Subject: (urth) The face of Pas

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 05:33:09 +0000

Typhon's maniacal obsession with his own face is a given, well established
in the Urth Cycle. The head on the left side of Piaton's body had yellow
hair, the head on the right side had black hair (SWORD, chap. XXIV). The
head on the left was Typhon's (URTH, chap. XXXIX, 274). Severian at first
thought Piaton "a species of idiot" (SWORD, XXV) because he rolled his eyes
and his lips moved but he was unable to speak. Piaton was unable to speak
because "He can't get his breath, poor fellow," as Typhon put it (ibid,
XXVI).

Silk had yellow hair, as is mentioned many times in LS.

Shortly after Mint and Remora and some others climbed out of the tunnels,
Remora shot Sand and Pas made a theophany in the Sacred Window in the
Prolocutor's Palace. This is what Mint saw:
------------------
She blinked and stared, then blinked again. Not one face but two crowded the
Window, one gaping and gasping, the other radiant with power and majesty,
just--and more than just--pitiless and nurturing. "My faithful people,"
intoned Twice-headed Pas, "receive the blessing of your god." (EXODUS, 204)
------------------

The "gaping and gasping" face was clearly Piaton's. Mint (and Remora) damn
well knew what Silk's face looked like. Had she recognized the other face in
the Window as Silk's, she would have been shocked silly and the course of
the story would have changed radically. Ergo, the other face was not Silk's.

Nature versus nurture issues aside, on the nature end a clone should look
almost identical to the original.

-Roy

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 06:37:10 +0000

> Prolocutor's Palace. This is what Mint saw:

But Typhon has probably been through a lot of nurture in his time. The 
author can also play tricks, like reversing the video side-to-side, so 
that an asymmetrical face becomes merely a familial resemblance.

Facial asymmetry has been noted in and associated with particularly 
gifted and driven people as well as those afflicted with harmful 
conditions like stroke and Bell's Palsy, and in particular cerebral 
palsy and muscular dystrophy is associated with people who are both 
gifted and afflicted, and have been for enough time to have been 
circulated into the author's command of scientific concepts.

Or perhaps the commonality of clones of various Typhonian family members 
prevents Silk's resemblance to Pas from being particularly remarkable, 
because lots of people on the Whorl have a similar degree of resemblance 
as a young adult clone would have to his octagenerian original.

And the second, uncoordinated head has to be be one hell of a 
distraction. One is left to wonder why Typhon doesn't have some other 
arrangement, like an opaque or catoptric dome to hide Piaton's silent 
gibbering.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 03:51:08 +0000

Jeff Wilson wrote:
[snip]
> as a young adult clone would have to his octagenerian original.

There are no references to clones in LS or SS, but there are the khaibits of
NS who do closely resemble their originals. Severian gives no indication
that the Typhon face/head he twice saw was that of an old man, which would
have been in stark contrast to the gladiator body it was attached to.

When Silk was buried in that tunnel collapse and made his brief sojourn to
Mainframe heaven, he saw his biological parents. The male bio parent had
blue eyes, like Silk. A clone necessarily comes from the same genetic
lineage as the original. In other words, the bio parents of the clone are
the same as the bio parents of the original. Had Silk been a clone of
Typhon, the bio parents he saw in Mainframe would have been Typhon's
parents. Typhon supposedly wasn't native to Urth and claimed not to have
been born at all in the usual sense. There is no logical reason for Typhon's
parents to have been on the _Whorl_ or in Mainframe at all.

It is possible that Typhon and the bio female parent Silk saw in Mainframe
contributed the basic genetic material that went into the embryo that became
Silk, but that would make them more-or-less conventional parents whose
genetic material had been modified to produce particular genetic
improvements, making Silk a "designer baby", but in that case he would not
be a clone of Typhon. Further, the bio parents should have been dead on the
_Whorl_ in order to be in Mainframe heaven. Typhon, at least, died on Urth.

When Silk tried to use the glass on the airship, Kypris appeared and tempted
him to go to Mainframe for a god-grade scan, so that he could become Pas and
Pas him. She, apparently meaning the bio woman who had been Typhon's
mistress on Urth, claimed to have been scanned at Mainframe: "As I was
scanned, Silk, with him. He held my hand. . . ." (EXODUS, chap. 15, 346) She
then showed him an image of "a bronze-limbed man with rippling muscles and
two heads", one of which was Silk's.

Granted, the image she showed him was probably photoshopped, but only one of
the heads looked like Silk. Which of Pas' two traditional heads did she
replace with Silk's? If she substituted Silk's head for Piaton's, then the
Typhon head didn't look like Silk, even to Silk. If she substituted Silk's
head for Typhon's, then Silk's still didn't look like Typhon's, otherwise
there was no point in making the switch. If you want to say that she didn't
make a switch, that Typhon and Silk had always looked alike, then Mint and
Remora should have seen that Silk looked just like Typhon during the earlier
Pas theophany at the Prolocutor's Palace.

-Roy

---

From: Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 06:41:16 +0000

Roy C. Lackey wrote:

When Silk was buried in that tunnel collapse and made his brief
sojourn to Mainframe heaven, he saw his biological parents. The male
bio parent had blue eyes, like Silk. A clone necessarily comes from
the same genetic lineage as the original. In other words, the bio
parents of the clone are the same as the bio parents of the original.
Had Silk been a clone of Typhon, the bio parents he saw in Mainframe
would have been Typhon's parents. Typhon supposedly wasn't native to
Urth and claimed not to have been born at all in the usual sense.
There is no logical reason for Typhon's parents to have been on the
_Whorl_ or in Mainframe at all.

Do we know for sure that the spirits he saw were manifested by the
Mainframe? One of them says, "You must go back, Silk. He sends us to
tell you." If "He" is the Outsider, there are no restrictions on who
could be manifested based on where they resided or died. They could be
Typhon's parent's, if Silk is a clone. Or they could be Typhon and
Mamelta, if he's a biological son. (Hopefully not Typhon and Kypris,
because that would be a bit incestuous -- Kypris' promise of "We'd be
together then" doesn't sound entirely platonic. Indeed, in RttW,
Silkhorn doubts that Silversilk in Pig would have bothered looking for
the ghost of Hyacinth as long as he had Kypris instead.)

I don't find the argument of Mint's non-reaction totally convincing.
The commanding expression, the enhancement of godly images in a
theophany, and the many representations of Pas in art and sculpture
could have accustomed Mint to a face like Silk's without any
confusion. The image Kypris shows Silk of what it would be like to be
an aspect of Pas is more convincing, as long as it wasn't Piaton's
head that was replaced. But I'm tempted to think it was Piaton's. The
Outsider has taken over Pas. He wouldn't yield the driver's seat to
Silk.
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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:09:15 +0000

Dave Tallman wrote:
> could be manifested based on where they resided or died.

I agree. And Silk did think it was the Outsider who had brought him back.
"You returned me to life, Outsider," (Calde, chap. 9, 331). The thing is,
this clone stuff in LS/SS is something I have been fighting against for
years, in long and ugly battles that gained notoriety here as the Clone
Wars. Even the particulars of who said what in that scene has been disputed
in furtherance of certain viewpoints. I don't want to re-hash all that, but
it has been argued that Silk's vision was of Mainframe heaven, and the text
does say that he saw the Aureate Path and lighted upon it just before he saw
the four people. Of course he found the Aureate Path to be underwhelming,
but he had been conditioned all his life to think of the afterlife in those
terms.

In other words, this topic has deep roots that I have to contend with that
underlie my arguments.

>They could be
> Mamelta, if he's a biological son.

Mamelta? I don't think Mamelta was Typhon's mistress back on Urth, the
analogue woman who became the digital Kypris, so to speak, if that's what
you mean. Anyway, Silk had seen Mamelta in the flesh and should have
recognized her in his vision of his biological mother; I can't see that he
did.

> (Hopefully not Typhon and Kypris,

I'm glad you said that. <g>

> confusion.

Could be. But I think it a little odd that no one in seven books ever
suggests that Silk, even at the age of forty-three, looks anything like the
Pas of art or theophany, and Mint saw him at that age. In the case of
Severian, an innkeeper pointed out to him how much he looked like an older
Ouen.

> The image Kypris shows Silk of what it would be like to be
> head that was replaced. But I'm tempted to think it was Piaton's.

I also think it was probably Piaton's head she had replaced with Silk's.
Even so, since Kypris was trying to connect Silk with Pas, if she showed him
their two heads and he recognized only one of them as his own, it is easier
for me to believe that was because the Pas head didn't really look like
Silk. Typhon's obsession with his own face suggests that his Pas image
would have been the same as it had been when scanned, as the fact that
Piaton's idiot head remained part of the digitized image of Pas reinforces.

> The

I agree that the Outsider wanted the Plan of Pas to be executed. But I don't
think he was pulling Pas' strings.

-Roy

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:31:33 +0000

> Roy C. Lackey wrote-
> in the Urth Cycle.[snip]Nature versus nurture issues aside, on the nature end a clone should look almost identical to the original.

I hate to get picky about the text but there is absolutely no emphatic 
reason to believe that Typhon would be singularly identifiable from 
either his Pas-avatar or the iconography associated with him. There are 
lots of people today who "look like Jesus" because they are thin and 
have longish hair and a beard.

I imagine any tall blonde-haired, clean shaven man on the Whorl would 
look like Typhon's head. Does one really suppose that any of the other 
gods could have been recognized by their original face? Anyway, how old 
was Typhon when he was scanned? Imagine one could view a photograph of 
the model for Michaelangelo's painting of God taken as a young man. 
Would anyone looking at it think "Say! He looks like God!"

Okay. So there's that.

But the idea that Typhon was egotistically--let alone 
"manically"--obsessed with his face is simply not true based on his 
discussion with Severian in Sword of the Lictor. Keeping his original 
head, in the original case,  was a practical issue:

"My physicians, of whom I naturally had the best of many worlds,
told me it might be possible for me to take a new body, their first thought
being to enclose my brain in the skull previously occupied by another. 
You see
the flaw in that?"[snip] The face would be lost, and it is the face that 
men are
accustomed to obey!"

So Typhon believed that if he had a new face, his subjects would treat 
him as an heir rather than the rule to whom they had already accespted. 
But in dealing with memory-wiped Cargo this was not important at all.** 
Pas's appearance was limited only by Typhon's sense of humor. The whole 
thing was intended as a joke. A parody. Otherwise, why give Piaton any 
role at all.

**That the waking Cargo was memory-wiped in the same fashion as as the 
Sleepers were seems the obvious implication. There is simply no way 
people would come to _believe in_ the Whorl Gods and forget their true 
natures in the few centuries since the Whorl left Urth. In fact, it is 
hard for me to see how any real observant religion could have ever been 
more than something for kooky cults.

How the Ayuntamiento were aware of the secret history of Typhon is 
probably an interesting story. But there are any number of ways they 
could have rediscovered that knowledge. It was likely no great secret to 
the non-Cargo who did not worship the gods as far as I can tell.

