In which British military intelligence promotes skepticism in Ireland by lying about black magic

Richard Jenkins has just published a book, Black Magic and Bogeymen, showing how a British military intelligence division deliberately fabricated evidence of black magic and satanism for the purpose of social control and to vilify Irish paramilitary organisations.

The tactics seem to have involved:

1. Tapping into pre-existing beliefs in the local population. Without this vulnerability to exploit, the attempt would have come across as merely comical.
2. Planting false evidence of witchcraft or satanist events and rituals. In itself, this is little better than schoolkid pranking, but they were able to back it with authority (see below).
3. Leaking false stories of black magic or satanic rituals or beliefs to the press. I suppose they were able to get away with this because the press treated them as a trustworthy source, and the public were willing to trust the press!
   
   There's a moral here: certainly, these are slanderous, exploitative means and I doubt they justify the end, but until such time as they can be curtailed, skepticism seems like the only defense.

PS: It's sad that having had its five minutes of fame, Black Magic and Bogeymen has quite a few accessibility faults: it's expensive, there are no previews and no electronic versions. I think I'd rather enjoy reading it if some of that could be fixed.

Other stories about malicious fabrication of supernatural incidents:

In which Pastor Ezeugwu uses an angel to promote witchcraft belief in Nigeria.

How not to debunk an idea

Warning: this is a rant and consequently, it has a nasty tendency not to follow its own advice.

A certain number of articles I've read over the past year or so have annoyed the hell out of me. They have ideas to debunk, and their modus operandi is as follows:

1. Spend 80% of the article telling the readers what the author imagines they think.
   a) often get it wrong as far as many people are concerned,
   b) often focus on out-of-date or eccentric ideas, espoused only by those who are ignorant of the subject.
2. Then spend 20% of the article telling the readers why they're wrong.

This is a bad idea, worse than that, it's probably a cover for writers who need to make copy. Or even worse, it's just a form of super-trolling. At best, it's egocentric and lazy: anyone who can't quote an individual, publication or statistic in support of what they imagine 'everyone' thinks may well be the only one thinking it*. Let's face it, if an idea is truly universal, writers don't need to dwell on it. If most people believe the Earth is roughly spherical and someone wants to present exciting new evidence that it's actually cylindrical, why waste words on telling 'everyone' how wrong they are for having thought it was flat? Debunking for fun and profit is an excellent venture, but it doesn't sit easily alongside the promotion of new ideas. 

There are actually some very good reasons for this. Linking a belief, perhaps a loosely or unconsciously held one, with a reader's sense of self makes it harder for them to change their mind - although linking a belief which is probably false with any social group the reader may identify with (by religion, race, nationality, etc.) is worse. In fact it's such a stupidly ineffective thing to do that words fail me!** It strongly encourages readers to associate themselves with, and defend, the belief the writer has just proposed to them, rather than consider the evidence for the new one. At best, they are likely to find the writer manipulative and obsessive. The most effective way to introduce people to a new belief is to draw as little attention as possible to any contradictory ones they may hold. If this results in them experiencing a little cognitive dissonance, writers had best come over all discreet and let them deal with that by themselves. It's an inevitable part of the change process.

So much for readers who do hold a belief to some extent. Readers who don't may justifiably feel their intelligence and/or education has been insulted. Alternatively, they may take the writer to be ignorant and lose their respect for him or her. Or, if they're the nasty type, they may feel encouraged in their sense of superiority towards all those other pitiful readers who have allegedly bought into the debunked idea***. In all of these cases, the debunker's writing is the epitome of what the word 'divisive' means and being divisive for the lulz makes the perpetrator a troll and a waste of space.

Footnotes:

* Laziness and vague quoting of sources: at least the phrase 'a certain number of articles' doesn't imply they all do this. Nor does it posit writing such articles as the systematic behavior of any individual or class of persons. I may start naming and shaming individual cases at some point if I feel like it, but in the meantime, if you haven't noticed any, feel free to assume I have a bee in my bonnet.

** More laziness and lack of proper evidential support: as even Wikipedia would say, 'citation needed'. I'm pretty certain citations are available but I couldn't be bothered to find any right now.

*** If you don't fall into one of the four or five categories of reader enumerated here, this just isn't about you okay? Perhaps it just means you're not a real reader anyway, have you thought of that? Maybe you should just consider yourself lucky I didn't write this post as though you were practically bound to be the wrong sort of writer. In fact, I avoided writing most of it in the second person altogether, but I ran out of self-control by the time I reached this footnote.

The CEO of Microsoft brings us magical thinking on how to get a raise

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, has just made himself famous by responding to a question about how women should ask for raises thusly:

It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along. 

Sadly, Nadella reveals the all too common belief that he lives in a social system which is inherently and basically fair, barring exceptional abuses. Despite the fact this is probably a fundamentally human psychological response, shared by those it serves and those it penalises, no idea could be easier to call into question. A look through any history book will show that fair social systems are far from being the norm. It's rather incumbent on a system which considers itself the exception to prove its case. Here, it seems doubtful, and Nadella's remarks add to my suspicions for reasons I'll explain below. We're not finished with his superstitions yet:

To make matters worse, Nadella enjoins others, especially the likeliest victims of unfairness to inaction by referring to a spiritual belief about the self-correcting properties of social systems:

Not asking for raise, he added, was “good karma” that would help a boss realise the employee could be trusted and should have more responsibility.

It doesn't really matter whether he means 'karma' in the Hindu sense of the word or the Californian New Age sense because either way, no such thing exists - our social systems are not self-correcting, people don't automatically get what they deserve, and in this case, it isn't 'the system' which hands out rewards, it's people*. People like Nadella who make discretionary choices.

Taking Nadella at face value, one leaps to the conclusion that as a boss, he has a distaste for obvious ambition in his staff. He prefers employees of all genders to patiently do their assigned jobs to the best of their abilities, while he observes them and singles out the cream of the crop for promotion. If they seem too 'grabby', he has said, he will be disinclined to trust them and it's easy to imagine he might pass them over for promotion on those grounds.

So what are ambitious female employees left with? Pure faith that Nadella will not overlook them because not one fibre of his being fails to envisage women as normal and natural managers of divisions or future CEOs!!

Well... I would hate to hold him to a standard few have attained, but in any case, it's just so unusual to hear the CEO of an IT company decrying ambition. I would love to get into an alternate universe, find Nadella and ask him unawares how men should ask for a pay rise... or employees in general. I'm finding it rather difficult to have faith that I would have got the same answer. I suspect pushy women make Nadella uncomfortable whereas un-pushy women will indeed go unnoticed.

* On the other hand, I sincerely believe that where the Windows operating system is concerned, our society has got exactly what it deserves. I admit that whenever it crashes, my personal karma must be the cause, since there has never seemed to be any other good reason.

Opt-in or opt-out on organ donation: the right thing to do should be the default thing to do

For a while now, I've been wanting to begin a series of posts I'm calling Magic Society, on the subject of magical thinking with regard to social issues (the politically correct term is non-evidence-based thinking). The name Magic Society is derived from the UK Conservative government's Big Society, a scheme to bring about adequate government of a large and complex system by 'integrating the free market with a theory of social solidarity based on hierarchy and voluntarism.'

My kick-off post is just what it says, a little reflection on how to optimize a tiny part of our society, saving lives in the process. 

Since organ donation has become so successful, we are all aware of the difficulties of long waiting lists for transplants. I just signed a Change.org petition to ask the UK to switch to an opt-out system, which means people would be considered willing donors unless they've specifically indicated they don't want to be. There are ongoing campaigns to bring about opt-out systems in the US and Australia as well.

Since it seems kind of obvious that organ donation is the right thing to do, I thought I would like it to be the default. The problem is that nobody wants to mistakenly take the organs of someone who would have opted out, but somehow failed to make their choice known (just as so many of us fail to make our preference for being donors known). It might seem we could address this with an extensive public information campaign, special liaisons with religious groups likely to opt out, and so on, but I think there would inevitably be accidents and oversights.

