Notes: Duffey and Time

"Aeon is the measure of the duration of non-material creatures or substances, as time is that of material creatures or substances. Thomas writes, ‘Although the aeon is instantaneously whole, it differs from eternity in being able to exist with before and after.’ There is one aeon for every immaterial individual and for every immaterial relationship. Some aeons apply only to the non-material aspects of individuals and relationships. A person who is partly material and partly immaterial will be sometimes in time and sometimes in aeon. There are more aeons than one." More than Melchisedech

I've been considering Gregorio Montejo's outstanding essay on time in the Argo Cycle (Feast of Laughter, vol. 1) and thinking about how I would tackle the issue of Duffey and time. Unsurprisingly, for anyone who reads this blog, knows the essay, and has any interest in these issues, my pushback comes down to the always interesting and difficult figure of Origen.

Aeons - Origen.pdf

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Montejo views Origen as a primary precedent for Lafferty's plural, temporal, and non-temporal manifolds. Going to Origen for this makes sense. Origen believes there are many "aeons," and he uses the term in many ways. His primary sense of "aeon" is a finite historical age-world with a beginning and a consummation, not the intermediate between time and eternity Aquinas calls an aevum. Montejo takes on none of Origen's associated doctrines in making his case, but I'm not sure that they can be disentangled. In any case, Montejo limits his appeal to Origen to the bare fact of aeonic plurality, setting aside any wider cosmology of cyclic ages and universal restoration.

How important is Origen for Montego's argument? He writes that Lafferty should be seen as "privileging Origen's interpretation of the Aeon, according to which there are multiple aeviternal manifolds—a position that Thomas himself considers, seems to find disturbing, and ultimately rejects, since he envisions a unitary aeviternity hierarchically ordered to the eternity of an immutable God."

I think this makes Origen too important for the Argo cycle, but there is much room for disagreement here. Lafferty does say, "There are more aeons than one," and Montejo is quite right to call attention to that line.  The first part of the puzzle is what Lafferty means by this plurality. Montejo and I agree he isn’t just echoing Origen. In Origen’s cosmology, an aeon is a shared cosmic stretch, a single spatio-temporal world-system framed by successive consummations. Every rational soul lives, dies, and waits within that one span, still embodied after death in subtler, pneumatic flesh; no one gets a private timeline. As I understand Origen, Montejo’s leaking aeons are a creative departure from him, crafted to interpret Lafferty, and it works.

The second part of the puzzle is this: given what Lafferty says in the passage above about Saint Thomas, does he privilege Origen? That is what this post will try to work out.

As far as Origen goes, what strikes me as more suggestive is how he and Lafferty handle the end of an aeon. For Origen, each closing comes with a κρίσις and περικεφαλαίωσις: judgment and cosmic summing-up. These mark an ending that clears the stage for whatever comes next. That rhythm of closure followed by birth mirrors Lafferty’s cycles of recurring world-loss in novels like Past Master. But the end of worlds is a separate issue.

So, on the face of it, Lafferty's position (again, there are more aeons than one, one for every immaterial individual) sounds contrary to Summa theologiae I, q. 10, a. 6, where Aquinas says that, just as there is one time and one eternity, "there is only one aevum" that measures every created spirit. On the other hand, it also contradicts Origin, who does not think that one can be immaterial within an aeon.

Taken unequivocally, Lafferty's multiplication of aeons goes beyond both Origen's position and Thomas's position. But if we read Lafferty's "many aeons" not as distinct kinds of measure but as many participations in the single Thomistic aevum, each angelic person or real relation "taking its slice" of a common non-metric duration, then the difference is mostly verbal; the underlying metaphysics (one generic aevum, numerically multiplied only by the subjects it measures) can still be squared with Aquinas. It contradicts Aquinas only if we construe the plurality as separate measures rather than many instances of one measure. I think this is necessary if we want to prevent the ontological economy from exploding. There are different ways to do this.

One way forward is to dissolve the apparent contradiction in the age-old manner: make a distinction. We can posit one participated instance for every immaterial relation, not a second aevum, only another share of the single measure. Aquinas never says this, yet it doesn't contradict his philosophy of time: aevum is already the proper (non‑metric) duration of created spirits, and real relations are distinct, immaterial realities. Because a real relation's being is "toward another" (ad alterum) and thus numerically distinct from the substance it qualifies, Thomistic ontology can plausibly be extended to grant a relation its participated share of the one aevum, a modest extension of ST I q. 10. This extension is speculative: Aquinas never says that relations, as distinct beings in ad alterum, possess their share of the aevum; I am drawing that inference from ST I, q. 28 on real relation plus q. 10 on aeviternity.

Because Aquinas distinguishes substance from real relation (ST I, q. 28), even as he holds that every created spirit is measured by one generic aevum (ST I, q. 10, a. 6), a personal-aₚ / relational-aᵣ split is no ad-hoc gimmick relation taking its participated slice of one measure.

