You have the wrong creation you ninny - eschatology and genesis

I have always felt the statement Wolfe made in the Jordan interview about urth being a previous cycle was simply to escape a Catch 22 concerning God breaking the covenant of the flood which the Protestant ethos of the interviewer fixed upon- a get out of jail free card. Certainly in Eschatology and Genesis this is confirmed when the nephilim Nod says that the son of Meschia "is come to dwell with me, in my land east of this garden. I will give him one of my daughters to wife". Gabriel replies, (after calling him a ninny) "you have the wrong creation, my friend- you're fifty million years too late".

Nod being late suggests to me that the "correct" time for him to meet Cain would be even earlier; he was instructed wrt Cain, somehow became petrified, and reanimated during the next cycle before the subsequent Cain was born.

Right, the correct time to meet Cain would have been fifty million years earlier. I think the insistence Urth is a previous iteration is a retcon of the Jordan interview to avoid Prostestant wrath - he isn't going to meet Cain in the next iteration.

Protestant

An actual cosmic cycle would be on the order of tens of billions of years or more (this would have been known in the '80s), but I wouldn't rule it out on the basis of the "fifty million" alone, as in the context of a play it's a 'big enough number'. However, I would agree it suggests that Severian's Urth is fifty million years from the beginning of mankind. In the context of such a large number, it doesn't make a difference whether we count from the beginning of Mankind, or the Dawn Men a few hundred or thousand years in our future. That said, the internal evidence seems pretty inconsistent regarding the actual age of Urth. I feel Wolfe wanted an almost Vancean reach, even though the Sun of Urth is not really dying of its own accord, so a figure of fifty million works, and allows for mountains made up of forgotten cities etc. On the other hand, he wants more connections to present day Earth than this figure would render really plausible: when we see myths and legends surviving, as well as etymology and photographs, it's hard to believe in a span of more than a hundred thousand years or so. I think the inconsistency here is pretty unavoidable. [Compare Robert Silverberg's more unified Nightwings, which is specifically set 30000 years into the future, though it has much of the same atmosphere as Urth, as well as the consequences of a geological calamity and punishment for past human arrogance]. And, of course, it could be that "fifty million" is an exaggeration in the opposite direction, and the real time elapsed is less. - Gerry Quinn

And to be fair the coming of the New Sun isn't really a reboot of the entire cosmic cycle, just a local rebirth for Urth into Ushas. The play connotes the end of urth shall be like its beginning - and that its end heralds a new start. So it doesn't really need to be tens of billions of years.

The naming of specific individuals suggests to me that a complete recycle of time is intended. Unlike some treatments of Norse myth or LORD OF LIGHT, where there are god roles played by a progression of individuals who reshuffle to replace losses from the previous age.

The chapter "The Key To The Universe" in Citadel of the Autarch makes it clear, I think, that the concept of cosmic cycles is intended to be foundational to the structure of the universe. The blossoming of the New Sun is indicated to be part of the intercyclic intercourse. However, I am not sure that any named character outside of Yesod (I would include Tzadkiel among the Yesodi) have personal existences that intersect multiple cycles. Gabriel or Nod might share in the cross-cyclic nature of the Yesodi - but if they speak of coming fifty million years too late, I feel that they mean too late in the same cycle; that is to say, Nod mistakes the coming of Ushas for the Garden of Eden, or perhaps the expulsion therefrom - but he has not appeared at the wrong cycle. - Gerry Quinn

If he's in the correct cycle but in a much latter era, then the son of Meschia not being born yet seems like a contradiction. Cain needs to be born before the autarch, doesn't he, esp if he's the firstborn of humanity?

