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| "Waiting in the Forest" © 1903 by Edward S. Curtis |
It has been almost a year since I last contributed a Folkroots column to this magazine, and in that time my own life, due to a long illness, has followed the cycle of the seasons: autumn's decay, winter's hibernation, the slow greening of spring. Having spent many months in the muffled Underworld that is part of a physical disability, myths of descent and resurrection have a particular resonance for me right now — yet I began this column a year ago, before I was aware that my own road was about to lead sharply downward. Myths have a way of doing this, whispering at the edge of consciousness in the stage of life when they're needed most. This is one of the most important roles such stories fulfilled in ancient societies, aiding in times of darkness, change, and to mark major rites of passage. In an earlier time, it wouldn't have taken a magazine deadline to bring these myths to my attention — but rather, a medicine man, shaman, or herb-wife, consulted when my illness first appeared, might have sat me down and told a story similar to this one, from the mountains of northern Mexico:
There was a young girl who married an old, old man, who used her ill. He worked her hard, beat her, starved her, and cast her off when she gave him no children, leaving her in the desert with no food, or water, or shelter. The young wife hid in the meager shade of rocks by day when the sun was fierce. By night she walked, crying, for she could not find her way home. The nights were cold. Wolves prowled the hills and carrion birds followed after her. She was hungry, thirsty, weary, and she walked till she could go no further. Lying down by a wide, dry wash, she wrapped herself in her long white skirt. She said, "Let La Heusera (the Bone Woman) take me, for I am spent." She died. Wild animals ate her flesh. Her spirit watched over the white, white bones and knew neither sorrow nor fear.
The bones lay in that secret place until the moon was full once more. And then La Huesera came and put them all in her woven sack. The old woman took the bones up to her cave high in the mountaintop, then laid them out beside her fire. She sat and smoked. She smoked and thought. She smoked and she thought for a long, long time, and then she began to sing. "Flesh to bone! Flesh to bone! Flesh to bone!" the Bone Woman sang, and before too long the bones knit back together, covered in flesh. Where the girl had once been red and rough, now she was soft and smooth and plump. Her skin was as gold as daylight and her hair as black as night. La Huesera sang and sang. She blew a puff of tobacco smoke. The young woman's eyes flew opened, and she sat up and looked around her.
The cave was empty. The ashes were cold. The old Bone Woman had disappeared. All that was left were tobacco seeds, and she put them in her pocket. She left the cave and started for home, following the rising sun. She knew she'd find her village walking this way, and so she did. She came upon her dwelling at last. The place was dark, deserted now. "That old man has died, that poor wife has died. Come away from that place," the people said, for they did not recognize the lovely young woman who came to them out of the west. They gave her a name, a fine set of clothes, a new dwelling place, a goat, and a hen. They taught her human speech, for she had forgotten all that she knew. She planted La Huesera's seeds and tended the new plants carefully. In time, she married, and gave her young husband many gold-skinned daughters and black-haired sons, and her children's children's children still grow tobacco in that village today.
There are different
versions of this basic story found in cultures the world over, particularly
among the oral tales associated with healing rites. In the literal way
we approach old folk tales and fairy tales in our modern world, it might
seem just a simple "where tobacco comes from" story or even
a Cinderella variant: a mistreated girl is made beautiful, marries, and
lives happily ever after. (I can picture the Disney version already, complete
with a singing-and-dancing La Huesera.) I have no abusive husband, and
certainly didn't come through a year of illness with sudden supernatural
beauty. So why would this tale apply to my recent journey through the
dark woods of illness? Let's look at the tale again, as an ancient curandera
(healer) might look. It doesn't really matter how the girl came to find
herself in the desert — the Mexican equivalent of the mythic greenwood
— for any life change or calamity can trigger events that lead into the
dark. (Hansel and Gretel's parents abandon them there, Beauty takes her
father's place in it, Donkeyskin chooses the dark unknown to escape a
more dreadful fate.) The point is that she's there, alone, walking by
night, miserable, in extremis, removed from the normal rhythms
of life … and thus ripe for transformation. It is in the darkest hour
of need that the guardian figures in folk tales appear, waiting by the
side of the road as the hero stumbles by. In this case, our guide waits
long indeed — she waits until the hero is dead. (It is notable that as
the young woman surrenders to her fate, all fear and sorrow leave her.)
