Boatman as Inire

John Watkins · 09 Aug 2010, 14:31 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2010 10:31:33 -0400
Subject: (urth) Boatman as Inire
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W245B60047ACB48B6071206CF940 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W245B60047ACB48B6071206CF940 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=eN4eQa7ApQFgju-_P=RjwyJeDOxkh2iUY9Ejj at mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> I hope this is not an intentional misunderstanding of my words for the sake
> of
> argument. I say "must" because Master Ash winks out and Ushas and the
> Hierogrammates
> exist. If we saw the Hierogrammates wink out and a Ragnarok Urth in
> Severian's
> time travels in UotNS, I'd say the reverse- averting Ushas was necessary
> for the creation
> of Ragnarok.
>
> No.  Rather, you misunderstand my point.  The Hierogrammates exist because
of a causal chain of events that has no connection to the manvantara we call
"Briah"--there were engineered by the Hieros in a prior manvantara and
escaped that manvantara prior to its Big Crunch by fleeing to Yesod.  Yesod
has a different timeline than Briah altogether and moves in relationship to
Briah's timestream in an exotic manner dictated by Yesodian technology.  I
respect your "agree to disagree" language here, but this isn't a wild
hypothesis--this is text.

The Hierogrammates are not attempting to cause their own creation by
bringing a New Sun to Urth--they are attempting to engineer new Hieros.  In
order to do this they oversee humanity.  Humanity is at the time of the Book
of the New Sun dispersed through the cosmos--Apheta confirms that the
Hierogrammates and Hierarchs monitor myriad *galaxies*.  So the success or
failure of the Hierogrammates' project does not depend on whether Urth in
particular becomes Ushas or Ragnarok.  Urth is just one of many (very many)
petri dishes cultivated by the Hierogrammates.  Severian's quest, if it has
any meaning at all, only succeeds in buying Urth a second lease on
life--convincing the Hierogrammates that this particular petri dish is
promising enough to warrant an intervention to save the culture.  It is in
no way a foregone conclusion that Ushas will result in the birth of new
Hieros--the green man *may *be a Hiero or more likely an intermediate step
on the path to Hiero-hood, but he also *may *be something else entirely.  It
was, however, a foregone conclusion that Ragnarok would foreclose the
possibility of new Hieros being born on Urth.  They could have still been
born in another petri dish world.

> Good fights against evil all through history; though which is which is a
> matter of opinion.
> In the end it doesn't matter. Good and evil pagan gods and beliefs- all
> will be swept away as a
> higher level of spirituality washes in to take their place. I think that's
> the message of BotNS.
>
I will only say that if that is the message of the Book of the New Sun
(rather than the message of the Books of the Long and Short Suns), it's hard
to see.  What little we see of Ushas involves both pagan gods and beliefs
and the survival of the undines.

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