> Roy (to Jeff Wilson) -

A lack of positive indication is usually pretty weak evidence. In a 
Wolfe novel, sometimes it is evidence of the opposite. But even if 
Typhon were a middle-aged man, the baby-fat of his teen-age years 
stripped away, it would be enough difference that people would never 
remark "You look like Pas". Give it 15 or 20 years and people might 
refer to him as "That patera who even looks like Pas." But it wouldn't 
blow anyone away any more than having a guy play Santa Clause who also 
happens to have cherubic cheeks, a white beard, and a some extra meat 
around the middle.

> parents.

I don't know how to respond to this. This so totally ignores the elastic 
definitions Wolfe deliberately employs throughout the LS/SS novels for 
"father", "son", "sister", "daughter", even "mother". To try to nail 
down an emphatic definition of these terms is to totally miss the spirit 
of the novel. Why not insist that the team of scientists who extracted 
the embryos meet Silk in Mainframe? Tussah insists that the next Calde 
will be his "son"-- although he openly admits "he is not the son of my 
body". The Rajan calls three inhumans his sons and daughters (and, as 
for Jahlee, sometimes his "sister"). Magnesia/Marble calls Mucor her 
grand-daughter. In the case of one or two of the inhumans, there is 
indisputably more to those designations than random familiarity. I 
believe it is true in the other cases as well.

Yeah, Silk says the Outsider brought him back. I don't doubt that, just 
as it could be said for anyone with a near-death experience. But there 
is a genuine implication that Quetzal was a partial agent in 
accomplishing his return.

> Typhon supposedly wasn't native to Urth and claimed not to have
> parents to have been on the_Whorl_  or in Mainframe at all.

There  is also no reason for a random embryo loaded on the Whorl before 
leaving Urth to have parents in Mainframe either. The idea of a being 
such as Silk having multiple souls who feel for him as "parents" is 
peculiar. Yeah, his birth-mother, sure. But Tussah? Really? And for the 
reason you give here, it's hard to imagine who the other set of parents 
would be if they are not Typhon and "Kypris".

The meeting of Silk with his "parents" is weird. I find it unlikely that 
the scene means what we think it does or the motivations are as we 
suppose. If Silk is in Heaven, why would his parents care about 
accomplishing the Plan of Pas. Surely they are beyond such worries. If 
he is in the Mainframe, how does his uploaded psyche return to his body?

> Dave Tallman -
> Roy -

I don't think this quite gets at what the Outsider is saying. He says 
that a demon who imitates a god, eventually becomes a god. He doesn't 
say the god possesses the demon.

In other words, because Kypris is the most like the Outsider, her 
behavior and plans have the most quickly begun to parallel those of the 
Outsider. There are analogies to this throught the novel. Quetzel 
pretends to be a Good Shepherd and ends up taking the risks and even 
dying in the tunnels while leading his flock safely to the landers. 
Also, General Mint says that she doesn't care that Spider has 
infiltrated her ranks with spies because in order to be good spies they 
will have to be exceptionally good soldiers. In other words, but 
pretending to be loyal soldiers, their actions become those of loyal 
soldiers.

Hmmm...there is another parallel to Fifth Head of Cerberus in that.

u+16b9

---

From: DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:39:29 +0000

I emphatically agree with the following:
--- On?Mon, 9/13/10, James Wynn?<crushtv at gmail.com>?wrote:
From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) The face of Pas
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Monday, September 13, 2010, 1:31 PM

> in the Urth Cycle......
But the idea that Typhon was egotistically--let alone "manically"--obsessed with his face is simply not true based on his discussion with Severian in Sword of the Lictor. Keeping his original head, in the original case, was a practical issue.....
u+16b9
However, there must be some flexibility here:
"That the waking Cargo was memory-wiped in the same fashion as as the Sleepers were seems the obvious implication. There is simply no way people would come to _believe in_ the Whorl Gods and forget their true natures in the few centuries since the Whorl left Urth. In fact, it is hard for me to see how any real observant religion could have ever been more than something for kooky cults."
While this is reasonable, we have to allow room for the author to carry out his plans. The ease with which humans forget, or lose their faith or regain it or find it in something else, might be a starting point as well as it might be an end point for Wolfe.
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From: Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 02:46:04 +0000

Roy C. Lackey wrote:

> We ought to look at resemblances people really notice in the books and see
what explanations are possible.

1) Silk mistakes his astral-travelling older self for Patera Pike.  This was
in bad light and just a glimpse of the lower part of his face.
2) Severian mistakes the astral-travelling Silk for Master Malrubius. This
is more troubling because Sev got a longer look and he has a
near-photographic memory.

The Severian that Silk meets is probably an early iteration, maybe even
Sev1. He keeps his dog longer, and he has a relationship with Merryn and
probably not with Thecla. It seems like he draws inspiration from the
goodness of Silk, and maybe that "ghost" incident drove him out of the Guild
and to the north to become Autarch for the first time. The aquastor who
helps him in later iterations is probably drawn more from Silk than from the
old Malrubius.

But why does Silk look so much like Malrubius to Sev?
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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 04:14:22 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
[snip]
> head, in the original case,  was a practical issue:

Having one's head cut off to preserve the face is very radical, particularly
if there were other options available, such as clones and chem bodies that
could be made to look human, as was the demonstrated case with Potto and
Lemur. One for Siyuf was whipped out in about two-day's time.

> Sleepers were seems the obvious implication.

Neither the waking Cargo nor the Sleepers were memory-wiped, but in the case
of the Sleepers, at least, their brains were tinkered with. "You talked
about Mucor. The monarch's doctors tinkered with the minds of the men and
women he put into the whorl as Blood's surgeon did with hers. But more
skillfully, erasing as much as they dared of their patients' personal
lives." (LAKE, chap. 12, 299)

> There is simply no way

This is what the text has to say about it:

"There you have it. The surgeons found, however, that their patients'
memories of their ruler, his family, and some of his officials were too
deeply entrenched to be eliminated altogether. To obscure the record, they
renamed them. Their ruler, the man who called himself the monarch, became
Pas, the shrew he had married Echidna, and so on. She had borne him seven
children. We call them Scylla, Molpe, Tartaros, Hierax, Thelxiepeia, Phaea,
and Sphigx." (ibid)

What did Typhon's wife and young children have to do with anything? Why were
the memories of Typhon's family so deeply entrenched in the minds of the
people put aboard the _Whorl_ that not even a surgeon's knife could
eliminate them? For an answer, look to what Lemur next had to say: "The
monarch had wanted a son to succeed him. Scylla was as strong-willed as the
monarch himself, but female. It is a law of nature, as concerns our race,
that females are subject to males. Her father allowed her to found our city,
however, and many others. She founded your Chapter as well, a parody of the
state religion of her own whorl. She was hardly more than a child, you
understand, and the rest younger even than she." (ibid)

There is your "parody". Typhon and his family were entrenched in the minds
of the people of Urth because they had been forced upon the people of Urth,
possibly in the form of the state religion. The initial waking Cargo were a
captive congregation with even less choice in the matter than when they were
on Urth, regardless of the "true natures" of Typhon's screwed-up kids.
Whether or not worship of Typhon and his family was the state religion on
Urth, the fact remains that his family was entrenched in the minds of people
put aboard the _Whorl_, and the only solution found to what was apparently
some sort of problem associated with that fact was to rename them. Renamed,
they became gods in Mainframe. For the religion of Viron to be a parody of
the state religion on Urth, the state religion on Urth must have been
polytheistic, otherwise the solution would have generated more problems than
the solution was intended to remedy.

-Roy

---

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:42:45 +0000

>Lemur: "The monarch had wanted a son to succeed him. Scylla was as strong-willed as the
>monarch himself, but female. It is a law of nature, as concerns our race, that females are 
>subject to males. Her father allowed her to found our city, however, and many others. She 
>founded your Chapter as well, a parody of *the state religion of her own whorl*. She was hardly 
>more than a child, you understand, and the rest younger even than she."
 
>Roy C. Lackey: For the religion of Viron to be a parody of the state religion on Urth, the state 
>religion on Urth must have been polytheistic.
 
Typhon ruled a multi-planet empire. To me the above passage suggests that Typhon installed Scylla 
as the ruler of another planet and it is that place which has the polytheistic religion Viron's was 
based upon. The Empire had much interstellar travel and trade so I don't see that everything on The 
Whorl needed to come from Urth.

I have to wonder about Lemur's "law of nature, as concerns our race". He is more than slightly aware
of Trivigaunte. Does he consider Trivigaunte a violation of the laws of nature? Or is there perhaps
some question about which race of beings he is talking about?

---

From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:57:28 +0000

> Piaton's idiot head remained part of the digitized image of Pas 

It's worth noting that the *significance* of the two heads may be different 
in the case of digitised Pas, compared to biological Typhon.

Granted, in one vision we see Piaton struggling for breath.  But elsewhere 
Silk thinks of two heads as being a sign of wisdom, universality, or some 
such - he thinks of the Outsider as having two or more voices.  Now Kypris 
is not Silk, but she could have been suggesting some such idea.

It seems probable to me that Pas has failed to fully ressurect, and Silk is 
needed to replace some significant part of him.

- Gerry Quinn

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:28:54 +0000

>
>     Roy - Could be. But I think it a little odd that no one in seven books ever

Even people strongly disinclined to "clone-theories" have recognized 
strong associations between Silk and Typhon/Pas. I suspect Wolfe --who 
left far more subtle narrative details inexplicit-- considered such a 
reference to be too "on the nose".

> D. Tallman- We ought to look at resemblances people really notice in 
> the books and see what explanations are possible. 1) Silk mistakes his 
> astral-travelling older self for Patera Pike.  This was in bad light 
> and just a glimpse of the lower part of his face.

I now believe that the real Patera Pike could not have been the 
astral-traveling Rajan. Too many references to Pike as a young man. 
Since I consider the "mistaken identity" explanation unacceptable in a 
Wolfe novel, clones are the only explanation I can think of. If anyone 
can think of another reason Silk would mistake the Rajan for Pike, I'm 
open for business.

> 2) Severian mistakes the astral-travelling Silk for Master Malrubius. 
> This is more troubling because Sev got a longer look and he has a 

Don Doggett had a very wide-ranging clone theory that involved even 
Severian himself being a clone of one of the sons of Typhon. Obviously, 
with Time travel on the table in the Book and Urth of the New Sun, there 
are other explanations available. But clones should not be dispensed in 
this case for merely philosophical preferences.

Sev _does_ make blatant errors in memory where he should not. But I 
doubt that is the issue here.

> The Severian that Silk meets is probably an early iteration, maybe 
> even Sev1. He keeps his dog longer, and he has a relationship with 
> Merryn and probably not with Thecla. It seems like he draws 
> inspiration from the goodness of Silk, and maybe that "ghost" incident 
> drove him out of the Guild and to the north to become Autarch for the 
> first time. The aquastor who helps him in later iterations is probably 
> drawn more from Silk than from the old Malrubius.

Minor errors in timelines are notorious as errors authors make in 
sequels. I would prefer that-- since otherwise divining what is going on 
becomes even more daunting.

u+16b9
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:27:07 +0000

>> Me - But the idea that Typhon was egotistically--let alone
> Roy = Having one's head cut off to preserve the face is very radical, particularly

There are downsides to chem bodies as the Ayuntamiento discovered. Being 
downloaded into a chem body might reasonably give Typhon no more actual 
legal status than uploading his personality into a computer. There is no 
evidence of fast-grown clones being an available option in any of the 
novels. The point remains that Typhon said he used the method he did for 
practical reasons. Not egotistical ones.

