When I started reading Lafferty’s novels carefully, I relied heavily on whatever overviews and blog posts I could find. Reflecting on these sources has brought to mind a broader issue in Lafferty fandom: the relative lack of concern for accuracy when discussing his work or caring about detail. From the Sherlockians to the Pynchonians, fandoms devoted to intricate literary canons tend to care intensely about their details, so this is a little surprising. Unlike the flourishing community around Gene Wolfe, where careful reading and precise interpretation are the norm and debate is welcome, Lafferty’s readership is small enough that discussions often take a more casual approach—sometimes, to a fault. The prevailing attitude seems to be, “We’re among the few paying attention, so let’s not get too caught up in details.” This isn’t to say that Lafferty’s readers are inattentive. They are very smart and care about his work intensely. It is just that there is an unspoken understanding that enthusiasm takes precedence over anything that might resemble intellectual discussion. This is partly because what many readers enjoy in Lafferty represents only a small fraction of what he offers. One of the very best blogs that discuss Lafferty’s novels has an overview of Past Master . It is a great place to start wrestling with Lafferty. It is enthusiastic. But it does exhibit the kind of thing I’m writing about. Its author says that Thomas More in the novel has his mind invaded by seven snakes, implanted there to have him speak his words by Pottscamp. The phrasing isn’t mine. There are a few problems here. For instance, it isn’t Pottscamp; it’s Skybol. Boggle, Skybol, and Swampers are retrogressor devils, not extrapolators like Holygee, Gandy, and Pottscamp. They have a different role in the manipulation of Astrobe, so this entire dimension of the novel gets scrambled. But set that aside. It isn’t just incorrect; it obscures the novel. Here’s Lafferty: “Wilderness Wolves you be," Thomas said. "You howl higher than the ear on a bleaker moor than any on this world. All, the nine of you, extrapolate, damn it! Retrogress! Rechabitize! Nine of you, and are your extensions not the nine snakes nesting in my mind?” Nine snakes. Not seven. Does this matter? Maybe not if you’re just along for the ride. If you want to understand Past Master , keeping count matters. It isn’t just a numerical slip; it alters the novel’s architecture. The Programmed Killers move in groups of nine. The real masters of Astrobe are the nine Programmed Persons. Evita says that nine out of ten people request termination before a natural death. Some people hear her voice as a nine-stringed lyre. The Irish monks’ return journey in the coracle after discovering Astrobe took ninety-nine days. Those monks? There were nineteen of them. Foreman has the innocence of a ninety-nine-year-old serpent. Foreman also says he will plant the mustard seed at exactly nine o’clock in the morning and expects a new world to grow from it. There are five hundred and ninety-nine emperors’ skulls in Goslar. The “Free Year” on Astrobe happens every twenty-nine years. Thomas More is a nine-day king. And so forth. Insisting on noticing nine snakes and not seven snakes in a novel as wild as Past Master  might sound like the height of pedantry—but Lafferty is an architect, not a rambler. He looks like a rambler, but he's sly. And the nine-snake pattern is anything but subtle. His patterns mean something, and if we shrug them off, we miss the shape of his art. If we don’t catch the snakes, we don’t catch other ideas and connections. I don’t know how many Lafferty readers privately care about this kind of thing. I suspect it’s more than we think. If we take Lafferty’s work seriously, we have to get these details right. Factual distortion, even when unintentional, limits our discussion of his work. It shoves him into the ‘teller of tall tales’ box, reducing him to America’s weird O. Henry. I wonder how many readers of Past Master  miss these patterns without ever realizing what they’ve lost. I know I make mistakes too, and I try to hold myself to the same standard. If you notice an error in my work, just let me know at mumbrumber101@gmail.com , and I will fix it tout de suite.  My goal isn’t just to appreciate Lafferty; it’s to understand his work as precisely as possible, help others in his fandom do the same, and learn from those who take a similar approach.

