(urth) Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod

[Lee Berman]

I find the text confusing and contradictory in places, regarding cosmology especially. 
My interpretation has been clarified by this exchange in the James Jordan interview:
 
 
 
>JJ: This universe that you set in Briah, or part of it--is that our universe? ....
 
>GW: No. I thought of it as a long past universe. Something that we are repeating rather
>than something that we are.
 
>JJ: ....But that is a past world just in your imagination.
 
>GW: Yes, I was looking at what past universes might have been like really and that is how...
>I began with the idea of what is going to happen to us if we just keep going the way we are 
>going and continue to live on the continent of Earth without ever really going into the sea 
>or going into space and we just wait for the money to run out. The do nothing future and thinking 
>about what that would be. And then I got into the idea of universal cycles. And decided that I 
>would show that this might be a past cycle. Some physicists at least think that the Big Bang is 
>eventually going to be followed by a Big Gnab in which the whole universe coalesces again which 
>will be followed by another Big Bang which is sort of like a succession of universe as piston 
>impulses in an internal combustion engine. I certainly don't have any great emotional investment 
>in that idea but I do think it is a useful idea to play around with. Physics is coming nearer and 
>nearer and nearer mysticism. It has been doing this now for over 50 years and it seems to me that is 
>a fascinating thing that much too little attention has been given to.
 
>JJ: That poses something of a difficulty in terms of Christian eschatology if there is to be a time 
>and there is a resurrection where the world comes to an end. Are you making an attempt to unify those 
>two ideas or just to play with the idea of a gnostic universe?
 
>GW: I was toying with those ideas, I think, rather than trying to make sense of them. Is our resurrection 
>going to be in another universal cycle? Well, yes, maybe it is. I don't know. We don't know what is really 
>meant by the world coming to an end, and God rolling up the sky like a carpet and all that. It is all 
>picturesque language. Figurative language to try to give a general idea to an audience that would not be 
>capable of understanding the actuality. And I am not sure we are more capable of understanding that 
>actuality than they were. It is like the Genesis story. I don't believe in a literal apple and I don't 
>believe that literally biting into the fruit had this effect but if you have to explain to a bunch of 
>primitives how men differ from animals and where men went wrong in differing from animals, this is a 
>pretty good way to do it.
 
For me Wolfe's words suggests that the universe we readers live in is in the cosmological future of Briah. 
The text suggests to me that Yesod is in the cosmological future of Briah. So, not an impossible conclusion 
that we live in Yesod. It explains why a denizen of Yesod, Tzadkiel, has an identical name to one of our 
angels. And it fits Wolfe's assertion that Briah is a universe in our past.
 
 
>Roy C. Lackey- 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."
 
No disrepect intended Roy, but that is your opinion. I see the same words and find different meaning. 
As I understand, there is a succession of universes and Briah is succeeded by Yesod. One step higher on 
the staircase, so to speak.  I truly don't understand where you get the concept of Yesod being "apart" 
like a single step or a ladder rung floating detached in a void.