If I understand Montejo, he is saying that Lafferty follows Origen in that every immaterial person occupies its aeviternal manifold, with overlapping aeons Aquinas would have rejected. Duffey's "Seven Lost Years" happen when he steps out of clock time and crosses the overlaps between his aeon and other manifolds recorded in the Argo log. It's an ingenious solution:

The Origin-Based Metaxy

Note that, in addition to many aeons, we get a considerable amount of metaxy in this model. On my reading, Lafferty’s “many aeons” are really many participations in one Thomistic aevum. Each spirit or relation holds a non-metric slice of a single measure. Duffey’s detours are shifts along his personal or relational slice within that shared aevum—he leaves clock-time without ever entering a separate aeon. In short, I think Lafferty chose to speak of “many aeons” because it’s a simpler way to say that each spirit has its non-temporal career, without introducing Aquinas’s more abstract idea of numerical participation in a single aevum.

Alternative View

To see how this works, here is the model I have in mind:

Term	Classical / Theological Source	Definition
Aeon	Origen	A finite “age-world” bounded by a cosmic beginning and consummation; several aeons can compose a larger historical cycle.
Aevum / Aeviternity	Thomas Aquinas	The Thomistic mode of duration proper to created immaterial beings—simultaneously whole, originating at creation, lacking an intrinsic end, and allowing only accidental change.
Eternity (Aeternitas)	— (divine attribute)	God’s own “simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life”; absolutely changeless, without before-and-after succession.
Time (Tempus)	— (creaturely realm)	The fully metric succession of “before” and “after” that measures every motion of material beings.
Participated aevum	—	A single generic aevum numerically shared by all immaterial subjects—many individual “slices,” one common measure.
aₚ (Personal aevum)	—	The non-metric career of a particular spirit that can branch from—and later re-enter—clock-time.
aᵣ (Relational aevum)	—	The non-metric duration of a real immaterial relation (covenant, pact, friendship) uniting two or more subjects.
Metaxy	—	The “between-space” where slices of aevum touch clock-time—a participation point rather than a separate stratum.

	What Exists There	Kind of Succession	Narrative Function
Clock‑Time (T)	Physical bodies, material events, calendars, causal chains	Fully metric, strictly forward	Provides the stable yard‑stick against which Duffey’s detours register as anomalies.
Personal Participated Aevum (aₚ)	The non‑material duration proper to each immaterial supposit (Duffey, Bagby, Black Giants…)	Ordered (earlier/later) but non‑metric	Accounts for Duffey’s private detours such as the “Sea of the Seven Lost Years.”
Relational Participated Aevum (aᵣ)	The non‑metric duration of a real immaterial relation (e.g., Duffey–Eva covenant, Argo–crew pact)	Ordered, non‑metric	Explains why the Argo log can record events whose personal aeva have not yet intersected Clock‑Time.
Eternity (E)	God’s timeless act of knowing all that is	No succession at all	Provides the metaphysical ceiling hinted at by Lafferty’s omniscient asides.

The Time Game

1. Single metric baseline	Clock-Time (T) is one continuous orange line; its x-axis is the only place durations can be measured.	Solid orange baseline
2. Level exclusivity	Every event or slice occupies exactly one layer—T, personal aₚ, or relational aᵣ.	Separate vertical bands; no markers straddle layers
3. Forward-only motion inside T	Movement within Clock-Time can proceed only to the right (later instants).	Baseline arrowheads on magenta rays
4. Forward branching	Any T-instant may fork into mutually exclusive futures; branches diverge and never reconverge.	Magenta shallow V anchored on the baseline
5. No direct back-walk	To reach an earlier T-date an agent must exit Time, traverse an aevum, and re-enter.	Crimson dashed path (Sea of Seven Lost Years) rising into aₚ then bending back to an earlier point on the baseline
6. Trial-balloon retro-message	A not-yet-fixed future branch may send one information packet backward along an immaterial layer, landing strictly before its own fork.	Black dashed left-pointing arrow above the baseline
7. Block-axis alignment	A vertical dotted line marks instants that are logically co-present across layers; it shows how a single “now” spans T and aₚ (or aᵣ).	Cyan dotted vertical
8. Block invariance	Facts inside any fixed T-block remain identical whether viewed from past record, present sense, or prophetic knowledge.	Implicit in the unbroken orange baseline (no edits after the fact)
9. Non-metric aevums	Both aₚ diamonds and aᵣ hollow circles are evenly drawn for legibility but signify an order without measure—no durations, no clocks.	Discrete markers at y ≈ 1 and y ≈ 1.3
10. Cross-level personal identity	A person’s continuum is the causal chain of slices (memory + form + intent) that may hop layers yet still counts as one and the same subject.	Diamonds linked by crimson/teal paths crossing layers

Let's use the model to read the memorable scene in More Than Melchisedech where Duffey tells Gertrude that “if one brings any artifact … and touches it to the piece of talking oak that is built into the ship’s wheel, that talking oak will call out the year of origin of the piece in whatever aeon or era it belongs.”  

