Kevin's Watch

OK, I'm thinking SRD didn't choose the name "Thomas Covenant" because it sounded cool.
There's a meaning.

And if I should guess, then it would be "Thomas" for the apostle (?) Doubting Thomas (but I couldn't for the life of me tell you the story behind it because I'm not Christian, so sue me. Mebbe someone else can.)

And "Covenant" would refer to a specific covenant with God. Maybe the one that was mentioned by those awful preachers in the Easter Revival, in TPTP:

Quote:
"Tot the thirsty I will give water without price...But as for the cowardly, the unbelievers, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolators and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death"
"Marvellous, marvellous Words of God. Here in one short passage we hear the two great messages of the Bible, the Law and the Gospel, the Old Covenant and the New"

Can anyone help me with the significance of this? What exactly do the Covenants say? And is it true that the bible says that God curses sins by inflicting illnesses (such as leprosy?), which is the next conclusion Rev. Johnson draws?

Also, I think Hile Troy's name is significant
He resembles the Trojan horse, which the Trojans pulled into their city, thinking it was a present. They were betrayed because what the horse contained opened the gates of the city wide to let in the whole army of enemies.
Or maybe it is also significant that Troy was the city that was destroyed because of the throes of a lovesick prince: Paris kidnapped beautiful Helena (!) to there and waged a senseless war against the Spartans because of her. He lost his city because of her.

Any other takes/ideas on those? Any other names you think significant?

onions

Interesting... Hate to diverge from the subject, but I sort of have an idea myself about Holden Caulfield (well, I read it somewhere, but it's so fantastic and such a rare idea that I might as well embrace it as my own). See...a caul is that membrane you have around you before you’re born...or something, um, I think. I'm not quite technically sure, but, anyway: Hold-on Caul-field. Might mean he's holding onto that proverbial caul--sort of a symbolism of his reluctance to grow up. *shrugs* Sorry! But the subject matter made me do it.

Thomas was one of the twelve disciples of Christ. When
Christ returned from the dead, Thomas was the one who
doubted that Christ had returned in the flesh rather than
being a ghost or spirit. He asked to put his hands in
Christ's wounds to make sure that he was really alive.

Hence, "doubting Thomas."

... and it was mentioned somewhere else here that 'Covenant' being a 'solemn promise', presumably TC was the promise of the land, and also is in referral to his various promises, which all made things worse, until he just let the promises be, and just did something (whereupon he fulfilled the promise inherent in him).

Thanks, Kaos Arcana, for explaining that. Well, Covenant certainly seems to be jabbing his fingers in where it hurts, doesn't he?

Landwaster: yes, that makes sense. So, do you think SRD was just allowing himself a clever wordplay in the Easter Revival scene, or is there also a "Christian" sort of covenant that's relevant to the book (I really don't know).

onions

I dunno about the religious relevance of the name, but by all means there's no reason why it couldn't be so.

Thomas I always associated with doubting Thomas from the Bible.

Covenant: There are a ton of vows in the chronicles and many of them are broken, starting with the wedding vows represented by Covenant's wedding ring which he still keeps and holds. There's all sorts of insisting that Covenant "be true", something that usually applies to promises. But a covenant is something deeper than a promise or a vow, it is a pact that can't be broken and throughout the two chronicles, Covenant defeats Foul by being true to himself and to the land.

(also note parallels between the "arch of time" and God's covenant from Genesis).

I always wondered if there was a significance to some of the places like Kiril Threndor, Melenkurion Skyweir (though Skyweir of course means "home in the sky"), or the names of the ravers.

OMG there was a site somewhere that gave definitions for the names...I'll try to find if someone else doesnt first!

It's right here on the 'watch! Go to the front page and then 'links'

I'm not positive about the meaning of Covenant from a Christian standpoint, but doesn't it mean something like a new way/set of rules/system is now in place? That is, Jesus' sacrifice makes individual sacrifices of lambs unnecessary? That's a big change. How the ultimate goal is accomplished is now different. (I wouldn't be at all surprised if that needs correcting, but it's the impression I have, so I'll go with it for this post.)

Well, we have some huge changes at the end of each chronicles. At the end of the first, Mhoram changes the way they will interact with the Earthpower. At the end of the second, Covenant becomes a part of the Arch of Time; and the new Staff of Law should set things back on course. But who knows what differences it will have from the way the old Staff had done things.


GSG,
The names of the Ravers (samadhi, turiya, moksha) are Hindu words having to do with joining with Brahman (the Hindu Godhead) while you're still a living human. This is considered a very good thing, and the reason the various types of yoga were developed. SRD used these words to point out that evil very often thinks itself to actually be good. That's his explanation, not mine.

To me Troy definitely was evoking the Trojans and that kind of war-ish stuff. Hadn't thought of the Helena/Paris love triangle thing, though!

