Insolation

Insolation is the phenomenon by which solar heat is absorbed and retained. And my cat is very good at it. He is a golden cat in the golden sun, and in the evening he is warmth unto my feet when the sun has set.

And what of the sun? Well, I am now insolated in a way — I am the proud owner of a Solar Titanium watch, functional and inexpensive, a daily thing like the sun it is named after. But looking at its name, I was reminded of the solar titans.

Who were they? We know little of them and their mythology, although there are a number of stories. The first solar titan was Hyperion, 'Most High', son of Ouranos and Gaia. His successor was Helios, after whom we named helium — compared to his predecessor he must have seemed a lightweight.

And so I mused. And I remembered the idea of solar titans and the tutelary spirits of the stars. Some day, they will return to our cosmology.

Huge and Ravenous

A long time ago now, I conducted a little literary experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to see if my students were 'awake' to mythological or magic-realist imaginings. The means by which I tried to do this was to post — every day for roughly six months — a short piece in an ongoing narrative, and capture their responses.

The narrative was about two ravens, named after Odin's companions Huginn and Muninn (or Thought and Memory), and described their combined musings in dialogue and short poems. Thought was characterised as an intense bloke, while Memory was always a more reticent lady.

You can find that experiment here. What you do, if you want to try it out, is scroll to the bottom and then read the posts in reverse order. They come in groups of three — a short poem with a numbered title (e.g. 'Two Ravens 001') and two dialogue posts. By the end of the 181 posts, think about what it all means... and above all, have fun!

Just Like That

And just like that, August this year draws to an end. It is not quite the drawing-down of blinds that Owen wrote about. But it certainly feels that a drawing-down of funds, a slowly grimacing end to the high days of summer, is not far away.

August marks the end of my financial year, and its beginning. Yes, it's an unusual time to be doing such things, but if you think about it, why should you operate to the convenience of others when you don't have any dealings with them anyway?

So I watch the unusually early cold chills in a month predicted to be the hottest on record, and I think about the global future. This is the Indian Winter, before Surtur wins in the end.

Thunderhead

The clouds above reverse-age themselves as I watch, from wispy balding thin white strands to the deep purple-black of the middle years. Like the great black slab of Hephaistos, they promise the work of lightning and thunder from the mountains of the air.

And I hear the hammer of the Armourer, I hear the pounding of the Smith, and I realise that Zeus crippled his son out of fear — for who wields the thunderbolt without one who makes them? and who guards his life with a shield and does not trust its maker?

Deep in the caverns of the world, the plates buckle and fold. The hammer rises and falls and the anvil is the quenching water of the sky come down. I cannot get that movement out of my mind, that almost mechanical round of action and reaction.

Some day, technology will make a world, they say. But look! Look around you, and see the technology that IS a world, the seemingly-endless cycles of destruction and rebirth!

High above, the invisible hammer of a hundred thousand Pascals flattens the sky into silver sheets against the blackness of the thundercloud.

Tree

There is a green hill far away, outside a city older than Methuselah. There is a tree there, and that too is older than Methuselah. Indeed, both stood there before Methuselah was born, and stand there still long after he has gone.

The city was built on another tree, one of knowledge that broke a race; the remaining tree offers eternal life, and is despised. Five times a day, the horn of the deep sounds, and five times a day, it receives no answer there.

I stand outside the old walls of the crumbling city. I wish I had known it before it was built, and the mighty men raised high its walls. I wish I had been there to see the dawn of the age of men. And I am glad I was not.

Thunderflash

Tonight I was at a dinner at which the Thunderer was honoured. He spoke briefly in reply, but his words, though slowed with great age, were sharp and clear.

It was interesting to see how his self-avowedly secular ethical system always came back to one idea: the state is bigger than you — and so, what you do should serve the state well. It appeared to us, listening amidst the ruins of the day, that the greatest crime was to make the state look bad, or otherwise to do it harm.

In these days, when his powerful allies Black Diamond and the Gnome are dead and gone, it is a great thing to see his frail frame unleash an echo of the ancient force that swept all before him and established a legacy in the region. Many of us, mere mortals, do not agree with him or the way he used that force; but what will replace it in this new world that even he acknowledged in his speech?

