A Twisty Look at Ensoulment

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matt 7:13-14 (NIV)

So, ensoulment, when a person gains a soul, though that idea is tied in also with (if not confused with) when a person becomes a "person" (not at all necessarily the same thing). The Wikipedia article on the matter gives a quick little journey through the traditions, though not all the possibilities. Still, looking about the web: conception, fourty days, ninety days, one hundred and twenty days, birth, a week after, two weeks after, as found in the wikipedia article, "The first amen."[FN]

************************ [FN]To note, that Wikipedia article is rather tainted by its emphasis on the question of abortion, and its seeming desire to to take every opportunity to speak against it. ************************

Lots of choices, and that's not nearly all of them. But, through them all there is a truth: at some point somebody simply decided on an answer. Even when it seems that answer is Biblically based – or by the Quran, or what other religious text or philosophical train of thought – the arguments always follow the conclusion. If it were not so there would not be debate. They are all, in the end, merely traditions. Arbitrarily chosen dates given substance by philosophical and dogmatic accretion.

And if you want to know what I think about the validity of religious – particularly (for geography) Christian – traditions, keep in mind that the Inquisition (to choose one example from many) was Biblically based, despite the on-its-face obviousness of that Jesus would openly and vehemently condemn it. Not easy to find torture in the Beatitudes. And don't you think that because you are Protestant you escape that condemnation. Just take a look at your own history of abuses. Find out about the atrocities of early U.S. Christianity. Read The Scarlet Letter already.[FN]

Review: Catherynne M. Valente, Radiance

So, I came upon Catherynne M. Valente through her debut, "Fairyland," series, which starts with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Though, for the life of me, I cannot remember how I came upon those books. But I read the first however many pages (I am pretty sure on Amazon) and had to know more. Not being so much interested in reading something meant for children, and mostly at random, I bought Radiance.

The axle around which Radiance turns is Severin Unck, daughter of the famed film director Percival Unck, herself also a renowned director, though of the documentary bend. While she is the axle, the story is mostly told through and by other people connected to Severin: her father (or, her father's camera), one her seven step-mothers, and persons connected to her in the world of film. the most important being her crew on her last film, that documenting the Venusian town of Adonis, which was mysteriously wiped out in one swoop, its entire population disappearing without cause or trace. It is her last production because during its tragic and chaotic filming — and this is the centerline of that axle — Severin, herself, vanishes.

A town on Venus: because the world of Radiance — and, really, it should be said the worlds — are of a solar system where the planets are much closer together (though still months' journeys apart), all habitable, with their own flora and fauna. Indeed, not only habitable, but all inhabited, "colonized," if you will, by the ruling nation-states on earth: Mars is Chinese, Pluto, American. Though, that mostly in terms of rather fluid citizenships than of racial identity. And all except for the moon, which is divided up by film studios.