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R Scott Bakker's :The Great Ordeal (spoilers)


Kalbear

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3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Talking about gods finding us tasty, here's Fane talking about the end of all time:

Sorry guys, we're not bread any more. I brought this up not just because of how far this has been planned out, but how it might hint at the way things end - where the gods are denied their food. Their lake is empty of souls. 

So which happens - do the souls go to another lake, or are the Sons shuttered away from the lake?

I could see Mimara forgiving literally every soul in the Outside, redeeming them and removing them from the grasp of the Sons. As for the rest, I'm still thinking all future humans will be born soulless, with Mimara's child the first soulless Modern Man born after the literal Semantic Apocalypse. Hell, if your "cuckolded Nonmen" theory is right, then it could be a less grotesque version of that - instead of modifying wombs to produce soulless Nonmen equivalents, Mimara will just change the rules and end the narrative of a meaningful universe. 

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I wonder if it flip flops somehow - remove souls from sons, they starve which is like torture for them. Over time they start worshipping to fulfil the thing they miss, as Kelhus describes men doing. Eventually learn how to open the gate because they have to because such suffering...

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Quote

 

The torment of the Whale-mothers.

Between women and men, women possess the lesser soul. Whenever the Eye opens, she glimpses the fact of this, the demand that women yield to the requirements of men, so long as those demands be righteous. To bear sons. To lower her gaze.. To provide succor. The place of the woman is to give. So it has always been, since Omrain first climbed nude from the dust and bathed in the wind. Since Esmenet made herself a crutch for stern Angeshraël.

 

I'm curious as to whether this revelation is some kind of turning point for Mimara. That this is no longer acceptable and that she'll somehow with her judging eye either try to change this or turn against the gods.

Surely Kellhus wanted her to see this, but why?

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16 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

Unless the Whale Mother transformation is something that happens after you've sorted the smart girls and killed off the dumb ones in each generation...though that again would seem to require things the Dunyain don't have - knowledge of how to manipulate the Bios.

 

Perhaps the Dunyain do have some knowledge of the Bios. We have next to no knowledge of their founding - it could be that their founders included former members of the Consult seeking another way around damnation as opposed to closing the world, namely by grasping the Absolute and becoming self-moving souls (God cannot be damned, therefore to become God is to escape damnation). The Dunyain quite deliberately forgot, or repressed, many things (at least from Kellhus' perspective), so for all we know they have also forgotten or repressed the Consult contribution to their history. Knowledge of the Bios would explain not just whale mothers but also their knowledge of other elements of biological manipulation, such as selective breeding (a lot easier to do if you have some idea of how genetics works) and noopuncture.

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33 minutes ago, Gasp of Many Reeds said:

Perhaps the Dunyain do have some knowledge of the Bios. We have next to no knowledge of their founding - it could be that their founders included former members of the Consult seeking another way around damnation as opposed to closing the world, namely by grasping the Absolute and becoming self-moving souls (God cannot be damned, therefore to become God is to escape damnation). The Dunyain quite deliberately forgot, or repressed, many things (at least from Kellhus' perspective), so for all we know they have also forgotten or repressed the Consult contribution to their history. Knowledge of the Bios would explain not just whale mothers but also their knowledge of other elements of biological manipulation, such as selective breeding (a lot easier to do if you have some idea of how genetics works) and noopuncture.

I think they probably had at least some knowledge of Bios. The theory that roiginal Dunyain had some contact with Mangaecca and perhaps even were sponsored by it also was sometimes mentioned on this board. They also could suppress any such knowledge after they decided it is no longer necessary since they already have everything they wanted from it.

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9 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

 

"Those who are saved by the light of the mystery which I have revealed unto you, O Hermes, and which I now bid you to establish among men, shall return again to the Father who dwelleth in the White Light, and shall deliver themselves up to the Light and shall be absorbed into the Light, and in the Light they shall become Powers in God. This is the Way of Good and is revealed only to them that have wisdom."

-Thoth Hermes Trismegistus

 

It would make sense I suppose, given the Logos, Tekne and all, but has Bakker ever said Hermeticism is an influence?

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4 hours ago, Gasp of Many Reeds said:

Perhaps the Dunyain do have some knowledge of the Bios. We have next to no knowledge of their founding - it could be that their founders included former members of the Consult seeking another way around damnation as opposed to closing the world, namely by grasping the Absolute and becoming self-moving souls (God cannot be damned, therefore to become God is to escape damnation).

