Theological analysis of Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids (The Discworld Series, book 7)

Greetings.

Jewish date:  6 ’Elul 5770 (Parashath Ki-Theṣe’).

Today’s holidays:  Nag Panchami (Hinduism), Feast Day of Stephen of Hungary (Roman Catholicism), Solarinite Day (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Take Action: Tell President Obama: Make Our Food Safe NOW!”, “GOP: Stop Punishing the Unemployed - The Petition Site”, and “Save the Internet: Take Action!:  Dear Chairman Genachowski: Don't Let Google Be Evil”.

Note:  My trip to Israel begins tomorrow afternoon.  Expect posting disruptions and (YHWH willing) cool pictures of places in Israel.

Topic 1:  Theological analysis of Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids (The Discworld Series, book 7):

WARNING #1:  SEVERE SPOILERS.  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

WARNING #2:  WRITTEN IN A HURRY BEFORE THE REVIEWER GOES ON A TWO WEEK TRIP.

Pyramids is aptly titled, as pyramids really are one of main focuses of this book in two of their aspects.  The first aspect of pyramids is their being the tombs of dead kings, in this case of the Discworld kingdom of Djelibeybi, which corresponds with ancient Egypt.  Djelibeybi has a very extensive necropolis of the pyramids and monuments of all its previous rulers.  In each of the pyramids lies the mummy of a ruler, the later ones preserved in something close to Egyptian fashion:  with the brain and internal organs removed and pickled in jars and the empty body embalmed.  Laying the mummy in its pyramid, along with models of the necessities of life, is supposed to give it a good afterlife.  The other aspect of pyramids which shows up melded with the first aspect is the New Age concept that pyramids have occult powers, including the (flakey) idea that pyramids can sharpen razor blades.  The pyramids of Djelibeybi are nothing so trivial; their pyramids are magical devices which can stop the flow of time (or at least some “arrows of time”) and flare off accumulated new time from the top periodically in something akin to lightning.  The original point of pyramids is to stop time therein so that the entombed king never dies.  Real mummification is a later development.

Other aspects of ancient Egyptian religion are reflected in Djelibeybi.  The inhabitants are polytheists, worshipping various animal-headed gods.  Notably the sky is a goddess, and much emphasis is placed on the Sun and its movements across the sky.  The king is considered a living god, sacred in his person, and somehow responsible for making the Sun rise each day.  There is also a priesthood, headed by the high priest Dios.  “Dios” is a rather strange name for a priest, meaning “god” in Spanish, but it fits his character.  He has been around for as long as anyone can remember, is opposed to changing anything ever, and effectively rules Djelibeybi with a proverbial iron hand, even creatively interpreting the commands of the king to mean what he wants them to mean.

Curiously, the Djelibeybi religion is intrinsically inconsistent.  Now, it is common enough for real people to have not thought things through enough or not to know enough and thus to not realize that some of their beliefs are in conflict.  However, there are blatant inconsistencies in the Djelibeybi religion which even fairly dull people can recognize are contradictions.  E.g., it is not possible for the Sun to be rolled across the sky by a giant dung beetle and to be a boat and to be a hole in the sky and to be a flaming ball of gas orbiting the Disc.  What usually happens in real religions is that when conflicting beliefs are noted, some way is found to harmonize them.  E.g., conflicting beliefs may be things which are possibly true, or they may each be in some aspect true.  However, occasionally there are individuals who are not that wise and thus embrace contradiction.

All of this interacts to create the two major problems of the plot.  The easy one to understand is that the new king, Teppicymon XXVIII (“Teppic” for short), is highly displeased with Dios effectively countermanding his orders, including ordering the execution of the handmaiden Ptraci for refusing to voluntarily be buried with the old king and Teppic’s father Teppicymon XXVII.  Despite Teppic being a recent graduate of the school of the Assassin’s Guild, he has enough of a conscience to try to work against Dios underhandedly and effectively become an outlaw in his own kingdom in order to save Ptraci.  (To be fair, members of the Assassin’s Guild are supposed to kill only for large sums of money, and Dios is not paying Teppic anything.  And, yes, killing only for money is a rather strange concept of morality.  On the other hand, the Discworld pokes fun at a lot of the really nutty things that real people do and believe.  In our world, we have the no less bizarre notion of regulating warfare, which in turn is perverted by failing to apply the standards in anything resembling a fair manner.  But I digress.)