I agree. I find much in the text of BotNS to support the idea that Urth/ Briah was originally intended as a previous iteration of our Earth. The very name "Urth" implies the past. If Severian's world were a future version of Earth, wouldn't Wolfe have chosen to name it "Skuld", for the Norn of the future. I am loathe to think Wolfe chose the name "Urth" soley for the funky spelling, ignoring the meaning. Moreover, everything about Urth says to me "pre-Christian" society. The giant pagan "gods" running about, the barbarism, the witchcraft, the absence of a salvation route, etc. There is a Jesus-like figure mentioned in Short Sun but why is he associated with a Dionysian God rather than a Jehovian God? Then there is Severian. Wolfe has said he is a "Christ-like" figure. Is he the Second Coming? The Third or Fourth? That just doesn't seem right to me. Severian seems more like an imperfect proto-Christ than a later version of him . Plus, like the pre-Christian gods, Severian ends up in a mini-pantheon of other (false?) gods like Odilo and Thais. To me, Urth is a socially, historically and technologically advanced version of Earth. But it is a spiritually stunted version which has only advanced to Earth's Noah level at the time of Severian. It makes more sense to me that Urth is a previous iteration of Earth than Urth having spiritually degenerated and all the progress which Jesus brought having been lost.

We must agree to disagree, Marc. In the same interview, Wolfe flatly states his belief that the pagan gods were real and the ancients were in fact building temples and worshipping beings that did truly exist. If Wolfe is going to commit such blasphemy in one part of the interview, why would he tiptoe around fundamentalist Protestantism to the point of retconning his own work in another part of the interview. Surely the reality of pagan gods is more heretical and offensive than the fictional depiction of God breaking his Covenant. (also, I don't think the concept of time, in years, has any meaning in regard to universal iterations. I think the idea is that time, as we know it, is reset to zero at the creation of a new universe.)

What do you think of Robert and Marie and their Bible missionary work in the Jungle Hut? Cross-cyclic hijinks in the Botanic Gardens? No Christ in their bible? A trick of the mirrors? Meschia is a symbol of renewal and genesis but I suppose I don't take it literally - just a repopulating kind of new man (if he is a man) brought for Ushas - he is a symbol of new life transplanted. Urth also I think is a nice name for a world so ancient and old it is cloaked in antiquity and decrepit - nothing new has come yet. The autarch doubles as God in the play, too. The roles are kind of all meshed together. So while some parts are literally true, I don't think Meschia is actually an ancestor of that particular Autarch at all, he is just the first of the new wave.

That section quotes Mt. Nebo and the Bible quite explicitly. Jonas quotes Lewis Caroll and knows the origin source of The Tale of the Student and his Son and as the labyrinth of Crete and the toll from Athens. Is everything going to happen exactly the same in these cycles save one thing?

Lewis Carol especially is inconceivable without the presence of Christ in history. He would have a completely different life story and his introductions are so heavily skewed by a particular kind of faith - he even talked about trying to edit Shakespeare for the morally inappropriate parts for young girls while keeping the art somehow and hoped someday to make a children's bible.

Yes, most emphatically. I'll address that specific issue below, but generally I find that Dr. Talos' words apply to artifacts and stories from Earth being found on Urth. I don't have the text with me, but something about the echoes of past and future travelling back and forth through the corridors of time. A Frankenstein quote applies this quite directly to Dr. Talos, not to mention Biblical elements found in his Eschatology and Genesis. (Conversely, I think Wolfe is suggesting that some of our legends and myths, like Typhon, like Scylla, come as an echo from Urth not our own planet's history.) Wolfe is careful to put such Earthian references only in the hands of certain key Urth individuals who are likely to be privy to them, e.g. Jonah as mentioned, Father Inire/Rudesind, for the Apollo moon painting, Dr. Talos for Frankenstein, etc. Please remind me if I have overlooked any Earth reference from a non-spacefaring, general populace sort from Urth (i.e. with a Saint name). I don't think I have. Based, in part on the hierarch shape preference, I see the links of the sequential universes coiled into a spiral shape as a model. Given that, it becomes easier to see how a link might easily appear between a lower coil and a higher coil. So, regarding Robert and Marie: A number of years ago, I wrote an essay which wasn't published anywhere, regarding time travel structures in BotNS. The archetype for such things is found in the Last House, for which severian has to exactly follow a labyrinthine path and in doing so successfully, he arrives at a vertical structure in which upper stories exist in the future and lower stories exist in the past. we see a parallel to this in Valeria's tower, which Severian cannot find by flying around above The Citadel. He can only find it by retracing his steps in a maze below the Matachin Tower and finding the "antique" Valeria who resides in the lower levels of her tower. There may be a few other versions of this sort of structure in the text (the lair of the Naviscaput, for example). I suggest that the Jungle Hut is actually another one of these time-spanning structures. Severian and Agia have to travel a labyrinthine path to find it. Because they have to ascend to see the residents of the Hut, it reveals that what we are seeing is in the future. We see Robert, Marie a Bible and an airplane because inside the Hut we are in the (universal) future, on Earth. I find it a wonderfully written irony that the flimsiest of these time-travel structures opens the furthest (further even than the Last House) into the future. And if Isangoma is really Father Inire, as some have deduced, then it makes the connection that much stronger.

