Abaia and the undines

brunians at brunians.org · 10 Dec 2008, 15:54 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:54:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: (urth) Abaia and the undines
In-Reply-To: <493FDCEA.1020508 at verizon.net>
References: <mailman.38551.1228879380.21489.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
	<493FDCEA.1020508 at verizon.net>
Message-ID: <4623.67.142.130.21.1228924477.squirrel at brunians.org>

> 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

It is active.

It has a lava lake, even.

http://erebus.nmt.edu/



.

(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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