Like folk tale crones who are fairies in disguise, La Huesera, scavenger
of bones, is salvation cloaked in an unlikely form. The old woman carries
the bones to a cave in the west, the place of the dead. Dead to her old
life, if not to the world, the girl's spirit lingers, watches, and waits.
Her patience is rewarded as her broken body is fashioned anew.
This "ritual death" is similar
to shamanic initiation rites found in tribal cultures around the world.
The initiate, in a state of trance, journeys into the spirit world —
where his body dies, is shorn of flesh, and the bones are picked over
by spirits who are then persuaded (if all goes well) to sew them all back
together again. (If the ceremonial procedure fails, the initiate can die
in this trance-state.) In this story, too, the young woman can be seen
as a shamanic initiate. She lies down wrapped in long white cloth, the
color of initiation. She leaves her body, returns to it, and finally becomes
"twice-born," emerging from the cave (the womb of the Mother
Earth) with a sacred gift for her people. When she returns to her village,
she is literally a new woman. She is given a new name, a new dwelling,
and must learn to speak all over again. This, too, is common in initiation
ceremonies found the world over. In one West African tribe, for instance,
the initiate drinks a sacred brew which causes him to lose consciousness,
whereupon he is taken into a special place deep in the jungle. When he
wakes, he has forgotten his past, and must be taught to speak, walk, and
feed himself. Returning to the tribe, he comes with a new name and new
role to play.
The safe return from the jungle, the forest,
the spirit world, or the land of death, often marks, in traditional tales,
a time of new beginnings — new marriage, new life, and a new season of
plenty and prosperity enriched not only by earthly treasures but those
carried back from the Netherworld. Thomas the Rhymer, after seven years
in the woodlands of Faery (in old Scottish tales), returns to the human
world with the gift of prophesy, the "tongue that will not lie."
Merlin returns from his time of exile and madness in the forests of Wales
with magical knowledge and the ability to speak with the animals. Odin
hangs in a death-like trance for ten days from the world-tree Yggdrasil,
and comes back with the secret of runes from the dark land of Niflheim.
The hero of our story has also survived a great ordeal, a rite-of-passage
from a barren life into one of great fecundity — symbolized not only
by marriage and children, but also by the precious tobacco seeds she brings
for her people. To a modern audience, tobacco might seem a strange gift
to appear in a healing tale since we now associate the plant with addiction,
cancer, and death. Yet tobacco was once a sacred plant used only for ritual
purpose and prayer — particularly as old, ceremonial strains had hallucinogenic
properties. (Some tribal elders say that its casual use for non-religious
purposes is what makes it so harmful today.)
Rites-of-passage stories like the one above
were cherished in pre-literate societies not only for their entertainment
value, but also as mythic tools to prepare young men and women for life's
ordeals. A wealth of such stories can be found marking each major transition
in the human life cycle: puberty, marriage, childbirth, menopause, and
death. Other rites of passage, less predictable but equally transformative,
include illness and injury, divorce, the loss of one's home, or the death
of a loved one. With any sharp change or calamity, one can find oneself
deep in the woods (an image, in Jungian psychology, which represents an
inward journey). Rites-of-passage tales point to the hidden roads leading
out of the dark — and remind us that at the end of the journey we're
not the same person as when we started. Ascending from the Netherworld
(that grey landscape of illness, grief, depression, or despair), we are
"twice-born" in our return to life, carrying seeds — new wisdom,
ideas, creativity, and fecundity of spirit.
During the winter months, still sequestered
in bed, I came across Alan Garner's strange and brilliant collection of
essays, The
Voice That Thunders — an autobiographical look at mythology,
rural England, and fantasy literature. Garner is the author of The
Owl Service, Elidor,
The
Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and other classics of our field. In
his essays, he examines the things that formed him as a writer and a man.
