I don’t get to the cinema as often as I would like, no reason not to, there is a perfectly good multiplex quite nearby. Anyway, having said that we saw two films within a week last month. The Jack Reacher film ‘Never Go Back’ with Tom Cruise which was a bit of a disappointment. I loved the book but the film was a bit routine. A very pleasant surprise though was Arrival which was on release a week or so later. On one level it is a science fiction story about aliens making first contact. Like the best of science fiction it asks some searching questions about the human condition.

Twelve massive space ships arrive and park themselves around the world. There is no sign of hostility and the occupants are willing to communicate. The world goes a little crazy and the obsession is with the ‘threat’ the visitors pose and what should be done to destroy it. Amy Adams plays Louise Banks, a professor of linguistics, who is brought in to see if she can understand the very strange way that the aliens communicate. She does succeed just in time and I won’t say any more about the narrative in case I spoil the story. I highly recommend this film but you will have to concentrate while you watch it, there is a lot to think about.

The main point of Arrival is that there are different methods of communication and we are limited by our means of communicating. Limited in terms of our ability to communicate with each other, from one country to another, let alone between human an alien. Our method of communication also limits our ability to think and thus communicate with ourselves internally. The heroine of Arrival is able to learn how to communicate with the aliens by working our their language. In turn her thinking changes too. (Sorry, spoiler there.) One reason she is able to manage such a feat is that she understands the principles of language and communication better than anyone else. The language you use to talk to someone who knows the same language is an effective method of communication. There are also methods of translating, which tends to be less effective, depending upon the skill of the translator. There may even be methods of developing communication with an unknown language, but that can be extremely difficult and there will be an awful lot of trial an error. Again, you would be back to principles of communication and looking for techniques, individual words and gestures, in order to formulate a method of communication which eventually results in using the previously unknown language. Learning an unknown language without a pre existing method of translation is going to be challenging. But, if the principles of linguistics are understood, simple techniques of communication are developed and then eventually language will be shared.

The idea that language shapes thought is a more contentious one. The idea that Eskimos have over one hundred words for snow may or may not be true. But soldiers have more than one word for gun, a painter has more than one word for brush or a gardener more than one word for flower. If you are deeply involved in something then you will think about it. As you think you will either learn the words that are used in that activity, or invent them if necessary. Someone who has little or no interest in a subject will know very few words relating to the field. If Eskimos do have many words for snow then that is because snow is such a major part of their lives and they have to think and communicate about it a lot.

However, the techniques and methods by which we communicate can have profound implications, both for the way we think and how we can share essential principles with others.

Again, at a risk of another spoiler, the aliens in Arrival do not communicate with writing that goes from left to right, top to bottom, beginning, middle and end. Lets just say the alien communication involves circles. When I saw it my first reaction was, ‘that is how bind runes work’.

If you use ordinary letters then each letter has little significance of its own. If combined together according to accepted methods of spelling you have a word. Combine words according to methods of grammar and punctuation and you have sentences. Then combine sentences according to methods of literary construction and communication is achieved between author and reader. If you have read this far then we can agree this method works.

Runes are a bit different. Yes, they can be used as phonetic letters and constructed into conventional writing. But each rune can be used to retrieve a wide range of knowledge as a technique of memory recall. It can also be used as a physical stance, or cut on a stave of wood and used for the technique of rune reading, the basis for the method of rune counselling.

Bind runes in the Hafskjold Stav tradition are a method of combining runes so that essential teachings are communicated in very simple form without the need for a list or description. When understood bind runes can communicate essential principles from which methods and techniques can be developed as necessary. Right from the beginning Ivar told me that Stav was not about techniques, just about learning and understanding principles. Unfortunately just writing “learning”, then “understanding” and then “principles” imposes a structure of beginning, ‘learning’, middle, gaining ‘understanding’ and end, receiving the wisdom of knowing ‘principles’. Express the same concept as a bind rune which you can see here http://oxfordstavclub.co.uk/images/communication.jpg and you see that there is no beginning and end just a process of development as a human being. The true objective being to bring to conscious awareness what you always knew intuitively. Techniques and methods are the means by which this process occurs.

Next Saturday I will be sharing the idea of working with the apparent techniques and methods of Stav to rediscover the principles of who we are and how the universe works. I am not offering a result, just participation in a process. Having said that you will learn techniques and a method with which to make your own search for principles. http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/foundation.html

regards

Graham

PS Other opportunities for Stav Training next year:

Another CQC weapons seminar with Fox in April http://somersetstav.co.uk/cqcweapons.html

I will be teaching in the USA in Minneapolis in May http://iceandfire.org.uk/usamay17.html

Learn Stav direct from Ivar in Somerset in September http://stavcamp.org/