The more I think about Past Master , the clearer I see how Lafferty is playing with groups of three. Today I spent some time tracing out (for my notes on the book) the arcs of Cosmos Kingmaker ("The Heraldic Lion"), Peter Proctor ("The Sleek Fox"), and Fabian Foreman ("The Worried Hawk"). This assemblage is a distorted echo of the Holy Trinity. Cosmos, as a distant and symbolic kingmaker, parallels a withdrawn, benighted Father. Fabian, a hesitant strategist rather than a decisive Logos, presents a troubled Son (we are told he is the youngest of the three; he tarries = Fabian tactics). Peter, a cunning and lucky trickster, inverts the watchful and guiding role of the Spirit (Proctor). Together, they form a fractured divine pattern—each bearing an inadequate resemblance to their prototypes. The implication is that on Astrobe order has been corrupted. Peter’s speed of motion and Fabian’s “I want a death and resurrection of the thing” as well as his use of the mustard seed parable are relevant here (his body is hung on a tree). Foreman is obviously a pun. To see how deep this goes as a structural device, just do a search and look at everything that happens to Fabian Foreman. The novel starts to open up in a new way.

“It was like an old Puca comedy: one person falls into the quicksand, drags another in after him, then a third, then a fourth—until they all vanish to their deaths. Who could help laughing at a thing like that, especially when the actors were not Puca themselves but had been given parts in a play that was real?” The Reefs of Earth (1968) Reading large chunks of Lafferty is anything but straightforward. It’s not just that his thinking is wildly inventive, sharp, and lateral—it’s that his stories and novels demand intense rereading, and there’s never enough time to do them full justice. The threat of a Puca comedy is never far away. When I want to understand a writer, I start at both the beginning and the end of the career, then work toward the middle with surgical strikes at key points. This method has served me well in studying Lafferty, though it has led to some unexpected consequences—chief among them being that Sindbad: The Thirteenth Voyage (1989), one of his least-read works, became a crow’s nest from which to survey the full sweep of his ideas and artistry. To those unfamiliar with the novel, this might seem odd, but it helped me recognize how Serpent’s Egg (1987), East of Laughter (1988), and Sindbad are Lafferty’s late meditation on the nature of fiction. Beginning with Sindbad  was also a lot of fun. I’ve long admired The Arabian Nights , particularly in Richard Burton’s translation, and have always agreed with G. K. Chesterton that “there is in the unruffled life of an Arabian Nights  tale a great deal of what we call happiness” ( Charles Dickens: A Critical Study ). Which brings me to the point of this post. As I worked through Sindbad , I relied on a remarkable scholarly tool: H. M. El-Shamy’s A Motif Index of The Thousand and One Nights . Keyed to various translations, it’s a dream for anyone who loves The Nights —and a double delight for those who enjoy the madness of Stith Thompson’s motif indexes, which are both rigorous and more than half-mad in their relentless pursuit of classification. The dogged passion for cataloging narrative elements is what makes Thompson (1885–1976) such a fascinating figure. He was an American folklorist now mainly remembered for his Motif-Index of Folk-Literature , an ambitious attempt to classify recurring narrative elements in folktales, myths, and legends. Influenced by the Finnish method of comparative folklore study, he raised the stakes, aiming to systematize all folk tales into a comprehensive reference. First published between 1932 and 1936 and later revised, his index became the foundational tool for folklore research. It allowed scholars to trace the transmission and evolution of motifs across cultures. (Below is a copy of the revised Index if you want to check it out.) Using an Arabian Nights folklore index while reading Lafferty's Sindbad  sparked a question: what if there were a Lafferty motif index? I experimented with building a retrieval-augmented generation system to construct one, but I was never satisfied with the results, though I went ahead and created a motif set for all