[Madness]

Questions from TSB's introductory post. Thought they might get more traffic here.

So the mark doesn’t equate to damnation since chorae have a deep mark and are sorcerous items but going by the JE they are god’s own tears though this doesn’t actually tell us if sorcerers themselves are damned. Guess we have to wait and see whether mimara glimpses a socerer that isn’t damned.

Mimara sees snakes as holy….are cish holy for their affinity for snakes

Kellhus shows us his own inverse fire….is this a prelude to what the consult inverse fire is. Long distance communication with the black heavens.….an emptiness that lets people peer out or into someplace else.  Damnation-scope

Mimara claims it wasn’t the betrayal of the nonmen that created the topoi in the mountain but rather the generations of human slaves the nonmen used. Just interesting because akka assumes wrong stuff all the time. Misdirection for the reader I guess.

The judging eye is a thing of women that will give birth to stillborn children….but mimara had the judging eye well before she became pregnant. Is this a result of mimara herself being born even tho esmi was using the whore’s shell.

In chapt 1 of the UC akka talks about how when souls are trapped into objects like wathi dolls etc
“ The intricacies of identity are always sheared away. Memory. Faculty. Character. These are cast into the pit... Only the most base urges survive in proxies.”
Just like the nonman revenant created on the topoi under the mountain dreaming he was a god but with a hunger and speaking through the unconscious akka etc
Just like the no-god created in golgotterath (known topoi according to akkas dreams) speaking through scranc, wracu etc. asking who he is

i.e. is the no-god a big ol soul trap.

Also is wutteat a temporary storage bank for souls of the inchora if hell sustains him from within and he refuses to die until salvation is achieved. (I’ve read some theories already but thought I’d remention)


finally what is with the glow around kellhus's hands. the first time the books mention a halo its serwe noticing them on the skin spy mimic of kellhus. clearly thats just serwe's insanity bleeding through but then the next time they are mentioned by kellhus himself after his ordeal on the tree and pulling out serwe's heart from his robe...right after his mind broke. latter when kel is talkin to his pa he mentioned seeing the halo about his hands all the time. We know some of his followers see the halo...even aka glimpses it on occasion but some people see it all the time and others only intermittently.

point im getting to is that it seems to me that the halo is evidenced by people who are probably insane. serwe and kel included. but madness in earwa isnt an objective discredit to people seeing the halo. it has a metaphysical component. when Cnaiür recalls akkas tutorial on madness

" Each man, he explained, was a kind of hole in existence, a point where the Outside penetrated the world. He tapped one of the beads with his finger. It broke, staining the surrounding parchment. When the trials of the world broke men, he explained, the Outside leaked into the world. This, he had said, was madness."

so i guess im saying that kelhus is mad and that thru him the outside is leaking into the world hence the halo that people sometimes see. this differs to sorcery but is more like the way the godess yatwer can do some pretty freaky/crazy stuff but we dont necessarily call it sorcery.

[H]

So the mark doesn’t equate to damnation since chorae have a deep mark and are sorcerous items but going by the JE they are god’s own tears though this doesn’t actually tell us if sorcerers themselves are damned. Guess we have to wait and see whether mimara glimpses a socerer that isn’t damned.

Yes, I believe you are right in the sense that the Mark is not strictly equal to damnation.  Recall that the Tusk is what damned sorcerers, the Mark presumably predates that.

Mimara sees snakes as holy….are cish holy for their affinity for snakes

There is a lot more we don't know about the Cishaurim then there is things we do know.  I'm not sure I'd buy that snakes are what make the Cish Holy, but they being viewed as holy certainly makes it plausible as to why they'd be chosen.  Recall that Scott has often pointed out his Christian upbringing, so no doubt the allusion of snakes is not accidental. 

Kellhus shows us his own inverse fire….is this a prelude to what the consult inverse fire is. Long distance communication with the black heavens.….an emptiness that lets people peer out or into someplace else.  Damnation-scope

Plausible.  I do tend to think of the Inverse Fire as something you see.  It does appear to predate the Inchoroi arrival on Earwa, so I don't think it is quite the same, since it must then be non-sorcerous.

