Widdershins
Mamacita says: I have always loved fairy tales. I do not mean the insipid heavily-edited baby-tales, all with happy endings, the Disney-fied versions; I am speaking of the real thing: stories full of blood and guts and red-hot spikes and death and endings-that-are-not-always-happy and the accidental lunching on one’s infant and the horrendous consequences of not following directions or keeping oneself moral.
Mom had a large thick book of fairy tales when we were kids. One of my favorites was a tale not as popular as Cinderella, or Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty, etc. One of my favorites was the story of Burd Ellen, and her brothers.
I loved this story on so many levels. . . . but one of those levels was the vocabulary. It was full of many-syllabic wonders: words that the second and third grade world would have shortened and made politically correct in a whipstitch.
My favorite word in this story was “widdershins.” (Antonym: deosil)
Widdershins and deosil
Its meaning wasn’t explained within the story, and I liked that, too. It meant that I got to pull down the absolutely immense dictionary and look it up. And while I had the dictionary down, I got to look at the shiny slick pages of world flags, and jewels, but I digress.
I’m not going to tell you the definition, either. That’s not how I teach. By now, you should be interested enough to find out by yourself. You know, like real students do.
Widdershins. Burd Ellen was snatched up by evil elves and taken to fairyland 
because she went widdershins around the church. I was lost in fascination by this word and by this concept. She and her brothers were caught up in playing and forgot the warning and she went widdershins around the church, chasing the ball.
Please, take your children to the library and check out a big thick book of UNABRIDGED fairy tales. Don’t waste your time with anything that’s been edited; you want the real thing, the genuine unadulterated scary bloody real thing. Abridgments are the devil. Yes, THAT devil. Do not allow an abridged ANYTHING in your home; it will devour your soul and make your children stupid.
Some “experts” claim that scary stories traumatize children. I do not believe that. This is not to say that your five-year-old would do fine with Steven King, no, not at all. Context, y’all. But a good satisfying scary fairy tale? Go for it. I can still remember sitting with that huge book, projecting myself into the illustrations, and grooving on the musicality of the language. I can remember coming to the end of a story and closing the book, thinking satisfactorily that since the wicked stepmother is dead, she’s not OUT THERE any more, and not only is Cinderella safe from her grasping hands, but so am I!!!
Whereas the Disney stepmother was forgiven, which means she’s still OUT THERE, and no little child is safe.
The little mermaid died, too, but it was the only honorable way out for her. Once she got legs, walking was like being sliced by sharp knives, and with legs, she had to get married to get a soul or vanish completely. The very obnoxious prince she wanted was already married, so it was murder him in his bridal bed or dissolve. She dissolved. Word to Disney.
Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid
I love Disney animated movies, don’t get me wrong, but those are not the real stories. I also understand that these stories were passed from generation to generation verbally, and if you’ve ever played “Secrets” at a party, you’ll know how much even a simple sentence will change as each person whispers what they think they heard to the next person. Once written down, though, the stories started carving themselves in stone, and those are the versions I love best. I’m not saying YOU have to love them best, but I think we should understand the dark underbelly of “Happily Ever After.” I wish parents and teachers would expose children to the real thing, in print, and refuse to allow those sissy censored edited changed and WRONG WRONG WRONG books of these stories to grace the bookshelves of our schools and homes. Let the kids experience the wonder and satisfactory retributions and blood and guts and weeping and punishments and VOCABULARY of these stories, exactly as the authors and re-tellers put them down in the first place. It creates opportunities for comparison/contrast, too. Run with it.
I can close my eyes and remember those illustrations. There weren’t very many, because too many pictures in a good book is an unpleasant distraction, but those pictures that were there, were, to quote Spencer Tracy on Katherine Hepburn, “cherce.”
Widdershins. Burd Ellen. I hadn’t thought of Childe Rowland in years, but I thought of it this afternoon whilst chatting with a dear friend; he used the word “widdershins’ and I was transported back to my childhood, poring over that big thick book, fascinated by the picture of the big gothic church and the young girl chasing a ball widdershins around it, not to reappear. I remembered how much I loved it.
Widdershins and its antonym, deosil, are associated by some people with the occult, but don’t let the undereducated fears of such people influence you. Go HERE, and become enlightened at once. Do not skip the big words. That is what your dictionary is for. If you know how to use context clues, you won’t need a dictionary, even.
And contrary to what the not-very-good elementary teachers might think and say and do, small children love big words, and the best way for them to learn them is for them to hear them.
Condescension is never a good thing, and dumbing-down, editing, and changing all the cool big words into stupid tiny words is an insult to our young people.
Good People Exist & They Shall Prevail!
Mamacita says: I tend to stress and focus here on people who are, let us euphemistically say, somewhat less than nice, or less than hardworking, or less than considerate, etc. Let’s face it: those are the people who “stand out” sometimes, which is most unfortunate since such people don’t deserve to stand out.
