Neo-Gnostics. The new synchratists. It's the best way I can find to describe the work of scholars like John Dominic Crossan and Elaine Pagels and popularists like Dan Brown. What makes a Neo-Gnostic? First, there's the insistance that the Bible makes sense only if you have a special knowledge. For instance, the Church was wrong for 2,000 years about the account of Jesus' resurection and crucifixion. The authors never intended it to be undestood litterally, merely "prophetically". Christianity is really supressed goddess worship, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Second, an attempt to reinvigorate the the Gnostic writings in order to create a "special knowledge" that serves as a key for decoding or even flat out re-creating a new Christianity. Funny how the new Christianity that's found always harmonizes so well with the spirit of the age... We've seen these sort of attempts before, and the fact is that however well-intentioned they are, they die out the minute the fashions of the age change. Only orthodoxy marches on, refined by the passing ages, now swerving this way, now that, but always there just when we think we've seen the last of it. You can follow the documentation of 2,000 years and come to your own conclusions. The Platypus reads on.
I needed a break from A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (too many authors and too many styles coming in too fast) so I decided to turn back to an author whose work I've enjoyed exploring: Robert E. Howard. This time, however, I decided to skip over Howard's famous Conan yarns and instead take a look at one of his earlier creations, Solomon Kane. The idea of a puritan occult detective was too intriguing to pass up. I have the whole collection of Kane's tales and I do intend to blog them all. Right now, my little literary detour has only encompassed the first two short stories so I'm going to record my thoughts on them right away and get back to the rest as I have time. Skulls in the Stars Solomon Kane makes his debut with this classic bit of English Gothic including a haunted moor, a vengeful ghost, and a solitary miser. Howard's Kane fits the portrait of the archetypal puritan: grim, principled, metaphysical, with an iron sense of right and wrong. I h...
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