>> Me - **That the waking Cargo was memory-wiped in the same fashion as as the
> Roy - Neither the waking Cargo nor the Sleepers were memory-wiped, but in the case
> of the Sleepers, at least, their brains were tinkered with.

Yes, The memories of the waking cargo were strategically wiped and added 
to. That's what I was getting at -- as described in quotes you offered. 
They didn't forget that they had left Urth. They probably knew initially 
what the purpose of their cards was (although the significance of their 
value might have unintentionally been softened). But they did not 
remember Typhon as normal human dictator. The augurs and sybils and the 
congregants thought of their religion as one practiced throughout their 
lives.

The *idea* of Typhon and his family could not be expunged. It is 
unlikely that any people on Urth thought of him as a two-headed being. 
He could not have been in that form long before he died.

And if there had been a religion centered around Typhon --one that could 
not be expunged from the memory of the Cargo-- then it would not have 
dissipated with his death as easily as his government did (dividing 
allegiance between the competing alien powers).

> Roy - What did Typhon's wife and young children have to do with anything? Why were
> possibly in the form of the state religion.

No. I do not see how this can be at all. The text you are providing does 
not map to your conclusion. Not at all.

The child Cilinia could not have designed all the traditions of the 
Chapter. No way. Typhon's committees did that on an ad hoc basis-- the 
same way they put together the Writings. When Lemur say she "founded" 
the Chapter and Viron and other cities, he is talking about a titular 
role--with little more input than a suggestion here and there. That's 
why Lemur stipulates that she was little more than a child.

The state religion on Urth was real one- an established one analogous to 
the Catholic Church...thus the similarities. Your explanation of the 
parody leaves little room for parody. Nor does it explain how religions 
of other cultures are also parodies of known world religions. For 
example, the parody of Islam among the Trivigaunte does not require a 
male god for ultimate devotion--everything is reversed from Islamic 
culture regarding male-female relations.

The reason Typhon and family are so ingrained in the minds of the 
Urthlings is obvious from looking at the personality cults established 
by lesser tyrants like Stalin and Saddam, and the obsession people have 
with their royal families (ala the U.K.)

> the solution was intended to remedy.

Urth's state religion was not centered around the worship of Typhon and 
his family. There's no evidence of a surviving cult of worship around 
Typhon in Severian's day. There is no hint that the people the 
Conciliator encountered viewed him that way.

I don't think Wolfe the author was so constrained that the state 
religion the Chapter parodied had to be polytheistic. Typhon only needed 
to have the personalities of his family to be redrawn in caricature. The 
Typhonic family was an issue, but the various religions (as I said, 
those of other cities were vastly different) he didn't care about at 
all. He played with them freely.

If I were to carry what you are arguing to its logical end, then Typhon 
was undermining his plan by having Echidna with snake hair and Scylla 
with tentacles.  And little Hierax as the god of death? Really?

u+16b9

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:40:17 +0000

> Gerry Quinn--It seems probable to me that Pas has failed to fully 
> ressurect, and Silk is needed to replace some significant part of him. 

That seems to be the implication based on the analogous situation with 
Scylla. Pas was wiped from the Mainframe. Fragments of him survived in 
Patera Jerboa, and IMO Oreb and Sand. But these were not sufficient for 
him to perform his required operations in Mainframe. That Silk was seen 
as an important viable supplement to Pas is one of the bigger hints that 
he is a clone of Typhon.

What the technicians could not have anticipated was that their clone 
would have been enlightened by the Outsider. Thus, in a sense, the 
Outsider has become Pas.

u+16b9

---

From: Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:41:29 +0000

"I don't think Wolfe the author was so constrained that the state religion
the Chapter parodied had to be polytheistic. "

Yes.  I've always taken the parody (of the state religion and of
Catholicism) to consist of such things as a celibate priesthood, celibate
nuns who teach children, confession, absolution, last rites, and the voided
cross.   The original religion does not have to have been polytheistic.

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 12:27 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> to. That's what I was getting at -- as described in quotes you offered. They
> didn't forget that they had left Urth. They probably knew initially what the
> purpose of their cards was (although the significance of their value might
> have unintentionally been softened). But they did not remember Typhon as
> normal human dictator. The augurs and sybils and the congregants thought of
> their religion as one practiced throughout their lives.
>
> The *idea* of Typhon and his family could not be expunged. It is unlikely
> that any people on Urth thought of him as a two-headed being. He could not
> have been in that form long before he died.
>
> Chapter. No way. Typhon's committees did that on an ad hoc basis-- the same
> way they put together the Writings. When Lemur say she "founded" the Chapter
> and Viron and other cities, he is talking about a titular role--with little
> more input than a suggestion here and there. That's why Lemur stipulates
> that she was little more than a child.
>
> the Catholic Church...thus the similarities. Your explanation of the parody
> leaves little room for parody. Nor does it explain how religions of other
> cultures are also parodies of known world religions. For example, the parody
> of Islam among the Trivigaunte does not require a male god for ultimate
> devotion--everything is reversed from Islamic culture regarding male-female
> relations.
>
> The reason Typhon and family are so ingrained in the minds of the Urthlings
> is obvious from looking at the personality cults established by lesser
> tyrants like Stalin and Saddam, and the obsession people have with their
> royal families (ala the U.K.)
>
>
> Urth's state religion was not centered around the worship of Typhon and his
> family. There's no evidence of a surviving cult of worship around Typhon in
> Severian's day. There is no hint that the people the Conciliator encountered
> viewed him that way.
>
> I don't think Wolfe the author was so constrained that the state religion
> the Chapter parodied had to be polytheistic. Typhon only needed to have the
> personalities of his family to be redrawn in caricature. The Typhonic family
> was an issue, but the various religions (as I said, those of other cities
> were vastly different) he didn't care about at all. He played with them
> freely.
>
> If I were to carry what you are arguing to its logical end, then Typhon was
> undermining his plan by having Echidna with snake hair and Scylla with
> tentacles.  And little Hierax as the god of death? Really?
>
> u+16b9
>

-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:44:54 +0000

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. ?I've always taken the parody (of the state religion and of
> cross. — The original religion does not have to have been polytheistic.

However - since you have (correctly in my opinion) opened up the
can-O-worms of parodied Catholicism - it might be argued that a
polytheistic religion, where all the gods are members of the same
family, could stand as a parody of the relations of the Holy Trinity
in Catholicsm.
-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:57:30 +0000

Dave Tallman wrote:
> 1) Silk mistakes his astral-travelling older self for Patera Pike.

I don't accept the premise. Wolfe, in that List questionnaire, said that
Pike on the stairs of the manse was a ghost. I see no reason to doubt him.

> This was

What scene do you mean? When Silkhorn scared the bejesus out of Gurloes
(RTTW, 396)? Sev just said the bird belonged to Malrubius in an attempt to
avoid being punished and Silkhorn obliged him by putting his hand on
Gurloes' shoulder. Gurloes thought he was seeing a ghost when he turned
around and saw the light-haired Silkhorn in what looked to be a guild cloak.
(Silkhorn on that trip didn't look like Horn, he looked like a younger Silk
than he did back on Blue [388].)  Sev knew that Oreb had come there with
Silkhorn; Oreb had been there when they went to the necropolis.

-Roy

---

From: Tim O'Donnell <timodonn at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:03:50 +0000

James Wynn wrote
>> head, in the original case,  was a practical issue:

I have long suspected (with little evidence to be fair) that Typhon needed
to keep his head/face/brain in order to be able to exercise his magic
powers.  These powers might survive cloning but perhaps his powers would not
survive uploading into a chem or into mainframe.  This would be a pretty
practical reason to keep his head with the story of his face a cover so as
not to hint at the real source of his power.
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:22:45 +0000

>> Jack Smith -
>> I've always taken the parody (of the state religion and of
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes- However - since you have (correctly in my opinion) opened up the

Also, the veneration of the Holy Family and saints. All of these were 
all presented as evidence, by Islamic competitors, that 8th c 
Christianity was polytheistic.

While there might have been some of that in there, mostly I think Wolfe 
found it most appealing to create a demonic version Greek mythology as 
well as tossing in some Etruscan rituals and forms and shunting the 
whole thing onto a gnostic foundation.

u+16b9

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:29:23 +0000

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:22 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> found it most appealing to create a demonic version Greek mythology as well
> as tossing in some Etruscan rituals and forms and shunting the whole thing
> onto a gnostic foundation.

I agree about Greek, and don't know much about Etruscan stuff, but
take it from a Catholic: the rituals and forms of the Chapter are dead
on parodies of Catholic forms and rituals.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:36:56 +0000

> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:22 AM, James Wynn<crushtv at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
> on parodies of Catholic forms and rituals

I agree. The shriving. The "sign of addition". It all says "Roman 
Catholic!" in all-caps. But "augur" and the practice of "augury" is from 
the Etruscan religions. "Sybil" is a Latin word, derived from the Greek. 
So it harkens back to pre-Christian Italy as well. Also the form of 
temples having holes in their ceilings.

u+16b9

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:37:25 +0000

> Pike on the stairs of the manse was a ghost. I see no reason to doubt him.

Me either. Here's the text:

4. /Was what Silk saw in the manteion Pike's ghost, or an aquastor, or 
what?/
-- It was seen in the manse, not the manteion; it wasn't machine made.

27. /Is Pike's ghost really Quetzal?/
-- No.

I believe in an interview, he was asked if Pike's ghost were a "real 
ghost" and Wolfe replied that he was a "real ghost".

The Rajan is not machine made. In fact, he is a genuine ghost in that he 
is a disembodied spirit of someone who has died -- Horn and Silk.

But the figure of "Pike" vanishing in a "silver mist" simply does not 
imply a "gothic" ghost.

Remember that when Wolfe was answering these questions no one had yet 
read "The Book of the Short Sun". Thumb through those volumes and note 
how many references you get to ghosts. The Rajan twice (at least) denies 
to Severian that he is a ghost. He also denies that he the spirit of a 
dead man. But we, the readers, know that denial is ironic. He has died 
twice...three times if you count the time Silk died in the pit. His 
spirit is out of his body. The only sense that Severian is wrong is in 
that he thinks they are ghosts like Catherine Earnshaw in "Wuthering 
Heights". Silk does seem to sort of encounter those types of ghosts in 
his dreams. Pikes ghost is just obviously a different sort.

u+16b9
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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:12:01 +0000

James Wynn wrote:
> legal status than uploading his personality into a computer.

Legal status!? What would an egotistical tyrant care about legal status? Was
he going to be voted out of office or something?

> There is no
> novels.

Thecla was just a few years older than Severian, yet her fully-grown khaibit
was working in a whore house. Lest anyone misunderstand, I do not subscribe
to clone theories in LS/SS. Not at all. I'm just pointing out a fact in NS.

> The point remains that Typhon said he used the method he did for

That is your view. It is not mine.

[snip]
> He could not have been in that form long before he died.

I agree with that much.

[snip]
> why Lemur stipulates that she was little more than a child.

