FITH-FATH AND THE WIZARD’S DUEL: CHANGE YOUR FREQUENCY

Ceridwen by Christopher Williams

A guest post by Laura Marjorie Miller

Have you ever dreamt that you are being pursued, and to evade your pursuer, you leap into the air? Can you recall the form you are in when you take flight in your dream? Do you have any form? Is it merely your consciousness sensing what is before, around, and—most importantly—behind you? Or have you ever checked to see if you are even still human?

The chase is an archetype engridded in our dreams, primordial. And shapeshifting, being one of the most ancient and original forms of magic, has to do with the understanding of creation as well as with survival.

‘Fith-fath’ is an ancient Celtic term for a shapeshifting spell. Fith-fath is pronounced ‘fee-fah’ and has many different glosses: it may mean ‘shapeshifter’ and it may mean ‘effigy’ and it may mean ‘words of magic’ and it may mean ‘poetic art’ but one thing is for sure: it is a powerful charm. And perhaps with charms it’s best to leave alone the exact dictionary meaning of things, otherwise you will be in the wrong frame of mind for a charm, too fixed. Not magic enough.

Whatever it ‘means’, the fith-fath is a shamanic spell, plunging the magic-user into the undifferentiated field of creation so they may come out again in a different form.

Perhaps that is why the fith-fath appears in the story of the goddess Cerridwen, whose cauldron brews the cosmic soup from which all forms arise, and into which they dissolve. The fith-fath see-saw plunges you deep down into the unified field and hoists you back up again as something else. Which is why fith-fath spells are often spoken with protections invoked, for what if you did not come back out again as you were?

A fith-fath charm was—or is, because you can still choose to use it—of service not only to hunters, but also to warriors, travelers, and smugglers, rendering them unrecognizable to authorities, brigands, enemies, and animals. One translation of fith-fath is “the deer’s aspect,” for it may originally have been a charm for hunting tribes that follow deer, to make hunters invisible entirely or invisible by disguising them as their prey animal.

The Carmina Gadelica tells the story of the youth Ossian (Oisín), who, while hunting, encounters a beautiful deer in the woods who turns out to be his mother:

‘Do not hurt me, Ossian,’ said the hind; ‘I am thy mother under the “fīth-fãth,” in the form of a hind abroad and in the form of a woman at home…. Come thou home with me, thou fawn of my heart.’

Oison's mother running as a hind - Arthur Rackham

So sometimes you have to be careful. Witches are forever becoming wounded while in their fith-fath forms: a farmer shoots a fox’s paw off in his garden and then later a woman of the village appears without a hand. The danger is in getting hurt while in such a state, or even, as Granny Weatherwax senses in Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies and young Arthur in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, dissolving so much of your human self away that you have trouble returning and maybe you never come altogether back. You may need protection.

A famous fith-fath is the hare incantation of Isobel Gowdie, the 17^th century Scottish witch, given at her trial confession, which includes a protection: 

I shall go into a hare

With sorrow and sych and meickle care;

And I shall go in the Devil’s name,

Ay while I come home again.

Gowdie invoked the Devil on the way in and G-d on the way out:

            Hare, hare, God send thee care.

            I am in a hare’s likeness now,

            But I shall be in a woman’s likeness even now.

When I was little, and found these incantations in my grandmother’s folklore books, my heart thrilled at it. I instinctively felt the frisson of it, the delectable danger, the enticement like an electrical outlet to a child with a fork, and I knew that it was real. Still to this day I know. 

But what was I feeling exactly? How does a fith-fath work, and in a story or ballad, what is its purpose for our understanding?

One place the fith-fath shows up is in the motif and archetype of the wizard’s duel, or transformation chase. The duel or chase, usually a test of an apprentice differentiating himself from an overpowering master, is a motif that arises in several European fairy tale versions, traded from fireside to fireside by travelers until it criss-crossed the continent, from Straparola to Grimm, surfacing as well in Norway and Denmark.

For the purposes of this essay, I’m going to use fith-fath and wizard’s duel somewhat interchangeably, because at the core of the archetypal myth of the transformation chase is the key to how the fith-fath works.

The Archetype: Cerridwen and Gwion

Cerridwen is a goddess who lives on an island at the bottom of a lake in Wales. She has two children, one a fair daughter, the other a dark and disfigured son named Morfran. With concern for her son’s fate and future, the enchantress Cerridwen determines that she will brew a potion that will ease his life by giving him gifts of sorcery. The potion she settles upon will take a year and a day to brew, so she enlists (or enslaves) a youth named Gwion Bach to tend the fire and stir the brew, while she adds medicinal herbs and appropriate incantations to her cauldron throughout the year, at optimal astrological timings.

