(urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)

[John Watkins]

Isn't it likely that the secret of the guild is associated somehow
with the destruction Severian brings as the New Sun?  I.e., the secret
is that the Conciliator is a torturer, and that the New Sun means
death?

That way Severian has "told" the secret, without "revealing" the secret.



On 11/22/08, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There is, of course, the "secret" of the Guild which Palaemon and Gurloes
> tell Severian when he's made journeyman. Some people on the list have,
> interestingly enough, speculated that this "secret" is that the Torturer's
> Guild used to be the Catholic Church itself. The speculation that they used
> to be the Inquisition would fit rather well with that. As far as I recall,
> Severian never says anything else about this "secret," although he does
> claim to have broken his promise never to tell it.
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
> To: urth at lists.urth.net
> Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 2:02:46 PM
> Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)
>
>  I don't have any textual basis for this, but I thought of the Torturers as
> tracing their lineage back to Typhon. This is sort of the reverse of your
> impression; the institution would have started out as secular, and then
> acquired its mystical aspects in order to maintain its cohesion over time.
>
> --
> "When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to
> set." -- Lin Yutang
>
>
>
>> From: sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org
>> To: urth at lists.urth.net
>> Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:44:16 -0800
>> Subject: Re: (urth) Severian as reverse Christ (or something)
>>
>>
>> On Nov 22, 2008, at 10:19 AM, Dave Tallman wrote:
>>
>> > David Stockhoff wrote:
>> >> In similar vein, discussing "what offices a Christian man may
>> >> hold", he refers to a recent case wherein a Church member had the
>> >> opportunity to receive high public office as a magistrate.
>> >> Tertullian argues that it would be morally impossible for this man
>> >> to satisfy both the Gospel's demands and those of Roman law, for
>> >> that would require him to abstain not only from all public pagan
>> >> sacrifices, oaths, etc., but also from "sitting in judgment on
>> >> anyone's life or character, . . . neither condemning nor fore-
>> >> condemning; binding no one, imprisoning /or torturing no one/".^*2
>> >> <http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html#FN_2
>> >> >* These are the earliest known explicit Christian statements on
>> >> the morality of torture.
>> >>
>> > Wolfe may have drawn some ideas from Tertullian, but he surely
>> > wouldn't consider him to be the last word on Christian morality. A
>> > couple of centuries later St. Augustine wrote on the idea of a "just
>> > war," which could be fought by righteous Christian soldiers.
>> > Tertullian ended up being declared a heretic (not about pacificism,
>> > but about whether a new prophecy could have the same force as
>> > scripture).
>> >
>> > Tertullian had the luxury in the third century of belonging to a
>> > persucuted group that could stand outside and condemn the system.
>> > But later the Church became the accepted state religion, and took
>> > over a great deal of power in the Middle Ages. At that point,
>> > soldiers, magistrates, and even torturers were at least nominally
>> > Christians. It's a difficult moral dilemma and one that Wolfe
>> > doesn't shrink from presenting in all its horror.
>>
>>
>> On that note, I've taken the Torturer's Guild as a sort of Inquisition
>> that's become a more or less secular institution of the State. As if
>> the State absorbed them and gradually became more and more ashamed of
>> the Guild, yet kept it around in diminished form for their dirty work.
>> but it's lost it's original purpose.   Of course that's all
>> speculation, but it works for me.
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