BoM/TWS Message Forum

The Banks have never been thoroughly described, so I'm not surprised to see them given a dark interpretation. But they are a variation on a ... thing ... in George MacDonald's fantasy Lilith. (Which, not excepting Kafka, is the weirdest book I've ever read.) In Lilith there is a dark, empty, seemingly infinite space where the dead are taken to sleep, and when they wake they are ready to face and pass Judgement. It is implied that everyone, from the pettiest criminal to the Prince of Darkness will eventually come to that Hall and reawake in a state that will allow them to be redeemed.

The mechanics are obscure but, the way that I imagine the Banks working, there is nothing compulsory or "brainwashing" about it. It literally causes a kind of forgetfulness[*] -- you forget all your malice. Have you ever gone to bed mad and brimming with the desire to get even with someone ... and when you wake the next morning that feeling is entirely gone, and you just feel silly and want to put all the previous thoughts and schemes behind you? Was that "brainwashing"? I don't think so. You just lost the mood and everything that went with it while passing thru an unconscious state. It's a reset that breaks you out of a temporary deformity of temper. That's what I imagine the Banks are like.

I don't even think that the Banks are a Stellae construct -- it's a place that they've been granted access to.

I'm not sure who built on whose idea: If imaj built on one I introduced, inspired by Lilith, or if he came up the basic idea and I lunged at it when I saw the resemblance to Lilith.

[*] It really ought to be called the Banks of the Lethe, not the Acheron.