My study of myth has been influenced by French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, especially his Structural Anthropology, the section entitled "The Structural Study of Myth." I have put my own spin on his work, seeing myths not only as mediators between conflicting social or religious concepts, but as analogous with genes. A body's genes (and a culture's myths) evolve by addition, subtraction, recombination, and mutation, and those that do not serve, or that debilitate, are lost when the body or the tribe that contains them dies. Those that enhance or maintain the tribal body's survival are passed on.
Myths evolve. They are kept and retold, or discarded and forgotten, as the needs and natures of societies change. Saint Augustine, an early revisionist, realized in the Fifth Century that it was not enough to eradicate pagan myths and the practices that sprang from them, so he suggested that every holy pagan tree should be made into planks for a Christian shrine, every sacrifice replaced with a Christian feast, andby extensionevery pagan myth with a very similar saint's tale. This dynamic, changing mythic fabric is the framework for The Sacred Pool, the first volume of The Sorceress's Tale.
Myth is not history, though some historic tales serve as normative myths; evaluating a myth for historic accuracy, or worse, debunking and rejecting it on historic grounds, is akin to rejecting gold coins because their pouch is frayed.
Because I am "cautious" (though arguably less despicable than Gilles), I have chosen to tell of old myths indeed and, like the Jewish scholars, have written a midrash, a tale intended to elucidate without dry and lengthy argument.
Such tales are dangerous. They flesh out austere principle and pristine reasoning with appealing, unfounded details that work themselves into common belief. When did angels, beings of fleshless light, grow feathers? When did Leviathan become a toothed sea mammal? At what age did God's salt-and-pepper beard turn white? In the interest of maintaining the boundary between myth and deliberate fiction, and of making excuses for myself as well, I have prepared the following notes.
Myth and Perception
The Sacred Pool contains two "mutating" myths. The Tsigane version of Sara and the saints is from Claude Clément's wonderful children's book Contes Traditionelles de Provence, and represents either the iconoclastic extreme or the earliest, least-changed myth. The more conventional version is recounted briefly in the Michelin Green Guide to Provence.
Saint Giles's story, the Visigoth version, is from Clément also. The variation Pierrette first recites is the "accepted" one. Pierrette's last, pre-Christian tale evolved from my own realization that its common elements are widespread in Celtic, Gothic, and Germanic tales, individually redacted as Saint Giles in Provence and Saint Godfric in England. Guihen l'Orphelin and Jean de l'Ours are authentic Provençal folklore heroes, but their roots in an earlier Celtic or even Proto Indo-European tradition are wholly my own suspicionyet myths seldom emerge without context. In the sense of The Sorceress's Tale, all are valid, because all have shaped perception and, as Breb would say, "Seeing is believing."
Breb and his people, who exist nowhere but on the pages of this book, were created to elucidate that important Medieval absolute: that what we can know of the universe is only what we can see through the door of perception, and that all perceptions are realwhich they are, in one sense. The masc who eats amanita mushrooms and nightshade feels like she is flying, and when she arises sober from her bed, her subsequent actions are influenced by what she saw and did when she flew.
The voice of Godheard as crosstalk via the corpus callosum between the two halves of a prophet's brain, or as words issuing from a stone, a sacred pool, or a burning bushare not ignored by history; wars have been fought over them, and great religions have arisen. They have shaped our modern, skeptical world.
Chronology
The Sorceress's Tale may begin a few decades after the Battle of Poitiers in 732 A.D., or just before Harold Bluetooth espoused Christianity, around 965 A.D. The early Middle Age was monotonous in Provence. Common folk little cared who ruled in Aix (Aquae Sextius), Arles, Paris, or Ravennaand cared little more just who raided, raped, and killed them, whether Saracen, Christian, Magyar, or Viking. The results were the same. Times changed only imperceptibly.
Aam's people painted the chambers of the Grotte Cosquer between 25,000 and 16,000 B.C.; the animal paintings probably date from the later years, the traced hands from the earlier. At present the cave's only entrance lies under 120 feet of water, beneath the Calanque de Sormiou.
Thera's eruption in 1628 B.C. establishes the beginning of Minho's reign. Extensive Minoan ruins have been excavated on the broken island, source of the Atlantis myth. Biblical accounts of pillars of smoke and fire, and shifting seabeds, arguably tectonic phenomena, date from the reign of Sesostris, Rameses II, and thus fall forty-odd years before the radiocarbon-dated destruction of Jericho by soldiers equipped with Egyptian arms. Thus do myth, oral history, and modern science converge, to the detriment of none.
