(urth) Typee, incidentally

[Lee Berman]

>David Stockhoff: This solution, that missionary work is "just and holy" but missionaries 
>are "earthly" and "productive of evil," is so reminiscent of one "solution" to the puzzle 
>presented by the Hierodules, Vodalus, and the actions of the undines toward Severian---that 
>even evil forces do the work of the Increate---that I think they must be related. In fact, the 
>Heirodules on Urth from the perspective of a citizen of the Commonwealth must resemble an 
>islander's view of missionaries, given the same level of knowledge and grasp of history.
 
At the end of CotA there is an elaborate blacksmith analogy made to describe the Hierogrammates' 
shaping of humanity (below). I think it may be apt in describing how Wolfe's view of good and 
evil doesn't follow the traditional Christian definitions. Humanity, as the hot piece of metal 
being pounded, might define the solid, cool foundation of the anvil as being "good" and the 
crushing, painful blows of the hammer to be "evil". But the blacksmith would not and could not 
view the process this way. How could He accomplish His shaping by seeking always to elevate the 
anvil and eliminate the hammer? 
 
Brings to mind the questions of why God created Lucifer et al. to fall and created Adam and Eve 
to fail. Also that recently found Lost Gospel of Judas, which suggests Jesus and Judas secretly 
planned the Judas betrayal all along to accomplish their spiritual goals.
 
 
 
>However it may be, they shape us now as they themselves were shaped; it is at once their repayment 
>and their revenge. The Hierodules they have found too, and formed more quickly, to serve them in 
>this universe. On their instructions, the Hierodules construct such ships as the one that bore me 
>from the jungle to the sea, so that aquastors like Malrubius and Triskele may serve them also. With 
>these tongs, we are held in the forge.
 
>The hammer they wield is their ability to draw their servants back, down the corridors of time, and 
>to send them hurtling forward to the future. (This power is in essence the same as that which 
>permitted them to evade the death of their universe—to enter the corridors of time is to leave the 
>universe.) On Urth at least, their anvil is the necessity of life: our need in this age to fight 
>against an ever-more-hostile world with the resources of the depleted continents. Because it is as 
>cruel as the means by which they themselves were shaped, there is a conservation of justice; but when 
>the New Sun appears, it will be a signal that at least the earliest operations of the shaping are 
>complete.

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