who's Christian?

[Joachim de Fiore]

Thomas Eckhardt wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Doug,
> 
> I have read the excerpts you forwarded with interest. Just a few remarks:
> 
> The first excerpt certainly demonstrates the complexity and depth of Pynchon's
> allusions to religion and mythology. This is not a subject of contention. I am
> not surprised to be told that he was obviously aware of some the more obscure
> relations between antiquity and Christianity, and that there are some veiled
> references to older Deities. At least in his allusions P does indeed return to
> pre-Christian concepts. I have not yet come around to read Adams' book, but it
> seems indispensable to do so in order to grasp the way P uses the notion of a
> mythical mother-goddess being a driving force of history. 

I think Adams is the most important text here. The two
chapters from EHA that I posted are critical. Pynchon makes
extensive use of The Education and Mont Saint Michel and
Chartres.    

>As I stated before,  the "earth-womb" is a decidedly non-Christian idea. 

Obviously, in its orthodoxy today, this is true. Pynchonm
however, loves a heretic and he is an excellent student of
early church history and heresy. 

What Pynchon has done in the novel, is to show us (here the
text is Robert Graves' White Goddess and  it's important, I
think, to note that Pynchon names both of these texts--Adams
and Graves--when he defines Stencils quest) the defeat of
both the Virgin and the earth goddess by V. V. is a usurper,
a force that not only defeats the Virgin and the Earth
goddess, defeats the Unity and Fertility that they
represent, but the people, the civilization for which these
have profound importance. In the early church the Virgin
Mary cult, as it developed, stomping out heresies (just to
note but  one such, there was a Mary Trinity, Mary was
identified with the Triple Goddess, see Graves) was trying
to defeat, in Jungian terms, the Great Mother archetype and
this was fairly successful. So the opposition of fact that
you state, is quite correct, but Pynchon will put them back
together in an inspirited earth.  

In chapter 11 Fausto specifically describes Malta as the
sweet meditarian earth/virgin. There is an obvious Paradox
and conflict (agon) here that the applied author, imvho,
wants sustained.  
 
So the idea of an earth mother is an idea incorporated into
the Virgin cult. This is not only historical, it is clearly
and exactly what the applied author of V. sets up on the
stage of siege Igeman bombings) that is the island of Malta. 

Remember that Fausto is a RC. He is also Maltese. His
description of the island combines the earth goddess and the
Virgin.  The womb of rock is the matriarchial meditarian and
Virgin church, the people unified. Also, when we have a
chance to read Adams we will note that Adams talks about
Nature and the Virgin as forces of Life and Unity. 



We may need to go back to the Jesuit in the sewer and to the
conflict of the Bad Priest and Father A.  Unfortuneatly we
did not have much time to really get at the debate that the
rats/saints have as they are being educated, this because we
got hung up on the apparent colonialism implied by the
priest's actions ( he literally cooks and eats his flock) 
and neglected what I think is much more important, the fact
that these rats are Catholic Saints and the priest,
exhausted and perhaps mad with the suffering (1)  of souls
he has been sewing up on the streets, debates theology with
them (Marx is also discussed) and his tract is lost or
hidden (sorry I don;t have the novel) or supressed and is in
the Vaticam Library I think.   

(1)  suffering--  we can come back to this word too, maybe
Kai will comment on Adorno's essay on Beckett and we can
weave this right into Dave Monroe's party)







Also, it is hardly
> flattering for Catholicism when the children who dissemble the sinister Bad
> Priest find an image of the Crucifixion tattooed on his/her forehead.

Can you elaborate on this, please? Here, one of the
importnat things to note is 
is the children's education by the bad priest and their
Manichaeism. 

PS Thanks David Morris, brilliant post.