Getting born from the forest´s twilight-Úlenkláwe wiärd báren...

 Slowly rising from the depth of my thoughts, from the deeper regions of my soul and the deep of the rich, black soil, from a wood contaminated with waste and poison, steel rose to the surface, neglected by all but me. A chisel I found and lit my forge. I assumed it was a modern HSS steel...

...but it is not. For the first time being, a really distinct Wootz pattern showed. I forged a Sica from it.

In the Roman empire, a lot of styles of blades were imported from all over the empire. The Sica, hailing from the Dacian people´s realm, and the sickle knife of the cisalpine Celtic people, and some Semitic styles blended into each other to form a knife that saw a lot of use as an everyday knife.

But as empires as totalitarian regimes always have enemies within, there was a group of people named the "Sicarii", back alley cut-throats and murderers who set out on Roman executive. The Sica thus was getting a somewhat sinister reputation. Roman knife - laws banned non-native inhabitants of Rome from using knives longer than one "palmus" (roundabout 76 mm blade length). Suffice to say that back-alley murderers just hid their sicae in their flowing tunics and cloaks. Assassination of Roman executives reached a soaring height afterwards. So much for the efficiency of knife-laws.

While I am not at all agreed with any assassin and believe that violence can never be a solution, but in fact poses a problem, the very shape of the blade is an expression of all things wild. Following the line of a golden ratio spiral, it exemplifies one of the ways life is sprouting from the forest´s soil that is so rich with secrets and life. And like a fern´s sprouting sapling rises from the dark, steel that has long been lying submerged under scales of flaking rust, is reborn into the light. It reaps the herbs and due to its very origin, it is a talisman to me. It speaks of life and death, and its ambivalence is that of the forest´s sic et non. While the line of the edge points forward like a whiplash, the triskell points into the other direction to calm the dynamics; the phallic line on the blade itself goes back into the notch that serves the same function as the cho on a Khukhuri. The meanders on the handle again work into the other direction of the triskell.

While things do not fall against gravity, so to say, there is a way magic works. It works its way from root and grain and soil and soul-into the world.