ADDENDA TO "HEROES VS. HORRORS"

After I posted in "H vs. H" that the earliest "villain rally" known to me was in STAR-SPANGLED COMICS #7 (1942), I had the nagging feeling that I had indeed seen mention of an earlier team-up of comics-criminals.

A dim memory led me to reread Mike Conroy's 500 COMICBOOK VILLAINS, and sure enough, there was an earlier story-- sort of. It was a "Mr. Scarlet" tale appearing in Fawcett Publications' AMERICA'S GREATEST COMICS #1, dated 1941. That would beat the Needle/Doctor Weerd tale from SSC (though not the Joker/Catwoman crossover in BATMAN)-- except that, according to what Internet evidence I could find, none of the villains appearing in AGC #1 had appeared before. These villains were apparently created for this one appearance, as a team called "the Death Batallion," and so I'd hesitate to consider their teamup as a true "villain rally."

Incidentally, the Wikipedia writeup for "Mr. Mind and the Monster Society of Evil" rates that group as "the first supervillain team in comics to contain villains that a hero had fought previously," which is obviously incorrect given the SSC example. So, even though Fawcett can probably lay claim to the first BIG "villain rally," I'm rather glad that Jerry Siegel, founder of the whole damned ball of superheroic wax, can lay claim to the "villain rally" idea (so far as I can tell at this time, anyway).

Also incidentally: though in BATMAN #2 the Catwoman isn't costumed and doesn't seem to function as anything more than one of Milt Caniff's "shady ladies," in her very next appearance in BATMAN #3, she does join the rank of the costumed, wearing a gaudy orange dress and a big cat's-head mask. Still, not until 1946, in a tale titled "Nine Lives Has the Catwoman," does she get refitted into her familiar (and un-catlike) purple-and-green garments, and starts committing "cat-crimes" with various catlike devices.

HEROES VS. HORRORS: THE FINAL CONFLICT!

Over at The Groovy Age of Horror Curt Purcell just finished the third of three posts on the concept of "monster rallies" in horror movies (for the most part beginning with 1943's FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN) and horror comics. By coincidence I'd already been getting interested in this general concept of "interrelated monsters" through the webforum Classic Horror Films, where a thread asked the question as to when the concept of "ghoulish families" like the Addams Family got started.

Now, it so happens that the Addams Family's first cartoon was in 1938, which puts that particular cartoon before the aforementioned 1943 film. However, not being a Charles Addams expert, I've no idea as to what that first cartoon contained, and when Addams started putting in characters that drew on monsters from the movies and elsewhere-- the Frankensteinian butler eventually named "Lurch," or that "crawling hand" Thing. For all that I know at this time, the first Addams cartoons may've presented nothing more than a family of weirdos, of the sort one sees in the 1932 film THE OLD DARK HOUSE (itself based on an earlier novel). These kind of weirdos, like the Addams character eventually named "Gomez," had no explicit connection to movie monsters. The one exception, I assume, would be the black-clad lady of the Addams house, later named "Morticia" for the 60s TV series, as her character looks pretty strongly modeled after the Carol Borland vampiress from 1935's MARK OF THE VAMPIRE. In any case, though, the "ghoulish family" of the Addams probably didn't begin as a "monster mash" composed purely of spoofy versions of famous monsters of filmland, as with that other 60s series, THE MUNSTERS. It's interesting, though, that 1938, the year of the first Addams Family cartoon, also saw a re-release of the two most famous terror-tales of the early 30s, DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN.

But still and all, it does look like FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN is the first time the cinema ever put together two monsters whose respective origins had nothing to do with one another.

But whether cinema was the first medium to do so may depend on your definition of the word "monster." Structurally speaking, "villains" do pretty much the same things that "monsters" do. The most crucial difference is that in horror-tales the monsters, not their usually-ordinary opponents, are the "stars" of the show. But villains, more often than not, are basically foils to the (super)hero whose name is, or is above, the title.

