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Underground > Comic Books >

Invisibles Volume Three Observations/Questions

  
  

Page: 1(2)3

 
 
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03:03 / 02.12.02
I'm sorry Runce, but I have to disagree with you on the Horus is Robin's baby thing. I think you're reading way too much into Quimper's character. I always saw him as just another enemy agent of some importance. And I think the Horus child is too large a thing for one sole character to give birth to. Robin is important, yes, but I really don't think Horus is her child. Still, everyone's entitled to their own opinion. Hell, you're probably right.

Having said that, I'd like to see your comments on the coronation, so long as you don't try to make it seem like your way is the only way to intepret the scene and dismiss those who disagree with you as missing out on the "big picture" of The Invisibles, whatever that is.
 
 
The Natural Way
08:43 / 02.12.02
Sypha - Robin isn't "one" character.

"The best thing that ever happened to WE"

They all birth the child. The child is all of them. But she's the cipher/mask for the mother aspect. Horus is expansive, Quimper contractive - these are the principles that define them. He's the infected child with his "horrible baby voice" - it's there in the text. Join the dots like King Mob in Varanasi. And I don't just dismiss everyone else's ideas: if I disagree with yr take, there's no harm in me saying so. There's plenty of people who post about the Invisibles whose thoughts I'm really into - often sending my reading off in completely new directions. There's this feeling that, because we're talking about the Invisibles, everyone's opinion has to be respected, even when Morrison's on record saying that a lot of people have completely misinterpreted the series. So I'm not down w/ this "I have my opinion, you have yours" stuff.

Laurence, I don't know how you stuck with this book. Statement's like "Ornothocrasi's not LITERALLY real.." etc., reveal such a total lack of understanding of what magic and the Invisibles is actually about, it's completely baffling. And I'm really not trying to be a wanker here, but if you think Morrison (and his story) follow that kind of either/or logic, well....weird.....
 
 
some guy
12:18 / 02.12.02
Laurence, I don't know how you stuck with this book. Statement's like "Ornothocrasi's not LITERALLY real.." etc., reveal such a total lack of understanding of what magic and the Invisibles is actually about, it's completely baffling. And I'm really not trying to be a wanker here, but if you think Morrison (and his story) follow that kind of either/or logic, well....

Runce, unless you are incapable of reading, it should be obvious that I "get" what The Invisibles is "actually" about, and that I adore the series. It should also be obvious that there is no single reading of the series. If you're not examining the book through a magical lens, then your statement about Ornothocrasi is meaningless. There is no "unified theory" of The Invisibles, as Grant himself admits and indeed intended. If you're trying to assert one, then perhaps you are a wanker after all. If anything, you appear stuck on a single reading, while I'm interested in seeing what else pops up when the series is viewed from different angles. Talk about either/or...

As I said above (there's that paying attention thing again), your birth description works on the level of metaphor - examining the book through a literal lens (again, one of the many facets of the series to examine), there is no Ornothocrasi (though there are other mythic figures, so this can't be an accident), Quimper is not Robin's child, she and KM did not conceive a Horus baby or the supercontext etc...

To say Morrison had no interest in literal aspects of The Invisibles is silly, as linear events wind up having enormous impact, and he takes the time to create plausible character backstory and development. This doesn't negate the magical reading, or the chaos reading, or the political reading, or the spiritual reading, and so on. These are all separate readings, in which the same details have different meanings.

And I don't know what you're getting excited about, considering I actually agreed with you in my previous post! Ornothocrasi metaphor, yes.
 
 
The Falcon
12:25 / 02.12.02
There's this feeling that, because we're talking about the Invisibles, everyone's opinion has to be respected, even when Morrison's on record saying that a lot of people have completely misinterpreted the series. So I'm not down w/ this "I have my opinion, you have yours" stuff.

Yeah, but who says he's right? This book is now public domain, and I wouldn't trust an author to interpret their own work.

Of course, I've still read a few pieces on it that stank, but... not many here.
 
 
arcboi
13:44 / 02.12.02
I think the problem is where some theories are being put forward as the definitve meaning to The Invisibles rather than just what they are - theories.

Personally, I'm going to stick with GM's ideas and intentions as he did write the thing after all. Yes, there's lots of resonating ideas coming off the back of it, but the core of the story is what GM wrote. I think it would help if some reference points could be dropped into some posts that point the way to an interview or comment that GM made that supports some of the theories being suggested. Just an idea.

