MEXICA – THE AZTECS

The Basin of Mexico served as the seat of power for the Aztec empire. This lake-dominated valley had been a popular settlement choice for a long succession of sedentary peoples, and indeed Teotihuacan is located in its northern region. Beginning around 1200, several hunting and gathering groups moved south into more fertile regions from the dry northern deserts. Leaving their original homeland of Aztlan (as yet unidentified), seven of these groups stopped at Chicomoztoc, or Seven Caves, and undetermined location in present-day northern Mexico. While historical accounts offer varying ethnic identifications, these groups moved south and settled in key locations around the Basin of Mexico and in valleys to the east, south, and west. These included the Acolhua, who established themselves east of Lake Texcoco; the Tepaneca, who settled to the west of the lake; the Xochimilca and Chalca, who took up residence in the south of the basin, and the Matlatzinca, Tlahuica, and Huexotzinca, who settled in neighboring valleys. In each case, the people and their cultures blended with the resident sedentary populations.

The last to arrive were the Mexica who, after a dramatic arrival and turbulent relationships with resident polities, established themselves on a small island in Lake Texcoco in 1325. They named their city Tenochtitlán; it was to become an enormous metropolis and center of the Aztec empire.

From 1325 until 1428 the Mexica pursued longstanding and widely accepted strategies on their road to ultimate imperial dominance. Renowned warriors, they served as mercenaries to the most powerful polity in the Basin of Mexico, Azcapotzalco (flourished c. 1300– 1428). Their successes on the battlefield earned them lands, tributaries, and wealth, which they used to enhance their resource-poor island settlement. They concentrated on building and expanding their urban center beyond its small island setting and into the lake itself by claiming lands from the shallow lake bed. Ultimately (by 1519) the city would house 200,000 to 250,000 people. During this early period they also negotiated strategic elite marriages, particularly with the Colhuacan dynasty in the southern part of the basin. The Colhua claimed descent from the Toltecs, and establishing genealogical ties to that heritage gave the Mexica an enhanced power base and legitimacy to rule. With this dynastic connection forged, subsequent Mexica rulers successfully sought favorable marriage ties with other dynasties in the Basin of Mexico. In short, their first century in the basin provided the Mexica with the military, political, social, and economic foundation for their second century of imperial dominance.

THE CITY OF THE ELF GOD

The London of Ancient Egypt, Ptah Chief of Nine Earth Spirit, God of a Military Aristocracy, Palestine Cave dwellers and Alpine "Broad Heads", Creation Artificers of Egyptians, Europeans, Indians, and Chinese Sun Egg and Moon Egg, The Later Ptah Neith as a Banshee Sokar, God of the Dead Earliest Memphite Deity Ptah and Osiris Manetho's Folk Tales, A Famous Queen The First Pyramid.

Now, when there was corn in Egypt "as the sand of the sea", traders from foreign countries crossed the parched deserts and the perilous deep, instructed, like the sons of Jacob, to "get you down thither and buy for us from thence". So wealth and commerce increased in the Nile valley. A high civilization was fostered, and the growing needs of the age caused many industries to flourish. The business of the country was controlled by the cities which were nursed into prosperity by the wise policy of the Pharaohs. Among these Memphis looms prominently in the history of the early Dynasties. Its ruling deity was, appropriately enough, the artificer god Ptah, for it was not only a commercial but also an important industrial centre; indeed it was the home of the great architects and stone builders whose activities culminated in the erection of the Pyramids, the most sublime achievements in masonry ever accomplished by man.

To-day the ruins of Old Memphis lie buried deep in the sand. The fellah tills the soil and reaps the harvest in season above its once busy streets and stately temples, its clinking workshops and noisy markets. "I have heard the words of its teachers whose sayings are on the lips of men. But where are their dwelling places? Their walls have been cast down and their homes are not, even as though they had never been." Yet the area of this ancient city was equal to that of modern London from Bow to Chelsea and the Thames to Hampstead, and it had a teeming population.

O mighty Memphis, city of "White Walls",

The habitation of eternal Ptah,

Cradle of kings . . . on thee the awful hand

Of Vengeance hath descended. . . . Nevermore

Can bard acclaim thy glory; nevermore

Shall harp, nor flute, nor timbrel, nor the song

Of maids resound within thy ruined halls,

Nor shouts of merriment in thee be heard,

Nor hum of traffic, nor the eager cries

Of merchants in thy markets murmurous;

The silence of the tomb hath fallen on thee,

And thou art faded like a lovely queen,

Whom loveless death hath stricken in the night,

Whose robe is rent, whose beauty is decayed_

And nevermore shall princes from afar

Pay homage to thy greatness, and proclaim

Thy wonders, nor in reverence behold

Thy sanctuary glories . . .

Are thy halls

All empty, and thy streets laid bare

And silent as the soundless wilderness?

O Memphis, mighty Memphis, hath the morn

Broken to find thee not?

