I was re-reading Neverwhere the other day, and two new things caught my attention.

Firstly, Croup and Vandemeer call themselves "The Old Firm". In the Terry Prachett book The Truth (which was written a few years after Neverwhere), there are two characters, Mr Pin and Mr Tulip who call themselves "The New Firm". Pin and Tulip are very reminicent of Croup and Vandemeer. Since Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman wrote Good Omens together, they must be familiar with each other's work, so this seems like an obvious homage.

The second thing that caught my attention is Knacks. The existance of "Knacks" in Neverwhere (for example Door and her family's Knack at opening things, and Varney's Knack for moving objects with his mind) reminds me of Knacks in Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series. This reference is a little more dubious than the first one, but it made me curious.

Has anyone else noticed either Gaiman making references to contemporary writers, or them making references to him?

I know that A. Crowley in Good Omens is either a knod to, or a name inspired by Aleister Crowley the former leader of the Church of Satan. Though the A. is then said to stand for Anthony and not Aleister. But I still think the character's name was influenced by the leaders name.

In The Doll's House of the Sandman series, "Gilbert", aka Fiddler's Green looks and talks like Gilbert Keith Chesterton, a 300 pound Victorian journalist. Since Gilbert says that he is "not even a very good copy of a human" (his emphasis), I suppose we should assume that Fiddler's Green liked and copied Chesterton when he became human.

Thornefox, Aleister Crowley was NOT the head of the Church of Satan. That was Anton LeVay you're thinking of. Crowley was an early 20th century mystic and magician. Crowley was invovlded with several mystic groups, like the Golden Dawn and the OTO. Here's a link for info on Crowley:
Crowley

Neil has confirmed on many occasions that 1) Gilbert was based on Chesteron and 2) Good Omens Crowley was based on Alesteir Crowley (who Neil used in the first Sandman issues).

The Sandman Companion contains of little stuff like this

Heh... from what I hear, the real Mr. Crowley (*insert guitar solo*) was something of a fraud and a faker... this was told to me by my friend, who still carried around a copy of his "777" (reportedly consisting of stuff plundered from the Order of the Golden Dawn) and consulted the Table of Convergences regurally.

Anyway, has anyone seen any more obscure references? Haroun Al-Rashid, the guy from "Ramadan", just turned up in a "Ulyssess" annotation today... he was a caliph of Baghdad noted for walking the streets as a commoner and telling stories...

My apologies, somewhere along the line I was mixed up. I think it happened when I was reading one of those books linking the Illiminati to various individuals, read a description of them, and looked at a picture of Aleister Crowley, and then somehow got the Church of Satan out of that. Thank you Parsival for the reference site.

I read somewhere that Gaiman heard about the demon Mazikeen and Adams first two wives from a rabbi at his parents synagogue who used to tell old Jewish stories. Apparently the guy was a big influence on him. Not so much from the Jewishness I guess as there isnt a particularily 'Jewish' thing in the Sandman, but in the whole story telling and the power of old stories

Another interesting Jewish reference that comes up is in Fables and Reflections, where Death comments about the Jewish legend of the Kaddish, if I remember right, (don't have the material in front of me), which is a group of saints, who, unkown to themselves and others, keep the world functioning.

There's a few others references that I can think of off the top of my head: Tamberine noted two from A Game of You in another thread, and there's surely other out there too.

Here's a though: does anyone know if there are the angels Duma and Remiel in Jewish or Christian lore? I wonder if there are, and how close they are to their counterparts in those stories.

No, the Kaddish is the prayer for the dead. Interestingly, its actual text praises God in all his aspects, and says nothing about the departed.

I think you are recalling some fragments of the legend of the 36 righteous men (and boy, did it take me a passel of searches to turn this up!!!):

"There is a teaching in the Talmud that says the world depends on lamed vav tzadikim, on 36 totally righteous and hidden people for its existence. Later teachings describe these “hidden tzadikim” as very humble, ordinary, normal appearing people. Yet the existence of the world depends on their quiet and unassuming faith and righteousness. There are many folk tales which describe some kind of great danger that faced a community, and one of these lamed vavniks quietly appeared, took care of things, and once again faded into obscurity."

