(urth) Send in the Clones

[Stanis³aw Bocian]

Friday, June 24, 2005, 2:36:51 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:


 ....

DlDO> Ummmm ... not really what I had in mind.

DlDO> What I'm saying (and have been saying for a couple of years
DlDO> now) is that the _Whorl_ itself is a miniature Gnostic Kosmos,
DlDO> with Pas/Typhon as the Demiurge who creates it and the
DlDO> Outsider as the True God. Silk's "enlightenment" - for which 
DlDO> I have no proper name in terms of the "orthodox" true 
DlDO> Creation; perhaps it might be likened to a moment of 
DlDO> prophetic vision? - is, within the context of this miniature 
DlDO> Kosmos, a moment of pure Gnosis. In pretending to be a 
DlDO> whole and self-contained universe, the Whorl is thus a 
DlDO> parody of the true Creation. 

DlDO> Because the Outsider is the True God of this Gnostic
DlDO> parody Kosmos, but also and more basically the God 
DlDO> of Christianity, the Outsider is able to bend the false 
DlDO> gods of the _Whorl_ to (ultimately) serve His ends. At
DlDO> one point Silk observes that demons and other entities 
DlDO> who pretend to be gods "become" them - that is, they 
DlDO> all tend toward Outsider-ish-ness - they are subsumed 
DlDO> ultimately into His design (rather like Melkor and the
DlDO> Music of Eru Iluvatar). 

DlDO> I'm still not saying this very well. I have a clear vision of
DlDO> what I'm saying but it's hard to put into words. I need
DlDO> to draw pictures or something.

....

DlDO> --Dan'l

Yes. One of constant topics of Wolfe is that we became something by
acting like it.

And something not quite on topic, but, I think, interesting. In "When
I was Ming the Merciless" Wolfe alludes to a passage from "City of
God" of St Augustine. The most striking fragment of that passage are:

"This Egyptian, however, says that there are some gods made by the
supreme God, and some made by men. .. he asserts that visible and
tangible images are, as it were, only the bodies of the gods, and that
there dwell in them certain spirits, which have been invited to come
into them, and which have power to inflict harm, or to fulfil the
desires of those by whom divine honors and services are rendered to
them."

"Dost thou not know, O AEsculapius, that Egypt is an image of heaven,
or, more truly, a translation and descent of all things which are
ordered and transacted there, that it is, in truth, if we may say so,
to be the temple of the whole world?"

It should also be noted that for Gnostics Egypt was the symbol of the
false world of matter, created by Demiurg, in which we live. So, I
think that there can be no doubt that Whorl is symbolically Egypt, and
leaving the Whorl is the Exodus.



Gene Wolfe "When I was Ming the Merciless"

"He had a theory-I don't know whether he believed it himself. I
didn't, but still. . . . There was something in it. Do you understand
what I mean? It wasn't true; but still. . . .

"All right, here's what he thought. Or anyway, what he said he
thought. That there are things we don't know about that live in the
world with us-things in another plane of reality. And when you make
something like that, it comes- one of them comes. It shapes itself to
fit your image of it, becoming the real Spirit of the Yellows. Anyway,
when we had the torchlight processions, sometimes you might think you
could see it move. It was just the flickering light, of course, and
the fact that because it was so tall the face was illuminated from the
bottom. Any face will look strange when you light it from below, I
suppose. We caught rats and pigeons when we built it and put them
inside, so it would make strange sounds; some of them must have lived
a long time.

"No, I don't know what happened to it, and I don't care. You can't
kill the thing, the Spirit of the Yellows. Not unless you kill all of
us, and you won't do that. We'll be free someday. How could we forget?
The experiment was the greatest thing in our lives. At night, before
we had won, we used to sit around the fire-outside, the buildings were
too dangerous then-and talk. You've never done that. You weren't
there.


St Augustine "City of God"


 http://ccel.org/fathers/NPNF1-02/Augustine/cog/t45.htm#t45.htm.0


" The Egyptian Hermes, whom they call Trismegistus, had a different
opinion concerning those demons. Apuleius, indeed, denies that they
are gods; but when he says that they hold a middle place between the
gods and men, so that they seem to be necessary for men as mediators
between them and the gods, he does not distinguish between the
worship due to them and the religious homage due to the supernal
gods. This Egyptian, however, says that there are some gods made by
the supreme God, and some made by men. Any one who hears this, as I
have stated it, no doubt supposes that it has reference to images,
because they are the works of the hands of men; but he asserts that
visible and tangible images are, as it were, only the bodies of the
gods, and that there dwell in them certain spirits, which have been
invited to come into them, and which have power to inflict harm, or
to fulfil the desires of those by whom divine honors and services are
rendered to them. To unite, therefore, by a certain art, those
invisible spirits to visible and material things, so as to make, as
it were, animated bodies, dedicated and given up to those spirits who
inhabit them,--this, he says, is to make gods, adding that men have
received this great and wonderful power. I will give the words of
this Egyptian as they have been translated into our tongue:

"And, since we have undertaken to discourse concerning the
relationship and fellowship between men and the gods know, O
AEsculapius, the power and strength of man. As the Lord and Father, or
that which is highest, even God, is the maker of the celestial gods,
so man is the maker of the gods who are in the temples, content to
dwell near to men."

And a little after he says, "Thus humanity, always mindful of its
nature and origin, perseveres in the imitation of divinity; and as the
Lord and Father made eternal gods, that they should be like Himself,
so humanity fashioned its own gods according to the likeness of its
own countenance."

When this AEsculapius, to whom especially he was speaking, had
answered him, and had said, "Dost thou mean the statues, O
Trismegistus?

"--" Yes, the statues," replied he, "however unbelieving thou art, O
AEsculapius,--the statues, animated and full of sensation and spirit,
and who do such great and wonderful things,--the statues prescient of
future things, and foretelling them by lot, by prophet, by dreams, and
many other things, who bring diseases on men and cure them again,
giving them joy or sorrow according to their merits. Dost thou not
know, O AEsculapius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or, more truly,
a translation and descent of all things which are ordered and
transacted there, that it is, in truth, if we may say so, to be the
temple of the whole world? And yet, as it becomes the prudent man to
know all things beforehand, ye ought not to be ignorant of this, that
there is a time coming when it shall appear that the Egyptians have
all in vain, with pious mind, and with most scrupulous diligence,
waited on the divinity, and when all their holy worship shall come to
nought, and be found to be in vain."

Hermes then follows out at great length the statements of this
passage, in which he seems to predict the present time, in which the
Christian religion is overthrowing all lying figments with a vehemence
and liberty proportioned to its superior truth and holiness, in order
that the grace of the true Saviour may deliver men from those gods
which man has made, and subject them to that God by whom man was made.
But when Hermes predicts these things, he speaks as one who is a
friend to these same mockeries of demons, and does not clearly express
the name of Christ. On the contrary, he deplores, as if it had already
taken place, the future abolition of those things by the observance of
which there was maintained in Egypt a resemblance of heaven,--he bears
witness to Christianity by a kind of mournful prophecy. "




-- 


    Stanislaus Bocian


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