Wargod

What civilisation would have a one-handed god of war? The answer, of course, is the Norse.

I've always wondered about that symbolism: the Norse god Tiw, for whom Tuesday is named, is said to have surrendered his right hand to the Fenris-wolf as a pledge of good faith (which his pantheon immediately broke). The wolf bit down, the god lost his hand, but the great chain of being that would hold Fenris till the end of the age was in place.

The lesson to me, the one I think about on most Tuesdays, or Tiw's days, is that sometimes war can be seen as a needful sacrifice. A war that does not help to keep chaos at bay is a worse war than one which does, although all war has an intrinsically serious moral burden.

In Tiw's case, the loss of his master hand in Norse society would have disqualified him from leadership; indeed, it should have disqualified him from godhood. And yet... there he stands, with a silver hand, much like his Celtic counterpart Nuada.

Tiw, also known as Tyr, faded early from Norse myth. He was seen as the organised face of war, much as Athena was in comparison to Ares. Wise and self-sacrificing, Tyr apparently had little place in later Norse myth. His name is absent from the Eddaic poetry about Ragnarok, the last battle of the world.

Gnomonomythic

And it came to pass that Atlantis had need of heroes. But some had made themselves as unto gods, and hence disqualified themselves; and some had feet of clay, for they were idols; and some disdained the very idea of heroism, preferring other terms more quantitative and less qualitative.

Most disdainful were those who themselves wrote heroic tales, for they pointed out how easy it was to invent heroes and tell stories about them, and thus argued that all heroes were likely invented, and their fabled heights were but storeys. And this was only too easy to believe, for Atlantis is indeed a many-storeyed land.

But yet, the Gnome.

The Gnome, unlike Black Diamond (who succumbed to the temptation of naming heroes), claimed to dream no dreams. Indeed, he denied having any visions, for he said he was no dreamer. He did not think of himself as a hero, and he was suspicious of that label, for he was a pragmatist.

And so, the Gnome.

The Gnome was of the gods on one side (or at least, the Celestials, for that is what his people called themselves) and of the giants on the other (or at least, the Wanderers, for that is what his other people called themselves). He did not like the glare of the spotlight or the boom of the thunder, but he did not mind harnessing the lightning in order to bring fire to mankind.

But then, you might say, being a titan should have disqualified him too.

The Gnome, though he bestrode Atlantis like an invisible colossus, did not think much of titanes. But he was a hero of the kind one hardly thinks about.

You see, while striving not to be a dreamer, he created visions. While avoiding heroism, he made heroes. And while doing his job parsimoniously and unromantically, he sat in the middle of the web and coordinated the efforts of others in making a better life for many.

For many? Not for all?

No, not for all. The Gnome, in his words to a range of audiences, was always careful to point out that you could make life better, but not for all. There would still be those who won less, who earned less, who became losers relative to whatever winners there were. He himself just went on, doing project after project, spinning narrative from his busy spinnerets.

He made the birds fly. He brought music to the hall. He was master of weapons and maker of shields. He was patron to muses and horses. He educated the masses and massed the educated. He was taskmaster and mentor, cryptic sage and determined reader.

He was a pantheon unto himself. And that is part of why he was heroic, epic even.

But the last part of why he was a hero was that he was flawed. Like Achilles, or the Hooded Man, or any other hero, he had a weakness hiding amongst his many strengths. And in the Orwellian year, he went away from the thunderbolt and into the slow evening of his long day.

Pulau Blakang Mati

Somewhere on the ridge between Churchward's Mu and Sclater's Lemuria, there is an island. That island is called, by its longest-term inhabitants, the 'Island of Death-From-Behind'. Some wags have therefore concluded that the ancient indigenes knew what a civil service was.

But emerging from the Atlantean towers to the north comes a book, presently being proofed and completed. It is the tale of the Gnome, referred to several times in this blog, and the modern Imhotep of this present Atlantis.

The question that was being debated by some in recent times was: "In what way was the Gnome a hero?" It is an interesting question, and one well worth considering.

The Gnome was not a barbarian or slave gladiator who with might of arm drove the enemy away in flight. He was not a wizard-king single-handedly holding back the fall of night, the incursions of chaos, the end of time, or the ruthlessness of the Lords of Order. He was High Priest of his own order, but not the bearer of the temporal majesty — that was the Thunderer's role.