Thecla's sister Thea is an exultant, so perhaps not of the common populace, but she is aware of the fact that 'present' meant 'now' and 'gift' in English. I assume she learned it in history class. And of course, 'The Wonders of Urth and Sky' contains certain stories clearly deriving in part from Earthly myths. If we are to consider the Long Sun cosmology - though I don't think that's the strongest of sources in terms of what Wolfe had in mind when writing New Sun), clearly the Outsider is a fairly Christian version of the Aramaic god (we may infer that the name Outsider has resonance in the enclosed world of the Whorl). Jesus throwing the moneylenders of of the temple is mentioned, as is a distorted version of the Eden myth - and there is also a reference to Allah. - Gerry Quinn

I've long been one of the people pooh-poohing Lee's notion of Inire as a multiple creature and shapeshifter like Tzadkiel, despite them being at opposite extremes of the visible Yesodi ranks. However, seeing the juxtaposition of classes and people here reminds me that Inire is the supplier of cloning and bestifying/anthopofying technology with his hands in the khaibits and the anpiels and mastiffmen. So he does have something of these abilities, only as lab technology rather than an inborn ability like the Hierogrammates. So, perhaps Rudesind is rather a clone of Inire himself, explaining their similarity of simian build. This goes for the other suspects like the autocthonous shaman and Isangoma. This also explains how a short-lived hierodule has served a thousand years. And we know for sure he has memory-transfer potions, gobble-gobble!

In about every case of attention being drawn to an unusual life span in literature, the answer is hidden reproduction. And doesn't The Phantom live in the jungle? I still don't like the idea of Rudesind being a monkey, though. On 9 September 2014 19:43, Jeffery Wilson clueland.com <jwilson at clueland.com

Rudesind at one point says that he was "supposed" to tell Severian something but then messes it up. I don't mind the ape associations with Inire at all (how else to describe all those apes just hanging around in weird places?), but geez associating other characters with Inire always rubbed me the wrong way ... even if they were described as ape-like

Good example. Thea explains that Urth was "renamed" that during the period when men "sailed between the stars, leaping from galaxy to galaxy" which, given Tzadkiel's ship, (which might be the only ship), might offer them exposure to the next universe in which Earth exists. Vodalus contradicts her, claiming that Urth had been named so since the "utmost reaches of antiquity". At the least I think Wolfe is sowing some ambiguity here on whether Urth is in Earth's past or future.

This book unequivocally contains tales from beyond Urth and thus may have absorbed some content from Earth in the next universe.. Rudyard Kipling and Squanto are almost certainly of Earth origin. As noted in a previous post, I think Wolfe wants us to consider that some of our Earthly legends (like Abaia and Typhon) may have been bled over from the previous iteration of Urth.

Again I would ask why The Outsider is not more explicitly identified as the Judeo-Christian God, Jehovah. Why is he more explicitly associated with Dionysus? Briah being a pre-Christian universe is my explanation. As has also been discussed before, the presence of a Jesus-like character is different from the presence of a Christ. Same explanation. Severian is a "Christ-like" character, that much seems established. The problem for me, is that if it is so, what happened to Christ? How could his salvation ever vanish from Urth? Why would another Flood be necessary? Why do we only see Urth get an imperfect, paganish Christ-like version in Severian? Urth and Briah being a different, pre-Christian iteration of Earth answers these questions for me.