It seems to me that the real 'right thing to do' is to make sure everybody has a declared preference and that their choice is accessible to medical professionals at points where it will be needed. That would mean a single organization (probably the NHS) actively soliciting that choice from everyone in the country, double-checking it from time to time, and making sure it appears on identity documents most people are likely to have (or make it accessible by other means).

It's a system that would be easier to arrange in some countries than others. Unlike some state health systems, the NHS has rather given up on prevention and prefers to see most of us as little as possible, making it hard for them to collect information from us. Since the British are very resistant to carrying identification cards, we can't push for the relatively easy and inexpensive solution of getting this information displayed on them. We certainly don't want to rely on multiple organizations to hold this information: a driving license authority here, a medical insurance there, because of the risk of people giving different choices. The right default involves a single authority soliciting everyone's decision and allowing them to change it at will. This could be one of those situations where a lack of existing social infrastructure forces Britain to hover between two non-optimal solutions - meanwhile, people die who didn't need to ...

How to make magic water

I've been meaning to write another long how-to post for weeks. Here are just a few of the many, many ways to make magic water. All of them are quite unnecessary, but they're worth ploughing through because there's a party political broadcast at the end.

HOW TO MAKE HOLY WATER IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC TRADITION

Lots of people have used lots of different ways for sanctifying water, but it was Catholic holy water I got asked about so I'm focusing on that one. Back in the old days, Catholic holy water was accounted a substance with real magical powers, so potent that it was kept locked up to stop it falling into mischievous hands. One of the interesting things about the Catholic Church is that a lot of what they did was straight-forward magic and they wanted to retain a monopoly on this magic. Their tactics included: writing everything down in Latin so people couldn't understand it, claiming that good magic could only be performed by their qualified practitioners, and that all other uses of magic were bad and should be pursued and punished.

That's why it doesn't matter how well you know the ritual for making holy water, it won't work for you unless you're a Catholic priest. And priests don't get their powers just by knowing stuff and going through a ceremony. That's also magic, and can only be transmitted to them through the rite of ordination, in a chain of transmission that connects them all the way back to St Peter and to Christ himself. There is not supposed to be any way of 'stealing' this power, although you could go ahead and become a bad priest and then misuse it. But, if you're not a priest, first you need to get one, and once you've got one, this is what he'll do/would have done:

1.  Exorcise all the dark forces out of some salt.
2. Appeal to God to bless the salt and make it holy.
3. Exorcise all the dark forces out of the water.
4. Appeal to God to bless the water and make it holy.
5. Add the salt to the water and stir thoroughly. 

The exorcisms very much take the form of magic spells, since they address the substance directly and assume the priest holds within himself the power to bring about the desired effect. Here is one for salt (see a complete but slightly different version of the rite from 1964):

For contrast, this is one of the rites of the
Eastern Orthodox Church, which I didn't
have time to write about.
The Consecration of Water on the Theophany
by Boris Kustodiev, via Wikimedia Commons.

O salt, creature of God, I exorcise you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by the God who ordered you to be poured into the water by Eliseo the Prophet so that its life-giving powers might be restored. I exorcise you so that you may become a means of salvation for believers, that you may bring health of soul and body to all who make use of you, and that you may put to flight and drive away from the places where you are sprinkled every apparition, villainy, and turn of devilish deceit, and every unclean spirit, adjured by Him Who will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire.

The blessing of the salt or water to make it holy depends on God, but it's assumed that he'll honor the priest's requests as a matter of course. While reciting the prayer and the exorcism, the priest will also make the magically powerful sign of the cross over the substance. This is the prayer for water:

O God, Who for the salvation of mankind has built Thy greatest mysteries on this substance, water, in Thy kindness hear our prayers and pour down the power of Thy blessing into this element, made ready for many kinds of purifications. May this, Thy creature, become an agent of divine grace in the service of Thy mysteries, to drive away evil spirits and dispel sickness, so that everything in the homes and other buildings of the faithful that is sprinkled with this water may be rid of all uncleanness and freed from every harm. Let no breath of infection, no disease-bearing air, remain in these places. May the wiles of the lurking Enemy prove of no avail. Let whatever might menace the safety and peace of those who live here be put to flight by the sprinkling of this water, so that the healthfulness, obtained by calling upon Thy holy name, may be made secure against all attack. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who lives and reigns with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

After the Second Vatican Council, a lot of Catholic rites became less about actively changing the nature of substances and more about a symbolic getting in touch with the divine and letting God's power work through things and all that. The Council rather wanted to discourage those aspects of Catholicism which seemed to involve superstition, magic belief, and over-interest in supernatural entities such as ghosts, devils and even angels. Attention then shifted towards the question of whether holy water played a role in transmitting the more identifiable demons known as germs, rather than banishing the ineffable kind. Holy water is no longer locked up to keep it away from illicit practitioners of magic, but managed in such a way that it stays hygienic for users.

Meanwhile, traditional Catholics, priests and lay-people alike, have complained that the new rites are too Protestant, too symbolic and basically, have had the actual magic ripped out of them (see complaints here and here). It turns out that if you want traditional Catholic holy water these days, that first step of finding a priest to make it for you may be quite a challenge.


MAKING WATER INTO A MEDICALLY ACTIVE SUBSTANCE BY SHAKING IT

Homeopathy is a system of medicine based on magic water, developed in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann believed that diseases were magic as were the curative properties of his remedies and so was water. More or less. The one thing that can be said for Hahnemann is that in an age where medicines were generally unproven, sometimes poisonous and usually bad for the patient, he saved lives by using plain old placebo water. Let's just hope he boiled it first.

Important disclaimer: homeopathy has no impact whatsoever on illnesses or discomforts beyond what can be achieved through psychological effects. For anything more serious than a common cold or feeling a bit down, see a medical doctor. This post is of satirical intent and should not be taken as medical advice. (Sheesh, the things you have to spell out for people...)

Homeopathy is very, very complicated and requires long years of study, which is why its practitioners get to call themselves experts and charge lots of money for their fancy water. They have memorized a lot of stuff, which a lot of people before them have agreed to count as knowledge. For the benefit of the public, Magic for Skeptics offers an easy guide to DIY homeopathy, with an even easier quick-starter guide to follow.

1. Psychological support: get a friend over and bribe them with beer to listen to you sympathetically while you talk about your symptoms. This is important: if you don't do this part right, you will lose out on the important psychological aspects of homeopathy. If you don't have a suitable friend, venting on the Internet may be better than nothing.

2. Selecting a remedy: choose a substance which seems likely to cause the symptoms you're experiencing. In DIY homeopathy, please make absolutely sure to avoid the really poisonous substances, just in case (due to inexperience) you fail at the dilution stage of the process. Magic for skeptics recommends brandy as a good, traditional remedy for most purposes. There are few symptoms it can't produce under the right circumstances and if you don't like brandy, so much the better, because you won't be drinking any.

3. Dilution: Hahnemann's big insight was that if you dilute a poison enough, you'll end up with a harmless liquid. This is the key to safe homeopathy. To begin your dilution, place 1(one) centilitre of brandy in a litre of water.

4. Succussion: ignore what all the homeopathic textbooks have to say on succussion. It really doesn't matter one bit how you do it, trust me on this, just give the stuff a good shake.

5. Repeat repeatedly: take one centilitre from your water and brandy mixture and add it to another litre of water, then shake again.  Repeat this whole process 12 times altogether. You will now have a solution of brandy which is quite unlikely to contain any brandy at all.

6. Dosage: drink one teaspoonful of your dissolved brandy and believe. The believing part is very important, failure to do this interferes with the placebo effect of the remedy.

Here is the shorter (and recommended) version:

1. Psychological support: get a friend over and bribe them with beer to listen to you sympathetically while you talk about your symptoms.

2. Dosage: drink either one large glass of water or one small glass of brandy according to choice and believe.

This shorter version of the brandy method was practiced with great success by my grandfather throughout his life, so it must be true, right? So much for regaining our health, now we'd like to keep it indefinitely... wouldn't we? Well, see below.


