The Four Winds Bar

When you least expect it...

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How Do You Know

That the madman on the corner of fourth and West Lake, the one with the poorly painted sign warning of our society's decadence and its imminent slide into oblivion, isn't the only one with half a clue?

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One of the most ancient symbols in Europe and near-eastern Asia is that of "Odin's Cross" or the "Sun Wheel".  The original meaning of the symbol is literally impossible to know, as it appears to be buried in the deepest recesses of human history.  The symbol is nearly universal, appearing from sites across the planet, and likely represents either a single truly ancient origin or (much more likely) a repeated pattern designed by many different people at different times and for different reasons.

The name of Odin's Cross comes from the Germanic tradition, in which Odin was the chief god.  However, the symbol likely predates the myth.  A similar "sun wheel" is associated with the Sumerian deity Shamash, whose divine lordship over the principle of justice likely stems from both the goodness the Mesopotamian sun could bring, and the horror which it presented to the badly burned man stumbling in madness through the desert, lost without hope.

The first picture here is of Shamash, with his seal. Note how much taller he is than the human beings serving him.

Below that are the more secular portrayals of the same symbol in Linear B Greek calligraphy and in the American hobo code.  The Greek symbol is simply a wheel, while the sign in the hobo code relates that good handouts are to be found at a given location.

At the very bottom is a more Christian usage of a similar symbol.  The origins of the Celtic Cross are a little bit difficult to know, and the ring may simply be a support for the heavy stone arms.  It's possible, however, that the Christian cross could have been used either to assert dominance over the earlier pagan imagery (by covering it with the cross) or to assert the importance of Christianity by connecting to a symbol already associated with divine power.  By this point, however, the original meaning of the symbol (whatever it may have been) was already long lost.

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The "Plat Eye" or "Plate Eye" is a mythical being from Gullah folklore. This image, from a mid 19th century print, shows one popular image of the creature. Others portray the being as a large dog with fiery eyes. The Gullah are the descendants of slaves, largely from western Africa. These individuals were brought forcefully to the New World because of their skill in cultivating rice. Unlike the highly supervised slave economies of the upper South, these tidewater communities worked under the task system, being assigned a particular swampy area of rice-growing land to work under the hot South Carolina sun, and being allowed to rest once it was tended. This allowed a new culture to emerge, which still exists in the lowlands and barrier islands of the coast to this day. The version of the Plat Eye depicted in this image is something similar to a human being. Its eyes, however, are as large as dinner plates, completely covering the face. According to Gullah tradition, the Plat Eye lives among tree branches, seizing victims who are wandering through the tideland forests late at night. Those targeted by the Plat Eye are never seen again.

The Plat Eye is sometimes portrayed as a stalker, following its victims and doing nothing.  Sometimes, it can drive someone to madness.  In other mythologies, the Plat Eye is a simple killer.

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Exams and Such

For the past few days, I've been studying for finals, and I've really not had a lot of time to post to Tumblr.  I've also been dealing with a few very, very,verycomplicated things in my personal life, and I figured that I might as well share a few of those with you now, since they're largely connected to some of the posts that I've made here.

First, my friends have been more shut off than usual, and I'm not sure why.  I've tried contacting them, but they just let their phones ring.  I ran into John yesterday while I was walking across campus, and we stopped and talked.  He kept glancing around, took his hat off his head, put his hat back on his head, then took it off again.  That conversation lasted all of half a minute before he "had to go to econ."  Definitely not normal behavior from someone who you've known for more than three years.

Second, and maybe more important, I've starting noticing thateveryoneseems to act a little strangely around me.  People kind of look down at their feet when they walk past, and when I had to give a presentation for my dark ages class a few days ago, I got a lot of review papers back that just said "good" and a handful with no marks at all.  Maybe I'm just being paranoid.

It's getting colder this time of year.  Hard not to think of how dark winters must have been from the first people who settled here.  Maybe that's why they kept up with their old myths.  They were alone, nothing but emptiness ahead of them, nothing but superstition behind them.  It's easy to see how you could look at the hills here on a late, storm gray December evening, and wonder what was behind the next ridge.  It's easy to see how you could think that the interior of the continent was a land of nothingness and oblivion.

