Writing Prompts - The Tutelary Spirit

Create some sort of tutelary spirit, kami or deity. Give it a personality and quarks. Than create festivals and religious ceremonies around these.

Further information;
The tutelary kami is what defined the nature of many of the local festivals in Japan’s past. For it was believed that in order to have a good harvest and continued fortune people needed to draw the mountain kami down into the rice paddies. To do this they held festivals in the kami’s honor and or to lure them to the excitement of the event. Such festivals were also designed to build a relationship with the kami. 

Far from being ubiquitous each set of kami had their own personality and could even be a completely different type of being. In the story of the ‘Mountain Kami and the Ugly Fish’ a kami who was extremely sensitive and easily embarrassed discovered he was ugly and so fled up into the mountains to hide. Without his presence the plants began to wither and die, until the people of the village figured out how to get him to come back down. (read the Story)

In one village the woman would wear only loincloths and tell dirty jokes when they planted the rice in order to get the mountain kami to come into the field to watch and listen to them.
 
In yet another story an old farmer and his grandfather had to walk high into the mountains and wake the rain causing kami which was sleeping within a rock it had possessed. Because this kami had overslept people would do things to insure he was awake when they prayed to him. (Read the Story)

In still another case people offer the mountain kami rice porridge because she is said to have lots of children whom she has difficulty feeding. This is in part based on the fairly common motif that many mountain kami have one child for each month of the year.

In yet another story the spirit of a bear was said to reside in a rock. This spirit protected the village, travelers around the village and would make it easier to push or pull a heavy cart up a hill. (Read the Story)

In some parts of Europe people believed that the field spirit lived within the last sheaf of grain and so would make this into a straw figure with which all the men would dance at the harvest festival in order to show their appreciation (when the spirit manifested as a female). 

In other cased field spirits could appear as predatory animals such as wolves and so people needed to be careful when entering the field. Further they might keep this field spirit in the barn to keep it from escaping into the wilderness in the winter.

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Writing Prompts From Japanese Folk Life - 1

Koi on the Black Market
During the 1900’s the price of Koe increased so much it became illegal to sell them. Write the story of a poor tenant farmer who decides to supplement his income by stealing a koi and then tries to sell it.

Once he gets it he has has no idea who to sell it to, however, so he goes to the Yakuza.

A few points to keep in mind; Japanese farmers tried to keep a years supply of food in storage in case of famines which were common. People wouldn't let their daughters marry a person who couldn’t keep this food supply as they didn’t want to see their daughters starve when a famine hit.

Five Writing Prompts to Keep You Warm

1-With nothing to do one cold winters day some boys in a small Polish City in the 1920's take turns pretending to smoke so that they can watch each other get scowled by the elder ladies of the village. And even though they are brave enough to face the wrath of a woman who'll box their ears they encounter something that startles them all back to their mothers.

2-A powerful hermit wizard in the mountains of Japan is going stir crazy in his cave because he pissed off a tribe of powerful serpents with shape shifting powers. Now he can't leave until winter comes and he's getting serious cabin fever.

3-Some Christmas elves creep into a house in Japan to check on things in that country for the first time (back when the Japanese first started celebrating Christmas with a Santa Claus). While inside they run into some Chochinobake (Mischievous paper lanterns that have come to life because they are more than a hundred years old). This is a strange encounter between the spirits of two different places, in order to figure out what happens when they meet each other you need to give characterization to mythical beings.

4-Write a story about Woden as Santa. Riding around hunting evil spirits while also delivering presents and luck to people.

5-In one folktale the yukionna marries a woodsmen who doesn't know who she is, than later leaves him because he finds out. Now he has to raise the children of a snow woman all alone. Write a scene from this.

Internal Dualism

Is it a good spirit or an evil spirit? That question always seems to come up when one is discussing mythological creatures, and usually the answer is 'neither or both.' For unlike Christianity in which the dualism, the opposing forces are contained in two separate beings fairy like beings tend to be their own opposites which makes sense given that nature itself is often unpredictable and it's own opposite. Hermes for example was the deity of both thieves and merchants, for he could help either as he wished. 

It makes sense for natural beings to be their own opposites, for the same river which brings water to fields also floods them, the same forest which provides food is the place of wolves. It's also important to keep the world of fairies in perspective. For the king of the forest loves the spirits of the trees, they are his children and or his wives. Thus those who cut down trees are killing those he loves. From the perspective of the fairies humans are assaulting them, attacking them. Yet at the same time many of these fairies have a protective streak about them. Thus they will both help and harm humans, depending on the humans relationship with them.