Regardless, there's still lots of thought provoking stuff being posted by everyone on here so keep it coming..
 
 
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14:51 / 02.12.02
I don't really think Robin is the mother "mask" because, well, there isn't much in the text about her as a mother, despite the little bits of evidence you provided. I mean, what about Audrey Murray, Bobby's wife? She's a mother who actually did give birth in the series, why couldn't she be the mother mask? Still, as a metaphor it works well.

Statement's like "Ornothocrasi's not LITERALLY real.." etc., reveal such a total lack of understanding of what magic and the Invisibles is actually about, it's completely baffling

See, it's statements like that annoy me. Unless you're some grand magus of magic or are an enlightened plane of Invisibles knowledge, I think it comes across as arrogant when you make statements like that. Who is to say what something as varied and complex as magic is actually about (or The Invisibles for that matter).

I think your ideas and theories are good but you never really elaborate on them, instead you just give brief bites from the series itself as if that answers everything. I'd rather you be a "cool egghead and stoner motherfucker" who "will do their best to "explain" it to you" and go into a bit more detail.
Usually your explanations of your theories make me more confused then enlightened (not that I think you have all the answers, mind).
 
 
The Natural Way
14:54 / 02.12.02
And, as I pointed out on a previous thread, it's horses for courses. There are aspects of the Invisibles that are impossible to understand unless one adopts a magical perspective. The Horus child is one of them. The Invisibles is a Shrodinger's Cat, it operates in the fuzzy areas where things are at once metaphor and real. It's not that I prefer the "magic" reading, over the literal one, it's just that I don't really see the distinction - In the Invisibles, one segues into the other. It's so blurry. One minute we're on the "ground" and it all "makes sense", the next.... Reality tunnels fractal-branch/bifurcate... Hey! we're down with Grof, and the next minute we're catapulted into the realm of aeonic magic and the next it's Susan Blackmore. The problem I have with yr take (or, at least the way I perceive it), is this idea that you can follow a common-sense, literal thread (or any one thread/model for that matter) all the way through and force a logical, cause and effect-style, explanation out of the series without smashing into a brick wall. Everywhere. You have to hold each model in yr mind and shift reality tunnels where appropriate. It's all real.

I've never insisted on one interpretation. But we were talking about the birth stuff and so....you got my tuppence worth.
 
 
some guy
15:11 / 02.12.02
The problem I have with yr take (or, at least the way I perceive it), is this idea that you can follow a common-sense, literal thread (or any one thread/model for that matter) all the way through and force a logical, cause and effect-style, explanation out of the series without smashing into a brick wall.

Yep, I agree. But as you say, all of the models smash into brick walls at some point, not least of which is the birth/mother reading, which is riddled with holes. Part of this is the delightful nature of the series, which demands readings that work a bit like a Underground (different lines occasionally share the same stations; the map of the whole can't be seen without exploring each line, however mundane).

But we also need to remember that much of The Invisibles is a half-assed creation of constantly shifting intent. The first several issues were "intended" for a series that never materialized; parts of the structure were no doubt influenced by the planned 64 issues that never materialized; the countdown was a failure; Helga was never intended to be in the series, and so arguments as to what she represents fall flat. I could go on, but we would all be bored. So what emerges as the one constant is the literal sequence of events, where other ideas become dalliances, embraced and discarded at various points.

The underplaying of the "literal" aspect of the series becomes quite annoying when we consider just how much the actual characters bring to the table, what they mean and how events resonate. Morrison loves soap operatics, and the literal experience of the characters demonstrates the importance he placed on that aspect of what is, after all, ultimately a narrative.
 
 
The Natural Way
15:22 / 02.12.02
The above response was aimed at Loz.

Well...the evidence I give is, as far as I'm concerned, pretty conclusive. A pregnant Robin is catapulted into the supercontext while dreaming/birthing the universe in the word-tank and emerges, "awake" with the words "baby in a dream on sex". I mean, you have to ask yrself why this stuff's included if it doesn't mean anything. I accept that other mother figures are invoked in vol 3: Edith AND Audrey serve this function, but they are never specifically described as pregnant or any of the other stuff, inspite of the fact that they segue in and out (esp Edith) of the divine mother-archetype. But, yeah, if you like....I'm not fussy. It can be Audrey if you like. It IS Audrey.

"See, it's statements like that annoy me. Unless you're some grand magus of magic or are an enlightened plane of Invisibles knowledge, I think it comes across as arrogant when you make statements like that. Who is to say what something as varied and complex as magic is actually about (or The Invisibles for that matter)."

