MDMD: What is this junk?

[Terrance]

Mark Wright AIA wrote:
> 
> Are there any "Gnosticism" enthusiasts in the room?  And didn't
> Zoroaster spake sommat on t'Topick?
> I am way out of my depth in the theological stuff, but the line
> reminded me of the doctrine of the "demiurge", a sort of semi-divine
> employee of God who did the dirty work of putting the whole works up
> and in motion. Pynchon's engineers, in dealing with the matter in hand,
> never seem to get it quite right, initiate awful chains of unintended
> consequences, and generally serve Powers they do not themselves
> understand. Engineer also has roots in "enginer" -- one who designs and
> builds the engins of war. Such an Enginer might well be Dark.
> 
> Mark

Thanks Mark, I think you are right on.  I'm thinking that 
Gnosticism, as we find it in the novel V. and in GR, is here in M&D,
every bit as tricky because of how close these ideas come to the
christian/Eatern religion Wicks longs for and mourns the loss of (both
his own and the worlds) and to other Pynchon norms.  
In M&D, I think, Gnosticism is not nearly as important as it is in GR.
More important,
is Freemasonry. The idea that the measurements, the calculations, can't
be completed by one generation, as if the Dark engineer designed the
universe to prevent men from calculating in one life span, his design,
to remind them of their preterit Mortality and that they should seek to
measure it nonetheless is, as Otto pointed out and as you point out
here, Enlightenment thinking and Gnostic. 

http://members.home.net/rsampson60/mason/geometry.htm