Z is for Zenyatta Mondatta

[This is the last of my April A-Z Challenge series of posts on Symbols, Glyphs, and Sigils. What a month!]

So sorry, but this post is a total bait and switch.  It's not about the Police's ground breaking third album.  It's about their even more successful fourth album and the enigmatic red LED type symbols on its cover...

I never knew until recently that these symbols are actually stylized pictures of the three band members.  On the left is guitarist Andy Summers, in the middle is Sting, with his spiky reggae hairdo, and on the right is drummer Stewart Copeland, who had cropped forehead bangs at the time.  An image this iconic was of course ripe for parodying (e.g., Batman and the Muppets) and it's also been targeted by religious extremists -- backwards, it's 666, right!?!

I also didn't know much until recently about the album's title, Ghost in the Machine.  That phrase was tossed out in Terry Gilliam's Brazil, but with so much else going on in that movie I never followed up on it.  Sting and friends were inspired by Koestler's 1967 book of philosophy, which explored the incompatibility between what we know about the multi-layered brain and the classical idea of a mind-body duality.  The more we learn about how our bodies and brains evolved, the harder it becomes to see how a disembodied spirit or soul could ever detach itself from all that hardwired wetware...

It's funny that, all this month, down in the comments of these A-Z posts there's been an intermittent meta-discussion, mainly between myself and Suze, that's come back again and again to the idea of Transhumanism.  People planning for the Singularity have been thinking a lot about how "embodied" a conscious intelligence really needs to be.  Can we truly thrive as ghosts in a digital machine?

Gotta be a Trekkie to get this one?

I'm sure transhumanists have debated whether there should be litmus tests to verify that we're ready, willing, and able to be uploaded.  Personally, I wouldn't attempt the crossover until I was 100% sure that the new "substrate" keeps not only the conscious mind, but also the murky depths of the unconscious.  I'm not going anywhere without my archetypal peeps!  :-)

I sometimes get excited about these quasi-apocalyptic possibilities, but I worry about becoming too focused on the potential awesomeness of the future.  It's kind of the flip side of nostalgia and Springsteen's "Glory Days."  If I fetishize either the past or the future, it keeps me at a distance from the Right Now.  Maybe that's the real Zen(yatta) connection here?

Y is for Yat

[This is the 25th of my April A-Z Challenge series of posts on Symbols, Glyphs, and Sigils. Each day I'll try to include some material that old-school role-playing gamers will find useful, but I can't guarantee that there won't also just be a few posts filled with weirdness for the sake of weirdness....]

"Yat" is a letter of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet that doesn't exist any more.  Where did it go?

Back in the 1700s, it represented a unique vowel sound, but spoken sounds tend to slip and slide with the centuries.  By the early 1900s it was kind of redundant, and the rules for its proper use were complicated.  It was called "...the monster-letter, the scarecrow-letter ... washed with the tears of countless generations of Russian schoolchildren."  And the Soviets gave it an unceremonious heave-ho.

There are some theories out there that this particular letter was singled out for persecution by the Communists because it kind of looks like a church topped by a cruciform spire, or like the traditional sovereign's cross-bearing orb.  I've also seen a grim joke that noticed that the word for "bread" in Russian was spelled with a Yat, so that its removal heralded the coming of the famines of the 1920s.

Like many things, though, what was old can be made new again.  Since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, there's been some nostalgia for the Yat, with it being called a "white swan" and "that most Russian of letters."

Why bring up this remnant of the era of Catherine the Great?  Even though its link to religion may be apocryphal, it's yet another reminder that in many cultures, writing and the alphabet were regarded as holy and sacramental.  One can't simply decide to throw away a letter from Sanskrit, or Hebrew, or Arabic!  There have even been times when mystics have received secret languages that were claimed to be from God himself.  The Golden Dawn (see my K-post and M-post) made use of the Enochian language taught to John Dee in the late 1500s, and they tricked it out with more psychedelic colors than you can shake a lotus-wand at...

Modern Enochian scholars have put an incredible amount of work into trying to understand this language and what the "angels" told Dee and other seers.  Some of it seems to approach a new mythology for a new age (click on Ben Rowe's Book of the Seniors if you have a spare week to delve deeply).  Some of it, though, seems to get people running over the same old ground, finding their same old fears dressed up in different clothes.  (Out of courtesy I won't link to those that I suspect of going down that road.)  Even with the benefit of the angels whispering in our ears, I guess we can always choose to turn up the volume on the iPod...

X is for Saltire

[This is the 24th of my April A-Z Challenge series of posts on Symbols, Glyphs, and Sigils. Each day I'll try to include some material that old-school role-playing gamers will find useful, but I can't guarantee that there won't also just be a few posts filled with weirdness for the sake of weirdness....]

Another alphabetic cheat?  Maybe.  Unlike my earlier V-but-not-a-V post, at least this one looks like the letter X.  Saltire, or a Saint Andrew's Cross, is heraldry-speak for a diagonal cross that spans the full length of one's shield or flag.  The bonnie Scots have adopted this term for their own symbol of rugged individualism...

