On My Stall
If you’ve ever visited my humble stall, and listened to me waffle on, you might have heard me mention that knot-work reflects the thread of life and a sense of connectedness. The incorporation of animals and plants into these designs reinforces this notion. My explanations evolve with my understanding, partly instinctive reasoning, after years spent carving these motifs on stone. But it's always good to back these ‘notions’ up with research.
The famous Sutton Hoo burial buckle, 7th c. AD |
In all my years carving I've restricted my use of knot-work, due to a number of factors:
- It’s complicated, and time consuming, to reproduce the type of work found in the likes of the Book of Kells. There's a lot of planning involved.
- I feel that knots have become synonymous with Celtic art, and this isn't wholly true. Knot work is a later development and not restricted to the tribes we nowadays term Celtic. If anything the knot was borrowed from other cultures.
Norse 'Mammen' Style artwork, 10th c. AD |
Hence looking at some of these fantastic images here with the above text in mind perhaps you can sense that connectedness is rife through these designs.
Wholeness and the Implicate Order
This sense of place and connectivity reflected in quantum physics. David Bohm’s book, “Wholeness And The Implicate Order”, likens the rush of thoughts to a river, in which there are eddies and vortexes of thought, yet all are connected and moving. Although our mind isolates fragments of thought into phenomena, this isn’t actually so. In the quantum world everything is linked, nothing is separate. This ties in with Chaos theory and the famous quote of the butterfly, whose tiny wings could kick-start hurricanes across the globe.
Sometimes I have the uncanny feeling that at an instinctual, intuitive level the ancient peoples grasped fundamental principles of existence. Not fully understanding the physics behind the metaphors - but it suited their cosmologies and sense of sacredness all the same… or perhaps that is my interpretation, my fancy… a hope. Ah, what tangled webs we weave!
Indeed, But Back to Knotwork!
In the past sorcerers and various cult practices bound demons to their service. Bewitching was to bind, and across the globe the etymology of magical words is often linked to root words for tying or binding.
Odin was bound, and hung from the world tree in Norse Mythology. And there is evidence of cult practices amongst ancient Germanic tribes that involved binding rituals. In one of the earliest human sculptures of a ‘goddess’, the hands appear wrapped in a cord, possibly hinting at an ancient ritual.
Knotwork could be used as a talisman to protect from evil spirits, much like the idea of labyrinths, in which the malign spirit becomes lost. Knots could be used both beneficially and detrimentally, they could curse as well as heal. But don’t worry, all the knots I carve are ‘happy knots’! ho-ho.
John Romilly Allen, in his book, Celtic Art In Pagan And Christian Times, points out that during the Roman occupation of Britain, knots were simple plaits, and hadn't metamorphosed into the intricacies that adorn the Book of Kells, and high crosses of Britain. He traces the change to northern Italy, during the he Lombard invasion of the 6th Century A.D.
Celtic interlace from Edinburgh Museum, 8th c AD |
The Endlessly Flowing Knot
Celtic art is a mutation of the Lombardo-Byzantine style, from which fantastical creatures such as centaurs, griffons, etc, were also borrowed. The art-form flourished, developed to exquisite heights. The subject matter was overwhelmingly Christian, with mythological imagery used out of context, so that a centaur might represent a desert, rather than some episode in Greek myth.
Recently Britain voted itself out of the EU, for better or worse. However it is pertinent to say that movements of peoples are evidenced by art. Ideas from Europe and further afield have always been integral to the island’s culture, and these were indeed altered, developed and adapted by these island’s inhabitants (including Ireland here too). States are modern conceptions, they are the amalgamation of ancient kingdoms, peoples (themselves migrants and movers, invaders or refugees). This has always been the way of the world and no walls or frontiers can stop that.
Find Knotwork and other designs in my Etsy Shop
References:
1: Romilly Allen - Celtic Art In Pagan And Christian Times
Islamic Knotwork from a 12th c. AD Koran |
Celtic Christian Cross showing marriage of styles and mythological monsters. |
Find Knotwork and other designs in my Etsy Shop
References:
1: Romilly Allen - Celtic Art In Pagan And Christian Times
2: H.R. Ellis Davidson - Lost Beliefs Of Northern Europe
* In Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe HR Ellis Davidson has the Norn, Skuld, connected with debt, or something owed… as in life.
* In Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe HR Ellis Davidson has the Norn, Skuld, connected with debt, or something owed… as in life.
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