Yet, as the book will show, the Gnome was a hero because he was a hero with a thousand faces. Whether it had to do with the instilling of lessons, the defence of the realm, the collection of rare birds, the injection of culture, or the hard golden coin of the marketplace, the Gnome had everything to do with it, while the Thunderer's bolts struck downward to the left and right, removing opposition. Like Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the Gnome was the true tragic hero, while the Thunderer was his foil.

A hard truth, perhaps, this story of Atlantis.

Word of the Day: Theogony

The Greek root -gonia means 'a point of origin'; in geometry, it is the point at which two different lines meet at an angle. In literature, Hesiod's Theogony is an account of the origins of the Gods.

But Hesiod's masterwork is not just a clever synthesis of all the mythology he could lay his hands on; rather, it is a long poem in which he establishes the right of the poet to rewrite the foundations of his world. In the end, the true story is not about the mythical basis of existence, but about how change and reform are the rights of humanity.

Along the way, of course, Hesiod does mention bloody revolution and how rebels always end up making themselves the new establishment. He mentions it three times. The final rebellion is when Prometheus, the learned titan whose name means 'Foresight', steals fire from Zeus and earns no reward except his loss of freedom and an eagle to eat his liver every day.

It is always fascinating to read mythology. It is not quite fantasy. It is a symbolic approach to understanding the way humans engineer their perceptions of the world so that the stories are easier to tell. And also, in case there are indeed gods on Olympus, this form of narrative disguises the poet and protects him from their wrath.

A History of Atlantis

I realise that I have written often of the blessed island, the beautiful nation, the city that was the light of the south. For those who wish a convenient list, here are some links to what I have written.

When City and State are One: Part [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ]

The Atlantean Myth:
1. The Thunderer's Tale
2. The Gnome's Tale [ Elegy ]
3. Black Diamond's Tale
4. Golden Mountain's Tale [ Elegy ]

An Atlantean Bestiary.
An Atlantean Map.
Fear in Atlantis.

Of course, there are omissions. There are always omissions. We seek eternal security, but sometimes we also remember internal security.

Unwinding

The idea of the universe as a coiling — of strings, a mainspring, a great serpent, or a ball of thread — is a key entropy-defeating idea. Nobody likes loose ends, a blind watchmaker, a mad snake or a universe at odds with itself. This is why in all our human attempts to construct the universe as an understandable concept, we prefer to ravel rather than unravel.

It is also why we think up theurges and demiurges to assist the Highest in the work of making. We have gods like Hephaistos, with his metallic handmaidens and his dactyls at the forge; we have the Moirai weaving the huge tapestry of the threads of life; and in all the other mythologies, the smiths and weavers, the potters and tinker(er)s, the architects and builders.

There are easier models for the larger universe — an egg that hatches, ice that melts, a river coalescing, a word out of nothing that becomes light. But each of us prefers smaller gods, because they are just like us, daily makers of daily goods.

Yet everyone pays tribute also to unwinding. The great escapement must in the end still allow the mainspring to unwind, the strings to uncoil, the serpent to sleep; and the thread to run out, to be cut, to fail. A poker hand might fold, but the sky and the story both unfold.

Sometimes the task is not one of making or unmaking, but of puzzle-solving. You need a hero for that. If there is a knot of vipers, that hero must be prepared to sacrifice a limb, or turn blue with venom, or even die saving the day. Not all heroes are hero enough.

Christmas Connections: Part 9 of 12

The nine ladies dancing are appropriately so, for as every young person should know, this is what they are, and that is what they do. They are old, but ageless.

In any revel, where food and drink have been provided for, you will find the nine. They are not bound by any ring, and they vary in degree of caprice. But they have sponsored this blog since its inception, and it's a pity I took so long to thank them.

Not forgetting, of course, that they are but servants of a greater gift (or servants of the nine great gifts), and a greater giver. As are we all.

=====

"On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me nine ladies dancing."

Life in Wartime (Part V): Götterdämmerung

Wagner was a romantic fatalist, compared to his sources. For him, valkyries and pyres, heavenly choirs, all kinds of mushy guff. And that abomination, he called Götterdämmerung despite it having nothing to do with the original.