This all comes down to the nature of the soul in ancient belief. In order to begin to understanding the ancient European conception of the soul, you must forget everything you think you know about it. Our modern conception does not help in our goal of becoming aware of the real nature of fairies and our relationship to them. Moreover, the modern European beliefs about the soul do not explain some of the important traditions that have been carried over from ancient belief systems.

People then, as they often times do now, believed that the soul was separate from the body. At one time people thought that souls inhabit objects as well as living things. 

“The ancient Egyptians…conceived the Ka or personality as a thing separable from the person or body, and hence ‘the statue of a human being represented and embodied a human Ka’. Likewise a statue of a god was the dwelling-place of a divine Ka, attracted to it by certain mystical formulae at the time of dedication.” (Wentz, 1911) 

When someone dies we erect a marker to them, a marker which is then placed in a beautiful location and on which we place flowers and other offerings. That this marker is a remnant of a shrine to the dead person is clear, for we speak to them at it which is in essence a form of prayer to their soul. What’s more, we feel reverence around it as we would in a religious setting. So again it is clear that this is a shrine for the dead. What isn’t clear, given most peoples current beliefs regarding the soul, is why this shrine must be at the persons body. The answer to this question is surprising as it is plainly obvious – people once believed that the soul remained with the body after death.

In Russia, they have funeral songs: 

“which the grave itself is spoken of as the home of the departed spirit. “Dark and joyless is our prison-house," is the reply constantly made by ghosts when questioned about their habitation. "Stone and earth lie heavy on our hearts, our eyes are fast closed, our hands and feet are frozen by the cold." Especially during the winters do the dead suffer; when the spring returns the peasants say, "Our fathers enjoy repose," and in Little-Russia they add, "God grant that the earth may lie light on you.” (Ralston, 1872) 

From this song, we can see that the Russians believed that the soul remained within the body. Similarly, as we will see further in “Humans Are the Dead”, in Celtic, Germanic, Mongolian, Japanese, and nearly every other Indo-European and Tengeri Mythology,  humans souls were also thought to grow into flowers, trees, and rivers - things that we previously explained to be fairies. Yet at the same time, side by side with these beliefs, are Celtic and Russian myths that tell of soul taking the form of a winged animal. 

In Brittany, souls are frequently thought to be in butterfly form, “but that upon leaving the body it is often believed to take the form of a fly and sometimes that of a raven…" (Ralston 1872). The butterfly also seems to have been universally accepted by the Slavonians as an emblem of the soul. Similarly, one of the names in the Government of Yaroslaw is dushichka, a caressing diminutive of dusha, the soul. In Kherson culture, it is believed that if the usual alms are not distributed at a funeral, the dead man's soul will reveal itself to his relatives in the form of a moth flying about the flame of a candle. Then, the day after receiving such a warning visit, the family would call together the poor and distribute food to them. Meanwhile, Bohemian culture holds that if the first butterfly a man sees in the spring is a white one, he is destined to die within the year. The Servians, on the other hand, believe that the soul of a witch often leaves her body while she is asleep and flies abroad in the shape of a butterfly. 

“The belief in the bird-soul was well known in the Highlands. To illustrate: A farmer was coming home from Inverness to Buntait when at a weird part of the way his mare got uncontrollable and ran up with him to where there was a waterfall (eas). Whereupon he swooned and fell off. On recovering he found his way home and was amazed at finding his mare tied in the stable, not knowing how it happened, for nobody confessed to having tied her. Soon after he hurt himself in moving a heavy box of oats at the farm of Shewglie; a plough or two broke thereafter at the spring-work, always a bad omen. Getting more unwell, he said to his wife the night before his death: "What a beautiful bird I heard singing by my bedside to-night." "I well believe it," she replied. To which he answered: "It was my ghost; I cannot live long.” (Ralston, 1872)

There were also a number of other animal forms which human souls could take. 

“it was generally believed among the Northern nations that the soul escaped from the body in the shape of a mouse, which crept out of a corpse’s mouth and ran away, and it was also said to creep in and out of the mouths of people in a trance. While the soul was absent, no effort or remedy could recall the patient to life; but as soon as it had come back animation returned.” (Guerber, 1909)

It is also clear that along with these ideas, it was believed that humans changed into some other form after death. What we see from examining the mythology surrounding death is that the same people believed that two or even three things happened to a human soul when we died.

Why did the ancient Europeans hold so many beliefs? Is it simply because they were confused by what happens after death? Is it because people were not certain which one of a myriad of choices to believe in so they picked all possible outcomes? Of course, any of these options is possible. Certainly the modern tradition of laying flowers on the grave has persisted even though almost no one truly believes that this does any real good for the dead. So it is also quite possible that the beliefs in Europe changed slowly over time, thus making it appear that they believed that two very different things could happen to a person's soul.

