[What Came Before]

Damnation is not local. There is a right and wrong way to believe in Eärwa, which means that entire nations will be damned. Since the question of just who will be saved and who will be damned is a cornerstone of The Aspect-Emperor’s plot, there’s not much more that I can say.

The caprice of the Outside (where the distinction between subject and object is never clear) is such that those rare souls who walk its ways and return never seem to agree on the nature of what they have seen. Since only demonic (as opposed to angelic) Ciphrang can be summoned and trapped in the World, practitioners of the Daimos can never trust the reports they receive: the so-called Damnation Archives in the Scarlet Spires are rumoured to be filled with wild contradictions. The Damned themselves only know that they are damned, and never why.

[What Came Before]

I remember...
Damn, I feel like a nonman erratic on these boards sometimes.

A great point, but does it really negate my idea?  Their morality is subjective, local if you will.  For the Daimos practitioners, their morality is not a shield but a lens.  What you see outside reflects your inside.

Not so for the inchies (or the rest of the consult), who have replaced their morality with one on printed circuits.  As another anology, their souls are all of the same proportion.  They all believe the same thing when it is a moral issue.  They don't need to vote or argue amongst themselves.  They all see the same damnation, and all agree what must be done.

Thus whole kingdoms are damned, but not all kingdoms.

I love the idea of an inchie civil war when they made the inverse fire and started recruiting.  Almost enough to make me fanfic  :shock: 
For some reason I have always thought this refered to the inchie homeworld.

Chapter Twelve: Kûniüri
Skies are upended, poured as milk into the tar of night. Cities become pits of fire. The last of the wicked stand with the last of the righteous, lamenting the same woe. One Hundred and Forty-Four Thousand, they shall be called, for this is their tally, the very number of doom.
—ANONYMOUS, THE THIRD REVELATION OF GANUS THE BLIND

How about the idea that Seswatha's heart is made on similar but sorcerous principles?

edit* inspired to further crackpottery,
let me suggest the cognitive long jump to the assertion that this in turn exposes the true nature of the no-god.

It's a machine that uploads souls.  When the outside is closed the consult upload their recorded conciousness (and the old tapes of their dead buddies) with god powers invoked (they are already weighty with the accretion of age).  Inchie morality becomes the proportions of god...
All their victims provide subjective reference points they can 'explore'. 
When they have more souls in the no-god (assume it holds 144k) than there are remaining in the world, they release the chorae locks and turn the world into their topos.

It can control the sranc etc because it connects into the 'sockets' where their soul should/could be.

[What Came Before]

How about the idea that Seswatha's heart is made on similar but sorcerous principles?

I think I said on westeros right after TFS was posted that Seswatha's heart bears startling resemblance to The Inverse Fire.

Combine this with the way the Inchoroi can SEE Seswatha in a Mandate I've since wondered if Ses pulled a Prometheus and stole fire from the no-gods, bent it to his own purposes and thus crafted and anti-consult, binding its members as completely to his purpose as the Consult are bound to the purpose of the Inchoroi?

And relating to Curethan's proposal that the Inverse Fire rewrites/rewires the neural circuitry of its viewers (which I think fits with Tirtaga's statement that a horrible god with insatiable hunger has possessed Shae and all the Mangaecca) we see a similar INSTANT transformation throughout the series with the Grasping ceremony of seswatha's heart.  It's an instant rewrite.  This is also reminescent of how the Dunyain rewrite people, but it is more thorough, faster and more reliable.

That raises the question, again, as to who was the purpose behind the Dunyain, I think it was Nil'Giccas that founded them, and I think he founded them because he wanted to 'farm' man's intellect to solve riddles that the remaining Intact weren't capable of solving, or it was too risky to expose the small population of Cunoroi to some of the ideas the Dunyain would explore.  Creating an ability in man to rewrite other men is just the sort of Bene Gesserit esque project to approximate technology with something of nature that I find delicious.

***

Madness, I think you're getting too caught up in the postulate that the Inverse Fire shows the truth.  It is as likely to show the truth as Seswatha's dreams are, and we all know that those dreams are extremely unreliable.  I think the Fire is equally unreliable (even if there is no connection between the two) and it would be a mistake to assume that either the Consult or the Mandate are 'right' even though both are certain that the beliefs they possess are 'true'.