The other major problem is wholly due to the construction of the pyramid of Teppicymon XXVII.  This is the largest pyramid ever constructed in Djelibeybi, and with its construction come bizarre magical effects.  Pyramids, as noted, have magical effects on time, and effects are felt even before the pyramid is finished.  The Ptacslup clan who build it and their workers are frequently “looped back”, so they may be effectively present in multiple places at the same time, enabling them to do the job in a matter of days.  Flaring begins before the capstone can be put into place, and when two of the Ptacslups try to hurriedly manhandle it into place, all of Djelibeybi is rotated 90° through another dimension away from the rest of the Discworld, effectively isolating it.  (The effect is done in a way which shows that Pratchett really has not quite gotten the hang of four-dimensional geometry, but since this Divine Misconceptions and not Scientific Misconceptions or Mathematical Misconceptions, I will let it slide.)

Now, remember that on the Discworld belief changes reality.  While Djelibeybi is part of the Discworld, the beliefs of everyone on the Discworld go into creating reality.  But after the isolation, the belief system of the Djelibeybi religion takes over, unimpeded by the beliefs of other people.  But the Djelibeybi religion is inconsistent, which contradicts a principle that most of us take for granted:  reality is always self-consistent.  As much of the Djelibeybi belief system as possible is manifested, but the result in chaotic.  All of the sudden, gods who are supposed to be fulfilling the same function are fighting each other, including multiple Sun gods fighting over the Sun so that it gets tossed all over the sky.  Even worse, these gods are fairly stupid and ignore humans, causing a lot of damage wherever they go.  This is not what the gods are supposed to be like, suggesting that a lot of people in Djelibeybi, while believing in their gods’ existence, give little thought to their gods having minds and personalities or caring about humans; instead, they are just indefinite, uncaring powers.  All this is a shock for the priests, especially Dios.  Dios invented these gods and the entire religion of Djelibeybi in the first place, and he is at a loss at what to do.

A much stronger belief is in the afterlife for kings.  Now, in the Discworld people survive after death in according to their beliefs, so it should be no surprise that Teppicymon XXVII survives as a ghost to watch his mummification in grisly detail.  After the isolation of Djelibeybi, however, the belief in the mummy as the physical form of the deceased king took hold, and his mummified remains become his actual physical form.  Teppicymon XXVII quickly realizes that what has happened to him is probably happening to every other mummy in Djelibeybi.  He enlists two embalmers, and the three of them set out to free the other mummies.  Indeed, every pyramid contains an active mummy, many expressing a hatred for pyramids.  (You just try lying in a casket for 1,000 years.  You would probably hate it, too.)  But there is one exception to this rule:  one small, extremely primitive pyramid.  This pyramid is empty, and enough aspects of time run backwards in it for a lit torch to unburn.  (The amount of fuel increases rather than decreases.)

The plot resolves with three different groups converging:  1) the mummies and the embalmers, 2) the priests, who really have no idea how to handle the situation, but are still determined to do something anyway, and 3) Teppic.  Teppic, with the help of the mummies, manages to get his father’s pyramid capped, causing a huge flare.  Besides a lot of pyrotechnics, most of the pyramids are destroyed, the mummies fall into water and are dissolved (thus sparing them the horrors of eternal life), Dios disappears, the gods of Djelibeybi disappear, and Djelibeybi drops back into the Discworld.  Teppic abdicates in favor of Ptraci, who it turns out is his half-sister.  But then, at their last scene together, Ptraci demands that he not leave and ends up snogging him.  (I know:  EW!)  I am well aware that the ancient Egyptian royalty (and gods) had a thing for incest, but I am left wishing for something other than historical accuracy on this point and hope this pairing does not recur later in the series.  We also learn what happens to Dios:  he is blown right back to the beginning of Djelibeybi history, to found the kingdom.  His life history is circular, without beginning or end, and he never ages, due to his pyramid.  Appropriately, the symbol on his staff is the ouroboros, a snake swallowing its own tail and thus a kind of circle.


