Tree in the Door's Fauna and Flora: Harlech, Wales

Friday, December 18, 2015

Harlech, Wales

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...

Well, here's a notion that I'll lay out as simply as I can, and then reference a few things that complicate it really fast!

Robert Graves has it that in the Stone Age, religious awe was inspired by women giving birth, so much so, that for a long time, well into the bronze and early iron age, religious rituals celebrated women...then came along agriculture, technological inventions, and the strength of arms in warfare became all important, and religious rituals celebrated men, which is pretty much how things are now...so, Graves sees this transition from matriarchal tribes to patriarchal tribes, and something was lost in the transition, that regard for women and birth and birth's sacredness...and there's this sentiment that in the Stone Age people lived in harmony with Nature as Hunter Gatherers...don't know but when the Spanish happened on the Indians of California, they happened on the Stone Age just as Graves' suggests...the climate of California is much like Greece...and the tribes here and there were Acorn eaters...and the Indians lived in harmony with Nature...and what happened is the Spanish horsemen arrived, just like once the Centaurs came to Thessaly, and the rest is California's early history...in parts of the world, like the Western United States, Australia, the Stone Age is not that far back...and it could be argued that these tribes not knowing how to work with anything more complicated than stone, were living in harmony with Nature for just that reason, and connecting this harmony with a religious awe of women and birth might seem just a sentimental sentiment...Nature's harmony was going along fine for millions of years before the arrival of the tribes, and in places one can find that harmony still in place...ecosystems untouched by the tribes...and that is the age beyond the Stone Age, and in truth, likely the age Graves, and many, are reaching for...the long age when the Earth didn't have people...and I can't find Graves' using the terms, ecosystem, or, ecology, and yet, I'd say, anyone reading about his notions of the Goddess, and the return of the Goddess, would say, 'oh, he's writing about the Earth reasserting her harmony, her ancient ecology!'...terms like ecosystem and ecology are kind of new...Richard Nixon made NOAA in 1970, and Apollo 11 gave us the first full on photo of the Earth from Space...

Robert Graves Ecology

In the last chapter of the book he talks about the suppressed desire of Western people for the return of the goddess and foretells ecological disaster if it is postponed, for the longer it is:

"… and therefore the more exhausted by man’s irreligious improvidence the natural resources of the soil and sea become, the less merciful will her five-fold mask be, and the narrower the scope of action that she grants to whichever demi-god she chooses to take as her temporary consort in godhead."

Sunday, 27 March 2011

True Poetry and Ecology: The White Goddess Revisited

http://musingsfromgellifach.blogspot.com/2011/03/true-poetry-and-ecology-white-goddess.html

As a child, Graves spent time at a family home on vacations at Harlech, Wales...nearby was a ruined Castle, and mountains, and seashore...it was a wild place...it was his favorite place...when he moved to Majorca it was because Majorca reminded him of Harlech...I found a little notation that a zinc mine, or zinc mining, was nearby Harlech...

"unheeding the ancient deities wrath called down by Mr. Robert Graves..."