SOURCE : Arthur Rackham, animism and tree spirits
An obsession with fairies and all things diaphanous was common among late-Victorian illustrators, but it is this element of almost pagan cruelty that makes Rackham more than just a period piece…
Trees whose branches are arms and whose roots are clawed feet, whose heads sprout a bristling crown of twigs. Trees with knots that might be eyes and gashes that seem to leer, trees that dance and point and gesticulate and generally mock the absurd pretensions of men. Even those that are less obviously ghoulish are still fearsome – black dragon-growths pockmarked with woody vortices, the branches seeming to burst from a dark and unspeakable density. These predatory, malevolent presences form a weird subtext to almost all of the books Rackham illustrated… they aren’t so much trees as tree-spirits.
Rackham’s trees got me thinking about animism, that oldest and sanest of religions. In its purest form… animism holds simply that everything is alive and should be accorded proper reverence.