Regardless of who designed the traditions of Viron, the fact remains that
the city, complete with its scores of manteions, was already built when the
first people came aboard -- Marble was there at that time and said so; she
was working as a maid at the Sun Street manteion. The Sacred Windows were up
and running with Viron's Chapter in charge of daily operations in the
manteions. And like it or not, the city's Charter was said to have been
written by Scylla: "The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and
corrected by Pas." (LAKE, chap. 7, 188) Thus, her role in the founding of
Viron and its institutions was not just titular.That she was a girl of about
thirteen at the time she was scanned is not my problem to explain; that's
the way Wolfe wrote it.

-Roy

---

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:31:08 +0000

>Tim O'Donnell: I have long suspected (with little evidence to be fair) that Typhon needed
>to keep his head/face/brain in order to be able to exercise his magic powers.  These powers 
>might survive cloning but perhaps his powers would not survive uploading into a chem or into 
>mainframe.  This would be a pretty practical reason to keep his head with the story of his 
>face a cover so as not to hint at the real source of his power.

I find Typhon's superhuman powers of telepathy and clairvoyance to be quite significant (though
most often glossed over in discussions of him). No other characters in BotNS that I can think of
have similar powers. Maybe Tzadkiel, who seem to speak to Severian during a dream.

I think the  Mandragora's similar powers support your suggestion that Typhon's powers can be 
duplicated via cloning. (mythological Typhon being a man-dragon)

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:34:13 +0000

>> James Wynn-
> Roy-

A tyrant must induce people to obey him. Would anyone obey a robot? 
Mamelta's attitude toward them makes me think the idea would be 
preposterous. Secular tyrants like Stalin and Saddam maintained total 
control even as thet killed and terrorized everyone around them. It's 
almost like magic act. Getting venal people work hard to set up a system 
with you yourself at the top is a subject that has always fanscinated 
historians. Xenophon was not the first.

>> JW- There is no
> Roy- Thecla was just a few years older than Severian, yet her fully-grown khaibit

And presumably she was implanted around the same time as Thecla.

>> JW - The point remains that Typhon said he used the method he did for
> Roy - That is your view. It is not mine.

Hmmm...We are talking about what Typhon _says_, right? I'd be curious to 
hear your alternate reading on what Typhon _says_ his reasons were:

I gather two relevant points here 1) Implanting his brain in a young 
body was an option for his doctors. 2)Typhon felt he had to keep his 
face because it was the face his subjects had grown "accustomed to obey".

> thirteen at the time she was scanned is not my problem to explain; that's

You need to read that text a little more carefully, Roy. What Remora 
says is:

"The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and corrected by Pas. So 
it-um-asserts."

Even Remora, retains skepticism regarding what the Charter says 
regarding its own history.
But even then, what Remora and Lemur think about the founding of the 
Whorl should be taken with the same degree of skepticism: "So he 
asserts". And that's the way Wolfe wrote it.

u+16b9

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:42:24 +0000

Whorl are in "our" future or not, and thus whether the Commonwealth's 
state religion was a decayed Catholicism, or something that might have 
arisen in a parallel universe from some universal desire for such a 
thing. But---

I am always struck by the way these trappings suggest that this is in 
fact what has happened---that this iteration is one without a "savior" 
and therefore with hollow versions of the "true religion." Especially 
the "sign of addition"---such a perfectly logical alternative 
explanation for making the sign of the cross. All these real roots seem 
to have been combined out of a yearning for Catholicism by people who 
could not have known it.

Either that, or the religion was constructed by people seeking to 
imitate Catholicism without understanding it, like amateur 
archaeologists. Certainly there is evidence for that kind of deliberate, 
almost scientific syncretism. And on the Whorl, both explanations may be 
true.

On 9/14/2010 1:36 PM, James Wynn wrote:
>  On 9/14/2010 12:29 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> Catholic!" in all-caps. But "augur" and the practice of "augury" is 
> from the Etruscan religions. "Sybil" is a Latin word, derived from the 
> Greek. So it harkens back to pre-Christian Italy as well. Also the 
> form of temples having holes in their ceilings.
>
> u+16b9
> ---
> avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean.
> Virus Database (VPS): 100914-1, 09/14/2010
> Tested on: 9/14/2010 1:38:08 PM
> avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2010 ALWIL Software.
> http://www.avast.com
>
>
>
>

---

From: Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:49:18 +0000

About the apparition of "Patera Pike" --
1) Pike was old when he died. RttW p. 40 says he was about eighty.
2) The apparition is called "the old auger," which happens to fit the future
Silk perfectly.
3) Wolfe in the Q+A session didn't ever say it was a real ghost. He said it
wasn't machine generated and it wasn't Quetzal in disguise. That's all. If
he was ever more definite in another interview I'd like to see the citation.
Even if he was it could still fir Silk/Rajan.
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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 04:42:02 +0000

> on parodies of Catholic forms and rituals.

Sure, it's easy to see that the religion of Viron is a parody of
Catholicism. It it also easy to see how a parody could be made in a
Hindu-based city like the one Gaon must have been based on. It is not so
easy to see it in an Islam-based city like Trivigaunte. Lemur said that
Viron's religion was a parody of the state religion on Urth, but that says
nothing about the other couple-hundred cities on the _Whorl_. But what he
said about Typhon and his family being deeply entrenched in the minds of
people put aboard the ship does apply to all the other cities.

Though the religion in Trivigaunte in Silk's day may have degenerated so far
as to be all but beyond recognition, it cannot have been that way on Day
One. What to do with 9+ gods in such a monotheistic religion? Did all the
other gods just agree to step aside and let Sphigx have her way?

-Roy

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 04:44:12 +0000

> A tyrant must induce people to obey him. Would anyone obey a robot?

Obviously so. People obeyed Potto and Lemur and the fake Siyuf. People
didn't know they were robots.

> "The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and corrected by Pas. So

I did read the text carefully, James. That's why I wrote "the city's Charter
was **said** to have been written by Scylla".

> asserts". And that's the way Wolfe wrote it.

Yes he did. And if you don't like it that Hoof described the astral Cilinia
as looking like "a girl old enough to take care of other sprats but not old
enough to get married" (RTTW, 347), or that Cilinia herself, while looking
at her remains on Urth, said "I died young. It can't have been long after I
was scanned for the _Whorl_." (392), you can claim that it was only Hoof who
made the assertions and it doesn't mean what it seems to mean if it doesn't
suit your notion of the founding of Viron or its Chapter or whatever point
you really wanted to make.

Look at your above assertions about what Cilinia could or could not have had
to do with the founding of the Chapter, and that it was done by "Typhon's
committees". Where did you get that? I stated what the text had to say about
it, along with corroborative indications that the infrastructure for the
Chapter was in place from the get-go. Which position merits more skepticism?

-Roy

---

From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:20:23 +0000

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com>
> on parodies of Catholic forms and rituals.

There are certainly some rituals and forms analogous to those of 
Catholicism, although I think it should not be exaggerated - Catholicism is 
not the only religion with hierarchies of male priests, for example.  The 
'Peace of Pas' does of course correspond closely to Last Rites, or Extreme 
Unction as it was once called, and is IMO the closest to a specifically 
Catholic ritual.  But some Protestant denominations have Last Rites too, and 
the corresponding Jewish ritual does not seem so different.

I think Wolfe would not think it strange to have a convergence of rituals - 
quite the opposite in fact.  Indeed, I think he would say that rituals tend 
to be conserved across religions and cultures.  For some hints as to this, 
consider Severian's discussion of the coin he was given by Vodalus, or the 
way hillmen children are washed in rivers after birth (Fifth Head of 
Cerberus, 2nd novella).  The meanings of rituals and forms may be multiple 
and debatable, but the ritual is conserved.  Could we even say: the 
Outsider's two or many voices, Pas's two heads, the Holy Trinity, even the 
pantheons of polytheism in general?  Silk finds a connection between the 
Outsider and Pas's two heads, but to find a connection is not to prove a 
parody or a derivation of any sort.

In short, I don't think we know enough about the state riligion of Urth in 
Typhon's time to identify it as Catholicism, though the sign of addition 
does indicate some Christian roots.  (Elsewhere Quetzal mentions 'Ah Lah' as 
a forgotten god, and refers to a somewhat modified version of the story of 
Adam and Eve.  And the Chrasmological Writings seem to take a pinch of 
everything in the line of religion and related philosophy.)

- Gerry Quinn

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:35:15 +0000

>> Me -

Typhon could not have prevented those closest to him from knowing that, 
and those are the ones he had to fear and control. While the 
Ayuntamiento had reasons to keep their chem-nature secret (more than 
they even realized), robots on Urth were robots. On the Whorl they were 
"chemical persons".

>> Me-

Sigh. Roy, Roy, Roy. Do not pretend you do not understand the difference 
between hearsay and first hand information.

> committees". Where did you get that?

 From an interview I recalled with Wolfe where he discussed how the 
Writings were put together. But, mainly, Typhon didn't strike me as a 
big reader.

> Roy-
> I stated what the text had to say about

Correction: You stated what *Remora* said the Charter said about it. You 
can't just say "the text says". Context is key.
What I'm saying is that I'm as skeptical about what the Charter says 
about itself as Remora seems to be. But you are right that typically in 
a Wolfe novel, when someone says something emphatically or expresses 
skepticism about something then the opposite is true. (Oh. Wait. You 
didn't say that. That's what _I_ say.) So maybe Remora's skepticism is 
proof that along with all her other activities betraying humanity to 
aliens, Cilinia was in the playroom designing the laws, streets & 
buildings, and religious ordinances of Viron and _many other cities as 
well_.

Or maybe it was the Mainframe effigies of Pas and Scylla who did that. 
After all, that is _precisely_ what the "text says".

u+16b9

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:59:27 +0000

> It is not so

The concept of monotheism as a central doctrinal signifier was 
foundational to Islam from the beginning. "There is no god by God" is 
the first doctrinal tenant of a Muslim.

As for how such a practice could arise, there are at least two 
possibilities. 1) The memory monotheism was so ingrained in the minds of 
original the Islamic citizens of Trivigaunte that they naturally 
returned to that belief immediately. 2) The scientists recognized in 
advance that monotheism was so deeply ingrained as designed the city's 
religion around it.
Either way, it seems unlikely that Lemur's knowledge was comprehensive 
regarding the cultural/political situation on Urth and the requirements 
of the Whorl's design.

As for why the other gods did not compete for worshipers there:
Apparently, there are ways to summon and avoid summoning gods. Quetzal 
managed to completely avoid having any gods appear in Viron after the 
death of Pas and Tussah. I guess forbidding child sacrifice was one way, 
but I imagine there could be others. Presumably, the Trivigaunte were 
only interested in attracting the interest of Sphigx. They might well 
have been quite adept at it.

u+16b9

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:17:29 +0000

This statement as odd on a number of levels, of course, but one way that 
it did is that it felt like a FAIL regarding Oreb's characteristic 
powers of speech. Only two words, fine, but THREE syllables. But  I 
figured, well, it's Wolfe's story.