This complete action (see diagrams) happens not across the Clock-Time (no one time-travels) but in the relational participated aevum (aᵣ): the immaterial covenant that links Argo, her crew, and every object ever bonded to the ship. Because aᵣ is ordered yet non-metric, the wheel can “see” dates that sit far to the right of the baseline, events whose personal aeva (aeons) have not yet intersected T, then pipe that information leftward along the black dashed retro-arrow (Rule 6). Nothing violates Rule 3’s forward-only motion inside T; the data surfaces across layers. The vertical dotted “now” slots Duffey, Gertrude, and the wheel at one instant, while the hollow circle marking the ship-artifact slice shows that, inside aᵣ, that future year is already present. Reading the scene this way, the wheel’s prophecy isn’t supernatural clairvoyance; it’s the normal, cross-level traffic of a relational aevum mirrored in the diagrams.

With a touch of irony, we can say that the wheel’s so-called clairvoyance ceases to be miraculous. It is simply the routine, cross-level logic of relational aᵣ, laid out in the diagram.

This brings us to how Montejo conceptualizes metaxy in Lafferty, the “between-space” where aeviternal reality and ordinary clock-time meet. Drawing on Origen, he suggests that Lafferty multiplies that middle tier into many aeviternal manifolds, each of which can open onto temporality. I would keep the same point of contact but interpret it differently: metaxy is the instantaneous act of participation whereby any personal (aₚ) or relational (aᵣ) slice of the single Thomistic aevum brushes the temporal baseline, so no corridor between separate aeons and no additional stratum is required.

Other puzzles in the book can also be worked through. Take Duffey’s three childhoods:

Argo Puzzles

#	Puzzle in the fiction (verbatim / neutral paraphrase)	Why the Origen-based model can stall	T – aₚ – aᵣ interpretation
1	The Argo’s wheel “dating-clock.” Any object touched to the talking-oak inset “will call out the year of origin … in whatever æon or era it belongs,” and the log “covers anything within the last nine thousand years, or the next sixty-seven.”	Origen-based model’s leaking-æons idea gives no metric binding the ship–artifact pair or limit explaining the ±9 000/ +67-year horizon, so the read-out remains mysterious.	The wheel queries the Argo–crew relation inside non-metric aᵣ. Makers of artifacts (past 9 k years back or 67 years ahead) already co-exist there, fixing the log’s span; the wheel simply reports a date present in aᵣ, not foretelling.
2	Mixed simultaneity. For a Master the deck may be future while dockside folk experience the same instant as present.	Overlapping æons “leak” qualitatively but never assign observers to slices, leaving simultaneity ad hoc.	Rule 7 erects a vertical block-axis through T, aₚ, aᵣ defining one shared Now. A Master translates along his personal aₚ fork, acts, then rejoins T; observers anchored in T experience one continuous moment.
3	Effigies & the Sea of Seven Lost Years. Duffey lives seven subjective years offstage while an effigy works the deck, then returns with no seven-year gap in public time.	Origen-based model concedes æons hold “before/after,” yet offers no way to detach a seven-year block or empower a copy without causal rupture.	Rule 4 lets a private aₚ fork sideways from T; the Lost Years lie on that forked segment. Re-joining under Rule 5 projects length 0 onto T. An effigy borrows Duffey’s aₚ vector and essential aᵣ bindings, so the ship runs normally.
4	Conflicting testimony (St Louis vs Omaha). Some witnesses swear Duffey was present; others insist he vanished for those same years.	Æonic “ripples” give no criterion for selective impact.	A detached aₚ fork rejoins T only at certain loci. Where it has not rejoined, Duffey’s aᵣ bindings are absent (memory gap); where it has, bindings exist (memory intact); hence mutually consistent yet contradictory accounts.
5	Swimming ashore in 1923 still “quite a young man.” The Lost Years “are not deducted from the years of the life,” though Duffey experienced them.	Origen-based model must posit “æonic shrinkage” to square real metabolic ageing with zero external lapse; no energy ledger is offered.	Proper time and entropy accrue along the fork; its projection on T remains 0. Energy generated on the fork is carried with it and re-enters T at the join, preserving conservation without chronological deficit.
6	Seven traversals of the Lost Years. Duffey is told he “has lived … and died” those years seven times.	Single-pass æons forbid repetition; extra traversals are ad hoc.	Multiple private aₚ¹, aₚ² … forks can branch, age, die, and all rejoin the same T-event with projection 0, naturally stacking memories and deaths.
7	Biloxi Brannagan’s thirty-year shore-leave occurs during a “quite short” Argo absence.	“Elastic duration” is asserted but no invariant couples the clocks.	The ship’s aᵣ ordering lacks a metric; Brannagan’s thirty-year aₚ fork still rejoins T with projection 0, so the log merely notes “leave complete.”
8	Casey Gorshok mars three effigies; Masters survive.	The theory wavers on whether injury crosses æons.	Each effigy holds a borrowed aₚ vector and selected aᵣ bindings. Damage perturbs those bindings, causing remote shock, but never reaches the distant aₚ source, so each Master lives.
9	Duffey’s bones rest aboard while living Duffey steers.	Origen-based model replies with “symbolic recurrence,” skirting dual mass–energy.	The coffin contains a spent effigy: once its borrowed aₚ is released, inert matter tagged in aᵣ remains. Living Duffey continues on another aₚ fork, so both manifestations coexist without identity clash.
10	Three overlapping childhoods and clashing memories. Duffey jokes he wishes for “more than three” to choose from.	“Resonant dream æons” give no rule for reconciling contradictions.	Concurrent aₚ forks let several childhood segments occupy identical spans of T; when the forks merge, bringing memories while leaving somatic histories disjoint, mutually exclusive yet co-present recollections arise.

