The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman

by Burke, Jessica

  I am getting old… Things inanimate have always been more difficult to change than things animate. Their souls are older and stupider and harder to persuade. If I but had my true youth again…why, in the dawn of the world I could transform mountains into seas and clouds into palaces. I could populate cities with the pebbles on the shingle. If I were young again.… 152

  She gives a strange compliment to living—“animate” things as younger and less stupid—but easier to persuade than mountains and pebbles. Her magic lies in persuasion and in that, the Lilim—unlike Jadis—have some twisted respect for life. This reference to her “true youth” and creating seas, palaces, and populations, gives the Lilim yet another connection to yet another mythology—Tolkien’s Silmarillion. The reference is two-fold. In the “Ainulindalë” with the first battle between the Valar and Melkor, it was Melkor who destroyed the building of Middleearth: mountains were razed, seas emptied, valleys lifted.153 Morwanneg doesn’t say she blasted the mountains—but turned them into seas—nor did she ruin the clouds. She transforms matter in much the same fashion that the Valar do when “Valinor was full-wrought.”154 However, the Valar create truly, while Melkor does not. Rather, he distorts, confounds, manipulates, and corrupts. Morwanneg and her Sisterhood may fall into a space between. Her people were pebbles and her palaces, clouds. As Lewis says of Jadis, “witches… are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical.”155 Yet, in the end, when we last see her, the image is a compassionate one. If Yvaine can pity Morwanneg and even give the old woman a parting kiss, then we the readers must also empathize with the Witch Queen’s fate.156

  Madame Semele, part of Morwanneg’s Sisterhood, is the classical witch from Malleus and fairy tale. She’s also a con artist and everyone she encounters is a potential mark. Gaiman refers to her in debased tones, much like the Shahinai women—a cackling, gap-toothed, old harridan with wild iron-grey hair, and bony hands.157 Yet, in her wickedness, she’s a vital piece in the story. If she hadn’t captured the Lady Una, holding “the first-born and only daughter of the eighty-first Lord of Stormhold”158 captive, then Una wouldn’t have met Dunstan and Tristan wouldn’t have been born. If Madame Semele didn’t give Morwanneg the lembas grass, then the Witch Queen wouldn’t have laid her curse:

  …you have stolen knowledge you did not earn, but it shall not profit you. For you shall be unable to see the star, unable to perceive it, unable to touch it, to taste it, to find it, to kill it. Even if another were to cut out its heart and give it to you, you would not know it….159

  Madame Semele’s function as the stereotypical cackling crone is vital to the outcome of the story, despite her turning Tristan into a Doormouse. Had Morwanneg not placed the curse on Semele, Yvaine could’ve been killed by old Ditchwater Sal—or been revealed to the Witch Queen in Diggory’s Dyke.160

  Certainly, not all witches in Gaiman’s world are negative, or consumed by detrimental appetites. In The Graveyard Book, Liza Hempstock is subtle, a satirical commentary on witches. Born when Queen Elizabeth I died, Liza candidly describes her death when Bod asks if she was a suicide, since she was buried in unconsecrated ground, without even a tombstone. Her appetites aren’t entirely unconventional and her desire comes in the form of a favor Bod wishes to repay for her help with his sprained ankle. She doesn’t ask him for a headstone, but he decides to repay her kindness—and to help alleviate her sadness because he finds her sad yet oddly alluring. Liza is “not even a little bit beautiful...”161 even resembling a “pretty goblin….”162 The young man who could be blamed for her death, however, didn’t need witchcraft to go “mooning”163 around her cottage, a point she admits readily to Bod which he already noted.164 The satire comes in the description of her death and her vengeance on the town:

  ‘You’re a witch!’ they shouts, fat and fresh-scrubbed all pink in the morning, like so many pigwiggins scrubbed clean for market day. One by one they gets up beneath the sky and tells of milk gone sour and horses gone lame, …. So they strap me to the cucking stool and forces me under the water…saying if I’m a witch I’ll neither drown nor care, but if I’m not a witch I’ll feel it. .... I cursed each and every one of them there on the village Green that morning. … I was surprised as how easily it came, the cursing. Like dancing it was….I cursed them, with my last gurgling pond-watery breath. And then I expired. They burned my body on the Green until I was nothing but blackened charcoal, and they popped me in a hole in the Potter’s Field without so much as a headstone to mark my name.165

  Liza represents the nameless women killed during the Burning Times. Many of the women accused and killed weren’t witches; however, confessing the crime of witchcraft did one of two things. It promised them forgiveness, salvation, and a quicker death—or, in the rarest cases, release. Or, it promised an end to their torture. In death Liza fully claims her status as witch by cursing her murderers with her dying breath.

