The hero-cults of literature are generally regional and thus offset from worship of the main pantheon as practiced everywhere the same, but one can make, after years of archaeological study, certain basic remarks about shrine architecture.
The columns are marble books, stacked; each page individually cut, but time is blurring their corners and creases into vague rectangular shapes, and some of the names and titles chiseled into the spines are no longer legible. Suppliants' ritual tends to involve the chanting of these titles, however, so one must assume that more permanent—copied and recopied—lists are kept elsewhere.
On the pediments of the shrines are usually represented such type-scenes as the First Sale, Arming before the Con, Signing the Contract, and sometimes the more elaborate Hero Shows Off Award To Family, Friends, And Everything That Isn't Nailed Down. Cult statues, however, are idiosyncratic; easily recognizable even if one is not familiar with all the attributes of a particular hero. See the shrine of the hero-twins Sheldon and Tiptree, who share immortality between them; the twins are generally represented as one Janus-faced being, facing east and west, although evidence from all the literary and oral cycles characterizes them with two naturally separate lives.
It is a popular piece of misinformation that books are sacrificed at the shrines of heroes. (Think about it for a minute.) Only at the shrine of Bradbury Flammifer are pages burned, and these generally written with the prayers of suppliants to this particular aspect of the hero; the smoke carries the words. Rather, heroes prefer the sacrifice of time and energy: the forecourts and porticos of their shrines are full of the tidal hum of voices, reading aloud, reading out the words that heroes once committed to the page from the aether above: language earthed, made buoyant again. To make sacrifice of ten minutes for a brief story or a handful of poems is the usual suppliant's offering. A full book's worth of time is a more dedicated sacrifice. To read out the whole works of a hero confers the highest level of attention.
If one is planning to visit the shrine of Joyce Polytropos with a serious request in mind, don't make any afternoon plans.
no subject
The columns are marble books, stacked; each page individually cut, but time is blurring their corners and creases into vague rectangular shapes, and some of the names and titles chiseled into the spines are no longer legible. Suppliants' ritual tends to involve the chanting of these titles, however, so one must assume that more permanent—copied and recopied—lists are kept elsewhere.
On the pediments of the shrines are usually represented such type-scenes as the First Sale, Arming before the Con, Signing the Contract, and sometimes the more elaborate Hero Shows Off Award To Family, Friends, And Everything That Isn't Nailed Down. Cult statues, however, are idiosyncratic; easily recognizable even if one is not familiar with all the attributes of a particular hero. See the shrine of the hero-twins Sheldon and Tiptree, who share immortality between them; the twins are generally represented as one Janus-faced being, facing east and west, although evidence from all the literary and oral cycles characterizes them with two naturally separate lives.
It is a popular piece of misinformation that books are sacrificed at the shrines of heroes. (Think about it for a minute.) Only at the shrine of Bradbury Flammifer are pages burned, and these generally written with the prayers of suppliants to this particular aspect of the hero; the smoke carries the words. Rather, heroes prefer the sacrifice of time and energy: the forecourts and porticos of their shrines are full of the tidal hum of voices, reading aloud, reading out the words that heroes once committed to the page from the aether above: language earthed, made buoyant again. To make sacrifice of ten minutes for a brief story or a handful of poems is the usual suppliant's offering. A full book's worth of time is a more dedicated sacrifice. To read out the whole works of a hero confers the highest level of attention.
If one is planning to visit the shrine of Joyce Polytropos with a serious request in mind, don't make any afternoon plans.