Fairies and Wolfe

Lee Berman · 03 Apr 2012, 17:46 · from 2012-April.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2012 13:46:49 -0400
Subject: (urth) Fairies and Wolfe
Message-ID: <SNT123-W60C274EFB40A8C96C91D08CF4D0 at phx.gbl>

>Jeff Wilson: Moses uses magic when he strikes the rock in defiance 
>of G-d's command.

In my opinion, "defiance" is an overly strong word. IIRC, Moses had
been ordered to strike the rock in the past to get water and it worked.
This time he was supposed to speak to the rock but instead he struck it,
as before, twice and got a nice gusher to flow. For this offense, God
makes his long-suffering servant die in the desert, barred from the 
Promised Land. As I 've suggested before, the OT God seems a bit 
different from the NT God. Not very forgiving.

>Allan Anderson: I once had a teacher who told us that prayer was 
>supplication to divine power, but magic was like grabbing the 
>intestines of the forces of the universe (gods? spirits?) and twisting 
>until they did our bidding.

Well, I think Jeff and Allan present a pretty consistent definition of
the difference between divine power and magic. I assume this means
Severian is mostly using divine power?

I wonder what it means to take Gerry's position- that Severian is using
science and technology. Is it possible that some uses of technology are 
a form of divine power while others are akin to magic, i.e. performed for 
selfish human wants?  Scary. (how many SF Holy Atomic Bombs have been 
created...how many real ones?)

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