Exciting subscriber updates:
I’ve made my Founding Member subscription level pay what you choose. It just needs to be above the annual subscriber cost of $60. I’ve also just added a killer bonus for founding members.
Founding members will all receive a welcome gift that includes the hardcover graphic novel Mary Shelley’s School for Monsters: La Llorona in the Machine that includes the La Llorona Bookplate signed by both the writer and the artist with free shipping ($50 value). The graphic novel is a Foreword INDIES and IBPA Benjamin Franklin finalist for 2023 Book of the Year. The signed bookplates is a collector item with a limited amount available.
This is the ideal time to subscribe at this level. On top of the reduced cost and book bonus, you will continue to receive exclusives and additional bonuses throughout the year.
Now, onto this week’s epic monster - the original gargoyle - Goji.
Catchphrase “Save your tears. My heart is stone.”
The gargoyle as we think of it today began to appear in medieval Europe on churches and cathedrals as a rainwater management device, but why were these spouts made to look dragon-like? The tradition of using animal-shaped waterspouts appeared much earlier in ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Greece, Etruria, and Rome. In the 12th century, when gargoyles were showing up on cathedrals across Europe, the Roman Catholic Church was also growing stronger and converting many new, often illiterate, people so images were very important to the church. Some think, the gargoyles depicted dragons so that their terrifying mouths could evoke the destructiveness of these legendary beasts, reminding their once pagan converts of the need for the church’s protection from such evil creatures.
Some of you may remember the awesome animation, Gargoyles, where the gargoyles were a warrior monster race that turned to flesh and blood at night and then to stone during the day. The show was amazing and did get the transformative powers of these creatures partially right.
There is a French legend about the original gargoyle, La Gargouille or Goji, that is mostly true, but it leaves out “the what happens afterwards” which I am going to gleefully share with you.
The legend goes that St. Romanus, before he became bishop of Rouen, had to deliver his country from a terrifying sea monster, La Gargouille or Goji. Goji’s lair was on the left bank of the Seine that was filled with wild swamps where he could roam and rampage freely, which he often did. This deadly behavior was the nature and prerogative of a medieval sea serpent. He would douse the lands with spouts of water and finally a large deadly tidal wave that wreaked havoc. Whoever the wave did not kill, Goji would devour. He reminds me a bit of the water monster, Amhuluk, whose story I’ve already shared on the pages of this journal.
St. Romanus swore to enter the swamps and rid the lands of this wicked sea serpent who also had wings and a terrible mouth filled with jagged teeth. No one would willingly go with him on this suicide mission, so he dragged two condemned men along to assist him in ridding the land of this beast.
La gargouille de Rouen, et le privilege de Saint Romain
Once they entered the swamp and came upon this deadly and formidable foe, all it took was St. Romanus crossing his two fingers together in the sign of the cross, a makeshift crucifix and Goji became docile and allowed the men to chain him. The humans decided to burn Goji, using fire because of all the people he had killed with water. From that day foreword, the spouts that diverted rainwater from the cathedral were decorated in the likeness of the monstrous Goji. In other versions, La Gargouille is said to have been a typical fire-breathing dragon with bat-like wings and a long neck. When, St. Romanus tried to burn him, his head and throat would not burn because they were accustomed to fire traveling through them, so St. Romulus mounted his head and neck on the church to scare off evil spirits.
It is very important to understand that objects and symbols that humans or monsters give great power to actually do work, like the crucifix or putting two fingers together to make a cross. It has power because of the wielder’s belief or faith. That being said, both the person invoking the symbol, and the monster it is being used against need to believe in its power. Unfortunately for Goji, he had come to believe that the cross was a powerful symbol of a covenant and mistook the gesture as one of peace. A mistake that cost him his freedom and natural dragon form. St. Romanus also believed that the cross symbolized a covenant, but he did not believe that it applied to a monster. He believed the cross to be a weapon against Goji, rather than a means to work out their differences, if possible, to come together.
The part of the story that has never been told is the one of Goji’s resurrection. Directly after his death, they tried to use his ashes to make a spout on the cathedral. They did not actually try to make the rainwater spouts in Goji’s image, it was just that every single one they made in Rouen after his death transformed to wear his face, his neck, his wings, etc. As a result, as the practice spread across Europe, it simply became common practice to create gargoyles with a terrifying dragon or animal face, sometimes a grotesque human one. Goji never forgave the entire region of Rouen for burning him to death and on certain days, when it storms and the water rages through his stone form, his spirit breaks free from the stone and takes a flesh form. When he comes to life in this manner, he has two forms – his dragon and a more human one. He mostly uses these forms to take vengeance on those that he perceives as wicked.
In my next entry, I’ll tell you the full story of Goji’s resurrection.
Subscriber updates:
I’ve changed my Founding Member subscription cost to be pay what you can. It just needs to be above the annual subscriber cost of $60.
I’ve also just added a killer bonus for founding members.
Founding members will now receive a welcome gift that includes the hardcover graphic novel Mary Shelley’s School for Monsters: La Llorona in the Machine that includes the La Llorona Bookplate signed by both the writer and the artist. The graphic novel is a Foreword INDIES and IBPA Benjamin Franklin finalist for 2023 Book of the Year. The signed bookplates is a collector item with a limited amount available.
This is the ideal time to subscribe at this level. On top of the reduced cost and book bonus, you will continue to receive exclusives and additional bonuses throughout the year.
Welp, I will never look at goji berries the same way again after this.
I used to love that gargoyles animation!