What I want to know is whether the creation of the Whale Mothers happened by accident or if it was something that they planned for from the beginning, when the women were still women. That’s assuming that they were normal humans that were bred into that shape over the millennia.

Like you said there is a lot of mystery surrounding the founding of the Dûnyain, IMO. Assuming that the Whale Mothers did not happen by accident, then the question is where did Dûnyain get the idea from? The Inchoroi? The Consult? Someone associated with them or has knowledge of the Tekne (like Seswatha)? Remember what Seswatha says to NC about Golgotterath being a womb? Perhaps the idea was to turn Ishuäl into something similar. Moënghus calls the Dûnyain sons of Ishuäl, after all.

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2 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

It would make sense I suppose, given the Logos, Tekne and all, but has Bakker ever said Hermeticism is an influence?

As per the chorae and Greek stuff Solo brought up, looking into it I feel like there's some Hermetic/Gnostic and Neoplatonist themes running through the text.

I mean the Gnosticism of it, with the Hundred as Archons, is there. It seems Kellhus and Mimara are in touch with two different deities, Kellhus the Demiurge/Archons and Mimara the Father of Light.

Even the Cish seem to be Islamic influenced Neoplatonists, with the idea of the One which divides itself. See Batzek's comment about Fane's creation story:

14 hours ago, Baztek said:

First there's the One, which is synonymous with the unconsciousness of death because where there is no awareness there is no striving. Then you have the Solitary God because out of an inexplicable hunger and maybe even terror of being alone (recall "how can a god hunger?") refracts himself into a multiplicity that, ultimately, exist only to consume progressively individuated portions of their essence in a vain attempt fill this hunger.
 

I'd just make some tweaks. The One is Awareness without the corruption of thought in time. The Solitary God is Nous (intellect) that comes from the One in Hermetic fashion. As the Intellect it refracts as Baztek says. 

Plotinus also suggested the One wasn't a deity to be worshiped, rather the gods were the intercessory powers. In the Bakkerverse, however, the gods are even more capricious than the Greek pantheon.

I don't know if Bakker was deliberately invoking Neoplatonism or Eastern thought but I do think that looking into the Western Occult tradition does lend us some insights into the text?

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32 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

I'd just make some tweaks. The One is Awareness without the corruption of thought in time.

This is a lot pithier than I think you intended it to be. A lot of initiatic systems with the aim of spiritual reintegration with this state promote a kind "a-temporalization" of experience to liberate it from the weight of the senses/mentation. Ultimately the Ciphrang are forces that actuate in the physical universe - they start as different determinations of the Original One, different expressions of the modalities of his Being, and then refract further in Becoming, where the subjective impulse is met by objective rigidity and the resulting tension is like crack for the Ciphrang. All souls return to the particular Ciphrang their lives were most aligned to as a whole mode of being, since it becomes their source and stem. When they are returned they are devoured, to feed this "Being" they owe sustenance to. 

This has a lot of paralells with the Buddhist conception of the samsaric being as the force responsible for one's existence and ultimately responsible for its characteristic tendencies an inclinations. All this is talk of determinations, of being-this and not-that, are the properties of no longer being One. "A-temporalizing" experience is no longer qualifying time in intrinsically limiting and incomplete terms, but experiencing time in eternity, and vice versa.

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Sadly Baztek I can't quote you but excellent stuff! 

I'd like to credit myself with a certain degree of pith, even if short of the level you took it. :-)

I see the Cish as [Islamic] Neoplatonists, I'm even curious if they'll wind up utilizing some of the ideas that Henry Corbin elucidated studying Islamic mysticism:

"...to leave this world, it does not suffice to die. One can die and remain in it forever. One must be living to leave it. Or rather, to be living is just this."
 -Cyclical Time in Ismaili Gnosis

Also from The Golden Chain, Algis Uždaviny's work on the philosophical mysticism in Platonic & Pythagorean thought :

