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under sea, under swamp
The whole first floor of the museum is the history of the creation of Wales - starting with the big bang. I am not really a natural historian, but I felt myself curiously pulled into a spiritual mood, uncommonly moved by the awe of the cabinets of rocks as the labels explained their age and the processes of their making.
I contemplated that the Myth of Creation embodied by the Map is more or less correct; that is, beginning with the mystery of the Stellar in deep space and deep time. 'This was once all sea' and 'this was once all forest that became swamp' are both overlappingly true, as well as 'this was once all ice'. Those are all Lunar-Stellar visions, one on the path of Land, and the other two on the path of Sky. The 'this was all forest which turned into the swamp' times were called Carboniferous (not 'carbon-nefarious' as i mistakenly told my husband today while trying to remember)
A lovely ex once got me a book called the Museum of Lost Wonder by Jeff Hoke. It's wonderful. A hardback comic book laid out like walking through a museum, and each chapter contains the museum exhibits (some of which you can print out and fold up as a papercraft model), which are all philosophic-alchemical concepts. I cannot resist physical space. I love houses...malls...hotels...Disneyland....cities that feel like infinitely huge buildings...the Backrooms...for sure, I do like forests and stuff, but my attachment to land-based practice is probably in truth more place-based. I get excited about manmade environments too, especially when they are strange or otherworldly. I like museums mostly for being in a museum, which are typically monumental imperialist follies with high ceilings and unexpected corridors. And so a book which expresses a place you can go - almost like a mindpalace or near-astral journey - is an absolute delight.
Something i felt today walking round the museum was a pathwalking sense of proceeding through time, of exploring the Traveller's Map physically. Because I walked from room to room and time passed by me - first space, then sea, then swamp. then dinosaurs. After swamp, came these very Lunar landscapes - barren desert, tundra, rock, glacial landscapes, and mountain-valleys cut by water. And then of course, ultimately, man and landscapes defined by man
As you might expect, I visit the Map and do all my inner working by imagining I go to places - the landscapes those points express. I have an unfinished Twine game where you're sort of exploring a fantasy land, but it's laid out like the Landcraft concepts; and a half-finished map for my wall which looks like the frontispiece map of a fantasy novel to the uninitiated but is, again, that diagram expressed in a playful way. I'd never considered a Museum as a conceptual layout before, but I really love it. I think i will travel back to that museum basement in my mind and then extend it, as a somewhat more 'interior' and domestic version of the outer landscapes i travel to. Maybe i'll make a little leaflet-map, Jeff-Hoke-style, complete with a little cafe of the soul and - of course - the gift shop.
(It's not uncommon for your classic Pathworking Script to end with 'in the temple, you find an object. What is it? take it with you, it is for you' and i hate that, I always feel embarassed and on the spot about maybe choosing or not organically 'finding' a thing, or feeling indecisive. Anyway, the equivalent for the Museum of Landcraft visual journey would be 'now you are in the gift shop'.)
I also discovered the UK is really old - when the map of Gondwana and Laurentia etc, the ancient supercontinents which existed before the map changed to how it is now, with (modern day) Africa glommed onto the (modern day) Americas - the UK is actually there, already an island apart looking just as it does today. And known as 'Avalonia', which lets you know something of the character of the sorts of people who named and popularised this history.
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When I was granted my first objects, it was in a ceremony where I wasn't expected to find them, but recieve them. One was a knife, which I expected, but another was a distaff and spindle! What a being might think is suitable for you, rather than what might be in a place, does take some of the imaginative pressure off.
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And i suppose the context of a gift shop is less pressured in other ways: there are a range of objects, you take your time looking at them, you choose one of many, and it's super low stakes (it's a souvenier to remind you! or an educational toy!). but can still be meaningful and intriguing - it's a nick nack, not an artifact.
brb gonna get a pressed penny from the Akashic Records ^_^