Well, okay, some context: like Grant, I kind of grew up w/ magic. I don't think it's some endless, limitless thing... You don't need to be a "Grand Magus" to have some kind of definition, or, at least, some inkling of the thing's shape. Why is it that people insist this stuff's limitless? Bloody Phil Hine..... It isn't "arrogant" to have a take, Sypha, esp. when you've been surrounded by the stuff all your life. Anyway...you want me to expand? Laurence talks about performing a "literal" or a "metaphoric" reading. I say 'fuck "OR"' Magickal thinking (popularly) doesn't make those kind of distinctions. Neither does the Invisibles - the literal continually collapses into the metaphorical... take the "meta" route - it's more effective.

I'm sorry if my posts confuse you - that's because I'm inarticulate, really.
 
 
The Natural Way
15:34 / 02.12.02
I prefer "fractal branching" to "underground". And "hologram" even more.

In the end, this is where we just can't agree, Laurence. I don't think the Invisibles is the half-arsed mess you think it is (all the really important themes/ideas are dealt with - and you can easily unpack the rest), and, really, those "metaphors" you talk about are as real as anything else. I'm not into this "literal" OR "metaphor" thing, anyway. In the Invisibles, they're continually shifting positions. As I said, it's a Shrodinger's Cat.
 
 
some guy
15:44 / 02.12.02
I'm not into this "literal" OR "metaphor" thing

Er, neither am I...
 
 
--
21:24 / 02.12.02
I wasn't crazy about the way Robin's pregnancy was handled. I mean, there is a LOT on information spread out over the Invisibles 1,400+ pages. Some of this information gets a lot of attention: Who/what is the Harlequin, what is the hand of Glory, time travel, John A'Dreams, etc. Robin's pregnancy gets little attention at all: I think there's that line in Volume 3 issue 5 (where does she say she gets an abortion again, I can't recall reading that), and that other line in the final issue about calling her baby Quimper, but that's about it. If what you're saying about the whole Robin/baby thing is true, you would think that would get more focus in the story itself. As it is it seems kind of like a throw-away to me (like the line "Now it's a rescue mission"). I think it gets lost in the huge bulk of information that is "The Invisibles". How do you know she's pregnant when she emerges into the birth of the supercontext? I must have missed that to, not surprising considering the information overload, and the fact you've had years to study the text, whereas I... well, I haven't even been reading it FOR a year.

As for all the literal stuff (why does this thread seem to be becoming a retread of the fiction suit thread?) I think it's impossible to read the Invisibles as strictly linear but at the same time I also think it's impossible to read it as strictly metaphorical. You kinda have to read it both ways for the thing to make sense (Hell, I pretty much read them all out of order, with the exception of Volume 3). There IS an established back story of sorts (ie. the characters are born on certain dates, things happen to them in their early years that influence their adult lives: Mob's upbringing by his radical mother, Miles seeing the Fox killed, Fanny's initiation in Mexico, Mason Lang's alien abduction, etc.) I had some spare time once so I made an Invisibles timeline, but it didn't make too much sense... mainly because Lang said he was nine when he was abducted in 1983 (I think) yet in 2008 he was 45, when in reality he should only have been 35 or so (which was either a deliberate bit of misinformation designed to mess up linear thinking, or a minor GM fuck-up/typo). I'm guessing the latter in this case though.

As for magic, I'm fairly new to magic, I've only really been studying it/practicing it hardcore for the last year or so, so I still have a lot to learn (initiation never ends). I'm not sure how to define magic, everyone I know who is into it has some definition of what they think it is. Most of what I know I read from books, some helpful, some not, though I'd rather create my own system, like that Michel Beatriux guy says (I know I mispelled his name, it's that guy who did the Vodoun Gnostic Workbook). I'm not very experienced in the use of it but I like to think I have some knowledge about it... The books I found most useful, ironically, were Phil Hine's books. Anyway, I'm sure that not everyone who reads The Invisibles knows a lot about magic (or even believes in it) so the magic stuff they'd either simply gloss over or just regard as fantasy (most of my on-line friends are extremnely cynical about magic). I don't think you have to know a lot about magic to enjoy the Invisibles, but I'll admit it does help (like how it helps to know a bit about William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, HP Lovecraft, etc. which were helpful handholds for me when I first started reading the series and knew little about stuff like chaos magic, discordianism, Susan Blackmore and stuff like that, which I've taken the time to learn about now, though I haven't gotten to Grof yet). Regarding magic in the series itself, to me the most interesting magical stuff was all the city magic stuff in the Down and Out in Heaven & Hell arc, only because that seems more practical to my daily life then the whole Horus birth stuff (not that I've ever switched my eyes with pigeons mind). But I definetly agree that The Invisibles is a spell to give birth to Horus, or whatever you wish to call the process itself. Maybe as I practice magic more my viewpoint will change one day. Who knows... What I like about the Invisibles is how it gives us all this magic stuff but demystifies it too. Like when Jack recalls how ElFayed said that he was an avatar of Horus and Jack told him to "go fuck himself". Chaos magic technique of not taking the magic too seriously and all.

