X marks the spot...

It's been a while, but I'm back with some more weirdness.
As ever we've got a hotch-potch of myths and gods and an obligatory Sean Connery clip. Oddly enough there's quite a lot of music this time 'round too.
So to get you in the mood here's a little tune.





What does this music have to do with gods beginning with 'X'? Well, a weird set of synchronicities and coincidences came into force as I was doing research for the letter 'X'. Most of the 'X' gods come from th Mayan pantheon. Quite a bit of what we know about the Mayan creation myths and cosmology comes from a Dominican priests translation of a text known as the Popol Vuh. So far, so blah! But something niggled at the back of my brain. I had heard the name Popol Vuh before and it wasn't in the context of Mayan mythology. I racked my brains and finally remembered that Popol Vuh was the name of the band that film maker and famous shoe eater Werner Herzog used for his early films. What you are listening to now is the music that plays over the opening scene "Aguirre: The Wrath of God". (Minor digression No. 1 - I don't know if you remember the adventure books they used to have in the 80s which gave you a choice - "If you want to fight the bizzarly trousered monster turn to page 246. If you want to fill your pants with the brown stuff turn to page 249". If you do then at this point in time you've got a choice. You can either carry on listening and ignore the clip below or stop the beautiful Teutonic cosmic Krautrock nosnsense and click on the clip below to watch the opening scene od Aguirre. To be honest I'd go for the first option only because a clip from the web doesn't do justice to the majesty of this scene or the film. Buy/rent/borrow the film. I promise you it's worth it. Klaus Kinsky plays a Conquisdador losing his mables as he sails down the Amazon river searching for El Dorado in German. Nuff said!)





Just in case you didn't believe me about Werner Herzog eating shoes here the evidence.




Anyway, back to gods and stuff. Our first story has got many threads. Immaculate conception, ball games and decapitation, so bear with me! It's also got lots of 'X' gods.

So let's begin at the beginning.



Things you need to know...

Xibalba 
This is the name give to the Mayan Underworld (Think Hades not Mafia)


Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu
Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu were brother. Brothers who like to play ball. Unfortunately they decided to have a kick about in the wrong place. That place was Xibalba (see previous point). The Lords of Xibalba became displeased with all the noise the two brothers were making. Rather that putting a garden fork in the brother's ball and telling them to piss off home the Lords invited them to play against the Xibalba team. Unfortumetly the Lords had rigged the ball with razor sharp blades and within seconds Huh Hunahpu was decapitated. The Lords of Xibalba hung Huh Hunahpu's head on a tree as a kind of Mayan 'No Ball Games' warning.

(All this talk of ball games and decapitation made me think of next clip. It's got Sean Connery in it, but don't worry it's not shit. It's from the sublime 'The Man Who Would Be King')





Back to our story...

As the head of Huh Hunahpu hung from the branches who happened to walk by but Xquic
(sometimes know as the Blood Maiden, sometimes know as the Blood Moon). The strange skull shape fruit that hung from the tree sparked her curiosity. The Head of Hun Hunahpu began to talk and told her to pick him. She did so and the skull spat on her hand and she became pregnant. (Maybe the skull said it was spit but we all know what it really was.)

Nine months later Xquic gave birth to the Hero-Twins Xbalanque and Hunahpu. They went back to Xibalba and challenged the Lords to a ball game. After many trials and tribulations (including bats, blades, ovens disgused as benches, even more decapitations and butternut squashes) they whupped the Lords asses and ascended to heaven and became the embodiment of the Sun and the Moon. A happy ending of sorts, I think you'll all agree.

Xipe-Totec
Xipe Totec is know as 'The Flayed One'. He is the Aztec god of Life, Death and Rebirth. In myths, Xipe Totec flayed off his flesh to give food to humanity, in much the same way snakes shed their skin and maize sheds it's husk.

The thing I kinda like about Xipe Totec is that he would wear other peoples skin over his own flayed flesh. I'm sure the first thing that come to  mind when you think of people putting other peoples skin over their own is Leatherface in Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' but personally when I heard this story all I could think about was Geroge Franju's 1960 masterpiece 'Les Yeux Sans Visage' (Eyes Without A Face)

'Les Yeux Sans Visage' has one of the strangest soundtracks, courtesy of Maurice Jarre (father of Jean Michel Jarre). It also has one of the most haunting endings.

