Fantastic Beasts, and why we need them
Think back, way back as far as you can, to your first connections with the natural world, I don't mean the blackbird whose proud syrup song drizzled from the tv aerial outside your bedroom window, nor the riverine ant heards navigating the asphalt savannah, only to depart the above for the underneath, as they trickle between a curbside crack. I mean the creatures from the otherworld, the surreal and unsettling domain of skinwalkers, shapeshifting frogs and werewolves.
When we were children, animals affected us most profoundly when they pounced, flew and slithered from between the pages of a book, often read to us as we teetered beside the abyss of dreamtime and it was here that these characters had the freedom to unfold further into our psyche, their essence weaving a fraid suture between sleep and wake that ultimately bursts, spilling a colourful menagerie of everlasting impressions into our waking life, leaving a permanent watermark on our collective imaginations. It might be a shadowy underwater wake from the passing leviathan, it’s cold breath wafting our toes, or the twig snap shudder panic from the stalking beast, slinking behind the vanta black curtain of a woodland night, or simply caution for the untrustworthy cunning of the fox and the bloodthirsty intentions of a ravenous wolf. Of course all are things not to be feared at all, however, when a lot of these tales were established, wolves, bears and lynx were very much a part of our native fauna and the creatures in these stories taught us some important natural lore.
The teachings drawn from the yarns of animal myth and fable unravel possibility into our lives, we learn of risk, adventure and romance, danger and consequence, and probably most importantly, we also discover alchemy in the narrative of these fantastic creatures. Magic fascinates and tickles our curiosity, yet seldom do we consider that in reality, the natural world shimmers with magic that is far beyond any bedtime story. In fairy tales and folklore, flying creatures, shapeshifters and resurrection are all enchanting and wondrous powers, yet in reality birds and bats, butterflies and beetles, hibernation and seasonal change are commonplace phenomena, actuality invariably exceeds the freakiness of fantasy every time. Immortality is a completely rational option for the jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii; in the case of the desert dwelling New Mexico whiptail lizard, virgin birth, also known as parthenogenesis, is a routine method of reproduction, as it is amongst many other invertebrate, plant and vertebrate species. It truly is a deliciously weird and wonder filled world that we live in.
One of the most beguiling fictional relationships that smudges the margins between animal and human cultures throughout the world, is that of the shapeshifter, the bedeviled human caged within the tormented husk of some lowly or hideous beast. Werewolf and Lycan stories have a long and gruesome history, metamorphing and snarling their way from the ancient streets of Uruk to the gusty tunnels and escalators of the London underground. In the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’, a 4,000 year old poem which is widely considered to be the oldest known surviving work of literature, we witness, arguably, the first appearance of a werewolf. In this tale the hero of the title shuns the advances of the goddess Ishtar after learning that she had turned an amorous shepherd into a wolf, who then meets his demise at the teeth of his own guard dogs. In Navajo folklore those who can deviate between animal and human form are known as skinwalkers, or, yee naaldlooshi, meaning, “with it, it goes on all fours”, these are murderous, malevolent witches that once draped in a pelt, can disguise themselves as that very same creature, often mutating into huge coyotes, wolves or bears hell bent on mayhem and destruction. In European fairy tales, green-eyed spells of entrapment are often cast to hinder or elicit romantic liaisons. The most widely known tale being that of ‘The frog prince’, one of the many dark and bewitching fables collected by the Brothers Grimm, here the frog turns back into a prince only after being touched by the lips of the princess, however, in the oldest version the transformation only occurs once the princess has thrown the frog against a wall!
In the 18th century Italian fairytale ‘The canary prince’, the king's son, whilst out hunting, discovers a hidden castle where he spies a beautiful imprisoned princess, he partners up with the local witch who sneaks a magic book to the subjugated maiden, flicking forward through the pages the prince transforms into a canary, gifting him the power to fly to her side through an open window, when she flicks back he returns to his human form. Closer to home, in Celtic mythology, shapeshifters appear frequently, for example, there are many stories that feature Selkies, these are seals who upon emerging from the surf, remove their pinniped skin to walk the earth as a human, more than often these tales centre on a beautiful selkie woman, who becomes entangled within a relationship with a man who has stolen and hidden her sealskin, preventing her from returning to her home beneath the wave, and then there is the Puca, a ghost of Irish folklore, a mischievous white or black furred creature that can change into a wide range of forms from hares to horses as well as human, yet in this final form will always retain some vestige of animal features such as a nose or tail.
Alternatively, if we are not becoming a beast ourselves, then we are granting the more than human world our peculiar and often flawed human idiosyncrasies, long after the Grimm and Aesop boom, tales featuring anthropocentric animals have become increasingly commonplace, from the quintessential watercolour tales of Beatrix potter to the political farmyard banter of George Orwell’s Animal farm, the spiritual coney tragedy of Watership down to the trippy freakiness of Alice in wonderland along with pretty much everything from the disney stable, it appears that telling stories featuring animal protagonists, be it cave painting, myth, fable, fairytale or contemporary literature is vital to our very being, our animal yarns are as old as wonder itself, as ancient as the first sparks thrown across kindling, the grotesque and fanciful animals that prowl, swoop and gallop through the tangled convolutions and corridors of our essence catch a flame to our imaginations, they flicker and crackle through the dark, illuminating our lives with enchantment and possibility. The more we stray from the ancient path of sharing stories about wild things, then the further we distance ourselves from nature, its wisdoms and magic, if we no longer know the tales of the land and its multitude of curious creatures, then we lose our connection to them and our relationship will be forever broken.
There has recently been a lot of talk about our increasing disconnection with the natural world, however, in the universe of fantasy, fiction and imagination, we are now more connected to wild things than ever before, which is why it is now more important than ever that we keep telling those weird and magical stories and keep those fantastic beasts alive.
Thanks to Left Lion for commissioning this written work