The Unholy Consult Post-Release SPOILER THREAD II

[wayward_ishroi]

Spoiler

Pa'bikru

Historically, the most famous of these was Modhoraparta’s “Dance of the Demons,” where the face of the God of Gods viewed through the aperture became a group of demonic monstrosities viewed from all other angles.

Spoiler

So this was a very random but long entry in the appendix. 

 

An argument that the the god of gods is not actually fractured into a million warring pieces, it just looks that way when you view the outside from the vantage of your own soul via the slot of the head on a pole behind you.

 

 

 

[PapushiSun]

10 hours ago, Ajûrbkli said:

Sosering Rauchurl ends up in heaven, somehow. 

The only way to heaven is to win favour with one of the Gods, at least that's how I've understood it. But if this quote from the False Sun is correct

Quote

 

For I have seen the virtuous in Hell and the wicked in Heaven. And I swear to you, brother, the scream you hear in the one and the sigh you hear in the other sound the same.

–Anonymous

 

it doesn't seem to make to make much difference since you still end up food for a God.

[jurble]

The manner in which your soul 'played' by the Gods seems to matter, though.  Ajokli's seems to be straight up Hell, pain and suffering is his food. I'm not sure what Gilgaol's feeds on from his souls.  But Hogrim gets fire and Sosering gets whatever Gilgaol feeds on.  Is martial glory something a God can eat?

[PapushiSun]

So can anyone explain what "the No-God collapses Being and Object" means?

[jurble]

The line is Subject and Object.  Subject being the thing that has subjective experience (it has consciousness) and Object (everything else apart from itself).  Hence my argument for taking the Dunyain at face-value that the No-God is somehow God manifest in the world.   Remember Sorweel's Mandate schoolman talking about how some souls resemble God in form, though smaller?  If Kelmomas was such a soul, possessing the form of God, then the Sarcophagus might be a mechanism to create God (or a proxy or avatar of God) to use as a force for mechanical purposes. 

For analogy... the No-God is like the Consult using God's hand to jack themselves off while God sleeps.

How else should explain the Bode? Except that the No-God as being the God and the lodestone that draws all souls towards it, becoming the shortest path to the Absolute.  The control of the Weapon Races might be through physiological antenna, or just the emanation of Divine Will (which the Souled do not notice through their "Free Will").  The Whirlwind itself isn't a technological phenomenon, but rather the No-God's mastery over physical matter, similar to Ajokli pulling all the Skin-Spies to the ground via their Chorae.

[Happy Ent]

23 hours ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

So my favourite part of these threads is everyone's initial impressions - I was actually quite looking forward to yours. So tell us Treefather; WHAT DID YOU SEE ?

No sentient trees in it. So from the arboreal perspective, it sucked. Hardly a single plant, sentient or not.

One thematic observation, related to trees: We have had lots of branching imagery throughout the books. In many important scenes, we typically get something like a denuded tree in the background, the branches of which symbolise the many decisions that can be made (Tree behind Mekeritrig, twig in Kellhus’s sandal). In this volume, there is almost nothing left of that, except for the twin horns of the dread Ark. And then that remaining branch also collapses. Very nice.

—

In general, I was very happy with the book.

My eternal criticism with Bakker is his annoying ambivalence; I think his books would be far better if the reader knew what was going on. This has been a constant throughout the series, apparently RSB acknowledges it (and concedes the problem), but has decided to stick with that style. I dislike that position strongly.

The rest is great. I understand (now) that the Great Ordeal had to go through a moral degradation that dwarfs the mundane degradations that, say, normal people experienced in the 20th century. RSB needs his crusaders to commit moral atrocities of biblical proportions. Rape-eating the dying victims of a nuclear attack fits the ticket. I find it remarkable that I did not see this coming; testament to the tricks our psychology is playing on us to avoid thinking about it. I founds these chapters annoying, gut-wrenching, harrowing, exhausting, and perfect. These parts are not a mistake.

I liked the glimpses of Kellhus’s humanity, such as Esmi being his only darkness.

I am deeply impressed that after so many books, there is yet another layer of revelation pulled back for us. So now we know it’s about some complicated head-swapping demon-possessing deal with a specific God, and we need to re-interpret many of the puzzling scenes in earlier books in a new light. This is very disciplined writing. Bravo.

The finale is as awesome as I expected it to be, with images and scenes that rival anything written in the Silmarillion. The falling Horn! If Bakker did nothing else that that kind of stuff, he’d be worth reading already. (Of course, his ambition is different.)

