1. There was a time, long ago, when people finally understood that Death happened. They didn't necessarily understand what it was, or why it happened, and because this scared them, they began to make up stories about how it was.
2. The story tellers would talk about it around the fire late at night, making it up as they went along, to soothe the fearful. They would say, "A great beast came for Harry last night and took him away."
Someone might ask, "Why? Why did he take Harry, and will he be back for us?" And the story teller, being wise, would ponder this and say, "well, I think the great beast comes for someone when they are old and tired or can't work anymore. When we get like that, it will be our time too."
3. And they all went away and thought about this.
4. The stories grew more elaborate, more detailed, as the centuries went by. People began to see that this Death, this Great Beast, wasn't all that bad. If you got really sick, he took you somewhere and you got better, maybe, and came back as someone else. And they started honoring the dead, to make sure they wanted to come back. Buried them, to keep the spirits safe and happy.
5. Soon they were finding spirits in everything: sour milk, two headed calves, a good crop, tall daughters and sons. Rain at the right time, or too much rain. Volcanoes that needed appeasing (there go your tall daughters). Each culture had it's own. pixies, gremlins, elves, leprechauns, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy. Hundreds of spirits, hundreds of events. Lares and Penates, the household gods. Small shrines kept well lit to honor someone's memory. And there were the naughty spirits: Pan, the pukelman, the tricksters, the rabbit, the fox, imps, goblins.
6. Festivals were constructed both to celebrate the harvest, spring, summer, the longest night, the longest day, the changes in the year's cycles. Some were in honor of harvest spirits. But along with all of this sterner minded folk were constructing their own festivals, and being lazy, began to take over other cultures celebrations--cleaned up the act, you might say.
7. The spring festival was no longer a bacchanalia, where couples would go off into the woods and celebrate their own rising sap, winter festivals of lights were no longer a time of wonder in the dark, chasing the evil darkness away on the longest night of the year; easter became a month long descent into terror and grim death, with a resurrection at the end, and bunnies delivering eggs.
8. There were spirits to explain the mysterious--why the milk went sour, how the frost covered the windows, how to make pains disappear, what cured, what killed and how to appease all of them.
9. But Death was always just outside the door, and it became part of the fabric. No one really knew what it meant to die, to go still and cold. So they tried to call the spirit back, they invented souls and angels, and of course the angels had to have a leader, and gods appeared. Great, terrifying, flaming gods that rode across the sky in chariots of flame, or arose from the sea to sink ships.
10. People began trying to appease the gods, to stave off disaster and death a bit longer. When it happened they left offerings, and when it didn't they prayed harder and left bigger offerings.
11. The story tellers wrote about miracles, and magic, and winged creatures. They wrote it all down to be told and retold, tinkered with here and there, to bring it all up to date. And somehow, somewhere along the long line, some of the stories became real to their listeners. They began to imagine what those magical beings really looked like, and sometimes in the dark they would hear voices or cries which alternately soothed or scared the blazes out of them.
12. Devils appeared in their dreams. And gods, warring with each other. Thousands of years, thousands of stories and thousands of gods. They still pray to their own particular god or gods, to cure sickness, to appease the weather spirits, to make the volcano stop. When it happens, they leave offerings. When it doesn't, they pray harder.
13. Not a lot has changed. 💫
T13
