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[James Wynn]

>> >That’s why harping on a reference to Dionysus as a form of the Outsider, for example,
>> >as if it were the key to some great secret cosmology (even though Dionysus is one of many gods so
>> >described)

Are you talking about fictional gods of the Whorl rather than actual 
gods with actual religions and cults from our world? (ala Dionysus). The 
references to Dionysus are deep and broad. And they are not even limited 
to the Sun books. Dionysus is a special case with Wolfe, especially in 
the Long/Short Sun. And the references get steadily more more explicit 
the closer to the end.

Incidentally, I really like Lee's identification of Silent Silk and 
Silver Silk with Silenus and Silvanus. That's an excellent catch, and 
I'm kicking myself I didn't see it first.

>> is getting Wolfe’s world completely ass-backward, just as it is getting it ass-backward
>> >to read Book of the New Sun as some hermetic gnostic scroll.

I think one should educate himself enough to identify references to 
Dionysus or gnosticism before attempting to speak so definitively. It's 
like arguing with a color blind person about which shade of blue goes 
with these jeans. Maybe you're right, but you wouldn't really know. I'm 
not going to name-drop, but I had a conversation with a pillar of Gene 
Wolfe scholarship--a Christian who is motivated NOT to read into Wolfe's 
novels anything but orthodox Christianity-- and he said (referring to 
the 'New Sun', "I know that Wolfe is not a gnostic, but I can't deny the 
degree that the gnostic stuff is in there."