DOUBLE, DOUBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE

The story arose from pagan beliefs in prehistory, tying a spiritual realm to the physical world. Yet in reality, it was not a spiritual realm that the storyteller tapped, but the inner workings of the human mind. And as the story went on to define culture, it was inevitable that the human mind would play a large part in how society developed.
Whereas a system such as Christianity went on to use the story to control society and allow order, paganism continued to weave its stories and bring chaos. But then again, perhaps what society really needs is a balance between chaos and order, for if any one becomes supreme we have either totalitarianism or anarchy.

THE PAGAN

Paganism continued to provide the stories of life because it worked directly on the human mind, sparking man’s sense of wonder and his need for mystery and excitement. On the one hand, this led to stories celebrating great heroes and achievement, but on the other, it also celebrated the monsters and demons the heroes fought.
And in such ways, supernatural cultures intertwined with physical living, allowing the continuance of shaman-like abilities as expressed in the witch. Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, and well into modern times, the witch continued to be the central basis of folklore, which is, of course, storytelling.
This inevitably led to stories being told against the witch. Some of these arose from the Christian hierarchy, who saw witchery as a threat to Christendom, whilst others were more local based – the witch often became the cause of illness or natural disaster. And a mixture of such causes allowed a continuance of the interference in the physical world of supernatural forces.
Our ability to tell stories thus propelled a culture of superstition, curse, ghosts and demons. But how was this achieved? Maybe it tapped already existing abilities within the human mind. We must analyse these to show how easily storytelling can actually create wonder.

HALLUCINATION

We are told that we have an ordered mind that can rationalize problems and the world around us in order to come to balanced judgments. Should such a mental process be inhibited by fantasy, we automatically believe the sufferer to be mentally ill. And nowhere is this more true than in hallucination. Only the mad hallucinate, we say. But the reality is very different.
The mind observes the world through the senses and then interprets what it sees to offer images, in the mind, of the outside world. However, this ability to interpret images can be affected by many factors, including emotion and tiredness. When in such states, the unusual can often be interpreted in surreal form. It is as if the calibration between mind and the world has become faulty. And in such states we can all readily hallucinate.

THE CURSE

Rational people are said to be totally in control of their actions and bodies. Superstition is a force that cannot affect them, but what such rationalists forget is the power of chance and hopelessness.
Chance automatically creates coincidences that can seem to be meaningful. When we are affected by such a run of random events, we class ourselves as lucky or unlucky. But if such events happen within a culture that believes in superstition and the curse, the meaning imposed upon the random events can be powerful indeed.
In a simplistic sense, if you felt a curse or bad luck had been put upon you, you would automatically be more careful in your actions. As such, you would not be operating as you normally did, and with such abnormal behaviour, the chance of an accident is increased.
Taking this process to its ultimate, a sense of hopelessness could take you over. Medical science knows of a phenomenon known as ‘vegal inhibition’ where, due to a sense of hopelessness, the body can shut down, resulting in death. It seems, good reader, there is a reality behind the curse.

HYSTERIA

The rational, sane mind is said to be unable to take on board an irrational idea and become hysterical. This is absolute bunkum, as evidenced by everyone who has ever fallen in love. Your feelings and actions during intense love would, by the above measure, be classed as mental illness.
Hence, if we can be affected by hysteria in one way, it is inevitable that we can be affected in other ways. And nothing is more powerful than an irrational idea concerning supernatural forces.
At its most intense, irrational ideas can pass from one mind to another, causing mass hysteria. Such a ‘mechanism’ is essential for supernatural ideas to spread, infecting a whole community to the point that effects and sightings can be seen to confirm the story being told.
On a sublime level, we activate this social force every time an audience watches a good comedian. The laughter we display is mass hysteria, based on an irrational idea – i.e. a joke. For a whole society to experience a supernatural event, the only difference is one of degree.

POSSESSION

The supernatural is full of tales of people being possessed by demons or other supernatural entities. Yet we do not need to invoke outside forces to explain what is going on here.
The human mind has specific character types which Jung called ‘archetypes.’ Such archetypes presented themselves in mythology in order to show people how they were to behave. Yet, if they exist in the mind, and are malleable to the storyteller’s craft, then it is also likely that they can manifest naturally in the mind and take a life of their own.
This is particularly so in the psychological phenomenon known as ‘multiple personality.’ Here, the mind is said to fragment into distinct personalities that take over the mind. The way such personalities work is not much different to supposed cases of possession. But the most fascinating aspect of the phenomenon is that the severity seems to increase if treated by a therapist who believes the phenomenon to exist.
It is becoming increasingly likely that the therapist creates the phenomenon, the sufferer simply falling in line with the therapist’s beliefs. In a culture where beliefs in possession are strong, the same process could reinforce the degree of possession.

CULTURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL

In the above, we have looked at four abilities of mind to bend to ideas of supernatural forces, giving them a form of reality in society itself. It seems that such abilities allow individuals and societies to bend to the stories being told.
Those stories can be told for many reasons. Maybe people just want to scare others, or maybe they want revenge on someone; and as the stories apply to one person, they take a life of their own and formulate into a general type of phenomenon in society.
The processes involved, here, are essential. Consider the proof of the resurrection of Christ. This proof came in the form of ghostly sightings, hysteria and possessions. If the processes used to confirm the supernatural had not been in place, then Christianity would never have existed as no proof of the Resurrection would have been seen.
We can see, here, that the supernatural, and the stories that lie behind it, was essential to the formulation of culture, and thus our advancement. And it is interesting to track such forces through history to see how important they really were to us.

NATURAL HISTORY OF HALLUCINATION

For instance, the demons and curses said to be endemic to Medieval witchcraft eventually formulated into stories of ghosts and vampires. It is no coincidence that this occurred as man was beginning to philosophise upon his individuality. The supernatural had moved from supernatural beasts to man-beasts and memories of their dead.
Towards the end of the 19th century a phenomenon grew as powerful as witchcraft. This was Spiritualism, which included séances where hysteria and hallucination led to the communication with the dead. Spiritual mediums were predominantly women, and it is no coincidence that this occurred as feminism was gaining ground, requiring women to take a bigger role in society.
As World War Two ended and science looked to the conquest of space the supernatural story changed to extraterrestrial, with the UFO and, eventually, alien abduction being the new cultural tale, feeding people’s requirements towards a new spirituality and an urge to explore the heavens.
And as if to confirm the new cultural slant on an old story, consider a person who sees a small entity who goes on to abduct them and take them to a fantasy world, and before long a form of hybrid child appears. This is seen as the classic alien abduction event, but I was describing a classic fairy abduction from the Middle Ages.
Today, we live in a material world, and it was the story that went on to define it, as we shall discover in a coming post. But just to upset those who think the pagan story is dead, we must remember the modern phenomenon of the conspiracy theory. This is nothing more than superstition in new clothes, but whereas the force to be feared used to be supernatural, it is now malign government.

© Anthony North, June 2007

For more posts in the Story of the Story, see history page, above.
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