Stories surrounding the rocks

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, rocks, minerals, stories, legends, surveys

This is a shelf of my own Lapidarium (rock collection), chosen for its variety. If you click on the image you can see a larger version.

As a rock collector I have eclectic tastes. Here are minerals, fossils, sliced-and-polished geodes, and a few crystal clusters that were grown in a jar (such as the deep blue at bottom center: copper sulfate, which occurs in nature in very arid regions as the water-soluble mineral chalcanthite).

The word "lapidarium" is quite obsolete, but is found, very fittingly, in the title of a recent book, Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones by Hettie Judah. Ms Judah writes primarily about art, particularly the stories surrounding artworks; here, the artworks are natural stones and modified stones.

Sixty stones, loosely so-called, are surveyed in six sections, with the themes Power, Sacredness, Evocativeness, Technology, Sculpture, and Life. Life? Consider Coral. In a game of Twenty Questions, the answer to the obligatory opening question, "Animal, vegetable, or mineral?" is "Yes" or "All". The polyp animal, bearing symbiotic algae in its tissues, secretes a mineral skeleton. The deep red skeleton of precious coral, so sought after by kings of old, is colored by pigments derived from the algae. You can only get away with this once.  The Life section also mentions Pearl and Blue Lias; the latter is a heavily fossiliferous shale on England's Jurassic Coast. A few examples from the other sections:

Power: Powerful people like gemstones such as emerald, ruby and sapphire. Note that ruby and sapphire are both corundum (aluminum oxide), with different minor impurities that confer their colors. So this is clearly not a mineralogy book. I firstly thought that Old Red Sandstone was an odd choice; it turns out that the famed Stone of Scone, where Scottish kings were anointed, is a big block of Old Red Sandstone.

Sacredness: Pele's Hair, a type of spun glass from volcanic lava fountains, is sacred to the Hawaiians. Sarsen is silicified sandstone (much tougher than the usual calcite-cemented sort) that makes up the larger stones at Stonehenge. Cinnabar, or mercury sulfide, is a bright red mineral that was used to make scarlet pigment for cosmetics and the clothing for royals and ecclesiastical officers (and poisoned a number of them). Tuff was used to form the Moai, the standing sculptures on Rapa Nui (AKA Easter Island). I must mention that, while the article mentions a study in 1997 of moving one of the statues using ropes, a sledge, and banana-juice lubricant, the moai actually "walked". See this 2013 video. It is a clip from a longer presentation.

Evocativeness (the section is called Stones and Stories): Lapis Lazuli, translated "azure-colored stone", was also a stone of power, but later became better known as the source of Ultramarine pigment for the intense blue and indigo colors in paintings of the great masters. Phonolite Porphyry is a "ringing stone" that makes up the substance of Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Tap a piece with a smaller stone and it will ring like a gong or bell. So will most of the Dolerite stones that make up the inner circle at Stonehenge, and there is a field of ringing stones in eastern Pennsylvania.

Sculpture: Gypsum (usually as alabaster), chalcedony, onyx, and crystalline quartz are among the stones favored for carving and sculpting into artworks. Red Ocher, a mix of red hematite and other iron oxides, may have been used for art tens of thousands of years ago, both as a pigment and as a material to sculpt.

Technology: Flint may be the basis of the oldest technology, that of making edged tools of stone by knapping; the article is mostly about a modern flint knapper who became so skilled, many museums have his counterfeits on display. Obsidian may be equally old, but its occurrence is not as widespread. Lodestone, magnetic ferrous (Iron II) oxide, appears to have a nearly 1000-year history as an aid to navigation. Coltan, an ore containing niobium (columbium) and tantalum, is still in heavy use for electronics. Mica, particularly the clear, colorless form called muscovite (named for Moscow), was used for oven door windows because it is heat resistant; in such a use it was called Isinglass.

This is a fun, well-written book, not about rocks per se, but about stories about rocks.

Becoming the archetypical Wizard

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, history, legends

The brief version is this: In about the year 540 AD, twins were born near where Glasgow lies today. Their names were probably Langoureth, a girl, and Lailoken, a boy. The twins were scholarly kids, very bright. In her teens, the girl was married to Rydderch (sometimes called Roderick), who became king of Strathclyde, an area from Partick (now a suburb of Glasgow) northward. At about the same time, the boy was sent into battle, where he did not distinguish himself, but at least survived. He was a scholar, not a fighter, and came under the training of Druids, who were the intellectuals of the time. Though his sister became an outward Christian, he never strayed from the "old ways".

