Pegana and the Eternal Return

I found myself a little at a loss before beginning the Fantasy Masterwork Write-up (the extra-special one :) for Time and the Gods. There's just so much one can talk about with this collection. There's over a hundred stories after all.
But, halfway through The Gods of Pegana short stories I struck on an idea that I had already touched upon on the blog, pointing back to an earlier personal post; Time as a flat Circle, and looking at Time and the Gods I found that I could continue on here in that same theme: The concept of Eternal Return.

Circe in front of a circular mirror.

Did Richard Carr, the cover designer for this Fantasy Masterwork, know what he was doing here whe he selected this picture, I wonder?

If so: absolutely brilliant, my man.

Dunsany apparently read Nietzsche's philosophy while writing The Gods of Pegana, and if you read it with some attention you'll recognize that he actively worked Nietzsche's nihilistic philosophy into his god-mythology.

 Or well, if there are gods, is it then in fact nihilism?
Hah, sorry about that; it's my religious upbringing rearing its head once more.

Either way, it's important to note that this is Nietszsche's pre-determinism which has central stage here, as is evinced by the Dreams of A prophet short story. Time as fixed and cyclical, not: time as endlessly recurring but different in sequence.

Anyway, without further ado:


The Mythology

Our compressed mythology, which consists mainly of metaphor built on metaphor, goes as follows:

Before the beginning, before Time, before all, there were Fate and Chance. Until, of these two, one strode out of the mist and declared existence through the First, who is MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI.
It was He who was ordered to make the Gods, for that is what the game will be about. And then on this one's bidding MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI made the Gods. Alongside the Gods is created Skarl the Drummer, who lulls MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI asleep with his drumming.
And while their creator sleeps, the Gods, at first in silence, play games, and in the first they create the spheres that move in patterns or not at all, and it is in the second game that Beasts are created, and in the third Men, and it is with their creation that the Gods begin to speak.
  It is Kib, who is the first of the gods, and who is the bringer of Life itself, who created beasts and he also made mortal man.
  Second to him is Sish, the god of entropy who has Time as his hound, until the age when Time will remember Himself and will turn on his masters The Gods.
  Then there is Mung who is the third, the God of Death, who is ever relentless, and ever unmoved. Mung knows where the souls of those that died go.
  And there is Slid whose soul is in the Sea, and who is in all the waters.
  There is also Limpang-Tung, the god of youth and mindless mirth, who names himself lesser than the Gods, but who nonetheless is the painter of the sky and lord of the winds, the dweller in the mountains.
 There is also Yoharneth-Lahai, the sleep-giver, the one who brings peace through little dreams.
 There is also Roon, the never-still God of Going, who is the God of momentum and movement, and it is his spirit that stirs all things. For His opposite, Roon declared there to be 1000 sedentary house gods, who sit before the hearth and mind the things of home. These gods be lesser than men and serve them and the Gods. Once, some of them rebelled but the Gods proved greater.
 There is also Dorozhand, who is the gazer at the end, and the god of Destiny and the one who sets in motion all the moving things; He is the beginner, for a purpose of his own.
There is the God who was once the God of outright mirth, but who is now just Hoodrazai, the God silent and alone, ever since he overheard the sleep-whispers of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, and the secret meaning that they conveyed.
There is also a Thing, which doesn't howl, and which doesn't breathe and which is neither God nor beast. IT is called Trogool and IT sits on the rocks of the rim at the edge of the universe where IT turns, one by one, the pages of a great book. The pages are black and white, and days pass as they are turned. Trogool will turn these pages until IT will come to the final page whereon is written MAI DOON IZAHN, which means The End Forever, and all will come to an END.

Mythology continued in THE END

The meaning of existence

In the mists before all, Fate and Chance cast lots to decide who gets to decree the forthcoming 'game'. The winner of this lot-casting is unknown, giving the whole of existence the conceit to be both pre-ordained or to be a consequence of pure random chance, effectively rendering it meaningless. But the act of this game before time itself also makes it clear that even if Fate is the one to give meaning to the universe, it isn't much of a meaning at all.
For the game before time, its outcome truly determined by these two, could just as well have been won by Chance.

