# Comparative Religion *The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 08 Oct 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. --- ### David_Lebling *08 Oct 1999, 09:51* From: Paul C Duggan <> If you look at the features of the Vironese faith, it has only a tenuous connection to Christianity. Some of its features compared to Christian ones: --Vironism-- --Christianity-- polytheistic monotheistic animal sacrifice no human sacrifice (only recently abolished) no reading of entrails no theophany as major element no, but visions have been important confession and forgiveness confession and forgiveness sign of cross sign of addition Really, Vironism resembles nothing so much as the Roman religion, a syncretic popular religion based primarily on the original Roman polytheism, but open to any cult with a popular following. Had Christianity exhibited a willingness to sacrifice to the Emperor, it probably would have been absorbed into the Roman religious "marketplace." Popular Roman religious practice has to be distinguished from the state religion, which was conservative and focused more on the old (pre-Greek-borrowings) Italian (Latin? Etruscan?) deities, such as the Lares and Penates, the Bona Dea, and so on. In Viron, Jehovah (or is it Allah?) has been absorbed as the "Outsider." The Romans as individuals were into Isis, Mithras, mystery cults, and so on, all of which were grafted onto the original pantheon. This is not unlike Hindu syncretism as well. In any case, the religions of the Whorl appear to all be parodies of Urth (or rather, Earth) religions, sometimes with a sting or joke attached. Triviguante's religion and culture are parodies of Arab culture and religion with the sexes swapped, for example. The religion of Gaon (in _On Blue's Waters_) appears to be more-or-less a parody of Hinduism. Pas/Typhon did this on purpose to divide the inhabitants of the _Whorl_. In short, we can deduce little or nothing about the religion(s) of Urth from those of the _Whorl_. -- Dave Lebling (aka vizcacha) --- ### Alex David Groce *08 Oct 1999, 10:57 · follows David_Lebling* Although (ignoring Wolfe's purposes and attributing final reasoning to Typhon here) the fact that the parodies are as close as they are to religions we know suggests that (as I think New Sun indicates) Urth's religions are descendants of Earth's religions. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32 ``` Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu) Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department 8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce ``` --- ### Michael Straight *08 Oct 1999, 11:10 · follows Alex David Groce* > On Fri, 8 Oct 1999 David_Lebling at avid.com wrote: > In any case, the religions of the Whorl appear to all be parodies of Urth (or > rather, Earth) religions, sometimes with a sting or joke attached. > Triviguante's religion and culture are parodies of Arab culture and religion > with the sexes swapped, for example. The religion of Gaon (in _On Blue's > Waters_) appears to be more-or-less a parody of Hinduism. This touches on the difference I was trying to express between these two series. Does one get the feeling, reading the New Sun series, that even in Typhon's time anyone would remember enough of Arab culture to get the joke of switching the sexes? The world the Whorl came from seems more closely connected to our time than Severian's world. -Rostrum ---