There is, however, an alternative option; that people believed many things happened to a person when they died. That like the people of the Steppes in Central Asia, the Ainu, the Japanese, the Finns as well as the forbearers of the Hungarians and North East Europeans some Europeans believed that everyone had multiple souls. These peoples do have some disagreement as to the number of souls a human can have, but they believed that when people die some of their souls reside in nature and become trees or mountains, while others are reincarnated or travel to the afterlife for a time in the form of a winged creature such as a butterfly or a bird. (Ried, 2002) 

Jacob Grimm points out that Germanic people spoke of the soul as a feminine object, while they spoke of life -integrally related to breath - as masculine. (Grimm, 1835) Clearly, then, there was a distinction of some form between the two, which in turn, supports the idea that at one time the people in Europe believed in more than one soul. The fundamental belief in multiple souls is significant because it shows us not only how some fairies that reside in nature can be connected with ancient humans, but it also explains how an individual fairy can seemingly have many personalities and forms at one time. 

We see the same belief repeated in Japan where people thought that the Kami had multiple souls, and therefore multiple natures or personalities. According to them, any given Kami has four souls and three natures. Namely, Aramitama, Nigimitama, and Sakimitama. Any one of these natures can become dominant, thus completely changing the way the Kami acts, what they desire, and what goals they will have.

The Aramitama is violent and generally destructive. However, it is important to keep in mind that destructiveness is not always harmful.  After all, it was violence and destructiveness that saved Japan from the genocide of the Mongols and protected people from other dangers.

The second type, Nigimitama, is the gentle nature which Kami uses to make the crops grow and the water pure. However, Kami in this state do not go out of their way to do good. They simply keep the natural order of things so that there is enough for humans and animals to survive.

The final nature, Sakimitama, is one in which Kami brings extra luck, creates wealth for humans, and other similar helpful actions. 

I believe that, just as in the concepts behind the Kami, we see separate natures in fairies of European mythology. For the same fairy that causes people's crops to grow is the one that children are told to avoid. (Frazer, 1922) In the sacred groves, the fairies that people prayed to for wealth and luck would not hesitate to kill those who disturbed ­­­them. (Tactis)

Hermes in Greek mythology was both the god who protected merchants from thieves and the one who helped thieves rob the merchants. He gave humans secrets to keep them safe, yet snatched children away, dragging them into a dark world from which there was no return. It is clear from these stories that the fairies and deities in European myths had multiple natures, and that their motivations and thoughts changed with their mood. Indeed, fairies and deities can be said to feel things with more intensity than most humans can and so they need to struggle for control much more fiercely. 

Unlike much of the modern perception of the world, in which the duality between destruction and creation exists in separate beings, fairies exhibit this duality inside themselves. An internalized duality makes sense given that fairies were natural phenomena which are, in themselves, dualistic in a way that is neither good nor evil. After all, if fairies helped humans hunt for food, they must also help wolves source their food, which can include humans as there is no moral difference in the wolf's mind between a deer and a human. In addition, we as humans have every right to kill the wolf to defend ourselves, our own food, and those we love. Why is this comparison significant? Because this is the way of fairies – in fact, the way of all feral creatures - and this is a critical insight into what they think and do.

Indeed, when examining fairies, it becomes obvious that humans are not always their closest companions. Fairies often love trees and animals more because these are their friends. When a human chops down a tree they are in fact killing a fairy, which can be a child, mother, or lover of another fairy. To fairies, humans can be the wolves that destroy what they love, the rats that bring disease and eat off their infant’s faces. In this sense, fairies have every right to return pestilence onto humanity to protect themselves just as we have the right to defend ourselves from predators and illnesses.

Fairies - Always Ancient but Never Mature

Many fairies never truly mature. At the same time, however, they grow up within a few years or are born ancient from the very beginning (Grimm, 1835). Further, because of their immortal nature, they would eventually only have the slightest inkling that they were ever young at all. This situation can lead them to desire that which they cannot have, a childhood. Consider that when fairies kidnap adults, the fairies most often replace them with objects which are made of dirt or wood but are enchanted to appear to be corpses. Yet when a fairy takes a human baby, they replace the child with old fairies in disguise. So when a fairy takes an adult, it is clear that what they are after is the adult because they leave the humans very little recourse to discover the deception or to force the fairies to return the person who was taken.

When fairies take human children, however, they are after something else, something more. By leaving an elderly fairy, the fairies risk being found out because of the actions of the elderly fairy. Further, they risk having the fairy abused by the humans as often happened. If all the fairies wanted was the child, then they would simply replace them with clay or wood magically disguised to appear as a dead child as they do adults. By replacing children with older fairies, the fairies are actively seeking to take the place of the child.
In history and our own society, we can see many child actors who grew up to seek after their childhood later. They sought to create a “Neverland” for themselves. Even beyond this, however, there are many people who seek to go back to or to find a childhood again. Movies are ripe with stories of people who wish to regain their youth, or to find the happiness they never had as a child. For such people, however, the rules of society, age, mortality, as well as the fact that no matter what they do they cannot look like children prevents them from achieving childhood later in life.

