From: matthew.malthouse@guardian.co.uk
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 08:40:15 +0000
Subject: Re: (urth) Gnostic Wolfe




On 07/11/2002 23:36:17 Adam Stephanides wrote:

>on 11/4/02 12:22 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at ddanehy@siebel.com wrote:
>
>> Part of the issue, of course, is that the Outsider is
>> Outside because the gods of the Whorl deliberately
>> shut him out -- tried to erase all memory of him when
>> they reprogrammed the original Cargo. But memory of the
>> "long sun Whorl" religion, in trace form, remained, and
>> became part of the Writings, in the few references to
>> the Outsider ... This implies, incidentally, that the
>> Writings were not presented to the people of Viron
>> already-written by Scylla or some other god, but were
>> set down by them in the early days ...
>
>I see some problems with this:
>
>1) Did Typhon, then, fail to provide scriptures for his invented
religion?
>If so, why?  If not, what happened to them?

I can't see that the religious environment set up to support Pas and his
familly as gods of the Whorl could have worked in any fashion unless Pas
did indeed provide the founding scripture.

Did the original inhbaitants not have their memories adjusted to make it
appear as if the Whorl were their proper home?  To have memory of a
religion without its support structure - scripture - would have left a
hole very damaging to that preparation.

>2) Iirc, the Writings were a melange of quotes from a variety of sources;
>James Jordan mentioned "Marcus Aurelius in the Chrasmological writings"
in
>another post.  I could see Wolfe positing that traces of the true
religion
>survived all efforts by Typhon to erase it; that he would have posited
the
>same thing for Marcus Aurelius seems less likely.

Religious writings that evolve retain traces of their precursors, often
whole tranches verbatim.  The same is generally true of attempts to create
new things - viz almost any of the extant cults around the world.  It
seems to me that Pas/Typhon was constructing a tool for control as a
pragmatic exercise not one of convistion.  He, or those he set to the
task, would be more likely than not to crib what existed where it seemed
to serve the purpose.  That traces of other things remained to be found
should be no surprise.

>3) Assuming that you are correct about the Writings' origin, if Pas et al
>did not want people to worship or remember the Outsider, why didn't they
>announce that the parts of the Writings mentioning the Outsider were
>heretical and should be removed?

I don't find it likely that Typhon believed in deity as the writings
present it.  He'd know of the galactic powers and possibly those that
stand above them but would he give credence to some godhead such as the
Outsider when in Typhon's world (personally and politically) I doubt he
would admit to there being any power stronger than he.

Thus there would be no motive to remove possible references while
prepareing the writings and once the Whorl was running to have declared
part of the sacred writings heretical would have allowed the entry of
doubt, the possibility that other parts might not be as sacred or as
necessary as the worshipers were supposed to believe.  Such a move could
potentially have been extremely damaging to what might perhaps be the gods
of Manframe's most powerful tool of social control.


Matthew



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