Do other cultures have legends that specifically frame the loss of pre-this-life memories as traumatic?
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I know there's a bit in one of the Mary Poppins books (which are very odd overall) where babies can understand the language of animals until their first tooth comes through, and that's why they scream so much when they're teething, because they don't want to lose that knowledge. I mean, personally speaking from when I was getting my wisdom teeth in, teething is quite agonizing enough by itself, but that and the sort of Peter Pan "grow up and forget" concept definitely seem potentially related. I don't know if PL Travers was Jewish or not. Hm, that would actually explain some things maybe? *pokes google*
Doesn't look like she was Jewish, *does* look like she was a big fan of JM Barrie, so there's that. Interesting, I guess? I'm not so familiar with like folklore, but I can think of a George MacDonald bit where babies were angels (not Heaven-angels but naked-child-angels) who turned into shooting stars to become incarnated, and a Rudyard Kipling story where teenage boys writing adventure stories may remember their past lives in great detail until they first fall in love, at which point everything is wiped. I'm not sure if it's a concept that comes from the Victorians in that way, or if I'm simply not as familiar with anything outside of Victorian to midcentury kidlit.
Re: Yo dawg, I herd you like memory play
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I know there's a bit in one of the Mary Poppins books (which are very odd overall) where babies can understand the language of animals until their first tooth comes through, and that's why they scream so much when they're teething, because they don't want to lose that knowledge. I mean, personally speaking from when I was getting my wisdom teeth in, teething is quite agonizing enough by itself, but that and the sort of Peter Pan "grow up and forget" concept definitely seem potentially related. I don't know if PL Travers was Jewish or not. Hm, that would actually explain some things maybe? *pokes google*
Doesn't look like she was Jewish, *does* look like she was a big fan of JM Barrie, so there's that. Interesting, I guess? I'm not so familiar with like folklore, but I can think of a George MacDonald bit where babies were angels (not Heaven-angels but naked-child-angels) who turned into shooting stars to become incarnated, and a Rudyard Kipling story where teenage boys writing adventure stories may remember their past lives in great detail until they first fall in love, at which point everything is wiped. I'm not sure if it's a concept that comes from the Victorians in that way, or if I'm simply not as familiar with anything outside of Victorian to midcentury kidlit.