(urth) Time, Not Cloning

[Lee Berman]

>Jeff Wilson: Mass is sticky and inert energy, sure, but it makes more thematic 
>sense to me that matter is not native to Yesod but can exist there, since that
>makes it more spiritual. There allegedly is a more spiritual plane still
>above Yesod where the Hieros went after entirely discarding their material
>forms, where Yesdis cannot yet follow.

Damn, you are on such a roll. Brilliant connection. I agree that Yesod and the
concept of ever reborn universes implies spiritual progression. But I think you
are showing that Wolfe uses matter and energy as metaphors for the balance 
of material and spiritual in the nature of things. I like it a lot.

>Here's my shot at making it implode: I meant to write "the torturers'
>benefit" above, but perhaps the Increate guided my hand. If Holy Katherine
>*is* an eidolon form Sev's mind, then she *is* a shadow of Severian The
>Torturer's, and is the title character of the first book!

Oh crap. Now you've given me the head explosion. Yes, tangentially, if 
the Katharine maid is copied from Severian in any way she might qualify
for the title: Shadow Of The Torturer. But...

There is a more direct and literal interpretaton of that title. "Khaibit"
is Arabic for "shadow".  More specifically, 

>"the shadow of a soul, deemed to be a spiritual essence that was capable of freeing 
>itself at the moment of death."

The concept is more from Coptic beliefs than Islam; a better fit within Wolfe's
gnostic paradigm.

I've known that definition of "khaibit" for a while but I never connected it with the 
title of the first book. Most likely others have and I was just being dense. Not that 
Severian being a clone of some sort (biological material, energy-based and/or spiritual) 
is a new idea. 

But I had never thought about how explicitly Severian's clone status is given to us by 
Wolfe in the title of that first book.