  Liza is also an aid to Bod through his journey. When he meets her, he’s having difficulty in his lessons, being unable to Fade properly.166 Already, he has been rescued by magical female forces at various points in his story. First, Mrs. Owens being the only member of the graveyard to speak up for Bod and the one to listen to the lamentation of his own mother’s spirit; then Miss Lupescu, not merely teaching him some of the most important lessons of his life—both in and out of ‘school’—but as a Hound of God, she rescues him physically from Ghûlheim, and later lays her life down when she, Silas, and the other guardians battle the Jacks. Liza serves as a warning, literally warning Bod of impending doom at various points in the tale. She is truly a guardian spirit, helping him to evade physical harm. The snapshot of history surrounding Liza’s death as a witch is a truncated, starker version of another witch-killing in Gaiman’s work— that of Agnes Nutter from Good Omens.

  While many of Gaiman’s witches can be seen as his commentary on the stereotypes surrounding witches and women, Good Omensgoes further than that. It’s satire and social commentary on all things from the steady march of capitalism, to unbending zealotry, to the affect of the apocalypse on the humdrum of everyday life—all very much in an Adamsian mode. Despite being written in tandem with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens is still Gaiman’s own—with a humor crafted from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Throughout the text are historical facts regarding the Inquisition and witch hunts—along with satire about the period known as the Burning Times:

  There’s no witches any more, actually. People invented medicines and that and told ‘em they didn’t need ‘em any more and started burning ‘em.167

  It’s not so much that the witches in Good Omens are realistic, as the information surrounding them paints an accurate picture of the attitudes about witches.

  While there may not have been a Witchfinder Army, England did have a self-styled Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins.168 Far from fictitious, Hopkins gave rise to “the most notorious and deadly witch hunt in England” in barely a 14-month period, from 1645-1646.169 More than 250 women were accused of witchcraft and identified via torture, while over 100 were executed.170 Unlike the account presented by Gaiman and Pratchett, Hopkins was not “hanged as a witch by an East Anglian village” intent on “eliminating the middleman.”171 Shortly after his trade in witch location and eradication began, Hopkins died of tuberculosis.172 Prior to his death, Hopkins did make enemies in Norfolk because of his enhanced interrogation techniques used on the accused.173

  One such technique Hopkins used was the “pricker.” The job of the “pricker” was to find the “devil’s mark” or “witch’s teat” and literally jab a special needle into it.174 Shadwell reflects this in the question he poses to any would-be acquaintance: “How many nipples hae ye got?”175 Often the needle was retractable—as noted by Gaiman and Pratchett176— or the woman was in such a state of shock, not noticing she was being pricked, she didn’t react. Favorite torture techniques advocated by witch hunters like Hopkins were sleep deprivation, denying the accused m
eans of warmth including clothes, removing all the hair (so as to better see the “witch’s mark”), starvation, rape, and physical abuse. With all that, who would notice a little prick?

  When we first meet Anathema Device as a woman, the authors describe her as wearing a “sensibly waterproof ” cloak with a warm lining.”177 Pointing specifically at Gardnerian forms of Wicca and to past views on witchcraft from texts like Malleus, the authors note:

  Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.178 While this text, like those, is written by men, they are practical. Anathema, like Liza Hempstock, is “not astonishingly beautiful”179—but she is pragmatic:

  Young women should not go alone on dark nights…But any prowling maniac would have had more than his work cut out if he accosted Anathema Device. She was a witch…And precisely because she was a witch, and therefore sensible, she put little faith in protective amulets and spells; she saved it all for a foot-long bread knife she kept in her belt.180

  Yet, Anathema lives her life according to the prophecies of Agnes Nutter, her ancestress. It’s not until after the ending of the Apocalypse that Anathema, with the aid of Newt Pulsifer, moves beyond the prophecies of Agnes. Anathema is the classical witch, living in Jasmine Cottage. She unknowingly passes wisdom about the occult and the environment on to Adam, the Antichrist, and through the imparting of knowledge, plants the seed that both causes the Apocalypse and ultimately prevents it from happening. Through the knowledge shared with Adam, Anathema in some respects is more influential in the Apocalypse than the seer Agnes Nutter.

