Re: Informants, Issytra, The Gospel of Bastet

----- Original Message -----
From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>


> On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 10:39:01AM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
Yryi:

> > AAACK!!!!  You just snipped out my plug, with Web address, to my Gospel
of
> > Bastet selection!!!  I'll read your Esani text if you'll read my Bastet
> > poem!! :-} I fully intend to, since I need to find out more about these
> > Ebisedi.
>
> _uso'. uso'._ [1]
>
> >         http://www.frontiernet.net/~awen/bastgosp.html
> [snip]
Fyryi:

> Ah, "the kittens of the gods"... that's surely a relic from the feline
> days of Teonaht, I presume? :-) As well as all those retractible claw
> references, I suppose.
Well, you sweetheart!  You gave it a look-see.  I have done the same with
Esani the Wise.  Yes, this is a relic of the feline days of Teonaht;  Bastet
is a favorite goddess, and her angels are all the Feleonym, the flying cats
I invented when I was four.  They've become a cult.

> ROTFL!!! "If you are afflicted by gestures..." LMAO...
Yes, neither Issytra nor Arrais Aijjy quite know what to do with this.  Some
have argued that this means that you are afflicted by people making rude or
dismissive gestures at you, in which you are an outcast; others have
suggested that you are the one making rude gestures at people, in which case
you are an outcast.  One medical Teonaht student suggested that it showed
the symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome, in which case you are truly afflicted,
and an outcast.  All the afflictions, says Bastet, are to be looked upon as
hidden gifts given to you by the gods.  The twitching of Bastet's tail.

> "It is the goddess Bastet sending you your mice"... LOL, this is so loaded
> with double meaning, what with mice being the affliction of kittens and so
> on... Uh, I mean, humans. :-)
Well exactly!  Mice are the bane of humans and the delight of kittens.
Bastet is feeding you and punishing you at the same time.  A third meaning
is that your persecutor could become your victim if you just turn around and
face him at full hiss--claws extended.  It also means something like "a life
well-lived is the best revenge."  Those who deride you are so many mice in
your cupboard, easily caught in mousetraps and fed to the hearth-cat.

> And what's with this repeated reference to being half-blind? It certainly
> strikes one as stemming from a deeper idiom, but I'm at a loss to divine
> what that may be.
Eyes are an important part of early Teonaht belief--in vision,
understanding, blessing.  God Himself is often called an Eye, who sees
through your own closed eyes, even if you don't see Him.  God also has you
in His Eye, which means He's thought of you before you've thought of Him.
If you are blind, you have no power of Sight at all.  If you are Half-blind,
you have no power to understand contradiction and subtleties.

> --------
> [1] _uso'_ is actually the weak optative marker in Ebisedian that means "I
> really prefer to, but if you insist...". It's supposed to indicate the
> speaker's wishes, but much weaker than _oso'_ "I wish". Here, however, it
> is not used as an optative marker, but as a highly idiomatic[2] way of
> apologizing.
>
> [2] Ebisedian has a lot of highly-idiomatic features[3]. I believe I've
> already pointed out how the strong optative marker, _0so'_, which usually
> means "my (arrogant) opinion is that ...", can also be used as an answer
> to a question, with the meaning of "yes I'll do it".
I like this distinction between preference and wish, opinion and arrogant
opinion.  Whoohoo!

> [3] You'll find that I use this phrase "highly-idiomatic" very often, in
> relation to Ebisedian. It's a convenient umbrella term[4] over those
> vague, mushy, grey areas of Ebisedian which do not necessarily follow
> logically from what one might understand of Ebisedian grammar and
> semantics.
Go for it!  Vague, mushy, grey areas in Teonaht are terms like Felrreo,
which can mean "fairy," "false person," "invented person," "personal demon,"
"second self," "wraith," and "alien."  Felrreoth, the adjective, means
"highly deceptive," "alien," "heretical," "not to be trusted,"
"paradoxical."  Imral means both "sapient creature" (important when I was
creating non-human intelligent aliens), and "soul."  Veparema is
"nothingness," a contradiction in terms, because it means the ultimate
nothingness that is devoid of being and yet it's a word that contains the
word "being.  It is the "why is there something at all instead of nothing at
all?" concept.  Its first derivation is ve- (no) and parem (be), with
somekind of substantival suffix (no-being-ness).  But the -ema means "like,"
and Vepar means "the sky between stars."  In my cosmology, God rolls
nothingness into a ball, surrounding it with substance and turns it into
Hell.  "To throw the farlarop" means to do something that will come back and
hit you.  Boomerangs are also called nifarlarop.

NOW:  to "The Speaking of Esani"-- to be found at
http://quickfur.yi.org:8080/~hsteoh/conlang/Esani-1.pdf

I love the fact that you have made a "dramatic" register.  And that sa'ni is
a word associated with intelligence, wisdom, and expertise.  And that Esa'ni
and Erosa'ni rhyme.

I also love the triadic nature of Ebisedian thinking!  This is somewhat
consonant with Teonaht fascination with threes, although they see threeness
as emerging from dualities:  you, your lover, and your relationship (the
third thing).  You, your book, and the reader.  You, your painting, and the
viewer.   The better, the best, and the otherly good.  The weak, the strong,
and the trickster.  The father, the mother, and the child that is born of
their pairing.  God the Father, God the Mother, and God the Holy Child.  And
in earlier pagan thinking: the god at your right hand, the god at your left
hand, and you.  Two gods can reinforce each other as they stand next to you,
but you provide the catalyst, depending on whether you are bright (seeing),
dark (blind), or lukewarm (half-blind).  Mykwid and Dohhdakra are forces of
stability and change in the human world, but they provide a kind of Hegelian
dialectic with thesis, antithesis, and new synthesis, which, pendulum like,
always shatters the confident rule with the different one, but whose
strangeness becomes familiar and a new rule that is shattered by another
intrusion, and so on and so on and so on.

I've got the English version of Mykwid Dohhdakra-jo on a tentative web site,
which is a dialogue.  And a list of gods on another tentative website.  It's
getting the Teonaht in perfect form that is the chore, but I can post what I
have if people are interested.

I really do like the three directions of the Ebisedi!  North, Southeast, and
Southwest.  What a wonderful concept!  The Teonaht keep to the four
directions, but each has a middle.  Twelve all in all.  Twelve is the number
of their fingers, and twelve is their base in counting (or used to be...).

The "Colourful Universe" is also a wonderful concept, Teoh.  It suggests all
sorts of multiplicities, all the varieties of the world.

Yeah, and I thought immediately of the country Georgia, instead of the
state! (re the Tom Lehrer quote).

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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