EN 2215 S/F I Zelazny Lecture

Lectures 7/8 - Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light (1967)

1 Lévi-Strauss on myth

2 The Space Travel Story

3 Hinduism & Indian Mythology

4 Buddhism & Buddhist Doctrine

5 The Tension between Hinduism & Buddhism

6 The Prometheus Myth

7 The Anti-Prometheus Argument

8 Christianity/Islam

1 Lévi-Strauss on myth

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning (New York: Schocken Books, 1978)

· “in mythology the world over, we have deities or supernaturals, who play the role of intermediaries between the powers above and humnanity below. ” (32)

· “Mythology is static, we find the same mythical elements combined over and over again, but they are in a closed system … in contradistinction with history, which is … an open system.” (40)

· “the gap which exists in our minds to some extent between mythology and history can probably be breached by studying histories which are conceived as not at all separated from but as a continuation of mythology.” (43)

2 The Space Travel Story

o I am one of the First you know. One of the first to come here, to build, to settle. (13)

o The body merchants are become the Masters of Karma. (52)

o They had been puny in the early days, struggling to discipline their mutant powers with drugs, hypnosis, medication, neurosurgery – forging them into Attributes – and across the ages, those powers had grown. (231)

3 Hinduism & Indian Mythology

· Polytheism

o The Trimurti (Trinity) of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva – Creator, Preserver, Destroyer: … Vishnu rules, preserving (256)

o The power of Shiva is the power of Chaos (138)

o Animism and Personification: Yama (Death), Agni (Fire)

o Kali and Mother Goddesses

· Orders of Beings: gods, demons, humans

o Yakshas, Kumbhandas, Nagas (101), Negas (103), Raksha, Prajapati (114), demons (140), etc.

· Avatars: The reincarnations of god

o Mahasamaatman, Kalkin, Manjusri, Siddhartha, Tathagatha, Binder, Maitreya, the Enlightened One, Buddha, Sam. (11)

o I’m quite fond of this world, although it wallows in an age of darkness. (60)

· Karma: the doctrine of fate or destiny as the outcome of one’s actions

o The definition of bad karma is anything our friends the gods don’t like. (53)

o Tak of the Archives …was transmigrated into the body of an ape …to work off his karmic burden. (187)

· Rebirth & Metempsychosis: The transmigration of the soul through several bodies

o “Supposing I’m wrong … how shall I fail?” “You shall be required to work off your karmic burden in a lesser form”. (60)

o from body to body one does retain a similar mind-matrix, despite the fact that a different brain is involved. (203)

· Moksha: Release from duty, also release from the Karmic the cycle of rebirth

3 Buddhism & Buddhist Doctrine

· Maya: the world (Samsara) as illusion

o Much of the world is illusion, yet the forms of that illusion follow a pattern which is part of a divine reality. (27)

o To dwell within Samsara … is to be subject to the works of those who are mighty among dreamers. (35)

· The ineffable: the essence of truth as the unnameable

o forget the names you bear … Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves (34)

o I look upon the flows of energy which are your true being – not the flesh that masks them. (118)

· Dukha: the world as sorrow produced by the unappeasable aspect of human desire

o He had been touched by the lusts of the demon-lord … he knew that within himself, as within every man, there lies a demon capable of responding to his own kind. (127)

o bear that human curse called guilt? (128)

o all men have within them that which is dark and that which is light… His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires … his ideals are at odds, with his environments (130)

· Enlightenment: to perceive the truth beyond illusion and desire

· Atman: The soul; also, one who has achieved enlightenment (Sama-atman: he who is one with all other souls)

o Tathagatha, meaning He Who Has Achieved (76)

o The Way of the Eightfold Path, the glory of Nirvana, the illusion of the world and the chains the world lays upon a man. (88)

· Nirvana: Release from the cycle of rebirth

o I shall return to being a man, and I shall let the people keep the Buddha who is in their hearts. (254)

4 The Tension between Hinduism & Buddhism

· The caste-system: Kshatriya (warrior), Brahmin (priest), Vaishya (trader), Shudra (Worker)

o The local Brahmins did not approve of the antiritualistic teachings of the Buddha … never voicing the world tir-thika – heretic. (79)

o Better to incorporate than struggle to extirpate … So after you have disposed of Sam, you will have been the real Tathagatha. (169)

5 The Prometheus Myth

o to oppose the Order of Life and the gods who ordained it so. (5)

o It is difficult to stir rebellion among those to whom all things are good. (37)

o We of the crew should be assisting them, granting them the benefits of the technology we had preserved, rather than building ourselves an impregnable paradise and treating the world as a combination game preserve and whore house. (61)

o One man, brief in space, must spread his opposition across a period of many years ... a one-man antithesis to Heaven (107)

o I will hate heaven with every breath that I draw. (150)

o This is an age for the consolidation of man’s gains upon this world. This is a time for the sharing of knowledge, not the crossing of blades. (161)

o Accelerationism – it is a simple doctrine of sharing. It proposes that we of Heaven give unto those who dwell below of our knowledge and powers and substance. This act of charity would be directed to the end of raising their condition of existence to a higher level, akin to that which we ourselves occupy…. The result of this, of course, would be that there would no longer be any gods, only men. (166-67)

o The twin beats, Buddhism and Accelerationism, draw a single chariot. (191)

o The printing press was rediscovered in a place called Keenset, by the river Vedra. Experiments with sophisticated plumbing were also going on in this place. Two very fine Temple artists also appeared on the scene, and an old glasscutter made a pair of bifocals and began grinding out more. Therefore, indications were that one of the city-states was undergoing a renaissance. (200)

o I decided that mankind could live better without gods. If I disposed of them all, people could start having can openers and cans to open again, and things like that, without fearing the wrath of Heaven. (202)

o Accelerationism … represents the one force in the world to oppose Heaven. (211)

o If we win, Siddhartha, toppling the Celestial City, breaking the old religion, freeing man for industrial progress… giving classes on the internal combustion engine to all the local servants … geology, mining, metallurgy, petroleum, chemistry …(212)

o The microscope and the telescope have been rediscovered. (228)

o (Kubera) he has dwelled in hiding over the years, leaking scientific knowledge into the world. (235) ... The bicycle was rediscovered. (259)

6 The Anti-Prometheus Argument

o We must not permit them to be accelerated into an industrial revolution and so destroy the first stable society on this planet…. Gods and goddesses are basically parent figures… (62)

o You picked a pacifist creed with which to oppose an active one. (107)

o Godhood is… a condition of being… Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe (149)

o He is a bomb-throwing anarchist, a hairy-eyed revolutionary. He seeks to pull down Heaven itself. (165)

o Each man eventually receives his just deserts … and so each man, rather than society as a sudden whole, may come into the divine inheritance which the ambitious Accelerationists wished to scatter wholesale before everyone, even those who were unready. You can see that this attitude was dreadfully unfair and proletarian-oriented. What they really wanted to do was to lower the requirements for godhood. (167)