ATDTDA (5.3) - Word Power

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Robin:

>I know that magical systems are supposed to
>invoke all sorts of spirits, some potentially world-wrecking Deities,
>and "Ritual Reluctance" has everything to do with that. "Be careful
>what you invoke, it's supposed to turn up." And high ceremonial
>magick (loads of examples in AtD) is supposed to invoke these
>sorts of powers. The powers might be part of some divine interlocking,
>universally encompassing overall plan, but invoking some of these
>powers can wreck havock on the conjuror, not to mention the planet
>at large..

I think this naming business has more than one side to it. The aspect you 
point out above - summoning/invoking certain (magical) powers by saying 
their (often secret) name out loud - is certainly an important part of it: 
it's what's at play in the scene where Merle is reluctant to name the 
Anti-Stone, for instance, and his refusal to say the name out loud in this 
instance can easily be construed as "Ritual Reluctance." But the Wilderness 
Creature/Glacier/odalisque in the Vormance section seem somehow different to 
me: They DON'T have a name, not even a secret one, and can hardly be 
summoned in that way. They are, literally, unnamed, they're beyond grammar, 
and thus they seem to be more closely connected to that other aspect of the 
naming theme in Pynchon's work: the aspect where naming equals taming: where 
something hitherto uncontained, some ancient force of nature, can actually 
to a certain extent be tamed once it enters the prisonhouse of language. I 
see these creatures and the glacier as instances of the Sublime, the terror 
which is just beyond language. Their very namelessness add to the terror 
they can instill, and naming such ancient forces from beyond language is not 
so much a matter of summoning them as tying them into the Linnean grid of 
the indicative. Naming them doesn't unleash them; it places them in the 
realm of the known.

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