416 replies to this topic

[Madness]

Oh, the possibility remains and Mimara sees some kind of actual Damnation for the Cil-Aujan Nonmen.

However, yes, I'm saying the Nonman were never Damned and all human ideas about why Nonmen are damned are suspect - the only things that give us this impression is the Tusk and the cultural institutions and artifacts that have arisen in interpreting that scriptural lie and Mimara's impressions in TJE.

Edited by Madness, 12 December 2012 - 04:36 PM.

[Sci-2]

Mimara refers to specific place sinking to Hell due to treatment of slaves. I think only that one area sunk into Hell, I don't think it means the practice of slavery damned the entire Nonmen race. [I'm also presuming similar breeding pits slid those locations towards Hell.]

Sin doesn't echo AFAIK, it doesn't seem to follow beneficiaries of sin - a Nonman (or human) who had a slave he treated nicely doesn't seem to be damned though the man who breeds slaves would be damned depending on how slaves are treated.

Edited by sciborg2, 12 December 2012 - 04:52 PM.

[Madness]

Lol, hence my joke title. I'm sure, as you suggested, that the those social activities which cause Topoi were sufficiently curbed by Nonmen society, neh?

We just don't know... is the act of slavery enough? What is enough? Same questions for the Damnation of Nonmen... but I definitely hold to that they were never damned.

[Sci-2]

Okay, when you say never damned - do you [mean] no Nonmen was ever damned no matter their sins? Because that's what confuses me about your statements.

Do all Nonmen souls enter oblivion? I'm assuming Nonmen must have souls to create the Aporos, which turns on paradoxes in grammars.

Edited by sciborg2, 12 December 2012 - 05:12 PM.

[Madness]

No, I guess the miscommunication is coming from my perspective of, where the world stands.

I think that Nonmen and Men are damned for similar, if not, identical reasons.

I'm just thinking that almost nothing Men derive for "causes of damnation" can reflect the Nonmen's racial damnation by the prejudice Inchoroi. Any philosophical or theological reflection in Earwa that starts with "Nonmen are damned because" is likely a rationalization based on the false premise of the Inchoroi inscription.

[Sci-2]

[Something] I'm now thinking about is the Nonman touching Kellhus to know he wasn't a demon in Kellhus's body - how could a Nonman confirm that by touch alone?

Perhaps Nonman Nonmen are different not just in body, but in soul?

Edited by sciborg2, 12 December 2012 - 05:24 PM.

[Madness]

I've just kind of accepted that the Nonmen appear to be able to sense that truth, sci.

It needn't reflective differences in soul, though that is possible - fits with the different shapes and sizes of the Ur-Soul.

Vision is an easy metaphor to understand but we don't know much about Nonmen physiology or the difference in their sensory apparatus or thresholds. Cleric seems to exhibit [experience] greater than human hearing or vision. Why not touch?

Edited by Madness, 12 December 2012 - 06:10 PM.

[Shryke]

kalbear, on 12 December 2012 - 10:15 AM, said:

Though it is odd to think of. The cish and the Fanim believe very strongly that damnation is real even if the gods are not precisely. They seem to have more information about what the real Outside is than anyone. Presumably they have similar ways to see or interact with the outside as the mandate and daimos do, even if they don't worship.

So why wouldn't moe think that damnation is real? Maithanet did, as well as the gods.

I don't agree necessarily. Moe certainly believes in the Outside. What he doesn't believe in is damnation. So the question is, do the Cishaurim have any proof of damnation? And there's no evidence contradicting the idea we get from Moe that they don't.

We know the Cish know alot about the Outside, but we don't know the specifics of that knowledge or how it translates into faith. What parts of the Fanim religion are made up and what are based on facts is something we can't be sure of.

Given that, it seems completely plausible that Moe could not believe in damnation.

[Shryke]

Also, where'd the idea the Inchoroi wrote or edited the Tusk come from?

[Madness]

I'm really hoping Meppa gives us insight into the beliefs of the Cishaurim. Meppa preaching in Momomn...?

http://fantasyhotlis...iew-part-2.html

Quote

So the Inchoroi began giving them to the Men of Eärwa, hoping to incite them to rebellion. But the Halaroi had no stomach for rousing a feared, and most importantly, absent master, and so rendered the deadly gifts to their Nonmen overlords. The Inchoroi then looked to Eänna, where the Men were both more fierce and more naive. They gave the Chorae to the Five Tribes as gifts, and to one tribe, the black-haired Ketyai, they gave a great tusk inscribed with their hallowed laws and most revered stories–as well as one devious addition: the divine imperative to invade the ‘Land of the Felled Sun’ and hunt down and exterminate the ‘False Men.’

It was something that the forumers had long speculated, here and back to the old Three-Seas. Same with the possibility that the Inchoroi might have added that sorcerers are damned but obviously, the interview reads that the Inchoroi took the beliefs of the First Tribes and inscribed them onto the Tusk, only adding the bit about the Nonmen, [so it suggests some pre-existing believing in the damnation of sorcerers but strangely not shaman?]