DISCOVERING THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

There are many natural sources of magical water around the world: Lourdes, the Ganges, and so on. One which has appeared in European culture for millenia is the Fountain of Youth, which has water which is sort of like botox that actually works. At least, it would if it could be located. The Fountain of Youth, as you might imagine, is always somewhere else, or Europeans would have stumbled into it already. In the 5th century BC, Herodotus reported that Cambyses of Persia, having decided to extend his empire, sent the Ichthyophagi ('fish-eaters' from the island of Elephantine, now in Southern Egypt?) to spy out the land of the 'Ethiopians' (possibly inhabitants of what is now Sudan?) The Ethiopian king indicated to them that he didn't plan to get conquered any time soon, although, in the interesting cultural exchange that followed, he revealed the source of his people's long life:

The Icthyophagi then in their turn questioned the king concerning the term of life, and diet of his people, and were told that most of them lived to be a hundred and twenty years old, while some even went beyond that age- they ate boiled flesh, and had for their drink nothing but milk. When the Icthyophagi showed wonder at the number of the years, he led them to a fountain, wherein when they had washed, they found their flesh all glossy and sleek, as if they had bathed in oil- and a scent came from the spring like that of violets. The water was so weak, they said, that nothing would float in it, neither wood, nor any lighter substance, but all went to the bottom. If the account of this fountain be true, it would be their constant use of the water from it which makes them so long-lived.

You can never tell with this kind of 'traveler's tale' whether it was based on a report of local beliefs or was merely a promotion of someone's conquest plans, the sort of thing that might encourage foot-soldiers to cross deserts to fight random people.

Typical European Fountain of Youth iconography, in this case by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1546,
via Wikimedia Commons

By the 14th century, the search had shifted to India, sort of. Actually what happened is that physician and fan of real-life travel literature, John the Bearded of Liege, Belgium, wrote a travel fantasy, passing himself off as traveler extraordinaire Sir John Mandeville of St Albans, England. He went out of his way to include every piece of late medieval clickbait imaginable, with the result that he became incredibly popular and nobody bothered much about what was true and what wasn't. He sets his experiences with the Fountain of Youth near Polombe (modern day Kollam, Southern India):

Also toward the head of that forest is the city of Polombe. And above the city is a great mountain that also is clept Polombe. And of that mount the city hath his name. And at the foot of that mount is a fair well and a great, that hath odour and savour of all spices. And at every hour of the day he changeth his odour and his savour diversely. And whoso drinketh three times fasting of that water of that well he is whole of all manner sickness that he hath. And they that dwell there and drink often of that well they never have sickness; and they seem always young. I have drunken thereof three or four sithes, and yet, methinketh, I fare the better. Some men clepe it the well of youth. For they that often drink thereof seem always young-like, and live without sickness. And men say, that that well cometh out of Paradise, and therefore it is so virtuous.

By the early 16th century, it had been definitively established that the Fountain of Youth was in the Americas. Europeans knew this for sure, because the indigenous people of the Caribbean knew all about it, locating it to the north in an island called Bimini. Unfortunately, they too had been unable to find it. It's not at all certain that anyone was trying all that hard, so yet again the task of making up a half-decent story was left to those who stayed at home. Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, an early historian of Spanish conquests wrote:

Among the islands on the north side of Hispaniola there is one about 325 leagues distant, as they say which have searched the same, in the which is a continual spring of running water, of such marvellous virtue that the water thereof being drunk (perhaps with some diet) maketh olde men young again. And here I must make protestation to your holiness not to think this to be said lightly or rashly, for they have so spread this rumor for a truth throughout all the court, that not only all the people, but many of them whom wisdom or fortune hath divided from the common sort, think it to be true. 

That would explain why everyone was rushing over to the Americas to seek their fortune. Later on, 'historians' attributed the most intensive search to Juan Ponce de Leon, actual European discoverer of Florida, beginning considerably after his death to be on the safe side:

Having overhauled the vessels, it appearing to Juan Ponce that he had labored much, he resolved, although against his will, to send some one to examine the island of Bimini; for he wished to do it himself, because of the account he had of the wealth of this island, and especially of that particular spring so the Indians said that restores men from aged men to youths, the which he had not been able to find, by reason of shoals and currents and contrary weather. He sent then, as captain of the ship, Juan Perez de Ortubia, and as pilot Anton de Alaminos. They carried two Indians for pilots through the shoals, because they are so many that one proceeds with much danger because of them. This ship departed on the 17th [27th?] of September, and Juan Ponce the next day for his voyage. And in twenty-one days he arrived within sight of San Juan and went to make harbor in the bay of Puerto Rico; where, after having found Bimini, although not the spring, the other ship arrived with the account that it was a large island, cool, and with many springs and woodlands. The discovery by Juan Ponce of La Florida so ended, without knowledge that it was the mainland; nor for some years thereafter was that assurance obtained.

By the 21st century it had become almost certain that the Fountain of Youth was located on a distant exo-planet, yet to be discovered.

WATER WE SHOULD REALLY INVEST OUR RESOURCES IN

In reality, it seems to me we have more than enough problems with water, without investing ourselves in the production or discovery of kinds that don't exist. Getting clean drinking water, getting enough water, saving and storing it, getting it where it needs to be, and away from where it doesn't need to be, these are still massive problems for a lot of the world's population, perhaps all of us at times. If the time, money and effort that gets poured into gaining expertise in various forms of 'magic' water was spent on real water infrastructure and management issues, would it be enough? It would certainly leave us a lot better off, but there's a problem with this plan. Stuff that actually works just isn't magic enough, apparently.

Remedial Christian Studies

According to my daughter, her Religious Studies teacher told her there are two approaches to animal rights in Christianity. One group believes we should be kind to animals because God went to the trouble of getting them onto Noah's Ark, thus saving them from his own flood. The other group believes we can do what we like with animals because God created us first!!!!!

Really, when my daughter's time is being consumed by this subject within the context of a public school, I think I'm in my rights to expect the teaching to be accurate. Everyone should know, especially a Religious Studies teacher, that the order of creation in the Bible is 1) light, 2) the heavens, 3) earth, which God commanded to produce plants by itself, 4) the sun and moon, 5) animals who live in water and fly, 6) land animals, followed by man and woman who come last.

The piece of Christian belief the teacher is probably trying to refer to is based on what God said to the humans after he made them, apparently assigning them dominion (authority) over living things.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Some Christians interpret this as an absolute gift which humans can dispose of as they please, up to and including destroying living species, let alone treating animals in whatever way suits them. Other Christians interpret it more as a stewardship, granting humans the management of living things but with the assumption that mis-management, destruction and cruelty are not likely to be what God had in mind.

It actually ties in quite nicely with the spells for stopping bees from swarming which I posted about earlier this week. The second spell/prayer, from the more Christianized Middle Ages, basically reminds the rebellious bees 'God said you should do what I told you!'

Banksy's Birds

Subtitled, another fine failure at anti-racist art!

It seems to be open season on 'racist' art in Britain these days. Brett Bailey's Exhibit B didn't make it to opening night at the Barbican but triggered an outpouring of debate on whether it would or would not have been racist if it had. My views on that one are here.

Now we have Banksy, who goes around painting very expensive graffiti on walls, hitting Clacton-on-Sea with the mega-million buck masterpiece shown below. Clacton could have sold it to buy themselves a new sea wall, but instead it seems they have destroyed it because a member of the public complained it was 'racist and offensive'.

Jonathan Jones at the Guardian isn't buying this story. He thinks Banksy's piece is 'quite plainly an eloquent attack on racism'. Since he suspects the good people of Clacton-on-Sea of significant ingrained racism due to the fact that a UKipper is about to stand for election there, he believes the only reason they would tear the mural down is because 'it hits too close to home' and makes them feel squirmy.