However, while rereading interviews yesterday I came across this 
statement by Wolfe:

http://www.sfsite.com/03b/gw124.htm

Wolfe: "Of course all of us speak differently to different audiences. 
Auk talks like I do when I'm talking to the dogs. Almost no one seems to 
notice how Oreb talks, but _Oreb can manage only two syllables_: 'Good 
bird! Watch out! Bad boy. Iron girl. Good Silk!' "

I don't know what it signifies, but based on what Wolfe says, it ought 
to mean something.

u+16b9

---

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:48:34 +0000

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 2:17 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
> ?At the end of RttW Oreb says "Good Fishing".
> This statement as odd on a number of levels, of course, but one way that it
> did is that it felt like a FAIL regarding Oreb's characteristic powers of
> speech. Only two words, fine, but THREE syllables. But ?I figured, well,
> it's Wolfe's story.
>
> However, while rereading interviews yesterday I came across this statement
> by Wolfe:
>
> Wolfe: "Of course all of us speak differently to different audiences. Auk
> talks like I do when I'm talking to the dogs. Almost no one seems to notice
> how Oreb talks, but _Oreb can manage only two syllables_: 'Good bird! Watch
> out! Bad boy. Iron girl. Good Silk!' "
>
> I don't know what it signifies, but based on what Wolfe says, it ought to
> mean something.

Doesn't that quote mean that nothing odd is going on (beyond the
obvious Gospel allusion or whatever)?

"Iron girl" is 3 syllables by my count, as is "good fishing".

-- 
gwern

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:53:54 +0000

> "Iron girl" is 3 syllables by my count, as is "good fishing".

"Iron girl" is two syllables if you have a Texas accent.

u+16b9

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:54:45 +0000

> "Iron girl" is 3 syllables by my count, as is "good fishing".

Given Wolfe's geographical history, he probably pronounces "iron" as
one syllable: "eyrn."

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:14:07 +0000

> regarding the cultural/political situation on Urth and the requirements

Both of those possibilities ignore my point. I'll say it again. If memories
of Typhon and his family were too deeply entrenched in the minds of people
put aboard the _Whorl_ to be eliminated, how could/would they have initially
manifested themselves in a monotheistic religion like Islam? Either the
memories of the Nine were there on Day One or they weren't.

> have been quite adept at it.

Quetzal could not control the gods. No sacrifice of any kind was required
for the manifestation of a god, as Kypris coming to the glass at Orchid's
and to the glass on the airship proves.

-Roy

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:17:22 +0000

> can't just say "the text says". Context is key.

Yes it is, James. You seem to be confusing Chapter and Charter. Look back at
what I wrote. You broke up my paragraph, which is perfectly okay, but the
antecedent for the pronoun "it" in the second half of the paragraph is in
the first half of the paragraph, i.e., the founding of the Chapter. The
Remora quote had to do with the Charter, but the earlier quote about the
founding of the Chapter was from Lemur.

-Roy

---

From: Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 19:19:44 +0000

You're right about Oreb only using one-syllable words.  Perhaps the
two-syllable "fishing" implies some sort of development in our feathered
friend.

Oreb is limited in speech but not in understanding.  At one point the story
shifts to Oreb's point of view.  He dines on the face of the dead Dace, and
then reflects:  "The dead one had been good.  There could be no doubt about
that.  Friendly in the reserved fashion Oreb preferred alive, and delicious,
dead."  (Calde, Ch. 6)

Wolfe's humor is like Faulkner's in *As I Lay Dying.*

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 2:17 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

>  At the end of RttW Oreb says "Good Fishing".
> speech. Only two words, fine, but THREE syllables. But  I figured, well,
> it's Wolfe's story.
>

-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:39:07 +0000

> memories of the Nine were there on Day One or they weren't.

But, Roy, the citizens of Trivigaunted were not _unaware _of the other 
gods. They merely only honored Sphigx. So their memories of the Typhonic 
family was dealt with by their _knowledge_ of the rest of Pas' 
family.And of course, expunging the memory of Typhon's family was not 
even an issue for subsequent generations.

> and to the glass on the airship proves.

Not entirely. But Quetzal believed he could _affect_ the occurrence of 
theophanies, or at least he said he believed he could:

"Before Kypris manifested here on Scylsday, the Windows of our city had 
been empty for decades. I can't take credit for that, it wasn't my 
doing. But I've done everything in my power to prevent theophanies. It 
hasn't been much, but I've done what I could. I proscribed human 
sacrifice, and got made law, for one thing. I admit I'm proud of that." 
[Epiphany of the Long Sun,  page 124]

"I'm in contact with religious leaders in Urbs, Wick, and other cities, 
cities where his children have boasted of killing Pas." [p 131]

"Now you see why I've tried to prevent theophanies, don't you, Patera 
Calde?"
[page 132]

Quetzal implies that there were other factors affecting the lack of 
theophanies in Viron.

> founding of the Chapter was from Lemur.

I supposed I lost track of which you were arguing for at that moment. 
But the dubiousness regarding what the Charter says about it's founding 
and what version Lemur has heard or extrapolated on what he has heard 
about the founding of the Chapter are identical. If it is dubious that 
Cilinia wrote the Charter for Viron and all the other cities that Scylla 
was credited for founding, then it is equally dubious that she designed 
the formalities  of the Chapter. We're told what Lemur told Silk--to 
mock and belittle Silk's piety. We're also told lots of other things 
about the Whorl with which we can judge how much to credit what he says.

I think we've gone off track, though. Who cares if Cilinia was a child 
prodigy who designed multiple governments, cities, and religions in 
detail? I don't think any of this matters as to whether there was a 
polytheistic, state religion of Urth centered around Typhon's family. 
And I don't see much to support yet that there was. The religion that 
the Chapter was an evil parody of was surely Roman Catholicism (or a 
Briahtic analog). And that's why Silk was "a good man in a bad religion" 
as Wolfe called it...as bad a religion as Wolfe was inclined to imagine.

u+16b9

---

From: Adam Thornton IO <adam at io.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:05:41 +0000

> I don't know what it signifies, but based on what Wolfe says, it ought 

Quite apart from _Orphans of the Sky_, I'm pretty sure that it's the
Outsider speaking through Oreb to his Fisher of Men.

Adam

---

From: Mr Thalassocrat <thalassocrat08 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:55:52 +0000

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 4:44 AM, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:

> If memories
On my hypothesis, the Triv culture on the Whorl was an artificial construct,
so Islam needn't figure into at all. (Hopefully I'm not missing the point
here!)

As to how the Whorl-dwellers were "converted", it's worth recalling Auk's
meeting with Tartaros in the tunnels (Calde Ch.6). It happens at the "oldest
altar", of which Tartaros says: "When the first people came here, Auk, they
were shown how we desired to be worshipped. Soon, they were made to forget.
They did, but because they had seen what they had seeen, a part of them
remebered, and when they found our altars on the inner surface, they
sacrificed as we had taught them. First of all, here."
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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:41:26 +0000

> Even if he was it could still fir Silk/Rajan.

It has long been my belief that Wolfe said Pike in the manse was a ghost,
and I know I'm not the only one with that impression. If he didn't state so
expressly elsewhere, this is the best I can do to reconstruct the belief. At
the time of the Q&A, the SS concept of astral travel was unknown to us.
Given the way the first Pike question was phrased, when Wolfe's answer
eliminated an aquastor and the answer to the second Pike question eliminated
Quetzal, a ghost was what was left. Sorry, but that's the best I can come up
with.

-Roy

---

From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 05:27:32 +0000

> At the end of RttW Oreb says "Good Fishing".
...

Sorry, where does he say that?  In a quick look, I could only find where Daisy 
writes it five times at the very end of the book.

Jerry Friedman

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:29:42 +0000

>> Dave Tallman -
>> 3) Wolfe in the Q+A session didn't ever say it was a real ghost.
>> He said it wasn't machine generated and it wasn't Quetzal in
>> disguise. That's all. If he was ever more definite in another
>> interview I'd like to see the citation. Even if he was it
>> could still fir Silk/Rajan.
>
> Roy -

I do remember -or imagine I remember- an interview in which someone 
tried to pin Wolfe down about Pike's ghost. As I remember it, they asked 
was Pike's ghost a real ghost or what and Wolfe replied "It was a real 
ghost." But I cannot find that interview by googling. Given that, 
perhaps we should accept, for the sake of argument, it that it he never 
said it. If we accept that Wolfe only said "It was not machine-made" it 
seriously under-cuts the assessment that it was a Gothic ghost, IMO. 
Because that is a very occult response.

But even if he DID say it, it is still obvious to me that "real" or not, 
it was not a Gothic ghost. Only Terry Pratchet or Robert Asprin would 
write a scene that way with an old-fashioned ghost.

u+16b9

---

From: Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:03:15 +0000

"The Wolfean Oracle Speaks"

An interview by Michael Andre-Driussi:

4. Was what Silk saw in the manteion Pike's ghost, or an aquastor, or what?
-- It was seen in the manse, not the manteion; it wasn't machine made. [DRL:
See question 27.]

27. Is Pike's ghost really Quetzal? -- No. [DRL: Which blandly leaves the
possibility that the `ghost' might still be another of the alien inhumi....
See question 4; also, below.]

I don't have the date of this interview or where it was conducted.

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 10:29 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

>  :
> I do remember -or imagine I remember- an interview in which someone tried
> to pin Wolfe down about Pike's ghost. As I remember it, they asked was
> Pike's ghost a real ghost or what and Wolfe replied "It was a real ghost."
> But I cannot find that interview by googling. Given that, perhaps we should
> accept, for the sake of argument, it that it he never said it. If we accept
> that Wolfe only said "It was not machine-made" it seriously under-cuts the
> assessment that it was a Gothic ghost, IMO. Because that is a very occult
> response.
>
> But even if he DID say it, it is still obvious to me that "real" or not, it
> was not a Gothic ghost. Only Terry Pratchet or Robert Asprin would write a
> scene that way with an old-fashioned ghost.
>
> u+16b9
>
>
>

-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:51:54 +0000

Mantis. He only acted as a go between for members of this List asking 
questions about the Book of the Long Sun. The sources are not very easy 
to find by searching the Urth.net archives so I'll post them here:

Mantis announces Wolfe's agreement to the Q&A:
http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0005/0258.shtml

Q&A 1
http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0006/0350.shtml

Q&A 2
http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0007/0511.shtml

> 4. Was what Silk saw in the manteion Pike's ghost, or an aquastor, or 
> what? -- It was seen in the manse, not the manteion; it wasn't machine 
> made. [DRL: See question 27.]
>
> 27. Is Pike's ghost really Quetzal? -- No. [DRL: Which blandly leaves 
> the possibility that the `ghost' might still be another of the alien 
> inhumi.... See question 4; also, below.]
>

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:30:28 +0000

Andrew wrote:
> remembered, and when they found our altars on the inner surface, they

That quote doesn't make sense. I wonder if it's tied to what Lemur said
about entrenched memories of Typhon and his family being too deep to
eliminate, so the Nine were renamed. Let's parse the Tartaros quote.

At first glance, the first sentence seems straightforward enough, but then
you have to wonder what the first people were doing down in the tunnels. The
area with the altar and a Window was wider than the tunnels that led to it,
but it's unclear just how large the area was. The chamber was not too far
from the Pit. So was it some sort of orientation center for new arrivals who
had just been brought up to the ship in landers?

Even if that is so, why were they then made to forget what they had been
taught? Is this where Lemur's comments come in? Maybe I better give that
quote again: "The surgeons found, however, that their patients' memories of
their ruler, his family, and some of his officials were too deeply
entrenched to be eliminated altogether. To obscure the record, they renamed
them. Their ruler, the man who called himself the monarch, became Pas, the
shrew he had married Echidna, and so on."

