Mamelta is Kypris?

Roy C. Lackey · 03 Aug 2005, 12:17 · from 2005-August.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Wed Aug  3 12:17:04 2005
Subject: (urth) Mamelta is Kypris?
Message-ID: <001e01c5985f$eb92aae0$483dc6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

Don Doggett quoted and wrote:
>> >b) Do you think Hy could see the goddess although
>> she was not a virgin? I
>> >think Tartaros stated unambiguously that that was
>> it was not possible for
>> >men who had slept with women or women who had had
>> sex with men to see god
>> or
>> >goddess.
>>
>If he did, he was wrong. Sometime after his wedding
>night, while on the
>airship, Silk saw Kypris again, when she made him that
>famous offer to
>become Pas. (EXODUS, 346) So, yes, I believe Hy could
>see Kypris.
>
>OR, Silk and Hyacinth did not consumate their vows.
>Why this would be, I'm not sure, but it could be the
>reason Silk was suicidal on the airship.

He had sex alright; he bragged to Horn about it while on the roof of the
airship:
*************************************
"I won't ask if you've lain with a woman, Horn; it's too personal a matter
to broach save in shriving, and I know you too well to shrive you. Should
you wish to be shriven, I hope you'll go to Patera Remora."
    "All right."
    "I had not until my wedding night. Indeed, it remains my only such
experience. You needn't tell me that Hyacinth has lain with scores of men. I
knew it and was acutely conscious of it; so was she. I can't say what our
experience meant to her, and perhaps it meant little or nothing. To me it
was wonderful. Wonderful! I came to her as one starving. And yet?"
    Still very frightened, Horn jerked his head. "I know."
    "Good. I'm glad you understand. There was a taint that came from neither
Hyacinth nor me, but from the act itself. After two hours, or about that, I
rested. We had done what men and women do more than once, and more than
twice. I was happy, exhausted, and soiled. I felt that Echidna,
particularly, was displeased; and I doubt that I would have had the courage
if I had not rejected her in my heart after her theophany. You were there, I
know."
    Horn nodded again. "She's a very great goddess, Cald?."
    "She is. Great and terrible. It may be that I was wrong to reject her?I
won't argue the point. I only say that I had, and felt as I did. As I've
said, the Outsider enlightened me a second time then. I won't tell you all
that he told me?I couldn't. But one thing was that he created Pas. The
Seven, as everyone knows, are the children of Pas and Echidna; it had never
occurred to me to wonder whence they themselves came." (EXODUS, 341)
*************************************************

I think this quote answers Crush's question, which was:

>>Sooo...how does Silk see Kypris and Pas at the end of The Long Sun after
his wedding night with Hy when it is a rule that he cannot if he, as a man,
has had sex with a woman?<<

My conservative opinion is that Silk's rejection, in his heart, of Echidna
is what allowed him to continue to see the gods in violation of her rule. In
other words, the inability of those with carnal knowledge to see the gods
was a function of belief. The Outsider outranked the gods, and Echidna was a
hypocrite. The taint Silk felt goes back to Genesis.

-Roy

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