{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/441",
    "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": 441,
    "subject": "yellow robes",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-03-25T22:18:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-03-25T22:18:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0008-0662@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-03-25T22:18:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) yellow robes",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #1901496 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET03#\n\nDan,\n\nFWIW:\n\nThe alcalde of Saltus also \"wore his yellow gown of office and his\ngold chain\" (II, ch. 4).\n\nThe Old Autarch wears the yellow robe and (in contrast to gold chain)\nan iron phallus necklace (containing, as it turns out, the autarchial\nalzabo extract [which =is= said to be more powerful, I believe, than\nthe Vodalarii version] and a skull smashing knife).\n\nMaster Gurloes gives Severian a memorable lecture about poisonous\naphrodesiacs and an iron phallus (II, ch. 7).\n\nRe: yellow and color symbolism:\n\n\"According to Beaumont, colour has a very special significance in\nChinese symbolism, for it is emblematic of rank and authority;\nyellow, for instance, because of its association with the sun, is\nconsidered the sacred privilege of the royal family [contrast with\nthe European sense of purple's royalty] . . . Interesting evidence of\nthe ominous and tragic character of orange . . . is forthcoming in\nthe following passage taken from Heinrich Zimmer, the orientalist:\n`After the Future Buddha had severed his hair and exchanged his royal\ngarments for the orange-yellow robe of the ascetic beggar (those\noutside the pale of human society voluntarily adopt the orange-yellow\ngarment that was originally the covering of condemned criminals being\nled to the place of execution'\" (entry on \"Colour,\" A DICTIONARY OF\nSYMBOLS, J.E. Cirlot).\n\nRe: the memory thing being how Thecla is captured within Severian.  I\npersonally think this is the earlier level (\"explanation\" or\n\"excuse\") of perception--since in reading through the book the first\ntime we know that Sev has this memory but we don't know he has the\nClaw (much later we will find out he doesn't even =need= the Claw\nitself, re: Triskele) nor what the Claw does or can do.\n\nThe next level is that it is the Claw's doing--that it has resurrected\nThecla within Severian (or \"bound her spirit to his body in the same\nway that a spirit is normally bound to its body\").  And as I've\nintimated, the level beyond that brings us back to the beginning but\nwith a difference (so our motion is a spiral rather than a circle):\nthe Claw's powers come from Severian himself.\n\nBut yeah, we've got Father, Sun, and Holy Ghost walking around in one\nbody, with a chorus of badly xeroxed autarchs going all the way back\nto Ymar the Just-A-Smudge.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}