March 1998

I've this theory about the X-Files. While UFOs and aliens might be the hook that attracts the audience; while theories of some great governmental conspiracy to engender super beings (PHANTACEA's supras), by splicing human with exotic DNA, might be the underlying theme that holds it together; what it's really about is faeries.

Yep, faeries. You heard it here first!

Why faeries, you might ask. To which I won't answer 'why not?' but will ask, instead, why aliens? I mean, haven't we got enough of them already? What's Celestial God but an alien? And if Lucifer and his ilk are Fallen Angels, heavens above!, where did they fall from except, well, Outer Space?

By contrast, faeries and their cousins, the daemons or daimones (agatho, caco, or whatever), are nothing if not homegrown talent. Am I making this up? The usual answer's 'always' but, in this case, consider the evidence.

First of all, look in the dictionary. In mine, for example, demons are defined as: "supernatural entities of 'a secondary rank' (my emphasis, not Funk & Wagnalls); a guardian spirit, a genius." And what's a genius if not a djinn or genie? No UFOs them; not in Aladdin's time anyhow.

Here's another interesting, albeit uncommon, word: chthonian (pronounced 'tho-ne-an') or chthonic (i.e. no 'ch' -- so why's it there, you might ask. Don't know, I might answer.) It's defined as: "in ancient mythology, pertaining to the gods and spirits of the underworld." In short, earthborn. Its opposite may or may not be catholic, as in universal, as in Outer Space again.

Fairies may not be as trendy as aliens (blame Walt Disney and Tinkerbell for that) but you have to admit that all the shape-shifters, face-dancers, and skin-walkers featured in X-Files this last season have their antecedents in fairytales (not to mention pan-global folklore).

It wouldn't surprise me if the writers and creators of X-Files keep a copy of Katharine Briggs excellent, and thoroughly researched, 'Dictionary of Fairies' (Penguin Books, 1977) by their bedsides for inspiration.

After all, until aliens became everyone's favourite bogeyman, there were plenty of gremlins, spooks, and such like 'things that go bump in the nightmare' to keep us, and our ancestors, well and truly terrified damn near every hour of the day. [Not to mention during prime time.]

So, come clean, Chris Carter, you rat. Admit it. Your show should be called 'The Faerie Files'!

One of my favourite resources for the PHANTACEA series of stories is 'The Greek Myths' (Penguin Books, 1955) by Robert Graves. He's the man probably best known for writing the 'I, Claudius' (Penguin Books, circa 1934) pair of books so brilliantly adapted for, or at least presented on, Public TV howsoever many years ago now.

In another of his books, 'The White Goddess' (Faber & Faber Ltd, 1948), one of the thickest tomes I've ever attempted ploughing through, Graves (great name!) talks about how myths have meshed throughout humanity's seemingly endless wanderings from the Garden of Eden until today. How, for example, the origins of the Olympian Gods and Goddesses can be traced to the Indian Vedas and other such seemingly diverse places as Libya and Scythia.

[He also notes that the Milesian (Phoenician) invaders of Ireland thought the world began in 5004 B.C. This is roughly a thousand years before the Moloch Sedon raised the Cathonic Zone in PHANTACEA but, for what it's worth, around the same time I place the birth of Droch Nor {the Biblical Enoch}, the Sixth Patriarch of Golden Age Humankind and the one who was killed when the Sedonshem came to Earth in 4669 B.C.]

That the gods and goddesses, the demons and monsters, of Ancient Mythologies all stem from essentially the same source is, of course, one of the precepts of PHANTACEA, -- always has been and always will be. In one section of Goddess though, Graves speaks of the Sea Peoples, the otherwise unnamed Biblical invaders of Egypt and Palestine after the destruction of Aegean Santorini sometime around 1500 B.C.

Lots of folks share my analyses that the Sea Peoples (supposedly the ancestors of the Philistines of David and Goliath fame) were Cretans or, to be more specific, the Etocretans,-- the original inhabitants of Aegean Crete.

They're the folks who gave us, among many another stirring saga, the myths of the Minotaur and the disastrous flight of Icarus.

[Let's not even get into the Minelaphos (Stag-Man) Cults, which Graves claims dates back to the cave paintings of the Neolithic, or truly Stone Age, times of 20-odd thousand years ago in the Spanish and French Pyrennes.]

However, on page 207 of Goddess, Graves also identifies the Sea Peoples with the Irish Sidhe (pronounced 'shee', I understand). He writes: "The Sidhe are now popularly regarded as fairies: but in early Irish poetry they appear as real people -- a highly cultured and dwindling nation of warriors and poets living in raths or round, stockaded forts." (Sound familiar?)

Similarly, a much more contemporary author, Stephen R. Lawhead, in his 'Pendragon Cycle' (Avon Fantasy, circa 1988) identifies the survivors of Atlantis, PHANTACEA's Old Eden, as the Fair Folk or fairies.

As well, back in the late Seventies, early Eighties, Julian May featured fairies in her tetralogy, 'The Saga of the Pliocene Era' (Del Rey Science Fiction).

May called them the Tanu and the Firvulag,-- pretty clearly the Dana (after the Roman Diana) or the Danu (Tuatha De Danann), the 'good' gods of Old Ireland, and the Fomorii, the 'evil' gods of Old Ireland. (See: 'Irish Mythology', Oxford University Press, 1987).

In May's stories they lived in the Mediterranean Basin, around the nowadays so-called Tethys Sea, before the Atlantic Ocean burst through the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) at the end of the, obviously, Pliocene Age some six million years ago.

However, according to, among others, David Hatcher Childress in his fascinating 'Lost Cities' (Adventures Unlimited Press) series, this same area was the heartland of the Osirian Civilization. [Note: I say fascinating but, then again, I'm essentially a nice guy. Had there been indexes provided I might have even said something like 'altogether enjoyable'!]

When the Mediterranean flooded in the, Childress says, later stages of the last Ice Age (under 10,000 years ago), the survivors made it to Crete, North Africa (most famously Pharaonic Egypt), and as far east as Asia Minor, where they established the Hittite Empire, and the Black or Friendly Sea, where they became the Scythians.

Also according to Childress, the Osirian Civilization was contemporaneous with the Rama Empire of Antique India. In fact, he suggests, the two may have went at it with all sorts of exotic weaponry including flying machines called vimanas (mercury-driven engines) or shems (airplanes?) and even nuclear-powered lances (rockets?).

As proof of his theory, Childress directs our attention to Mohenjo Daro, Harappa, and other ruins of this Sumerian-era, Indus Valley civilization, once located in modern Pakistan. He seems convinced that the high levels of radiation found there to this day can be explained by nothing less than an at least moderately-scaled Atomic War in the far distant past.

[I'll take his word for it. So might you. Mind you, I accept it as a given that there's a Sedon's Head. Of course, despite all the evidence I've presented throughout these Web Pages that there is indeed a Headworld, you might not go quite that far.]

The point of all this? Other than to tout a few interesting books and provide some background for this time up's penultimate chapter of Apocalyptics? To get myself a job writing for the X-Files? (Hey, I do live in Vancouver, where it's shot, at least for now, and don't my neighbours claim to see Agent Muldaur jogging by every so often?)

No, the point of all this is to ever-so-cleverly lead into my next installment of PHANTACEA on the Web -- which is when I hope to mount a gallery of shots of Tholoi Shrines or Ghost Houses that I took during my most recent travels.

Tholoi? They'd be related to the rounded raths (whatever they are!) noted above.