"Ginny Wrapped in the Sun" (1967)

William Blake, The Red Dragon and the Woman Wrapped in the Sun, c. 1805

My last post looked at Lafferty's aesthetics and theology in abstract terms, briefly mentioning his short story "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun." Today, I want to descend the ladder of abstraction and look at that story in detail.

Its plot is deceptively simple: a long, digressive conversation between Dr. Minden and Dr. Dismas. Gradually, we begin to see that Dismas's daughter, Ginny, is implicated by Minden's theory of human evolution, which he plans to unveil in a paper titled "The Contingent Mutation." Ginny acts strangely, seemingly confirming Minden's theory that humanity is a contingent offshoot of a transitional species called Xauen man. Set near Lafferty's Doolen's Mountain, the story moves its dialogue through a series of interruptions—irruptions, really: religious zealots searching for a "weird seed," Ginny's growing sway over those around her, the news of a four-year-old's suicide. It carries some of the conceptual heft of his novels.

Essential aspects of "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun" puzzle me. The names, for example. I'm sure they matter, but I haven't figured them out. What is the relationship between Agar and Hagar? Why Susanna? "Dall" means blindness in Gaelic, which makes sense. Clarinda suggests clarity or insight, but consider how she responds to the death of her four-year-old, Krios, who has been violated and destroyed by Ginny.

Krios, too, has import. The word means "ram," which connects to Ginny's heartless comment about using rams. But there is more. The ram's horn. The shofar. The trumpet that echoes and is travestied throughout the story. And the ram from Isaac's binding, which prefigures Christ, the Lamb. And the woman in Revelation 12, clothed with the Sun, who gives birth to the Lamb. Even Xauen seems to possess a secret. The name means "look at the horns." For Lafferty, that would place it squarely inside his complicated horn imagery.

If these fragments are spolia, what follows in this post is an attempt to show how one of them, Gyne Peribebleene-ton-Hēlion, ends up lodged in the heliish wall of Not to Mention Camels.

But first, a theory about what may have inspired Lafferty's story, something I feel reasonably confident proposing. At the center of "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun" is cacophony. It appears early, interrupting the conversation between Dr. Minden and Dr. Dismas, marking the moment we first meet Ginny.

"Musical screaming! Glorious gibbering with an undertone that could shatter rocks! Hooting of a resonance plainly too deep for so small an instrument! Yowling, hoodoo laughing, broken roaring, rhinoceros grunting!

And the child came tumbling out of the tall rocks of Doolen's Mountain, leaping down the flanks of the hill as though she was a waterfall. And both the men laughed.

“Your Ginny is the weirdest cacophony I can imagine, Dismas,” Dr. Minden said. “It scares me, and I love it.”

Cacophany also ends the story, as Ginny vanishes up into the rocks of Doolen's Mountain, a place Lafferty associates with initiation into loss. (If you have read "Saturday You Die," one of his most powerful and personal stories, you have been inside Doolen's Mountain.)

Raucous rowling! Hound-dog hooting! Hissing of badgers, and the clattering giggle of geese! Shag-tooth shouting, and the roaring of baby bulls!

And a screaming monkey leaped and tumbled up the rocks like crazy water.

These are birth pangs, and they punctuate the story. They float free, disconnected from any actual birth. If Ginny gives birth, it happens after the story ends. The effect is dislocation, a deeply uncanny echo without an event.

I remember imagining something like it as a child and feeling puzzled. I suspect Lafferty had a similar moment. What he heard in his head, and what I later heard in mine, was the screaming of birth pangs. I think that cacophony gave rise to the story. It is the labor and physical pain question implicit in Revelation 12. Most readers will recognize the allusion in the title of "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun," but they may miss why it has uncanny potential, especially for a Roman Catholic.

In that chapter, the "woman clothed with the sun" is the center of a cosmic struggle. She is clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. Pregnant and crying out in labor, she prepares to give birth. A great red dragon, later identified as Satan, waits to devour her child, the one destined to rule all nations with a rod of iron. But before the dragon can strike, the child is caught up to God and His throne.

The woman then flees into the wilderness, where she is protected and nourished for 1,260 days. A war follows in heaven. Michael and his angels fight against the dragon and his hosts, and the dragon is cast down to earth. Enraged, he pursues the woman, but she is given wings and escapes. In his fury, he turns his attention to the rest of her offspring.

