Reading The Wicked + The Divine (part 2)

Spoiler warnings for ‘The Faust Act’ through ‘Imperial Phase Part 2’

Something that I meant to spend more time on in the last post was “tongues”.

In The Wicked + The Divine, gods perform. There are tours and residencies and multitudes of people who follow these events. There are possessive and tribal fandoms. There are diverse movements and trends among them. No one (as of being about six books in) thus far has been able to describe what a divine performance consists of.

Externally, a big part seems to be standing around with your mouth open- apparently vocalizing. Our privileged narrative perspective reveals that everyone is receiving an outpouring from the deity. When Laura sees Amaterasu (her manifestation only a “couple of weeks” old at that point) for the first time, her mental narration says that “I don’t understand a word she’s saying. Nobody does. (…) All we know is that it means everything. (…) She’s been doing this for an hour, and it’s been all climax. (…) Every second is the best of my life so far…”

Laura realizes that orgasms and masses are pale three-dimensional shadows of the higher reality before her. A moment’s eye-contact with Amaterasu breaks a dividing line in her head: “I want everything you have.” The pure impact leaves a pure void: adoration and identification blended into child-like, frenzied desire.

What happens during these performance is an exertion of power but not control. A god becomes the center of gravity and the subjective quality of the performance varies depending on the personality and state of mind of that god. That is not the same as control. The performing god is often a fellow traveler on the journey; at most a conductor. More often, they are simply a conduit.

None of these experiences are the same as a hivemind- that specific talent is unique to Dionysus. Yet the resemblances are striking. In the Morrigan’s first ever interview (the beginning of ‘Imperial Phase Part 1’), the journalist finds herself alone with the Morrigan but far from lonely. The domain of the Morrigan includes a sequence of selves; communion with a line of yourselves going backward and forward through time. In the Morrigan, the interviewer sees versions of herself and others like her.

Also- the whole ‘selves through time’ thing? Is there a reason why it is usually portrayed, in fiction and folklore, as a feminine experience? Not that it necessarily must be, by any means- but there are a ton of female characters who go through stuff like this. In the cosmology of Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, Paul Atreides is unique specifically because he is a man who is capable of ancestral memory, which (the story posits) is a necessary ingredient for prophecy.

We’re also reading a comic with two simultaneous portrayals of the triple goddess: the Morrigan and the Norns. Two characters who routinely have conversations with themselves and others. Whose other selves address other people. Perhaps the natural resonance between gods and humans simply attracted the personality of a prospective worshiper to the Morrigan interview. Maybe this is how conversations between humans and gods usually go, anyway. In any event, that journalist did not simply see the Morrigan’s other aspects in her minds’ eye. She saw other versions of herself, reaching through time and space. Maybe this is not, specifically, a tongues moment but it feels kind of like one.

Meanwhile, the Norns? The other triple goddess? Her manifestation vector (Cassandra) has long insisted that the tongues are an ordinary group-think experience and nothing more. Even after she awakens as Urdr of the Norns, she does not experience it any differently until Persephone catches her off-guard.

Why does she do this? To show Cassandra memories. That appears to be a one-off use, though. ‘Rising Action’ starts with Persephone’s first concert after manifesting through Laura. She stands onstage like the rest of the Pantheon, opens her mouth like the rest of the Pantheon…and everyone feels the touch of darkness. Everyone is alone and in Hell, like Persephone. With Urdr of the Norns, though? It works as direct thought-transfer. When Persephone is alone in the underworld with Baphomet, the panels are still divided with the black intertwined tentacles that they were when Persephone sent her memories to Cassandra. This is still part of the memory-transfer but the chapter-break nearly implies a scene change. The chapter with Persephone and Baphomet is called ‘Persephone In Hell’, as though Hell accompanies her thoughts and her heart no matter where she is. Y’know, kinda like not having free-reign on the surface after eating the pomegranate.

