Subject: (urth) 3 Tiered Universes

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.geis.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 02:47:00 +0000

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Umm...

If you read the recently quoted lecture Baldanders gives (V, ch. 42):
Briah is neither the lowest nor the highest cotemporaneous universe
(which is only a half surprise, since we know the name of hyperspace
is "Yesod" but we don't have much of a lead on subspace); a Briahtic
black hole leads upstairs to Yesod; a white hole in Briah can only be
from a black hole in subspace downstairs.

(I write "contemporaneous" to avoid confusion with the past/future
universes of different manvantaras: subspace/Briah/Yesod are all in
the same manvantara, or "period between Big Bang and Grand Gnab"; the
Hieros, those who made the Hierogrammates in their own image, were
born in--and died in--the "Briah" of an earlier manvantara; the
Hierogrammates escaped the death of their universe by colonizing
Yesod [which in turn suggests that Yesod is actually independent of
Briah, rather than being tied to the same cycle that Briah is].)

The name of subspace is probably "Abaddon" (III, ch. 12).

=mantis=

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 21:20:36 +0000

>from a black hole in subspace downstairs.

	Are you certain that this is so in the Urth world/s? I had associated the
fountain with the river that flows from Yesod to Briah, and
theo-symbolically with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit -- so that the
regenerating power is coming from heaven. I'd be inclined to reverse your
scenario, and say that hell is syphoning off Briah through the black hole.

>The name of subspace is probably "Abaddon" (III, ch. 12).

	Sure. Heaven, Cosmos, Hell. (Abaddon is one of the names of Satan, the
lord of the pit of hell, in Revelation 9.)
	In terms of SF scenario, we have a previous Briah, whose "saints" are now
in Yesod (heaven) and, like angels, oversee the current Briah (via their
big scarab-machine). All this makes sense at the theo-symbolic level also,
except for the notion that the Hieros of the preceding cycle made the
Hierogrammates, who now occupy Yesod. This would imply that the Hieros, or
their spirits, have gone to a plane higher than Yesod.
	I did ask Wolfe about the Kabbalistic worlds, and he indicated to me that
he had just picked the words Yesod and Briah to designate these two realms,
without intending to imply the entire gnostic hierarchy of worlds of
Kabbalism.
	At any rate, the notion that the angels of the present cosmos are not the
men of the previous one, but rather creatures fashioned by those men, is
curious, and I wonder if there is more info to be teased out of the books
about the whole matter. Any thots?
	Yesodim as angels: Tzadkiel should mean "God Is My Justice," but Wolfe
said he intended it to mean "Angel of Justice," which is also possible.
	Tsedeg = justice, righteousness
	Tsaddiq = just, righteous
	Tsidqi = my justice
	Tsidqiel = God/Angel is my justice
Properly, in Hebrew, "Angel of Justice" should be El-Tsedeq.
But then again, this is Briah, not Earth!!

Nutria

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From: Tony Ellis <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 11:58:21 +0000

18/02/98
                                                                      10:02
 RE>3 Tiered Universes

Mantis, I envy you your clear vision of the relationship in time and
space between Yesod and Briah! Personally, I have always found
this perhaps the single most confusing and opaque area in all the
five books. Here are some of the problems I have:

You say that the White Fountain can't come from Yesod, citing
Baldanders' explanation in V, Ch 42 that the white fountain is
the irruption of energy from a lower universe (ie not Yesod) into
our own. But in Ch 23 we actually get to see creation of 
Severian's White Fountain. He's in Yesod, and it's a black hole.
He passes through it into our universe, and it's a white fountain.
Later, in Ch 25, Severian himself wonders how he could have 
looked back and seen Apheta's face leaning out of it, and 
concludes "May it not be that the White Fountain is a window
to Yesod after all?"

How, then, do we explain Baldanders' explanation? Can Yesod
be simultaneously higher than our universe and lower? Perhaps:
like Blake, Wolfe loves to show us that two opposing views of a
fact can be equally valid. Baldanders puts his faith in cold science,
and doesn't believe in the Claw: to some extent he is Severian's 
antithesis - perhaps for him the world of Yesod IS lower than
ours; he sees a hell where we see a heaven. Severian tells the
prophetess "'He has told the truth, as well as you.'"

I mistrust your 3-tiered universe idea. I'm not aware of anything
in the novels that suggests universes come in packs of three.

Your idea that Yesod is "hyperspace" I like a lot more. It's
one explanation of how Yesod can be a "higher" universe than
our own: Severian tells us that Briah is one of an endless series
of dying and re-blossoming universes, and I've always assumed
that "higher" meant that Yesod must be the universe to suceed 
ours. Now I have better mental picture: an endless, linear series
of Briahtic universes, all existing within the outer, meta-universe
of Yesod.

I don't think that Yesod dies with the Grand Gnab, however. To
my new way of thinking, Yesod exists outside of ordinary
time\space - destruction and rebirth is just something that 
happens to other universes. <g>