Queen Fennalis is aged:
"''Tis high time I got out of the way, and ready I am to go. A kind of adventure, drawing close to the Otherworld. I begin to make out its shores.'
"Dahut's ideas widened. 'In dreams?' she breathed.
"'Often I cannot be sure if the glimpses come when I sleep or wake.'" (p. 83)
Observations
"Otherworld" could just mean some other realm but, of course, it was widely believed not only that there is another realm but also that each of us enters it temporarily in dreams and eventually at death. Indeed, this belief is deduced from experience. We not only leave our bodies - so it seems - while asleep but also can dream about, i.e., meet, the dead.
The King of Ys assumes an Otherworld, including a hereafter, as a fictional premise.
If, as I believe, there is no hereafter, then those who expect to enter that realm will never know that it does not exist. That is logically odd. If you predict an eclipse at noon tomorrow, then, at 12:01, if there was an eclipse, then we will know that there was one and, if there was no eclipse, then we will know that there was not one whereas, if there is a hereafter, then we will know that there is one but, if there is no hereafter, then we will not know that there is not one. Some would argue that this makes the question meaningless. I do not. But it is logically odd.
4 comments:
There was a gravestone (in Philadelphia, IIRC) marked: "Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and nowhere to go."
But, as Aycharaych would say, his life is complete.
Note that both belief and unbelief are different in the modern period.
For most of humanity's span on earth, the supernatural was just accepted the way we accept atoms or gravity -- it was what 'everyone knew'.
There's a bit in the New Testament where (IIRC) Paul gets mistaken for an appearance of Zeus at a Greek-speaking city in Anatolia.
Note that that was in a -city-, and a Greek city, heir to a fairly rationalist philosophical tradition.
But to ordinary people there, it was perfectly possible that a God in human form might show up at the gates.
That's closer to the mental universe that most humans have experienced than anything in our century.
This didn't stop with Christianization, tho' that set it afoot.
Eg., in the late 17th, early 18th century, a Congregationalist divine named Cotton Mather kept a diary/journal.
He was a highly educated man (at Harvard University) and an upper-class cosmopolite, though in a provincial settings.
But if you read his writing, the private stuff as well as books like WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD (written to defend the Salem witch trials) you'll see that he existed in a universe of spirits and wonders.
Omens were important to him -- the birth of a two-headed calf was significant as evidence of God's Will. One in which heaven was just overhead, hell right beneath your feet, and angels and demons were constantly intervening in human affairs.
A generation or so later, a young man of his background -- affluent, formally educated -- would have a very different outlook, one that eventually spread over more and more of the world.
But Cotton Mather, in an important sense, was still living in a magical universe.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A fascinating mini essay, many thanks.
And I believe "wonders" still happens, which would be better called miracles. The most striking modern example being the cures recorded at Lourdes, giving us evidence of both the mercy of God and that He is real.
Ad astra! Sean
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