Crossovers were not new to popular media before either comic books or horror movies came along: one thinks of stories where authors crossed over characters and/or concepts that had appeared separately (Haggard's 1921 SHE AND ALLEN, Burroughs' 1930 TARZAN AT THE EARTH'S CORE). But I'm not aware of any prose ancestor to a conceit that preceded the "monster rally"-- i.e, the "villain rally," which seems to have made its biggest showing in the comic book medium.

Now, by "villain rally" I mean the same sort of phenomenon we saw in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN: two larger-than-life characters explicitly brought together so that an audience could see how they "meet" with one another.

I doubt-- though I can't be sure-- that there were any crossovers in most of the early pulps, comic strips, or "pre-Superman" comic books, though I've heard rumor of a couple of "villain rallies" in pulps whose dates I haven't yet ascertained. I'd say that even if such exist before the first ones in comic books, the comics-versions still took off with the concept as no medium had before.

The earliest "villain rally" I've pegged is in 1940, in BATMAN #2. One issue after BATMAN #1 gave fans both the Joker and the (not yet costume-wearing) Catwoman, both criminals overlap in one of the stories in issue #2. However, it's not that great a crossover, partly because Catwoman isn't yet a larger-than-life figure. Indeed, she spends a sizeable portion of the adventure protecting Robin against the Joker until Batman can arrive. So this tale in issue #2 both is, and is not, a real "villain rally."

I have a better candidate for "first rally" in STAR-SPANGLED COMICS #7, a 1942 tale written by Jerry Siegel and featuring Siegel's heroes, a "Batman and Robin in reverse," where the lead hero is the teenaged Star-Spangled Kid and the sidekick is an adult with the risible name of "Stripesy." In earlier issues they had encountered separately the menaces of "the Needle," a criminal who killed victims with-- guess what, and a hulking "Mr. Hyde" sort of villain named "Doctor Weerd." One could almost call this something of a "monster rally" as well in that both villains are overtly grotesque-- but in any case, it predates FMTWM in terms of simply bringing together two unrelated agents of chaos, albeit as foils to a goodguy hero.

Finally, during the same year FMTWM came out, CAPTAIN MARVEL ADVENTURES #22 launched the first chapter of its multi-part tale, "the Monster Society of Evil," in which new villain Mister Mind bosses around an assemblage composed of both new antagonists and villains who had been created for previous stories, such as Nippo, Ibac, and the irrepressible Doctor Sivana.

So for what it's worth, one might say comic books got a little ahead of horror films in terms of giving audiences a new cosmos of interrelated monsters. As to what this means, if anything-- stay tuned.

A MOVEABLE FEASTER, PART 2

Back in my essay "Archetypal Library" I was groping for a basic example that "could distinguish the mythopoeic literary function from other functions in literary works." I had thought of comparing figures from WATCHMEN and SQUADRON SUPREME since I'd just done a compare/contrast on both of them, but I lost interest in that particular opposition. But as I started doing my Halloween post on the "sacred earth" element in Stoker's DRACULA., it occured to me that this might serve as a better example of the mythopoeic function I'm talking about. After all, what's more "basic" than the earth beneath our feet?

It should be said that just because an element has mythopoeic associations does not mean it's something airy-fairy in its complex symbolism; that it's divorced from any function within the narrative. On the contrary, the more complex it is, the more integrally the story-element works within the narrative, both to communicate plot-events and symbolic discourse.

For instance, at base Stoker's idea of "sacred earth" is a device that liberates Dracula from his burial earth but also gives him a weakness that the vampire hunters can exploit. Both of those are functions integral to the plot, and as base functions they're no different from a similar element in Polidori's "The Vampire," where Lord Ruthven, apparently struck dead, is revived by moonlight. Polidori's moonlight and Stoker's sacred earth both function to advance the plot. However, though Polidori's moonlight may carry some potential symbolic associations, the author doesn't do anything to enlarge upon those associations, and so that element remains what I call a "null-myth."

