Seven Days in New Crete

"Seven Days in New Crete", also known as "Watch the North Wind Rise", is a seminal but out of print future-utopian speculative fiction novel by Robert Graves, first published in 1949.

The novel takes place in a future society (first established on the island of Crete, but later spreading through much of the world) in which most post-medieval technology has been rejected, and a Triple Goddess religion is followed. The book is narrated by mid-20th century poet Edward Venn-Thomas, who is transported forward in time by the New Cretans. Society is organized into five "estates" or social groups: captains, recorders (scribes), commons (by far the most numerous), servants, and magicians or poets (the least numerous), which are analogized to the five fingers of a hand. Different villages practice different marriage customs (strict monogamy, non-strict monogamy, or polyandry), worship different local "godlings", and specialize in various local handcrafts and foodstuffs, but share the common values of the New Cretan civilization and devotion to the Triple Goddess. Some of the social customs are somewhat matriarchal. There is no poverty in New Crete (money has been abolished) and little dissatisfaction. War is only known in the form of controlled local one-day conflicts between neighboring villages, similar to the old game of village football or Shrovetide football. The poets or magicians of New Crete are an integral part of a religion centred on a sometimes capricious Goddess worshipped in three aspects: the maiden archer Nimuë, the goddess of motherhood and sexuality Mari, and the hag-goddess of wisdom Ana. The only masculine elements of New Cretan religion are the rival twin demi-gods (the star-god of the first half of the year and the serpent-god of the second half of the year) who compete for the Goddess's favor, and the local village godlings, who are all far below the Goddess as queen of heaven. However, the failings of past fallen civilizations are remembered and personified as an anti-trinity of evil gods (the "three Rogues"): Dobeis, god of money and greed; Pill, god of theft and violence; and Machna, god of science and soulless machinery.

Though Venn-Thomas has been moved in time, he is still in the same area of southern France where he lived before and after WW2, and he compares the conditions in his own time to those under the New Cretan civilization (mostly to the disfavor of the 20th century, though some things seem "too good to be true").

In this apparently idyllic utopian setting, Venn-Thomas begins to realise that he has been chosen by the Goddess in order to inject disruption into a society that is becoming static and in danger of losing its vitality. A symptom of trouble is that over the course of the week described in the novel, the five poet-magicians of the "Magic House" of the village of Horned Lamb all die or lose their status as members of the poet-magician estate. In the last section of the book, Venn-Thomas makes a trip to Dunrena, the town which is the capital of the local kingdom, in order to witness the half-yearly cermony of the changing of the king, carried out as a solemn religious-theatrical performance culminating in a ritual sacrifice similar to those described in "The Golden Bough". At the end of the book, Venn-Thomas unleashes the whirlwind which will prepare the way for the transition to the next phase of history, and Sapphire (a young woman whom he has had unsettled feelings for) returns with him through time to be reborn as his daughter.

External link

* [http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/4/canary4art.htm "Utopian and Fantastic Dualities in Robert Graves's "Watch the North Wind Rise"] by Robert H. Canary in "Science Fiction Studies", Fall 1974