Today’s holidays: Feast Day of Mary Magdalene (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Karl Marx/St. James Whale/ 1/Pi approximation (Church of the SubGenius), Feast of the Scarlet Woman (Thelema).
WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW. YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP TO TOPIC 2.
This book focuses on parodying the plays of William Shakespeare, particularly Macbeth and Hamlet, not theology. There are a number of more or less theological ideas dealt with, though.
Ghosts. Early in the book King Verence I of Lancre is murdered. After meeting with Death (apparently a favorite character of Pratchett), Verence remains in his castle as a ghost. It turns out the castle is filled with the ghosts of royalty—and the kitchen is filled with the spirits of animals eaten by them! Ghosts interact weakly with material objects and are not visible to anyone except cats, witches, and Death. Ghosts are also linked to the actual material of the place they died and cannot go far from it. The only way Verence and a number of other ghosts can leave the castle is to have a brick of it physically carried elsewhere.
Witches. Featured in this book is not only Esmerelda “Granny” Weatherwax, but two of her colleagues, Gytha “Nanny” Ogg and Magrat Garlick, as well. While Nanny Ogg works pretty much along the same lines as Granny Weatherwax (except never having been celebate and dominating a large family), Magrat is a parody of the contemporary “witches” of our world. E.g., she coerces Granny and Nanny into forming a coven with periodic sabats, she wears tacky silver jewelry, she likes dancing, she believes in “Nature’s wisdom and elves and the healing power of colors and the cycle of the seasons” and pretty much any flaky New Age idea the reader can think of. There is also the idea that witches are supposed to stay out of political matters; this is not a genuine traditional or New Age concept about witches, but rather an inversion of the behavior of the witches in Macbeth. Duke Felmet, who murders King Verence I and claims the throne, accuses the witches of interfering in politics, as they make convenient scapegoats.
Cleanliness = moral purity. Duke Felmet, like Lady Macbeth, feels guilty over his crime. In a rather extreme version of the equation, he does extensive damage to his hands trying to rid them of the (real or imagined) blood of his victim. (I know: ew! While much of the book is funny, in this item Pratchett goes into the realm of the cringe-worthy.)
Granny Weatherwax discovers that the Kingdom of Lancre has what might be described as an “overmind” consisting of the minds of all its inhabitants, including animal inhabitants. This may be a reflection of ideas that all are part of a greater whole. This overmind hates Duke Felmet and his wife and want them deposed.
Destiny. The witches believe that Tomjon, the son of Verence I, is destined to inherit the throne. While they do play a part in ensuring his survival and hastening his ascent to the throne, the assumption is that his ascent is inevitable. Tomjon is indeed recognized as the legitimate heir to the throne, but he does not want the job of king. The throne is then turned over to the Fool, who is his half-brother. This is consistent with the handling of fate/destiny previously in the series.
Belief = reality. The influence of belief on reality on the Discworld has already repeatedly been discussed. Wyrd Sisters takes it in a new direction by having Duke Felmet have the Fool commission a play depicting the “official” version of the death of Verence I with the intention of establishing that the Duke is legitimately ascending to the throne. While the actual performance of the play is accidentally hijacked by the witches, Death, ad Verence I to reveal what really happened, the question of whether the play could have actually changed reality in the Discworld had it been executed successfully is left undecided.
Next up in this series: Pyramids (The Discworld Series, book 7) by Terry Pratchett.
