When explaining anything, it's usually customary to start off with a brief summary and an orientational note, a bit of context to let people know how it fits into everything else. If you've never heard of a Viol-da-Gam, for example, the way I'd describe it to you is that it's an upright stringed instrument that's somewhat like the viola. With espianity that's somewhat difficult, for several reasons. Firstly, it's an umbrella term, so any summary of it is going to necessitate describing its consituents, which will turn it rapidly from a summary into a tract; and secondly, the few things that it compares to will once again take so much explanation themselves that it's probably not worth the bother. So instead I'm going to chat about underground stations.
There's something strange about underground signs. I'm not sure why Charing Cross and Leicester Square are as strange as they are, but it's probably got something to do with that natural quality of London of mixing the old and the new in a very urban-chic but earthy setting. I tend to associate espianity with London too, and it has that same kind of quality, only its origins are far more remote.
Myth just isn't what it used to be. Tales of Atlantis and Shangri-la only really work on the past, whereas in modern times they're much less believable. There's one story of inuit abandoning their homes in the Canadian Arctic, for example, which is widely believed, but is actually the invention of a twentieth century writer. And that's certainly not up to the standards of some of the tales of the Indus Valley.
One tale, for example, relates of the inhabitants of Shambala, a small himalayan village with a peculiar social order. Like many oriental socities of the time, they venerated a particular animal--in their case the snake, but unlike any other culture they regarded it as an equal rather than a deity. The inhabitants of Shambala developed a complex mythical system as a vehicle for encoding esoteric knowledge, and passing it down throughout generations.
Occasionally they recorded information based on star patterns, for example using stringed food which tied in with the distance between stars as a means of persistent storage. The numbers 0, 18, and 108 were considered especially important due to their use of base-18.
Sean B. Palmer