I'm looking forward to being done with the school year now.  I really just want to get away from this place.  I'm not sure how many problems that's going to solve at this point, though.

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In my childhood — in the dawn Of a most stormy life — was drawn From ev'ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still — From the torrent, or the fountain — From the red cliff of the mountain — From the sun that 'round me roll'd In its autumn tint of gold — From the lightning in the sky As it pass'd me flying by — From the thunder, and the storm — And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a daemon in my view —

From Alone, by Edgar Allen Poe.

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Because paleoanthropology is great.  That's why.

Note: First one is a chimp.  A little misleading if you don't know that.

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Caught this little guy outside with an iPod camera (hence the terrible quality).  He was very confused when I walked by, and started climbing up a tree.  About midway up, he decided that he didn't know whether to continue up, to go down, to try to scramble across the middle of the tree, or to descend into the tesseract.

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Japanese Noppera-bo, by Buddhist priest Asai Ryoi.  Date c. 1666.

Noppera-bo were faceless ghosts in Japanese mythology.  These figures are usually portrayed as horrifically frightening, imitating human beings until they want to be known.  Wikipedia claims that they're generally non-violent, but since the story I read ended with the light going out (blowing out, presumably, since candles don't spark out) right after the noppera-bo revealed itself, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

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Hear the tolling of the bells - Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people -ah, the people - They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone - They are neither man nor woman - They are neither brute nor human - They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells!

Edgar Allen Poe, The Bells, part IV.  1848.

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I substantially prefer this kind of forest, myself.  Rare, alpine forest ecosystem in Appalachia, located only on the highest peaks.  Similar to what you find in the Canadian Shield.

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Myrkviðr

For anyone who missed it, I made a post yesterday about a book called Notes on the State of North Carolina by one Mr. James Pennington.  Suffice to say, Mr. Pennington didn't like the Appalachian Mountains very much, and he thought that the people living there were superstitious.  Basically, a few of them believed that there was some sort of dark forest filled with demons that could throw you all the way to Michigan (which, quite frankly, makes it terrible enough even without the demons).  I've never heard of this before, but I'm inclined to believe people who are trying to hawk land for tobacco plantations whenever they tell you to stay away from some of it.

So, I looked up dark forests, and I actually found Pennington's forest. He was right about it being a myth from ancient Germanic mythology.  It's apparently called Myrkvidhr (for those unfamiliar with the delightful Scandinavian "eth"), Mirkwudu in Old English, or Mirkwood, in its modern Anglicized version.  J.R.R. Tolkien used the name in The Lord of the Rings, but it apparently goes back to at least the 11th century A.D.

Mirkwood is pretty much a mirror of the forest Pennington describes, at least in some of the myths (mythology could be a bit flexible).  It's dark, it's ancient, it's full of monsters, and it apparently opens out onto a lot of different places, including Valhalla.

Note: Pic is of Yggdrasil, the ash tree that the world is built around in Scandinavian mythology.  Its roots are gnawed by the dragon Nidhhoggr, who can only be controlled by the underworld goddess Hel (yes, that is where we get the word Hell) and who presages Ragnarok by his presence.

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To the land of no return, the land of darkness, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin directed her thought. To the road, whence there is no turning, The place where dust is their nourishment, clay their food.' They have no light, in darkness they dwell. Over door and bolt, dust has gathered. Ishtar on arriving at the gate To the gatekeeper thus addressed herself: "Gatekeeper, open thy gate that I may enter! If thou openest not the gate to let me enter, I will break the door, I will wrench the lock, I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors. I will bring up the dead to eat the living. And the dead will outnumber the living."

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Akkadian Version, c. 1300 B.C.  Translated 1915 by M. Jastrow.  Edited slightly for brevity.

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I spent most of the day today looking up Thomas Jefferson and the natural sciences for my undergraduate thesis, but I did manage to make a little time to go and look for anything that might help me to understand what's going on.  I asked the librarian whether there was anything in the Appalachian books collection that might help out (being a bit careful to mention that I just wanted information on "holes in reality" and "dark forests" as very general concepts).  This was the closet thing to a match that she could give.

