Iterate

To utter again or repeatedly; iterative means characterized by or involving repetition or recurrence. According to the on line Mirriam Webster Dictionary, the first known use of the word was in the 15^th Century.

This word can refer to the act of repeating a process, usually with the aim of approaching a desired goal or target (every spring I wait for my Tulipa Tarda to come up, and then I get ready to plant the annuals).  The results of one iteration are the starting point for the next.

Iteration is used in mathematics with functions and in the sieve of Eratosthenes.  The latter is a process to find all the prime numbers up to a given limit, and is usually done by computer through an algorithm, using a repetitive process. Iteration is used in computer programming (looping), as well as in business to develop and deliver increments of a product of process.

In renga, a Japanese collaborative poetry, three, four and up to fourteen or fifteen people work together to write a poem. The first stanza contains 5 – 7 – 5 sound units, the next 7 – 7 and then it`s back to 5 – 7 – 5, and the pattern repeats.  Haiku developed as a separate form of poetry from the first verse of the renga.

In his book, Difference and Repition (1968), French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze spoke of three different levels of time in which repetition occurs. One might think these would be past, present, and future, but according to Deleuze’s theory, the present contains both past and future.  His levels of time are passive synthesis exemplified by habit; active synthesis exemplified by memory (i.e. a repetition of time); and empty time that breaks free of simple repetition of time because of a huge symbolic event (e.g. Oedipus’ murder of his father). The latter seems to me have something to do with becoming part of an archetype, a Jungian sort of view, perhaps. (I find the above interesting, though I’m not sure that I really understand Deleuze or Derrida for that matter.)

A contemporary of Deleuze was philosopher Jacques Derrida. The on line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Derrida states:

 “What is happening right now is a kind of event, different from every other now I have ever experienced. Yet, also in the present, I remember the recent past and I anticipate what is about to happen. The memory and the anticipation consist in repeatability. Because what I experience now can be immediately recalled, it is repeatable and that repeatability therefore motivates me to anticipate the same thing happening again.”

Side note: Derrida also originated deconstructionism, a way of criticizing literature, philosophy and political institutions.

Though I think repetition can be useful, I also wonder if when we get up, have breakfast, brush our teeth, and go through the routines of our days perhaps we are living lives of boring iteration (my version of Henry David Thoreau: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”).

Hag

It’s a word with a lot of negative meanings and connotations: a female demon, a harpy, a witch, a woman who has made a compact with the devil, an ugly or evil old woman.

The etymology is fascinating, however. From Middle English hagge or hegge, probably a shortened from of Old English hægtesse (harpy or witch), akin to Middle Dutch haghetisse (witch) – don’t these latter two sound like a sneeze? Also Old High German hagzissa and hagazussa (my personal favourite) also meaning witch or harpy. It is thought these all derive from a prehistoric West Germanic compound whose parts are akin to Old English haga, meaning hedge, and dūs, meaning devil. (Have you ever heard the term hedge wizard?) Dūs is also akin to the Norwegian tysja meaning elf or crippled woman. The derivations go on a bit longer with connections to Gaulish and Cornish. At any rate, the meanings are mostly negative, but I love the sounds of the words.

So why would a witch or hagazussa necessarily have to be ugly? Think of Galadriel, the Lady of Lórien, an elf queen, beautiful but also potentially terrible. If a witch had magic, why would she not make herself glamorous and enticing, or plain and ordinary if she didn’t want to be noticed? For example, Circe was a beautiful Greek enchantress living on the island of Aeaea who turned Odysseus’s men into pigs at a banquet. And in The Wizard of Oz we have two good and beautiful witches living in the north and south respectively. So, I don’t buy the cultural stereotypes of the hagazussa – I think that the fear of their power made people describe them in negative ways.

Witches are often portrayed as living in a forest. Some of the other meanings of hag tie in to this location -- an enclosed wooded area, and a section of timber marked off for felling. In certain cultures trees had power or magic and spirits (e.g. dryads) lived in or among them. Think of the oaks of the druids and the mistletoe that grows on these trees. In Norse mythology Odin created the first woman out of an elm tree log and the first man out of an ash tree. Sacred groves were common among the ancient Germans, Swedes, Slavs, Lithuanians, Greeks and Italians. In Rome, the sacred fig tree of Romulus was worshipped as well as a cornel tree (a species of dogwood) that grew on the Palatinate Hill.

By the way, the word hag has other meanings as well: to urge on or goad, to tire out, and to hack or chop.