Resurrections

Jeff Wilson- I get the sense that the author is trying to convey that the various "kinds of resurrection" are a mortal projection; there is only one source of the gift of life and that is the grace of the Increate. Then there are people who presume to decide that the Increate hasn't given them enough and will try to get more some other way, rather than living and sharing so that what they've been given is enough. This kind of substituion of one's judgment for that of the Increate is the first step on the dark path that eventually leads the likes of Typhon and Ceryx to airs of godhood, the way Vodalus presumes to substitute himself for the Autarch.

On Jul 30, 2010, at 12:32 PM, Lee Berman wrote: So, why doesn't Wolfe have Severian reject the Autarch's pharmicon at the last second and have him find the true, Increate-given, path toward becoming the New Sun and Conciliator? Are we to conclude that Urth itself has an allotted lifespan and it has no right to be reborn and all who assist Severian in this task are as sorcerous and evil as Vodalus and the Old Leech and others who seek artificially extended life?

On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Ryan Dunn <ryan at liftingfaces.com> wrote: Lee, Aren't we supposed to get the vibe that "the power was in Severian all the time, he just didn't know it?" Meaning pharmacon or not, claw or not, he had these powers. I thought that was demonstrated with Triskele in a very clear way. Severian does strive at length to attribute powers to the claw, but that is a bit of a loophole that suggests it was Severian, not any other talisman/affectation, that beholds the power. So the question would be, where do HIS powers come from? Is it part of him being a 2nd iteration of himself? The first having gained access to the corridors of time, gone back to become Conciliator, and the Severian we follow being a product of prior Severian achievements?

...ryan _______________________________________________

On Jul 30, 2010, at 12:58 PM, John Watkins wrote: My understanding. Severian's superpowers come from the White Fountain. In Yesod, another universe entirely, the Autarch Severian is deemed worthy of linkage with the Fountain. The Fountain, which was always already linked with Severian in Yesod time, enters Briah sufficiently early so that its light reaches Urth at or around the time of Apu Punchau. The Autarch Severian, on the other hand, is returned to Briah during Typhon's time. Severian always has some measure of superpowers when he is within the "broadcast range" of the influence of the Fountain, which coincides with the light of the Fountain. Thus young Severian, who has not yet become the Autarch in his personal timeline, has superpowers--the light is hitting him, and with it whatever influence gives him personal powers. He is limited in using those powers because he doesn't know about them. Late in Citadel, the superpowered Severian cuts himself on a thorn. His blood transmits some measure of his power to the thorn. He keeps it as a memorial of the Claw, a similar-looking thorn he once carried. After travelling to Yesod and being bound to the Fountain in his personal timeline, he becomes aware of his powers and is far more adept with them, even to the degree that his is more apt to use them unconsciously. Super Severian gives someone his bled-on thorn in Typhon's era. It is a treasured relic that becomes the Claw. Later on in Briah's timeline, but earlier in Sev's personal timeline, he acquires the Claw, only powerful because of its linkage to the Sev who exists in Sev's future and Briah's past. Because the Claw has some measure of power on its own, and because Sev has superpowers, it acts as a channel or focus for his powers--he doesn't know he has powers but he believes it does. So he sometimes tries to use its powers, which is really him using his powers and incidentally making the Claw glow, but he's not quite sure of how it works.

On 7/30/2010 11:32 AM, Lee Berman wrote:

Jeff Wilson- I get the sense that the author is trying to convey that the various "kinds of resurrection" are a mortal projection; there is only one source of the gift of life and that is the grace of the Increate. Then there are people who presume to decide that the Increate hasn't given them enough and will try to get more some other way, rather than living and sharing so that what they've been given is enough. This kind of substituion of one's judgment for that of the Increate is the first step on the dark path that eventually leads the likes of Typhon and Ceryx to airs of godhood, the way Vodalus presumes to substitute himself for the Autarch.

So, why doesn't Wolfe have Severian reject the Autarch's pharmicon at the last second and have him find the true, Increate-given, path toward becoming the New Sun and Conciliator? Are we to conclude that Urth itself has an allotted lifespan and it has no right to be reborn and all who assist Severian in this task are as sorcerous and evil as Vodalus and the Old Leech and others who seek artificially extended life?

On 7/30/2010 11:43 AM, Ryan Dunn wrote: So the question would be, where do HIS powers come from? Is it part of him being a 2nd iteration of himself? The first having gained access to the corridors of time, gone back to become Conciliator, and the Severian we follow being a product of prior Severian achievements?