Also:  All rulers of Djelibeybi have a dream about seven fat cows and seven thin cows.  This should be familiar to anyone with a decent knowledge of Genesis as one of the two dreams of Par‘oh (Pharaoh) interpreted by Yosef (Joseph), though in that dream no cows were doing anything silly (unless one considers cannibalism silly).  Descriptions of Djelibeybi as “a land flowing with milk and honey” are less appropriate, since that description normally applies to Israel; it is only applied to Egypt once, by Jews dissatisfied with life in the Desert.

Also:  Djelibeybi lies between two powers, Ephebe and Tsort.  Once Djelibeybi disappears, these two countries decide to go to war, more out of principle rather than any real cause.  However, they base their tactics on what happened in a previous era, and both sides build giant wooden horses, which their soldiers hide in.  (Shades of the Trojan War.)  Fortunately, Djelibeybi reappears before anything actually happens.


Also, and finally:  I am well aware what the name “Djelibeybi” plays on.  I have seen more than enough Doctor Who to know that.


Next up:  Probably The White Goddess by Robert Graves.  This work is famous for having influenced the Neopagan movement and infamous for historical inaccuracy.  Though I have a ways to go in it, I am so far dissatisfied with the quality of its scholarship to the point that I am likely to title the review “I spit on Robert Graves”.  (Thanks to Barry for devising that title, intended for a nonexistent movie.)

Topic 2:  For today’s religious humor: “Puff, the Kosher Dragon”.  This is a song which goes at least far back as my childhood.  There is also an audio version (RealPlayer required).  And, for the record, dragons are not suitable for food according to Jewish law; Puff is kasher in the sense of eating kasher food and being Torah-observant.

Peace.

Aaron

Theological review of Wyrd Sisters (The Discworld Series, book 6)

Greetings.

Jewish date:  11 ’Av 5770 (Parasthath Wa’ethḥannan).

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).

Worthy causes of the day:  “JCRC-NY Write to Rickys”, “ColorOfChange.org:  Put up or shut up:  It's time for prominent Tea Party leaders to step forward and deal with racism within the Tea Party”, “Protect the Future of Fish and Fishing in America - The Petition Site”, “MoveOn.org Political Action: We need Elizabeth Warren at the CFPB!”, and “Forget what Timothy Geithner thinks. We want Elizabeth Warren to police Wall Street.”.

Topic 1:  Wyrd Sisters (The Discworld Series, book 6) by Terry Pratchett.

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.

Related to this:  “A political culture gone bad” deals with how not to treat Muslims.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor: “Bonus Post: The Most Elusive Of Them All”:



Note that this graph is arguably not accurate on Jesus, but some people really do seem to think of him in these terms.

Peace.

Aaron

More on Mort

Greetings.

Jewish date:  16 Tammuz 5770 (Parashath Pineḥas).


Today’s holidays:  Feast Day of Irenaeus (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Carlos Castaneda (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy cause of the day:  BP is burning endangered sea turtles alive.

ANNOUNCEMENT:  I have now scheduled a pilot trip to Israel for the second half of August.  My plans for immigrating to Israel are progressing (thank YHWH), and I hope to report on religion over there.  Now I have to do further work on the details of the trip and ultimate immigration…

Topic 1:  More on Mort (The Discworld Series, book 4), and I cannot believe I overlooked this.  As Mort takes over Death’s duties and Death’s attributes, he becomes “more real”.  He becomes more solid and less susceptible to influence.  He even can notice the interface between the two realities in Sto Lat, while everyone else is oblivious to it.  This may reflect a limit to the power of belief in the Discworld.  While belief can reshape reality, it seems to have no power over Death.  No one so far has believed their way to immortality in the sense of their material body remaining intact and functioning; the best they have done is to become ghosts.  Death is fated to be the last being in existence, and being the final fate of everything, no matter what, it is arguably “more real” than anything else.

