I have often started seeds of Dutch white clover indoors at the end of January in order to grow my own seasonal houseplant by March 17, since the plants sold in stores as "shamrocks" are really South American oxalis. It's one of my little pet peeves about how the day is marked, which I have written about in this 2017 blog post.
The other thing that bugs me a little — but just a little — is how the emblematic greenery is often depicted as a four-leaf clover, when the whole reason for its association with the good saint is the folklore claiming that he used the plant to teach his followers about the Holy Trinity. Never mind that there's no evidence whatsoever that he ever did that, it's just that it's so missing the point about shamrocks and St. Patrick's Day.
Patrick is the subject of a lot of historical misinformation, including in his own telling of his story, says historian Roy Flechner in his 2019 book, Saint Patrick Retold. Flechner argues that Patrick was never captured and enslaved, that he made up that story as a cover for his flight from inherited onerous duties as an imperial officer in Roman Britain. You can read a good overview and summary of the book on the publisher's page here, and an excellent review in the Irish Times here.
As to Patrick's own version of his story, known as The Confession of St. Patrick, you can read it for yourself on this website, and view facsimiles of the earliest versions known. The elegant Latin text makes me think of asemic writing: Both aesthetically pleasing and meaningless (to me).
Seeing Asemic: Patterns Everywhere
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| Image from Post, a blog of the Museum of Modern Art |
Because the Latin text has no meaning for me, my attention is drawn to its decorative form, the patterns created by its marks. While all asemic writing mimics the form of regular writing, some artists copy the form of printed works almost exactly.
For example, Argentinian artist Mirtha Dermisache (1942–2012) created "asemic versions of the daily newspaper, maintaining the layout, but substituting illegible characters," hence highlighting the patterns formed by the headlines and columns of text, wrote Peter Schwenger in the book I mentioned last week, Asemic: The Art of Writing.
With that sort of thing on my mind this past week, I began noticing the text-like patterns in seemingly random things, like my scarf . . .
and the seeds in a bell pepper . . .
and my half empty latte.
My heightened awareness of patterns that resemble asemic writing got me to thinking about the tendency we humans have to not only see patterns, but to imbue them with meaning, as if they contain some message from the divine. You know, like, "Today I saw X and I believe that god/the universe was telling me something." An article I read some while back on the web journal Psyche nicely describes this phenomena, called apophenia.
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| From Leiden Medievalist Blog |
About that Latin Text
There is something about Latin text and other hand-lettered archaic languages that carries an air of mystery, don't you think? It evokes a magic spell or incantation, mainly because we don't understand it, and because that ancient script looks so fanciful and mysterious, especially if you've read any historical fiction set in medieval times.
Both because I have read those kinds of historical mysteries, and because of all that asemic writing stuff echoing in my head, I pounced when I spotted a review of the book Textual Magic: Charms and Written Amulets in Medieval England, by Katherine Storm Hindley (Chicago, 2023).
By "pounced" I mean I read the review, not that I bought the book. I'll wait for it to come out in paperback, or become available from my library. But the review by Tom Johnson in the London Review of Books provides an excellent overview.
In medieval Christian Europe, the written word was highly venerated, from the opening lines in the Gospel of John to amulets made of text written on parchment believed to have the power to protect and otherwise benefit the one who holds it. Johnson describes these as a kind of "charm magic," that is, "words and rituals that invoked supernatural power, whether divine or arcane, in order to gain protection, medicine and secret knowledge."
The kinds of things people wrote down included "holy verses, sacred names, symbols, runes and pure nonsense." If that last part doesn't describe asemic writing, I don't know what does.
Apparently, the more undecipherable the writing, the better its magical properties; so while Latin was the primary language of these charms, they also incorporated lots of "Greek letters, Hebrew, runes and all kinds of luxuriant gibberish," plus "sham alphabets, pseudo-writing and non-signifying marks."
Fittingly, the author traces the decline in use of these written charms to the rise in literacy. "As more people came to be able to read, . . . it became harder to maintain the idea that writing contained occult power."
Now I am thinking about a new variation in my 100-Day Project: asemic amulets.
Department of Oops: Pi Day on The Useful Calendar Planner
My husband discovered a mistake in my planner this week. He wondered why I had put the pi symbol on March 12. I quickly checked all versions of the calendar, and the planner is the only one with the misplaced pi, which would have happened after I copied the calendar grid from the desk version and placed it into the planner document, then dragged it across because the planner calendar spans a two-page spread. I didn't notice that pi was left behind in that motion. I would actually be a little surprised if I managed to make all versions of my calendars without any mistakes! I tell myself that it will please the people who enjoy catching other people's mistakes.
It also reminded me of a custom I was told about when I took a quilting class many years ago, that of the "humility block." Traditionally, quilters were supposed to deliberately include one block in their quilts that contained a mistake, because only God is perfect. I thought at the time that it was a convenient "rule," and I was certain I wouldn't need to do it deliberately.
But apparently the "tradition" is nonsense, as related in this excellent blog called Willy Wonky Quilts.
On My Work Table
It's all quiet in Sharon's Compendium-Etsyland now, but the week started out with a mini flurry of orders over the weekend. Well, three orders, actually, but two of them had multiple items that I needed to make, so that kept me busy through Thursday.
While I welcome the business, I really do, I'm looking forward to getting back to playing at my asemic projects, both doing some painting and drawing of the patterns I photographed last week, and playing around with those amulet charms. I also have a meeting with my art exchange group on Friday, and I've been pondering how I might incorporate some asemic writing into my coffee-and-tea themed Artist Trading Cards for that.
I'll show you what I come up with next week, as well as whatever asemic marks I manage to put on paper.
Absolutely fascinating stuff.
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