(urth) silk, the dancing toy, gods in the tunnels

[Marc Aramini]

By now everyone know I actually think Wolfe creates symbols and "metaphors" that are actually extremely literal.  Thus, Shadow Children riding Marshmen is the same as Shadow Children riding a man named Marsch (his name is misspelled in my copy as Marsh in the title "A Story by John V Marsh", which I feel might be intentional even if changed in later editions by copy editors).
 
I've always felt that Silk felt particularly manipulated, and that this prompted his suicidal thoughts.  Kypris is equated with mother, Hyacinth, and Mamelta in his dreams.  I want to talk about the dancing toy that his mother makes move for him - I think this is a symbol of Silk, and that "mother" calls the shots.  When he is enlightened, that female dove voice he hears has always resonated, in my mind, with Kypris, and when mamelta is awakened I have always posited that her claim, "We will be lovers" is not from Mucor (who was insistent that no sex with Silk would occur in their first meeting) but actually from somewhere else.
 
It is Mother who makes the little toy dance, it is Kypris who calls Silk to join with her and Typhon in mainframe, it is Kypris in Hyacinth that compels Silk to love a prostitute at first, and I think it is Kypris' voice in the enlightenment (which can have a physical cause and still be serving the Outsider, just as the castle in the sky is a tent full of hot air in New Sun - it has a physical cause, even though Crane's explanation seems absurd, training us NOT to look for it).  
 
I think that the rather odd naming of the dogs in the tunnels as gods is indicative of exactly what it implies literally: the gods are in the tunnels - the sleepers behind the seals of Pas.  Before his probably suicide attempt, Silk indicates that he is aware of his origins now and that he learned them in the time down below.  While we can say this is just a statement about humanity and the whorl, I think it is personal - he realizes that the things which control him (Mother Kypris) are using him like that dancing toy, that his enlightenment might be spurious and predetermined in that gnostic universe (how quickly the chalk of Silk for Calde goes up after his enlightenment - I've always felt this overdetermined beginning is part of that "clock work figure" of Silk and the whorl.  He realizes that he has very little freedom and it is all set up.  However, Mamelta is swallowed by the giant fish, and I think this too is a symbol - that Kypris is
 subsumed by something far greater than herself, so that the englightenment, which Silk misinterprets at least once and possibly twice, serves the Outsider in the final analysis even if Pas and Kypris, the male and female voice, set it up as the spark that would start their little clockwork plan in motion, like the dancing toy controlled by Mother.
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