Persephone is also distinguished by the possible relationship between her tongues and her combat. The black tentacles appear everywhere she wants them yet the imagery is also paired with listening to Persephone’s tongues. She is the only Pantheon member who uses tongues in battle.

The mystery of tongues lends intrigue to ‘Imperial Phase’ parts one and two. ‘Rising Action’ was a perfectly good culmination of Ananke’s early villain arc. Ananke, a figure whom heads of state deferred to, was publicly revealed as the force behind the deaths of Lucifer, Inanna and Tara in the same breath that her death was announced. The erratic behavior and the violence was tolerated for the sake of spectacle but also because the world, in general, saw Ananke as the “adult in the room.” As Dionysus put it: “We need a reason for people not to be afraid of us.”

A big’ol unprecedented tongues concert with the aid of a large, mysterious machine is definitely one way to approach that. Since the tongues performances often convey a sublime sense of oneness, perhaps it’s even a decent idea. Especially since Dionysus- a beloved performer whose tongues open a direct hivemind with all present -is at the center of things (with a giant machine understood only by Ananke and Woden). Maybe more to the point: after Persephone kills Ananke, Amaterasu asks “What do we do now?” Persephone: “Duh…(…) whatever we want.”

That line is huge foreshadowing for the end of ‘Imperial Phase Part 2’.

I just finished that book so this is all pretty fresh in my mind. Lots of obvious things happen by the end. Things that seem like they should have been obvious. Why weren’t they, though?

Because ineffability. The ineffable is intrinsically hard to define and are often described by reference and analogy. Once you get used to representations, it becomes possible to lose sight of things representing themselves. By the end of ‘Imperial Phase Part 2’, no one has behaved out of character. Everything everyone did in the end lines up with everything that they said, up front, about their motives.

Just to keep things neat: let’s define the ineffable as that which is real but either exceeds context or is distinct from it.

Baal is a Boyscout, at heart. He likes his house to be in order and errs on the side of tradition, precedent and authority. He obeys Ananke on principle until Baphomet tells him something that he could only know if he were close enough to see what happened during Inanna’s death. Baal wastes no time after he realizes that everyone else is right about Ananke.

Still…afterward, there is a vacuum. The Pantheon is used to having a single, authoritative voice and Baal readily steps into the role. They also want to make sure that all of their usual boundaries are in place and intact and that they still have the power to control internal information and dynamics. This is why Sakhmet wasn’t told about Persephone’s role in Ananke’s death. It wasn’t to exclude Sakhmet; only to maintain elective control of the information during a transitional era in their family. Someone is stepping in to do the same things that Ananke did…but what of it? We found out where his true loyalties were in ‘Rising Action’ and he’s cool, right? The Pantheon has no precedent for this and they’re doing their best with what they have. Why shouldn’t they use the old way of doing things as a jumping-off point?

The entire Pantheon appears rattled by Ananke’s death. None more so than Woden who limits his perspective to a very specific research project with Dionysus: the tongues machine. Maybe Baal’s example- a former underling of Ananke doing the right thing once they know better -helps us ignore certain motives of his, which he never kept hidden in the first place (come to think of it- his motives are the only thing he’s ever been open about, aren’t they?).

Later, the Morrigan tells Persephone to keep her distance, after Baphomet revealed their fling. “He never should have told me. Beware the honest, Destroyer… (…) …they will hurt you just to feel clean.”

Sakhmet is the other end of the spectrum. One reason why Baphomet has a single, exclusive partner and confidant is because he cannot keep things to himself and- if he must choose a side -desires only to be on the side of the Morrigan. If even pragmatic secret-keeping is more deception than Baphomet has stamina for…maybe that says something about what he has in common with Sakhmet.