Don't worry about being inarticulate, I babble on and on and in the end I usually have no idea what the hell I'm going on about (this post itself being a good example). Sorry if I misread your intentions, you obviously seem to know what you're talking about, even if I don't always agree with your "take".
 
 
Mr Tricks
22:19 / 02.12.02
well... V3#1
I thought the apearance of the KING oF TEARS from the gap in space left by Robin's Time suit made sence... the birth trauma thing... or in this case the trauma/horror of being thrown out of space/time created a footing for the King of tears to re-appear... almost directly from where he left Jack in the house of fun.

thant's all carry on...
 
 
arcboi
22:54 / 02.12.02
I can approach The Invisibles from a magickal viewpoint as well, but all the information is pretty much laid out in the pages. Unless GM was being ultra-subtle (and I don't think he was) I still have a hard time accepting some of these theories regarding a 'divine mother' etc. If I want that, I'll go read a Pat Mills comic.

Nowt wrong with Phil Hine either. Magick has no limits except for the ones you define. The Invisibles demonstrates this with the different models used: KM's use of Lennon as a god-like figure, Jim Crow's voodoo methods, Fanny's shamanism etc. etc.

Robin's words when she emerges before the Supercontext are, IMHO, simply her emotions at seeing KM again. "Baby" doesn't necessarily mean "Baby" if you see what I mean. But if GM has stated otherwise, then I'll gladly accept his version because that's what counts from my point of view.
 
 
--
03:02 / 03.12.02
Hell, I invoked William S. Burroughs once to get over writer's block based on that Lennon thing. I do find the vodou stuff in The Invisibles fascinating, I don't practice vodou but I study it a lot. And I think Phil Hine is the man.

Anyway, here’s a load of references from The Invisibles, mostly from Volume 3, some taken out of context.

some mother imagery for you:

Invisibles volume 3, #5:

The wire mother, anti-Diana (ref. To Myra from Vol. 2 #14), the toxic womb, bad mother being subconsciously evoked, Kali giving birth to skeletons, Kali is the terrible mother of the negative universe (Miles is caught up in the web of Kali according to Helga). Robin saying she’s pregnant.


Other mother references:

The statesmen who come to drink Rex Mundi’s milk.
Lord fanny’s mother having a miscarriage
Edith’s miscarriage
Audrey giving birth to a baby with cerebral palsy (note the many botched births).
The placenta crashing (ref. To Barbelith as Placenta in Volume 2)
Survival information downloading, instructions to breath (compare this to Barbelith’s lines in the final issue: “remember to breath, you are only being born, prepare for download”.
At Westminster Abbey, the guard who mentions the “aborted gut-sin” (whatever that is).
“Edith being dead is like something being born”.
The menstrual river in India.

Invisibles as a game/time as everything:

Tom: It’s only a game, it’s being wound up, folded up and put away like “Monopoly”.
Helga: We have the rulebook and the game cheats.
Takashi: Space-time is the game board.
Lord Fanny: How flat the world seems (ref. To a butterfly here too: chrysalis). (and don’t forget the butterfly in KM’s office in the final issue).
Lord Fanny: Time is all at once.
Flint: It looks like everything.
Flint: ref. To how the game crashed and embedded the player.
“The Invisibles” as a game: King Mob: It’s different every time.
Time turning itself in
Endless self-generating iterations
Weird synchronicities: like the King of all Tears appearing in 2012.

Merge of opposites:

Sun and moon at the eclipse.
John A’ Dreams: The archon will manifest as an annihilation of opposites.
Helga: refers to “becoming the enemy”.
Harper: The alchemical marriage is about merging opposites: sun and moon, good and bad guys. It’s all symbolic.
The Invisibles game contains traces of magic mirror and anti-mirror.
King Mob: everything bound within 4 dimensions is the same thing.
confronting and integration of not-self necessary stage in the larval stage’s development of self-awareness: hence Jack eating the Archon, John-A-Dreams being modified, etc.
John: When the mirror liquids are combined, holographic complexity is created.

