Tuesday, September 8, 2015

SFF names #8: Ged

Sounds a bit like "God" or "G-d" doesn't it?

But also, you know that bit near the end -- you know that bit I mean, the bit near the end? -- do you think it can be read as a critique, or perhaps even a parody, of the notion which is played straight in the rest of the book, the notion that knowledge of a True Name confers power to the knower?

After all (you know the bit I mean, right?), who has the power in that situation?

I'm really not going to say anything else.

Honestly, this comment is otherwise ENTIRELY suppressed because of spoilers. In its place, a quotation from William James:
Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of quest. You know how men have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know what a great part in magic words have always played. If you have his name, or the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his will. So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe's principle and to possess it is after a fashion to possess the universe itself. "God," "Matter," "Reason," "the Absolute," "Energy," are so many solving names. You can rest when you have them. You are at the end of your metaphysical quest. But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such word as closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed.

Earlier:
SFF names #7: Shevek
SFF names #6: Buhle
SFF names #5: Parva "Pen" Khan
SFF names #4: Beth Bradley
SFF names #3: Rumpelstiltskin
SFF names #2: Lucy
SFF names #1: Winnie

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