writing

Dragons

~ MKW Publishing ~ 2 Comments

I think about dragons every now and then, and the fact there is some kind of legend or myth about them across most continents. So, like the other articles Giants, Fairy Tales and Myths, Monsters & Legends, I try to piece together what it is about it that makes me thinks there is something to it. It was particularly the fire breathing aspect that I kept mulling over, because we have lizards today which almost fit the bill, small ones with flaps of skin looking like wings, large heavy set lumbering ones without any form of wings. But while discussing the phoenix the other day, and descriptions of it bursting into flames, I thought of a fire breathing dragon. Then I thought of a few other mythological creatures that seemed similar once I lined them up in my head. And when put together as below, you can see why I thought of all of them all in turn.

Phoenix – a magnificent creature that was a symbol of renewal and rebirth.

Sphinx – mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle.

Griffin – mythical creature known as a half-eagle, half-lion.

Chimera – a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature, composed of different animal parts.

Dragons feature in all sorts of stories though, Archangel Michael slaying a dragon, St George known for the same. Each of the ancient stories and fantastical tales featuring a winged creature, that had the ability to kill you on the spot or some great power to overcome and defeat.

Sphinx Gate – Neverending Story
Ark of the convenant

Another came to mind based on its description, although the visual portrayal I had for this myself was from a movie, so didn’t fit until I gave more thought to the aspect of serpents in all these stories. Medusa being the most ‘famous’ of these I believe.

Gorgons – snakes for hair, wings, claws, tusks, and scales.

If we did happen to find any remnants of things like that today, we might think they looked like dinosaurs or pterodactyls perhaps, or just a plain old snake or bird – or a snake eating a bird, if you have both in the same fossil. Maybe. I know it sounds like reaching a bit, but I like to consider all options. So of course, they really could just be fantastical and outrageous stories we like to retell and pass down through the ages. For no reason other than to entertain it would seem, and to make us think of a time that never was. Or, there is the far-fetched possibility that we really did have a more fantastical time that came before, and something they haven’t been able to get rid of, so rewrite them instead, giving them different names and meaning, scattering the truth to the far-flung corners of the earth for it to be diluted and lost. Until such time of course, that it comes back, as truth often does…

Gorgon

(c) K Wicks

The Old World

~ MKW Publishing ~ 6 Comments

There are scatterings of the old world throughout the lands and even submerged off coastlines. Relics, buildings, monuments and rather grand things to show we missed quite a spectacular time. These are what are being called Tartarian currently, to represent grand things of a time past. It is mentioned on maps and was known as a region, now covering Russia, China and lots of Europe. As the range of photographs from the 1800’s and early 1900’s show, they are all over, and the buildings we have left to speculate on about their true nature, show a grandness and beauty we are simply not capable of today. Or it would appear that way with our modernistic, square and unflattering building techniques. Very much built not to last, or look good in any way, often barely even functioning for its purpose.

In the last 100 years or so, many of these old unique buildings and monuments have been destroyed, burnt, bombed and demolished – throughout various countries. Some of them strangely not long after construction apparently. World fairs being a classic example of build something grand and disposable, quickly at great cost, then tear it down. Although some of the ‘temporary features’ built still stand today. But we lost the skills of that time it would seem. And world wars seemed to have served as a great cover to get rid of others that would have been noticed and probably stopped otherwise. Ancient, not so ancient and modern alike, sweep and clear missions hold no regard for what has come before.

And of those previous skills, I still find it difficult to get my head around there being enough skilled craftsman, and materials available to find their way to every continent, and multiple countries to build all these architectural masterpieces within what seems to be a relatively short time frame. The similarities are striking. Post offices, city halls, asylums, schools etc. Seemingly way too large for the communities and infrastructure of the towns at that time. Dirt roads and pillared giant neoclassical buildings, for a population of only a few hundred in some cases, or less. Where we are also led to believe people were rather illiterate, and didn’t get pushed into formal education until early 1900s. Someone was writing a lot of letters, or there was a great need for shipping things around small towns though for there to be so many massive post offices. And a big need for overly large buildings, and somewhere to house all the people deemed crazy or unfit for their new society rolling out. Maybe I’m missing something there.

