Map of the Whorl

Midas of Urth

How Midas Received His Golden Touch

The old drunken and licentious satyr, Silenus, got separated from Dionysus' army. The servants of King Midas found him sleeping in the rose garden. Silenus regaled Midas with wonderful stories about an vast continent lying beyond the Ocean, the land of the Hyperboreans. The land was a paradise of ancient-living people. Between this continent and Africa, Europe, and Asia there was a frightful whirlpool. Close to the whirlpool were two streams with a tree growing on the banks of each. The fruit of one tree would cause the eater to weep, groan, and pine away. The fruit of the other would make the eater young again. Actually he would grow ever younger, going back and back till he became an infant and then disappeared. 

Midas was enchanted by Silenus' tales. He entertained him for a while and then had him escorted back to Dionysus. For this kind act to his teacher, Dionysus gave Midas the power to turn everything he touched to gold.

"A great expedition -- at least 10 million strong -- once set out thence across the Ocean in ships to visit the Hyperboreans; but on learning  that theirs was the best land that the old world had to offer, retired in disgust"

Summarized from Robert Graves, The Greek Myths 83:b-c from Aelian's Varia Historia iii:18
That this is the story of the Long Sun and Short Sun cannot be denied. The planet Green is clearly to be associated with the tree that caused agony and wasting away. On Blue, colonies are in the process of becoming more and more primitive and are feared to be doomed to vanishing altogether. Between Urth and the planets is the Whorl (a whirlpool). 

This seems to clearly suggest an unwritten story of the Whorl's creation and Typhon's rise to power were also be explained here. In Quetzal: His Nature and Deeds, I explain how the inhumi are associated with Dionysus and how Typhon is in turn associated with him as Alexander the Great -- the two of them representing the "two-horned ones." What I do not relate there is that the tamarind tree that Quetzal plants under his window at the Prolocutor's palace figures in the Hindu version of the story of King Midas receiving donkey ears. In that version, however, Midas receives not ears but horns! It is certain to me that Wolfe intends to associate Typhon with Midas. 

Then there is Quetzal's rendition of the Garden of Eden story in chapter one of Caldé of the Long Sun. He speaks of the cyclic nature of myth and the references point to Quetzal as the cobra in his story. The obvious implication is that the Quetzal is re-telling the Plan of Pas. The cobra entices the man and woman into his tree (that is, off of Urth and to the stars), but they have yet to climb down (establish a colony on Green). So naturally Quetzal the serpent lured man and woman into the stars and now he wants them to climb down. Quetzal would have to be on Urth to entice them. Since the inhumi are serephim, and Quetzal is the Devil, then Quetzal is a fallen angel. With all the Noah's Ark references in the story, this would make Quetzal Noah and the Whorl his boat.

Tie this to the story of Midas' Golden Touch and we have an Inhumi-Silenus gets separated from his people (Dionysus' army) and ends up on Urth. He buys his way back home by offering Typhon power through technology (which he has gained from whomever it was with whom he hitched a ride to Urth). He manipulates Typhon into building a fantastic ship to colonize a "paradise" about which Quetzal has told him. See how tidy that is?

However a spanner was thrown into these lovely works by a Question and Answer series on the Urth.net mailing list where Wolfe states the following:

Q: In the Long Sun books, is Quetzal the only one of his kind on the Whorl? Was he an original passenger or a late arrival?

GW: He was a late arrival. He is not the only one of his kind, but the Inhumi are rare on the Whorl.

When this quote shown to me, I was for a long time thrown into confusion: "so Quetzal is not Noah, and while the story of Midas' Golden Touch is the outline for the Long Sun and Short Sun, the beginning of the story is not related to the story of the Whorl?"  Why not?? After connecting Quetzal to Dionysus and the cobra...after connecting Typhon so succinctly to Midas, why not complete the loop? 

But then I realized the obvious: It is the word "Inhuma" that is connected to Dionysus, not the name "Quetzal."  It is the race of the Inhumi which is connected to Dionysus. So while Quetzal is a late-arrival, that does not mean that the Inhumi as a whole are as well. 

This investigation is still in development; I will further document this issue at a later time. 

"Halfway to the horizon, one of the snake-necked [white] seabirds skimmed the water hunting fish, a creature capable of soaring almost to the stars that rarely rose higher than a donkey's ears"
On Blue's Water, chapter 1

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