There are some other theories out there that are questionable, yet backed up with enough evidence to make them credible. All of the breadcrumbs are there leading to some pretty direct conclusions. Dorcas is his grandmother, Ouen is his father, the series takes place in South America, etc. That being the case, there are some elements to BotNS that are pretty much ironclad. Well, it's the wonderful thing and the vexing thing that he rarely, if ever says things directly within a story, so a lot of it requires re-reading, reading some of his interviews and essays, and discussing with others what some of it means. I don’t know what kind of answer you are looking for There are enough hints to suggest that they are not purely alien and may, especially the Undines, have some relationship with human stock. I don’t really know what kind of answer you are looking for- their purpose is to influence the development of humanity and is inextricably tied to human agency, choice, and evolution in creating what will become the hieros and in encouraging or halting humanity’s transcendence or stagnation. Given how often the hieros are accused of the same thing, there is perhaps only a semantic difference between them, but it is important to keep in mind that they might also be the sons of humanity as well as of more “angelic” Powers. They have different agendas: Abaia wants to “capture Catodon and cast out his conation” - Ie - cast out mankind’s free will. I don’t know what kind of answer you are looking for, but given the properties of the Scylla monster we see in Short Sun with the subtextually implied ability to pinch off a smaller “atomie” with autonomy, and given Tzadkiel’s smaller cherubim like component guarding the brook madregot with a fiery sword like Eden, the play eschatology and genesis cements a relationship between the nephilim, the hierogrammates, and the sea powers influencing Urth. I love the way they are used here a lot, while for Lovecraft these sometimes shapeless beings are a very close, visible and terrifying metaphor for an uncaring, unbalanced and unfair cosmos, Wolfe's entities are a very close but invisible 'villain' who is, in the end, rather impotent, limited by the fate Sev brings and profane issues like physics.Ī handful of occultists over the years have drawn inspiration from Lovecraft's work (Kenneth Grant, Micheal Paul Bertiaux for example), so I think it's very interesting to see how much the perspective changes when they're being utilised by a Christian author. The single biggest difference between the nature of these 'cosmic horrors' would be the beings in Lovecraft's stories having no morals/feeling/agenda, which is basically even the polar opposite of at least the megatherians we hear about.īut there's so many similarities, the names for example (compare to Dagon or Mother Hydra), the communication via dreams, the locations and origins. I see this as similar to the Lucifer/Judas-like understanding that such rebellions and betrayals of God/The Increate are part of the Plan and necessary to it. This tiny Tzadkiel has been broken off from the larger being and, apprently, she was rebellious against the larger angel and has been banished to this realm for doing that. I interpret this disconnect between Typhon and the megatherians in light of the tiny Tzadkiel angel that Severian encounters at the Brook Madregot. Typhon assures Severian that these beings will soon be his abject slaves. But when Typhon wakes up and is discussing the current state of Urth with Severian, he is told that the world is ruled by gigantic sea beings (one of whom is Scylla, as mentioned by the Caloyer of Saltus). Mythologically, and in Long/Short Sun, Scylla is the daughter of Typhon. I'll risk over-dissecting the enigmatic nature of these beings to note that the text probably doesn't allow us to consider megatherians to be Typhon's pets exactly. Each view being an alternate perspective of the same thing. I think Wolfe was highly influenced by Lovecraft and I think he might consider the Cthulhu Mythos to be another way of perceiving our spiritual universe, cognate rather than separate from Biblical, Greek, Hindu and Zoroastrian cosmologies. That's a refreshing take that I can appreciate.
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