My question is simply this: What has happened to us as a society that we give all this time and attention to such people when it’s the OTHER kind of people who are most deserving of it?
In any group of 100 people*, for example, 95 of them are good, kind, honest, decent, considerate, intelligent, polite, hard-working, savvy people. 95 out of 100 people earn a living, help others, discipline their children, read things other than the sports page, keep promises, control their hormones, appreciate, thank, accept responsibility for their own actions, and take care of their responsibilities properly and well. These people know what love is, and what love does. I shall refer to this group as the “cream.”
As for the remaining 5, who lie, cheat, steal, abandon, betray, abuse, annoy, harm, distract, neglect, attack, ignore, and defy**, and who choose themselves and their own personal convenience first, above and beyond any person or any responsibility they might have, and who consider “consequences” as some coincidental oddity that occasionally falls from the sky for no apparent reason, and just generally do their utmost to prevent others from learning, achieving, living a good life, being comfortable, feeling secure, or in any way being able to trust? These people believe that love is sex. I shall refer to this group as “skim milk,” or , the “lowest common denominator.” (LCD)
The lowest common denominator is, naturally, at the head of the line when it comes to attention-grabbing, which is one reason the media is all over them like piranha on a cow’s hind leg. The lowest common denominator is fascinating to read about, for their antics and general lifestyles are so far from what decent, intelligent people believe and do that it’s often like watching or reading about an alien species. (Hoarders. Honey Boo Boo. I rest my case.)
Which, indeed, it is. And not a superior one, either. Quite the opposite. Maybe, an evil alien species that’s trying to take over the planet in order to drain it to keep itself alive. “To Serve Man” etc.
While the lowest common denominator is out there doing its “thang,” the cream is busy taking care of people: their own, and those the lowest common denominator left behind. The cream is working two or three jobs, making sure their children and other people’s children have shoes and milk. The cream is trying desperately, with little or no support, to educate both the cream and the LCD, often amidst great reluctance at the best and chaos, destruction, and harm at the worst from the lowest common denominator. The LCD will often protest being asked to lay aside their egos and fun and body parts – instant gratification – merely for the sometimes delayed gratification of thinking, connecting, exploring, and probing their heretofore unexplored brains. That’s too hard, and besides, most of the LCD don’t have a large enough vocabulary to make very many connections. Small vocabularies are also one of the causes of much of the violence: when someone doesn’t have the means to communicate verbally, he/she tends to strike out physically.
The more words we know, the more connections we are able to make. The more connections we are able to make, the more we can understand. The more we understand, the less apt we are to be violent.
The more we understand, the more we want others to be able to understand, too.
Uneducated, undereducated, lazy, small-minded people perceive the world to be equally small, and treat it likewise. To the LCD, the world is a buffet of victims and freebies, all of which belong to him.
The cream tends to perceive the world as being just like themselves: eager to know, willing to learn, trustworthy, hardworking, and worthy of respect. Even after being victimized time and again by the lowest common denominator, the cream still has hope.
I wish the media, the business world, and the schools would stop giving the lowest common denominator so much more than their fair share of attention or focus. Making headlines out of adultery, betrayal, violence, bullying, drugs, disruptions, adultery, selfishness, etc, somehow makes such things “okay” to a person without the means to make proper connections. “Wow, it’s in the paper! Cool!” is not a good attitude to cultivate in our young people, or in our LCD older people, either.
The cream doesn’t usually make headlines. The LCD have money, and they aren’t interested in spending it to find out about cancer cures, rocket science, volunteering, sacrifice, donations, and people who go about their lives quietly, decently, doing the right thing even when the wrong thing would be easier and a lot more fun. The LCD feed on discord and personal pleasure, and lately they’ve had plenty to feast upon.
No matter how the lowest common denominator may prosper, and no matter how much attention they get from the media and the people who finance it, and no matter how much our schools ignore, neglect, and even punish the pupils and teachers who work and care above and beyond the norm, the cream will continue to work, care, love, and display those very unfashionable traits like loyalty, fidelity, ethics, citizenship, good behavior, charity, and other positive attributes laughed at, devalued, and mocked by the lowest common denominator
In the end, the cream will rise. It always does, no matter how hard the LCD tries to push it down or mix it up. The cream will continue to rise, and work, and love, and be shining examples that get no press to those fortunate enough to know them.
The lowest common denominator may get most of the attention, money, services, and press, in business, education, media, etc, but it is the cream who will ultimately rise to the top.
Let’s all give the cream the time and attention they so rightly deserve.
* I made up this statistic, but I stand by it.
**The bad, negative kind of “defy,” not the cool, out-of-the-box kind that creative people are often forced to do.
Oh, oops, is “stupid” a politically correct word? My bad. And, too bad. Used properly, it’s the perfect description for some.
