The Wizard

Andrew Mason · 11 Mar 2012, 19:55 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 19:55:40 +0000
Subject: (urth) The Wizard
Message-ID: <CAM3O41KprP1O=VdWZjwnS5nMfEVWSy__M_R8CUtjbSx-gXLM5w at mail.gmail.com>

There are rather a lot of questions in play here, which I think it
might help to distinguish between.

One is whether Christianity actually exists within the universe of the
solar cycle. Now, I think there's lots of evidence that something very
like - amazingly like - Christianity does. there are the patron
saints, like Katharine  and Barbara (and Wolfe in COTO makes it clear
that Holy Katharine is indeed the Christian saint of that name). There
are crosses, rosaries, the paschal candle, the Angelus. There seem to
be at least two passages in the Chrasmologic writings derived from the
New Testament - the beating of traders, and 'the sign from the belly
of the fish'. I think there is also a reference to the New Testament
in Dr Talos's play, 'raising sons form stones', though there is
another possible source for that. (Certainly Old Testament references
are more common.)  There is Severian's dream of a ritual taking place
in the Citadel chapel, before the sun was darkened, involving bread
and wine. I'm sure each of these things individually - except the
saints. I guess - could be traced to another source, but cumulatively
I think they point to a religion closely modelled on Christianity
having existed at some point in the past of Urth. This in any case is
plausible given that the past of Urth so closely follows that of our
world, including Fair Rosamund and Lewis Carroll and the freemen of
Lombardy - without Christianity it would surely be very different.

This, however, does not imply that the founder of this religion
actually is Christ - he might be merely a prophet - and while I don't
think it can be settled absolutely, I'm inclined to think that he is
merely a prophet, because that fits in better with the 'forms of the
Outsider' passage at the beginning of OBW - it looks as if there are
many people through whom the Outsider manifests himself, none of whom
is actually identical with him, rather than a single person who is the
Outsider made manifest.

Another question is whether the Outsider is the Christian God. That
can be true even if there is no Christ in this world, since Christians
believe that God was active in the world before the coming of Christ -
and while Old Testament material isn't directly relevant to the
question 'is Christianity present?', it is relevant to this question,
since Christians believe that the God of the Old Testament is their
God. I think there is a wealth of reference that does link the
Outsider with the Christian God - and, as I've said elsewhere, I think
the passages that link him with pagan gods can be read in a way that
doesn't conflict with this.

Yet another question is to what extent the work is _symbolically_
Christian - which it might be without any overt Christian references
at all (think of _Harry Potter_). I think in some respects it clearly
is, perhaps most obviously in the life of Severian - whom Wolfe has
described as a Christian figure, and elsewhere 'to the extent that
there is a Christ figure it is Severian, though he is not Christ'. The
most blatant parallel, I guess, is his temptation by Typhon, but there
are also his turning water into wine, his death and resurrection
accompanied by an earthquake, and indeed the idea of a Conciliator.
After all, the pagan gods who are referred to in the series, aren't, I
take it, literally present either - the Whorl gods aren't literally
the same people as the pagan gods from whom they take their names and
attributes, but they are understood through symbolism derived from
those gods. I think there is equally stuff that should be understood
through symbolism derived from Christianity.

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