By the way, I think we might be talking about xenophobia here rather than racism, but since the former seems to be considered acceptable by so many, I'm choosing to cynically believe we're using the word 'racism' to try to trigger appropriate responses in people. Just like Banksy really, but was his painting likely to work?

Let's imgaine a member of the public completely unfamiliar with Banksy and his work, yet familiar enough with the anti-immigration political discourses going on in his or her town, and disapproving on them. Will it really be so obvious to them that the art work is on their side?

I'm not so sure about that. What Jones is overlooking is that the only eloquent things in the painting are the racist pigeons and what they're saying is exactly what the racist politicians and their supporters in the same environment are saying. How can the piece be effectively anti-racist when it offers no counter-arguments, no condemnations, but just sits there reinforcing the same old local racist messages? How can it be effectively anti-racist if it's only method (apparently) is to hope its viewers find the swallow small and sweet enough to start feeling sorry for it?

Now imagine a resident of Clacton-on-Sea who knows nothing about Banksy but is vehemently anti-immigration. They regularly hand out messages like those on the placards with no sense of shame whatsoever. They see no benefits or attractions in the smallness or sweetness of swallows in Britain. Does a 'confrontation' with this painting on a wall actually give them a communication about how others perceive them and why they should stop? Or does it confirm them in their actions? It seems to me the only really convincingly negative thing about the pigeons is the message on their placards but to see that you have to be the type to perceive those messages negatively!

Now imagine you're an immigrant in sunny Clacton-on-Sea. I think the message the painting conveys is, at best, that you'd better just sit tight while other people decide whether you're small and sweet enough to be allowed to stick around. At worse, it's just a reminder of a message you may already have heard: 'There's some big fat pigeons around here who don't want you!'

Sorry Jonathan Jones, I think you and I only know this piece is 'plainly anti-racist' because we know who Banksy is and we move in circles where the messages on the placards meet with open disapproval.

I'm sure anti-racist art can do better than this, so I'm now officially on the lookout for excellent pieces. Anyone want to send me one for review?

You may also be interested in:
Why I think Brett Bailey's Exhibit B is not a good idea
The misuse of a work of art in promoting murderous witch-hunts in Nigeria

In which Pastor Ezeugwu slanders an angel, though this is the least of his sins

This story should start in the proper place, with a rather beautiful artwork by Chinese artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. It's a fibreglass angel fallen to the ground, shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2009, though there have been other versions in other places:

Not very Nigerian looking, not very female looking and not very witchy, I think you'll agree. Pastor I.C. Ezeugwu, has a whole different angle on the thing, quite literally.

Frame it so the face is hidden, darken the skin a bit, and write a little story underneath it, and lo and behold, you have a dead Nigerian witch on your hands. Pastor Ezeugwu provides the little story (emphases mine):

On the eve of the crusade, I had a revelation where three elderly women came to me and told me to cancel the crusade. On the morning of the crusade, I held a brief counselling session. An elderly woman who came for counselling on a white robe told me that "her members don't want me to hold the crusade". That was what her interpreter told me as she couldn’t speak English. I asked why? She said because they rule the land. I told her interpreter to tell her that they don't rule the land, JESUS rules the land. She said they'll kill me and I told her I'll kill them first hence the crusade was titled "Operation Kill the Witches". The crusade was meant to hold for 4 days but later lasted for 7 days as a result of the testimonies the people were sharing.

Eight days after I went back to my base, I received a telegram from the leader of the organising committee informing me that the head of the witches was dead after suffering a partial stroke for 2 days.

Note the little details, the white robe and the allusion to the death of the 'head witch' intended to help the inattentive link the story with the picture without going quite so far as to assert they are one and the same. I won't tell you to note the fact that this believer in Jesus is going around threatening elderly ladies with murder, I'll trust you to notice that for yourselves.

This debunking of this piece of maliciousness was brought to us by Richard Bartholomew who apparently heard about the whole thing from Leo Igwe, and passed it on to Ophelia Benson, from whom it reached me. It's a pretty pathetic and dangerous scam. I mean come on, if you want to believe in witches, believe in this, by the same artists:

That is an amazing piece of art I would have loved to have seen. And this is only a tiny part of it. It's called Dear and was shown at the Galerie Perrotin in Paris.

Other stories about malicious fabrication of supernatural incidents:

British military intelligence lie about black magic among Irish paramilitary organisations. 

Spells for keeping honey bees from swarming

I'm not sure how many old European magic spells were ever written down, but prominent among the survivors are a couple for controlling our one of our few domesticated insects, the honey bee.

My favorite bee book (French only)
by Eric Tourneret

I think it's possible that there are people today who don't really know what a bee swarm is, or why it matters. Swarming is how a honeybee colony reproduces. It's a special event during which the queen, rather unusually, lays fertile female eggs which will develop into new queens. Having done so, she will abandon the old colony herself, taking more than half her workers with her, but leaving her daughter with an established infrastructure. For bee-keepers, uncontrolled swarming is a thing to be avoided at all costs. Bees left to their own devices will leave them with a reduced hive of unproductive bees struggling to re-establish itself and the loss of more than half their 'livestock' into the wilds.There are few things more beautiful than a wild honeybee hive (see left), but try telling that to bee-keepers and said hive's human neighbours! I suppose it's true that if you do a Google image search for bee swam pictures, swarms do seem to get into some rather anti-social places.

Our ancestors were obviously more than willing to resort to begging, threatening and pleading to prevent this. I find the Old English of this spell so beautiful, I had to do my own translation to capture the rhythm of the exhortation. There are more linguistically accurate translations here and here.

Sitte ge, sīgewīf, sīgað tō eorðan, næfre ge wilde tō wuda fleogan, beō ge swā gemindige, mīnes gōdes, swā bið manna gehwilc, metes and ēðeles.

Be still, shield-maidens, stay earth-bound, don't fly off wildly, through the forests, but instead think you kindly, on my welfare, as all mankind thinks, of hearth and home.

The Lorsch Bee Blessing is formatted more like a prayer or invocation, but it was meant for the same purpose. It sounds a lot more fraught to modern ears.

Kirst, imbi ist hûcze Nû fliuc dû, vihu mînaz, hera Fridu frôno in munt godes gisunt heim zi comonne Sizi, sizi bîna Inbôt dir sancte Maria Hurolob ni habe dû Zi holce ni flûc dû Noh dû mir nindrinnês Noh dû mir nintuuinnêst Sizi vilu stillo Uuirki godes uuillon

Christ, the bee swarm is out here! Now fly, you my animals, come. In the Lord's peace, in God's protection, come home in good health. Sit, sit bees. The command to you from the Holy Mary. You have no vacation; Don't fly into the woods; Neither should you slip away from me. Nor escape from me. Sit completely still. Do God's will.

Or, as my daughter put it: 'BEES! Stop what you're doing and work for me!'

Unfortunately, it was eventually discovered that honey bees are largely impervious to human poetics.The way to deal with swarming bees is, as usual, by knowing stuff.

Traditional Hives via Wikimedia Commons.

YOU CAN TRY TO RECAPTURE OR RETAIN A SWARM

What the swarm is looking for a new hive. You could have the best new hiving spot in the district all ready for them and hope they pick it, but that's kind of primitive. To be really modern, you would sprinkle alluring bee pheromone all over it. You can physically capture the swarm and get them into your new hive. There are lots of ways of doing this, from the primitive to the high-tech, provided you know them. You can clip the queen's wings to prevent her flying, making sure the attempted swarm never gets far from the original hive. This is the only method which is actually considered desirable, as a stop-gap measure.

YOU CAN ANTICIPATE THE SWARM AND TRY TO PREVENT IT

This relies on knowing why bees do what they do. If a colony has grown past a certain population density, has plentiful supplies of food and future bees, and a sufficiently mature queen, it will quite likely prepare to swarm. Bees want to swarm. It's how they reproduce. But if you can trick them into thinking population density is low, and resources uncertain, they may defer reproduction until times look better. Alternatively, you can use 'controlled swarming' techniques, such as permanently or temporarily splitting the colony, or creating a mini-colony around the old queen - a kind of mini-swarm. Some techniques rely explicitly on making the bees think they have swarmed when in fact, they've returned to their old hive. Deciding what to do with the cells containing new queens is a secondary issue - their fate will no longer have an impact on a colony's decision to swarm.

