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Who doesn't know Mount Erebus?<br>
<br>
... Erebus, fiery-throated on the waste Antarctic shore.<br>
---The Lathe of Heaven, <span class="addmd">by Ursula K. Le Guin<br>
<br>
Presumably it's no longer an active volcano (so there's no reason why a
giant humanoid couldn't live in it---just sayin'). But it wouldn't be
full of water either.<br>
<br>
Also, I don't see why the four Beasts need to be part of the 17
Megatherians at all, especially if 5 beans = 5 Beasts (one unnamed). We
have no other names for them, not even "Beast." There are 4 apocalyptic
horsemen, however---FWIW. <br>
<br>
Mythical Scylla has only 6 heads, but she could be the hundred-headed
beast Severian sees (somehow she is also a goddess in BotLS and, I
think, BotSS). Of the rest, I don't know of any associations with
ships/clouds/headless giants, which Severian also sees. In myth, Abaia
is a giant eel who brings a Flood in anger, Erebus is darkness and
death (and is the sunset/West looking out from Scylla's cave in Homer),
and Arioch is a demon of Semitic origin with a number of
interpretations. Arioch is often depicted with a huge sword, thanks in
part to Michael Moorcock, I think. <br>
<br>
The </span><span class="addmd">main features </span><span
class="addmd">of the 4 horsemen are: bow and crown, sword, scales,
death ("</span><strong><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"
size="3">and Hades was following with him</font></strong><span
class="addmd">," whose other name is Erebus). That's 2 possible
correspondences, but we need 4.<br>
<br>
Incidentally, in Moorcock's Elric pantheon, there is "</span><b>Pyaray</b>,
the <b>Tentacled Whisperer of Impossible Secrets</b>,
[who] appears as a giant red octopus. His soul is kept in a blue
crystal on
his head. Sailors who drown at sea are taken into his Chaos Fleet. One
portent of the end of the world is the ascent of the Chaos Fleet to the
surface.<span class="addmd">" Pelagic argosy, anyone?<br>
<br>
Otherwise, I have not found any correspondence of these names with one
another or any single mythos in any way, except that the names Erebus
and Arioch may have Semitic roots, and that Erebus and Scylla are
Homeric. <br>
<br>
I'll have to look into black bean myths.<br>
<br>
I don't follow the Erebus/Antarctica pole-flipping thread.<br>
<br>
<br>
</span>
<blockquote
cite="mid:mailman.38551.1228879380.21489.urth-urth.net@lists.urth.net"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 14:47:49 -0800
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:danldo@gmail.com"><danldo@gmail.com></a>
Subject: Re: (urth) Abaia and the undines
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net"><urth@lists.urth.net></a>
Message-ID:
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:1f7617370812091447l39e73211q646269fb5455ebaf@mail.gmail.com"><1f7617370812091447l39e73211q646269fb5455ebaf@mail.gmail.com></a>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Matthew King <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:automatthew@gmail.com"><automatthew@gmail.com></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Wolfe presumably knows--and expects us to know--that under the ice at
the South Pole currently sits a continent. What's going on here? Is
this one of those singleton clues Wolfe likes to drop?
Possibilities:
- Everyone agreed to a cartographic inversion
- Magnetic poles reversed
- Antarctica drifted, like, really far
- A Velikovskian pole flip
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Actually, Antarctica is the single strongest argument against my
theory that the continents have shifted position noticeably by the
time of BotNS: the Megatherian Erebus is named for the volcano
on Antarctica in which, apparently, he makes his residence. I was
kind of surprised that nobody mentioned this when I proposed it.
</pre>
<div class="moz-txt-sig">-- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon
vivant
-----</div>
<pre wrap=""></pre>
</blockquote>
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