Once again you have a choice....

You can either watch the opening titles...





And/or watch the ending
(Before you do watch the ending please consider this small piece of advice; if you are a hardcore horror fan and have not seen Les Yeux Sans Visage then shame on you. Don't watch the ending. Instead go to your nearest film shop and buy it right now and watch the whole film. I don't care what time it is. Just go. On the other hand if you are not a hardcore horror fan and are not the kind of person that is going to watch a seminal 1960 French body horror classic then watch the ending but I do warn you there are some gruesome bits))







Xanadu
Much like Xibalba it's a place rather than a god. Xanadu was the summer residence of Kublai Khan. The story of the Kublai Khan and his summer palace were immortalised in Samuel L Coleridge's poem though most scholars believe the definitive version of the story is portrayed in Frankie Goes To Hollywood 'Welcome To The Pleasuredome'. (Coleridge's poem is only 54 lines long and the reason for this, according to the author was because a 'Man From Porlock' interrupted his laudanum-induced train of thought. Most people now think that the man from Porlock was a fabrication and that old Sammy couldn't think of any more).

You've had the background and so it's time once again to boogie. Here's Olivia Newton-John and ELO singing the theme from one of he 1970's worst musicals.





It seems that many band's have been inspired by the poem but this is the only one that I know of that has a horse whip in it. Here's Davee Dee, Bozy, BEaky, Mick and Titch with 'The Legend of Xanadu'. Deep joy!





Xmulzencab
And to finish we have the Mayan Bee Gods. There wasn't much info on these but I included them just as an excuse to show one of the weirdest bee related trailers I've ever seen.





That's all for now. I know I've been a bit slack updating but hopefully I'll be back with 'W" in the next few weeks.
You know where to find me.
Hell Yeah!

Y is for...

Wotcha!
Once again we've got a few real gods and a couple of fakers. Finding 'Y' gods has been a bit of a tricky one. I made my first trawl and didn't find many that sparked anything in my brain, so I kinda improvised, dragging other myths that don't really fall into the 'Y' category to bulk up the blog (you'll see what I mean when you read it.) I discovered more on my second trawl but have decided to keep everything in (wild digressions included) so if it's a bit long then it's a bit long. Unfortunately my brain spew has no on/off tap. God-miles are extremely high this time 'round because we're going to be travelling to India via Australia, Scandinavia, the North of England, New England and Wales. See you at customs!

We'll start with Giants and just to get you in the mood here's a song to listen to whilst you read.  
(Be warned the following song by the band Gentle Giant does fit into the dreaded category of Prog Rock, but it's a bonkers tune and the aforementioned band was one of Frank Zappa's favourites. Nuff said!)
 



Ysbaddaden Bencawr (I'm not going to give a phonetic way of pronouncing the name. Either you can say it or you can't)
Ysbaddaden Bencawr appears in the Mabinogi tale Culhwch and Olwen. Culhwch's stepmother insisted that Culhwch married her daughter. When Culhwch refused she puts a curse on him which stated that he could only marry Olwen. So far so blah! The only problem was that Olwen's father Ysbaddaden Bencawr, a fearsome Giant, was a tad reluctant to let anyone marry his daughter as he had been cursed to die the second Olwen was married. (There's a lot of cursing in Welsh mythology) Rather than kill Culhwch (which would make the Giant's life a lot easier but would make for a much shorter story) Ysbaddaden decided to give Culhwch an insanely difficult set of tasks...

(Forgive me while I digress for a few moment. This part of the story reminds me of when Bond Villains explain to 007 the elaborate ways they have devised to kill him rather than just finish him off there and then. This clip from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is a good illustration of why talk is cheap.)



