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Regardless of their opinion on it, everybody right now knows about Palestine. My mother had these earrings that came from Gaza, they're tarnished silver Palestinian coins hung with blue beads from a dangle hook. I never remember seeing her wearing them, which means they were from before her piercing ripped the first time, so they're older than me by at least a couple of years. Maybe twenty-five years old. I don't know the age of the coins off the top of my head, but it would probably help me tell. In all likelihood, knowing my mother, she bought them fair trade in Toronto in her student days at ICS.
The name of Berchta, mythical figure of the high Alps, could mean "the bright one" or "the white one," but could also mean "the bearer/carrier", or alternately "hidden/covered", depending on which etymology you subscribe to. Among the intense, etymologies can be like political ideologies, if usually more petty. Like a terrifying female Santa Claus, she prowled the countryside at midwinter, most likely the Winter Solstice but later Christmas after that became a thing. Those she deemed on her "nice list," who had upheld all of her prohibitions and done work she seemed fitting, would recieve silver coins in their shoes. Those on the naughty list would be gutted, their bodies stuffed with straw, chaff, and gravel. Some forms of her mythos connect her, again like Santa Claus, to the Wild Hunt: a Queen or leader even of the motley, curséd host that rattles through the air when the night is cold and eerie.
In Ireland, the Wild Hunt is sometimes given the name An Sluagh Sidhe and is sometimes depicted not as battle-hungry faeries but as ghosts, perhaps along the lines of the bánanaig and boccanaig, the geniti glinni and the demna aeoír.
Reading Lebor Gàbala Érenn, also called The Book of Invasions or The Book of the Takings of Ireland in the Twenty-First Century sheds a whole new light on the Fomori and their role in the story. Lebor Gàbala was never supposed to be about colonialism. In its original context, conquest and its fallout was normal, as was demonization of whoever the fuck you were conquering. Nobody thought twice about any sort of implications for the Fir Bolg driving the hideous, inhuman-looking Fomori out of Ireland, nor for the Tuatha de Dannan driving them out then too. Reading it with a modern eye paints the Fomori, and the Fir Bolg after them, in a tragic new light, as conquered peoples run from their home and no doubt imprisoned in hell-knows-where, considering that even that Tribe of Danu eventually becomes the Aos Sidhe.
And then somewhere in between the ancient legends (Lebor Gàbala, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, the Welsh Mabinogi, etc etc) and the triple early aughts phenomenon of Holly Black, Seanan McGuire, and Cassandra Clare, up springs the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Did they drive the Tuath Dé from Annwyn just as the Tuath Dé drove the Fir Bolg and the Fir Bolg drove the Fomorians?
And so the thought process behind my Kill the Seelie Queen was thusly: maybe somebody needs to throw the Seelie Court back out and put a stop to all of this madness. Maybe the Fomori, maybe with the backing of someone like a revolutionary Fomorian Berchta of the Wild Hunt, wandering the plains of the edge of the faerie lands, putting Palestinian coins into poor childrens' shoes.
The name of Berchta, mythical figure of the high Alps, could mean "the bright one" or "the white one," but could also mean "the bearer/carrier", or alternately "hidden/covered", depending on which etymology you subscribe to. Among the intense, etymologies can be like political ideologies, if usually more petty. Like a terrifying female Santa Claus, she prowled the countryside at midwinter, most likely the Winter Solstice but later Christmas after that became a thing. Those she deemed on her "nice list," who had upheld all of her prohibitions and done work she seemed fitting, would recieve silver coins in their shoes. Those on the naughty list would be gutted, their bodies stuffed with straw, chaff, and gravel. Some forms of her mythos connect her, again like Santa Claus, to the Wild Hunt: a Queen or leader even of the motley, curséd host that rattles through the air when the night is cold and eerie.
In Ireland, the Wild Hunt is sometimes given the name An Sluagh Sidhe and is sometimes depicted not as battle-hungry faeries but as ghosts, perhaps along the lines of the bánanaig and boccanaig, the geniti glinni and the demna aeoír.
Reading Lebor Gàbala Érenn, also called The Book of Invasions or The Book of the Takings of Ireland in the Twenty-First Century sheds a whole new light on the Fomori and their role in the story. Lebor Gàbala was never supposed to be about colonialism. In its original context, conquest and its fallout was normal, as was demonization of whoever the fuck you were conquering. Nobody thought twice about any sort of implications for the Fir Bolg driving the hideous, inhuman-looking Fomori out of Ireland, nor for the Tuatha de Dannan driving them out then too. Reading it with a modern eye paints the Fomori, and the Fir Bolg after them, in a tragic new light, as conquered peoples run from their home and no doubt imprisoned in hell-knows-where, considering that even that Tribe of Danu eventually becomes the Aos Sidhe.
And then somewhere in between the ancient legends (Lebor Gàbala, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, the Welsh Mabinogi, etc etc) and the triple early aughts phenomenon of Holly Black, Seanan McGuire, and Cassandra Clare, up springs the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Did they drive the Tuath Dé from Annwyn just as the Tuath Dé drove the Fir Bolg and the Fir Bolg drove the Fomorians?
And so the thought process behind my Kill the Seelie Queen was thusly: maybe somebody needs to throw the Seelie Court back out and put a stop to all of this madness. Maybe the Fomori, maybe with the backing of someone like a revolutionary Fomorian Berchta of the Wild Hunt, wandering the plains of the edge of the faerie lands, putting Palestinian coins into poor childrens' shoes.
