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katakaluptastrophy · 5 months ago

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In world, part of the issue is that we see a tiny slice of the society, which doesn't give us a broader picture of the religion.

But House theology seems to be drawn heavily from Revelation: the Houses understand themselves to be something akin to the first resurrection who reign with god and who look forward to the second resurrection when all the dead will be judged. Teacher specifically refers to Alecto as "the devil", and she is imprisoned like Satan in Revelation. The theology of cavalierhood also draws strongly on Pauline ideas about marriage, and the Sermon on Necromancers and Cavaliers expresses ideas about how the Houses understand themselves to be made in the image of god. The more ancient understanding of the River seems similar to concepts of Purgatory.

I do think we see genuine religious sentiment in other characters. Judith talks candidly about her relationship with religion in As Yet Unsent and explicitly thanks god. Abigail, while heterodox, prays spontaneously before trying to summon Nonius. And we see Silas grappling with how what John has asked of them clashes with how he understands his faith. We also see Cohort soldiers making some kind of ritual gesture at the Lyctors.

While we don't get broader details, beyond the Ninth there are references to concepts of prayer and sacraments, to some form of confession, to blessings, sacramentals, and relics. Abigail had an icon of John on the wall of her childhood bedroom.

As for the oddness and inconsistency of how House religion draws on Catholicism, it's worth bearing in mind that John was probably some form of (cultural?) Protestant: he attended an Anglican boarding school and was baptised as a teenager at a non-denomonational music festival. While Anglicanism obviously does overlap with some aspects of Catholicism, it's rarely as baroque as the kind of influences we see in the Houses. M-'s nun (who later became Cristabel) seems to have been the main Catholic influence on John, but that would only have been pre-res, so I think John was mostly fumbling around in the dark with a Douay Rhiems Bible (quoted by several House people!) and a skim-read copy of Catholicism for Dummies, bodging together something that works for him and his ego.

Metatextually, TLT is a book that strongly explores Catholic themes - though that doesn't mean it entirely presupposes a Catholic metaphysics...

The event at the heart of the story of The Locked Tomb is one where a man declares himself a false god on the basis of power and immortality gained from the violent consumption of another's body. Like traditional vampire mythos, Lyctorhood is an evil that is typologically an inversion of the eucharist. And the consequences of Lyctorhood - of trying to style oneself as a Catholic god without self-giving or love or forgiveness - haunt the story.

Per Tamsyn Muir, ATN apparently starts with something akin to the Harrowing of Hell or Dante's Inferno, so I suspect we'll be seeing more of these themes...

RE: TLT and catholicism

You know those churches in the Netherlands who ertr sold and now are public buildings , faculties or shops and services ? If you entered them you might not notice their previous use at all but it's very easy to recognize it you're used to churches. There's the nav, the altar, the orientation and of course the shape and the places where the saints and images used to be .

The Locked Tomb Universe is kinda like this . Gaius, a former catholic, created his "religion" based on the rites and imagery he knew but devoid of all the substance of it ... or almost all since the resurrection for them is also a huge point even if it's not The Ressurection we know of .

He got his saints, and the prayers ,and the rites, and specially for the readers who see it from the perspective of the Ninth, even a Holy Mother , that for them is Alecto. In HtN John explicitly says in a way she's everyone's mother .

Lastly Harrowhark devotion for her church and the Body and said Mother resonates a lot with so many catholics including me. Specially by the end of Nona after she has learned the truth about Gaius and decided she was still a daughter of the Ninth and went in search of God by herself after letting the pretender behind .

So yeah, in summary, it's the imagery and Harrowhark devotion and faith that makes these books so Catholic at least for me.

Thank you!

So, the answer turend into some rambling, but anyway)

Yes, I totally agree that John just used imagery he knew to create whatever it was he created without any substance to it. I am not sure whether it is right to call this cultural appropriation, but I guess it is. John appropriated everything, so)

Anyway, I often see familiar Christian/Catholic symbols with wrong denotation in this day and age, so I just thought "aha, here we go again" and stopped thinking about it. I mean, there is an in-universe explanation for this, which I like a lot, but still.

Also, apart from the Ninth House and the Locked Tomb cult I do not remember any forms of organized religion, theology, I do not see genuine religious feeling in anyone but Harrowhark. And as far as I understand, Anastasia was the nun, so it seems fair that she was able to create a genuine religion in the Ninth House. (I mean, their memories were erased, but it looks like personalities, body memories, perhaps sunconscious remained).

And to summarize answers I received, Harrowhark is a Catholic character. I have read the arguments, and yes, I agree. I applied her worldview to my earlier experiences in the Church, and I see similarities.

Thank you again for sharing your personal feelings, I really appreciate that.

#tlt meta

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