John Watkins wrote: On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Ryan Dunn <ryan at liftingfaces.com <mailto:ryan at liftingfaces.com>> wrote: Lee, Aren't we supposed to get the vibe that "the power was in Severian all the time, he just didn't know it?" Meaning pharmacon or not, claw or not, he had these powers. I thought that was demonstrated with Triskele in a very clear way. Severian does strive at length to attribute powers to the claw, but that is a bit of a loophole that suggests it was Severian, not any other talisman/affectation, that beholds the power. So the question would be, where do HIS powers come from? Is it part of him being a 2nd iteration of himself? The first having gained access to the corridors of time, gone back to become Conciliator, and the Severian we follow being a product of prior Severian achievements? My understanding. Severian's superpowers come from the White Fountain. In Yesod, another universe entirely, the Autarch Severian is deemed worthy of linkage with the Fountain. The Fountain, which was always already linked with Severian in Yesod time, enters Briah sufficiently early so that its light reaches Urth at or around the time of Apu Punchau. The Autarch Severian, on the other hand, is returned to Briah during Typhon's time. Severian always has some measure of superpowers when he is within the "broadcast range" of the influence of the Fountain, which coincides with the light of the Fountain. Thus young Severian, who has not yet become the Autarch in his personal timeline, has superpowers--the light is hitting him, and with it whatever influence gives him personal powers. He is limited in using those powers because he doesn't know about them. Late in Citadel, the superpowered Severian cuts himself on a thorn. His blood transmits some measure of his power to the thorn. He keeps it as a memorial of the Claw, a similar-looking thorn he once carried. After travelling to Yesod and being bound to the Fountain in his personal timeline, he becomes aware of his powers and is far more adept with them, even to the degree that his is more apt to use them unconsciously. Super Severian gives someone his bled-on thorn in Typhon's era. It is a treasured relic that becomes the Claw. Later on in Briah's timeline, but earlier in Sev's personal timeline, he acquires the Claw, only powerful because of its linkage to the Sev who exists in Sev's future and Briah's past. Because the Claw has some measure of power on its own, and because Sev has superpowers, it acts as a channel or focus for his powers--he doesn't know he has powers but he believes it does. So he sometimes tries to use its powers, which is really him using his powers and incidentally making the Claw glow, but he's not quite sure of how it works. ...ryan _______________________________________________

Jeff Wilson wrote: On 7/30/2010 11:43 AM, Ryan Dunn wrote:

So the question would be, where do HIS powers come from? Is it part of him being a 2nd iteration of himself? The first having gained access to the corridors of time, gone back to become Conciliator, and the Severian we follow being a product of prior Severian achievements?

Whatever the mechanism, the reference to Joseph's dream makes it pretty clear to me that he is correct in his feeling that it comes from the Increate, like Joseph always claims of his gift of divination.

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> What's the reference to Joseph's dream?

And who is the Old Leech everyone is talking about?

On 7/31/2010 1:27 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: What's the reference to Joseph's dream?

And who is the Old Leech everyone is talking about?

On 8/1/2010 4:13 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote: He's really old, and might be an Inire disguise except that in XXIX an old, bent and deformed shaman in a mask with a monkey-headed staff shows up in the same precession at the same time, and who appears to be the person Severian is thinking of later when he tells Rudesind he knows his master was with him in the jungle.

Jeff Wilson wrote: On 7/31/2010 1:27 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:

What's the reference to Joseph's dream?

In URTH XXXVIII, while Severian is also a seer imprisoned by the authorities, there is a literal biblical reference to it, immediately followed by a dream with Revelations imagery, or maybe Peter's: "In those moments I knew my power, that could draw whole worlds to me and incremate them as an artist burns his earths for pigments. In the brown book, now lost, that I carried and read so long that at last I had committed to memory its whole contents (though they had once seemed inexhaustible) there is this passage: 'Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; the sun and the moon and eleven stars made obeisance to me.' Its words show plainly how much wiser the peoples of ages long past were than we are now; not for nothing is that book titled The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky. "I too dreamed a dream. I dreamed that I called the power of my star down upon myself, and rising, crossed (Thecla as well as Severian) to our barred door, and grasping its bars, bent them until we could easily have passed between them. But when we bent them it seemed we parted a curtain, and beyond it beheld a second curtain and Tzadkiel, neither larger than ourselves nor smaller, with the dirk afire. "