The face of Pas

Lee Berman · 14 Sep 2010, 19:31 · from 2010-September.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:31:08 -0400
Subject: (urth) The face of Pas
Message-ID: <SNT123-W495D29D88802FDC9CFC015CF780 at phx.gbl>

>Tim O'Donnell: I have long suspected (with little evidence to be fair) that Typhon needed
>to keep his head/face/brain in order to be able to exercise his magic powers.  These powers 
>might survive cloning but perhaps his powers would not survive uploading into a chem or into 
>mainframe.  This would be a pretty practical reason to keep his head with the story of his 
>face a cover so as not to hint at the real source of his power.

I find Typhon's superhuman powers of telepathy and clairvoyance to be quite significant (though
most often glossed over in discussions of him). No other characters in BotNS that I can think of
have similar powers. Maybe Tzadkiel, who seem to speak to Severian during a dream.

I think the  Mandragora's similar powers support your suggestion that Typhon's powers can be 
duplicated via cloning. (mythological Typhon being a man-dragon)

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