How did fantasy become such a childish matter?
In ancient times, such items as magical gemstones with healing properties were widely accepted as both useful and, perhaps to some, extremely important. Each gemstone has its individual usage and symbolism, which details how it should be used. Of course, there were skeptics in those times as well, of the power that gemstones really could possess, but at least ‘adult’ figures accepted them as real. What changed? How did a dragon sitting upon a pile of gold and gems go from being heroic and epic to frivolous and childish?
In the Bible, gems are mentioned in a few places. In Exodus, chapter 28, Aaron is to have a breastplate of jewels and gemstones, all set to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. The stones are all listed out:
The first row shall be a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle: this shall be the first row. And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond. And the third row a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst.And the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jasper… And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names… every one with his names shall they be according to the twelve tribes. —Exodus 28.17-21
Here we can see that the stones are all important, for they have the names of the children of Israel. The fact that they also were specifically written out, in such a careful manner, so that the order of the rows are laid out so clearly leads to the conclusion that something about these stones must be precious and important.
A second place that these stones appear in the Christian canon of scripture is in Revelation, in chapter 21, where the entirety of the perfected holy city of Jerusalem is presented. Here, too, is a careful consideration of all the gemstones.
And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald;The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. —Revelation 21.19-20
In Marbode of Rennes’s De Lapidibus, the jewels and the stones from these verses are all listed out, along with their respective meanings. For example, Jasper the first foundation, “reveals the greenness of faith / which in all perfect men / never grows deep within; / by its strong protection / the devil is resisted,”(Marbode, Lapidary of 12 Stones in Verse). This is just one example of how all the stones, and all of their powers and representations, are carefully and clearly written.
These precious stones do not only hold power in the Judeo-Christian traditions, but also in many others, such as the Greco-Roman and the Indian tradition. So many gemstones that were thought to hold power have been found in so many countries, and some people still believe certain jewelry to hold power through their religion. So why are so many modern adults so skeptical of anything holding power? And how does this digression on jewels and gemstones with religious power have anything to do with fantasy?
Other universes, such as the one that the Lord of the Rings takes place in, are often, by our parents, or perhaps by teachers, or any other ‘rational’ adults in our lives, called frivolous, and there simply for escapism. Maybe part of fantasy and its allure is, after all, simply a desire for escaping from our mundane reality, to where real monsters exist, which offer problems and a perspective greater than our next essay or midterm from which we are trying to escape. But escapism cannot be the only reason for why fantasy has become such a large part of popular culture.
Fantasy draws us in with the promise of adventure, and a calling to become the chosen one, which I doubt any of us will be able to experience, in all of its honors and trials, and dangers and difficulties, in our lives, unless of course one of us is indeed part of some fantastical tangent reality that coexists with our own. Perhaps, then, it is not escapism, but the call to something higher, some greater purpose that we all wish to serve. Or maybe we are simply trying to forget about our next assignments. But this drawing in that good fantasy can do so thoroughly might relate back to what people thousands of years ago wrote down.
The magic of the gemstones, not only in the Bible, but in every ancient tradition in which they are mentioned, do represent some higher order that exists in our own world. All the gems have a specific meaning, and they all hold some power, whether it be protection from the devil himself, or a representation of faith and hope.
Somewhere along the way, these gems lost their respect due to perhaps the disbelievers or the skeptics of religion. I am certain that this is not the whole picture, but, however the gems actually lost their magic and significance, anything magical, to many adults today, is considered childish. What they do not realize though, is that these traditions come from long before the tradition of childish fairy tales and Disney magic. They come from a higher order, one that all subscribers of fantasy wish to also become a part of. In this way, fantasy does, in fact, bring us much closer to religion than I, personally, and perhaps many others, could ever have imagined.
-CS
-CS
3 comments:
Thank you for such a well-written post! I really enjoyed reading it. You note that: “Somewhere along the way, these gems lost their respect due to perhaps the disbelievers or the skeptics of religion.” I would argue there is something far more simple operating here: scarcity. Once jewels became things that could be seen in shop windows, rather than glanced from afar on a monarch’s crown, once diamonds became commonplace in weddings rings, the mystical allure of the gemstone faded, just as the commonplace availability of books in industrialized society (or even, the relative availability, post-Gutenberg), drastically decreased the amount of respect afforded to them.
That being said, I still think gems actually convey a huge amount of significance in the modern, much more secularized world. Diamond-set wedding rings are proof of this, as are birthstones. While they may not have as much religious significance in the modern day, I think this speaks more to the decline (or shift in) religiosity of the modern world to the Medieval one. I don’t think the issue is so much that adults believe gems don’t hold power, it’s that their belief in the ability of material objects to hold spiritual power, or their belief in that spiritual power at all, is much diminished.
MHK
Fantasy is “the call to something higher, some greater purpose that we all wish to serve.” I like this interpretation! We are called to go beyond ourselves, to be the adventurous, heroic hobbit. Powerful gems represent part of that higher order of reality, though they seem to have lost that power today. Or have they? What do you make of the popular trend of using crystals today?
Just how intertwined are fantasy and religion? One of the big questions of the course. In medieval times, they were often indistinguishable by today’s definitions—Dante’s Divine Comedy, for example! What role does the imagination play in religion? -LB
Gemstones as representative of a higher order—could you say more? Order is definitely one of the features of the descriptions of the priestly breastplate and the walls of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Have we not perhaps lost not only our sense of adventure, but also our sense of meaning (order), to which the gemstones point? RLFB
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