Besides, overuse of political correctness and euphemisms cheapens our language, and our society.
Bring it on.
Cupid & Psyche & the Mother-in-Law From Hell
Mamacita says: I’ve been blogging for over sixteen years, and every Valentine’s Day, I like to re-tell the story of Cupid and Psyche to the Blogosphere.
Why? Because it’s one of my favorite myths. I love this story. I’d post more pictures about it, but everybody’s nekkid.
Mamacita says: It’s Valentine’s Day, and since many people associate this day with Cupid, let’s talk for a moment about the REAL Cupid. Well, the real mythological Cupid.
Cupid is not a fat naked baby, flying around shooting arrows into people to make them fall in love with the first living thing they see, causing people to have inappropriate relationships with cows and bulls and goats. It was used as an excuse by some people, but we won’t go there.
It’s kind of along the same lines as the alcoholics who tried to rationalize their choices by swearing they were just worshipping Bacchus/Dionysus, and the knocked-up teenagers who swore they were abducted by Zeus. . . .
Ahem.
In some myths, Cupid/Eros IS a perpetual child, but in most of the myths, he is as all the other gods (except Hephaestus) were: indescribably beautiful. Unfortunately, his mother was the goddess Aphrodite/Venus, and even though she was the goddess of love and beauty, she was a BITCH.
Here is the story of what happened when Cupid dared to fall in love and try to have a life of his own. Heh, and some of you think YOU have mother-in-law problems. . . .
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Once upon a time – was there EVER a better way to begin a story? – there was a King who had three daughters, all beautiful, and the youngest daughter was the most beautiful of all. In fact, and this was dangerous talk in any myth, people said that this young princess was more beautiful even than the goddess of beauty herself. Now, whenever, in a myth, people compare a mortal to a god or goddess, you will know in advance that the poor mortal, even though he/she probably did nothing wrong, is going down. DOWN. Circling the drain down.
This young princess, whose name was Psyche, begged the populace not to say such things, but people were heedless and full of gossip even back in these days, and the talk went on and on. Eventually, of course, Aphrodite heard of it, and she was FURIOUS.
She called her son Cupid to her, and instructed him to fly down to earth and shoot an arrow into Psyche, making sure the first living thing she saw would be a monster that would devour her even as she could not help falling in love with it.
What Aphrodite had not foreseen was this: Cupid took one look at Psyche, was dazzled by her beauty, tripped and fell on one of his own arrows and fell in love with her himself. It was the real thing, too; it would have happened with or without magic love arrows or anything else. He saw her, and he loved her.
He knew, though, that he would have to keep it a secret from everyone, especially his jealous, possessive mother. Therefore, he would have to somehow get Psyche away from her family and sneak her to his palace.
He sent Psyche’s father, the King, a dream that directed him to go to an Oracle – a fortuneteller – who told him that he must take his beloved daughter to the top of the mountain and let a Demon take her to wife.
The King did not dare to disobey, so he and Psyche’s sisters walked with Psyche up the mountain and left her on a jutting rock to await her demonic husband. She did not understand what was happening, and could not think why she should be treated so, but back in the days of the myths, people did what the gods told them to do and chalked it all off to the Fates.
That night, the West Wind swooped down and flew with her to her new husband’s home. She tried to ask Zephyrus what was to become of her, but he would not, or could not, answer. He, too, was following orders.
To Psyche’s surprise, Zephyrus took her to a beautiful palace, even more beautiful than her father’s palace back home. Invisible servants waited on her hand and foot. Delicious food was served to her, three times a day. Lovely clothing appeared in her closet.
She dreaded the night, because she knew that her new husband would come to her in the marriage bed, but when he came into the room, she knew no fear. She could not see him in the dark, but he told her he loved her and would always love her. He also told her that she must NEVER see him in the light.
He came to her every night after dark, but was gone before the morning light fell upon his face. Psyche knew that she loved him, but she did not even know his name.
Then, she got homesick.
After much crying and begging from his wife, Cupid told her that her two sisters would be allowed to visit her. Psyche was happy to hear this, for living alone in a huge castle with only invisible servants by day and a nameless, faceless husband by night was hard on a girl. Besides, she was pregnant.
Cupid was happy to hear this news, but he warned his wife that as long as she never looked upon her husband’s face, the baby would be immortal, but if she could not resist temptation and saw him in the light, the baby would be mortal and eventually die.
By this time, Psyche loved her husband so much she would have done anything for him. She agreed.
When her sisters arrived, they were impressed with the richness and luxury their sister enjoyed, but their jealousy of her good fortune overcame their love for her. They were amazed that Psyche was pregnant with the child of a husband she had never seen and didn’t even know by name. They told Psyche that he must be a hideous monster, and that she had a right to see her husband’s face. They told her that if he was indeed a monster, she would have to kill him. They told her these things over and over until they convinced her that it would be the only right thing to do. After all, why should a wife not know her husband’s face and name? It was so logical!
