people in TBOTNS The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 02 Dec 2004 https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4264 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. ============================================================================== turin — 02 Dec 2004, 20:30 Chris? Rasputin? oh dear, we have another question of identity... You are exactly right to tell the type of story Lord of the Rings is it is neccesary to go to entropy, exactly. But, I was just pointing out that Tolkien's universe is not in a state of decline from the very beginning like the Platonic universe and experiences once the Valar enter into the world and start making things an increase in order and complexity which doesn't happen in the garden of Eden. Eden maintains the status quo and then the fall of man is also the fall of all of creation. When I said earlier Tolkien is kind of a cyberneticist, I mean he is interested in systems and subsystems, and he looks at the rise and fall of cvilizations as systems in and of themselves in regards to the large system of the universe which happens to be in decline for most of his narratives. The two mythologies which come immediately to mind in which things increase for a time, hit a good point, and start to sink, are Greek mythology and Norse mythology, and these are the myths that Tolkien working with, primarily for the general shape of the history. Not that they are the only stories involved, but Manwe is obviously Zeus/Michael/Odin. Yes mental illness is a device for talking about memory and identity, but if we consider mental illness as a social construction, I think the question of memory and identity is bound with ideas of psychosis. For a long time people were diagnosed with mental "illness" (there are diseases of the body but can there be diseases of the mind and if so has largely depended on definitions of consensus reality. I mean the level of dopamine in your synapses doesn't have much to do with whether or not God is talking to you or not of if you are you. Severian at the beginning of TBOTNS says he's insane. To this day, I still do not know what that means, Does it mean I don't know who I am or Don't trust a word I say........ It's ineluctable. I thought of Siva too, I actually just didn't write clearly. I never thought Wolfe was going for the New Testament Christ. I meant that after the first two readings I was still thinking of the Mitra-Christ of the Revelation of St John, which the Catholics don't take literally now, apparently, and which St Jerome thought of cutting out of the canonized Bible way back when. TBOTNS is in a way a Catholic indulging in a good ol' fashioned bible belt millenarian fantasy, which reminds me of some of the more terrible moments during my childhood. Sometimes Geburah is Sammael. Sometimes Sammael is one of the seven archangels that attend the throne, and sometimes he's Satan. It's difficult talking about the Cabbalah because there are so many texts and versions of angelic hierarchies, thats what philosophers and popes and priests did before Kant; they made up lists of angels and what they did to keep the divine order, ordered, lime making sure milk curdled and and that the strong winds didnt blow the stars off course. Even Isaac Newton spent more time doing alchemy than physics. I wish there was an authorative grand unified theory of cabbalah that scifi fantasy writers to use so we know what their symbols mean. I honestly don't know how much of the Caballah or gnosticism Wolfe really uses. I wish he'd write us a good essay about it. Tzadkiel does mean justics in Hebrew, and Geburah is still a good metaphor for Severian. On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 20:30:30 -0800 (PST), turin wrote: > You are exactly right to tell the type of story Lord of the Rings is it is > neccesary to go to entropy, exactly. But, I was just pointing out that > Tolkien's universe is not in a state of decline from the very beginning... Counterargument: At first Morgoth cooperates with the Valar in the work of building up Ea, then he feigns cooperation, and finally rebels. I suggest that the decline was present from the beginning, but that at first it was only in Morgoth's heart. --Dan'l -- www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer Freedom has no barcode. --J.G. Ballard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chris — 03 Dec 2004, 10:14 in reply to Dan'l Danehy-Oakes To go along with the counterargument: you also have the insistence of the Valar to incarnate themselves (or whatever term you wish to use) in Ea, and the creation of the dwarves, etc. Perhaps in the early stages of the singing, however, things weren't in decline... I'm not sure this matters that much, though. For example one could similarly say there was a period between "Let there be light" and the fall from the Garden where the Biblical earth was not in decline as well. > > You are exactly right to tell the type of story Lord of the Rings is it > > is > > neccesary to go to entropy, exactly. But, I was just pointing out that > > Tolkien's universe is not in a state of decline from the very > > beginning... > Counterargument: At first Morgoth cooperates with the Valar in the work > of building up Ea, then he feigns cooperation, and finally rebels. I > suggest > that the decline was present from the beginning, but that at first it was > only in Morgoth's heart. > > --Dan'l -- "You must not be soft, but cover yourself up; for you must discover an intellection abstractional and fraudulent." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------