"Overhead he saw a painted roof, where a youth killed a bull, and the Bull was the Sun and the Man."
-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 7, p. 92.
Manse Everard of the Time Patrol understands the dominant world-view in Persia in 542 A.D. Peasants make offerings not to the Mother of God but:
"...to an Earth Mother who was old in this land when the Aryans came, and that was in a predawn past." (ibid.)
A Time Patrolman is able to travel not only physically but also conceptually. He experiences the past and sees, sometimes even experiences, what the present would have been if the past had been different.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Some Catholics might have tried to express this Mystery more precisely: at the consecration a validly ordained priest transubstantiates the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ because of His power passing thru the minister of the Eucharist.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that the Indo-Europeans usually had a female deity paired with their male ones.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Such as Zeus having Hera as his sister and wife. And the Romans had Jupiter paired with Juno.
I rather vaguely thought most pagan pantheons had the male gods paired with goddesses.
Ad astra! Sean
Often, but not always. One interesting bit of the IE pantheon is that most of its descendants have male and female war-deities. Usually the male one is like Ares, a berserker, and the female like Athena, who was a -thoughtful- fighter.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I do recall how the Greeks had Athena not being a hot tempered impulsive berserker like Ares.
Ad astra! Sean
Are there any more examples of Ares-Athena-like pairs?
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