Lee: The Outsider gives Silk a clear vision of the passion of Christ. And Dionysus, as a dying-and-reanimated god, is generally considered a prefigurement of Christ.

When Vodalus says that Urth has been named thus since the utmost reaches of antiquity, it is a pun on the sound. It sounds the same but is spelled differently - the same name but a different connotation. It's been renamed from Earth but its been the same phonetically - both are correct. There is a very important thematic exchange in that Vodalus interchange in Claw where I believe Thea states how odd it would be if words could mean more than one thing. the language of the future is supposed to be perspicuous (one meaning-one word - something more fantastic than eating dead people for extant memories)

I don't think that is clear. A Jesus-like figure is crucified but so were many others crucified, even on Good Friday. Crucifixtion is not prima facie evidence that a person is Christ. If the Outsider's vision had included a resurrection three days later I'd be more convinced it was Jesus "Christ" And again I have to ask: it that was Christ then what happened to Christianity? How did it disappear? Why didn't the Second Coming ever happen? (surely not Severian). For me there are too many missing pieces for this planet to be Earth.

Exactly how I see it, which is why Silk and Dionysus (not Christ and Jehovah) figure into not only the Short Sun story but BotNS (an issue I'll address in another post). I see Urth as pre-Christian. But that is just my view.

Right, Vodalus is saying Urth is Earth. But why then, does Wolfe also provide the Thea story which Vodalus contradicts? Vodalus presents himself as having the greater authority and dismisses Thea's story as cute and charming. But Thea's story is far more detailed and specific, lending it a veracity which Vodalus' off-hand explanation does not possess. Though she does not deign to re-contradict her lord, I think Thea has a much more knowledgeable source of information than Vodalus: Father Inire. We know Inire was involved in Thecla's childhood. Surely he was involved in Thea's. This debate is in interesting contrast to another one previously discussed. When Gene Wolfe specifically stated in an interview that an abo had replaced Dr. Marsch, the debate on that subject instantly ended. But when Wolfe specifically states that Urth is a previous iteration of Earth in an interview, the debate continues on to this day. We haven't heard from James Wynn in a while but I know he was in the "Urth is Earth" camp.

see any purpose in Wolfe introducing the sequential universe model in Citadel of the Autarch. Why bring up other universes if we aren't ever going to see them and everything happens right here in our universe?

Tzadkiel and Inire being at the opposite extremes is actually at the heart of my view. The religious/mythological model is that of angels and demons. These are both the same sort of creatures. Both are superhuman, pluralized, genderless, shapeshifting beings with animal associations. The main difference is that demons are fallen angels who dwell on earth (and below?) rather than in heaven. I notice that Tzadkiel (as far as we know) never appears on Urth. The lower orders of Hieros such as Barbatus and Famulimus only make brief appearances on Urth. Others such as Father Inire, the Cumaean (and Abaia and Undines) are on Urth all the time for at least a thousand years. It seems pretty clear which of these are "demons" and Wolfe goes so far as to specifically call Juturna that name. There is a specific Biblical demon that I find especially relevant to BotNS:

A lot of stories have war in them but I was always intrigued by Wolfe's emphasis on beautification in BotNS. I think this connection explains it. Building on that:

This human-demon interbreeding, producing the "Nephilim" is interpreted by many as the real Biblical reason for the need for a purifying Flood. If Father Inire is responsible for bringing the tools of warfare and beautification to the Commonwealth, perhaps we are also invited to wonder why he is called "Father". His interest in young human girls must surely serve a storyline purpose. Azazel is strongly associated with the goat, leading to the depiction of Satan as hooved, horned and goat-eyed. This goat-connection is related to the pagan god Pan or Faunus, (known for his sexual proclivity and lust for human women) which leads to a direct connection to (who else?) Dionysus.

I think we should not ignore Wolfe's repeated urgings that we not draw such a strict dividing line between magic and science. Nor between biology and technology.