Memphis was named after King Pepi, and is called Noph in the Old Testament. Its early Dynastic name was "White Walls", the reference being probably to the fortress erected there soon after the Conquest. Of its royal builder we know little, but his mother, Queen Shesh, enjoyed considerable repute for many centuries afterwards as the inventor of a popular hair wash which is referred to in a surviving medical papyrus.

After Egypt was united under the double crown of the Upper and the Lower Kingdoms, and the Pharaoh became "Lord of the Two Lands", the seat of government remained for a long period at Thinis, in the south. The various nomes, like the present-day states of North America, had each their centres of local administration. Pharaoh's deputies were nobles who owed him allegiance, collected the Imperial taxes, supplied workmen or warriors as desired, and carried out the orders of the Court officials regarding the construction and control of canals. The temple of the nome god adorned the provincial capital.

Ptah, the deity of Memphis, is presented in sharp contrast to the sun god Ra, who was of Asiatic origin, and the deified King Osiris, whose worship was associated with agricultural rites. He was an earth spirit, resembling closely the European elf. The conception was evidently not indigenous, because the god had also a giant form, like the hilltop deities of the mountain peoples. He was probably imported by the invaders who constituted the military aristocracy at Memphis in pre-Dynastic times. These may have been the cave-dwellers of Southern Palestine, or tall and muscular "broad heads" of Alpine or Armenoid type who prior to the Conquest appear to have pressed southward from Asia Minor through the highlands of Palestine, and, after settlement, altered somewhat the physical character of the "long heads" of the eastern Delta. Allowance has to be made for such an infusion in accounting for the new Dynastic type as well as for the influence exercised by the displacement of a great proportion of the mingled tribes of Libyans. The Palestine cave-dwellers may have been partly of Alpine origin.

A people seldom remember their early history, but they rarely forget their tribal beliefs. That being so, the god Ptah is of special interest in dealing with the tribal aspect of mythology. Among all the gods of Egypt his individuality is perhaps the most pronounced. Others became shadowy and vague, as beliefs were fused and new and greater conceptions evolved in the process of time. But Ptah never lost his elfin character, even after he was merged with deities of divergent origin. He was the chief of nine earth spirits (that is, eight and himself added) called Khnûmû, the modellers. Statuettes of these represent them as dwarfs, with muscular bodies, bent legs, long arms, big broad heads, and faces of intelligent and even benign expression. Some wear long moustaches, so unlike the shaven or glabrous Egyptians.

At the beginning, according to Memphite belief, Ptah shaped the world and the heavens, assisted by his eight workmen, the dwarfish Khnûmû. He was also the creator of mankind, and in Egyptian tombs are found numerous earthenware models of these "elves", who were believed to have had power to reconstruct the decaying bodies of the dead. As their dwellings were underground, they may have also been "artisans of vegetation", like the spirits associated with Tvashtar, the "master workman" of the Rig-Veda hymns and the "black dwarfs" of Teutonic mythology. A particular statuette of Ptah, wearing a tight-fitting cap, suggests the familiar "wonder smith" of the Alpine "broad heads" who were distributed along Asiatic and European mountain ranges from Hindu Kush to Brittany and the British isles and mingled with the archaic Hittites in Asia Minor. The Phoenician sailors carried figures of dwarfs in their ships, and worshipped them. They were called "pataikoi". In the Far East a creation artificer who resembles Ptah is Pan Ku, the first Chinese deity, who emerged from a cosmic egg.

Like Ra, Ptah was also believed to have first appeared as an egg, which, according to one of the many folk beliefs of Egypt, was laid by the chaos goose which came to be identified with Seb, the earth god, and afterwards with the combined deities Amon-Ra. Ptah, as the primeval "artificer god", was credited with making "the sun egg" and also "the moon egg", and a bas-relief at Philæ shows him actively engaged at the work, using his potter's wheel.

A higher and later conception of Ptah represents him as a sublime creator god who has power to call into existence each thing he names. He is the embodiment of mind from which all things emerge, and his ideas take material shape when he gives them expression. In a philosophic poem a Memphite priest eulogizes the great deity as "the mind and tongue of the gods", and even as the creator of other gods as well as of "all people, cattle, and reptiles", the sun, and the habitable world.

Thoth is also credited with similar power, and it is possible that in this connection both these deities were imparted with the attributes of Ra, the sun god.

According to the tradition perpetuated by Manetho, the first temple in Egypt was erected at Memphis, that city of great builders, to the god Ptah at the command of King Mena. It is thus suggested that the town and the god of the ruling caste existed when the Horite sun worshippers moved northward on their campaign of conquest. As has been shown, Mena also gave diplomatic recognition to Neith, the earth goddess of the Libyans, "the green lady" of Egypt, who resembles somewhat the fairy, and especially the banshee, of the Iberians and their Celtic conquerors.

