'A tree is a community ...'
The Melyan Tree is a poetic myth, rooted in ecology.
It is a Giant Tree which holds, and gives life to, hundreds of thousands of living communities. It lives in the mythical tropical rainforest, which has risen upon such rich volcanic soil that the trees reach a hundred metres into the sky.
Every community within this tree lives in perfect equilibrium, perfect harmony: from the tiniest microscopic fauna to the giant monkeys that swing and hoot in its splendid branches; from the fungi that weave between its roots, to the birds that soar from its highest canopy. The tree holds the Web of Life.
Ecology
is not just the world outside us, ‘the environment’. It is within us. We are walking ecology. We are
interwoven with the ecology that surrounds our bodies. The air we breathe, the water we drink … as it has been said: 'if you doubt that you are connected with the systems of life on Earth, try not breathing for five minutes."
As
a child I knew this. Children can be
wise. At the age of twelve, I began to
write a story, which I am still writing today.
It is a story about the Melyan Trees of the Great Caldera Forest.
***
There
was a forest … perhaps in the distant past, perhaps in the distant future,
perhaps in an Earth parallel to ours, yet a forest that existed. It formed at the beginning of an age in the
basin of a great volcanic eruption, a caldera, hot and wet and steamy. In the rich basaltic soils, in the deep
crevices and canyons of lava flows, in the gullies carved by torrential rains,
it grew to impenetrable size and depth.
Thousands of animals and plants and insects and fungi wove together,
thicker and richer by the age; and within this tight, diverse web of life grew
the greatest Trees ever on the Earth, called by the ancient peoples of that
land, 'Melyana' … the Melyan Trees.
The
people who lived in this forest: who
knew from where they came? They had
always been there. They were the
deschana, a small, wiry people whose feet only touched the ground when they
consecrated their children and buried their dead. They lived high in the canopy, on frets and
structures of bamboo, cut with prayer; their songs in many languages sounded
like water and birdsong; and their life was as harmonious as it was possible
for human beings, in their element, in the forest, in the Melyan Trees.
They
never got sick, for a large part of their food came from the honey of the Black
Guanye Bee. This honey was taken with
much ceremony from the hives of the bees, who had actually evolved the
propensity to build a spare shelf of wax, so the people could take the honey
without compromising the lives of the bees.
The honey was mixed with a hundred medicines, berries, fruits and dyes
from vines, and the potent drink was called mela; and with this, the people
never starved or were hungry.
One
day this harmony was interrupted, and the peaceful lives of the
deschana were changed forever.
It started with a pervasive discord, a fear, an feeling of discomfort which seemed into the clans and tribes and families of the Melyan Tree People. People began to squabble amongst themselves. The healers began to use sorcery to try and restore balance; but the sorcery twisted unto itself and became dark, and one day, in one particular tribe, somebody was killed by another man.
This tribe were the Amatei people. All the families of the Amatei grieved; and the shamans went into ceremony to ask for guidance from the Trees. They drank the sacred vine medicine, pituangha, which induces visions; and as one, lamenting, they asked the question:
It started with a pervasive discord, a fear, an feeling of discomfort which seemed into the clans and tribes and families of the Melyan Tree People. People began to squabble amongst themselves. The healers began to use sorcery to try and restore balance; but the sorcery twisted unto itself and became dark, and one day, in one particular tribe, somebody was killed by another man.
This tribe were the Amatei people. All the families of the Amatei grieved; and the shamans went into ceremony to ask for guidance from the Trees. They drank the sacred vine medicine, pituangha, which induces visions; and as one, lamenting, they asked the question:
‘Sacred
trees, life of Oam, Law of the Forest, what is happening? Why has one man killed another?’
And
the trees replied:
‘A
great enemy is about to arrive from over a great Water, from the Land Below the
Clouds. They will enter the forest and
penetrate, and bring fire, death and destruction to all trees and all the web
of life. Your people know this, deep
down, in their hearts. They are afraid;
and from this fear comes the violence.’