the short stories. Still, I’d love to see a proper Lafferty motif index—and I might try again. Here’s what my partially finished "Days of Grass, Days of Straw" (1973) looks like: A0–A99. The prophets wrestle God directly, highlighting an act of creation shared with the deity. A900 . The floating mountain and grass-choked main street emphasize mythically altered geography. A1172.1. The story’s rain and sun dances suggest a ritual control of light and weather. B. The presence of buffalo, dogs, and eagles in surreal roles underscores the narrative’s animal significance. D. All aspects of existence (coins, telephones, daily life) operate under a pervasive magical logic. D1193 . The buckskin “telephone bag” behaves as a quasi-magical sack used for communication. E. Death is prominently featured (with blood blessings and dismemberment) in a spiritually charged context. F. The entire setting abounds in marvels, from leather-built cities to spontaneous cosmic battles. F110. Christopher’s shift from the normal city day to the “grass day” world constitutes a terrestrial otherworld journey. F160. The story details the unfamiliar qualities of this alternate realm, including its dizzying vitality. F170. Various out-of-count intervals and mountain wrestling scenes function as miscellaneous otherworld motifs. F171.0.1. Strange occurrences (floating mountain, bizarre currency) are enigmas of another domain partially explained by prophets. F440.1. “Days of grass” can be read as a symbolic presence of a vegetation spirit animating the land. F710. The roaring river on higher ground alters its “tune,” signifying an extraordinary body of water. F750. The hovering mountain that never reaches the earth demonstrates an extraordinary landform. F760. The buckskin-built urban space, teeming with grass, exemplifies an extraordinary city. F770. Buildings made of painted hides and walls rolled up at will illustrate singular architectural marvels. F790. The shimmering day and thunderous mountain clashes constitute extraordinary weather and sky phenomena.H (General). The prophets’ contests with God fulfill the role of daunting ritual trials. H1200. Characters undertake a profound quest (ascension and cosmic knowledge) involving mortal risk. H1225. Wrestling the divine is a pursuit of the strongest possible adversary. H1250 . Entering the “days of grass” can be viewed as a quest to another world. H1376. The quest for “which day is this?” serves as an allegory for deeper existential searching. L. Ascending to prophet-status or collapsing into “straw-man” form reflects abrupt reversals of fortune. M. Wrestling God to extract new days effectively ordains the future’s shape. N (General). Chance governs who stumbles into these extra days or wins the struggle on the mountain. N100. The presence of “days of grass” or “days of straw” implies fate’s random influence over human experience. N770. Surreal encounters and revelations initiate an unforeseen sequence of grand adventures. 770.0.1. Gathering at the roast dog stall becomes the feast that triggers Christopher’s deeper involvement. P. The buckskin economy, communal hunts, and pipe-smoke “change” reveal an alternate social system. Q. Success earns cosmic potency on the mountain; failure leads to brutal ejection or straw transformation. T. Christopher and Helen’s passionate union enacts the fertility integral to grass days. U (General). Juxtaposing dull straw days with vibrant grass days questions the essence of being fully alive. U100. The story’s contrasting temporal modes underline the complex dualities inherent in existence. U110. Seemingly mundane spaces prove deceptively surreal, inverting standard appearances. V. The direct wrestle with God foregrounds a potent religious or theurgical dimension. W. The strength or frailty of a character’s spirit (courage versus collapse) is central to identity. W121. Buford’s cowardice leads him to become a mere scarecrow of straw.X. Incongruities like a bale-of-rags telephone and buffalo coinage inject continuous surreal humor. Z. The repeated ballad lines and references to holy skins create a formulaic ritual framework. Z0. Repeated phrases and stylized naming of days constitute a formulistic pattern. Z72. Seasonal references (Indian Summer, Blue-Goose Autumn) operate as year-based formulas.

