(urth) No Planets Strike question for those with religious backgrounds ...

[Marc Aramini]

"In The Godstone and the Blackymore," White even comments on being observed
by a Chough:

"I thought how strange that young ravens should be as small as jackdaws,
that they should have this thin and almost curlew beak. I looked earnestly
upon the beak, and upon the feet. My heart bounded as I distinguished the
redness, even against the sky. No wonder they were so trim, so much
lovelier than any of the black-guard I had previously known. They were not
ravens at all. They were the red-beaked choughs of legend, looking on Man
for the first time—as I on them."

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 5:17 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com> wrote:

> I suppose it could mean "web of swords/important events" as well...
>
> The story also uses the donkey and the bull to re-enact the rather famous
> allegory of the long spoons - hell would be much more like heaven if the
> people fed each other rather than simply tried to feed themselves.
>
> I feel that Wolfe's religious stories, for whatever reason, are highly
> dependent upon older texts.
>
> "How the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen" is intensely dependent upon T.H.
> White's biographical travels to the Inniskeas, where White became obsessed
> with a possibly pagan stone used as the pillow of a holy man which was
> appropriated in Catholic reverence, depicted in his nonfictional "The
> Godstone and the Blackymore". There is a scene at the start of that in
> which the historically ambiguously sexually oriented White talks to his
> older patron Bunny passionately about falconry that reminded me so strongly
> of Blood and Musk in The Book of the Long Sun that it was almost shocking.
>
> On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 4:58 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I am writing up a whole bunch of the short story ones now, and there is a
>> scene at the end of the rather allegorical (but obviously so) No Planets
>> Strike, which depicts the reign of the pagan world (The Beautiful Ones of
>> the planet Sidhe/The Fair Ones) as alien control of humanity, and pretty
>> much involves scenes directly from the bible and the life of Christ from
>> our narrator Donkey ... and there is a scene at the end where he talks
>> about folks going to the planet Barrmaser, though some pronounce it
>> Biladmaser.
>>
>> These words are Somalian words, and "maser" is tissue.  If it stopped
>> there I would expect it to be mere coincidence, but in Somali Barr means
>> "important events" and Bilad means "sword" ... so we have three Somalian
>> words.
>>
>> Does "tissue of Swords" or "Tissue of important events" mean anything to
>> anyone here with a knowledge of the Christian religion or the transition
>> from the pagan world to the Christian one?
>>
>> I do not think the sound similarities to a Jewish concept such as a bar
>> mitzvah (where bar implies son) is necessarily the way to go with this,
>> since all three components are actual words in an existing language ...
>>
>
>
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