Jenzik And Maleldil

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 11.

Lenard, escaped from his Dalesmen captors, leads his Lann warriors into the City. When one warrior mumbles that such places are cursed, Lenard snaps that the power of their own gods is with them. The warrior replies:

"'Our gods are far away in the north...'" (p. 107)

- but their "Doctor," i.e., priest, claims to carry what he calls "'...the House of Jenzik...'" (ibid.) with the god in it. After chanting ancient words over "...a small iron box...," (ibid.) he claims that he and his companions are now guarded against spells.

Carl thinks that the chanted words:

"...must be in the old language itself, which had changed greatly since the Doom." (ibid.)

But might they be even older? Latin? What is in the box? The god's name begins, "Je..." (Carl thinks that he makes out a few words but many English words have Latin roots.)

If someone who has been displaced or exiled believes that he has left his gods behind, then there are several possible solutions:

a god can be carried around or made to be effectively present;

other gods are really the same gods under different names;

one god is omnipresent.

Christian slaves in the Roman Empire had the first and third solutions. One god can be both omnipresent and also specially, sacramentally, present in material form in a particular place or places.

In Chapter 1 of Perelandra, Lewis as narrator mentions a mysterious being called Maleldil, obeyed elsewhere in the Solar System, adding:

"I knew what Ransom supposed Maleldil to be."

CS Lewis, Perelandra IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 145-348 AT 1, p. 155.

En route to Ransom's cottage, Lewis passes a "...little Wesleyan chapel..." (p. 154) Is Maleldil more actively present there than anywhere else on Lewis' journey?

Most sf fans are not concerned about such theological issues.

Pulling Everything Together, Maybe

The previous post, Gods And Wars, referred to a battle between Dalesmen and Lann. For the Dalesman battle formation, see A Blunt Wedge. For three young Dalesmens' discussion of whether someone must have made the world, see not only Just A Story but also Someone. For one of several items seen, in different contexts, against the Milky Way, see Progress. And that Milky way reference is part of yet another of Poul Anderson's vivid descriptive passages appealing to at least three of the senses:

"Carl lay in tall, wet grass, hearing the sigh of wind and the distant creaking song of crickets. Looking upward, he saw the [guard] go past, a dim sheen of metal against the Milky Way."

-Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 9, p. 97.

Sighing wind is appropriate to the Dalesmen's post-battle exhaustion whereas the crickets are indifferent to human conflict.

Gods And Wars

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 9.

I have summarized Andersonian battle scenes on land, at sea or in space before. We have just read through and past Anderson's description of the battle between the Dalesmen and the Lann. Military sf is a distinct sub-genre. Some readers appreciate this aspect of works by Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling. Such readers might even include military experts or veterans, which I am not. My expertise is philosophy, which explains why I focus on textual references to "gods" rather than on accounts of combat. However, Anderson addresses every aspect of human experience so this blog welcomes comments from readers who focus on other aspects - and also from those who read something other than sf! which is what I should spend the rest of this evening doing. 

Only one more full day before I am in London Thursday to Sunday.

Just A Story

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 9.

Carl wonders whether the gods are not just a story. Tom thinks that:

"'Someone must have made the world...'" (p. 96)

Why? Someone making things is part of a world. The universe has not been made by anyone but has developed from the simplest of elements by natural processes. I was brought up on arguments for the existence of God. People tried to rationalize a received belief in every way that they could think of. CS Lewis reasoned his way to theism but I disagree with his reasoning. Essentially: if rational mental processes are effects of non-rational material processes, then there is no basis for their rationality. But reasoning is a valid process. Therefore, reason has always existed, in God before He imparted it to men. (This is my summary of an argument that I used to accept because I wanted to. Anyone who would like to discuss it further can read Lewis' Surprised By Joy and Miracles and get back to me.) Lewis' linear causality is an inadequate explanatory framework. Organisms interacting with their environments became conscious and manipulative. Reason emerged as a way to think about and act on the environment. Sometimes it works. People learned how to make and control fire. But reason remains surrounded by irrationalities as we realize as soon as we start to argue about anything important!

Carl says that he could believe in the great God of the time vault but not in the small, childish gods of the stories. I question whether a centuries-old monotheism would recede before primitive polytheism even in post-nuclear war conditions. However, when Carl gets as far as believing in his "great God," philosophical discussion can begin.

Giving Thanks

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 8.

In battle:

"The Dalesmen were holding - the Dalesmen stood firm - oh, thank all gods!" (p. 84)

There are times when I feel grateful but to whom or to what? Expressing thanks for the course of events is part of animizing nature. We have been selected to interact with other persons, therefore sometimes to thank them, so we interact in the same way with impersonal forces and thus the gods are born. But I still want to feel, if not grateful, then at least appropriately appreciative of aspects of actuality. 

But is it appropriate to thank "all gods" during a battle? Surely some of the gods will be on the other side, whether literally or metaphorically? If I were asked to pray in public, then the only honest prayer that I would be able to offer would be as follows:

"All gods, we ask your help. But, if not, we'll do it ourselves."