The other rather splendid buildings we have, which are earlier it is said and we also have plenty of, are churches and cathedrals. So even further back, less people because of all the plagues and wars, yet grand building projects requiring money, time, people, skills, construction etc. Seems to defy belief really when you really think it through. Or maybe it’s just the timeline I have been taught doesn’t quite add up, thinking we had Romans building great things, then the skills just disappeared for a few hundred years during some ‘dark ages’, followed by peasants and medieval Europe, the crusades etc. Leading us to believe people again were just poor and busy trying to live, with skirmishes, revolutions, wars and religious domination also occurring. The 1493 papal decree, the inquisition, the church of England split and the war on monasteries. Oh, and chuck in some plagues, huge fires engulfing entire cities, invasions, fall of empires etc. Just seems like what we see, and what we are told don’t quite match up. And we must have had great numbers of people to keep losing millions, every decade and century to what we would call ‘an untimely end’.

When you realise potentially lots of people have been deliberately removed, from either society or the records, it would be much easier to retell it as you want it remembered. Because you would want a certain version of events to be carried down, the chosen history to be taught and retold. Usually children would be very important to that, and being separated from their parents of course, makes this much easier. Funnily enough, there was a fair amount of movement of that nature in the 1800 and 1900s. Check out my article A Train Of Thought for more on that. But again, many countries and continents have moved a great number of children under the guise of for your ‘safety & health’, or for just plain old social experiments or excuses for ‘education’, displacing natives and trying to eliminate cultures, language and traditions that way. It’s a tried and tested method, still going on today unfortunately.

So, given what we know of how those who control society behave, and their methods and motives for things, I find it easy to understand why they wouldn’t want beautifully crafted buildings around to remind people of what came before. Also, whether they are a representation of a mysterious time or not, they are of a previous time and mindset, and one they don’t want people having anymore. To start over, you need to get rid of what came before. And people can be very good at remembering, but only if they actually knew in the first place…

Tartarian Architecture

(c) K Wicks

The Great Conjunction

~ MKW Publishing ~ 1 Comment

This article is looking at the film The Dark Crystal, it’s fiction and a children’s film no less, but one I like and it’s one of those films that pops back up in thought now and again. More so recently.

I have mentioned it before in relation to a process within it, of draining energy from creatures by way of the crystal and turning them into slaves. But the overall premise of the story is a long stretching one, with conflict, battles and prophecies. Of cycles and a change in the order of things when the conjunction occurs.

“The Great Conjunction is the end of the world! Or the beginning. End, begin, all the same. Big change. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. ~ Aughra”

It reminds of giving thought to the Phoenix event story we have in our reality, even though it is apparently a simulated one, and of alignments in our ‘solar system’, looking like spiral path being followed. With eclipses and a termination point, or recycling point, where it all starts over. Like a clock having a countdown, or a reset I guess, as we do every day when the sun rises and we start over again.

But in The Dark Crystal, three suns align and a new age dawns – with a fair amount of adventure and peril in between of course, yet the idea of multiple suns kept coming up in mind. Making me also think of the multiple suns in Star Wars visible on Tatooine, wondering if there are other lands further from us on this realm, that have a different view from us. And when they talk of blocking out the sun, could it be because it will start to become obvious? Of the pending conjunction or that there is more out there in close proximity than is being admitted? Perhaps that is why we have stories of Niribu, one of the other suns that is visible now and again on its route, or a shadow of it is. Because while we usually think of suns as bright and glowing, perhaps there is a black sun, which may almost look as a black hole would in our astronomical imagination. But perhaps that is what Niribu is, a dark sun as the opposite of our known light sun, and I even went as far as to think that the moon may have also once been a sun – or in fact still is. As it seems to have its own light source to a point, could it be that it’s a super dim small version, but still part of the mechanical system. Playing its own more noticeable part. Just a strange a wandering thought…

(c) K Wicks

Gen X

~ MKW Publishing ~ 7 Comments

I have done an article on Gen Z, and speculating on that being the ‘zombie generation’, and how they seem to have it in society. But this one will be for Gen X, the last vestige of an upbringing and attitude that no longer exists. But the product of it does. Us. The X-ers. And recently I’ve watched an American woman do a couple of funny shorts, answering random internet people who ask, “Are Gen X-ers okay?” and “Didn’t y’all have access to sinks when you were a kid, why drink out of the hose?”. Well, her response nails it to me, and although done in a funny, punchy and humorous way, the truth in what she responds with is great. With classic timing and delivery, summing up, literally, some people’s childhoods, homelife, upbringing and influences, in a very concise and hilarious manner. Being locked out of the house all day, forgotten about by parents, had to feed yourself for the day, fend for yourself kind of thing. And if you are one of those ‘drink out of the hose’ kids, you possibly know what she means.

