(urth) Shapeshifting Evidence and Principles

[thalassocrat at nym.hush.com]

On Tue, 30 May 2006 05:08:52 +1000 "Roy C. Lackey" 
<rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
>The many references made to the Increate in the Urth Cycle leave 
>little room
>to doubt that Increate means God, as, for example, Dan'l uses the 
>word God.
>Severian, at least, believed that he was doing God's will when he 
>destroyed
>Urth. "It came to me that when the Increate had chosen me his 
>instrument to
>destroy the land, only babes and beasts had died in innocence." 
>(URTH, 333)

Sure, the Increate is God, and Sev & others believe they are doing 
God's will. But nobody seems to have a direct line to him; they're 
guessing.

I do think Sev's prayer in the chapel of the Pelerines is very 
instructive (Ch 14 of Citadel). 

"I remained conscious of my kneeling body, but only as a peripheral 
burden. My mind was among the starry wastes, far from Urth and 
indeed far from Urth's archipeligo of island worlds, and it seemed 
to me that that to which I spoke was farther still - I had come, as 
it were, to the walls of the universe, and now shouted through the 
walls to one who waited outside."

At this point, I think you'd normally expect any answer to the 
prayer to come from the Increate, who is surely the same as the 
later "Outsider". But no; Sev finds only himself.

"... I seemed to see ... through the chink in the universe to a new 
universe ... where my listener knelt to hear me. What had seemed a 
crevice in the world had expanded until I could see a face and 
folded hands, and the opening, like a tunnel, running deep into a 
human head ... I was whispering into my own ear ..."

Of course, it's as the New Sun that Sev finds himself. But even as 
the New Sun, the Conciliator, the holest thing around, I don't 
recall the smallest hint that Sev experiences any form of communion 
with the Increate. 

In the New Sun universe, the Outsider isn't taking any calls.