Topic 2: A backlog of materials on Islamic misbehavior, including associated anti-Semitism: “Special Analysis: The Obama-Netanyahu Summit” looks at biased reporting. In “Tom Friedman’s Soft Spot for Terrorist Fadlallah”, Rav Shmuely Boteach blasts New York Times columnist Tom Friedman for mourning the death of Hezbollah terrorist Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah as if he were a hero. (Some people do have very strange ideas that murderers can be heroes. I have no clue why.) Daniel Pipes in “Turkey in Cyprus vs. Israel in Gaza” notes Turkish hypocrisy over criticism of Israel’s treatment of Gaza, considering how Turkey has treated northern Cyprus since it invaded and occupied it in 1974. “No. 1 Nation in Sexy Web Searches? Call it Pornistan” notes that Pakistan, an Islamic nation not famous for freedom, is the number-one country in many pornographic searches on Google; I suspected this story was a hoax until I went into Google Trends and checked the claims myself. “The Muslim Mosque: A State Within a State” argues that Islam itself qualifies as a state; his might be stretching the meaning of the term somewhat, but lots of citations in basic Islamic literature are brought forward to argue the claim, especially the point that it is a goal of Islam to take over the Earth. And there is plenty in the way of violence, but I have other things to do today that just blog.
NOTE: There was no blogging yesterday due to the Fast of Tammuz, which begins the Three Weeks, a period of mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Temples and other tragedies in Jewish history.
Let’s face it: comedians can say true things with impunity that many other people would hesitate say at all. The Dry Bones cartoon “Immigrants (1990)” correctly notes the different attitudes of Israel on Jewish immigrants and Islamic countries on “Palestinian” immigrants; the former I, as a future immigrant to Israel, am grateful for, while the latter is beneath contempt and a complete betrayal of the notion that all Muslims are supposed to brothers and sisters. “Bret Stephens on Shalom TV: Will Israel Survive?” presents a “liberal case” for Israel:
Mr. Stephens correctly notes that the values of Israeli society and government are in close agreement with liberal values, while the values are Islamic countries are contradictory to liberal values; it therefore makes no sense for liberals to back Islamic states. “Telegraph Caught Recycling Gaza War Photo to Distort Today's Reality” documents using an old photograph as if it were applicable to the current situation, a form of quoting out of context. Rav Shmuely Boteach presents “Response to Congressman Rothman Calling Pres. Obama the Best Friend Israeli Security has Ever Had” and “The World’s Oldest Hatred”, noting correctly that Obama is no friend of Israel (actually, to be fair, every US president since at least Jimmy Carter, has tried to get Israel to do stupid things in the name of “peace”) and that Israel-bashers tend to be insensitive to things wrong with other countries, such as Israel’s enemies.
Also: Someone please prod me to get back to writing about Jesus for a change and not to concentrate too much on the Arab-Israeli War. We are most likely going to be dealing with the Arab-Israeli War so long as our planet uses petroleum as fuel, and there is no way one man can comment on everything on this one topic. Not to mention that there is material in Sanhedhrin 43a that presents a radically un-Christian picture of one “Yeshu hanNoṣri”, and there is some particularly un-Jewish and anti-Semitic material in the Gospel According to John which really needs to be discussed.
WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW. THOSE NOT WISHING TO BE SPOILED ARE ADVISED TO PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO TOPIC 2.
Mort is the more overtly religious of the two books, building upon the character of Death and his domain. (And because much of what happens in this book is connected with Death, this is going to be a long, nontrivial review.) Death’s domain is elaborated beyond parts of a building which Rincewind and Twoflower saw to include a surrounding area including a garden, moors, and mountains, only all in black. Death created his domain, and it did not come out quite right. Everything is only an imitation of the real thing, e.g., the mountains are fuzzy up close. Even the time of Death’s domain is fake, as Death’s adopted daughter Ysabell has remained 16 for 35 years there, and his servant Albert has remained something like 91 for about 2,000 years. The job of Death is also elaborated on. There is an hourglass for everyone on the Discworld, and when the sand in the hourglass runs out, their soul needs to be removed with a special scythe. (Keep in mind that the Death of Discworld is essentially the Grim Reaper, though the classic Grim Reaper does not ride around on a horse named “Binky”.)