When the time arrives for the potion to be delivered, three drops of the brew fly out of the cauldron and burn Gwion’s finger. He reflexively places it in his mouth to suck it cool and in that instant absorbs all the powers of Cerridwen’s potion. There are none left for Morfran and the cauldron explodes, draining its contents into the dirt. In some tellings, Gwion is a rapscallion who pushes Morfran out of the way to get the brew for himself; in others, he is an innocent bystander. I reckon that such a powerful potion chooses its own recipient, and the drops jump of their own conscious will, convergent with the will of fate.

Whatever the case, Gwion knows he needed to get out of there fast. So he takes off running, with Cerridwen in hot pursuit. Racing through a field, he realizes that as a boy he cannot outrun her, and in that instant of airborne stride turns into a hare and hits the ground bounding. Not to be outdone, Cerridwen shifts into a greyhound and courses Gwion until in desperation the boy/hare hurls himself into the nearest stream, becoming a fish the instant he hits the water. Cerridwen dives after him as a hungry otter, chasing him in the current. Gwion leaps out of the stream and into the air, winging for dear life, as Cerridwen explodes through the surface of the water, drops showering from the tips of her wings, a mighty hawk. Gwion flies into a nearby barn, lands to catch his breath on a pile of grain and then—changes himself, or is changed, into a seed. Alighting on the pile, Cerridwen turns herself into a great black hen, pecks him up in her beak and swallows him. 

Gwion - by Thierry Brasseur

The rest of the tale is how the bard Taliesin came to be. But I will leave it there, a tale-trace, so you can hear the shape of the striving, the severity of the testing, the desperation and wit of the hunt.

Does something about this sound familiar, even if you had never heard the myth?

It may put you in mind of the Wizard’s Duel sequence in the Disney animated version of T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone (1963).

The Wizard’s Duel

The Wizard’s Duel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h90ZrKj08Fc ), storyboarded by Bill Peet and animated by Milt Kahl, is a lively setpiece between Merlin and his rival/nemesis Madam Mim (contesting who has possession of Arthur). The combinations of animals defy ecology and grow more outlandish as the contest escalates, introducing tigers, rhinoceroses, rattlesnakes, and walruses to the mix, and culminating with Mim as a dragon, finally outdone by a germ that is Merlin, who infects her.

When I was a beginning magic-user in Nashville, my then-mentor had an ongoing rivalry with a sorcerer who used to frequent the local English pub. The two were always putting hexes and curses on each other (which unfortunately affected each other’s associates). My fellow students/best friends in magic and I used to playfully refer to this as a wizard’s duel, although in this case a reckless and immature one. But we would make ourselves laugh at the time, imagining them as Mim and Merlin.

Unlike Gwion and Cerridwen, the Mim/Merlin duel is a match between peers: wizards of similar stature, and practice. As with the archetypical chase, there actually is risk involved, physical pain being traded around, and peril, however cartoonishly it may be portrayed.

The Fith Fath

Another occurrence of the shapeshifting duel in art is named outright ‘Fith-Fath Song,’ composed and performed by acclaimed pagan musician Damh (pronounced “Dave”) the Bard.

 

Damh makes his version a paganized riff on Isobel Gowdie’s incantation, reworking Gowdie’s fith-fath to be a game between the Goddess (Our Lady) and the Horned God, a competition for life between ‘their’ creatures, with a solo party representing the Lady playing against a band of the male god’s agents:

I shall go as a wren in spring

With sorrow and sighing on silent wing

And I shall go in our Lady’s name

Aye, ‘til I come home again

Then we shall follow as falcons grey

And hunt thee cruelly for our prey

And we shall go in our Horned God's name

Aye to fetch thee home again

Then I shall go as a mouse in May

Through fields by night and in cellars by day

And I shall go in our Lady's name

Aye ‘til I come home again

Then we shall follow as black tom cats

And hunt thee through the fields and the vats

And we shall go in our Horned God's name

Aye to fetch thee home again

Then I shall go as an autumn hare

With sorrow and sighing and mickle care

And I shall go in our Lady's name

Aye till I come home again

Then we shall follow as swift greyhounds

And dog thy steps with leaps and bounds

And we shall go in our Horned God's name

Aye to fetch thee home again

Then I shall go as a winter trout

With sorrow and sighing and mickle doubt

And I shall go in our Lady's name

Aye till I come home again

Then we shall follow as otters swift

And bind thee fast so thou can’tst shift

And we shall go in our Horned God's name

Aye to fetch thee home again.