Mimara claims it wasn’t the betrayal of the nonmen that created the topoi in the mountain but rather the generations of human slaves the nonmen used. Just interesting because akka assumes wrong stuff all the time. Misdirection for the reader I guess.

Heaped up suffering is a good way to make a topoi, it's how the Consult turned Golgotterath into a topoi.  In Akka's defense, I don't know that he really knew of the extent of the slavery that was going on there, nor how the Nonmen seemingly exacerbated it with the design of their prison.

The judging eye is a thing of women that will give birth to stillborn children….but mimara had the judging eye well before she became pregnant. Is this a result of mimara herself being born even tho esmi was using the whore’s shell.

Do we know this?  I don't recall that.  I'll have to dig in and see if I can find a reference.

In chapt 1 of the UC akka talks about how when souls are trapped into objects like wathi dolls etc
“ The intricacies of identity are always sheared away. Memory. Faculty. Character. These are cast into the pit... Only the most base urges survive in proxies.”
Just like the nonman revenant created on the topoi under the mountain dreaming he was a god but with a hunger and speaking through the unconscious akka etc
Just like the no-god created in golgotterath (known topoi according to akkas dreams) speaking through scranc, wracu etc. asking who he is

i.e. is the no-god a big ol soul trap.

Also is wutteat a temporary storage bank for souls of the inchora if hell sustains him from within and he refuses to die until salvation is achieved. (I’ve read some theories already but thought I’d remention)

We've talked a lot about the No-God before.  I'm with you on the soul trap, because I think that the whole idea is for the Consult's soul to go somewhere, not just into the waiting clutches of gods on the Outside.

finally what is with the glow around kellhus's hands. the first time the books mention a halo its serwe noticing them on the skin spy mimic of kellhus. clearly thats just serwe's insanity bleeding through but then the next time they are mentioned by kellhus himself after his ordeal on the tree and pulling out serwe's heart from his robe...right after his mind broke. latter when kel is talkin to his pa he mentioned seeing the halo about his hands all the time. We know some of his followers see the halo...even aka glimpses it on occasion but some people see it all the time and others only intermittently.

point im getting to is that it seems to me that the halo is evidenced by people who are probably insane. serwe and kel included. but madness in earwa isnt an objective discredit to people seeing the halo. it has a metaphysical component. when Cnaiür recalls akkas tutorial on madness

" Each man, he explained, was a kind of hole in existence, a point where the Outside penetrated the world. He tapped one of the beads with his finger. It broke, staining the surrounding parchment. When the trials of the world broke men, he explained, the Outside leaked into the world. This, he had said, was madness."

so i guess im saying that kelhus is mad and that thru him the outside is leaking into the world hence the halo that people sometimes see. this differs to sorcery but is more like the way the godess yatwer can do some pretty freaky/crazy stuff but we dont necessarily call it sorcery.

That's a really good theory, I never really considered it as such.  That means that something from the Outside is influencing him though, but is it really the No-God, or what?

I definitely invite you to check out some of the other threads we have here, I think you might enjoy of the the theory-crafting in them we've built up over the years.

[profgrape]

In chapt 1 of the UC akka talks about how when souls are trapped into objects like wathi dolls etc
“ The intricacies of identity are always sheared away. Memory. Faculty. Character. These are cast into the pit... Only the most base urges survive in proxies.”
Just like the nonman revenant created on the topoi under the mountain dreaming he was a god but with a hunger and speaking through the unconscious akka etc
Just like the no-god created in golgotterath (known topoi according to akkas dreams) speaking through scranc, wracu etc. asking who he is

Excellent observation!  I'm kicking myself for not seeing the parallel between the Wathi Doll and the No-God.  But yes, the No-God seems to fit with Akka's description in TUC.

I agree that the No-God is a sort of soul-trap.  I've always figured that the line of prisoners that Akka dreams in WLW are "soul food" for the No-God and that it's brought to life when the number of souls consumed hits a critical mass.  Or maybe that the souls provide the energy it needs to fulfill it's greater purpose -- sealing the World from the Outside.