The Ptah worshippers were probably not the founders of Memphis. An earlier deity associated with the city is the dreaded Sokar (Seker). He was a god of the dead, and in the complex mythology of later times his habitation was located in the fifth hour-division of night. When sun worship became general in the Nile valley Sokar was identified with the small winter sun, as Horus was with the large sun of summer. But the winged and three-headed monster god, with serpent body, suffers complete loss of physical identity when merged with the elfin deity of Memphis. Ptah-Sokar is depicted as a dwarf and one of the Khnûmû. Another form of Sokar is a hawk, of different aspect to the Horus hawk, which appears perched on the Ra boat at night with a sun disk upon its head.

Ptah-Sokar was in time merged with the agricultural Osiris whose spirit passed from Pharaoh to Pharaoh. Ptah-Osiris was depicted as a human-sized mummy, swathed and mute, holding firmly in his hands before him the Osirian dadu (pillar) symbol. The triad, Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, gives us a combined deity who is a creator, a judge of the dead, and a traditional king of Egypt. The influence of the sun cult prevailed when Sokar and Osiris were associated with the worship of Ra.

Memphis, the city of Ptah, ultimately became the capital of United Egypt. It was then at the height of its glory; a great civilization had evolved. Unfortunately, however, we are unable to trace its progress, because the records are exceedingly scanty. Fine workmanship in stone, exquisite pottery, etc., indicate the advanced character of the times, but it is impossible to construct from these alone an orderly historical narrative. We have also the traditions preserved by Manetho. Much of what he tells us, however, belongs to the domain of folklore. We learn, for instance, that for nearly a fortnight the Nile ran with honey, and that one of the Pharaohs, who was a giant about 9 feet high, was "a most dangerous man". It is impossible to confirm whether a great earthquake occurred in the Delta region, where the ground is said to have yawned and swallowed many of the people, or whether a famine occurred in the reign of one pharaoh and a great plague in that of another, and if King Aha really engaged his leisure moments compiling works on anatomy. The story of a Libyan revolt at a later period may have had foundation in fact, but the explanation that the rebels broke into flight because the moon suddenly attained enormous dimensions shows how myth and history were inextricably intertwined.

Yet Manetho's history contains important material. His list of early kings is not imaginative, as was once supposed, although there may be occasional inaccuracies. The Palermo Stone, so called because it was carried to the Sicilian town of that name by some unknown curio collector, has inscribed upon it in hieroglyphics the names of several of the early kings and references to notable events which occurred during their reigns. It is one of the little registers which were kept in temples. Many of these, no doubt, existed, and some may yet he brought to light.

Four centuries elapsed after the Conquest ere Memphis became the royal city. We know little, however, regarding the first three hundred years. Two dynasties of Thinite kings ruled over the land. There was a royal residence at Memphis, which was the commercial capital of the countrythe marketplace of the northern and southern peoples. Trade flourished and brought the city into contact with foreign commercial centres. It had a growing and cosmopolitan population, and its arts and industries attained a high level of excellence.

The Third Dynasty opens with King Zoser, who reigned at Memphis. He was the monarch for whom the first pyramid was erected. It is situated at Sakkara, in the vicinity of his capital. The kings who reigned prior to him had been entombed at Abydos, and the new departure indicates that the supremacy of Memphis was made complete. The administrative, industrial, and religious life of the country was for the time centred there. Zoser's preference for Memphis had, perhaps, a political bearing. His mother, the wife of Khasekhemui,' the last of the Thinite kings, was probably a daughter of the ruling noble of "White Walls". It was the custom of monarchs to marry the daughters of nome governors, and to give their sons his daughters in marriage also. The aristocracy was thus closely connected with the royal house; indeed the relations between the Pharaoh and his noblemen appear to have been intimate and cordial.

The political marriages, however, were the cause of much jealous rivalry. As the Pharaoh had more than one wife, and princes were numerous, the choice of an heir to the crown was a matter of great political importance. The king named his successor, and in the royal harem there were occasionally plots and counterplots to secure the precedence of one particular prince or another. Sometimes methods of coercion were adopted with the aid of interested noblemen whose prestige would be increased by the selection of a near relativethe son, perhaps, of the princess of their nome. In one interesting papyrus roll which survives there is a record of an abortive plot to secure the succession of a rival to the Pharaoh's favourite son. The ambitious prince was afterwards disposed of. In all probability he was executed along with those concerned in the household rebellion. Addressing his chosen heir, the monarch remarks that "he fought the one he knew, because it was unwise that he should be beside thy majesty".

It may be that these revolts explain the divisions of the lines of early kings into Dynasties. Zoser's personality stands out so strongly that it is evident he was a prince who would brook no rival to the throne. His transference of the seat of power to the city of Ptah suggests, too, that he found his chief support there.