That's the basic theory and the reason the practice is complicated is that there are several ways of doing all of these things, but the response of the bees is variable and no method is absolutely reliable. Or perhaps we still don't know enough stuff.

International Blasphemy Rights Day

Oh, dear, nearly too late for International Blasphemy Rights Day. Let's see if I can squeeze it in. This is not a blaspheme, as such, but a story about why you don't want to go there, religious people.

Some years ago, I thought my daughter should be educated regarding the contents of the Bible, and I even thought I might read her a little King James. I'd heard it was good literature, although it was the first Bible I ever read, and I never remembered it quite like that. Nevertheless, I took the book down and did that thing religious people sometimes do: I let it fall open at a random page and looked to see what I had drawn.

There before we was a story about Moses and Aaron telling their sister Miriam to shut her mouth because she was a woman. In a literary way, of course.

I decided then and there, that my kid was getting the toned down version and I certainly wasn't going to have her plough through the various obscenities and disgraces to civilization she would find in that book.

This is the thing, dear religious people. Your book is really, deeply and horribly offensive to the beliefs and values of other people, but it is tolerated, because freedom of speech is tolerated.

Now, it's going to be October in about one minute, here we go.

'I'll believe in evolution when I see a cat turn into a dog'

Well, here you are then.

This post is dedicated to the spotted hyena, the most liminal mammal alive, just because I'm into liminality at the moment. Hyenas have often been compared to wild dogs, wolves, jackals and other members of the canine family. Everyone agrees they kind of look and behave like dogs, but they're actually more closely related to cats. They belong in a taxonomic sub-order with the pretty name of feliformia which includes hyenas, cats, civets and mongooses.


"Hyena Standoff" by Maureen Lunn - Hyena Standoff Uploaded by Mariomassone. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

But spotted hyenas don't stop there. They blow our minds still further by being full-on gender-benders at least if they're female. Not only is their clitoris enlarged into what looks like a penis, they even have a fake scrotum. Copulation is a bit fiddly for them, birth even more so, since they have to do all that stuff via the long pseudo-penis. They do pay a price for it, with a rather high maternal mortality and first pups who are more likely to die than not. Even if two pups survive birth, one sibling will often kill the other. On the other hand, surviving female pups of the most masculinized (and agressive) females rise to the top of the group hierarchy, get the most mating rights, generally boss everyone around and have lots of masculinized female pups in their turn. Males tend to do better in the mating market by behaving submissively.

Humans have often responded to this boundary-breaking by despising hyenas. Many African societies have not thought highly of them, European big game hunters found them too ugly to bother with (good survival trait there!). Not many people like their habit of eating anything they can kill or find, starting with human corpses. Being obvious 'hermaphrodites' makes matters worse, but at least no one paid much attention to the cat/dog thing until recently. With all that negativity, it's nice to find one positive appraisal:

Among the Korè cult of the Bambara people in Mali, the belief that spotted hyenas are hermaphrodites appears as an ideal in-between in the ritual domain. The role of the spotted hyena mask in their rituals is often to turn the neophyte into a complete moral being by integrating his male principles with femininity.

'His' male principles, huh? Could it be that being a 'complete moral being' is a guy thing with the Bambara people? Since I have no clue, I'll have to give them the benefit of the doubt for now. And that would be about enough of hyenas, except the Tanzanian ones are irresistible.

In the culture of the Mbugwe in Tanzania, the spotted hyena is linked to witchcraft. According to Mbugwe folklore, every witch possesses one or more hyenas, which are referred to as "night cattle" and are branded with an invisible mark. It is said that all hyenas are owned by witches, and that truly wild hyenas are non-existent. Lactating female spotted hyenas are said to be milked by their owners every night to make hyena butter, and are further used as mounts. When a witch acquires a hyena mount, he rides it to distant lands in order to bewitch victims and return safely home before morning.

You might be interested in:
How witchcraft belief in contemporary Africa is not nearly as fun as that sounds
The Norse god Loki and liminality of various kinds

Loki breaks

It's really nice when books you're reading come through and give you what you need when you need it. Over here, we are suffering from outbreaks of institutional xenophobia (again), such that it's hard to find much magic in life. But, I started reading Joanne Harris's Gospel of Loki with my daughter again, and here is what it delivered:

Nine little stitches, that's all it took for me to suddenly realize the truth: that whatever I did, whatever I risked, however much I tried to fit in, I would never be one of them. I would never have a hall, or earn the respect I so clearly deserved. I would never be a god; only ever a dog on a chain. Oh, I might be of use to them now and then, but as soon as the current crisis was done, it would be back to the kennel for Your Humble Narrator, and without as much as a biscuit.

I'm telling you this so you'll understand why I did the things I did. I think you'll agree I had no choice; it was the only way I could retain the little self-respect I had. There's such purity in revenge, unlike those other emotions I'd had to endure in Odin's world. Envy, hatred, sorrow, fear, remorse, humiliation - all of them messy and painful and quite spectacularly pointless - but now as I discovered revenge, it was almost like being home again.

Home. See how they corrupted me? This time, with nostalgia, that most toxic of their emotions. And perhaps with some self-pity as well, as I started to think of all the things I'd given up to join them: my primal Aspect; my place with Surt; my Chaotic Incarnation. Not that Surt would have understood of cared for my belated remorse - that too was the product of their pernicious influence. Hence my hunger for revenge, not because I expected a reconciliation with Chaos - not then - but because the urge to destroy was really all I had left.

Well, quite. Now I'm done letting off vicarious steam, I'll admit that I don't think much of Loki's choices even though I get them. It can be a fine line between justice and revenge, given that his complaints are broadly accurate, but someone who fails to recognize its existence is broken. In narratively interesting ways, if they're Loki. It's a brilliant book, by the way, and lots of it is also very amusing. It's another exploration of Loki's status as a liminal being. I suppose a character could be super-liminally interesting by exploring that boundary between revenge and justice, but that's wasn't Loki and Joanne Harris's book adheres pretty closely to the original mythology.

You might also be interested in:

Thor and Gender
Gender transgression, magic and warfare in Nordic societies

Neolithic hairstyles and fashions

It's odd how prehistoric people are all too often presented to us in modern-day reconstructions like those in the frankly brilliant Operation Stonehenge. I must admit it, the thing which stretches my skeptical credibility to the uttermost is being asked to believe that the builders of Stonehenge, with their priests, geometers and astronomers, their 'architect, surveyor and builder', their wide-ranging trade routes and shipping capabilities, these sophisticated people, were apparently not capable of combing their hair, washing their faces, or even smartening up their leather loincloths by trimming the edges and adding ornamentation.

I know it's impossible to guess their 'fashion sense' when we have so little evidence for its details, but they had one. As far as I know, there has been no recorded human society in which people did not style their hair and ornament themselves. And these were people with a complex and sophisticated social structure.

It's odd. We live so much surrounded by their remains there are times you could think they were still with us. And then you realize how much we're having to make up - or avoid making up - by letting them appear as stereotypical primitives of a kind which our species doesn't turn out, practically by definition.

Stonehenge and the Blood-Stones of Amesbury

This post is all about exceptional natural phenomena, and how they can drive the ritual activities of a region over many millennia. Maybe.

Completely by chance I began watching the BBC's new series Operation Stonehenge, and it is brilliant! Seriously, I totally recommend it. Excellent archaeological coverage is one of the things Britain should be famous for across the planet. As usual, I'm gob-smacked by what modern archaeology can do. Move over ley-lines, this is neuro-imaging for the earth itself. So much of Operation Stonehenge is amazing, I don't even know where to begin. I want to watch it a dozen times.

One of the things which fascinated me most deeply came early on and is dated to the earliest period of occupation during the Mesolithic era, around 10,000 years ago. Archaeologist David Jacques speculated that an exceptional natural phenomenon observed by the earliest humans may be at the root of the area's significance.