One of these was an intense relationship with the land on which he was
born (where Garners have lived for generations): the Alderley Edge in
Cheshire, rich in myth and history. Another was the childhood illness
which kept him bedridden for several years, bringing him face to face
with death. During this time, the boy taught himself techniques (similar
to shamanic rites) enabling him to travel outside his body and to alter
the flow of time. In his essays, Garner speaks frankly about his journeys
into another world reached through the plaster ceiling over his bed —
and the myths he studied later in life which gave words to his youthful
experiences. "I have often been asked," he says, "whether
that childhood made me a writer. If I had not had the encounter with my
death and the Damascan road provided by the Edge, would I have been granted
the vision needed in order to write? If I had not been born with the stamina
of will and the bloody-mindedness required of all writing, should I have
meekly accepted the doctors' diagnosis? All I can say is that many writers
have been only children, and have suffered long and life-threatening illness
in isolation from human company."
He goes on to speak of a rite-of-passage
less individual, but equally formative: a childhood spent during World
War II, years of blacked-out windows, short rations, shrapnel in the road
and bombers overhead. "My wife," Garner writes, "claims
to find, in recent children's literature, little that qualifies as literature.
She asked herself why this should be, after a Golden Age that ran from
the late Fifties to the late Sixties. And she found that generally writers
of this Golden Age were children during the Second World War: a war raged
against civilians. The atmosphere these children and young people grew
up in was one of a whole community and a whole nature united against pure
evil, made manifest in the person of Hitler. Parents were seen to be afraid.
Death was a constant possibility. . . . Therefore, daily
life was lived on a mythic plane: of absolute Good against absolute Evil;
of the need to endure, to survive whatever had to be overcome, to be tempered
in whatever furnace was required. . . . Those children
who were born writers, and would be adolescent when the full horrors [of
the concentration camps] became known, would not be able to avoid concerning
themselves with the issues; and so their books, however clad, were written
on profound themes, and were literature. The generation that has followed
is not so fueled, and its writing is, by comparison, effete and trivial.
Susan Cooper, an exact contemporary of mine at Oxford, has said, 'I know
the shape of my imagination, and all its unconscious preoccupations, were
molded by having been a child in the war.' "
There is, unfortunately, truth in Garner's
characterization of much current fantasy fiction, although I certainly
hope we don't require a war to produce fine writers in the coming generations.
What we do need is to remember that fantasy (even more than other
kinds of fiction) is a rites-of-passage literature — whether its themes
are based on collective battles or on private, individual ones. The best
fantasy is rooted not only in myth but in life experience — while the
worst draws experience second-hand from film, television, and other books.
Our field is plagued with mediocre tales inspired by Tolkien's masterwork,
for instance, while ignorant of Tolkien's source material — his extensive
knowledge of European myths, history, theology, and languages, and his
experience of a war that threatened the land and the life he held dear.
Attempting to re-create Tolkien's world view through, say, a middle class
American suburban upbringing, is nothing short of ridiculous — and the
painful results are evident on all too many bookstores' shelves. As fantasists,
we must look to the quests, ordeals, and trials that form (as Susan Cooper
says) the shape of our own imagination and all its unconscious
preoccupations. Through myth, symbol, and metaphor, the true fantasist
transforms the personal into the universal — creating stories that not
only entertain but provide the mythic tools we need to face the ordeals,
the monsters, the wolves, of our modern age.
"I see much current fantasy and science
fiction in full retreat from real human needs," writes Ursula K.
Le Guin (in Dancing
at the Edge of the World, a collection every aspiring fantasy
writer should read). "Where a Tolkien prophetically faced the central
fact of our time, our capacity to destroy ourselves, the present spate
of so-called heroic fantasy, in which Good defeats Evil by killing it
with a sword or staff or something phallic, seems to have nothing in mind
beyond instant gratification, the avoidance of discomfort, in a fake-medieval
past where technology is replaced by magic and wishful thinking."
These kind of books (no titles are needed,
we all know the ones she is talking about) have, at best, but a cursory
knowledge of myth, folklore, and epic myth cycles — usually gleaned second-hand
from other works of modern fiction. Magic in these books operates like
science, or car mechanics, or a cake recipe: follow the manual and it
works like this when you push the button. Yet the magic of our
human heritage, formed by centuries of stories, dances, songs, sacrificial
ordeals and ritual acts, is evoked, not manufactured — the science lab
is not going to help us here. Magic is a symbol, a metaphor, an integral
part of a mythic belief system — and of the mage, or shaman, or storyteller's
relationship with the numinous world. Take myth away, and the magic in
a fantasy book is nothing more than special effects, or Le Guin's phallic
staff of wish-fulfillment. The myth is the magic, moving us through
the dark, through the fire, flaying flesh from bone. By following the
myth to its end, the hero of the tale, and the reader, and the writer,
all participate in the final rebirth — putting us back on the road to
the east with tobacco seeds in our pocket.