There are multiple ways to figure out who the winner is in the game before time.
Mung, the God of death has some of the most interesting passages that'll help with this:

'Alas, that I took this road, for had I gone by any other way then had I not met with Mung.'

And Mung said: 'Had it been possible for thee to go by any other way then had the Scheme of Things been otherwise and the gods had been other gods. When MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI forgets to rest and and makes again new gods it maybe be that They will send thee again into the Worlds; and then thou mayest choose an other way, and so not meet with Mung.'

Besides implying that the winner of The Game Before All is in fact Fate, it also seems to adhere to the Time as a Flat Circle theory, time as predetermined and recurring. And which would also rule out Chance as the victor of the game before time.

However.

Time and the Gods' The Dreams of A Prophet further also talks about this; where a prophet describes his vision of Fate and Chance in a time when the entirety of existence has already played out. In this vision Fate says to Chance: "Let us play our old game again." and then everything happens again exactly as it had happened before.

This occuring again exactly as it happened before is of course Nietschze's concept of the Eternal Return

The ideas hinted at throughout the Gods of Pegana point to fate not as meaningful, but predetermined, and cyclical. Pointless in its repetition. Or, not pointless, and instead; fateful.
As in learning and loving one's own fate. Amor Fati.


Pegana and the whole of creation

Pegana is the place in the middle of all, where the Gods sit in the middle of Time; because Time is equal unending before it, and unending after it. There is below Pegana, what is above it, and beyond it, what lies before. Meaning, there is nothing outside of Pegana.

 In truth, this there was('nt) before the creation of anything outside of Pegana, at that point these things were true, as it was the whole of time encompassing the whole of creation. At that moment it is/was the absolute focal point. 

After this, Pegana is in every way the center of the universe. It is Dunsany's Heaven-allegory, employing occasional lofty 'downward-gazing upon creation', and the use of mists, implying popular depiction of ethereal planes.
There are vales, and mountains whereon the Gods sit, with MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI resting in the highest place of Pegana above Them.
There is a highway between the worlds, on which light travels, and this might be the same as the river of Silence on which Yoharneth-Lahai travels when he brings his dreams to Man.
At the ending of the universe lies the rim, which is a mass of rocks which the Gods did not use in their creating, and beyond the rim lies only the Silence, and the old, dead days.


MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI

Is the First of the Gods, and might be interpreted as being the fabric of existence itself. Forever dormant, dreaming, until the end, when his awakening will herald the end of all the gods... Unless (p556):

For none shall know of MANA who hath rested for so long, whether he be a harsh or a merciful god. it may be that he shall have mercy, and that these things shall be.

Skarl the Drummer

The first one who is talked about is Skarl the Drummer, who seems to stand apart from the Gods.

Skarl the Drummer drums MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI asleep, and an interesting metafictional/physical concept is introduced which implies that it could be that, indeed, all that existence is, is the dreaming of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI given form by the drumming of Skarl the drummer.

Should Skarl the Drummer ever cease his drumming, MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will waken and, in his laughter will end the Gods, which indeed, makes them but dreams in a sense, regardless of their actuality during the dreaming of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, to go away into oblivion upon the awakening of that dreamer.

See also the Yoharneth-Lahai quote p549:

Whether the dreams and the fancies of Yoharenth-Lahai be false and the Thing that are done in the the Day be real, or the Things that are done in the Day be false and the dreams and the fancies of Yoharneth-Lahai be true, none knoweth saving only MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, who hath not spoken.

Dunsany explicitly connects Yoharneth-Lahai with MANA-YOOD-SAHAI and furthermore, emphasizes the last part of the sentence.


Time and Sish 

"Before Sish is Kib, and behind him goeth Mung."

Before Entropy there must be life, and following upon entropy's heels there must be death.

Also, Time is the hound of Sish, because time is inextricably linked to the process of entropy.
Time, as hound, will serve for as long as there are gods, but when even the gods go away or vanish, then even entropy will hold no longer sway over time. If there's nothing to break down there can be no entropy. This is why Death and Time will kill each other in mutual extinction. The ending excludes the process. Nothing will decay, will break down, because there will be nothing to break down. Time will be void and nonexistent, as will be death. Unless we're thinking about death as a different concept. But we're not.