Lafferty’s Dotty offers a glimpse into what his literary career might have been had he pursued fiction outside of genre marketing constraints. More significantly, it serves as a tuning fork for reading his later work. Rich in Catholic thought yet presented with sharp ironies, the novel raises questions about its intended readership in my mind. Unlike much of Lafferty’s work, Dotty puts a check on its exaggerated humor and avoids discontinuous allegory, the mode I think Lafferty most often executes with literary genius; instead, it offers a direct meditation on grace, loss, and the nature of human recuperation. (My notes on the novel are in the file sharing section.) Though not literary naturalism, Dotty  shows Lafferty wrestling with that broader Irish and American tradition. I suspect he later reworked Dotty  into "The Ugly Sea" (1960), published in The Literary Review . Both stories center on young women who play the piano in coastal towns. The stories are reversals of polarity—one girl excels at the piano while the other does not; one is drawn to the sea, while the other is repelled by it. If this transformation is deliberate, it may have been Lafferty’s way of freeing himself from the expressive constraints he imposed on himself while writing Dotty . In this light, Moysha Uferwohner reads like Lafferty’s struggle to see Dotty clearly as a writer, only to turn away from her—opening new creative pathways in the process. Lafferty would return to Dotty to mine it repeated. One example. Dotty early on has terrible nightmares about going to hell. She knows she has precociously reached the age of reason. I n Past Master , we find her showing up in Evita: “Yes, there is, Charley-boy. I was naive in my methods and in my direction of revolt,” Evita said. “The teachers said that there was no Hell and no Devil, and this angered me; I knew that they were wrong; I had had some personal contact with both. They said that there was no sin. In particular, they said that children were not able to commit serious sins; and in this I knew that the teachers were sinfully wrong.” Dotty also gives Lafferty’s full articulation of a recurring motif in his work: the pig-people—one of my favorite Lafferty hobbyhorses. Though the image recurs throughout his stories and novels, Dotty is where its full context is most clearly established within the ghost story. Lafferty, who almost certainly delighted in Plutarch’s Gryllus , tells us a pig-person is out of grace. He does it with a seriousness that may unsettle readers who suddenly realize just how completely earnest he is. (Try, for instance, to see Charles Cogsworth through Valery Mok’s eyes in the same way after reading Dotty .) "There used to be an invisible world as well as a visible one. And there was a high excitement in running from one to the other. Now there was nothing but Immediacy, Practicality, the Dialectic, Humanism, Liberalism, Pragmatism. Words for a world with the light gone out of it. The pig people had been right. The pig people ruled the world. There was no world but theirs, and Dotty had become one of the pig people. 'I have traded a kingdom for a mudhole,' said Dotty. 'I have made myself an animal when I was not entirely so before... I wonder why I did it? And if regret will ever grow tired? Have pigs regret after they have settled down to being pigs?'" This is the Ur-moment of seeing through other eyes. It is also the novel’s center of gravity: the nature of spiritual degradation. Every Lafferty fan should at least read Chapter 11.

As a kid who couldn’t get enough sword and sorcery, I read every Offutt paperback I could find. Here’s Lafferty putting him on blast. From Arrive at Easterwine : “Those three guys with whiskers on their faces I don’t trust” (they were Nourse, Offutt, and de Camp), the Epiktistes extension said. “That middle one especially don’t trust. Is he not sometimes known as Randy Andy?” Lafferty loves to do this, sometimes far more subtly. Today, I noticed him taking a pretty funny kill shot at Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics in Past Master : “The Programmed Killers are inhibited from killing a human citizen of Astrobe, though often they do so by contrived accident.” https://www.amazon.com/My-Father-Pornographer-Chris-Offutt/dp/1501112473

One of my favorite directors is John Ford, and like many Ford fans, I have a special place in my heart for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance  (1962). The film tells a story about two men: Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart), an idealistic lawyer, and Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), a rugged frontiersman. Stoddard arrives in the town of Shinbone with a belief in law and order. But he is beaten and humiliated by the outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Rescued by Doniphon, Stoddard recovers and begins teaching the townspeople about democracy and self-governance. In doing so, he wins the admiration of his future wife, Hallie (Vera Miles). Everything heats up when the territory’s statehood is at stake. Stoddard challenges Valance’s lawlessness and finds himself