With the political ascendancy of Memphis begins the great Pyramid Age; but ere we make acquaintance with the industrial and commercial life in the city, and survey the great achievements of its architects and builders, we shall deal with the religious conceptions of the people, so that it may be understood why the activities of the age were directed to make such elaborate provision for the protection of the bodies of dead monarchs.

From EGYPTIAN MYTH AND LEGEND by Donald Mackenzie

CARYATID PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE OF RAMESSES

CARYATID PILLARS [SIC] OF THE TEMPLE OF RAMESSES III (Medinet Habu-20th Dynasty)

The temple of Medinet Habu in western Thebes was the mortuary temple for Ramesses III. In the first court of the building, seven pillars—the Osirid Pillars—stand in a row, with a statue of the king attached to each. (Strictly speaking, this is not a caryatid pillar—a supporting pillar carved in the shape of a human figure. These figures are attached to a. square pillar which supports the roof.) The statues were badly damaged when the temple was converted into a church. To execute this study, Prisse collected various surviving parts from the seven statues and reconstructed one in its entirety. It shows the king with all the emblems of royal power. The god Amun, sitting on his shoulders, symbolizes "beloved of Amun."

SPIEGEL DER ZEEVAERDT

Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer, Chart of Europe, Leyden, 1586. Chart from the first engraved sea atlas, the Spiegel der Zeevaerdt. Originally published in 1584 in Dutch, there were many editions of the atlas in different languages until 1615.

It would be tempting at this stage to launch into a chapter on the 'Age of Discovery' but we must content ourselves with only a passing reference to the influence of Henry the Navigator and the voyages of the Portuguese southwards down the coast of Africa and subsequently to India, to those of Columbus to the West Indies, of Cabral to Brazil, Cabot to Labrador and to Magellan's circumnavigation of the world, and to the long controversies over the merits and possibilities of the North-West and North-East passages to the Orient. Suffice it to say that in rather less than a century knowledge of the geography of the world changed profoundly, a change which was reflected in the gradual abandonment of the Ptolemaic ideas which appeared in the early printed editions of the Geographia from 1477 onwards. Furthermore, from about the year 1500, the development of improved geometrical methods of survey and the invention of more precise instruments by geographers in Germany and the Netherlands enabled relatively large land areas to be surveyed more rapidly and accurately and, on a wider scale, Gerard Mercator, regarded as the greatest name in cartography since Ptolemy, produced the first map on his new projection in 1569. Publication of Ptolemy's maps continued during the century under many names including Waldseemüller, Miinster and Gastaldi; successive editions contained an increasing number of 'modern' maps until, in 1570, the Ortelius Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, composed entirely of contemporary maps, was published in Antwerp. This Atlas, containing at first about 70 maps, was an immediate success and publication continued through 40 or more editions until 1612, but it was not the only success story of the time. There was extraordinary activity in every facet of map making: Mercator's Atlas in three parts was printed in Amsterdam between 1585 and 1595; also printed there in 1584 was the first Atlas of engraved sea charts De Spiegel der Zeevaerdt by Waghenaer with an English edition in London in 1588 and many editions in other languages; in the Rhineland, there was the superb collection of over 500 town plans in 6 volumes compiled by Braun and Hogenberg, published between 1572 and 1618; and, not least, Christopher Saxton's survey of England and Wales was being carried out soon after 1570 followed by publication of his Atlas in 1579 which set a standard unsurpassed for the best part of two centuries.

THE CATTLE RAID OF COOLEY

The central tale of the Ulster Cycle is the Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cúailnge), which tells of the heroic single-handed defense of Ulster by the young Cú Chulainn. The men of Ireland, led by Ailill and Medb, attack Ulster in order to obtain the Brown Bull of Cúailnge (Cooley peninsula, Co. Louth). Cú Chulainn fends them off by engaging them in single combat, tragically slaying his beloved foster-brother Fer Diad in the process. The Bull is carried off and dies fighting against the White-Horned Bull (Finnbennach) of Connacht. A number of other tales, called foretales (remscéla), purport to explain the events that lead up to the Cattle Raid, although the connection between the foretales and the Cattle Raid is often tenuous. The reason for the inability of the Ulaid to defend themselves is given in the tale Ces Ulad “the debility of the Ulaid.” The otherworld woman Macha is forced to race against the king’s horses while heavily pregnant. She gives birth to twins on winning the race, and as she lies dying she curses the Ulstermen so that they will suffer the pangs of childbirth at times of greatest danger. The origin of the two bulls is explained in De Chophur in dá Muccida (“Of the generation of the two swineherds”). The swineherds of the title transform themselves into various animals to demonstrate their magical powers. When they take on the form of worms, they are swallowed by two cows that subsequently give birth to the two bulls. Another important prefatory tale is “The Exile of the Sons of Uisnech” (Longas macc nUisnig), which explains how various Ulster warriors, most notably Fergus mac Róich, went into exile in Connacht and so accompany Ailill and Medb on the Cattle Raid.

