This story by Eric Flint is a sequel to a novelized series by Poul Anderson. We appreciate Anderson's works both by discussing and analyzing them and by comparing them to other works of imaginative fiction. Anderson's range is vast. Comparable authors are many. For example, I need not repeat the list of works describing Hell. See All We Need Of Hell II and All We Need Of Hell (linked).
Here I want to focus on composite Hells because Flint's characters, traveling through Anderson's hell universe, enter "'...a Mayan mythos... Close analog, anyway.'" (3, p.169) Are all the analogs there?
In Mike Carey's Lucifer: Evensong, YHWH withdraws and is succeeded as God by His granddaughter, Elaine Belloc, Who dismantles Heaven and Hell and builds a new afterlife because She is trying to move away from all that vultures eating livers stuff. While walking through fragments of afterlives grafted onto a prelinguistic substrate, Elaine's agents, two former demons, see:
a Japanese raiju;
the stairway to Heaven, AMA-NO-HASHIDATE;
CHALMECACIVATI, (scroll down) an Aztec children's afterlife;
AL-SIRAT, the Zoroastrian Purgatory;
Cerberus;
the peach trees of Khun-Lun;
PHLEGETHON, the river of fire;
a macho mead hall, Valhalla;
Remiel, hiding in the defunct hereafters while resisting Elaine Who, I have just realized, has an "El" name.
I thought that all that composite imagination deserved to be recorded.
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Of all the non-Christian faiths, Zoroastrianism strikes me as both the most interesting and the most worthy of respect. I recall how sympathetically Chesterton discussed that religion in his book THE EVERLASTING MAN.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that Buddhism is head and shoulders above all of them for its philosophical analysis, its account of experience and its contemplative practice.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I have to disagree, Buddhism, at best, is too abstract and remote. It's a philosophy, not a religion.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that Buddhism is both a philosophy (analysis of concepts and experience) and a religion (response to transcendence and oneness with the eternal, not understood as a person). It is very immediate, always addressing life here and now.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!]
I still disagree. A religion, by definition, concerns itself with questions about God or gods. Buddha had little or no interest in such issues. And whatever is true in Buddhism can also be found in Christianity. Aside, of course, from those Buddhist ideas Christians have to reject as erroneous.
And I still rate Zoroastrianism as the best of the non-Christian faiths.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that:
religion is response to transcendence;
theism is personification of transcendence, therefore one kind of religion;
Jainism and the Hindu Samkhya system involve no creator plus matter and souls that are uncreated and beginningless;
Taoism is about an impersonal Way;
Buddhism is about a transcendent state.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, but a "transcendence" to what end or point? Lacking any belief in God or even gods, the "transcendence" offered by these "religions" or philosophies is rather pointless.
Frankly, I think that's why both Taoism and Buddhism so easily took over so much from popular pagan religions, such as belief in gods and devils. Such things filled in the gaps and made them more appealing to ordinary people.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We come back to a difference of value judgments. Freedom from/transcendence of greed, hate and delusion seems to me the best possible state.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And Christianity offers that kind of transcendence as well, freedom from hate, greed, delusion is part of what union with God will be like.
Ad astra! Sean
Someone once compared the versions of Buddhism popular in the West to Unitarianism... without the harsh doctrinal rigidity...
Actual Buddhism as it's practiced in countries like Thailand or Tibet where it's the majority faith is much more "religious", frankly supernaturalist, with lots of stuff about the afterlife and lots of divine, semi-divine and demonic beings.
"Unitarianism... without the harsh doctrinal rigidity..." That's a joke?
I am not a Buddhist because I have not taken refuge/received lay ordination and do not accept the whole teaching, particularly not rebirth. Although it is possible to receive instruction in meditation and to attend the group without hearing anything about rebirth and also without anyone ever hassling you to take refuge, the fact remains that the monks and lay Buddhists do implicitly buy into this whole rebirth idea which seems unwarranted to me, a hangover from reincarnation of souls. The Buddha analyzed the idea of souls, then taught "no soul" so (I think) he should not have kept rebirth. Of course, he is supposed to have remembered previous lives but I do not believe that either.
Meditation can be practiced by secularists or supernaturalists. A woman who visited the monastery for instruction in meditation said that she was a Christian. A monk replied, "You continue to believe in that. We will help you to meditate."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: Exactly! "Pure" Buddhism, by itself simply does not appeal that much to ordinary people. So, we see the things you listed creeping in.
Paul: And I do believe in supernaturalism, that is, the allegedly "harsh doctrinal rigidity" of Judaism/Christianity (more precisely, Catholicism).
And I frankly see no NEED for Buddhist meditation. Christianity has its own tradition of meditation and contemplation.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: meditation techniques have a lot of very practical applications -- they're a form of useful self-discipline that make you more effective.
That is true. In zazen, we try to go beyond useful techniques to a basic awareness but practical applications are undeniable. The whole of hatha yoga, commonly called "yoga," developed from meditative postures.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Both: I'm not denying the benefits of meditation and contemplation. What I was saying was that Christianity has its own tradition re meditation. And the benefits cited can be found in that way as well.
Ad astra! Sean
Every tradition should preserve contemplative practices. Zen could have come from Yoga or Taoism as well as from Buddhism.
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