Topic 2:  For today’s religious humor: “Basement Cat”:


Peace.

Aaron

Theological review of Mort and Sourcery (The Discworld Series, books 4 and 5)

Greetings.

Jewish date:  13 Tammuz 5770 (Parashath Balaq).

Today’s holidays:  Friday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Ed Gein (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Obama: Keep Your Promises to End Hunger! - The Petition Site”, “JCRC-NY Write to Gilad Shalit”, “Join financial titans in telling Congress: Crack down on Wall Street abuses. | Progressive Change Campaign Committee”, “Save the Internet: Take Action!:  Stop the Secret Meetings at the FCC”, “Tell Hillary Clinton: Stand up to Blackwater”, “Health Care for America NOW! | Stand Up for Your New Rights”, “Repower America | Tell Our Leaders: Clean Energy Now!”, “Take Action: Call on BP to pay for all cleanup costs and fines”, “action.firedoglake.com | Tell BP to Protect Gulf Cleanup Workers”, “"Drill, Baby, Drill" comes to Discovery?”, and “Less than 10 Days before a Yeshiva Will Be Destroyed”.

Topic 1:  Mort and Sourcery (The Discworld Series, books 4 and 5) by Terry Pratchett.

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 2:  About a weeks worth of commentary on anti-Semitism (and I will lay off of this topic when the anti-Semites learn to shut up and stop blaming the Jews for everything wrong with the world):  1) The Dry Bones cartoons “Media Attention”, “Piracy”, and “Independent Women - the Dry Bones Blog”.  (Enjoy the irony.)  2) From HonestReporting:  “Behind Bars: Photo Bias Breaks Out of Gaza”, “Will the Media Remember Gilad Shalit?”, and “Scenes From the World's Biggest Concentration Camp”.  3) Assorted other people getting mad:  “An open letter to President Obama from Jon Voight - Washington Times”, “Geert Wilders: Change Jordan's name to Palestine” (which works historically, since Mandatory Palestine started off including what is now Jordan), “Weathering the approaching storm”, and “Joyce Kaufman. The 7 Reasons to Support Israel.”:


Topic 3:  Arguably creeping Islamization here in the United States, and yes, this is definitely against the Constitution:  “Dearborn Police: Defending Islam against the Constitution”:


Topic 4:  For today’s religious humor: “The battle between good and evil.”:


Peace and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

The theology of Equal Rites (Discworld Series, book 3)

Greetings.

Jewish date:  5 Siwan 5770 (Parashath Naso’).

Today’s holidays:  Day 49 of the ‘Omer/‘Erev Shavu‘oth (Judaism), Feast Day of John I (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Leonary Nimoy (Church of the SubGenius), Feast Day of Elias Ashmole (Thelema).

Note:  There will be no blogging by me for the next two days due to the Jewish holiday of Shavu‘oth.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Friends of the Earth U.S.:  Say 'No!' to Offsets, 'Yes!' to Real Climate Solutions”, “Repower America | Tell Your Senators: Time to act!”, “An inconvenient truth about the climate bill”, and “Help Wild Tigers Survive - The Petition Site”.

Cover of Equal Rites

Topic 1:  Equal Rites (Discworld Series, book 3) by Terry Pratchett.


WARNING:  SOME SPOILERS.


