[Texas]

http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=741.0

I am SATXZ from before.  Let us continue.

The story turns out, only Fanimry was a true faith after all this time.  Enjoy your enlightenment.

[mrganondorf]

The true story of Sejenus, the one not recorded in the Tractate, the curing Horoman's blindness--Horoman was a normal guy who could see with his normal eyes, until Sejenus gouged them out.  Then Horoman began to see new things...

Sejenus was in on the true religion.  He was a set up, a transitional figure to begin moving some of the faithful from the Tusk to the God of gods and then onto the Solitary God.

Hey Texas!  I got roots there myself!

[Wilshire]

It appears the conversation dropped off after Curethan's post, so I'll repost it for ya. Glad to see another make it back from the Void..

......I do think that most of what we know about damnation is wrong. Like curethan said, the mark is no indication of damnation and the Cish not having the mark is just a happy coincidence.  ......
I don't remember any coincidences in the entire series.  To be fully honest, I don't believe many authors allow wasteful coincidence into their books very often. 
But onto the point of the actual fictional piece.  It is not coincidence that the Cish are sorcercerors, priests, they believe in the solitary god, and they leave NO MARK.
On the mark showing damnation, the greater the blight of a sorcerors mark, the more damned they are.  This is stated clearly dozens of times throughout the series.

No, it isn't.  It is intentionaly ambiguous.
Again. Start from your assumption.
Why do inamanimate objects bear the mark?  Are they damned?  Why can only sorcerers see the Mark?  Why do chorae destroy Cish?  Why does damnation look different to the Judging eye?

Surely the 'coincidence' that Cish magic is undetectable to gnostic/anagogic sorcery is important to the plot of PON in more fundamental ways...  i.e. the Saik and SS assuming the Cish are responsible for Skin Spies, the Cish asuming the SS were responsible for the Skin Spies, the way the Cish assasinated the SS grandmaster, the fact that both sides of the religious conflict have sorcerers etc etc etc.

....The Cish can do some scrying of the outside as well, and they say they know of the hundred, but this doesn't prove any actual knowledge of damnation but rather just shows they know a bit more about the gods than others.....
We have one of the hundred admitting the 100 gods are just greater demons using souls to their own desires.  They consider soul slavery for eternity to a greater demon damnation.  I do too.

And here is your unreliability. In the same conversation, Psatma (who is, btw, not Yatwer) asserts that Yatwer is the Goddess several times.  She also names Khellus as Demon and the Psukhe as deviltry.  Just because you latch onto the part where she says

"Demon?  Yes! I worship a demon! - if it pleases you to call her such."

  doesn't make it black and white.
I see it as confirmation that the Hundred are similar to Demons, as non-men are similar to sranc.  Again, recall that there are angelic Ciphrang.  How do these fit in your vision of black and white?

"The fat shall be eaten, of course.  But the high holy?  The faithful?  They shall be celebrated!"

Implies that a different fate awaits the faithful.  Something that they would call... redemption.

....
 The Tusk says sorcerers are damned, but again so what? Its an artifact given to a group of superstitious natives for the purpose of getting rid of the Nonmen. Its entirely possible that they already believed that sorcerers where damned.....
Their beliefs were changed by outside sources (inchies/rapeyliens.)

 Also consider that the oldest tribal leaders (way before the tusk) where Shaman, meaning religious leaders and wielders of magic. This leads me to believe that someone or some group got upset that they couldn't see the onta and could therefore not obtain the highest rank in their tribe, so a few years of subterfuge and bam- suddenly there are a bunch of Shaman out of jobs because guess what? Turns out that they are devils and are going to hell.
This statement here disagrees with that above, but it has been laid out that the tusk was given to the tribes of men for specifically two reasons.  Men did not believe thus before the Tusk.

Specifically, one reason.  That is what you quoted earlier clearly states.  Stop adding sorcery just because you want it to be so.

Maybe it could be that there will be some kind of "right" and "wrong" reviled, and whole nations will end up damned for believe the wrong thing. For example if the Ordeal is false, all the participants will be damned.
- There is no nationwide shared soul.  Souls are individualy assessed.

Or maybe the belief that one is, or should be, damned, is the driving force of actually becoming damned. Self fulfilling prophesy of sorts.

So far the JE hasn't showed us much proof of whole nations being damned, as Mimara has spent her life in a brothel and wandering through the woods with a group of murderers. She will probably provide us with some kind of evidence later on about who is or isn't damned, but she won't be able to fully understand it and it will again be left to us to debate what it was she saw.
Yes, souls are not shared.

History and culture determines individual action.  Major theme and not that hard to grasp guys...  c'mon.

[Bolivar]

I haven't ruled out that Fane was a Dunyain and the solitary god is related to the meaning and free will that they hope to achieve. It makes me wonder if the history of the three seas and the second apocalypse have been orchestrated by them to culminate in the event that allows them to unlock this.

