Once upon a time, in ancient Greece, there were three ‘ladies’ who led a busy life, occupied with the task entrusted to them: to carefully spin the lines of people’s destinies.
Their names were Clotho (Spinner), Lachesis (Allotter) and Atropos (Inflexible). It was up to Atropos to make the final decision as to when the person in question should die – that is, the span of their life.
The three sisters were goddesses, known in Greek and Roman mythology by the general name of ‘Moirai’ (Greek) and ‘Parcae’ (Latin).
The belief in the existence of an immutable ‘destiny’, governed either by the will of God or by a fixed ‘natural order’ of the universe, was very common until the Middle Ages.
During that time, concrete knowledge about the world around us was considerably limited, particularly in terms of geography and astronomy, among other fields.
The sky and the lights that moved within it with mathematical accuracy were a complete mystery. Ancient scientists believed that the heavens were a separate realm governed by their own rules, different from those of the ‘sublunary’ world – the world below the sphere of the Moon, where we live, which was viewed as the centre of the Universe.
Contrary to the situation in the ‘sublunary world’, in heaven, everything was made of a fifth substance, ether, that was not subject to the laws of ‘generation’ and ‘corruption’ (using Aristotle’s terminology) that govern our world.
Nowadays, we know that this is not true. The world ‘out there’ is composed of the same substances and elements ‘our world’ is made of, and it is subject to the same laws of generation and corruption.
Even so, concerning human ‘destinies’, is there any immutable ‘destiny’ like the one that the Greek ‘Moirai’ were so busy working to control?
DEATH SPEAKS:There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
This is the famous Epigraph, written by the well-known twentieth-century British author William Somerset Maugham, for John O’Hara’s 1934 novel, Appointment in Samarra.
The moral of this story is that when we believe we are escaping Destiny, making use of our free will, we may, in fact, simply be fulfilling what was already ‘written’ for us.
This is a compelling paradigm, which has generated much speculation and many intriguing efforts to trace its origins.
Some see traces of the same paradigm in the Jewish Talmud, written more than 1500 years ago. Another interesting source, and one much closer to Maugham’s version, is the eighth-century Muslim Sufi author Al-Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad’s tale, ‘When Death Came to Baghdad’.
An English version of the latter appears in Idries Shah’s Tales of the Dervishes. Al-Fudayl’s story is in essence the same as that of Maugham’s epigraph, except that the city mentioned is Samarkand rather than Samarra.
In all likelihood, Samarkand appears in Al-Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad’s tale because of the magical aura that has always enveloped the city, one of the oldest in Central Asia. Didn’t the Persian poet and astronomer Omar Khayyam (1040–1131) write, ‘Samarkand, the most beautiful face / The Earth has ever turned towards the sun’?
Nowadays, Samarkand is part of Uzbekistan and, in 2001, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Leaving aside the details of the tale, the main question remains: is there an immutable personal ‘destiny’ like the one that so occupied the Greek Moirai? Or is what happens to us purely a consequence of the intelligent (or not so intelligent) use of our own free will?
Both options are wrong, a good friend of mine, a very rational-minded person, would reply.
On the one hand, he would say, there is no immutable ‘destiny’ because life consists of change; one’s ‘destiny’ changes every second, because the universe itself is made of continuous change.
On the other hand, he would add, free will, intelligence, talent, and effort, although they are very important components in the making of a person’s ‘destiny’, are not enough to keep everything under control.
The circumstances we encounter throughout our lives, the (lucky or unlucky) ‘coincidences’, play a role that cannot be ignored and often cause decisive changes during our lives.
It is true that we still have the alternative of trying to make the best of the new circumstances that appear or, should they be negative, having the wisdom to mitigate our losses and even look for the opportunities that may be hidden at the core of the crises.
This factor is known in common parlance as luck, which can be either good or bad. In other words, it corresponds to what we don’t control in life.
However, the dominant mindset in Western societies is not open to any suggestion that there might be anything resembling any kind of destiny. Success and happiness (either individual or collective) are in our hands and subject to the exercising of our free will. Anything that goes beyond that tends to be considered mere superstition.
This creed, however, does not prevent the easily proven existence of circumstances, apparently governed by the laws of pure chance, that can have a greater or lesser impact on the evolution of our lives.
In other words, as Niccolò Machiavelli recommends (on this, see another article posted on this website under the title O Fortuna), it is wise to be aware of the existence of this imponderable and, sometimes, mysterious side of life.
Because the Wheel of Fortune never stops turning…