In this book, Death takes on an apprentice by the name of Mort, who in his teens and something of a bookworm. Ysabell correctly notes it makes no sense for Death to have an apprentice; it is not as if Death is going to die and need a replacement. Nevertheless, Death trains Mort in his job of collecting the souls anyway, and there are strong hints that Mort is meant to also keep Ysabell company. (She has Death, Albert, and some horses for company, no one particularly like her, so she is very lonely.)
Mort has moral qualms about his new job. He is horrified to learn that when one dies, one experiences what one expects will happen to him/her. E.g., if one believes one will go to Heaven, one goes to Heaven. If one believes one will be reincarnated, one is reincarnated. And if one believes one will go to Hell—well, you get the picture. Mort decries this as unfair. Though considering the power of belief on the Discworld (though not our own world), this does make sense. And hold on to the notion of belief creating reality, because we will be dealing with it again in a moment.
Also problematic to Mort is how death is parceled out. Death knows whose souls to take by reading the Nodes (or something like that) and checking hourglasses. Who lives and dies is handed down from the Discworld gods, and whether anyone actually deserves to die apparently does not figure into it. And this causes trouble for Mort. When he is sent to collect the soul of Princess Keli of Sto Lat, he collects the soul of her would-be assassin instead. In doing so, he splits reality in two. In most of the Discworld, Keli is dead and the evil Duke has succeeded to the throne; but in Sto Lat, Keli still lives—sort of.
Though Keli is still breathing, eating, and moving about, everyone around her is in a state of confusion; left to themselves, they feel that someone important is dead and will act on it, and they will even act unaware of Keli’s existence, but they are not completely oblivious to her. Keli consults the 20-year-old wizard Igneous Cutwell, who is probably the only one around who is not oblivious to her, and he is able to divine through the Discworld equivalent of tarot cards and I Ching her situation. Refusing to simply live with being dead (so to speak), Keli charges Cutwell with the office of Royal Recognizer; his duty is to fix things so that everyone recognizes her as alive. Knowing the power of belief, Cutwell unleashes a propaganda campaign, with images of Keli everywhere, hoping that by convincing people he can stabilize the local reality with Keli as being alive. Only his success is mixed, and the bubble of local reality is shrinking. Keli thus charges Cutwell with the task of officially crowning her queen before the bubble collapses completely, even though he has to highly abbreviate the ceremony, including forcing the half-blind high priest to rush through sacrificing an elephant to do so. (And the elephant only gets a flesh wound on the trunk and escapes, so rest assured that no elephants were killed in the telling of this story.)
Mort has his own problems. He has a crush on Keli and wants to save her, but Death has disappeared and someone needs to do his job—and Mort dares not not do “the Duty”. (Ysabell and Albert would never let him.) His solution to the moral dilemma is to do the Duty with Ysabell’s help and hope he can reach Sto Lat in time to do anything to save Keli. In doing the Duty, Mort increasingly takes aspects of Death upon himself, in some aspect actually becoming Death. Mort and Ysabell do arrive before the bubble collapse. They try to stabilize the bubble through belief, appointing Cutwell a priest and having him crown Keli, but to no avail. In the end, all four of them escape to Death’s domain on Binky.
In the meantime, Albert (previously the great wizard Alberto Malich) returns to Unseen University and terrifies the wizards there into helping him perform the Rite of AshkEnte, which summons Death away from his new job as a chef(!) and back to his actual job. Death, being the magically reified personification of death, came into existence when the first living thing came into existence, and he will exist until no one is left and there is nothing else to do but (so to speak) to put the chairs up on the tables and turn out the lights. This is a grim future for the Grim Reaper, and thus he hoped to escape it—or at least get a vacation from it—through becoming more human. (One may quibble about whether being the last being left alive or dying earlier is better; this is arguably just a matter of taste. But despair at the idea is quite understandable.)
