This is the message of Gordon R. Dickson's Childe Cycle. An evolutionary epic planned in twelve volumes, the Cycle treats the entire human species as one multi-celled organism undergoing initiation. This communal experience culminates in one man's pilgrimage across the centuries and among the stars. Like the race for which he stands, the hero is a squire—a childe—seeking knighthood. Through the victory of a single member, the whole body triumphs.
The man who came into existence as Donal Graeme is a worthy model for others to follow, because his three lives have been successive courses of initiation. Even heraldry proclaims his destiny. The three scallop shells adorning the arms of Graeme, as well as those of Sir John Hawkwood, Donal's historical forerunner, signify pilgrimage, rebirth, and the waters of limitless possibility.
First as Donal Graeme the Dorsai Warrior (Dorsai!, 1959), then as Paul Formain, the proto-Exotic Thinker (Necromancer, 1962 and for the forthcoming Chantry Guild), and finally here as Hal Mayne, the adopted Friendly Faith-holder, he explores three fundamental roles. These are the three points that determine the circle of his being. When he has finally integrated the separate lessons of each life—intuition, empathy, and creativity—his initiation as an evolved, ethically responsible person will be complete. Remembering what he learned as Donal and as Paul enables Hal to begin mastering the cosmic wheel. No longer a victim bound to it, he will eventually turn it himself, becoming the axis about which it willingly revolves.
But no hero's path to glory is smooth. Like Christ before His public ministry and the Buddha prior to his Enlightenment, Hal must withstand the blandishments of a tempter. Hal's satanic opponent, Bleys Ahrens, is a princely, titanic fiend out of Paradise Lost, an archangel noble even in his ruin. (The Miltonic inspiration is obvious and acknowledged, since Milton is to be the subject of a Childe Cycle historical novel.)
Biblical overtones resonate in Bleys. He is the corrupting serpent of Genesis and the whole hellish trinity of Revelation. Like Satan in the Book of Job, Bleys is the adversary who tests the just man nearly to destruction. But the trials thus inflicted inspire virtue that would not have emerged otherwise, even as Bleys' challenge triggers Hal's self-discovery. Satan's overtures to Christ in the desert are probes to discern His mission as well as lures to mislead Him, for Satan expects a Messiah in his own image. Likewise, Bleys attempts to examine as well as enlist Hal. He cannot imagine Hal being anything except an Other—darkness cannot grasp light. The captor remains imprisoned within walls of his own making while his captive breaks free.
Bleys' guileful tactics also parallel those of Mara, the Buddhist Lord of Death who lures men into fatal snares. When the treacherous god's threats and blandishments fail to dissuade the Buddha from seeking Enlightenment, the tempter disputes his very right to search for a new direction. But Mother Earth herself bears witness for the Buddha. He perseveres in his crucial meditation and, in the course of a single night, finds his Way to Liberation. In the same fashion Bleys ridicules Hal's agonizing pursuit of a path different from the Others'. But fundamental reality confirms the quest and thus Hal crosses nightfall into dawn.
The supernatural being Bleys most resembles in personality is Iblis, the melancholy Islamic Satan. They share the same fondness for sad songs and somber dress, the same grave manner that cloaks self-pity. Each strikes the pose of a scapegoat blamed for the failings of jealous inferiors. Each justifies himself as acting according to his inborn nature. Both beings suffer the predestined, but no less tragic, fault of single-eyed vision: they recognize power, not love. Bleys' fascination with Hal is like Iblis' longing to be overcome by the Perfect Man. Each instinctively seeks the defeat that will make him whole. Meanwhile, both Bleys and Iblis serve a greater purpose. As a Persian poem says, "Shadow makes clear the brilliance of light."
Thus Bleys Ahrens is an ancient Enemy poets knew of old. His very name marks him as a "wrongful blaze" that sheds "no light, but rather darkness visible." Preferring to "reign in hell than serve in heaven," he is the lord of endless twilight, the woeful "son of morn in weary night's decline." The infernal constancy of "a mind not to be chang'd in place or time" traps him in a dismal maze of his own design: "for within him hell he brings, and round about him, nor from hell one step no more than from himself can fly." Though "graceful and humane;… he seem'd for dignity composed and high exploit," his venomously sweet tongue can lick truth itself into deceitful shapes. Much as he professes to deplore bloodshed, "the dragons of the prime… were mellow music matched with him" for nothing in his arid heart "shares the eternal reciprocity of tears." He is the everlasting negation whose stubborn choice of stasis over growth makes potential heaven accomplished hell.