• T = baseline public time (what outside observers call “history”).

• aₚ = personal/“proper” aevum, a metric time-line an individual can fork sideways from T.

• aᵣ = relational aevum, a timeless, non-metric web of relationships.

• fork = a detour in aₚ that departs from T and later rejoins it.

• projection 0 = the fork’s elapsed duration in T is exactly zero; clocks in baseline history advance not at all while the traveller’s proper time advances along the fork.

When it comes to the ship’s prophetic log, the split witnesses, and the Seven Years, this non-Origen model does help explain how these high concepts (and others) work in-world. Whether one needs that extra machinery depends on how much value one places on ontological parsimony. Do you really want billions of aeons leaking into each other? It also depends on how allergic one is to either Origen or to ragged ends.

Does it matter? Probably not. One can always make allowances as problems arise. But the interpretative choices do have consequences. For example, how would each model handle other in-world aspects of faith that mattered to Lafferty—like the Communion of the Saints?

Catholic teaching	Many-Æons model	One-Aevum model
“One Church in heaven and on earth” (LG 49)	Must insist that multiple aeons still form one Mystical Body; danger of implicit pluralism.	Fits naturally: one immaterial measure ⇒ one ecclesial milieu.
Simultaneity of the beatific vision after death	Straightforward: each aeon instantly offers its saint the Vision.	Also straightforward.
Universality of Marian mediation	Needs meta-aeonic privilege for Mary to access every manifold.*	Simple: Mary’s slice permeates the whole aevum and so every time.
Eucharist as “synaxis with all angels and saints”	Would require real-time convergence of aeons at every Mass—possible but complex.	Mass already “touches” the single aevum; the communion is ontologically built-in.

What I think does matter is how Lafferty’s Argo cycle demands that the reader think about time and think with the past and with the thinkers of the past. Aquinas is out of step with the development of sacred dogma in a few places, the best known of which is Mary’s sanctification. Origen has always been a complex figure in Catholicism: both toweringly inspirational and more than a little dangerous, a man who perhaps avoided heresy only by the timing of his birth and the slow development of sacred doctrine. He hovers over the contemporary Catholic Church, especially in its embrace of nuptial theology since John Paul II, and in certain quarters that quietly (and not so quietly) flirt with universal reconciliation.

Wherever one lands on the aeon question in Lafferty, on which so much of the surface madness of the Argo cycle depends, it is worth pausing over one of its great passages, found in “From the Commentary of Count Finnegan”:

"Simple insanity is like heresy in one way. It loses, or it throws out, only one thing of many, and it keeps the rest. It allows the original structure (whether of mind or of institution) to stand, with only one big gaping hole in it. Sometimes the structure will collapse quickly then (if the gaping hole is at the heart of it); but sometimes it will stand for a very long time with the wind whistling through that hole. If the wind does not happen to blow from the wrong direction, one might not even notice the insanity, or the heresy."

* Here is my reasoning. If souls are spread across multiple aeons that only touch one another sporadically, Mary’s universal reach cannot be taken for granted. Either every aeon must overlap with hers (which collapses the plurality), or Mary must enjoy a higher-order status that lets her step into, or be simultaneously present in, all those aeons. You would need a proposed “meta-aeon" to preserve both the cosmology (many semi-autonomous aeons) and Catholic teaching. By making the allowance that Mary’s glorified presence is not limited to one ordinary aeon, she would hold a trans-aeonic or pan-aeonic position, functionally the “hub” through which graces flow to every spoke. But now that you have allowed a pan-aeonic factor into the scheme around a strictly human person, why did you want all those aeons in the first place?