forced into a gunfight. At the showdown, his and Valance’s guns fire. He seemingly kills the outlaw and becomes a celebrated figure, launching his political career. Years later, he learns the truth. Tom Doniphon fired the fatal shot from the shadows, sacrificing his own future (he, too, is in love with Hallie) so that civilization can take root. Years later, he returns to Shinbone for Doniphon’s funeral, and the now Senator Stoddard confesses this to a reporter. The reporter then says the famous line: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." As he and Hallie leave on the train, the woman Tom Doniphon lost looks out at the town’s transformation and reflects, "It was once a wilderness. Now it's a garden." We can see the mixed feelings in Stoddard’s face. I was surprised to discover that Lafferty had rewritten the movie. His version isn’t just about settling the West—it’s about how “civilizing” forces repeatedly depopulate it. Anglo settlers displace the Indigenous inhabitants, rename the land, and establish a company town around a coal operation. But when the owner shifts to gold mining, he hollows out the town, cashing relief checks for former, deceased, or nonexistent residents to fund his new venture. Corrupt officials take their cut, but one gets too greedy. When the owner is murdered, an innocent family man takes the fall. But this is only the beginning. Enter the novel’s true villain: a corrupt lawyer, darker even than the industrialist and his underling—one of civilization’s real pillars, a man with a law degree, just like Ransom Stoddard. As the violence escalates, the framed family man is senselessly and brutally murdered. Then the novel surges toward its astonishingly mystical climax. This is where Lafferty most clearly echoes The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance . An Indian woman who lives on town’s outskirts and a wronged child fire their guns at the corrupt lawyer at the same moment—just as Stoddard and Doniphon did at Valance. But it is her bullet that strikes, avenging the original act of Indigenous depopulation and protecting the child and his siblings. And here lies a big difference from John Ford’s masterpiece: the child, unlike Stoddard, never learns that the legend is a lie. The Indian woman keeps the secret. Yet almost no one talks about The Reefs of Earth this way. Perhaps that’s because it’s easy to overlook how brilliantly Lafferty has inverted its structure. I have even heard someone say the plot of the novel doesn’t matter, but it does—immensely. Lafferty rewrites the American myth of the West, taking it straight out of John Ford’s hands and re-enchanting it. When Lafferty's novel ends, he has completely solved The Stoddard Problem . In the final night scene on the Ile de France, the Dulanty children—with their six little pairs of goblin eyes glowing green in the dark—are ready to turn the garden back into a wilderness.

The Execution of Thomas More in 1535 by Antoine Caron (1521-1599) I’m working through Past Master  to create an annotated outline, and a few nagging questions remain. If anyone has theories, I’d love to hear them. The Time Travelers and the Stranger at the Scaffold Early on, Thomas More is contacted by time travelers, and he plays it off. Even stranger, Paul does the same, and it’s never revisited. Were these meetings a providential preparation for More? Do they connect to the mysterious “stranger” at his execution? Writers often give special attention to beginnings and endings—could these bookend appearances be something deeper? Hidden Appearances of the Nine Programmed Persons Are the Nine present in more places than we realize? On my last reread, I noticed Holygee, Gandy, and Pottscamp manipulating the extrapolation sensors Cosmos Kingmaker consults in Chapter 1. Does Lafferty play with their presence elsewhere in the novel? The Stranger on the Scaffold Who is the stranger that speaks to More in his final moments? If not Christ, my first thought was the Archangel Michael, then I considered Raphael because of the Book of Tobit. But could it be a time traveler—or something else entirely? How should we understand this moment? The "False Ansel" in Paul’s Mind Who is the " false ansel" that infiltrates Paul's mind? My assumption is one of the Nine, likely Skybol, but the phrase itself seems weighted. Could it have another significance? Allegory in the Feral Lands and the Devil Brains When More sees the allegory playing out before him ( “Why, this is allegory acted out before my very eyes,” Thomas exclaimed, and he was shaking from the passion around him. ), what does it mean? The "snakes" that slither from his severed head are his "devil brains," but how does this relate to eating the devil-hydra’s brains, said to be crucial to his final moment? The Role of Bait in the Novel More is Fabian Foreman’s bait, and Foreman’s ship is a grasshopper-class vehicle, and the grasshoppers brings More into the future. Later, Father Oddopter says, “Thomas, Thomas . . . it’s but the grasshopper that one catches in his palm to use on the hook. This isn’t the fish. It’s the bait.” What do we make of this?

