(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight

[Roy C. Lackey]

Stanislaus wrote:
>>According to Neoplatonism the world was created as a series of emanations
of the One; the description in the Wizard is close enough. Our task is to
return to the One by ascending again the ladder of hierarchy; this can be
done by mediation or by faithful service to the state (according to the
pre-Neoplatonic astral piety as eg Somnum Scipionis of Cicero, the
meritorious civil servants become the astral spirits, in fact - equal of
gods).<<
[snip]
>>An important part is that there is nothing like forgiveness, charity etc.
Those that are lower, are lower because they are worse; the higher are
nearer to the One or to his earthly image, the Emperor, and therefore are
better. You can rise, best of all by philosophy or by service to the State,
but if you do not, it is your own fault.<<
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That's a nice theory, but it doesn't fit the facts as sketched in TWK, as I
pointed out two years ago.

The Aelf have no souls. When they die, they die *dead*. But for the sole
possible exception of Disiri, when the Aelf die they cease to exist at all.
(As does Mani, after his ninth death.) The Aelf will not rise again, to
Mythgarthr or anywhere else.

The overwhelming majority of humans in Mythgarthr aren't going to rise to
the next level, Skai, either. Only very few, the chosen slain, get to go to
Skai. I don't know where, if anywhere, humans in Mythgarthr go when they
die, but that is the way things are set up in the Seven Worlds cosmology of
TWK.

To anticipate possible argument; I could make a case for the eventual
humanization of the Aelf by way of human blood, but that would drag
Christianity back into it. And even then, I find it rather difficult to
imagine any significant portion of humanity ever getting picked to go to
Skai. And it's harder yet to imagine the denizens of a Norse afterlife being
on the career path to a Christian heaven.

-Roy