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<p>Both group-internal violence as in human sacrifice or external
violence as in war are both embedded in myth and ritual. Nowadays,
propaganda and scapegoating groups of people are comparable to
myth. The concept of the sacred was involved in both acts of
killing as in holy war (O.T. Israel, Uria the Hittite, Gideon) or
even burials (Human sacrifice in graves excavated at Ur). Of
course the sacrificial patterns change over time and culture. Even
the economy may be viewed as a sacrificial pattern with its own
glory (capital), power (money), sacraments (consumptive wealth)
and divinity (the invisible hand of the market system). If we take
technology into account and the way it is fetishized we have one
underlying pattern to both fantasy and science fiction and indeed
(modern) culture. Biblical Cain is represented as the father of
smiths which may be an example of early culture criticism.<br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Op 2-4-2018 om 03:10 schreef David
Stockhoff:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fc635fa0-cf03-54ff-3099-f523153ca00c@verizon.net">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<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"
moz-do-not-send="true">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/"
moz-do-not-send="true">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>
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