An Abecedary of Non-Embodied Beings
Feb. 17th, 2021 09:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kimberlysteeleHi Everyone,
I'm taking a little break from my Seven Deadly Sins series before I return with the final Sin, Gluttony. Let's have a little fun with non-embodied creatures. And to think less than a decade ago, I used to be an atheist who didn't believe in any of them...
A is for Angels
Angels are not pretty glowing humans with wings from what the old sources say! The Bible routinely describes angels as bizarre creatures with multiple sets of wings, entire egg-crates worth of eyes, and floating animal faces amongst all the other stuff... Yikes!
B is for Brownies
They really do come out at night and help... The ones in my house returned a lost S hook from underneath our rickety porch (fixed since then) to the seat of my locked car to thank me for feeding the neighborhood animals. I never had a single doubt they existed after that event!
C is for Cthulu
He's a fictional cosmic deity who escaped the confines of H.P. Lovecraft's imagination to become more than just imaginary. Strange how a character from a book can become sentient via the fuel of fertile reader imaginations.
D is for Dryads
Tree spirits are there for all those willing to listen. Try doing a Tree Energy Exchange and find out for yourself!
E is for Egregores
An egregore is a thoughtform that arises via collective consciousness. It is the atmosphere or personality of a group that develops as a result of its members, and odder still is that it develops (much like Cthulhu above) a consciousness separate from its members.
F is for Fairies
From my encounters with them, they are not Tinkerbell in any way, shape, or form... they can often be terrifying and they often do not wish us humans well.
G is for Ghosts
By ghosts I am talking about the spirits of recently dead people who have not yet gone through the Second Death as described by Dion Fortune in her book Through The Gates of Death. Most people have seen or at least felt one, yet science keeps screaming "deny deny DENY!" Personally, I see them sometimes and talk to them frequently. It's not a big deal and it's not scary.
H is for Hauntings
Hauntings are looped impressions of events, often traumatic, that are occasionally visible to people during episodes of clairvoyance. They are typically harmless, much like watching a video tape. They often happen on former battlefields or old houses. One chilling example of a haunting was the 1901 encounter with the ghosts of the Petit Trianon.
I is for Intelligences
Looking for someone to make lemonade out of lemons in your messed up natal chart? Perhaps some planetary charity directed towards one of these guys is in order... it couldn't hurt!
J is for Jesii
Is he the kind Jesus who drives the Good Samaritan to open his doors to the homeless or is he the vengeful, hateful Jesus of Westboro Baptists? He certainly doesn't seem like one single god, no matter what some of his adherents would like to claim.
K is for Kek
How did an ancient Egyptian frog god resurrected by a bunch of basement-dwelling meme dweebs manage to redirect the preordained 2016 election, birthing a populist revolution that is nowhere near finished? Only time will tell.
L is for La Llorona
Her wailing can still be heard along highways and near lakes and rivers. Like other urban legends such as Resurrection Mary or the Candy Man, hers was allegedly based on a tragic true story.
M is for Manitou
The Algonquian Indians used the term manitou to both refer to the Great Spirit that permeates the world (like Chinese chi, Japanese ki, or Indian prana) as well as specific spirits in the wild or of manmade objects.
N is for Nymph
Nymph is the general ancient Greek term for a nature spirit. Much like the dryad is the astral embodiment of a tree, the nymph is the astral embodiment of a part of nature, such as a lake or a particular patch of woods.
O is for Orang Minyak
Orang Minyak means "oily man" in Malay and refers to a spectral rapist that targets women, especially virgins.
P is for Poltergeist
The noisy ghost is usually a harmless prankster who goes away upon the children of the house aging out of puberty, but every now and then is the prelude to demonic infestation.
Q is for Qliphoth
That is to say, demons. The creatures of the Qliphoth beckon from the periphery, eternally yearning to draw us into their scrim of hatred, perversion, and despair.
R is for Ra
Norweigan myth recognizes the spirit of place by assigning non-embodied keepers to various locations and landforms. Different species were defined by the kind of landform they protected, such as water, forest, and mountains.
S is for Succubus
The slightly more pleasant version of Orang Minyak doesn't resort to rape, but this spectral night terror gets what she wants at the expense of her human victim all the same.
T is for Trolls
Norwegians call them Mountain Kings. They are often portrayed as big, dumb, and mean with a taste for human flesh.
U is for Undine
Neither god nor intelligence, an undine is a water elemental more aligned with the manitou mentioned earlier.
V is for Vampire
Probably the scariest of all non-embodied creatures, because they are real and as common as dirt; the best trick vampires ever pulled off was convincing people they don't exist. They don't have fangs and cheesy Transylvanian accents.
W is for Wendigo
The last word in hungry ghosts, the Wendigo is a spirit who eats and eats and eats and can never be full. Oh no, the people of our civilization wouldn't know a darn thing about that... Nothing to see here...
X is for Excalibur
Are there creatures who are straight up X words? Yes, nevertheless I wanted to mention Excalibur here because it is such an important phenomenon among talismanic objects. Many swords have had spirits and Excalibur is the classic example; it was a sword that changed history.
Y is for Yuki-Onna
Yuki-Onna (Snow Woman) is a creature from Japanese folklore who visits people living in isolation, occasionally choosing to mate or live with them much like the selkies of Scottish myth.
Z is for Zeus
The Greek god is still going strong, long past his Hellenic heyday. You can hear a livestream of my version of the Orphic Hymn to him on Sundays around 1pm central time at my Queenie Songs Youtube channel.
Wonderful post
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