Creating the Webbd Wheel: Shapeshifters and Blue Beards
In which we look below the surface ...
If you could change into the shape of any creature, real or imagined, what would you choose?
As a child, I had a picture book by Jane Yolen about a selchie, a creature who is a human on land and a seal in the sea. Ever since then I’ve been fascinated by these legendary beings and the stories about them from the Northern UK and surrounding areas.
Selchie stories explore the tension between what we are made of and who we feel we must be. Most of them involve the selchie having their skin stolen so they are trapped in a world not altogether their own.
Traditional oral stories, mythology, and fairytales from around the world tell of shapeshifters, from the magical selchie to werewolves and other monsters, like the Wendigo. Is such a being handicapped or especially blessed? Good or evil? Powerful or victimized? What is it like to live with a foot (or a leg, or a wing) in another world?
These stories also involve choice, which invariably leads to loss. To chose one thing is to leave another behind. Themes of exile, choice, loss, our relationship to the natural world, and staying true to ourselves are universally appealing because we all experience them in our lives. Writing about shapeshifters gives me a chance to explore such themes in poignant detail. In many cases, I’ve done extensive research on the creatures my characters shift into to more accurately describe and imagine their perceptions and behavior.
In this post of The Hanged Man, I introduce a young man from Welsh mythology who is a shapeshifter, the first of many you will meet in the Webbd Wheel series.
People and situations are rarely what they seem at first glance. Human beings insist on boiling everything down to simplistic either/or memes, but life is far too complex to be captured and understood with such slick superficiality.
How often are we tempted by a perfectly constructed façade, only to find the reality is much less attractive? How often do we judge someone prematurely and later discover facets and depths we had no idea existed?
Bluebeard is an old French fairytale. I’ve loved it since I was a child, and wrote a version I told as a storyteller for years. One of the fascinating aspects of this story is the way in which Bluebeard’s victims minimize the ominous color of his beard. In fact, they minimize or ignore all the red flags in his behavior because he’s rich, powerful, and seductive.
Sound familiar?
The Bluebeard story is about refusing to see, then seeing and pretending we didn’t, and the final, often terminal piece where we come to terms with reality and save ourselves. Maybe. If we’re lucky.
Some things can’t be unseen, unheard, or unsaid. Bells can’t be unrung. Ships sail and they don’t come back. Unwelcome insight, knowledge, and understanding come to us in life, and we ignore that information at our peril.
Bluebeard and shapeshifting characters remind us all is not as it might seem. The perfect fruit may be rotten at the core. We don’t always have all the facts. We can’t always understand other people. For the most part we don’t entirely know who people are, or what their experience is, or what they’re capable of, but we forget that. We create idols, martyrs, and scapegoats. We expect consistency and transparency. We expect perfection, whatever that means to us.
The old stories remind us life is magical. People and creatures are enigmatic and complicated. Instinct and intuition are survival skills. Good looks, wealth and power are seductive but often lead us into trouble. Intelligence, leadership, compassion, wisdom, and courage often lie invisibly beneath an unassuming or homely surface.
See that youth with the limp? He’s a shapeshifter.
See that handsome devil with the blue beard? He’s a killer.
(This essay was published with post #11 of The Hanged Man.)