Since Bleys impedes the pilgrimage to transcendence Hal incites, they collide like immovable object and irresistable force. But their clash is necessary as well as inevitable for, as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus puts it, "Out of discord comes the fairest harmony." The racial organism cannot pass from youth to maturity until its conscious and unconscious aspects are properly developed and fully integrated into a single self.
Humanity's contrary impulses to hold fast and reach out wage random war with each other until mystically divided by Hal's earlier incarnation Paul in Necromancer. This intervention allows the nascent Splinter Cultures to go their separate ways among the stars. Then the new planets' right to independence is assured by Cletus Grahame in Tactics of Mistake (1970). Generations later, Cletus' descendant Donal Graeme imposes interstellar peace in Dorsai!.
Now the experiment is nearly complete. The garden planted by Paul and cultivated by Donal ripens for Hal to harvest. The special gifts that bloom best in the Splinter Cultures have begun to wither. But as they fade, they cross-fertilize one another. When traits mingle and perceptions change, mystical Dorsai, brave Exotics, and wise Friendlies emerge. When intermarriages multiply, the Others appear. Unless the new variants are grafted back on Earth's old roots soon, the entire species will perish in a final winter that never sees spring.
Curiously, despite the utter opposition between the sides Hal and Bleys lead, the rival paladins are obscurely alike, as if they were the right and left hands of a single entity. Cunning Bleys is quicker to spy an affinity and adds this notion to his tempter's bag of tricks. But Hal denies any likeness so vehemently, the very force of his revulsion impels him towards understanding.
Nevertheless, the haunting issue remains. Mere disbelief cannot drive the demon from the mirror. Indeed, his mocking image grows clearer over the years as Hal reaches full adult size. By the time he hurls his solemn défi at Bleys, their physical resemblance is unmistakable.
What might brotherhood between these enemies imply? Past situations offer parallels. The starkest tragedies Hal witnesses as Donal are deaths of brother-figures: the slaughter of his uncle James (his father's counterweight), the assassination of his uncle Kensie (dark Ian's bright twin), and the murder of his elder brother Mor (a hostile shadow of himself). Meanwhile, in Soldier, Ask Not (1965), young Tam's malice destroys three men who could have been his brothers and thereby filled the chasms of his lonely heart. Thus fraternity can fail through too much closeness or too much distance. Ian and Kensie are doomed from the very beginning when fate cleaves them into separate persons instead of the one they would afterwards yearn to be. Death renders the lifelong gap between Mor and Donal forever unbridgeable, leaving Hal a legacy of guilt for his part in the fatal estrangement.
Instinct and memory also breed imagery that inspires art. For example, Hal's vision of himself and Bleys confined in membrane-walled compartments not unlike amniotic sacs is transformed and incorporated into his poem "The Enchanted Tower": "And now, through double glass I see/My brother's image darklingly." This poem, quoted in Necromancer, will become a psychic vehicle to bring their sundered selves together face to face in Childe. Nourished by the Final Encyclopedia's vast resources, Hal's innate sensitivity to mythic symbols will equip him to place his predicament in a universal context. For as anthropologist Claude L
évi-Strauss proposes, "The aim of myth is to furnish a logical model for solving a contradiction."
Likeness and unlikeness define existence. Their interplay pulls the cosmos apart and brings it back together. Thus although we perceive our world through pairs of opposites such as Light and Darkness, we also long to transcend these oppositions once and for all. Various solutions are possible. Light may ultimately overwhelm its twin Darkness (Persia) or coexist with it in dynamic harmony (China) or coincide with it (India). Many cultures see a cryptic kinship beyond appearances, making deities and devils interchangeable poles of some primordial unity. ("God and Satan are brothers," says a Romanian proverb.) But if Light is active Darkness and Darkness potential Light, what reconciliation waits when they meet at midnight noon?
