To us, Necromancers
Just remember,
All who read and glaze
With fascination
Across dusty ancient tomes, of manuscripts and archives,
Commune with the dead.
We are, as necromancers.
The Ancient Egyptians said,
‘To speak of the dead, is to make them live again’.
When we open a book,
That ancient author again speaks and lives in us
And if inspired,
They move the Earth.
With their silent chaos.
Happy Halloween
MMXXV
The Archivist’s Accessioning Table, All Hallows’ Eve MMXXV
What do the Shades Have To Say To Us?
ABORIGINES AND MISSIONS
“To me, as an individual, The mission to the aborigines of N.S.W. has always seemed a sort of iniquity when it overlooks this great section of most hopeful material (referring to the convict shepherds). Great numbers of these poor creatures have been hurried on to their degraded condition by the pressure of want in the parent country, and by not having time to reflect: but now amidst the still wilderness, they would reflect, if a little stimulus to reflection were supplied. The voice of the religious teacher would often be humbly welcomed; broken hearts will take in Christian Consolation, when there is still enough of steel about them to defy the gaol, the manacles and the cats.
On the contrary, all the thanks we get from the black native for attempting to introduce our religion into his tribes is the laugh of derision, or the silence of yet deeper scorn. “You!” he says, “you who tie one another up and flog one another within an inch of life, for some little hasty word; you who begrudge one another enough to eat; you who deprive me of my hunting grounds, only to increase possessions for possessions sake; you a people divided into two classes, the one hateful and the other contemptible, the tyrant and the slave; you who keep, and clothe, and train men to human slaughter as a trade – you teach me to be better! Me, who walk the forest free, who appropriate no more than I need, who never fight but as a deeply injured man who would not pay your bloody lash upon my dog, much less upon my brother; who ‘in wrath remember mercy’, and give even the public culprit, against whom I am to direct my spear at the command of the tribe, his shield to defend himself with; YOU CONVERT ME! Preposterous!”
O that mankind would have but common sense. One of its first undertakings would certainly be to rectify the shameful errors of our own condition of society.
Happy Halloween
Gionni Di Gravio OAM
University Archivist & Chair, Hunter Living Histories
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