For a start, it seems there was a natural clearing which turns into a funnel of the type used by hunters of herding animals, always and everywhere, to trap their prey en masse. In this case, the prey was the Aurochs, an extinct species of huge wild cattle. There is some evidence that people gathered from far and wide for Aurochs hunts and feasts.

So far so good. This is normal and expected hunter-gatherer stuff. The fascinating part is that near this hunting ground is a spring, and the flints from that spring, if exposed to the air for a few hours, turn a color you might call pink, magenta or even fuschia. Jacques says it wasn't a common color in the lives of prehistoric hunter gatherers, but I swear, the first thing I thought when I saw it (and I was deeply impressed, by the way), was: blood... blood and butchered flesh. Hunks of meat, organs. That's what the pink flint looks like.

It is easy, very, very easy, to speculate about what these flints may have meant to Aurochs hunters, although the phenomenon is actually caused by a rare algae in the spring water. Not far from the stream, the Mesolithic people erected three tall, totem-pole-like stones, the first ritual structure known in the area, a couple of thousand years before Stonehenge really got started.

Although this is astonishing stuff, I do have some questions for the archaeologists. First, there has been significant climate change since that period. We're talking about a time when Britain was not separated from the continent. Since then, the climate warmed, sea levels rose.Why should I believe that these algae were in situ ten thousand years ago? Okay, I guess I'll just have to believe you've done due diligence here.

Second, why should I believe the pink flints have anything much to do with Stonehenge? You say there was a big gap, during which nothing much seems to have happened. The henge monuments aren't built in relation to the stream particularly, whereas they are quite convincingly connected with solar astronomy. If the people who created Stonehenge used these 'magic stones' for any purpose, it hasn't been brought to our attention. Correlation doesn't equal causation, at least not directly. Is the implication only that a high intensity (and density?) of use in Mesolithic times prompted dense and intense usage of the site later on - while meanings, possibly, changed completely?

None of this alters the fact that the pink flints are a rare and amazing natural phenomenon and were surely interpreted in a magical way by the early people who first observed them.

One Who Walks with the Stars: her name

As you can see in my original post on One Who Walks with the Stars, she appears under various names in the documentation. Maine calls her 'Walks with Stars Woman' and Miller prefers 'Woman-Who-Walks-with-the-Stars'. Capitals, hyphens and word order vary, and these days we tend to leave out gender but that's all just so many translation issues.

Walks with the Stars original name was in Lakota. I wasn't sure how to translate it, but the internet being fantastic, I discovered the name of a contemporary Lakota woman named Wichapi Ob Mani Winyan. I think this must be the correct translation based on Wichapi-Star, Mani-Walk and Winyan-Woman. Perhaps she's named for the One Who Walks with the Stars of Little Big Horn fame.

The words 'woman' and 'walk' or 'walker' are quite common in 19th century Lakota names, but 'star' wasn't so much, even though star quilts and blankets became common since. Walks with the Stars sounds like the prettiest girls' name you could imagine but stars didn't always get a particularly good rap in Lakota culture. They were a long, long way from having their Old World astrological meanings, or even, rather to my surprise, being considered as navigational aids. Ringing Shield explained them at length to James Walker in 1903, p.114:

A wise man said this. The stars are wakan. They do not care for the earth or anything on it. They have nothing to do with mankind. Sometimes they come to the world and sometimes the Lakotas go to them. There are many stories told of these things. No medicine can be made to the stars. They have nothing to do with anything that moves and breathes. A holy man knows about them. This must not be told to the people. If the people knew these things, they would pull the stars from above. There is one star for the evening and one for the morning.One star never moves and it is wakan. Other stars move in a circle about it. They are dancing in the dance circle.

 There are seven stars. This is why there are seven council fires among the Lakotas. Sometimes there are many stars and sometimes there are not so many. When there are not so many, the others are asleep. The spirit way is among the stars. This moves about so that bad spirits can not find it. Wakan Tanka begins at the edge of the world. No man can find it. Taku Skanskan is there and he tells the good spirits where to go to find the beginning of this trail. The bad spirits must wander always on the trail of the winds. The stars hide from the sun. They must fear him. So mankind should not try to learn about them. It is not good to talk about them. It is not good to fight by the light of the stars. They must be evil for they fear the sun.

We should remember that by 1903, Lakota culture had been intensely affected by white America. Walker's informants were usually older men specifically chosen for their memories of traditional culture, but some of Ringing Shield's emphasis may be a response to white ideas about astrology which came through in Walker's questioning. All the same, I have another reference which says something similar, but more briefly.

Anyway, since names were often acquired or changed at various points in a Lakota person's life and since they often had meanings, sometimes humorous ones, I did begin to wonder if being called One Who Walks with the Stars was analogous to being called something like Head in the Clouds. Or perhaps she sleep-walked! But that's a lot more than I know for sure.

If anyone can tell me more, that would be fantastic.

Weekly roundup

• Here I am, at the start of my month-long writing retreat and I have to admit it, I'm still struggling to get back into writing (#1, #2). I managed to do one scene for Manuscript in Progress which lived up to my expectations of my narrator's voice, but only by a combination of graft, strategy and experience. It's a bit like faking the work of an writer you know really, really well. Hopefully all this will change next week.
• My strategy for the one accomplished scene, consisted of dealing with a long complicated series of dialogs during which everything changes, as though it were a fight scene. It was going to be one of those standoffs you get in Chinese movies, with six different characters duking it out in a clearing. Their words were going to manifest as spiritual weapons like those of Hindu gods, ripping through the air and tearing into the psyche of their victim. But since I am European, it ended up being more of an air raid-type situation followed by a series of nasty encounters in dark alleys.
• I started writing about fictional personality tests, just for fun (#1, #2), then got sidetracked by essential research on One Who Walks with the Stars (#1, #2). It's going so well, it's hard not to get obsessive about it.
• I'm gearing up to do more work on Wikipedia. The Stonehenge thing was just a trial run.

One Who Walks with the Stars: Crow Dog's wife

"Crow Dog" via Wikimedia Commons.

I said in my last post there was a mystery surrounding the life of One Who Walks with the Stars, the Lakota woman who killed two of Custer's men at Little Big Horn.  Here it is: whenever One Who Walks with the Stars is discussed, she's invariably referred to as Crow Dog's wife.

Crow Dog is the guy in the photograph, a fairly well-known minor chief of the Lakota, who turns up at most of the major events in their history throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. There is even a supreme court decision named after him, Ex parte Crow Dog. It's an interesting case which must have displeased Crow Dog in more ways than I have space to mention right now, but it offers rare insight into the life of his wife: there is a complaint that she was not allowed to testify on his behalf in court.

This is the point. If I want to learn about the little-documented life of One Who Walks with the Stars, I could follow the career of her more famous husband and it would give me an idea of where she was and what might be happening to her. It might even provide me with photographs of the Crow Dog family, like this one.

Taken in 1890, by Grabill. Based on the 1887 census* for Crow Dog's family the photograph may include Cooks the Pot (52), Leaves Her Rock (45), Ugly Woman (23, an adult daughter), either White Woman or Lightning (both 8-9), Crow Dog (57), Log (5) and other younger children not recorded in 1887. Then again, it may not.

Taken in 1890, in the aftermath of Wounded Knee. This photograph appears to show the same family, plus a couple of extra children, possibly Lightning as well as White Woman this time (8-9) and Thunder Comes Out (13). According to my second hand report of the 1887 census Crow Dog's family then consisted of himself, two wives, one adult daughter, three daughters aged between 13 and 5 and four sons aged between 12 and 2. That child would have been 5 when this photograph was taken. It would seem that Crow Dog's 1st wife was deceased by 1887*.

