From: "Andy Robertson" 
Subject: (urth) Re: Baptising the Little Gods
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 20:59:12 +0100


----- Original Message -----
From: "James Jordan" 

>          Anyway, all this stuff in the Briah books is metaphorical for
> symbolic (in some senses) Christian notions, not a nod toward literal
Hindu
> ones.


But Catholicism is full of nods toward "literal Hindu" ideas.


But I should not say "Hindu", but rather "Indo-European" - since the legend
stream that gave us the Norse and Celtic gods has a common root with the one
that gave rise to Hinduism.



One of these "nods" is of course the resurgent Mother Goddess, Mary.

Another is the bubbling profusion of Little Gods - who in Catholicism are
called Saints.

Another is the whole Matter of Arthur, and its cognate legends in other
European cultures.




Catholicism is (at least in human terms) a fusion of the
monotheistc/judaistic root meme that arose in the eastern mediterranan with
these older ideas, from North/Central Asia.

As Christanity migrated away from its jewish roots and migrated north into
Europe it accreted these old patterns of belief and thought and
Christianised them - or, if you are a believer, you may chose to say it made
them Holy.


(I am urgent that you should not see this post as an attack on your
religion, for it is not.  Though I am an athiest, I was Christian once, and
I believe that only those who love the Christian religion can truely
understand Wolfe).



The Briah cycle is profoundly about Little Gods, and the way their false
godhood becomes a friend and figure of the True god.

It bears repeatedly on the process by which humans become Little Gods -  as
Pas did, as Severian did, as Silk did, and as (we might say) - and, even
more, and even more puzzlingly, it  bears on the truely divine process of
*making that holy*.

I put it to you that this process is at the roots of Catholicism.


    hartshorn



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