I think this is the way we were meant to see it. With remembrance that one of the goat-god Pan's best tricks was to be able to multiply himself into a small army of iterations. Here is an interesting story about one of those iterations:

Typhoeus being Typhon, of course. The question might arise as to why Father Inire (and some of his iterations) were seen as monkey-like rather than goat-like. My guess is that Wolfe thought that "goat" would make the puzzle too easy to solve. But "monkey" was not chosen randomly. Searching out the name "Inire" provides the Latin meaning of "sexual entrance" and the likely inspiration for that word being from Innuus, an epithet of Pan reflecting his sexual nature. The demonic name "Incubus" is related to this. As it happens, there is a tailless monkey named Macacus innuus, so named for its highly sexual nature. I think Father Inire's name and monkey resemblance is riff on this.

To explain the Yesodi. - Gerry Quinn

Yes, we need to see the goal mankind strives toward, the real point of Severian's narrative, transcendence into something else and the yesodis. If all these characters have access to previous iterations and cycles and knowledge, then what is the real difference in cycles of creation and merely traveling through time? God can reach through them as easily as Jonas, one would imagine, and Christ either valid for creation or not. Otherwise the yesodis and even Jonas have access to powers denied to the Increate. Is Christ then the only one bound into cycles? One would imagine the cycles would not allow such leakage of Lewis Caroll if God himself is limited to a particular cycle. (Of course with this argument I have backed myself into a theological corner - why couldn't Christ have saved all those who came before him if God is truly outside of time? That's okay though - let's keep it SFnal.)

Yes, he tells Severian he is there to clean Father Inire's painting but then he remembers that he was supposed to tell Severian about his own childhood and how there is a painting of him as a child by Fechin that he hopes to clean. The fact that Wolfe bothers to have Rudesind innocuously correct himself is (for me) a signpost that there is a mystery to be solved here. It is a tough one, but I think the answer lies in some subtle hints that the Fechin painting of Rudesind as a boy is a self-portrait.

the twisted, bent, monkey-like appearance I deduce that Rudesind and Father Inire are, in some sense, the same person. Similar sorts of clues lead me to the conclusion that The Old Boatman is also an iteration of Inire. He is small, old and bent. And he says he was there when Father Inire planted averns in the Lake of Birds. He was indeed. Dorcas was a young teen when the Old Boatman married her, another clue associating him with Father Inire. Consider also how closely the speech of Rudesind and The Old Boatman match.

Marc, in another thread you debated that in a Wolfe work, one word is able to completely turn the story on its head and allow it to be seen from a completely different perspective. I wouldn't expect such a long-term, extremely well-versed Wolfe fan such as yourself to change your views, but I do think there is one word which does that for BotNS. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) that word is found in the very Severian-Rudesind conversation you cite above. It refers to the gathering of nobility and aliens, artists and sexual revellers at the House Absolute where Dr. Talos' troop is performing. The word is "thiasus". It is similar to "bacchanal" but it specifically refers to:

Given that Nonnus' Dionysaica specifically refers to Pan's ability to multiply himself, is it such a stretch to consider that the word "thiasus" is a hint that Father Inire is a similar sort of being able to accomplish a similar trick? FWIW, another likely Dionysian/Pan hint is The Green Man:

http://www.greenmanenigma.com/history.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man

I don't see any purpose in Wolfe introducing the sequential universe model in Citadel of the Autarch. Why bring up other universes if we aren't ever going to see them and everything happens right here in our universe?

The Yesodi characters of Apheta, Venant and Tzadkiel have not been introduced in Citadel of the Autarch. In fact, Wolfe did not have plans to write UotNS while Citadel was being written. It is Malrubius who tells Severian about the multiple universe structure of the cosmos but we are given no reason to think that he or B, F and O come from another universe. They are just "aliens" not of Urth. So I find the only reason to introduce such an outr? concept as multiple universes so late in the story is not to explain where the characters are from but to explain where we, the Earth readers, are from and thus where Urth really is.

