Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 11:22:42 -0500
From: James Jordan 
Subject: Re: (urth) Some Scattered Thoughts: some short, one very long.

A handful of scattered thoughts:

At 11:53 AM 7/15/2002 -0700, Blattid wrote:
>1. Silk's relationship with Hyacinth. This simply cannot be understood
>outside of the context of the (very short) book of the prophet Hosea
>in the Bible. To summarize thematically: Hosea, at God's command,
>marries a whore and repeatedly forgives her straying; this is intended
>as a metaphor for God's relationship with Israel (and, in Christian
>understanding, also for Christ's relationship with the Church).

         Well put.

>No, Nutria, there is _not_ -- at this point, anyway -- a consensus
>that Horn is moved into Babbie at the end of OBW. There is some
>evidence that he is moved (or copied) to Babbie, possibly/probably at
>that point, but no certainty by any means, and strong evidence that
>the Horn persona is still present e.g. when Hide recognizes his father
>in the Narrator during his (Hide's) first astral trip to Green.

         My thinking was that the (non-)"consensus" might be that something 
of Horn is duplicated into Babbie, while Horn also remains in Silk until 
the end, and then all of Horn is put into Babbie. I was asking whether 
these are "part" of Horn, so that Horn is divided, or whether Horn as such 
goes into Babbie and also remains in Silk, which seems more likely given 
the "wholeness" of the other transfers and duplications. I.e., just as 
there is more than one Silk running around (in Pig and in Silk himself), so 
there is more than one Horn for a while (in Babbie and in Silk). As 
Silk-in-Pig seems to move into Silk, so Horn-in-Silk seems to move into 
Babbie fully at the end. That was my speculation.



>Consider, similarly, someone who suffers a less extreme cranial
>trauma. He retains all memory, but is drastically changed -- there are
>cases of a "normal" person becoming antisocial, even vicious, after a
>head blow. This is extremely problematic for the soulist: if physical
>trauma can cause a person to become thus loveless and (at least
>outwardly) sinful, is the soul thereby damned, though there is no free
>choice? A radical Calvinist _might_ have no problem with this; most
>other Christians are made a bit more uncomfortable when the problem is
>stated thus baldly.

         Thanks for the "_might_". As a "Calvinist," I would say that God 
overlooks sins committed in ignorance, an application of Romans 3:25, 
grounded in the distinction between "sins of wandering astray" and 
"high-handed sins" in Leviticus. Such sins don't erase the gift given at 
baptism. As you probably know, true Calvinists hold "free choice" and 
"predestination" in paradox.

Nutria


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