Castle Basements

One theme in many folktales and Dungeones and Dragons - type settings is that of the basement being a gateway to adventure, hidden knowledge, and magical realms where the mystery of the universe would be revealed through the journey or through acceptance into mystery schools that might appear in the real or virtual worlds.

Lulworth Castle Basement
All rights reserved Pawel Tomaszewicz

Castles were linked with mysteries of alchemy, hermeticism, and, of course, dragons.

A number of the writers of Dungeons and Dragons games were attempting to pass down native folklore in a different kind of oral tradition, disguised as games. Some of those D&D games were innocent dramatizations of journeys and actions the Native Peoples of the Northern latitudes performed that could be much more dark and sinister on the outward appearance.

D&D Games generated a kind of psychotic mania in some folks, who somewhere along the playing became unable to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.  The longer they played the games, the further they traveled in their own minds and the stories that were laid down for them to follow in their 'games'.

There are a lot of nice folks who like to play dress up and 'be' characters from their favorite sci fi movies.   Some like to dress up and pretend they are paranormal creatures such as vampires.  Again, somewhere along the line, some of these folks lose their grips on reality and really start to believe that they are what they pretend to be.

Wendigo psychosis, for example,  is a label conventionally applied to a culture-bound disorder involving an intense craving for human flesh and the fear that the sufferer would turn into a cannibal. The Wendigo is part of the traditional belief systems of various Algonquian-speaking tribes in the northern United States and Canada, most notably the Ojibwe and Saulteaux, theCree, the Naskapi and the Innu people. (Minnesota for instance). The solution was to euthanize the affected people.  Playing Dungeons and Dragons, if one was susceptible, induced similar manic disorders, delusions and fixations.

Many many people have thoughts and associations with Dragons and the myths and folklore surrounding them.

This then brings me to the story of the Daemon Pony, illustrated in the cartoon called "My Pony", which resembles the dragons occupying the Castle basements (the Dungeons), and which is prevalent in the Northern American tribal traditional belief systems.

In places very far away, in ages long past, a pony did not refer to a small horse.  A 'pony' was a young dragon.  Myths and legends speak of angels and knights who battled dragons gone bad, but these were adult dragons, dragons who had become a danger to all living things.  Normal humans were not called upon to rid the earth of them, but to evoke angelic hosts or call forth their heroes to put an end to them.

A Daemon Pony, however, because of its relative youth in dragon years, generally considered a test of common humanity and that of tribal shamans.  A Daemon pony  was one in which a bad seed had invaded the good and, although no one knew why, it was most often female.    The bad seed insured that the daemon pony would never be good, would never generate anything but chaos and death, and could not ever be rehabilitated or restored or redeemed.  In many ways,  it was like a rabid dog that could and often did bring death or madness to all it 'touched'.  As horrid as that was, old ones knew that it had to be killed before it passed the bad seed to others and the destruction would spread exponentially.  It could not be allowed to grow to full maturity and it was a problem that could not wait for angels or heroes to address.

When such a Daemon Pony was identified, tribal leaders would lure the female with good food that would have been used to feed the tribe.  The more death the Daemon Pony had caused before its identification, the greater its ego and vanity so the leaders knew they would have to make the food better and the presentation that of a feast.   She would be captured and tied down, and a member of the tribe would be chosen to slit a vein so it slowly bleed to death.  Death would be slow and the Daemon would writhe in agony, similar to the actions it had performed on the tribal members over the period before it was identified and caught.  As death approached, the dragon form collapsed upon itself to leave what appeared to be on the husk of a human. 

That nobel action by the Tribe elevated it to be deemed more worthy and it elevated the male brave who performed the deed to kill the Daemon Pony to High Shaman status.  The service of "freeing the daemon" is very consistent with Native tribes world wide. They recognize and are cognizant of their spiritual duty to protect the earth from such Daemons.


Why is that modern civilization has lost the ability or the will to recognize such predators as Daemons, and consistently fails to protect all who are harmed by it?