Baphomet has one relationship that he prioritizes over everything. That is how he manages both his boundaries and his lack thereof. Sakhmet is not exclusive- she is promiscuous. Everyone else is either equally in or equally out and she is always number one. Persephone has had a number of flings and crushes. Early in ‘Rising Action’, I wondered if Baphomet and Persephone were going to be a Thing. Baal started out as a sky god and was eventually reclassified as a demon with the rise of Abrahamic religion. Baal has slept with Persephone (I think…? I was pretty sure there was an allusion to an off-camera hookup during the first three books but I may be wrong). No, Baal is not an underworld god but there is still a certain consistency with Persephone being with him. Neither of those hold and Persephone’s first, sustained relationship of the comic is with Sakhmet, after Ananke’s death.

Baphomet controls his feelings by controlling his circle. Sakhmet controls hers by treating everyone like (either mortal or sexual) prey. Then she gets a partner who’s not part of her usual orgy nest. She brings her unregulated feelings to Persephone like she brings them everywhere. Like Baphomet, she is honest: her boundaries and standards are simple. Don’t hurt her and don’t lie to her. Then she finds out (from sweet, well-intentioned Amaterasu) that Persephone killed Ananke and starts ripping out throats. Sakhmet might not live in a black void like Baphomet and the Morrigan but she is just as paranoid about who she gives her trust to. Baphomet cannot keep secrets; he simply does not have it in him. Sakhmet does not have it in her to tolerate any level of exclusion or secret-keeping. Much less concerning secrets that leak to several other people before getting to her.

Amaterasu has nothing but good intentions…but she was still the one who told Sakhmet something that Sakhmet interpreted as a collective lie perpetrated by her family. It doesn’t go well. This divides resources and surveillance at the worst possible time during the tongues-machine concert, brought to you by Dionysus and Woden. Remember when we first met Dionysus, at the beginning of ‘Fandemonium’? Woden fumes because all he can do is create things for other people. On that level, he would rather be any other Pantheon member than himself. Dionysus can thread his consciousness through anyone who hears his tongues. How did Laura-Persephone put it? “Woden thinks he’s got the worst hand…you’ve got the best.”

Woden appropriates what he can’t emulate. Also, what do people go to the tongues-concerts for if not to experience the ineffable? Something that is often described by comparison to something else?

I feel like there is something going on with Amaterasu that began on the first book and ended on ‘Imperial Phase Part 2’. Amaterasu awakened within Hazel a “couple of weeks” before ‘The Faust Act’. The story, thus far, may have covered all of Amaterasu’s life and career in the Pantheon.

A few days ago I saw a YouTube video about Kate Bush. The story behind the song ‘Cloudbusting’ jumped out at me: an anecdote from the autobiography of Wilhelm Reich’s son Peter. According to Peter Reich, his father took him out to test a machine built to force clouds to rain. A ‘cloudbuster’. Peter avowed that this was what he and his father were doing when Wilhelm was detained by FBI agents and driven away. The incident was played down as a case of mistaken identity; evidently another man named Wilhelm Reich lived in the area, who was suspected of distributing communist literature. Wilhelm Reich had been persecuted in Nazi Germany over his research but this was, evidently, not one of those times, even if it did leave an indelible mark on his son.

Kate Bush herself portrayed the young Peter Reich, opposite Donald Sutherland as Wilhelm. It was the kind of creative decision that usually appeals to me. It reminded me, vaguely, of one of my favorite movies: Les Enfants terribles, in which Renee Cosima plays both a male childhood friend of the main character and a woman whom he falls in love with in adulthood. None of these things really add up to why it stuck with me, though.

No matter what the historical facts of the situation were, the emotional tone of Peter Reich’s anecdote and Kate Bush’s song prioritize strength and brilliance in the face of overwhelming odds. In the magazine section of ‘Imperial Phase Part 1’, the interview with Amaterasu is called ‘Cloudbusting’. The interviewer and Amaterasu herself wrestle with the question of the Pantheon’s apparent hubris.