  Before describing the demise of the undervalued prophetess, Agnes Nutter, Gaiman and Pratchett show a satire of how witches—like Liza Hempstock—were murdered. Adam and his gang of Them decide to combat the ensuing witch plague in Oxfordshire by starting their own Spanish Inquisition, complete with the ‘torture’ of Pepper’s six-year-old sister. Since the “British Inquisition was…not ready for the reintroduction of the Iron Maiden and the choke-pear…” the Them decided on a homemade version of the ducking stool, which turned out “just like a seesaw.”181 Since the accused was “too soggy to burn”182Adam and the Them take their own turns on the ducking stool before going home to face the “questions asked about muddy shoes and duckweed-encrusted pink dresses.”183

  While Agnes’ own execution is more serious, it, too, has a satirical tone since in burning her, the town unwittingly kills half its population. The reason for her execution wasn’t so much about her being a witch, but because the town became: “A howling mob, reduced to utter fury by her habit of going around being intelligent and curing people….”184 As with Liza, with Agnes’ last breath, before being gagged and set alight, she utters her curse—but she doesn’t doom them to die: “mark well the fate of alle who meddle with such as they do notte understande.”185 The village explodes as Agnes burns, since she “concealed eighty pounds of gunpowder and forty pounds of roofing nails” in her petticoats.186

  The witches in Good Omens are a satire of witches, rather than proper witch figures with revealing appetites. Agnes, like Luther’s bad wife, creates her prophecies not for the good of mankind, necessarily.

  Agnes was the worst prophet that ever existed. Because she was always right. …It was obvious that Agnes had a line to the Future, but it was an unusually narrow and specific line. In other words, almost totally useless.187

  Agnes’ bizarre prophecies, curing sickness with mold and not buying BetaMax, turn out marginally important to humanity, but do give aid to her descendents. Anathema’s intent isn’t for personal gain, but, as with the rest of her family before her, to decipher the prophecies of Agnes Nutter and to recognize the events leading up to the Apocalypse.

  A witch that exists somewhere among the Lilim, Liza Hempstock, and the Queen from “Snow, Glass, Apples” is Thessaly from The Sandman. Thessaly’s name comes from Thessaly—a Greek province. Thessaly was linked to negativity and barbarism when they conspired against Athens.188 Preempting the Malleus by over a thousand years, the Thessalian witch was a fearsome image, epitomized in Erictho—a compilation of all witch women, from Circe to Medea to Hecate, the Witch Goddess herself.189 Robert Graves claims that Thessaly was a “semi-matriarchal Bronze Age civilization” found in central Greece by invading “Achaeans...patriarchal herdsmen.”190 A site for the revelries of the Bacchantes, Thessaly was also home to the Moon Goddess Artemis’ primary temple, regulated by priestesses who were overseen by a high priestess representing the Goddess herself.191 In addition to rites, later in Neo-Paganism called Drawing Down the Moon, Thessalian witches used menstrual blood as a powerful magical connection to the Goddess.192

  First seen in A Game of You, Thessaly is calm, yet is anything but timid or beautiful. Portrayed as plain-faced, dull-haired, and without curves, Thessaly’s most remarkable features are her sharp tongue and a pair of enormous, moon-like glasses. Thessaly seeks out Foxglove, Hazel, and Wanda not to help Barbie, but because the Cuckoo tried harming her and she doesn’t “take things like that lightly.”193 Thessaly has been called cold and callous, but she doesn’t wantonly kill. Unlike Lady Indigo or the Other Mother, Thessaly uses violence as a means of self-defense, not as a psychotic. She kills George because he “gave himself to the Cuckoo.”194 She later threatens Lyta Hall with death, after protecting Lyta from both Dream and the Furies inside a witch’s circle, because Lyta was responsible for not only the destruction of many in the Dreaming, but of Dream himself.195 Thessaly has both redemptive and unredemptive qualities. Not necessarily a goddess, she is linked to Hecate through ritual, connection to the moon, and to association with Thessaly itself. In The Kindly Ones, she alters her name from the province Thessaly to Larissa—its capital city.

