Plant/Animal

Lee · 22 Sep 2014, 13:21 · from 2014-September.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee)
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 09:21:37 -0400
Subject: (urth) Plant/Animal
Message-ID: <BLU175-W44BCC46084217883EC1ACECFB30 at phx.gbl>

>Jeffrey Wilson: The Hierarchs are said to be the creatures of the

>Hierogrammates, so they are among "the other Yesodis" I mentioned. 

>FB&O are not among the tongueless Hierarchs, as they are able to speak 

>in places as literally silent as a tomb. IIRC, F and B are of the short-lived 

>purpose-made Hierodules, with robot O along for muscle.


I would agree.


Still I think what I said previously holds: Wolfe does not want these "angels"

and their form and organization to have a clear, explicit description in our 

minds, and he is deliberately being ambiguous in describing them.


Biblical seraphim are described as:


>Literally "burning ones", the word seraph is normally a synonym for serpents when used 

>in the Hebrew Bible...Fiery six-winged beings that fly around the Throne of God crying

>"holy, holy, holy". ."Each had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he 

>covered his feet, and with two he flew."..They appear also in the Christian Gnostic text 

>On the Origin of the World, described as "dragon-shaped angels".[6]



This is pretty strange stuff, especially for ancient people who could only communicate such

supernatural constructions with words and 2-D hand drawings. I get the sense that even the

people creating such depictions  were aware that they were not doing their referents real

justice with these odd descriptions.


So my guess is that Wolfe is going for something similar in describing Hiero-types.. A 

description which gives us an idea; something for our imaginations to work with but 

which doesn't really do it justice, given our human limitations.


(The idea of angels taking the form of fiery reptiles/dragons might have more than one

 echo in BotNS; the Salamander and Typhon/Mandragora to name a couple.)

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