Morgan Daimler

If you know me, you know I love fae, and I was so excited to get my hands on this book. It goes quite in-depth despite not being extremely long, and it's clear Daimler has done a lot of research. This doesn't just explore the land of fairy - it also dives into the way it's known and perceived across cultures, and throughout history. I learned some new things I hadn't come across when I was younger and first diving into the realm of fae. It also includes how Christianity influenced old beliefs, and how the view of the realm of fae has evolved in modern times. The chapters make it easy to navigate, and are invaluable if you wish to use this regularly as a reference book. I greatly appreciated the pronunciation appendix at the back. Highly recommend if you're interested in the realm or inhabits of fairy. If you want to dive deeper, the extensive bibliography gives you no shortage of things to read.… (mer)

I’m going to compare the Dagda to Greek gods because they’re the ones I know. [N.B. I do realize that classical vs northern gods are very non-1-to-1, and are gendered differently, for example—perhaps most obviously with regards to the sun & moon, right.]

I first decided to read the PP book on the Dagda, (after reading the one about the Morrigan, who I guess is his boss bitch/girl), because he’s called the “good god”, and that’s reminded me of my god Hermes, who’s also a good god, a fun god. Not that it’s good or bad, so to speak, since it’s good to know many gods, but it seems to me now like the Celtic Hermes/the little god, is more like Cernunnos, I think. Daggie is more like Zeus; he’s big; or at least kinda a cross between Hermes and Zeus, since he’s a king, or a chieftain, but also fun, but in a more muscular way, not so much in the trickster/comedian/mischief maker (I guess you could say) style. I do feel like Daggie is more of a chieftain of the gods, rather than a king like Zeus; it’s more decentralized, less hierarchical…. Less, I don’t know, lawyer-y. (Not that Zeus is EXACTLY like Ha-Shem/Allah/Jesus’ Dad, you know.) But the Dagda is respected because he’s strong and boss and capable, basically. He’s also kinda has the aspect of a provider/lover/economic nurturer. Sometimes he reminds me of an athlete, because he has that aspect of being physically boss but entertaining/prosperous/money-oriented/not war-for-war’s sake. But he’s respected/boss because he’s physically tough and people like that about him, you know. That’s how he sounds to me. He’s a god-chieftain.

…. Yeah, the Dagda is an athlete, and Hermes is a comedian.

I now feel like (although I’m not sure if he’s actually a comedian) the Celtic Hermes would be Manannan Mac Lir, you know—if Hermes lived on an island, then he would be a sea god, right…. He’s not so much the Dagda, although I feel like they’d get along. I also now feel like Cernunnos is more like the Celtic Dionysios, you know. Although the five of them could make like a band, right—they could be like The Beach Boys, only not hokey or whatever. (Maybe they could be, The Beech Boys, or something, right.)

So yeah.

…. And I know the Dagda has at least one tool which is not a “typical” “God” tool—his cauldron: but he has another tool which is I think a very excellent “God” tool, right—his staff. It’s like one of the wands of tarot! And it’s not listed really in the vanilla Wicca books, which is why you read widely, right. As for the whole dagger/sword/“wand” thing: well I knew if they found out I bought a dagger into the house, right—and kept it in my room! OMG! It would have been against rules, for sure. So I bought a wooden sword, but even then finding out that I had a “sword” in the house was weird for them and brought too much attention to myself for awhile, although it wasn’t considered forbidden. But it made me think actually using it in a park, right—stranger with a sword—would draw too much attention. As for wands: well, there’s the fake plastic fan/Harry Potter kind (buzzer sound), and then there’s bringing what externally would be a stick into the house, which would certainly be used against me, right…. But a staff, right: “Oh, you have a staff. You like to think you’re cool. Well, I don’t like anything, just in general. But, whatever.” = VICTORY!!

…. I guess that in the fairy times peasant guys would sometimes go around wearing a top but no bottom the way in our times people listen to—I mean, they don’t want to dance to the music, you’re almost not supposed to listen to it, really, or like it, but I guess if there were a store without dance music playing it would be like, I don’t know, that would be The End, right, because we’d be in public and dance music wouldn’t be playing. And the words, yeah. I mean, I do like some Top40 songs again, especially (although not only) the ones that are vaguely about politics/something different. I feel like I’d like the romantic songs if they weren’t the great great bulk of all the songs. Like, we want to transgress but we don’t want to be creative or stand out…. You know, and we want to follow the rules. We just kinda want to be lewd, but without shocking anyone, right. Just like in those days before: we want to be lewd and not wear a bottom, but we don’t want to shock people by like wearing a fancy robe and (fake?) gold rings and shit like we didn’t think that we were peasants anymore, right….

Like, can you imagine—I know it’s been done, I guess, although people HATED it at the time, and got uber-paranoid about it—people doing a song about doing LSD or magic mushrooms with a shaman or with a doctor/social worker/Jungian psychologist team (people weren’t as good about that in the past, it’s true) and then writing a song with interesting lyrics about the nature of mind and consciousness, right—people would think that that would be like the triumph of the monkey men: whereas if you do this peasant song of like, you know, peasant shirt + penis outfit, right: “you should be in my bed, naked, by the time I count down from five to two! (naked! naked!)” ~disco ball falls down and kills someone~…. You know? It’s like…. Anyway. People are comfortable with peasants, you know. I mean, they hate them, but—the American slaves were positively Expected to be lecherous during any of their few few times off, right….