Now, here is the problem. Although every source on One Who Walks with the Stars says she was Crow Dog's wife, pretty much every source I've found on Crow Dog says his wives were Good Home, Cook Her (or Cooks the Pot or possibly Catches Her) and one other, given in the 1887 census* as Leaves Her Rock, though I've also seen Jumping Elk mentioned. One name which never comes up is One Who Walks with the Stars.
Actually, not quite never. I've found one note which says she was the first wife of Jerome Crow Dog, Crow Dog's eldest son, who was born c.1853. Here is a quote which may attest to the confusion between the two men... at any rate, it attests to confusion.

According to Leonard**, Crow Dog took the name Kangi Shunka Manitou after his first fight with enemies. It means Crow Coyote, not Crow Dog, but an interpreter translated it wrongly and the name stuck. Later at the reservation a census taker gave him the Christian name Jerome, so he´s also known as Jerome Crow Dog in official records.

It does seem clear that by the later 19th century, 'Crow Dog' was functioning like a European family name, so you find lots of people called 'Mary Crow Dog', 'Alexander Crow Dog'. They may be Crow Dog's descendents or spouses of his descendents. Contemporaries of Crow Dog's eldest son(s), like the men who told the story of Walks with the Stars to Miller in the mid-20th century, may have got used to referring to them simply as Crow Dog by then.

At any rate the answer to the mystery makes a difference as far as One Who Walks with the Stars is concerned. Imagine you want to write the story of her engagement at Little Big Horn. On the one hand, you have Crow Dog's wife, probably born before 1840, a mature woman with adult children and little ones to worry about on the field of battle, on the other, his newly married daughter-in-law, probably under 20 and perhaps still childless.

I expect only the census* can shed light on this matter and even then, without recorded births and deaths, with name changes and varying translations, it may not be easy.

 Sources and footnotes: 
*The 1887 census for Rosebud can be viewed here. Crow Dog was in the Brule #2 band, under the letter C.
**This refers to Leonard Crow Dog, author of Crow Dog: Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men, and a great-grandson or possibly great-great grandson of the Crow Dog in the photographs.
 - Most of my original leads come from this page. There are still several things here which I haven't tracked down to source.

Note: if I find out any of the information in this page is wrong (very likely) I will update it.

One Who Walks with the Stars at Little Big Horn: the sources

One Who Walks with the Stars was an Oglala Lakota woman recorded as having killed two of Custer's soldiers during the Battle of Little Big Horn on 25 June 1876. She's also a secondary character in my novel. Since I've been writing about women warriors, I decided to post about my research process which has been long and uncertain.

A quick synopsis of the lead-up to the Battle of Little Big Horn may not be amiss. Basically, the Great Sioux Reservation was established in 1868, but by 1876 it was already under encroachment by white gold miners and settlers. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1876 a large group of Sioux from many tribes had gathered outside reservation land, apparently as part of an annual summer buffalo hunt. The group included whole families, so when Custer attacked women like One Who Walks with the Stars inevitably found themselves on the field of battle. This may have been central to Custer's plan: the Wikipedia article on Little Big Horn makes much of the idea that he expected to take the women and children hostage while the warriors were away. This would force the warriors' surrender and enable Custer to escort them all back to their reservations. As the warriors' were in the village things didn't go according to plan. For the attack, Custer's troops divided into two groups, with Custer leading his men nearest to where One Who Walks with the Stars was encamped. This was the section of the village beside the river, and Custer approached it along the opposite bank. The battle which ensued was undoubtedly chaotic, and very few people will claim we can get an accurate picture of everything that transpired.

I believe there are only two published sources for One Who Walks with the Stars' engagement at Little Big Horn. The first is in Lone Eagle the White Sioux, by Floyd Shuster Maine (1956), pp.128-9. Unfortunately, I can't justify ordering this book from abroad right now, and it isn't available to me any other way. If anyone has it, and would like to let me know what it says on pp.128-9, I would be super-grateful. In the meantime, I have to make do with this report from Richard Hardorff's Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight.

Sioux and Cheyenne reported the presence of several women who participated in the assault on Custer's force. One of these was Hunkpapa, Moving Robe Woman, who avenged the death of her younger brother by slaying several of Custer's troopers; see Charles A. Eastman, "Rain-in-the-Face," The Outlook (October 27, 1906); 511; and also Floyd S. Maine, Lone Eagle... The White Sioux (Albuquerque, 1956), pp.128-29, which recounts the exploits of Walks with Stars Woman, the wife of the Oglala, Crow Dog.

As a bonus for those who are interested in Sioux woman warriors, this page has extracts on the subject from Bruce Brown's 100 Voices.

The other source for One Who Walks with the Stars is in Custer's Fall by David Humphrey Miller (1957), pp.156-8, and I have it in full. To begin with, here is what he says about his own sources:

Woman-Who-Walks-With-The-Stars actually did better at Little Big Horn than her husband, Crow Dog, who succeeded only in capturing three badly shot-up cavalry horses. Her story was told to me in 1941 by Hollow Horn Eagle and Brave Bird, both Bighorn survivors.

Since the event he recounts had no other surviving witnesses, the original story must have come from One Who Walks with the Stars herself. It's likely Hollow Horn Eagle or Brave Bird heard about it soon after it happened from Walks with the Stars or one of her close relatives. When you read Miller's version, you'll see that it's incredibly fictionalized for a history book. At least half of it is given over to speculations as to what was going through Walks with the Stars' head at the time of the killing. You'll also see that it only describes the killing of one soldier so either Maine describes two killings, or his story is sufficiently different from this one to justify attributing two separate deaths to Walks with the Stars. Miller's story is accompanied by an illustration captioned 'Crow Dog's wife killing the last of Custer's command' a probably unverifiable honor he or his sources granted to Walks with the Stars.

In thick timber on the banks of the Little Big Horn near the Brulé camp, Woman-Who-Walks-with-the-Stars wandered, looking for stray cavalry horses. Since the now dead soldiers on the ridge had turned their mounts loose, many of the thirsty chargers had been rambling through the brush, trying to get to water. As the wife of Crow Dog, ranking Brulé chief in the village, Woman-Who-Walks-with-the-Stars well knew the value the big, sturdy horses would assume now the fighting was over. During the kill-talks and honor giveaways which were sure to follow such a great victory, nothing would add more to her husband's prestige than gifts of fine horses to chiefs of other tribes.

Suddenly a flash of dusty blue caught the woman's eye. There in a thicket close to the water crawled a man - a uniformed white soldier. Badly wounded, he was struggling through the undergrowth to get to the river's edge. As he inched along the ground, the woman saw he was carrying a carbine. For some reason he was trying to get back across the river, though he seemed at times too weak to crawl any further.

Every so often he was forced to stop creeping and lay panting a while until he could build up strength again. At last he was near enough to the water to push his carbine over the bank. While he lay prostrate, weary from his last exertion, Woman-Who-Walks-with-the-Stars picked up a heavy branch of deadwood. For a moment she watched the soldier curiously. White men always seemed so strange with their hairy faces and bodies and their pink skin. She found herself wondering what their women were like, for she had only seen pioneer women at a great distance, when they were cloaked in mother hubbards and sun bonnets. Perhaps a white woman loved this very soldier. A strange tenderness swept over Crow Dog's wife.

The soldier stirred a little. Dragging himself along again, he slipped over the bank's edge and plunged into hip deep water. Watching him, the softness left the eyes of Woman-Who-Walks-with-the-Stars. After all, the soldiers had come attacking. Women, even children, would not have been spared by them, for had not entire Cheyenne families been wiped out by the soldiers in the south? It was always whites who were the aggressors, seeking to destroy Pte, the sacred buffalo uncle of the Sioux, crowding the Indians out of the land Wakan Tanka had given them. Taking a tighter grip on the driftwood club, Woman-Who-Walks-with-the-Stars moved swiftly to the river's edge, where the soldier now saw her for the first time. Stark terror widened his eyes. A hoarse scream started in his throat. But his cry was lost under the loud crash of driftwood about his head and shoulders. In a little while he sank beneath the surface as the woman kept striking at the roiled water where his head had been.