From the Church Fathers onward, the sensus fidelium of the Catholic Church has understood the woman to be Mary. This view became so embedded in the Church's devotional imagination that it has profoundly shaped Marian iconography. Last year, I rented a bike and rode the Mission Trails in San Antonio, stopping by churches. Everywhere I turned was Our Lady of Guadalupe, depicted with the moon under her feet, the imagery of Revelation 12.

Our Lady of Guadelupe, 1531

The identification of the woman clothed in the sun as the Virgin Mary became a key part of the theological foundation for the dogmatic definition of the Assumption on November 1, 1950. In the last time a pope spoke infallibly from the chair of Peter, Pope Pius XII in Munificentissimus Deus, §27, wrote

Moreover, the scholastic Doctors have recognized the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God as something signified, not only in various figures of the Old Testament, but also in that woman clothed with the sun whom John the Apostle contemplated on the Island of Patmos. Similarly they have given special attention to these words of the New Testament: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women," since they saw, in the mystery of the Assumption, the fulfillment of that most perfect grace granted to the Blessed Virgin and the special blessing that countered the curse of Eve.

At the same time, the Catholic Church has no dogmatic teaching on whether Mary experienced labor pains during the birth of Jesus, even if the sensus fidelium is that she did not. Most Catholics believe that Mary's preservation from original sin and her unique holiness set her apart from the ordinary conditions of birth. Imagining the Virgin Mother crying out in pain is a kind of sonic shock to the Catholic imagination. The story plays on that dissonance. It amplifies it to apocalyptic decibels.

Lafferty has also reversed the order of events by dislocating the cacophony. The woman in Revelation has the child and is hidden in the mountains. Ginny is screaming after her perversion with Krios but before she gives birth; she wants her peanut butter sandwiches for her 1,260 days on Doolen's Mountain where she will deliver her "weird seed." It's all backwards.

Lafferty brings the story’s inversions to a climax with the image of “crazy water” running away from the people—not flowing down from Doolen’s Mountain, but upward. This reversal becomes a metaphor for withdrawal. It alludes to scriptures like Ezekiel 47:1–12 and Ephesians 5:26, where water flows outward to give life and to cleanse. But the deeper echo, especially for "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun," comes from Revelation 22. There, the “water of life, clear as crystal,” flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In Lafferty’s version, that water does not come to the people. It leaves them behind.

Lafferty usually treats mutation as an eschatology of hope, as he does in Fourth Mansions, but "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun" darkens the theme. Mutation here is not a gateway but a closing down. It is a reversal and then a mutational inhibition.

Not even a sinister figure like Carmody Overlark in Fourth Mansions wants this kind of reset. It is total implosion. Humanity is pulled downward to a state before its origin, and sealed off from every possibility, locking everyone outside the First Mansion. This point brings us back to Dr. Minden's paper and his discussion with Dr. Dismas, whose name in Greek is a warning: night is coming.

We do not hear Dr. Minden read any passages from "The Contingent Mutation," only his nervous promise to present it and Dismas's teasing response. But we can imagine its contents, dense with terminology such as delayed epiphyseal closure and pelvic infantilism. It says that once upon a time, a small, fast-cycling, tool-less species, the Ouezzane monkeys, stood three feet tall, reached maturity by four, and were old by fourteen.

From this population came rare mutants. These were the F₁ drones: "sports, steers and freemartins… gangling drones," sterile figures growing after their kin had stopped.

Then came a miracle when two sterile drones produced offspring. Their union "set up a mutational inhibition against the normal" and gave rise to the F₂ generation, the "filial-twos," the first humans.

Lafferty implies that this is a double miracle, the moment of Genesis 2:7. It marks the point in evolution when God creates humanity by giving the monkey a soul, which is to say the drones produce more than offspring: they produce people.

Once the F₂s began to reproduce, the change took hold. Childhood stretched. Puberty came later. Lifespans expanded four or five times beyond the usual mammalian allotment. "One morning they were the Xauens, and the next morning they were humans." Neanderthal, Grimaldi, Cro-Magnon, and modern humans are regional variants of this single, improbable F₂ line.