(fyi: "lamed vav" = 36)

(from, of all things, a sermon comparing the premise of the movie "Men in Black" to this legend: http://jacksonsnyder.com/arc/Midrash/55.htm)

- Cho

Duh, I knew about the Kaddish. (I even remember a refernce to it from another story, where a rather nasty Jewish father says the Kaddish for his daughter after she marries an non-Jew). I guess it's just a case of typing fast and going with the first word that I popped into my mind when I was trying to remember. Thanks for the information, Cho!

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Originally posted by The Lord of Nothings:
Anyway, has anyone seen any more obscure references? Haroun Al-Rashid, the guy from "Ramadan", just turned up in a "Ulyssess" annotation today... he was a caliph of Baghdad noted for walking the streets as a commoner and telling stories...

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That's not very obscure, since Haroun al-Rashid is the caliph that appears a thousand (duh!) times in A thousand and one Nights -there are stories about him, and he is named every two pages or so throughout the book (like 2in the days of the great caliph Haroun al-Rahsid...").

Maybe you all know this already, but the "arcane2 books Neil likes to write in his stories, the Liber Paginarum Fulvarum (mentioned in the Sandman #1, in Good Omeans I think, and since then mentioned for example by Caitlin Kiernan in "The Girl Who Would be Death", among others) is an invention of eithe rNeil or Terry prattchett or both, and means, in Latin, "Yellow Pages Book".

Duma I'd always heard referred to as the angel of dreams, and his name means "sleep," though it's true that he never speaks to mortals or to anyone but the Lord of Hosts and GOD Himself. I suppose actually making him the angel of dreams would've confused the mythology a bit.

Remiel is typically the angel of mercy (his name literally means "the mercy of GOD,") and the lord of Purgatory. Though that's not mentioned, it's part of the reason I've always thought he was a bit of a pansy for freaking out when he was given Hell.

No other conteporary homages, but I did notice a (seemingly pointless) reference to the Slavic thunder god in the name Gary Perunu in Neverwhere.

Oh I meant to ask, where did you find the angel name info, Dweller?
Thanks

World's End - reference (for structure) Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)

Sandman companion has loads, but the best one I find for ideas and reference points is the Osxord English Dictionary and a baby's book of names...
Enjoy going to a library and looking up Hob Gadling (two separate names) and their original meanings!

Also - sinople is true and fun - try and teach new people it every tme I meeet them!


hehehhe - suddenly had idea for continuance of thread, or at least a new one - how mnay films/tv series can be spotted as an inluence/reference to Sandman?

Anyhow - also a call out to any on the boards who are in Bristol, UK... I'm moving there in 24 hours time - mail me: p_giffney@yahoo.co.uk and we can be all conferency and discussy (I kow, new verbs but heck Shakespeare had taken the best ones already!)

Hoping all well
Paul aka Crescent

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Originally posted by Chomiji:
No, the Kaddish is the prayer for the dead. Interestingly, its actual text praises God in all his aspects, and says nothing about the departed.


(from, of all things, a sermon comparing the premise of the movie "Men in Black" to this legend: http://jacksonsnyder.com/arc/Midrash/55.htm)

- Cho

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Reminds me of an episode of The X-Files a friend showed me. It involved a golem, and was heavily into Jewish mystisim... and at the end, there was the kaddish. As it was being said, there flashed a notice that the episode was dedicated to someone involved in the show who died... my friend pointed out that they actually worked the saying of the prayer for her into the show. Very nice.

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Originally posted by Smierna:
Oh I meant to ask, where did you find the angel name info, Dweller?
Thanks

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Reading when I should've been studying for my Greek finals.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
Remiel is typically the angel of mercy (his name literally means "the mercy of GOD,") and the lord of Purgatory. Though that's not mentioned, it's part of the reason I've always thought he was a bit of a pansy for freaking out when he was given Hell.

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I read somewhere Neil saying that the "Creator" in the sandman is NOT the juedo-christian god, as we have known him in the bible and the texts. I either read or inferred that he did take obviously from that god, but he was careful never to mention him as "God". In other words, that all his stuff about the Creator, and Hell, and Lucifer and the angels does not necessarily correspond with what we might know from the regular sources (i mention coz I don't know whether the Purgatory is a Jewish or christian conception, if it's Christian then I can see it not fitting at all in his universE).
I think he's done to the jedeochristian God what he has done to all the myths he puts into his stories: instead of taking a current belief and make it different, he kind of takes the belief that might possibly have spawned the belief we got now (like he did with morpheus, or faeries, etc.).

I'd always imagined the Sandman God, or creator-deity, as being closely related to the same character from Smoke & Mirrors.