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<p>Marc, I'm working through your write-up for Latro in the Mist.
I've barely scratched the surface, but your voice is
authoritative, your writing is clear, and your arguments are
logical and yet sensitive to all the mysteries and motivations of
Wolfe's story and characters. It's more than solid---it's
definitive. I stand in awe!<br>
</p>
<p>You note, regarding the Great Mother's aversion to iron, that "<span
style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Consolas, Menlo,
Monaco, "Lucida Console", "Liberation Mono",
"DejaVu Sans Mono", "Bitstream Vera Sans
Mono", monospace, serif; font-size: 12px; font-style:
normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps:
normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(248, 248,
248); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Beyond the
fairy tradition, it does not seem that a clear reason for the
aversion to iron is ever given..." </span>This issue has always
bothered and fascinated me---the reasoning behind the fairy
tradition and how it is (inconsistently) used in literature as
well as specifically how it works here. Why would the Mother
behave like a fairy, and why would Ares behave like a human? If
this is the case, is either entity diminished or enlarged by this
treatment? Does it reveal basic assumptions about gods, or is it a
forcing of categories necessary under some strict Wolfean scheme,
or merely a convention?<br>
</p>
<p>The question of why fairies dislike iron may be one of those that
can't ever satisfactorily answered. All sorts of arguments have
been made, including contradictory ones. For example, (1) "Iron
has magical properties" such as magnetism; it was first known and
used in the form of meteoric iron (literally, "sky iron") and was
used in lightning rods on church steeples (2) "Iron signifies
ironworking and other human skills" that are naturally inimical
to fairies, who only use "natural" materials or magic and can't
even tie shoes (3) "Iron is from the earth and fairies are sky
creatures." <br>
</p>
<p>These principles can be applied to good effect in fairy stories
that address a limited aspect of the magical world (e.g., the
meteoric elf-armor-slicing sword in <i>The King of Elfland's
Daughter</i>, or the glamours of <i>Jonathan Strange & Mr
Norrell</i>). But theories #1 and #2 are generally negated by
the fact that fairies (and gods) can be both skilled ironworkers <b><i>and
</i></b>masters of magic. And #3 is just lazy new age nonsense.
<br>
</p>
<p>Comprehensive discussion of fairies---and hot babes---here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.medbherenn.com/faerie-lore.html">http://www.medbherenn.com/faerie-lore.html</a><br>
</p>
<p>I'm not sure we actually know anything concrete about historical
worship of the Great Mother. Maybe Wolfe is just applying Occam's
Razor to fill in a gap where it serves his plot. But somehow the
Mother's aversion to iron has to fit with both the universal
folklore tradition about the (un)dead and the worship of
Pleistorus as you describe it: "<span style="color: rgb(51, 51,
51); font-family: Consolas, Menlo, Monaco, "Lucida
Console", "Liberation Mono", "DejaVu Sans
Mono", "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono", monospace,
serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(248, 248,
248); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">the War God
of the Thracians receives sacrifices to an iron sword planted in
the ground which represents him both in Herodotus and in
*Soldier of Arete*.</span>" <br>
</p>
<p>How can the natures of the Mother and Pleistorus be so
fundamentally incompatible that they respond differently to the
same elemental material? Or is this something operating above the
level of elemental divinity? Perhaps it makes sense to assume an
opposition of the divine female principle to the male, but (a) why
represent this opposition with iron blades (b) why force Ares into
representing the male principle just because he wields a sword?</p>
<p>Three lines of thinking could apply to both fairies and the Great
Mother, and I think they are instructive. <br>
</p>
<p>First, iron can symbolize the life force, because it channels
lightning, smells like blood, and can be reshaped, meaning that
fairies, being originally dead (originating in ancestor worship,
are hurt by it. When Tolkien's blades are forged and reforged,
this is in part iron/steel being used to represent the life force
(though it can also signify the death force in the form of
"satanic mills"). Because iron has "life" in it, it can be used to
bind the spirits of the dead. This belief underlies iron cemetery
fences, knives under the cradle, and iron-bound coffins for
detested (i.e., vampiric) individuals. <br>
</p>
<p>But Wolfe probably would not go for this explanation, since his
gods (unlike the Nazgul) are actually positive forces who reflect
the true God. It also seems like a later, rationalizing response
to technological development and the Carolingian relegation of the
pagan gods to superstition, rather than true Iron Age belief.
