Gene Wolfe and Sevarian’s Coin
A reader with the uncomplicated but noetic name of Simplemind asks:
I have always wanted someone to explain this Gene Wolfe passage spoken by his character Severian the torturer. I do not know philosophy but is he talking about gnostiscm? Knowing the right words vs that things unfold according to free will/plan?
It always struck me as a beautifully written and pregnant with a meaning I could not quite deliver into my own mind.
“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.”
It is an excellent question.
The quote immediately follows the moment when the young Severian, having accepted a coin from the dashing rebel Vodalus, puts it unthinkingly in his pocket.
Without knowing it, he is now a soldier of the rebel forces, a Voladarii. This is just as he just pretended to be a paragraph before: as often happens in life, the pretense becomes reality.
When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms.
Accepting the coin is the sacrament of entry into the military: from now on, Sevarian is a rebel against the system of his world, just as Christ was a rebel, not just against the Roman Empire, but against Hell.
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges
In the Thirteenth Century a dispute arose among schoolmen as to whether we invent names for things arbitrarily, or whether names have a nature of their own. The idea that words are merely labels applied arbitrarily is called Nominalism. Without going into the history of philosophy, or the complexity of the various nuances of the argument, it is accurate generally to say that Nominalism gave rise to the dethronement of Metaphysics as the queen of sciences, the rise of Dualism, the glorification of Empiricism at the expense of Rationalism, and, indeed the abandonment of classical philosophy by the modern world altogether. It is somewhat awe inspiring to contemplate the forethought of the medieval scholars to reject Nominalism, and to foresee the various errors that would inevitably flow from this one master error.
Nominalism says Platonic idea or forms do not exist. Universals, so says Nominalism, exist only in speech, not in reality. The opposite doctrine, saying abstractions are real and universals are real, is called Realism.
Severian is announcing his belief in Realism, but adding the mystical doctrine that some symbols are sacramental. A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible (and sacred) reality.
I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic.
Sevarian is saying he did not know first, that accepting a coin inducted him into the military of the rebels, and, second, that the symbol of the coin has a power to shape Sevarians character whether he knows it or not. And it does indeed so shape him: he falls in love with a prisoner named Thecla and arranges her suicide to prevent her suffering the proscribed regime of torture as proscribed by law because he is, whether he admits it or not, a servant loyal to Vodalus, attracted to the paramour of Vodalus, Thea, and hence attracted to her sister Thecla.
Severian is dramatically dismissing the doctrine that symbols have power over us only when we know and acknowledge their meaning. He calls it magic somewhat wryly: a magician believes that certain magic words have power because the words are magic.
Severian is turning this on its head, saying that sacramental words (words like “I do” spoken by the bride at her marriage mass) have power because the words are magic, and it is the magician who thinks they are robbed of their power merely because he does not know or does not consent to that power. (I note in passing that the sin of buying Church offices is called Simony, and takes its name from Simon the Magician, who astonished the crowds of Rome by flying over the city with artificial wings.)
The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all
In the Fifth Century a schism erupted called Donatism, where certain Christians asserted that any bishop who collaborated with the Roman Persecutions of ten years before lost their bishoprics, hence every sacrament they had performed, baptism or marriage or ordination, was invalid.
St Augustine of Hippo argued against the Donatists, and first enunciated the Catholic doctrine of Ex Opere Operato, that is, the sacrament works of its own power, not by the faith of the bishop.
If you have ever seen the movie FRIGHT NIGHT, there is a funny (if horrific) scene where an unbeliever holds up a crucifix to a vampire, who merely smiles and says “You need faith for that to work” pushes the crucifix aside without harm and mugs the man. Now, whatever the other merits of the film, it is theologically incorrect.
As Severian says, rational people know that things act of themselves are not at all.
Not to shock my Protestant friends, but this passage, and indeed this book, takes its beauty and its depth from the Catholic doctrines that Gene Wolfe is seeped in.
I note wryly that in the final book, when Severian once again inspects the coin he was given by Vodalus, discovers that it is adulterated. It is a false coin.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
