Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 12:35:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Jerry Friedman 
Subject: (urth) Green Man, Green/Lune


--- maa32  wrote:
> I was just going to clarify a previous post, and I will stick to the New
> Sun 
> books for this.  I was positing that The Green Man and his continued
> existence 
> represents "saved humanity"; In other words, since his sustenance is
> received 
> primarily from the sun, he partakes of the symbolic substance of
> Severian for 
> noursihment.  This overturns the diabolical eucharist by which Severian 
> ascended the throne to temporal power.  His spiritual body (ie- the
> white hole 
> / new sun) feeds the saved people of the future.  Thus, Green Men live
> through 
> a type of eucharist; The New Sun becomes the bread of life. Those who
> cannot 
> eat of that substance will certainly not survive as well as the green
> man, 
> since their food supplies and available land have been depleted by the
> flood.  
> What do you think of this interpretation of the green man? It is a type
> of 
> eucharist that is spiritual and does not smack of necrophagia. 
> Marc Aramini

This is one of my favorites of your ideas so far.  I'd never made the
connection that _Severian_ is feeding the Green Man.

On the other hand--maybe I've missed it, but how do you and other
believers in Blue=Ushas explain this passage from RTTW, Chapter 19?  Hoof
is narrating, speaking of "Father":

"'Soon it will be evening,' he said.  'If we still haven't gone, we'll go
up onto the roof of this house.  Standing on the tiles I will point and
you will peer until at last you see a certain dim red star.  It's a long,
long way from here.  Think of it now, the sky like black velvet strewn
with diamonds in the bottom of a grave, and among the diamonds a minute
drop of blood.

"There is a whorl circling that star, an ancient whorl.  On that whorl,
Juganu, there is an old city you have seen, and through it a river.  Its
waters are turbid and foul, and seem scarcely to move.  You know that
river; you have sailed on it...."

Is Silkhorn simply mistaken when he uses the present tense and says the
Red Sun is visible at night as a dim red star?

Jerry Friedman

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