A
species of giant, slender, humanlike beings who populated the
earth in primitive times, before human civilization.
Possessing a strong immune system, they can survive viruses
that kill humans. Although human lore often depicts giants as
enemies, the Taltos are in fact an angelic, rational,
peace-loving species and enjoy music, sex and dance.
The
Taltos are born with innate knowledge of their history, songs,
legends, rituals and the language of their mothers; most can
find their way back to the home of their ancestors. Their
language sounds like humming or whistling to humans and they
spontaneously break out in song or poetry. It is believed that
the Taltos live more than one life.
Taltos love detail,
logic and reason and they cannot sustain irrational states of
mind such as wrath or hatred. They are direct, willful and
childlike, with a great capacity to play. Nonaggressive but
stubborn, they want simplicity and instant gratification.
Their sense of the past is immersed in their childlike sense
of the present, and they are fearful of thinking in terms of
millennia. They cannot predict the future.
A distinct scent
emanates from their genitals and inspires erotic behaviour.
Taltos are able to identify one another easily by this odor.
They also know witches on sight and feel overwhelmed by
them.
Taltos are easily seduced and subdued by music,
because they are strongly attracted to pattern and order. Some
have been so entranced with the rhythms that they have fallen
down, dead. Their minds are strongly focused, which makes it
easy for them to become obsessive, and sometimes they need
help getting released from the spell.
Taltos are
long-lived, although none knows his or her true life span.
Most die from accidents or by someone else's hand, rather than
old age. As they age, they lose their scent, their hair turns
white, and their skin becomes thinner, but their memories
remain clear and they can tell the longest and most detailed
stories about the Taltos history.
The racial memories of a
Taltos derive from shared memories of the entire tribe.
Telling tales is spiritual for them, and it involves
accurately recalling what others had remembered. They call
this chain of memories "our finest mental achievement," and it
involved a long period of time linked and formed by one
Taltos' vision. They did not know how to write until long into
their history, and thus relied on oral tradition. Once they
integrated with human beings, they learned such languages such
as Latin and Greek. Their chief record is History of the
Taltos of Britain, written by Ashlar (the Taltos from the
novel, "Taltos"). Another record is "Legend of the Lost Land.
Of Stonehenge,â which the Talamasca scholars wrote in the
Middle Ages when Ashlar told them about his
tribe.
Childbirth is hard on the females, and often they
die by their fourth or fifth birth. Because of these dangers,
Taltos have to get permission to mate, and males invent
competitive games over the honor of coupling with a
particularly beautiful Taltos. There is no concept of monogamy
or marriage, although a few Taltos choose to remain partners
on a long-term basis. Bearing a child is done as a sacred
ceremony, under tribal observation. The two potential parents
begin with foreplay, and the act of consummation lasts an
hour. A Taltos is born directly after intercourse. The
children are two to three feet long and grow to their full
height in about fifteen minutes. They grow long, thick hair,
long fingers, a long neck, marrow ears and big hands and feet.
Most of their lives, their skulls remain like those of human
infants, resilient and vulnerable. They have large brains and
enhanced verbal capacities, possessing the ability to talk
fluently as soon as they are born.
Females consider it an
honor to give birth, but they do not do it for fun, and some
choose not to do it at all. Often they couple with other
women, as the men do with other males, to experience the fun
of sex without the consequences. Sometimes males also couple
with a barren female just for pleasure. When they want to
avoid procreation, they make love primarily by suckling, and
they love to sing and dance. They also love humor, red hair,
beauty and height.
Crime is rare among Taltos. They are
not innately aggressive or attracted to death. If anyone
defies Taltos rules or fatally injures another Taltos, they
are outcast and left to die.
Mostly Taltos are agreeable,
this is a natural state for them. On their original paradise
island, they wore no clothing and spent the day in
pleasure-seeking activities. Their world was one of harmony
and happiness, and no one wanted to remember violence, even if
it did occur. They practice a religion based on an androgynous
deity and distinct concepts of a Good God and an Evil One.
Making a child, which involves a sense of order and harmony,
brings them close to God. When they are forced to leave their
island and go to the freezing climate of Britain, many die.
Some remain on the island and drown when it breaks apart and
falls into the sea and others simply can't adapt the their new
environment. Those who survive, learn to make clothing from
animal skins and to dig underground shelters. These new skills
become part of their survival and history, along with violence
and suffering.
The first people they see in Britain are the
Beaker People. These people seem weak to the Taltos and
innately stupid, no more than dogs.
