Ith's spoilermode essay!
SO UH. You may have heard me (or castmates) call Ith a Jesus sometime in the past. Now, in camp, "jesus" can mean a lot of things.
SHORT VERSION: "ITH IS JESUS" IS A MORE-OR-LESS LITERAL STATEMENT. If I linked you here for threading purposes, this is pretty much all you really need to know, unless you're curious.
Long version: Ith's backstory is essentially a retelling of Milton's Paradise Regained, except with dinosaurs and randomly some cats thrown in. But it's not simply some extremely involved literary allusion.
Remember the Winged Defender? The Athena/Thor/Archangel Michael/prototype-of-whatever-other-gods-angels-and-or-demiurgic-beings (this class of entity being generally referred to as a "Power" in canon) living in Ronan's head? Ith has a situation somewhat similar to that. Kind of. Possibly. Canon is rather vague on what the relationship entails. It's. In this case, the term "avatar" might not be entirely accurate, or else the form of avatarization isn't the same as the one expressed in Ronan.
STORY TIME. In the first book of FW, The Book of Night with Moon, Ith and a few other characters essentially become a few of the most high-up Powers. If you've read the second book in YW--the one with the reenactment--it was something like that, except it wasn't staged. Someone spoke a spell without knowing precisely what the effects would be, and. They all turned into gods, and brought about a reenactment of a feline myth occurred, wherein... actually, I'm not going to spoil all of it, go and read the book. But Ith's part, the Bright Serpent--Ith's god, Ith's Power--wasn't originally in the script.
Thousands of years ago, the dinosaurs were tricked by the Power that created death--called, in this case, the Old Serpent--and thus led themselves into fiery devastation. This story echoes Paradise Lost; the story told in TBONWM--or Ith's part of it, anyway, is, like I said, a retelling of Paradise Regained. The turning point is the introduction of the Bright Serpent, which is cast as the redemption of the old story and of the Old Serpent's betrayal of Ith's people. Ith's action in TBONWM was to free his people from the misery and subjugation brought about by the Old Serpent's trick, and, in doing so, became the symbolic and spiritual "Father" of his people.
Now, in the next book, the other characters' avatarization is pretty much forgotten and never comes up again. And I would have assumed this was true of Ith as well... except for some things he himself says in the next book: "...the Bright One Who is a shape I wear these days sometimes, or Who wears me--whichever." Additionally, in reference to a spell which invokes the power of the Bright Serpent: "Yes... there is a piece of my name, and another piece. And a piece of the Bright Serpent's name..."
In this second case, it does seem that he is referring to himself and the Bright Serpent as two separate entities. However, from an in-universe perspective, the significance of that interpretation is dampened heavily, because of the heavy emphasis placed upon fluidity of identity among the Powers.
For example: Aaurh the Mighty is a feline Power who is most closely equated with the "Michael" Power, who is in turn, as the One's Champion, equated also with Thor and Athene of the human idiom; but Athene has completely distinct parallel of equal standing to Aaurh in the Feline pantheon, Hrau'f the Silent. DD keeps equating the "Michael Power" with the "Winged Defender" and the "One's Champion", but nearly always makes sure to qualify that with something along the lines of "inasmuch as such parallels can be made at all with the Powers, who see identity and selfness differently than mortals do...."
At any rate, it doesn't entirely make sense that that spell, which originated in Ancient Egypt, would have invoked a mortal wizard as a mortal wizard. But the Bright Serpent, with whom Ith is somewhat conflated, and the Father of the Serpents, Ith's own mythological role... that makes more sense.
Other notes, expand on later:
-Bright Serpent v. the Hesper--in YWverse, the Hesper is the "unfallen" version of the Lone Power. There is muchly intertextuality between FW and YW that indicates the events I've described above are intended to be parallel to the events which lead to the rise of the Hesper. What is the Hesper? REALLY REALLY SIMPLIFIED: so, it's kind of like if you had a proto-jesus, but then it did binary fission and one of them became Jesus and the other became Lucifer. Except that's not what happened at all, but it makes it easier to understand.
-Father of Serpents: elaborate.
...so yes. LONG STORY SHORT: ITH IS ACTUALLY JESUS. BUT WITH SCALES. AND A LOT MORE LITERALLY THAN YOU THINK.