This is not a theological story.  It is not even a non-theological story with major theological elements.  The central theme of this story is magic performed by men versus magic performed by women as they are treated in fantasy:  the male magic of wizardry is considered good, while the female magic of wizardry is considered bad.  This is definitely not the first book to attack this cliché, i.e., the Oz books of L. Frank Baum featured good witches and bad wizards alongside bad witches and good wizards.  Pratchett has different method of handling this problem:  a dying wizard bequeaths his “wizardness” to a newborn baby girl, Eskarina “Esk” Smith, not knowing she is a girl.  This one act forces Esk and many of the other characters to try to find some way of dealing with the anomaly of a female wizard, whether to try to turn her into a witch or to accept her as a wizard.  In the process the worlds of witches and wizards collide, and your humble author decides to not spoil you on how things turn out in the end, as the state of sexual politics at the end of the story is not a theological issue.  (OK, I know:  there is a sexual political aspect of religion, especially these days when sexual equality or lack thereof is a real issue.  But the wizards-versus-witches issue is given as much theological depth here as the matter of feminism is given theological depth in The Marvelous Land of Oz.  Perhaps in another book...)

There are, nevertheless, a few theological elements in Equal Rites.  Pratchett does mention the cliché of witches worshiping a mother goddess and dancing naked in the woods—and he immediately dismisses it as a common delusion (at least so far as the Discworld is concerned).  Also noted in passing is the notion that religion makes people act unnaturally, leading them to visit witches to help them deal with the consequences.  There is real truth in this.  Much natural behavior (murder, rape, violence, infidelity, domination, promiscuity, etc.) is forbidden or strictly controlled by religion.  Pratchett give this a bit of a negative spin, but even adamantly anti-religious secularists normally advocate some degree control of such natural behaviors, if only for utilitarian reasons.  If some unnatural behavior is necessary for a more pleasant and safer society, so be it.

Also present is the notion that thought creates reality, which the wizard prodigy (and proto-love interest of Esk) Simon lectures on at Unseen University.  In our reality this is, of course, wrong.  Unfortunately, some people implicitly treat it as true by means of the fallacy of wishful thinking, and there are even a few works (The Secret, What the Bleep Do We Know?) which argue (badly) for the explicit version.  The counterfactual belief in thought creating reality shows up as a plot element in the form of the Things which dwell in the Dungeon Dimensions.  The Things threaten Esk and Simon, but once Esk realizes they are merely ideas without independent existence, they atrophy and evaporate.

Overall classification:  Humorous fantasy, but not for children.  Don’t beware of Things.

Theological rating:  ☈.  (Absurdist.)

Note:  I do not yet own a copy of Mort (Discworld Series, book 4), so it will be a while until I review it.  I could skip to the next book in the series I have, but I would rather review the series in order.  Anyone wishing to speed things up is welcome to send me copies of Discworld books I do not already own.

Topic 2:  The daily dose of anti-Semitism:  “Anti-Israel Detractors Go Postal to Stamp Out Israel (May 16, 2010)” and “"You Lied to Me, Jew Producer": Comedy Central Shocker”.  Irony may be found in “Rachel Corrie Died for This?”  “Journalist says only truth will set Palestine free” deals with the question of what it really means to be “pro-Palestinian”.  “Israeli-Palestinian conflict rages on Wikipedia” deals with a relatively recent method of trying to get a set of beliefs enshrined as the truth.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor: “I IS AMISH LOLCAT.”  (Sorry, they made no provision for embedding this one.  You will have to click on the link.)

Peace and ḥagh sameaḥ.

Aaron

On The Light Fantastic (Discworld Series, book 2)

Greetings.

Jewish date:  27 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath BeMidhbar).

Today’s holidays:  Day 42 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Salvador Dali (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy causes of the day:  “CARE : Defending Dignity - Fighting Poverty :  International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act”, “Stop Terrorists from Buying Guns and Explosives - The Petition Site”, “Friends of the Earth U.S.:  Tell President Obama to Support a Financial Speculation Tax”, “Save BioGems: Take Action: Stop the Pebble Mine”, “Ban New Offshore Drilling - The Petition Site”, “Working Families » Take Action!:  Sign the petition to Albany”, “Take Action: TrueMajority.org:  Mr. President, THIS is why drilling is bad.”, “Empowering Women Can Save Children - The Petition Site”, and “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.:  Ask Your Legislator to Override the Veto!”

