbol of power and sovereignty. The unicorn was also associated with purity, as a kind of Savior. The horn was presumed to have magical healing powers. It was said that if you dipped a unicorn horn in poisoned waters, it would purify them. And ultimately the unicorn was associated with that Christian symbol of purity and healing and grace and mildness–the Virgin Mary.
Because the unicorn had received the stamp of truth from Aristotle, and from many other credible scientists in the centuries that followed, belief in the unicorn was still quite popular in the Middle Ages and still believable in the Renaissance. In one of his notebooks Leonardo da Vinci wrote, “The unicorn, through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself, for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; and laying aside all fear it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it.”
At this point, human beings are not content to invoke the presence of the unicorn through its symbology nor are they merely happy to catch a glimpse of it. Now they want to catch it. And stories begin to circulate about how a virgin can go out and into the woods and wait, and attract the unsuspecting unicorn so that it can be captured. Whoever captures the unicorn can get the horn and the powers, and there was another attraction that had been added at this point. The idea that the unicorn had a jewel at the base of its horn that had its own powers. In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s version of the story Parsifal, there is a reference to the unicorn’s ruby, and it’s used in the story as one of several medicines, including the unicorn’s heart, that is employed to cure the wound of the king of the Grail, that is the Fisher King. In the story, they catch the unicorn with the aid of a virgin maid and then they take this stone from the unicorn and heal the Fisher King.
There are many connections at this time between maidens, virginity, purity, pure love, knights and ladies, and the evolving concept of courtly love. All of this was very much steeped in Christianity and the crusades, and also reflected the secular assertion of individuality, of the right to love and to step out of convention.
I found a funny story while I was putting this podcast together for you, that can be found in a book by Odell Shepard called “Lore of the Unicorn.” This is available online so I will post a link to it on my website. Apparently, there was an old French romance written about the same time as Percival and the other stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table called “the Knight of the Parrot.” In this book, young King Arthur travels around and has a set of adventures, and he’s accompanied by a talking parrot. This parrot has a tremendous cleverness and sarcastic wit, and is also a very skilled singer and storyteller.
Among his various adventures, King Arthur and his parrot meet a dwarf who says that his gigantic son was suckled by a unicorn. Arthur’s been stranded on a strange coast in a way very reminiscent of Odysseus landing on strange coasts in the Odyssey. And he finds a square red tower without a door or window. This is where the dwarf lives, and the dwarf tells Arthur that he and his wife had lived there on the shore for many years until his wife died in childbirth. The dwarf was completely beside himself with grief so he buries his wife and he gathers up some food and he wraps up the baby as best he can, and leaves the place. They are in the forest when night falls and the dwarf begins looking for a place to shelter from the animals and the weather. He finds a hollow tree.
The hollow inside this tree is huge and when he climbs in there, he finds a group of new born fawns, each one of them with a little horn in the middle of its brow. He has found a clutch of baby unicorns. He sits down among them and while he’s sitting there, the mother unicorn comes in and he’s so frightened, that he leaps up and runs out and he leaves his son behind. A little bit later, he screws up the courage to peek in and he sees that the mother unicorn has taken pity on his child and is allowing the baby to suckle along with her own children. The dwarf found a place to hide in the roots and waited until the next day to see what was going to happen and to figure out how to get his son back.
He was terrified that something awful was going to happen to his son. And the next morning when he peeks inside, the mother unicorn sees him, and recognizing his relationship to the baby is very friendly, and so he stays. And not only is the unicorn friendly, but she realizes, maybe because, as the dwarf says, he was so small because he is a dwarf, that he might be hungry too, that he might be yet another baby. So she allows him to suckle also and the dwarf and his son stay with the unicorn until they’re both strong and the son has started growing. And it’s this unicorn milk, so says the dwarf, that turned his son into a giant. The dwarf explains that the unicorn becomes a helpful presence in their lives on going, and even teaches the giant son how to become a very efficient hunter.
