Of the Sith: An Essay
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 4:28 pm
Here is a wee essay I wrote in my downtime the last weeks.
***************
Of the Sith
An essay
January 6th-14th 2008
***************
When I was in Scotland last summer, from the windows of Blair Castle, you could sometimes (that is, on a clear enough day) see the summit of the mountain Schiehallion. One fellow guide, rather well-versed in the area, told me that the name of said mountain meant something along the lines of “the mountain of the fairies”.
Being a Spanish Literature scholar with a solid linguistics background (I speak fluently French, English and Spanish), I am often in the habit of questioning the words which surrounds me. My hypothesis was that the “schie” part meant “fairy” and that the “hallion” part meant “mountain”, by its phonetic proximity to “hill”. Further researches indicated that Schiehallion was in fact an English transcription of the Scots Gaelic “Sidhe Chaileann”, which indeed means “Fairy Hill”.
Which brings me to a very interesting discovery. Scots Gaelic “sidhe” means “fairies”. And “sith” means in fact “fairy”. Case in point, with the better-known banshee, or “bean-sidhe”, the Celtic equivalent to the Roman Furies or the Greek Erinyes. Strange, that, because I had once been told that George Lucas had invented the term “Sith” by interverting the order of the letters within the word “shit”…
You can then imagine how surprised I was when the wheels started clicking in my head. The Sidhe are indeed known as a later name for the Tuatha de Danann, the highest order of the Celtic mythology, a bit like the Olympian Gods in Greece. These are the mightiest beings in the Celtic mind, beings of power who sometimes visit the mortals through doors in the fabric of the space-time continuum, portals more often placed in mounds or, yes, hills… The Tuatha trace their lineage to the Goddess Danu (or Ana, or Dana), and are often represented in Sacred Triads, of which the mythological heroes are counterparts.
Such a triad represents the tripartite aspects of a woman, as maiden, spouse and crone, accepting that those three stages of a woman’s life are complementary, and that you don’t stop being the one for becoming the other. To cite a famous example, however, the triad of Nuada-Dagda-Taranis (or Arthur-Merlin-Lancelot) represents the three social divisions of the Common Law, the Moral Guide and the Warrior Force, almost like a pre-Enlightenment concept of the separation between the Legislative, the Judicial and the Executive powers. Yet it is more subtle than that, for the Celtic mentality is essentially monist, which supposes that each part is a whole and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The aforementioned powers must be separate, as too much might concentrated in the hands of one entity creates despotism, but at the same time, one power cannot exist without the others, because otherwise it becomes weak and ineffectual.
The Sidhe are all-powerful, yes, but they also have an inherent frailty which makes them almost human, and therefore Gods and Goddesses we can relate to. They represent the full scope of the human mind and personality, making them at once good and bad examples. Their adventures show us that power in itself is not bad, but that what matters is how exactly one handles this power. They carry, before their time, the notion of an ethics of responsibility, wherein the person must weigh their options carefully before commiting to a course of action, and then bear with the consequences of their actions.
It is a conception of the world which is completely at odds with the Judeo-Christian respresentation of Good and Evil, as well as the notion stating that we all carry within us the seeds of the Original Sin which we must needs expiate all our lives, Jesus’s sacrifice notwithstanding. This Manichean postulate is completely different from the concept of Right and Wrong, which appeals more to civic duties than to religious beliefs.
In the early times of Christianism (around the dates of the Council of Nicea, in the IVth Century), this new religion, impulsed by its Church, sought to extend its power through the Known World. In this quest for domination, the central power of Rome wanted to impose its way of thinking to the Christian flock, and it clashed with freer ways of seeing this new religion. One of these ways was the Irish Church (or Kirk, as it was pronounced in these parts), the depository of spiritual treasures such as the Book of Kells, one of the prime examples of early Celto-Christian illumination, containing texts which would have otherwise been lost, but for the remote (and relatively peaceful) location of Ireland. The Kirk of Ireland sought to accommodate its practices to older customs, incorporating elements of Druidism in its rites. A good example thereof is the tonsure, which was from the forehead to the back, according to Celtic uses. Another is the beard, which was worn long in the Druid fashion. Likewise, the priests of the Kirk of Ireland had the right to marry, unlike in the Church of Rome where they sought to keep the belongings of the Church within the Church.
These are but the point of the iceberg of more profound disagreements, which almost led to a schism between the Kirk of Ireland and the Church of Rome, until at long last the Kirk of Ireland relented and bowed under the persuasion of the Church of Rome.
