unsuscrible-Digest whorl.v008.n053Whorl

At 14:10 16-07-98 -0700, you wrote: -------------- BEGIN whorl.v008.n053 -------------- 001 - Michael Straight <straigh - Re: Fwd: (whorl) Gods 002 - mary whalen <marewhalen@y - (whorl) Greek Gods 003 - "Mark Millman" <Mark_Mill - apology WHORL Digest -- for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun --------------- MESSAGE whorl.v008.n053.1 --------------- From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu> Subject: Re: Fwd: (whorl) Gods Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 16:50:34 -0400 (EDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.3.95L.980714085044.91618E-100000 at login2.isis.unc.edu> On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, prion lots of really nifty background on the names Wolfe used for the gods of the Whorl, including:

I think something important may be in an analysis of the Mainframe gods' names in relation to their characteristics. Pas: Greek for all. Pseudonym Typhon uses. Typhon or Typhoeus was either a giant or a many-headed dragon that breathed fire who defeated the gods and cut out Zeus' muscles until Zeus regained them and buried him under Mt. Etna, or some other volcano or in the region of Tartaros.

Hmmm. Typhon the many-headed. Since the whole point of Typhon grafting his head onto a new body was to preserve his personal identity authority, it seems unlikely that he took a new name ("Typhon") after becoming many-headed. So perhaps he got the idea from his name?

Tartaros: Not a Greek word. God of the underworld, or the place itself. Child either of the original Chaos, or of Typhon and Echidna. Tartaros was said to be as far below Hades (also named after it's master) as Hades was below the Earth. In the Whorld Tartaros is the god of night, crime, and commerce.

'Tartaros' is not Greek? Or are you saying it's not the word for anything other than the god of the underworld? Webster's 17th lists 'Tartarus' and says it's from the Greek. When you say "or of Typhon and Echidna" do you mean that in Wolfe's story he's their child, or is that also true in Greek myth?

Hierax. Greek for eagle. The eagle who tormented Prometheus, by eating his liver each day, which grew back. Child of Typhon and Echidna, or others. In the Whorl the god of death, who likes to torment others.

Again, is Hierax the offspring of Typhon and Echidna in Greek myth as well? I had no idea so much of the Whorl mythos came straight from the Greek.

Looking over the list, it seems that about every "god" has a serious mental problem. Typhon is monomaniacal, Scylla is egotistic, Hierax is sadistic, Sphigx is hyperaggressive, Molpe has fits of insanity, Thelxiepeia was probably a drug addict and poisoner, Phaea eats too much, and Kypris is a nymphomaniac. Any ideas about the others' possible problems?

Tartaros is blind. Not a mental problem, but a similar theme, perhaps. You'd think Typhon would have used genetic engineering or married better breeding stock to have more perfect children. I love the bit where Tartaros tells Auk, "You can't see me because I'm blind." -Rostrum --------------- MESSAGE whorl.v008.n053.2 --------------- From: mary whalen <marewhalen at yahoo.com> Subject: (whorl) Greek Gods Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:22:45 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed;

---2131475428-838545539-900548565=:22833 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline note: forwarded msg attached. Oops. Looks like I sent this to the Urth list first. _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ---2131475428-838545539-900548565=:22833 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Received: from [207.50.113.29] by send1b; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:15:27 PDT Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:15:27 -0700 (PDT) From: mary whalen <marewhalen at yahoo.com> Subject: (urth) Greek Gods To: urth at lists.best.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Length: 2534 This is Sean Whalen (prion). Rostrum, I'm always happy to elaborate. All the gods/monsters from Greek mythology which I said had names that aren't Greek words had their names borrowed from the names of other gods who were not Greek, or else the origin of their name is unknown but doesn't seem to come from a Greek word. Tartaros is probably comes from a word that the people who lived in Greece before the Greeks came had. Thyone and her older name Semele are apparently the names of non-Greek gods who came to be worshipped by the Greeks. Catamitus is how the Romans pronounced Ganymedes (in English Ganymede) which is not a Greek word either, and it's origin is unknown. When I say that a monster is the child of Typhon and Echidna or others, I mean that in the Greek legends it is uncertain because some legends say one thing that others disagree with. All of the people who are children of T and E on the Whorl have the names of monsters/gods who were said to be the children of the Greek T and E in at least one source, though there is disagreement concerning every single one of them. It is even uncertain if in the Greek myths T and E were brother and sister, if Typhon and Typhoeus are two different people, and if Typhon is Typhoeus' father, or vice versa. Yes, much of the Whorl religion is based directly on Greek sources. Tartaros being blind. Yes; and it is possible that this is a problem of his brain, rather than his eyes, which would fit in with the rest of his family. It certainly would be odd for his eyes to be irreplaceable, especially since Typhon wouldn't have minded using any available source for replacements. I think I have some new thoughts on Pas' name. In Greek pas if the masculine form of the word "all." The neuter form of this word is pan. Wolfe said he once thought that the Greek god Pan was the word for all, and that he used to be the main god that the Greeks worshipped. He was corrected by someone who wrote a letter to him. Actually, Pan's name is a masculine word, just like the names of all male Greek gods. It would be odd for him to be the only male with a neuter name. Pan comes from a shortening of the older form Paon, which comes from the word for "feeder" and is related to his Roman equivalent Faunus. Wolfe probably had Typhon use this name because he is also not the god of all, as his name is taken by everyone else. prion _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ---2131475428-838545539-900548565=:22833-- --------------- MESSAGE whorl.v008.n053.3 --------------- From: "Mark Millman" <Mark_Millman at hmco.com> Subject: apology Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 14:31:48 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Folks, I'm writing to apologize in advance for a pointless note that I'll be sending to some of you. I'm going on vacation for a week, and have (I hope) set my mail program to generate an automatic response to all incoming mail. The program I'm using, however, won't allow me to exclude certain classes of message, so that anyone who writes to me will get the response whether they should or not. I have, however, set the device to generate only one response per correspondent, rather than one response to each message. So I'm sorry for sending you the pointless note, but at least you'll only see it once. Mark Millman --------------- END whorl.v008.n053 --------------- *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.