Thelxepeia's Mirrors

The image of Thelxepeia, the Whorl's goddess of witchcraft and trickery is the location selected by Hyacinth to meet Silk and begin their love-affair. The statue is carefully described by the narrator as that of a woman with off-center eyes standing in a reflecting pool, holding mirrors. The mirrors are positioned such that they capture the reflection of the waters. This statue is the center piece of the Long Sun story embodying the themes of Mimicry and Artificiality. 

Artificial Whorl

Everything in the Whorl is artificial, including the Whorl itself. The Whorl is in an inside-out parody of the Urth on which it was based. The religion of the Whorl and its Chrasmological Writings were created by Typhon in blasphemous parody of the "state religion". It is a mix of Catholic Christian formality veneered over Graeco-Roman cults. The gods are ostensibly more real than any of those ever worshiped on Urth in that they can be seen and heard from time to time thru the computer monitors called "Sacred Windows". But these "gods" are in fact only computer interfaces and program modules based on members and courtiers of Urth's royal family. Each member took a roll vaguely reminiscent of Graeco-Roman gods, but they are blasphemous parodies of them, named after monsters from Greek mythology. 

Viron's chem soldiers say the "real" gods are the hyena-like creatures called bufes that live in the tunnels under Viron and receive live on the refuse from sacrifices. They call these creatures "gods" ("dogs" backwards); one more facet to the inside-out theology of the Whorl, where Cerberus, that is death, is the only true divinity.

The leaders of Viron are counterfeits too. The Prolocutor Quetzal (the "Pope" of the Vironese Chapter) is a disguised sinister alien vampire with the body of a winged serpents. The five member Ayuntamiento are all chemical people, mechanical puppets of the consciousness of the biological bodies. But even that is a deception, because the biological bodies of four of the five members have died unknown to their chemical homunculuses. Before the story is over, even the army of the Trivigaunte will be divided between an original Generalissimo and a chemical copy.

In the Whorl, chemical people, called "robots" on the Urth they left behind, have the same rights as the humanity on which they were based. They are even sexually differentiated require one of each sex to "reproduce".

Even people have been tinkered with on the Whorl until it is questionable to what extent the Whorl's humanity is "genuine." Silk (and probably Chenille) is such a human contrivance.

Imitation Whorl

There's a good side to imitation in the Whorl as well. One of the principles Silk learns during his enlightenment and repeat several times is that "when a demon mimics a god, it can not help in some ways becoming like a god." So The Long Sun is about the creature imitating it's creator (ala the "imitation of Christ").  Thus, Horn imitates Silk, at first in mockery and at last in homage. 

Many "demons" imitate good "gods" in The Long Sun and are transformed by their imitation. Oosik is an ambitious colonel who supports Silk's Caldéship because he thinks it's a good bet for his career. He bets right in that Silk promotes him to lead the Guard under General Mint. His actions, however, are those of a selfless patriot because his life depends on it. For the same reason, Mint tells Spider, the leader of the Ayuntamiento's spy-ring that she doesn't mind that her army is full of his spies because they will have to fight hard in order the gain the trust they desire. This is the sense in which the Outsider tells Silk that, "though He is not Kypris [the Whorl's goddess of love], she cannot help becoming him. The more she becomes a goddess of love in truth, the more they will unite." (Exodus of the Long Sun, pg 369).

While the inhumi Quetzal is not a "god" of the Whorl, he thematically represents a demon-Dionysus (see Quetzal: His Nature and Deeds). While the people are to him merely prey, as the Prolocutor of Viron, he imitates a wise and venerable old man whose only concern is their careful leadership. In the end, he gives his life for those people, guiding them through the tunnels out of Viron.

Gods and Demons

The concept that a demon becomes in some ways like a god when it imitates a god is significant in that the nine major gods based on the royal family are named after demon-monsters and resemble them too: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athene, Apollo/Hades are Pas/Typhon, Echidna, Scylla, Molpe, and Hierax, Quetzal) – see The Binding of Zeus in Mainframe for more on this. 

This juxtaposition of concepts (demons that imitate gods and gods in the form of demons) leads me to believe Wolfe is considering the relationship between the Classical gods (asserted by the Apostle Paul to be demons – 1 Corinthians 10:20) and the Judeo-Christian Messiah. It has been frequently pointed out by scholars of Comparitive Religions that gods such as Dionysus and Zeus perform similar acts and present similar themes as those of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospels. Christian apologists and mytholophiles (such as C.S. Lewis who embodies both categories) have argued since the 2^nd century that the Christ was pre-figured in the ancient religions — not drawn from them. Justin the Martyr postulated that the Devil himself had created these counterfeit versions in anticipation and imitation of the real thing .

Wolfe is taking the argument a step further in saying that to the extent that Dionysus and the others imitated Christ, they became the Christ for the purposes of their worshippers. C.S. Lewis said as much in The Last Battle (last book in the Chronicles of Narnia): Aslan tells a Calormen soldier he is the opposite of the fearsome god Tash – such opposites that any good thing done in Tash’s name was actually done for Aslan, and anything evil done in Aslan’s name was actually done for Tash.

Some Significant Imitators