I admire Lafferty’s verse. It's often the reactor core of his imagination, where he puts so much pressure on the carbon of his imagination that it becomes diamonds. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, but my current choice has held its place for the last few months. And if the babe is less than ten, He's given to a woman young Who utters him anew, and then (For benediction splits his tongue.) What matters if from gallows-tree, I dangle on a rope? I hold me fast to virtue three, The greatest one is hope. I wondered what musical genre could best capture how this poem affects me. I settled on the blues because of how Lafferty's irregular meter, wounded suffering, and redemptive defiance square with the blues’ melancholy and perseverance. Fracture becomes a condition of creation. Here is the best I could do: The irregular meter, I think, is a deliberate aesthetic choice by Lafferty, reflecting the thematic disjunction between restricted freedom, order, and transformation. The first stanza gives us innocence. The “babe” undergoes a violently forced linguistic metamorphosis. The whole “given to a woman young” is powerful and scary. It's not just the sisters making you do Reed-Kellogg diagrams. Then comes the rupture—“utters him” and “splits his tongue for benediction” with the cross-Latin pun on "good/better diction." There are many ways to take it. Is it creative re-articulation or subjugation? The phrase opens onto a landscape of violence and necessity, where speech itself is imposed, carved into the flesh. And what does this mean for Lafferty as a writer? This poem seems to say so much about him as a person and as an artist and the role of hope in his fiction. The second stanza moves from the bodily to the metaphysical. 'Dangling from a gallows-tree' is a metonym—it signifies the Crucifixion, martyrdom. If the poem is about Lafferty himself, it places him within the paradigm of martyrdom. His adherence to 'virtue three' (faith, hope, and charity), with hope exalted as preeminent (contra 1 Corinthians  13:13), serves as a counterpoint to suffering. This is Roman Catholic orthodoxy at its most difficult. It’s the moment of thinking: You have said the yoke will be light, but why does it feel so heavy?  I have a dear friend with an autistic son in his twenties, and she once said: It’s one thing I will want to know—what He meant when he said this.  It is merited vs. unmerited suffering. It’s just a terrific poem by Lafferty. He didn't write enough of these. He is fun, but here we are in the depths.

