(urth) Wolfe as Heretic

[Gwern Branwen]

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 6:29 PM,  <JBarach at aol.com> wrote:
> In a discussion of Wolfe's views of other gods, it might be helpful to
> factor in "When I Was Ming the Merciless."  All my books are in boxes right
> now, alas, so I can't look up the passage, but maybe someone could find it
> and quote it to push this discussion along.
>
> The passage I'm thinking of is the one where "Ming" talks about the Spirit
> of Yellow.  The Yellows all bring trophies of war and present them to the
> Spirit of Yellow at the shrine they've built.  Now of course there is no
> such thing as "the Spirit of Yellow." It's something that they've just made
> up.  It's a nothing in itself (just as much as "team spirit," I suppose).
>
> But, Ming says, when you start to do that -- when you start to pay homage to
> something like that -- ... and here's where my memory breaks down.  He says
> something like: When you start to do that, the thing you're worshipping and
> paying homage to takes on a new quality and becomes real.
>
> Please, please: Someone find the passage and quote it.

Courtesy of the ebooks some have execrated, from _Endangered Species_:

"No, we didn't worship the Lung-Rin. It was a symbol,
that's all. In the long run, if you know what I mean, we were
the Lung-Rin. We had ceremonies, yes. We set up a figure
to represent all the Yellows. Don made it of wood and leather,
and that was the center of the ceremonies. Althea helped
him with the face, and I had her make it look something like
me-you understand, a little psychology. It's odd, but you
can make a thing like that, and have everyone bow in front
of it, and offer it the things we took in war, and after a time
it becomes . . I don't know, something more. More than just
the figure you set up in the beginning. Have you talked to
Don?
"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 pi-
geons when we built it and put them inside, so it would make
strange sounds; some of them must have lived a long time."

-- 
gwern