The earliest surviving version of the tale was compiled in the eleventh century from ninth-century material, and the earliest copy is preserved in Lebor na hUidre. This version has been heavily criticized for the lack of unity that results from the presence of different linguistic strata, doublets, variants, inconsistencies, and interpolations. However, the aim of the redactor was scholarly rather literary, and it has been suggested that he deliberately juxtaposed contradictory versions in an attempt to establish the historical facts. In the twelfth century, the tale was revised to produce a more consistent narrative, and this version is found in the Book of Leinster. The story was clearly known long before this, as it is referred to in three seventh-century poems: one attributed to the Morrígain, which is preserved in the Cattle Raid, Verba Scáthaige (“Scáthach’s words”), and a poem by Luccreth moccu Chérai. A later tradition attributes the “finding” of the story to the son of the seventh-century poet, Senchán Torpéist, who supposedly obtained it directly from Fergus mac Róich.

THE DEBILITY OF THE ULSTERMEN

Macha, daughter of Sainrith mac Imbaith, was the wife of Cruinniuc, an Ulster farmer. After Cruinniuc's first wife died, she appeared at his house and, without speaking, began acting as his wife. As long as they were together Cruinniuc's wealth increased. When he went to a festival organised by the king of Ulster, she warned him that she would only stay with him so long as he did not mention her to anyone, and he promised to say nothing. However, during a chariot race, he boasted that his wife could run faster than the king's horses. The king heard, and demanded she be brought to put her husband's boast to the test. Despite being heavily pregnant, she raced the horses and beat them, giving birth to twins on the finish line. Thereafter the capital of Ulster was called Emain Macha, or "Macha's twins". She cursed the men of Ulster to suffer her labour pains in the hour of their greatest need, which is why none of the Ulstermen but the semi-divine hero Cúchulainn were able to fight in the Táin Bó Cuailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley). This Macha is particularly associated with horses—it is perhaps significant that twin colts were born on the same day as Cúchulainn, and that one of his chariot-horses was called Liath Macha or "Macha's Grey"—and she is often compared with the Welsh mythological figure Rhiannon.

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PRIMAL HARMONY

There are still a few places in the world where one can sense what Earth was like before the advent of humans. In the aisles of a tropical rainforest, such as the one that flourishes by the Rio Napo in Peru, there are so many species of trees that often one has to walk some distance before finding the same one twice, and the variety of iridescent butterflies, mantises and other insects is incredible. In a cave under the coastal cliffs of Oregon, open to the breakers of the seemingly changeless ocean, the great sea lions bark clouds of steam above pools where mussels and anemones cling amid a constantly moving throng of crustaceans. At evening in springtime around a desert water hole in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona, bright flowers spice the air as bighorn sheep lower their heads and bats dive to the surface, drinking on the wing. Earth before mankind was a place of abundant biodiversity and of dynamic balance among species and elements.

An environmental history has to begin with the environment. There is a history of the environment before the human species evolved into its present form. Indeed, the appearance of Homo sapiens came only recently in the long story of the Earth’s geology and biology, a story to which many scientists apply the term “environmental history” in a broader sense.

What is the natural state of Earth? This is a question that must be answered before it is possible to understand how the human species relates to, and changes, the natural world. Some early ecologists argued that selected areas ought to be preserved from virtually all human disturbance to show how natural living systems operate when compared with areas that have suffered from various kinds of interference. While it is even more important today to preserve habitats for animal and plant species, it is also increasingly apparent that no place on Earth is really unaffected by human activity; none has escaped such widespread effects as air pollution, intensification in the acidity of precipitation, radioactive fallout, and the penetration of ultraviolet radiation due to the depletion of the ozone layer in the high atmosphere. This means that historians must look to evidence from the deep past to find out how nature operated without humankind, and use that as a baseline or control against which to judge the changes brought about since the beginning of human history.

Contemplating the immense age that Earth had reached before humans appeared may provide perspective. The planet condensed into its nearly spherical shape, seas and continents formed, the phyla of the animal and vegetable kingdoms evolved, and living species evolved ways of interacting with the physical matrix and with each other over hundreds of millions of years. The result was an ecological balance that sustained the conditions for life. Natural laws may, according to the new views of cosmological physics, change as the universe unfolds, but they do not apparently make exceptions for individuals or species. Humans, whose written history has spanned only the last few thousand years, must live within the conditions of the physical and biological universe and take careful account of the balance that is the natural state of Earth.

Ecological balance is dynamic, not static. It operates through change. It is not rest, but harmony in movement. It is not the stable condition of block resting on block in a pyramid, nor the unstable equilibrium of scales where a weight added on one side will bring one arm down and the other up, but the poise of an eagle flying, adjusting her wings to carry her body evenly through shifting currents of air. A living creature allows for changes that come from inner states and outer forces, adapting to sustain its life.

