Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod

Lee Berman · 10 Aug 2010, 12:20 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 08:20:50 -0400
Subject: (urth) Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod
Message-ID: <SNT123-W4086C55EFA2AA826A1DF38CF950 at phx.gbl>

>Jeff Wilson- >> Severian- "But on the ship I thought we had come to the end of Briah when we came here"
> Apheta- "So you did..."

>This can be the physical or spatial end, like the end of the street. 

My understanding is that the definition of a "universe" is that it has no physical, spatial
boundaries or ends. This has been called into question recently but I think it was a very
accepted fact back in the 70's and early 80's.  Thus, for me, the end of a universe in this
story must be temporal.

>If he can see the Big Bang from the "end" of Briah, isn't he more likely 
>to be at the earlier end, rather than the latter?

Earlier and later imply temporal ends. 
>From my interpretation, Severian would only see the "earlier end" of Briah if he was travelling to Abaddon 
(sorta like Hell), the universe lower than Briah. As he is travelling to the higher universe I think it is
the Yesod (sorta like heaven) universal creation he is seeing.

But, it is just my interpretation.

>David Stockhoff- My guess is that Wolfe is "proposing" by his use of names and terms from 
>different religions/systems that all have a partial grasp of the same 
>truth. Therefore, it follows that you won't succeed in figuring out the 
>truth by following one system.

I very much agree with this guess.

>Dan'l Danehy-Oakes- I suspect that some of the questions we've considered
>ever-so-seriously would make Wolfe roll his eyes. I suspect that,
>confronted with some of these questions -- I'm NOT guessing which ones
>-- he would say, "You know, I never thought of that..."

I agree. I saw an interview in which Wolfe was asked what he thought of the 
speculation about BotNS. He answered that he was surprised at the large amount of
attention that was being paid to some things and surprised at the lack of 
attention that was paid to other things.

Allowing that Gene Wolfe takes great pains to make his stories internally consistent, it should be 
recognized that a good artist can't devote all his time to that. He/she must work intuitively
at times to produce good art, putting things together because they feel right, not because of some
mechanical blueprint. While Wolfe has consciously put some puzzles in his work, he couldn't spend
30 years winkling out every little possible shred of meaning in his stories. That is our job. And, 
in many cases, we can do it better than he, having the advantage of time and of working together.

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