TWK: 7 world cosmology

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com · 10 Dec 2005, 14:21 · from 2005-December.txt.gz

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com (thalassocrat at nym.hush.com)
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 06:21:12 -0800
Subject: (urth) TWK: 7 world cosmology
Message-ID: <200512101421.jBAELI5A073735 at mailserver3.hushmail.com>

On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 01:57:39 -0800 "Roy C. Lackey" 
<rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
>In my previous post I forgot to mention that the "servants" of God 

>in Kleos
>had his ear, but those who went down to Skai to kill Ymir no 
>longer had it.
>This forced the latter to petition the former to intercede for 
>them (W, 47),
>thus establishing the pattern of praying, sacrificing and 
>otherwise
>worshiping the inhabitants of the next higher level for all the 
>remaining
>lower levels.
>
>Humans are native to the fourth level, Mythgarthr, having been 
>"raised" up
>from animals by God. Scattered references in the story make it 
>clear that
>Art came from modern America, in our world. Our world can exist 
>only in one
>of the several worlds said to be on the fourth level. Proper 
>religious
>practice is defined in the story as the devotions due the 
>collective
>inhabitants of the next higher level by the inhabitants of the 
>level
>immediately below it. Stated bluntly: humans are supposed to 
>worship the
>inhabitants of Skai.
>
>We all know there is a wide and deep religious underpinning to 
>Wolfe's work.
>I don't recall any overt, specific Judeo-Christian references in 
>TWK, but
>it's in the background; certainly it's in Art's background. The 
>first time I
>read TWK and realized the way people were prescribed to worship, I 

>fully
>expected the hammer to fall, sooner or later; that people would be 

>set
>straight before the story was done. It never happened, and I don't
>understand why it didn't.
>
>Why did Wolfe write a story in which people are expected to pray 
>to and
>worship Norse gods, in direct violation of the First Commandment, 
>beings to
>whom God had specifically turned a deaf ear? In which a man, hero 
>or not,
>becomes an object of worship for humans?
>
>To say that it is "just a story" isn't good enough, not for Wolfe. 

>He could
>have left the High God out of this cosmology and avoided the 
>issue, maybe.
>Then it would have been "just a story". There were "gods" in the 
>Sun cycle,
>too, but God was always around the corner, never out of touch. I 
>recall no
>instances of prayer, not even an oath, directed to God in TWK. The 

>concept
>doesn't even seem to exist, and there are two levels of beings 
>between man
>and God. Am I missing something?
>
This vaguely Zoroastrian or Gnostic or whatever hierarchy of powers 
permeates Wolfe's fantasy works. I can't see it as anything but 
deeply, deeply unorthodox. These beings are not just members of a 
hierarchy of angels; they are, in fact, gods - imperfect, perhaps 
wayward, but neverthless beings who stand above humans. 

If they have strayed, they are to be "respected but not 
worshipped", as SilkHorn says of the Mother. If they haven't, they 
are to be in fact worshipped - Michael, Art himself after his 
return from Skai (excpet that he is travelling "incognito").

Similarly unorthodox, his God-heroes: Severian is, in fact, an 
enormously powerful God. Latro is at least an avatar of Mars & I 
wouldn't be surpirsed to find in the concluding works that he is 
something even higher than that. We have a large number of hints 
that Art is at least an avatar of Thor, in some sense the son of 
the Valfather, and (especially with the conclusion) perhaps also 
something higher.

I find it impossible not to read them as Jesus-types within a 
fundamentally Arian (and Adoptionist) setting. They are creatures, 
they come after the Highest God, they may in fact be chosen from 
the ranks of mortals, but they develop into a godhood with a 
trajectory of development which will in the end bring them to the 
Empyrean, as very high gods.

I don't read Wolfe this way because it's the way I happen to 
believe - fundamentally, as metaphysics, I actually think it's kind 
of silly. But I think it must be Wolfe's belief, because if not, 
why write these stories in this way?

One "heresy" which Wolfe is not "guilty" of: Manicheanism. There is 
no independent God of Evil. Evil is just a mistake, a separation 
from God, not a positive thing in its own right. The Most Low God 
in TWK is the closest to a real Lord of Darkness, and his claim 
that God is Janus-faced is the closest thing to Manicheanism I can 
recall in Wolfe. But I think it's reasonably clear that this being 
is just the dross cast off by God -  a mere creature. (And he flees 
Art, and Art "harrows" his realm - once again, a Wolfean 
Arian/Adoptionist Jesus-type.)

I think one of the clearest statement of what I really believe to 
be WOlfe's cosmology is in the first Latro book, where he discusses 
the subject with Cleomenes. There is a hierarchy of powers; we can 
aspire to commune with the lowest rung; the God of Light does not 
require a God of Darkness.

but I think it's clear that even he is just the dross cast off by 
God

Why do I say unorthodox? Because

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