(urth) The face of Pas

[James Wynn]

  I'll recombine two threads here...


>
> Roy -
> Both of those possibilities ignore my point. I'll say it again. If memories
> of Typhon and his family were too deeply entrenched in the minds of people
> put aboard the _Whorl_ to be eliminated, how could/would they have initially
> manifested themselves in a monotheistic religion like Islam? Either the
> memories of the Nine were there on Day One or they weren't.

But, Roy, the citizens of Trivigaunted were not _unaware _of the other 
gods. They merely only honored Sphigx. So their memories of the Typhonic 
family was dealt with by their _knowledge_ of the rest of Pas' 
family.And of course, expunging the memory of Typhon's family was not 
even an issue for subsequent generations.

>> Me -
>> As for why the other gods did not compete for worshipers there:
>> Apparently, there are ways to summon and avoid summoning gods. Quetzal
>> managed to completely avoid having any gods appear in Viron after the
>> death of Pas and Tussah. I guess forbidding child sacrifice was one way,
>> but I imagine there could be others. Presumably, the Trivigaunte were
>> only interested in attracting the interest of Sphigx. They might well
>> have been quite adept at it.
> Roy -
> Quetzal could not control the gods. No sacrifice of any kind was required
> for the manifestation of a god, as Kypris coming to the glass at Orchid's
> and to the glass on the airship proves.

Not entirely. But Quetzal believed he could _affect_ the occurrence of 
theophanies, or at least he said he believed he could:

"Before Kypris manifested here on Scylsday, the Windows of our city had 
been empty for decades. I can't take credit for that, it wasn't my 
doing. But I've done everything in my power to prevent theophanies. It 
hasn't been much, but I've done what I could. I proscribed human 
sacrifice, and got made law, for one thing. I admit I'm proud of that." 
[Epiphany of the Long Sun,  page 124]

"I'm in contact with religious leaders in Urbs, Wick, and other cities, 
cities where his children have boasted of killing Pas." [p 131]

"Now you see why I've tried to prevent theophanies, don't you, Patera 
Calde?"
[page 132]


Quetzal implies that there were other factors affecting the lack of 
theophanies in Viron.

> Yes it is, James. You seem to be confusing Chapter and Charter. Look back at
> what I wrote. You broke up my paragraph, which is perfectly okay, but the
> antecedent for the pronoun "it" in the second half of the paragraph is in
> the first half of the paragraph, i.e., the founding of the Chapter. The
> Remora quote had to do with the Charter, but the earlier quote about the
> founding of the Chapter was from Lemur.

I supposed I lost track of which you were arguing for at that moment. 
But the dubiousness regarding what the Charter says about it's founding 
and what version Lemur has heard or extrapolated on what he has heard 
about the founding of the Chapter are identical. If it is dubious that 
Cilinia wrote the Charter for Viron and all the other cities that Scylla 
was credited for founding, then it is equally dubious that she designed 
the formalities  of the Chapter. We're told what Lemur told Silk--to 
mock and belittle Silk's piety. We're also told lots of other things 
about the Whorl with which we can judge how much to credit what he says.

I think we've gone off track, though. Who cares if Cilinia was a child 
prodigy who designed multiple governments, cities, and religions in 
detail? I don't think any of this matters as to whether there was a 
polytheistic, state religion of Urth centered around Typhon's family. 
And I don't see much to support yet that there was. The religion that 
the Chapter was an evil parody of was surely Roman Catholicism (or a 
Briahtic analog). And that's why Silk was "a good man in a bad religion" 
as Wolfe called it...as bad a religion as Wolfe was inclined to imagine.

u+16b9