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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=andrew.mason53@googlemail.com
href="mailto:andrew.mason53@googlemail.com">Andrew Mason</A> </DIV></DIV></DIV>
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Gerry Quinn wrote;<BR><BR>> > The Catholic interpretation of God already
includes several aspects, equal in significance.<BR><BR>> Actually I got that
slightly wrong; the term the Rajan uses is<BR>> 'forms', not 'aspects'. The
term 'aspect of the Outsider' is used, I<BR>> think, only in the glossary,
where Quadrifons is called that - though<BR>> as the Rajan calls him a form,
the terms are presumably equivalent.</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">I
think so. There’s another very interesting use of ‘aspect’,
though:</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">“Is
it known that all the gods are Mainframe?” Sciathan awaited an explosion
with some anxiety; when it did not cone, he added, “Equally is Mainframe all
gods. Mainframe in its aspect of darkness, which in this tongue is termed
Tartaros, issued my instructions.” [Exodus]</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">And
now here’s something from Nightside, which I think is relevant to our
understanding of the religious cosmology of Long and Short Sun (and very likely
is, I think, something that Wolfe would consider equally applicable to our own
cosmos):</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV>Blood stooped to examine the triptych. "Where's Pas?" Silk pointed.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"That whirlwind? I thought he was an old man with two heads."</DIV>
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<DIV>"Any representation of a god is ultimately a lie," Silk explained. "It may
be a convenient lie, and it may even be a reverent one; but it's ultimately
false. Great Pas might choose to appear as your old man, or as the spiralling
storm which is his eldest representation. Neither image would be more nearly
true than the other, or more true than any other - merely more
appropriate."</DIV>
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<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">Wolfe
does not, I imagine, believe that the doctrines promulgated by the Vatican at
this moment in history represent the final word on the nature of reality.
Still less is he engaged in writing some sort of secret heretical screed to be
unpicked by an analysis of codes relating to pagan gods. I think he knows
that no human representation of what is called on Urth the Increate and in Viron
Mainframe can ultimately be a true representation; and if no representation can
be ultimately true, then no specific doctrine or iconography can be ultimately
true either. Pas may have one head, or two, or perhaps sometimes even
three, but the number three is a specific doctrine which might be reverent and
appropriate at some times or some circumstances – and that is true not just for
Pas but for other human representations of Mainframe, or the Increate, or
God.</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV
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<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">That’s
why harping on a reference to Dionysus as a form of the Outsider, for example,
as if it were the key to some great secret cosmology (even though Dionysus is
one of many gods so described) is getting Wolfe’s world completely ass-backward,
just as it is getting it ass-backward to read Book of the New Sun as some
hermetic gnostic scroll.</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><BR><BR>> Anyway, yes, certainly Christianity recognises aspects of God
which<BR>> are of equal significance - but the forms of the Outsider in the
_Sun_<BR>> cycle would seem to be people through whom he has spoken or acted
-<BR>> Kypris and Severian are our clearest examples - and there are<BR>>
thousands of them.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Perhaps our understanding will evolve in this direction over the next
100000 or whatever it is years. And it’s worth noting that the gods leave
a piece of themselves in those whom they have possessed and enlightened.
Devils, at least, can see it: when Poppy was possessed by Mucor she saw everyone
as hollow, except for Silk.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
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