The growing understanding that leads Hal from rejection to recognition of Bleys as his counterpart transforms their relationship. Hal's road to wisdom retraces the tradition-hallowed path of heroes—separation, initiation, return. (Tam, ever the pioneer, travels this route earlier in Soldier, Ask Not.) The process also repeats Hal's experiences with the trios of elderly men who are his prototypes.
Since his origins are unknown, young Hal strives to identify with his tutors, each of whom speaks to one portion of his full-spectrum self. As age-patined relics of their cultures' peak years, Walter, Obadiah, and Malachi are worthy of emulation. But in order to surpass them, Hal must leave them. The child grows to manhood relearning his foster-fathers' lessons from models he initially tries to resist.
Tam, the Earthman with Exotic links, had been a demonic force in Donal's day, before his polarity was reversed in blood. Hal is unready to assume the mental task Tam offers him at the Encyclopedia because the promotion is premature. He needs to understand how his precursor anticipates him in the evolutionary adventure. Recognizing Tam as the age-gnarled taproot and himself as the ripening fruit of the same tree shows Hal why the newly selected strains of humanity need the adaptable hardiness of the old.
At first, Hal and Child-of-God are totally at odds despite their significantly parallel names. Not only does "Child" pun childe, the Friendly's messianic surname is equivalent to "Immanuelson," Hal's alias on Harmony as a member of the Revealed Church of God Reborn. (And note that Donal's beloved uncle and surrogate brother is also called James.) But suffering in a common cause brings the two men together. The same inflexible Ironside who would have barred Hal from the Command in the beginning, demands he be retained at the end. "Unshaken, unseduc'd, unterrified," Child is the unyielding die that stamps Hal into shape as a Friendly. His example of fidelity unto death teaches Hal to live by faith, the sole weapon that can match the Others, though might and mind falter. This spiritual transfiguration completes the circuit of the hero's lives and readies him for his saving task.
Initially, Donal's filial piety inhibits Hal's reaction to Ian because young Donal could scarcely imagine equaling his revered uncle's prowess. Although he later surpasses Ian's military record, he never matches the older man's towering stature. But Hal's recreated body does approximate Ian's as Amanda swiftly recognizes. Her spell-song "Green Water" has finally sung back Ian's springtime after years of heartbreak. Graemehouse itself bears witness to the chieftain's return, like Celtic talisman stones welcoming a high king. When Hal can fill the measuring doorway as completely as Ian once did, he is ready for Amanda and the rest of Ian's unfulfilled potential. In life, Ian was the Dorsai ideal incarnate, the knight with the purest heart. Through Hal, his protective spirit will reach out to enfold Earth's besieged walls.
Thus by identifying with Tam in mind, Child in spirit, and Ian in body, Hal inherits the young woman who loves each of these aged men. Whereas Donal and Paul meet danger and disappointment in their relations with females, femininity enriches Hal's life on every level. He is fully immersed in feminine influences, both real and symbolic. This is only fitting, since goddesses are the traditional guardians of creativity, the boon Hal is destined to win for all human beings.
In Ajela lives the "dearest freshness deep down things" for she is the last flower to bloom before Fimbulwinter. Hers is the nurturing glow of golden sunlight. As handmaiden of the Final Encyclopedia, she is a living link between Hal and Tam as Tam's late wife Lisa was between Tam and Mark Torre, the first Director. Like Lisa, she is an unconventional Exotic, an idealist with a capacity for deep and lasting attachments. Her romantic fixation on Tam has gradually come to terms with reality. By sharing his work she possesses the man of her dreams, the splendid titan untouched by time. But it is a partnership of mind alone—Ajela is no bedwarmer for an enfeebled king.
Ajela's wholesome relationship with Tam reverses—and thereby redeems—the harmful one between Kantele and Walt in Necromancer. Kantele became the ancestress of the Exotics that are; Ajela will be the ancestress of the Exotics yet to come. Though unmated, Ajela mothers Tam, her staff, and eventually all Earth's children. Thus she is a doublet for the Encyclopedia itself, just as a priestess shares the identity of the goddess she serves.
Immovable as the roots of the mountains, Rukh has none of Ajela's softness. She is the Lord's terrible swift sword tempered in her own blood. Zeal is in her very bones because she is descended from the same North African stock that earlier had produced Jamethon Black in Soldier, Ask Not. Their Berber ancestors' ferocity blazed brightest under Islam. Not only did this folk breed fanatical fighters (they were the Almoravid foes of that proto-Dorsai El Cid) but they also revered "living saints" like the Elect of Harmony among whom Rukh is numbered.