Although done by proxy, it is a contest still between Lord and Lady, testing one state of being that preys on another in a chase, with a churning transfiguration from form to form. The victory is won when the Horned God’s animals bind the solo speaker so that he can no longer access his power to transform.  

The Chase

Tori Amos is a musical mythologist, and her song ‘The Chase’ from the album Night of Hunters is the Cerridwen and Gwion pursuit exactly, but this time played out between two females: Tori, and an opposing voice that belongs to her daughter Tash. The aim of this competition is “out-creation,” and the way shapeshifting is accomplished here is described as a change in “frequency”: a conscious alteration of the vibratory field until it can congeal so another solid state may arise. Quickness of wit is the test, and the transformations here have an agency that Gwion’s don’t, or may not, have: how fast and effectively can you change? How speedily shift? 

Out there are hunters

Let’s say predators

I have weapons

That could destroy them

You must out-create

It’s the only way

I am the hunter

And the hunted

Joined together

You create duality

And neutrality….

I’ll be the hare

Then I’m the greyhound

Chasing after you

Then I will change my frequency

To a fish that thinks

Then you will find yourself

In the paws

Of the otter

Near her jaws

Then I’ll grow my wings

As a flying thing

Flying thing, you be warned

I’m the falcon

Watch me change

To a grain of corn

A grain of corn

Hear the alarm

In your head

I’m the hen

Black and red

And you’re in my barn

They would have won

Use your head or you’ll be dead.

© Tori Amos

The mettle of Tori’s protagonist is tested by this other entity, which could be an outer challenger or an inner voice. Whether they are distinct organisms or as polarities of the same consciousness, the use of female voices for both competitors emphasizes the point that regardless of distinction, the duelists in the archetype swim in the same magic, hunter and hunted, joined together in a matter of life or death.

Sometimes the contest becomes gendered, especially when the fith-fath becomes a mating song.

Two Magicians

‘The Twa Magicians’ is a Child Ballad, and I particularly favor the version of it performed by Steeleye Span on their 1974 album Now We Are Six. 

She looked out of the window as white as any milk
And he looked in at the window as black as any silk

Hello, hello, hello, hello, you coal black smith
You have done me no harm
You never shall have my maidenhead
That I have kept so long

I'd rather die a maid
Ah, but then she said and be buried all in my grave
Than to have such a nasty, husky, dusky, fusky, musky
Coal-black smith—a maiden I will die

She became a duck, a duck all on the stream
And he became a water dog and fetched her back again

She became a star, a star all in the night
And he became a thundercloud and muffled her out of sight

She became a rose, a rose all in the wood
And he became a bumble bee and kissed her where she stood

She became a nun, a nun all dressed in white
And he became a canting priest and prayed for her by night

She became a trout, a trout all in the brook
And he became a feathered fly and caught her with his hook

She became a corpse, a corpse all in the ground
And he became the cold clay and smothered her all around

Blacksmiths are by nature magic, as I have written elsewhere: ‘There is an old, old belief that blacksmiths have magical powers…. Smiths have expertise to work with what is inorganic, the same way a witch works with organic plants and parts. They are powerful: the groundedness of material nature itself but they also know that nature is not static. Metal is strong, but capable of being cajoled into forms both beautiful and useful. Smiths are elemental transformers. They go down into something that looks solid, fluidify it, and change it. It is a return to a primal state, a source state, a working-back in time. In the forge… what is solid becomes fluid through flame.’ (Imbolc in the Forge: A Threefold Meditation).

In ‘Two Magicians,’ we encounter a magic-working woman who has met her match in a smith. There is a light-heartedness and rowdy defiance, a sense of one-upmanship to this ballad. Perhaps that mood comes from the way Steeleye Span performs it, but it seems that the woman derives delight from staying one step ahead of her pursuer/suitor.

And she does prevail in the end, because she dies rather than be with him—or maybe she only temporarily becomes a corpse, to turn back into herself later, and that’s her secret, because according to the defiant vow she has made, these are the terms in which they will be together. That, or he really has outlasted her and the victory is his.

There is a reading of this ballad that could easily see the smith as an unwanted pursuer. I am going to choose to read it—admitting this is a choice—as the woman’s way of making sure that her lover is worthy of her. It is a way of asserting a parity between lovers, that the one who would court you is on a par, at least as adept of a magic-user: is he as skillful as you? Is his craft as sound and high?

It’s more than testing, more than even “Are you worthy to be with me?” It is: “Are you as good as I am?” 
 

The Sorcerer-Shaman, cave painting in

Les Trois-Frères, France

The Splitting of the Archetype

What do the incarnations of this archetype have in common (other than a predominance of otters)?

