What's So Great About Ushas?

O'Donnell, Tim BOSI · 10 Jul 2008, 15:55 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: Tim.O'Donnell at bankofscotland.ie (O'Donnell, Tim (BOSI))
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:55:46 +0100
Subject: (urth)   What's So Great About Ushas?
Message-ID: <63FB9AC7E0AEC7459DBCC99DC44247CA016C3611 at BOSIDEXDB.Bankofscotland.ie>

Sure, I'll take a quick stab at this, being of the aforementioned
"Hierogrammates are not as good as they seem" persuasion.  They admit to
wanting to condition humanity to become the Hieros.  This conditioning can
come in all sorts of forms, and the spiritual is certainly not to be
discounted given how secular Urth is.  My contention is that they need a
mystical account of what they've done to Urth for it to matter, like a
certain other flood, for which they recruit the mostly unwitting Severian to
act as a mystic and write The Book of the New Sun as a mystical testament to
what otherwise would be a pretty secular and unpleasant occurrence.

Don't forget that Urth isn't the only human-inhabited planet, and as the
Anchorite mentions if they wanted to save the population there were less
murderous ways to do it - planetary evacuation in Ragnarok scenario.  I
believe this suggests that they instead wanted to do something else to the
population, and Severian's mystical roles as Apu Punchau, the Conciliator,
and the Sleeper may well have something to do with it.  I see him as a
social engineering tool.

Curious about others' opinions though, myself.

Paul

_______________

I guess my problem with that is - why tell the humans that the Hieros are going to wipe out the planet?
Just cause the flood anyway and then tell the survivors and those repopulating the Earth that it was a natural disaster.
Then you could instil in the people the idea that the Hieros were the ultimate saviours of man by helping them post-flood.
I am not a Catholic and have no particular axe to grind but any other explanation of the Hieros seems unnecessary to me.

The Hieros are a higher order of imperfect vessels attempting to become like God.  
It doesn't mean that their solution was perfect, but that in no way means they are evil.

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