Original Sin and pagan gods

Roy C. Lackey · 08 Aug 2006, 21:02 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 16:02:11 -0500
Subject: (urth) Original Sin and pagan gods
Message-ID: <001c01c6bb2d$ee48aae0$da3ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

b sharp wrote:
>>Not sure where you got the part about Noah being a drunk but God seems to
think Noah and his family are quite worth saving.  "Perfect in his
generations" to me says "uncontaminated by matings with fallen angels".  The
whole part about "Nephilim" comes right before the Noah section.<<
[snip]
>>Isn't this the same choice God made?  Destroy everything, or destroy
almost everything, purify and repopulate.  This makes Tzadkiel's ship like
the ark and the sailors who repopulate Ushas like Noah and family, yes? (I
know not everyone thinks it was the sailors who were landed on flood day).<<
[snip]
>>(I'll note that I think Severian did know Valeria was a
family member and his consciously celibate marriage to her was a step toward
his/humanity's salvation, but I mustn't get ahead of myself).<<
--------------------------------------------

Wherever did you get the idea that the marriage was celibate?

But the bigger problem I have with this theory is carrying the Genesis flood
analogy over to the Urth flood. I don't want to get bogged down in the
"Original Sin is carnal knowledge" issue, still less in the morass of
Severian's presumed familial inbreeding, but both those things figure into
your theory. Earlier you wrote:

>>I think this is Wolfe saying that humanity and specifically, Severian's
family, have been contaminated by a matings with the Urth equivalent of
pagan gods.<<

If this is true, how is Severian as Conciliator/New Sun an improvement,
analogous to a righteous Noah? He went to Yesod and fathered a New Sun --
who was/is himself. (URTH, 145) You can't get much more incestuous than
that. Further, he fathered himself on an insect from another universe, who
was the larval stage of a god-like, angelic being. How is that any better
than Adam's tribe and the "Nephilim"? I would think it even worse, because
the Hierogrammates were man-made to begin with.

Btw, the Lilith myth figures into Wolfe's story "Copperhead". Fwiw.

-Roy

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