Spooky Magic 101 part V

Today we're going to get into something a little more theory heavy. Specifically, I want to talk to you about monsters. What is a monster? That's a trickier question than you might think. Some define a monster as a creature that confounds our reality (zombies for example are both living and dead) and exists only to destroy and cannot be reasoned with. Some would consider monsters to be mythic creations we use to explain and personify that which we as a society repress but cannot adequately describe in words alone. Still others may simply think of a monster as some fantastical beast and little else. There's a lot going on behind the scenes and this article can only hope to scratch the surface of it.

Every culture has monsters. Without exception. And they usually represent something beyond our understanding. They reflect the culture they were birthed from. Vampires are the personification of wasting disease, a slow and silent killer. Werewolves are the id unleashed. Ghosts are our attempt to make sense of death itself and what happens afterward. Still others are the result of barely glimpsed mysteries. Sea monsters exist in every culture with sailing in its history. And the ocean is a big place to hide all kinds of freaky nightmares. Most lands have some variation on the Bigfoot legend. My own native Pennsylvania has one. There are several in Asia and Africa. I'm pretty sure there's one in Scotland. Speaking of, the Loch Ness monster is only one of many. Pretty much every loch in Scotland contained a monster at some point. Nessie was simply the most palatable to the mainstream because it's the least disturbing. If you know anything about Celtic mythology, you know what I'm talking about.

When you get right down to it, monsters are an important part of mythology and culture. Angels and demons, vampires and werewolves, witches and warlocks, ghosts and zombies, sea monsters and yeti, the list goes on. They're every bit as prolific as the monomyth itself. We fear and respect the power that these creatures represent.

However... here's where this gets a little uncomfortable. There is another side to monsters. For centuries, people have been terrified of their mythic creatures, yet also have a desire to objectify, tame, and capture that power for themselves. Francisco Goya once hung one of his own paintings in his dining room. It depicted the Roman god Saturn devouring one of his own children. The Japanese mercenary Hatori Hanzo had such a fearsome reputation that he acquired the nickname Hanzo no Oni (Devil Hanzo), which he happily embraced. The Ford motor company named one of their luxury cars after the thunderbird, a creature from American Indian myth that created thunderstorms by battling with a giant rattlesnake in the sky. Even the Pokemon games are based on the outlandish concept of sending children out into the world to capture and subjugate wild monsters based on Japanese mythology, all of which have astounding superpowers, and train them to beat the living crap out of each other in a nationally recognized and condoned blood sport.

And of course look at modern movies. Blade. Underworld. Twilight. Monsters in these movies are not to be feared so much as coveted for their power. To be fair, the transformation of vampires from hypersexual harbingers of disease into imaginary gay boyfriend for fat teenage girls more or less started with Anne Rice. But the trend seems to be at its peak in the 2000's. Sure, people may fear getting mauled to death by a werewolf. But how afraid do you think they are of becoming one?

It's easy to trace back a monster to a primal fear, and with a little more digging you can easily unearth what's repressed as well. Zombies? Maybe you're really afraid of crowds. Aliens? More like foreigners. Werewolves? Losing control. Clowns? Pedophiles. Witches? Female sexuality. Notice that a lot of these fears also reflect something that you or the people of your culture have repressed for some reason or another. For example, witches are tied to female sexuality. In the West in particular, there's a certain taboo eroticism associated with witchcraft. Dancing naked in the moonlight, flying on broomsticks (a decidedly phallic symbol), and all manner of mysterious and strangely sexy rituals. This came about largely because most men just plain don't get women and misogynists in particular are intimidated by any sexual empowerment given to women in general.

So what does this mean for you? The knowledge of where monsters come from, what they represent, and why we fear them serves to bolster your toolbox of terror. To make something truly scary, it has to mean something. And when you know what it means and why it scares us, that's infinitely more powerful than just having an effect where you suddenly have fangs. You want to be a vampire? You're Patient 0 of a new and horrific disease. You want to be a werewolf? You're a murderer and you don't even know it. You want to be a witch? Then you're sexy and forbidden and a femme fatale and... sorry, kind of lost my train of thought there.

We'll be finishing this discussion on spooky magic with something different. I will be fielding questions from you, my readers. Any questions you have about horror and how it relates to magic I will do my best to answer. The post will be going up soon, so if you have questions ask them here in the comments, on my Twitter feed, by email or through any other channel you know to reach me at. Since I need time to write and edit, I'll only be taking questions through to Sunday. If you have one, now's the time to ask.