It is fascinating to see how an archetype splits, because that is what makes it an archetype: it is a motif that contains multitudes, white light split by a prism: like the Empress in the Tarot deck who splits into all the Queens. All of these frequencies and more can live in the original myth—or the closest we can come, anyway, to the original, which retreats back into time and past memory.

The archetype is the key. It’s fascinating to dissect tales in their particularity and curiously to compare them, but there has to be a deeper why to make the pursuit truly meaningful, beyond just mental. What’s going on if we take the fith-fath even deeper, to the bottom of the cauldron at the bottom of the lake? Like the unified field of the cauldron’s cosmic psychedelic brew, the archetype of Cerridwen and Gwion ties the tale versions together. So to understand what is happening beneath the surface of the wizard’s duel, the fith-fath, the transformation chase, we look to what is bubbling and combining over that central fire.

Part of the excited apprehension of the fith-fath is the way it challenges the stability of form. It presses upon us that being a human is incidental. And that we are more connected to the rest of creation than we may comfortably like to acknowledge.

For that’s the shamanic secret: this core story holds within it something of eternity, of galaxies, of souls dissolving back into the mix and then meeting each other in new forms: predator and prey over and over in new iterations and combinations. Such an understanding gives depth even to the madcap whimsy of Merlin and Mim. Who are the souls we always meet? Who are our rivals and lovers, antagonists and supporters, that we keep encountering over eons of lives? Because we in essence are shapeshifters, our outer forms are malleable from incarnation to incarnation. And in these different guises, we meet one another again and again.

And how, in those incarnations, do we test each other? Even though the chase is remorseless—How do we help make each other better, spur each other to improve, to evolve? I asked an evolutionary biologist once what he reckoned an impala felt, being pursued by a lioness. ‘Adrenaline,’ he replied. ‘Excitement. This is one of the most important things they exist for and what they have evolved to do.’

Strong predators help to evolve better prey. Faster, cleverer, more adaptable prey assists the evolution of predator species. Just as when we refine old iterations of ourselves or leave them behind, life according to its essence is improving, on a cosmic and macrocosmic level, spiraling ever upward, like the arms of a galaxy swirling in the brew Cerridwen stirs.

Laura Marjorie Miller writes about myth, travel, natural history, ocean conservation, and other soulful subjects. Her work has appeared in such places as Utne Reader, Parabola, Faerie, Yankee, UMass Magazine, BeYouMediaGroup.com and elephantjournal.com. This is her second essay for Seven Miles of Steel Thistles. She is based in Massachusetts, where she lives with a cat named Huck. Find her at www.lauramarjoriemiller.com and on twitter at @bluecowboyyoga . 






Picture Credits

Ceridwen - by Christopher Williams (1873-974) Wikimedia Commons


The Sorcerer-Shaman, cave painting, Les Trois-Frères, France, Wikipedia


Oisin's mother running as a hind - by Arthur Rackham

Gwion - by kind permission of Thierry Brasseur (T.Brass) http://brass.canalblog.com/archives/2005/06/16/578359.html

Willie Millar and the Sleeper in the Cave

In the widespread legend known as 'The King in the Mountain' (Aarne-Thompson 776), an unsuspecting shepherd or lost traveller stumbles upon a cavern in which he (so far as I know it's always a he) discovers a sleeping or incarcerated king, often surrounded with his retinue. The king may be Holger Dansker (Ogier the Dane) as in the illustration above; he may be Arthur, Charlemagne,  Barbarossa or many another; sometimes the sleeper is not a king but another important figure such as Merlin, St John, or Sir Francis Drake. There's often a horn to be blown or a drum to be struck, which will call the sleeper to wake and ride out to battle - but it's not very wise to disturb him before his time.

Here is a wonderfully Gothic version from Scotland set down by Hugh Miller (1802-1856). Miller was a native of Cromarty on the east coast of the Highlands. Born to a humble family he took up his trade as a stonemason, but became in later years a well-known and highly respected geologist, lecturer, writer and folklorist. Cromarty’s Dropping (or Dripping) Cave in which the tale is set, is a sea-cave, said also to be the haunt of a mermaid. I like the touch of scepticism with which Miller incorporates the sly suggestion that the hero’s visions may have been assisted by, well, gin.

I've slightly abridged the tale. And in a later version which Miller published in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, February 17th 1838, the hero is named Archie, not Willie.

Willie Millar and the Sleeper in the Cave

(from ‘Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland’ by Hugh Miller, 1834)

There was a Cromarty mechanic of the last age, named Willie Millar, who used to relate a wonderful adventure which befell him in the Dropping Cave of Cromarty. Willie was a man of fertile invention, fond of a good story and zealous in the improvement of bad ones … Hearing of a tradition that the cave extended over three miles from the entrance,  Willie resolved on testing the story for himself.