Now to the third sentence of the Tartaros quote. After being made to forget
how to worship properly, complete with sacrifices, when the first people saw
the altars set up in the cities that had been built for them, they went back
to worshipping as they had been taught, complete with sacrifices. What had
changed?

I really have no vested interest one way or the other in the notion that
Typhon and his family had been worshipped on Urth, so if anyone has a better
explanation for Tartaros' statement, I'd like to see it. And that is not a
challenge.

BTW, while it is true that there is no evidence in the Urth Cycle that
Typhon and his family had been worshipped  back on Urth, neither is there
any evidence that Catholicism or some approximation thereof had been
practiced in Typhon's time.

-Roy

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:25:14 +0000

> Andrew wrote:
>> "When the first people came here, Auk, they were shown how we desired
>> to be worshipped. Soon, they were made to forget. They did, but because
>> they had seen what they had seeen, a part of them remebered, and when
>> they found our altars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had
>> taught them. First of all, here."
>
> Roy-

Let me take a shot at it.

1) I would suppose that when Tautaros says "when the first people came 
here" he means "came to the Whorl generally".

2) As they traveled deeper into the Whorl from the outside, they 
encountered Tautaros' altars first because they were closer to the 
outside. Based on their training, they knew what to do when they 
encountered an alter. If they had no animals to sacrifice, they chose 
one of their fellow colonists.

3) Presumably, when Taurtaros says "First of all, here" he is only 
talking to Auk specifically about the Vironese colonists, but the 
principle would be the same in other cities.

> to worshipping as they had been taught, complete with sacrifices. What had

I _think_ you are misinterpreting what Tartaros is saying here. I don't 
take this to mean they were made to forget specifically what they were 
taught about worship. They were taught how to worship just before the 
memory wiping specifically so they _would_ remember it right after the 
procedure. What they forgot--at least to some degree-- was what they did 
before. This seems to me to imply that the memory tinkering was not a 
purely medical process. Memory wiping was medical. But to implant 
altered knowledge and memories, you had to teach it to them before the 
mind wiping. What's in short term memory survives.

> practiced in Typhon's time.

Aren't the many close analogs between the Chapter and Roman Catholicism 
evidence of this? If Lemur is entirely correct that the Chapter was a 
parody of the state religion of Urth, then that religion is likely to 
have been something like Roman Catholicism. It is clear that the Gospels 
have survived to Typhon's time and been incorporated into the Writings 
because Silk refers to the event of Jesus casting out the money changers.

"The sellers never extended a single bit's credit, true. They gave 
credit to no augur, and certainly they would not extend it to an augur 
whose manteion stood in the poorest quarter of the city. Yet the 
Outsider could not be denied, so they would have to. He would have to be 
firm with them, extremely firm. Remind them that the Outsider was known 
to esteem them last among men already that according to the Writings he 
had once (having possessed and enlightened a fortunate man) beaten them 
severely in person."[Nightside, page 17]

But it is also possible that Lemur's knowledge was inaccurate in some 
ways. A skeptic like Lemur in Trivigaunte might say the same about the 
religion there and have been *just* as accurate/inaccurate. Both RC and 
Islam *have* been state religions at certain times in history.

u+16b9

---

From: DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:23:10 +0000

In fact, if one wants to take the fact that Wolfe modeled the Commonwealth on Byzantium (with the Korean War thrown in for local color) to its logical conclusion, the period before the Autarchs would necessarily be characterized by paganism, animal sacrifice, and a state religion centered on the ruler.

--- On Thu, 9/16/10, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:

BTW, while it is true that there is no evidence in the Urth Cycle that
Typhon and his family had been worshipped? back on Urth, neither is there
any evidence that Catholicism or some approximation thereof had been
practiced in Typhon's time.

-Roy

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From: Mr Thalassocrat <thalassocrat08 at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:32:42 +0000

> had just been brought up to the ship in landers?
That's my guess.

> taught?

I read it as "made to forget in general": their memories were wiped to a
large extent.

> Is this where Lemur's comments come in? Maybe I better give that
The memories of Typhon et al went too deep for this wipe to eradicate them,
and so they were used to construct the Whorl pantheon.

> to worshipping as they had been taught, complete with sacrifices. What had
Well, the worship they had been taught in the "orientation area", which had
been attached to their deep memories of Typhon et al & so survived the wipe.

> Here from memory is my list of the little we know about religion on Urth in
Typhon's day (probably incomplete, possibly incorrect):

- The peasants Sev and young Gunnie encounter immediately upon their return
from Yesod sacrifice to "sky powers" in high places.
- The term "Increate" is used, which I think implies at least a top-dog
creator God, if not actual monotheism, possibly just amongst the educated
classes.
- The saint-name naming convention is in place already, which is meaningful
here to the extent that the names given in the text aren't just a
translation artifect.
- If the St Catherine story comes down to BOTNS time from Typhon's time,
then there is some reason to suppose that the names may actually be "our"
saints' names. It seems to be the same as "our" St Catherine's story,
complete with "our" Emperor Maxentius.

I don't think there's enough info to draw firm conclusions. Every reference
to "our" religions on the Whorl could be an artifiact of the Whorl
cultrual-construction team. Taking Whorlish religions as "parodies of the
Urth state religion" doesn't tell us much. For example, Catholic ritual etc
elements in the Vironese worship can be seen as elements inserted by the
Whorl team to mess up a polytheistic original; or as part of a "state
religion" messed up by a polytheistic religion created by the team.
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:51:50 +0000

> Mr Thalassocrat wrote-
> Well, the worship they had been taught in the "orientation area", 
> which had been attached to their deep memories of Typhon et al & so 
> survived the wipe.

Something a little remarkable is implied here, I think. Had Typhon had 
his druthers --Lemur believes-- the colonists would have had no memory 
of him or his family. The system of gods ruling the Cargo on the Whorl 
is a workaround. "They will remember us no matter what we do, so we will 
distort their memory of us". This is contrary to our typical view of 
Typhon's egotism. Perhaps, if they remembered the Typhons, they would 
remember the rest of their lives on Urth and their lot aboard the Whorl. 
Perhaps, the concern was that if they retained their memories, then they 
not be content to remain as cargo and join forces to take over the ship. 
Keep them confused so they could be controlled.

u+16b9

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From: Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:09:46 +0000

James Wynn wrote (quoting Roy Lackey):
>> Typhon and his family had been worshipped “back on Urth, neither is there
> evidence of this” If Lemur is entirely correct that the Chapter was a

Consider the religion of Urth a thousand years later. It seems to
contain reminiscences of Catholicism (or at least of some form of
Christianity which makes much of ritual); names of saints like
Katharine and Barbara, crosses (Dorcas refers to roods, and there's
the landmark Ctesiphon's Cross), a paschal candle. True, it also seems
to contain elements derived from Hinduism, and in any case it's been
overlaid by the cult of the Conciliator and the New Sun, but it's
likely that some elements in it go back further than that. (As I
mentioned in another thread, this need not be seen as a direct
survival from our time; it can bepart of the cultural memory returned
to humans by machines, as recounted by Cyriaca.)

Also. Severian dreams of a ritual taking place in the Citadel chapel
at a time before the old sun was darkened, which invoves bread, wine
and a knife - not exactly the Christian eucharist, but something like
it.

---

From: Matthew Weber <palaeologos at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:13:41 +0000

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com
> wrote:

> and a knife - not exactly the Christian eucharist, but something like

In the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, the (leavened) bread used in Communion is
cut with a triangular-bladed knife, referred to as the Spear.

-- 
Matt +

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.
    Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65-8 B.C.), Epistles, bk. III (Ars
Poetica) [c. 8 B.C.], l. 25
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From: Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:14:25 +0000

Thanks for the links.

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 2:51 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Jack, the title is misleading. It was not an interview performed by
> questions about the Book of the Long Sun. The sources are not very easy to
> find by searching the Urth.net archives so I'll post them here:
>
>> what? -- It was seen in the manse, not the manteion; it wasn't machine made.
>> [DRL: See question 27.]
>>

-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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From: Nicholas <nickjost at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 01:29:42 +0000

As is mentioned by others the Orthodox liturgy explicitly uses a knife. It is ritually inserted prior to a formal cutting motion being made. Since Wolfe has mentioned that the state is based on a Byzantine pattern this could indicate a eucharistic ceremony. That being said I haven't read the books about the whorl so I can't comment further.

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 11:43:15 +0000

> Jerry Friedman -

Interesting. I had remembered her as quoting Oreb. But a careful read of 
the last chapter and afterward, as well as a search of the book at 
Amazon reveals Oreb saying no such thing.

u+16b9

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 11:44:17 +0000

the skull of the old Autarch.

On 9/16/2010 6:13 PM, Matthew Weber wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Andrew Mason 
> <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com <mailto:andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com>> 
> wrote:
>
> In the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, the (leavened) bread used in 
> Communion is cut with a triangular-bladed knife, referred to as the Spear.
>
> -- 
> Matt +
>
>     Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65-8 B.C.), Epistles, bk. III 
> (Ars Poetica) [c. 8 B.C.], l. 25
>
>

---

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:36:09 +0000

Not that I have a solution but a few vague observations:
 
> to be worshipped. Soon, they were made to forget.
 
Sounds like a conflict. One person or group reversed the actions of another.

>They did, but because they had seen what they had seen, a part of them remembered, 
>and when they found our altars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had 

So the reversal was only partial. Maybe it means human sacrifice was reduced to 
animal sacrifice? Human sacrifice is most closely associated with Echidna, I think. 
 
On Urth, Typhon demanded tribute of fair women and boys. What he did with them seems 
illustrated in the painting of his court orgy. Perhaps shrewish Echidna did not look kindly 
upon such attractive objects of her husband's attention and had her barbaric way with them 
when Typhon was finished.
 
The name Scylla is invoked in BotNS. Echidna is not but there is mention of a book bound
in echidne hide. Perhaps it is a spelling error and spiny anteater is meant. But that seems 
like an awkward, painful sort of binding for a book. Moreover "Echidne" is an alternate 
spelling for the Mother of All Monsters. Having her skin used to bind books in Ultan's Library 
could be part of the foul mood of her electronic avatar in the Whorl.
 
Regarding Scylla, I'll re-observe:
 
>She founded your Chapter as well, a parody of the state religion of her own whorl.
 
To me the word "own" might imply ownership more than just origin.  Typhon ruled a multi-planet 
empire.  Perhaps Typhon installed Scylla as the ruler of another planet in his empire. 
The Empire had much interstellar travel and trade so I don't see that everything on The Whorl 
needed to come from Urth.

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 06:19:17 +0000

Take two. Let me give the Tartaros quote again:

"When the first people came, Auk, they were shown how we desired to be
worshipped. Soon, they were made to forget. They did, but because they had
seen what they had seen, a part of them remembered, and when they found our
altars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had taught them. First of
all, here."

Interpretations aside, it is indisputable that the worship preceded the
forgetting. Why? I mean, why did the Typhons want to be worshipped at all?
Lemur said the monarch's doctors had erased "as much as they dared of their
patients' personal lives." Okay, I can accept that erasing the first
people's personal memories might keep them from becoming disaffected with
their new environment, but I have a hard time believing that the best way to
go about making people forget someone is to first teach them to worship that
someone.

