Just recently reading and trying to catch up. A note on:
16 quoted lines
At 11:25 AM 4/22/99 +0200, N Gevers wrote:
Following on fascinating remarks by Ori Kowarski and mantis, re the Hierogrammates as secular conspirators (fallible or not):
1) Even if one views the Hierogrammates as conspirators in their own secular/evolutionary interests, they can, and in my view should, still be viewed as instruments of the Increate. Their Yesod is part of a hierarchy of universes that culminates in Heaven, the pleroma, or whatever: the home of the Increate. Elsewhere, mantis has speculated that the immediate cosmic environment of Urth is a hierarchy of three universes as follows:
Yesod
Briah
Abaddon,
these linked by black holes and White Fountains. But given Wolfe's Cabbalistic terminology, one should invoke the Sefiroth above Yesod, to produce a wider scheme of universes as follows:
The Pleroma (Heaven, the Increate, the Ein Sof)
Keter
Binah Chokmah
Gevurah Hesed
Tiferet
Hod Netzah
Yesod
Briah (Malkuth?)
Abaddon
etc. etc.
I asked Wolfe about this either in or around the time of my interview that is posted on Paul Duggan's website. I had supposed he intended to allude to the whole neoplatonic-cabbalistic chain, but he indicated that he had just picked the name Yesod as a good symbol for the higher world, without intending the whole Qabalistic scheme. Maybe he was just funning with me, but since only the three tiers show up in the NS works, I suspect that's all he intends. As in the bible, you've got a created heaven of angels, an earth, and a lower realm of fallen angels. Now, Yesod in NS is not the biblical heaven, but does correspond to it in some symbolic ways. At any rate, I don't think Wolfe intended to imply the entire neoplatonic heirarchy.
Of course, this is always the problem. When Wolfe pulls a token from here and there to toss into the mix, how much of the baggage of that token is supposed to come with it?
Nutria