A turning point in Lailoken's life was his participation in the disastrous battle of Arderydd, 573 AD. He is said to have gone mad with grief, and at least he self-exiled to the woods north of Partick for about seven years. During those years, his sister, now queen, met him a few times in the woods, and eventually he was persuaded by emissaries of king Rydderch to return to court. Among those emissaries was one Mungo, a "Christian" priest (I use those quotes advisedly), who was nothing if not a psychopath in his hatred of the Druids and the old way. It must have galled him to "make nice" to the king's Druid brother-in-law. The two fought one another for decades.

One attempt by Mungo to surmount Lailoken's opposition was to accuse the queen of adultery. Though the accusation was true, the king was tolerant and unwilling to judge her. Her brother brokered a deal to save her and shame Mungo. Mungo, now revered as St. Kentigern, patron of Glasgow, went for about thirteen years to Rome, from which he returned with great authority and riches bestowed by Pope Gregory the Great. In his absence, Strathclyde prospered.

By the year 600, the twins were sixty years old, the "Mungo Christians" were gaining in power, and Lailoken retired, a pensioner of the king, to a hilly area west of Partick. There he had built, among other things, what people thought of as a great hall with seventy doors and seventy windows. It was probably a wooden henge, built in a circle, used by the old Druid for astronomical observations. He had a large staff to keep his records and assist his studies. During this time he was again considered a madman.

In 612 AD Mungo died, the king died, and the queen retired to her brother's complex. A rival king, known today as Mordred, had taken over the Dunipace area next to Strathclyde in 596. Rydderch's younger son Constantine was briefly king of Strathclyde, but turned out to be the Scottish Caligula and was deposed.

War with the Angles was looming, and Mordred summoned Lailoken to Dunipace to arrange some kind of truce between the Christian forces and those of the old way. He was briefly imprisoned and starved to induce compliance, but did not submit. He tricked his way to freedom and returned to Partick. However, in about 618 AD he was asked to return to Dunipace, and along the way, was assassinated at Mordred's command, instigated by his wife, who hated the old Druid even the more. He was hastily buried near the place he was ambushed, on a hilltop some 30 miles from Glasgow. The hill is no longer there. It was gradually removed in the 1830s to make a quarry for road building stone. A single grave was discovered during the excavation, containing bones and, oddly enough, rotted papers in a jar.

We don't know this man by his given name today. For much of his life he was called a madman, and the nickname stuck. A common Gaelic word for madman is Myrddin, with the "dd" having a soft "th" sound. Over time, that sound shifted to an "L" sound, and we know him today as "Merlin."

This is a summary of the content of Finding Merlin: The Truth Behind the Legend of the Great Arthurian Mage by Adam Ardrey. Historian Ardrey had a hard job: a thousand years of labor to hide Merlin's true nature and history, and to move both him and Arthur hundreds of kilometers to the south, have yielded a written record in which reading between the lines is a bit like uncovering Troy; the archaeologists had to dig through a dozen later cities to get a few artifacts of Homeric age, and the author of Finding Merlin had to dig away religious romance, hagiography, anti-Druid prejudice, and sundry miracle stories to unearth the sparse facts that limn the remarkable old Druid.

Sadly, I must comment that the author uses terms like "this sound like that" and "it must be supposed" in such profusion that the book would be a quarter shorter without them. I'd prefer that he state once, like Sherlock Holmes, "Once you have excluded the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth," then get on with straight narrative.

Why have I written nearly nothing about Arthur? Primarily because Ardrey is at work on the title Finding Arthur, and the only clue I can offer at this point is that Arthur, a military genius of Napoleonic stature, lived but 37 years before being betrayed by Mordred and killed in 596 AD. The modern portrayals of both Arthur and Merlin are composites, as are most of the other figures in the stories.

