Abaia and the undines

David Stockhoff · 10 Dec 2008, 15:14 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:14:50 -0500
Subject: (urth) Abaia and the undines
In-Reply-To: <mailman.38551.1228879380.21489.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
References: <mailman.38551.1228879380.21489.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <493FDCEA.1020508 at verizon.net>

Who doesn't know Mount Erebus?

... Erebus, fiery-throated on the waste Antarctic shore.
---The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Presumably it's no longer an active volcano (so there's no reason why a 
giant humanoid couldn't live in it---just sayin'). But it wouldn't be 
full of water either.

Also, I don't see why the four Beasts need to be part of the 17 
Megatherians at all, especially if 5 beans = 5 Beasts (one unnamed). We 
have no other names for them, not even "Beast." There are 4 apocalyptic 
horsemen, however---FWIW.

Mythical Scylla has only 6 heads, but she could be the hundred-headed 
beast Severian sees (somehow she is also a goddess in BotLS and, I 
think, BotSS). Of the rest, I don't know of any associations with 
ships/clouds/headless giants, which Severian also sees. In myth, Abaia 
is a giant eel who brings a Flood in anger, Erebus is darkness and death 
(and is the sunset/West looking out from Scylla's cave in Homer), and 
Arioch is a demon of Semitic origin with a number of interpretations. 
Arioch is often depicted with a huge sword, thanks in part to Michael 
Moorcock, I think.

The main features of the 4 horsemen are: bow and crown, sword, scales, 
death ("*and Hades was following with him*," whose other name is 
Erebus). That's 2 possible correspondences, but we need 4.

Incidentally, in Moorcock's Elric pantheon, there is "*Pyaray*, the 
*Tentacled Whisperer of Impossible Secrets*, [who] appears as a giant 
red octopus. His soul is kept in a blue crystal on his head. Sailors who 
drown at sea are taken into his Chaos Fleet. One portent of the end of 
the world is the ascent of the Chaos Fleet to the surface." Pelagic 
argosy, anyone?

Otherwise, I have not found any correspondence of these names with one 
another or any single mythos in any way, except that the names Erebus 
and Arioch may have Semitic roots, and that Erebus and Scylla are Homeric.

I'll have to look into black bean myths.

I don't follow the Erebus/Antarctica pole-flipping thread.

> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 14:47:49 -0800
> From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Abaia and the undines
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Message-ID:
> 	<1f7617370812091447l39e73211q646269fb5455ebaf at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Wolfe presumably knows--and expects us to know--that under the ice at
>> the South Pole currently sits a continent.  What's going on here? Is
>> this one of those singleton clues Wolfe likes to drop?
>>
>> Possibilities:
>>
>> - Everyone agreed to a cartographic inversion
>> - Magnetic poles reversed
>> - Antarctica drifted, like, really far
>> - A Velikovskian pole flip
>>     
>
> Actually, Antarctica is the single strongest argument against my
> theory that the continents have shifted position noticeably by the
> time of BotNS: the Megatherian Erebus is named for the volcano
> on Antarctica in which, apparently, he makes his residence. I was
> kind of surprised that nobody mentioned this when I proposed it.
>
>   
> -- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant -----

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