Urth Digest, Vol 71, Issue 87

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 5:43 AM, <urth-request at lists.urth.net> wrote: Send Urth mailing list submissions to urth at lists.urth.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.urth.net/listinfo.cgi/urth-urth.net or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to urth-request at lists.urth.net You can reach the person managing the list at urth-owner at lists.urth.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Urth digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned byRudesind (Jeff Wilson) 2. Tzadkiel/Melek Taus (Mr Thalassocrat) 3. Re: Tzadkiel/Melek Taus (John Watkins) 4. Re: Tzadkiel/Melek Taus (Mr Thalassocrat) 5. Re: The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned byRudesind (Adam Thornton) 6. Monkey business (Roy C. Lackey) 7. Re: Monkey business (Mr Thalassocrat) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 18:50:27 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jeff Wilson" <jwilson at io.com> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned byRudesind Message-ID: <2aacbeb9c2e6573f0a1d94897f59491e.squirrel at webmail.prismnet.com> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1

Well, yes indeed Judge Holden is reminiscent of Baldanders. But the creepier thing is that the Judge, well, he's not really a fictional character. Or if he is, he's Chamberlain's fictional character. The height, the albinism, the baldness, and the terrifying and lethal appetites towards children are all there in Chamberlain.

Albinism and baldness? Doesn't Baldanders have grey hair? ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 10:05:10 +0930 From: Mr Thalassocrat <thalassocrat08 at gmail.com> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> Subject: (urth) Tzadkiel/Melek Taus Message-ID: <AANLkTiksy2xSZYAhIYNFOHZxQ8JNWq9nVnximiT_zHB_ at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Finally got around to tracking something down which had been nagging me. When I first came to the conclusion that Tzadkiel was a liar and a no-good, it put me vaguly in mind of a satanic peacock-angel that I'd read of (in a Patrick O'Brien novel?) in connection with some middle-Eastern sect. Tzadkiel's eye-wings always struck me as peacock-ish. Anyway, here he is, the Peacock Angel of the Yazidis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melek_Taus The Peacock Angel of the Yazidis. He has much the same story as Satan/Iblis ("the liar"), except for the Yazidis, it's a good thing that he didn't accept the favored status of Man. Wouldn't surprise me at all if Wolfe had this bird and the Yazidi's in mind. No, I don't think that BOTNS is intended as a Yazidi gospel :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: < http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20100709/82b1503f/attachment-0001.htm

------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 20:52:16 -0400 From: John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Tzadkiel/Melek Taus Message-ID: <AANLkTinL0Au5EU73SiBRhmZXv7CZrIVNbqqDW8oKgtvQ at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Ooh, this is excellent stuff. Thank you for this. Someone like me (but smarter) should take this insight and run with it into a full-on application of Melek Taus to other Wolfean demons. If Wolfe used the figure once, did he use it again? If not, why not? On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Mr Thalassocrat <thalassocrat08 at gmail.com wrote:

Finally got around to tracking something down which had been nagging me. When I first came to the conclusion that Tzadkiel was a liar and a no-good, it put me vaguly in mind of a satanic peacock-angel that I'd read of (in a Patrick O'Brien novel?) in connection with some middle-Eastern sect. Tzadkiel's eye-wings always struck me as peacock-ish. Anyway, here he is, the Peacock Angel of the Yazidis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melek_Taus The Peacock Angel of the Yazidis. He has much the same story as Satan/Iblis ("the liar"), except for the Yazidis, it's a good thing that he didn't accept the favored status of Man. Wouldn't surprise me at all if Wolfe had this bird and the Yazidi's in mind. No, I don't think that BOTNS is intended as a Yazidi gospel :) _______________________________________________ Urth Mailing List To post, write urth at urth.net Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

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------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 11:54:49 +0930 From: Mr Thalassocrat <thalassocrat08 at gmail.com> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Tzadkiel/Melek Taus Message-ID: <AANLkTilEW8QQYfHkf9vmhFpu36lZB8zLEO4EIC0VQTA8 at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 10:22 AM, John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com wrote:

Ooh, this is excellent stuff. Thank you for this. Someone like me (but smarter) should take this insight and run with it into a full-on application of Melek Taus to other Wolfean demons. If Wolfe used the figure once, did he use it again? If not, why not?

This is the way I see it: In the BOTNS, Wolfe shows how a young man, by no means inherently evil, is induced to do the will of (call it) Lucifer, working on the young man's inclination to obey and disinclination to think clearly when afflicted by religiosity, with these propensities assisted by a cloud of meretricious gnostic-ish mumbo-jumbo which takes the place of "true religion". The Lucifer figure is particularly evil in that he causes the young man himself to be responsible for the mumbo-jumbo, unwittingly. Wolfe takes the reader on the same kind of journey as Sev. He sets up the form of the story to make it look like a tale about enlightenment and the progression of a soul from lowest to highest, and what BOTNS/UOTNS shows is how powerful such forms are. By the the end of UOTNS there is overwhelming evidence to make the enlightenment reading completely untenable on any "objective" grounds, but nevertheless for most readers it persists. "Tzadkiel" remains somehow the agent of some greater good, Sev has somehow earned his role of minor god to the remnants of destroyed Urth humanity, a grand (unknown) plan progresses to a sanctified (but unkown) end. On this view, BOTNS/UOTNS is a kind of demonstration of how people can become "yazidis" (to the extent that the term can be used to denote those who beleive bad is good - no offence to actual Yazidis!). Anyway, if Wolfe was thinking along those lines & did make use of aspects of the Melek Taus figure, I guess that use was pretty specific to the concerns of BOTNS/UOTNS. The closest figure I can think of in other works is The Lowest God from W-K, but even though he may well be a de-winged angel, he fits a different "error" (ie "lowest = highest", rather than "wrong highest"). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: < http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20100709/65456cc3/attachment-0001.htm

------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:15:21 -0500 From: Adam Thornton <adam at io.com>