The
shamans were deeply troubled. They had
never fought an enemy from outside.
There had never been an enemy. In
their visions they could see the fire-smoke on the horizon, the monstrous
people carving gouges into the land, travelling in giant toothed monsters with
gaping mouths, entering the sacred maples paths of the forest, striking a
lightning into the bases of the Great Melyan Trees, producing fire, fire which
roared into the trees and ate them, until nothing was left but a black and
smoking ruin …
‘What
do we do?’ they cried, in lament.
‘Guard
us,’ said the Trees.
‘How? We cannot fight fire! If a lightning strikes a tree, we cannot live
there any longer. This is more than lightning! This is a death that rivals the menace of
Akhar, the First Mountain, who vomited her rivers of liquid stone over the land
in the Beginning Times!”
“How
are you to guard us? You must. You are to build a web of light and song that
the enemy cannot penetrate. And you are
to send forth an emissary, a shaman of your people, who will teach the enemy
about the Law of the Forest. Once the
enemy know the Law, they will no longer be able to destroy us or violate the
sacred Web of Life.”
Deeply
puzzled and troubled, the shamans of the Amatei went back to their families and called
Councils. Holding the talking sticks of
the Law, they told their people what the trees had said.
And
meanwhile, far away, below the clouds, on the edge of a great expanse of salty
water, a strange people dressed in many skins were standing in their own
ceremony. A chief, wearing a
wide-brimmed hat, shouted and declaimed his sovereignty over the new land as
nearby sweating men raised a tall pole, on which a strange and garish flag blew
in the blistering sun.
A
hundred years passed. In that hundred
years, terrible things happened. In the
forest that reached to the edge of the land, fire was set to destroy thousands
of trees. In the smoking ruins, just as
the shamans of the deschana had seen in vision, the strange people of many
skins began to build houses. They cut
the living trees, hoisted the dead carcasses of the trees onto carts hauled by
alien four-footed beasts, and made structures square and ominous on the ground,
in the ash and the dust. Their
settlements grew like cancers across the devastated land that once was
forest. As they pushed their frontier
back, they began to encroach on the edges of the territories of the Melyan Tree People.
These forest tribes, who lived on the frontier, had no chance; they were unprepared for the suddenness of the assault; they had never made such war or had to defend themselves against such an enemy. Their story is written across the world, in the histories of conquest. Those that survived came to live on the ground, alongside the rivers which now ran black with filth. Children were born of both races, the forest and the water-people: and these children were poor, spat upon by the elites of the settlement. The land was dug for rare and precious metals, which were packed onto boats and sent far away across the Water. A great city was born, called Darroman. In the depths and welts of this city, in the rum-drenched slums of Darroman, the remains of these forest people forgot the Law of the Forest.
These forest tribes, who lived on the frontier, had no chance; they were unprepared for the suddenness of the assault; they had never made such war or had to defend themselves against such an enemy. Their story is written across the world, in the histories of conquest. Those that survived came to live on the ground, alongside the rivers which now ran black with filth. Children were born of both races, the forest and the water-people: and these children were poor, spat upon by the elites of the settlement. The land was dug for rare and precious metals, which were packed onto boats and sent far away across the Water. A great city was born, called Darroman. In the depths and welts of this city, in the rum-drenched slums of Darroman, the remains of these forest people forgot the Law of the Forest.
Far away, in the mountains of the Caldera, above
the clouds, the forest remained unviolated for the first hundred years. The shamans of the Amatei, who had spoken to the Melyan Trees, passed their skills and
dreams onto their children. Life went
on, seemingly as usual.
But it was no longer harmonious and innocent. Ever fearful, unaware of the fate of their brothers and sisters down on the coast, the Amatei waited for more news on the wind of the Enemy, whom they called Khalurn - the ‘firemakers.’ And they pondered how they might protect their land, what this ‘web of light and song’ might be; and they speculated on the birth of the Great One, the shaman who would go to the land of the enemy and teach them the Law so that all threat would vanish forever.
