Thursday, 30 August 2018

Theontology

Poul Anderson, The Byworlder, I.

No one creates new New Age movements like Poul Anderson. Let me try to summarize, rather than quote, a writing of the founder (?), Joswick:

we mentally construct our apprehension of reality;

therefore, every imagining contains partial, distorted truth and is one of many signs pointing toward the cosmic oneness called God;

by meditating on everything, we open ourselves to divine apprehension.

Theontologists choose to seek God through "cults" of:

Spirits
Jesus
Brahma
Amida
Snake
Oracle

They process in "...seven columns, the last for postulants...to the Nason's Peak trail."(?) where they have erected an altar "To the Unknown God.".. (p. 8) They have come to believe that the extrasolar visitor is "...a direct manifestation of God." (p. 9)

More direct than anything else? Would human astronauts become direct manifestations merely by crossing an interstellar distance?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The way Theontologists regard the alien orbiting Earth reminded me of how some humans founded similar sects teaching veneration of the Others in THE AVATAR. And I would not be surprised if some non human rational beings behaved as foolishly as this if human space explorers found them. Simply recall the Star Believers and their opponents the Demonists, on the Merseia of "Day of Burning."

Sean