(urth) The Wizard

Tue Mar 6 12:47:00 PST 2012

>Daniel Petersen: the whole point in Wolfe is for there to be few and
oblique
>Christian references that are completely outnumbered and
>out-everything-elsed that still end up subverting the hordes of 'pagan'
>overlords.

That sounds good but it just isn't what I am seeing in the Sun Series. BotNS
ends with the worship of a pantheon of gods based on normal people from the
past,
with demonic fish women still lurking around.  And Short Sun ends with
swarms of inhumi threatening the future of humanity. I am left with the
feeling
they are in need of something more to attain the higher level of
spirituality
that we (Christians) have here on earth.

Right, I should be more clear.  The *trajectory* of the Christian elements
woven centrally (if obliquely and 'humbly') through Wolfe's Solar
Cycle*points toward
* this subversion of the oppression of non-Christian systems (and, indeed, *
fulfillment* of all that's good in them).  In my opinion, Wolfe's works are
not at all about endings in terms of where a tetralogy or trilogy actually
narratively ends.  The End (the Eschaton) is always breaking up in the
midst of the narratives and pointing beyond the whole narrative thread to a
further True Ending (True Telos, Goal, Aim) - per New Testament eschatology
(often phrased as 'the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God').  That is again
the genius of Wolfe's art.  It points to 'Final Morning' but no particular
narrative ever arrives there, reflecting (one would think) Wolfe's view of
our present lives - we yearn and hope toward Eschaton but do not arrive in
this life.  That's why Wolfe is hopeful, but NOT utopian (something I see
consistently in all the Christian writers from Lewis and Tolkien and
Chesterton to Lafferty and Wolfe - non-fantasists could also be included,
e.g. Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Muriel Spark, etc.)

>He graciously invites readers to hear the Outsider and be part of Silk's
>revolution, exodus, and new frontier.

I am confused. Are you saying The Outsider is our Christian God and Silk is
the
second (or tenth or whatever) coming of Jesus? If not, we might be in
agreement.

I think The Increate in the Sun Series is our Christian God. Is The Outsider
actually The Increate? I don't find that likely. The Increate is too
impossibly
distant from humanity to directly interact while The Outsider gets right
into
our business on a personal level. (more like the Old Testament God)

I completely do not follow your theology there, Lee.  The Outsider is *
totally* like the 'God of the Bible' (OT and NT) in my opinion:  both
transcendent and immanent, eternal yet near, incomprehensible yet
revelatory.  And, of course, none of these* characters in a book* (be they
Deity or human or otherwise) are anything at all in our real world.  They
simply point (sometimes powerfully) to realities in the non-Gene-Wolfe-book
world (or, at least, what some, like Wolfe, take to be realities).  (Oh,
and for the record, I don't take Silk or Severian or any other character in
Wolfe's works to be Christ - even symbolically or allegorically.  They
are*Christ-like
* but fallen human figures, akin to Ransom in Lewis's Space Trilogy - not
akin to Aslan in Narnia.)

