Life, Death, and Water Mythology
I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides for some time. The movie is loosely based on Tim Power’s novel by the same name. In anticipation of this event, I talked my fearless editor into letting me celebrate with a post or two.
While chatting about potential topics related to the movie centering around water and the fountain of youth, she mentioned water myths in the context of space travel. I was surprised at first. I so seldom think about such things when I consider space exploration. Sure on alien lands, encountering alien cultures I can absolutely see it. I just don’t think of any kind of belief system in relation to spaceships and travel. The one exception might be John Scalzi’s The God Engines.
Ok so let’s try an experiment. I am going to share with you locations, creatures, and ideas both real and fantastic that belong to our collective human mythology involving water. They will be direct quotes from various sources. As you read over them, try and think how they might fit into stories involving space travel. Are you with me? Good.
LIFE
“In India, the sacred River Ganges embodies the water of life for Hindus. Legend has it that the Ganges is the river that flows beyond its earthly bounds to Moksa, the realm of Nirvana.” (Water Myths, Mysteries and Symbolism)
DEATH
“The river of which many know its name, without knowing its origin or what it really stood for. A river that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. Styx it is said winds around Hades (hell or the underworld are other names) nine times. Its name comes from the Greek word stugein which means hate, Styx, the river of hate. This river was so respected by the gods of Greek mythology that they would take life binding oaths just by mentioning its name, as referenced in the story of Bacchus-Ariadne, where Jove ‘confirms it with the irrevocable oath, attesting the river Styx.’” (Styx, The River)
LOST CIVILIZATIONS
“The Greek philosopher Plato first mentioned Atlantis as an island that once existed. He stated this island was a naval power that had conquered parts of Western Europe and Africa. Some 9,000 years before Plato’s time a natural disaster caused Atlantis to sink into the sea. It is thought to have been located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and America. Throughout the centuries the theory of Atlantis was mostly rejected, and often parodied…It was thought they possessed aircraft and ships powered by some form of energy crystal. Modern theory sometimes states that some modern Islands are parts of Atlantis that rose from the ocean.” (Water Mythology)
“Ritual purification is a feature of many religions. The aim of these rituals is to remove specifically defined uncleanliness prior to a particular type of activity, and especially prior to the worship of a deity. This ritual uncleanliness is not however identical with ordinary physical impurity, such as dirt stains; nevertheless, all body fluids are generally considered ritually unclean, and some religions have special treatment of semen and menses, which are viewed as particularly unclean.” (Ritual purification)
“A flood myth or deluge myth is a mythical or religious story of a great flood sent by a deity or deities to destroy civilization as an act of divine retribution. It is a theme widespread among many cultures, though it is perhaps best known in modern times through the biblical and Quranic account of Noah’s Ark, the Hindu puranic story of Manu, through Deucalion in Greek mythology or Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primeval waters found in some creation myths since the flood waters are seen to cleanse humanity in preparation for rebirth. Most flood myths also contain a culture hero who strives to ensure this rebirth.” (Flood Myth)
CUNNING
Bäckahästen: “It was often described as a majestic white horse that would appear near rivers, particularly during foggy weather. Anyone who climbed onto its back would not be able to get off again. The horse would then jump into the river, drowning the rider. The brook horse could also be harnessed and made to plough, either because it was trying to trick a person or because the person had tricked the horse into it.” (Neck/Water Spirit)
LOVE & TRAGEDY
“The shy Selkies are marine creatures in the shape of a seal. They can be found near the islands of Orkney and Shetland. A female can shed her skin and come ashore as a beautiful woman. When a man finds the skin, he can force the Selkie to be a good, if somewhat sad, wife. Should she ever recover the skin, she will immediately return to sea, leaving her husband behind. The male Selkies are responsible for storms and also for the sinking of ships, which is their way of avenging the hunting of seals.” (Selkie)
“In Teutonic folklore, undines are female water-spirits who like to associate with humans. They often join villagers in their dances and merry-making. An undine was created without a soul, but by marrying a mortal and bearing him a child she obtained a soul and with it all the pains and penalties of the human race.” (Undine)
I read a short work online that had a plot that revolved around water. I am sorry to confess that I cannot remember the name of the work for the life of me, and I cannot find it again. However, it dealt with a space drive that used mass displacement for propulsion, and water was used as the primary “fuel” for its abundance. There was a colony on Mars, and Earth decided to not let anyone use their water anymore for fear of it running out. Mars rebelled and started mining Saturn’s rings for ice/water.
