1. There once was a good man in a good land with a good people. They made him king.

When his kingdom was sore pressed by enemies and not all his valor nor the urgent spells of his magicians could turn them away, it so happened that a loyal man-at-arms sought an audience, saying he had somewhat to offer. The king received him, of course. The man spoke with fervor and sincerity. “Sire!” he said. “I will will my life force, the mana of my soul, to you! With that extra might, you will save the kingdom!” The king was horrified. ”  You would die.  I forbid it,” he barked. “You cannot stop me,” the man said. Zeal gleamed in his eyes, and then his eyes were blank. He fell to the floor. Potency rushed into the king, who vomited.

Others did likewise, to the increasing horror and rage of the king. Filled and overflowing with literal power, the king won the battle and the war. and freed all.  A universal golden era set in. (more…)

“Be good, be good,” the father duck said

“No, be great, be great,” the father duck said.

A young man went climbing the mountain to speak to the guru at the mountain top.  On his way up, he met a wiry man in a robe climbing down.

“Did the guru give you wisdom?” the young man asked.

“I am the guru,” the other man said.

“Then why . . .?”

The guru nodded.  “Because I saw another mountain peak over there higher than this one that I’m going to ascend.  Because a voice said to me, ‘you are not the guru at the mountain top.  You are the guru climbing the mountain.’  And because I don’t know if any mountain top can be high enough.”

The guru took his leave and continued on down, but when he  looked back the young man was following him.

“Why are you following me?” Then the guru grinned and the young man grinned.  They both knew why.  They  continued on their way. (more…)

C.S. Lewis once said something like the essence of myth is that the person who makes it doesn’t see it as an allegory, but the hearer keeps seeing hints of allegories in it.

He is technically wrong, but substantially right.  A mythmaker can have an allegorical meaning in mind.  But the myth has to be stronger than their allegory for it to work.

Take Mr. Lewis’ own allegory, Pilgrim’s Regress.  Its nothing but allegory and pleasant enough in its way.  I can speak, though, of three different passages which I keep coming back to.   They have that kind of force.  For some of them, I don’t even remember what the original allegorical meaning was supposed to be.

The first is the giant whose sight turns people transparent so that you can see their bowels and their bones.

The second is the parable of the man closely pursued by enemies.  His wife sees him coming and is perplexed.  If she cuts down the bridge that leads to their home, he will be stranded on the other side with his enemies.  If she doesn’t, his enemies will cross with him.

Those two I don’t really recall the allegorical point Lewis was making, at least not off the top of my head.

The third passage proves my point the best, since it is the most clearly allegorical but is also a passage that I have *felt* many times.  It’s about the home of Mr. Wisdom.  He and his children live a quiet, sober life there.  They dine on plain fare and are content.  But at night, his children in a trance fly off to participate in witches sabbaths and bloody melees and the like.

The point is that a myth, to really work, has to have some weight to it apart from the message its supposed to be teaching.  Which is why Mr. Wisdom and his children have come to my mind at times that had nothing to do with the message that rationalists subconsciously derive their emotional satisfaction from elsewhere.

My best parables can sometimes have a very clear message, but they have a power beyond the message.

Poet Head, for instance, is so self-consciously message fiction that I literally call the head poet heads and sober heads.  But it still works.

A bull was gazing longingly over the fence into the next pasture.

“What’s the attraction of that pasture?” asked a pigeon on the fence.

“It’s greener,” said the bull.

“But look at all the hills,” said the pigeon, “they are greener too.”

The bull looked around. “Yes” he said, “now I want to roam all the hills, grazing there too.”

Moral: The vignette came to me first. I am undecided if the moral is something about ambition and desire being limitless. Or if the moral is that you need somebody to help you elevate your ambitions.

Sexual temptation can be pretty strong sometimes, especially when the desire is new and in the full flood of youth.

