!n Celtic lore there are magickal creatures called Kelpies. They were
water-horses. They had the head of a horse, sea serpent body and the
tail of a fish. They could transform into a human form and mate with a
human. It is said that if a human were ever to attempt to ride one it
would carry them into the water and the human would drown. Children
especially were lured to their deaths this way. Their hands would get
stuck to the creature and their bodies would wash to shore the next
day. The symbolism of these stories represents the idea that these
creatures were guides into the Underworld. However, they did not kill
actually you; they drove you under where you faced your darkest fears,
and then released you. It is likely that drowning of unsupervised
children were blamed on these creatures.
The Loch Ness Monster is a Kelpie. It
is described as having a horse-like head and long serpent body, with
variable humps and colors. Nessie, a nickname of the monster, is not
really a monster. She (marine objects are referred to as she) has been
described as having two horns and a horn on the center ridge. She was
also seen as “a cross between a very large horse and a camel.” She was
called a “merhorse” by some and a dragon by St. Columba.
She is a fresh water creature but can
adapt to brackish waters. She is a fast swimmer. Nessie is nearly
blind, and relies on a sense of smell, which underwater is sensitive to
chemicals in the water, but in the air catches small particles carried
in the breeze. The creature has gills along its sides. The lake itself
is fresh body and is 1000 feet deep.
The animal cryptozoologists name her
as is a Zeuglodon which means “snakelike whale.” If Nessie is a
dinosaur, then she is a plesiosaur. Plesiosaurs are vegetarian and
would not feed on zooplankton. Therefore, there is enough food in Loch
Ness to sustain such a creature and her family.
Dinosaur eggs may have been trapped
under seismically disturbed crust during the time of Pangaea. They
would have quickly froze and survived for 350 million years. This has
been shown in a cryogenics laboratory. Eggs could have been froze and
carried by a glacier or shifting land mass during an ice age.
Paleontologists suggest that the first thawed eggs would have hatched
in the Loch about 8000 BCE.
She became trapped in Loch Ness
during a pole shift, where land routinely heaves up out of the sea and
drops in other places below the waves.
Nessie is not a German U-Boat with a
dragon mask. Sightings have occurred in the lake hundreds of years
before submarines were invented. If Nessie is an Atlantean submarine
has yet to be determined. Nessie is not a sturgeon because of the way
the fish behave. If she is somehow a ghost has also yet to be
determined.
However, kelpies are magickal and
Nessie is paranormal. Both involve multidimensional reality.
Shape-shifting horses are referred to
in many other traditions. The Irish call them Each Uisge which means
water horse. Homid is the name of their human form. Eochaidh means
horseman. This form consists of the torso and arms of a human with the
head and legs of a horse. The phooka and glastyn are fairy horses.
These steeds were a means of conveyance between the mortal world and
the otherworld. Other examples of using a horse to travel to the
otherworld include German stories of witches who transformed into black
horses and then rode to the place of the sabbat. In Ireland a witch’s
broom was called a fairy horse. In Ireland the Far Dorocha (the Dark
Man) rode on a black horse. He was a messenger of death who called out
the names of someone about to die. His horse’s hooves made the sound of
thunder. He was also said to abduct mortals to bring them to the
otherworld.
Some of the ceremonies the druids
presided over were the inauguration of a king or chieftain. This
involved marriage or intercourse with a white mare (the king would
dress as an animal). This was a symbolic marriage to the goddess and
the land. It would be fair to suggest that this was also a marriage to
the otherworld via the sacred horses.
The word nightmare is a composite of
night and mare, a female horse. The term gets its meaning due to
stories of hags or Cailleach sitting or mounting the chest of a
sleeping human. This caused disturbing visions which were believed to
come from a horse goddess. Scandinavian folklore referred to the
nightmare spirit as Mara and it was thought that being ridden by the
mare could cause fear and even death. It is also interesting to note
the similarity between the root mer or mar meaning of the water or
underwater (marine) and the word mare.
The winged sea horse pulled the
sea-chariot of Manannan Mac Lir and was a white horse. Geroid Iaria,
son of the Fairy Aine and the Earl of Desmond, lives under water and
emerges every seven years on a ghostly white horse. Gwydion, a white
horse, was a shape-shifter. In Arthurian mythos, a black horse
represented Arthur’s Britons and a white horse represented the Saxons.
England’s famous White Horse is carved in a chalk hill in Uffington.
This is said to represent the constellation Sagittarius. There is also
the Cherhill White Horse, near Avebury.
In the Nordic runes the rune Ehwaz
represents the horse-like path the sun takes as it gallops across the
sky.
There are over 300 other “lake
monsters”. Ogopogo is the name of the one that inhabits British
Columbia’s Lake Okanagan. One named Champ lives inside Lake Champlain
in the North East United States. The voyage continues to get to the
bottom of this mystery.
Author’s addendum – The movie The
Loch Ness Kelpie was made before this article was written. The movie
The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep was made after this article was
written. They both explore the same ideas as this article but I have
never viewed either one.
Editor's
Note: Because of Crowley's infamous hang-out,
Bolskine, Loch Ness has been a particular focus of those involved in
such things and so we are delighted to hear how very weird it is....
