So “dreamtime” was originally (1899) a mistranslation by a white ethnographer of an ATSI (Indigenous Australian) term “Alcheringa”. It was promptly criticized in the community of ethnographers for being a mistranslation/misunderstanding and usage in the academic community dropped out until the term was revived in the 1970s for a more broaaaaad definition, the mythological phenomenon described in the thread above.
What I was not aware of is that the mistranslation persisted in English-speaking communities to refer to those ATSl cultural belief sets! (When I was taking mythology classes in college, we used ATSI terms for ATSI concepts). Some very kind people on twitter gave me some sources and gently corrected me.
So let’s just all agree in the future to use the alternate term “strongtime” instead of “dreamtime” when we’re talking about the stuff that my thread concerned, y/y? It’s just less fraught with shitty colonialism and it costs zero dollars to not be an asshole, u get me?
SO NOW WE KNOW THAT
ok this is a REALLY GREAT THREAD but no, i’m not giving up ‘dreamtime’ as a term of art for narrative space. @ariaste you just underwent the process described in the thread – with regards to the word ‘dreamtime’. it was a lovely, evocative word, and then you found out it was politically tainted, and now you want to avoid it.
plus, it just makes more sense. if ‘strongtime’ is the correct term for australian mythology, then of course we should use it for that. but it doesn’t describe narrative space in general nearly as well as ‘dreamtime’.
aboriginal australians have reclaimed ‘dreamtime’ to mean that specific thing in their culture, in the town I lived in in central queensland there was a wonderful building that sadly closed before I could ever visit called the ‘dreamtime cultural center’ which had the history of the aboriginee peoples that live in the area. Reading about the dreamtime is really interesting and educational!
Using the same word to describe the narrative thing seems fine from what I know through my prior interactions with aborginee cultural practices. The thing that’s a Please Don’t from what I researched and asked about is using the actual dreamtime as a spice for fantasy/sci-fi stories and such if you aren’t yourself aboriginal australian, because it’s part of a living culture that holds stories and history as sacred.
also after rambling in the tags i just want to share a really lovely thing i learned at the retreat:
this is migaloo! migaloo is a white humpback whale that migrates past the island regularly and is sacred to the woppaburra people who live on what is now known as north keppel island, but the traditional name is konomie. His name means “white fella”. The woppaburra are part of a wider whale dreaming indigenous community around australia, and the spiritual salt water totem for them is mugga mugga, (the humpback whale).
i’ve blathered on a bit mainly because aboriginal mythology is really cool and there are so many distinct cultural groups and i just wanted to share what i know about the people who were kind enough to welcome me to their home and tell me their stories. I checked to be sure I wasn’t mangling anything c: https://australianmuseum.net.au/woppaburra-people-of-the-keppel-islands (in case anyone wants to read more about the history! cw for some very sad stuff though)
thank you for adding this, knowing about this sacred whale friend added to my life’s happiness ❤
my thesis involves this principle! in fluids, viscosity (the thickness/stickiness of the fluid) and inertia (the tendency of something to stay in motion when a force is exerted) are in competition. glycerin is incredibly viscous, so the viscosity beats the inertia and the dye doesn’t shift beyond where it is immediately pushed–so exerting an equal and opposite force on the dye just puts it back to its exactly original position.
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
I started thinking: how did Telchar make Narsil in the first place? (…
Telchar first wrought it in the deeps of time … )
The dwarves of yore made mighty spells, While hammers fell like ringing bells
Narsil is a first-age sword. It’s a dwarf-sword, not an elf-sword. (Though, potentially, using some Noldorin technology, since it was made by Telchar of Nogrod, presumably during the period when Nogrod, Belegost and Thargelion were at the height of wealth and technology, when Curufin was learning Khuzdul, and Caranthir was trading with the Dwarves.)
It’s probably about six thousand seven hundred years old.
Let me consider that for a bit. 6700 years. 6700 YEARS.
It’s older than Stonehenge is now. It’s older than the Pyramids. It’s far older than the oldest known coins. If we had a sword that was 6700 years old today, it would have to be made of stone, because that’s well before the start of the Bronze Age.
I can’t think of any metal object in the real world that is still in use after 6700 years.
And it’s being remade from Narsil to Anduril in Rivendell, which means, I’m guessing, that those two guys hitting it are smiths escaped from Eregion that Elrond swept up and managed to rescue during his insanely-risky post-fall-of-Eregion attempted rescue mission. Eregion, of the jewelsmiths. Eregion of the Rings that can avert entropy.
And later, Anduril seems to know what it’s hitting, and be able to flash light at just the right moment…? Maybe it can do what Sting does and detect enemies.
…mighty spells…
Maybe you DO remake the damn thing by hitting it with a very carefully tuned hammer while reciting poetry? In the absence of a treatise on the practice of Elven Enchantments and Dwarven Spells And Their Employment in Metalworking it seems as valid a theory as any.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,
Arthur C Clarke’s third law says.
No doubt Galadriel would argue with the use of the word ‘magic’ on the grounds that it isn’t sufficiently distinguished from the deceits of the Enemy, but we don’t all have the advantage of having studied with Aule, Galadriel.
… I love this scene!
I have always wished to read On the Practice of Elven Enchantments and Dwarven Spells And Their Employment in Metalworking. Because this is not how iron-based metals work. Ferrous metals neither work that way in the sense of “function” nor do they work that way in the sense of “to bring to shape by gradual process.”
If I try to consider it as steel, I have the following issues:
If that is a (forge)weld, you are hammering too hard and will break it.
If that is a weld, where is your flux?
It’s not even the right kind of weld for a high-impact tool (i.e. a sword), so even the idea of welding in this way is wrong, but we’ll ignore that since it’s apparently what they are doing. (Re-forging a sword is exactly what it says on the tin, forging again.)
Good temperature-color for shaping, not hot enough for sticking (welding)
Lawsy, someone teach that boy how to aim his hammer
Or maybe give him a proper smithing hammer?
Or some muscles? That ain’t how your swing that (estimated) 3-pound hammer.
The sparks always give me a special shudder because if your steel
comes out of the fire sparking, you’ve burned it and have to REMAKE YOUR
STEEL (or cut off the burned bits)
Never mind how that steel isn’t hot enough to spark white
What are you even doing?
If I try to consider it as a whitesmithing situation (gold, silver, etc) then I have even bigger issues, so that’s a no-go.
Ergo, either “magic metal” or “metal that has had magic applied to it.” A metal we have no access to or steel that has had enchantments applied so that it no longer functions molecularly like steel.
(It’s Tolkien, why not both? I’ve always headcanoned something like a mithril-alloy with magical enhancements.)
In spite of all that, 10/10 for feels. Bonus points for atmosphere and working at night. (Leaving aside ideas that starlight might help with Elven enchantments, a dark forge is properly historic and the still used by many of the best swordmakers.)
And now 11/10 for the idea that those are
Eregion
smiths.
Reblogging because I secretly hoped @ilsa-fireswan would have Thoughts on this!
It kinda blew my mind to learn today that “thou” was actually an informal form, and “you/ye” was the fancy one
Now whenever I see “thou” I read it in a tone kinda like “y’all” in tumblr posts and like… 1600s bible verses were supposed to be perfectly frank, not stilted. this changes everything………..
“Listen, then, if y’all have ears!” – Jesus, maybe
I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love
I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on
‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.
just moving along like everyone else 