…. But yeah, the Dagda seems like a cool god—like a well-rounded tribal chief. One of the differences with Zeus is he isn’t always the king—“I don’t always lead the tribe. But when I do, (product placement)”, lol…. I know even less about North American native nations than I do about the old (pre-white) Celts, even, but he does kinda have more of a feel like that, you know: the Dagda could be king for a long time and then let Lugh be king (for a rather shorter period, because the Daggs is boss, right), and then maybe go back to being king after awhile: and in a similar way, although I don’t know as much about the Lenape or the Cherokee, it’s hard to imagine one of their chiefs having the attitude, you know, “I’ll be chief until you kill me and take my spear from my cold, dead hands”, like a Roman king (or whatever), right…. I know that guy Frazer (Golden Bough) had that idea that in the pagan times the king was like a sacrificial king and another bloke could kill him and eat him (or whatever) and be the king, and I would probably like to read that book eventually, but it does seem from what I read that he was a—you know, he was almost like a Threads poster today, all religions are the same and/or all religions are different, therefore, all religions are BS because they should be more unique/consistent, whatever the argument is, right~ except Frazer was much much more bookish/secret agenda/reticent to reveal motives and get exposed to criticism, like an old aristocrat rationalist elitist-rebel instead of the new idiot Threads version, right…. And yeah, some of that stuff could have happened, but given the whole Victorian/Edwardian nature of the scholarship, it probably all happened in the Mediterranean, right….

~But anyway, yeah: it is curious how alternative actually-specifically-Irish things can be, as opposed to the bulk-Irish “what I like about being Irish is that nobody dislikes us, there are lots of us, and nobody expects us to uphold any specific customs, basically” people, right…. The actual divergent-Irish tradition is in fact relatively poorly documented compared to many other groups (if not, say, compared to the Lenape: but certainly in between the Lenape and the Greeks and even arguably the Norse: Wagner happened a long time before the Ethnic Miracle happened, and Wagner encoded a lot more folklore into the popular consciousness than JFK, lol…. 😂), although it’s certainly pleasant to think that if I don’t have children I won’t be the Last Mick, the way that the Lenape or even the Jews must feel, occasionally, right….

…. And yeah: I know I don’t really ‘get’ it all yet, and although I’m not as into the ‘correct’ way as some people are—people have different dispositions, of course—I would like to understand more of it, eventually. Of course, one never comes to an end of understanding—that’s why they call it a mystery….

…. And yeah, it’s funny, I like the Goddess: she’s almost what I like best about paganism—I want her to brag on herself and be sexy and kill people, right. (Although in a way that makes me feel safe! Hahaha! 🫨). But I guess the deities I connect to most are mostly gods—although I see them as kinda feminine, or at least boyish and playful, which is almost the same thing. I mean, mostly I like Hermes…. Although Crowley calls the god of childhood Horus, and that’s kinda how I see Hermes, right…. I don’t know, I guess I’m just indecisive, you know. (Do NOT make fun of me, lol. “(people start to make fun of me)” No! Stop it! You’ll make me angry! 🪼 ⚡️ ⚡️…. Ok.) I mean, the goddess is just kinda abstract without like a girlfriend, you know. I don’t know. I mean, there’s also like, friends and artists family and shit…. Just girlfriends are the MOST amusing, right. I guess when I get a girlfriend, it’ll like, solidify my ideas about her. Although I guess knowing the goddess could also lead me towards a…. I mean, the thing is, I want like a job that (a) is intrinsically a good job, in terms of pay and work done/“creativity” (I don’t mean like writing or acting, you know), and skills, and (b) where the different workers there actually share some kind of culture—it could be normal or semi-normal, although too normal and people would share absolutely nothing, right—or some other place with a shared culture, right. I don’t know. It’s not good to rush, or not to integrate it into your whole life. Some love affairs last for many lifetimes—with little breaks for childhoods and the odd weekend apart, lol…. I need there to be a pop song where the couple is like, splitting up to go to work, right—but I don’t know if I even want that. I suppose it could happen. But you have to integrate your whole life; it seems like the love affair you’re committed to having never end becomes like something weird, right…. Maybe if you’re real old and sad looking, you could just be an elder in a community, right; it wouldn’t matter if you’re part of a couple…. But yeah, I’m not sad looking yet; I’ll keep working on my life, and maybe in some months or a year or something, I’ll meet someone. That’s what my Chinese fortune cookies implied. 👌 🎱 lol…. I remember when I was dealing with anxiety but doing pretty good with it, I went to some small metaphysical store in Ocean Grove with my mom, and if you buy something you get like the tiny symbolic random thing from the converted candy dome dispenser, whatever you call those things: and I got like a little toy flower thing or something, and I’m like, Wow, that’s fun; I must not need anything…. An amusing interpretation, looking back, now that I see relationships as actually…. I mean, one mountaintop leads to another, right. Not that I climb mountains, lol. Look it up in a book, what I’m trying to say; I have no personal experiences. 😆

🪸

Ok.

So yeah…. I was definitely trying to like, communicate, right…. But yeah—but yeah, the Dagda, the fun, playful guy, although more muscular than Hermes; versatile, different; curious, right.

So yeah.… (mer)

Into Shadow - the Tallan Chronicles is a good read. I’m not surprised.

I have a love/boredom relationship with Quest stories. I've read far too many to be easily won over. A particularly good one, I recall, is [[The Hounds of the Morrigan]], which though slow moving is so thoroughly interesting that a meander is a gift, not an annoyance. Far too many are pretty cookie-cutter, though. So, when I saw that Daimler’s later novel was a quest, I did brace myself a tad, despite having enjoyed all of their previous novels. I needn't have worried.

This novel, not set in Daimler's usual fictional universe, is gently paced, well developed, and peopled by distinct and appealing characters whose relationships evolve in ways that both bring in the randiness of much fantasy fiction and stretch the boundaries of what is normal and acceptable. The journey—both physical and emotional—draws me in, and the book finishes in a very satisfying way, while leaving open the likelihood of becoming a series. To that I say, keep ‘em coming.… (mer)