More on the Clergy

[Craig Neumeier]

(In my continuing effort to find a way to post to the list reliably...)

> From: James Palmer <jrp36 at hermes.cam.ac.uk>

> > You're restricting the occult to just magick, yes, not the avatars?
>
> That's what I was thinking of originally, yes.
>
> >   Or would
> > you have (almost) all avatars be people not in the historical record, and
> > (almost) all historical figures not be avatars?  There would be a certain
> > logic to that, since in fact historical figures never disappear.
>
> Good point.  Hadn't thought of that.  This doesn't prevent them from
> having been avatars or Godwalkers, just from actually joining the
> Invisible Clergy.

Right.  But there are quite a few people who by rights should have.

> Interesting issue; which historical characters did disappear, or had
> suitably ambiguous deaths?

See my comments below --

>   For a few
> > archetypes, that doesn't work -- I suppose They must have edited the
> > historical record to make everyone think Alexander the Great just died
> > instead of becoming The Conqueror.
>
> Nah; Nimrod got there earlier, and we don't have any records of his death,
> far as I know.

Nimrod was just a mighty hunter, one of any number of potent kings.  Alexander
conquered the known world while still young and inspired would-be conquerors
for thousands of years.  Frankly, if he isn't an archetype, no one is.  It's
possible that Genghis Khan  dislodged him, though I'd doubt it -- Napoleon was
clearly trying to follow the Alexandrine path.  Though I guess he might have
trying to switch it back.

>  But isn't it surprising that neither
> > Tesla nor Edison ascended?

> Perhaps they were too busy fighting each other to become the Inventor
> (presumably already taken by Da Vinci ... records of his death, anybody?),
> and neither of them actually made it.

Possibly, though it probably wasn't da Vinci -- but there have been lots of
important inventors, even if none of the rest of them got the same sort of
public reputation as Edison.


> Something we haven't seen yet; Renunciated historical characters, kicked
> out of the IC.

I don't have any good candidates, either.

> > (Incidentally, does anyone have any idea what archetype Benjamin Bathurst
> > became?)
>
> I'm going to have to ask "Who?"

Benjamin Bathurst was a wellborn British diplomat during the Napoleonic Wars
(there's a city in Africa named after a cousin of his from the colonial
service). In November, 1809,.en route from Hamburg to Vienna, he was examining
a change of horses on his coach at an inn in Prussia, and stepped briefly out
of sight of his secretary and valet, who were traveling with him.  He has not
been seen since.
H. Beam Piper wrote a minor classic of alternate history, "He Walked Around
the Horses," about the confusion BB caused on appearing in a timeline without
American or French Revolutions, carrying authentic diplomatic papers and
letters describing absurd events.

> ------------------------------
> >Interesting issue; which historical characters did disappear, or had
> >suitably ambiguous deaths?
>
> Jesus
> Mohammed
> Buddha

No, no, and no. Jesus cannot have ascended to the Clergy, as his archetype is
dependent on *dying* -- and after that it's too late.  Muhammad's tomb is in
Medina -- there *is* a story about him ascending to Heaven, which is what you
may be thinking of, but it was in a dream and he came back to continue his
career for several years.  There are stories about later Buddha-figures
disappearing, but I don't believe any of them were applied to Siddhartha.

>From a Buddhist perspective, I suppose the statosphere ought to be just
another illusion for the Buddha to transcend.  From a Muslim perspective,
there were lots of other Prophets before Muhammad, and probably Jesus or
Elijah is the archetype. (According to Muslim teaching, Christ was never
crucifed; that was just an illusion while Jesus himself was taken up into
Heaven.)  From a Christian perspective, it is very convenient that Jesus'
archetype is the sort that makes it impossible for him to ascend to the
Clergy, since otherwise he would not have been completely human if he failed
to ascend.

> Ambrose Bierce
> Jimmy Hoffa
> Judge Crater

Fair enough.

Enoch certainly, and possibly Elijah.  Possibly Lao-tze, and there are
actually several Chinese stories about people ascending to immortality,
sometimes in full view.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are similar stories
in India.

Somebody else mentioned Rasputin and Hitler.  They found Rasputin's body,
though. Hitler--

Actually, I envision Adolf as an interesting case of archetype engineering: he
was the Demagogue godwalker, surely, and all set to ascend.  But rather than
trying to unfit him his mystical enemies (mortal or ascended) deliberately
chose to delay him. They stop at the end of the war, he disappears from the
bunker (which the Soviets cover up, of course), and the Demagogue archetype
has been tweaked slightly. It's not just more evil than it was back when
Demosthenes in charge (although it is, clearly): Hitler ascended amidst the
shattered remains of everything he hoped to achieve.
Thus the Demagogue archetype has become mystically associated with ultimate
failure, its further attempts to influence events always twist and go wrong
(hence the absolute repudiation of Naziism since), and avatars like Jim Jones
-- or Randy Douglas, one assumes -- can do atrocities here and there but never
really have the sort of major effect they dream of.  Quite a neat piece of
work, really, to pull the fangs of an archetype like that.


Craig Neumeier, LHN