But to us who served during the Twilight War, it was clear that the Wagnerian take was what the public saw, and most of the clientele saw it that way too — fake thunder and lightning, drama and beauty, and everyone taking a bow together at the end. Under the surface, however, the Tree of Life groaned as the dragon gnawed at its roots. The ravens took flight, and ponderously, the ship made of fingernails moved into play.

It might come as a surprise to those who read such things that some secrets of the Twilight War are also woven into the threads of epic myth as described elsewhere. Yet those are hard to disentangle, and the arts required are no longer commonly found among the living. Still, there are more brutal paths to knowledge.

Essentially, the purge of the faithful, which began a decade ago, had weakened the Citadel. The Leader had placed inferior officers slowly but surely into positions of trust. They were reliable people, but often not principled or bright enough to be a threat to him. And in those choices lay the seeds of doom, for if the Leader failed, there would be none left to raise the Citadel.

So it came to pass. All the losses sustained across the years caught up with Asgard, and the ravens left the Tower. When the Old Man looked across the room at the meeting of the wyvern brothers in March, he should have known his time was up. I looked into his face, but he did not dare meet my gaze. And in that moment, I knew it was time.

Integrated Programmes (Part I): We Had Lift-Off Or So We Thought

Integration is the opposite of differentiation. What then can we make of a system that creates integrated programmes for students while claiming to differentiate students? Analogically, it would seem that the programme is designed to reduce the amount of information by letting students go through more years of undifferentiating education.

In Atlantis, an 'integrated programme' is one which removes high-stakes examinations between primary school and university, so that only two main examinations remain: a primary school streaming examination and a senior high terminal examination such as the A-levels or IB Diploma. The results of the former examination are now often circumvented by something called the DSA (Direct School Admissions, not to be confused with the ISA, which does not stand for Indirect School Admissions), which are criteria cooked up by individual schools to allow them to admit students they like and exclude students they don't.

Three integrated programmes were launched at the end of 2003. The Citadel of the Wyverns, the Gryphon Academy, and the Temple of Flaming Books (recalling a certain Chinese Emperor) all started off with their own quaint notions of what they could do with time not spent preparing for a third main examination at the end of the 10th grade. I say quaint, because not much was new about these new programmes—some of their features were Victorian and some even more antiquarian than that.

Perhaps the most interesting thing was the degree to which educators, given free rein and liberty to be creative, failed to do much that was extraordinary or novel. Rather, a lot of stuff was lifted from other sources, repackaged, and smushed (for want of a better, more aptly onomatopoeic word) together to create something very much like existing Grade 10 programmes with a few extra bells and whistles but not so many tassels and hassles.

The second most interesting thing was the research that came out of it. The Citadel was dead against having any research done (especially by its own people), but the Hierarchs of Atlantean Learning had decreed that some research should be — and so, some was. The Academy was just as resistant, but quietly did some of their own. The Temple did a lot of their own, and made sure every one of their students could recite the key information points (KIPs) when asked.

This research had not been released to the public yet, when it was claimed by the Hierarchs that such programmes were all brilliant, exciting, stimulating, good for the youth of Athens Atlantis and so on. And because they were so good, all remaining major high schools should be made to do the same thing.

The resultant Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, a jerky and discombobulating affair (and a true Nutcracker Suite) which is still unfolding, has been (and will continue to be) affording educational observers with much amusement.

But I would like to point out one very important finding: people who have gone through an Integrated Programme do not show significant superiority (and that's putting it mildly) over those who have not when they sit for their terminal qualification examinations. The superiority of Integrated Programmes must therefore be in non-academic areas, but that is even more difficult to prove — perhaps almost as difficult to prove as the contention that having a programme specially for Gifted and Talented Atlanteans will prevent some final catastrophic crisis.

Only time will tell. And Khronos, unlike Kronos, is a very quiet and subtle Power.

Cuckoo

The cuckoo is an obligate brood parasite. That is, it survives only by deceiving a host into rearing the cuckoo's offspring. Essentially, the cuckoo hatches in the nest first and then proceeds to boot the host's own eggs out. This means it gets all the food and nurture. On maturity, it then flies off to do its own thing. It probably thinks that in some way, it is a member of the host species.

