(urth) Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod

[Roy C. Lackey]

Lee Berman wrote:
> John Watkins and I are in disagreement over the relationship between
Hierogrammates,
> Briah and Yesod. My view is that Briah precedes Yesod in the cosmic
timeline, that
> the birth of each new universe is what constitutes a "manvantara" and that
Hierogrammates
> were created in Briah by some version of humanity and escaped to Yesod.
John feels that the
> Hierogrammates' creation had nothing to do with Severian's universe or his
race.
>
> The text I base my views on:
>
> >Severian- "But on the ship I thought we had come to the end of Briah when
we came here"
> >Apheta- "So you did..."
>
> As the Ship approaches the end of its journey Severian sees, rising over
the topmost sail-
>
> >"the birth of a new universe, the primal explosion containing every sun
because from it all
> >suns will come.."
>
> Taken together, it seems clear to me that as Briah ends in a Great Gnab it
Big Bangs into the
> new universe, Yesod.

Yesod is a universe apart from Briah and the other manvantaras, on a
different level. This is not my opinion; it is what Severian was told by
Malrubius in CITADEL: ". . . Yesod, the universe higher than our own, where
they created worlds suited to what they [the Hierogrammates] had become."
There is an "endless succession" of these universes on the level below
Yesod, in one of which "a race was born that was so like to ours that Master
Malrubius did not scruple to call it human." That race is the one Apheta
said was "cognate" (p-137) to Severian's.

> In Yesod, Severian speaks to Tzadkiel who tells him,
>
> >"..I am as I am, your own race having made us so before the apocatasatis.
Were you not told
> that they had shaped us in their image?"
>
>
> Later Severian wonders why Tzadkiel disguised himself so he could hang out
with Severian on the
> ship. Tzadkiel explains that if Severian had had a childhood hero, it
would be only natural, if
> given the chance to want to:
>
> "walk with him, ..Stand beside him when he was in danger..Care for him,
perhaps, when he was ill."
>

It wasn't just some childhood hero. Tzadkiel explicitly states in that
passage that he was speaking of the Conciliator. (p-152)

> This seems clear to me. Tzadkiel is saying that Severian's race created
his and that Severian, as
> a major participant in this, is a legendary childhood hero of Tzadkiel's.

The paragraph you quoted from goes on to say "I [Tzadkiel] have been such an
acolyte, in a creation now vanished. In that too there was a Conciliator and
a New Sun, though we did not use those names."

I guess you can look at it as a chicken-or-the-egg debate, but the universe
Severian was born in is not the same universe the Hieros formed the
Hierogrammates in, otherwise there would be no point in endless repetition
of the same universe. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.) And the text does
say that there are at least small changes in each iteration. Presumably the
changes are hoped to produce better results at some point, but that will
stray into another tiresome religious debate.

-Roy