What's So Great About Ushas?

John Watkins · 16 Jul 2008, 17:53 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:53:44 -0400
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
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I read Severian's consumption of Thecla, at least, as another instance of
Wolfe's "evil masquerading as good turns out to be good via divine action."
To Vodalus and his cronies, the feast is a Black Mass, but to Severian, via
the power of the Claw/the New Sun, it is an act akin to the Eucharist, as he
really does achieve a mystical communion with a sort of resurrected Thecla.


On 7/16/08, Adam Thornton <adam at io.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Jul 16, 2008, at 12:25 PM, Jeffrey Brent McBeth wrote:
>
>> While I didn't find your comment particularly inflammatory (I'm a bit
>> biased
>> against the target, so I'm not a fair judge), I think the claim that the
>> comment was more than tangentially connected to the topic at hand to be a
>> bit more of a stretch than even this group is accustomed to :)
>>
>
> It's a fair cop.
>
> And, with regard to the Flood....perhaps modern society overly plays DOWN
> the "death and" aspect of the death-and-rebirth that baptism IS.
>
> That is....maybe baptism is SUPPOSED to make you feel like you're drowning,
> and, if I were being--just suppose--a reactionary Catholic who really thinks
> Vatican II was a lousy idea (this is a position I am merely arrantly
> speculating about, with no indication that Wolfe actually believes it)--I
> might actually *want* to revisit the idea that my religion was, in fact, a
> much scarier thing than the
> smiling-nice-forgiveness-and-bunnies-and-little-tweeting-birds thing that my
> effete society would like to present it as.  (_Pirate Freedom_ certainly
> takes the position that mealymouthed-niceness-is-corrosive pretty damn
> explicitly.)
>
> So, let's remind the readers that rebirth means *having to die
> first*....and, hey, for an encore, anyone want to talk about the brain feast
> as Holy Communion?  One presumes it's a Black Mass--that is, a ghastly
> *parody* of Communion--but I wonder if the opposite case can be made?
>
> Adam
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