7 Star Warsesque
Essays
IV. Is Nothing Sacred in Star Wars?
Special Thanks to Enrique Guerrero
In this fourth informal essay exploring
the dusty corners
of the Star Wars universe, all our powers of concentration are focused
on one little
word, the term “consecrated.” The notion of consecration in our
world has
the meaning of a thing being deemed or made sacred, often through a
ritual of
some kind. As the word has its roots in Christianity, it comes as
little
surprise that the first time we see this word used in the Star Wars
galaxy is
in the book Truce at Bakura by
devout
Christian author Kathy Tyers. In
this book,
religion and consecration play an important role in the culture of the
primary
antagonists. After that first use, thing get complicated, mostly thanks to a Bakura companion book which for some reason latches onto the word consecrated and gives it a very specific meaning in the Star Wars universe—or lack thereof, as it were. This comes back to haunt Star Wars continuity years later when not only Tyers returns to write another book in a galaxy far, far away, but when the villains of her original novel are resurrected by the hands of new Star Wars novelists. Usually, I can let little things like this go. Continuity-wise, there are much bigger fish to fry in Star Wars. But the queer development of “consecrated,” owed to a deliberate warping of the word, appeals to my fascination with the concepts of translation, interpretation, and word origins…not to mention the butterfly effect and plain old mischief. What follows is the exploration of the curious etymology of the word consecrated in the Star Wars universe. And it is, to say the least, curious. The attention to detail presented here will probably go over the heads of casual fans, but should give interested parties an idea of just how carefully I mull over potential problems when writing Star Wars. |
In
the Star Wars novel Refugee,
second book in the Force Heretic trilogy of the New Jedi
Order
series, we revisit the Ssi-ruuk,
dinosaur-like
galactic invaders and their alien ways, including their idea of
"consecrating" worlds. Given that the basic premise of the
19-book New Jedi Order series is the invasion of the Known
Galaxy by an
all new species of invader, the Yuuzhan Vong, you would think the “conquering foreigner”
motif
should be used more sparingly, but that’s a separate issue. That
said, I'll make my curious continuity
observation.
This particular word, “consecrate,” has an
interesting history in the Expanded Universe. I believe I can count on
one hand
the number of times that this word has appeared in Star Wars
literature. One is
obviously the Force Heretic book just mentioned, and I’ll get
to that.
The first example of it being used, though, comes from the Truce at
Bakura by Kathy Tyers,
the
1994 novel that inspired one of Refugee's main plot points, the
return
of the Ssi-ruuk during the Yuuzhan
Vong War.
Bakura’s
saurian antagonists believe that if they die away from a
"consecrated" world, that is, on a world that has not been cleansed
via ritual acts, their souls are thereby
lost to the
ether. The reason I have been using the term consecrated in
quotes is
that, apparently, the word does not exist in Basic—the common Star Wars
language that comes off as English in the Star Wars films. This
odd
distinction is introduced to readers not in the Bakura
novel itself, but in the Truce at Bakura
Sourcebook, the companion to Tyers’
novel, via
the character Voren Na’al.
Na’al is established as a historian
extraordinaire in
his frequent appearances in the Star Wars literature published by the roleplaying game licensee West End Games.
It
was common for West End Games to
include vignettes – quarter-page, half-page and page-long stories – in
their books,
and this was especially true of the Bakura
Sourcebook, which almost qualifies as another novel. The
vignette
that interests us is the one titled, “The Creation According to the Ssi-ruuk,” in which historian Na’al
translates a part of a Ssi-ruuk holy text
that
explains the origin of the cosmos according to their religion.
The
translation ends with this footnote by Na’al:
"Some [parts of this Ssi-ruuvi myth] do
not translate smoothly into Basic. I was
particularly confused about 'consecrating' worlds. No other
references
came up during my search. I found one outside reference to 'waters
of
consecration' in a medical text, but it described tests for
infection of
spinal fluid. It is probably not relevant to the aliens'
religious practices."
Oh, how wrong you are, dear Voren!
Assuming the
competence of the
authors of the Bakura Sourcebook,
and Kathy Tyers and Eric S. Trautmann (“Dark
Vendetta”) are no slouches, the immediate question
becomes why this particular word got singled out by the book’s
authors.
I'd have to venture that the idea for this probably came from Trautman rather than Tyers,
who
didn't think to make a big deal out of the word in the original Bakura novel, and who we will see uses
this word
again with superficially catastrophic results, in light of the word’s
established lack of meaning. In any case, given that consecration
is utterly
pertinent to the Ssi-ruuk’s religious
practices, the wink
wink, nudge nudge
effect from the line, “It is probably not relevant to the aliens’
religious
practices,” is what seems to be the punchline
of the
footnote; it is a vignette within the vignette, commenting on the human
element
that makes translations and, more seriously, cross-cultural relations
problematic.
Jokes and moralizing aside, one thing, at
least, is clear: while the word consecrate exists in the English
language, it does not exist in Basic.1
At least, not up until the events of Bakura
and/or not with the same meaning. Good ol’
Voren, after all, is no slouch either when
it comes to
research, as the thoroughness of his character is exemplified in such
books as
the Movie Trilogy Sourcebook, and the companion sourcebooks to Heir
to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command.
