(urth) ATTENDING DAEDALUS

Stanislaus sbocian at poczta.fm
Sun Jan 29 04:46:42 PST 2006


Hello Roy,

Saturday, January 28, 2006, 8:38:43 AM, you wrote:

> Last spring I argued, largely with Adam Stephanides, in large part about the
> role of the Hierogrammates in the Increate's designs for humanity. Simply
> put, I contended that the Hierogrammates were doing the Increate's bidding
> when they did whatever they did to or for Urth's sun, and therefore to that
> branch of humanity affected by the coming of the New Sun. By "Increate" I
> meant God, more specifically the Judeo-Christian God, as I believe the term
> has been commonly understood, aka "Pancreator" and "Outsider".

> Recently I received and read Peter Wright's _Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe,
> Artifice and the Reader_. The book was written by 1999, but wasn't published
> until 2003, so the SHORT SUN books were not discussed.

> It is unfair to the author to summarize a whole book in a few lines, but it
> seems to be his contention that the Hierogrammates were selfish manipulators
> of humanity, that Severian was a hapless, rather foolish puppet, sans
> divinity in his orchestrated role as Conciliator.
    ....
> -Roy


First, I wouldn't say that Increate is specifically Judeo-Christian
God. He isn't usually called that, for one thing. I would say that He
(or It - Uncreate is usually not personal) is most similar to the
Neoplatonic One. Uncreate therefore is impersonal, unknowable and
unintelligible. According to Neoplatonical doctrines of hierarchy
and mediation (transmitted to Christianity by Pseudo-Dionysius
Areopagite) a higher and a lower being can meet only through the
mediation of a tertium quid, an intermediate. Between God and Man
there is the whole celestial hierarchy (the nine choirs of angels of
Dionysius). Each of the levels communicates only with the next higher
level.

It is best exemplified in the fable of the cock, eagle and angel in
"The Citadel". The Angel says there: "The Pancreator is infinitely far
from us, and thus infinitely far from me, though I fly so much higher
than you. I guess at his desires - no one can do otherwise." I would
say that is the situation of Hierodules, or even Hierogrammates.


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-dionysius-areopagite/

P. S.

To be precise - I would say theology in TBoNS is more Dionysian
than classical Neoplatonist. Eg the Pancreator (a typical Eastern
Christian epithet of God) created the world directly, not by
mediators.
-- 
Best regards,
 Stanislaus                           mailto:sbocian at poczta.fm


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