Fairies, however, can change their form at will, and they don’t have the same social rules as humans. Perkiss points out that when the nymphs would kidnap heroes, it seemed that they did so in order to essentially play house with the hero the way a girl might seek to pull a father, brother, or neighbor boy into a game of tea. Thus, while even human children must follow certain rules, (they can’t force the neighbor boy to play tea without adult intervention or a lot of badgering), fairies with their supernatural powers do not have very many rules at all. Further, because of their immortal nature, they have forever to gain a greater longing for a childhood and can act childlike forever.  There is never a moment when they start to whither and get injured more easily or must worry about finding a job. So they can dance on the hillsides every night for eternity and so they often do.

Rumpelstiltskin and the Knight

The ancient fairy sat beside the road and felt the wind brushing through his leafy hair as he kissed the moonlight causing her to give a shy giggle which made him smile.
“Its going to be a while isn't it?” Rumpelstiltskin asked the wind, which blew in affirmation. So he sat on an old rock which bent and softened itself for him providing an unnatural cushion. Rumpelstiltskin knew that three young men would soon be passing his way, one after the other, and while he’d already determined that it was the third and youngest of them which deserved to rule Whispershire he still felt he should give the others a chance to prove him wrong. He whistled cheerfully as he looked out over what remained of the wild rye meadow. Perhaps he’d let the trees grow too far he mused as a deer and her fawn were forced to stand so close to the forests that they would have had no warning had wolves been on the prowl. He closed his eyes and began to envision how the forest would look if he allowed the grass to push the trees back just a little more. He was contemplating all the ways he could change the forest when the oldest of the young men started to walk past.....

Read the full story.

I wanted an introduction to Rumpelstiltskin that fit with my analysis of him as a helper of the downtrodden and of kingdoms, it didn't take me long to find the role of Männleins in giving advice to people setting  out to seek their fortune or knights going to rescue someone. This gave me the perfect set up for my first Flash Fiction about Rumpelstiltskin, as the fairy waiting to help those setting off to seek their fortune, while at the same time assuring that a kingdom gains a good king.

Read My Analysis of Rumpelstiltskin

Germany - Water Sprites

Extracted from Jacob Grimm's Teutonic Mythology

Water sprites have manythings in common with mountain sprites but many things peculiar to them.

The males like those of the schrat kind, come up singly rather than in companies, the water man is represented as oldish with a long beard, often he is many headed. In Danish folk song the enokke lifts his beard aloft he wears a green hat and when he grins you see his green teeth.

He at times is the figure of a wild boy with shaggy hair or else with yellow girls and a red cap

Nakki of the Finns is said to have iron teeth.

At times water sprites will go and buy grain and if they pay more than the price a dearth follows but if he buys cheaper the prices fall.

Dancing and song and music are the delight of all water sprites, like sirens the nixe by her song draws listing youth to herself then into the deep. In Sweden they tell of the stromkarls alluring enchanting strain they have eleven song variations but only ten may you dance to the eleventh belongs to the night spirit and his band; begin to t play that the table sand benches, cup and can, gray beards grandmothers, blind lame, and even babes in cradle would begin to dance.

The stromkarl loves to linger by mills and waterfulls hence his Norwegion name fossegrim people would offer a black lamb and were taught music by him in return the fossegrimm too on calm dark evenings entices men by his music and instruct in the fiddle or other stringed instruments  in return for a little white he-goat. If the victim is fat the fossegrim clutches hold of the players right and guides it up and down till blood starts out of hall his finger tips, then the pupil is perfect in his art and can play so that all the trees shall dance and torrents in their fall stand still.

Although Christianity forbids such offerings people retain a certain awe and reverence and have not quite given up all faith in their power and influence.

The nix also extracts cruel sacrifices of which memory is preserved in nearly all popular tradition, when people are drowned in a river it is common to saw the river sprite demands his yearly victim which is usually an innocent child.

On the whole there runs through stories of water sprites a vein of cruilty of bloodthirstiness which is not found among the sprites of mountains woods and homes. The nix kills humans and his own folk who go ashore to mingle with men. A girl was taken by a sprite and passed fifteen years in a haf-fruns gard home (sea wife)and was never seen for all that time. Her brother rescued her

Some others suppose that they do not drown but instead bear peoples souls to their next abode

in seaden drowned men who's bodies ar enot found are supposed to have been drawn into the dwelling of hafafru