While the topic's up, Linden is another name with another meaning. It's a kind of tree (which is also called a basswood), and is also used to designate a family of tropical trees. Its theoretical Indo-European base word is "lento," meaning flexible or yielding. This from my Webster's unabridged dictionary and dictionary.com.

Anyway, not much connection there, but that she does end up getting the Staff of Law V2.0, which is kind of related to trees. I don't think it's really connected to much, like the name Thomas Covenant definitely is--it's also somewhat conflicted: Thomas was a doubter, a covenant is something you commit to, generally unassociated with doubt--but intentional or not, Linden does have a different "dictionary" meaning.

Aside: The Indo-European language is a mostly hypothetical language that linguists believe modern European languages evolved from, and they tend to extrapolate Indo-European root words from words that are similar or the same across multiple languages. That info is from Mother Tongue a very good book that talks about where English comes from, about Indo-European, and why English is like it is. It doesn't mention the origins of the word "linden," but it's quite interesting, very accessible and informative, and it's written with humor.

I think I'm going to look that up, it sounds good and I love researching the Indo-European language from a druid's standpoint...there's a lot of similarity between the ancient Celtic culture and the ancient Hindu culture and religion as well, I read a cool article on it somewhere on the net...

I think that somewhere I found that Moksha meant karma. Not sure though. I think it was an encyclopedia... *scratches head*

Yes, I remember there were meanings for all the Ravers' names.

Just a short lesson about Hinduism

From The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion.

Moksha: The final liberation and release from all worldly bonds, from karma and the cycle of life and death through union with God or knowledge of the ultimate reality... For the spiritual aspirant, the realization of moksha is the sole aim of life.

Samadhi: A state of consciousness that lies beyond waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, and in which mental activity ceases. It is a total absorption in the object of meditation. If that object is God or the Absolute, the result is union. There are various stages of samadhi, of which the highest is nirvikalpa-samadhi.

Turiya: Literally "the fourth"; the superconscious state of illumination, called the fourth because it transcends the three familiar states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. This state of absolute consciousness is beyond thought, causality, and identification with the body; it is indescribable.


To me, it seems that samadhi and turiya are pretty much the same thing, and moksha is the act of getting there. The whole idea is, as it says under samadhi above, to become one with the Brahman. Which has been defined as "The irreducible ground of existence. The essence of every thing." and "The eternal, imperishable Absolute. The supreme nondual reality of Vedanta."


Karma is the concept of "what goes around comes around." On one level, it means that what you do can have consequences in the future, near or far. If you hurt someone, they might get angry and hurt someone, and on and on. Until you get smacked in the back of the head, possibly by a stranger, and stand there bewildered as to why this guy hit you for no reason. On another level, what you do in this life determines the conditions of your next life:

We live in accordance with our deep, driving desire. It is this desire at the time of death that determines what our next life is to be. We will come bak to earth to work out the satisfaction of that desire. -Upanishads

But if we finally get it right, the quote continues:

But not those who are free from desire; they are free because all their desires have found fulfillment in the Self. They do not die like the others; but realizing Brahman, they merge in Brahman.

Or, as is says in The Bhagavad Gita:

As the heat of a fire reduces wood to ashes, the fire of knowledge burns to ashes all karma.

Wow! Now I can confuse my friends! Cool... Interesting though.

Does anyone ever think, in the deepest and blackest part of the doubting night, that maybe SRD just picked those words for names because he liked 'em, and had heard 'em before 'cos he had lived in India? I've kinda thought that...Their meanings just don't make a lot of sense w/the things they name. Maybe he just picked some related Hindu words from whatever vocab he developed in that language...I just don't get as much meaning from them as from some of the other names and such...like, Covenant, and then Joan's maiden name is Macht which someone here who knows German said meant covenant as well...that makes some good debate-worthy sense.

I think at some point interpretation of most any text breaks down, especially if you take it too seriously (Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale in the Canterbury Tales is kind of a humorous example of this). The Ravers' names seem more partially suggestive than outright descriptive in the way that Thomas Covenant, for example, is.

I got curious about Macht, too, and Altavista's Babelfish translation site says Macht (capital letter) is "power"--keeping in mind that Babelfish isn't a perfect translation service, so it probably has other meanings as well.

The raver's names were definately intentional - think of how the 'old' names (Herem, Sheol, Jehannum) refer to enlightenment and the spirit, but the names known to the New Lords (Moksha, Samadhi, Turiya) refer to destruction and hatred.

Do you have that backwards? turiya and moksha and samadhi are the nice names...Sheol and Jehannum and Herem are the bad ones. Lord Foul was known to the Old Lords as a good guy 'til he screwed them over, but were the Ravers part of the Council or openly involved as nice guys too?