In the rough diamond between them was a country so harsh as to make even the feral strips look tame. This was deeply muscled country that had sinuous depths and involved hills and ramparts. It was prototype nightmare country where everything was bigger and woolier. It was heap upon heap, and spires rising in clusters to the cross-buttressed heights of the mountains. And now, as the darkness began more to deepen, all the high places were outlined with an electric blue glow. — Chapter 7 Lightning, a billion times as bright as that on Electric Mountain, a billion times as short in duration, does it lace the things together with its instantaneous fire, or sunder them forever? Thunder that flattens worlds with the shock of it, and a tidal wave, a world wave carrying away the golden fungus from the orb! In much less than an instant, in much more than forever, it is over with. — Chapter 13 I've been thinking more today about Petersen's exposition of Chapters 6 and 7 of Past Master  ( LINK ) and the deep structure embedded within them. It seems clear to me that these chapters are architecturally significant and connected to the novel’s final moments. To illustrate this, I will lay out an image and a table to clarify some of these relationships. This analysis builds on my previous discussion of spiritual and temporal authority in the novel. One concept not addressed in that earlier post is the interplay between the Book of Nature and the Book of Revelation—the two complementary ways in which God reveals Himself. This medieval framework, central to Augustine, Aquinas, and Bonaventure, ultimately derives from Romans 1:20, where St. Paul writes that God's attributes are evident in creation. The Book of Nature refers to the created world as a means of knowing God through reason, enabling natural theology to discern divine truths through observation and intellect. The Book of Revelation—what Catholics call the deposit of faith—comprises Scripture and divine revelation, conveying truths that surpass human reason and require faith. Together, these two books present a unified vision of knowledge, in which faith and reason are not opposing forces but interdependent aspects of truth. Now, let’s bring this into dialogue with the idea of spiritual and temporal authority. We now have a framework for understanding the relationships between Charles, Oddopter, Adam, Evita, and the Feral Lands, allowing us to begin interpreting the interplay between character and environment. I propose mapping these figures onto the categories of emperor, church, revelation, and nature. These, in turn, correspond to the four mountains—Evita and the others. At the heart of this structure stands Thomas More, whose role remains to be more fully explored—perhaps in another post. This isn’t the whole picture, but it is, I think, part of what is at work here, and helps us understand what is going on with Evita, Adam, the Salic Emperor, and Oddopter. The passages describing the space between the mountains are powerful—a prophetic vision of the novel’s final chapter. Prophecy precedes eschatology, as Daniel and St. John precede Apocalypse. In Chapter 7, we perceive this space from the outside, grasping its structure at a distance. By the novel’s end, we enter it, seeing from within—at the center of the stellar core collapse. The reborn world will have to account for the ends of the grid. Evita, as the female mountain, is a major part of the transcendent yeast—transcendent in the sense of being a necessary condition of possibility, one of four lightning rods for its primal discharge. I can see how the interior of the rough diamond-shaped space is an image of primordial nature. I would argue that its defining points are just as significant, ensuring that we have both ground and figure. AUTHORITY ROLE IN CHS. 6 & 7 KEY QUOTES Chs. 6–7 ANALYSIS CHURCH Manifested in the green-robe monk (Father Oddopter) and the liturgy- Spiritual Directive: Celebrates Mass, blesses kills, stands for a supernatural order.   Mission of Salvation: Father Oddopter tries to keep Thomas oriented toward the transcendent.   Suffers Martyrdom: Like the Salic Emperor, the Church in the ferals is constantly endangered. “He is a green-robed monk of the order of Saint Klingensmith... ‘Preserve us this morning from dire-wolves and panthers…’” (Ch. 6)     “And the monk said mass for all the people in Goslar… a simple and clear mass with a surprisingly intelligent sermon. It was as though the Heavens opened on command and the Spirit came down…” (Ch. 7) Dante’s Two Ends: Father Oddopter is the power guiding souls to the higher end (eternal life), fitting with the “Book of Revelation” (grace, revealed truth).   Martyr Figure: Father Oddopter’s death on Thunder Mountain shows the precariousness of spiritual authority in a mechanized, “Programmed” world.   