The idea that the Earth is a living organism is very ancient. Such was the intuitive understanding of the earliest people whose thought can be fathomed, the tribal hunters and farmers. They regarded Earth as a mother, and worshipped her as a goddess. Plato and other Greek philosophers maintained that the cosmos is alive, as we, who are among its constituent parts, are alive. In the twentieth century, the atmospheric chemist James Lovelock enunciated a theory that all life on Earth acts together like a great living organism to influence temperature, atmospheric composition, and other physical factors so as to maintain optimum conditions for itself. As the name for this organism, Lovelock selected “Gaia,” the Greek name for the goddess Earth. This idea, called the Gaia hypothesis, is a seminal concept, but should be used critically and carefully. In what sense is Earth alive?

When we look at Earth as an entire planet, it does seem to be alive. Time-lapse films taken from artificial satellites show the great cycles of weather systems streaming like the currents of cytoplasm in a cell. The seas also circulate. Geologists have detected a much slower recycling called plate tectonics, in which the renewal of the sea beds, welling up from under the crust and being swallowed millions of years later by subduction back to underworld places of melting heat, moves the continental masses, splitting and joining, in ever-changing patterns. These look like living processes, and although the seas are, so far as we know, a unique feature of Earth, roughly similar atmospheric patterns appear on Venus and Jupiter, while some of the moons of the outer planets show evidence of plate tectonics, and these bodies are almost certainly not alive in the same sense as Gaia.

It can be maintained with good reason that the entire planet is alive, that just as a body includes seemingly nonliving parts like bones and blood serum, so a living planet includes air, sea, and rocks. Ecological science shows us how animals and plants interact with each other and their environments, forming larger units called ecosystems. Through reproduction, the food chain, and the cycles of elements and energy, in an immensely complex set of relationships, species increase and decrease in number, but the ecosystem as a whole continues. In this sense, ecosystems are organisms, and Gaia, or the biosphere of Earth, is the largest ecosystem. This does not mean, however, that Gaia is an organism in just the same way that the human body is an organism. To explain this, one can look at the relationship between a single cell and the body. Both are alive, but the body is not just a large cell. The body is an immense community of living cells, related to one another in myriads of ways. The whole is greater than the sum of parts. Similarly, Gaia is a community that includes billions of living bodies, but the structure of that living community is much more complex than that of the body, as the structure of the body is more complex than that of the cell. The body is a somatic organism, but Gaia is an ecological organism. Thus defined, Gaia is much more than a metaphor. The physiological processes of Gaia are the interrelationships defined and studied by ecology.

It is possible to examine the natural state of Earth in realistic ecological terms. Though it was undeniably less polluted and more profuse in living things than today, Earth before humans was not a boring Eden. There were sudden and immense changes: volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, forest fires, floods and droughts. The wounds left by these soon healed, as life, often finding the devastated areas enriched by mineral and organic deposits, reclaimed them in the stages of natural succession. Great changes were wrought by the working of the ecological processes themselves. The populations of some species built up cyclically to insupportable numbers, depleting their food supplies, and then suddenly declined. Some species became extinct while others evolved. There were those that, like beavers and termites, greatly altered their environments over large areas. But changes prepared the way for new forms of life. Life was sustainable and, above all, abundant. The air thronged with billions of birds, compared to which the present avian population is a sad remnant. The plains themselves must have seemed to move with herds of herbivores, followed by their predators. Schools of fish silvered the sea, while the great whales rejoiced in numbers unseen in more modern times. Even in the late twentieth century, one could still gain an idea of what the primal state of Earth was like by visiting the savannas of East Africa or bird colonies on isolated islands. Although these regions are still impressive, they have suffered diminution, and some degree of imagination is necessary to appreciate the abundance and diversity of life as it existed before humans evolved.

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INTO THE HAUNTED FOREST

The Travelers Stop Inn stands just off the main trade route on the fringe of the Arthfell Forest. While it does not lie within any particular community, it often becomes a small settlement in its own right when large caravans stop by and attract locals from the surrounding area to view the available wares. As such an important trade site, it falls within the jurisdiction of the nearby Shire of Elberwick and is policed by that district’s sheriff to ensure the peace is maintained and taxes are collected. Despite the Travelers Stop Inn’s long tenure in the area, locals tell of an even older inn deeper in the Arthfell Forest that once served a now-abandoned trade route from the north. Nothing has been heard of that inn or its occupants for several years.

The Forest King Narven ruled over the Arthfell more than two centuries ago. Devoted to a druidic faith, this arboreal kingdom left few traces upon the land when it collapsed in a bloody coup led by the peoples of the southern moors, who sought to embrace the civilization of the surrounding lands. The only survivor of the forest king’s family fled to the depths of the primeval forest after Narven was slain on the field of battle. Generations later, the last descendant of the forest king’s line, a druid named Willowroot, sought out the ancient battlefield where his ancestor fell. He hoped to recover five unique items that once belonged to Narven—the regalia carried into battle by the last forest king, crafted by his druid advisors and supposedly imbued with the elements of nature. These legendary elemental regalia of the king were known collectively as the Panoply of Narven. The panoply consisted of the breastplate of the sacred fire, the wand of earth’s ire, the codex of the firmament, the vial of pure water, and the spirit-staff of Narven. Five years ago, Willowroot succeeded in his quest and unearthed the panoply and chose to re-consecrate it back to the elements from which the items were formed, marking their locations on the monument he raised in remembrance of his ancestor.

