Originally posted August 31, 2008
My favorite deity of the moment is Lurline, the Fairy Queen of Ozian origin myth. Lurline is a “fictional” character (as opposed to the characters in “real”mythology) in L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, and appears in Gregory McGuire’s revisionist novel Wicked, 1995, based on the series. My newfound faith in Lurlinism came out of reading McGuire’s book—I don’t know what took me so long to get around to reading it—but it has changed my life. I’m a born-again convert to Lurlinism. McGuire has turned the story of Oz on its head, making the wicked witch into an eccentric and sympathetic character. The book is great (they made it into a musical) but it’s the Lurlinian underpinning throughout the novel that got my mythic nostrils twitching.
According to Ozian lore, Lurline is responsible for making the Land of Oz the extraordinary place we know and love. Not being familiar with the numerous Oz related novels written by Baum and others, I had only the well-known movie as a reference for Oz. I liked it well enough, especially the songs (We represent the Lollypop Guild, the Lollypop Guild…) but didn’t give it much thought. I believe now, as many modern day Lurlinists do, that Dorothy, the precocious little girl from Kansas, gets far too much airtime. I want to know more about the Animals, the other witches, the Gillikins and tic-toks (not the breath fresheners, but robot-like creatures), etc. I want more Fairy Queen!
Queen Lurline, according to those with Lurlinist conviction, left a fairy (legend says it was her own daughter), named Ozma to rule over Oz. One myth explains that Lurline’s enchantment allowed people to live forever and never grow older than they were when Lurline and her fairy band passed over. (Not such a great deal if you were an octogenarian when Lurline waved her magic wand, but that’s just my opinion.) According to Lurlinist belief, the various Ozmas who ruled Oz in succession (Ozma the Warrior, Ozma the Mendacious, Ozma the Librarian, Ozma the Scarcely Beloved, etc,) were actually reincarnations of the same Ozma who “bears herself again and again like a phoenix.” Followers of Lurlinism celebrate a holiday called “Lurlimas” and are still persecuted today by nonbelievers as pagans. It is time for Lurline to be recognized for the cosmological force that she is, a “real” myth. Athena, Aphrodite, your time is up girls—make room for Lurline.
—Leslie
COMMENTS
Editor
Sari Krosinsky lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her partner and two cats.
She received a B.A. in religious studies and a M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. Her poems have appeared in Poesia, Pebble Lake Review, The American Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster, Verse Daily, and others. Fiction Editor
Leslie Fox lived in Central America during her formative years and in New Mexico since the mid-70s – before it was cool.
She writes novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and creative nonfiction. Some of her short fiction has appeared in The Medical Muse, red. a journal of arts, Earth’s Daughters and Earthships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection. She has a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico.Art Editor
Dianne Schlies is a practicing artist and has taught studio art since 1986. She received her M.F.A. from SMU at Dallas, Texas in 1990. She has studied or worked with David Bates, Mel Bochner, Squeak Carnwath, Harmony Hammond, Ed Harris, Joyce Kozloff, Mary Ellen Mark, Duane Michals and Robert Rauschenberg. Schlies presently teaches Drawing and 2-D Design in Albuquerque, New Mexico.