"Philosophy will clip an angel's wings." OOPS haha...
10 points to anyone who can tell me who said that without googling it (that's cheating hmph.)
This is kind of a review/musing of The Crucible series, I'm warning ya in advance :D
For those who don’t want to read the spoilers under the cut (and I seriously urge you NOT to if you are even thinking about reading the series) I have a question:
What is your personal interpretation of Angels? Even if you don’t believe in them, what would you imagine them to be like? Are they sexless? Ageless? Do they have feelings? What about Demons or Fallen Angels? If they ‘lie with women’ (i.e. Genesis 6) then what does that make ‘Angels’ capable of?
Title: The Crucible Series
Author: Sara Douglass
Setting: These books are set in late 14th century Europe (mostly England!) and Douglass considered these books, not history per se, but set in a ‘parallel universe.’ I haven’t read any of her other books, but learned that they are set in other worlds. Which might be a shame bad, because her take on history and medieval Europe is pretty fascinating, and I liked it all the more because I could relate to the setting, rather than having to guess. For example, we KNOW that Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barayar is based on Russia, and that Sara Ash based Fancia on France, but none of the characters were real people… I had fun looking up Henry Bolingbroke in my Kings and Queens of England reference book!
Plot: A more detailed plot with spoilers is below (because I want to discuss the characters), but here is a teaser for anyone who hasn’t read it yet: The series is basically about Brother Thomas, a Dominican Monk. I love the fact that Douglass chose the Dominican brotherhood, because they were supposed to guard against hearsay (read = pompous, accusatory arses...I think they were all Virgos). Poor Thomas learns that Demons walk the earth, and the Archangel Michael has chosen him to send them all back into Hell. A certain Lady Margaret however, and even the church itself, are going to make his task super difficult…Especially when she gets pregnant… Oops...
This series was fun because it took such an interesting angle on Christianity, which to me (as a Christian) can be very confusing. For example, why is OldTestament!God (full of wrath and killing and favoritism) so different than NewTestament!God, who Jesus portrayed as loving and inclusive? Did the writers of the old Testament get it all wrong? Did God have a change of heart? Is God capable of making mistakes? But I digress…
Douglass’ interpretation of angels was really quite interesting to me: She portrays them as power hungry cold heartless beings, whose only interest is to control human kind and copulate (why did MS Word ask me if I meant ‘cupcake’ here?) with human women. The results of these angelic trysts are the ‘demons’ super-humans who are the people who make a difference in our world (famous leaders etc.). I thought this similar the ego-centric portrayal of werewolves in Donna Boyd’s series…the preposition that anything accomplished in our world was not done by ordinary humans, but in fact super intelligent ‘werewolves.’
The real kicker was when Douglass revealed that Jesus was in fact NOT the son of God, but in fact the son of all the Angels as a collective. To me, this seemed a good explanation as to the almost diametrical God’s in the Old and New Testaments. (Justice vs. Mercy.) In this series, Jesus in fact spreads the gospel of “Love Saves.” This is different than the real New Testament’s Salvation by Faith alone (that Luther would promulgate) and leans more heavily to the Humanism ideal (of Ancient Greece, the power of _human_ potential.)
I am surprised this book has not caused a lot of stir, in not just the Catholic Church, but among the Fundamentalists as well. It certainly seems more of a so-called ‘threat’ to them than the Golden Compass series…but I imagine that the relative obscurity (and the fact that it was written for adults and not children) has spared it from the wrath of religious leaders… (honestly, I wish so called ‘religious leaders’ would put that kind of time, money and energy and sheer RAGE into something MORE important…say healthcare? Domestic violence? The dwindling middle class? The fact that Corporations pay next to no taxes in the US? (As opposed to in the 1940’s when they paid about 40% of federal revenue. Seriously people WTF!?)
I’ll be writing more about the characters in my next post and discussing the virgin/whore complex, and how it relates to the character of Margaret.
This is kind of a review/musing of The Crucible series, I'm warning ya in advance :D
For those who don’t want to read the spoilers under the cut (and I seriously urge you NOT to if you are even thinking about reading the series) I have a question:
What is your personal interpretation of Angels? Even if you don’t believe in them, what would you imagine them to be like? Are they sexless? Ageless? Do they have feelings? What about Demons or Fallen Angels? If they ‘lie with women’ (i.e. Genesis 6) then what does that make ‘Angels’ capable of?
Title: The Crucible Series
Author: Sara Douglass
Setting: These books are set in late 14th century Europe (mostly England!) and Douglass considered these books, not history per se, but set in a ‘parallel universe.’ I haven’t read any of her other books, but learned that they are set in other worlds. Which might be a shame bad, because her take on history and medieval Europe is pretty fascinating, and I liked it all the more because I could relate to the setting, rather than having to guess. For example, we KNOW that Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barayar is based on Russia, and that Sara Ash based Fancia on France, but none of the characters were real people… I had fun looking up Henry Bolingbroke in my Kings and Queens of England reference book!
Plot: A more detailed plot with spoilers is below (because I want to discuss the characters), but here is a teaser for anyone who hasn’t read it yet: The series is basically about Brother Thomas, a Dominican Monk. I love the fact that Douglass chose the Dominican brotherhood, because they were supposed to guard against hearsay (read = pompous, accusatory arses...I think they were all Virgos). Poor Thomas learns that Demons walk the earth, and the Archangel Michael has chosen him to send them all back into Hell. A certain Lady Margaret however, and even the church itself, are going to make his task super difficult…Especially when she gets pregnant… Oops...
This series was fun because it took such an interesting angle on Christianity, which to me (as a Christian) can be very confusing. For example, why is OldTestament!God (full of wrath and killing and favoritism) so different than NewTestament!God, who Jesus portrayed as loving and inclusive? Did the writers of the old Testament get it all wrong? Did God have a change of heart? Is God capable of making mistakes? But I digress…
Douglass’ interpretation of angels was really quite interesting to me: She portrays them as power hungry cold heartless beings, whose only interest is to control human kind and copulate (why did MS Word ask me if I meant ‘cupcake’ here?) with human women. The results of these angelic trysts are the ‘demons’ super-humans who are the people who make a difference in our world (famous leaders etc.). I thought this similar the ego-centric portrayal of werewolves in Donna Boyd’s series…the preposition that anything accomplished in our world was not done by ordinary humans, but in fact super intelligent ‘werewolves.’
The real kicker was when Douglass revealed that Jesus was in fact NOT the son of God, but in fact the son of all the Angels as a collective. To me, this seemed a good explanation as to the almost diametrical God’s in the Old and New Testaments. (Justice vs. Mercy.) In this series, Jesus in fact spreads the gospel of “Love Saves.” This is different than the real New Testament’s Salvation by Faith alone (that Luther would promulgate) and leans more heavily to the Humanism ideal (of Ancient Greece, the power of _human_ potential.)
I am surprised this book has not caused a lot of stir, in not just the Catholic Church, but among the Fundamentalists as well. It certainly seems more of a so-called ‘threat’ to them than the Golden Compass series…but I imagine that the relative obscurity (and the fact that it was written for adults and not children) has spared it from the wrath of religious leaders… (honestly, I wish so called ‘religious leaders’ would put that kind of time, money and energy and sheer RAGE into something MORE important…say healthcare? Domestic violence? The dwindling middle class? The fact that Corporations pay next to no taxes in the US? (As opposed to in the 1940’s when they paid about 40% of federal revenue. Seriously people WTF!?)
I’ll be writing more about the characters in my next post and discussing the virgin/whore complex, and how it relates to the character of Margaret.