In contrast, Stoker takes this particular element-- which is, of course, just one isolated element in his elaborate vampiric cosmology-- and invests it with a wide variety of symbolic values that go beyond ONLY fulfilling what the plot requires.

For instance, one should give a little extra thought to this odd turn of Van Helsing phraseology:

"There have been from the loins of this very one [Dracula] great men and good women, and their graves make sacred the earth where alone this foulness can dwell"

Prior to this Dracula only spoke of the earth being saturated with the blood and memories of the heroic dead, which includes even women and children. He doesn't speak as explicitly as Van Helsing does later of his need for sanctified soil but he does comment to Harker that he wants an old house in England because "to live in a new house would kill me." But Van Helsing puts an extra twist on Dracula's celebration of his heroic ancestors, for the professor speaks as if the sacredness from the soil comes from the very "great men and good women" who have sprung from Dracula's own "loins," which is to say, not his ancestors, but his children.

The novel is ambivalent about Dracula's specific past. To Harker the vampire naturally disassociates himself from the historical figure we now call Vlad Tepes, since that ruler would have been long dead by the time of the novel, but Stoker clearly counts on the reader not to believe Dracula, who rages bitterly against a "brother" of that long-dead ruler who betrayed his people to the Turks. So Dracula is Tepes, perhaps raised to undead life by a bargain with Satan himself, or maybe from some strange electrochemical phenomenon (Van Helsing seriously proposes both origins at different sections of the novel). But for all his talk of the glory of the Sekely family, Dracula makes no allusions to either mother nor father. He seems the embodiment of a domineering paternal principle that owes nothing to earlier forbears, though this would of course be impossible if he were indeed a historical figure. Still, though Van Helsing sees him as vampirizing the "holy memories" of the soil where his children lie, it's certainly possible to see the reverse as well. If the soil also holds the sanctity of all those who preceded the historicized Dracula, then he is drawing vitality from both his ancestors and his descendents. It's possible to see in him an incest-happy myth-figure like Zeus, pretty much "vamping" any old relative-- mother, sister, daughter-- though in DRACULA only the figurative "daughters" matter to the story, since they're the only ones among the living.

Side-note: Stoker gives us few clues about the origins of two of his three vampire brides, who unlike the third one are said to resemble the king-vampire with his "aquiline nose." They could be daughters, one supposes, if one takes as gospel Van Helsing's assertion that many "great men and good women" have sprung from the vampire's loins at some time in the past, but it's broadly implied that Dracula no longer has the power to spawn as living things do, and can only create symbolic offspring through vampirism. Like Dracula, all three vampire brides apparently have existed in the undead state for centuries, since all of them dissolve into dust once staked-- a fate which is in marked contrast to Lucy, who, getting staked after having been a vampire for only a few weeks, returns to being a not-long-dead corpse. Thus, for neatness of timing if nothing else, I would think that the two brides with the physical resemblances are more likely sisters than daughters, though the identity of one with the mother of Dracula is not impossible, since Stoker's vamps can temporarily turn younger with the imbibing of stolen blood.

Again I feel compelled to harp upon how much complexity of association Stoker has imbued into what *could* have been treated as a simple weakness for the vampire hunters to exploit, along the level of such comic-book analogues as the Martian Manhunter (weakness to fire) and Green Lantern (weakness to the color yellow). I don't include the better-known example of Superman and his radioactive rock-nemesis here, for kryptonite did accrue a fair amount of mythicity over the years-- though Stoker's treatment of the associations of "sacred earth" is on the whole more complex.

