{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1562",
    "note": "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.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1562,
    "subject": "Yesod and Heaven",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-22T09:25:38+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-22T09:25:38+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0026-0003@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nicholas Gevers",
        "address": "potto at webmail.co.za"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-22T09:25:38+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Yesod and Heaven",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Following on fascinating remarks by Ori Kowarski and mantis, re the\nHierogrammates as secular conspirators (fallible or not):\n1) Even if one views the Hierogrammates as conspirators in their own\nsecular/evolutionary interests, they can, and in my view should, still\nbe viewed as instruments of the Increate. Their Yesod is part of a\nhierarchy of universes that culminates in Heaven, the pleroma, or\nwhatever: the home of the Increate. Elsewhere, mantis has speculated\nthat the immediate cosmic environment of Urth is a hierarchy of three\nuniverses as follows:\n                     Yesod\n                     Briah\n                     Abaddon,\nthese linked by black holes and White Fountains. But given Wolfe's\nCabbalistic terminology, one should invoke the Sefiroth above Yesod,\nto produce a wider scheme of universes as follows:\n      The Pleroma (Heaven, the Increate, the Ein Sof)\n                       Keter\n                  Binah    Chokmah\n                 Gevurah     Hesed\n                       Tiferet\n                    Hod       Netzah\n                        Yesod\n                      Briah (Malkuth?)\n                        Abaddon\nIf Abaddon is a cognate of Hell, then Yesod is much closer to Hell\nthan it is to the Increate, whose major Sefiroth or emanations lie\nabove it in the hierarchy. No wonder, then, that despite their place\nin this divine hierarchy, the Hierogrammates of Yesod are readable in\nbiological terms a la Wright and Kowarski, as scheming, flawed, part\nof a cosmic reproductive mechanism, etc; theirs is a universe only\nsomewhat less carnal than ours. But the Increate still acts through\nthem, as He does through the denizens of Briah and no doubt Abaddon.\n2) I contend that Wolfe's primary challenge to the reader is that of\nreading the presence of the Divine in the Mundane, be the Mundane\nscheming Hierogrammates or anything Briahtic. Wolfe's characteristic\nplot, as I've argued elsewhere, is zig-zag and helter-skelter, with\nconstant bizarre twists of plot (eg. the Old Autarch in his flier\nbeing the lord of all he surveys, only to be brought low the next\nmoment), with copious and conflicting casts of characters and bodies\nof symbols, for good reason: Wolfe wants both to represent the\ndistracting, confusing illusion of the carnal world and to intimate\nthe mastery of God over that confusion. If you attempt to perceive the\npattern behind the chaos, the Divine Will becomes evident, if very\ndarkly, in the imperfect form thal lies within our comprehension. That\nwe cannot see the higher (Divine) purpose behind the evolutionary\nmanoeuverings of the Hierogrammates is no indication that it is not\nthere.\n//--------------------------------------\nNicholas Gevers\npotto at webmail.co.za"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}