The Wild Hunt is a folklore motif that historically occurs in European folklore. Wild Hunts typically involve a ghostly or supernatural group of hunters passing in wild pursuit. Seeing the Wild Hunt was thought to presage some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it. People encountering the Hunt might also be abducted to the underworld or the fairy kingdom. In some instances, it was also believed that people’s spirits could be pulled away during their sleep to join the cavalcade.
suppressing unbecoming fantasies of making everyone who blithely talks like this spend a couple seasons spinning/weaving all their family’s clothing and chopping their own firewood
I love the complete lack of understanding about historical ways of living that imagine people had tons of free time not consumed by the constant labour of NOT FUCKING DYING come winter.
Or not living in filth and ruin. And so on.
eehhh, maybe they meant that the majority of a person’s labour would go towards themself/their family/their community, rather than going towards making someone else wealthy?
I have some very, very bad news about the majority of agrarian societies.
the unnatainable prelapsarian ideal but make it leftist
I award you one (1) internet and will be screenshotting this for later pithy use.
also what do people mean by “olden times?” because the nature of labor and compensation varies wildly by society, location, and time period
are we talking Bronze Age Japan? medieval Bavaria? the Benin Empire c. 1600? Gilded Age San Francisco? 1920s Spain? colonial Virginia? a Bering Strait Inupiat village in 1405?
…I mean like it’s probably everyone’s most favorite Imaginary Medieval Pan-European Society™, but still
I think Dracula knows Jonathan intimately enough by now to get that he won’t just walk into the wolves’ mouths. But it’s a perfect opportunity to punctuate what he’s been doing to Jonathan from the start: Have Jonathan actively participate in his own victimhood, make him complicit in what is happening and what will happen. “You wish to not stay? Then feel free to leave. Oh, you choose to stay? Remember, you chose to.” Everything Jonathan decides to do or not to do has been built this way. Enter of your own free will, write letters that you will be staying with me for a month since you have agreed to meet all my needs, don’t open these doors , seek me for safety, exit of your own free will.
I have some Thoughts about Jonathan’s “a man’s death is not a calf’s” and the uncertainty of his soul’s existence after death. As a human, he has a soul. Jonathan has been using animalistic terms since he realized that Dracula isn’t human, such as lizard and creature. Vampires are known of having no soul, which means no casting of shadow or reflection.
Jonathan wants to die as a human than like an animal led to the altar for a blood ritual.
The calf is pretty much globally a sacrificial animal ([Moses] said to Aaron, “Take a bull calf for your sin offering and a ram for your burnt offering…” … So Aaron came to the altar and slaughtered the calf as a sin offering for himself. -Levictus 9:2-9). Though Jonathan could have used the more widely known lamb as a sacrifice simile.
But in this case, Jonathan is showing doubt about if he can even exist after death. Lambs represent purity and innocence, and he no longer sees himself as such. It could be that he feels he’s been becoming too corrupted. The castle’s influence, the creeping madness, the “wicked” desires he’s felt, the dreams, the intimacy with someone inhuman…
“At the worst it can only be death”. Death is no longer his greatest fear, it probably hasn’t been for a long time now.
Love. Above all things I believe in love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love.
