(urth) The Wizard

[Antonin Scriabin]

"I didn't detect any Judeo-Christian element except for the (pretty
amazing) appearance of Michael the Archangel."

This is what I had in mind as well, but it is impressive enough of an event
that I can't help but feel it is important.  The terminology "Most High" is
along Judeo-Christian lines as well, now that I think about it.  The "most
high" and "most low" dichotomy is very dualistic as well; it is almost as
though each of the treated pantheons has its own world, but there is no
true overarching cosmology in place.  When reading Wolfe, of course, what
he *doesn't* show the reader is often just as important as what he does
show, which makes me very curious about Kleos and Elysion!

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Daniel Petersen <
danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's been some years, but for what it's worth, the world struck me as more
> Gnostic - which, as I understand it, is about the opposite of a 'most high
> and most low are really the same' sort of reality structure (i.e. in
> Gnosticism, the farther away, the farther 'down' the chain of existence, a
> being is from the originating 'Creator' the less real they are - thus
> matter is basically 'evil' and 'salvation' is an escape/return into pure
> spirit - as opposite from matter as is possible).  I didn't detect any
> Judeo-Christian element except for the (pretty amazing) appearance of
> Michael the Archangel.  Indeed, Wolfe professed in an interview to be
> explicitly trying to write a world that had no Christianity.  If it was
> Gnostic-based at all, I would suspect Wolfe of being fairly devious and
> subversive about this - showing how it 'doesn't work' to some degree (as
> with the closed-system religion of The Whorl in Long Sun).  Then again,
> he's always kept me guessing about his relation to Gnosticism - there's a
> fairly blatant exposition of it at one point in Peace.  I never can tell
> what he's doing with that.
>
> -DOJP
>
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Antonin Scriabin <
> kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> After taking a several month break after *The Knight*, I finally got
>> around to reading *The Wizard*.  I liked it better than the first
>> installment overall, but the shift to third-person narration for some of
>> the Jotunland scenes didn't work very well, in my opinion.  This duology
>> was definitely one of the more confusing and tricky Wolfe series that I
>> have read, since so little is known about the world Able finds himself in
>> (at least, the worlds other than Aelfrice, Mythgarthyr and Skai).  It was
>> also confusing because it is such a hodge-podge of mythologies (Arthurian
>> legend, Norse gods and goddess, Judeo-Christian, etc.).  Anyways, I was
>> wondering if anyone thought the universe in these books really is
>> "cyclical"; i.e., The Most High God and the most low god are indeed the
>> same being, and that the highest and lowest worlds are the same.  Reading
>> that portion was one of those Wolfe moments where I have to put the book
>> down for an hour or so, and come back later.  My first thought is that the
>> most low god was simply trying to deceive Able, and that the worlds are not
>> the same.  I was also wondering what happened to Mani ... he seemed to
>> disappear about half-way through the narrative and none of the characters
>> seem to notice (unless I missed it completely).  Finally, has anyone picked
>> out connections between *The Wizard Knight* and *Castleview*?  They both
>> involve people from modern day America getting entangled with a world that
>> is a blend of Arthurian legend and Norse mythology, and I would be very
>> surprised if there wasn't some subtle link between the two works.
>>
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