(urth) An Old mystery ...

[Son of Witz]

I'm with you Dave, especially here:

"It's kind of like having a deck of cards celebrating 100,000 years of messiahs, and Number 12 is Jesus."

I do take exception to the part about the state religion.  I don't think the religion of the Conciliator / New Sun is named, but it is clearly the state religion because prayers are made during State sanctioned Executions.  I quoted that in a previous thread.

I have read the Hypostasis of the Archons you linked to, though I don't get all of it.  Secret Chiefs 3 has a song by that title, inspired by such ideas.
I illustrated the album that it is on, Book of Horizons, for what it's worth.
it's a gnarly metal song, but the lyrics are awesome and densly packed:

lyrics by Trey Spruance

"You corpse animators, charcoal burners,
Moulders of wax, adherants to the Seen

The Black Hand pushes
Your- agnostic reflex
You- automatons
Of- the animatronic sham

You're planted in the Garden of
Earthly Corporate Temple Messiah


The baby-crackers boomed
And echoed off the Bardo
Like half-assed Prometheans
With stupid macrame crowns

Saran-wrapped neurotic SMILE's
Around the Vajra Hell
And sold the "goddess" back to a world
Already drowning in Bohemian Snake Oil

Draw open the curtains of the Abyss
Where Mother and Father can't
Keep up appearances

They switched to Merck-Amphetamines
Our Fearless Leaders have
Packed their bags for Babel

And from that PR tower
They shine the beacon down
Upon the vampirized world

Where corpse-fucker "artists" back-engineer
Their stupid props to attract the dim sparks
Back to the dungheap
& now they all shovel shit
Down the throat of their beloved Moloch

I've watched the best minds of my generation
Prostrate themselves before the myth of
Progressive Evolution
Like a bunch of fucking dressed-up rats
Spreading "civilization" like it's the plague

All points of view
Are points of sale
In the Market of the Visible
Equipped with Grand Scale Optics
Transhorizon offshore nations
Offer you the best in False Frontiers

A pseudo-individual
Is a resource to be mined
Like any other product
Only, this one sells itself


Where Good is the Harness of the Slave
And Evil is the lash of the Overseer
The Master takes no heed
(but where is there such a Master?)

Under watchful eye of the Unholy See
You Obey Your Thirst like cap-
Tive dogs, desires "liberated", free

Substitute Horizons, full-screen
Third world population transfer, no need
Fetishized, Colonized, free
Produce the new location
Download it to their screen

Hollywood Triumphant
We'll burn your Holy Land
And give you virtual space
Hollywood Triumphant
Panoptical Surveillance
Murdered human race


Behold the Antagonist,
On the Throne of this world
Who dares help him
Build in the House of God?
These mortifyers are
Sucked dry by the Druj
Of their cryptotheocratic nightmares

So who will defend the Temple?
NO ONE! NO ONE! NO ONE!
Burn it down!
"





