[ANSTHRLD] Symbols & symbolism, or, some thoughts on today's threads

[Diane Rudin]

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Serena here--well, I had a big long post all written up on this when my computer crashed.  So you don't get to read it.  You get to read this long post instead.  :^)



The gentle who started today's ruminations referred to "squires" having various armorial entitlements.  I presume he meant "esquires", as in gentlemen, not squires as in apprentice knights.  I would recommend using the term "gentlemen" to avoid such confusions in the future.  While there were undoubtedly men of rank who were squires in the SCA sense, they would not have trumpeted such a thing.  Why brag about being a squire (student knight) when you're an earl, or the son of a duke, or....  Such concentration of minute sub-sets of rank smacks of Victorian excess to me.



Someone asked about whether groups can register achievements.  In Ansteorra, baronies can register achievements, and they get the whole shebang, short of gold helms, white/ermine lions, etc.  Long ago, some shires asked about registration, but I don't remember what was done with that.  I certainly could agree with having livery.  As the SCA structure is currently set up, we can't register devices/arms for guilds.  A household achievement is, of course, the achievement of the head of the household.  One indicated membership in/allegiance to a household by displaying the BADGE of the household.  I can provide many, many examples of this in period artwork.  Wearing someone's *arms* means that you *are* that person.  That's why the proper attire for someone's herald is the arms of that person, because on a *legal* level, a herald in tabard is the voice of the person whose arms his tabard displays.  That's why it is proper and right for Modius to wear the royal tabard when acting as royal herald; he's the voice of the Crown.  That's also why he removes it if he's speaking for himself.



Symbols have meaning.  Symbols have power.  They only have this because we give it to them.  Many people have chosen to give the meaning "squire" to the symbol-item "red belt", "protege" to "yellow belt", and "apprentice" to "green belt".  Why?  Where did these definitions come from?  Green belts for apprentices is an obvious color connection, but the meaning of the other two is lost to me.  Yet they mean these things, regardless of any logical connection, because that is how we have defined them as a group.  I, too, would prefer that we mark such connections with badges, as was done in period.  Perhaps I will do that if I take another apprentice.  But I and my apprentice did not choose to use a green belt.  It caused some confusion and problems at times, but that symbol did not special meaning for us.  To us it meant "everyone else's symbol".  I already had my own symbol, long before I took an apprentice.  I may incorporate my Catherine's wheel to encase it, but the key symbol remains:  the laurel seed.



The speech I made during Sara's elevation to the Order of the Laurel at Coronation was not empty ceremony.  I meant every word.  It was a blending of literal and symbolic truth.  When I was elevated, the (cherry) laurel wreath Branwyn placed on my head really was covered with fruit.  I really did collect the fruit to use as apprentice tokens.  They're in a marble box along with a few dried leaves (I placed the rest of the wreath on HL Athelstan's grave) and the cork of the champagne bottle I drank up that night.  I really did give one to my apprentice, Sara, which is where the symbolism comes into full play.  I "planted" that seed, and it "grew". <snif>  When Sara asked me if I wanted the seed back, I replied that it is impossible to reclaim a seed which has sprouted and grown.  That is my symbol, and it means more to me, and to her, than any piece of green cloth.  It is that attachment to seeing symbolism in everything around us that we most lack in re-creating medieval and Renaissance culture.



Most of us don't use our symbols nearly enough, and/or we don't think how to use them, and/or we use them in inconsistent/inauthentic ways.  A *lion passant guardant* means England, as do a slew of badges, not least of which the crowned Tudor rose.  The fleur-de-lys means France.  The *mullet of five greater and five lesser points sable* means Ansteorra.  The mustache means Robin of Gilwell.  The World Trade Center meant New York.  These things didn't always mean what they mean now; someone made them have that meaning.  The fylfot was once a perfectly respectable cross variation; now it's a symbol of unspeakable evil.  Burning an American flag is a well-known provocation.  Facing a solid wall of yellow tabards with black stars on them will strike fear into the hearts of an SCA enemy line.  Wearing a White Scarf in a certain SCA kingdom will garner you more insults than speaking the English language in France.  You can't buy, regulate, cheat or steal that level of recognition.  It must be earned, for good or for ill.



So if there are those, whether on or off this list, who dislike the use of colored belts to identify allegiances, I recommend that they plaster their belongings, retainers, and anything else they can think of with their badge.  Not "device"/arms, because that means "me"; with badges, because that means "mine".  And for those who like using that currently-defined symbol, go right on using it.  But use it because it has meaning for you, not because everyone else is doing it.



Elizabeth and her Parliaments tried to regulate clothing and accessories Acts of Parliament (statutory law) and royal proclamations, believing that certain things should symbolize rank.  What they were (doomed to fail in) fighting was the reality that those certain things really symbolized wealth, which was having less and less to do with rank.  The fact that they issued so many such edicts is indicative of their ineffectiveness.  So if the SCA BoD decided tomorrow that sticking my finger in my ear was a symbol of supporting the BoD,  they'd be wrong.  It'd mean my ear itched.  Look at how (in)effective Ansteorran coronet sumptuary laws are.  In reality, a baronial coronet is a coronet on the head of a baron, a county coronet is a coronet on the head of a count, and a ducal coronet is a coronet on the head of a duke.



Laws are only followed so long as a mechanism for enforcement exists, be it social pressure, political pressure, threat of immediate bodily or property injury, or a police force.  England has learned, and forgotten, that lesson more than once.  So has everyone else.  It is history, and the future.



Serena Lascelles  /  Diane Rudin  "It's 1:30 a.m. & I'm rambling"



P.S.  I agreed with Gunnora's initial post.  Is this one of the signs of the Apocalypse?  Or Ragnarok?  :^)



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