The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/mythology)
The more of Romero’s films that I watched – and especially the more of his novel that I read – the more I also found a theology bubbling up through the blood that aligns with my own theology of Ásatrú, a modern religion that revives, reconstructs, and reimagines the ancient polytheism of Northern Europe.
I’m a natural born sucker for fantasy. Bring that same fantasy, things that should be impossible, to real life, and I am all yours. I have this fascination for impossible creatures. Some call them cryptids, some monsters, others just figures and characters from folklore and mythology. I call them culture. That’s why I decided to get my hands on Cryptids, Creatures & Critters: A Manual of Monsters & Mythos from Around the World, by Rachel Quinney.
Except that what I heard then were no musical notes. These were sounds of the earth. Crackling; slowly rumbling; like a fissure opening up on the ocean floor; or a mountain growing, or a volcano awakening after millennia of stillness. The music had not even started that I was already captivated.
Ultimately, whether he intended the Silmarillion to function as a national epic for England, Britain, the Anglosphere, or the entire world does not really matter all that much. What matters is that he succeeded.
As we perform the enchantment of mythicization on our world, we lift people, places, and things from the mundane to the meaningful. The trivial becomes tremendous and the ephemeral becomes enduring. Myth, regardless of veracity, can have more power than any truth. This power is not always used for positive ends.