UotNS and how it screws with your head

John Watkins · 13 Jul 2010, 16:12 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:12:19 -0400
Subject: (urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head
In-Reply-To: <E63D05FC598643369D658EB90F8BDE01@jill>
References: <AANLkTinHy3Aec9OA-UHwh1uw3BFusrKErPLPID7aXss8 at mail.gmail.com>
	<E63D05FC598643369D658EB90F8BDE01@jill>
Message-ID: <AANLkTikvoAFjIi4Aa5uxhbDgjXMdpKFA67WDFwOVwCxG at mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:03 PM, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:

>  I think it was the white fountain too.
>
> Of course, there is another issue with the white fountain, which Mr.
> Thallassocrat, at least, may find interesting.  The concept of a white hole
> comes from the maximally extended Schwarzschild solution for a black hole.
> Few nowadays think that white holes exist in nature - but if one does it
> should be associated with a black hole (though perhaps in a different
> universe).
>
> It would also make sense in that the result of combining the two should be
> to negate both - this doesn't seem so probable if an arbitrary black hole
> meets an arbitrary white hole.
>
> Could Severian, therefore, also have created the black hole in the Sun?
>
>

I don't think so...

I think the black hole in the Sun exists as a white fountain in the lower
universe (Abbadon?)

It would follow that the white fountain Severian creates exists as a black
hole in Yesod or some higher plane.  There may be an incredible number of
layers of universes...

Metaphorically (and maybe literally), I think Wolfe is making a point about
grace.  The layers of universe ultimately terminate at what Dante would have
called the Empyrean, highest heaven, where infinite energy miraculously
fonts from the Godhead.  God, being the well that never goes dry, can give
without taking, breaking the law of conversation of energy.  This has a
parallel with ethics--in love, humans partake in the divine essence, and so
love is giving without taking, et cetera.

These points would be lost, or their effectiveness reduced, if the white
fountain and the black hole were one and the same.


>
> - Gerry Quinn
>
>
>
> *From:* Cliff Judge <transentient at gmail.com>
>
> And then they engage in what a couple of Wolfe's characters call the "warm
> congress" and Severian says, I entered Yesod, or rather, it enclosed about
> me, yada yada, and then he describes his orgasm as this terribly serious
> cosmic event, and talks about something that is conceived from the union.
> Then he states that what was conceived was himself.
>
> Now as a reader who has just decided that its pretty clear that Dorcas is
> his grandmother, Ouen is his father, and btw I like the idea that his mother
> is Catherine, of whom a khaibits is slain every year at the Feast of Holy
> Katherine, there is something in my brain that really WANTS to take the easy
> way out here and say, right what was conceived was "himself" meaning the
> actual white fountain that will replenish the sun of Urth.
>
> But part of me is also thinking....yeah there it is, Severian is his own
> father.
>
>
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