The Yesodi are mentioned here. They were responsible for the creation or modication of the Hierodules, who in turn created aquastors such as Malrubius: "It was not done swiftly or easily. Uncountable billions suffered and died under their guiding hands, leaving ineradicable memories of pain and blood. When their universe was old, and galaxy so far separated from galaxy that the nearest could not be seen even as faint stars, and the ships were steered thence by ancient records alone, the thing was done. Completed, the work was greater than those who began it could have guessed. What had been made was not a new race like Humanity's, but a race such as Humanity wished its own to be: united, compassionate, just. I was not told what became of the Humanity of that cycle. Perhaps it survived until the implosion of the universe, then perished with it. Perhaps it evolved beyond our recognition. But the beings Humanity had shaped into what men and women wished to be escaped, opening a passage to Yesod, the universe higher than our own, where they created worlds suited to what they had become. From that vantage point they look both forward and back, and in so looking they have discovered us. Perhaps we are no more than a race like that who shaped them. Perhaps it was we who shaped them or our sons or our fathers. Malrubius said he did not know, and I believe he told the truth. However it may be, they shape us now as they themselves were shaped; it is at once their repayment and their revenge. The Hierodules they have found too, and formed more quickly, to serve them in this universe. On their instructions, the Hierodules construct such ships as the one that bore me from the jungle to the sea, so that aquastors like Malrubius and Triskele may serve them also. With these tongs, we are held in the forge." - Gerry Quinn

As mentioned to Gerry, there doesn't seem to be any reason in Citadel for any of the characters to be from Yesod. But the sequential universes are in the narrative of Citadel for a reason. Later, in UotNS we do get a sense that there are higher beings residing in a higher universe than Severian's but not so much in the first four books. There is some sense of Wolfe looking to our future and making some speculative projections. But given the total body of WOlfe's work I find that he is far more interested in explaining our past. Urth, as a previous iteration of Earth, does that. Wolfe says he thinks the pagan gods were real. So why don't we find gigantic, fossilized Zeus, Odin, Typhon, Scylla and Abaia bones? Because they can only be found in a previous iteration of our planet, on urth. Why can Urth be flooded? Because, like here, it only happened once.

As I see it, only a few mysterious, arcane Urth characters and their confidants have access to knowledge of Earth. The rest operate, as we do, with the working assumption that there is only one universe.

Well, my impression is that the Increate is not actively "reaching". He, as Pancreator, has already created all things in all times in all universes. Travelling through time (even one moment at a time as we do) and experiencing "change" is just an illusion for lesser beings who cannot simultaneously perceive more than one moment of time as it "happens". In BotNS, Severian is a pawn who can only move one space at a time. Tzadkiel is presumably a queen who can move multiple spaces in multiple directions (some bishops and rooks might also be identified in the story). But the Increate is an entity far beyond Tzadkiel. He is all spaces and all boards everywhere. Unlike Tzadkiel, Given his universal nature, God cannot appear to a human being in any comprehensible form, hence he uses various spokesmen and other media to deliver His messages.

Yes, since he takes human form, he is bound by the limits of that form. I don't think Christ can be found in our universe AND in Briah except as "leakage".

Lewis Carroll is in human form but God is not. It is beyond our comprehension but it might be argued that the form of God IS the universe(s).

This is tautology. You are saying beings from another universe were mentioned when beings from another universe were mentioned. It is a diversion from the topic of the this thread which is whether Urth is a future version of planet Earth or whether Urth is a previous universal iteration of Earth. The James Jordan-Gene Wolfe quotes which inspired this thread are:

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html#urth To me this is an explicit, detailed and unequivocal statement by Wolfe that he intended Briah and Urth to be seen as a previous universe, not our own universe nor our own Earth. Marc has suggested this was a casual, self-ret-con of Wolfe own work to pander to Protestant sensibilities and to post facto justify the occurrence of a second Flood on Earth in violation of the Covenant. With due respect to Marc, I find this to be an unbelievable explanation of such specific and detailed words from Mr. Wolfe . I actually think it would make more sense to suggest that James Jordan deliberately misquoted Wolfe to uphold Protestant dogma. And with due respect to James, I do not think that is at all the case. I respect both Gene Wolfe and James Jordan and I feel their words were reported faithfully and honestly in this interview. I might find the accusation of ret-conning slightly plausible if there were no textual hints to support Gene Wolfe's contention that he intended Urth to be a previous iteration of Earth. If there were no mention of multiple universes or hints that Urth is "of the past". But there are. Both the interview and text support the theory that Urth is not Earth. Marc is not the only highly intelligent, well-versed Wolfe fan who adheres to the "Urth is Earth" theory. And Wolfe himself seems to give latitude for each reader to interpret some parts of his work as they see them, not necessarily as Wolfe intended them. But if Wolfe's intentions matter, then, given the words of the interview and the textual hints, I find it more likely that the "Urth is Earth" theory is a case of readers clinging to their initial, cherished impression rather than "urth is not Earth" being an incidence of Wolfe auctorial retrofitting.

