These words are written by the individual known within The Society for Creative Anachronism as Ian Jameson, currently resident in the Barony of Glymm Mere within the Kingdom of An Tir, who has known of the SCA since 1970, attended their first event in 1977, and first became active in 1980.
I’m certain there are those who will take issue with my description of the initial philosophical outlook of the SCA.
Tough.
It’s the lead-in to some thoughts concerning how we need to get serious about not being those people, and being what we officially say we currently are.
Some sixty years ago now there was a party held in celebration of Diana Paxson getting an advanced degree in History, or some such thing.
Fun was had.
Folks decoded they wanted to continue having this kind of fun.
And thus was started what became known as The Society for Creative Anachronism.
Initially the focus was something along the lines of Chivalric Fantasy loosely inspired by works of various folks from a variety of cultures...but The Matter of Britain as much as anything.
The focus very much was not upon high level historical accuracy in recreation of any culture...but the focus was still a pseudo-Western European glorification of stuff between the Fall of Rome and the Death of Elizabeth Tudor. With Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings included; take a gander at the early West Kingdom Coronation Oaths, and tell me that’s not cribbed directly from Aragorn’s Coronation.
Over the passage of time we’ve moved away from Chivalric Fantasy, at least in theory, and toward a more nuanced focus upon what we can document concerning pre-1601 cultures. We’ve discarded a starting date, and most recently discarded any geographic restrictions. Pre-1601 anywhere, whether or not Europeans had contact.
And that approaches the matter which prods me to write various things.
Officially no culture has primacy. We are the world.
However…
In our heraldry we still have the concept of “Core Style.” Of there being One True Heraldic Structure that we work with when registering Armory. Anything outside that structure requires Individually Attested Patterns every single time.
Every. Single. Time. Doesn’t matter how many times it has been documented. Doesn’t matter how well we’ve documented the differing heraldic culture. If it doesn’t fall in line with our pseudo-English heraldic tradition it requires submitting documentation we don’t require for “Core Style.”
This is incompatible with “No culture has primacy.”
“If you don’t have one Core Style, what do you do?” is a fair question, I’ll grant that.
Have Cultural Core Styles. Based upon the conversations within the Knowne World Heraults Discord Server I’d argue that various folks have a solid grasp of Italian Core Style, Polish Core Style, &c. Then we have Choi Min’s Teahouse and various Asian cultures. And the Indigenous Cultures server. And the… I think I make my point; the knowledge is out there.
Sufficiently so that they could develop alternate versions of our guidelines that reflected those heraldic traditions. Pretty sure stabs could be made at such for a wide variety of other cultures.
So you say that you are submitting armory within a specific heraldic tradition, and those are the armorial guidelines which apply to your submission.
If you don’t name a tradition...it gets evaluated using the Lingua Societatis Heraldic Tradition. What we currently have. Because that’s the SCA Generic Sub-culture.
Here we hit another stumbling block.
What is heraldic display, anyway? And can we continue being bound by the traditions of a small number of cultures when “we are the world” is the official mandate?
Within the SCA, the purpose of an individual’s device is to identify them. While there may be cultures that lacked that concept, the SCA embraces that concept.
Our heraldic tradition derives from that of certain European cultures. That’s where our Core Style and such comes from. That’s where we get our concepts concerning what qualifies as a “heraldic thing.”
Well, if you are dealing with a culture that didn’t have something arguably serving the same purpose as European Heraldry, um, yeah, they aren’t going to have recognizable heraldic motifs. But will they have recognizable artistic motifs? I’ll argue “yes.”
Given the goal of registering stuff to identify individuals within the unique sub-culture which is the SCA, and recognizing that a great many cultures don’t have a tradition equivalent to that which formed our current practice… We acknowledge they didn’t have such a tradition, didn’t have such motifs, and do our best to allow inclusion within the culture which is the SCA.
Recognizable, commonly identified, artistic motifs can become heraldic motifs within the SCA for use with registering armory for the respective culture.
We already have the practice of “defining registrations” for charges not used previously within the SCA. And when we do such, we lay down what they get compared to when considering conflict. We just run with that, while indicating which culture(s) it could be used within.
We just start doing with “armorial traditions” what we’ve done with name components. Yes, it’s not a simple thing, but if we were into simple we wouldn’t be here in the first place.
It is my hope that these words inspire discussion and movement toward a more inclusive heraldic environment within the context of the SCA as a distinct culture.
It won’t be easy. But we do need to move away from the concept of a singular core style derived from a minor culture in the southern end of an insignificant overgrown island being what everyone has to fall in line with.