That night, after her husband had come to her and then fallen asleep, Psyche fetched an oil lamp and a knife. The lamp would show her his face, and if he was indeed a monster, she would kill him with the knife.
But she trembled, and a drop of hot oil fell on him. He awoke, and turned to look at 
her. She saw, in the light, not a hideous creature from the depths of hell itself, but a beautiful young man with golden wings, looking at her with love and pain and despair. He got out of bed and flew away, and Psyche knew she would never see him again.
Psyche blamed herself for losing her husband. Because of her curiosity and disobedience, she was alone, and pregnant. She prayed desperately to the gods, but they did not answer, and Cupid did not return to her.
She decided to go to Aphrodite, Cupid’s mother, and offer her services as a servant, hoping that Cupid might admire her devotion and return to her.
What naive Psyche didn’t know was that her mother-in-law didn’t merely dislike her; she HATED her, and was eager to do great harm to her to keep her son away from his wife. She was still angry because the townspeople in Psyche’s homeland had remarked that Psyche was more beautiful than Aphrodite, and the fact that this girl was now pregnant with her son’s child made Aphrodite even more furious. Aphrodite was determined to punish Psyche for taking some of her son’s affection from his mother.
Aphrodite set Psyche to work on a series of ridiculous, impossible tasks. She had to sort a roomful of different grains by nightfall; had it not been for the ants, who helped her sort the grains into various piles, she could never have finished. Next, Aphrodite told Psyche she had to shear the wool from a flock of deadly, possessed sheep that were hypnotized, so that they tried to kill all who came near. Fortunately, the reeds along the riverbank advised Psyche that she could get enough wool from the thorny bushes the sheep had passed through, instead of trying to deal with these evil sheep.
Each time Psyche succeeded, Aphrodite became angrier and more determined to break her. The tasks became more and more difficult. She sent Psyche to fetch water from the river Styx, the river of death, but fortunately, Zeus took pity on Psyche and sent one of his mighty eagles to fetch the water for her.
Finally, Aphrodite told Psyche to enter the Underworld and fetch her box of cosmetics from Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. No mortal had ever entered the World of the Dead and returned. The night before this task, she lay in her bed and wept.
Suddenly, she heard a voice, telling her how to succeed in this task, and also warning her not to open the box once she got it in her hands. This piqued Psyche’s curiosity.
In a myth, whenever someone is extremely curious about something, there’s going to be trouble.
Psyche entered the Underworld. She crossed the Styx, paying Charon his toll. (This is why, in many cultures even today, the dead are buried with a coin on each eyelid.) 
She gave food to Cerberus, (now you know where the idea of Hagrid’s “Fluffy” came from!) to distract him so she could run through the gate of Hades without being devoured. (Meat is placed in the hands of the dead, and when rigor mortis set in, the meat was secure in the fist.) Psyche did as the voice had instructed her throughout her entire visit, and finally, box in hand, she returned to the world of the living.
Once she got back to her palace and was alone with this mysterious box, Psyche’s curiosity got the better of her. What harm could one little peek do? She wasn’t going to TOUCH anything in there, after all. But when she opened the box, she fell into a deep slumber.
By this time, Cupid’s anger had passed, and he longed for his wife and baby. His mother tried her best to dissuade him, but for the first time in his life he defied her openly and, in spite of her magical attempts to hold him, flew out of his childhood home and went back to the castle he had built for his own family.
He found his wife, sound asleep on the floor of her room, and so deep was her sleep that Cupid thought she was dead, and wept as he held her in his arms. He bent to her for one last kiss, and she awakened!
Cupid and Psyche were together at last, in the light, and both liked what they saw.
However, there was still the danger of Aphrodite, who still hated Psyche and who wanted her son Cupid’s full devotion. Cupid finally appealed to Zeus, King of the Gods, and asked him to make his wife immortal, that Aphrodite could no longer harm her, and Zeus agreed.
Cupid and Psyche lived happily ever after, and their daughter Volupta. . . well, that’s a whole other story, isn’t it.
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I hope you saw the roots of a lot of fairy tales and other stories. The ancient myths are a treasure trove of literary points of origin. I also hope you noticed a lot of root words; the English language is a patchwork quilt of languages: we steal from everybody.
Mythology is one of my thangs. Can you tell?
Happy Valentine’s Day, all.
Somebody else can tell the story of St. Valentine. I like Cupid and Psyche.
This myth is also ONE of the origins of the expression “Opposites attract.”
Because Love is all emotional, see, and the Mind is logical, and. . . . oh, you know. And how ironic is it that the Ancients saw the male as the emotional one and the female as the logical one?
Mythology is so cool.