Pain seals this quintessential Woman of Faith into the vocation she was born to follow, for she is a female version of Isaiah's Suffering Servant. She "can speak to the weary a word that will rouse them" for she has been called "for the victory of justice… a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness." Nevertheless, she is also merciful, unwilling to quench a smoking wick. (Her name means "bright" but in Persian mysticism signifies the Gracious Attributes of God.) Her mercy toward her tormentor Barbage has unexpected consequences—and incidentally prevents Hal from committing the "sin of the warrior" that blemishes Donal. In her prophetic function, she foreshadows the eventual transmutation of denial to affirmation in the Friendly spirit. Rukh is a torch to light candles in the darkness and those she enkindles with her inner fire are her virgin-born children.
In Amanda, "the shadows of the stars have mingled with the sea." Like a Celtic goddess, she is linked with horses, birds, and water as well as being a triplet of her other selves, the First and Second Amandas. From a broader view, the three Amandas comprise a Great Goddess—Maid, Mistress/Wife, Crone—bracketing each of Hal's three lives. Moreover, Amanda III traces the whole circle herself. She was a virgin warrior, is a lover, and will be a mother to a new kind of human. In Hindu terms, she plays Mahadevi to Hal's Mahadeva.
Fal Morgan, the house built with its foundress's "heart for the hall's foundation stone" is an extension of the Amanda-persona herself. She made it, not it her as in the case of Ajela and the Final Encyclopedia. As the pattern repeats itself through time, she extends the scope of her embrace—from family to planet to species. Her breadth of experience prepares her for fulfillment. Amanda I had three husbands and Amanda II none but Amanda III is joined to a perfect soulmate. By adding her ancestresses' traits to her own she is a full-spectrum Woman of Faith, Philosophy, and War and thus a properly royal consort for Hal.
Not only do Ajela (Mother), Rukh (Maid) and Amanda (Mistress) themselves constitute a Great Goddess, they fit like tabs of differing shape into corresponding slots in Hal. Their special loves help him grow beyond the limitations of his solely masculine upbringing. In contrast, Tonina's aid is merely practical. She is the crippled counterpart of the other three, since, despite a few good intentions, she fails in her successive feminine roles. This barren woman stands for a dead-end universe badly in need of opening. Like the counterfeit gardens o
f Coby, she stirs a hunger for genuine beauty others will satisfy.
Once Hal has settled into his carrel at the Encyclopedia, his three women colleagues actualize what he inspires. This division of labor is efficient since each of them is more skilled in some area than he. But it is also symbolically significant that the women take conventionally "masculine" leadership roles on Earth, in low heaven, and in deep space—the three domains of Indo-European sky gods.
Meanwhile, Hal stays englobed within an artificial moon spinning webs of past, present, and future fate from the Encyclopedia's threads of data just like a lunar goddess. By his three seashell-marked births from the maternal waters of possibility, he has developed conventionally "feminine" traits of intuition, empathy, and creativity.
Thus Hal, Ajela, Rukh, and Amanda are complementary within as well as among themselves. By crossing the traditional boundaries between the sexes, they expand the scope of their being so that each encompasses the full circle of yang and yin. Thus when Hal and Amanda come together "each is both" and their union is all the closer for it.
But Bleys in his terrible angelic neuterness cannot experience this. He is both a null sum within himself and uncompleted by anything outside himself. As Arthur Machen observes, "Evil in its essence is a lonely thing, a passion of the solitary, individual soul." Devoid of family or friends or helpmate, Bleys could not help but envy Hal and Amanda "imparadis'd in one another's arms." Although he senses kindship with Hal, he will not open himself the slightest crack to claim it. The Other's imprisoned ego cannot be an "I" unless it allows another to be a "Thou."
While Bleys remains a bleak monad, alone in his unsatisfying excellence, Hal makes his way into full membership in the human family. Hal's broken-hearted compassion for everyone mystifies unbreakable Bleys who cannot conceive of suffering on anyone's behalf save his own. These differences determine their styles of leadership: Bleys is a cattle-drover herding his beasts into a pen but Hal is the soaring point of a hurled spear.
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