(urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head

[David Stockhoff]

That has been my assumption. It would mean that

(1) first Urth had a yellow sun

(2) then it drained itself into a lower universe

(3) then a higher universe drained into it, there being a river of 
available energy/love (with ultimately the Empyrean as source)

(4) Urth had a yellow sun again but now it's called Ushas.

Which universe did the sun drain into? When? Why? Is there any reason to 
think Severian did not open the drain thousands of years ago (as Apu 
Punchau? During a stopover in Typhon's time?) and plug it up again as 
the Conciliator?

Yes, it would seem like an unnecessary step---but then God gave his only 
son to bridge a gulf he himself created in creating Adam, and he makes 
us suffer etc. Without this negation of an earlier act, there would be 
no Christian religion. There is also the Creation and the End of 
creation---are those redundant acts?

Do we have a better explanation for the black hole? I haven't seen one.

John Watkins wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:03 PM, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie 
> <mailto:gerryq at indigo.ie>> wrote:
>
>     I think it was the white fountain too.
>      
>     Of course, there is another issue with the white fountain, which
>     Mr. Thallassocrat, at least, may find interesting.  The concept of
>     a white hole comes from the maximally extended Schwarzschild
>     solution for a black hole.  Few nowadays think that white holes
>     exist in nature - but if one does it should be associated with a
>     black hole (though perhaps in a different universe).
>      
>     It would also make sense in that the result of combining the two
>     should be to negate both - this doesn't seem so probable if an
>     arbitrary black hole meets an arbitrary white hole.
>      
>     Could Severian, therefore, also have created the black hole in the
>     Sun?
>      
>
>  
> I don't think so...
>  
> I think the black hole in the Sun exists as a white fountain in the 
> lower universe (Abbadon?)
>  
> It would follow that the white fountain Severian creates exists as a 
> black hole in Yesod or some higher plane.  There may be an incredible 
> number of layers of universes...
>  
> Metaphorically (and maybe literally), I think Wolfe is making a point 
> about grace.  The layers of universe ultimately terminate at what 
> Dante would have called the Empyrean, highest heaven, where infinite 
> energy miraculously fonts from the Godhead.  God, being the well that 
> never goes dry, can give without taking, breaking the law of 
> conversation of energy.  This has a parallel with ethics--in love, 
> humans partake in the divine essence, and so love is giving without 
> taking, et cetera.
>  
> These points would be lost, or their effectiveness reduced, if the 
> white fountain and the black hole were one and the same.
>  
>
>      
>     - Gerry Quinn
>      
>      
>
>         *From:* Cliff Judge <mailto:transentient at gmail.com>
>
>         And then they engage in what a couple of Wolfe's characters
>         call the "warm congress" and Severian says, I entered Yesod,
>         or rather, it enclosed about me, yada yada, and then he
>         describes his orgasm as this terribly serious cosmic event,
>         and talks about something that is conceived from the union.
>         Then he states that what was conceived was himself.
>
>         Now as a reader who has just decided that its pretty clear
>         that Dorcas is his grandmother, Ouen is his father, and btw I
>         like the idea that his mother is Catherine, of whom a khaibits
>         is slain every year at the Feast of Holy Katherine, there is
>         something in my brain that really WANTS to take the easy way
>         out here and say, right what was conceived was "himself"
>         meaning the actual white fountain that will replenish the sun
>         of Urth.
>
>         But part of me is also thinking....yeah there it is, Severian
>         is his own father.
>
>
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