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Category: General

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Lords Of The Forest

A deity or a local god plays often an important role in forest horror stories. In Christian tradition, these original pagan gods become sometimes the devil. But forest deities as the Green Man survived. They even exist in churches as paintings or sculptures. There is a deep respect for these deities as they represent archaic forces of natures. Are they a product of human imagination or do they indeed represent the otherworldly side of nature?

Storytellers like the lord of the forest as a sinister deity since it makes a great mystery or even a murderous antagonist. H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen and many others made use of the long tradition of deities. Some of the forest deities are the same or resemble ancient gods of the greek, roman or Celtic tradition.

A prominent example is The Great God Pan. Horned gods appear often as lords of the forest. Both Herne the hunter and the Celtic god Cernunnos are horned gods like Pan. Cernunnos, sometimes also a fertility god, has a frightening appearance. He is present in rituals, in folk stories and made a career in horror. Sometimes he is more seen as a devil or demonic figure. Recently he appeared in the outstanding forest horror series Black Spot (Zone Blanche) by Netflix and France 2.

It makes sense to have Cernunnos and Herne in the European tradition of folk horror since there is indeed a Celtic tradition. The tradition was later borrowed by modern witch-covens. The horned god plays an important role in Margaret Murray’s Witch-Cult hypothesis. These lords of the forest are often connected with sacrifice and magic powers. People worshipping the gods hope to get something in return. In more modern traditions the lords of the forest are also connected with the seasons and rituals related to fertility. One example is the Beltane tradition on April 30.




In winter the lords of the forest are related to the wild hunt. Herne is sometimes mentioned and this – of course – mostly presents the darker aspects of the forest deities. They are often hunters and it’s not always animals they are after.

The lords of the forest are often local deities. Even it seems easy for a god to travel wherever he wants to these deities often represent the genius loci. It is a spirit residing in an exceptional tree or a mountain top. There is no evidence for this, but the idea of the lords of the forest represents more an earthbound entity rather than a cosmic force as in my story.

However, it isn’t necessarily either one thing or the other. If there is one thing that “true stories”, folklore stories, witness accounts of supernatural phenomena or horror fiction tells us then it is the fact that the gods exhibit many faces of themselves. It might be the same phenomenon which appears in different disguises. The important thing about forest deities is that nature itself is an expression of these gods. The giant old tree or the impenetrable forest itself is only a cover. There is an invisible world behind this. Ancient folks had a sense about it. Forest deities as the horned god make it more simple to grasp these feeling because if something has a face or a form it is easier to handle.

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The Cosmic Connection

Scientists discovered that cosmic rays had more influence on trees rather than climate change. BBC Earth reported in an article the surprising discovery that there is a cosmic influence to tree growth. The author said, “When the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s surface was higher, the rate of tree growth was faster”.

Cosmic rays are particles in the universe which hit the surface of the Earth. However, their intensity varies with solar activity. During the heightened activity, there are more sunspots on the surface of the sun, which create a strong magnetic field. The field absorbs the cosmic rays to a certain extent.

Cosmic rays are not the only connection between the forest and the universe.

Now think of our solar system as one big spaceship. The nine planets and its surroundings are indeed in a kind of bubble travelling through space. Space is a vacuum, but it isn’t empty. There are cosmic rays. There are other stars and planets, black holes, rogue planets, and somewhere there is dark matter. Space is anything but a lifeless place. There might be intelligent clouds, alien civilisations, but also entities which are beyond our imagination.




What if Earth attracted on its endless journey through the vastness of our universe a cosmic hitch-hiker? It might be something, which was lurking somewhere in the depth of space. What if it landed in some remote forested area a long time ago? Perhaps it is still there. “He who walks behind” doesn’t show his face, but he is here. Right now.

We should also be aware that any point on the surface of Earth and other places in the solar system could be in connection with the universe. If we look at Astrology in a metaphorical sense, we get the right picture.

The cosmic-hitchhiker surprisingly gets some credibility through science. The mystery of the genesis of life remains unsolved. The most common idea is the microbial-hitchhiker sitting on some comet or some other cosmic driftwood. We know that microbes can survive journeys of millions of years in space. Some day the asteroid hits a planet. The asteroid survives the impact. The seed of life in a primordial world is the microbes on the surface of the asteroid. That’s also called the “Panspermia theory”. The theory means that life on Earth may have seeded here from other worlds. The transportation happened via microbial contamination of solid objects like asteroids.

The earliest forms of life on Earth are 3.48 billion years old. These are fossils found in Western Australia. There is no proof for any extraterrestrial origin but at this time Earth was very young. The young solar system was chaos with a constant bombardment of cosmic debris on the surface of the young Earth. There is also a prominent theory suggesting that life comes from Mars.

The unsolved riddle of the creation of life on Earth brought up even more fascinating ideas: What if there was some extraterrestrial civilisation “seeding” planet Earth? This is the idea of the “Engineers” as seen in the Alien Franchise by Ridley Scott. Okay, this is science-fiction but is it too fantastic or could it be real?




Recently Kelsey Johnson wrote in a Scientific American article about “No E.T. Life Yet – That might be a warning” that “ridiculously crazy and complex ideas are sometimes correct”. “Just because something is unlikely doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a serious academic study”. The article is mostly about why we haven’t found extraterrestrial life yet and that we shouldn’t draw simple conclusions. It says that humans are “cosmic babies” considering the age of the universe. “E.T. life is likely to be millions of years more technologically advanced than we are”.

There is another problem connected with the unsolved questions about the origins and the creation of life. That is our limited view of what life is. There might be other forms of life, which are different from any idea we have. If this is the case, we should not only watch the skies. Perhaps we are sharing our spaceship Earth with other cosmic-hitchhikers, with somebody accompanying us from the very beginning.

