You have the wrong creation you ninny - eschatology and genesis

Lee · 10 Sep 2014, 18:12 · from 2014-September.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee)
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 14:12:37 -0400
Subject: (urth) You have the wrong creation you ninny - eschatology and
	genesis
Message-ID: <BLU175-W22DEDACA17ADA8743BCE0ACFCF0 at phx.gbl>

>Marc Aramini: Well.. I guess my big problem with it is the idea of no Christ 

>in a previous iteration..

Well, my first thought is that it is instead "no Christ in a previous iteration, yet".

On the other hand, Severian does travel to the end of Briah and Tzadkiels' Ship

remains decidedly un-Christian. In the James Jordan interview, Wolfe expresses a

personal wonderment about Earth and our own salvation and whether we might have to

wait until the next iteration for it. So I guess the idea might be that Urth and

Briah have to wait until Earth just to get Christ.

>...because that is something that we see more clearly in
>The Wizard Knight - knightly medieval virtues (ie- boasting and bullying)
>stripped of Christianity.

Erm..I dunno. Even among the Christian Arthurian knights there were some bad eggs

like the braggart Sir Kay and the treacherous Sir Mordred (even Lancelot and Gawain

 had some moral issues). Conversely I think Wizard Knight portrays a number of 

"true knights" who display the sort of humility, nobility and bravery we might expect 

of Christian knights. Not to say that they are Christian. But perhaps to show that 

even in a pagan/non-Christian society, the seeds of Christ can be found.

>The religion of Silk is Catholicism with paganism written over it.

That is a way to look at it. I view it as a religion parallel to Catholicism

but without Christ. Animal sacrifice and divination of entrails and possession

by (electronic) spirits are not the superficial patina of Silk's religion. They

lie at the heart of it (with remembrance that outside of Silk, the OUtsider remains

a minor, unimportant god).

>The cross can't be voided if there was never anything on
>it - why does it exist as a symbol at all if it has not been effaced by
>time and the desire for worship which Typhon's amalgamation brings?  Typhon
>steals the Catholic religion and then winds up making something sublime in
>Silk.

The voided cross is the best presentation I've seen for evidence of an eliminated 

Christianity in Briah. I don't find it compelling partly because of the

avalanche of evidence (including the Wolfe-Jordan interview) to the contrary.

But also because we hear about a version of a cross (Dorcas' rood) on Urth. I

don't find that to be a "Christian" symbol any more than I see the Jesus figure

in Short Sun to be Christ.

For me, Wolfe's message is that there is nothing inherently Christian about the cross.

It was just a torture device which happened to be used during a crucial time in human

religious history. Likewise for the personage of Jesus. On Earth, Jesus of Nazareth 

was endowed with Christ Consciousness. But on Urth I don't think the Jesus figure shown 

to Silk was.

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