Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod

Lee Berman · 10 Aug 2010, 19:19 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:19:11 -0400
Subject: (urth) Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod
Message-ID: <SNT123-W3533ECF8E77DB49ACD8952CF950 at phx.gbl>

>Tony Ellis: In chapter XXII of UotNS, when Severian is in Yesod, he says: "They
> were people I'd known... Thecla, Agilus, Casdoe... Perhaps they're all
> dead now, all ghosts, though I didn't know it."
> Apheta corrects him: "They are unborn. Surely you know that time runs
> backward when the ship sails swiftly. I told you myself. They are
> unborn, as you are."

>Dan'l: This seems to imply that Briah and Yesod share a common timeline, and
>that Yesod is either before or simultaneous with Briah (so that one
>moment in Yesod can be meaningfully prior to another in Briah). Which
>pretty much kills Yesod as our Universe...

Now, let's not be too hasty..I do think Tony's point is a good one to bring up. 

But we still have Tzadkiel's words to Severian to consider; can't ignore them-

>"..I am as I am, your own race having made us so before the apocatasatis. Were you not told
>that they had shaped us in their image?"

How could Severian's race have made Tzadkiel's race if they were all unborn? Who ya gonna
believe in such a contradiction, Dad/Butterfly or child/larva?

Perhaps Apheta's statement refers to the fact that none of the characters Severian saw were 
actually born. All of them, including Severian as we later learn, are eidolons.

But on an even more likely note, I agree with Lane Haygood that perhaps Einsteinian physics only 
works within a universe and has little to do with multiple universe hopping Perhaps Apheta's 
statement is only meant to imply that when Severian returns to Urth, again via the swift-sailing 
Ship in Briah, time will have moved backwards from his relative POV and all these people will be 
unborn, (including, ironically, Severian himself, unborn both as an eidolon and walking around 
1000 years before his birth).

If Yesod were actually to be a universe which preceded Briah in sequence we'd be stuck with the 
unpleasant concept that each succeeding universe becomes worse. Not, I think, what Wolfe intended
us to think. (maybe Peter Wright likes that idea though ;- ))

There is another part of BotNS which makes me think Yesod is our own universe but I'll have to 
address that in a different thread.

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