...to the extent that, in some circles, the word "Saltire" is synonymous with "the Scottish flag."  But the general Saltire design is also a popular component of flags of many other nations, regions, and military forces...

Americans will no doubt recognize that one on the lower left that's never far from controversy.  What struck me from this collection of Saltires is the large fraction of them that command strong emotion amongst those that fly them proudly.  You've got various peoples of the British Isles who've been under the thumb of the English monarchy, you've got the Basques, Confederates, and other rebelling factions, and you've got various "Hey! Danger!" signs.

Why do people get so emotionally involved with a simple X?  Or rather: why do they actively associate X's with issues and objects that they're already strongly emotional about?  I think these feelings were associated with their Saltires long before our modern-day association between X's and negation.

Psychologists probably have their theories, but I wonder if part of it is the expressive "swoosh" of this shape.  Sharp, bold, and decisive!  This made me think of a few other angular swooshes from logos and advertisements that you may recognize...

Zorro's Z is particularly interesting because it's made with the tip of a sword.  The red V was made, with spray-paint, by freedom fighters who seethed with many of the same emotions that caused Don Diego de la Vega to don his mask and cape.  (No need to carp on the unrestrained emotions of devoted video gamers or that famous Nike sponsor...)  The lesson: symbols can be powerful things!  Trifle with them at your own peril!  :-)

W is for Weary

or woozy, or wrecked, or weak-kneed, or wiped out.  I'm sorry folks; I wracked my brain, but nothing really worthy of this fun series on symbols worked out for the letter W.  So, I decided not to be such a worry-wort, and just take a bit of a walkabout today to see what the world has in store for tomorrow.

But...

You know...

W is also for Waldo:

They say that nobody knows whatever became of him, but I know.  Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to say.

V is for Digamma Inversum

[This is the 22nd of my April A-Z Challenge series of posts on Symbols, Glyphs, and Sigils. Each day I'll try to include some material that old-school role-playing gamers will find useful, but I can't guarantee that there won't also just be a few posts filled with weirdness for the sake of weirdness....]

V is for what now?  I'm not cheating here... this post really is about the letter V, but maybe from a bit of an alternate history perspective.

The ancient Roman alphabet was slightly shorter than the 26-letter version that we're celebrating this month.  Specifically, they used the letter we call "V" for both the Vee (consonant) sound and for the "Youuu" (vowel) sound.  You've probably seen inscriptions like AVGVSTVS.  The problem was that there were some Latin words that were ambiguous when spelled this way.  People talk about VOLUIT ("he or she wishes") being indistinguishable from VOLVIT ("he or she tumbles").

Enter the hapless emperor Claudius in the 1st century AD.  He introduced three new letters of the alphabet to fix some perceived problems, and one of them was the digamma inversum shown here.  It was meant to replace the letter V when the consonant sound is to be made.  To ancient Romans who looked up to the Greeks in matters of culture, it was a quasi-borrowing that made some sense; the Greeks had an old F-shaped letter called digamma that was used for this sound (even though they weren't using it much when Claudius was alive).

The problem was that nobody, um, gave a fvck....  There are a few stone inscriptions in Rome that show this odd letter, but after Claudius died, it rapidly fell out of favor.

The lesson, I suppose, is that of Ozymandias... "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair?"  Not forever, bucko.

However, stuff like this can spur the mind into "what if's."  What if these new letters DID remain a part of our modern-day alphabet?  Would Robert Graves' famous book cover look like this?  (Look closely!)  :-)

About a decade ago, I got really into ancient Roman alternate histories.  You know... What if the Roman Empire never fell?  I thought I'd end this post by listing a few of my favorites...

1. Kirk Mitchell, in his Germanicus trilogy, probably did the most historical homework of the three authors I'm listing here.  One of his "points of departure" (the Romans' defeat in the Teutoburg Forest) is something that historians continue to debate as a key turning point in the Empire's expansion.  Even with all the history, it's an enjoyable, fast-moving read that shows the rise of a troubled emperor and his journeys to the New World and back.
2. Somtow Sucharitkul's Aquiliad series (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3) is probably the least researched, but the most fun!  Full of howling puns, glaring anachronisms, and in-jokes that only sci-fi fans will get, the characters have stayed with me since I first read parts of Book 1 serialized in the early 1980s.
3. Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna was interesting in a bunch of ways, though it's been criticized for its history and its characterization (both a tad shallow).  However, his tie-ins between the changed Roman history and the plight of the Jews were quite poignant.
4. More alterna-Greek than alterna-Roman is Richard Garfinkle's Celestial Matters, which is best known for its conceit that the Ptolemaic, geocentric universe is actually true, and the "crystal spheres" that surround the fixed Earth can be visited by spacecraft!  I honestly don't remember the historical point of departure, but it may involve the survival of Alexander the Great's empire.  I remember the characters being endearing in a similar way that I came to love the characters of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

U is for Unkin

[This is the 21st of my April A-Z Challenge series of posts on Symbols, Glyphs, and Sigils. Each day I'll try to include some material that old-school role-playing gamers will find useful, but I can't guarantee that there won't also just be a few posts filled with weirdness for the sake of weirdness....]

