(urth) Lives of the Great Beasts

Jonathan Goodwin joncgoodwin at gmail.com
Sat Jul 3 09:53:51 PDT 2010


On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 12:23 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:

> I still don't see it as necessarily hinging on Crowley's anything.


It's possible that I don't understand what you're arguing, then. I
thought it went something like this: Crowley was a magician. Crowley
called himself the "megatherion," his own coinage for the Beast of
Revelation. There are magicians in BoTNS.* Therefore, the Lives of the
Seventeen Megatherians likely refers to similar self-styled "great
beasts" who were magicians rather than to the powers in the sea.

This argument, if I've reproduced it correctly, goes wrong by
overestimating the likely relevance of the first two steps, or,
perhaps, by assuming a broader context for the second step than it in
fact has.

If you're also suggesting, as I think you might be, that a title
modeled on Plutarch or Vasari would be inappropriate for still-living
beasts and would be better applied to their vassals, perhaps the Group
of Seventeen, who might well be thought of as magicians, that's one
thing. I don't see why they would die, either, though. The title would
be appropriate if they change while growing as much as I had earlier
assumed, though.

*Probably not really, though. Severian's suggestible, and it's
directly stated that the Ascians and others are controlled by
thoughts. Typhon's oath seems to be an incipient bit of mind-control
in the same way that the duel with the magician is, or at least
Severian perceives it that way; but it's difficult to ascribe this to
magic or even charisma.



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