(urth) the Epitome

[Roy C. Lackey]

Matt Tillman wrote:

>Sorry, cut out most of this because I just wanted to respond to one
paragraph
>
>Roy C. Lackey wrote:
>
>I know that Apheta says that the H's wanted Sev to succeed because that
>strain of mankind born of Ushas might produce the Hieros, which would in
>turn shape the H's in Briah. But that doesn't change the fact that the H's
>already exist and live in Yesod. There is no practical point in endlessly
>repeating what has already been done in universe after universe. That's
>where the Increate comes in. They were doing his bidding. The goal was to
>improve and transform mankind "by some minute step" in each cycle into
>something nearer and dearer to the Increate, just as they themselves had
>been transformed by mankind into a race that was "united, compassionate,
>just." (CITADEL, 242)

>>Why is it implausible that the H's are working along a non-linear timeline
to prevent anything from forestalling their own development.  Certainly, it
could be said that if we could work outside of time and guide our lives from
childhood, we might do things differently with all of that 20/20 hindsight.
Now imagine that we have more than 20/20 hindsight, because we operate on a
different plane of existance than the creatures that we are gradually
manipulating.<<
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I don't know if my use of "H's" as shorthand for Hierogrammates is causing
confusion with Hieros, or what. Anyway, to be clear, the Hieros were the
humans of a previous universe who caused the eventual creation of the
Hierogrammates. That creation was their great sin; a sin certainly in the
eyes of the H's, but also, more importantly, in the eyes of the Increate.

As I've already said, the H's already exist, in Yesod, independent of any
further Briah-like iterations of universes. Their development is not an
issue. If they found their creation to have been such a painful ordeal that
mankind had to be punished for it, why would they want to repeat it
endlessly if they didn't have to? And they didn't have to.

Let me condense it this way: either the H's did what they did (mess with the
Sun, drown Urth, manipulate mankind, etc.) with the consent of the Increate,
or they didn't. That they did have that consent is what I have argued. To
argue that they only _thought_ they had that consent doesn't change
anything; either they did or they didn't. The absence of divine sanction
reduces the Pancreator to a spectator to events profoundly affecting his own
Creation. From the Garden to Noah to the Christ, the Bible presents a
decidedly contrary portrait of Divine Right.

If the H's had their own agenda -- regardless of what that agenda may have
been -- and were operating without the blessing of the Increate, then they
lack the _moral authority_ to pass judgement on mankind. It's that simple.
Without moral authority, the H's are just cosmic cowboys, hypocrites guilty
of precisely the same sin for which mankind had been condemned . They can be
neither "compassionate" nor "just", as Wolfe says of them.

Finally, if Wolfe didn't intend the destruction of Urth and the birth of
Ushas to be, in a religious sense, a good thing, why did he write it that
way? Why write it at all?

-Roy