The Archons:

The King-Of-This-World folds down. The timesuit folds above. The Archons are described as time demons. The King of all Tears appears in the shape of the timesuit. H’mm…

The Archons are Grof BPM 3 condensations. The Archons are Grof’s pertinatal matrices: birth trauma memories experienced as cosmic horror. Global death camps. Poisoned babies. Birth. (Archons manifestations of Horus child’s birth-trauma?)

“When we remember them & recognize them for what they are, they cease to enslave us.”

Westminster Abbey:

Miles: I should seal it with a sacrifice (see Stargrave story in Volume 1 of Gideon hanging himself in the same position as the tarot hanged man, which Miles imitates).
Miles: The King is Dead. Mob says the same thing. Another “link” between them?
Tarot: Helga/Mr.6: The Lovers
Jolly Roger: The Magician
Sir Miles: The Hanged Man
Miles: Yours was a wasted effort (ref. To the fact that Roger’s violence amounted to nothing in the end?)
Miles: I saw I had a choice (he couldn’t see past the Outer Church to the Invisible College beyond).
The Moonchild: He helped them, he’s always been one of them (more merging of opposites, confusion of sides?)
Ritual elements: Miles kills 3 people. He kills the Moonchild with 3 bullets. He’s achieved a 333rd degree of anti_masonry. He says “At the appointed hour I slay the king”.



The supercontext:

Blind Chessman: You are not even born yet.
Husking identity: Dane must husk his ego scald offing to see his true form. King Mob says “I’m what crawled out of that husk of a phone box”.
Reynaud: We shed names like ducks shed water (see Gideon get rid of the King Mob title at the end of “The Invisible Kingdom” and Helga changes her name to Olga).
Reynaud: You tried to hammer your enemies into shape. You wouldn’t understand how you allow them to define your self-boundaries (compare to Mob’s chat with Jacqui in Volume 2).
Computer: The very concept of the individual was not designed to survive the last millennium: must be transcended.
Identify with everything in the universe that is not-self and dissolve the existential alienation dilemma in unity (compare with Miles as an existentialist who is afraid of modification: Takashi in Vol.3, issue #4: we will be together in our understanding).
King Mob: all is one and several is none.
King Mob: We’re being born, fully grown.


Things I’m not sure about at Westminster Abbey:

-Where all those words are coming from after Miles is dosed with key 23? The Invisible College maybe?

-What Miles and Helga mean by referring to “The Foundation Stone”?

-I know what Baphomet is, but Diamond Baphomet?

-Superdense star of chaos? Ref. To Outer Church (must be cuz Helga mentions the microscopic iron prison of “it”.)

-exactly what the Black Grail is. I know it has something to do with the Gnostics and Judas.

-How are Miles and Dane connected (other then their wish to make their enemies just like them).

-Helga to Miles: You’ll rise again. Dane to Fanny: Nobody died. Nobody ever dies”. Okay… so what happens to Miles/Roger now? What happens to their time maggots/worm casts? Do they just stop growing and stay static until 2012 and the supercontext occurs and they merge with everyone then? I’m very confused about this. Or is it impossible for them to die because everyone is everyone else and there is no individuality (though this doesn’t occur till 2012)… Help!
 
 
PatrickMM
18:57 / 03.12.02
>>-Where all those words are coming from after Miles is dosed with key 23? The Invisible College maybe?<<

In the previous issues of The Invisible Kingdom, we can see King Mob putting up a bag with the words in it. What I would have loved to see in that page was a shot from Sir Miles perspective with all those concepts turned into reality.

>>-exactly what the Black Grail is. I know it has something to do with the Gnostics and Judas.<<

I think it said earlier in IK that the black grail was used to collect Judas' spunk and blood as he hung on the cross. The image of Helga collecting Miles' blood in a similar manner works because Sir Miles is like Judas, in that he had to be the one to sacrifice his principles in order to bring about the birth of the new world, or the ressurection of Jesus in Judas' case.

-How are Miles and Dane connected (other then their wish to make their enemies just like them).