That might sound disrespectful but, in fact, it is as respectful as I can make it: 

first, by acknowledging that it is possible that I am mistaken to believe that no superhuman beings exist;

secondly, by affirming that we should not just pray (if we believe in praying) but should both pray and act. 

The gods expect action. Krishna speaks the Bhagavad Gita on the Battlefield of Kurukshetra and urges his friend, Arjuna, to act in the world, not to withdraw from it. Theists and non-theists can agree on the necessity of action.

Twilight

We posted once yesterday but on another blog, here. The Jade Emperor is the supreme deity in the Taoist pantheon.

In Poul Anderson's Vault Of The Ages, four of the twenty chapter headings refer to gods:

10 Vengeance of the Gods

11 The Gods Are Angry

16 Defiance of the Gods

20 Twilight of the Gods

In addition, Chapter 19 is entitled "The Last Battle," an apocalyptic phrase. We do not expect literal gods to come on-stage but will there be a change in human attitudes to these "...great shadowy powers..."? I think that Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods" means the beginning of an Age of Men, as Valhalla burns in the background.

In The Near Future

Let us look ahead, not for the next five hundred years, just for the next two weeks. Tomorrow will be 30 June and I will probably end this month with a round number of posts, thus with this one. The coming Thursday through Sunday will be spent in London (including travel time), therefore away from this computer. The following Tuesday, I will hopefully visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop. A day trip to another town is planned for the following Friday. What will happen globally during this fortnight or so? I confidently predict that something unexpected will occur.

In "day after tomorrow" sf, the recognizably familiar contemporary world is the setting for a revolutionary invention or discovery. James Blish refers to a dying breed of attic inventors. His readers remember Frankenstein, the Time Traveller, Cavor, the Invisible Man, Doctor Moreau, Robur etc. Blish's Adolph Haertel discovers anti-gravity and flies a tree hut to Mars. In CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, scientists keep a guillotined head alive although the intelligence that speaks through the "Head" is demonic, not human. In Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, the discovery is that animal and human intelligence is increasing because Earth has moved out of an inhibiting radiation field. In all these cases, the point is that mankind interacts with the cosmos - with gravity, Mars, hyper-somatic intelligences, cosmic radiation - not just with itself. The universe waits while governments fight over parts of the Earth. (I was not leading towards that conclusion but now it seems inevitable.)

CS Lewis wrote somewhere that only the first visit to another world is of interest to a reader with imagination. We see what he meant without necessarily agreeing in detail. When a Lunar or Martian base has become an everyday environment for colonists and space travellers, then it has lost its newness. However, Anderson maintains the planet Avalon as an intriguing environment through three short stories and one novel.

Ad astra.

What Should The Lann Do?

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 7.

Lenard, captured son of the Chief of the Lann invaders, explains that his people - hunters, herders and small farmers in a harsh and barren country - have always fought cold, rain, blight and each other for diminishing resources while their numbers steadily grow. Brothers fight like wild dogs. Now they have come together to attack possessors of better lands. Dalesmen will be displaced or become servants. The Lann do not vote but follow their Chief. They will not accept an offer of empty forest tracts and, in any case, Lenard does not think that there is enough room for both tribes.

If I were the Lann Chief, then I would accept any offer of empty tracts while also sending scouts or leading groups further south in the hope of finding empty lands to colonize. But, if I were a Lann, then I would not become Chief. I would leave home and trek south alone or with a small group to live by hunting or by finding employment among other tribes.

An individual solution should be possible even if a social solution is not. 

See you in Sky-Home. (I don't think so but it is a good story.)

Shadowy Powers

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 7.

"...the gods..." have been mentioned since p. 21 but that becomes just a phrase, a part of the spoken language. At last, we get some sense of what is meant:

"...those great shadowy powers of sky and earth, fire and water, growth and death and destiny, before which men quailed." (p. 72)

Powers to be feared and propitiated? Elsewhere, Poul Anderson shows us "the gods" developing beyond that earliest and most primitive of roles. See Gods And Men.

A Unitarian that I knew in Dublin read the Roman philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, and told me, "He talks about 'the gods,' you know, but you could easily replace that with 'God' and the rest would remain the same." 

I am happy to have "the gods," including the monotheist versions, angels and saints etc, in speech and literature, provided only that we have moved beyond that earliest stage of fearing them as if they were ghosts.

The universe is haunted by an awesome presence.

The Old Enemy

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 5.

After driving off a tiger with arrows, Carl mentally lists and reviews the enemies of men:

tiger

bear

snake

dog packs

demons

ghosts

gods

night 

storm

flood

fire

drought

winter

man

That last enemy, remorseless, deadly, old, strong and crafty, wrecked civilization and has returned as taboos and barbarians.

Exactly the same phrase:

"...that enemy was old and strong and crafty." (p. 58)

- occurs both here and in Anderson's first future history series.

See previous posts on the "protean enemy."

Vault... is pre-future history.