This is a post about desire. Any desire. But we will do that literary thingo, synecdoche or metonymy or whatsit, where we focus on a part to stand in for the whole. So we will be looking at sexual desire and sexual temptation.

Let’s look at the teenage years or early adulthood, when the desire is strong but chastity still means celibacy. I am writing from a guy’s perspective but I think, mutatis mutandi, you could translate it into a girl’s perspective too. (more…)

A certain lamb was being loaded onto a livestock trailer for the trip to the slaughterhouse.  As the tractor-trailer drove off, the lamb squirmed its way through the tightly pressed sheep to catch a glimpse out a ventilation hole, a glimpse of the pastures the lamb was leaving behind.

“At last, freedom at last,” the lamb exclaimed.  “No more fences, no more herd dogs!”

A worker put some wood into the furnace of an unlit boiler then tried to light it.

“What are you doing?”  his boss said.  “Studies show that there is a tight correlation between the amount of the wood and the heat of the fire.  Corporate wants us to do nothing but add more  wood.  Everything else is a waste of time.”

Moral:  You cannot start a fire by adding more wood.

Related: Light a Fire that will Never Go Out

And thus we saw, in the heavenly vision, the glory of the telestial, which surpasses all understanding;

And no man knows it

There was a large heap of wood in the campfire ring. But when the man tried to light it, it would not light. The wood was laid too thickly. The flames choked out. Much of the wood was punky and would by no means take a light.

The man removed bad wood and more bad wood and overstocked wood until all that was left were a small stick and three twigs. But those caught the flame and burned with light.

(more…)

Following on from Part I, read it first.

The wizard lands were stagnant. Millions striving to create their own language, their own script, their own scales, and not succeeding. Some few succeeding in a minor ways. A mere handful truly achieving greatness . . . and then dying, and their greatness dying with them.

The land without magic was not stagnant. Gleaming towers were there; and gleaming rockets to the Moon, and to Mars; and gleaming teeth. They were not stagnant. But if an angel were to jerk back the veil on time, you would see that their trajectory was a curve. Up and then over and then down. It would take no angel to see the signs that were already there. Their arts were complex enough now that no one person could achieve much in the way of greatness. But they were so far removed from want that struggle and suffering were no longer spurs to them either. Their growth had slowed. Movements and ideas insulated from reality were starting to spread. Individuals who wanted greatness were fighting for preeminence and celebrity instead. They had grown slowly and then for a few dizzying decades had grown very quickly. Now they would decline slowly and then very quickly.

But if the way of magic didn’t work, and the way of the country without magic didn’t work, what then?

A new thing was seen in the land. A boy was inspired with a new language. In it there were rules that made the language individual for each speaker. It captured their experience and their character. Their words would be shaded by their relationships with their family and their friends. Their achievements were built in. Only they could speak it. But others could understand them. Each one who learned the rules was able to create their own language, and speak words of power. And the words they spoke together, the songs they sung together, were more powerful still.

There once was a boy who was set to watch sheep. Some wolves gathered and he ran to the village for help. “Wolves! Wolves!” he cried. But shockingly, in describing the wolves he said that some of them were “bitches.” This was offensive. The villagers beat him a bit and then the village elder took him aside to counsel him. When the boy said that the wolves were already among the sheep right then, the village elder pointed out that the delay was entirely the boy’s fault. The slain sheep must be on the boy’s conscience. Finally the boy was let go to salvage the situation as best as he could on his own.

Wolves learn from experience even if boys do not, so the next time the wolves attacked they behaved and dressed in a very peculiar fashion, like an outrageous gay stereotype. The boy fought them but finally had to run to the village for help. He described the wolves as ‘acting gay.’ The villagers would have reacted badly in any case to this association of sexual minorities with vicious predatory beasts but they were even more concerned given the boy’s prior history of offensive conduct. They beat him thoroughly and lectured him long.

