Typhon's nature

Gerry Quinn · 14 Oct 2011, 18:25 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:25:34 +0100
Subject: (urth) Typhon's nature
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W1290A1E0AB98398D3322CECFE10 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W1290A1E0AB98398D3322CECFE10 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <9F5FD06354C046CCB4960035952470A5@Rover>

From: Lee Berman 

> > Gerry Quinn: Jesus existed in the universe of Urth ? Silk has a vision of 
> > him entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

> I think this has been discussed in the past. That vision does seem to be of
> a Jesus-like figure. But severian has been described (by Wolfe) as a Christ-
> like figure and we can be pretty sure he is not Christ.

Actually, Wolfe said Severian was ?a Christian figure?.  But in any case, Silk?s vision was not of Severian but was a pretty clear reference to Jesus on Palm Sunday.  

> Conversely, even if the figure Silk sees in the vision happened to be named
> Jesus (or Yeshua or Joshua) I don't think he is meant to be Jesus Christ, The 
> Saviour of Humanity. Humanity on Urth/Whorl is still plagued by all the stuff 
> Earth's humanity was plagued with before Jesus and even the stuff before the 
> Flood. Things like false (but real) gods, monsters, demonic possession, etc.

The same is true of our own Earth. 

> If the Jesus that Silk sees was Jesus Christ, it would mean his salvation was
> only temporary and faded. Doesn't seem like a very Christian concept to me, but
> I dunno. Anyway, Urth's humanity is plagued by a lot of problems with no hope 
> for salvation except for a New Sun that might come someday. (and as has been
> mentioned in the past, it is part of Earth's God's covenant that he wouldn't
> ever use a Flood again on humanity).

But Urth *is* saved, resurrected even.  As for the personal salvation of its inhabitants, that is a matter between them and what is called in Severian?s time the Increate.  Regarding the Flood, Wolfe is a Catholic, and probably doesn?t fret about Biblical literalism.

> >Gerry Quinn: Echidna is (presumably) no blood relation of Typhon, yet her 
> >digitised personality has similar powers.

> Mythological Echidna was Typhon's sister as well as his mate. 

That depends on which of a dozen origin stories you select.  Besides, they were monsters, not people.

> I think there 
> was a purpose in naming her this way. Part of it was surely that Typhon and
> Echidna are known as the "mother and father of all monsters". But wny not
> make their sibling relationship part of it also.  Pagan ruling houses were well
> known to use sibling matings to solidify dynasties.

One might note in this regard that Typhon?s offspring were all in some way defective.  On the other hand, Typhon would have known of the dangers of inbreeding, and it also seems that he didn?t much like the idea of genetically engineering his offspring.  So it would be remarkable if he married his sister.  Duke Rigoglio doesn?t mention anything unusual about his marriage ? you?d think such a thing would be remarked upon.

> Even if there were no evidence of genetically similar powers, I would think
> it more likely that Echidna was Typhon's sister than that she wasn't. 

There is no evidence whatsoever of genetically similar powers.  We are told nothing about any genetically endowed powers Echidna (or whatever her real name was) may have had.  We know her digitised personality can invoke the personality transfer mechanisms installed in the Sacred Windows, but so can all the others except maybe Tartarus.

> The assumption of outbreeding and marriage based on love is a modern prejudice.      

Outbreeding has notable advantages that societies ignore at their peril.  As for love, it?s not unlikely that Typhon married into some powerful family rather than for love; he had concubines as well, after all.  Or perhaps Echidna was necessary to him in some other way.  But there?s no particular evidence of incest that I can see.

- Gerry Quinn

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20111014/c6860a86/attachment.htm>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net