This Monad is the spiritual source of everything which emanates the plemora, and could be contrasted to the darkness of pure matter.

Maybe Kai and Butchie's child? She really was, for lack of a better term, glowing in the last episode.

I was wondering if room 45 was referring to a room at all, or if there was a double meaning.

45 BC = Julian Calendar year 1. (This was also the dawn of the Age of Pisces, which Jesus' birth ushered in. Is John here to usher in the Age of Aquarius? Does Ramon want to know who's hungry in the courtyard in the new year 1?)
45 AD is when St. Paul (who Elaine Pagels claims was a Gnostic) began his mission, and also the year people began calling those who follow Jesus "Christians."
1945 was when a cash of Gnostic gospels was found in its hiding place in Egypt, one of them being this one. (It was also the beginning of the end of WWII, when the nazis tried to eradicate God's chosen people.)

But what I love about the show is that you find things to care about in a wide range of different characters.

Some people will not know themselves. As the minister says at Hickok's funeral, he quotes Paul -- that was what I wanted to do that Roman show about, was the first guy they arrested was Saint Paul. But Paul says, "If the hand shall say, 'Because I am not the foot, I am not therefore the body of Christ,' is it not of the body?" In other words, because we misunderstand our natures, does that exclude us from the community of spirits? And the answer is no, it just means we misunderstand our natures. So many of these characters misunderstand their natures, but that does not prevent us from recognizing that they're of the body of Christ. My feeling about "Deadwood" is it's a single organism, and I think human society is the body of God, and in a lot of ways it's about the different parts of the body having a somewhat more confident sense of their identity over the course of time.

What kinds of characters do you enjoy writing the most? Do you favor certain characters?

No. You know, William James said that what every spiritual experience has in common is ego suppression at depth. That is, one loses one's sense of one's own separate identity, and experiences a kind of in-rush of either a sense of God or one's commonality with others. So when I write, I try to have no favorites. I try to be sort of a vessel of the character, and that's how I feel a part of the body of Christ. I feel that they're all part of a single thing, and they just exhibit their sameness differently, if that makes sense.

It does. Do you feel like you're channeling God or the spirits when you write?

Well, I think we all are vessels of God, you know. As Saint Paul says, if the hand doesn't know, that doesn't mean it's not part of the body, that just means it doesn't know. And that's why, when I'm able to be of service to the characters, I experience God's presence more acutely than I do when I'm not working. So I try to work as much as I can.

Butchie: Whatever that means doc, I'm busted for being a dope fiend.

Smith: Why would that make you ineligible for a paranormal experience?

Oh my God not Roger Scruton! Run, don't walk, away from his writings!

I agree that we need to read outside our interests, but I also feel that life is too short to waste on pointedly self-referential work, isolated from the world in which I live and work.