He sewed sprigs of rowan and wych-elm in the hem of his waistcoat, thrust a Bible into one pocket and a bottle of gin into the other, and providing himself with a torch, and a staff of buckthorn which had been cut at the full of the moon, he set out for the cave on a morning of midsummer. It was evening ere he returned – his torch burnt out, and his clothes stained with mould and slime, and soaked with water.

After lighting the torch, he said, and taking a firm grip of the staff, he plunged fearlessly into the gloom. The cavern lowered and narrowed as he proceeded; the floor of white marble-like stone was hollowed into cisterns filled with water so pure it sparkled in the light like spirits in crystal; from the roof depended clusters of richly embossed icicles of white stone. The springs from above trickled down their channeled sides and then tinkled into the cisterns, like rain from the eaves of a cottage after a thunder-shower. Perhaps he was too busy looking around at all this, for at the ninth and final cistern he missed his footing, and falling forwards shattered his bottle of gin. The liquor ran into a little hollow in the marble, and unwilling to lose it, he stooped down and drank till his breath failed him, and pausing to recover himself, stooped and drank again. 

There were strange appearances when he arose. A circular rainbow had formed around his torch; there was a blue mist gathering in the hollows of the cave, the roof and sides began to heave and reel, and a low humming  sound came from the interior, like that of bees in a hawthorn thicket on a midsummer evening. Willie, however, had become much less timorous than at first… And so on he went. 

The cavern widened and the roof rose. The sound of his footsteps was echoed on either hnd by a multitude of openings, in which the momentary gleam of his torch was reflected, as he passed, on sheets of water and ribs of rock, and which led – like so many arched corridors – into the bowels of the hill. Not that all of the sounds were echoes. Besides the continuous humming noise, he could hear sounds like the wind moaning in the trees above, the scream of the hawk as if pouncing on its prey; the deafening blast of a smith’s bellows and the clang of hammers. A breeze came moaning along the cave and shook the marble drapery of the sides, as if it were formed of gauze or linen; the entire cave seemed turning around till the floor stood upright and the adventurer fell heavily against it; as his torch hissed and sputtered in the water he could see by its expiring gleam that a full score of dark figures, as undefined as shadows by moonlight, were flitting around him in the blue mist which now came rolling in dense clouds from the interior. In a moment more, all was darkness and he lay insensible amid the chill damps of the cave.

On returning to consciousness  he found the gloom around him had given place to a dim red twilight which flickered along the sides and roof like the reflection of a distant fire. ‘It is sunlight,’ thought he, ‘I shall find an opening among the rocks of Esthie and return home over the hill.’ Instead, however, he found the passage terminate in a wonderful space so vast that though an immense fire of pine-trees, whole and unbroken from root to branch, threw up a red wavering sheet of flame many yards in height, he could see in some places neither the walls nor the roof. A cataract descended in thunder from one of the sides, presenting its broad undulating front of foam to the red gleam of the fire, and again escaped into darkness though a wide broken-edged gulf at the bottom. The floor of the cave appeared to be thickly strewn with human bones, half-burned, blood-stained, and gnawed as if by cannibals; and directly in front of the fire there was a low tomb-like structure of dark stone, full twenty yards in length, roughened with grotesque hieroglyphs like those of a Runic obelisk. An enormous mace of iron, crusted with rust and blood, lay against the upper end; while a bugle of gold hung by a chain of the same metal from a column at the bottom. 

Willie seized the bugle and winded a blast till the wide apartment shook with the din; the waters of the cataract disappeared, as if arrested at their source, and the ponderous cover of the tomb began to heave and crackle and pass slowly over the edge, as if assailed by the strength of some newly-awakened giant below. Willie again winded the bugle; the cover heaved upwards, disclosing a corner of the chasm beneath; and a hand covered with blood and of such fearful magnitude as to resemble only the conceptions of Egyptian sculpture, was slowly stretched from the darkness towards the handle of the mace. Willie’s resolution gave way, and flinging down the horn he rushed toward the passage. A yell of blended grief and anger burst from the tomb, as the immense cover again settled over it; the cataract came dashing from its precipice with a heavier volume than before; and a furious hurricane of wind and spray rushed howling from the interior, well-nigh dashing the adventurer against the sides of the rock. He succeeded however in gaining the passage; a state of imperfect consciousness followed, like that of a feverish dream; on fully gaining his recollection he found himself lying across the ninth cistern, with the fragments of the broken bottle on the one side, and his buckthorn staff on the other.

