Original Sin and pagan gods

Roy C. Lackey · 08 Aug 2006, 07:00 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 02:00:34 -0500
Subject: (urth) Original Sin and pagan gods
Message-ID: <001601c6bab8$5bfb9140$383ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

b sharp wrote:
[snip]
>>So, anyway, in BotNS, humanity as a race doesn't seem to matter much with
regard to purity.  They did their part to produce the Hiero race, despite
being contaminated.  But as Apheta notes, humanity has already been strewn
across the galaxy, too spread out to be dealt with as a whole. It is the
planet Urth that matters and the Hieros will purify it (symbolic gesture?)
one way or another.  Freezing it would do the job (and they would evacuate
the remaining humans, Master Ash says).  Urth would be pure and lifeless.
But Severian is willing to risk everything to have it purified, reborn and
repopulated (not that he really understands what he is doing).<<
[snip]
>>I think in leaving the angels and demons (Hieros and Megatherians in my
interpretation) of BotNS very mysterious and hard to understand, Wolfe is
saying that there are heavenly machinations; battles between good and evil
which are above us and beyond our understanding. But in crucial situations,
we humans will be given enough knowledge to make the right choice.<<
-----------------------------------------------

I can only conclude, from these two paragraphs, that you are using "Hieros"
where you mean "Hierogrammates". The Hieros were/will be in no sense
angelic. They were the race of humans, cognates of our (and Severian's)
race, who sinned on a grand scale in producing the race of beings known as
Hierogrammates, of which latter group Tzadkiel is an example.

Tzadkiel's examination of the future found the probability high that the
Hieros would develop from the strand of humanity left on Urth-come-Ushas
(URTH, 160), and thus produce the Hierogrammates in Briah. It was Apheta's
belief/hope that this was true (162).

-Roy

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