Back to our story. Culhwch, with the help of some of King Arthur's Knights managed to complete all the tasks. When they arrived back at Ysbaddaden's Castle (which of course is a magic castle – it moves farther away the nearer you get to it) Caw of Pryden, one of Arthur's Knights gave Ysbaddaden a shave. Quite a close one. In fact a very close one. So close that he shaved off both of Ysbaddaden's ears. Beaten and earless Ysbaddaden conceded defeat and allowed Culhwch to marry Olwen. Culhwch and Olwen got married and as a wedding gift Goreu, the son of Custennin, took Ysbaddeden outside and chopped off his head. (I've sort of glossed over most of the story but I'll cover it in more detail when I get to 'C' – it also gives me a chance to read the story properly) 

Interesting parallels spring from this story. When it comes to myths and legends there seems to be a lot of Giants having their heads chopped off. One of the most famous decapitations appears in the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A film version was made and stars Sean Connery as the Green Knight. It is another example of why Sean Connery's agent in the 1970s and 1980s should have be shot.



There is also a Scandinavian Creation myth concerning a Frost Giant called Ymir. Ymir created Man and Woman from the sweat from his armpit. I was going to show a video of a sweaty armpit but this clip from a forthcoming Norwegian Film 'Trolls' is more exiting (but only fractionally).



Yrlunggur 
In Murngin Aborigine mythology Yrlunggur is the Great Rainbow Serpent (Most Aboriginal tribes have a Creator myth concerning Great Rainbow Serpents though their gender seems to change from tribe to tribe). Yrlunggur (who was a male of the species) is of interest because of the rituals that have sprung from his story. Yrlunggur was fast asleep but was woken from his slumber by the stench emanating from the Wawalug sisters who happened to be passing by. What was the smell? Some say it was menstrual blood, others say placental blood. Either way Yrlunggur was so displeased by the smell that he swallowed up the sisters in one angry gulp. Unfortunately news of his chow-down reached the Serpent Council and he was chastised for bringing the good name of snakes into disrepute and ordered to regurgitate the sisters. A sheepish Yrlunggur disgorged the sisters in front of the council. Bizarrely in Murngin ceremonies the vomiting symbolises a young boys journey into manhood. (There is evidence that vomiting and entering manhood can be considered an universal cultural meme as most young boys' journey to manhood involves vomiting, usually after drinking two and half bottles of Archer's Peach Schnapps at a school-friend's party.)  Though the next clip has nothing to do with snakes or Australian Aborigines it does touch on one major theme of the story.



Yog Sothoth 
Yog Sothoth is a cosmic entity that is part of the Cthulhu Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft in the 1920s. It is said to take the form of a conglomeration of glowing spheres. Here's how Lovecraft described it:-

It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self — not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep — the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vapourous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign...

Shit-Your-Pants kinda stuff!
The Cthulhu Mythos writings of H.P Lovecraft are a bit of guilty pleasure. They are the kind of horror stories that you should have grown out of when you were 15 but for me they are the greatest horror stories ever written. Weirdly the mythos has taken on a life of its own. Many practitioners of the Dark Arts regularly summon these fictitious gods for whatever lurid reasons. If all this talk of Dark Arts and Cosmic horror spooks you out  following Yog Sothoth related song should cheer you up.



Yama
Yama is the Hindu Lord of Death. Traditionally he is believed to be the first person who ever died and because of this got the honour of being made the Lord of Death. He is usually portrayed as having blue skin and rides around on a buffalo. The word Yama means twin and sometimes he is accompanied on his travels by his twin sister Yami.
Yama has become the Eastern equivalent of the Grim Reaper, and in the same way as the Reaper has been embraced by modern Pop Culture, so has the Hindu Lord of Death.



That's it for now. Sorry for waffling on for so long, but I did warn you.
Same time? Same place?
Hell Yeah!

Z is for...

We are going to start at the end and work backwards. From 'Omega' to 'Alpha' so to speak. (I've often wondered, considering that the ancient Greeks were meant to be so clever, why did their end their alphabet with an 'Omega' when they had a perfect candidate for the role with 'Zeta')
Z threw up three random gods. Two real, one made up. (Though technically they are all made up or are all real - it depends on you belief system) See if you can spot the imposter.