[locke]

Halos first show up in book one, serwe sees them. Esme sees them in book two before the skin spy occurance, I think akka and proyas both see them too as does martemus, iirc.

Serwe probably sees them on the skin spy because she is the holy one and the source of kellhus divinity.  The halos she sees are not false because she did not know the skin spy was false.


Additionally, kellhus is briefly divine after her death and can do the heart trick since she did an Aslan for him.

[The Spaces Between]

thanks for redirecting my questions here madness  definitely more traffic haha

So the mark doesn’t equate to damnation since chorae have a deep mark and are sorcerous items but going by the JE they are god’s own tears though this doesn’t actually tell us if sorcerers themselves are damned. Guess we have to wait and see whether mimara glimpses a socerer that isn’t damned.

Yes, I believe you are right in the sense that the Mark is not strictly equal to damnation.  Recall that the Tusk is what damned sorcerers, the Mark presumably predates that.

how did the nonmen know they were damned in the first place. Titirga tells shau that the nonmen taught them how to hide their voices to avoid damnation....but the nonmen worship darkness, not the thousand gods which are the purveyors of the whole hells...unless they are just ciphrang of more power like meppa says then its just generally ciphrang.

Plausible.  I do tend to think of the Inverse Fire as something you see.  It does appear to predate the Inchoroi arrival on Earwa, so I don't think it is quite the same, since it must then be non-sorcerous.

good point!

The judging eye is a thing of women that will give birth to stillborn children….but mimara had the judging eye well before she became pregnant. Is this a result of mimara herself being born even tho esmi was using the whore’s shell.

Do we know this?  I don't recall that.  I'll have to dig in and see if I can find a reference.

here you go 

"But I do know," Achamian hastily adds, "that the Judging Eye involves pregnant women."
Mimara gawks at him through tears. A cold hand has reached into her abdomen and scooped away all warring sensation.
"Pregnant..." she hears herself say. "Why?"
"I don't know." He has flecks of dead leaf in his hair, and she squelches the urge to fuss over him. "Perhaps because of the profundity of childbirth. The Outside inhabits us in many ways, none so onerous as when a women brings a new soul into the world."
She sees her mother posing before a mirror, her belly broad and low with the twins, Kel and Sammi.
"So what is the curse?" she fairly cries at Achamian. "Tell me, old fool!" She rebukes herself immediately afterward, knowing that the Wizard's honesty would wither as her desperation waxed. People punish desperation as much out of compassion as petty malice.
Achamian gnaws his bottom lip. "As far as I know," he begins with obvious and infuriating care, "those with the Judging Eye give birth to dead children."
He shrugs as if to say, See? You have nothing to fear...
Cold falls through her in sheets.
"What?"
A scowl knits his brow. "The Judging Eye is the eye of the Unborn... The eye that watches from the God's own vantage."
A cleft has opened about their path: a runoff that delivers them to a shallow ravine. They follow the stream that gurgles along its creases—the water is clear but seems black given the gloom. Monstrous elms pillar the embankments, their roots like great fists clenched about earth. The stream has wedged the trees far enough apart for white to glare through seams in the canopy. Here and there the water's meandering course has gnawed hollows beneath various trees. The company ducks beneath those that had fallen across the ravine, trees like stone whales.
"But I've had... had this... for as long as I can remember."
"Which is my point exactly," Achamian says, sounding far too much like someone taking heart in invented reasons. He frowns, an expression Mimara finds horribly endearing on his shaggy old features. "But things are always tricky where the Outside is concerned. Things do not... happen... as they happen here..."
"Riddles! Why do you constantly torture me with riddles?"
"I'm just saying that in a sense your life has already been lived—for the God or the Gods, that is..."
"Which means?"
"Nothing," he says, scowling.
"Tell me what it means!"

For the first time, it seemed, he noticed how much lighter her skin was than his or her mother's. For the first time he wondered about her real father, about the twist of caprice that had seen her born, rather than aborted by Esmenet's whore-shell.

