# urth Digest, Vol 23, Issue 10 *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 20 Jul 2006* > 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. --- ### Jonathan Laidlow *20 Jul 2006, 08:19* > BSharp wrote: > I don't want to try to answer questions on the cabala. I never knew a great > deal about it and I >have forgotten most of what I knew. I have the great > disadvantage of not believing in it and so I >can't get so caught up in it > as cabalist really do. To me it was someplace that I could steal ideas >and > names from. > I noticed this quote a while back and have, thererfore, avoided looking too > deeply into Kabbalah concepts to explain BotNS and am a bit skeptical > regarding those who do. There is another, non-cosmological, Kabbalistic > theme Wolfe borrows which I haven't seen mentioned by any critical review, > that being the Lilith myth. I think I hinted at that a month or two ago but > I'm not sure. I'll try to discuss it if I can gel my ideas and if there is > any interest. If there's one thing I've learnt from reading Gene Wolfe it is to never trust the author or anything he says.... But I think GW is being disingenuous here because he borrowed the Kabbalah much as other writers might borrow from Tolkien - not as something he believes in, but something that worked well in the story. J - ---