Zeus
Father of Gods and men. Head of the Greek Pantheon that populates Mount Olympus. He has been played on film by Laurence Olivier, Liam Neeson and numerous other older actors with white beards. If you ask anyone to name a god other than their own they pretty much will always answer Zeus (or Jimi Hendrix or INSERT NAME OF FOOTBALLER HERE). He is usually portrayed as a womanizer, with a short temper, who has a penchant for dishing out godly justice, mostly in the form of thunderbolts, upon those who have offended him. Also, if we are to believe what we see in the movies, he can be tricked into doing just about anything by the fairer sex (I still do not understand how an all-knowing Uber-god can be tricked into doing anything, but then again, what do I know.)
When trying to think of a way to illustrate the true might of Zeus, I remembered the fantastically named track 'The Wrath of Zeus' by The Eternals which appears on the truly magnificent 'Crydamoure Presents Waves' compilation. So click on the link below and we will have a listen while I go through some of the lesser known facts and slightly dodgy things our friend Zeus has done just because he is King of the Gods.





Zeus' father Cronos sired seven children but swallowed all them, except Zeus, moments after they were born. Zeus managed to escape a swallowing because his mother, Gaia, knew of Cronos' liking for baby meat and swapped baby Zeus with a large stone seconds after he popped out. Cronos swallowed the stone thinking that it was his latest child. Upon reaching manhood Zeus forced Cronos to throw up his siblings. Some myths state that he used a large sword to slit Cronos' belly and out rolled his brothers and sisters. Other myths insist he used a strong emetic (possibly a Big Mac) to do the job.

As a punishment for trying to trick the gods into eating the flesh of his butchered son Zeus condemned Tantalus to be tortured for the whole of eternity.

When Zeus discovered that Prometheus had shown mortal man the secret of fire Zeus decided a just and fair punishment for the Fire-giver was to have his liver eaten out by an eagle.

Of all his many sons Zeus was the least proud of Hephaestus. Hephaestus was so ugly Zeus threw him off the top of Mount Olympus.

When Phineas the Seer revealed the secrets of the gods Zeus blinded him and sent the Harpies to plague him as punishment.

The final fact isn't particularly gory but it is a good excuse to show one of Ray Harryhausen's greatest cinematic moments. Enjoy!





Are you ready for more?

Zhang Guo Lao
One of the Eight Immortals of Chinese mythology. He had a fondness for wine and winemaking and simply refused to die. This isn't strictly true. He did die once, whilst travelling to see the Emperor. Many of his followers watched in horror as his body began decomposing and became wormridden. But a few weeks later he reappeared in his home town fit and well.
He has a style of kung fu dedicated to him. Some of the moves include delivering a kick whilst doing a back flip or bending so far backwards your shoulders touch the ground.
He also had a magic donkey. At the end of every journey Zhang Guo Lao would fold up the donkey into a tiny box and place it in his pocket. When he wanted to use it again he would he would fill his mouth full of saliva and dribble over it and the donkey would regain its form.

I couldn't find anything much about origami donkeys but I did find instructions how to make the origami unicorn from Blade Runner. So I made a little film of my endeavors.






Zardoz 

The year is AD 2293. The Earth is now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Living in this wastelands are the 'Brutals'. The 'Brutals' are kept in order by the 'Exterminators'. The 'Exterminators' worship a huge, flying stone head called Zardoz. Here are a few of Zardoz's favourite teachings:

The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth . . . and kill!

You might have guessed that this is the made up god. Zardoz is a 1973 sci-fi fantasy movie by John Boorman. It also stars Sean Connery bare-chested and wearing a red loincloth. It is one of the most insanely awful films I have ever seen but I kinda love it. It makes no sense but looks amazing. If the picture above doesn't convince you then check out the trailer.




That's it for 'Z'. Next, inevitably, is Y.

Can I count on you to be here next time? Hell Yeah!

And so we begin...

I've been bullied into writing this blog. Bullied in the nicest possible way. Bullied in the It'll-Be-Good-For-You kinda way. Writing this blog is an attempt to kick-start my dormant creative muscles. It also stops me from wasting my evenings watching TV.
So here's what I have been bullied into doing. 'A Rough Guide to Mythology' starting with Z and ending in A. There are no guidelines. I am allowed to choose any Pantheon I wish. Along the way I will also digress, deviate and wander wildly off topic and try to empty my brain of all the cultural detritus that been building up over the years.
Are you with me?
Hell Yeah!