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Darkness

“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Darkness can mean a lot of things. The immediate association is often with sadness, depression and danger. We are afraid of darkness. Particularly in the forest when it is getting dark we don’t want to be there. Perhaps this is our instinct from ancient times. We are not trained to survive in the dark. Newt in “Aliens” says: We‘d better get back ’cause it’ll be dark soon and they mostly come at night.

Indeed we are most vulnerable in darkness. We can’t see. But they can see us. The Forest Dark is no exception. In my story night means danger. But there is more about darkness. It can mean many things. As the philosopher says, there are many things to discover in the darkness. He might refer on the Dionysian side of existence, which is associated with chaos and the unknown but also creativity. 

The forest is the perfect representation of both the bright (the Apollonian) side and the dark and dangerous (the Dionysian) side of reality.  There are purity and innocence when we look at the trees and hear the birds. But darkness is never far away. The forest is a world full of secrets.

The Dionysian view acknowledges the daemonic principle at work. Life is an essential struggle. There is agony, tragic and darkness. We see it in the struggle for survival. It suggests that we live in Purgatory. Stories and films often show us that kind of darkness in their strongest scenes: In David Lynch’s latest Twin Peaks series there is a scene in front of the dinner when Bobby Briggs tries to stop a honking woman shouting in a car after a little boy started to shoot with a gun. This is a moment where we feel that life is purgatory. It is a quiet scene which ends up in pandaemonium. It shows us a supreme reality which is full of darkness.



In the forest, there is incredible beauty and there is unparalleled cruelty – animals get eaten by insects and even fungus. The wanderer is soon in his own struggle for survival if he got lost.

The forest is the place of Dionysian rites and sacrifices. It brings up the Dionysian side of people – this is where drug parties happen and there are secrets about unspeakable things which happen in the night.  

Darkness, however, should not be mistaken. Darkness can be a condition. It is a condition where there is a connection between men and unknown spiritual forces. Something dwells in thick darkness. There is always an ambiguity about darkness. Something can look at us but we can’t see its face. Something which can’t be grasped in simple terms. A mystery which can’t be explained in words.  An experience which can’t be described. The experience of the unknown in darkness is also the previously mentioned black fire. 

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Black Fire

“Sometimes people see wildfires in Witch Mountains but the trees are not consumed. The fires are known as ghost fires or black fires” (The Forest Dark Movie Project).

What is Black Fire or a Cold Fire? It is mentioned in fiction, religious text and in sightings. It exists. Black Fire is a supernatural thing, a metaphorical thing and a physical reality. Indeed there is also a literally black fire which can be demonstrated in chemistry experiments: If a fire gets illuminated with a monochromatic light source (sodium vapour) and you put sodium ions in the fire the flames appear black.

A black flame is mentioned in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone.

Furthermore, black fire is for example mentioned by Deputy Hawk in Twin Peaks III when he explains the map to Sheriff Truman. He said that “there are two kinds of fire, similar to modern day electricity, but depending on your intention. Black fire symbolizes death and destruction, and probably the Black Lodge”


However Black Fire is not an invention by Lynch and Frost. It is an ancient idea which already occurs in connection with the Bible/Torah. In Jewish thought “Black Fire” is important.

The supernatural experience of Moses in Exodus 3:2 leads to the mention of black fire:

“There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. (Bible, New International Version)”.

The Midrash ( the biblical exegesis – interpretation – by ancient Judaic authorities) on Exodus 3:2 explains:

“From this they derived that the heavenly fire shoots out branches upwards, burns but does not consume, and is black in color; whereas fire used here below does not branch upwards and is red, and consumes but does not burn.”

Scholar and Rabbi Fern Feldman gives an excellent and very interesting insight on her website and opens up a new way of thinking about “black fire” and “darkness”:

Rabbi Fern Feldman: “It may be hard to imagine a black fire—perhaps it is counter-intuitive, or paradoxical. So what can we learn from this black fire?

The fire metaphor itself is multifold. It implies something awesome, powerful, something with the potential to give life or death”.

We learn that black fire is an ancient symbol for the sacred, the divine, the otherworld and there is ambiguity.

The Black Fire mentioned in Twin Peaks is also not always necessarily evil. As Hawk puts it it depends. The experience of black fire is more that we are able of overcome our boundaries and feel connected. “We become aware of a larger whole that includes all of it”, as Rabbi Feldman says.

 

Black Fire has an even longer tradition in Jewish History. It is said that the Torah is “black fire on white fire”.

“R. Simeon ben Lakish said: The Torah given to Moses was written with black fire upon white fire, sealed with fire, and swathed with bands of fire” and Yerushalmi Shelamim 6:1, 49d): THE FIRST THINGS CREATED – In the beginning, two thousand years before the heaven and the earth, seven things were created: the Torah written with black fire on white fire, and lying in the lap of God” etc. Source: Sefaria.org

Thus black fire is often a metaphor for something real, an expression of the divine. The gods can’t be seen in itself. One way they show their presence is through images which might occur paradoxical.

Black Fire is often seen as the fire of creation. That is why people are interested in it. Black fire is at the bottom of things. It is a hidden driving force. Black Fire might be also the Philosopher’s Secret Fire (Patrick Harpur wrote a book by the same title and describes it as something accompanying human history but which can’t be defined in a single way).

It is possible that black fire as a manifestation of something we can’t understand appears also in our days hiding behind other phenomenas like mysterious lights and many other.

In my story this is why people are drawn towards the forest dark. This is where black fire is more closely.