I'm leaning towards the Fanim being right and the Inrithi being wrong for a couple reasons. There's the Inchoroi origins of the Tusk and since Sejenus was hailed as its culmination, it doesn't bode well for where he comes from. The fact that he ascended to the nail of heaven, which is heavily speculated to be an orbital space station, also concerns me. Despite all the inconsistencies and nuances between religions in our world, the fact that so many faiths keep coming back to the idea of The Sacred Heart leads me to believe the Fanim might be onto something. Unless it's just another self-flattering deception

[mrganondorf]

Fane as Dunyain would be so awesome.  Also Sejenus.  Also various 'false prophets' to better control the margins of religion.  Also various Shriah's and Fanim-Popes.  Consult just thought their skin-spies were the ones watching from the dark--the whole time, they were the ones being watched!  Why else would the Dunyain in Ishual go to the trouble of having a whole unmasking room???  They had advanced intel!  Had to make little Kel ready!!!

[Seökti]

I'm not so certain the thousand temples has to be wrong for Fane to be right, just because they are two religions at war.  The fact that the Tusk outlaws sorcery (an Inchoroi plot?) and that sorcerers with no mark make up the priesthood of the Cishaurim suggests that the Cishaurim are actually not sorcerers at all.  It seems to me that the realization of the solitary god is not so different from how the nonmen escape damnation (worshiping oblivion or 'the spaces between the gods'), as worshiping the sum total of all the thousand temples gods (who are 'aspects' of the one god at war with himself through us and thereby preventing aforementioned realization) you can safely assume this means worshiping 'beyond' the Gods - an attempt to grasp the underlying foundation of all reality - and perhaps this is what drives the Psukhe, nothing less than a foundational meaning for existence.

Also I don't think Fane was Dunyain - it contradicts what Moenghus told Kellhus about the Psukhe.

[Wilshire]

Thats a pretty good summation. This lines up Fanim and Inrithi, Nonmen, and even Dunyain mythologies, all of them sharing similar ideas. I dont think it will end up with everyone living happily ever after, but it would at least tie things up nicely.

[mrganondorf]

@ Seokti - i really like the parallel you draw between the realization of the Solitary God and the Nonman's idea of oblivion.  both would prefer a kind of sacrifice: the Cishaurim's eyes and the nonmen must bear the mark at least while they tarry on Earwa.  i must object, however, to taking anything Moe says at face value!    they speak knives!

p.s. love your personal text

[Seökti]

I'm not sure about not trusting Moenghus, as he is talking to a fellow Dunyain whom he has summoned himself.  That scene between them is the culmination of everything in the PoN series and I believe both Moenghus and Kellhus are being honest with each other.  Its everyone else they seek to manipulate.

[The Sharmat]

Moenghus says very, very little of substance in that encounter. He lets Kellhus do most of the actual speculation and information exchange.

[Seökti]

He claims Kellhus is insane, 'broken by the wild' I think, which is a pretty substantial accusation.  We never figure out if its true, and even Kellhus wonders.

[The Sharmat]

That is, perhaps, the only thing of substance he says of his own volition. That, and his assertion that the Consult is quite close to reviving the No-God.

[mrganondorf]

Moenghus says very, very little of substance in that encounter. He lets Kellhus do most of the actual speculation and information exchange.

i think Moenghus was mostly interested in a kind of stimulus-response thing.  he has been conditioning Kellhus all the way, their encounter is Moenghus last test to see if Kellhus follows the script that Moenghus has written. 

i tend to think that the encounter went just as Moenghus intended to go, but maybe just maybe Kellhus became aware that he was expected to play the role and did so just to mollify his father's scheming

[Wilshire]

Moenghus says very, very little of substance in that encounter. He lets Kellhus do most of the actual speculation and information exchange.

i think Moenghus was mostly interested in a kind of stimulus-response thing.  he has been conditioning Kellhus all the way, their encounter is Moenghus last test to see if Kellhus follows the script that Moenghus has written. 

i tend to think that the encounter went just as Moenghus intended to go, but maybe just maybe Kellhus became aware that he was expected to play the role and did so just to mollify his father's scheming

Thats the problem. If Moe did all the conditioning and had everything 100% correct, and then the entire thing was mostly a lie to the reader, then there's little reason Kell wasn't doing the same, and then you can reach no conclusion at all other than that everything is possible. You can just keep adding layers of unseen powers behind the scenes: The Consult, then, were conditioning Moe to condition Kellhus, and "WHO ARE THE DUNAYIN" scenes were just to fool the reader. The chorae scene that killed moe was manufactured to blind the reader further, it actually teleported Moe/Cnaiur to Golgotterath... And on and on...