MDMD(5) Chap 16----Questions, Angular

[Steven Maas (CUTR)]

171.30-35 Mason seems to at times suspect that Rebekah's ghost is actually
a creature of evil, out of hell if you will, what with those "black Fumes"
and that "Voice thickening to the timbres of the Beasts" and those
"serpents of Hell. . .lying just the other side of her Shadow."  At these
times he feels "pleasurably helpless," maybe because he thinks that if
this thing (which may or may not be Rebekah, though he tries to reassure
himself that "'tis sure, 'tis his own Rebekah") drags him after her (to
where?) it won't be his fault.  After all, he was helpless, right?

171.35 to 172.4  "She occupies now an entirely new angular relation to
Mercy. . .as if, the instant of her passing over having acted as a Lens,
the rays of her Soul have undergone moral Refraction." Well it says the
Living show Mercy by refusing to act on behalf of Death (Unusually
positive for P. don't you think? Are these hypothetical Living persons
members of the Counterforce?).  Anyhow I can picture this as Mercy and the
Soul of a living person represented by parallel lines.  Maybe the Lens of
Death refracted the rays of her Soul away from the parallel plane so that
her Soul and Mercy are getting further and further apart--forming an
"entirely new angular relation."  Of course I may be reading this entirely
wrong--after all her ghost doesn't seem to get less merciful as the book
goes on.  As Eric says this whole passage seems Fraught with Meaning.
Puts me in mind of that "*parsonical Disguise*" and that hypothetical
hanging (pp. 8-9).

A-and what's that "dire promise"? (172.11)

	Steve Maas