The apostoli landed at Saints-Maries-de-la-Mer no later than 40 A.D. Magdalene pursued her mission in Lugdunum (Lyons), then lived in her cave for thirty-three years. Maximinus heard her last confession and buried her, and was himself surely buriedand Lazarus and Martha and Cedonius as wellby 90 A.D.
Places
There is no fortress atop Cap l'Aigle (the Eagle's Beak) west of La Ciotat, Roman Citharista, but waves lash the foot of the cliffs, and friable conglomeritic rubble would have crumbled in a hundred years, let alone a thousand. The Roman quays are covered in concrete. The spidery towers of the Black Time loom over La Ciotat, but there is talk of removing them, because the naval yards are closed, and an expanded marina would bring tourist revenue. Will their removal signify that Pierrette has at last won her battle, and the Black Time will never be?
The "Roman fountain" is on Michelin Map 245, but the sacred pool is not; it lies behind a veil of confusion, and you would walk by unknowingly near the shoulder of Highway D3. The unusual occurrence of a wet-climate, northern beech and maple forest among the scrub oaks and pines of Provence is patterned after the Sainte-Baume valley a few miles to the north of the sacred pool, where the towering cliffs that house Magdalen's cave shade the ground, and springs moisten it.
The dragon's bones lie bleached and exposed just north of highway D141, above Le Ciotat. The thousand-foot cliffs Pierrette measured are a few miles further on. Poor Ant'ny's red blanket and cart are (on this side of the Veil) a red automobile blown off the road by the terrible winds.
The loveliest calanques are just east of present-day Cassis; bring lunch, water bottles, and a sturdy hiking stick, because the trail is just as rough and sere as when Pierrette walked it.
In the fifteenth century two bays were added to the fortified church at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and the newer stone of restoration and addition is lighter and smoother than the old. The Camargue is still magical, though much tamed.
Massalia is buried beneath modern Marseille, and only scattered ruins remain; one can part the veil of years briefly while walking the short stretch of Roman stone road between the gate towers, where Pierrette entered the town.
Maps
I have taken few liberties with mountain ranges, coastlines, or known human settlements, but I have not shown towns that play no part in the story. The Roman road from Massalia to Aquae Sextiae existed, as did the Via Julia Augusta between Aquae Sextiae and Arelate. I have renamed the Via Domitia Via Tiberia, for reasons that will become apparent in Volume II of The Sorceress's Tale, The Veil of Years. The east-west road on Map 1 is my whim, but surely existed, at least as a trail.
In recent centuries the rivers of Provence have been constrained within their defined beds, but that was not always so. The Crau Plain was once the delta of the Druentia (Durance), which emptied directly into the sea. The lower Rhodanus (Rhone) itself has shifted many times within the memory of man; I chose to show it in its present bed, which is no less likely than any other: the very existence of Camargue indicates that at one time or another the river flowed over every hectare of the vast delta, and the "main channel" could have been anywhere, in Pierrette's time. Sea levels were higher once. Arelate had direct access to the sea when it was founded; Marius's canal was an attempt to maintain it as a port, not to create one. Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer has been an island off and onbut I wanted Pierrette to ride there on a horse.
Languages
Languages shape us, and we shape them. Changes can be confusing. If I say bhagos in Proto Indo-European, and you hear bhergos in some early Indo-European tongue, the tough beech table I order may be made of brittle birch instead. If I say "Reed Sea" and you say "Red Sea," my Moses will get across, but your Pharaoh will drown.
Provence is rich in languages. Ligures are the first folk whose name survives. They maintained an identity even after successive invasions of Indo-European CeltsSegobrugii, Anatilii, Dexivates, Verucini, Deciates, Ligauni, Salluvii, and othersand may have spoken a Celtic dialect (or a non-Indo-European tongue, as did the Etruscans, and as do the Basques of today). Latin, Celtic, and Greek had not diverged far from their common Indo-European root in 200 B.C., but were no longer mutually intelligible by Pierrette's time, when French, Italian, Spanish, and Provençal were becoming distinct.
That Aam's Magdalenian or Aurignacian speech was Proto-Ligurian is not much less likely than the known relationship between Lithuanian and Sanskrit, two millennia and thousands of miles apart. The pace of change was slow throughout prehistory.
Written characters (hieroglyphics, syllabaries, or alphabets) are not always consistent with spoken tongues. The Celts used anybody's alphabetEtruscan, Greek, Latin, and Iberianso it is not a stretch to write Pierrette's horrible spell (spoken in bastard Proto Indo-European) in Mycenaean syllabic characters.