Taltos rituals soon
become laws of survival. A new Taltos born to them is viewed
superstitiously as a good or bad omen, depending on the
circumstances. Ashlar's tribe eventually settle in the
Salisbury Plain of Southern England. They are the most
organized and have the greatest of the stone circles in
Britain. They build Stonehenge to mark their territory and
establish new rituals of song and dance. Since other Taltos
had spread out, forming separate bands, they visit each other.
The tribes learn from one another, and this new information
changes the genetic structure of their newborns. Those Taltos
born in Britain are more aggressive and more able to
kill.
Eventually, the Celts arrive into Britain. This
war-addicted group invades the Taltos settlements and
slaughters the people. Ashlar's tribes escapes travelling
north, leaving England to the barbarians and settles in a glen
in the Scottish Highlands they call Donnelaith. For a long
time they are safe. However, they begin to hear stories about
how humans are enthralled with the miracle of the Taltos
birth. Yet, the humans' attempt to breed with the males
results in death for the human woman. Thus, the male Taltos is
sacrificed. They begin to be hunted by the humans as sacred
prey for a sacrifice in the pagan rituals known as the "Sacred
Hunt."
Some humans possessed the ability to breed with the
Taltos, such as witches with special powers. Some men could
couple with a female Taltos and some females could bear a
Taltos child, though it usually killed them to do so. These
offspring were called, Wild Taltos. They would escape the
human settlements and live in the forests, fueling legends of
Jack-in-the-Green. As a result of their parentage, they are
born with the knowledge of Taltos history and also practical
things from their human side.
As the Taltos blood mingles
with human, three separate schedules for gestation and birth
evolve. A Taltos with a human requires around three months to
make a baby, although if the mother speaks to her child when
it is within the womb, she can accelerate its growth. One of
the Little People with a Taltos can make an instant baby, like
a Taltos can with a Taltos. Two humans with the giant helix
gene can produce a Taltos within four to five months, a
process which the mother again can accelerate if she speaks to
her unborn child.
For survival, Ashlar's tribe pretend to
be a tribe of humans. They call themselves Picts, presenting
themselves as a noble, gentle race. As their reputation
spreads, humans arrive in the glen to trade with them, and the
Taltos learn to weave, sew and write. Encountering the order
and pattern of math, they are entranced. Moreover, they
translate their own tongue into the written word.
Witches
who know what they are come to mate with them. The Taltos fear
the witches, but some do intermarry and human blood increases
in the clan of Donnelaith. Eventually, as the Taltos die out,
the clan becomes exclusively human, although their genetic
heritage still makes it possible for some of them to produce a
Taltos every few centuries.
In the sixth century, Ashlars
learns about Christianity. He attempts to convert his tribe.
Those who resist are led by a female Taltos Janet. Most of the
Taltos are annihilated and Janet dies at the stake. Five
Taltos survive and become celibate priests and nuns to appease
human members of the clan who feel threatened by them.
Eventually, Ashlar leaves Donnelaith and goes on a
pilgrimage. The remaining Taltos also left or died off. When
he returns to Donnelaith in 1228, the Taltos priests had
become venerated as saints. He does see a Taltos alive though
and he had acquired Ashlar's identity. The townspeople believe
that Ashlar is reborn every so often to help his people. The
clan has evolved a practice that dictates that if male Taltos
are born with visions of God, they are considered to be Saint
Ashlar. Any others, and all females, are the Devil's spawn and
are immediately burned. Possessing the right genetic memories
is merely serendipitous.
Ashlar continues to wander for
many more years, always in search of another Taltos,
especially a female. Janet had cursed him to wander alone and
he begins to realize he may be the last of his kind, so with
his death, the Taltos would become extinct.
The Mayfair
witches, being descendants of the Donnelaith clan, some of
them could produce a Taltos. Or, two close kin witches with
the double dose of double helix would produce a Taltos. Of
course, this did happen with Rowan giving birth to Lasher and
then later to Emaleth. These Taltos are known as "walking
babies."
Ashlar promises to resist pairing with a Mayfair
witch, since it would risk her life.
Ashlar warns Rowan
that a Taltos is a repository of genes that can end the human
race. So when she finds out that Mona had given birth to a
female Taltos, Morrigan, she doesn't know what to do. While
she debates whether or not she should tell Ashlar, he arrives
in New Orleans and discovers Morrigan for himself and they run
off together to perform the birth ritual at Donnelaith.
Footnote: The actual name, Taltos, is from
Carlo Ginsburg's book "Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches'
Sabbath," wherein he describes a Hungarian sect of sorcerers
called taltos who claimed to have been created by God to
combat evil witches. "At the time," says Rice, "I responded to
the word and liked it. I didn't realize how closely connected
taltos was to the Talamasca [which translates as 'witch' or
'shaman']."
This information is from Katherine Ramsland's, "The
Witches Companion"