After placing the other four items in appropriate shrines, Willowroot carried the spirit-staff to a small inn standing at the center of the Arthfell. The inn, called Spirit of the Wood, was originally founded by a half-satyr as a way to control the encroachment of civilization into the domain of the fey in the wake of the forest kingdom’s collapse, while maintaining friendly relations with the races who sought to pass through the wood. Unfortunately, when Willowroot arrived at the inn he found a band of goblin brigands attacking it. Willowroot called forth the powers of nature to defeat the attackers, summoning a wooden protector, but even its mighty power was insufficient to the task, and the goblins slaughtered the druid and his fey allies. Their sacrifice was not entirely in vain, however, and they managed to destroy all of the goblin raiders save one. This last goblin fled from the inn, terrified of the power of nature unleashed. For years he maintained a low profile and honed his latent magical ability. Along the way, he joined up with a group of mercenaries that he slowly manipulated into trusting him. Now, he is finally ready to return to the lost inn and reclaim the loot he was forced to leave behind.

LOUGH GUR

Irish mythological site.

This small LAKE in Co. Limerick, inhabited for almost 6,000 years, is surrounded by low hills, each of them connected with a goddess or god. Site of the largest extant STONE CIRCLE in Ireland, the Grange, the lake is believed to be an entrance to the OTHERWORLD, a belief common to Celtic lands where water was seen as the dividing line between this world and that of the FAIRIES.

The many legends connected with the lake emphasize a cycle of time, usually seven years. Each time that cycle passes, distinctive events occur. The lake empties of water, and passersby see a tree growing from its bottom, covered with a GREEN cloth; beneath it, a woman named TOICE BHREAN sits KNITTING. The goddess or fairy queen Áine is similarly seen at Lough Gur each time the seven-year cycle ends, as is her enchanted son GERÓID IARLA, born to her after her affair with Maurice, earl of Desmond, who saw her swimming in the form of a SWAN and stole her cloak in order to capture her. As with other such marriages, the groom was put under a taboo by the bride, in this case to show no surprise, no matter what their son might do. Maurice forgot himself when, at a banquet, the now-grown Geróid shrank himself into a tiny being and leaped into a bottle, then out again, resuming his regular size. The moment Maurice called out in amazement, Geróid disappeared into Lough Gur, appearing on its surface as a GOOSE. Every seven years, he emerges from his fairy residence on the island named for him, Garrod Island, and takes on human form as he leaves the lake. He rides a white horse and leads the WILD HUNT across the land.

Other legends tell of a FAIRY HOUSEKEEPER who appears on the chair-shaped ancient monument called the Suidheachan or “housekeeper’s seat” near the lake. The housekeeper once fell asleep when the dwarf harper, Áine’s brother FER Í, stole her COMB (a female anatomical symbol, suggesting the theft might have been a rape), whereupon the housekeeper cursed the CATTLE of the region as well as the dwarf. Fer Í returned the comb, but to no avail, for the CURSE held and he died. The housekeeper, or another fairy woman, is believed to “steal”—drown—a human in the lake waters once every seven years. The lands around the lake are believed to be the territory of the fairy race, who frequently kidnap children from its shores.

Sources: Carbery, Mary. The Farm by Lough Gur: The Story of Mary Fogarty. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937; Croker, T. Crofton. Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. London: William Tegg, 1862, pp. 167 ff; Dames, Michael. Mythic Ireland. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992, pp. 73 ff; Evans- Wentz, W. Y. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe Humanities Press, 1911, pp. 78–79, 81 ff.

BOMARZO: THE ART OF MELANCHOLY

Bomarzo, the most instantly recognizable of Italian gardens, is also the most untypical – indeed it is unique and impossible to categorize. Its weird monsters, giants, gaping mouths and lopsided architecture would seem more at home in the paintings of Salvador Dali or the pages of H.P. Lovecraft than in the peaceful countryside of the Latium. Located near Viterbo, the palace of Bomarzo, at the town of the same name, belonged to the Orsini family, and the garden was created by one of its most eccentric members, Vicino Orsini. Born in about 1516, Vicino grew into a colourful and talented young man who sired a number of illegitimate children before marrying in 1544 the beautiful noblewoman Guilia Farnese. He had a distinguished diplomatic and military career before being captured in battle in 1553 by the forces of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V and held to ransom for three years. Orazio Farnese, his closest friend, was killed in the same battle, and shortly after he was freed from imprisonment his beloved young bride also died. In his grief he became a recluse and began obsessively to build one of the world’s most bizarre gardens.

