(urth) Thecla's "Identity"

[DAVID STOCKHOFF]

>________________________________
> From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>To: "urth at urth.net" <urth at urth.net> 
>Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 10:01 AM
>Subject: (urth) Thecla's "Identity"
> 
>>Marc Aramini: I have always maintained it is the transformation of vegetable matter to blood 
>>quite literally, the watchers behind silk being the vanished gods, the trees, who will eat of 
>>flesh and be transformed into something between vegetable and flesh.  This is why the hyacinth 
>>flower is so symbolically important as well at the end - the future is the convergence of blood 
>>to flower and fruit to blood.
>
>I agree that the plant-animal connection of the Eucharist is an important Wolfean theme which 
>ties religious symbolism to naturalistic themes. Perhaps because I am not catholic, I get the 
>impression Wolfe is not quite content with the tranformation and feels something further or
>more advanced is in our future.
>
>I am struck by a couple vegetarian advocacies in BotNS (Severian musing on it as an ideal as he
>descends the cliff and also the concept of The Green Man). The higher beings in the Sun series 
>such as the hierodules and hierarchs would not seem to be meat-eaters and The Neighbors seem to demonstrate an herbivorous, ungulate sort of nature.
>
>
>
>The distinction between lions and lambs lying down together vs one eating the other is spelled out pretty clearly in Genesis as one of the fundamental features of a fallen universe. It's easy to see that this formula is not really adequate, since if trilobites etc. didn't eat one other we wouldn't be here to speculate on the inadequacy of anything. 
>
>This makes me think of an exercise. Let's say you are an engineer given the task of reimagining Eden. Not as a puppet show, with lions being fed behind the scenes and shot up with tranquilizers for the 2 pm nap-with-lambs, but as a real, sustainable system. How would it work? 
>
>How did lions function without the appropriate level caloric intake that defines a predator? It's not like they are able to munch low-energy food all day---then they'd be sheep. And is a cheetah that doesn't run 40 mph for its dinner really a cheetah? And so on.
>
>Even if it's all just metaphor, how would Eden function even metaphorically? (if there was ever an Eden, it was when humans, plants, and animals locally coevolved.)
>
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