One of the most difficult journeys we face
in our lives is also the most universal: the one that forms our transformation
from child to adult. In many tribal societies, this transition is marked
by elaborate ceremonies symbolizing the death of the child-self, reborn
into adulthood. The male puberty rites of Aboriginal tribes in Australia,
for example, are harrowing. The boys are abducted by older men, carried
away from their mothers, who weep and wail over the "death"
of their sons. Isolated, the boys endure weeks of fasting, feats of physical
endurance, prayer, instruction, and ritual circumcision. "Underlying
the Aboriginal world view," notes folklorist Robert Lawlor, "is
the belief that people only reach fruition by accepting the risk and adventure
of continual death and rebirth. In the Mardudjarra language, the novice
murdilya (uncircumcised boy) is named bugundi after being
circumcised as part of his puberty initiation. The word bugundi
is formed from the combination of bugu, death, and yudirini,
both being born and returning. The word bugu is applied to women
during pregnancy, childbirth, and menstruation, indicating that women,
by their very nature, continually participate in the initiatic experience."
The female puberty rite is less extended and far less arduous, reflecting
Aboriginal belief that women participate in the Mysteries naturally throughout
the course of their lives whereas men must be laboriously inculcated with
this special knowledge. At the onset of menstruation, a girl is secluded
in an isolated hut built by her mother or grandmother, and visited by
older women who instruct her in women's rites and traditions. Although
there are ritual taboos on what she can eat or touch at this time, the
menstrual cycle is not considered unclean by Aboriginal people as it is
in other parts of the world (in parts of Africa, Asia, and some Native
American tribes) where women "on their moon" are considered
a corrupting influence. To the Apaches, by contrast, a young girl's first
blood is a cause for tribal celebration. An elaborate feast and dance
ensues, with rituals to petition the spirits to gift the young woman with
four basic things: physical strength, good disposition, prosperity, and
a healthy old age. The four days of the dance are arduous ones for the
young initiate, but she is sustained by the power of Changing Woman (one
of the great founders of Apache culture) whom she embodies during the
ritual. The "Vision Quest" is another ceremony used to mark
major life transitions and common to many different tribes. The length
and form of the ritual varies from region to region, but generally one
goes to an isolated spot on a hill or mountainside where one prays, and
sings, and "cries for a vision" over the course of four days
-- abstaining from all food, water, or sleep for the duration. The physical
difficulty of the ordeal puts one into a highly receptive state, breaking
down the usual barriers between human perception and the world of the
spirits. The bar mitzvah ceremony is the male puberty rite of the
Jewish faith, marking the beginning of the fourteenth year and a new role
in the community. Christian baptism in another rite-of-passage, generally
performed on newborn babes (who remain in grave danger of fairy mischief,
according to Irish lore, until the rite is complete) — but in some Christian
sects, baptism occurs in adolescence at the threshold of adulthood.
The rich tradition of adolescent rites-of-passage
myths is equaled by a wealth of modern fantasy tales with coming-of-age
themes. We see this particularly, of course, in the field of Young Adult
fiction — in which the works of Alan Garner stand out among the very
best. Other books of note include Susan Cooper's The
Dark is Rising sequence, Lloyd Alexander's "Prydain"
series, Madeleine L'Engle's A
Wrinkle in Time, Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, Robin McKinley's The
Blue Sword, Diana Wynne Jones' Fire
and Hemlock, Martha Brooks' Bone
Dance, and the haunted tales of Robert
Westall. Ursula K. Le Guin's extraordinary "Earthsea"
books and Joyce Ballou Gregorian's under-rated "Tredana"
trilogy are notable for starting out as adolescent coming-of-age stories
and then moving far beyond to the trials and quests of mature adult life.