***
I think Titirga told us EXACTLY what the No God is:

A lunatic God… perhaps. The Hells that you think you see. Something… Something adulterate, foul. Something that craves feasting, that hungers with an intensity that can bend the very Ground.”

What makes me think that this is right is the invocation of "Ground."  It fits with the names of the No-God we have that refer to its endless hunger.  It fits with the intensity.  It fits with how the world is pitted against the no God.  It fits with the idea that a bent Ground becomes invisible to the Gods.  It fits with the bending of the Ground that was the Wight in the Mountain. It fits with the idea that SIGHT is deceptive.

The very fact that the Inverse Fire is SEEN makes me distrust it and its revelations all the more.  In the land of the Bakker the No-eyed man is king.

[What Came Before]

Nice lockesnow, I'll let you take the props if we get any confirmation on that Seswatha's heart/inverse fire speculation

I don't know if it acts on the moral centre of personality though - the inverse fire seems to actually burn away certain learned/inherited moral meanings, whilst leaving the personality intact.
Seswatha's heart otoh, seems more like memories being added to the subconcious via some outside link - there is the way it makes it almost impossible to reveal the gnosis... again this seems like an additive, because Kellhus is able to over-ride it.  Similar, but...

I recall Bakker saying that he doesn't really have a proper explanation for the skin spies recognizing Seswatha in the Mandati - the idea was that they recognized him in the same manner that a dunyain reads body language or something.  Don't forget, the skinspies are souless so it rules out sorcery.

I'll try not to get caught up in more wild speculation for the moment, but Madness has brought many good points to my thinking on this that have enlarged how I see the inverse fire. 
The consult see damnation in a consistent manner that has enabled them to build 'scientific' theories around it sufficient to construct the no-god and unify the metaphysics of sorcery and the tekne.  There is certainly a lot of truth in their understanding.  You can't get that far with faulty principles, as it were.

I can't argue with the way Madness has categorized Bakker's layers of revelation so far.  I just feel like the consult are as blind as anyone else in certain areas - they see only that which pleases them and the inverse fire shapes and informs how they see the world more thoroughly than any culture of man or non-man. 

It's certainly possible that the inverse fire yokes them to the desires of some pre-existing god, it's just my feeling that they are slaves to their desires and the no-god was subsequently created to embody those desires.

I'd like to mention one final related thing. 
I am almost certain that the gods are blind to those who have been cut off from the causal flow of culture and history because that is where they are immanent in the world.  This includes the dunyain, inchies and the once human members of the consult.  They only became aware of Kellhus because he has stolen so many of their followers.

[What Came Before]

Recently read Peter Watts's short story "Repeating the Past," and now I can't stop thinking of the Inverse Fire as an advanced MRI / brain-alteration machine.

http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_RepeatingThePast.pdf

[What Came Before]

Wow that story was bad.

[What Came Before]

The Inverse Fire: listen and learn from a real Gnostic School - http://gnosticradio.org/lectures/lectures-by-topic/tantra-yoga/120-the-fire-of-kundalini/view-details

The Reversed, Inverse Kundalini. A truly sexual process. http://oainternetservices.com/resources/tantra-magazine/17/pmen_2.html

Interesting correlation in Bakker's The False Sun. Shaeonanra does some kind of sexual act. http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/stories/the-false-sun/

Titirga Mithalara bears a Fire, too, but which sexual Sun is in error?!

Although, what Bakker actually means in his universe, I cannot tell just from one excerpt in TUC.

But enjoy. And see if you find any correlations.

[What Came Before]

That is some great stuff, lockesnow. 

Here's something I wonder about though...we are pretty sure that damnation of some kind is real.  Could the Inverse Fire be misleading about what damnation is?  Could damnation be pretty bad but just not quite as bad as what the Inverse Fire shows?  Or is it really that bad and the Inverse Fire just shows you the deal? 

I also wonder how the Inchies could know that they were still damned after their experiments on other planets.  Did they check the Inverse Fire?  Did they know in some other way?  If they pulled it off on Earwa would they check the Inverse Fire and have it show them something else? 

If the Inverse Fire is a manipulation of some kind, who the Hell created it?  Someone on the Inchie homeworld?

