Brook Madregot runs between

Roy C. Lackey · 11 Aug 2010, 05:14 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:14:49 -0500
Subject: (urth) Brook Madregot runs between
References: <SNT123-W126C3D66EC364580D81527CF960 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <008601cb3914$22d4ed60$f9d14a0c@rclackey>

Lee Berman wrote:
[snip]
> I can see that if one has always assumed Yesod to be separate and distinct
from the sequence
> of universes, each statement in the text becomes twisted to mean that very
thing. Likewise for
> me and perhaps others who have always assumed that Yesod was connected in
a sequence to Briah.
>
> I think that this particular textual passage (below) seems to argue for
sequential connection not
> separation. But perhaps others will disagree.

I disagree.

> >Severian- "But this place is Briah, or part of it. It's a passage in your
ship, the one you showed
> >me when you led me to my stateroom"
>
> >Tinkerbell Tzadkiel- "If that is so, you were near Yesod when you were
with me on our ship. This is
> >the Brook Madregot, and it runs from Yesod to Briah".
>
> >Severian- "Between the universes? How could that be?"
>
> >Tinkerbell Tzadkiel- "How could it not be? Energy gropes for some lower
state, always..."
>
> >Severian- "But it's a stream, like the streams of Urth"
>
> >Tinkerbell Tzadkiel nods- "Those too are of energy seeking a lower
state...."

She is speaking of entropy, as Apheta had earlier when she acknowledged that
it was something that even the Hierogrammates had to deal with. Because
energy always seeks a lower state, the Brook reflects that, as she indicates
on the next page:
------------------------------
"I can tell you this: Madregot flows from the glory of Yesod"--she pointed
upstream--"to the destruction of Briah, down that way." She pointed again.
(286)
------------------------------
In other words, the Brook flows *from* Yesod *to* Briah, from the higher
plane to the lower, just as Malrubius had told Severian ten years earlier.
Put still another way, Yesod and Briah are not on the same plane. Neither do
they follow one another in a series. In the cosmology Wolfe uses in the Urth
Cycle, Yesod is on a separate plane that is somehow "higher than our own",
"our own" in context meaning Briah.

-Roy

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