Other excellent coming-of-age stories can be found on the adult fantasy
shelves, including Patricia A. McKillip's gorgeous The
Riddle-Master of Hed, Midori Snyder's enchanting "Oran"
trilogy, Jane Yolen's folkloric Sister
Light, Sister Dark, Caroline Stevermer's delightful A
College of Magics, Richard Bowes' brutal Minions
of the Moon, Will Shetterly's poignant Dogland,
and the homespun American lore of Orson Scott Card's The
Seventh Son. On the mainstream shelves, you'll find beautiful
books weaving folklore into coming-of-age tales set in the modern world
-- in Linda Hogan's stunning new novel Power;
Heinz Insu Fenkl's haunting Memories
of My Ghost Brother, Seamus Deane's Irish tale Reading
in the Dark, Brian Hall's hilarious The
Saskiad, and Alfredo Vea Jr.'s rich Yaqui/Chicano story La
Maravilla, all highly recommended.
Marriage is another time of transition surrounded
by ceremony and myth — best evoked, in contemporary fantasy fiction,
by Smokey's marriage to tall Daily Alice in John Crowley's Little,
Big. Childbirth is represented in numerous mythological tales
-- from virgin and other miraculous births (found in traditions all over
the world) to more treacherous conceptions (such as that of King Arthur's
son, Mordred; and of Arthur himself.) Soulstring
by Midori Snyder is a fantasy book in which childbirth is an integral
part of a magical rite-of-passage, based loosely on the Scottish ballad
"Tam Lin," with its bold pregnant heroine. Parent-and-child
relationships are explored in the myths and fairy tales of every culture
around the globe. In modern fantasy fiction, I recommend Song
for the Basilisk by Patricia A. McKillip, Through
a Brazen Mirror by Delia Sherman, The
Winter Prince by Elizabeth Wein, and The
Dubious Hills by Pamela Dean. Menopause is rite-of-passage rarely
tackled by the average fantasy novel — yet Tehanu
by Ursula K. Le Guin (the fourth book in the "Earthsea" quartet)
and The
Great Wheel by Joyce Ballou Gregorian (the third book in the "Tredana"
trilogy) provide strong portrayals of the changes that mark older men
and women's lives. Death is another subject rarely dealt with as a primary
theme — yet Le Guin, once again, does not shy away from any of life's
major passages, and her "Earthsea" series (the third book in
particular) explores this one beautifully.
Despite the fact that magical storytelling
is one of the oldest of human art-forms, as a genre the modern fantasy
novel is young indeed. Most contemporary writers came into the field in
the post-Tolkien years of the late Seventies and Eighties — and were
young at that time, writing for audience that was equally youthful. This
is reflected by the number of stories that have focused on coming-of-age
material as opposed to older rites of passage. "Now my generation,"
Ellen Kushner has noted (interviewed in Locus magazine), "we're all
hitting late-thirties to mid-forties. Our concerns are different. If we
stick to fantasy, what are we going to do? Traditionally, there's been
the coming-of-age [novel] and the quest which is the finding of self.
We're past the early stages of that. I can't wait to see what people do
with the issues of middle age in fantasy. Does fantasy demand that you
stay in your adolescence forever? I don't think so. Tolkien is not juvenile.
It's a book about losing things you loved, which is a very middle-aged
concern. Frodo's quest is a middle-aged man's quest, to lose something
and to give something up, which is what you start to realize in your thirties
is going to happen to you. Part of the rest of your life is learning to
give things up."
In traditional rites-of-passage tales, it
is often our whole identity and our whole way of life we must learn to
give up in order to make it out of the woods, and to knit flesh and bone
back together. Like Ellen, I look forward to reading these "middle-aged"
tales as the fantasy genre matures — for the dark roads don't get less
perilous, nor do they get less interesting. And when we survive them,
we return from the west with new seeds, and new stories to tell.
"Literature exists at every level of
experience," writes Alan Garner. "It is inclusive, not exclusive.
It embraces; it does not reduce, however simply it is expressed. The purpose
of the storyteller is to relate the truth in a manner that is simple:
to integrate without reduction; for it is rarely possible to declare the
truth as it is, because the universe presents itself as a Mystery. We
have to find parables; we have to find stories to unriddle the world."
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About the Author: Terri Windling is a writer, artist, and editor, and the founder of the Endicott Studio. For more information, please visit her Endicott bio page. Copyright © 1999 by Terri Windling. This article appeared in Realms of Fantasy magazine, 1999, and may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written |
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