In fact, I'm moved to reflect that only recently have academics begun to appreciate the deep symbolic discourse in DRACULA. When I was growing up in the 1960s, there were no scholarly treatises on DRACULA, though there were quite a few on that other half of horror's "diabolical duo," FRANKENSTEIN. I believe that this was because Shelley's work, despite all of the novel's flaws and despite the popular iterations of the story, carried the associations of "high art" because it seemed to be "about something important"-- a hallmark attitude one encounters with works that follow the pattern of thematic realism. In contrast, DRACULA must have looked more like a pure thrill-ride, which is the hallmark of works that follow the pattern of thematic escapism. Yet though both the Shelley novel and the Stoker work possess considerable mythicity, I tend to favor the discourse of DRACULA a bit more. Intellectually, FRANKENSTEIN is easier to take more seriously, with its guilt-haunted protagonist unconsciously using his doppleganger to slaughter just about everyone he ever loves or even knows, while DRACULA's theme, such as it is, doesn't bear a lot of close analysis. Yet it may be that the very absence of a "serious theme" allowed Stoker's imagination greater free play, and allowed him, a la William Blake, "to see heaven in a grain of sand--"

Or memories of ancient blood-sheddings in a handful of earth.

A MOVEABLE FEASTER

As it's Halloween today, mad critics must go the extra mile to do what both they and mad scientists do on a regular basis: take something that's a living whole, tie it down, dissect it, and make it into an unholy thing. (Or maybe, to venture a bad pun, "un-whole-y.")

But despite the Frankensteinian comparison, my subject here is his sometime compeer Dracula, who is the "moveable feaster" of this essay's title. Specifically Stoker's novel is the "living whole" from which I'll be dissecting, though today I'll confine myself to one small part of the Dracula mythos: the aspect of Dracula's earth-filled coffins, which makes it possible for Dracula to move from place to place and menace respectable English Victorians.

Stoker's vampire is certainly not the first vampire who was able to move about freely, in contradiction to folkloric revenants who usually had to return to their graves by daybreak. John Polidori's Lord Ruthven, conceived in the same Romantic jam-session that spawned Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, seemed immune to the call of the earth, and walked about in day or night regardless. But Stoker apparently had a very specific set of ideas about how vampires might function. And though many aspects of Stoker's vampire myth have been mined by later authors, Dracula's reason for needing to repose in coffins full of native soil seem to have been forgotten by later vampire-mythographers.

Early in the novel, Dracula tells Jonathan Harker:

"Why, there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders."

Naturally, at that point in the novel, the vampire does not dwell on how this "blood-enriched" earth is going to make it possible for him to pick up stakes (so to speak) and invade merry old England. But much later in the novel, Van Helsing goes into greater detail about Dracula's literal need for earth that has been sanctified (as well as ensanguinated) by the past:

"There have been from the loins of this very one [Dracula] great men and good women, and their graves make sacred the earth where alone this foulness can dwell. For it is not the least of its terrors that this evil thing is rooted deep in all good; in soil barren of holy memories it cannot rest."

So in Stoker's mythos the sacred earth of Dracula's Transylvania is replete with both "the blood of the heroic dead" and "memories of great men and good women." Blood, then, is not just plasma and platelets in Stoker's cosmos, but rather the objective correlate of life itself, a sort of vitality that doesn't vanish with the deaths of individual humans but which seeps into the earth and sustains the life of a vampire quite as much as feeding off the blood of the living. This "sacred earth" explanation may explain how Dracula and his vampire brides managed to survive without exsanguinating every last mortal left in the region, especially given that Stoker's Transylvania often seems like a barren Hades-on-Earth, lacking the vitality that Dracula praises in past generations of his land. Stoker, in formulating this notion of the vampire needing to take his native soil with him when he departed for other climes, was thus overcoming the folkloric notion that a vampire had to return to his grave. Thanks to Stoker, Dracula could take his grave with him as he travelled.

To be sure, Stoker never has any scenes which directly prove Van Helsing's assertion about Dracula's dependence on Transylvanian soil-- that is, scenes like having Dracula try without success to sleep in English soil. But apparently whatever "blood-memories" in Dracula's native soil nourish the vampire, that vitality can be trumped by a greater vitality, as Van Helsing uses holy wafers, presumably blessed by the Catholic Church, to make some of Dracula's earth-filled coffins useless to him. (Side-note: the "holy water" device popular in many later vampire-tales appears nowhere in the original novel.) Still, the original folklore-limitation does crop again with respect to Dracula's only vampiric convert in England, for apparently Lucy Westenra can't just go anywhere she likes, but is obliged to return to her mausoleum at daybreak. Stoker does not emphasize her dependence on being close to English soil, but one must presume that she has some such dependence on returning to her original grave.