I think the connection is that both are immensely powerful, but slightly out of the circle of their respective groups. Dane never quite becomes part of the Invisible circle, and will never become as hardcore a killer as King Mob. He's clearly more sympathetic to the other side ("I'm on the side with butter on it, I am.") In a similar way, Miles refuses to get the 4-D armor, and is not quite as malicious as the other members of the Outer Church. He also questions what they are doing at times. Also, Dane's experience after killing the soldier parallels Miles' experience with the fox. Ultimately, Dane is the pure person that Miles could have been, but instead he has been corrupted.
 
 
PatrickMM
19:07 / 03.12.02
On the subject of Robin's baby, I think that it may tie in to King Mob's decision to put down his guns. At the end of volume II, he tries to stop taking life, and through his relationship with Robin, he begins to makes life instead.

It is also a demonstration of Robin's connection with Barbelith. While the new version of her is out of time, she is like a child herself, growing and gaining the knowledge that will allow her to be reborn, with all the knowledge of the universe. It doesn't quite hold together on a literal level, but on a metaphorical level, as Robin carrying inside her the essence of the new Robin who will be born at the end of the world, it makes some sense.

As for the Quimper line, I think it's a subtle way of showing that Quimper is back in his previous form, as a representation of all that is good. Just like Mob remembers Quimper speaking to him as a child, Robin probably remembers this, and in a state where her raw consciousness can come through, she is recalling a happy experience from her childhood.

Also, can anybody provide some links to the Morrison interviews where he talks about this aspect of the series. Is there anything outside of Anarchy for the Masses?
 
 
PatrickMM
19:08 / 03.12.02
Talking about an Invisibles timeline, I was reading some old digital ink columns and Grant mentioned that one would be put up on his site soon. I couldn't find that, did anything ever come of it, and is it available anywhere now?
 
 
--
20:52 / 03.12.02
I agree with most of what you say about Dane and Miles, but it is important to remember that almost all the members of Mob's cell questioned whether their actions were right or not at certain times.

So that's what Mob was doing in the rafters. Wonder how they got the bag to open up. Remote control maybe? Or is that nit-picking.

I thought the whole Hylic grail thing was Gnostic-related. I recall The Bomb annotations mentioning this awhile back...
 
 
The Falcon
20:56 / 03.12.02
Right, so is this what Runce was driving at - the recycling of the Biblical Jesus(Dane)/Judas(Miles) mytheme?

Sorry, I just had to type that.
 
 
--
21:23 / 03.12.02
I dunno, the whole Judas stuff seems pretty much on the page, I'd expect Runce to go deeper then that.
GM DID mention how the grail myth played a large part in Volume 3 of The Invisibles...
 
 
The Natural Way
16:16 / 19.04.04
I was just reading Vol 3 #2 last night. I've always understood it in theory, but on the re-read I found it effortlessly comprehensible and fun. I do have one question, though, re the purpose of the thing. Yeah, yeah, the Invisibles hi-jack/detourne the ritual and, instead of summoning the black, calcified, demonic energies of the outer church, they simply digest/retranslate (Helga is an interpreter after all) all the nastiness and "piss it out as vintage champagne". I understand that the initiation involves a drawing down of the fundamental ground of being (The Superconttext/The New Aeon/Horus) and that this...errr...Baphomet-flavoured condition manifests itself in the super-body of Miles and Dame simultaneously - at once contractive/limited (anti mirror/Miles), and at the same time expansive/liberated (magic mirror/Dame) - but my question is "why"?

Obviously, there's the very pressing danger of the future being pressed into the macro-body of some very nasty emotional currents, but beyond that? What's Helga trying to achieve? There's a bigger spell here, methinks. The answer I tend to give myself revolves around the idea that Fate and Free Will, being interchangable propositions in Grant's world view, simply don't matter here. The events in the Abbey occur as they do simply because they have to. The agents of the Invisible Order and the Outer Church are simply glyphs in some kind of meta-spell that collapses the Osiris vector (Miles's suicide) into Horus's (Dane's cosmic rebirth).

But has anyone else got any other ideas? Diz? Patrick?
 