But the danger remains. The ancestral four-year program did not disappear. It lies dormant, ready to awaken. A single "neotic conception" can reactivate it and cancel the human timeline. Ginny, locked at four and howling like a troop of monkeys, is that reversal made visible.

Each reversion threatens to found a new privileged mutation, one that writes humanity off the page. There have been false starts. The Screaming Monkeys of boondocks Rhodesia were an early probe that failed. This time, it may be final. The spreading cacophony does not signal birth. It signals extinction. "The human world can well pass away."

Dr. Minden	Inference
“Man is descended, recently and by incredible mutation, from the most impossible of ancestors, Xauenanthropus or Xauen Man.”	Humanity arose through a sudden and improbable macromutation from a near-human ancestor.
“Our descent from the Xauens was by an incredible, sudden and single mutation.”	The shift to modern man was not gradual but abrupt—one generation transformed the species.
“Humans descend from the Xauens. Australopithecus, no. Sinanthropus, no. They were creatures of another line.”	Homo sapiens is not descended from earlier fossil hominins but directly from the Xauens.
“We have more than twenty thousand of them, but most of them are called Ouezzane monkeys.”	The Xauen population was large, but misclassified as non-human due to small stature and limited capability.
“Three-foot-tall, big-headed running monkeys who were mature and full grown at four years of age and very old at fourteen.”	Xauen adults had extremely fast development and short life spans.
“They threw a few sports, steers and freemartins [...] They were gangling drones [...] and of course sterile.”	Occasionally, mutants were born who did not reach puberty and continued growing, sterile anomalies.
“One day they bred, set up a mutational inhibition against the normal; and mankind [...] was born.”	When two sterile mutants successfully bred, they produced fertile offspring whose genetics suppressed the old form—founding modern humanity.
“They had no speech, they had no fire, and they made no tools. Then one morning they were the Xauens, and the next morning they were humans.”	The emergence of Homo sapiens introduced tool use, speech, and cultural complexity overnight.
“The one hundred and one recognized Xauen skeletons [...] are of ten infants and children, eighty-six adults, two mutants and three filial-twos.”	Minden reclassifies the find: most are adults of the old form; two are mutant intermediates (F₁); and three are the first true humans (F₂ generation).
“All the mammals but one [...] live about the same number of heartbeats [...] man lives four or five times as long.”	Human longevity is unnatural; biologically, we live longer than we should.
“False puberty [...] appears about age four [...] goes away for another ten years.”	Human children show a developmental echo of the ancestral four-year reproductive schedule.
“The human race is so new that it has no stability [...] We could revert at any time.”	Human nature is a fragile, unstable state. Reversion to earlier forms is biologically possible.
“This can happen instantly [...] by a single neotic conception. [...] The reversion will inhibit the old normal.”	A new mutation—like Ginny—could suppress ordinary humans.

Dr. Minden’s theory helps clarify a puzzling moment in Not to Mention Camels. For readers like me who encounter the novel before reading “Ginny Wrapped in the Sun,” one detail really stands out. Its wicked protagonist eventually appears in a symbolic grouping alongside a figure who, at first, seems to be the Virgin Mother:

“He knew that in the psychology books of all the worlds there had appeared a new archetype. With Imago Dei, with Orpheus, with Child Hero, with Kore there was a new arrival. With Corn-Mother, with Fenris-Wolf, with Hermaphrodite, with Python there was a new lodger in Domdaniel, the castle that is under the ocean. With Black Beard, with George and Dragon, with Helen, with Houri there was a forever-person of the camel totem. One more had joined the most select company of Simon Magus and Baubo and Demeter, of Adonis and Alexander and Broom-Witch, of Leviathan and Hermes and Homunculus, of Moloch and Fisherman. There was a new oceanic companion to Huracan and to Beggar King and to Gyne Peribebleene-ton-Helion (Woman Wrapped-in-the-Sun). With the leper, with the Boogerman, with Body-and-Blood Giant there was now the Palgrave. Palgrave had gained swift status as a cult figure.”