-DOJP

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> >Dan'l Danehy-Oakes: But I hold that Wolfe's major method is to create
> >a non-Christian reality and embed it into a larger reality that is
> >Christian -- as it were, other realities created by the One God.
>
> Well, I tend to agree. I think "The Increate" mentioned in the Sun Series
> does represent the one true God. However I think "The Pancreator" and
> "The Demiurge" represent something different. Something lesser, darker and
> more materialistic than the one true God. Something similar to what was
> ruling the earth before Christ and had created such a nasty world full of
> monsters and demigods and demons. These horrors (be they real or allegory
> for our sins) represent what Christ saved us from, giving us the choice of
> salvation. Previous to Christ they (as on pre-flood Urth) were too powerful
> for humanity to resist.
>
> My view is that with Urth, Wolfe created a world where Christ never
> appeared,
> where all the ancient gods and horrors remained in control. A "what if"
> thought experiment. And you are right. In Wizard/Knight the Christian
> world is
> not inaccessible.  There is a passageway, so we have a more direct
> contrast.
>
> >Daniel Petersen: the whole point in Wolfe is for there to be few and
> oblique
> >Christian references that are completely outnumbered and
> >out-everything-elsed that still end up subverting the hordes of 'pagan'
> >overlords.
>
> That sounds good but it just isn't what I am seeing in the Sun Series.
> BotNS
> ends with the worship of a pantheon of gods based on normal people from
> the past,
> with demonic fish women still lurking around.  And Short Sun ends with
> swarms of inhumi threatening the future of humanity. I am left with the
> feeling
> they are in need of something more to attain the higher level of
> spirituality
> that we (Christians) have here on earth.
>
> >He graciously invites readers to hear the Outsider and be part of Silk's
> >revolution, exodus, and new frontier.
>
> I am confused. Are you saying The Outsider is our Christian God and Silk
> is the
> second (or tenth or whatever) coming of Jesus? If not, we might be in
> agreement.
>
> I think The Increate in the Sun Series is our Christian God. Is The
> Outsider
> actually The Increate? I don't find that likely. The Increate is too
> impossibly
> distant from humanity to directly interact while The Outsider gets right
> into
> our business on a personal level. (more like the Old Testament God)
>
> >Marc Aramini: I think the intention of Wolfe in There are Doors was very
> different
> > than the Sun stories: the sex goddess/death of males after mating is
> simply not
> >the dominant paradigm in the Sun Cycle, where we may see female beings of
> power,
> >but they are ultimately trumped and always seem to be stuck in a
> primarily sexual
> >mindset (Kypris, etc)
>
> The specifics may be different but I think the intent is the same- Wolfe's
> purpose
> was to show the result of having unworthy pagan gods (like Aphrodite or
> Abaia or
> Typhon) still being worshipped because Christ never appeared to show
> humanity the
> true God. Though not God, these beings were real and might have had
> superhuman powers.
> Wolfe himself says:
>
> >GW: Laura is my idea of what a pagan goddess might be who survived into
> the Christian
> >world. One of the places where I probably split off from conventional
> Catholic thinking
> >is that I believe that the gods of paganism were real. I don't think that
> they are
> >entitled to the worship that they received from the pagans. I think what
> many of the
> >biblical writers are saying is, "Yes, these are real powers, but it is
> wrong for you
> >to give to them the honors that are due to God alone." And I think that
> that is exactly
> >correct. Now, if Aphrodite were to survive into the contemporary world,
> what would she
> >be like? Well, Laura was a shot at trying to show what she might be like.
>
> >Gerry Quinn: Don’t confuse the names with the significance.  The monarch
> named Typhon is
> >*not* the ancient monster Typhon.
>
> You don't know that. The monarach could have been the source of our Typhon
> myth, in the
> manner described by Dr. Talos.
>
> >Only Thyone on that list above is the same Thyone.
>
> You don't know that either. You have no basis for making such flat
> statements of fact
> regarding fiction.
>
> >Whereas if the ‘Sign of Addition’ comes from the Cross it is more than a
> name.
>
> It is good you use the word "if" here. The swastika has Hindu origins and
> is sometimes
> called "the twisted cross". This does not mean the swastika must be
> considered only
> a Hindu or Christian symbol.
>
> As I see it, the "sign of addition" is this: +.  This is not a Christian
> cross but,
> like a swastika or gammadion, a distorted version of the Cross which has a
> longer
> vertical bar than horizontal bar.
>
> For me this demonstrate's Wolfe's intention to depict the religion and the
> gods of the
> Sun Series as distortions of our Christianity, not the real thing. As
> previously mentioned
> in this story, only The Increate (who is not The Outsider) seems to fall
> into a definition
> which is aligned with our own God.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20120306/46092562/attachment-0004.htm>