Increate on trial

Roy C. Lackey · 26 Mar 2005, 00:11 · from 2005-March.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sat Mar 26 00:11:22 2005
Subject: (urth) Re:  Increate on trial
Message-ID: <001001c531db$6460ee00$373ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

Adam quoted and wrote:
>on 3/25/05 3:05 AM, Roy C. Lackey at rclackey at stic.net wrote:
>
>> The H's are archangels who have the ear of the Increate, and
>> who do his bidding.
>
>Do you have a quote for this? You certainly know the text better than I do;
>but my vague recollection had been that while the H's believe they are
doing
>the will of the Increate, they have no privileged access to this will.

As with much else in Wolfe, it is largely inferred. The quote about "The
death agonies of the world you know will be offered to the Increate" implies
that the Hierogrammates have, at the least, the Increate's attention. And
Urth, as Man's planet of origin, has a unique place in the eyes of the
Increate, from a Christian perspective. We know Wolfe is a Christian and
that the Urth Cycle was written with that perspective in mind. Unmistakable
Christian imagery pops up throughout the Sun Cycle -- from Ctesiphon's
Cross, water into wine, the Temptation, death and resurrection, in NS, to
Silk's vision of the Cross during his epiphany in LS. There are probably
more, but that's just off the top of my head.

Probably the best quote I can give is the one from pages 137-138 of URTH:
------------------------------------------------
    "Severian, do you know the meaning of that word you used? Of
Hierogrammate?"
    I told her that someone had once told me it designated those who
recorded the rescripts of the Increate.
    "So much is correct."
-----------------------------------------------

My old _Webster's New World Dictionary Of The American Language_, College
Edition, 1966, defines rescript this way: "1. an order or decree issued by a
Roman emperor or by the Pope in answer to some difficulty or point of law
presented to him, and having the force of law; hence, 2. any official decree
or order. 3. a) a rewriting. b) something rewritten; copy. 4. in _law_, an
order, as from a court to its clerk, or from an appellate court to a trial
court, giving the disposition of a case."

I gave all of the definitions because I didn't want to be accused of picking
the ones that suited my case, or twisting them to fit my fancy. (I could
have used my compact edition of the OED, but the type is a hell of a lot
smaller than it was twenty years ago, and it says much the same thing,
anyway.[g])  Definitions 1, 2 and 4 each involve some sort of communication
between a higher and lower power, any of which suffice to support my
assertion that the H's receive their orders from a higher authority, and
what authority is higher than an archangel but the Increate? But even #3
requires an author, and the above quote specifies that the Increate was the
author of the rescripts, the H's merely the recorder. All in all, I don't
see any way around it; the Increate was calling the shots.

-Roy

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