What has made Lailoken/Merlin the prototypical wizard? Why is he not forgotten like the rest of the Druids? In spite of the best efforts of medieval Catholic writers, his character could not be completely hidden. None of them can make a credible claim that he ever converted, though there are a very few overly fantastic stories to that effect. But as the brother-in-law to a powerful king, and for a short while an advisor to a great general who is now thought of as a king also, and as a leading scholar of the first two decades of the Seventh Century, he became a figure that could not be ignored.

Yet he was no lightning-throwing mage. People tend to think of Merlin these days as a cartoonish figure like the one shown here. Many even profess to wish that such things could have some reality. I don't know about you, but I am very, very glad such powers are beyond the reach of mere humans.

The powers of the medieval-romantic Merlin were much more restrained: primarily a facility with herbal remedies and the ability to prophesy, though he had the Cassandra-like curse that he was seldom believed.

The real abilities of Lailoken were founded in scientific knowledge and a keen understanding of human nature. When he retired, a few years after the death of Arthur, he could see the writing on the wall; fanatical "Christians" were growing in power, the king was aging, he himself was weakening and had never been much of a warrior anyway, and the likely successor to the king was a psychopath as evil as Mungo. By retiring away from the citified areas, he placed himself in the protection of a popular majority of non-Christians, who revered him as a scholar of the old ways.

So, by one means or another, once the story of Arthur was romanticized (and moved a lot closer to London), his trusted advisor had to become a figure of similar majesty, and the romantic wizard "Merlin" was created (the "madman" meaning had been forgotten).

In reality, I suspect Merlin/Lailoken looked a lot more like this old photo of John Muir. He enjoyed the woods as much as Muir did, and for similar reasons he opposed the encroaching cities that have, in the centuries since, seen the removal of all the old forests.

The popular imagination has turned Merlin into a Gandalf or Saruman, or even an avuncular Dumbledore. Were he around today, Lailoken would be a professor of geology or astronomy, dragging telescope or gravimeter hither and yon in an unending quest to find out what makes the universe tick. It's nice to see a scientist make good.

I just had a by-the-way thought: The new PBS series, "NOVA ScienceNOW", stars a favorite writer of mine, Neil deGrasse Tyson, who likes to wear a vest with alchemical and astrological signs on it. He, a real scientist, is taking advantage of Merlin's image also, and I reckon he knows it. I wonder if he knows just how deep his kinship with Merlin really is.

Seismic Survey

kw: speculation, myths, legends

In posts on 2/20/09 and 2/26/09 I speculated about what is the real nature of a grid on the seafloor that some think is Atlantis. Since then I have taken just a little time to snoop around looking for other seafloor artifacts that may be related.

This image shows the traces of seismic surveying located on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, one of the most thoroughly surveyed regions of the sea floor. (click to see a larger image with more clear traces showing.) The survey was "3D Seismic", which records low-frequency sonic reflections from sub-seafloor rocks. The sonic data can then be used to calculate a three-dimensional model of the configuration of the rocks to a depth of several miles. It is a powerful exploration technique, and as you can see, it chews up the ocean floor rather thoroughly.

The location of this area is 28°45'N, 88°30'W, at a depth of 7,160 ft, or 2,180 m (By contrast, the "Atlantis" pattern is found at a depth of about 17,900 ft, or 5,460 m). Considering that the area shown is about 50 miles wide by 30 miles north-south, the traces are about a half mile apart.

If the "Atlantis" pattern is a sonic survey of some kind, it is much looser, and the source was quite a bit more energetic. Possibly whoever did it was looking for much deeper targets than what is shown here in the Gulf.

Sinking Atlantis, again

kw: legends, myths, lost worlds

Remember this image? Similar images, purported to be Atlantis, are everywhere now. I posted about it a few days ago, asking, If it isn't Atlantis, what is it? My own speculation is that it is the trace of a seismic or sonar survey, or perhaps trawling. That is the position taken by most commentators. The Bits Blog at the N.Y. Times reports on Google's debunking of the Atlantis idea.

Two things come to mind, however. There are many sonar and seismic surveys done, often over equally large areas. The ocean floor ought to be marked up like the wall of a house inhabited by artistic toddlers. I've done some looking around, and so far I haven't found anything similar.

But it is hard to get an idea of the scale of this thing. It is 120x120 km, or 75x75 miles. I clipped an image of the Los Angeles area at the same scale for comparison.

