A new mystery ...

Lane Haygood · 03 Dec 2008, 00:19 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: lhaygood at gmail.com (Lane Haygood)
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 18:19:34 -0600
Subject: (urth) A new mystery ...
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The areas of my expertise are limited to law and philosophy. ;) So I've just
about reached the limit of my depth.  And my specialization isn't in ancient
Greek philosophy, so I can't tell you all that much about aquastors or
Paracelsus, but Platonic idealism I can.  At the very least, the way I read
Wolfe was using Plato is more how Plato was received by the Gnostics and
Neoplatonists, who had a decidedly more systematic and mystic bent to their
Platonism than what I guess we could call "orthodox" Platonism.

Lane

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com> wrote:

> Lane,
> Fabulous stuff.  Indeed, the etymology of those terms now seems extremely
> important.  It is easy to say now that resurrected Severian is an Eidolon,
> and that this happens to him in the perfect place in the myth.
>
> And your point about Thecla is taken to heart as well.
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 4:11 PM, Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The etymology of these words shall help.
>>
>> Eidolon is a Greek philosophical term, denoting the abstract reality of an
>> idea.  For Plato, these are the universal Forms, the perfect instantiations
>> of a given idea that all particular instances of are imperfect emanations.
>> Aquastor comes from Paracelsus, an entity formed from thought alone.  So an
>> Eidolon is a projection from a higher world (the Platonic world of
>> ideals/Yesod) to a lower world (the physical world/Briah). An aquastor would
>> be a created being formed of pure thought (intention).
>>
>> It's also important to note that Severian only absorbs some of Thecla's
>> memory and personality, but not her consciousness itself.  While these
>> things may be in some way linked to the brain, the sense of identity, the
>> self-consciousness and transcendental unity of apperception, is not, and
>> thus, Severian-as-intentional-being never experiences a disconnect between
>> his death(s) and rebirth(s).
>>
>> Lane
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On T
>>
>
>
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