Category Archives: Australia

The Artefacts of Power in The Secret of the Tirthas

In The Secret of the Tirthas, the demons and their followers are desperately seeking to capture the Artefacts of Power. These magical items have gained their power from the devotion of worshippers over the centuries.

Each Artefact in the story is based on a real life sacred object, from a different religious tradition. Here’s a list of them, with the culture or religion they came from:

Nkisi statue – a wooden figure from African shamanistic religion. People drove iron nails in to release the power of the ancestor spirit residing in it.

Nkisi statue

Nkisi statue

Hilili Kachina – a raindance doll with a snake hanging out of his mouth, from Native American culture.

Hilili Kachina doll (image: Creative Commons-BY; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 03.325.4648_threequarter_PS6.jpg)

The Holy Grail – a chalice containing the blood of Christ from the Last Supper, much pursued by medieval knights.

The Damsel of the Sanct Grael

The Damsel of the Sanct Grael, Rossetti

Easter Island statue (maoi) – over 1,000 of these mysterious statues were constructed by the inhabitants of a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. All the statues look inland, away from the sea. It is thought they represented ancestors, guarding over the islanders.

Maoi sculptures

Easter Island sculptures from the original Garden of Rooms in Herefordshire

Venus – the statue is based on the famous Venus of Hohle Fels, found in Germany and believed to be 40,000 years old. She was carved from mammoth tusk.

Venus of Hohle Fels

Venus of Hohle Fels (Image: Thilo Parg / Wikimedia Commons License: CC BY-SA 3.0)

Green Man – a figure from Western paganism, symbolising the regenerative, mysterious powers of Nature.

Green Man

Green Man from a Herefordshire church

Other Artefacts in The Secret of the Tirthas:

Yingarna – a goddess of creation, who carried children from different Aboriginal tribes in her many bags.

Shiva Lingam – a holy symbol of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, carved from stone.

Buddha’s Tooth – there are several teeth relics of the Buddha, including a very famous one in Sri Lanka.

 

Australia, and Uluru Magic

“The outback was like a vast, beaten plate of copper stretching out around them, shimmering in the distance where the heat warped the fierce light…”

Uluru, the sacred Aboriginal rock in the heart of Australia, gets its first mention in The City of Light, when Lizzie discovers her great-uncle’s journal and reads about the inma, or initiation ceremony, of David Maturwarra’s son. But it’s not until the most recent book, The Lady in the Moon Moth Mask, that any action takes place there, when Ashlyn activates a garden portal and finds David and his friends. There she discovers the harrowing events that have taken place following the arrival of the terrifying Liru Snake Woman.

In 2001 I visited my Dad who was living in Sydney and subsequently travelled around Australia. I was stunned by the beauty of the country, from the vibrant cities of Sydney and Perth, to the grand walking country of the Grampian mountains, and the fabulous coasts of Cairns and New South Wales.

But above all, I was in awe of Uluru and the outback. I loved the way the legendary rock changed its colour gradually throughout the day. How its smooth and chiselled escarpment tugged images out of your head. And the contrast of the austere outback with the intimate, scrubby paths that encircled the rock.

It was stunning. All the pictures in this post I took then (on print film). The descriptions are from The Lady in the Moon Moth Mask.

“Uluru’s massive terracotta flank loomed up beside them, seeming to throb with a life of its own…”


“The rock was mostly smooth like the brow of a giant’s head, but in places it was punctured with scars and pits. One section looked like a giant spoon had gouged through it, exposing a honey-combed, chocolate-orange mousse below…”


“‘This is where Kuniya Python Woman fought the Liru Snake Woman,’ said David. ‘That crack is the Liru’s head wound, made by the Python Woman’s digging stick. If only she had killed her for good…’
From a distance, the place where the Python Woman and the Snake Woman fought looked to Ashlyn like a giant barracuda’s head, with a long gash almost three-quarters of the height of the rock for its slanted eye, and a large broken cavern at its base for its gaping maw. That was one mean fish.”


“Even the trees were desiccated, standing like straps of parched, twisted bone in the pulsating landscape…”