The rock at the edge of the world
Where lands end and worlds begin.
In May, I found myself in Uluwatu, the southernmost tip of Bali, Indonesia. Itself a stretch of rock, attached to the mainland by a spit of land the width of an airport. Its name Ulu - watu literally translates to ‘rock at the end of the world’.
I discovered this entirely by accident, as I made my way down an eclectic cliffside to a famous beach one morning. The path took me through multiple restaurants, through people's homes, down uneven steps, with a slight jump over a gap in the concrete, to an inlet where the water washed all the way up through the cliff edges, themselves connecting to form a triangle viewfinder through which the infinite ocean lay in wait beyond. It was a beautiful spot, but it was swamped with people getting photos for Instagram. I left, made my way back up the cliffside, and came across this piece of etymological wisdom on the wall of a cafe. Uluwatu, this tiny island on the other side of the world, was a Balinese Lands End. I was struck for a moment.
Cosgrove claims that the relationship between mythology and the physical world is symbiotic, in the sense that each’s impact upon the other exists in constant feedback. Landscapes and physical entities can become characters through the influence of human perspectives. We eschew character onto them, not meaninglessly, but because the physical experience they inspire can conjure complex and introspective emotion within ourselves.
A pinnacle historical example of this is the stars. In Europe, the Greeks and Romans crafted entire worldviews based on the stars, and now, when we look up at night, we look out for Canis Major, Libra, and the Milky Way (or the Via Lactea - Road of Milk - as the Romans called it). In the South Pacific, stars have long been associated with wayfinding and navigation, especially across oceans. In Balinese culture, like many around the world, the sea itself also crops up in traditional mythologies. Oceans are understood as both a giver and a taker of life: a symbol of fertility and an being that demands respect. One that can bestow both the ultimate kindness and yet enact the gravest cruelty (Hull, 2023). Around the world, stars, oceans and rocks have been granted meaning by people, meaning which has influenced modern percpections of place and physicality, and meaning which seems so beautifully congruent in a way that only a deeply ecological explanation seems to be able to account for.
Like Uluwatu, Land’s End, the southernmost tip of England, has inspired its own cosmologies. There is something truly intriguing to this stretch of rock which seems to signify the very end (or perhaps the beginning, depending on where you’re coming from) of an entire world. During Greek Antiquity, Land’s End in Cornwall was known as Belerion - the shining land. The point is closely associated with the legend of King Arthur’s Camelot, itself a mystical place of magic and intrigue, and more recently, in 1862, Edmond writes that: “the aged and the young, the educated and the uneducated, the Englishman and the foreigner, all regard it as one of the most strikingly sublime and beautiful objects they have ever beheld.” More than just a coastline, it is an emblem of fascination, awe and danger, resonating on a deeper frequency than perhaps I had previously realised growing up on this little island.
I decided to pay that southernmost county a little visit. Just three months since climbing up a cliff in Uluwatu, I was now looking out onto the Atlantic Ocean, sat beside a small square tent, sipping on a smooth and cinamony chai latte, whilst my sister attempted to open a cider with a mallet (we forgot the bottle opener). There is a feeling that sits in the air of Cornwall. The coastline seems to shine a brighter shade of blue than in other parts of the country. The cliffs dive earthward more dramatically, the skyline seems to stretch out further. There are fewer motorways, villages are accessed through country lanes or not at all. We drove amongst swaying crops, edging towards harvest, whilst the sea expanded out beyond the fields, and I just hoped to take it all in - whatever ‘it’ was.
The thing is, I know that Cornwall is not the end of the world. The world I have come to know, through books, school and experience is vast and yet contained. Diverse and yet utterly and totally kindered. I suppose that’s more what I felt in Uluwatu. Humanity, connected across geographies by nothing other than itself. Perspectives and corporealities existing in parallel. Lands End no more a unique cultural landscape but a fundamentally human way of understanding that which may have once been un-understandable. In the past, before we had all these maps, before we all got on planes and ships to see far off places, perhaps not everyone might have known this truth I see in the world. Perhaps, the cliffs that dove into both the Atlantic really did feel like the very end of it all.
Central to the mystique of these geographical thresholds is the very duality of their existence. Land’s End and Uluwatu are symbols of the edge of knowing. They represent the terrifyingly thrilling prospect of all that lies beyond, and they serve as a reminder that all can never be known on the land that lies behind you. They represent a choice between forwards and backwards, the known and the unknown, the past and the future. Their physical beauty is striking, but their emotional resonance is pericing. I sometimes like to imagine an ordinary Balinese person and an ordinary English person, staring at the same ocean, years in the past, utterly incapable of fathoming each other's existence. Land Ends, as you may call them, may indeed be closing off one world, but they are they are also doorways into other worlds, both physically and metaphysically. Just like the stars and the oceans, they connect us to each other because of how they remind us of our own, humble humanity, amongst the grandiosity of the world in which we exist.
In India, there is another land’s end known as the Vivendakanda Rock, considered a sacred place for its association with the Goddess Kanniyakumari. It is thought that she meditated here, at the edge of her world, and today tourists flock en masse to explore the rock. The following poem, written by K. B. Sitaramayya, draws on the way that these geographical extremities have long been a source of introspection and reflection, and I leave it with you as a final nod to these intriguing landscape features and the unique and fascinating emotional impact they seem to have had on human populations for centuries.
THE VIVEKANANDA ROCK
(Kanyakumari)
At the Land’s end is the Soul’s End,
The rock that stands every human shock
Stands beckoning him that understands,
Calls him from all that is false.
It calls them too, they are not a few,
Whom divine beauty from human duty draws,
Whose joys spring from no little toys:
They see the sun and moon rise and set
And rise again in all their glory there
They that seek escape also visit the Cape,
To ferry to the rock makes them merry.
Among them all you sometimes find a soul
Finding a balm for all ills in the Calm
May suddenly discover its destined goal.
sources
https://landsend-landmark.co.uk/nature/lands-end-history/
https://substack.com/home/post/p-167524350
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/3647/
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003575269-10/landscapes-myths-gods-humans-denis-cosgrove?context=ubx
https://www.wisdomlib.org/history/compilation/triveni-journal/d/doc72630.html
