Organic Bridges

Organic Bridges

The Nature of Things – the secret life of Inanimate Objects by Lyall Watson

Long before the circulatory system was described and understood, it was noticed that a loss ob blood resulted in a loss of vitality. Blood therefore must be the vital essence, and life, it was assumed, could be given or transferred with the help of some of this magic ingredient. Hence the Aboriginal practice of opening a vein to let blood drip on to a symbolic stone churinga, ensuring the the quickening and increase of totemic animals such as the kangaroo; the the ratification of the Mosaic covenant with God by the sprinkling on an altar of the blood of a sacrificial ox; and the taboo, still common in many parts of Africa, against taking first fruits until the vitality of the entire crop has been guaranteed by making a bloody oblation in the fields.

The assumption in each case is that blood animates, validates or vitalizes that on which it is shed, bringing the dead to life. The sacrificial victims of blood donors were invariably male. They still are. When a new house or shrine is built in West Africa a cock is killed and its body put into the main posthole. Stone-masons in Greece shed a ritual drop of blood into the foundations of a new home. And constructors and architects everywhere take part in “topping out” ceremonies when a project nears completion. Given that such rituals include symbolic sacrifice in the form of split red wine, or the actual beheading of a billy goat, talk of a building “getting topped” seems singularly appropriate.

During work on a Tudor house in London in 1963 a bricked-up recess was found to contain the bodies of four cockerels, two of which had been decapitated and two walled-in alive. Cats too were deliberately entombed, sometimes with a mouse or a bird for company, once in the roof of a church being restored by Sir Christopher Wren in 1691. Other organic charms concealed in buildings include old shoes on over seven hundred sites from Turkey to Australia, with a date range from the thirteenth century to 1935. All are men's shoes, presumably belonging to the builders, but always set with obvious care into their hiding places. Some are ritually marked or deliberately mutilated with mystic symbols, and a few somewhat disturbing examples are still attached to the feet of their owners.

It is interesting how often buildings, ships, roads and bridges seem still to take human toll just as the work on them is coming to an end, almost as though they “demand” a suitable sacrifice. Managers in the construction business recognize the phenomenon of “last day injuries”. And folklore in the industry is full of tales of missing workers whose bodies turn up later when ships are being demolished in the scrapyard, or bridge supports damaged by earthquake or flood. Then the deaths are discovered and rationalized by talk of laborers on their lunch breaks crawling into the cavities of double hulls or the shelter of wooden casements for a sleep, just before the last rivets are shot or the first concrete poured into place. But it is ominous how often River Kelang in Malaysia neared completion in the 1960s. And a measure of how seriously the question is still considered is that workers on project of the English Channel, while deploring the death of two of their fellows, should admit to a feeling of relief that at least “the bugger has had his taste of blood.”

Our daily lives are filled with obvious example of the organic bridge in action. Picture by Elena.