Readers who play(ed) classic Dungeons & Dragons may remember that there were several magic spells that required chalking out mystic runes on some surface to get the effect to work.  There were Explosive Runes (3rd level M-U), Aerial Servants that came only in response to a magic circle (6th level cleric), and all-purpose Symbols that could enslave or kill (8th level M-U).  But maybe most famous was the Glyph of Warding (3rd level cleric), which could be tweaked and adapted like a piece of devious technology.  Is it a booby trap?  An unbreakable lock?  It allowed sneaky players to devise all kinds of interesting delayed reactions.

The original D&D books only gave a small number of examples, but fans ran with that ball.  Most memorable to me was an article by Larry DiTillio, in The Dragon #50, which gave dozens of them.  I was a bit freaked out by the one shown here, titled "Unkin," which was described thusly:

The bleeder. This Glyph causes any wounds on the toucher or passer to open and begin bleeding even if the wounds are bound. Wounds will continue bleeding for 2 rounds per level of caster, such bleeding draining an additional 2 pts. every round.

Not fun for the person who happens across this one!  More recently, I encountered the word "unkin" in the novels of Hal Duncan (who is awesome because he's a Blogger blogger, and because of this).  His version of this word refers to mortals who are touched by angels/demons and thus become "...transformed by the ancient machine-code language of reality itself."

But whenever I think about chalking weird geometric symbols on a wall for mystic effect, my mind goes first and foremost to the Twilight Zone -- the "Little Girl Lost" episode to be specific.  In that story, a kid fell through the wall into a fourth dimensional portal and was rescued by a quick-thinking physicist with a piece of chalk...
 

It's been famously parodied by the Simpsons, and it may have been inspired by an earlier, weirdly abstract Jack Kirby comic.  I always loved the idea that simple geometry could be the key to such "magical" outcomes.

And yes, I was probably the only kid in the class who looked forward to this on the ol' 16mm film projector.  :-)

T is for Treasure

[This is the 20th of my April A-Z Challenge series of posts on Symbols, Glyphs, and Sigils. Each day I'll try to include some material that old-school role-playing gamers will find useful, but I can't guarantee that there won't also just be a few posts filled with weirdness for the sake of weirdness....]

Money is a major "symbol" for all kinds of real things.  I was surprised to learn (from its obligatory Wikipedia page) that money can actually "symbolize" at least 4 distinct things: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value, and a standard of deferred payment.  Before your eyes glaze over in an econo-haze, I should say that money is also something that RPG players often obsess on as a way for their characters to gain experience and get new super-kewl powerz...

I find it interesting that the word Treasure comes ultimately from the Greek word Thesaurus, for a vault or storehouse in which money is kept.  It speaks to the enthusiasm of early compilers of "word hoards" that they came to call one type of lexicographical compilation by this evocative name.  I could also wax on about Aleister Crowley's use of the Greek word in his poetic (and symbol-filled) work called the Treasure House of Images, but I've probably blathered on about the ol' Beast too much this month.

So money!  In most of history, it was synonymous with coins made of various precious metals...

Game masters who create imagined fantasy worlds often want to make these worlds come alive for their players.  I think that much of a setting's verisimilitude can be conveyed through its coinage!  So here's a d6 list of numismatic events that may serve as fodder to help PCs get a feel for their world...

1. Watch out for "clipping!" It's the weight of a coin that counts, so all merchants should have scales to watch out for those who may shave off a bit of that precious metal from each coin.
2. Sometimes, though, it does matter what is printed on the coin.  One kingdom may "overstrike" the coins of their enemies with their own symbols, to show dominance.  Some merchants may not care if an enemy's coin is being used, but some may!
3. From time to time, the ruler can decide to revalue their money, in comparison to either a foreign currency, or with regard to the things it can pay for locally. Sometimes there's inflation... sometimes there's debasement.  Both often generate controversy.
4. Counterfeiting was often punishable by death.  Nuff said!
5. Rulers can put images on coins that are offensive to a ruled people. Romans enraged the Jewish people by putting pictures of their holy liturgical items on coins (see the lituus and jug pictured here), and Muslims didn't like seeing coins with images of animals on them.
6. A kingdom can choose to mint new commemorative coins for a big occasion.  PCs coming across these coins will learn about important events that they may soon
   become inveigled in!  For example,
   
   • birth of heir or new ruler
   • coronation of ruler
   • death of ruler
   • deification of dead ruler
   • peace treaty
   • great war victory
   • big-number anniversary of any of the above!

Finally, if you're truly disappointed at my semi-bait-and-switch here ("money is a symbol?" really?) and you want REAL symbols to chew on... I can give you the Type Parlant, a coin with an image on it that pictographically symbolizes the name of its home city or nation.  Usually very obvious with the linguistic play -- e.g.,  roses for Rhodes, a moon for Luneburg -- they've been used since ancient times.  GMs can have punny fun with this, too!  :-)