 
---
17:08 / 19.04.04
I think that possibly, if the blind chessman was supposed to be Lucifer (and i'm not sure how many of you think that this is the case) then King Mob's cell and the whole thing in Vol 3 #2 are the acts of his final redemption, so when Dane/Jack comes back out of the door from being shown the nature of who he is and the plans of the Outer Church have been stopped, his redemption is complete.
 
 
betatester
17:31 / 20.04.04
... We don't see what Jack wants, so it's still blank.

true! remember when the invisibles got trapped in the self-critic words? and each one of them started to deconstruct themselves? the "god made money in his image", "my tits spell anarchy" (i love that!)

the only thing jack frost said was "fuck". on self-critic words AND his own words. like if he was training to regain wholeness again. i got really impressed by that.
 
 
betatester
17:46 / 20.04.04
i agree on quimper being KM and robin's child.

kmon, after the supercontext, do you really wanna point out boundaries, "personalities as we call them"?

quimper is the unborn child of edith too, so they come thru all of it to "clean state" again, so he has another chance, i guess. i've been thru a miscariage (not mine, tho) and this is huge shit. a lot of symbolism packed together.

i can even spot the time of conception... when robin wanted to deal with quimper's invasion on her mind and said to KM "sometimes i just wanna be a number". does it makes sense?

i guess all those matriarchal symbolisms gets into blind spot to a lot of guys here (which is ok, you can view the story at any POV you want, and you can't grab it all anyway), but they are there. the diana and mother theresas's deaths conjuring the assasin mother, ornothocrasi, miscarriages, quimper, lord fanny con-games (like a woman, but just an image of it), horus child... it seems, really, that the universe wants to born in every way it could. and why not in the literal way, pregnancy?
 
 
luke hugh
19:30 / 20.04.04
6. If it's a rescue mission, who are they rescuing? And what's the deal with "Edith says to call on Buddha," in relative times, when is it first said, where is it distorted to, and when is it heard?

did anyone tackle this question . I know it was said when king mob was in the past and the hand of glory was activated. The golden age King Mob saw the baby bobby say it .I never really got that either.
 
 
Baz Auckland
05:51 / 23.04.04
It's either the echo of KM saying it, or Robin reciting it... he tells her to in 2.24? In the Bobby issue (#11?) he hears it as 'Edith says to call him Booty'

If Quimper is the child of KM and Robin, why would it be Robin's mission to 'remove him from the board'?
 
 
The Natural Way
17:24 / 23.04.04
Quimper, as we know him, is the nasty, unholy "shadow" of the cosmic birth. He's the abortion in Harrods; the child of Kali/Onorthocrasi - Horus, "figured to her ground".

He needs to be liberated. It's sympathetic magic, maaaaan.

The Rescue Mission? Who the wassis?

All of us. That guy in the suiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
 
 
diz
18:14 / 23.04.04
If it's a rescue mission, who are they rescuing?

Barbelith. the Magic Mirror. the Archons. themselves. everyone. everyone is trapped in the game and has forgotten that it's a game. they're rescuing everyone from that state to usher them (including themselves) into the supercontext.

And what's the deal with "Edith says to call on Buddha," in relative times, when is it first said, where is it distorted to, and when is it heard?

i think KM says it when he's in that weird dreamspace where Jack is boiling the glove. then Bobby hears it, but garbled, or at the wrong time and the wrong place.

The golden age King Mob saw the baby bobby say it .I never really got that either.

my understanding of that is that Bobby Murray is a misfired Dane prototype. almost, but gets lost along the way. a garbled transmission from Barbelith or the supercontext or whatever.
 
 
PatrickMM
20:09 / 18.05.07
I just finished rereading the series, and pretty much got everything, or at least had an understatnding of everything that worked for me. However, there are two scenes that still baffle me.

One is Jack boiling the glove, he seems to be making the Hand of Glory, yet earlier the and was connected with Beryl. I'd always belived that it was Beryl's hand, but reading it again, I didn't find that much evidence for it to be hers. So, at what point in time is glove boiling Jack from? Where does he step out of the game into this place?

And, does anyone have any theories about the naked Takashi and Geisha page in 3.1. Earlier in the Volume, he says that he remembered the image of the timesuit and sent it back through his genetic memory to his grandfather. So, is the Geisha actually a manifestation of the Harlequin, showing him the timesuit so he can send it back. How does that connect to him talking with her in the sand in reality? I haven't seen much discussion of those panels, and I'd be curious to see what people have to say.
 
 
This Sunday
20:19 / 18.05.07
I think the 'geisha' image is how he sees his wife from death/outside-time. Similar to how the time machine presents itself as archon around the same time in the series.

As for the glove/hand-of-glory... I stick to my opinion that since part of this is Jack playing the game and us experiencing/playing the game, the hand is our hand, Barbelith is our eye* from the angle we can't see, that is, looking out, with the lines as eyelids, and so our experience of the comics and reading them. Holding the page and looking at it. Jack manifests the hand because Jack is playing the game that round, sitting in that Technoccult office.