I can see the water/rivers leading to other places in this story. If water was a propellant, you could even work Atlantis into this: perhaps it was a downed alien craft (technology would support this), and it did not sink, but was fixed, refilled, and took off.
Oh Britt, that’s great. Thank you so much for sharing that story and then expanding on the theme.
I had to go look up that method of propulsion. Thanks for sending me back to Wiki today!
My pleasure!
I just wish I could remember the name of the original story!
Yeah, that description rings a bell. If we’re thinking of the same thing, the idea was that this was a huge example of irrational politics, because asteroids were yearly adding more water to earth’s system than was used in propulsion. Was that the same story were a handful of colonists rig one of the first orbital habitats into a ship that makes a desperate attempt at the asteroid.
I think it was a Sturgeon or an Anderson, or maybe Vonnegut– based on what i was reading at about the time i think i read this. It wasn’t a full length novel.
Right. It was just a short story. Earth politicians were worried about their oceans being dried, when really it would have taken some millions of years or something like that, so off the colonists went to the rings of Saturn.
I have tried to find the story again online using every technologically specific search term I can remember from the story, but to no avail. If I happen to find it, I’ll post the link here.
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mg – you might want to check out arthur c clarke’s “songs from a distant earth”.
I need to have a read.
When it comes to space travel, we can accept that travellers will be journeying for a very long time between their origin and destination. Now, the universe is vast and it has a lot of stuff in it, but most of it is dreadfully inhospitable to humans. Outer space is a desert in more ways than one. Because space is so ‘arid’ of all the things we require to survive, let alone thrive, we may wish to examine the water myths and resource conserving practices of both hot and cold desert cultures around the world as we plan our interplanetary…road trips.
It’s worth noting that many desert cultures are or were once primarily nomadic, and many today are still dependent upon expansive trade networks in order to persist. Establishing an equivalent resource exchange network in outer space will probably never be viable, and the existing system appears to be unsustainable on Earth.
In fact, nothing we’ve accomplished on Earth is likely to scale well to the environs beyond our atmosphere. When we speak of space travel and habitation in real terms, we must speak in terms of millenia and light years. Except for pocket-sized artifacts, nothing we’ve ever built has remained intact as long as a generation-ship will need to last in order to deliver our descendents where we send them. No government has persisted continuously without revolution or civil war for the length of time that would be necessary for such a journey. Hell, most workplaces can’t pass a day without human error producing a considerable loss of efficiency. How do we compensate for ourselves to the degree necessary to ensure enough of us survive the trip to establish a colony? And after we’ve arrived, how do we compensate for being maladapted to living anywhere but Earth?
One thing is sure: We will spin yarns in space. If we ever learn how to live there, that is. For now, we need to spin yarns that get our minds right with regard to VERY BIG THINGS. We need to become better at thinking and caring and operating beyond our own individual lifespans. For help with that, I suggest researching ‘seven generation sustainability.’ And then imagine that principle as multiplied by five or ten to approach the perspective required for space travel and habitation.
We will need to become builders of ‘worlds’ just to travel between planets. The path we’re on right now – burning and paving the only place in the universe to which we are adapted for survival – will not deliver us to the technologies we’ll need to live away from Earth long enough to matter.
My speculation? Science fiction dealing appropriately with these problems of scale will come to resemble epic high fantasy, in that stories will follow series of characters along the lines of their family trees. Only, in these epic space operas, their whole world is a glorified ‘pizza box civilization’ en route from a place they never knew, to a place they will probably all die. Assuming the box doesn’t ‘go cold’ on the way…
Now I have a plotbunny and a craving for pizza. Hm. Plotbunny pizza, anyone?
Have you ever read Vernor Vinge?
He is one of my favorite SF authors, and he has actually developed a culture around the whole travel between worlds and planet sustainability called the Queng Ho. It’s a rather interesting idea worth checking out.
This is an interesting recommendation. Thank you.
You’ve given me quite a bit to think about. Do we have other bloggers tackling this topic right now?
