antw. Re: Why Sista be messin wit the Devil

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 + And when these things had come to pass, then Pistes came and appeared
over the matter of kaos, which had been expelled like an aborted
fetus --- since there was no spirit in it. For all of this kaos was 
limitless darkness and bottomless water. Now when Pistes saw what had
resulted from her defect, she became disturbed. And the disturbance 
appeared, as a fearful product; it rushed to her in the kaos. She 
turned to it and blew into its face in the abyss, which is below
all the heavens.


And when Pistes Sophia desired to cause the thing that had no 
spirit to be formed into a likeness and to rule over matter
and over all her forces, there appeared for the first time
a ruler, out of the waters, lionlike in appearance, androgynous,
having great authority within him, and ignorant of whence he had
come into being. Now when Pistas Sophia saw him moving about 
in the, ugh, depth of the waters she said to him, "Child, pass 
through to here," whose equivalent is "Yalda Baooth" ...


(Damn, it's hard to type with this ice-hockey-mask on my face.) 


In the Rainbow, where Pynchon gives us an entire archaeology of 
occidental gnosticism, the feminist spiritual perspective appears
in the character of Geli: Sister Angelika, so to speak -


Cannot say that the theo-mythological stuff functions too well in
this Weinland book. Or, as David Cowart has it: "Vineland is not the 
postmodern Finnegans Wake". (Neither is M&D, btw). All this family
and female perspective stuff is just a little bit too simple. Yes,
Katia, it's a trick and it doesn't work ... Lacks lyric complexity.


Gotta go spicing the pumpkin soup -- 


Happy Halloween! Michael Myers *