Post by Rion on Jun 17, 2010 9:21:34 GMT -1
The following is an account, recounted by a druid to a Roman traveller in Britain in 1 BC, of his purported conversation with a river spirit, describing how Rigantona established some order in the chaotic world. I feel, and you may disagree, that many of the presences that are often named 'spirits of place' were not always tied to one particular spot, beginning rather as some form of nature spirit, and becoming attached to one place for one reason or another. It is also my UPG (again, disagreement is actively encouraged) that these spirits, being of the land, will feel a certain affinity for the Lady of the Land, and indeed may even be in some way her children. Anyway, enough wittering, on with the story.
In the beginning, we were spirits without form. We clad ourselves only in running water, in living mountains, in growing fields and in spreading forests. We wore the winds like cloaks, stone like armour, and glaciers like icy corsets. We had no words for things like these, actually no words at all, and we lacked even the idea for what we did, putting things on and taking them off, slipping in and out of them.
Words came later. Similes came later. They had to wait for the mouths and bodies of your kind.
The world was wild in those days when we were naked, and full of things wilder even than our unchained spirits. Many great and terrible things roamed it: massive things, destructive things. Giants reshaped the world to their whim, the gods fought to impose order, while crawling, oozing things sought to undo it. They fought; they all fought, among their own kind as well as with each other, while the Grey Lady worked quietly among them. She took what they used as weapons and what they discarded without thought and wove them into the rhythms of the world. She delved into the chaos and found the most useful patterns within it, the accidents of harmony and the islands of stability, and she created them within the world.
We were her quick and nimble fingers in those days, her darting thoughts, racing ahead and working her will, weaving ourselves into the new pattern of things.
The fiery explosions, the colossal quaking, the thunderous bolts and the torrential deluges that had been the improvised weapons of a cataclysmic war were tamed by us. The things that might have torn the world asunder became part of it. What once was destructive grew functional.
Our efforts seemed futile while the war raged on around us, undoing much of what we did… much, but not all. We paid as little heed to the conflict as we could. Eventually, it ended somehow. I like to think that our reshaping of the world helped bring it to an end; that our work made less room for the chaos to crawl in, less space for the whims of giants and the arrogance of gods.
There are still giants in the remote corners of the world. Their lesser kin are as innumerable as any mortal creature. The titans of the chaos without still cling to this place where they can.
They made life together, the gods. They took the best and most stable things they found in the chaos and made new forms from it: simple, slimy things that closely resembled the base stuff from whence it came at first, then larger and more complex forms. There were birds that flew through the air with us, and deer that bounded through our woods and fish that swam in our streams. They were soldiers in no one’s army. They fought to advance no cause.
They lived and died. Endlessly. They lived endlessly. For the first time ever, the world lived. Can you understand how beautiful that was? How joyful? From chaos, our Mother had woven… not exactly order, but something that could sustain itself. What had once been a fiery chariot of war was now a beacon of light and life that would keep the whole thing going as long as nothing upset it.
And for us? We were now too deeply bound into the flesh of the world to slip in and out of it as we had before. We were not disembodied spirits of mountains and springs and fields, but of a mountain or a field. I had become what I am now: a river spirit, guardian of a current. I have sisters who tend the tides and keep the waves. I am in communion with them, through the body we share.
Originally, our forms all reflected our true natures, as mine still does – you see me as a body of water within the water, all swirling currents and foam – but many of my sisters, such as those who guard the glades or watch over the fields, they are now no more than a presence, a presence that is gone when humankind destroys the places they protect. And that is the greatest sadness of all.
In the beginning, we were spirits without form. We clad ourselves only in running water, in living mountains, in growing fields and in spreading forests. We wore the winds like cloaks, stone like armour, and glaciers like icy corsets. We had no words for things like these, actually no words at all, and we lacked even the idea for what we did, putting things on and taking them off, slipping in and out of them.
Words came later. Similes came later. They had to wait for the mouths and bodies of your kind.
The world was wild in those days when we were naked, and full of things wilder even than our unchained spirits. Many great and terrible things roamed it: massive things, destructive things. Giants reshaped the world to their whim, the gods fought to impose order, while crawling, oozing things sought to undo it. They fought; they all fought, among their own kind as well as with each other, while the Grey Lady worked quietly among them. She took what they used as weapons and what they discarded without thought and wove them into the rhythms of the world. She delved into the chaos and found the most useful patterns within it, the accidents of harmony and the islands of stability, and she created them within the world.
We were her quick and nimble fingers in those days, her darting thoughts, racing ahead and working her will, weaving ourselves into the new pattern of things.
The fiery explosions, the colossal quaking, the thunderous bolts and the torrential deluges that had been the improvised weapons of a cataclysmic war were tamed by us. The things that might have torn the world asunder became part of it. What once was destructive grew functional.
Our efforts seemed futile while the war raged on around us, undoing much of what we did… much, but not all. We paid as little heed to the conflict as we could. Eventually, it ended somehow. I like to think that our reshaping of the world helped bring it to an end; that our work made less room for the chaos to crawl in, less space for the whims of giants and the arrogance of gods.
There are still giants in the remote corners of the world. Their lesser kin are as innumerable as any mortal creature. The titans of the chaos without still cling to this place where they can.
They made life together, the gods. They took the best and most stable things they found in the chaos and made new forms from it: simple, slimy things that closely resembled the base stuff from whence it came at first, then larger and more complex forms. There were birds that flew through the air with us, and deer that bounded through our woods and fish that swam in our streams. They were soldiers in no one’s army. They fought to advance no cause.
They lived and died. Endlessly. They lived endlessly. For the first time ever, the world lived. Can you understand how beautiful that was? How joyful? From chaos, our Mother had woven… not exactly order, but something that could sustain itself. What had once been a fiery chariot of war was now a beacon of light and life that would keep the whole thing going as long as nothing upset it.
And for us? We were now too deeply bound into the flesh of the world to slip in and out of it as we had before. We were not disembodied spirits of mountains and springs and fields, but of a mountain or a field. I had become what I am now: a river spirit, guardian of a current. I have sisters who tend the tides and keep the waves. I am in communion with them, through the body we share.
Originally, our forms all reflected our true natures, as mine still does – you see me as a body of water within the water, all swirling currents and foam – but many of my sisters, such as those who guard the glades or watch over the fields, they are now no more than a presence, a presence that is gone when humankind destroys the places they protect. And that is the greatest sadness of all.
)
Far more succinct than I.