god(s) and gods

James Wynn · 29 Nov 2010, 18:42 · from 2010-November.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:42:27 -0600
Subject: (urth) god(s) and gods
In-Reply-To: <4CF1C33F.9020801 at sky.com>
References: <4CF1C33F.9020801 at sky.com>
Message-ID: <4CF3F413.8080709 at gmail.com>

> Jane Delawney-
> Not at all sure what this means but anyway ...
>
> Why is Typhon known as Pas on the Whorl? The noxious kind-of-canines 
> which roam the Whorl's ventilation / heat-exchange system are known by 
> the Whorl's chem soldiers (and also by Vironese convicts consigned to 
> the Pits) as gods, because they are the exact reverse of what one 
> would normally expect a domesticated dog to be (ferocious instead of 
> benign, unmanageable rather than obedient, and so forth). Silk is a 
> little leery of this designation for obvious reasons, but uses it none 
> the less because there is no other name for them. 'Pas' is Serbo-Croat 
> for 'dog'. And Typhon/Pas is in most ways the exact reverse of what 
> many would expect a father-god to be; he's a 'dog' rather than a 
> 'god'. Would not be at all unlike GW to introduce this kind of 
> bilingual pun ... just because. It gets all of us scratching our 
> heads, and is pretty amusing once one has figured it out - yet it has 
> no deeper significance at all, it's just Typhon (or rather GW through 
> 'Typhon') having a laugh. Any views?

This is not unlikely.
I have elsewhere posited that the name of the city "Viron" is associated 
with the word for werewolf, "vironsusi". Wolfe would have either come 
across this term while researching the werewolves in Herodotus or became 
interested in Herodotus for the same reason he would be researching 
foreign words related to "wolf".
http://urth.org/whorlmap/viron

For the same reason, he be expected to look up foreign words, especially 
European words, for "dog", since European grey wolves are the ancestors 
of all dogs.

I like this reference a lot, Jane, since I have always thought there was 
too little to firm ground for Wolfe choice in this analogy. "Pas = dog" 
and "god=dog" provides an etymological reason that the dogs of the 
underworld are reverse of the celestial Whorl gods (who are themselves 
daemons/demons, because a daemon is a spirit and a programming function).
http://urth.org/whorlmap/bufe.htm

And additionally, of course, as we discussed before, "pas" is Koine 
Greek for "all", that is Pan, and Pan is the only god to die in 
historical time. Also, Zeus's died as well and his grave was honored in 
Crete. Layer upon layer.

u+16b9

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