I have written briefly about escapades of childhood in The Hay Bale Incident, and of a time before technology in The Before Time, but I guess hadn’t fully appreciated the affects of those times on people, and how it creates a certain attitude amongst an entire generation. Mostly. There will always be ones who didn’t, or who can’t relate to that at all and within it there will be those who had extra weird childhoods as their parents were very good at even looking after themselves, let alone kids. But the toughened attitude that many in that age group now present, can’t be entirely by accident, can it? Maybe the ones from the 70’s and 80’s were meant to be the forgotten generations, the ones who fell through the cracks during recessions, financial collapses and whatever crisis they could manufacture to keep it as they wanted. Giving them an extra hammering now, and including the Millennials as they will also now be the ones with children, mortgages and businesses. The boomers having retired, and Gen-Z not quite able to get involved, and looking as though they will be locked out of ever having the opportunities we did. And it might seem like progress to think they get all new ones, and if it was anything positive and inspiring being pushed for the future, I would be behind it. It does not appear to be the case though, and if they don’t know any different, does it matter?

Being resilient, and practical, and being able to ‘fend for yourself’ aren’t traits that everyone has, or has even retained into adulthood if they did need to be a bit more savvy back in the day. Not all are able to get through childhood and life completely unaided, and despite appearances, many have their scars, emotional and physical. Understanding that what made you who you are, was often a product of someone else’s failure, distraction or circumstance. Lives overlapping and intertwining as we all end up sharing a certain space and time, whether we get on or not, or like each other or not, or can even relate to each other or not. Here we all are. But in the latest twist in society, it would seem that having those traits, or the extra behaviours that followed on from them was not entirely foreseen. Or maybe they were and that is why there is such a push to make people believe they need a label, and a medication that inevitably follows. To be convinced you are a problem, the problem, and it needs to be ‘fixed’. Because otherwise, we might have all spotted sooner that society is the problem, and how it has been set to work. It’s anyone guess whether there really are generational differences that are so easily defined by when you were born, or what you were taught. But if there wasn’t, it makes me wonder why they would spend so much time and energy separating us all out and making sure we have different societies to grow up in. That no decade can be like the last, constantly changing things to keep it all up in the air and never actually progressing, just the illusion of it…

(c) K Wicks

Maps and Islands

~ MKW Publishing ~ 4 Comments

Further to previous articles about maps and islands, An Island, Or Was It? and Atlantis? No That Would Be Silly, I spent some more time looking through maps of the 1500’s. One in particular is currently a favourite which you may be familiar with – Urbano Monte 1587. And an earlier one too, the Mappa Mundi. But in between there are others, showing places that apparently were, but no longer are. Named, routed and landmarks noted. But as far as we are told, they didn’t exist and were just bits of fiction added, or they just ‘got it wrong’, which may well be the case, we know that just because it is drawn or written, doesn’t mean it is real.

I noticed what looked to be an interesting feature on the 1587 map though, a spiral named as Vorago. Naturally I looked up the word, with its meaning being put as – An engulfing chasm : Abyss. And it seemed awfully close to where we have magnetic north showing, a strange feature which looks as though the images aren’t stitched together properly, so it appears fragmented and pixellated, like what happens when you curve something that isn’t supposed to be curved, but what do I know.

And it can be seen as a diamond formation of dots on earlier maps, this one noted as 1380 in roman numerals, seems very different from the other maps of that time, being that the mappa mundi is apparently from 1300.

And although it is speculated that most of these places noted above, are in fact modern day Iceland, Greenland, Shetlands Islands and The Orkneys – they say the others just simply don’t exist. Although, when you look at google earth today, there are shapes within the area which could have once been islands perhaps. Which leads back to a reoccurring question for me, if the water level has risen and fallen over time, to reveal land once lost, or cover land we once knew, how could that possibly happen? Could the land tilt, rise or drop? Or is it the water levels that have changed, draining every now and then and creating land bridges and bigger continents for a time, only to be covered again by a deluge from above. As the old saying goes, the waters above, and the waters below…

(c) K Wicks