I've seen this happen with wyverns too. Except that in the case I'm thinking of, one of the members of the host species made the serious mistake of importing a cuckoo. Said cuckoo then proceeded to attempt to mimic a wyvern. Although nobody was really convinced, such is the power of resident incumbency that the cuckoo was able to kick the wyvern's own children out.

Fortunately, wyverns are independent creatures and seem to be able to set up their own nests almost from birth. Yes, I know this whole post is screwed-up mythology. You had to be there.

Meanwhile, we await the real event of the night: the final game of the 2010 World Cup.

Chimera

A chimera is what you get when you graft separate entities together and make them one, and yet still semi-autonomous. When confronted with a beast that has the head of a lion, the wings of an eagle and the body of a two-legged dragon, you might be tempted to think of it as a chimera, but you would be wrong. Such a beast is merely a wyvern; that is, a winged dragon with only two legs.

A chimera, on the other hand, has a head in front, a head in the middle, and a head at the end. This leads to interesting conflicts, with the three heads corresponding roughly to Freud's ego, id and superego.

The front end has a lion's head, and most of the body is a lion's body too; this is courageous and bold, but not very bright. It breathes fire, according to Homer, "A terrible flame of bright fire." It sometimes thinks it is the only head, and is somewhat irked when the others hijack its agenda.

The middle head is that of a goat, with a brain of typical mortal lusts and hungers, mainly for food and sex. It is only interested in whatever makes it feel better, which isn't much, considering it feeds straight into the reflexes and guts of the overall animal, and wants everything all of the time.

The tail turns into a snake's head. The snake is crafty and devious, always trying to look forward and make clever plans for the long term. Unfortunately, it's facing the wrong way, and sometimes dares not venture in the other direction in case it gets eaten by the goat. It thinks it can control the others.

The chimera is altogether an unfortunate creature. Divided in all its ways, it is a fearsome enemy, but a silly one. The goat eats almost anything, the lion's flame burns almost anything, the snake's venom kills almost anything — and yet, it is always at war with itself.

The best strategy for dealing with it is to bait the individual heads into arguing with each other, or to slay it from a distance using arrows of lead, as Bellerophon did — the expression 'eat lead and die' is an old one. It was hot lead too; apparently the lion's breath melted the lead and the goat ate the hot lead while lead vapour poisoned the snake.

And as I look back at the wyvern, and the chimera, I laugh a lot. The world was ever a complex place. The classics have much to teach us. Homer's wine-dark sea long pre-dates the red ocean/blue ocean dichotomy of modern folly, and his chimera long pre-dates various gryphon/wyvern hybrids of dubious long-term viability.

Myth-Placed Identities

There is a single most frustrating thing about researching this little red dot which I've referred to as 'Atlantis' in most of my posts. This one thing is the problem of the monomyth. The traditional history of modern Atlantis, supposedly begun in 1819 (or perhaps 1965), is one that begins with a single hero who comes from an obscure background, battles through epic evils, and returns with some boon for mankind.

In the 1819 version, the ironically-named Gambler descends upon the benighted island, cuts a deal with the ignorant natives, and raises an obscure fishing village into prominence as the leading edge of the Empire's masterplan of globalization initiatives. Under the Imperial banner, this little red dot becomes an impregnable fortress in the East, and the paramount harbour of Eastern trade.

In the 1965 version (remake?), the Thunderer descends upon the benighted island, intervenes on behalf of the ignorant natives, and raises an obscure post-Imperial backwater (totally in contradiction of the earlier myth, of course) to the leading edge of worldwide globalization. Under the Moon-and-Stars banner, this little red dot becomes an impregnable fortress of the East, and the paramount harbour (supposedly) of all the world's trade.

In both myths, reality is neglected and the very strong supporting cast ignored.

The Gambler actually attempted to destroy all gambling; the appointed Resident, fondly known as the Progenitor, failed to do so. At that point, the Gambler (who in all his time supposedly in charge of Atlantis never spent more than a few months here) sent that worthy servant of the public trust back to Alba. It was only 1823. All accounts from that era show the Progenitor as being more worthy of the title 'Founder of Atlantis' than the Gambler. It was just, I suppose, that the Gambler's name was easier on the ears.