I played fast and loose with words, because people did so then, and do now. It is impossible to say just when Proto Indo-European pa became Latin pater, which became French pere, Spanish padre, English and Italian papa. We know that Greek Massilia and Roman Massalia became modern Marseilles, and Aquae Sextiae Calvinorum (122 B.C.) became Aix-en-Provence (1997 A.D.), but what form did a particular name or word take in 1000 A.D.? I have freely used Proto Indo-European, Latin, Gaelic, modern French, and interpolated variations, wherever I wanted to.
Religion
Anthropologist Edward Wilson suspects that the capacity for faith is hardwired; I do not doubt it. I had trouble with Faith until, in a kind of epiphany, I realized it was qualitatively no different from the "willing suspension of disbelief" that writers and editors worry about. "O Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief."
The Sorceress's Tale is allegorical; the growth of Satan as "Eater of Gods" parallels his growing role over several millennia of religious thought. In early books of the Old Testament "a satan" is a common noun meaning "adversary"or "lawyer." In later books, "The Satan" was a titleThe Adversary. In the New Testament we find Satan, an individual with a proper name, portrayed as attractive and compelling, not ugly or deformed.
When Christianity spread among Gauls and Germans, Satan gained his "modern" appearance when priests told converts their old gods were aspects of the Deceiver. Satan indeed "ate" the older gods, and took on their attributesPan's cloven hooves and a satyr's impressive member, Cernunnos's horns and a long, dragonlike tail. The poor chimaera! How far bright Lucifer had fallen!
My assumption that "underground" pagan worship flourished in Provence 750-950 A.D. has two bases. First, a Diana cult survived into the nineteenth century in the hills of the Ligurian coast. It turned to Satan worship when eloquent priests convinced the stubborn folk they had been worshipping the Deceiver all along. Second, Provence has been home to every imaginable cult and heresy, from Albigensians to Zoroastriansand still is.
That Reikhard, a Burgundian of Germanic descent, might hold beliefs we recognize as Celtic, reflects both the miscibility of traditions and confusion of the two peoples by early historians. Today we think of peoples as concrete entities, but it was not always so. The Ostrogoths, "classic" Germans, arose from Celtic, Germanic, Scandic, and Hun roots, and came to power as kings in Italy.
My portrayal of an easy relationship between Christians and pagans only seems strange in light of the "publicity" that purges and religious conflicts have generated; years or centuries of relative peace lie between the persecution of Christians under Nero and Diocletian, between early purges of Mother-cultists and the American colonial witch trials. I contend that religious persecutions correspond with political and economic polarizations.
Saint Augustine lived during a critical period when great "heresies" threatened to fragment the Pauline Church just as Minho of the Isles wished them to, and when hitherto remote Gothic tribes (and their beliefs) became near and familiar. Needless to say, Augustine is historic; Anselm and the Hermit are not. Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul is loosely based on ibn Battuta and other Arabic-speaking travelling scholars of later centuries.
Fantasies, like "heresies," often avoid theodicy, the question of the origin of good and evil, and opt for Gnostic philosophies: a Good force and an Evil one created the universe, and have been squabbling over it ever since. That avoids the paradox of good God having created the world's evils. It puts all the responsibility on us humans to save the daybut doesn't it ultimately mean that both good and evil gods are irrelevant?
Augustine, as Father Otho tells the priests at Saintes-Maries, resolved the paradox by reasoning that God was good, but that by giving us free will, he had no choice but to allow us to sin, and that evil thus stems from human choices. Otho partly confuses Augustine with his archenemy, the druid-influenced Gallic bishop Pelagius, whose Latin name translates to "Myrddin" (Merlin) in Celtic, and whom Pierrette will meet in a future tale.
The point of his confusion is that ordinary Christians often espouse beliefs theologians consider heretical. Does that really matter? The Arian heresy divided nations, but who really understands the distinctions between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? "In their hearts," said a pastor friend of mine, "I think most of my congregation are Arians."
The Sorceress's Tale need not be a Christian story. Gilles is saved by Grace of a Christian God, Pierrette by her motherthe Motherand there are pagan stones built into the Christian edifice. If we humans have created Evil, we have done it by drawing lines in the sand with ourselves on one side and Evil on the other, by setting conditions for worship, salvation, redemption, and rebirth, and by making rules about where prayers, spells, and pleas for intercession go, when they are uttered.