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| The 3 Fates Gathering in the Stars by Elihu Vedder |
"You know how often the turning down this street or that, the accepting or rejecting of an invitation, may deflect the whole current of our lives into some other channel. Are we mere leaves, fluttered hither and thither by the wind, or are we rather, with every conviction that we are free agents, carried steadily along to a definite and pre-determined end?"
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from the Stark Munro Letters.
Our human predecessors had found, or constructed, an answer to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's question. In Greek, Roman and Norse mythology we find related versions of the same story: "The Fates". In each case a trio of females representing past, present and future, prepare the destinies of gods and men, serve the unchanging laws of the cosmos. They were unanswerable to even the greatest of the gods.
Greek mythology called them the Moirai: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.
In Roman mythology they became the Parcae: Nona, Decima, Morta.
While in northern climes Norse myths had the Norns: Wyrd, Verdandi and Skuld.
The Norns would seem to have been of even greater significance than their Greek and Roman counterparts. They were thought to be older than the gods, and originally came from Jotunheim, land of the giants, travelled to Asgard, home of the gods, where they spun a thread on which hung the destiny of the universe itself.
All versions of the "Fates" myths have one thing in common: they suggest an abiding belief that an unseen force shapes our lives.
“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West.