Picture credits:

Holger Danske, also known as Ogier the Dane, was a legendary Danish warrior and knight in Charlemagnes army. The statue is made by Hans Peder Pedersen-Dan (1859-1939) 1907, and is found in the cellar (kasematterne) of Kronborg Castle, Denmark. Here he sleeps until Denmark is in danger and needs his help. My thanks to Malene Thyssen who has kindly permitted me to use this image. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Malene


The Sleeping King, by Eric Fraser, illustration from English Legends by Henry Bett, 1950

The Magical SATOR Square

In Lady Wilde’s ‘Ancient Legends of Ireland’ there’s a story about a young man, a poet, who attempts to seduce a farmer’s daughter. He’s used to having his wicked way with girls, for we're told that Irish poets were known for possessing ‘the power of fascination by the glance … so that they could make themselves loved and followed by any girl they liked.’

With this particular girl, however, the power doesn’t seem to work very well at first. The poet arrives at her farm and begs for a drink of milk, but the young woman happens to be on her own in the house – the maids are busy churning in the dairy – so she refuses to let him in. Annoyed by this, the poet takes action. Lady Wilde continues:

The young poet fixed his eyes earnestly on her face for some time in silence, then slowly turning round left the house and walked towards a small grove of trees just opposite. There he stood for a few moments resting against a tree, and facing the house as if to take one more vengeful or admiring glance, then went his way without once turning round. 

The young girl had been watching him from the window, and the moment he moved she passed out of the door like one in a dream, and followed him slowly, step by step, down the avenue.

As the girl passes through the farmyard, the dairymaids notice her entranced state. They raise the alarm and her father comes running from his work, shouting for her to stop, but his daughter doesn’t seem able to hear. The poet does, though,

…and seeing the whole family in pursuit, quickened his pace, first glancing fixedly at the girl for a moment. Immediately she sprang towards him, and they were both almost out of sight, when one of the maids espied a piece of paper tied to a branch of the tree where the poet had rested.  From curiosity she took it down, and the moment the knot was untied, the farmer’s daughter suddenly stopped, became quite still, and when her father came up she allowed him to lead her back to the house.

Recovering, the girl tells her family how she’d felt impelled to follow the young man ‘wherever he might lead’, only coming to her senses when the spell was broken. But what was the spell?

The paper, on being opened, was found to contain five mysterious words written in blood, and in this order:

Sator

Arepo

Tenet

Opera

Rotas

These letters are so arranged that read in any way, right to left, left to right, up or down, the same words are produced; and when written in blood with a pen made of an eagle’s feather, they form a charm which no woman (it is said) can resist…

(In a sceptical aside, Lady Gregory adds, ‘but the incredulous reader can easily test the truth of this assertion for himself.’)

The Sator, Rotas, or Rotas Sator Square as this acrostic is called, is both very old and tantalisingly obscure; at any rate, no one has yet succeeded in explaining to everyone else’s satisfaction exactly what it means. Carved in stone or painted on walls, it crops up all over the place, at sites in Italy, Britain, Sweden and even Syria, ranging in date from Roman to medieval to near-modern. The words are obscure in themselves and have given rise to various tortuous interpretations (explored in this interesting article by Duncan Fishwick MA, "An Early Christian Cryptogram?"), which range from the reassuringly rural though still opaque, ‘The sower Arepo works the wheels with care’ – to Satanic invocations. AREPO is a nonsense word, and it seems that the rest, though they may resemble Latin words, are so ungrammatical as to be pretty much nonsense too. 

However, back in the 1920s two German scholars discovered (or re-discovered) that the Square hides an anagram: it can be arranged as the word PATERNOSTER written twice in a cruciform order which uses the N only once, and leaves four letters over: two As and two Os – Alpha and Omega.  

There’s really no chance that this is not deliberate, but to assume a Christian solution is problematic. The earliest known examples of the SATOR square are two graffiti from Pompeii which predate the Vesuvian eruption of AD 79.  Duncan Fishwick summarises the difficulties thus: there's no convincing evidence of any Christians in Pompeii before it was destroyed; the Cross is not found as a Christian symbol before about AD 130; Christians of the First Century used Greek not Latin for teaching and liturgy; the Christian use of Alpha and Omega as symbols for God was inspired by verses of the Apocalypse, which by AD 79 had not yet been written; finally, ‘cryptic’ Christian symbols first appear only ‘during the persecutions of the third century’ when overt Christianity had become politically unsafe. 