The next time the boy ran into town he said the wolves were painted in blackface and saying “n*****.” The villagers had put up with the boy’s antics for a long time, but saying “n*****” was really too much. They beat him almost to death and drove him out.

It was too bad about the sheep.

The ruler of that land was called the Tiger King.  He lived in great luxury and had utter sway from harvest to harvest.

When the harvest was in, he stepped down.  The time for choosing who would next wear the Tiger Crown came.

The choosing went like this.  They had a certain large field where they held a combat.  The last man standing among all the aspirants took the Tiger Crown for the next year.  But this was no ordinary combat.  Each man had to be mounted on a tiger.  Either his own, or one that would be provided.

More men were laid low by their own tiger then by another’s blows. (more…)

A great bear came out of his winter cave to see the sun rising pink over the still snow-patched fields and meadows.  The bare trees were dark against that brilliant light.  The bear was overwhelmed and had what he felt was a vision of true insight.  “Beauty is good,” he said to himself.

He painstakingly set to etch patterns in each claw using his other claws and gentle patient nibbles with his great jaw.  It took a long time.  The changes were subtle.  But when he was done he was an ordinary bear in all other respects, but each claw was truly beautiful.

In his rejoicing, he lifted a great log and tossed it, and felt the joy and glory of his strength.  “Strength is good,” he said to himself, and then improved his strength in the ways that even bears can do.  When he felt himself to be truly strong, even for a great bear, and with his claws truly beautiful, he went forth slashing and destroying.  He knocked down and ripped and tore and left broken trees and dying animals and dead men and women in his wake and horrible death and corruption.  In that way he became the first ogre and the grandfather of all that kind.

Moral:  Beware isolated beauty.  Beware isolated truth.

In a certain country there was a city that had a crown without a king and a throne without a monarch.  Elders ruled the place until a king should come.  The people were not just waiting, no.  Because in fact there was a test.  From time to time the elders would approach a likely candidate and test him to see if he was the new king.  The details of the test were not generally known, but the people did know the test was administered from time to time, though so far no candidate had been successful.  It was not known exactly what criteria the elders used.  They seemed to pay particular attention to the gleaming athletes in the gymnasia, but there were other ways too.  Again, the details were not generally known.

There was a man in that place who one day wondered why the king should not be him?  He was already fit but now he dedicated himself to athleticism and beauty.    He was frequently seen in the gymnasium, gleaming with olive oil, wrestling in the nude or hurling a discus or running.  He grew stronger and swifter and more handsome.  The people began to glory in him and as he did he felt the taste of kingship coming stronger over him.  But still no call from the elders came, so one day he went to them. (more…)

An ape scraped together some education and a chalkboard.  RULES, he wrote on it.

RULE NUMBER ONE: SHARE YOUR FOOD

He called the animals together and showed them the rule.  The lion had his doubts, but the ape reminded him that even kings were beneath the law.  By way of teaching the rule by example, the ape helped himself to generous samples of every animal’s food.

Later the ape gathered some tender shoots and was munching on them.  A number of animals who liked that sort of food gathered round for their share.  But “ah,” said the pe, and led them back to the chalkboard clearing.  There, written clearly under Rule Number One, was the following:

EXCEPTION ONE: Unless the Food is a Luxury.

Sharing is for necessities, the Ape explained.  Tender shoots are a delicacy, not a necessity.

The monkey objected, “you ate  most of my banana.   That wasn’t a necessity.”

“Oh, they are for apes,” the ape replied.  “But in any case . . .”  He turned to the chalkboard and wrote a new exception.

EXCEPTION TWO:  Unless the Food Requires Effort to Prepare.

“I had to dig for these tender shoots,” the ape explained.

“And I had to climb the tree for the bananas and you made me peel it for you!” was the monkey’s hot reply.

“I feel sorry for you, friend,” the ape said.  “But Exception Two didn’t exist back then.”

Moral:  the rules created by rule manipulators aren’t real rules.  The explanations they make aren’t real explanations.