(urth) Claw = Fang?

[Daniel Petersen]

My point is that seraph means serpent and there's nothing in the Biblical
text that I'm aware of that tries to distance that snake-like image from
the angelic beings themselves.  As I said before, one trained theologian
knowledgeable of the original languages that I spoke too said he pictured
them as winged dragons of a sort.  Hence, Satan being a more or less
de-winged dragon in Revelation.  (And this making all serpentine/clawed
images in Wolfe simultaneously resonant of both the angelic and demonic,
the divine and the diabolical - appropriately, as both Jesus and Satan are
imaged as a lion in the New Testament.)  The Solar Cycle's soteriology
reflects the N.T. in seeing salvation as a divine incarnation into the very
symbols of evil (originally good in themselves) in order to redeem them
back to their right place.  E.g. 'claw' is a thing of tearing and death in
a fallen world but becomes, in the Conciliator, a thing of healing.

Observe one of my favourite theological passages in BotNS:

'What I was going to tell you was that the existence of that relic seems to
have given some people the idea that the Conciliator used claws as weapons.
 I have sometimes doubted that he existed; but if such a person ever lived,
I'm sure that he used his weapons largely against himself.  Do you
understand what I am saying?'  (p. 173 in the Fantasy Masterworks version
of Sword and Citadel)

This is why the gem's touch earlier in the book can be described as the
'kiss of the claw'.  In the paragraph following the one above, the contrast
is given:  some use 'claws of steel' as a 'charm against the coming of the
New Sun'.  Such people 'must want to hold back the coming of the New Sun so
they can take his place and perhaps usurp his powers.'  As with many such
theologically revealing passages, it is cut short mid-sentence and not
returned to.

At any rate, the former quote is the messianic sense of the Claw
(self-sacrifice) and the latter is the satanic or antichrist sense of the
Claw (violent tyranny).  Biblically, both may be related to
serpents/dragons/lions.  There is no inherently evil beast in the biblical
ecosphere, but rather they symbol forth both good and evil according to
context.

-DOJP

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 9:39 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at clueland.com> wrote:

> On 11/26/2012 3:08 PM, Daniel Petersen wrote:
>
>>  From H8313; burning, that is, (figuratively) poisonous (serpent);
>> specifically a saraph or symbolical creature (from their copper
>> color):—fiery (serpent), seraph.
>>
>
>
> Yes, but when the word is used for multi-winged angels "burning ones" is
> more literal, because one tests a prophet with a hot coal, IIRC.
>
> --
> Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
> Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
> < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >
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-- 
Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
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