Which leads us back to the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
In it, we see Jedi who are forbidden to marry, under the “no attachments” rule. They aren’t even allowed to have contact with their families, as Obi-Wan especially forbids Anakin to go after his mother, even though the young man has nightmares (or visions) about her passing. The Sith are an Order of sterile, patriarcal structures of power, where the master holds his apprentice like a slave, expecting him to comply unquestioningly to his master’s decrees. “Only the Sith deals in absolutes,” Obi-Wan warns Anakin as the young man slips even further down the Dark path. The Sith are the incarnation of Evil, the Demons, the Sorcerers who destroy everything in their path and twist a good man’s potential until he no longer can stop himself from strangling his pregnant wife. The Sith are seen, rather ironically, as the absolute enemy which the Jedi must needs eradicate for the Galaxy to live in peace. The Jedi are the guardians of Freedom and Truth, and without them the Galaxy is plunged into Darkness and despotism.
Darth Vader is an Archangel of the Apocalypse, he who, by virtue of his miraculous birth, would have been the Saviour, the spearhead of the Jedi in their quest to rid the Free world of the Sith and their Evil ways. From the Sith-hunt to the Witch-hunt, there is but a step. I do not know yet if I am bold enough to cross it.
The Sith are thus the Devil, millions of lightyears away from the rich, human, forward-thinking portrayal of the Sidhe or Thuatha de Danann. How such a semantic slight happened, I cannot venture to imagine. Yet a part of me cannot help but wonder what message it gives to the public at large. If a great, fullsome world as the Celtic mythology can be reduced to being the villains in a XXth century Space Opera, it makes me extremely wary as to the state of General Culture and the risk of misinformation in our society.
At the end of all things, I will still like Star Wars as the set of movies which fired my imagination in my young teenage years. Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia have been part of my life for too long for me to snatch them so from my heart. And some Star Wars fanfics are just amazing.
Yet I believe I have at last put the finger on the reason why I like the Lord of the Rings trilogy best. Because in it, another modern re-imagining of the Sidhe (the Elves) are, for all their otherworldliness, utterly human in their preoccupations and failings. And like Galadriel, they recognise the risks of absolute power when such is offered to them.
***************
Of the Sith
An essay
January 6th-14th 2008
***************
When I was in Scotland last summer, from the windows of Blair Castle, you could sometimes (that is, on a clear enough day) see the summit of the mountain Schiehallion. One fellow guide, rather well-versed in the area, told me that the name of said mountain meant something along the lines of “the mountain of the fairies”.
Being a Spanish Literature scholar with a solid linguistics background (I speak fluently French, English and Spanish), I am often in the habit of questioning the words which surrounds me. My hypothesis was that the “schie” part meant “fairy” and that the “hallion” part meant “mountain”, by its phonetic proximity to “hill”. Further researches indicated that Schiehallion was in fact an English transcription of the Scots Gaelic “Sidhe Chaileann”, which indeed means “Fairy Hill”.
Which brings me to a very interesting discovery. Scots Gaelic “sidhe” means “fairies”. And “sith” means in fact “fairy”. Case in point, with the better-known banshee, or “bean-sidhe”, the Celtic equivalent to the Roman Furies or the Greek Erinyes. Strange, that, because I had once been told that George Lucas had invented the term “Sith” by interverting the order of the letters within the word “shit”…
You can then imagine how surprised I was when the wheels started clicking in my head. The Sidhe are indeed known as a later name for the Tuatha de Danann, the highest order of the Celtic mythology, a bit like the Olympian Gods in Greece. These are the mightiest beings in the Celtic mind, beings of power who sometimes visit the mortals through doors in the fabric of the space-time continuum, portals more often placed in mounds or, yes, hills… The Tuatha trace their lineage to the Goddess Danu (or Ana, or Dana), and are often represented in Sacred Triads, of which the mythological heroes are counterparts.
Such a triad represents the tripartite aspects of a woman, as maiden, spouse and crone, accepting that those three stages of a woman’s life are complementary, and that you don’t stop being the one for becoming the other. To cite a famous example, however, the triad of Nuada-Dagda-Taranis (or Arthur-Merlin-Lancelot) represents the three social divisions of the Common Law, the Moral Guide and the Warrior Force, almost like a pre-Enlightenment concept of the separation between the Legislative, the Judicial and the Executive powers. Yet it is more subtle than that, for the Celtic mentality is essentially monist, which supposes that each part is a whole and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The aforementioned powers must be separate, as too much might concentrated in the hands of one entity creates despotism, but at the same time, one power cannot exist without the others, because otherwise it becomes weak and ineffectual.