Quote

In the original Orphico-Pythagorean sense, philosophy meant wisdom (sophia) and love (eros) combined in a moral and intellectual purification in order to reach the “likeness to God” (homoiosis theo, [Plato, Theaet. 176b]). This likeness was to be attained by gnosis, knowledge. The same Greek word nous (“intellect,” understood in a macrocosmic and microcosmic sense) covers all that is meant both by “spirit” (spiritus, ruh) and “intellect” (intellectus, ‘aql) in the Medieval Christian and Islamic lexicon. Thus Platonic philosophy (and especially Neoplatonism) was a spiritual and contemplative way of life leading to enlightenment; a way which was properly and intrinsically intellectual; a way that was ultimately based on intellection or noetic vision (noesis), which transcends the realm of sense perception and discursive reasoning. Through an immediate grasp of first principles, the non-discursive intelligence lead to a union (henosis) with the divine Forms. “Knowledge of the gods,” says Iamblichus, “is virtue and wisdom and perfect happiness, and makes us like to the gods” (Protr. 3). Even for Aristotle, who seems to be a much more earthly-minded rationalist, the highest and eternally active Intellect, or God, as the ultimate metaphysical telos of any true philosopher, erotically attracts and harmoniously moves everything in the multi-dimensional cosmos...

The way I see it, this union of wisdom and eros is what the Cish achieve but the Dunyain lack. In confusing the Nous with the One, the Dunyain think the God is something to be apprehended via "theoria", the process of reifying and abstracting the world.

Yet this, as Mimara sees, leads them to into a spiral that ends with damnation.

The folly of the Nonmen is ego - trying to be an anti-hero walking into Oblivion rather than submission to the One.

The folly of the Inchies is reductionism - thinking all there is in the Bakkerverse is meat that is made up of matter.

The folly of the Dunyain is worship of reifying intellect - trying to fit the entirety of reality - including themselves - into a machine process that can be tweaked to grasp the Absolute.

Obviously there are surprises, and I might be wrong about this, but I think the predictions that the Cish have the right way to believe is correct? 

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48 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

I don't know if Bakker was deliberately invoking Neoplatonism or Eastern thought but I do think that looking into the Western Occult tradition does lend us some insights into the text?

Yeah, sorry, wasn't meaning to come across as dismissive. Having been out of the loop for so long I was actually wondering if maybe he'd stated that somewhere. 

Given all the Greek and Eastern influences, of course there's nothing wrong looking through that lens. I was just curious.

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Remember that Fayanal is also cish. And he promotes slavery, rape and torture in the name of the solitary God. I think the cish are more right, but they're still not right.

And that assumes that the goal is not to cause maximal damnation in order to feed the outside. Mimara sees the truth of the world - and the world is visibly unequal. What does that inequality do? It creates desire for what you do not have. And that in turn produces damnation. That is God's design in earwa. 

The gods suck and are demons, but they are just part of a system that sucks at its core.

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10 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Yeah, sorry, wasn't meaning to come across as dismissive. Having been out of the loop for so long I was actually wondering if maybe he'd stated that somewhere. 

Given all the Greek and Eastern influences, of course there's nothing wrong looking through that lens. I was just curious.

No worries, didn't think you were.

I'm kind of kicking myself as I'd assumed - being raised Hindu - that it was obviously some Hindu influence. I think there might be a little of that for the cultural but the Neoplatonist/Hermetic/Gnostic take seems to jive more closely with Bakkerverse metaphysics.

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22 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

"...to leave this world, it does not suffice to die. One can die and remain in it forever. One must be living to leave it. Or rather, to be living is just this."
 -Cyclical Time in Ismaili Gnosis

 

All beings unconsciously strive towards the perfection of the original unity, what they probably cannot articulate but what they subconsciously interpret as the antithesis to temporal life, as what will confer a kind of timelessness or center to experience that is usually chaotic and relentlessly changing.

 

The head on the pole is how Kellhus orients himself in the Outside, which is just experience for the sake of experience (just an orgiastic thirst for Becoming and all the permutations of experience), and is groundless. The created-as-created, however, is perceiving the onta, perceiving the underlying, Absolute reality, which is seeing existence with the eyes of God. But for some reason this is forbidden to humanity and so sorcerors are damned. 

And I think the Dunyain are asking the question, "what if a p-zombie self-actualized?" If a p-zombie were able to completely bend circumstance to his control, become the master of persuasion, and all-around most sublime being to ever walk this earth, all through mechanistic probability algorithms, what would it say about the person who does this "for real"? And so on.  

