(urth) Cumaeans

[David Stockhoff]

Tim

My assumption---or rationalization---has always been that the Cumaean was an alien of a different sort than the Inhumi. Or else just a being of power---she is named after a witch out of the New Testament, after all. The faces and lack of wings or any serious attempt to disguise herself lead me to that. 

Beyond that, I dunno. It's possible Wolfe hadn't worked out the details yet. Who would the thing feed on?

I also have always assumed that the great toothy butterfly-creature Severian sees flying through the pages of Father Inire's mirror book was an Inhumu. Is there any consensus on that? Was it Tzadkiel?



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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 11:49:40 -0000
From: "O'Donnell, Tim \(BOSI\)" <Tim.O'Donnell at bankofscotland.ie>
Subject: (urth) Wolfean theologies
To: <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID:
	<63FB9AC7E0AEC7459DBCC99DC44247CA01F6B695 at BOSIDEXDB.Bankofscotland.ie>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

SonOfWitz, as a long standing member of the Church of Odin (I am due to receive my celebratory pair of imitation ravens this weekend in the
Valhalla Restaurant and Public House) I take serious offence to your remarks on Satanists.  While the Odinists broke away from the Satanists in
the great schism of 4003 BC (on our first anniversary) in what has since been described as the "Dirty Hanky" scandal (this pivoted on whether cleanliness
was indeed next to godliness - an issue that occupied our immoral philosophers for some time) I still recognise myself as belonging to the greater Satanic church
and so would like you to retract what you said.

Seriously though, I have my private beliefs which I would prefer not to discuss and I have some knowledge of various religions (most particularly Catholicism) having
become very interested in the topic in my early 20s.  But I recognise the difference between what I believe and what I understand that other people believe.  Instead of 
arguing this out with people on the list can we not leave the "Wolfe as Catholic writer" vs "Wolfe as writer with many influences, many of them Catholic" to the realm of
"Are Blue/Green Urth/Lune?" in the camp of intractable Lupine questions?  

I would prefer to discuss other items than to argue about beliefs and disappear into tangents on the Church in the world today.  

So in that spirit I asked about the following passage in BOTNS a while back and there were no takers:

As I had suspected, the Cumaean was not a woman at all; yet neither was she one
of the horrors I had beheld in the gardens of the House Absolute. Something
sleekly reptilian coiled about the glowing rod. I looked for the head but found
none, though each of the patternings on the reptile's back was a face, and the
eyes of each face seemed lost in rapture.
Dorcas woke while I looked from one to another.


I have long hoped that this was an Inhumu (Inhumi?) on Urth in the time of Severian.  
Reasons it is possible:
*	Reptilian in nature
*	Element of Soul Travel seems to be occurring here

Reasons it may not be an inhumi:
*	The description of the faces on the reptile's back does not tie in with BOTSS, unless it is the faces of the Inhumu's victims?

Any takers?





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