Delphic Maxim 19: Do not use an oath
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.
19. Do not use an oath
Good grief we’re in the Delphic Doldrums now! How do you respond to something as cryptic as this?
My initial reaction was to think of the word ‘use’ in the sort of contemporary sense, where people talk about someone being ‘used’ by somebody else. On this reading, I think of this maxim as demanding that we behave honourably when someone has given us their word — that we don’t betray them or exploit the oaths that they have given.
We might also extend this understanding to cover the idea of ‘being under oath’. A reading like this would suggest that we shouldn’t exploit the trust of others, to be ‘people of our word’, and if we’ve made a commitment to truth-telling — or any kind of promise — that we should stick to it.
Let me draw on pop culture for a moment, since I’m feeling quite stuck with today’s maxim.
Game of Thrones places a lot of stock in oaths. That’s partially a consequence of its setting — George R. Martin was heavily inspired by the War of the Roses, and the world of GoT leans on the gallantry and social codes of Chivalric England. The TV Series (vastly superior to the books I might add) creates a neat contrast in language around oaths that it might pay to explore briefly here: Jamie Lannister gives Brienne of Tarth a sword called ‘Oathkeeper’, a phrase that is inverted in the Season 6 episode ‘Oathbreaker’. Now, the fascinating thing is that at no point in ‘Oathbreaker’ do we see Brienne or the sword ‘Oathkeeper’.
What are the origins of the sword Oathkeeper? It was melted down from the family sword of House Stark by Tywin Lannister, and gifted to his son Jamie, a man who is notable in the world of Westeros for breaking his oath of service and protection to the ‘Mad King’ Aerys Targaryen (whom Jamie kills prior to the events of the whole saga). Jamie, a massive Oathbreaker, is given a sword acquired through the execution of the ultimate Oathkeeper — Ned Stark.
Jamie gifts the sword to Brienne of Tarth when he sends her on a mission to protect Sansa Stark (the daughter of Ned). Brienne names the sword Oathkeeper at this point, and so the loop here is complete: Stark Sword passes from Oathkeeper to an Oathbreaker, and then returns to an Oathkeeper (Brienne is nothing if not devoted to her oaths) to protect the original Oathkeeper’s family.
Now let’s look at the episode Oathbreaker. The concluding moment of the episode, which happens just after Jon Snow’s resurrection (Ned Stark’s ‘bastard’ son, who is actually the son of Ned’s sister, Lyanna, and Raegar Targeryen, the son of Mad King who Jamie Lannister killed). Complicated, but bear with me.
Snow was killed by his colleagues in the Night’s Watch — men who have sworn an oath to protect the world from the evil magical forces north of the Wall. This oath is supposed to last until death, and specifically precludes violence against their comrades, and especially against their Lord Commander who was at the time, Jon Snow. So Snow is the victim of Oathbreakers. But the brilliance of the episode, which concludes with the execution of these traitors, is that Snow then declares his watch is ended — his time serving the Night’s Watch and that oath can be broken since he ‘died’ (even if he returned from the dead). Snow ends — or breaks, if you will — his oath. Though in a sense it is more conclusively broken: having died and returned from the dead, it’s not a simple act of ‘oath breaking’ that has occurred, but actually the logic that underpins the oath itself is broken by his puncturing our understanding of ‘death’.
Alright. My 15 minutes is well and truly up. When you struggle to respond to a concept, sometimes the best thing to do is to stroll around the topic in a roundabout way and see what your mind comes up with. In a sense, I’ve followed this maxim by ‘using’ the idea of an oath to drive my writing.
Lesson for life? Don’t betray trust, and don’t break oaths with people (in fact, don’t make them if there’s a possibility you’ll break it). But if you do intend to break an oath, make sure you’re totally destabilising the logic that underpinned it in the first place.
Better to shake the foundations of the Earth than to throw stones and smash a few windows.
