Subject: (urth) urth Digest, Vol 23, Issue 9

From: Tony Ellis <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:34:37 +0000

b_sharp wrote:

> So..I think Earth is 
> in Yesod and 
> in Urth's future.

Well, careful. As Dan'l says, Yesod and Briah are separate issues.
They're not just different universes, they're different *kinds* of
universe.

As I understand it, while our universe endlessly dies and is reborn,
Yesod is *another* universe, adjacent to ours. It's not one of the
future (or past) flowerings of our own universe.

The key for me is that in The Citadel of the Autarch, chapter XXXIV,
Severian calls Yesod "the universe higher than our own". 'Higher' is an
odd word to use if all he meant was 'in the future of our own', and
since there are a perhaps infinite number of future flowerings of our
universe, he should rather have said "_a_ universe higher than our own".

On top of which, he also says that "from that vantage point, they look
both forward and back". If you've merely escaped to the universe after
yours in an endless series, that's not much of a vantage point from
where you were before. If you've escaped to somewhere that is in some
way 'higher' than the whole process of repeating universes, and looking
down on it, that's different.

So I don't think Earth can be in Yesod, because Yesod isn't part of our
Briahtic succession of universes.

>The only other place I know of in BoTNS where an Earth book
>is quoted is L. Carroll's Through The Looking Glass...

Here's another for your collection, then: in The Sword of the Lictor,
chapter XXXV, Dr Talos alludes to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.