Death, when he returns to his domain, is, of course, angry. Thus he and Mort fight in the (very large) room full of hourglasses. Every time an hourglass breaks, someone dies; Ysabell, Keli, and Cutwell thus work hard to save whatever hourglasses they can from being smashed. Death gloats that Mort cannot win; even the Discworld gods are subject to him. (And in this respect the Discworld gods are clearly of a very inferior sort of deity. Discworld theology seems to be designed for humor, not to necessarily reflect any particular real religion.) And the sand in Mort’s hourglass is running out. Death regrets that he must kill Mort, but Mort claims he understands. And then, as the last grain of sand in Mort’s hourglass runs out, there is a surprise twist in the plot: Death turns the hourglass upside-down. And this makes sense: if he is above the gods, then has to answer to no one for tampering with reality. If he wants Mort to continue to live, Mort will continue to live, because no one can stop him.
Tampering with reality is not limited to Mort continuing to live. Keli’s fate is also altered so that she lives—and the gods agree to this, being reportedly sentimental and just—though she must now unite the Sto region as the Duke was originally supposed to do. (The Duke died when his hourglass was broken in the fight between Death and Mort, so he is no longer a threat.) Mort and Ysabell also have their fate changed; they leave Death’s domain, get married, and become the Duke and Duchess of Sto Helit. In short: while there is fate on the Discworld, it is not immutable.
It also turns out the attempt to alter reality, independently of Death or the gods, was somewhat successful. Death gives Mort and Ysabell a “pearl of reality” formed by the attempt. This may become a full-fledged universe at some point.
The theology in Sourcery is more subtle. The eighth son of an eighth son on the Discworld is a wizard. Wizards are supposed to be celibate, and the reason for this having nothing to do with sex being bad for magic. (Which may be good news for such implied pairings as Simon with Esk and Cutwell with Keli, should they figure this out.) Rather, the eighth son of a wizard is a sourcerer. Sourcery is a much more basic and powerful sort of magic than wizardry or witchcraft. And we find out just why wizards did whatever they could to prevent the second coming of sourcery when outcast wizard Ipslore the Red marries and has eight sons, the eighth, Coin, naturally being a sourcerer. Soon after Coin’s birth, Death comes for Ipslore—as he comes personally for all wizards—but Ipslore escapes Death temporarily by transferring his essence to his octiron staff. Ipslore intends to instruct Coin from within the staff and make it that Coin will become Archchancellor of Unseen University and “show the world its true destiny, and there will be no magic greater than his.” Death objects to predestination; there must be a way out of this fate somehow. (Remember that in the previous book the judgement was that fate is not perfectly predestined, so Pratchett is being consistent.) Ipslore reluctantly agrees.
Ten years later, Coin comes marching in to Unseen University with powers beyond anything that wizards have. He takes over and subjugates and destroys anyone who stands in his way. He is so powerful that he takes over Ankh-Morpork and magically renovates the entire city. Furthermore, he wants to become Archchancellor. Soon ambient magic levels rise sharply. Every wizard becomes much more powerful. Great towers start going up, and the wizards in the towers start fighting each other, wreaking enormous destruction. Coin even dares to imprison the Discworld gods in a pearl of reality. With the gods gone, the Four Horsemen of the Apocralypse gather together at a bar, and the Ice Giants decide the end of the world has come and start riding their herds of glaciers over everything they can. Everything seems grim.
There is a complication to Coin’s plans. To properly become Archchancellor, one needs the official Archchancellor’s hat. The hat, which has absorbed something of the magic and personality of its previous owners, calls out to be stolen by Ankh-Morpork’s greatest thief: Conina, daughter of Cohen the Barbarian, would-be hairdresser, and plausibly inspiration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena, Warrior Princess. Conina not only steals the hat, but soon teams up (more or less) with the massively incompetent wizard Rincewind to get the hat to far-away Al Khali and away from Coin. After some adventuring, they get to Al Khali, where the Seriph Creosote throws Rincewind in a snake pit and Conina in his harem. In the snake pit Rincewind finds (unsurprisingly) a snake and Nijel the Destroyer. Nijel is a barbarian hero-wannabe who is only slightly more skilled at being a barbarian hero than Rincewind is at being a wizard. Conina’s experience in the harem is a parody of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, with Creosote trying to get Conina to tell him a story. (Sorry, not the stuff one expects to happen in a harem.) Creosote also has a tendency to (try to) flatter women in poetic language which sounds like something from Song of Songs or The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; Conina, who is frequently on the receiving end of the compliments, finds this annoying. Also out of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights are a magic lamp (with an incredibly useless genie) and a flying carpet. FYI: make sure your flying carpet is right-side-up before using it; otherwise you will have to order it to go down in order to make it go up. But I digress.
