A new mystery ...

David Stockhoff · 03 Dec 2008, 17:26 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:26:31 -0500
Subject: (urth) A new mystery ...
In-Reply-To: <mailman.29234.1228323729.21489.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
References: <mailman.29234.1228323729.21489.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <4936C147.60902 at verizon.net>

Witz---

Supposedly, there is a Jewish tradition that each generation has its potential messiah. But usually that messiah fails. (I'm not sure what's supposed to happen if he succeeds, except that the Temple is rebuilt.) This would fit neatly with the progression of autarchs who failed to become the Conciliator. 

See Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union and an episode of Millenium, and no doubt many other silly conspiracy tales. Or ask your rebbe. ;)

David

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:46:57 +0000
From: "Son of Witz" <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Subject: Re: (urth) A new mystery ...
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <W22586201365751228322817 at webmail29>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

>> >> Severian I (clawless)  gained the phoenix throne, but did he become  
>> >> the New Sun? or is all of this Heirodules just trying to renurture him  
>> >> so that he has the character to pass the Trial.
>> >> I guess I'd assumed that they saw him become the New Sun, but now I'm  
>> >> wondering if they just saw the potential.
>>     
> >
> >
> >I apologize, but I think I've missed something.  What is the "potential" that was seen?  While I personally perceive Severian as being unique and pretty wonderful (I'm in love with and have worn out my first copies of The Wizard Knight), I also can't help but feel that he "passed" because it was time for the New Sun much as, to overtly steal from Marcus Aurelius, grapevines produce grapes when it is the time of year for them to produce grapes.  I would be interested in responses.  Thanks for reading.
> >Bob
>   

The "potential" was that he would pass the test.
It seems the Heiro-dudes seem to think he 'could' fail.
according the Ash, there is still quite some time before the sun dies and the last glaciation occurs.  
I suppose the spirit of you question is right though. it was time for the New Sun.  I'm hazy on all this, but didn't the Jews think it was gettin' 'bout time for a Messiah 'round the time Jesus entered the picture.
It could perhaps be that the New Sun was waiting for a worthy host.  dunnoh.

~witz

------------------------------

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 081203-0, 12/03/2008
Tested on: 12/3/2008 12:26:32 PM
avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2008 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20081203/6e789994/attachment.htm>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net