Written for the CEEALAR / EA Hotel Winter Solstice on the 12th-14th December, which is still open for signups for the next few days. If you’re attending already, consider whether you want spoilers for the emotional peak of the event.
One of the most powerful archetypes I know is The Comet King from the book UNSONG, perhaps Scott Alexander’s greatest work of art. This reading will have mild spoilers, so feel free to close your ears and gently hum until I raise my hand if you’re strongly averse, but the extracts chosen should more whet than spoil your appetite.
In the story, the Apollo rocket crashes into and damages the crystal sphere around earth which had been installed by the (autistic) archangel Uriel to force the world to run on math rather than magic, which he set up to keep the devil (Thamiel) from being able to commit unspeakable evils.
Despite being a very amusing and almost lighthearted work mostly made of elaborate wordplay and references, the world of UNSONG is very bad for a lot of people. The world is coming apart as magic floods back into the world as Uriel’s damaged machinery comes apart, angels are falling because they cannot model lies or deception, a government-corporate stranglehold on the names of God which are humanity’s only real glimmer of light renders most people’s lives miserable, and hell is what hell would actually be if it were competently optimized for evil.
The story’s counterweight is The Comet King. He’s not the main viewpoint character, he’s more like a force of nature in the background of the plot. He sees the horrors of the world, sees no one else is going to save it, then with clear focused determination moves to destroy hell. He is made of fire and ice and rage against injustice channeled so perfectly it sometimes looks like patience. I’d like to share a few quotes, so that your predictive model can trace this archetype that this story was, in part, crafted to make more of reality contain.
1. (talking with his wife)
“The astronomers used to say comets are unpredictable,” said Robin. “That everything in the heavens keeps its own orbit except the comet. Which follows no rules, knows no path.”
“They are earthbound,” said the Comet King. “Seen from Earth, a comet is a prodigy, coming out of the void for no reason, returning to the void for no reason. They call it unpredictable because they cannot predict it. From the comet’s own point of view, nothing could be simpler. It starts in the outer darkness, aims directly at the sun, and never stops till it gets there. Everything else spins in its same orbit forever. The comet heads for the source. They call it crooked because it is too straight. They call it unpredictable because it is too fixed. They call it chaotic because it is too linear.”
He hesitated for a moment.
“That is why I love you, you know. In a world of circles, you are something linear.”
2. (talking with his moral advisors)
“Proper?” asked the Comet King. “I come to you with a plan to fight off Hell and save the world, and you tell me it isn’t proper?”
Vihaan stared at the priest, as if begging him to step in. “I swear,” said Father Ellis, “it’s like explaining the nature of virtue to a rock”.
“Do you know,” interrupted Jalaketu, “that whenever it’s quiet, and I listen hard, I can hear them? The screams of everybody suffering. In Hell, around the world, anywhere. I think it is a power of the angels which I inherited from my father.” He spoke calmly, without emotion. “I think I can hear them right now.”
Ellis’ eyes opened wide. “Really?” he asked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…”
“No,” said the Comet King. “Not really.”
They looked at him, confused.
“No, I do not really hear the screams of everyone suffering in Hell. But I thought to myself, ‘I suppose if I tell them now that I have the magic power to hear the screams of the suffering in Hell, then they will go quiet, and become sympathetic, and act as if that changes something.’ Even though it changes nothing. Who cares if you can hear the screams, as long as you know that they are there? So maybe what I said was not fully wrong. Maybe it is a magic power granted only to the Comet King. Not the power to hear the screams. But the power not to have to.”
3. (after Thamiel does something particularly cruel)
An hour and forty minutes later, Thamiel swaggered through the big spruce wood door with a gigantic grin on his tiny face, “Well!” he said, “It looks like we…”
The Comet King had his hands around the demon’s neck in an instant. “Listen,” he said. “I know the rules as well as you do. ███████. But as God is my witness, the next time we meet face to face I will speak a Name, and you and everything you have created will be excised from the universe forever, and if you say even a single unnecessary word right now I will make it hurt.”
The grin disappeared from the demon’s face.
“You can’t harm me,” said Thamiel. “I am a facet of God.”
“I will recarve God without that facet,” said the Comet King.
I’m sure you can think of many facets of the world which you believe should not be, stains on reality which will not be forgiven even when the last lit sun has faded.
By everything I see of the world, we sit at the hinge of history, closer to the most important event in the universe than all but a handful of beings who have ever been or will ever be. In the balance lies eternity; good, bad, or empty. The current horrors of the world are wailing their final screech, one way or another, as the autocatalytic feedback loop of technocapital spials up towards posthumanity.
Consider a comet’s path in this world.
While I have observed on too many occasions that a human cannot hold purely the Comet King archetype sustainably, I do think there is something crucial and powerful worth integrating from it. Something that when brought together with patience for the human form, which nurtures and empowers your avatar in the world rather than burning through it, can be a blazing beacon of hope and transformation.
One of the Comet King’s most famous lines is “Somebody has to and no one else will.”. That has long stuck a mixed note, as I think humans need a flavour of heroic responsibility that remembers that you are not alone.
So, on this darkest night of the year, let us instead say:
“Somebody has to, and so we will.”
(cue Matches)