seamonster: in sum

forever trying to scaffold order upon the abyss

...And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
 
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
 
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.

-D.H. Lawrence, 'The Snake' 

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PART IIX: why do we like this story so much

miniature from the Saint Sever Beatus (11th c.), ‘Bird Devouring the Snake,’ symbolizing good triumphing over evil.

Sky vs. sea; bird vs. reptile; chaos vs. order – however you care to articulate it, it seems rather hardwired into us.

The t-shirt I will buy with your paid subscription

Flag of Mexico

Oddly this has also resurfaced in the geopolitical battle between the U.S. and China.

Truthfully, after my 8,000+ year review¹ of humankind’s obsession with the sky vs. sea vendetta, I am not sure why it captivates us so. Your thoughts?

In part it may be through the sheer act of repetition. It’s an incredibly ancient myth; we have regurgitated it in enough contexts and through enough characters for it to develop new resonances over time. There’s something captivating about myths once they begin to echo, ricocheting off different historical circumstances and returning to our ears changed yet deeply the same. And once they start to reverberate in our subconscious the urge to retell them again in new clothes is even stronger.

But there must be something about the myth itself that makes it interesting enough to be retold for thousands of years.

Perhaps we desire to partake of some great mythic battle, good vs. evil, God vs. Devil, Jedi vs. Sith, democracy vs. tyranny/terrorism/fascism/autocracy, science vs. magic, celestial vs. chthonic. Dualism certainly has its intoxicatingly simple narrative appeal.

Or perhaps this myth embodies the basic terror of being alive, how we are forever trying to scaffold order, meaning, sense upon the yawning, terrifying, chaotic abyss. And forever failing. That damn seamonster will not die. Death and nothingness and meaninglessness are right there, close enough to smell and taste, threatening to engulf us at any moment.

Or perhaps the nearly 10,000 years of telling this story, weaving through all of the earth’s major religions and art forms, just came from people sitting on a cliff watching a storm rumble over the sea; as lightning flares and fizzles across the water and the waves spit and roil upward, they say, Damn looks like the sea and the sky are really getting into it… wonder what that beef is about…

And with that, here’s the SEAMONSTER SERIES table of contents:

1. By no means exhaustive or worldwide. I focused on a particular Egyptian-Ugaritic-Canaanite-Hittite-Hurrian-Mesopotamian-Babylonian-Greek lineage of this story. The world’s seas are full of legendary monsters; perhaps I’ll explore their histories another time.