To be continued in MOVEABLE FEASTER, PART 2--

QUOTE FOR THE YEAR

As long as I'm reading Murdoch, I may as well quote her slam against what I've called the naive positivists:

"Of course there are neutral scientific or scholarly or legal disciplines and procedures and states of mind, and these, often to be thought of as ideal limits, are essential and without them we would indeed 'perish and go to ruin.' But they represent one aspect only of the idea of truth, and occupy a smaller area than is sometimes suggested by those who conjure up a vast world of facts in contrast to a small specialised activity of evaluating."

I will say that I disagree on some of her insights on "truth:"

"It seems to me that one cannot 'philosophize' adequately upon the subject [of ethics] unless one takes it as fundamental that consciousness is a form of moral activity: what we attend to, how we attend, whether we attend."

For me the moral nature of consciousness (which roughly parallels the nature of the "ethical criticism" I discussed in MERIT RAISED) is not the whole picture, any more than is the aesthetic sense that underlies "aesthetic criticism." Both of these aspects of consciousness, the moral and the aesthetic, are secondary responses to the power of personal mythopoesis, of the mythic identities that human beings choose to project. Such identities are not just facile comparisons to archaic myth-figures (as Murdoch assumes in her pooh-poohing polemic against Jung), but modern myths as well. The man who thinks "I am a realist" is living no less a myth than the one who thinks "I am an idealist;" the two merely use different moral, aesthetic and philosophical justifications in order to articulate and communicate said identities. The moral certainly impacts upon those identities, but it's not a primary function. But to get at that primary thing would be beyond the scope of this short piece...

ID-IOT'S DEMISE

Right away let me lay down my prejudices regarding villains.

In the annals of popular literature (which automatically disincludes anything in the realm of the canonical class), there are only Three Great Villains.

Rider Haggard's SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED (1887)

Bram Stoker's DRACULA (1897)

Sax Rohmer's FU MANCHU (1912)

Other prominent villains-- Captain Nemo, the Wicked Witch, Joker, Doc Doom, Darth Vader-- are at best "near greats," and most of the not-so-prominent may be "good," "interesting," and so on down the line. Only the Big Three-- all, not coincidentally, born from the medium of prose-- possess the quality Henry James called "density of specification." James was applying this concept to the density of realistic detail in a work, but though that verisimilitudinous idea does somewhat apply to these prose-villains-- or as much as it can, given the parameters of popular fiction-- I'm really thinking of the density of mythopoetic associations one finds in each of the Big Three; a density that puts all other villains to shame.

Of course, even if these villains were not fictional, few if any of them would be capable of shame. To borrow flagrantly from the psychological model of Big Sigmund Freud, shame belongs to the "ego," experienced thanks to the never-ending battle of the shameless "id" and the shame-inducing "superego." There should be no need to point out which of the latter two most resembles the archetypal comics-villain and which the archetypal hero, but who's the ego? One might suppose that it's the reader of the hero/villain struggle, who both enjoys the villain attempting all sort of transgressive desires (meant here more in the sense of Bataille than of Freud) and the hero's prosocial efforts to batter the villain into submission.

But what happens when the heroes are all gone and the villains, those icons of the id, are on the loose? That's a question suggested by the setup of the Mark Millar/J.G. Jones limited series WANTED-- but do Millar and Jones really let the dogs out? Attend.

Mark Millar is not unique in attempting to break down his readers' tender egos with a villain-centric world. Of the Big Three cited above, Rohmer's Fu Manchu, by promoting his favored fiend within an ongoing series of books, did the most to put readers in the Oriental slippers of an undefeatable evil. Stoker wisely (given his talents) killed his demon off in one book, while Haggard, having killed off his demoness in the first book, had to strain to launch one okay sequel and two mediocre prequels. So Rohmer is certainly one of the first creators who managed to make a villain into the star of the show.