  To gain information, Thessaly reanimates George in exactly the same fashion that Morwanneg reanimates the unicorn: blood transmitted into the mouth of the deceased by the tongue of the witch. Thessaly kisses George, taking his tongue into her mouth, biting it off, and inserting it into his skinned face196—after the face is pinned to Wanda’s wall by iron nails, itself a protection against maleficia. Morwanneg bit on her own tongue, mixed her saliva with her blood and spat that into the unicorn’s mouth.197 The connection serves to remind us that Thessaly—like Morwanneg— has no proper name, an unknown history, and similar magical capability. Thessaly is ancient, as she tells Dream when he arrives for Lyta Hall, “maybe a couple of thousand years.”198

  Thessaly calls down the Goddess Hecate—and yet, she is Hecate, just as the Lilim are one and three together. For her spell, Thessaly requires menstrual blood from Hazel and Foxglove. Wanda is excluded, being a transsexual. Hazel remarks that she did “some witchy stuff,”199 but it was more for empowerment. Casting her spell, Thessaly reveals she is even more powerful than previously thought, since she has the ability to call down, bind, and dictate to the Witch Goddess Hecate, calling her by her three names:

  Gorgo, Mormo, Ereshgal: Three-faced woman. I fetch you, tie you, bind you. There are none left to save you in this old world. None to beat cymbals, and distract you with sharp cries. We have walked together in the past, you and I. I have bound you as a hare, as an owl, as a lantern: I have bound you in your House in the Heavens, now I call you down to me. We are old friends, you and I. She who dies and lives and never dies, be here for me.200

  The power of this statement reveals that Thessaly is perhaps older than Hecate since Thessaly “bound” this Goddess into her “House”—or the moon itself. Thessaly tells us that she “was born in the day of greatest Darkness, in the year the Bear Totem was shattered.”201 When entering the Dreaming, Thessaly displays her power over the dead—like Erichtho, Hecate, and other Killer-Regeneratrixes—by reanimating Wilkinson for information.202 Gaiman gave the Lilim connections to the Bible and Enochian texts, to Narnia and to the Silmarillion. Thessaly is linked to the Lilim, but she is also perhaps the creator of the moon. In Tolkien’s mythology, Yavanna formed the moon out
of the fruit of the dying Telperion, with the aide of Aulë and Manwë.203 In the panels depicting Thessaly Drawing Down the Moon, her glasses reflect the Moon’s face— and her own make the Three. The Witch Goddess chafes under Thessaly’s command, but still obeys.204 When Thessaly travels with the weird sisters Foxglove and Hazel, “Identity blurs on the Moon’s road.”205 In this sense Thessaly can be Hecate and the Lilim and even Yavanna; Thessaly is every woman, and especially every witch.

  The final witch image isn’t satirical, as with Agnes Nutter or even Anathema Device, but shows appetite, intent, and realism, to the point of humor. In Anansi Boys, Fat Charlie appeals to Mrs. Dunwiddy and Mrs. Higgler for help in ridding him of his brother Spider:

  It was sort of like Macbeth, thought Fat Charlie…if the witches in Macbeth had been four little old ladies and if, instead of stirring cauldrons and intoning dread incantations, they had just welcomed Macbeth in and fed him turkey and rice and peas….206 Usually, when we see any of these old women, they’re eating, smoking, or drinking massive cups of coffee. Their appetites are human appetites for food, calm, and even love. Mrs. Higgler tells Fat Charlie how she was smitten with his father—until he disappeared and she married another man. Mrs. Higgler is the first to tell Fat Charlie his father was a god, and that Fat Charlie did have a brother—a brother banished by Mrs. Dunwiddy.207 We learn later, Mrs. Dunwiddy didn’t simply send Spider away—she removed him from inside Fat Charlie, essentially splitting the boy into light and dark for breaking the shiny ball in her garden and to teach Fat Charlie a lesson.208 In her is a desire to teach, and in teaching, protect since the broken garden ornament—also called a ‘witch’s ball,’ used against maleficia —was a broken protection.