MDMD Tenebrae & Sappho

[Terrance]

Tenebrae  (Roman Catholic Church. The office of matins and lauds sung on
the last three days of Holy Week, with a ceremony of candles. Latin,
Darkness, Shadow, Tenebræ is the name given to the service of Matins and
Lauds belonging to the last three days of Holy Week. This service, as
the "Cæremoniale episcoporum" expressly directs, is to be anticipated
and it should be sung shortly after Compline "about the twenty-first
hour", i.e. about three p.m. on the eve of the day to which it belongs.
"On the three days before Easter", says Benedict XIV (Institut., 24),
"Lauds follow immediately on Matins, which in this occasion terminate
with the close                  of day, in order to signify the setting
of the Sun of Justice and the darkness of the Jewish people who knew not
our Lord and condemned Him to the gibbet of the cross."

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14506a.htm
Candlemas: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03245b.htm
Purification of the Blessed Virgin (Greek Hypapante), Feast of the
Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Observed 2 February in the Latin
Rite.

This Botticelli is the one in the Candlemas Chapter of one of Pynchon's
known sources for the Christian Calendar. 
http://pefab.webpark.cz/Galerie/bo-mm.jpg

 Tenebrae, a smart and very witty young woman, seems to be kept in the
shadows, some of her own making, some cast by the men and boys.
Moreover, Brae is a mere shadow on the patriarchal Sun/Son culture she
lives in. She is an mere embroidress, while the boys carry the all
important machine. She is  working on something the family seems to
think too big and too difficult for her.  With her needles (she
sutures-suture self-fabric not bodies, a  traditional woman's craft. Yet
with her needles, she also needles old Wicks,  Mason & Dixon, the men. 
In the imaginary book (History of the New Planet) the children have
begun to write, the boys provide the Wars, while Brae contributes the
scientific inventions and useful crafts. Note too, that as the family
converges on the orrey, she finds herself in the corner. She finds
herself next to cousin Ethelmer.  Ethelmer remembers her the time when
they cut a lock of her hair, fashioned it into a comet and attached it
to the orrey.    

Comet: A celestial body, observed only in that part of its orbit that is
relatively close to the sun, having a head consisting of a solid nucleus
surrounded by a nebulous coma up to 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million
miles) in diameter and an elongated, curved vapor tail arising from the
coma when sufficiently close to the sun. Comets are thought to consist
chiefly of ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, and water. From Greek
(astr) komts, long-haired (star) from kom, hair.] 

There are certain parallels and doubles, "mappings onto" in these
companion chapters (i.e., 9&10). The hair as a symbol, the theme of
female sexuality, a fetish, and the subjugation of woman. 

And the woman oppressed, oppress  other woman. 

Vrou Vroom, Johanna is married to the Puritanical Pipe smoking
Cornelius--Cornelius, Peter von?, but she longs for an Adonis. She
settles for seducing the widower, Mason, and sends her Slave to his bed.
She expect to sell the bleached offspring of their pimped affair on the
salve block. 
When Austra goes to Mason, he is appalled, but Austra questions his
patriarchal belief in the freedom of English woman. And American too. 
Elizabeth is introduced by the narrator as the WIFE OF Mr. J. Wade Le
Spark
Sultan--a powerful person. 

TBC