The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman

by Burke, Jessica

  52 For other Triple Goddess elements in A Game of You, see Sanders in Hanes and Sanders, 161-5. Further on A Game of You, see Bratman, 41-53. At 47-50, Bratman addresses some criticisms that have been made of the story, specifically the deaths of the single black character and the single transgender character, criticisms he feels misplaced. Whilst I appreciate the point of view he takes, I think he is perhaps too dismissive of those criticisms.

  53 Gaiman, in Bender, 244-5.

  54 The DC Universe as a whole is less accepting of such perceived inconsistencies, and has been “rebooted” on several occasions to eliminate them.

  55 I do not intend discussing the entire plot of The Kindly Ones in detail here. See Bender, 186-202, and for a discussion of female empowerment (or the lack thereof ) in the storyline, see Laity, 65-76. 56 Gaiman never explicitly mentions this, though the Furies do refer to Lyta as “daughter”; but then they tend to refer to all women as “daughter” (as an example, this is how they address Rose Walker in The Doll’s House).

  57 For the Furies in this sequence, see also Marshall, 91-5. The Three also briefly make reference to the three Graeae, old women from Greek mythology possessed of a single eye and a single tooth among them (see the entry in March, 173-4), thus presumably appropriating them as an aspect of the Three (Sandman 63, 20.7); arguably this had already been done when Destiny referred to them as the “Grey ladies” in Sandman 20 (2.4), “Grey ladies” being a translation of the Latin graeae.

  58 See note 27 above.

  59 Wagner, Golden and Bissette, 119. For the argument that the elf-girl Nuala, Lyta Hall, and Thessaly/Larissa form another manifestation of the Triple Goddess in The Kindly Ones, see Sanders in Hanes and Sanders, 165-7.

  60 Gaiman, in Bender, 199. I suspect Gaiman may be slightly sending himself up here, especially as another of Rose’s Walker’s research areas is The Golden Girls(USA, 1985-1992), where, of course, there are four principal characters, all of whom are perceived as elderly (though three of the characters are only in their fifties when the show started), and could therefore, in theory, all lay claim to the role of Crone.

  61 See Laity, 73.

  62 The non-Gaiman spin-offs, WitchCraft (DC/Vertigo, June-August 1994) and The Sandman Presents: The Furies (DC/Vertigo, 2002), lie outside the purview of this chapter. For the former, see Plowright, 742; for the latter, see Marshall, 95-6 and 97 Figure 6.2.

  63 Gaiman, The Dream Hunters, 42. See Wagner, Golden and Bissette, 132.

  64 In the comics adaptation of the story, P. Craig Russell gives the youngest multiple breasts. 65 Gaiman, Gods, 486.

  66 This does not mean, of course, that critics cannot still see Pratchett’s witches as symbolic. For discussions of Pratchett’s witches as manifestations of the Triple Goddess, see Hanes in Hanes and Sanders, 148-58; Hanes, “Weatherwax,” 406; Hanes, “Witches,” 419. For Pratchett’s witches in general, see Sayer; Hanes, “Witches.”

  67 See Gaiman, Midnight Days 16, for the story behind why Gaiman’s run on Swamp Thing never happened.

  68 Gaiman, “Notes Towards a Vegetable Theology,” 191.

  69 On a purely subjective note, I consider Stardust to be quite the finest thing that Gaiman has ever written.

  70 Gaiman and Vess, Stardust, 61-7; Gaiman, Stardust, 50-4.

  71 The movie version (dir: Matthew Vaughn, wri: Jane Goldman, 2007), develops the roles of the other sisters, and names all three as Lamia (the principal witch-queen), Mormo, and Empusa, all female monsters from Greek mythology. Two are names Gaiman has used himself, Lamia in Neverwhere and Mormo in Sandman 34 (see above).

  72 Gaiman, Gods, 80-98. According to Dixon-Kennedy, 48, the plural is Zoryi.

  73 Dixon-Kennedy, 189.

  74 Gaiman and Oswalt, “@ Saban Theater.”

  75 Gaiman, Gods, 485-6.

  76 Gaiman, Gods, 62, 243, 532, 534, 544.

  77 Sancken.

  78 Daniel Bustamonte is a victim of the “sleepy sickness” in “Sleep of the Just” (Sandman 1). 79 Gaiman, Anansi, 31.

  80 Gaiman, Anansi, 146-9.

  81 Gaiman, “This is a prayer for a blueberry girl …”

  82 Not knowing what Vess would do with the book until it was completed may have been attractive to Gaiman. Certainly he has, in his introduction to the graphic novel adaptation of The Dream Hunters, identified that as one of the pleasures he got from that project, where P. Craig Russell took Gaiman’s prose story and adapted it without direct reference to Gaiman; thus Gaiman got to experience a new Sandman comic in a way that he had not been able to when writing the title.

