Map of the Whorl

Chems

Chem is short for "chemical person". In Viron, Chems ostensibly have full rights as persons although they are widely considered inferior to "bios" (that is, humans). That the augur and sibyls of the Sun St. mantaeon actually considered it conceivable to dismantle the chem maid to provide prosthetics for the old sibyl Betel is proof that whatever the law said, chems were still believed to exist for the benefit and at the leave of bios.

When the first humans arrived in the Whorl, chems had already been occupying and preparing the cities for some time.

Commentary
The most obvious derivation of the word chem as it is used in the Long Sun the usage by the Cabbalists. In this aspect, the word means "name." Such a chem is placed on a golem to animate it as in the famous tale, The Golem of Prague. In that case, the chem was "emeth" which means "truth." When the initial e was removed, the chem became "meth" meaning "death" and the golem died. An alternate spelling of chem in this sense is shem which is also the name of Noah's eldest son (Genesis 6). 

There were several recipes for creating a golem which provided the conjunction between the Kabbalists and the alchemists such as the Persian Jâbir ibn Hâyyan who discussed the creation of "animated statues" and "morphing machines." This leads us to the second derivation: alCHEMy. The Long Sun narrative is filled with alchemic references and references to the paramount alchemist Paracelsus. The word alchemy comes from the Egyptian word Khmia or Kemet (from which came the word "Egypt") which leads us to the most involved derivation: the Egyptian god Chem.
 

Chem is an archaic name for this god. Modern authorities refer to him as Min. But Samuel Sharpe in Egyptian Mythology and Christian Mythology [1863] refers to him by this name, and Robert Graves does as well. 

Chem's name came from the word Kemet and he was the divine personification of Egypt.  An alternate pronunciation of Chem is Ham, the second son of Noah. This brings to light another derivation of chem, for Ham was cursed by his father to serve his brothers just as chems are created and doomed to serve bios.

Chem was a god of "increase" and as such was associated with the Greek gods Priapus and Hermes. Chem wore "the tight garment of the Egyptian women", and carried a whip. He wore a crown with two large feathers, so large he required a "prop" to hold himself up. (Samuel Sharpe, )

What's unexpected about Chem is that he is clearly associated, not with Marble or Molybdenum as one would expect, but with Silk! This is probably because Silk is a homunculus such as Paracelsus claimed to have made from semen, blood, and mud in De Natura Rerum (1572).


The god Chem

Chem, like Silk, is associated with Apollo, for Robert Graves asserts:

"A Greek colony planted at Chemmis apparently towards the end of the second millennium B.C., identified Perseus with the god Chem, whose hieroglyph was a winged bird and a solar disk...the  confusion between [Hermes] and Perseus may have arisen because Hermes, as the messenger of Death, had also earned the title of Pterseus, 'the destroyer'." (The Greek Myths 73:8-9)

 

Now Graves asserts that the title "Destroyer" is also a possible root of the name "Apollo". Wolfe is demonstrably aware of this because in the  Soldier novels Latro refers to Apollo as "the destroyer". So by extraction, Chem is associated with Apollo as well as Hermes. Elsewhere Graves clearly states that Chem was associated with Perseus who was associated with Hermes who was associated with Apollo. 
 

The truth about the hieroglyph for Chem seems to be that it was a reed leaf, a [crown??], water, a [cow or bull??], and a griffon vulture as you can see from the graphic above from Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity. Graves was possibly thinking of the Winged Sun Disk of Thebes. Yet Wolfe frequently accepts Graves' errors as well as his insights, and so Silk, who is thematically associated  with Apollo, does fly on a disk with Hyacinth over the Alembrera as Oreb wings about him.


Winged Sun Disk of Thebes
The following is an explanation of the picture to the right from Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity:

"Another Phenician deity is the foreign Venus, chiefly worshipped at Memphis, who, unlike the Egyptian goddesses, is wholly unclothed. She is Athor under a new form, having her long hair falling in two locks on her shoulders, and having a basket on her head. She shows us a front view, and stands upon a lion that walks side-ways. She stands between two gods, each on the top of a small temple with a door. One is the Egyptian Chem, who, with his right arm raised, holds the whip. The other is a foreign god, with an Asiatic beard: he holds a spear in his right hand, and the character for life in his left hand. In place of the sacred Asp, the usual ornament of a god's forehead, he has a dog's or stag's head with two long ears, like that on the top of an Anubis-staff. The name of the goddess is Koun, the queen of Heaven; the name of the foreign god is Ranpo, Lord of Heaven, and king of the other gods. To Chem, the goddess presents a bunch of flowers, emblems of life, and to the foreign god two serpents, emblems of death, thus declaring the Gnostic and Manichean doctrine of Antitheses or oppositions between life and death, or good and evil , a doctrine of which we see many more traces in Lower Egypt than in the Thebaid. The goddess Koun, or Chiun, is mentioned by the prophet Amos, in chap. v. 26, where the Greek translators in the Septuagint version have changed her name into Raephan, which in Acts vii. 43 is spelled Remphan; and thus by a strange change we have these two Phenician deities. both mentioned in the same sentence.

"This god Ranpo is sculptured on other Egyptian monuments, with spear and shield in one hand, and a battle-axe in the other, with which he is prepared to strike down his terrified worshippers"
Chem, Koun, and Ranpo
The fact that goddess Koun (koh-oon) presents to Chem flowers and to Ranpo serpents, connects Koun to Hyacinth who presents Silk with flowers in the form of a needler with a picture of hyacinth blossoms (LS 1). Therefore the bearded Crane is to be identified with Ranpo and the information Crane received from Hyacinth the spy are the (oracular) serpents Koun offers. When Hyacinth gives her needler to Silk, she's elevated above Silk, due to being on a bed, temporarily mimicking the stature of Koun.

Koun is also to be identified with Chenille since an alternate pronunciation is Chiun (kee-yoon), so similar to her nickname Chen. The entry for "Chiun" in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, gives meaning as "properly, a statue, i.e. idol; but used (by euphemism) for some heathen deity (perhaps corresponding to Priapus or Baal-peor)." The most frequent description of Chenille, in fact the first description of her (LS1:10), is "statuesque."  This refers to her height (note Koun's height in relation to Chem and Ranpo. It is no mystery that Chenille is equated with Hyacinth for she is thematically Isis as Horus' sister while Hyacinth is Isis as Horus' wife. But there is still a puzzle here in that Chenille, like Silk, is also associated somehow with chems. Her nickname Chen differs from chem in only one letter, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance associates Koun with Priapus (who is also associated with Chem), and as a living "statue" she is a golem.

Having accepted Silk as the god Chem, it is possible to see that the whip Silk identified as his own in the dream at the end of Lake of the Long Sun, chapter 4 (not merely "a whip" but repeatedly "his whip") is that carried by Chem, and to see why Silk needs a "prop and support" as he declares a couple pages later at the beginning of chapter 5. The feathers in Chem's headdress references either Oreb or the pen-case Silk carries with him always. Silk is wrapped in bandages throughout most of the Long Sun narrative, either in the ankle brace provided by Crane or the bandages on his chest for his needler wound.

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