Well.. I guess my big problem with it is the idea of no Christ in a previous iteration, because that is something that we see more clearly in The Wizard Knight - knightly medieval virtues (ie- boasting and bullying) stripped of Christianity. The religion of Silk is Catholicism with paganism written over it, the cross "voided" (an inversion of pagan holidays being "appropriated" by Christianity), quotes from Marcus Aurelius in the Chrasmological Writings and all. The Saints names, the scriptural echoes ... eucharists everywhere ... seems the solar cycle is Catholic or Orthodox Christian in a way Wizard Knight never was. 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. Self aggrandizement cannot kill the spirit (and I still think the male and female voices in Silk's ears is a pre-recorded message from his parents, Pas and Kypris)

Well, you did ask what could be the purpose of introducing an iterated universe, and this is an in-text reason for it.

I would agree, at least to the extent that he makes it clear that this is the sort of idea that he was considering. I don't think it necessarily establishes that he intended it to be unambiguously determinable from the text. I don't see anything much in the text that pushes us towards understanding it as a past iteration, unless you attempt to align it with theology or some other criterion, and determine that Severian's Urth is an inferior creation to ours.

Leaving something ambiguous can achieve several functions at once. I certainly don't think Wolfe would ret-con it for an interview. It doesn't seem impossible that he might, while writing the book, have thought "well, at least this iteration concept means it'll be hard for people to throw theological brickbats at me!" Personally, I've always tended to the view that Urth might be a past, present or future iteration. If Wolfe says it's a past iteration that's fine with me. He might have chosen this to avoid contrasting the Conciliator with a past Incarnation. If so, though, it seems to me he changed his mind between New Sun and Long Sun. [One could postulate, of course, that New Sun and Long Sun are set in different iterations - they have only two characters in common, after all. But that seems a stretch...] - Gerry Quinn

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.

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.

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 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.

It was meant more rhetorically to address the thread topic, but okay.

Agreed, in similar fashion to the other recent topic, Dr. Marsch being replaced by an abo. As discussed, that was an ambiguous point until the Wolfe interview confirmed it. I find the Jordan interview to be confirming on this issue.

Agreed. In this case I find the interview to be the most compelling evidence for it and the text serving as confirmation. (I'm pretty sure Wolfe mentions the past iteration idea in other interviews also. I'll try to find them if anyone is interested).

On first reading, it is very possible to confuse the Conciliator with Jesus who did serve to present a bridge of conciliation between those of heaven and those of earth. But, by the end of Citadel, we can be pretty sure The Concilliator is Severian and UotNS confirms that.

Is this because of what Marc notes as the Catholic trappings of Silk's religion? Or the vision of the Jesus-like figure? Both? Until told by him otherwise, I must assume Gene Wolfe intended to be consistent in his transition from New Sun to Long Sun and Short Sun. Thus, Urth, The Whorl and all of Briah are not in our universe but a past iteration. God (the Outsider) appears in this universe as Dionysian and pre-Christian rather than Jehovian and Christian. Crosses and priestly confessions and Jesus-figures may appear but they are not (yet) related to Christ. (I would not rule out that Silk's vision of the Jesus-figure was actually Jesus Christ of Earth but if so, he would be an example of Marc's "leakage" between universes, much as Urth's "Typhon" and Green's vampiric "Inhumi" have leaked from Briah to our own myths and legends)

