{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2624",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2624,
    "subject": "More on Gnosticism (Pullman)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-05-06T12:20:40+00:00",
    "last": "2001-05-06T12:20:40+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0379@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "akt at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-05-06T12:20:40+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) More on Gnosticism (Pullman)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Thinking randomly in print here, and grateful for illumination.\n\nThe pre-adolescent Lyra has gnosis--she can read the alethiometer.\nPuberty sets in and she cannot. Does this imply sinful boinking? Yes,\nthough in the world of US juvenile publishing it is forbidden to say so\n(the UK may be different: I look forward to Harry Potter's First Time).\nYet she is told that with study and hard work she can master it once\nmore. So gnosis is a gift (Gnosticism) but it can also be earned:\nChristianity, but *not* in strict Protestantism, which in a sense\nreverts to Gnosticism.\n\nNow does this mirror the banishment from Eden situation? I've been\nlooking over the first chapters of -Compass- which predict Lyra's\njourney; the Master appears to have a bit of gnosis himself. Where does\nhe stand? Status quo, of course; he's presented as something of a\nbureaucrat. He sucks up to Mrs. Coulter, though he doesn't trust her. He\nattempts to murder Asriel, an agent of change (I won't say Good or Evil;\nit's too complex), but he does it, perhaps, out of love for Lyra. Or so\nhe says. \"She will be the betrayer, and the experience will be\nterrible.\" (p 29, paperback) That puts Lyra as the uncomprehending Eve,\nand of course she is explicitly compared to Eve later.\n\nDust. It registers as Light on Asriel's photo-prints. In a parallel\nworld, Dr. Malone calls it Shadow. What do we think about it? (Lyra, we\nare told, will eventually know more about Dust than anyone in the world,\nher world, that is -35.) Pullman may not have pulled this off entirely,\nbut he is certainly an interesting thinker. Quite apart from having\ngiven us wonderful witches and an incomparable bear.\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}