Wikipedia Trails: From Draupadi to Street Performance

This week, since I finished up the Draupadi-narrated novel The Palace of Illusions, I decided to start my Wikipedia Trails journey off by reading about Krishnaa herself; it seemed like it would be interesting to see how much of the story was embellished by the author and how much directly followed the original Mahabharata.


1. Draupadi

As it turns out, Palace just about follows the source to a T, which I was really impressed with; all of the new interpretation comes from exploring Draupadi's internal state and narration, rather than any external changes.

I also learned that there's a Draupadi cult today that celebrates her as a village goddess "with unique rituals and mythologies." One of the ways the cult worships her is through firewalking, which seemed like something I had to learn more about.


2. Fire-Walking

Fire-walking—when someone walks across hot coals, stones, embers, and so on as a rite of passage or test of courage or faith—has been practiced during lots of different time periods by lots of different cultures, and is still practiced by some groups today. The most interesting modern examples I stumbled across involved young girls in Bali, who participate in a ceremony and "are said to be possessed by beneficent spirits," Bushmen in the Kalahari desert who use it as part of their healing ceremonies, and Pakistani tribes who use it to determine whether a person is innocent or guilty of a crime (the idea being that if they're successfully able to walk across without getting burned, they're innocent).

It also works as a group-bonding exercise, even if people throughout history probably didn't realize that it had that specific effect; scientists have studied fire-walking rituals and found "synchronized heart rate rhythms between performers of the firewalk and non-performing spectators."


3. Fire Eating

Next, I wandered over to "fire eating," in which a person uses his or her mouth to extinguish some sort of flame. It's often used in street performances and circus acts, but there's also a spiritual history for it in India. However it's used, the skill is passed on from a master to an apprentice, with lessons including technique, fire safety, chemistry, and physics. Interestingly, performer Daniel Mannix claimed that "the real 'secret' to fire eating is enduring pain; he mentions that tolerating constant blisters on your tongue, lips and throat is also necessary." Fire eater's pneumonia, which is rare among the public but considered an occupational hazard for these people, is also a risk.

The last tidbit that caught my eye was about Robert Powell, a fire eater in the 1700s who "allegedly not only swallowed fire but also red-hot coals, melted sealing wax and even brimstone."


4. Street Performance

I ended up on the page for street performers, which worked out pretty well for me, since I'm currently working on a novel about a street-rat necromancer and his ghost-whisperer partner, and they happen to do street magic for extra cash.

There are tons of different types of buskers, but they've all got it down to a science: there's a specific art to "bottling," or taking up donations, and to picking out the right type of time and location for an act, both of which determine the success of the performance. One of the risks buskers have to look out for is thieves stealing the donations; late American entertainer George Burns noted, "Sometimes the customers threw something in the hats. Sometimes they took something out of the hats. Sometimes they took the hats."

Back in his youth, Benjamin Franklin was a busker himself, till his dad insisted that it wasn't worth the hit his good name would take for it. This ended influencing his beliefs in the freedom of speech.



Image Credit: "Malabarista de Rua (Street Performer Using a Fire Devilstick)" by Eduardo Casalini. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Wikipedia Trails: From Yama to the Carnival of Venice

I'm working on a novel for another class this semester (inspired by a weekly post in the Myth-Folklore class last semester, fittingly enough), and it revolves around a necromancer-medium duo. Because of that, I thought it would be interesting to research about Yama, the Indian god of death, and see where that takes me.

1: Yama, Indian god of death & the underworld

In any mythology, I'm always interested in the death god's actual relationship with death, and Yama's is probably the most interesting one I've seen so far: Wikipedia states that according to the Vedas, "Yama is said to have been the first mortal who died. By virtue of precedence, he became the ruler of the departed and the lord of the [spirits of the departed]."

In Hinduism, he's guarded by a couple of hellhounds who "wander about among people as messengers," and Yama himself "wields a leash with which he seizes the lives of people who are about to die." Another version claims he carries around a noose instead of a scythe, which is pretty fascinating.


2: Death (personification)

It seemed appropriate to read up on personifications of Death itself, since that's interesting research for my novel, so that's where I headed next.

Some cultures have thought of Death/the Grim Reaper as responsible for a person's death, causing it when coming to collect the person; because of that, characters in some old stories try to avoid Death by dodging his visits or tricking him, sometimes even bribing him. Other people view Death as more of a chaperone, a psychopomp who comes to collect the victim and bring him or her to the afterlife.

Interestingly, "Ancient Greece found Death to be inevitable, and therefore, he is not represented as purely evil. He...has also been portrayed as a young boy." The Greek god of death was Thanatos; his brother was Hypnos, god of sleep, while his sisters were the Keres, "spirits of violent death...associated with deaths from battle, disease, accident, and murder." If Thanatos wasn't seen as evil, his sisters were: they were often depicted as "feeding on the blood of the body after the soul had been escorted to Hades," with "fangs and talons, and would be dressed in bloody garments."

Celtic folklore's death figure, delightfully, was usually "the spirit of the last person that died within the community." In Ireland, meanwhile, it was a dullahan: someone whose "head would be tucked under his or her arm," with a head that "was said to have large eyes and a smile that could reach the head's ears." The dullahan would ride up to someone's house on a black horse and call out that person's name, causing their instant death. But the dullahan apparently didn't like attention, because "if a dullahan knew someone was watching them, they would lash that person's eyes with their whip, which was made from a spine..."

In Aztec mythology, morphed through the years by Spanish traditions, the "Lady of the Dead" (related to the Mexican folk religion's "Our Lady of the Holy Death") is said to have been born and then sacrificed as an infant before becoming the Lady.