There was however a Jewish population in and around Pompeii, as various graffiti testify, and Fishwick suggests that rather than Christian, the Sator Square may have been Jewish in origin. The Alpha and Omega may derive their significance from Old Testament passages such as Isaiah 44, 6 in which God declares, ‘I am the first and the last’, while as for the Paternoster anagram, Fishwick explains that, ‘Far from being a Christian innovation this form of address [eg: 'Our Father'] has its roots in Judaism’, citing various Judaic prayers. He concludes that the Square may likely have been a charm constructed by Latin-speaking Jews, the magic of which resides in its satisfying symmetry and the concealed invocation which, revolving around the single letter N, hints at the unspoken nomen or name of God. Another scholar, Rebecca Benefiel, points out in a fascinating article, "Magic Squares, Alphabet Jumbles, Riddles and more: The culture of word-games among the graffiti of Pompeii," that the Sator Square is only one of many different word-squares found at Pompeii.

Even if not Christian in origin, the Square was soon adopted as a Christian charm and invested with more specifically Christian symbolism: a belief arose that the five 'words' of the palindrome were the names of the five nails which fastened Christ to the cross.  And it went on from there to enjoy a long subsequent history as a potent magical spell. It was used in the 12th century, according to medieval scholar Monica Green (quoted by Sarah E. Bond in a post, 'Power of the Palindrome', in her blog History from Below), as a charm which could be written on butter and eaten, to help women who had miscarried. At some time in the 18th century the Sator Square was brought from Germany to America: in the Pennsylvanian Dutch example shown below, dated circa 1790, you can see that mistakes have been made in the lettering, so that it becomes simply a piece of magical gibberish. One wonders how early any awareness of the Paternoster anagram had vanished.

In 1820 printer and chapbook seller, Pennsylvanian John or Johann Hohman published German and English versions of a book of spells, charms and remedies called 'The Long Lost Friend' or 'The Long Hidden Friend'. On the page reproduced below, we find in charm number 121 the Sator Square, used 'To Quench Fire Without Water':

 

It's clear that people tried it. The photo above, from the Oberhausmuseum in Passau, Bavaria, shows 'a plate with magic inscription, used as a fire fighting device to expel the evil spirits of fire.'  Perhaps people prepared them in advance? I suppose it might even have worked to damp out a very small fire, but one hopes those who tried this charm were busy stamping out the flames at the same time. (At least it's fairly brief, unlike the elaborate spell Hohman provides for 'Preventing Conflagration' which involved throwing into the fire a bundled-up sheet stained either with the menstrual blood of a chaste virgin, or the blood from child-birth.)

A charm written on wood, intended to put out fires

In fact 'The Long-Hidden Friend' itself had a long history as a popular folk-magic text: as late as 1904, Carlton F. Brown wrote in The Journal of American Folk-lore (Vol. 17, No. 65, Apr. - Jun., 1904, pp 89-152) that 'in eastern Pennsylvania whole communities, even whole counties, firmly believe in the realities of "hexing", and protect themselves from its influence by the charms and incantations of witch doctors.' Subsequent investigation by the Berks County Medical Society into the practices of the witch doctors showed that 'the principal source of the charms which they were using was this very book of Hohman's.'  And they charged high prices for their services.

Who would have thought that a word puzzle dating from at least as early as first century Pompeii would still be in use as a popular charm in 19th century America, and appear in a 19th century Irish folk tale? Whether Judaic or Christian, Roman or medieval, European or American – whether religious symbol, magical aid for women in childbirth, a charm to put out fires or a spell to lure young Irishwomen away – the Sator Square will surely continue to puzzle and intrigue.

 

Picture credits

Fair Rosamund, by Arthur Hughes, 1854. (So no real connection with Lady Wilde's story, but a sweet young woman in a summer garden with something doomful looming.)

Rotas square from St Peter ad Orotarium, Capestrano, photo by Poecus, at Wikimedia Commons

Rotas square from Cirencester,  photo by ThrowawayHack, at Wikimedia Commons

Pennsylvania Dutch talisman c. 1790, Wikimedia Commons

Plate from Passau, Bavaria, with Sator charm against fire, photo by Wolfgang Sauber at Wikimedia Commons

Sator square from Freistadt, Austria: Mühlviertler Schlossmuseum: Magic formula against fire, photo by Wolfgang Sauber, Wikimedia Commons

'The Museum of Shadows and Reflections' by Claire Dean: Review

Claire Dean’s fairy stories are for adults, not because anything in them is inappropriate for children, simply because most children would find them difficult to understand. Much is left hanging in the air, hinted yet unsaid. I was already familiar with a few of the stories which have previously appeared in various new fairy tale journals, and the words I’d have used to describe them would have been ‘beautiful', 'airy', 'delicate’. Now, ‘delicate’ is a word that isn’t always welcome: it can signal ‘slight’; surely ‘delicate’ rules out ‘powerful’? Well, Hans Christian Andersen could write beautiful, airy, delicate fairy tales which have the emotional kick of a mule. At her best so can Dean, and this collection showcases a very talented writer whose work is getting better and better. The illustrations by Laura Rae perfectly complement the text.  