Comic books also experimented off and on with villain-centric features, but few within the superhero idiom enjoyed much success (horror characters did somewhat better). I believe the first feature to be devoted to a large team of supervillains continually striving against their heroic enemies was 1976's SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER VILLAINS, where the villain known as Gorilla Grodd (a "pretty good" malefactor, if you're curious) helped organize a bunch of standard DC evildoers into a force for evil. Though SSOSV was a pretty crappy feature, it had one inspired line, where Grodd tries to give his criminal compeers a reason for forming an alliance, saying that they should do for the same reason they do anything: "enlightened self-interest!" Even given the ritual nature of the hero-villain dance in superhero comics, it's practically mandatory that the villain should have an id-oriented reason for trying to foment chaos, or his whole rationale-- and that of the id/superego dance-- collapses.


However, it's a rationale that I found wanting in, uh, WANTED. One might think that in a world where the supervillains have successfully killed off all of the superheroes (and even wiped out humanity's memory of the event), one might see the supervillain in All His Glory: might see all sorts of weird, perverted, diabolical id-impulses on display. But I see more "id-iosyncracies" in an average issue of BATMAN than in this facile antiheroic tripe.

To borrow Freud's horse-and-rider imagery regarding the id and superego, the hero in mainstream comics is the rider, who guides the narrative to closure, but the villain is the horse that provides the plot's motive force. For the villain to do so, the creator must give the villain's nature center stage for some time, and this often has the effect of making the villain a little more humanly relateable than the superegoic hero, and maybe even more individualistic. The Joker and the Riddler may overlap in terms of narrative functions (both supercrooks leave behind clues that possess a comical tonality), but for Batman to defeat them he must figure out the different ways they think and act, anticipate what they will do, and determine how to use their strengths against them.

There should be no reason that, without the presence of the heroes, the villains should not still be as perverse and transgressive as they are in books with heroes. And yet the Millar/Jones work gives us nothing but pale imitations of the id-icons brought forth by the sublimely-trashy mainstream. Here's a Red Skull ripoff, here's a Clayface copy (appropriate!), and here's a pastiche of the Puppet Master (GREEN LANTERN version). Even in triumph, Millar's villains have all the individuality of ducks in a shooting-gallery.

Which I suppose is the whole point. Millar's antiheroic hero Wesley (supervillain name: The Killer) begins as a tedious office drone who is awakened to his murderous abilities by other villains and who proceeds to use his killing talents on as many of society's sheep as he finds satisfying. Later, it is other villains who become the targets in Wesley's rogue-shooting gallery, but neither their personalities nor their powers are any challenge to him.

Within the overall action-genre (which naturally subsumes the superheroic one), there's always a good deal of kinetic appeal in mass slayings of both the innocent and the guilty, with the villain usually supplying the former while the hero provides the latter. Within the subset of action-works deemed "antiheroic," it probably doesn't matter that the protagonist becomes the Lord High Executioner to just about everyone, as antiheroic works are inherently more id-aggressive, with more of a tendency to expunge other realities in favor of the protagonist's id-centered existence. It does matter a little, though, that the protagonist is just about as dull as a mass murderer as he is as an office drone. I don't *think* this was the author's intent, but IMO even a minor jerkoff antihero like DC's Lobo is more "killah" than the Killer.

From the bland narrative of WANTED it would seem that heroes and villains need each other, if only to challenge one another's weaknesses and provide a sense of conflict. Millar's Killer has no weaknesses, hence no conflict. And don't get me started on the faux daddy issues, which Millar totally bollixes.

In conclusion, I don't imagine that my opinion on Millar's meditations on matters villainous will disturb the author much, especially now that the miniseries spawned a big-budget, certainly-profitable film of the same name. But I will say the one thing no author likes to hear:

"The film was better."