  83 De La Soul, “The Magic Number,” 1989.

  84 For which see Jessica Burke’s chapter in this volume.

  1 William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, Scene I.

  2 Gaiman jokes that the explanation is “When I was four, I was bitten by a radioactive myth” (quoted in Crispin).

  3 Levi, 368.

  4 Since nine is three times three, it is reasonably easy to see how differing traditions of the Muses could arise. For details of the Fates, Graces, Furies and Muses, see the respective entries in March, 163 (Fates),

  165 (Furies), 173 (Graces), 261-2 (Muses).

  5 See the entry in March, 179. An example is the Hecate Chiaramonti in the Vatican Museums in Rome.

  6 See the entry in Orchard, 267.

  7 Ó hÓgáin, 307-9.

  8 Sjoestedt, 21, 25.

  9 Green, 190-204. Examples are known from the Roman fort at Housesteads on Hadrian’s Wall, or from Cirencester.

  10 Green, 185-7. An example is known from Housesteads.

  11 The play was composed c. 1611; the witches first appear in Act I, Scene I.

  12 For criticisms of The White Goddess and the mythological structure it propounds, see Wood, 22; Morales, 111-14. Morales is working from a feminist perspective.

  13 Collard, Oresteia, 83-113.

  14 See the entry on “chorus” in Howatson and Chilvers.

  15 Euripides, Trojan Women 457, in Davie, 194.

  16 Virgil names Allecto at Aeneid 7.324, in West, 150. He does not name the others.

  17 See Mackie, 354-6.

  18 Westrin, 1480.

  19 Green, 186, fig. 83.

  20 See Hanes and Sanders, 148.

  21 Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters, 5.

  22 In what follows, I am primarily concerned with the ways in which Gaiman draws together in his work the mythological roots of the Triple Goddess as Triple Goddess. For other aspects of how the Triple Goddess is depicted in The Sandman, and the implications of that when approached from a feminist critique, see Hanes and Sanders; and for Gaiman’s magical women in general, see Jessica Burke in this volume.

  23 On Gaiman and the pan-pantheon, see Harley Sims elsewhere in this volume. On one level the panpantheon is simply a development of the syncretism that the Greek and Romans performed whenever they encountered anyone else’s gods, assimilating them to their own. But it is also something to which comics fans are particularly attracted, having been accustomed from an early age to dealing with such all-encompassing continuities as “the Marvel Universe” or the “DC Universe.” Such constructs can be described as “megatexts” (see Marshall, 90 & n. 6, who takes the term from Segal, 48-74), or in Roz Kaveney’s formulation, “Big Dumb Narrative Objects” (Kaveney first formulated the term in From Alien to the Matrix, 3-4; for its application to the Marvel and DC Universes, see Superheroes!, passim). Another self-confessed fan of this approach is Gaiman’s friend and mentor Alan Moore, whose League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series (1999 onwards) is an attempt to turn the entirety of fiction into a single megatext.

  24 This is one of the most difficult ideas to get across to students when teaching them myth courses, that there are not necessarily “correct” versions of myths, and that self-contradictory narratives can exist, even within the work of a single author.

  25 Clements, 551, takes exception to Gaiman’s reluctance to clarify certain issues, such as whether the Endless are “simply ambulatory ideas
or are they personalities in their own right?” But to complain about this aspect seems to me to be missing the point.

  26 Gaiman refers to them as the Triple Goddess in the text introduction to The Doll’s House (9). “The Three” is used, e.g., by Thessaly/Larissa in Sandman65, 20.5. From this point on, I will use “the Three” to refer to the characters in The Sandman, and “Triple Goddess” for the wider concept.

  Women’s Magic: Witches and the Works of Neil Gaiman

  Jessica Burke “Was the gibbet really better than the maypole?” 1 “Anyway,” said Adam, “you’ve got it all wrong about witches.” …. “My mother said they were just intelligent women protesting in the only way open to them against the stifling injustices of a maledominated social hierarchy,” said Pepper. … “And she said, at worst they were just free-thinking worshippers of the progenerative principle.”

  “Who’s the progenratty principle?” said Wensleydale.

