Creating the Webbd Wheel: Complexity and Cast of Characters
In which I don't write memes ...
This week’s post introduces yet another new character, and it’s time to talk about complexity.
Regular readers of Harvesting Stones, my blog, will know I’ve gradually become more and more aware of complexity, social, biological, and otherwise, over the last years. Sadly, we are in danger of losing our grasp on complexity. Our current popular culture seems to be driven by memes, emoticons, and the shortcuts of texting. We spend billions of dollars making and watching movies based on comic books. Discourse on social media and elsewhere is extremely simplistic, uninformed, and black and white.
I am going in the opposite direction with my work, which surprises nobody who knows me well! The world is complex. We are complex as human beings, individually and socially. Biological families, groups, and communities are complex.
Life consists of layers of complex systems, many of which we remain ignorant of.
The Webbd Wheel is about stories and people and animals. It’s about those figures who symbolize or represent some aspect of spirituality, something bigger than ourselves. It’s about the Green World of plants, the living, and the dead.
Most single stories, oral or written, are necessarily tightly focused on a handful of characters for ease of telling and listening or reading. Series can be more complex. We talk about epics, or sagas, or sweeping novels to describe works like the Webbd Wheel.
When I began blogging, I read a lot of advice about using short sentences, short paragraphs, bland language, and employing bells and whistles like colors, lots of images, fancy fonts, and bullet lists. We don’t read like we used to. We don’t sit down with a good book and fall into it. Our attention span is weak because technology has trained us to rely on instant gratification and lots of stimulation and graphics. We don’t take the time to write longhand anymore without abbreviations.
The publishing business is necessarily concerned with giving as many readers as possible something attractive, palatable, and easy.
Many successful writers provide such material, and I respect that. I’m also bored with most current pop fiction. I don’t want to write it and I don’t much enjoy reading it. I believe both writers and readers can do more. I know there are still readers out there, readers like me, who are delighted with complex stories and characters. So I’m writing the books I’d like to discover and read. It’s really as simple, and as complex, as that.
As The Hanged Man continues to unfold, all the characters you are getting to know will begin to interact, I promise. They will learn from one another, argue, fight, love one another, hurt one another, travel together, dance together, and live together. Their individual stories will become part of a connected web, each separate strand vital and dynamic.
Scroll down for the cast of characters. Because they come from stories from around the world, some of the names are strange to English speakers. The characters are listed in alphabetical order rather than order of appearance for easier reference. In the case of characters from existing stories, I’ve indicated their cultural origin as well as a pronunciation key.
Some of these characters appear only briefly, and others are present throughout the series.
(This essay was published with post #7 of The Hanged Man.)
Cast of Characters
(In alphabetical order)
Alexander: Brief lover of Rapunzel. German fairy tale.
Baba Yaga: Hag who is Mother of Witches; Slavic.
Bald Tegid: A giant; Ceridwen’s husband; foster father to Morfran; father to Creirwy; Welsh.
Baubo: (BAW bo) Old woman who uses humor and dance to guide and help others. Greek.
Dark Prince: Becomes Dar, Lugh’s twin, a peddler.
Blodeuwedd: (bluh DIE weth); White Lady; name means “flower face.” Takes the form of an owl. Associated with spring. Welsh.
Briar Rose: Introduced as ‘Lost Woman’; Grimm’s fairytales.
Carlos: Maria’s second son.
Cassandra: Seer and prophetess; under the protection of Minerva; first met in the shape of a sparrow. Greek.
Ceridwen (KER id wen): Powerful enchantress. Welsh.
Creirwy (KREE ree): Morfran’s foster sister; daughter of Ceridwen and Bald Tegid.
Dar: Formerly the Dark Prince. A peddler. Twin to Lugh.
Demeter: The Corn Mother; Persephone’s mother. Greek.
Dvorgs: Dwarves who stayed below ground, avoiding the sun and people, especially women.
Dwarves: Race of short statured men who mine; smiths; gem masters; a branch of the Dvorgs who came above ground and mentored young women.
Elizabeth: Rapunzel’s foster mother, a witch. German fairy tale.
Eurydice: (yoo RID uh see) Brief wife to Orpheus; olive tree nymph. Greek.
Firebird: A large bird with glowing feathers who leads one to treasure. Slavic folklore.
Guy: Morfran’s father; half selchie, half human.
Hades: Rules the Underworld; Persephone’s consort. Greek.
Hanged Man: Lugh (Loo); also, Billy in goat-foot aspect; Mary’s consort and male Seed-Bearer; twin to Dar.
Hecate: (EC a tay) Queen of the Crossroads. Greek.
Heks: Bruno’s mother; charcoal burner’s widow; midwife.
Hel: Runs a boarding house on the Northern Sea that is a threshold between one thing and another. Norse.
Juan: Maria’s lover; also, her oldest son.
Juliana: A middle-aged woman who stops waiting and rests in the embrace of the White Stag.
Kunik: An adolescent boy; mother human, father a polar bear; sees shapes within shapes.
Marceau: A merman. A King of the Sea. Morfran’s maternal grandfather.
Marella: Daughter of Marceau; sister of Vasilisa; lover of Radulf.
Maria: Murdered her two sons and committed suicide. Also known as La Llorona. Hispanic traditional tale.
Mary: Consort of Lugh; mother of twins, Lugh and Dar; Seed Bearer.
Melusine: Morfran’s mother; a mermaid. French.
Minerva: Associated with wisdom, ingenuity, business and weaving. Symbolized by the owl. Roman.
Mirmir: A giant gossipy snake who guards and lives in/under Yggdrasil, Tree of Life. Norse.
Molly: Mary in child aspect.
Morfran: Foster son of Ceridwen and Bald Tegid, foster brother to Creirwy. Shapeshifter, magician; Welsh.
Mother: Mary in aged aspect.
Nephthys: (NEF this) Lady of Bones. Lives in desert. So old she’s a child again. Can take the form of a falcon. Associated with transformation; a life-death figure; Egyptian.
Norns: The three Fates; old women who live with Yggdrasil and Mirmir. Norse.
Odin: (O den) Wind God; head of Wild Hunt; owner of Valhalla; one-eyed; marble champion; father of Valkyries. Appears as Timor, Shabu. Norse.
Persephone: Demeter’s daughter, Hades’ consort. Greek.
Rapunzel: Foster daughter of Elizabeth, a witch. German fairy tale.
Raoul: Creirwy’s murderer; Bluebeard. French.
Richard: Briefly, Rapunzel’s husband.
Rusalka: Nature spirits who assist Baba Yaga to guard the birch forest and rye fields. Shape shifters; Slavic.
Sofiya: One of the Rusalka; mate of Morfran; owl aspect.
Surrender: A rabbit.
Timor: Old one-eyed woodcutter who saves Morfran from freezing; Odin.
Valkyries: Warrior women; daughters of Odin. Norse.
White Stag: Enormous antlered white stag; guide; works with Artemis.