3: Plague Doctor Costume

The related links brought me here, which is also the source of this post's photo. Apparently, plague doctors during the 17th century wore this outfit to protect against airborne diseases; it "consisted of an ankle length overcoat and a bird-like beak mask often filled with sweet or strong smelling substances (commonly lavender), along with gloves, boots, a wide brim hat, and an outer over-clothing garment." There were glass openings in the mask to see through, and straps that held the beak over the doctor's nose. The doctors would also wear leather hats to show their profession, and carried canes so they could examine patients, shift clothing, and check pulses without actually making deadly contact.

During the Plague of 1656, "[t]he costume terrified people because it was a sign of imminent death."


4: Carnival of Venice

For my last stop, I wound up at the Carnival of Venice, where I was mainly interested in the masks. Apparently, back in the day, people were allowed to spend a large part of the year in disguise; "[m]askmakers enjoyed a special position in society, with their own laws and their own guild." There are plenty of different theories to explain this widespread practice, but one explanation is that "covering the face in public was a uniquely Venetian response to one of the most rigid class hierarchies in European history." Eventually, though, masks and crime became an issue, and the law cracked down on wearing masks "in daily life."




Image Credit: Copper engraving of Doctor Schnabel [i.e Dr. Beak], by Paul Furst. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Wikipedia Trails: From Grave Robbery to Posthumous Marriage

For my next story, I'm working on developing something that involves a couple of grave robbers. That said, I really only know the basics about the whole process, so I thought this assignment would be the perfect way to gather some details and deeper knowledge on it all.

1: Grave Robbing

Obviously, grave robbing's been an issue for a long time, and it was actually a bigger one in ye olden days. But I'm really interested in more modern grave robbing, which is why I found it really fascinating that it's apparently not only a real problem in China today, but also kind of a trade you can learn: "The increase in technology, such as night vision goggles, air breathing equipment, and metal detectors allows grave robbers to better find and rob ancient gravesites. There are institutions in which you can learn how to rob graves–'for about 200 yuan (about $30) a day. Land surveying skills are first taught, before progressing to probes and shovels, then finally explosives. After 10 days, adepts have the chance to assist an instructor in a real tomb robbery.'" Apparently, this information came from an article in the Epoch Times, which I'm noting here so I can refer back to it later.

In North America, apparently, grave robbers typically target "long-abandoned or forgotten" private grave sites, from before the Civil War and also the Great Depression. These spots make prime targets because they're undocumented and isolated, often hidden away in "rural, forested areas where once-prominent, wealthy landowners and their families were interred." Because they're the graves of rich people, robbers mainly go digging for old, valuable jewelry. Back when laws prevented African Americans from giving their loved ones more involved funerals, they often had to bury them at night; the sight of a bunch of people huddling around a grave was a dead (I know, I know, the pun's unforgivable) giveaway to the location of the body, and robbers would hang back till the funeral procession left, then go for the new grave.

There's also a bunch of information about different grave-robbing deterrents, and they're all pretty fascinating: mortsafes, mort houses, coffin collars, guards, family mausoleums, and what were essentially obstacle-course tombs full of fake rooms and other tricks. But I've already rambled on way too much about all this, so. Moving on.

2: Body Snatching

Naturally, from grave robbers I had to jump to body snatchers—who used to be called, delightfully enough, "resurrectionists" or "resurrection men." My day is officially made.

Rather than targeting the valuables in a grave, resurrection men went after the corpses themselves, usually to sell them to medical schools for the students to practice dissection or study anatomy. Of course, when people started offing others so they could skip the whole grave-robbing process and just sell the bodies fresh, the law finally cracked down, and the common business of body snatching pretty much died out. Before it did in the US, though, resurrectionists sometimes used to hire female accomplices to "act the part of grieving relatives and to claim the bodies of dead at poorhouses. Women were also hired to attend funerals as grieving mourners; their purpose was to ascertain any hardships the body snatchers may later encounter during the disinterment." The story pretty much writes itself.

3: Ghost Marriage

From body snatching, I stumbled across the idea of ghost marriages. There are several different forms of this, but the most interesting one to me comes from the following example. Once, about a month after a Chinese teenager died, his spirit appeared to his mother, saying he's lonely in the spirit world and wants to be married to this teen girl who died recently in another area. Before the son disappeared again, he didn't actually reveal the girl's name—so the mom, top-notch problem-solver that she was, turned to a Cantonese spirit medium. The medium was able to contact the boy and get the information about the girl from him.

To carry out the ghost weddings, there are even a few matchmakers available for that sort of thing: In fact, in Singapore, "there is in fact a ghost marriage broker's sign hung up in a doorway of a Taoist priest's home. The broker announces that he is willing to undertake the search for a family which has a suitable deceased member with a favourable horoscope."

4: Posthumous Marriage

And finally, from there, I found my way to the article on posthumous marriage. Unlike ghost marriages, this is done when a couple was supposed to be married, but the man dies before they can actually file through. Apparently, it became relatively popular after World War I. There's a legal process that has to be gone through first, but if the marriage is approved, there's actually a wedding ceremony in which the woman stands by a picture of her dead fiancé and says "I did" ((rather than the traditional "I do")). She doesn't actually get any of his property from the marriage, and essentially becomes a widow, but it's often practiced for either emotional closure or to legitimize what would otherwise end up being bastard children. Interesting stuff.

Image Credit: "Body Snatchers at Work," by Kim Traynor. Source: Wikimedia Commons.