ETA:  Just to add...the quote from Titirga that Lockesnow pointed out about the No-God...the Nonmen have some name for the NG that is like "Angel of Endless Hunger."  Now it wouldn't be too weird that Titirga and the Nonmen would be thinking along the same lines, but there is that similarity as far as what evidence we've been given.

[What Came Before]

Good catch, Trisk.

I have to wonder if the Inverse Fire - if it shows damnation - isn't simply a window, a looking-glass. Truth of damnation, just not a list of requirements.

[What Came Before]

What would the inverse fire be, technology-wise.  Remember that old saw about magic being misunderstood technology?

Could it be an experience chamber like a holo deck?  Would it be a sort of matrix-esque pod where they tap your brain and make you feel/sense things.  Would it be a regular TV playing jersey shore on an infinite loop.  And the flat, lighted surface of the TV is fire's inverse.  Light without heat.

Brainstorm time.  What do you all conceptualize as a physical thing that is fire's inverse?  Is the inverse fire merely water?  THE WATER OF LIFE?  Holy water?  oh you Fremen (err I mean Cishaurim).

Fire burns, reduces things to carbon, perhaps an inverse fire takes carbon and builds, nano-tech style...

on a totally unrelated note, Kellhus watches--or creates the illusion of watching--men through his fire.  Is this repurposing of fire an inversion?  The use of fire to peer into the outside perhaps?

[What Came Before]

Could it be an experience chamber like a holo deck?

This is what I think of when Shaeonanra recollects looking up in the Golden Room.

Inverse Fire makes me think of a TV, something that gives light without warmth or something too - so any kind of sufficiently modern or SF visualization/representation technology.

I think Kellhus Seeing-Fire is simply another manifestation of "sorcerous objects" - not necessarily metaphysical level ramifications like the Chorae... I actually expect things like that to emerge in TUC - clearly from Achamian and Mimara's experiences and, especially, Ishterebinth. You have to recall that in the ancient North, all of the major Gnostic Schools engaged in making sorcerous objects of various device.

Obviously, so too has Kellhus. Though I like that the repurposing of fire is implicative.

[What Came Before]

 

I thought the inverse fire was named as such since it burned inward rather than outward.
Step into a fire and your physical being is scared, damaged, irreparably harmed, and yet your soul remains intact.

Step into the inverse fire, then, and while you remain physically unchanged, your soul burns to cinders, leaving behind only the desire to escape that fate at all costs.

I don't believe that the name is a description of its outward appearance.

Anyone seen the move Constantine? They mention that a second on earth measures an eternity of suffering in Hell (more or less). The inverse fire could cause something similar.

[What Came Before]

Hmm... Good call on the Inward and Outward - fits neatly with the mythology surrounding Husyelt and the Burned Prophet.

I've always wondered at the historical encounters with the Gods. Sorweel's and Psatma's are hardly moments of scripture. And we know the Inchoroi were actively treating with the five tribes before the Breaking of the Gates. I always wonder which of the Gods the Inchoroi are remembered as in the scriptures. I mean, a space-faring species would appear as Gods to any primitive people's internal explanatory style - see any and all ancient aliens theories lol.

[What Came Before]

It keeps coming up so I wanted to quote it
Arthur C. Clark: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
And I suppose in our case, gods.
Have the gods always had a hand in kahit(sp) throughout history? It seems that all the important characters are involved in some way with one of the hundred.
And certainly the Consult would have to  seem like gods to the 5 tribes. But which ones? Maybe some of the hundred that people worship are actually old references to the Inchoroi.

[What Came Before]

And certainly the Consult would have to seem like gods to the 5 tribes. But which ones? Maybe some of the hundred that people worship are actually old references to the Inchoroi.

Exactly. Which ones?!

Any references to Kahiht automatically reflect Inrithism interpretations of the Tusk. Don't know how much they reflect the clear definition of being an Avatar?

"Kahiht - The name given to so-called World-Souls in the Inrithi tradition. Since the God manifests himself in the movement of histroical event in Inrithism, to be Kahiht, or a world historical individual, is considered sacred" (TTT, p575).

"History (Inrithism) - The movement of human events through time. The significance of History for the Inrithi is that the God is manifested within it. The Inrithi believe that certain configurations of events express the truth of the God while certain other configurations are inimical to such expression" (TTT, p566).