I’m re-reading Robert Graves’ The White Goddess. It is a sort of poetic anthropology book. Graves was trying to find commonalities in mythology (as known at the time), using linguistics, some archaeology, literature, and other sources to find the roots of (archetypes) of pre-Christian religion in Europe. He was strongly influenced by Frazier’s The Golden Bough and other “grand theory of religion” thinkers. As a work of cultural anthropology, so to speak, it has not aged well, although I remain very impressed by his research and how he tried to use language and comparative religion to get down to the roots of faith.

As a study in world building? It is fantastic. Graves found commonalities, or at least thought he found commonalities in a number of religions and traditions, compared them with what archaeology had been done up to that point, and developed a then-plausible world that was pretty coherent and made sense of disparate traditions and beliefs. He translated some things himself, to be certain that he understood the material properly, and considered possible other scenarios. The world he created worked, mostly. If it had been a fiction novel, we’d probably go back to it as a study in craft and writing skill, a bit like some do with Tolkien.

It also shows the weakness in using cutting-edge data for world building. That’s also happened in sci-fi, where some hard sci-fi no longer works as built, because we know so much more about exoplanets, or how stars form, or biochemistry and biophysics, and planetary chemistry. A few other novels likewise, when the plot depended on a theory that has since been disproven. It doesn’t mean the books are no longer fun or entertaining, or thought-provoking, just that readers who know about the updated science have to suspend a lot of disbelief.

That’s where I have to stop and take a break with The White Goddess. I’m current on the archaeology, linguistics, and so on, more or less, and keep trying to argue with the author. That’s not fair to Graves, or to the book.

Since Graves showed his work, we writers can note how he used his sources, finding apparent commonalities between this idea and that poem, this religious practice and that word use in a different but possibly related language. From that he built a world. How can we do something similar, drawing from a variety of ideas and references? Start with commonalities, especially things on the surface, and ask “Why?” Then build your world, or have your characters build their world. I’ve done that by having characters relay their mythology (or what outsiders would call mythology) and/or Just-So Stories. Where did I get those tales? They were created by stitching together bits and pieces of a lot of real-world mythology, commonalities in beliefs ( like a Flood Myth – seems like everyone’s got one, almost).

If you are one who stitches together archaeology, mythology, and things to make a world, what is an example of your source material? How do you keep the seams from showing, if you do?