But it was no longer harmonious and innocent. Ever fearful, unaware of the fate of their brothers and sisters down on the coast, the Amatei waited for more news on the wind of the Enemy, whom they called Khalurn - the ‘firemakers.’ And they pondered how they might protect their land, what this ‘web of light and song’ might be; and they speculated on the birth of the Great One, the shaman who would go to the land of the enemy and teach them the Law so that all threat would vanish forever.
One
day, as foreseen, the Khalurn came to the land of the mountain people, to the deep high forest of the Melyan Trees. With savage
toothed monsters they gouged a track all the way up the River Samlura, all the
way from the rim of the caldera to the mountains above the clouds. Gradually, in small
but terrible numbers, they began to carve out territories of their own, to
massacre swathes of sacred trees. They
were looking for precious metals; and they had discovered that the wood of the
Melyan is rich and deep and red and valuable. The might of Darroman had reached, at last,
into the deepest forest. And the Amatei
had no choice but to act on their prophecy.
All life was at stake.
As
their territories were slowly invaded, they did what the frontier tribes before them had done: they retreated deeper. They held vigils and mourning ceremonies for
the massacres of their trees. They began
to fight with their neighbouring tribe, the Turindji, who did not want to let
them onto their territory. A terrible inter-tribal war began. The Amatei Elders held
council after council. ‘Who is this
shaman?’ they argued. ‘Who is to build
the web?’ Finally, the women retreated, having had enough of all the talk. They came together and began to sing. With their song they began to weave a magic, which they hoped would be powerful enough to
deter the Khalurn. They thought that
perhaps if the Khalurn saw how powerful their sorcery was, they would be afraid,
and they would leave.
But it soon became apparent that the Khalurn had no respect for such magic. They drove
straight through the invisible webs of light and song with their helicopters, their napalm fire-bombs, their trucks and their bulldozers. The Amatei raised the offensive. They began to make poison darts strong enough
to kill a Khalurn through their thick skins.
But the Khalurn retaliated with more powerful weapons: long black sticks that shot thunder and
lightning, and could punch a hole right through a man. Slowly but surely, a major war was beginning in the
land of the Melyan Trees. Violence and
chaos and fear tightened their strangling grip on those clans still remote enough to watch the invasion from the distance.
One
night, in the midst of this, a young boy, twelve years old, about to enter his
teman, his initiation of manhood, was tried in front of full Council for
breaking the Law. He had done no more
than spy on an act of magic that a sorceror was weaving; yet to the tribe, he
presented a greater threat. He had been
seen to possess, and wield, powers that even the Elders could not seek to
compete with. The Elders argued long
into the night, as the boy stood tied to a branch, unable to move or escape,
terrified and defiant. Some elders
cried: ‘This boy is the one who will talk to the Enemy, the one of the old
prophecy!’ Yet others argued: ‘This boy is a curse upon us! He has defied Law. If we do not deal with him unto the Law, the
Enemy will completely destroy us!”
In
the mire of superstition, violence and fear to which the Amatei had descended,
the women grieved and tried to remind the men of the word of the Melyan
Trees. But to no avail. The boy was exiled, by the Elders, under pain of death by
sorcery. The wailing broke into the
night as the boy fled, shadows closing in behind him.
And
not so far away, in a jungle-camp, on the ground, three sweating Khalurn men
put their hands over their ears at the frightening sound, and grumbled that one
day these ‘forest savages’ would hinder their progress no more …
End
of Part 1 ...
I might be asked why I am creating a fantasy story about a forest. It is not to portray a romanticised ideal of an indigenous people threatened by colonisation. In the fantasy vein, I have not modelled the Melyan Tree society on any Earth indigenous people of a particular tribe or culture. I don't want to claim to represent any existing society of people.
