(urth) This week in Google alerts

[David Stockhoff]

On 11/4/2011 2:01 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> *From:* Lee Berman <mailto:severiansola at hotmail.com>
>
> >Gerry Quinn:
> > > Some woodland god who shares one syllable and no etymology with the
> > > English word silver, and has at best a tenuous connection with 
> Dionysus. Of course
> > >that must be the explanation! Why worry about the quite plausible 
> derivation of
> > >Silent Silk and Silver Silk (for a single god, not two) that Wolfe 
> gives us in the text?
>
> > Anyway, Wolfe has Hound explain that "Silk has been awarded the
> > epithet Silent.."
> because he looked out of the Sacred Windows
> > without showing himself or speaking or making the window
> > change in any way.
> >
> > So how does that explain the epithet Silver? It would seem Wolfe's
> > Hound's (heh) explanation for "Silent Silk or Silver Silk" is 
> lacking by
> > 50% wouldn't you agree? Why did Wolfe even mention "Silver Silk"
> > if he only meant the "silent" explantation to have significance?
> The significance of Silver is obvious, surely? The full quote is:
> ****************************************************
> But Tartaros generally turns them black and speaks. Silk said he 
> didn't speak
> or make the window change at all, pretty often. He just looked on."
> ****************************************************
> In contrast to Tartaros, Silk leaves the windows the colour they are. 
> Which is described the first time we see one as “luminous grey”. 
> ‘Luminous Grey Silk’ lacks both poetry and alliteration; thus ‘Silver 
> Silk’.
>
> > If ignoring Silver Silk works for you, that's completely fine.
> But as you see, I don’t ignore it. That’s your trick.
> I went back and searched the Urth archives for your post on the 
> subject. You wrote: “My guess is that this is an allusion to a couple 
> satyrs/fauns who are associated with the Dionysus cult, Silvanus and 
> Silenus.”
> You totally ignored the clear explanation given in the text. Sure, 
> maybe you thought it only explained 50%, there’s no sin in not 
> spotting the meaning of ‘Silver’, though I’d have thought a little 
> thinking about the nature of Sacred Windows would make it clear. But 
> the thing is, you never mentioned it at all. Did you not read it? Or 
> did you maybe think an explanation in the text was irrelevant compared 
> to some random connections of a couple of syllables to some associate 
> of some god you want to generate a vague theory about, and some 
> associate of some other god that might have been associated with the 
> first one. Better not confuse list members with that.


So what does that "explain" exactly? If the screens turned blue, would 
Wolfe then have used "Blue Silk"? (Perhaps a reference to the Blue 
Screen of Death, indicating that Silk is a DOS program!)

He could have used Rainbow Silk. Or Pearly Silk. But he is quite careful 
with his color-word choices.
> By the way, here’s something from your next post in that thread: “In 
> conclusion, I think the presence of Dionysus' millenia-long worship 
> does provide a significant enough basis for a secret underpinning to 
> understanding of the Sun series. More and more this seems to me like a 
> gnostic universe that Wolfe has created.”
> “A secret underpinning... a gnostic universe” I don’t make random 
> assertions about what is being proposed on this list, either.

I don't see how that is the same as saying the Cycle is a "hermetic 
gnostic text." To me, it indicates a world where people are deliberately 
kept from seeing the truth about the universe/the universal truth by 
intermediate powers. Once you consider that the Gods of the Old and New 
Testaments have radically different personalities, the idea starts to 
make some sense.

To me, the movie The Matrix uses gnostic logic if not actual references 
to gnostic mythology. This hardly means that the writers thought gnosis 
was way cool. It does suggest they smoked a little dope in their time.