Subject: RE: (urth) DOORS: The Hero, The Otherworld, The Ending
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 09:00:04 -0700
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" 

Hartshorn declaimed:

> In Catholic Fabulation, the Little Gods (the remains of the=20
> old male/female aryan pantheon) pop up again and again.

Well, that's _one_ way of looking at it. A Catholic perspective
might be a bit different -- either mumbling about "foreshadowing,"
or, more constructively, suggesting that the pantheon was there=20
because the structure of the True Faith[tm] is deep in the human
psyche and so we naturally create mythologies that resemble it.
(A particularly extreme Catholic might simply deny that there was
any connection at all.) And some - this is the direction I tend
- would claim that in taking up the "good" of the local religions,
Catholicism essentially "baptises" them, viz. St Brigid.


> You see this in Lewis, with his eldils, and in Tolkien with=20
> his Valar: in Chesterton's Sunday: and you see it in Laffery=20
> with his numerous trickster-gods and demons.

Whoa. Hee-haw. Hey. HOLD IT.

1. Lewis wasn't a Catholic and would have been very annoyed
at you for suggesting he was.

2. The Eldila and the Valar are not "local gods"; they're=20
angelic powers, pure and simple.=20
   Tolkien uses the term "gods" of the Valar to make clearer
the difference in power between them and the Children of Il=FAvatar.
I strongly suspect that, if he had ever published the Silm., he
might have deleted that word.
   Lewis's Eldila ... well, it's a bit more complex, but the
short version is (1) Each planet has its governing spirit,
or _oyarsa_; (2) each of these has a sort of miniature version
or reflection on each of the other planets; (3) the _oyarsa_=20
of Earth is, of course, Satan; (4) the mini-oyarses of Earth,
fallen with their master, fool humans into thinking that they
are the gods of mythology. In short, the old explanation that
the "gods" are demons (fallen angels) tricking humanity.

3. Friday is pretty clearly not a "little god" but God.

4. I haven't read Lafferty in a dog's age...


--Blattid


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