Put briefly, spoilers be damned, A Voyage to Arcturus is an allegorical Luciferic Gnostic interpretation of reality. Krag, a devilish 'light bringer' character who embodies pleasure-pain as tool of enlightenment leads Maskull the ego/false self character to his death after meeting and surpassing the demiurge (called by many names), so that a third character, Nightspore, representing the true self can be reborn and spread this knowledge throughout the galaxy. The renunciation of the world is taken too far however, and reincarnation is declined. The message seems to be one that leans towards nihilism and nonbeing as the final end of existence.
I bought this book awhile back due to its appearance on a reading list of mine, that is The Western Canon as chosen by hardcore book critic Harold Bloom. Decided to complete it over the past few days after seeing it mentioned here. It's 273 pages. On the whole I'd say the story has some fascinating if unexamined concepts, but is very dry and bleak because of and in service to the theme.
After my own reading and musing, I used the articles on these two pages to supplement my interpretation of the text.
http://www.violetapple.org.uk/vta/philorvision.php
http://www.scifiwright.com/2009/02/voyage-to-arcturus-flight-to-lucifer/
Interesting Bits
- The planet explored is called Tormance, which is part of the Arcturus star system. (It's a binary star system here instead of the singular one in reality).
- All of the sentient inhabitants of Tormance are humanoid, and are in fact called human in passing. Most of them posses extra sensory organs and have technicolor skin, which was a common trope in early sci-fi literature. Think John Carter of Mars for comparison. The story takes this a step further by adding two new primary colors beyond normal perception known as jale and ulfire. Jale is described as 'wild and painful'. Ulfire is 'voluptuous, feverish, and dreamlike.
- My favorite part of the book is early on in the planet where Maskull meets a kind couple who teach him about the new sensory organs he's developed upon awakening on Tormance. They are:
Poigns: fleshy bulbs under the ears that allow one to explore the inward nature of things
Breve: a horn like protuberance in the middle of the forehead that allows for telepathic communication
Magn: a fleshy appendage sprouting from the middle of the chest that allows for emotional sharing and pure love
However, he forfeits these service-to-other organs early on in the journey for other organs such as the sorb, a third eye that replaces the breve and is used to exert one's willpower over other life forms of life to kill or control. It allows one to absorb the consciousness of those you murder.
- Much later he encounters a person of third gender called phaen, that uses the pronouns ae and aer. The being claims to be on an early race and has a bit of contempt for the later folk of split gender.
- States of perception in the book are divided into three, length, breadth, and depth, which represent existence(nature), relation(love), and feeling(spirit).
- As Maskull draws closer to the demiurge, he sees less differentiation between the forms of life. He views plant-animal hybrids that spring to life from primordial cloud matter and then die, evoking comparison to someone's imaginative process.
- On the last few pages Nightspore sees a microcosmic vision of all the souls on the planet in various states of knowing, depicted a green corpuscles with white lights overhead. Some dots have little light and are content, others are dragged around, but very few actually move where they want.
- As a final note, this book, if nothing else, introduced me to the theosophical composer Alexander Scriabin. Really powerful music, and I see he already has a thread dedicated to him here:
https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,6704.msg46516.html#msg46516
