Scribe's Corner

Before I began this site, I had started on a journey within my journey. A sidequest if you will, but one that has become pretty important to my main quest. I was given scribal duties. The more I worked on my duties, the more important I realized they were.

I started to think like a Secretary, and a transcriptionist, and a reporter, an archiver, and so much more... I really started to think about who gets to author our history? Who determines what is saved, what is considered important? And what will that say about us in the future? Who are we now if we don't understand where we came from? Why do we do what we do? What events have set the precedents for our futures? Who will one day need to look back and understand our history and the "Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How?" behind us? Are we doing our part to leave them what they need to know?

I reread my Book of Shadows. I began re-transcribing it. I understood more the second time around. But, I was also left with more questions that led me down new pathways.

I went on a quest for symbols. All letters, numbers, and other markings with meaning are all just symbols. I was searching for one's that were new to me, ones that might have degraded, one's I already knew but were visually rare... I began picking apart every piece I could. And I learned some new things out of it.

But then that brought up even further questions about transcribing, change, and meaning. Even when told to transcribe verbatim by hand perfectly, human error or even just stylistic or habitual changes may be introduced. Is a mystery gained when a symbol (or more) becomes something it was not? When it becomes garbled and lost to time? Just as you can track how many times a VHS tape has been copied due to visual degradation, so too could you follow changes in quality of transcribing. Like playing telephone, a little bit changes at a time.

But then that brought me to the idea of the Scribe's place in religious institutions historically, and how much value was placed on literacy. I'm spoiled, I got to lurn cursive handwriting in school, but still got to grow up with computers and word processors and so much instant-communication technology. Perhaps even we are all so spoiled as a whole that we don't place as high of value on literacy anymore. The changes I am seeing as I grow older (people prefering to read machine-made summaries, hobby readers only reading the dialogue in books and skipping any and all descriptions, etc) worry me. But literacy, texts, books, libraries... We have so much available to us in this time. We also have so many fine tools and stationery. I started looking back to medieval scribal methods and bookbinding to try to understand what was valued and how much effort was put into what they valued. I've no doubt at least one of those guys hunched over their writing would've killed for the nice pens and instruments we have now.

But the impressive part of their material made with so much care is that we still have some of those manuscripts. And those manuscripts show exactly what lasts and what does not, and how those materials degrade (or last) over hundreds of years. So then the questions I had turned into "what methods should we be using to ensure that what we value lasts?" That question led me to exploring some bookbinding and types of ink, instruments, and methods of transcribing that were used in the past. Although I have focused mainly on medieval and later, I would also like to explore other methods such as stone, clay, papyrus, and other methods.

The shadow to all these questions has arisen over the last year: "What is meant to be, needs to be, or should be lost to time? What must we let go of? What is worth letting go of? What is permanently lost already, never to return? Where does it go in the memory of the universe? And what should be banished to be forgotten? Do we have that authority?" And on, and oooooooonnnn... And of course, this has led me to more questions of copyright, censorship, and information control, and even some much darker corners.

These are a lot of big, and sometimes scary questions. They are ones I hope to illuminate for myself on my journey. And maybe along the way I will illuminate the answers to some of those questions for others, too.