The Sandman: Myths and History

Neil Gaiman has quite a lot to say on the subject of gods. Or more precisely the subject of mythology. Scratch the surface of one of Gaiman’s greatest works and you’ll find some rich commentary on the stories we’ve shared with each other, dating back to the dawn of humanity. Where do the gods come from? What are their rules? What happens to us after we die? How does it all end? These are just a few of the questions that Neil Gaiman has tackled over decades of storytelling, based on a deep background in mythology.

His point is that even though we don’t have the same answers, every culture on Earth is connected by their instinct to ask the same questions. This is the very premise for the sandman, Neil Gaiman’s 75-issue story about the nature of the stories themselves. It is apparently about dreams and the Dream, but as The Sandman make it clear, dreams themselves are merely the fertile soil from which ideas grow into history, stories into legends, and legends into myths.

The research and references Gaiman includes and alludes to in each issue of The Sandman is literally voluminous. For a complete account you will be best suited to read The commented sandman, a collection of Gaiman’s work that contains as many cross-references as any Sandman scholars could be expected to find. But with the Netflix series debuting this month and the first season covering the first two volumes of this ten-volume series, it couldn’t hurt to revisit some of the basics. So this is what dreams are made of.

The dream

Every culture that has ever existed has an explanation for dreams because their nature demands it. After all, dreams are probably the strangest thing that happens to any human that ever lived. Every day you live your life, pass out, vividly hallucinate for hours and then do it again. And if you try to skip the whole bizarre process, your mind and body will suffer for it.

Mythologies around the world have described dreams as prophetic, as revelations of our truest selves, as a means of communication from the gods. The Sandman‘s explanation for this last phenomenon is that all gods are born from the Dream, the shared space where all dreams are formed, and return to it when forgotten. Because as products of mythology, it is our dreams that create the gods, who in turn influence our own reality.

Incidentally, The Dreaming is a concept partially borrowed from the indigenous people of Australia, who also called it Dreamtime.

The king of dreams

The Dreaming is the setting for much of the sandman, or at least where the action typically catalyzes before going to the waking world. But our main character, Dream, is not just the master of dreams, but an embodiment of the very concept of dreams. Dreams are everything any culture has ever believed about the nature of dreams and the gods and entities that govern them.

Templates from African mythology are borrowed by Gaiman to convey some of the earliest myths of Dream such as the fictional “Kai’ckul”, a blend of many African cultures’ ideas about how gods work with nature and humanity. The Sandman will also introduce you to perspectives from Christian theology, Norse mythology, Shintoism, and most importantly, Greco-Roman myth. After all, it’s the one with which readers are most familiar, thanks in part to the stories of Wonder Woman and Shazam.

The name by which Dream is most often referred to The Sandman is Lord Morpheus, after the Greek god of dreams. It’s a role he often takes literally throughout the story, including his affair with the mouse Calliope and a strained relationship with his tragic son Orpheus, all of which we’ll get to (if all goes well) in future seasons of the series.

Also featuring from Greek myth is the triple witch-goddess Hecate, featured in The Sandman in the amorphous forms of Mildred, Mordred and Cynthia. They are the three destinies; the three furies; the three graces; the friendly ones. As holders of the narrative thread, they are the narrators of our story. These three witches will see Morpheus out on his first mission and they will be there at the end of our journey.

Lucifer

We all know the story of Lucifer. The beautiful, androgynous First of the Fallen Angels, God’s favorite servant, cast down when he challenged the Creator’s ultimate autonomy in the cause of free will, was punished only for his desire to be free.

Except, none of it was actually in the Bible. Lucifer Morningstar, or Satan as we know him today, has very little in common with the biblical adversary of good and righteousness – primarily because the Bible spends very little time actually describing the devil. Much of the popular portrayal of Lucifer, especially the more nuanced and sympathetic ones, can be traced back to John Milton’s 17th century epic poem the lost paradise, which retells the Christian creation myth from Satan’s perspective. Countless classical paintings, sculptures, stories, poems, songs and odes to Christian mythology have drawn from this narrative depiction of a complex Lucifer ever since, even The Sandman.

So when you see Gwendoline Christie roll up looking like a beautiful, otherworldly Renaissance painting to play evil incarnate, it’s just The Sandman celebrates 400 years of tradition.

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare, as our most famous teller of stories, plays a surprisingly important role throughout The Sandman in key issues of the comic series (and presumably key episodes of the Netflix series). What we see of Shakespeare relates primarily to the production of two of his plays, both commissioned for Morpheus himself. While studying mythology and Milton in your quest to complete Sandman understanding, it would serve you well to read as well A midsummer night’s dream and The storm.

The Corinthian

Perhaps the most confusing of all Dream’s nightmares, the Corinthian is a creation so visceral, with a name so mysterious and evocative that he must surely be from something. In fact, a character eventually asks him this very question.

Well, if you are confused, don’t worry. Gaiman came up with this one. All I can say is that a “Corinthian” is an outdated term based on an ancient stereotype of people from the Greek city of Corinth, known for their appetite for obscene cruelty and hedonism. Think of it as Gaiman titling him “The Very Old, Very Bad Dude.”

Fiddler’s Green

The mythical paradise of Fiddler’s Green can be traced back to the 19th century folk tales of English sailors. These sailors exchanged stories of a beautiful place where no one had to work and everyone was happy where hardworking sailors could finally retire after a lifetime of service at sea.

As a working-class symbol of the dream of a better life immortalized in sea shanties and great American novels, Fiddler’s Green is a blue-collar representation of what the dream itself represents: that all of us, even the humblest, dare to imagine. something bigger that awaits us one day when we can finally kick our feet up and find peace.

So why is this relevant to Sandman? If you don’t know yet, I won’t tell you. But when the time is right, you will understand.

And then there is death…

The most iconic character from the entire run The Sandman is not Dream himself, but his older sister, Death. If you don’t already know her, you’re guaranteed to love her at first sight. Just as Dream embodies every mythology and every culture’s perspective on dreams, Death is a blend of every culture’s thoughts about what happens after the end of our lives. The difference is that we never get to see the realm of Death as we do in dreams. That’s not her story. In fact, Death is largely a mystery, except for this: she is a friendly presence at the end of your life, a force for acceptance of the unacceptable. She may not be the answer, but she can lead you to it.

This is because death is what in mythological studies is called a “psychopomp”. Most mythologies have a psychopomp, whether it’s the Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper, Hermes, Charon, Anubis, or countless others. What they do is not to preside over death, but to allow passage and transition from one world to the next. Like the similarly named card in tarot, what Death represents is not finality, but a change in states. The end of a phase of life, and the beginning of something new.

You will learn all about it in episode 6 of The Sandman on Netflix, “The Sound of Her Wings”. And if it grabs you like the books once did for us, then a lifelong passion for mythology of all kinds awaits you. You could do worse than check out some of Gaiman’s other works on the subject, e.g Good omens, American Gods and Norse mythology. And of course all ten volumes of The Sandman are always available to you wherever you can find fine comics.

The Sandman, starring Tom Sturridge as Morpheus, debuts on Netflix on Friday, August 5. For more dreams, fables and memories, visit our official Sandman TV page.

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly “Ask the Question” column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DCComics.com. Follow him on Twitter at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC community as HubCityQuestion.