Based as it is in a fantasy Earth, this story is allegorical. I want to express a truth that has echoed through human history: the appropriation and invasion of lands, the pattern of conquest and domination waged by races with ever-stronger weapons, technology, and lust for power. But underneath this, I want to imagine a people who live so close to the forces of Nature that they consider themselves inextricably woven with it; a people whose lives might even appear, to us, to be 'magical'. The spiritual force or cosmology that drives these people, that fills their waking and dreaming consciousness, is what they call the Law: the Law of Life, the circle, at the centre of which the patterns of creation are woven, by dancers of light ...
And I want to imagine what happens when these people encounter the brutal world that is ours... what happens when they encounter the forces that threaten to rip and tear the delicate balance of the forest apart.
And how they might protect themselves and the forest from annihilation ...
Thus, with imagination, I hope to engage emotions and feelings and visions and ideas ... the idea of what it is for humans to live in complete harmony with ecosystems on Earth ... ideas of alternative perception, animism, spiritual connectedness ... ideas that could fuel a collective, directed and strategic action towards protecting the Earth systems that weave and support life. The symbol of the Melyan Tree, as a living community, rooted in the ground, reaching for the Sun, can become a vision of human societies that live in total harmony with Nature ... societies that we can build.
Imagination is the key to understanding mystery ...
As synopses and chapters are written, they should hopefully be posted on this blog! But lots of other kinds of posts will appear here too. Topics of sacred ecology, deep ecology and spiritual ecology will be explored. And so will photos, art and contemplations that encourage us to connect with the amazing complexity of life on Earth, to understand the geometry and the science of it, and to wonder at the patterns unfolded through evolution.
Eclectic insights, writings, inspirations, projects and sacred activism will be shared. Remember that the key two themes are 'connectedness' and 'action' ... how we feel towards Mother Earth, and how we behave towards her. These two themes go hand in hand. Connectedness without action is impotent. Action without connectedness is destructive.
With Hope
I might be asked why I am creating a fantasy story about a forest. It is not to portray a romanticised ideal of an indigenous people threatened by colonisation. In the fantasy vein, I have not modelled the Melyan Tree society on any Earth indigenous people of a particular tribe or culture. I don't want to claim to represent any existing society of people.
Based as it is in a fantasy Earth, this story is allegorical. I want to express a truth that has echoed through human history: the appropriation and invasion of lands, the pattern of conquest and domination waged by races with ever-stronger weapons, technology, and lust for power. But underneath this, I want to imagine a people who live so close to the forces of Nature that they consider themselves inextricably woven with it; a people whose lives might even appear, to us, to be 'magical'. The spiritual force or cosmology that drives these people, that fills their waking and dreaming consciousness, is what they call the Law: the Law of Life, the circle, at the centre of which the patterns of creation are woven, by dancers of light ...
And I want to imagine what happens when these people encounter the brutal world that is ours... what happens when they encounter the forces that threaten to rip and tear the delicate balance of the forest apart.
And how they might protect themselves and the forest from annihilation ...
Thus, with imagination, I hope to engage emotions and feelings and visions and ideas ... the idea of what it is for humans to live in complete harmony with ecosystems on Earth ... ideas of alternative perception, animism, spiritual connectedness ... ideas that could fuel a collective, directed and strategic action towards protecting the Earth systems that weave and support life. The symbol of the Melyan Tree, as a living community, rooted in the ground, reaching for the Sun, can become a vision of human societies that live in total harmony with Nature ... societies that we can build.
Imagination is the key to understanding mystery ...
As synopses and chapters are written, they should hopefully be posted on this blog! But lots of other kinds of posts will appear here too. Topics of sacred ecology, deep ecology and spiritual ecology will be explored. And so will photos, art and contemplations that encourage us to connect with the amazing complexity of life on Earth, to understand the geometry and the science of it, and to wonder at the patterns unfolded through evolution.
Eclectic insights, writings, inspirations, projects and sacred activism will be shared. Remember that the key two themes are 'connectedness' and 'action' ... how we feel towards Mother Earth, and how we behave towards her. These two themes go hand in hand. Connectedness without action is impotent. Action without connectedness is destructive.
With Hope