In chapt 1 of the UC akka talks about how when souls are trapped into objects like wathi dolls etc
“ The intricacies of identity are always sheared away. Memory. Faculty. Character. These are cast into the pit... Only the most base urges survive in proxies.”
Just like the nonman revenant created on the topoi under the mountain dreaming he was a god but with a hunger and speaking through the unconscious akka etc
Just like the no-god created in golgotterath (known topoi according to akkas dreams) speaking through scranc, wracu etc. asking who he is

i.e. is the no-god a big ol soul trap.

Also is wutteat a temporary storage bank for souls of the inchora if hell sustains him from within and he refuses to die until salvation is achieved. (I’ve read some theories already but thought I’d remention)

We've talked a lot about the No-God before.  I'm with you on the soul trap, because I think that the whole idea is for the Consult's soul to go somewhere, not just into the waiting clutches of gods on the Outside.

yeah the whole idea of the inchorai even waging war if they feared damnation so much doesnt make sense, let alone them crashing their ship into the planet. i imagine if i were fearful of the afterlife id be much more subtle about my tactics or just blow up the planets from afar...or always just use souless agents

Halos first show up in book one, serwe sees them. Esme sees them in book two before the skin spy occurance, I think akka and proyas both see them too as does martemus, iirc.

Serwe probably sees them on the skin spy because she is the holy one and the source of kellhus divinity.  The halos she sees are not false because she did not know the skin spy was false.


Additionally, kellhus is briefly divine after her death and can do the heart trick since she did an Aslan for him.

interesting theory!

Excellent observation!  I'm kicking myself for not seeing the parallel between the Wathi Doll and the No-God.  But yes, the No-God seems to fit with Akka's description in TUC.

I agree that the No-God is a sort of soul-trap.  I've always figured that the line of prisoners that Akka dreams in WLW are "soul food" for the No-God and that it's brought to life when the number of souls consumed hits a critical mass.  Or maybe that the souls provide the energy it needs to fulfill it's greater purpose -- sealing the World from the Outside.

haha it seemed like a massive hint. yeah the line of prisoners does seem like food. an almagamated wathi doll. but bound to a sorcerous purpose

[H]

So the mark doesn’t equate to damnation since chorae have a deep mark and are sorcerous items but going by the JE they are god’s own tears though this doesn’t actually tell us if sorcerers themselves are damned. Guess we have to wait and see whether mimara glimpses a socerer that isn’t damned.

Yes, I believe you are right in the sense that the Mark is not strictly equal to damnation.  Recall that the Tusk is what damned sorcerers, the Mark presumably predates that.

how did the nonmen know they were damned in the first place. Titirga tells shau that the nonmen taught them how to hide their voices to avoid damnation....but the nonmen worship darkness, not the thousand gods which are the purveyors of the whole hells...unless they are just ciphrang of more power like meppa says then its just generally ciphrang.

Well, let's not pretend that the Nonmen were really much of 'good guys' even before the Fall.  I think the Nonmen fell right into the same trap the Inchoroi did, although in a different way.  The Nonmen, as is often said, "dug too deep," that is, they went looking too far into the existential nature of the world.  In doing so, and mainly by doing so in a very amoral, almost depraved way, they actually damned themselves.  By the time the Tusk came along and damned them, the balance of them were no doubt already screwed, but that was just one more piece.