I can accept, in theory if not in practice, that an absolute dictator of a
whole planet, who also had an unbridled ego, might have made himself so
prominent in the lives of his subjects that he would leave an indelible mark
on their memories, but why and how should that be the case for his wife and
young children? His seven kids would have ranged in age from about 13 to 7
at the time they were scanned. We know that the eldest, Cilinia, died soon
after being scanned.

In Typhon's eyes, all of his children were found wanting in some way, if
only by gender. Molpe was crazy, Tartaros blind and Hierax was a psycho who
"inherited his father's virile indifference to the physical sensations of
others to the point of mania." "He allowed himself to be seduced by it, to
the point that he came to care for nothing else and while still a child
slaughtered thousands for his amusement." (LAKE, chap. 12, 300) Under what
possible circumstances would a boy of about ten have been allowed to slay
thousands of people?

Speaking confusedly of the Monarch's small second daughter, Mamelta said: "I
remember seeing her often at home, dancing through my dreams. She was a
wonderful dancer, but we cheered because we were afraid. You saw the hunger
in her face for the kind of cheers the others got." (LAKE, chap. 10, 262)
Why would Mamelta (and others) have feared how a little girl reacted to
audience response? Had she feared the girl or one or both of her parents?

Kypris also described a scene in which Typhon, apparently, had killed a
thousand people who had been forced to kneel in a public square, while she
was made to watch from a balcony while he watched her from another balcony.
(NIGHTSIDE, chap. 12, 296-97)

Scylla (in Chenille) told her newly appointed prophets (Auk, Dace, Incus) to
kill fifty or a hundred children to attract her attention if Kypris made
another theophany. When she departed Chenille at the Window at the lake, Auk
saw "the sneering features of a girl a year or two from womanhood." (CALDE,
chap. 1, 31) She was said to be "as strong-willed" as her father. The three
youngest girls were: "Thelxiepeia with her spells and drugs and poisons, fat
Phaea, and Sphigx, who combined her father's fortitude with her mother's
vile temper. In a family such as hers, she would be forced to cultivate
those qualities or die, unquestionably." (LAKE, chap. 12, 299-300)

These things paint an ugly picture of the Typhons while they were
flesh-and-blood people on Urth, and explains why they might not want the
first people put aboard the ship to remember them. However, Mamelta, though
she seemed not to have remembered Molpe's real name, remembered the dancing
and the girl's hunger for adulation. The girl became the goddess of music,
dance and art on the ship. The boy who slaughtered thousands became the god
of death on the ship. Scylla said of her father, "In the beginning we chose
up, with Daddy to be the god of everything--that's what his name meant--and
boss over everybody." (LAKE, chap. 11, 274) Aggressive Sphigx became the
goddess of war. Each family member's role as gods in Mainframe was a
reflection of their personalities when they were flesh-and-blood people.

The Typhons' names were changed when they became digitized entities in
Mainframe, became gods with as much or more power than they ever had on
Urth, now over a captive congregation rendered meek and unable to even think
about opposing them, but that was *after* the first people on the ship had
been taught how to worship them by burning animals on a sacrificial altar.
So, again, what really changed when the Cargo was made to forget?

Like Mamelta, Duko Rigoglio (aka Roger) had been a Sleeper forced to board
the ship. Also like her, he could not remember what Pas' real name had been
on Urth. But he remembered Nessus and the fact that he had lived somewhere
south of the Citadel (IGJ, 218-19), which is where he received his fatal
wound while on that astral trip there with Silkhorn. His rise to power on
Blue had been modeled on Typhon's rise to power on Urth (279). When Silkhorn
and Fava made that astral trip to the Duko's palace in Soldo, Rigoglio was
curious about Oreb. Silkhorn explained that the bird had originally been
intended as a sacrifice. The Duko admonished Silkhorn, saying "You failed
repeatedly to honor the gods as is their right." "You wakers on the _Whorl_.
In Nessus the gods walked among us, lords and ladies of Urth, even unto
Shining Pas." (217)

Note the plural, gods, flesh-and-blood entities seen by the public in
Nessus. By Pas he means Typhon, the man with a single head. As I have said
before, I don't care what religion(s) had been practiced during Typhon's
reign or what the state religion may have been. But Rigoglio claimed that
the Typhons had been regarded as gods on Urth, and that helps to explain
some of the outrageous behavior attributed to them that I outlined above,
and the sense of fear felt by people who had known them on Urth; gods can
get away with anything, so long as they have the power. It also explains why
Typhon's kids were so prominent in the minds of people put on the ship that
they could not be forgotten.

Rigoglio came to realize that some of his memories were false. If you want
to argue that his memory of the Typhons as gods on Urth was false, then that
directly contradicts the idea that Typhon wanted both sleeping and waking
Cargo to forget him and his family.

Though flesh-and-blood on Urth, in Mainframe they could only be virtual
people, computer personalities who manifested themselves in computer
terminals when they chose, or when summoned by sacrifices made in proximity
to a computer terminal. The point is, they wanted to be worshipped, which
brings me back to the oldest altar and the forgetting. Typhon elected to be
portrayed as a two-headed freak, his wife with snakes in her hair, and their
children not as little kids but as adults with physical attributes
appropriate to their chosen roles as gods. An image on a computer screen
lacks the presence and authority of a living physical being, but the Typhons
had little choice and the worshippers they commandeered none. The people on
the ship depended on the ship's gods for everything from day and night to
the weather and almost everything else they needed to live.

It seems to me that to maintain their positions as lords of the _Whorl_,
when they were actually only virtual beings in a big computer, the Typhons
used their god-like powers, which existed only by virtue of Mainframe, to
intimidate those subject to their whims and utilized their
computer-generated images as an interface, as their medium of command. On
Urth, those people subject to their whims had been conditioned to obey real
people, but on the ship those lords and masters were no longer real. On the
ship as on Urth, the Typhons conducted themselves as gods, and they had the
power to get away with it in both places. The altars and the burned
sacrifices on the ship may have been new, but not the egos and behavior that
prompted them.

-Roy

---

From: Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:16:42 +0000

Good, well-reasoned post.

-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:43:07 +0000

From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>

> altars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had taught them. First 

I think your post is excellent.  The foregoing paragraph still seems rather 
mysterious, though, as it seems to hint at events during a period about 
which we know little or nothing - i.e. a time between when people first came 
to the Whorl, and when they began living on the inner surface, in cities 
such as Viron.  Perhaps they lived in the tunnels while the main interior of 
the Whorl was excavated and terraformed.  Their tasks would have included 
hauling out thousands of cubic kilometres of asteroid rock (makes me think 
of ancient Egyptians constructing the Pyramids). Mainframe probably did not 
yet exist. Did Typhon (and/or his family) institute a special form of 
worship during this period?

- Gerry Quinn

---

From: António Marques <entonio at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:13:50 +0000

On 6 October 2010 07:19, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
> The Duko admonished Silkhorn, saying "You failed
> get away with anything, so long as they have the power.

That's not how I read it (that the Typhons had been regarded as gods
on Urth). Rather, the people he [now] knows as gods walked among him
and others on Urth. Just as he doesn't remeber their names, he doesn't
remember their role at the time; wakers take them as gods, so gods it
is. Mamelta - who didn't have years after her awakening to come to
regard the wakers' culture as more reliable than her own (a point
Rigoglio stresses) - doesn't seem to regard Typhon as a god, but as a
conqueror. Now, it isn't impossible that a god appears as a conqueror,
but somehow it doesn't look like that to me in her discourse.

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:35:45 +0000

and observe that plainly there is tension between the Typhons' desire, 
on the one hand, to have their worst excesses forgotten so that they may 
be worshiped wholeheartedly on the Whorl and, on the other, that their 
crimes and flaws not be entirely forgotten so that they may be worshiped 
fearfully on the Whorl.

In fact, this seems almost to be the function of a pantheon---that it 
contain gods to be feared as well as gods to be loved, though even then 
you still have gods that are to be loved and feared at the same time. 
Wolfe's God contains all functions: he is to be loved, but he once wiped 
out most life on Earth with a flood, just as the Increate did or allowed 
on Ushas. So this tension is a real part of godhood, and the Typhons may 
be equally a parody or an analysis of godhood.

As for Typhon's most horrid children, I am reminded of Saddam's sons, 
who also were able to order deaths through their official positions. All 
an emperor needs to do is make his 10-y-old son Guardian of the Royal 
Garden Shed, and the slaughter can begin if the boy is so inclined. 
These types of behavior are both a liability and an asset, depending. 
Saddam also built palaces and statues and mosques and stadiums and 
hospitals and so on, that he be thought of paternally and that his 
peccadilloes be overshadowed by this paternal image. But Iraqi citizens 
were effectively terrorized.

Finally, I hypothesize that Typhon's doctors could not biomedically 
implant memories, at least not as well as they could wipe them. We know 
this because the colonists were basically lectured on how to worship the 
gods---there were no injections or implants or reverse uploads. 
Therefore, it makes sense that wiping would be the final stage, 
especially if wiping affects long-term memory more than short-term. 
Knowing some memory would remain, they did the best they could to 
suggest to the colonists that the gods were to be both loved and feared, 
but never hated. Rather than empty their heads and then refill them, 
they subjected them to propaganda, then carved out the most damaging 
memories: the details of Typhon's rule and day-to-day life on Urth.

Had the Typhons been planning to take ship on the Whorl, they would have 
been able to continue their behavior as before. As "gods" with no 
physical presence, it was wise to tone down this behavior, since they 
could only rule through subordinates and were unable to personally 
brutalize anyone. Total memory wipe was unnecessary and 
undesirable---muddling memories or making them fuzzy or confused was 
sufficient for this purpose.

On 10/6/2010 6:43 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> I think your post is excellent.  The foregoing paragraph still seems 
> rather mysterious, though, as it seems to hint at events during a 
> period about which we know little or nothing - i.e. a time between 
> when people first came to the Whorl, and when they began living on the 
> inner surface, in cities such as Viron.  Perhaps they lived in the 
> tunnels while the main interior of the Whorl was excavated and 
> terraformed.  Their tasks would have included hauling out thousands of 
> cubic kilometres of asteroid rock (makes me think of ancient Egyptians 
> constructing the Pyramids). Mainframe probably did not yet exist. Did 
> Typhon (and/or his family) institute a special form of worship during 
> this period?
>
> - Gerry Quinn
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Virus Database (VPS): 101005-1, 10/05/2010
> Tested on: 10/6/2010 6:44:08 AM

---

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:59:34 +0000

>Roy C. Lackey- It is indisputable that the worship preceded the

Clearly it was something they were used to on Urth (and perhaps other planets).
 
>I have a hard time believing that the best way to go about making people forget 
>someone is to first teach them to worship that someone.

Yes. Hence we must suspect the Typhons were not a unified family. That some
were working at cross-purpose to others. But we already know that happened.  Why 
not assume the various problems of The Whorl all resulted from this same conflict. 
 
For me the suggestion is that part of the process of wiping Pas out of Mainframe was 
to wipe him from the memory of Whorl residents. But the memory-wiping process also 
inadvertantly erased the teachings of how to worship. Neither erasure was complete.
 