‘You have to catch their coats while they’re young’ is the mantra of a faded and nameless north-country village where most of the locals are married to or descended from swan maidens.  In ‘Feather Girls’ a man makes an habitual visit to the local pub to share a couple of pints and a packet of crisps with the swan-maid whom, unlike the other village men, he has refused to trap. In Dean’s elegant, sharp writing the ‘feather girl’  comes to life, ‘tall and slight in her downy white under dress, and she compulsively twiddled her fingers, as though when she had them she couldn’t bear not to be using them’. And ‘she plucked at the crisps … as though her fingers became her beak and her long thin arm took the place of her graceful neck’. It’s a story about love, loneliness and the price of freedom: it’s also perhaps a story about the way custom turns the strangest things into the quotidian. But I was left asking myself why the feather girl would join the man at all?  How far should gratitude for not being enslaved take you?  Is she sorry for him? Are there no feather men in the lake? 

People in Dean’s stories tend to be nameless: often only the subsidiary characters have names. In traditional fairy tales it’s usual for the main character to be ‘the boy’, ‘the maiden’, ‘the king's daughter’, and so universal rather than particular. Dean takes this further towards anonymity by referring to her characters with simple pronouns: ‘he’, ‘she’. It usually works I think, but occasionally the anonymity can get a little characterless. The opening story, ‘Raven’, is based on another animal transformation tale, ‘The Raven’ from the Brothers Grimm. An exhausted mother wishes her restless child would change into a raven and fly away.  In the traditional fairy tale this is the beginning of magical adventures out in the forest. Dean shows the interaction of raven-child and mother within doors, within the domestic setting. The bird-baby is active, full of energy, curiosity, boldness; the mother is passive: she copes better with the raven than she did with the child, but is emotionally numb:

I watched her watch the flock of ravens as they flew out of sight over the terraced roofs, chasing wind-torn scrags of cloud. I was still holding my arms as though to cradle her and support her head.

It’s very dreamlike. ‘I watched her’; ‘I was still holding my arms as though to cradle her’ – such physical stiffness and inability to react seem at odds with the vigorous, lively descriptions of the first-person narration. The mother seems to feel neither surprise nor responsibility for her daughter’s transformation, though maybe that too is the point: the baby has always felt alien to her.  

In ‘Growing Cities,’ a little girl visits the greenhouse where her Granddad grows cities from seed. A woman who works in the seaside ‘Museum of Shadows and Reflections’ takes an unexpected revenge when she is overlooked for a position. In the lovely ‘Chorlton-under-Water’ a resident clings on to life in her own home even after it’s been submerged in the new reservoir, and ‘A Book Tale’ is a charming, topsy-turvy, inside-out story reminiscent of traditional fairy tales in which girls travel east of the sun, west of the moon to rescue their lovers, or fall down wells into fairy kingdoms. These are all delightful, and there are many more.  

I did occasionally wish Dean had drawn with bolder strokes: when she does, the effect is electrifying.  The best stories in the collection are also the most recent. ‘The Sand Ship’ is a splendidly weird tale about the power of imagination, narrated by a bossy, rather unpleasant little boy as he plays with his sister on a toy ship in a playground. It’s tough and funny and I loved the sudden, surreal ending. In ‘The Stone Sea’, the growing, miniature stone seafront (complete with stone funfair) in Rivalyn’s living room seems to parallel the gradual petrification and loss of her memory. Finally, ‘Glass, Bricks, Dust’ is outstanding: a softly sinister tale of a boy playing alone on a mound of rubble by a demolition site: ‘At the top of the mound he was king.’  On summer evenings he stays out late, making play cities from bits of broken glass, ‘balancing roofs on them, building towers’. As dusk is falling, 

He heard nine chimes of the town hall clock. For a moment, the lamppost looked like a tall thin man wearing a large black hat. When the man turned towards him, he looked like a lamppost…  face to face with the boy with his feet still planted in the pavement.

Dark and utterly assured, this story has the strength and coherence of Neil Gaiman’s ‘Coraline’ and is a terrific achievement. ‘The Museum of Shadows and Reflections’ is a collection of beautiful, disturbing stories which will bear reading and rereading. I unreservedly recommend it and look forward to whatever this author does next.

THE MUSEUM OF SHADOWS AND REFLECTIONS by Claire Dean, illustrated by Laura Rae, is published by Unsettling Wonder and available from Amazon (click here)

Read more about it, and other publications, at Unsettling Wonder's website (click here)