here you go 

"But I do know," Achamian hastily adds, "that the Judging Eye involves pregnant women."
Mimara gawks at him through tears. A cold hand has reached into her abdomen and scooped away all warring sensation.
"Pregnant..." she hears herself say. "Why?"
"I don't know." He has flecks of dead leaf in his hair, and she squelches the urge to fuss over him. "Perhaps because of the profundity of childbirth. The Outside inhabits us in many ways, none so onerous as when a women brings a new soul into the world."
She sees her mother posing before a mirror, her belly broad and low with the twins, Kel and Sammi.
"So what is the curse?" she fairly cries at Achamian. "Tell me, old fool!" She rebukes herself immediately afterward, knowing that the Wizard's honesty would wither as her desperation waxed. People punish desperation as much out of compassion as petty malice.
Achamian gnaws his bottom lip. "As far as I know," he begins with obvious and infuriating care, "those with the Judging Eye give birth to dead children."
He shrugs as if to say, See? You have nothing to fear...
Cold falls through her in sheets.
"What?"
A scowl knits his brow. "The Judging Eye is the eye of the Unborn... The eye that watches from the God's own vantage."
A cleft has opened about their path: a runoff that delivers them to a shallow ravine. They follow the stream that gurgles along its creases—the water is clear but seems black given the gloom. Monstrous elms pillar the embankments, their roots like great fists clenched about earth. The stream has wedged the trees far enough apart for white to glare through seams in the canopy. Here and there the water's meandering course has gnawed hollows beneath various trees. The company ducks beneath those that had fallen across the ravine, trees like stone whales.
"But I've had... had this... for as long as I can remember."
"Which is my point exactly," Achamian says, sounding far too much like someone taking heart in invented reasons. He frowns, an expression Mimara finds horribly endearing on his shaggy old features. "But things are always tricky where the Outside is concerned. Things do not... happen... as they happen here..."
"Riddles! Why do you constantly torture me with riddles?"
"I'm just saying that in a sense your life has already been lived—for the God or the Gods, that is..."
"Which means?"
"Nothing," he says, scowling.
"Tell me what it means!"

I underlined a line there, because I think that is the explaination, although what it means exactly I don't know.  I think it is something similar to the White-Luck, in that what has happened has already happened.  Something like he running all through time, or something like that.  Maybe that is why she was prophesized?

For the first time, it seemed, he noticed how much lighter her skin was than his or her mother's. For the first time he wondered about her real father, about the twist of caprice that had seen her born, rather than aborted by Esmenet's whore-shell.

I've tried to reason out the curious circumstances of her birth, but with only the couple lines, it's really hard to figure much.  On the one hand, it seems like a rather mundane story of, "man sleeps with prostitute, later returns with no remembrence of ever having been."  That is imminently plausible, yet, we know, because we know that Mimara is special, that this wasn't just some chance encounter.  Yet, what can we draw further?

In chapt 1 of the UC akka talks about how when souls are trapped into objects like wathi dolls etc
“ The intricacies of identity are always sheared away. Memory. Faculty. Character. These are cast into the pit... Only the most base urges survive in proxies.”
Just like the nonman revenant created on the topoi under the mountain dreaming he was a god but with a hunger and speaking through the unconscious akka etc
Just like the no-god created in golgotterath (known topoi according to akkas dreams) speaking through scranc, wracu etc. asking who he is

i.e. is the no-god a big ol soul trap.

Also is wutteat a temporary storage bank for souls of the inchora if hell sustains him from within and he refuses to die until salvation is achieved. (I’ve read some theories already but thought I’d remention)

We've talked a lot about the No-God before.  I'm with you on the soul trap, because I think that the whole idea is for the Consult's soul to go somewhere, not just into the waiting clutches of gods on the Outside.

yeah the whole idea of the inchorai even waging war if they feared damnation so much doesnt make sense, let alone them crashing their ship into the planet. i imagine if i were fearful of the afterlife id be much more subtle about my tactics or just blow up the planets from afar...or always just use souless agents

Well, we really don't understand how or why they crashed.  We don't understand how or why they knew Earwa was special, yet they did.  We do know that Aurang hates how Sil wasn't patient enough, although, this could no doubt be hindsight being 20/20, of course.  It's very easy to say now that it was all a mistake, but I bet Aurang, considering how headstrong he is/was about his own strength was really all in favor of caution.

I don't think they had every really needed to create soulles things before Earwa though, or else they'd had had them ready and never needed to bother with the Nonman gnome.  The haphazard nature of the Bashrags kind of ratifies this for me, as it says to be that this was not what the Tekne was supposed to be used  to do, but they just made it work somehow (out of desperation).

