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echo: babylon5
to: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
from: Jeffrey Kaplan
date: 2008-05-07 12:28:38
subject: Re: ATTN JMS: What did Morden see?

Previously on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, Matt Ion said:

> > I've always assumed it was because Londo was "touched by the
shadows."
> Plausible, but then that doesn't explain Morden being able to see Kosh.

My guess is that Morden saw Kosh in his true form, the shapeless bundle
of energy we saw later, when Sheridan evicted Kosh2.
 
> > Besides, didn't the dying emperor see Kosh?
> This is true... although unlike the others who saw Kosh when he rescued 
> Sheridan, and thought they were seeing an "angel", Turhan knew what a 
> Vorlon was, and knew that he was seeing a Vorlon, rather than expecting 
> to see some sort of religious apparition.

We never saw Turhan seeing Kosh in his true form, only "within his
shell", as Turhan previously put it.
 
> This lends weight to the supposition that Londo's "lack of faith of any 
> sort" was what led to him not seeing anything - the Centauri
"faiths" 
> appear to be largely pagan-like, based around any number of minor gods, 
> mostly ascended from their own ranks.  They don't, that I recall seeing, 
> believe in any sort of single "higher power", and certainly
don't appear 
> to have any form of seraphim figure in their mythology.

IIRC from dialog in the show at various points, there are about 50 gods
in the Centauri pantheon, including former emperors, plus a Great Maker
above them all (at one point Garibaldi makes a point that except for
the Centauri, all of the Great Maker religions are monotheistic).

> I don't know so much that Kosh would have needed to
"project" an image 
> of appearing to each race in the form of that race, so much as that's 
> how the conditioning had taught them to see a Vorlon - creating God in 
> their own image, as it were.

Didn't Kosh subsequently say that being seen by so many at once tired
him out?  That would certainly imply that he was in fact projecting an
image to those in line of sight, not merely relying on some kind of
conditioning.  Then, a few seasons later, when we see Kosh and Kosh2
fighting, we see them as their formless bundles of energy not angelic
beings, which implies that they were NOT projecting an image nor that
those with a line of sight has a preconditioned thing to see them as
angelic beings.

-- 
Jeffrey Kaplan                                         www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled             Send personal mail to gordol

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary,
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