Monday 23 February 2015

Anubelea

OK. It is quite simple. The planet Ishtar is:

in orbit around Bel;
also close to Ea;
scorched every thousand years by the close approach of Anu.

Later, he travelled widely and joined the Triadic faith which personifies the three suns, whether literally or allegorically:

the main sun, Bel, is the sometimes terrible life-giver;
remote Ea symbolises the necessities of winter and death;
Anu, whose millennial approaches disrupt the planetary environment, brings chaos but also renewal.
-copied from here.

Life, death, chaos/renewal - Hinduism.

The Ishtarians variously name Anu:

the Red One;
the Stormkindler;
the Burner;
the Demon Sun;
the Invader;
the Marauder;
the Wicked Star;
Skeela;
the Rover;
the Torchbearer;
the Cruel Star;
Abbada, the outlaw god;
or by a series of epithets, none to be used twice in succession in case this draws its attention to the speaker.

The long-lived Ishtarians have learned ways to preserve the essentials of their civilization through Fire Time, the millennial scorching of their planet by Anu.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Dang! Now I wonder if I should reread THE STAR FOX and FIRE TIME. And I did finish rereading GENESIS only about a week ago. Problem is, I've started reading an SF novel by a Chinese writer named Liu Cixin called THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM. So far, it seems good and interesting, beginning as it does in the madness of Mao's lunatic "Cultural Revolution."

After Liu's book, I need to ponder which of Poul Anderson's books to reread. Either THE STAR FOX books or some thing else.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
You just can't keep up!
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Ha!!! Too true!

Sean

Jim Baerg said...

- Mao's lunatic "Cultural Revolution."

A friend of mine was born in China in the early 1960s so she & her parents lived through that. She was studying in Canada when the Tiananmen square protests & suppression occurred, so she stayed in Canada. I think I will ask her for a bit more about her experiences with those.
She complains that her education in China gave her next to no history, so I find myself telling her about history. Eg: just before she visited France I was summarizing a lot of what I had read about the history of that country.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Jim!

Tyrannical and totalitarian regimes like that of Maoist China WOULD keep a tight control on the teaching and study of history. To make sure only the image and the "facts" the regime favors would be believed by the people.

The ruthless censoring of history in China is all the more striking when you consider what a deep and rich tradition in the writing of history that country has. Some of the books I have are translations of parts of Chinese historical classics like THE RECORDS OF THE GRAND HISTORIAN (Ssu-ma Chien) or from the HISTORY OF THE FORMER HAN. Or modern works like 1587 A YEAR OF NO SIGNIFICANCE: THE MING DYNASTY IN DECLINE, by Ray Huang.

Ad astra! Sean