* I don't think anyone has yet agreed with me on this reading. I push it only because it works for me and I like it.
 
 
This Sunday
21:34 / 18.05.07
Although the Harlequinade (like the King in Yellow) is us as sometimes seen outside time, right? This is why we as reader/player see it's KM passing by to see Dane boiling the glove, while Edith is asking the Harlequinade about seeing their face and they come on with the 'only slivers' bit. Right?

So, if that's the case, the manifestation or normal time-slice view of Takashi's wife would be them, as well as herself.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
10:58 / 19.05.07
Did Grant ever say that his Kathmandu aliens contact experience was part of the 'official' cosmology of The Invisibles? Because those aliens lived outside of time and only needed it to grow stuff and that's what our universe was supposedly for, so I wonder if the Harlequin and Fanny's Gods are those aliens.

The whole problem with Boy's opting out and the whole 'there are no sides' is that if the team agreed with her at any point before the end of 3.2 The Archons might well have taken over our reality. In the same way that The Filth offers, amongst other things, a much sterner critique of De Sade's theories about sexual repression from Series Three, I think it also questions whether it's actually not a bad idea to accept that there sometimes ARE two sides in conflict.
 
 
PatrickMM
19:16 / 19.05.07
So, if that's the case, the manifestation or normal time-slice view of Takashi's wife would be them, as well as herself.

Yes, in theory that's true for every character in the series. So, you could argue that it's the Harlequin in the guise of Jack boiling the glove, and the Harlequin in the guise of his wife standing opposte Takashi with the time machine origami. But, that still raises the question of the larger significance of that moment, is this where the initial inspiration for the time machine comes from? It seems odd that Grant would include a moment like that for an essentially tangential character, while the rest of the last issue is so tightly focused on the core group.
 
 
PatrickMM
19:28 / 19.05.07
Lady, I don't know that the Kathmandu experience is strictly in 'canon' for the series, but it's that experience that informs every initiation experience, and the entire cosmology of the series, so anything that Grant says about his experience can be integrated with what happens with the characters. I think you hit on the head when you said that the Harlequin and Fanny's Gods are the aliens he saw, just perceived through a different cultural lens, in the same way that Jack sees them as Jesus.

As for there are no side, I think King Mob integrates it pretty well in the last issue when he calls the Archons inoculating agents from the supercontext. The conflict between the two sides is necessary as a part of humanity's growth, but the Archons' ultimate purpose is to be defeated, if not by King Mob and his crew, then by someone else. They can never win because the goal of our universe is to bring humanity to the point where they can accept the supercontext.

I think there's a difference between opting out of the struggle and opting out of the war. People like King Mob and Roger saw an enemy that had to be defeated, and only after beating them into submission would the war be won. Boy recognized the issues with this and chose to leave because she was uncomfortable with the fighting. Jack sees things different, he doesn't see the sides, doesn't see the war because he's able to integrate the other into himself. That's what him absorbing the Archon in 3.2 is about, and by 3.1, he's helped to build a world in which everyone is evolving and accepting the fallacy of conflict.

While Grant wholeheartedly embraces the fallacy of Manichaean logic, I think he still believes in The Invisibles' mission, once it becomes clear that their mission to free humanity from those who would trap them in limited thought perceptions, in the dualistic thought prison that traps people throughout the first two volumes. Volume II is all about getting lost in the war, but by the end, Jack and Fanny show a third path, when she saves Quimper and Jack comes back from the UFO with his own kind of enlightenment.

It all ties back into the Seven Soldiers parent/child conflict, which is also like Babylon 5, with the Shadows and Vorlons. The Outer Church wants the world to be a specific way, and the goal of The Invisibles to break the hold they have on humanity. By Volume III, the Invisibles have recognized that it's not a war, it's a rescue mission, and as such, fight things differently. Rather than kill Sir Miles, they make him doubt everything he believed in, that's what ultimately does him in, not the attack on his ceremony. You'll note that in 3.2, King Mob and Roger are the only ones who use violence, and they wind up nearly killed and dead, respectively. The rest attack on an ideological level, and that's what ultimately destroys the Archon threat and opens things up for a new age.

So, I think it's possible to take there are no sides as the Outer Church point of view is equally valid. That's not quite the case, but by seeing them strictly as an enemy, we become them. We have to move beyond that and look at them as something to be cured, not killed. Then, they are integrated into a larger whole, and humanity can move forward.
 
  

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