It takes a couple hours, or more if there is traffic, to drive from Oxnard to Oceanside or San Bernardino. A 120x120 km square takes in from Lancaster to Irvine and Santa Monica to Riverside. That's a lot of territory. Though the "Atlantis" image looks like a city laid out in blocks, the blocks are big. Each one is about the size of Anaheim or Pasadena.

It's worth while looking for more traces on the ocean floor. I don't know why this one formation off Africa should be unique. I am pretty sure the formation was caused by something towed behind (and below) a ship.

If it isn't Atlantis, what is it?

kw: legends, myths, lost worlds

I heard about this on "Late Night" early this morning. This image, from Google Earth, is located on the sea floor at coordinates 31°20'N, 24°22'W. It is thought by some to be the remains of Atlantis.

Note: I have enhanced this image, by stretching the contrast and lightening, to make the formation easier to see (though it is quite evident without the processing).

Whatever this is, it is large, about 120x120 km (75x75 mi). The "blocks" are thus about ten km wide (E-W), ranging down to half that, and several km in the N-S direction. The width of the lines that look so much like streets is actually greater than the width of most city blocks.

Could there really be an Atlantis? Atlantis was called a Continent by Plato, though the word was not so precisely defined then as it is today. He compared it in size to Asia, by which he meant the peninsula occupied by modern Turkey, AKA Asia Minor. Asia Minor is about 600x2000 km (370x1200 mi). The feature pictured here could represent a major metropolitan area, as it is larger than the Los Angeles metro area. But let us note that the sea floor here, in the abyssal plain, is composed of oceanic crust. It has been sitting right where it is now for millions of years.

It'll be interesting to follow this story…

Those ain't love bites

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, vampires, history, legends, myths

It is with good reason that I eschew vampire stories and films. Rationalist I may be, and a Christian mystic as well, yet there is an irrational core in all of us; I find myself much too easily influenced by the sexual-occult realms of the undead.

Wayne Bartlett and Flavia Idriceanu, two researchers working in Romania, waded through a great mass of folklore, literature, and filmography to produce Legends of Blood: The Vampire in History and Myth, which chronicles he bloody archetype and its enduring allure. Vampire stories touch some of the deepest chords in our psyche. The idea of a vampire ignites images of the most intimate predation, something a huge step worse than mere rape.

Fairy tales and ghost stories all have archetypical messages: what would I do if I were the abused stepchild, or the damsel in distress, or a demon's prey; what would I do if I were a giant, a dragon, a stepmother, or a ghoul? Would I abuse power in the same way (probably); would I be as resourceful—or as lucky—as these victims (probably not)?

Every culture has its blood-sucking monster, from the Babylonian labartu to the ghoulish kasha of Japan and the seductive lamiae of the Romans. "The blood is the life" is not only a biblical pronouncement; it has its corollary in every language. For all animals, at least, from mosquitos to whales, when the blood is removed, the life ends. Whatever attacks our blood, by analogy, attacks our soul (this accounts for the particular resonance of AIDS, which gradually corrupts the blood within the body).

I read through the book as quickly as I could. I wished minimal influence, but to gain insight nonetheless. In thirteen (of course) chapters, the authors discuss the vampire history and its connections with other magical creatures, particularly the way a vampire combines aspects of the ghoul, the seducer, and the magus. We may have many folkloric monsters – the list of legendary creatures from any culture numbers a hundred or more – but the vampire brings elements of all the worst ones together, to become our most fearful adversary and predator.

While vampires appear in some ancient literature, it is just in the past 130 years that a vampire genre has appeared. The creature that Bram Stoker conjured with his novel Dracula partakes of the entire history of the European subconscious, mining psychogical depths common to us all, and either thrilling or terrifying us all. Nearly forty films (dramas, comedies, spoofs, deep horror, and a bit of porn) are based just on this one book; many, many more are based on about forty distinct vampiric traditions.

The second-largest vampire tradition after Stoker's is Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" books (12 to date) and films. Compared to Dracula, Rice's Lestat is even smoother, more cosmopolitan, and much more terrifyingly evil...and he is not the worst of them. In more modern stories, vampires don't inhabit gloomy castles in far-off forests. As Dracula felt he'd find better hunting in London, so more modern vampires flood to the cities, and in some story series, such as the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, they are taking over the world.

The vampire is the ultimate bogeyman.