(urth) Abaia & co.

[mournings glory]

>I'm enjoying the reheated discussion about Baldanders
>and the megatherians.
>Baldanders as a "kind of baby Abia" is an important
>theory, but what if he IS Abia? This has been proposed
>before (I can't find the ref, but it must have been
>Borski, right?), and Sev as eventual Lake God
>(Oannes?)

Could the giant baby found in Baldander's castle be the infant Abaia? As 
Severian tells us, "I left this boy where I had found him, and to this day I 
have no notion of what may have become of him."
Pronouncements like this by Wolfean characters make me very suspicious, and 
if his mother is Juturna and experiences time backwards, he could evolve 
widdershins fashion into Abaia -- a rather nice irony, if Severian is his 
father. This would also make the undines mother-aunts more than 
sister-brides -- or maybe not, given the novel's many incestuous couplings.

> > The undines as "brides" of Abaia strikes me as
> > ludicrous unless bride is
> > meant metaphorically, in the sense that nuns are
> > said to be brides of
> > Christ. Juturna was big -- about sixty feet tall at
> > the Cephissus -- but
> > still quite small in comparison to a mountain.
> > Undines as sexual playthings?

Again, I think you're thinking too rigidly biological here. Severian couples 
with Apheta, and their child is the White Fountain. Explain the genetics of 
that one.

Re 14 vs 17, and minotaur math:

>I guess that makes more sense: 14 is as high as the Minotaur can
>count.  Ten fingers, two hooves, two horns.

What? No pizzle? Guess that makes him related to Appian-the-bull in at least 
two respects, no?

emotaur