Abaia and the undines

David Stockhoff · 09 Dec 2008, 20:28 · 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: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:28:57 -0500
Subject: (urth) Abaia and the undines
In-Reply-To: <mailman.37901.1228850603.21489.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
References: <mailman.37901.1228850603.21489.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <493ED509.2010000 at verizon.net>

Jack, Jeff, Witz---

I recall a hint somewhere that Abaia and Erebus were not from Urth, but I am not sure Jonas is the source of that. Where does he suggest that? I recall thinking that made them sound very Cthulhulean. They would have had to arrive when very small, a long time ago. And they could have, back during the era when there was commerce between star systems.

Is the book Lives of the Seventeen Megathereians in the Autarch's library? The image of huge giants bringing about an apocalypse---or struggling against one---is very Revelations. I am also reminded of The Night Land and its Watchers.

But yes, since the Beast has been interpreted as the Church (see interpretations of Nostradamus, however silly), it is possible to see the various beasts as symbolic. However, in terms of the story, if interpreted literally, that would mean that several species got together on Urth to conquer it. Seems odd. 

I have preferred to see that scene as a vision, and that none of the monsters are actually Abaia or Erebus. But I have no argument for this. I'll have to look it up.

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

Message: 7
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 05:26:03 -0800 (PST)
From: John Smith <jsmith2627 at att.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Abaia and the undines
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <95063.26628.qm at web180004.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Isn't Abaia an alien monster from the stars? 

 This is Jonas'  story of the black beans:

"...others went out in the ships that ply between the stars, returning with treasure and knowledge.  In time there returned a woman who had gained nothing among them but a handful of black beans...

"...-she displayed the beans to the lords of men, and told them that unless she were obeyed she would cast them into the sea and so put an end to the world.  They had her seized and torn to bits, for they were a hundred times more complete in their domination than our Autarch."   (Shadow, XXXV)

Best wishes,

Jack

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

Message: 8
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:09:47 -0600
From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Abaia and the undines
To: jsmith2627 at att.net, The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <493EC27B.7010800 at io.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

John Smith wrote:

> > Isn't Abaia an alien monster from the stars? 
>   

Possibly. Abaia is said to be one of the Great Beasts, but so was 
Aleister Crowley in his time. The library book _Lives of the Seventeen 
Megathereians_ implies that many Great Beasts (Mega * Thereians) are 
human enough to have biographies.

Of course, a man can take a beast's name for notoriety, as Typhon did. 
The Typhon that we meet in the Book is certainly a man, and certainly 
has designs on the dominating the world, but is not the irresistable 
force of nature the ancient Greek myths' Typhon was.

> > This is Jonas'  story of the black beans:
>   

I can't make more of that than maybe they were quantum black holes that 
ended up being chucked in the sun instead. Jonah is also our source for 
the Great Beasts being mountain-sized.

The boatman, however, tells a story of huge voices bespeaking through 
the river, with the female ones belonging to the huge undines, while 
their male order-giver is never seen. The male could be Abaia, or could 
be some lieutenant, perhaps.

-- Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com < http://www.io.com/~jwilson > 
------------------------------ Message: 9 Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 
19:23:20 +0000 From: "Son of Witz" <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org> Subject: 
Re: (urth) Abaia and the undines To: "The Urth Mailing List" 
<urth at lists.urth.net> Message-ID: <W503031070535921228850600 at webmail39> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I believe we see Abia and Erebus in Severian's Undine Dream. Shadow 15

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Far off loomed great shapes - things hundreds of times larger than a man. Some 
seemed ships, and some clouds; one was a living head without a body; one had a 
hundred heads. A blue haze obscured them, and I saw below me a country of sand, 
carved by the currents. A palace stood there that was greater than our Citadel, 
but it was ruinous,
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Hundreds of times larger than a man.
Living head without a body,
one had a hundred heads.

This is a hunch of course.

While these creatures seem to represent primordial and pagan entities, I think they also stand as a sort of theological critique.
Living Head without a body: a distant God with no incarnated aspect. 
One had a hundred heads: Polytheism.

~witz

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

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 081208-0, 12/08/2008
Tested on: 12/9/2008 3:28:58 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/20081209/47ed0e1f/attachment.htm>

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