Zodrak

And there, according to Imbaun the prophet, the most reliable of all prophets, if such can be reliable in any way at all, is yet another god, a god who was once a man, and who, thinking to do good, brought love, wealth and wisdom into the worlds.
His name is Zodrak, and he brought, while bringing these, unhappiness into the worlds.
But look upon him gently, because before He was a god He was a man and a sheperd, and he could not have known.


Dorozhand

Dorozhand is actually the divine name of Fate itself. The same Fate who in my interpretation (not by personal preference) is the one who won the game before the Beginning itself. All the rest of the Gods fear something about Dorozhand and it is said that both the destinies of men and those of Gods are under his purview.

It is stated verbatim that it is Dorozhand's goal, for the completion of which, the rest of creation is in play (p555):

The reason and purpose of the Worlds is that there should be Life upon the Worlds, and life is the instrument of Dorozhand wherewith he would achieve his end.

This goal is unknown. But is said that when it will be achieved or when it will be found, that then MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will be wakened by Kib, the god of life. And either THE END of all will be, or... (see MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI above).

OR, by pretty much the same reasoning; Dorozhand is Chance, which would explain why Hoodrazai, previously known as The Mirthful God, has become the silent and aloof God, since hearing the revelatory dream whispers of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, who after all, created the Gods by order of either Fate or Chance, He is burdened by the knowledge that life is utterly without meaning and that "The Game" will be everlasting, in pointless, unceasing eternity (for Dorozhand has no true goal...) and there will in fact be no END.
Or Hoodrazai knows that all will return endlessly, again and again, endlessly recurring, exactly as before.

Either way, Hoodrazai is symbolic for those of us who are crippled by existential depression.

THE END

There isn't actually any one clear way that events will happen at THE END. I've compiled here what I found. And apart from the possibilities already written above, in the Dorozhand section, the most un-self-contradictory way this might happen is:

The mythology continued:

When Dorozhand achieves his end and when also Trogool will come to his final page, then Kib will touch reverently the hand of MANA YOOD-SUSHAI, and Skarl will stop drumming and the dream of Gods will end. 

When 3 moons, not waxing or waning, will stand towards the north above the star of the abiding and when the seeking comet will stand still, then finally MANA YOOD SUSHAI will arise and slyly speak and then laugh witheringly at the Gods and they will then cease playing with spheres and beasts and man, and then the Gods will put those matters behind them and leave.
Or they will lie about their creating and then MANA YOOD SUSHAI will wave them away, like someone waving away an irksome matter.
Thunder will roar horribly among the worlds, and Mosahn the bird of doom will fly from Pegana's innermost vale and proclaim in a trumpet-voice that it is THE END. The hound Time will die when there is nothing to devour, or he will turn on his masters the Gods and Mung, the God of Death, will fight him and, killing him, will die also.
And then the Gods will have left and will have sailed away on Imrana, the river of Silence, in galleons of gold to a place far from Pegana, to where it is not known, and then they will be no more. Imrana will overflow its banks and Silence will fill creation.

There will be no worlds, nor will there be Gods. Skarl's work will be done and he will walk into the void so that at the end there will only be MANA YOOD SUSHAI because the Gods and all their works will have gone, and even Skarl the Drummer will be gone. MANA YOOD SUSHAI shall be alone.

But it may be that MANA YOOD SUSHAI will allow the old dead days to return from beyond the rim, for it is not known whether he is a harsh or a merciful God, and it is in this case  that the Gods will play their games once again. This will be the Eternal Return.

No Rest for the Wicked

'Thy life is long, Eternity is short.

So short that, shouldst thou die and Eternity should pass, and after the passing of Eternity thou shouldst live again, thou wouldst say: "I closed mine eyes but for an instant."

There is an eternity behind thee as well as one before. Hast thou bewailed the aeons that passed without thee, who art so much afraid of the Aeons that shall pass.'

The eternal return writ small.