Amazing Folklore Quotes

[Loki] was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or to see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons...He was amused and dangerous, neither good nor evil. Thor was the classroom bully raised to the scale of growling thunder and whipping rain. Odin was Power, was in power. Ungraspable Loki flamed amazement and pleased himself. The gods needed him because he was clever, because he solved problems. When they needed to break bargains they rashly made, mostly with giants, Loki showed them the way out. He was the god of endings. He provided resolutions for stories -- if he chose to. The endings he made often led to more problems. There are no altars to Loki, no standing stones, he had no cult. In myths he was always the third of the trio, Odin, Hodur, Loki. In myths, the most important comes first of three. But in fairy tales, and folklore, where these three gods also play their parts, the rule of three is different; the important player is the third, the *youngest* son, Loki.

In the popular folklore of American history, there is a sense in which the founders’ various achievements in natural philosophy—Franklin’s electrical experiments, Jefferson’s botany—serve as a kind of sanctified extracurricular activity. They were statesmen and political visionaries who just happened to be hobbyists in science, albeit amazingly successful ones. Their great passions were liberty and freedom and democracy; the experiments were a side project. But the Priestley view suggests that the story has it backward. Yes, they were hobbyists and amateurs at natural philosophy, but so were all the great minds of Enlightenment-era science. What they shared was a fundamental belief that the world could change—that it could improve—if the light of reason was allowed to shine upon it.

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.   —RAYMOND CHANDLER, NOTEBOOKS

April 21, 1897, by one of the most prominent citizens in Kansas, Alexander Hamilton. In an affidavit quoted in several recent UFO books and journals, Hamilton states that he was awakened by a noise among the cattle and went out with two other men. He then saw an airship descend gently toward the ground and hover within fifty yards of it. It consisted of a great cigar-shaped portion, possibly three hundred feet long, with a carriage underneath. The carriage was made of glass or some other transparent substance alternating with a narrow strip of some material. It was brilliantly lighted within and everything was plainly visible—it was occupied by six of the strangest beings I ever saw. They were jabbering together, but we could not understand a word they said. Upon seeing the witnesses, the pilots of the strange ship turned on some unknown power, and the ship rose about three hundred feet above them: It seemed to pause and hover directly over a two-year-old heifer, which was bawling and jumping, apparently fast in the fence. Going to her, we found a cable about a half-inch in thickness made of some red material, fastened in a slip knot around her neck, one end passing up to the vessel, and the heifer tangled in the wire fence. We tried to get it off but could not, so we cut the wire loose and stood in amazement to see the ship, heifer and all, rise slowly, disappearing in the northwest. Hamilton was so frightened he could not sleep that night: Rising early Tuesday, I started out by horse, hoping to find some trace of my cow. This I failed to do, but coming back in the evening found that Link Thomas, about three or four miles west of Leroy, had found the hide, legs and head in his field that day. He, thinking someone had butchered a stolen beast, had brought the hide to town for identification, but was greatly mystified in not being able to find any tracks in the soft ground. After identifying the hide by my brand, I went home. But every time I would drop to sleep I would see the cursed thing, with its big lights and hideous people. I don’t know whether they are devils or angels, or what; but we all saw them, and my whole family saw the ship, and I don’t want any more to do with them.

In simple green Wounds or Cuts, it has such an exquisite Faculty of Speedy Healing, that it cures it at the first Intention, Consolidating the Lips thereof, without … suffering any Corruption to remain behind.” If a wound becomes infected, “it is one of the best of vulneraries, for it digests [corrupted material] if need be, absterges or cleanses, incarnates [new tissue], dries and heals, almost to a Miracle.” It is useful for hollow wounds, ulcers, fistulas, and sores. It is most amazing how Lady’s Mantle can restore the integrity of torn, ruptured, or separated tissues, as seen in hernias or perforated membranes. It not only supports the cohesion of the cell wall, but of the muscle wall and other such structures, at every level of the body. It is well to remember that Lady’s Mantle was used in folk medicine to “restore virginity,” i.e., reseal the hymen. This sounds like a folkloric absurdity, but I have no doubt it could restore this membrane, as I have seen it restore others.

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me.” — 4.85 ★ Whimsical, enchanting, magical. I don’t know how else to describe this masterpiece, I absolutely loved every page of this book with my whole heart. The beautiful writing and delightful atmosphere made me fall in love with the story, full of Russian folklore. I mean, I’m a sucker for myths and fairy tales, but god, this book made an amazing work retelling them. Really recommend it. I will definitely be picking the sequel next month, when cold finally settles in and I can read it with my blanket and my hot cup of coffee on a windy evening. “In Russian, Frost was called Morozko, the demon of winter. But long ago, the people called him Karachun, the death-god. Under that name, he was king of black midwinter who came for bad children and froze them in the night.”

The Sexual Episodes When folklore becomes degraded to a minor literary form, as the fairy-faith was degraded to the fairy tales we know today, it natualy loses much of its content: precisely those "adult" details that cannot be allowed to remain in children's books. The direct result of the censorship of spicy details in these marvelous stories is that they become mere occasions for amazement. The Villas-Boas case is hardly appropriate for nursery-school reading, but to eliminate the woman from the story would turn it into a tale without deep symbolic or psychological value. The sexual context is precisely what gives such accounts their significance and their impact. The sexual (and, in some cases mentioned by Budd Hopkins, the sadomasochistic) component of the abduction stories provides an emotional "encoding" that makes them unforgettable. Without the sexual context – without the stories of changelings, human midwives, intermarriage with the Gentry, of which we never hear in modern fairy tales – it is doubtful that the tradition about fairies would have survived through the ages. Nor is that true only of fairies: the most remarkable cases of sexual contact with nonhumans are not found in spicy saucer books, nor in fairy legends; they rest, safely stored away, in the archives of the Catholic Church. To find them, one must first learn Latin and gain entrance into the few libraries where these unique records are preserved. But the accounts one finds there make the Villas-Boas case and contemporary UFO books pale by comparison, as I believe the reader will agree before the end of this chapter.

I don't fully know what love is. I don't think anybody I ever met does. People do have theories about it. It’s amazing how humans love to fabricate theories and opinions on topics they know nothing about. Many times it seems that people are more obsessed towards expressing themselves on the things they don’t know, rather than honestly sharing what they know. It’s impressive how arrogance often hides selfishness in the backstage; as if arrogance was the forefront of a desperate need to unselfish oneself. In this sense, if I look back at my books, all the books I ever wrote on relationships and love, I would clearly realize that they need to be rewritten. They are not necessarily wrong in their core, but they may not be very helpful too, in a highly complex and “brain-obsessed" society as it is this on planet earth. Solutions on a mentally enslaved planet are like the sun seen behind bars to those in a prison cell. Within this perspective, we can see that humans are both consciously and unconsciously correct, in both their humane and inhumane actions and words, and being fully honest too, when rejecting it. For they need the key to their freedom more than they the sun. To these souls, the heart is further apart than the sun or the key to their freedom. They can only talk about it, as if it was a myth, just like prehistoric tribes, when addressing their folklore.