  “Dunno. Something to do with maypoles, I think,” said Pepper vaguely.2

  Neil Gaiman has a knack for making the most unbelievable, believable and the most surreal just two degrees shy of odd. He has challenged boundaries deeply ingrained in fiction and the Western psyche—in regard to female characters and the witch, in particular.

  During the New York junket of the publicity tour for the 10th Anniversary of American Gods, Gaiman was asked about how he writes his characters. Referring to C.S. Lewis, Gaiman said that writing was basically “the strange events that happen to strange people.” Gaiman rebuked Lewis’ sentiment because, writing is what happens to “normal characters”—albeit normal characters who sometimes find themselves in odd situations. This level of normalcy makes Gaiman’s characters so remarkable, so likeable, and so influential.

  Gaiman achieves a state of normal with one of the most maligned characters in Western culture: the witch. In a politically correct world that pinpoints the anti-Semitism in Shakespeare, the racism in Twain, and the homophobia in Hemingway, the witch is still perfectly satisfactory, perched on her broom, black cat and dermatological problems in tow. With perhaps very few exceptions, the image of the witch still serves as a warning. For those who detest the term bitch, labeling an unruly, unattractive, unfitting woman as a witch is a great, socially acceptable alternative. Witches of all types—from classic hag to seductive temptress—adorn homes, offices, and schools during Halloween. The witch has been a source of fascination for more than a millennium, but where did this image come from? And why is she so terrifying?

  Gaiman doesn’t merely challenge one representation of the witch—the Hollywood, anti-norm, evil image. Nor does he limit his witches and magical women to the feminist, neo-pagan approach—all hippified, tree-hugging, Girl Power New Agers with crystals and fairy dust. Gaiman takes the images—negative and positive—and addresses them all, in various forms in various pieces of his work. From the witches of the Malleus Maleficarum3to the Witch in Snow White, he treats them all with an infinitely humane eye—despite the fact that some, like the Lilim, are not human. How are Gaiman’s witches different? By their appetite—and intentions.

  In his poem, “Instructions,” which directs the reader how to maneuver through a fairy tale, Gaiman tells us to “Remember…that witches are betrayed by their appetites….”4 Appetite is key to determining whether witches presented in Gaiman’s work are ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ or somewhere in-between. There’s a “firm correlation between bodily appetite and the condition of the human soul…”5 and a woman’s appetite—or a witch’s— appears more grotesque in Gaiman, more negative, when her intent runs contrary to normative society.

  The traditional view of witches presented in Malleus, Gaiman delves and satirizes, presenting the grotesque as well as the infinitely human, the humorous and the disturbing. Even in his most stereotypical concepts of the witch, Gaiman allows for normalcy, redemption, and understanding. Perhaps a handful of sorceresses are shown, wholly without deliverance— which stem their function as a lamia or vampire.

  What is a witch, really? That all depends on your source—and your personal belief structure. On the most basic, fundamental level—a witch is a person who traverses boundaries between the waking world and the world of dream, the world of magic. Witches travel a shamanic path, practicing “shamanic traditions” which are:

  …those that evoke a part of women and men that is natural, primal and wild. A shaman is a person in a tribal culture who confronts the world of the supernatural.6

  If witches are shamans, then so are storytellers and dreamers. Tellers of story make the supernatural—that which is beyond the mundane—real, believable, normal. When we dream or create story, we come in contact with the supernatural, and that which is “natural, primal and wild” within each of us. This is a purposefully broad definition of witches, reflecting the potential for magic, for shamanism, and therefore for witchcraft within us all.

  Appetite and intent also form part of the normal human potential. We all have them in mundane form—food, affection, money, sex, power, protection, success. When those are no longer commonplace and run contrary to what’s normally accepted— deviousness occurs. It is this potential for devious appetite and malicious intent that brands one a witch.

  Witches, to the mainstream, are women who practice dark magic, are somehow in league with the forces of Hell, and prance around stark naked brandishing black cats, wearing pointy black hats, and wielding broomsticks. Witches are often portrayed as grotesque old women who frighten –or eat—children, while mumbling into bubbling cauldrons. Throughout we have a layer of appetites unchecked, sexual inadequacy, and sexual deviancy. We have women past their generative prime, women of gender transgression, women with sexual urges, and women with grotesque appetites. As late as the 1970s, academics’ theories about witches ranged from unsatisfied women using “unguents and broomsticks for masturbation” to disgruntled women who “felt weaker than men and therefore turned to sorcery.”7

  Outside Neo-Pagan circles, the predominant view of the witch is marked by this grotesque appetite. Inside these circles, witches are shamans—of either sex. But, this view is relatively new and datable to the publications of Margaret Murray (1921) and Gerald Gardner (1955).8 Definitions of wicca or wicce that Gardnerians and Murrayites latch onto are predominantly incorrect, etymologically and historically speaking. These misconceptions have been regurgitated by modern Wiccans with regularity. Prior to Gardner and Murray, Witchcraft meant one thing: the practice of negative, harmful magic—maleficia— predominantly cast by women.