>It would be pretty crazy to have a photo of Neil Armstrong survive the gazillions of years, but not Christianity and its imagery. Especially since Nessus is Byzantium, and Severian is clearly describing Byzantine icon imagery. The Pantocrator is the typical Byzantine image of Christ we all have seen. (I'm not sure about the Lexicon's definition---it seems to conflate pantocrator and pankration in a way Wolfe might approve of but is not indicated here.) I'd read it more or less literally.
>
>But unlike in Byzantium, Christianity is not the state religion of the Commonwealth---not quite. God is the Outsider there, and whoever the people worship, they locate temporal power in the person of the Autarch and the cacogens who prop him up. The Increate is spoken of by the people, but is almost a gnostic or at least anti-state figure in TBotNS. He doesn't openly run things by "His" will (the way he does for GWB and some of my Baptist relatives).
>
>See http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/hypostas.html for a text referencing hypostasis, the other word your passage indicates, and see if it rings a bell. (It does for me.)
>
>The Black Sun is the true divine power who is so distant from us that the light of day hides him (just as in the Whorl, he cannot be seen because he is outside the hull.) The Archons are the rulers of "near space," if you will. I'd guess they correspond to the Heirodules. They have nothing to do with the Increate---they serve him as slaves, no less than do Abaia's lords.
>
>Wolfe seems to appreciate alternative theologies. This goes along with the Pelasgian idea of Christ being not a Big Deal but merely the Best Example (i.e., Epitome) of Man. So there are pantocrators, not The Pantocrator. It's kind of like having a deck of cards celebrating 100,000 years of messiahs, and Number 12 is Jesus.
>
>David
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 5
>Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:32:28 +0000
>From: "Son of Witz" <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
>Subject: (urth) Pantocrator
>To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>Message-ID: <W1080126807139531228411948 at webmail36>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>One detail from the book suggests the possibility of an actual Jesus figure in the history of Urth.  The Green Book.
>Shadow VI:
>"A green book hardly larger than my hand and no thicker 
>than my index finger appeared to be a collection of devotions, full of enameled pictures of ascetic pantocrators and hypostases with black halos and gemlike robes."
>
>"Pantocrator"
>The Lexicon has an entry:
>"those who have mastered the physical. Also, incarnations of the Pancreator.  Those fit for spiritual and philosophical 'wrestling'. Originally, the word designated what we would call all around athletes; but it's figurative meanings have overwhelmed it's literal one"
>
>but everything I can find online has a much different definition.
>
>OrthodoxWiki is as good an example of the stuff I'm finding:
>"The word Pantocrator is of Greek origin meaning "ruler of all". Christ Pantocrator is an icon of Christ represented full or half-length and full-faced. He holds the book of the Gospels in his left hand and blesses with his right hand.
>
>The icon portrays Christ as the Righteous Judge and the Lover of Mankind, both at the same time. The Gospel is the book by which we are judged, and the blessing proclaims God's loving kindness toward us, showing us that he is giving us his forgiveness.
>
>Although ruler of all, Christ is not pictured with a crown or scepter as other kings of this world. The large open eyes look directly into the soul of the viewer. The high curved forehead shows wisdom. The long slender nose is a look of nobility, the small closed mouth, the silence of contemplation.
>
>It is the tradition of the Church to depict "God is with us" by having the a large Pantocrator icon inside of the central dome, or ceiling of the church.
>
>The oldest known Pantocrator icon was written in the sixth century. It was preserved in the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai desert. This remote location enabled the image to survive the iconoclastic era in Byzantine history (726-815) when most icons were destroyed. "
>
>(I would emphasize those St. Catherine and Byzantine words if I could, if only for tangental coincidence)
>
>I think the "Ruler and Judge of All" is probably more apt than "master of the physical".  The Green book contains "ascetic pantocrators". Look up Byzantine icons of Christ Pantocrator. he's very aesetic indeed.  Byzantine art is FULL of gilded and enamel Pantocrators with Christ as the visage.
>
>In addition, the Lexicon mentions "incarnations of the Pancreator".
>Pancreator is a common word in the Urth cycle, found in each book, but Pantocrator is only used that once.  Pancreator obviously means Creator of All.  So, Pantocrator is a hypostasis of the Creator of All.  Much more than just a spiritual wrestling ascetic.  
>So, then Pantocrator would seemingly be better understood as the Creator of All as Judge of All.  And with that we come to the apocalyptic aspect of Christ. he must bring about judgment in one instance, and must advocate for humanity in another instance.
>
>Anyway, all this is to show that there is an analogue to the Christ myth present in the culture of Urth. 
>
>also,
>Sword VIII
>"That night in the jacal it was not brilliant, but it glowed with so deep a blue that the light itself seemed almost a clearer darkness. Of all the names of the Conciliator, the one that is, I believe, least used, and which has always seemed the most puzzling to me, is that of Black Sun. Since that night, I have felt myself almost to comprehend it."
>
>"Black Sun".  "Midnight Sun" sun is a concept that comes up in estoteric works and is usually described as a symbol for Christ.  I can't source that though, just something I've gathered over the years. 
>
>~SonOfWitz
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