Upshot: The Mass is both a sign of the Church’s constant presence and a foretaste of heavenly reality. By celebrating the Eucharist in a feral zone, Father Oddopter affirms that grace can break through any environment, a real “Book of Revelation” moment. EMPEROR Embodied by Charles the Six Hundred and Twelfth- Temporal Authority: Represents an earthly “realm” in the wild margins of Astrobe.   Fragile Leadership: The Salic Emperors are always short-lived, hunted by the Programmed Killers.   Tension with Thomas: Thomas rejects Charles’s feral monarchy, which sees Thomas as a “string-puppet,” which might be a shadow of Thomas More’s relationship to Henry VIII. “Not for thirty reigns have there been so many grand people… I am Emperor so I am given intuition about such things… The Scrivener is a machine.” (Ch. 6)   “You cannot mean that Astrobe must be still more exposed to its back-lands… They must be hidden away forever.” (Ch. 6, near Scrivener’s lines but referring to empire vs. wilderness) Dante’s Two Suns: Charles exemplifies the second “sun,” the Emperor’s power, which Dante argues comes directly from God but is distinct from papal authority.   Failed Dantean Vision: Because each Charles is swiftly killed, Lafferty suggests that temporal authority on Astrobe is extremely vulnerable—there is no stable Emperor to enforce the Book of Nature’s moral order.   Catholic/Medieval Resonance: A healthy Emperor–Church balance is missing.   Charles tries to shape Goslar with quick decrees, but can’t unify his subjects or harmonize them with the spiritual dimension.   It echoes Dante’s line that “men in their cupidity… need a twofold directive,” yet on Astrobe, that second directive (the Emperor) is ephemeral, always about to die while false kingship reigns in Cosmopolis. BOOK OF NATURE This just is the Feral Lands, the daily devil-slaying, the monstrous hydra, and the savage environment.   Unmapped Wilderness: Here is creation’s raw, unmediated power.    Source of Vitality & Danger: Characters must kill a “Devil” daily; the savage ecology is what sustains Golden Astrobe behind the scenes.   Contrasts with Cosmopolis: The city denies or sanitizes the feral’s chaotic abundance. “It was a fat discoid thing, black and quivering… half out of the water… ‘Devil, Devil, come in hate! Take the fine Evita bait!’ the wild-girl chanted…” (Ch. 6)   “Here there is superstition… a creature that had its origin in the nightmares of Golden Astrobe. It was banned there by group therapy… it came out here and became physical fact.” (Ch. 6) Augustine’s Two Cities / Dante’s Natural Philosophy: In medieval theology, the Book of Nature is a legitimate teacher of truth but must be guided by virtue and grace. Here, the Feral Lands are the “wild side” of Astrobe, full of real, primeval life—and demonic threats.   Distorted by Mechanized Ideology: The Programmed Killers treat nature and feral peoples as threats or tools. Lafferty portrays the Feral Lands as ironically more “human” than the “City,” because they still rely on the rawness of nature’s energies.   Nature, though fallen, mediates God’s goodness; it’s not to be suppressed but rightly ordered.   In Past Master , that “right order” has collapsed.   The daily devil-slaying shows nature’s spiritual warfare dimension—“Kill the Devil each day to limn his limits.” BOOK OF REVELATION We see it most clearly in the the Mass, Scripture references, signs of grace, and the transfiguration on Thunder Mountain   Direct Divine Intervention: The moment of consecration opens the heavens; the mountain lightning is spiritual revelation, Job before his creator.      Subverted by Cosmopolis: The city enforces a uniform “Dream” that sidelines both the Church and nature’s spiritual lessons.   Survival in the Feral Lands: Even in the wilderness, Father Oddopter says mass, showing that the “Revelation” can break in anywhere. “He said mass for all the people in Goslar… a miraculous morning, so why not believe in miracles again for a while? … It was a little while in the mornings that Thomas felt faith stirring in him.” (Ch. 7)   “Thomas and Paul and Evita had been transfigured on the mountain… They had been burned into something new…” (end of Ch. 7) Dante’s Supreme Pontiff & Pope Boniface VIII’s Two Swords: In De Monarchia , spiritual authority has its own direct line from God. Here, the “Book of Revelation” is suppressed in Golden Astrobe (the City) but resurfaces powerfully in the feral Mass and the mountain’s electrifying theophany.   Transformative Encounter: Thomas’s partial restoration of faith “for a little while” signals that spiritual realities can still break through the “golden mediocrity.”    Catholic Mystery: The Eucharist confers grace even in dire circumstances—both a hidden (sacramental) and visible sign of Revelation. On Thunder Mountain, cosmic forces (lightning and thunder) resemble a heightened form of “apocalyptic revelation.”