But that requires the Church to have fallen somewhere along the way, and the idea that the Church may fall is a heresy of much greater magnitude than Lee's issues with the reality of pagan gods, which is something that isn't really heretical. Or with God's promise that the Earth would not again be flooded: on the one hand, Wolfe chose flooding when he could have chosen anything else, so backtracking on it makes no sense. On the other hand, there are times when God does seem to have broken promises. I also find the issue of 'next' and 'previous' uncomfortably inappropriate when discussing separate universes. St Augustine knew already that there is no 'before' nor 'after' the universe, because time itself is part of the universe. And Ushas isn't a 'next universe'. It0s the same universe, the same creation. I find the problems go away if we accept the quite trivial observations that: - universes aren't 'temporally aligned', rather think of them as a bunch of balls inside a bag, with our own being in the centre and Yesod not being one of them - not being temporally aligned, there is no need to worry that God made a promise in our own universe and then 'broke' it in another - rather, what happens in the others is independent, and yet all of them may echo (differently and out of order) what happens in ours - there may have never been a flood on Urth (Severian's being its one flood), Severian's time may be millions of years after the time in Severian's universe that corresponds to our own present here (so 'in the future', but not our future) - the earthly references on Urth may be echoes and may be imported by the Yesodis, or some people on universes other than our own may be able to have visions of things happening in our own - the Incarnation is a single event, happening in our universe only, and it will eventually ripple to the others My view is that Severian's universe is not unlike ours, but with slightly different Jews and Christ was never born there. The issue tackled is, how did such a universe end up, and how can it be saved, in a soteriological sense? And each Book of the X Sun gives an answer.

I agree. Though not ever having been Christian myself, I can only guess at what most Christians would consider more or less heretical.

I tend to agree on a personal level about the "real" universe. But in regard to BotNS we have that pesky Wolfe referring in an interview to "past universes" and "past cycles" and "sequential universes", all making it seem as though he pictured them sequentially that way, at least for this story.

I like this analogy for one part of the story. As Tzadkiel's Ship travels to the end of Briah, it is implied that it has also reached the beginning of Briah. This doesn't fit with the "string of sausages" model for the sequence of universes. For me, the spiral model works best for Wolfe's universes. It allows sequentiality but also allows the beginning and end of each coil to be in proximity to each other. And of course the spiral is the shape preferred by the hierarchs.

Question: Given that time travel is the only "real" connection between the two, what is to say that the universe of Long/Short Sun is the same iteration as that of New Sun? Perhaps L/SS is our universe.

Actually, God never promises that the Earth will not again be flooded - only that He will not do it. And, in New Sun, God does not do it; the Yesodis and Severian do.

I like this.

Gen 9:11 in the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition has: "I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." This flood neither killed everyone nor destroyed the earth, so it would seem to be ok regardless of who was responsible.

No dia 11/09/2014, ?s 01:08, Thomas Bitterman <tom at bitterman.net> escreveu:

But then again neither did the other, so the words must be read as approximate.

Could be. But is there a mention that the red sun of Urth can be seen in the night sky of Blue? Conversely, I think "Fomalhaut" mentioned in BotNS foreshadows the sun of Blue, that planet being the origin of large, oceanic, fishy god/monsters. I think travel to Yesod can fairly be said to involve traversing both space and time. The whole idea of "dream" travel from Blue to Urth adds another dimension to the whole thing to the point that I don't know how it compares to other Sun Series examples of travel. Entonio:

Dan'l:

Ditto. I like that Urth, The Whorl and Blue each seem to have a unique path to "salvation". Blue appears to have suffered a Flood but there remains work to do, just as for post-diluvian Earth and Ushas. There even seems a glint of hope for Green (symbolized by the flooding of the sewer?).

Remember Tzadkiel's story that the original exalted human race built his from animals, so an association with animals and beastmen and apes as the most humanlike of animals is not inappropriate for Yesodis. The watcher-apes seen by Sev I still think may be aquastors, but there needs to be a reason both for their presence and for their lack of omnipresence. Perhaps they are animal characters originally meant for younger children's education but repurposed to guide or monitor Severian's progress. We know Wolfe uses the theme of mechanical toys taken into adult contexts in several short stories....