God/Increate in the New Sun

Andrew Mason · 02 Dec 2010, 18:14 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 18:14:19 +0000
Subject: (urth) God/Increate in the New Sun
Message-ID: <AANLkTikpMaYTuGoZdhzQMbC2HU++HA32xyUQsRpfOUFM at mail.gmail.com>

Craig Brewer wrote:

> All this talk about atheism has me wondering since it's been a couple of years
> now since I've actually re-read it: are there any passages in New Sun where the
> Increate acts directly? In Long Sun, obviously, we have Silk's opening vision.
> But is there anything equivalent with Severian that is (or appears to be)
> something that wasn't the Hiero's doing?
>
> That's probably a difficult question to answer and likely slides easily into
> speculation. Still, I'm interested.

I don't think there is a place in _New Sun_ where the Increate acts
_directly_. However, near the end Barbatus claims that  Severian's
power to recall the dead - in the same body, not in a new one - is
greater than the power of the Hierogrammates, which suggests that it
does not come from them but from the Increate.

(This might, of course, be part of a deception - produced as evidence
that the Increate endorses the Hierogrammates' plan. But if it were,
it's rather odd that it comes at the end, when Severian has already
served his purpose. It's actually quite striking that the original
explanation of the plan we get from Malrubius does not mention the
Increate at all - the Hierogrammates were created by humans or their
analogues, and their motives arise from their own experience; 'this is
at once their repayment and their revenge'. Severian seems quite happy
to go along with the plan on this basis. Later we get hints that it's
more complicated than that, and that the Increate is involved, in some
hard-to-determine way; I find it hard to dismiss these as
manipulation, because Severian is committed to the plan before they
start.)

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