The interviewer writes that Amaterasu “makes the world she believes in real by sheer force of will. The perpetual crescendo of her shows, like a sunrise that somehow lasts for hours -it is driven by the urgency of someone who is trying to save us all, and buoyed by the joy of someone who is sure that they will. You could call this hubris. You could also call it faith.”

This feels relevant to the mystery of tongues. Dionysus is one of the athletes of tongues and he understands that tongues cannot be purely alpha-beta: the god is also a participant, shoulder to shoulder with everyone else.

I still wonder how much of all this tongue stuff holds true for Persephone. Her tongues are unlike anyone else’s. After awakening as Persephone, she only got to sing tongues for a few seconds before someone tried to kill her.

TBC

Let’s read ‘The Wicked + The Divine’ (part 1)

Spoiler warnings for ‘The Faust Act’, ‘Fandemonium’ and ‘Commercial Suicide’

The Wicked + The Divine makes an interesting first impression. Like Watchmen, the succession of individual stories in the foreground has progressively bigger implications for the world in takes place in. Por exemplo-

Not every deity is included in every version of the recurrence.

Every ninety years, you see, twelve deities will seize a mortal avatar in which they will exist for two years before dying. Perhaps more accurately, the twelve will surface from below a living person’s identity. Such a person will realize that their life has been a straight arrow leading to that moment and they typically experience this as the emergence of their one true self.

To be sure, the recurrence has regulars. Ananke, Baal, Minerva, the Morrigan, Amaterasu and a few others have been present for nearly all of the story thus far. Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the Japanese storm god, was briefly present in the beginning but (as of the end of volume three) never again. The present rendering of Odin is (so far) constantly wearing a human-scale, Daft Punk-like mech suit. Odin is also a passive, willing cat’s paw for Ananke which requires that he not be known well by anyone but Ananke (he’s also morally and emotionally bankrupt which is a happy accident under the circumstances).

His rapport with Ananke the matriarch, combined with the mech suit…makes me wonder if his life is prolonged without any participation in the recurrence (he says, in ‘Fandemonium’, that he would trade his two years for Luci’s months but who knows if that can be trusted). Ananke wouldn’t want him getting too close to anyone, after all, especially if the rest of the Pantheon are potential targets. If the suit is technology than that could have wonky world-building consequences…which may be on-brand. So far, we have no idea what the historical timeline looks like even if the subject matter tempts assumptions. You can approach The Wicked + The Divine with no knowledge of mythology and- so long as you’re willing to read closely and carefully -be okay.

Most people who pick this up, though, will likely have some familiarity with the subject matter. Which is, itself, incorporated into the backdrop. Contextual recognition is funny, though. As of the end of ‘Commercial Suicide’, we don’t know what the ancient world even looked like in this story, even though it’s easy to slide into assuming that these characters must have had some cumulative background going back to the dawn of humanity (at least) to the present. So far, though, no such thing has actually been spelled out.

There’s probably no reason to be that corrosively skeptical, right? Just because contextual knowledge puts you at ease does not make it definitionally wrong. The hope of confirmation or denial of context makes things exciting, though. Maybe I’ve been reading too many hyper-subjective comics for too long but I get excited when second and third parties within the story confirm things. While speaking with the media, Ananke implies that there is an institutional relationship between the Pantheon and nation-states.

So the Pantheon is not hermetically distinct from the “rest of the world”. It operates within it. At the beginning of ‘The Faust Act’, Cassandra the journalist approaches Amaterasu as if the Pantheon must be a bunch of deluded, dipshit humans. Her words and behavior, later on, reveal that this must have been a ruse. Even if she never believed that they are “gods” in the sense that most people mean it, she still understood from the begining that something supernatural is at work.

Cassandra, btw, gets really interesting really quick. She gets shafted by the implicit narrative sympathies of a few different scenes in book one. That, alone, ends up making her really mysterious. Then, as time passes, we see that Cassandra’s experience with the divinities is far deeper than it looked. She knows that they are supernatural beings whom goverments defer to and she’s unafraid of them. Kind of a Constantine vibe.

