A handy chart for gauging how far a case of CTW has progressed. If anyone can tell me who actually produced this art, i'd be much obliged.
As mentioned before: Crystal Tower Wizardry is a pernicious habit, and magic is inherently evil. Allow me to relate the Biblical story of Creation and Eden from the CTW perspective, so that the reader may be warned of the severe mental damage which inevitably follows such impure thinking;
The First Account of Creation
Many people go pass through Sunday school without realising that there are in fact two separate Creation Stories in the canon Bible.
In the First, God does stuff for six days, then rests. The specifics of this cosmology can be a little difficult to visualize: It begins by describing that the earth as a formless wasteland. Two verses in and we already have a mystery; A wasteland is a form, so how can it be formless? There is also an abyss(of water) which is dark. But the spirit of God blows over it like a wind. My best guess at the meaning of this is that everything was all mixed together in a dark, useless muddy slop. It is the ultimate result of entropy- a homogenous, worthless muddle. But God was moving around in it.
Then god creates light. But there is still darkness for contrast and they are divided from eachother; creating day and night. This would be ample setup for some epic conflict. But God saw that it was good, and we had the necessary materials for the 1st day.
On the 2nd day, God made a dome to separate the waters; basically a bubble of atmosphere. This divided the waters above from those below.
This "day" idea is strange. Some people claim they were literally 24 hour days. Others cover by saying that "day" means something more like an era, or that a day for god is a really long time. These explanations smack somewhat of a desire to have one's cake and eat it too.
On the 3rd day, God gathers the waters below into seas so that dry land appears. Then vegetation and growing things come forth from the land.
On the 4th day, God places stars in the dome of the sky; as if they are stuck onto the membrane separating the atmosphere from the waters above. He creates the moon to be a light for night (the moon can be seen during the day, but whatever.) and the sun, which I guess is a consolidation of the light of day.
On the 6th day, God created all the animals on the earth. He then creates humans in his image. Exacty what this means is a huge mystery. It seems to imply that humans have the image of their creator, but not the substance. He also grants humanity dominion over the rest of creation. The lions and tigers and viruses probably took issue with this, perhaps on the basis that they had been created first.
As for the sexes, it says "man and woman he created them." in a nice egalitarian sounding way. Perhaps we may insert Lilith; Adam's apocryphal first wife at this point.
Lilith is a compelling figure; she is never described or explained in the bible, but is occasionally mentioned in extra biblical sources and commentaries. She is said to have refused to be subservient to Adam, and became a mother of demons. She came to be the Hebrew equivalent of a class of Sumerian baby-snatching demons, and also as a sort of succubus sexy-time demon. These days, she is mostly invoked for contrived post-modern vampire mythologies.
On the 7th day, God saw that it was good, and he rested. The idea that God requires rest is a perturbing, paganish notion.
The Second Account:
Picks up on the day when the dry land had been formed, but before plants had been caused to grow. God creates Adam out of clay, in a process which sounds eerily like the tale of the Golem. There you have it. Humans are Golems.
God then creates the Garden of Eden, the name of which is supposed to evoke pleasant feelings in most any language. In the middle of the Garden, God plants two special trees: The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Only the latter he specifically forbids to Adam.
Then God notes that it is not good that the man be alone. What God witnessed that led him to this conclusion is not explicitly stated. So God created animals and had the man name them all. But none of them proved to be a suitable companion; not even the god-spelled-backwards, who was probably really keen on getting to be #1 companion.
God decides to anesthetize Adam and synthesize a complementary organism from a tissue sample. Which makes you wonder if God had misplaced the original designs in the last day or so.
So God had his creations naked. And they felt no shame, but the implication is that they should have, which indicates that something weird was going on. (Questionable Western notions of nudity and propriety aside, let's take them as a given for this story)
One day, the serpent asks Eve to recount exactly what she is and is not allowed to eat. In pseudepigraphical books like the Book of Adam or the Apocalypse of Moses it explains that the serpent at the time was possessed by Lucifer himself. Lucifer wished to betray humanity out of jealousy, for God had ordered the angels to be subservient to man, and Lucifer thought this was just stupid.
So the serpent explained to Eve that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would work exactly as the name implied, making her like (a) god. BTW, the fruit was not an apple. But is depicted as such because of a Latin pun where malus is the word for both "evil" and "apple"
Eve got some of the fruit and gave some to Adam, who was with her and apparently not paying attention to the previous conversation. Then they ate the fruit and had the world's first psychedelic experience.
Imagine their consternation.
Ernst Fuchs. Adam and Eve Under The Tree of Knowledge.
The couple suddenly realized that they were naked. In a Garden. With snakes and shit. They may even have realized that their creator, who supposedly loved them, had made them that way and kept them ignorant of it.
A&E make some clothes out of fig leaves (AC +0). Evening comes and they hear Jehovah coming along. They hide themselves; probably because they haven't come down yet and are still a little jittery. And they do a poor job of hiding themselves because they didn't know that there was such a thing as needing to hide from anything until a few hours ago. Jehovah spots them and there is a dialog.
"Who told you that you were naked?" Jehovah knows his game is up; "Who told you Acererak was weak to gemstones and attacks from the astral plane?!" Jehovah then turns it around by blaming the victim, and this suffices to distract A&E.
Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent. Jehova curses them all to the chronic suffering. He then says that they have indeed become like gods in their knowledge. He decides to ban them from Eden so that they do not eat from the Tree of Life and become immortal. I suppose Jehova wouldn't have much to feel special about if his creations got too close to his level.
God is a terrible Dungeon Master here. We have a scenario where there are only a couple of clear, obvious objectives. Except the players are not supposed to win. When they achieve the obvious objectives, they are punished, for no other reason than for the DM to prove his control over the game ("You should have known better than to open that chest.") A good DM knows how to pose as a threat, but understands that the exercise is pointless if it does not ultimately benefit the players. Don't be a Jehova.
And don't be a Crystal-Tower Wizard.
How wrathful is He to set up his beloved creations for inevitable failure? How vindictive? Maybe to add a little perspective, apply Hanlon's_razor over the story? Sometimes legendary plots don't fall far from Newton's head.
ReplyDeleteSpace-wizards can make mistakes too.
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