This apparent jumble has a structure. Taken as a whole, the placement of Gyne Peribebleene-ton-Helion leans toward the monstrous, the ambiguous, and the uncanny. Within the cabbalistic imagination that runs through Not to Mention Camels, the “woman wrapped in the sun” appears as much qlippoth as sephiroth, as much Mashhith as Binah. Many of the surrounding figures are destructive, unstable, or distorted. If the figure were meant to represent only Mary, the association would cast her in a strange light. But the placement begins to make more sense if she somehow signifies a complex form that includes both the Virgin Mother and the no-longer-virgin Virginia Dismas. It also sheds light on Lafferty's method when shaping a character such as Eva in Past Master.

A table might help to bring the structure into focus. It could look something like this:

1. Deus in se	Absolute, uncreated Being	Imago Dei	“Image of God” touches the very idea of the Trinity reflected in the soul; nothing can outrank it.
2. Christic-Marian epiphanies	The only-Begotten and His mother, gratia plena	Gyne Peribebleene-ton-Hēlion (“Woman Clothed with the Sun”), Child Hero, Beggar-King, Fisherman	Mary in Revelation 12 and the hidden-king Christ (poor yet royal) are venerated just below God Himself. The “Fisherman” and “Child Hero” are transparent Christ-types.
3. Saints, angelic heroes & bright pre-figurations	Created spirits and humans who mirror divine virtues	George-and-Dragon, Orpheus, Kore, Alexander, Helen, Houri	St George is literally canonised; Orpheus and Kore are long-standing pagan foreshadowings of Christ’s Harrowing and Mary’s virginity; Alexander/Helen/Houri represent courage, beauty and paradisal reward purified of vice.
4. Fertility & generative powers	Good gifts of creation, but still temporal and ambivalent	Corn-Mother, Demeter, Adonis, Hermaphrodite	Mother-grain myths echo providence (bread, Eucharist); Adonis (dying-rising vegetation) hints at Resurrection; Hermaphrodite evokes the unio of Adam-Eve before the Fall.
5. Trickster, natural force & technical daimon	Created intellect or power that can aid or mislead	Hermes, Huracán, Broom-Witch, Homunculus, Black-Beard	Hermes is messenger/inventor; Huracán is raw storm; the witch, the laboratory creation and the pirate all illustrate cleverness set loose from charity—morally mixed.
6. Chaotic beasts, idols & arch-heretics	Directly opposed to right worship	Fenris-Wolf, Python, Leviathan, Moloch, Baubo, Simon Magus, "Ginny Wrapped in the Sun"	They embody the powers and principalities St Paul warns against: chaos monsters, child-devouring idol, the sorcerer who tried to buy the Holy Spirit.
7. Abjection, contagion & nightmare	Images of sin’s disfigurement and the fear it breeds	Leper, Boogerman, Body-and-Blood Giant	Not evil in themselves but experienced as “repellent”—symbols of fallen flesh, social exclusion, cannibal panic.

Ginny is the bricospolia that links Levels 2 and 7. She is an unholy child, assembled from scattered elements, whose meaning becomes clear only through the spolia of Level 2. These include the sacred spolia of the woman clothed with the sun from Revelation 12, the ram of Moriah, and the apocalyptic trumpet, all joined to the screaming simian ancestry traced by Dr. Minden.

At the end of “Ginny Wrapped in the Sun,” Lafferty returns to the question of the soul. It has been there all along, buried in Dr. Minden’s paper. By the final lines, it becomes the story’s central concern. In a tale built from dialogue, the last exchange is precise and ringing:

“Did I say something wrong?” Ginny asked.“The last thing I ever say, and it should be wrong? Dr. Minden, you know about things like that. What are you creatures, anyhow?” “People, Ginny,” Dr. Minden said miserably. “Funny I never saw any of you before.I sure don't intend to get involved with people.”

This is the anti-Christological horror of an eschatology that does not fulfill its beginning, but erases it.

"Ginny Wrapped in the Sun" does other things. It offers a sharp critique of youth culture and reflects Lafferty’s view of the fourth commandment, especially when Ginny gives her mother a venomous noli me tangere. But his take on the 1960s does not overwhelm the fiction, as it does in some of his other stories. It holds its shape. That may be why it was one of Lafferty’s favorites. He had good judgment about his work.

There is much more to say. About the public execution of Christians at Xauen. About Ginny’s link to the prima materia. About how her forgotten house echoes John 14:2 and ties into the Carmelite mysticism of Fourth Mansions. But for now, I will leave it there.

Current Notes:

Notes Ginny Wrapped in the Sun.pdf

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