 

That quote is great because the goal isn't to melt back into the One, or be recycled in Samsara/the Outside, but to live the transcendence of the system, not merely wait for it to work out in death/mystic union/by becoming an AI god-monk

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20 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Remember that Fayanal is also cish. And he promotes slavery, rape and torture in the name of the solitary God. I think the cish are more right, but they're still not right.

And that assumes that the goal is not to cause maximal damnation in order to feed the outside. Mimara sees the truth of the world - and the world is visibly unequal. What does that inequality do? It creates desire for what you do not have. And that in turn produces damnation. That is God's design in earwa. 

The gods suck and are demons, but they are just part of a system that sucks at its core.

Cish refers to the entirety of the faith or just the magic users utilizing the Psukhe?

Mimara also sees the Light beyond the "false foil" rind of the Abyss?

I also think the Cish priesthood aren't necessarily good people they just have the right way of reconnecting with the God. 

So Fayanal, IMO, is damned but the snake heads are not...or so I suspect. Question is where does this leave Big Moe?

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Thinking on Koringhus and the child today. What is so special about the boy that Koringhus saves him and carries him into the TTH and protects him for those long years? He is Dunyain after all, and they don't brook much sympathy for others. What makes the Dunyain that burns the brightest with the Logos, save a babe?

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2 hours ago, Baztek said:

All beings unconsciously strive towards the perfection of the original unity, what they probably cannot articulate but what they subconsciously interpret as the antithesis to temporal life, as what will confer a kind of timelessness or center to experience that is usually chaotic and relentlessly changing.

The head on the pole is how Kellhus orients himself in the Outside, which is just experience for the sake of experience (just an orgiastic thirst for Becoming and all the permutations of experience), and is groundless. The created-as-created, however, is perceiving the onta, perceiving the underlying, Absolute reality, which is seeing existence with the eyes of God. But for some reason this is forbidden to humanity and so sorcerors are damned. 

And I think the Dunyain are asking the question, "what if a p-zombie self-actualized?" If a p-zombie were able to completely bend circumstance to his control, become the master of persuasion, and all-around most sublime being to ever walk this earth, all through mechanistic probability algorithms, what would it say about the person who does this "for real"? And so on.  

That quote is great because the goal isn't to melt back into the One, or be recycled in Samsara/the Outside, but to live the transcendence of the system, not merely wait for it to work out in death/mystic union/by becoming an AI god-monk

Great stuff - the difference between the holism of the Psukhe vs the intellectual theoria of the other magical practices.

I see the head on the pole as the watcher, the aspect that astral travels into the Outside the watched. Curious about what you by "created as created" though?

It is interesting that sorcery, which is fueled by recollection, has become a means toward damnation. Though as Kal points out it seems almost all worldly actions lead toward damnation regardless of whether they are Good or Evil. 

I like the idea of the Dunyain as thinking of themselves as p-zombies in search of genuine self-awareness/self-actualization.

Your last lines are intriguing regarding the Cish - are they living "the transcendence of the system"? 

4 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Thinking on Koringhus and the child today. What is so special about the boy that Koringhus saves him and carries him into the TTH and protects him for those long years? He is Dunyain after all, and they don't brook much sympathy for others. What makes the Dunyain that burns the brightest with the Logos, save a babe?

Good question. Perhaps a desire to save all the genetic improvements of their race?

Is the Survivor able to breed? Even if he can the boy at least allows the experiment of breeding improvements to better continue with more stock.

 yeah, all Cish are Fanim (except Moe), but not all Fanim are Cish.  Fanayal is just Fanim, but I think Kal's point still stands.

 thanks Trisk!

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6 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Thinking on Koringhus and the child today. What is so special about the boy that Koringhus saves him and carries him into the TTH and protects him for those long years? He is Dunyain after all, and they don't brook much sympathy for others. What makes the Dunyain that burns the brightest with the Logos, save a babe?

My guess is Koringhus was pretty seriously maimed in the fighting and rationalised that having a child helper would be useful for running errands, etc. Plus always better that it's someone else's head looking above the ramparts when you're checking whether you're clear of trouble.

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I was thinking there might be a little more significance to the child than that. Maybe his son? Maybe a child prodigy? Is the child more important than Koringhus? Both of your guys answers are plausible, it just doesn't seem that those would be significant enough to risk limbs when being attacked relentlessly by the Consult and a horde of Sranc. If someone continues on with Mimara and Akka, my money is on the child.

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