Why did he create such an extraordinary place? The explanation may have something to do with his friend Cristoforo Madruzzo, a brilliant, worldly aristocrat and Church potentate who lived not far away in the palace of Bagnaia at the town of Soriano. Hansmartin Decker-Hauff, in an essay on Bomarzo, speculates that the two men entered into a kind of competition: Cristoforo Madruzzo set out to create at Bagnaia a garden of beauty, harmony and light, while Vicino Orsini at Bomarzo created one of gloom, disharmony and weirdness, reflecting his melancholy state of mind. However, I would suggest that the explanation is perhaps more complex. There are two opposite approaches to dealing with the condition of melancholy. One is to attempt to banish the melancholy by subjecting oneself to cheerful stimuli. The other is to do the opposite, namely to surround oneself with sad and gloomy things, thus giving oneself a kind of homeopathic dose of melancholy to stimulate a counter-reaction. As an example of the latter approach, the writer Colin Wilson has described how, as a young man, when he returned home from a tedious day’s work feeling depressed, he would retire to his bedroom and read the gloomiest poetry he could find. Inevitably, after a while he would begin to cheer up and be able to put the gloomy reading aside. This method was surely known to the Renaissance, and would provide a convincing explanation for Vicino’s creation of the Bomarzo garden.

It has also been claimed that the figures at Bomarzo, most of them carved out of natural pieces of rock on the site, are alchemical images. Vicino was deeply interested in alchemy and corresponded with the French alchemist Jean Drouet, and certainly a number of the figures could be given an alchemical interpretation. Others, however, appear to have no obvious connection with alchemy.

Probably the most penetrating and detailed study of Bomarzo and its creator is Horst Bredekamp’s Vicino Orsini und der heilige Wald von Bomarzo (Vicino Orisini and the Sacred Wood of Bomarzo), illustrated with wonderfully evocative photographs by Wolfram Janzer. Bredekamp sees much of the meaning of Bomarzo as lying in Vicino’s Epicurean world view, which led him to seek solace in sensual pleasure and the joys of nature and to rebel against the Counter- Reformation orthodoxy of his day by plunging into an extravagant world of the imagination, full of weird and bizarre images. Bredekamp also explains many of the features of Bomarzo as being intended to commemorate Guilia Farnese.

An interesting fictional treatment of Vicino’s life, written in the form of an autobiography and clearly based on thorough research, is the novel Bomarzo by the Argentinian writer Manuel Mujica Lainez. As Lainez portrays him, Vicino created the garden as a kind of inner portrait of himself, a ‘book in stone’, deliberately enigmatic. Writing of the rocks before they were carved, he says: ‘Each rock contained an enigma in its structure, and each of these enigmas was also a secret of my past and my character. I only had to uncover them, to strip each rock of the crust that covered its essential image.’

The approach to the garden of Bomarzo takes one first past two sphinxes, which underline the mysterious nature of what the visitor is about to see. An inscription on one of them reads:

TU CH’ENTRI QUI CON MENTE

PARTE A PARTE

ET DIMMI POI SE TANTE

MARAVIGLIE

SIEN FATTE PER INGANNO

O PUR PER ARTE.

(You who enter this place, observe it piece by piece and tell me afterwards whether so many marvels were created for deception or purely for art.)

Here the word ‘art’ could possibly be taken to mean the alchemical art.

Passing between the sphinxes the visitor comes to a small house, built deliberately so that it leans disconcertingly to one side. Bredekamp sees this as one of the memorials to Guilia Farnese. The pictorial source for the house he identifies as a contemporary emblem book by Achille Bocchi, where a similar leaning building signifies ‘a woman who, with great steadfastness during her husband’s absence at war, preserves the family house from collapse’. More strange images follow: a huge scowling face with a gaping mouth leading to a cave (perhaps the most famous of Bomarzo’s features), an androygne (possibly an alchemical image) being held upside down and ripped apart by a giant, a mermaid with two tails (again an image found in many alchemical treatises), a dragon attacking a deer, a giant tortoise carrying a globe surmounted by a female figure with a trumpet, and numerous other marvels.

Possibly the creation of the garden served many purposes – part memorial to Vicino’s deceased wife, part therapy for melancholy, part autobiography in stone, part collection of alchemical symbols, part mannerist experiment. The sculptures lay forgotten for centuries, gathering moss, until in the twentieth century they began to attract the attention of art historians, artists and writers. The writer Manuel Mujica Lainez has already been mentioned. The artists that the garden has inspired include Niki de Saint Phalle and the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali, who incorporated some of its images into his paintings and who was once photographed holding a candle and talking to a white cat in the jaws of Bomarzo’s largest monster. The spectacle perhaps drew a wry smile from the ghost of Vicino Orsini.