The ending? Yes, I get it. This had to happen, of course. Very strange that I was surprised by it. The emotional impact of the last sentence, with salt and butchery, is worth the prize of admission alone. The multiple frustrated plot lines I assume are deliberate. RSB sets up everything according to our expectations; we just know that there will be a super-important chain of events involving all the Chekovian guns set up through the last four volumes. And then our expectations are frustrated. This is pure Cormac McCarthy, of course. I don’t like it here (as I don’t like it in McCarthy), put it’s part of postmodernism. Fair enough, and well played.

I’m chuffed that this series is not over. I had resigned myself to the fact that the Good Stuff would be over when Kellhus destroyed the Consult and No-God and became some kind of God, and assumed the next few volumes would be released 15 years from now, with RSB masturbating in the Outside, much like the more frustrating parts of Michale Moorcock. (I’d still have read it, of course.) But now I think the series will just continue with a fight against the No-God; we’ve been fooled (expertly so) in expecting this confrontation to be over. Well done.

[Doc Holliday]

7 hours ago, Hello World said:

By the way, when would it be appropriate to edit the Wiki with spoilers from TUC?

NA release date?

[unJon]

9 hours ago, wayward_ishroi said:

  Hide contents

 

I vote "The No-God"

 

In keeping with the Prince-Emperor-God theme.

 

 

It's possible but it would break the tradition of Kellhus status. Unless someone wants to theorize that Kellhus switched heads with Kelmomas. 

I could see something like:

1) The Hungry God

2) The God of [Insert Aspect Here]

3) The Head on a Pole

 

[Doc Holliday]

1 hour ago, Happy Ent said:

No sentient trees in it. So from the arboreal perspective, it sucked. Hardly a single plant, sentient or not.

The Blood Weeper :).

[Happy Ent]

3 hours ago, Doc Holliday said:

The Blood Weeper :).

Good call, “the last tree they would ever see.”

After this last contact with arboreal sanity, the Great Ordeal descends into madness. From willow to wallow.

Also, we get a few more mentions of the Copper Tree of Siol.

[Hello World]

6 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

I am deeply impressed that after so many books, there is yet another layer of revelation pulled back for us. So now we know it’s about some complicated head-swapping demon-possessing deal with a specific God, and we need to re-interpret many of the puzzling scenes in earlier books in a new light. This is very disciplined writing. Bravo.

I don't know, Bakker has called the series a metaphysical whodunit. I've read hundreds of whodunits and the one thing they all had in common is that some definitive answers are given at the end and the red herrings are separated from the actual clues. All Bakker did in this climax is reveal more aspects of the mystery that we weren't aware of. He gave us more clues and it made the whodunit even harder to solve than it was previously.

[jurble]

I'm like 76% sure The God is actually Bakker.  Like, not in the sense he's the author, but that the character of The God represents Bakker-as-Author.  This explains how the God is both immanent and transcendent - the books are composed of Bakker, being his literal thoughts on page, they are pieces of him (c.f. Islamic theology grappling with the nature of the Qu'ran - some Islamic scholars held that as God's word, the Qu'ran was literally part of God), but just as The God is transcendent, so is Bakker.  He exists apart from the books.

So when Moe says The God sleeps, he is wrong. Bakker only sleeps sometimes.  When Kellhus says The God doesn't care, he's not entirely wrong - Bakker's has no problem with the suffering of billions of (imaginary) souls.   It also explains why the Judging Eye still works (because Bakker is The Almighty, The All-Knowing) - the No-God is His creation as much as anything else in the world, of course He can see it.  

The answer to the whodunit is Bakker.

[Gaston de Foix]

In my second read of the book, I have been investigating the extent to which the events of the TUC transpires in accordance with the Thousand Fold Thought.  In doing so, I came across this very interesting scene involving Mimara when she reaches the Great Ordeal: 

"The blanket is actually  a small ornamental tapestry, supple for the extraordinary quality of the weave. The tapestry itself she has seen before, she realizes. It once hung in the Sartorials, the imperial feast hall near the summit of the Andiamine Heights. But the image...that she has seen much more recently. 

It seems she can even smell it, the moss and rotting bark, the air choked of motion - the Mop. A dank socket between trees. A rare shaft of moonlight. Her own reflection across a black pool...only transformed by the Eye into the very image she now holds in her hands...

A pregnant woman, her cropped hair all the more black for the plate of brilliant silver about her head. 

