Claw = Fang?

Bill Burgess · 26 Nov 2012, 20:30 · from 2012-November.txt.gz

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From: whburth at gmail.com (Bill Burgess)
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 12:30:31 -0800
Subject: (urth) Claw = Fang?
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W36AA93D80A1558ECDC76BACF5F0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W36AA93D80A1558ECDC76BACF5F0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <CAPdJJvQ1UpgW8GK_fC08gZy2=1fEHJKE83gEpqBOwVKhZxDmTg at mail.gmail.com>

Now that you mention Quetzal.
This reminds me of Quetzacoatl, the Aztec flying serpent god.
who was some derivation of the central myth of the aztec which involved an
eagle with a serpent in its talents and is on the Mexican flag.   We've
already been told my Wolfe to view the claw as something like the talons of
the eagle of jove,  so he clearly links talons and fangs in his
mythologies.
Also, in the Bible, Seraphim are flying fiery serpents and angelic beings.


On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 7:51 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> >David Stockhoff: Typhon was certainly THE Serpent, but was he A serpent?
> >Is Severian something like the thorn of the field raised up to the
> >degree that Typhon/Satan is a raised-up serpent of the field? i.e., the
> >better counterpart to him? Are the two of them hammer and anvil in
> >shaping a more morally advanced humanity?
> >I'm just spitballing.
>
> Spitballing may be what we are limited to in a story which jumbles Theseus
> with the
> Monitor and Merrimac and Mowgli with Romulus and Remus and Squanto.
>
> As I see it, mythological Typhon was a potentially world-destroying
> mandragon, partially
> composed of snakes. His wife was Echidna, a cave-dwelling snake woman
> whose myth is in a
> direct line to the Roman Cumaean Sybil who is known as one of the earliest
> harbingers of
> Jesus Christ. This all gets jumbled into BotNS, tossing Alexander and
> others into the mix
> as well.
>
> FWIW, in Long Sun, Quetzal the inhumi, tells Remora (fishy stowaway, also
> an inhumi?) this story:
>
> >"A-man and Wo-man like rabbits in a garden. The--what do you call
> them?...The cobra persuaded Wo-man
> >to eat fruit from his tree, miraculous fruit whose taste conferred
> wisdom...It is all in the Writings.
> >Or nearly all. A god called Ah Lah barred Wo-man and her husband from the
> garden...We seem to have lost
> >sight of Ah Lah, by the way. I can't recall a single sacrifice to him. No
> one ever asks why the cobra
> >wanted Wo-man to eat his fruit...In order that she would climb this tree,
> Patera. The man likewise.
> >Their story's not over because they haven't climbed down."
>
> So, in this Eden story we have a plant (tree) and serpent as featured
> players. Somehow related to the
> Claw of the Conciliator? This story certainly presages Green, a planet of
> trees and parasitic reptilian
> beings. What might Wolfe's cryptic note to Marc, "GREEN is Urth" mean in
> an Edenic context?
>
> Dr. Talos' play also features the Eden story and the serpent appears to be
> represented by a fanged, busty,
> red-haired demoness named Jahi. Then in Short Sun we have an inhuma named
> Jahlee. Somehow it all has
> to be related but perhaps we were never meant to connect it all in a
> coherent, structured fashion.
> Perhaps, as David suggests, intuitive mythological spitballing is all
> Wolfe intended us to grasp from
> these connections.
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