The Apocralypse does not come, not in the least because Conina, Nijel, and Creosote steal the horses of Pestilence, Famine, and War, leaving them stranded at the bar since Death does not want all four of them riding on Binky. Conina and Nijel face off against the Ice Giants and their glaciers. They do not really think that they have any chance of winning, but rather Nijel believes (despite all evidence to the contrary) that he really is a barbarian hero, and a real barbarian hero would never back down from a fight, no matter how hopeless it seems. Their fight with the frozen foe never comes (though they do get a beautiful moment together), because of the actions of an even more unlikely hero: Rincewind. (I don’t make this silliness up. I just comment on it.) Rincewind, arriving at Unseen University on the flying carpet. Rincewind attacks the octiron staff, managing to drive a wedge between the spirit of Ipslore and Coin and toss himself and Coin into the Dungeon Dimensions. Death finally manages to collect Ipslore’s soul. In the Dungeon Dimensions, Rincewind manages to send back Coin with the pearl of reality containing the gods, who put an end to the terror of the Ice Giants once released. (Major rule of theology: no one messes with the gods and gets away with it.)
Coin, realizing he is too powerful for the Discworld, leaves for a universe of his own creation. Rincewind remains trapped in the Dungeon Dimensions, but I strongly doubt that Pratchett would allow such a great character to remain there indefinitely.
Next up: The Wyrd Sisters (The Discworld Series, book 6).
Topic 1: “Survivors”. This Dry Bones cartoon justifiably attacks Barack Obama for complaining about Israel when he should be worrying about Iran. (And, as I have mentioned before, expect material complaining about this to keep coming until Obama stops following the tradition of US presidents as far back as I can remember of trying to get Israel to be suicidally stupid.)
Topic 2: “Blinded by Scientism” and “Recovering Sight after Scientism”. One of the claims sometimes made by militant atheists is scientism, the belief that all belief systems other than science are invalid. These two articles correctly note that science itself cannot support scientism. This requires support from a system other than science to demonstrate scientism—a contradiction with the premises of scientism itself. I cannot say I agree with everything in these articles (though to be fair, I think I need to educate myself further on philosophy), but at least some of the reasoning is sound.
Topic 3: “Seeing Secular Zionism in a Positive Light”: This article is a great reminder to beware of false dichotomies. It is very easy to forget that human-created categories are not rigid or real entities in themselves. This article complains about the dichotomization of the world of many (or at least many vocal) Ḥaredhi Jews into Ḥaredhi-good versus non-Ḥaredhi-bad. This artificial division blatantly ignores anything good done non-Ḥaredhim, be they religious, secular or Zionist, and everything bad done by Ḥaredhim. This division also ignores that religiousness is not Boolean (true versus false), but rather very much a multidimensional continuum of shades of gray; statistics are given in this article on Pesaḥ observance in Israel, and clearly most Jews considered secularists in Israel observe Pesaḥ to some degree. While people on the edges of the continuum tend to make the most noise, almost everyone is somewhere closer to the middle. As far as I can tell, this lesson holds true in general, not just in discussing Judaism in Israel.
Topic 4: For today’s religious humor, in the spirit of Pesaḥ: “Passover Videos on YouTube”, courtesy of Jacob Richman. This should keep you busy for a long while.
