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Meteors and The Popular Imagination

When we look to the sky, our imaginations soar. But for many people — ancient and modern, across wide expanse of geography and culture — the night sky has meant nightmares. And among those things of which some cultures are still afraid are oft-misunderstood meteors.

Perseids
Photo courtesy of NASA.

Every August around this time, our planet passes through debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. The result: the Persied meteor shower (named for the constellation Perseus, out of which the perseids seem to appear). Igniting the night sky with sudden and often striking streaks of light, these meteors — simply bits of dust and ice — will burn up in the earth’s atmosphere just as the eye catches glimpse of them. Rates can get as high as 100 meteors per hour.

Many of us will marvel at the event. Most will sleep through it. But some will actually avert their eyes.

In many parts of eastern Europe, for example, among some Slavic peoples, seeing a meteor sets one ill at ease. For it is believed that everyone has a personal star that falls upon his or her death.

Residents of the village of Carancas in Peru became convinced that they were sickened by a meteorite that fell to earth in September, 2007.

Indeed, in the Book of Revelation, such sickness is foretold when an angel blows his trumpet and a star falls from heaven “blazing like a torch.” Contaminating a third of the world’s rivers and springs, “many died from the water, because it was made bitter.” (Revelation 8:10-11)

In ancient Egypt and Greece, meteorites were thought to be of the gods, and were venerated as such. They were objects to revered, not so much as feared, but nonetheless were seen as portents of something momentous.

There is even evidence among early Native American peoples that meteors were seen as omens — of good times and bad. Among the latter were the Blackfeet of Montana who believed a meteor was a sign that sickness would come to the tribe in the coming winter. Then there were the Cahuilla of southern California that believed meteors were signs of the spirit of their first shaman, Takwich. Disliked by his peole,  Takwich was said to wander the night sky, looking for Cahuilla that had wandered from their tribe so that he could fall upon them and steal their spirit.

Most comically, the Nunamiut Eskimos and the Koasati of Louisiana believed meteors to be the feces of stars.

Still, for every tale of doom, gloom and celestial excrement, there are dozens more from cultures from all over the globe that tell of good fortune follows the sighting of a meteor. Indeed, as children of Disney, we are told that when we wish upon a (falling?) star, our dreams will come true.

So this weekend, if you decide to look to the skies, keep in mind that if there is any meaning in the sighting of meteors, it is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps better than seeing meteors are signs of good or ill from the heavens, we should instead look to celestial events as inspiration for living. For after all, we live but a short time, eventually burning out in the atmosphere of our own lives. We are not permanent. We need not live in fear of anything except that which prevents us from truly living.

Jack London once wrote: “I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live… I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time” (The Bulletin, San Francisco, California, December 2, 1916).

Recommended reading:

 

Tattie Bogies, Kuebiko and Feathertop: The Scarecrow of Folklore and Fiction

Scarecrows. Ancient Egyptians hung tunics on reeds to scare quail away from crops that grew along the Nile. Wooden statues of Priapus, a well-endowed rustic fertility god, likewise frightened birds from planted fields in Greece. Even the Japanese, as early at the 8th century, had the Kuebiko to keep sparrows from the rice; in Kojiki (a Record of Ancient Matters) (circa 712), it is written that “though his legs do not walk,” Kuebiko knew everything.

Flier for KUEBIKO, a Finnish Art Project from 2011
Flier for KUEBIKO, a Finnish Art Project from 2011

Known as bootzamon to German settlers and Tattie Bogies to the Scots, scarecrows, culturally (if not etymologically) have long been tied to the supernatural boogeyman, a monster of legend who is, curiously enough —like the scarecrow — often depicted in tattered clothes. To a superstitious agrarian society, it would seem that there was utility in not only frightening birds, but scaring children as well. There are strange things out there among the rows. You’d do best to avoid them.

Yet monsters need not always be evil. Many, in fact, like the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, simply want to be human.

Others believe they are human.

Take for example the title character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1852 short story “Feathertop.” A scarecrow brought to life by a  witch seeking revenge on a judge, Feathertop appears human — and believes himself to be so — as long as he puffs on a pipe given to him by the old crone. He falls in love with the judge’s daughter Polly, only to have her recoil in horror when the couple gaze into a mirror and Polly sees Feathertop in his true form. The daughter thus made despondent, the witch has her revenge, but the cost is the despair of her creation: a “wretched simulacrum.”  Aware of rejection, Feathertop dejectedly drops his pipe and falls into a lifeless heap.

From the Patriot Scarecrow Series by Win Jones
From the Patriot Scarecrow Series by Win Jones

“There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was!” reflects the witch. “Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are.”

Two months before the unimaginable happened on 9/11, Florida artist Win Jones created his “Patriot Scarecrow Series.” Simply meant to be a scarecrow with an American flag — painted for its color — the image became a symbol that the artist did not intend.

“I was listening to this guy talk, a young man, college age, he was telling me, look, they’re all dressed up, fit to kill,” Jones said of his scarecrow, brandishing what by then, in late 2011, was draped over every window and rising on every pole. “Oh, my God, am I thinking that? I don’t think that I am, but subconsciously like a lot of these… you react to them. But that’s where I am at now with the scarecrows, and all these ghosts that are coming in and out of space, you’re not too sure where you are.” (Win Jones, taken from FlagerLive.com, “a news source for Flager, Florida and beyond”)

Dr. Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow from Batman Begins
Dr. Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow from Batman Begins

Deep within our psyche, we need the scarecrow — and this need exceeds the utility of frightening birds. He is, in Jungian terms, the shadow: an archetype that is the inverse of the ego. He is supernatural.

Be it the self-aware Feathertop or the all-knowing Kuebiko, the scarecrow is at once less than and more than us.

He is Dorothy’s clumsy companion from the Wizard of Oz and the terrifying  villain of the Batman’s rogues gallery — a psychiatrist who preys on our fears.

In the end, he is whatever we want him to be. He is truly a straw man: a distorted, exaggerated version of ourselves — foreign and familiar.

Dress him as you like. He will take on a life of his own.