(urth) Babbiehorn?: Was: a sincere question mostly for roy

[David Stockhoff]

On 11/17/2011 2:12 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:
>
> --- On Thu, 11/17/11, James Wynn<crushtv at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
> I kind of like the idea of Pas on the business end of a
> sacrifice. Also, there is the whole (quite intentional)
> Osiris motif in which Isis (Kypris) has to run around
> gathering parts of the god after he has been murdered. We
> have Patera Jaculus and we probably have Sand. I'd like more
> parts. There's Silk, but he's the phallus part that was
> missing that has to be added after his resurrection.
>
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> James, I agree that the mapping of some myths are to be expected and found, my problem with bringing in a bunch of different mythos is that Wolfe couldn't have alluded to them all intentionally and still made a good story that follows his plan without losing his free will to guide the story.
>
> Some allusion is of course spot on, but Pazuzu and Enkidu and all the norse gods can't be used at the same time - it has to mapped to a named/referenced mythology or the analysis is bogged down in too many variables.  This is why all my ideas are first formed from the text, then from mythical names explicitly mentioned, and only later from more esoteric or less obviously alluded to mythic situations, with provenance and supremacy given to biblical/Christian or Greek myths as the dominant/ most well known mythic resonances.

I dunno, Marc. Osiris's murder story is a very specific, concrete 
narrative which is plainly retold here up to a point. It doesn't dictate 
the story, just gives a blueprint for a subplot: "how would a murdered 
god reassemble himself ... if he was a computer program?" Great SF idea, 
probably languished in a Wolfean notebook from 1970 to 1990. Could have 
been a short story, but small stories are too shallow to hide deep clues 
and have real fun.

How many god-murder stories do we know? Two---and both of them are part 
of Christian myth, since many nonessential parts of the Osiris story 
were picked up and reused. Not at all obscure or out of the way.