Topic 1:  The daily dose of anti-Semitism:  First up, the cartoons “The Goldstone Whitewash” and “Jerusalem (1982)”.  Both of these deal with hypocrisy and double standards in anti-Semitic politics and diplomacy.  Notable articles include “Complex crisis most analysts fail to explain”, “Biased Broadcasting Corporation?”, and “Glorifying murderers only scores points at home”.

Image via Wikipedia

Topic 2:  The reason there has no blogging for a few days while I wrote the review:  The Light Fantastic (Discworld Series, book 2) by Terry Pratchett:

WARNING:  SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Light Fantastic picks up where The Color of Magic left off, with the wizard Rincewind, the tourist Twoflower, and the Luggage going over the side of the Discworld.  (The demon in Twoflower’s camera presumably goes over the side of the Discworld, too, but only by implication.  He barely appears onscreen in this book, as Twoflower does not get in much photography.)  However, instead of ending up as a stain on the shell of the world-turtle Great A’Tuin, our heroes (if you can really call them that) suddenly find themselves back on the Discworld elsewhere.

What at first might seem like an attempt by the Lady to cheat Fate (or a gross continuity violation), is actually the result of the spell from the grimoire Octavo which Rincewind carries around in his head working to preserve itself.  

Meanwhile, Great A’Tuin is now getting closer and closer to a red star with eight moons.  The wizards of Unseen University, lead by the dangerously ambitious Trymon, determine that they need to read all eight spells of the Octavo in order to save the Discworld.  Thus they set out, both in person and by proxy, to find Rincewind and bring him back to Ankh-Morpork so that all eight spells can be recited.

The misadventures of Rincewind, Twoflower, and the Luggage on their way back to and in Ankh-Morpork contain frequent religious references.

• Our heroes (if they can be called that) encounter Druids(!) trying to repair a Stonehenge-like stone computer.  (The humor falls a bit flat since the author’s understanding of computers falls short.)  As part of the process, the Druids try to sacrifice the virgin Bethan.  (Whether any of this bears any resemblance to real Druidism is beyond me.  I have not studied it yet.)  Luckily, Bethan is saved by Rincewind, Twoflower, and the 87-year-old hero Cohen the Barbarian.  (He is an obvious parody of Conan the Barbarian, even to someone who never read the relevant literature and only remembers two of the movies fuzzily.)  In this segment of the book, Rincewind notes that in his culture sacrifice is normal, while Twoflower claims that is totally absent back on the Counterweight Continent where he comes from.  I applaud Terry Pratchett for making the Discworld have multiple religions.  (Compare the Star Trek Universe, in which the usual case is for a planet to have a single religion and a single culture.)
• Rincewind finds himself in Death’s Domain, where he finds Twoflower teaching the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to play a card game.  Death for some reason has an adopted daughter, Ysabell.
• The approach of the star to the Discworld (or its relativistic equivalent, the approach of the Discworld to the star), sets off a religious panic.  Many people flee the cities for the mountains so they can have a better view of the coming destruction.  A new red star cult forms which tries to bring practically everything on the Discworld to a standstill by violence or threat thereof.  Notably, the Discworld gods, who were so prominent in the previous book, are silent here.
• Trymon steals the Octavo for himself and absorbs the seven spells still within it, intending to gain power for himself besides saving the Discworld.  In the process he opens the Discworld up to the Dungeon Dimensions, inhabited by clones of creatures from the (dreadful) horror stories of H. P. Lovecraft.  Interestingly, Pratchett describes the Dungeon Dimensions creatures not as evil, but as “eldritch”.  And he explains the difference:  evil may seek power over your soul or the world, but it sees the value of your soul or the world.  “Eldritch”, on the other hand, sees no value in your soul or the world and will step on you if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  This is actually a misinterpretation of what “eldritch” is supposed to mean (“weird and sinister or ghostly” according to the New Oxford American Dictionary via Apple’s Dictionary.app), but it is a faithful characterization of how the pseudo-gods of Lovecraft’s stories behave:  they simply do not care about humanity.  Trymon, who has acted callously and selfishly throughout the entire book, quite poetically transforms into one of the Lovecraftian creatures.  Of course, Rincewind defeats him (obviously, since this is not the end of the series), but how that happens will not be spoiled here.
• Once Rincewind beats Trymon, he evicts the eighth spell from his head back into the Octavo and reads all eight spells.  The red star’s eight moons hatch into (relatively) small world-turtles, each with four (relatively) small world-elephants and a (relatively) small discworld on the elephants’ backs.  Great A’Tuin and the hatchlings paddle away from the star, thus averting the crisis.  Thus is a nice chunk of the mystery of the origin of the Discworld cleared up.  (Actually, the spells of the Octavo discuss the origins of the Discworld earlier in the story with Rincewind, but none of them agree on what happened.  And they do not mention anything like this.)  This setup suggests that the Octavo being left behind on the Discworld by the Creator was not an accident.  No word is given on whether each of the new discworlds has its own copy of the Octavo, though considering that the series has a few tens of books, there are plenty of opportunities to find out.