The Sidhe are all-powerful, yes, but they also have an inherent frailty which makes them almost human, and therefore Gods and Goddesses we can relate to. They represent the full scope of the human mind and personality, making them at once good and bad examples. Their adventures show us that power in itself is not bad, but that what matters is how exactly one handles this power. They carry, before their time, the notion of an ethics of responsibility, wherein the person must weigh their options carefully before commiting to a course of action, and then bear with the consequences of their actions.
It is a conception of the world which is completely at odds with the Judeo-Christian respresentation of Good and Evil, as well as the notion stating that we all carry within us the seeds of the Original Sin which we must needs expiate all our lives, Jesus’s sacrifice notwithstanding. This Manichean postulate is completely different from the concept of Right and Wrong, which appeals more to civic duties than to religious beliefs.
In the early times of Christianism (around the dates of the Council of Nicea, in the IVth Century), this new religion, impulsed by its Church, sought to extend its power through the Known World. In this quest for domination, the central power of Rome wanted to impose its way of thinking to the Christian flock, and it clashed with freer ways of seeing this new religion. One of these ways was the Irish Church (or Kirk, as it was pronounced in these parts), the depository of spiritual treasures such as the Book of Kells, one of the prime examples of early Celto-Christian illumination, containing texts which would have otherwise been lost, but for the remote (and relatively peaceful) location of Ireland. The Kirk of Ireland sought to accommodate its practices to older customs, incorporating elements of Druidism in its rites. A good example thereof is the tonsure, which was from the forehead to the back, according to Celtic uses. Another is the beard, which was worn long in the Druid fashion. Likewise, the priests of the Kirk of Ireland had the right to marry, unlike in the Church of Rome where they sought to keep the belongings of the Church within the Church.
These are but the point of the iceberg of more profound disagreements, which almost led to a schism between the Kirk of Ireland and the Church of Rome, until at long last the Kirk of Ireland relented and bowed under the persuasion of the Church of Rome.
Which leads us back to the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
In it, we see Jedi who are forbidden to marry, under the “no attachments” rule. They aren’t even allowed to have contact with their families, as Obi-Wan especially forbids Anakin to go after his mother, even though the young man has nightmares (or visions) about her passing. The Sith are an Order of sterile, patriarcal structures of power, where the master holds his apprentice like a slave, expecting him to comply unquestioningly to his master’s decrees. “Only the Sith deals in absolutes,” Obi-Wan warns Anakin as the young man slips even further down the Dark path. The Sith are the incarnation of Evil, the Demons, the Sorcerers who destroy everything in their path and twist a good man’s potential until he no longer can stop himself from strangling his pregnant wife. The Sith are seen, rather ironically, as the absolute enemy which the Jedi must needs eradicate for the Galaxy to live in peace. The Jedi are the guardians of Freedom and Truth, and without them the Galaxy is plunged into Darkness and despotism.
Darth Vader is an Archangel of the Apocalypse, he who, by virtue of his miraculous birth, would have been the Saviour, the spearhead of the Jedi in their quest to rid the Free world of the Sith and their Evil ways. From the Sith-hunt to the Witch-hunt, there is but a step. I do not know yet if I am bold enough to cross it.
The Sith are thus the Devil, millions of lightyears away from the rich, human, forward-thinking portrayal of the Sidhe or Thuatha de Danann. How such a semantic slight happened, I cannot venture to imagine. Yet a part of me cannot help but wonder what message it gives to the public at large. If a great, fullsome world as the Celtic mythology can be reduced to being the villains in a XXth century Space Opera, it makes me extremely wary as to the state of General Culture and the risk of misinformation in our society.
At the end of all things, I will still like Star Wars as the set of movies which fired my imagination in my young teenage years. Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia have been part of my life for too long for me to snatch them so from my heart. And some Star Wars fanfics are just amazing.
Yet I believe I have at last put the finger on the reason why I like the Lord of the Rings trilogy best. Because in it, another modern re-imagining of the Sidhe (the Elves) are, for all their otherworldliness, utterly human in their preoccupations and failings. And like Galadriel, they recognise the risks of absolute power when such is offered to them.