Cirin

Cirin from the cover of Cerebus No. 173

Cirin was an aardvark, the spiritual and political leader of the Cirinists.

History

As Serna

The aardvark known as Cirin was originally named Serna. She and the original Cirin would meet in a library in Unshib where Cirin would study and Serna would ask questions and offer comments. Along with Cirin, Serna introduced their new philosophy to the women of their community of Riverside through the quilting circles.

As the quilting circles become greater in number, Serna became the de facto Communal Safety officer. She executed any man guilty of domestic violence. Serna started training a "sisterhood of assassins in secret -- calling them Cirinists" in homage to the real Cirin.

Serna's Communal Safety Officers, now called Cirinists, start growing in number. They stopped going to the quilting circles, but still claimed a percentage of the resources.

As Cirin

One night, Serna appeared in Cirin's bedroom and began calling Cirin by the name Serna. She charged the real Cirin with "undermining the five cornerstones through excessive appropriation of resources for communal safety." Serna, now calling herself Cirin, and two other Cirinists found the real Cirin guilty of the charges and sentenced her to internment for life.

This new Cirin then went into seclusion, due to what happened to the real Cirin, and then instituted a 6th cornerstone of Cirinism.

She authored The New Matriarchy, Dualism as Fallacy, and presumably other works.

According to Suenteus Po, she "supported rebellions in Dehrsion, Eshnosopur and Enothas. She's supplying arms and equipment to the Borealan rebels in the Blood Wars and she has solid treaties with the neighbouring Feldwar States."

Traits

• Although an aardvark, she was not a dwarfish one. If anything, she may have suffered from giantism.
• She had a very bad temper when she gets annoyed.
• She was very strong, and had an excellent sense of smell.
• At times, she communicated with her followers telepathically. She could also communicate telepathically with Cerebus.
• She had three fingers and one thumb on each hand.

Appearances

• Cerebus
  • No. 100
  • No. 151 and No. 152
  • No. 154 through No. 156
  • No. 158 through No. 160
  • No. 162 through No. 166
  • No. 168 through No. 189
  • No. 194 and No. 195
  • No. 227

Cameos & Mentions

• Cerebus
  • No. 20
  • No. 28
  • No. 38
  • No. 161
  • No. 167
  • No. 201 and No. 202
  • No. 206 and No. 207
  • No. 225
  • No. 249
  • No. 299

Dave Sim on Cirin

• Q4. Cirin reveals she wants to keep Cerebus alive (i152). We learn later that the reason for this is she hopes to create more aardvarks through Cerebus' hermaphroditic nature. Is she incapable of giving birth, and if not does this mean that Sir Gerrik is her real son and therefore her proof that she cannot produce an Aardvark?

DAVE: Cirin was infuriated by the fact that she couldn't give birth to another aardvark largely as an element of her overwhelming maternal vanity, the same maternal vanity that keeps mothers from seeing their axe-murderer sons as anything but misunderstood little darlings. It's all a matter of your reaction to being exceptional. As I say, Po's reaction was: if I'm that profoundly different from everyone else, what business do I have interfering? Cirin's reaction was: I'm that much better than everyone else so it's up to me to produce more like me in order to run everything properly because everyone else has made a mess of everything. Even among the exceptional she was exceptional. She knew that aardvarks were spontaneous mutations and that there were few if any instances of aardvarks even passing on limited aspects to their human offspring (i.e. Shep Shep's three toes). She could accept that about others but not about herself. She had to be the Mother of All Aardvarks. The fact that her son was human was a personal affront to her. There hadn't been a lot of female aardvarks if you read between the lines of the story and you don't need much exposure to Cirin to understand why that is. . . The fact that Cerebus might be able to impregnate himself only added to her fury since that seemed a greater likelihood of producing purer aardvarkian offspring. She produced a human infant and called it a day-it would be just too destructive of her over-inflated opinion of herself if she had had any more failures. Cerebus didn't produce any offspring for a long time which served as a kind of salve to her ego and compelled her in the direction of genetic engineering. If Cerebus was going to beat her in the baby aardvark sweepstakes, maybe she could beat him on the inside rail down the home stretch by learning how to grow aardvarks from scratch like plants.