# the Cock and the Angel *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 21 Apr 1999* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Michael Andre-Driussi *21 Apr 1999, 06:30* Ori, Good post! (You would probably enjoy Peter Wright's essays, I'm guessing.) I strongly agree with your post and especially like the use of the brown book tale (it comes up again in URTH)--and yes, I think that Briah/humanity got in trouble for storming Yesod by breaking the lightspeed barrier, and then behaving as badly as they did in Briah. I like the portrayal of Yesodians as being nearly as confused as humans--often (in essays, discussion) there is the suggestion that they are masters of certitude. I also find delight in the depiction of the "religious" trappings originating on Urth--again, the Yesodians are often painted as masters of a top-down conspiracy. Yes, yes! Yesod is not heaven--but it does have some very weird "heaven-like" qualities (for instance, a land of the spirits)--then again, the Whorl has a land of spirits and it is obviously not heaven! Would it bolster or diminish your point to include that devils are only fallen angels? Yesod is not hell--but it does have some creepy "hell-like" qualities. Let's take the whole shebang a step further and state "What is in it for Yesod," or, "If it ain't just messin' with the subcritters, why do we even bother with all this work?" The Hierogrammates want to be created. For them to be created there must be Hieros. There's something about Typhon (to give one example) that creates an evolutionary deadend with regard to Hieros. But even here, things get dicey: if humanity was "bad" for enslaving, warping, "uplifting" aliens she found in Briah, then how is Yesod "good" for all their manipulations? Is it merely the distinction between overt and covert? Outta time--gotta run! =mantis= ---