However, this principle would allow life-sucking undead entities
to be weakened by or have reason to fear iron.<br>
</p>
<p>Second, iron's best-known feature is that it can be made sharp
(sharper than stone or bronze) and tough and thus is (obviously)
associated with war. War means constant use of weapons against
armor: constant repair and sharpening of swords, as contrasted
with the ongoing making of new slingstones and spear and arrow
heads. The fact that Pleistorus is represented by a sword is
telling. In fact, in Hellas it might especially be associated with
the Doric invaders of the Iron Age, some of whom became the
warlike Spartans, whose slaves tell Latro (as noted) about their
worship of the Mother and the Spartans' destruction of her
forests. Unlike spears and arrows and bronze daggers, which feed
people (iron plows came later, with the Romans), swords are purely
instruments of war (like an AR-15 vs. a "hunting rifle").<br>
</p>
<p>On the other hand, it seems likely that a goddess of harvest and
hunting would deeply prefer her sacrificial victims to be offered
up intentionally as a gift of value rather than as waste. The
Mother would not want battle corpses piled on her shrines or to be
offered victims killed in anger. But then, she is not in fact made
weak by iron, like a fairy, but simply "<span style="color:
rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Consolas, Menlo, Monaco,
"Lucida Console", "Liberation Mono",
"DejaVu Sans Mono", "Bitstream Vera Sans
Mono", monospace, serif; font-size: 12px; font-style:
normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps:
normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(248, 248,
248); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">refuses to
drink the blood of any sacrifice which has touched iron.</span>"
Indeed, she could reasonably abhor all violence other than that
needed to gather food, since it diminishes her worshipers and
their reliance on her, or sanction only violence that does not
shed blood (such as strangling). <br>
</p>
<p>This theory seems to support your overarching thesis of beating
Martian swords into plowshares, without necessarily relying on
traditions of fairies or the dead. But it resonates with these
traditions because they tell us both the gods and the dead are
sensitive to such matters. Furthermore, the methods of killing men
in war are also quite different from those used to kill animals;
similarly, methods of corpse disposal are different for honored
humans as opposed to hated ones, criminals, or animals.</p>
<p>Regardless of how the gods felt about it, ironless animal and
human sacrifice was real. Forensic archaeology suggests that when
humans were ritually executed and committed to the bogs in
northern Europe, they were neither drowned (despite the obvious
convenience of that method) nor burned (even though that was the
norm for that time and place), nor killed with swords (perhaps too
noble a death?), but were instead strangled, hit on the head,
axed, and/or had their throats cut. Cutting throats does not need
a strong blade that cuts through bone and remains sharp. <br>
</p>
<p>Their deaths were highly intentional, in other words, and
resembled animal sacrifice; they were performed with full
knowledge of an audience, whether human or supernal/infernal, and
whether being killed in this way was honorable or dishonorable.
This seems to fit with the traditions regarding fairies and the
undead, but it's not obvious what the underlying logic might be.
If the spirits of the dead were feared enough to need fending off
with symbolic iron---but never with swords---this might be
explained by the "life force" theory. Perhaps iron swords sent the
warrior's spirit directly to the afterlife without the gods'
devouring it, while iron's life-affirming properties denied the
restless dead a return to this plane. Maybe the sacrifice part was
simply forgotten in folklore, for obvious reasons.<br>
</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/were-europes-mysterious-bog-people-human-sacrifices/472839/">https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/were-europes-mysterious-bog-people-human-sacrifices/472839/</a><br>
</p>
Personally, I am skeptical that human sacrifice to gods or elements
was routine, or that it occurred other than in times of famine or
other crisis. I suspect that at least some of these people were
hated and feared as malevolent beings (rightly or not) who required
denigration and treatment as animals. Whereas respected people might
be killed in battle and burned or buried with their retinues, the
"staged violence" and location of the bog peoples' deaths must have
been meant to deliver them and their spirits to the underworld in
such a manner that their spirits were destroyed, while others'
spirits were welcomed whole into the underworld. If that was the
case, then it could not have been the sacrificial victims whose
spirits were feared, but everyone else's, because the power of
ritual was strong. <br>
<br>
And that is why the restless dead fear iron, water, and fire and not
string, clubs, or bronze (and it has nothing to do with "life
force"). (Other evidence suggests a similar logic for decapitation.)<br>
<p>On 3/24/2018 4:11 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAF1072wY0D0FfAcRbnAj-JExu0Vn1COOgAY37i_Myo7jgmRxMw@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Here are the write-ups for Latro in the Mist and Soldier of
Sidon. They are very long because they are meant to serve as
annotated commentaries in the absence of annotated editions.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Latro in the Mist</div>
<div><a href="https://pastebin.com/26eeCgit"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://pastebin.com/26eeCgit</a><br>
</div>
<div>Soldier of Sidon</div>
<a href="https://pastebin.com/Pg615bEW" moz-do-not-send="true">https://pastebin.com/Pg615bEW</a><br>
</div>
<br>
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