The Thunderer, on the other hand, has readily attributed much of the success of his dominion to the clever thinking of his chief lieutenant, the Gnome. In a touching tribute published in the local press on 29 Dec 1984, the Thunderer said, "No panegyric can do justice to you." Yet, even after subsequent reinforcement in the Thunderer's own biography, textbooks still attribute (or blame) Atlantean development on the wielder of the lightning, and not the genius loci.

It is hard to restructure or replace the monomyth, especially when the historical basis is concealed by generations of bards who think they have been paid to sing the praises of the myth and not the truth. Such bards, of course, do not quite deserve the title and indeed should be targeted by scathing satires, as is the great Celtic tradition.

It is my hope to trace the educational history of Atlantis through those who made a genuine difference, and not through those who received credit for not really doing much in this area. It requires restructuring the monomyth and, perhaps, slaying a few dragons (gryphons?) along the way.

Bestiary

A medieval bestiary is a wonderful thing to behold. From the fertile imagination of homo mediaevalis, desperately using bird flight-pattern divination to seek a better age than the one he found himself in (auspicium melioris aevi, as they say), came glorious pictures of creatures that never existed or overly creative pictures of real creatures.

One of my readers requested that I provide a little guide to differentiating between Gryphons, Wyverns and Torchbearers. Well, let's assume that the rest of my readers have no ideas or preconceptions about Atlantean education. Then the task is simple, and I shall do it the easy way first.

The gryphon and the wyvern are etymologically related according to some accounts. This is because as in many word-pairs (such as 'guard' and 'ward', 'guardian' and 'warden', 'Guillaume' and 'William', 'guile' and 'wile') it is obvious that the Norman 'gu' and the Saxon 'w' are somewhat interchangeable. However, a closer inspection of the two shows significant differences.

It is more likely that 'gryphon' comes from Greek grypos, or 'hook-nosed', 'beaky'. It was a term used for the birdlike guardian spirits of the East, which in various accounts ranged from tiny brazen birds with very sharp beaks and teeth(!) to huge winged sphinx-like monsters like those depicted in Assyrian statuary. Eventually, it was linked to creatures which were eagle from chest up and lion from torso down, with the nasty habit of eating horses. The Atlantean gryphon however seems to have lost its way; it is a two-headed eagle (Aquila imperialis Rafflesii) rather than a true gryphon. That being so, it is often seen as a greedy, grasping, ambitious carrion-eater which looks both ways so that it might eat everything; not for nothing did the imperial monarchies of Austria and Russia adopt a two-headed eagle for their dubious heraldry.

The wyvern, however, has a less auspicious origin. It's quite likely that 'wyvern' comes from various Western European languages (e.g. OFr guivre which, as hinted at above, became Saxon wivre, plural wivren) which distorted the original Latin vipera, which is a particularly nasty snake. However, that perspective is slightly short-sighted. The Latin vipera comes from viviparere, a word that survives almost unchanged as English 'viviparous' — 'bringing forth live young' (as opposed to hatching them from eggs as an eagle would, I suppose). The wyvern's offspring are therefore a lot more lively than the eagle's.

But what really is a a wyvern? Well, most heralds agree that a wyvern refers to a beast that has two clawed feet and a dragon's body and wings. The details may vary; a fair number of these wyverns have the barbed tail that indicates serpentine (and poisonous) character. It is quite clear that the creature depicted here, for example, is indeed a wyvern by definition and cannot be a gryphon, since the nether parts are draconian and not leonine.

Where do torchbearers come into this mess? Well, it would seem that in modern Atlantis, there are those who use a logo that depicts a Promethean flame; that is, it is a flame that indicates knowledge — in the case of this logo, by associating the flame with what looks like a book.

The Promethean myth is intimately associated with flying beasts of all mythological kinds, as well as the myths of knowledge. More than five years ago, I posted this, if you wish to know more.

Within the modern Atlantean context, however, it might be of interest for me to quote a fable that a wise man, once a Power of the Torchbearers, told to a mixed group of educators one fine day in the Educators' Guild:

Once upon a time, there were three young men standing on the Hill of Tin. One was a Wyvern, one was a Gryphon, and one was a Torchbearer.

They were told by the Thunderer to find a way from the top of the Hill to the bottom without using wings or fire, thus blazing (haha) a trail for others to follow. It was interesting to see what transpired once the echoes of the thunder had died away.

