Having mentioned The Fountain movie and the World Tree universal feature of Earth’s mythology/religion yesterday I thought I’d include the episode of XaW Files: Beyond Humanity where they were featured, starting off the second half of the last chapter.
Time for a Piece of My Mind
For new readers, the chapters (C) and episodes (E) follow the structure of the X-Files series (S) and episodes to the T;
or should that be S/C-E,
providing an opportunity,
for a little poetry,
in this time of coffilosophy
XaW Files memory!
As I wrote yesterday, I set out to reach deep into my mind, to a place I imagined movies such as The Fountain were written, and took me when I was viewing them: a zone beyond ‘reality’, transported briefly to another dimension, maybe a universal unconsciousness (remembering Jung), like searching sky space for internal inspiration: potholing on Pluto, vanishing into Venus or embracing Enceladus. Or as I wrote in the episode, in line with greenYgreyology philosophy, perhaps just regurgitating memories of the fiction you’ve known in life.
Vikings and Modern Scandinavia
This episode takes place in Iceland, and the World Tree is a big part of the Norse Sagas, and what was the Viking religion; a recent BBC documentary compendium of their coverage over the last half century said (I think it was the great modern Icelander Magnus Magnusson, who I grew up with as the question master of Mastermind, and I now know from my XaW Files research had a father called Magnus, as that’s how Icelandic names work) they never took it that seriously though, not to the point of trying to convert others, preferring to integrate into places they settled, such as modern Normandy, Russia, Britain and Ireland.
I’d just like to therefore make it clear I’m not trying to convert anybody to the Norse sagas, although I think they have as much merit as other world ‘religions’; and their legends and stories. I do think modern Scandinavia has been a leader in many social progressions, such as the environment and gender equality; with the Norse sagas perhaps having some influence, with goddesses such as Freya prevalent, and Yggdrasil the world tree of course.
The episode also features a Biblical scene, reminiscent of Adam and Eve, symbolising the crossover of world myths, legends and religions, greenYgrey hotchpotch style!
Yggdrasil of course begins with a Y, and our (greenYgrey) middle Y was on its own in this episode, which seems to help it find its inner tree empathy.
Chapter 9 Episode 11
Warmed by our reunion and mealtime merriment, Dai and Stella showed us around their farm afterwards. As well as their free range Steller’s sea cows, they had orchards growing various organic fruits.
Golden evening sunshine flew silently through tree branches and leaves, with the ripe fruit seeming to reflect my rambling mind, knowing I’d reached the second half of the last chapter.
‘You can pick them,’ said Stella.
‘I know!’ I replied.
The True Meaning is Unclear
There were probably as many ways to interpret Stella’s words as there were words spoken, but this time I thought I knew exactly what she meant.
So I reached to the sky under the sun, feeling a visceral connection to my ancestors, whoever they were, noticing were (sic) there was a double meaning again.
Epiphanies Sometime Appear, Explanations Never Do
The fruit I could just reach made me feel lucky, but when I used a branch to pull another branch within reach it seemed to trigger an epiphany moment; reward chemicals flowed on nitrogenous neurons through my space-sized mind as if finding and crossing a favourite bridge again: the bridge between a homely past and possible future.
Of course, I don’t know if my mind is really tapping into the distant past, or if its been influenced by fictional media, with the lightbulb past perhaps represented by the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Steller’s sea cow future the seaside end scene of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.
Would I have felt the way I did picking the fruit if I had never learnt anything about humanity’s past, and theories about our prehistoric beginnings. I can never know, for I have lived amongst humans for too long, and learnt much about their ways.
Remembering my Ydentity
The Tree of Life movie memory eventually made me remember my own tree shape, passing through the tree of life in Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, before returning to myself. I am the closest thing to Yggdrasil in the greenYgrey world: central to its cosmology.
I, the Y, could see across the greenYgrey spectrum when I was altogether, as Yggdrasil can see everywhere in the Norse sagas. My thoughts inspired me to notice a lone tree atop a mound. I wondered if it was a sign, and if I might be able to receive or transmit a message from green and grey.
So I left the warm orchard, full of Love and life, walked up the hill and climbed the tree to the cold top. Balancing on the highest thinnest branches I tried to stretch my arms out as far as I could.
I picked up cold winds from all directions, reaching above tree,
and those from the north, also scattered snowflakes over me,
but there was no message yet, only this nonsense poetry.
References
In 2001: A Space Odyssey an ape (Daniel Richter) lifts a femur bone from a skeletal pile and realizes it makes a fine weapon. (Soundtrack: “Thus Spake Zarathustra” again.) The ape realizes that it can destroy other bones with the club. Three turning points in evolution happen simultaneously: proto-humans learn to kill with weapons, to hunt using weapons and eat meat, and to walk upright. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/synopsis?ref_=tt_stry_pl
Tree atop mound idea from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil
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greenygrey3 