There is much evidence found in Roy's post to suggest the Typhons were involved with 
human sacrifice on Urth. Evidence from BotNS and the hidden painting of Pas suggests 
Typhon had a sexual purpose for the victims also. (Herena's arm made her unsuitably
ugly but the cute boys and girls sent to Typhon did not return).
 
The conclusion  for me is that Typhon and his family wanted human sacrifice to 
continue on the Whorl but something went wrong. Both Mainframe and human brains were 
bollixed by the attempted insurrection. The windows didn't work all the time.  Pas 
remained in human memory as an absent Father God. And people picked up some ridiculous 
notion that human life was valuable and started sacrificing animals instead. This is why 
Duko admonishes Silkhorn for attempting to honor the gods with a bird sacrifice. That isn't 
what they wanted.
 
The Outsider is a minor god, barely present enough to be a competitor to the other gods.
This is in parallel to the status of Jahweh (later also called Allah) in the early days of
Judaism. The  more numerous worshipers of Jaweh's competitors, Moloch, Asteroth, the Baal 
gods, were gleeful participants in human sacrifice. I think it was the Plan of the Outsider 
to get Typhon's family fighting among themselves, messing up the blasphemous Whorl, ending 
human sacrifice, enlightening Silk, discrediting the false gods, etc.)

Thus the Long Sun series addresses the Abraham/Isaac portion of God's Covenant with humanity. 
BotNS obviously addresses the Noah/Flood portion of the Covenenant. I wonder if Short Sun is
meant to address the Jacob/Moses portions regarding the Promised Land.

> Under what possible circumstances would a boy of about ten have been allowed to slay
> thousands of people?
 
> audience response? Had she feared the girl or one or both of her parents?
 
Perhaps they were extremely powerful human beings. Or perhaps they were something more than 
human. Their disdain for human life and the sanctity of the human body is a bit creepy. I get
the impression, from his work and interviews, that Gene Wolfe considers the possibility that
man's inhumanity to man might have an alien source. 
 
Severian twice mentions his dream of a benign, utopian world where "all the people knew 
themselves bound by ties of blood, being descended from the same pair of colonists" I think
this could mean we will treat each other humanely, as we were meant to, when we are free from 
non-human influences. A nice mix of SF and Christianity.

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:19:18 +0000

I'll just address your proffered questions.

> Roy C. Lackey-
> Take two.

Isn't it because they were worshiped _secularly_ on Urth? I mean, 
worshiped in the sense that Stalin was worshiped or Kim Jong Il _is_ 
worshiped.**

Also, it was a joke. The Wakers were already conditioned to obey the 
Typhons. Typhon couldn't redirect that conditioning onto something else 
(same issue as the head-transplant operation). He didn't want their 
memories of him to help them reconstruct their old memories. He didn't 
want to stir up too many actual memories. So he created the Nine to 
distort their memories of him and his family to obey something 
different--something that only exists on the Whorl, that they would 
never have encountered on Urth.

**I recently heard a report about refugees in South Korea being allowed 
to visit relatives in North Korea. One old woman who had become a 
Christian asked her nephew (meeting him for the first time) if he 
believed in God. He told her that Kim Jong Il was God.

> at the time they were scanned. We know that the eldest, Cilinia, died soon

It doesn't require an unbridled ego. It seems obvious that absolute 
dictators who survive require absolute devotion of their subjects at all 
times. And they take multi-leveled steps to ensure their subjects are 
reminded of that.

As for why the children? That's a good question. That Typhon permitted 
his children to take part in his terror of Urth implies that he did not 
consider them a threat...he so them as part of his legacy. So his family 
represented a Royal Family of Terror-- Queen Elizabeth II meets Saddam.

> In Typhon's eyes, all of his children were found wanting in some way [snip] Hierax was a psycho who "inherited his father's virile indifference to the physical sensations of others to the point of mania."

Do you think Typhon saw this as a deficiency?

> [snip] Scylla (in Chenille) told her newly appointed prophets (Auk, Dace, Incus) to kill fifty or a hundred children to attract her attention if Kypris made
> another theophany.

It appears that the Whorl gods cannot monitor all behavior at once--but 
the Mainframe is designed to flag sacrifices in front of Sacred Windows 
and monitors based on type...human sacrifices are major flags, large 
human sacrifices are not likely to go unnoticed.

> So, again, what really changed when the Cargo was made to forget?

You seem to have answered this question. They were digitized and the 
were gods with the power over their subjects souls as well as their 
minds and bodies. But most importantly, the gods existed on the Whorl 
only. Thus, their identities were not useful for the the Wakers and 
Sleepers to reconstruct their old memories.

> Cargo to forget him and his family.

I think you are making this more complicated than necessary.

Pas is a god on the Whorl and Rigoglio is well aware that he was a 
flesh-and-blood entity on Urth. So the gods walked among them on Urth. 
Before being put to sleep, Rigoglio undoubtably was taught and 
conditioned to worship the gods just as the original Wakers were. That 
is why, when he woke, he had the same inclination to worship the Nine as 
did the inhabitants of Viron.
If the Urthlings actually, _religiously_, worshiped the Typhons, why 
teach them new rituals?

Typhon couldn't remove the memory of himself and his family (who even to 
the youngest he had implicated in his terror over his subjects), so he 
chose not to try. Just as Lemur explained. Instead he distorted the memory.

u+16b9

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:22:43 +0000

> his children to take part in his terror of Urth implies that he did 
> not consider them a threat...*he so them* as part of his legacy.
"he saw them"

---

From: DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:44:17 +0000

Exactly!

--- On Wed, 10/6/10, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Oldest altar
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 12:19 PM

The Wakers were already conditioned to obey the Typhons. Typhon couldn't redirect that conditioning onto something else (same issue as the head-transplant operation). He didn't want their memories of him to help them reconstruct their old memories. He didn't want to stir up too many actual memories. So he created the Nine to distort their memories of him and his family to obey something different--something that only exists on the Whorl, that they would never have encountered on Urth.

....

Typhon couldn't remove the memory of himself and his family (who even to the youngest he had implicated in his terror over his subjects), so he chose not to try. Just as Lemur explained. Instead he distorted the memory.

u+16b9

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 04:28:38 +0000

> but somehow it doesn't look like that to me in her discourse.

Rigoglio had never been exposed to the gods-in-the-machine on the ship, and
the gods could not follow the colonists to Blue. Even if he just gave
lip-service to the ship's gods, just went along to get along on Blue, how
could he recognize the two-headed freak the colonists spoke of back on the
ship as the monarch he had known of on Urth? The people of Urth had known
nothing of the head transplant, and the people on the ship at the time of
the exodus knew nothing at all about Urth. How would he have equated the
girl Cilinia on Urth with the tentacled being the people from the ship had
called Scylla?

-Roy

---

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 11:13:57 +0000

>Roy C. Lackey: ...the gods could not follow the colonists to Blue.
 
Would seem to be true. Yet we have Echinda worship still strong in Gaon.
 
Coincidence or not that we have a giant, shapeshifting entity in the ocean
called The Mother?

---

From: entonio at gmail.com <entonio at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 13:03:55 +0000

No dia 2010/10/07, ?s 05:28, "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>  

> girl Cilinia on Urth with the tentacled being the people from the  

Those are good questions, but I don't see their relevance here - istm  
they apply just as well no matter what the status of the typhons (do I  
love this plural!) on Urth was.

A way around it is to posit that the tinkering with their memories  
included inserting the new names there. Or even the new appearances.  
Identification would be trivial. The sleepers would only remember some  
events and personalities.

I don't think Roger was paying lip service. I think he came to accept  
the wakers' pov, because he realised his own was unreliable.

---

From: entonio at gmail.com <entonio at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 13:14:40 +0000

No dia 2010/10/07, ?s 12:13, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>  
escreveu:

> Would seem to be true.

All evidence is that only a small number of people realised that.

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:45:17 +0000

> girl Cilinia on Urth with the tentacled being the people from the ship had

I would suppose (for supposition is all we have, I think) that when 
Rigoglio thought of the Typhons, he thought of their monstrous versions 
in the Whorl. And though he retained the memory that they were flesh and 
blood on Urth, he had also been artificially conditioned (prior to being 
put to sleep) to think of them as gods deserving of worship. It's not at 
all unlikely that he had _some_ surviving memories of their corporal 
forms. But those memories took a less pre-eminent place in his mind than 
their Whorl forms (just as Silk no doubt sometimes --in the years 
following the Exodus-- thought of Kypris as looking something like 
Chenille and Auk thought of Chenille as being something like Kypris).

This would cause psychological tension and confusion, but it is the sort 
tension between education, belief, and intuition that the human mind 
tolerates all the time.

u+16b9

---

From: DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:05:08 +0000

In other words, take Rigolio's statement that the gods walked on Urth at face value. For someone with his memories and in his condition, that would be a plain statement of fact, however complicated by other facts.

--- On Thu, 10/7/10, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Oldest altar
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Thursday, October 7, 2010, 10:45 AM

> girl Cilinia on Urth with the tentacled being the people from the ship had

I would suppose (for supposition is all we have, I think) that when Rigoglio thought of the Typhons, he thought of their monstrous versions in the Whorl. And though he retained the memory that they were flesh and blood on Urth, he had also been artificially conditioned (prior to being put to sleep) to think of them as gods deserving of worship. It's not at all unlikely that he had _some_ surviving memories of their corporal forms. But those memories took a less pre-eminent place in his mind than their Whorl forms (just as Silk no doubt sometimes --in the years following the Exodus-- thought of Kypris as looking something like Chenille and Auk thought of Chenille as being something like Kypris).

This would cause psychological tension and confusion, but it is the sort tension between education, belief, and intuition that the human mind tolerates all the time.

u+16b9
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From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:06:27 +0000

>entonio: the typhons (do I  love this plural!)  
 
Me too. Sorta like "The Typhonnnns! dum dit dit dit dum dit dit dit duh duh duh dit."
 
HomerPas- D'oh! I've got a headsache.
 
Margidna- Anyone for more roast Musk?
 
Liscylla- Can't world conquest and world peace go hand in hand?
 
Bartaros- cowabunga! Outta my way dude, I can't see a thing!
 
Magolpe-  ------

---

From: DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:59:26 +0000

I'll bet there's been an episode where Homer had 2 heads, at least briefly.
If not, it's about time!

--- On Thu, 10/7/10, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Subject: (urth) Oldest altar
To: urth at lists.urth.net
Date: Thursday, October 7, 2010, 12:06 PM

>entonio: the typhons (do I? love this plural!)? 

 

 
Magolpe-? ------
 
? ??? ???????? ?????? ??? ? 
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From: Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2010 13:56:18 +0000

David Stockhoff wrote:

I'll bet there's been an episode where Homer had 2 heads, at least
briefly. If not, it's about time!

Yes, in "Treehouse of Horror II" Homer had Mr. Burn's head grafted to
his body. Given the character of Burns, that's a good match with
Typhon/Piaton. Since it's a Treehouse episode it's not in the normal
continuity.
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From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:06:30 +0000

On 10/8/2010 9:56 AM, Dave Tallman wrote:
> Virus Database (VPS): 101008-0, 10/08/2010
> Tested on: 10/8/2010 9:57:06 AM