Topic 1: “Obama’s Hospitality: A Question of Character” and “How Was Yours ?” In the former, Rav Shmuely Boteach notes that it is possible and practical to treat those with whom one disagrees respectfully. Rav Boteach notes that Binyamin Nethanyahu is not the first major leader Barack Obama has treated badly for political reasons. The latter is a Dry Bones cartoon which notes the inconsistency between there being a sedher at the White House, considering Obama’s maltreatment of Nethanyahu over Israel exercising sovereignty over Jerusalem and the famous prayer from the sedher which demands Jewish sovereignty, “Next Year in Jerusalem!”, which carries an additional, currently politically explosive connotation of Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount and rebuilding the Temple. (Sacrifices are supposed to be brought at the Temple on the Temple Mount. And Obama is going to be taking flack for as long as he keeps trying to get Israel to do stupid things.)
Topic 1: The latest episode of Caprica: “The Imperfections of Memory”. Most of the theology in this episode deals with Amanda Graystone. Early on Amanda gets upset at an attempt to move a sidewalk memorial to the victims of the train bombing. She also sees her dead brother at the site of the memorial. In fact, she admits to Sister Clarice (who is trying to charm further information out of her), she has seen him ever since he died in a car accident when she was 11. Once Amanda was even put in a mental institution over her visions. While Sister Clarice thinks Amanda’s visions are a sign from God, Amanda thinks seeing her dead brother is a form of Divine punishment. What I remember from Battlestar Galactica (new series), the dead brother may actually be an angel in his form. Sister Clarice also makes use of the steady-state philosophy saying “All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.” On an unrelated note, Lacy decides to dishonestly join the Soldiers of the One in order to be able to convince a Soldier of the One to help her get Zoe II to Geminon.
Topic 2: More anti-Semitism: “Johann Hari: Back With a Vengeance”, which deals with historical revisionism, quoting out of context, bad analogy, and other rhetorical abuses. “Forgetting History (1995)” and “Kabooom !” deal with the Obama administration sticking its nose into the Israel’s plans to build housing in Jerusalem and promoting the discriminatory notion that Arabs should be able to live anywhere in Israel but Jews should not.
Topic 1: “ Why Barack is Becoming Boring”. I am not sure Barack Obama has really become boring, and if he really has, then perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he has been spending his time trying to clean up the gigantic mess left by the Bush administration and thus he does not have much time to spend on dazzle. And I do not buy into notion that Obama is or has ever been perfect; I voted for him because I thought he would do a better job than John McCain. While campaigning, Obama honestly admitted that mistakes would be made, and there is no doubt he has made some since. And this is the point. Rav Boteach correctly notes that the great figures of the Hebrew Bible are not perfect. They have character flaws, and they make mistakes, often big ones. Rather than ascribing greatness to them because of perfection, they are great despite their imperfection. And this makes them better role models for it. None of us can hope to become perfect. But if someone imperfect can become great and virtuous, then we, who are also imperfect, at least have a fighting chance of also becoming great and virtuous.
Topic 2: “Time for a new attitude in the Pollard case”. This article is on a major anti-Semitic tragedy in the United States, the continued incarceration of Jonathan Pollard. Pollard has been jailed for 25 years for passing to Israel, a friendly country, information which the United States was obligated to share anyway. Correctly noted is that his life sentence is out of all proportion to what other spies—spies for hostile nations—have received and that it was given through government misconduct. This article ties the life sentence into American coddling of Arab pseudo-allies, such as Saddam Hussein, none of which has done the US any good. I will not believe any US president, Democrat or Republican, really has the good of Israel and the Jews in mind until he/she pardons Pollard.
Topic 3: “Top Ten Nazir Pet Peeves”. This is Jewish religious humor, and it really helps if you know what a nazir is. The rest of the references are left as an exercise to the reader.
Topic 1: Wyrd Sisters (The Discworld Series, book 6) by Terry Pratchett.
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