This here is a page from Notes on the State of North Carolina, by James D. Pennington, published in 1802.  This copy is a bit more recent, going back to 1833, and to their knowledge, it's one of only forty still around.  Pennington took some notes from Mr. Jefferson, actually (who wrote his own Notes on the State of Virginia at an earlier data).  Most of the book here is intended to convince farmers to grow their tobacco in Virginia rather than North Carolina.  He didn't seem to like the mountains very much, though, and I actually think that they scared him a little.

The library let me photocopy this in the most basic way possible.  You know, by taking a photo of it.

If you need help understanding anything, don't hesitate to ask.  English spelling wasn't quite formalized yet, so grammar can get kind of atrocious at times.  One of my teachers tried to transcribe pages from an early 19th century journal once, and Microsoft Word just gave up trying to spellcheck -_-

Also, the "∫" thing is called a "long s".  We don't use it any more in English, but it's basically just a strange way of writing the normal letter.

Who ever said that people in the 19th century didn't have creepypasta?

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WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?

You type like HABIT.  Why did you have to kill Jeff?  WHY?

[nyancatherder-blog]

Your closet fiasco is really interesting to me. Crazy interesting actually. It had me paranoid about my own doors. So, maybe you opened your closet thing too many times? I don't know. Maybe there's like some kind of limit on it or something... Try again tomorrow? o-o

I did try it again this morning, but I'm thinking/hoping that it might be a really transient thing.  I figure that my best best right now is to try and figure out whether anything like this has happened here before, and go from there.  Our library has a section chock full of rare books on Appalachia going back to the 18th century, and I have permission to access it (ah, the joys of working on an undergraduate history thesis), so I might be able to find something if there is, in fact, anything to find.

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On a note more in keeping with how I intended this blog to go in the first place...

Legio IX Hispana was a Roman legion.  You could probably guess that from the name.  In the early part of the second century, they were a powerful fighting force.  A standard Roman legion would contain about five thousand men, decked out in battle array and ready to take on pretty much anything a less developed nation could throw at it.

By the middle of the second century, this powerful fighting force of about five thousand men was gone.  Vanished from the historical record.  Not a single note of what happened to them, no real information on who made them "disappear", nothing.  They just stop showing up on Roman lists.  Some people think that they went down in Britain, fighting in an unknown war.  That's a less common opinion nowadays, with most people supporting the idea that they were shipped off to the eastern frontier and taken down at a later date.

Still, I think the important thing to note here is that, in the second century A.D., an army could go out into the wilderness and just freaking vanish.  This was no battle of Teutoburg Forest, where a Roman army was wiped out and the emperor walked around crying out for Varus to give him back his legions.  That's terrible enough, but here, five thousand men just disappeared from the historical record.  We still have people arguing about exactly where this enormous fighting force decided to exit the stage of the world, and there's no real prospect that we'll ever have an answer.

I guess that life is just like that sometimes.

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Here Today...

The closet portal thing is gone.

I have no idea what happened to it, but I tried to open it again this evening.  I was able to get the door to open on the black void about four times this morning, but when I did the same thing just a minute ago, it was just a closet.  Kind of a shame, because even though I wasn't about to go back in there, I did think about the possibility of buying a wind up car and strapping a camera to it (along with a light and some extremely long and durable fishing line, of course).  That would probably have been a lot safer and more interesting in the first place...

At any rate, I feel safe sleeping in here again.  Sort of.  I've been trying to get that door thing to work again for the past ten minutes, so I'm pretty sure that it's actually gone.  Regardless, I have the door tied shut with a chain rated to haul a truck through the snow right now, so the door itself should give before the chain does.  I'm going to have to move back in at some point, at least until I can work out some permanent solution, so I figure that tonight is as good a time as any.

So, yeah.  Not sure what to say other than that.  Welcome to my wild and crazy life.  Would you believe that this isn't the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me?