It was slightly past mid-afternoon. Less than a half-hour had passed since Custer's fall at the ford. During that brief interim, the two hundred fifteen members of his command had been wiped out to a man.

That's not quite all I've got on One Who Walks with the Stars, but it's the complete documentation of her life as a warrior. It turns out there is more mystery surrounding her life that I would have imagined. In future posts, I'll try to clear up some of it (success not guaranteed).

Stonehenge and shadows in the soil

Sometimes I do a bit of editing of this or that on Wikipedia. This evening I had the thrill of being the person who changed this sentence on the Stonehenge article:

Unless some of the sarsens (the big upstanding stones) have since been removed from the site, the ring appears to have been left incomplete. 

to this one:

It was thought the ring might have been left incomplete, but an exceptionally dry summer in 2013 revealed patches of parched grass which may correspond to the location of removed sarsens.

It's should be old news really, but it was only just reported in the Guardian. I'm completely fascinated by the archaeology we can do just by looking at the shades of disappeared structures expressed as soil colour, fertility, water retention. Even more amazing is the way it only 'works' at certain seasons and under certain conditions. Just like real magic!

Despite Wikipedia's reputation, I always feel the same way when I edit one of its articles: terrified lest I make an error, amused to discover the Stonehenge article is on partial lockdown (though I seem to have some ill-deserved regular editor status), annoyed at the hideous interface, and wry about the fact that my reference was longer than the sentence it justified.

Fictional personality tests: phrenology and physionomy

First some definitions: Phrenology is a 19th century pseudoscience, much used to justify racist and sexist ideas about people's abilities and character by a process which involved fondling their skulls. Physiognomy, the analysis of personality based on appearance, is older since it dates back at least to ancient Greece, but of equally dubious validity. People have mistrusted it for centuries and other people have gone on using it regardless.

18th and 19th century authors made much of their physionomic character studies, but I prefer to quote from a revival, Susanna Clarke's fantasy, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, set in 18th century Britain. Here is Childermass, whose presence as a secondary character runs through the novel:

He was a dark sort of someone, a not-quite-respectable someone who was regarding Mr Segundus and Dr Foxcastle with an air of great interest. His ragged hair hung about his shoulders like a fall of black water; he had a strong, thin face with something twisted in it, like a tree root; and a long, thin nose; and, though his skin was very pale, something made it seem a dark face - perhaps it was the darkness of the eyes, or the proximity of that long, black greasy hair.

I expect anyone can tell Childermass's appearance is being used to arouse our suspicions against him. The racial stereotyping may be less obvious to anyone unfamiliar with 18th and 19th century discourse on British ethnicities. I've read enough to recognise a representation of the supposed Celtic type, dark-haired and eyed, 'sallow' of skin, a supposed remnant of a primitive and inferior race, clinging on to the margins of British society after invasion by those who considered themselves the British mainstream. Yeah, that's what they thought. As the Wikipedia article on phrenology notes, the pseudoscience of phrenology never really took off in Ireland, due to ...

...not only the Vatican's decree that phrenology was subversive of religion and morality but also that based on phrenology the 'Irish Catholics were sui generis a flawed and degenerate breed'

Now we've pretty much abandoned our belief in physiognomy and its offshoot, phrenology, an author's 'drawing' of their characters' appearance tends to be more cursory. Here is one from another book I read this year, the introduction of the Marquis de Carabas in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

He wore a huge dandyish black coat that was not quite a frock coat nor exactly a trenchcoat, and high black boots, and, beneath his coat, raggedy clothes. His eyes burned white in an extremely dark face. And he grinned white teeth, momentarily, as if at a private joke of his own, and bowed to Richard, and said, 'De Carabas, at your service, and you are...?'

In the 20th century, De Carabas expresses his personality through his choice of clothes, his expressions and patterns of speech. Some cursory details of his appearance are given, but if you blink, you may miss the fact that he is supposed to be black. I've talked to people who did. It's an awkward situation because the inclusion of racially diverse characters was obviously a goal of Neverwhere, the TV series, and all they had to do was cast appropriately. With nothing but words to work with, the novel simply can't harp on about Carabas's appearance - the shape and colour of his face isn't supposed to tell us anything essential about him, and would almost inevitably come out sounding racist.

Fictional personality tests: magic swords and sorting hats

Life was much simpler, Way Back When. The Sword of Rhydderch Hael and the Coat of Padarn Beisrudd knew whether a man was well-born. The Cauldron of Dyrnwch the Giant and the Whetstone of Tudwal Tuglyd could distinguish the brave from the cowardly and only worked for the former.  The Mantle of Tegau Gold-Breast could tell if a woman was chaste. That was about all you needed to know about people.

So when and where was Way Back When? These magical objects, among a total of Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain, were first recorded in late medieval times though they're invariably attributed to the British 'dark ages'. Perhaps they reflect the qualities 8th century Britons wanted to see in each other. I wouldn't be surprised to learn they belonged to the realm of fantasy fiction from the start, and represented what late medieval Britons liked to see in their knightly romances.

Nobody tells us how the magical personality tests are supposed to work or why we should believe them. I suppose to some extent they relate to potentially observable facts: a man's parents may be unknown but they are who they are, he has or hasn't behaved bravely in battle, a woman has or hasn't respected the sexual mores of her culture. All the objects had to do was sense their user's past actions. Or we might suppose a person's entire being was pure or tainted in accordance with these facts. To the right object, a pure spirit might transmit enhancing energy, while a taint would spoil its effectiveness like rot or rust. At some point, our culture certainly invented the idea that virtue can have physical effects, but for all I know, it might have been any time in the last millennium and a half.

As soon as I discovered the Magical Treasures I thought of the Hogwarts Sorting Hat in Harry Potter. The Hat reads students' personalities by magic and assigns them to one of four houses accordingly: courage (Griffindor), cleverness (Ravenclaw), loyalty (Hufflepuff) and ambition (Slytherin).

We still don't get to see how it figures out these essential traits or accumulations of past choices but at least we get to hear it thinking so we know it doesn't work by contagion from the wearer. What do we imagine the Hat senses in eleven-year olds and how? At least it listens to them, a bit like a telephathic school psychologist. I'm sure I wasn't the only adult who felt uncomfortable with the way Slytherin children were selected for 'baddy' status (no matter how many euphemisms their 'qualities' are cloaked in), then placed in a situation which reinforced negative traits.

Unfortunately their plight is the point of the exercise, because although the Sorting Hat provides colour to the British boarding school tradition of houses, it's mainly a pretext for signalling which characters are protagonists (Griffindors, with all the good qualities nominally attributed to all four houses), and antagonists (Slytherins, unpleasant). The kids in the other houses are just there as extras. By using the Hat, Rowling did run a risk of producing super-flat characters but she got round it by mostly ignoring it except to dump lots of real-world complexity squarely on its poor old rim. It's quite comical watching it struggle with borderline cases, student preferences, personality transformations and plain old mistakes. That's what happens to an old-fashioned magical personality test lost in the modern world of psychological complexity.

Weekly roundup

What with having guests over for a week, I did even less writing and no writing related work. Not only is it stressing me out but I'm in full-blown mental energy deficit mode. It's got me literally sleeping 11 hours a night and finding it less than enough.

• It's been a week of unexpected things as well, like my computer dying. We actually managed to resurrect it for a brief afterlife which I hope will last till December...
• On the blogging front, I said what I thought about Doctor Who and Brett Bailey's Exhibit B. It felt good to get that out of my system given that quite a few cultural products make me feel like those two things respectively. I finished a few posts but I do this to play with ideas and I've not had much time for play.
• The good thing is I booked my train ticket to my parents' house for next Friday. I will be house-sitting and writing. Nothing but writing. I can't wait. I'm going to be blogging about the process, I hope.
• I may go to Lindisfarne for a few days soon, if I can borrow the car and find sufficiently inexpensive accommodation. I'm calling it research... but really, it's a need for inspiration. Late September is probably a good time to go up there. It may well be bleak, but it shouldn't be bitter.