Blessed. "  (Kindle Location 3556 of 12420)

The tapestry's subject matter is corroborated by Kelmomas and Serwa:

"As quick with child as that tapestry from the Feast Hall" (Kindle Location 3997)

We can infer from this that Kellhus' knows of Mimara's possession of the Judging Eye, her pregnancy through Achiaman, and her eventual joining of the Great Ordeal.   I'm convinced: the Second Apocalypse was the planned result of the TTT, and it was of great importance Mimara's child be born between the precise moment of Kellhus' possession by Ajokli and the resurrection of the No-God. 

Thoughts?

[jurble]

Kellhus instigated Achamian and Mimara's journey for a reason.  He is clearly the source of Achamian's dreams as well, since he doesn't push Achamian further about his changed dreams.

In fact, thinking about it, the fact that Ajokli cannot find Kellhus in Hell, combined with the line "sometimes old men wake behind the eyes of babes" from TWLW, I believe, and the not entirely clear timeline at the end of the book, makes me realize:

 

Mimara gave birth to Kellhus.

[Ser Bryar Ashford]

51 minutes ago, Ajûrbkli said:

 

Mimara gave birth to Kellhus.

Whoa.  Trapdoor from one body to the next through the Outside...

[Valandil]

Interesting ajurbkli. Lovely catch on tapestry gaston. 

Some randoms from the appendix 

1. Nilgiccas seems to have been levelled up over the glossary, he's the Union of dark nonmen and house of tsonos, he appears like their high king, Gil-galad figure, popping up in multiple interesting and important ways.

2. Qirri is described with no real negative effects. "Burns great souls down to the raw kernel of there vitality" etc.  Mim has been consuming a ton of nilgicass on her slog. 

3. Imimorul is described in greater detail, as a god, with hints that he yet lives somewhere in the deeps of the earth, inviting nonmen to find him in his psalm" the world to him, who finds me in the deep, the world to him and woe"

4. Pa'bikru section says to me that what is glimpsed through the inverse fire may be incorrect, a dance of demons, "the face of the God of gods viewed through the aperture became a group of demonic monstrosities views from all other angles"

5. There is a lot about soul swapping, concealing etc.(decapitants, iswazi,  kellhus clearly not done, though his body appears to be. 

6. Humanity survives this new apocalypse. There is a description of scholarly disagreements on in the swayali section when discussing kellhus' manumission of the feminine. "Several Scholars have noted ...the latter possessed only a nominal effect on the lives of women in the new empire.." Therefore scholars exist post apocolypse to debate it at a remove 

must dive back in 

 

[Kalbear]

It's an interesting idea, though the timing isn't quite perfect. 

[Kalbear]

21 minutes ago, Valandil said:

 

6. Humanity survives this new apocalypse. There is a description of scholarly disagreements on in the swayali section when discussing kellhus' manumission of the feminine. "Several Scholars have noted ...the latter possessed only a nominal effect on the lives of women in the new empire.." Therefore scholars exist post apocolypse to debate it at a remove 

 

 

Not necessarily- the scholars so cited could be talking about the new Lillian empire as it happened. The swayali occurred fairly early in his reign. 

[Hello World]

2 hours ago, Ajûrbkli said:

In fact, thinking about it, the fact that Ajokli cannot find Kellhus in Hell

I've seen this mentioned several times but where in the text is it from?

[jurble]

Just now, Hello World said:

I've seen this mentioned several times but where in the text is it from?

The very end, Ajokli possesses Cnaiur (who, as someone mad, is an opening to the Outside).  That's not Cnaiur yelling at the Sarcophagus, it's Ajokli.

Quote

“KELLHUS!” he roared in no human voice, a shout that cracked the Horde’s howl, that struck dust from open air. The Whirlwind continued to feed upon the Shroud, rending and inhaling, ripping it from its roots in the Horde, spinning it into the great bulbous pillar. The creatures were almost upon him. “I COME TO YOU AS HATE!”

not for the smoke steaming from his numberless swazond, nor for the crimson glow poisoning his turquoise eyes, nor even for the shadowy presentiment of four horns rising about his head.

“YOU SHALL SUFFER AS NO SON OF MAN BEFORE YOU!” he boomed to the black funnelling heavens, his eyes now spikes of crimson brilliance.

“ANASÛRIMBOR!” he roared, his voice bestial with fury. “REVEAL THYSELF TO ME!”

With Hell’s own eyes, Cnaiür urs Skiötha peered up into the void and saw ... nothing. “REVEAL! REVEAL THYSELF!”

Ajokli thinks Kellhus deceived him and he doesn't know where Kellhus is.  So he possesses Cnaiur and searches the Whirlwind.