Severian on trial

Chris · 28 Mar 2005, 10:27 · from 2005-March.txt.gz

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From: rasputin_ at hotmail.com (Chris)
Date: Mon Mar 28 10:27:33 2005
Subject: (urth) Severian on trial
In-Reply-To: <BE6D8603.4C6AC%adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <BAY102-F394CCFF8EE0724F92B03C286440 at phx.gbl>

You're right, that was a grievous error on my part.

The use of "Briah" is confusing no matter which way you look at it. "Briah" 
is one of a few fairly common spellings for the word indicated in Lexicon 
Urthus, although the entry there is a little misleading. What "Briah" 
actually means, or stands for, changes depending on what you're talking 
about. This could be because the qabbalistic traditions are fragmented, or 
just because of a general concept shift (in other words, the uses could be 
equivalent). In either event "Briah" isn't a sefirot, as Yesod is; the two 
are categorically different in a way. In addition, while it's correct that 
the whole of the tree of life can be divided into the 4 realms as 
Andre-Driussi shows, it's also true that *each individual sefirot* can 
equally be divided into the four realms; you might say that each sphere has 
its own path of energy down from the divine. On this picture of things it is 
indeed confusing, because the name you would expect for the physical realm 
is "Assiah"; "Briah" is a higher "archangelic" realm.

This can make a certain amount of sense if you choose to see Briah as a 
higher realm, because in Briah there is an archangel of mercy named Tzadkiel 
who is part of a matched pair with the archangel of "severity", Sammael.

Now for the qualification: Nutria has shared on the list that Wolfe says 
that while the names were "plucked" from the qabbalah (indicating that there 
probably is at least something *appropriate* about the names), he didn't 
intend a "larger spin" or that these terms would be the key to interpreting 
the book. So there are limits to how far this can be taken. I do think that 
the qabbalistic names that he chose to pluck were chosen because of their 
appropriateness to what they were naming; if this is the case then a 
materialistic/literalist interpretation would make "Malkhut" the obvious 
choice for Urth's universe, with "Assiah" as a close second.

Thanks for reminding me of all this.
Regards,
Civet

>Actually, Urth's universe is Briah; Yesod is the Hierogrammates' universe.
>But this makes things more puzzling, since "Briah would appear to be a
>different spelling of Beri'ah" (Andre-Driussi, Lexicon Urthus, p. 270),
>which is above Yesod.
>
>--Adam
>
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