Edited by Madness, 12 December 2012 - 06:35 PM.

[Triskele]

Shryke - Does Moenghus not believe in damnation, full stop, or does he just not believe that he is damned?

[Shryke]

Triskele, on 12 December 2012 - 06:39 PM, said:

Shryke - Does Moenghus not believe in damnation, full stop, or does he just not believe that he is damned?

He doesn't believe in damnation at all as far as I can determine. It's Kellhus reference to visions while hanging from the circumfix that first makes Moe think he's nuts. But, look through the book right now, he later questions why Kellhus is using words like "wicked", "perverted", "corrupted", etc and calls them nothing more than mechanisms of control.

He is also, interestingly, contemptuous of Kellhus' questions about "the Truth". He doesn't say their isn't any truth, merely that the worldborn cannot stomach it. But his version of the truth seems to involve none of the damnation/salvation/sin/etc type talk. He accused Kellhus of being broken for believing that stuff.

What's interesting is next the question is directly addressed. Kellhus goes "You are Cish, what about your visions and shit?" and Moe says it's bullshit. There's no proof it's not just deranged visions, his prophesying the future is coincidence and that while the Outside is real, the world "shows no favour. It is perfectly indifferent to the tantrums of men."

Interesting bit here:
"The God sleeps ... It has ever been thus. Only by striving for the Absolute may we awaken Him. Meaning. Purpose. These words name not something given ... no, the name our task."
"Set aside your conviction, for the feeling of certainty is no more a marker of truth than the feeling of will is a marker of freedom. Deceived men always think themselves certain, just as they always think themselves free. This is simply what is means to be deceived."

Some of it is a restating of Akka's general ideas about doubt, which is kinda interesting.

The rest seems to continue Moe's general belief that the world has no measuring stick of it's own. It's only humans that graft morality onto existence.




PS - Other interesting thing here. While Kellhus is imaging the ruin of Moe's plan to kill everyone and aid the Consult, the last line is this:

"The Gods baying like wolves at a silent gate."

[Triskele]

Shryke, on 12 December 2012 - 07:12 PM, said:

"The Gods baying like wolves at a silent gate."

I always took this to be a reference to the world being closed to the Outside when the Consult succeeds.  The Gods still want souls, and badly.  But all they can do is be pissed off.  Their soul revenue is no longer available to them.

[Madness]

"'The Dunyain,' Moenghus continued, 'think the world closed, that the mundane is all there is, and in this they are most certainly wrong. This world is open, and our souls stand astride its bounds' (p460)...

[Sci-2]

"This world is open, and our souls stand astride its bounds. But what lies Outside, Kellhus, is no more than a fractured and distorted reflection of what lies within. I have searched, for nearly the length of your entire life, and I have found nothing that contradicts the Principle."

Moe doesn't believe in gods. Which is interesting since it's possible he's heard of the White Luck and how to summon it.

[Triskele]

So what if Moe is right, and Kellhus, like the Consult, are motivated to destroy the world, but their motivations are based on certainty which does not actually reflect truth?

[generic]

sciborg2, on 12 December 2012 - 07:40 PM, said:

Moe doesn't believe in gods. Which is interesting since it's possible he's heard of the White Luck and how to summon it.

Or he thinks gods don't violate causality.

[lockesnow]

so the dunyain went to Ishual mid apocalypse and presumably believed the Consult had won, they worked from the premise that the world was closed because that was the goal of the Consult, right?

[Madness]

Presumably, after the fall of Tryse and certainly no later than the fall of Sauglish.

Then as far as I remember after the Dunyain would have established themselves in Ishual, the Consult chase Seswatha South to Eamnor, North-East to Aorsi, South to Meorn (sp?)... then flees West across the Three-Seas from Cil-Aujas to Kyranaes (sp?) where the assorted survivors defeat the No-God at Mangedda (sp?).

So yeah, I figure they'd [the Dunyain would] believe the Consult had won and tailor their actions, their principles, accordingly.

The one wrench is that the Dunyain [seem to have] repudiated the Gods themselves [before this] - if they had no evidence of the Gods aside from the belief in others, then they might have simply assumed that the worldborn were delusional, that the Gods never existed at all.

Edited by Madness, 13 December 2012 - 01:39 PM.

[Rhom]

That makes sense, I had wondered how the beginnings of a cult of superbeings could have denied the existence of magic.

One other thing that has bugged me about the no-magic Dunyain, how do they preserve their specimen for facial expressions?  Kellhus recalls the room where he is to study the exposed muscles of varying emotions.  How do they do that without some sort of magic?

I noticed we are approaching thread twelve and I have been wracking my brain for an appropriate sub-title; something along the lines of 12 inches = Pendulous or something, but that's not quite right...