By extension, Voren doesn’t seem like such
a
numbskull that he couldn’t or wouldn’t pick up a Basic dictionary and
easily
deduce what the all-too probable connection is between the Ssi-ruuvi
reference to consecrating worlds and their religious practices.
So, it
seems we are clearly meant to believe Voren
when he
says no such references to “consecrating” exist in Basic.2
I found it amusing
that this well-established
aspect of Earth culture had to be canonized into the Star Wars
universe, much
the same way ducks (A New Hope novelization,
The
Phantom Menace), dogs (A New Hope novelization,
The Lando Calrissian
Adventures), horses (Ewoks:
Caravan of
Courage, Marvel Comics), and other Terran
elements were. Unintentionally, though likely due to my strong interest
in
religions – as well as my continuity radar getting
set
up by this oblique take on a fairly normal English word in a rather
obscure
source – I kept tabs over the years on how often I came across
"consecrated" in Star Wars literature thereafter.
It
wasn't very hard. There were actually no
other references to anything being consecrated at all for the next
several
years… until, predictably, the word came up again about five years
later in the
novel New Jedi Order: Balance Point, written by, none
other—Kathy Tyers. What struck me this
time was that not only were the Ssi-ruuk
nowhere to be seen, but the word consecrated was
this time used by that aforementioned new alien invader race, the Yuuzhan Vong, who
were supposedly
from another galaxy entirely and yet used the word in precisely the
same
context as the Ssi-ruuk,3
i.e.
a cleansing ritual.
Yuuzhan
Vong use of the term consecration occurs
during a
conversation between one of the invader’s chief generals, Warmaster
Tsavong Lah,
and his covert
agent Nom Anor, following their conquest
of the
planet Duro. In the Vong
religion, life is revered to the point that all things synthetic
(including
advanced technology like artificially intelligent droids right down to
basic
“unnatural” compounds like concrete, windows,
and
plastic) are considered sacrilegious. As such, when Nom Anor gives Tsavong Lah a tour of the facility he’s been using as a
laboratory
(an unholy “built-thing,” as the warmaster
refers to
it), Lah decrees that the edifice should
be ritually
cleansed:
“Then we shall consecrate this
built-thing for your future use.”
The reappearance of the word is not a big
surprise, given that Tyers is an ardent
Christian and
that she wrote the book in which the term originally appeared.
However,
the problem that the Bakura
Sourcebook
introduced now becomes all too clear: if the word consecrate does
not
exist in the galaxy at large, save as used by a fanatical fringe
species of
alien invaders (the Ssi-ruuk), how do
these extragalactic
Yuuzhan Vong
also know
it? Even in the best case scenario, the Ssi-ruuk
could not have had prolonged exposure to the Yuuzhan
Vong (assuming any exposure at all at this
point,
given that the Ssi-ruuk are on the
opposite side of
the galaxy from which the Yuuzhan Vong
began their invasion). So, how do these two cultures both have a
word in
their vocabulary that translates to the non-existent Basic word
“consecrated?”
The answer, thankfully, is that they
don’t. Though the Truce at Bakura
Sourcebook
establishes explicitly that the Ssi-ruuvi
term
consecrated does not exist in Basic, when we the readers are exposed to
the term
again in the Yuuzhan Vong
tongue in Balance Point, it is not being spoken to a speaker of
Basic,
but to another Yuuzhan Vong
speaker, and appears to the reader in his native tongue of English.4 And as we well know,
the term consecrated does
indeed exist in English. Thus, this coincidence, that the Ssi-ruuvi and the Yuuzhan
Vong are both invaders of the galaxy far,
far away with a
word in their vocabularies that translates best to the word
“consecrated” in English,
is a mere curiosity and a sign of the indelible mark of author Kathy Tyers on the Star Wars universe. Tyers
is thus exonerated of any wrongdoing, and the Bakura
Sourcebook’s unwittingly risqué joke survives unscathed.
But not for
long.
Finally,
we return to that most recent
“consecrated” culprit, Refugee. Written by Sean Williams
and Shane
Dix, it is the middle book in the Force Heretic trilogy, 10
novels down
the line from Tyers’ Balance Point,
but still
developing the same New Jedi Order invasion story arc.
This is
relevant because in Refugee, Williams and Dix decide to revisit
Tyers’ planet Bakura
and that old
Ssi-ruuk enemy.
The set-up: the Bakurans
tell Princess Leia, a former senator and
diplomat,
that their world needs to be “consecrated” so that the Ssi-ruuk
ruler of prophecy, the Keeramak, will come
to Bakura. The reason the Bakurans
would want the ruler of the old invaders to come is
complicated, but in
a nutshell, the two parties have apparently formed a truce.
Nonetheless,
the point of contention remains the use of the word
“consecrated.” Here’s
the quote by a Bakuran army general to Leia, Han, and their entourage:
“In order to make them [the Ssi-ruuk]
comfortable, there are details we have to attend
to. [The Bakuran Prime Minister]
wanted this Keermak of theirs to come to Bakura
to sign the treaty in person, but he—it—wouldn’t come unless Bakura was consecrated. You see,
it believes
like the rest of the Ssi-ruuk that if it
dies away
from one of the sacred worlds, then its soul will be lost forever.”
