god(s) and gods

David Stockhoff · 29 Nov 2010, 19:09 · from 2010-November.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:09:33 -0500
Subject: (urth) god(s) and gods
In-Reply-To: <4CF3F413.8080709 at gmail.com>
References: <4CF1C33F.9020801 at sky.com> <4CF3F413.8080709 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4CF3FA6D.2060407 at verizon.net>

I like the idea too. My only concern is that you can find words that 
match just about anything if you search them all. So, why 
Serbo-Croatian? Is there a strong pattern of (1) dog words (2) "random" 
languages?

As for the first, we can be sure there are strong patterns of both puns 
and wolf references. These are general in Wolfe, and although I'd rather 
see a pattern that is specific to LS/SS, it's a strong start. For  the 
second, I would answer myself, Why Melanesian? (as with Abaia).



On 11/29/2010 1:42 PM, James Wynn wrote:
>
>> 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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