Seawrack and the Mother

Lee Berman · 21 Sep 2012, 18:49 · from 2012-September.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:49:43 -0400
Subject: (urth) Seawrack and the Mother
Message-ID: <SNT123-W5D9731CDD61E84FC48FE7CF990 at phx.gbl>

>David Stockhoff: This is a useful observation. Recall that Abaia is named after an eel 
>that lives in a lake. Why would a super-massive sea monster be named after an eel that 
>lives in a lake? It helps the name to fit if the monster lives "everywhere."

Agreed. I guess I'll offer this observation. Severian connects the Naviscaput to Abaia.
But the Naviscaput has taken Night as his mate. In Greek mythology, the mate of Night or
Nyx is Erebus. (one of their offspring is Charon, source of some of my suspicions about
the Old Boatman who is Dorcas' husband).

So, which is the Naviscaput, Abaia or Erebus? Could it be both, somehow?

I've mentioned that in the sun series, gender seems to be a mere convention adopted by these 
non-human god-monster beings for their dealings with humans. Names are perhaps even more of 
a human convention (Apheta doesn't seem to need a name until meeting Severian). Maybe "Erebus"
is just the name for the piece of "Abaia" who ended up near Antarctica. Likewise for 
all the 13 megatherians?

I find it interesting that in listing the offspring of Greek deities, there is the need 
to distinguish sexually produced offspring from the budded off variety. For the more ancient
gods like Nyx there seems to be a higher percentage of asexual offspring. But even Zeus and
Hera have a few budded off kids.

Somehow I get the sense that Wolfe (like Frank Herbert in the Dune series) is trying to get 
us to the idea of a universal god who becomes divided and then reforms into new gods (or 
God?) in whatever way best suits their purpose in the next generation. I'm not a religious
scholar but perhaps the divided god idea started from Hinduism with Brahma and all his branches
and all their avatars.

I could almost see this idea as a way for Wolfe to reconcile his ideas about the reality of
ancient gods with the demands of being a modern Christian. Perhaps being Catholic with its
emphasis on the Trinity is more fertile ground for such thinking than the more straight,
monotheistic leanings of Protestantism.

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