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE STORM

I mentioned in the essay "Myths of Sociology" that I have a problem with thinkers who reduce every aspect of mankind to sociological parameters, as do many anthropologists and social scientists. And while I hardly want to find myself going to the opposite extreme of Rousseau, who liked to define mankind as utterly independent of society, it should be made clear that "mankind" and "society" are not coterminous concepts.

Take religion. (Please.)

I have no opposition to the notion that religion evolved out of contingent factors, but I part company with many prominent anthropologists-- notably, Claude Levi-Strauss-- in seeing religion's as having evolved out of predominantly social factors. This is where a knowledge of Campbell's "four functions" of myth may prove a useful corrective, even when applied to the beings from which humans themselves evolved. Of course, anything one speculates about the early origins of human culture or those damn dirty ancestors is necessarily a heuristic assumption, based on fragmentary evidence of archaic times and backward extrapolations from our present reality.

The aspect of present reality to which I'd call attention is an anecdote from Jane Goodall related in her book on the chimpanzees of Gombe, IN THE SHADOW OF A MAN. In SHADOW, Goodall relates that during a particularly fierce thunderstorm that struck over the heads of a tribe of chimps, some of these anthropoids were submissively terrified while others ran up and down the hills, hooting and waving sticks at the storm, as if the storm were an enemy to be repelled.

Now, let us make the heuristic assumption that something like this happened in the days before hominids evolved, when chimps were the highest form of life. We do not necessarily have to suppose that early hominids inherited this pattern of behavior from their nonhuman brethren; only that big-brained species may be more capable in general of forming at least rudimentary concepts of unseen enemies, which in humans would then be articulated as gods, spirits or what have you.

Now, the notion that religion might ultimately stem from some combination of "challenge patterns" and "abasement patterns" is not original with me. It can be asserted that other animals lower on the "brain-chain" may well sometimes reflexively fall into "fight or flight" patterns when faced with unknown phenomena, but I would be surprised if there was any evidence of their conceptualizing the unknown phenomena. Of course the skeptic will point out that it's still dicey as to what extent chimpanzees can form concepts, though we know that at very least they can conceive of tool-using ("It is easier to dig up an anthill with a stick than with my fingers.")

What I wish to make clear with this heuristic example is that IF religion had its own beginnings as a set of "challenge/abasement patterns" in reaction to unknown phenomena, then this would challenge the notion of religion's origins as a sociological phenomenon. Challenge and abasement patterns are intrinsically biological responses keyed to promote the survival of the individual. They are not keyed to help the society, as one can say that "a protective response toward children" IS a pattern to aid society. Challenge and abasement indirectly help the individual survive in society, but there is no automatic benefit to society thereby, and indeed, depending on the individual, the survival of that individual may be a burden to his society.

Ironically, of the three functions Campbell sets down, the sociological is the weakest link, so to speak. One may characterize the chimps' reaction as a purely somatic response to the excitation of the storm, which would fit broadly within the category Campbell calls "cosmological." One may characterize it as "psychological," insofar as the reaction involves individual psych0logies (i.e., some chimps challenge the storm but others don't). Or, given that the imagined author of the storm's flashing and booming may be the ancestor of Old Yahweh himself, one could also see the reaction as belonging to the matrix of the "metaphysical."

We do not know the beginnings of Beginning, but one chooses to entertain this heuristic example (the sociologically-inclined, of course, will not) as forming at least part of the foundations of that Beginning, then one must concede that religion could not have been conceived simply to bind people closer together, or for the priesthood to keep the people buffaloed, as in scenarios popular with everyone from Ayn Rand to Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Religion then would proceed from individuals first-- albeit as an "intersubjective" spirit, to flagrantly borrow Husserl's term-- and then society would cope with the religious tendency in the form of rituals and other paraphernalia. Only the existence of an intersubjective tendency to believe in invisible spirits would thus be able to convince the "laity" of primitive societies to do all sorts of things contrary to their immediate interests, such as the sacrifice of time, hard work, and perhaps other creature's lives.

We're a long way now from Rand's goofy notion of primitives falling down in fear before the ravings of an epileptic priest, so-- let's stay as far away from that notion as possible.