[Edited 1/09 for notes]
SHORT VERSION: "ITH IS JESUS" IS A MORE-OR-LESS LITERAL STATEMENT. If I linked you here for threading purposes, this is pretty much all you really need to know, unless you're curious.
Long version: Ith's backstory is essentially a retelling of Milton's Paradise Regained, except with dinosaurs and randomly some cats thrown in. But it's not simply some extremely involved literary allusion.
Remember the Winged Defender? The Athena/Thor/Archangel Michael/prototype-of-whatever-other-gods-angels-and-or-demiurgic-beings (this class of entity being generally referred to as a "Power" in canon) living in Ronan's head? Ith has a situation somewhat similar to that. Kind of. Possibly. Canon is rather vague on what the relationship entails. It's. In this case, the term "avatar" might not be entirely accurate, or else the form of avatarization isn't the same as the one expressed in Ronan.
STORY TIME. In the first book of FW, The Book of Night with Moon, Ith and a few other characters essentially become a few of the most high-up Powers. If you've read the second book in YW--the one with the reenactment--it was something like that, except it wasn't staged. Someone spoke a spell without knowing precisely what the effects would be, and. They all turned into gods, and brought about a reenactment of a feline myth occurred, wherein... actually, I'm not going to spoil all of it, go and read the book. But Ith's part, the Bright Serpent--Ith's god, Ith's Power--wasn't originally in the script.
Thousands of years ago, the dinosaurs were tricked by the Power that created death--called, in this case, the Old Serpent--and thus led themselves into fiery devastation. This story echoes Paradise Lost; the story told in TBONWM--or Ith's part of it, anyway, is, like I said, a retelling of Paradise Regained. The turning point is the introduction of the Bright Serpent, which is cast as the redemption of the old story and of the Old Serpent's betrayal of Ith's people. Ith's action in TBONWM was to free his people from the misery and subjugation brought about by the Old Serpent's trick, and, in doing so, became the symbolic and spiritual "Father" of his people.
Now, in the next book, the other characters' avatarization is pretty much forgotten and never comes up again. And I would have assumed this was true of Ith as well... except for some things he himself says in the next book: "...the Bright One Who is a shape I wear these days sometimes, or Who wears me--whichever." Additionally, in reference to a spell which invokes the power of the Bright Serpent: "Yes... there is a piece of my name, and another piece. And a piece of the Bright Serpent's name..."
In this second case, it does seem that he is referring to himself and the Bright Serpent as two separate entities. However, from an in-universe perspective, the significance of that interpretation is dampened heavily, because of the heavy emphasis placed upon fluidity of identity among the Powers.
For example: Aaurh the Mighty is a feline Power who is most closely equated with the "Michael" Power, who is in turn, as the One's Champion, equated also with Thor and Athene of the human idiom; but Athene has completely distinct parallel of equal standing to Aaurh in the Feline pantheon, Hrau'f the Silent. DD keeps equating the "Michael Power" with the "Winged Defender" and the "One's Champion", but nearly always makes sure to qualify that with something along the lines of "inasmuch as such parallels can be made at all with the Powers, who see identity and selfness differently than mortals do...."
At any rate, it doesn't entirely make sense that that spell, which originated in Ancient Egypt, would have invoked a mortal wizard as a mortal wizard. But the Bright Serpent, with whom Ith is somewhat conflated, and the Father of the Serpents, Ith's own mythological role... that makes more sense.
Other notes, expand on later:
-Bright Serpent v. the Hesper--in YWverse, the Hesper is the "unfallen" version of the Lone Power. There is muchly intertextuality between FW and YW that indicates the events I've described above are intended to be parallel to the events which lead to the rise of the Hesper. What is the Hesper? REALLY REALLY SIMPLIFIED: so, it's kind of like if you had a proto-jesus, but then it did binary fission and one of them became Jesus and the other became Lucifer. Except that's not what happened at all, but it makes it easier to understand.
-Father of Serpents: elaborate.
...so yes. LONG STORY SHORT: ITH IS ACTUALLY JESUS. BUT WITH SCALES. AND A LOT MORE LITERALLY THAN YOU THINK.
[Edited 1/09 for notes]