Lupiverse(es)

James Wynn · 15 Mar 2012, 17:31 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:31:19 -0500
Subject: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W46490130117AB70C8647B5CF5E0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W46490130117AB70C8647B5CF5E0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4F622767.9050906 at gmail.com>

On 3/15/2012 7:56 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
> But, heresy aside, can such views be considered as leaning toward gnostic?

I don't think so. Not in themselves.

Wolfe's off-hand proposition that the gods were "real" in some way but 
not deserving of worship would only be directly tied to conventional 
gnosticism if he double-down and stated that the gods were also the 
direct creators of the universe or the planet. Many Greek philosophers 
opined that their gods had been kings around whom cults had formed. Paul 
thought they were demons or fallen angels who paid no attention to the 
sacrifices offered to their images. Lewis seems to have toyed with the 
idea that they were created powerful beings who, again, were unworthy of 
worship. Wolfe's comment demonstrates that he is a mythopoetist--that he 
believes the myths carry significant truths --spiritual truths-- just as 
electronic protocols carry data.

For more understanding of what he believes about mythology, study 
Green's conversation with his psychiatrist in There Are Doors.

J.

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net