The mythologies of the unicorn are probably best preserved for us at this point in the art from this time period, specifically tapestries. There’s a very famous set of six tapestries called “Lady with the unicorn” that hangs in the Musee de Cluny in Paris, in which the unicorn is associated with each of the five senses and finally, with Love. There is also a set of seven tapestries called “Hunt of the Unicorn” that hangs in the cloister division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In this series, ritually dressed noblemen, accompanied by their hounds and their huntsman, are pursuing a unicorn with the aid of a virgin maiden.
At some point even centuries ago, these stories were probably best understood as metaphors or allegories, and yet people continued to believe in the actual animal. They were suckered, for example, into buying magical healing horns, which were actually tusks that were taken from narwhals that lives year-round in the Arctic waters around Greenland and Canada. There are people who are of the opinion that this ongoing fascination with animal horns, including the horn of the unicorn, is a force that feeds the market for rhino horn and the poaching that is decimating the numbers of those animals.
Given the current state of the relationship of many people in cultures around the world, Western cultures in particular, to the natural world and to animals, you might be asking yourself why we continue to need these images and stories of fantastic creatures. Why do we keep returning to mythic animals? Well, first of all, we can’t stop mythmaking. But even if we could exchange partners and detach ourselves completely from our animal companions, I don’t know that we would. Human beings are animals in need of what is reflected in that particular mirror. We need the emotions that elicits, the wonder and also the fear, the way that their vulnerability reminds us of our own.
Animals also have become carriers of our shadow. Now, I said that there weren’t many stories about a lot of the fantastic creatures and that’s true, but one major exception is the dragon. There are many different types of dragons in cultures all around the world. Sometimes they have wings, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they have legs. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they are more like snakes and other times more like fish or birds. In some cultures, the dragon is a positive force, an expression of life, even of the feminine, and in others the dragon is a terrible threat and an embodiment of evil. I want to close today by taking us back for just a couple minutes to a Norwegian fairy tale that I’ve told on this podcast before, called “The Prince Lindworm.”
The Lindworm is a kind of dragon. In this story, a queen and a king who really want to have a child, that is they want to bring forth new life, are unable to do so until a witch instructs the queen to utilize magical, earthly powers, of which the queen has no knowledge. Well, the queen follows the advice of the witch, pretty much, and in that gap, she manages to give birth to a Lindworm, to this little dragon. The Lindworm seems destined to bring nothing but death and destruction to the kingdom and to young women in particular, until a particular young maid, who’s been tapped to face her death in the jaws of this creature, goes out into the woods and meet the same witch.
This witch tutors her in the ways to handle the Lindworm. And she ends up stripping skin after skin after skin after skin off of this little dragon. She stands firm in the face of its bluster and threats. She doesn’t give into fear. She unpeeled it, unpeeled, it unpeeled it and in the end she commits the act that she has told the witch is the one that she finds most revolting and difficult to contemplate– that is she embraces what is left of this pathetic dragon. This horrible, disgusting, whatever you can imagine after being skinned nine times. The young woman embraces the unembraceable. She does the work of transforming the shadow.
See, I think we really need the wonder and the mystery contained in stories like this. We are coached to set it aside as we age, and yet it persists. And it’s necessary my friend, because our capacity for wonder is bound up with our sense of possibility in the world, and so in the self. If there was ever a time to do the difficult work of turning to the shadow, to deconstruct our fears and defenses, now is the time, and our animal companions are mercifully still there, waiting to lead us as teachers and the carriers of important signs.
That’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. I invite you to contact me with your comments or questions. I want to send a big welcome out to all of the new subscribers to Myth Matters, and also mention that I have a new service that’s available online, called the Story Oracle. The Story Oracle is a tool that I’ve created to help you use a story to plumb the depths of an issue or concern you may be facing in your life right now. It’s proven to be a very powerful tool, and I’m happy to have finally gotten it online. If that sounds at all intriguing. Head over to the website, mythic mojo.com, for further details.
Take good care of yourself. Stay safe. And until next time, happy mythmaking and keep the mystery in your life.
Useful links:
Joseph Campbell’s Historical Atlas of World Mythology: The Way of the Animal Powers Vol.1
Leonardo da Vinci unicorn drawing and quote
Lore of the Unicorn by Odell Shepard (English professor at Harvard and Trinity Colleges from 1916-1946).
Mythic Creatures exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History 2007-2008