It hasn’t escaped the scientists involved in space exploration that water makes one of the best shielding materials available. There are variations on Zubrin’s Mars Direct that postulate a thick layer of water on the outside of the spaceship, serving the dual purposes of aquafarming plus protection from cosmic radation, a major danger in such voyages.
I would not be surprised if water was a major presence in an arcship. Without it, we and whatever sustains us die a quick death. Ours is a water planet, and we are 70% water ourselves. However, SF rarely treats water worlds because we are land animals and oceans are as hostile to our fragile bodies as is vacuum. For water planets, the major exemplar is Shora in Joan Slonczewski’s Door into Ocean; for island-based cultures based on the Polynesians, there are Poul Anderson’s Killimaraichan who surface in several of his stories and Vonda McIntyre’s Superluminal, which shows a symbosis with cetaceans.
Which book(s) by Poul Anderson features them? I was trying to add one to my reading list and couldn’t narrow it down.
I actually wrote a poem that’s Hindu science fiction, which I’m inclined to rework as a story eventually. It involves two alien species, one predator and one prey, who are locked into a cycle of reincarnation with each other. Things get interesting when a Hindu-crewed starship crashes on their world. I think I actually wrote something about the Ganges into that.
Is that one of your unsold poems? I would love to see it and the story when you complete it.
Have you ever read Zelazny’s “Lord of Light”? An excellent 70′s adventure novel (with some philosophy) based on Hindu mythology.
I don’t generally write in the science fiction genre or read much (though I should because I often like what I read!), but you’ve sparked so many interesting potentials here. Since water is essential to our world, and yes, loaded with archetypes that resonate and myths that have lived long in our culture, it seems it should always be a consideration in imagining new worlds–whether it means others survive without water or use it differently or have the key to our shortages of have sacred meanings we don’t understand.
I’ve often wondered if a “planet” could exist as all water, no mineral core. What magnetism could keep it contained, what gravitational forces? To be able to swim to a core and through it. Hmm, maybe it comes from that child belief that we could dig to China.
You always spark story ideas! My mind is swimming (ha) with ideas for a new alien vampire story to go with my last!
I love sparking ideas for you. Alien vampires – now I would not love to be stuck on a space station with one of them.
Hahaha. Me too.
Some of the gas giants like Jupiter may not have rocky cores. And some may be largely liquid, I’m not all up to date.
Though pressure in the inner layers would be extremely high. Think of the bottom of the ocean multiplied many times.
Years ago, 70′s?, someone wrote a story of a Jupiterian person windsurfing the thick atmosphere and semi-liquid layers, but like on an oceanic scale. One of those classic authors I believe. I didn’t really appreciate it at the time.
Whilst not directly related to writing fiction, We recently premiered a theatre show about the end of the world and the connection between water and relationships.
Essentially the myths created around water serve to strength our respect–and fear of it. It may pain you to imagine it, but you can go with out shelter for virtually forever (so long as you dont suffer from some strenuous over-exposure). And Food whilst really tasty, cannot beat the immediate relief that water brings to a thirsty man.
The physical importance of this element also inspires a spiritual/intuitive pondering: it has been linked to emotions, values, supernatural beings and other worlds. In Xhosa culture, the rivers are believed to house the ancestors–which are exact replicas of us, only more powerful! One still held belief is that if twins are born, neither can ever enter or even cross the river–the Ancestors will claim one as their own… but that’s a story for another day.
In Planet B (please see: http://www.urbansprout.co.za/the_arts_for_a_change_of_heart) water represents love and the spring from which the characters gain their sustanence comes from a secret cave only one of them knows the source of. In Jungian terms, the cave comes to represent the soul and the trickle of water is all that is left of his capacity to love.
Perhaps it sounds cheesy, both the internal flow of love and the extrenal rivers of fresh water are essential not just for survival, but the flourishing of humanity.
there is also the question of solarsailing–a topic i’ve recently gotten obsessed with. Instead of water, we are developing ships that can sail on rivers,oceans of light! to merge water and light would suit space travel so well. i’ve often wondered what lies beneath the vast oceans of the sun. Perhaps the universe is unsuitable to the inhabitants there, because the heat is so sparse. how would creatures made of 70% light build their star ships?
I just got goosebumps…
Thank you for leaving me more food for thought. Have you been exploring these topics in your writing or just as food your research jones?