Cassandra’s constant narrative sidelining in ‘The Faust Act’ stands out, especially among all the other characters for whom strength is being seen and embodied. She is one of two characters (beside Laura, the apparent protagonist) who are perpetually outside looking in. Laura wants to join the Pantheon; Cassandra doesn’t. Because Cassandra is more willing to get her hands dirty, though, she seems to fall into the Pantheon’s orbit faster.

Oh, those groups of twelve that reincarnate every ninety years? They are permitted up to two years per cycle; dying early is definitely a thing. When Cassandra awakens as Urdr of the Norns in ‘Fandemonium’, it lines up with the looming deaths of Inanna and Tara, as if an absence is being filled. After Lucifer’s death, Laura briefly manages to conjure fire with a snap of the fingers and eventually awakens as Persephone. Three gods die early, two more emerge and Ananke is always present but never counted among the twelve.

Ananke appeared to kill Persephone as soon as she manifested but the first page of ‘Rising Action’ has a diagram of all fourteen deities that we’ve seen so far. Lucifer, Inanna and Tara are colored over in red and Persephone’s image is not.

The way in which some characters appear to come and go from the twelve feels important. It even echoes the ways in which character interactions happen consistently through euphemism, literal description and withheld contact. We’re probably getting way too close to the ‘real life analogues’ to be taken seriously but…the Pantheon seems to represent the highest echelon of power through embodiment and attention. However elevated the Pantheon may be in the mind of someone like Laura, it is not the end of the game: it is the one true game board and- while many rules are spelled out -just as many rules need to be discovered through practice. What the Pantheon represents, to most people, is unanimous: ultimate power and indulgence beyond which calculation doesn’t matter. That means all calculations behind that line happen in a kind of void. In that void, it is best to take everything with a grain of salt. No rule book, after all.

Which brings me back to how skillfully The Wicked + The Divine uses expectation. The familiar connotations of many of these names (Inanna, Lucifer, Odin, etc.) create the illusion of a logical starting point. Sort of like “Oh look, it’s this character and now they’re like this.”

Once I learned how precarious that line of thought was, every other apparent reference stood out. The actual mythology of Inanna plays a subtle but inescapable role in my main non-blog writing project. Then, during Inanna’s first appearance in this comic, there is a star design over one of his eyes, which reminded me of the star from Bowie’s Blackstar album. There’s a brick on this site about that one and its thematic treatment of ceremonial sacrifice. A friend who is more visually attentive than I pointed out several of the celebrity musician character designs. Turns out I was way off on a few of them. The way Amaterasu interacts with other people and how other people treat her made me think of Grimes, at first. Kate Bush is a better match, though. Odin has an obvious Daft Punk thing. Lucifer and Tara are immediately evocative (to me, anyway) of associative groups of celebrities rather than specific ones. Lucifer and Tara are celebrities that put everyone’s teeth on edge: one of them thrives on animosity and Tara brings it out in other people no matter what she does or says.

Speaking of Tara- her associated references don’t work on the same level as anyone else’s. Other people can’t even agree on what deity she represents or if she is somehow an original one. Baphomet is a recent emergence, after all.

Inanna’s actual appearance and diction is more reminiscent of Prince. Prince diction is not the same as Bowie diction. An anal person could spiral out from that. No, the Prince/Bowie stuff are just references; this is Inanna. Inanna is just a reference; this is actually an original character. The visual nods to famous musicians are just a thematic expression of the analogues with the cult of celebrity; don’t overthink it. The analogues with the cult of celebrity are modern lead-ins to timeless subject matter; don’t overthink it.

That cycle can easily cause someone to over-correct in the other direction: every visual and textual reference is REAL and immediately relevant. The dialogue between characters expresses itself in tiers of language, including exclusion. Perpetual dialogue that weaves in and out of language sews the seeds of a collective subconscious cosmology.

More to come, obviously

Part 2