The Gryphon (or at least, the two-headed eagle masquerading as one) looked left and right, forward and back, up and down, East and West. It then quartered the terrain visually, calculated the optimal path, and started down. Since he had already calculated the path, all he needed to do was proceed relentlessly to the end.

The Wyvern, a well-rounded but slightly odd character like all of his ilk, tucked his wings and tail around him, ignored the obstacles, and rolled downhill, reaching the bottom first. He had yielded completely to Newton's Laws except when he got stuck, at which point he thrashed around randomly with his wings and tail until he got unstuck.

The Thunderer rewarded him with the right to do whatever he wanted, but with no further support. The Gryphon, who arrived (as usual) slightly later than that, was promised full support as long as he stuck to the Thunderer's rules. The Torchbearer also got to do what he wanted, for he never reached the bottom of the Hill and the Thunderer gave up on him.

At this point, we all expressed curiosity as to why the Torchbearer never got to the bottom. The wise man told us, "Torchbearers are very bright, but they often cannot see further than their own flames. Worse, since they are very square, they can't roll down the hill at all."

We had a good laugh. Shortly thereafter, the wise man transferred and is now a Power at the Artisans' School that has just got a new campus downtown.

I'll just end with an interesting little factoid. If you take a good look at the Atlantean priesthoods, you'll find that the majority of the priests are either Gryphons or Torchbearers. However, the number that get promoted to archpriests is disproportionately biased in favour of Wyverns. This is especially true in the priesthoods that control money and education, since these were once the domains of the Gnome, that ancient and talented Wyvern who was the Thunderer's alter ego.

The Gnome on his own Island

There is always danger in traduction of the established narrative tapestry to suit a specialized point of view. This is especially true when one examines the life of a person of multifarious viewpoints, a man who has had (apparently) something to say about everything even when he has claimed not to have anything to say about it. Then, the specific temptation is to try and find the one mind, the one strand of thought, that binds all the sayings together.

But as a moment’s reflection will establish, even for less complex persons such as ourselves, this is not possible. We are simply too different from ourselves when compared even at different times of day and in different company and different places and when speaking on diverse occasions.

The problem of the historian who aims at biography is therefore not to delve too deeply into the psychology of the individual — even when the personality is immediately presented, this can be problematic to a professional psychologist — but to determine what kind of picture one can paint in sure and uncontestable strokes while capturing the essence of a personality in such a way that those who may have known him, and those who read of him and examine his works, may say that this was quite likely the man.

The essay I am writing will therefore a be pen-sketch, perhaps a charcoal outline, of a specific perspective on the Gnome. It is an outline of his ideas on education, how these may have led to his acts of educational intent that are part of the history of Atlantean education up to the pre-university level, and the consequences of these actions which are part of the public record. It will not capture the man himself, but provide a single silhouette from a narrow viewpoint.

It is intended that In combination with other such silhouettes, a kind of hologram may be constructed that will be a kind of remembrance of the service of this inimitable and gnomic public servant. There are few who could withstand the Thunderer's blasts; yet the Gnome gave as good as he got, in good faith and genuine camaraderie. At the end of the Gnome's 25 years of ministerial service, we read a genuine sense of loss in what the Thunderer wrote to him:

Your biggest contribution to me personally was that you stood up to me whenever you held a contrary view. You challenged my decisions and forced me to re-examine the premises on which they were made. Thus we reached better decisions.

The Thunderer was later to write, in his own biography: "The one retirement I felt most keenly was [the Gnome's]... He [felt he] had done enough, and it was time to go."

To this day, it's still hard to capture the essence of the man who for so long was the Thunderer's true and faithful internal opposition. He was a myriad times more effective in this respect than any opposition party, having the gravitas and the intellectual ability to know his stuff better than anyone else. He was strangely blind to human personalities and characters, but that made him blunt enough to square off against the Wielder of Lightning himself, and survive.

I often wish that those authorities with authoritarian tendencies would at the very least have the brains or fortune to have a Gnome in their inner circle. Unfortunately, most such dictator-types or autocrats, principalities or powers, do not see the need for such a person.

From Donne's famous 'Meditation XVII':

Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

And yet, some people are like peninsulas. The Gnome was one of them.