Within two pages, the word is again
directed toward Leia and her crew by the Bakuran Deputy Prime Minister. Both times,
it is
spoken by Bakurans in a manner expected to
be
understood without explanation, and both times Leia,
former senator and diplomat, and crew receive the word as if they know
precisely what it means and have known it all their lives—a word that
is
established not only to not exist in Basic in the Bakura
Sourcebook, but the meaning of which could not even be deduced by
the
Rebel’s most respected academic and historian. Finally, almost a
decade
after the joke/social commentary was executed in the Bakura
Sourcebook, the joke’s now on Star Wars continuity.
So, what’s the solution?
Well, pretty it’s not, that’s for damn sure.
On the one hand, it can be
easily assumed that Voren Na’al
is a total idiot, and just didn’t know the definition of consecrated,
nor could
he look it up in a dictionary, or deduce its meaning from the context
of the
word in the ancient Ssi-ruuvi text.
But this
characterization isn’t supported by a look at Na’al’s
level of intelligence as seen in other Star Wars books, not to mention
being a
pragmatic cop-out on par with claiming that Obi-Wan is simply a no-good
liar. It is a betrayal of all the fine effort that’s been made by
numerous authors to give the character a realistic persona.
What then. The most obvious
answer to me seems to be the following: it’s likely that in the
28 years
between the events of the Truce at Bakura
and Refugee,
the Rebels have been exposed to the Ssi-ruuvi
concept
of “consecration,” which they have come to equate with the familiar
Basic term
“sacred.” This is not only possible but likely. According
to Star
Wars: The Essential Chronology by
Daniel Wallace,
the Rebels shipped off for the Ssi-ruuk
homeworld Lwhekk following the events of Bakura,
waged war on the invaders, and won. Furthermore, in Wallace’s Essential
Guide to Planet and Moons, it is stated that “over the next few
years”
after Bakura, the Rebels made
“numerous forays
into Ssi-ruuk territory,” presumably other
than the
war alluded to in the Essential Chronology itself. Thus,
it was
probably during or in the aftermath of this war that the Rebels were
again
exposed to the concept of consecration and came to understand its
meaning as
the equivalent of the word “sacred” in Ssi-ruuvi
culture and religion.
Next question: how were the Bakurans
so familiar with the term “consecrated?”
Like the Rebels, the Bakurans were never
demonstrated
to have been exposed to the concept of consecration during the events
of the
novel Truce at Bakura, and unlike
the
Rebels, they were not shown to have been exposed to it at all
afterward.
Nonetheless, a way out can again be inferred from a line in Plants
and Moons:
“Although the immediate threat from Lwhekk
seems to
have been ended, the
So, we have every reason to believe that
intelligence on the Ssi-ruuk, including
the meaning
of this strange word “consecrated,” was mined independently by the
Rebels and
the Bakurans, and any information gathered
was
probably exchanged freelybetween the two
parties over
the next 28 years, thus realistically explaining how an academic like Voren Na’al didn’t
know what the
term “consecrated” meant (it didn’t exist in Basic at the time), but
how three
decades later, Leia and the Bakurans
would be so comfortable with this new word that they could pass over it
without
any noticeable effort made by either party to make sure that the
meaning of the
word is understood.
Postscript: What remains strange
though is that this word, however it is spelled, pronounced, etc. in
the Ssi-ruuvi language, can be translated
into anything
intelligible at all. That is, in the Ssi-ruuvi
tongue – a whistling, flute-like language – what does the word
“consecrated”
sound like, and how was the decision made to translate this word,
non-existent
save for the meaningless phrase “waters of consecration,” into the
Basic word
“consecrated?” This was likely a problem not considered by the
authors of
the Truce at Bakura Sourcebook, and is beyond
the scope of this essay, and not to mention sanity.
Abel G. Peña is the author of numerous official Star Wars articles and fiction pieces. Visit his Star Wars blog at http://blogs.starwars.com/abelgpena for the latest news on projects he’s working on, as well as other essays and observations about the Star Wars universe. You can e-mail him at abelgpena@star-wars.net.
[1] Significantly, this isn’t to say that the term or concept “sacred” does not exist in Star Wars. Indeed, it does, and has been used frequently in Star Wars literature.
[2] On the other hand, the "reference" to which Voren is referring could be applied to the idea
of not only
consecrating, but consecrating worlds. However, this
interpretation, while practical, is not supported by the text.
[3] …and the English-speaking world,
obviously.
[4] A similar solution has been
applied to
explain how Wicket speaks Basic in the Ewok
telemovies, which take place before Return
of the Jedi, in
which he does not speak the language, i.e. it was not English that he
was
speaking in the telemovies, it was only
translated to
English for the audience’s convenience.
STAR WARS is ®,TM, and © Lucasfilm,
Ltd. (LFL) All Rights Reserved.
This site is for entertainment purposes
only.
Please don't sue us!