The Tree Of Life
When actually signing up on the NaNoWriMo site I had to really ponder what I was calling this project – the Maidens of the Wild, Wild Women, Women of the Wilds, Life and Death and Extremes, The Cradle and the Grave, The Cycle of Life, Cyclic Decay… and so on when I had a dream about Baba Yada or rather a series of small baby houses and the concept of the power of 3 and how a lot of the deamons and witches where once gods and goddesses or spirits of nature who were hobbled and vilified by the powers that be.
And this lead me to thinking of things like Crone, Maiden, mother and the sisters of night, day and twilight and of the Life Tree in various cultures in Northern Europe of which really the UK is a part and so these are some of the stories that permeated my head as a child. And being as alot of the stories will be based in the Punk’s Universe and be sci fi and infect some stories that would match this criteria already exist… I began to think of mechanism for these monsters and guardians hidden in the wild places and of the placenta trees that are so important in the rest of the stories and I started to think about genetic variations and cauldrons to bring people back to life when Irish Kings and Welsh Kind and all the rest went to battle.
It wouldn’t take much for such mechanisms of life’s creation and restoration to go wrong to produce the sorts of horrors we’ve been handed in our mythologies. Now because of my family contains sailors and explorers and those who came home with strange brides and family from Russia, South Africa, Canada, Australia and so on… I have been surrounded by and collected other stories who’s mythosis seem to fit so well. As an older teen I started researching old stories, myths, legends and religious texts with the idea that they were all an echo of something much older linguistic wise, culture wise. And these inputs and concepts have shaped my own story telling.
My granddad – a sailor who knew the ice and knitted and carved and was many many things, was obsessed with an author called Von Daniken who writes pseudo-science/history books which straddle a line, my granddad took them all as fact but then later my Dad told me that they had initially been advised as popular science books and later the author said it was a lot of “supposing” – my dad paraphrasing the paraphrasing! But weather or not the pseudo science and pseudo history books are correct or not is not really what I am looking for when writing – I am looking for the Maybes and the What Ifs and MayHaps and these books along with conspiracy theories tap straight into that. Infact their whole existence is a symptom of just how much we do not know.
The other thing is that no matter how smart or educated or careful we are – all of us – EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US – believes something that is a little nuts just most of us are in denial and many will even fight to defend those beliefs. I went to a very interesting phycology talk on this subject including our pattern sequins behaviour seeing coincidence as important and trying to find the cause or it. Sadly I can not remember the name of the speaker but I think it was either the Cheltenham Science Festival or possibly the Oxford one.
I am still researching ancient cultures and languages and stories and the Tree of Life or Yggdrasil and extremophiles and space and fossils, and all of these are relevant to my story telling. As for what I actually believe – that is tricky and probably the subject of many more posts. For a start I don’t really believe anything – there is so little evidence that what we can know is really small – quiet simply we do not have very much to go on. Do I think aliens built the pyramids?
Probably not – do I think there was way more to ancient civilisations than we have yet discovered including technologies we’d see as “advanced”? Hell yes – in fact I have seen the historical narrative shift in this aspect in my life time. Advanced mechanics existed and was forgotten or guarded as religious secrets. Centuries before Copernicus and Galileo there are Anglo Saxon documents that show a hello-centric solar system – the planets go around the sun – I even got to see one such document at a special exhibition at the British Library.
Also we are missing a lot of the where that these cultures thrived due to changes in sea levels – areas that were on land are currently drowned and we have only really very recently thought to look in these shallow seas for civilisations origin. Add to that the callus and wanton stripping and destruction of ancient artefacts from various sites in Africa and the horrible concept of barbarianism and racism and eugenics and a lot of global history we had say 100-200 yrs ago is gone or muddled and in some cases forged or forgotten in some vault somewhere. Go back another couple of hundred years and Europeans are melting down the history of the Americas and trying to obliterate cultures that don’t fit with the current power struggle both at home and abroad.
The ingenuity of these ancient people was the same as our own and look what we have built!
And especially with the current nuclear threat – look at how easily it could all be lost and we could all end up with shortened life spans living in remembrance of glory and within a few short generations having nothing but ruins that seemed impossible. Roman ruins in Britain ended up inspiring myths about gods and giants and fairies because how else could such large fine structures have been built?
It’s almost like we have a tree of knowledge and sometimes it get felled but its roots run deep and it resprouts and sometimes heals a lightning split. And yes was also a reference to things like the secret societies – illuminate and knights templar and Da Vinci and all the rest and… I think it is a comforting notion but I think politicians just actually like to chase the power and play silly games with all our lives – but you know I could well be wrong – there are such societies actually registered as having existed through out history and so on.
And that was a lot of waffle and I could probably continue but instead I want to get back to planing the fiction that I’ve done all this research and soul searching for!
NB Anglo Saxon is no longer a technical historical term and is not used by academics but it tends to take a lot of explaining to non historians and everyone kind of knows what you are talking about and I haven’t personally worked out exactly what I am supposed to be calling that era and group of peoples yet though I have been researching this area of history a lot having ended up being called in to research a local Queen that founded parts of the city I live in and help create workshops and drop in sessions for schools and the general public which also branched out into Women’s History and so on (yes I know thumbs in too many pies!). Once I am more clear on this I will share it with everyone 🙂 In the mean time you might have to look it up yourselves if you are interested 🙂
Posted: Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022 @ 11:53 am
Categories: Research, Waffle.
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