Overall classification:  Humorous fantasy, but not for children.  Beware of the Luggage.

Theological rating:  Q.  (Absurdist.)

Next up:  Equal Rites (Discworld Series, book 3).

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor: “PINK??! BASEMINT CAT”:


Peace.

Aaron

The theology of The Color of Magic (Discworld Series, book 1)

Greetings.

Jewish date:  15 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath ’Emor).

Today’s holidays:  Day 30 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Festival of Ridvan (Bahá’í Faith), Feast Day of Catherine of Siena (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Tito Jackson (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Break Goldman Sachs' Republican filibuster”, “Save BioGems: Take Action: Protect Yellowstone's Wild Buffalo”, “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.”, “Save Funding for Interstitial Cystitis - The Petition Site”, “Take Action: TrueMajority.org:  Stand Against Racism”, “Ask Eric Holder to block Arizona's racist law”, “ColorOfChange.org:  Stop Racial Profiling:  Tell Arizona's Governor that SB 1070 is wrong”, and “Don't let big banks gamble away our money! | Progressive Change Campaign Committee”.

Cover of The Color of Magic

Today’s topic:  The Color of Magic (Discworld Series, book 1) by Terry Pratchett.  

WARNING:  SOME SPOILERS AHEAD!

Before discussing religion in The Color of Magic—or the rest of the Discworld Series, for that matter—it is imperative to briefly explain the world that Pratchett creates.  The Discworld fictional universe is something like what would have happened if Douglas Adams had tried to write Oz books with all the systematics of J. R. R. Tolkien.  It is a well-constructed magical fantasy world in which it seems practically everything is lampooning something from someone else’s fantasy world or something in our world.  And since religion is a huge part of human thought and culture, religion receives the same treatment as everything else.

Discworld theology, so far as is presented in The Color of Magic, is a mishmash of religious ideas from many sources, particularly ones suitable for lampooning.  

The Discworld has a Creator, but He does not appear in this book.  Reportedly He is less mechanically competent but more imaginative than the Creators of other universes.  (And perhaps He is a plagiarist, too, considering what He created.)  His method of creation was magic, specifically with eight spells recorded in the grimoire Octavo.  One of these spells leaped from the Octavo and lodged itself in the head of (then) novice wizard Rincewind, forever keeping him from ever learning any other spells and threatening to force him to say it whenever danger presents itself.  Why the Creator ever left something as dangerous as the Octavo lying around is not explained, though since almost everyone in The Color of Magic is incompetent or crazy (quite common in lampooning), intuition suggests that the Discworld Creator is also incompetent or crazy; He may have simply been careless and forgot to remove the Octavo when He finished the Discworld.