  Witches, Historically Speaking Habitually, but debatably, the impression of the witch casting maleficia traces back to the 1487 publication of the Malleus. Kraemer and Sprenger’s text ramped up an already booming business in witches—namely location, interrogation, and eradication. For some scholars, the Malleuswas unique, being the first handbook discussing what witches were—and how to get rid of them. Others argue this text was symbolic of other witchhunting dogma of the day:

  ...the Malleus, more than any other contemporary treatise on witchcraft, effectively fused theological concerns about demonic magic with popular conceptions of harmful magic (maleficium) widely held in European society.9

  There were, however, precursors to the witch found in Malleus. The works of Johannes Nider (1437), the execution of Joan of Arc (1431), texts from the 11th and 12th centuries (the canon Episcopi and Burchard of Worms’ Decretum)10 and mythology surrounding Thessalian witches are but a few. To the Medieval European mind, the concept of the witch began with socalled maleficiumor evil deeds, grotesque feminine appetite, and evil intent:

  Prior to the fifteenth century, people spoke in terms of heretics, of maleficium, of monstrous female spirits—the lamiae and strigae, but not of a single composite category, “witch.” By the midsixteenth century, however, educated men generally agreed upon the definitions of “witch” and “witchcraft,” definitions which drew upon, but were clearly distinguished from, older categories. 11

  Gener
ally, there’s lateral thinking regarding the foundations for modern views of witchcraft that ignore origins of the term witch. Traditions of the malevolent witch with unchecked appetite weren’t creations from Malleus. As noted previously, reclaiming the term witch by modern day Neo-Pagans via Gardner’s term Wicais a confabulation of history and fancy. According to Gardner,

  Witches were…the Wica, the “wise people”, who practise the age-old rites and…herbal knowledge, [who] preserved an occult teaching and working processes which they themselves think to be magic or witchcraft.12

  Little evidence justifies Gardener’s claims linking old folk custom with witchcraft as a unified belief system. The OED links the term witch etymologically with the Old English term wicca, defining a witch as a “man who practises witchcraft or magic….”13 The first use of the term wicca – or wiccan—was in the ninth-century Laws of Ælfred: “Ða fæmnan, þe gewuniað onfon gealdorcræftigan, & scinlæcan, & wiccan.” Translated as— “Do not let women, accustomed to performing incantation and sorcery and witchcraft, live”14—akin to “do not suffer a witch to live.”15 By the tumult of the eleventh century, wiccan became the antithesis to normally functioning society:

  … wælcyrian and wiccan ‘witches’ are connected as baleful influences on society in Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (a.d. 1014), which accuses them, in concert with murderers, slayers of kinsmen, and fornicators, of destroying the English nation.16

  Yet, the term wælcyrian, “chooser of the slain, witch, sorceress”17—linked to the Norse valkyrie—itself wasn’t a negative term, being associated with the Celtic Triple Goddess the Morrígan.

  For archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, alliances between witches, carrion birds, and goddesses of death and war stretch back into the ProtoNeolithic and Neolithic Ages— discoveries in Zawi Chemi Shandidar in Northern Iraq (10,870 BCE), Çatal Hüyük in central Anatolia (circa 8000 BCE), and Skara Bræ in the Orkney Islands (3100 BCE).18 But, the witch to Gimbutas was nothing more than a “loathsome caricature” of the once formidable images of “Lady Death….”19 Ancient Goddesses of Death were deeply associated with fertility—of the earth and of the animals upon it, including humans. Often the destruction of life—as with the “Killer-Regeneratrix” figure, the Morrígan, Hecate, and Kālī—wasn’t rooted in animosity, but an intention toward balance, preventing eternally flourishing life.20 A need for balance is where the concept of appetite emerges: “Witches were greatly feared since they continued to represent the powers of a formidable Goddess on earth.”21 While Christianity gained control in Europe, folk traditions and magic were still practiced; yet these traditions were prosecuted and “considered dangerous” when contrary to normal intentions, normal appetite, and when practiced by women.22