We also don't know how or why Earwa was prophesized to them either.  I think a lot of their trouble comes from them simply not being humble and acquiescing to what is.  They feel they can always best anything, no matter what.

Excellent observation!  I'm kicking myself for not seeing the parallel between the Wathi Doll and the No-God.  But yes, the No-God seems to fit with Akka's description in TUC.

I agree that the No-God is a sort of soul-trap.  I've always figured that the line of prisoners that Akka dreams in WLW are "soul food" for the No-God and that it's brought to life when the number of souls consumed hits a critical mass.  Or maybe that the souls provide the energy it needs to fulfill it's greater purpose -- sealing the World from the Outside.

haha it seemed like a massive hint. yeah the line of prisoners does seem like food. an almagamated wathi doll. but bound to a sorcerous purpose

I've always maintained that the No-God is no real agent, it simply is just a thing, that does what it was made to do. 

[Simas Polchias]

Plausible.  I do tend to think of the Inverse Fire as something you see.  It does appear to predate the Inchoroi arrival on Earwa, so I don't think it is quite the same, since it must then be non-sorcerous.

I'm not so sure about equality of "outside of Earwa" and "non-sorcerous". Like, will generic chorae or wathi doll lose it's magic qualities if propelled out of Earwa's surface or star system's borders? I doubt it.
IF could be a 100% sorcerous thing (of earwan or other origin), whose strange qualities were somehow recognised by the dwellers of "magic-free" space. That's where the whole interstellar crusade may have came from. Speaking figuratively, Inchoroi found a promising artifact, but lacked temple, priests and scriptures for it (or, in tekne-speak, they had no manual, PhDs & setting).

[H]

Plausible.  I do tend to think of the Inverse Fire as something you see.  It does appear to predate the Inchoroi arrival on Earwa, so I don't think it is quite the same, since it must then be non-sorcerous.

I'm not so sure about equality of "outside of Earwa" and "non-sorcerous". Like, will generic chorae or wathi doll lose it's magic qualities if propelled out of Earwa's surface or star system's borders? I doubt it.
IF could be a 100% sorcerous thing (of earwan or other origin), whose strange qualities were somehow recognised by the dwellers of "magic-free" space. That's where the whole interstellar crusade may have came from. Speaking figuratively, Inchoroi found a promising artifact, but lacked temple, priests and scriptures for it (or, in tekne-speak, they had no manual, PhDs & setting).

Hmm, that could be true, but if the Inverse Fire was a sorcerous thing, it seems plausible to me that in their experimentation with the Aporos, they'd have realized that it could be undone by Chorae.

However, you could certainly be right, it's always seem to me that the Inchoroi kind of stumbled onto the IF, rather than developed or invented it, but I have no evidence to support this.

[mrganondorf]

Plausible.  I do tend to think of the Inverse Fire as something you see.  It does appear to predate the Inchoroi arrival on Earwa, so I don't think it is quite the same, since it must then be non-sorcerous.

I'm not so sure about equality of "outside of Earwa" and "non-sorcerous". Like, will generic chorae or wathi doll lose it's magic qualities if propelled out of Earwa's surface or star system's borders? I doubt it.
IF could be a 100% sorcerous thing (of earwan or other origin), whose strange qualities were somehow recognised by the dwellers of "magic-free" space. That's where the whole interstellar crusade may have came from. Speaking figuratively, Inchoroi found a promising artifact, but lacked temple, priests and scriptures for it (or, in tekne-speak, they had no manual, PhDs & setting).

Hmm, that could be true, but if the Inverse Fire was a sorcerous thing, it seems plausible to me that in their experimentation with the Aporos, they'd have realized that it could be undone by Chorae.

However, you could certainly be right, it's always seem to me that the Inchoroi kind of stumbled onto the IF, rather than developed or invented it, but I have no evidence to support this.

Could be that the IF is like the Seal. A single chorae might be totally ineffective against it.  But what if you had say 1 hoard of chorae? Or maybe if u had a sooperdooper chorae shooter like Mimi? Or both...