The Discworld itself is a huge disk (hence the name), supported on the backs of four gigantic elephants, which are in turn supported on the back of the gigantic turtle Great A’Tuin.  (The idea of world-elephants comes from Hindu religious tradition, and the world-turtle comes from Native American, Chinese, and Hindu religious traditions.)  At the center of the Discworld is a ten-mile high mountain supporting Dunmanifestin, the abode of the Discworld gods.  (Shades of Mount Olympus).  The gods in this book secretly drive much of the plot by playing a game using mortals as the game pieces.  (Perhaps this is a parody of Albert Einstein’s famous quote “God does not play dice with the universe.”  These gods literally play dice with their universe.)

Note:  Though mortals do worship some of the Discworld gods, mostly they just blame Them instead.  This makes perfect sense considering the game.

Most of the Dunmanifestin gods are quickly knocked out of the game, which turns into a contest between just two gods who are personifications of contradictory principles:  Fate and the Lady.  Fate (unsurprisingly) is the god of predestination, while the Lady is the goddess of luck.  The result of this conflict is something even more cruel than the predestination scenario of Oedipus the King.  The mortals caught between these two gods are Rincewind (long ago expelled from Unseen University the Octavo incident), the tourist Twoflower, a small demon which lives in Twoflower’s camera, and Twoflower’s luggage (which is self-moving, made out of sentient pearwood, and extremely loyal to its master).  Fate is out to kill Rincewind and company, while the Lady is trying to keep them alive.  The result is for Rincewind and company to get stuck in one insanely dangerous situation after another, only to escape each time by the skin of their teeth.  The dark humor of this scenario is heightened by the fact that Twoflower is completely unaware that he is in danger and (even worse) actually seeks out dangerous situations.  Not to mention that Rincewind has to save Twoflower, despite being a coward and the Discworld’s most incompetent wizard.  The contest between Fate and the Lady eventually reaches such a pitch that Fate does something He never ever does:  He strikes a deal with the Arch-Astronomer of Krull.  In exchange for the sacrifice of Rincewind and Twoflower, the Arch-Astronomer is guaranteed success for a venture into space to discover the sex of Great A’Tuin. 

Fate and the Lady are not above enlisting (or drafting) other gods into their game.  The first such beings which act as trouble for Rincewind are dryads, who are angry since he damaged a tree and want to kill him.  The dryads are depicted as being made of a sort of animated wood and having a rather spacious domain inside trees.  Clearly breaking with ancient Greek religion, there are a few male dryads.

Even worse is the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth (AKA the Sender of Eight), an evil being lampooning the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft.  (Because when it comes to insanely dangerous situations, an evil god is extremely hard to beat.)  The Temple of Bel-Shamharoth is supposed to be the most dangerous place on the Discworld and is avoided by everyone with even a smidgeon of sense who has a choice in the matter.  Bel-Shamharoth has a monstrous form with tentacles, sleeps in a special chamber (think “That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons even death may die”), and, at least when it comes to interior decorating, is pathologically obsessed with octagons.  Mentioning the number eight for any reason can wake Ben-Shamharoth.  How He is dealt with makes sense in terms of Him being a chthonic deity.

Even more blatantly plagiarized—and unexpectedly promoted to deity—in The Color of Magic is Death, who is essentially the Grim Reaper.  (A skeleton in black robes with a scythe who takes the souls of the dead.  Who else could He be?)  While Death has assistants, He always comes Himself to collect the souls of wizards (unless He is too busy).  Considering the constant danger Rincewind encounters, Death is always lurking nearby, suggesting that he not resist and accept death willingly.

Also to be noted is the power of will on the Discworld.  In our world, human will can only change reality by being expressed as action.  But on the Discworld, will can interact with magic to manifest itself rather more directly.  One of the places Rincewind and Twoflower visit is the Wyrmberg, an inverted mountain located in the middle of a strong magical field.  The royal family of Wyrmberg uses this field to manifest otherwise impossible dragons into existence, and Greicha the First manages to survive as a talking corpse after being poisoned by his daughter by refusing to die.

Overall classification:  Humorous fantasy.  Some content not suitable for children and may cause certain people’s heads to implode.

Theological rating:  Cookie Monster.  (This is an absurdist book.  It’s getting an absurdist rating.)

Peace.

Aaron