Quadrifons & Juturna
The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 21 Dec 2002
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3700

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.

==============================================================================

Andrew Bollen — 21 Dec 2002, 02:57

Did anybody ever work out what the deal with Quadrifons is? Going  back thru the archives, I see suggestions that Quadrifons is the name of a cherub. I'm sure that's true, but I'm also sure that the more relevant association is with Janus, in his four-faced aspect - Janus Quadrifons. After all, the text describes Quadrifons as "the god of doors and crossroads, and much else", which sounds pretty much like Janus to me. 

Assuming the connection with Janus is intended, why "Quadrifons" rather than the more usual "Bifrons"? 

Janus was married to the nymph Juturna, the goddess of springs and wells. Wolfe presumably knows this, but what's it supposed to mean?  Like all of these speculations, anything you can make of it is based on the flimsiest textual evidence; but I wonder if Juturna is the Undine Scylla and Silk speak with at the end of RTTW; and whether somehow Juturna's interest in Severian stems form this? Dunno! 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

James Jordan — 21 Dec 2002, 14:53
  follows, by subject match Andrew Bollen

> At 08:57 PM 12/20/2002, you wrote:
> Did anybody ever work out what the deal with Quadrifons is? Going  back 
> thru the archives, I see suggestions that Quadrifons is the name of a 
> cherub. I'm sure that's true, but I'm also sure that the more relevant 
> association is with Janus, in his four-faced aspect - Janus Quadrifons. 
> After all, the text describes Quadrifons as "the god of doors and 
> crossroads, and much else", which sounds pretty much like Janus to me.
> 
> Assuming the connection with Janus is intended, why "Quadrifons" rather 
> than the more usual "Bifrons"?

         Cherubim have four faces. Sphinxes are a one-faced form of the 
cherub. Being cats, they guard crossroads (as you know if you have a cat; 
look where he/she likes to sit: where he can watch up and down the halls 
and into the rooms). Cherubim guard doors, particularly the door into Eden.

Nutria

> Janus was married to the nymph Juturna, the goddess of springs and wells. 
> Wolfe presumably knows this, but what's it supposed to mean?  Like all of 
> these speculations, anything you can make of it is based on the flimsiest 
> textual evidence; but I wonder if Juturna is the Undine Scylla and Silk 
> speak with at the end of RTTW; and whether somehow Juturna's interest in 
> Severian stems form this? Dunno!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Josh Geller — 21 Dec 2002, 16:05
  follows, by subject match James Jordan

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2002, James Jordan wrote:
> At 08:57 PM 12/20/2002, you wrote:

> > Did anybody ever work out what the deal with Quadrifons is? Going  back

>          Cherubim have four faces. Sphinxes are a one-faced form of the
> cherub. Being cats, they guard crossroads (as you know if you have a cat;
> look where he/she likes to sit: where he can watch up and down the halls
> and into the rooms). Cherubim guard doors, particularly the door into Eden.

My first thought, which apparently did not occur to GW, was Trimurti (the
syncretic Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva being the One God
(or reasonable facsimile of same) in various Indian religions), Who is
always represented with *four* faces rotated ninety degrees from each
other. There are a number of different readings as to why four faces; the
most mundane one is so that three of them will be visible from any point
around a freestanding idol. Some of the more interesting ones have to do
with more-than-three-dimensional geometry (as do some of the more
interesting reasons why Indian gods generally have a multiplicity of
limbs).




















.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------