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Bakker XXX: A Dark and Seminal Work


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Just because Nau-Cayuti was buried in a sarcophagus does not mean that there is an Anasurimbor in the No-God's carapace.

I think Larry is suggesting synchroncities may be a way the reader - or the Inchies & Dunyain for that matter - read prophecies from events. The world is enchanted, which means the events are not always (ever?) haphazard - the symbolism of events is the way the world speaks to those who dwell within it and those who experience it on the page.

I suspect Bakker may be pushing Earwa's face against the membrane of the fourth wall in this fashion, a skin just translucent enough for us to make out the world's rictus grin...

Or maybe it's all just about child-faced monsters fucking orifices. :dunno:

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I think Larry is suggesting synchroncities may be a way the reader - or the Inchies & Dunyain for that matter - read prophecies from events. The world is enchanted, which means the events are not always (ever?) haphazard - the symbolism of events is the way the world speaks to those who dwell within it and those who experience it on the page.

I suspect Bakker may be pushing Earwa's face against the membrane of the fourth wall in this fashion, a skin just translucent enough for us to make out the world's rictus grin...

Or maybe it's all just about child-faced monsters fucking orifices. :dunno:

Pretty much. There are so small details and questions.floating around, and like you and Castel mentioned in the last thread, they could turn out to be something or nothing. And it seems like there are too many open ended concerns and parallels to be resolved or revealed in the next volume, which could be a shame.

I was just bored.and.speculating what.might.be.something important or might be "heh, ill make this kind of echo this just because its suggestive and clever and stuff. Oh and this chapter needs more dicks..."

I will be disappointed if we dont get a shit ton more info about the dunyain and the nogod.

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Reading some of his posts there I was kind of annoyed at how much he gave away.





Yes, Inrau IS damned. And this is the basis of his conversion. There's always hope that the scriptures just overlooked some kind of loophole, or that by praying real hard...


Part of the problem is that we see Inrau primarily through Achamian, and if you think about it, Achamian tends not to go into the details of his damnation - or that of any of those he loves. For instance, why doesn't he ever wonder about Inrau's soul? This omission becomes more and more explicit the more implicated Achamian becomes in Kellhus's world. Think of TTT. I wanted this to be the one thing he cannot grasp without the protection of vague intellectual abstraction.




So Inrau was damned before he joined the Thousand Temples. Even though he only learned little sorcery and never grasped Seswatha's heart.


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Damnation has always comes across as silly if people know they are damned for working sorcery.



Most importantly, why didn't the entirety of the Mandate go over to the Consult then? Did Seswatha know he was damned?


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I agree but don't think they know it.

I could be wrong but actually think the gods weren't really intervening in the world since the time of the Tusk until the time of AE. I think Moe would have noticed in his "counting" if there was interventions during the 30 years leading up to PON. :shrug:

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Pretty much. There are so small details and questions.floating around, and like you and Castel mentioned in the last thread, they could turn out to be something or nothing. And it seems like there are too many open ended concerns and parallels to be resolved or revealed in the next volume, which could be a shame.

I was just bored.and.speculating what.might.be.something important or might be "heh, ill make this kind of echo this just because its suggestive and clever and stuff. Oh and this chapter needs more dicks..."

I will be disappointed if we dont get a shit ton more info about the dunyain and the nogod.

I think we have enough to go where we can plausibly assert Kellhus and the Inchies do track the narrative elements of the world. For example when Kellhus holds up the twig. For most works of fantasy we'd assume the symbolism is meant to be appreciated by the reader rather than the characters. But once Kellhus accepts the possibility of After determining Before, he'd likely note that meaningfulness seems to influence causality. (Why Jung called synchronicity "acausal".)

We also have the scene with the Emperor and the oracles, where a bird shits on the former. Obviously we're meant to read this as Kellhus would - buffoonish people rationalizing the world to conform to their expectations. Yet once we think of the world as a character itself, the truth of who is the buffoon comes into question - the people who believe in oracles, or the skeptic who denies them?

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I think we have enough to go where we can plausibly assert Kellhus and the Inchies do track the narrative elements of the world. For example when Kellhus holds up the twig. For most works of fantasy we'd assume the symbolism is meant to be appreciated by the reader rather than the characters. But once Kellhus accepts the possibility of After determining Before, he'd likely note that meaningfulness seems to influence causality. (Why Jung called synchronicity "acausal".)

We also have the scene with the Emperor and the oracles, where a bird shits on the former. Obviously we're meant to read this as Kellhus would - buffoonish people rationalizing the world to conform to their expectations. Yet once we think of the world as a character itself, the truth of who is the buffoon comes into question - the people who believe in oracles, or the skeptic who denies them?

Interesting, and after all the discussion on the topic of wether the world is a character, my bet is that it is. " The world conspire's" is just one of many examples to prove this true. And if anything else I will say the great revelation of TUC will be this. Not in the sense that its a computer simulation or something. But, the world in one way or another "conspires" to achieve its own wants and needs. If this is the case, it will be truly amazing as to how that will be revealed.

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Interesting, and after all the discussion on the topic of wether the world is a character, my bet is that it is. " The world conspire's" is just one of many examples to prove this true. And if anything else I will say the great revelation of TUC will be this. Not in the sense that its a computer simulation or something. But, the world in one way or another "conspires" to achieve its own wants and needs. If this is the case, it will be truly amazing as to how that will be revealed.

Which leads to the interesting question of what the world might want?

I seem to think the judging eye will have a huge role to play in that.

What happens when Mimara looks into the Inverse Fire with the Judging Eye?

Or when Kellhus looks into the IF?

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Which leads to the interesting question of what the world might want?

What happens when Mimara looks into the Inverse Fire with the Judging Eye?

Or when Kellhus looks into the IF?

1. Great question, and I have nothing to offer.

2.I believe he has at some point, maybe on the circumfix, when he went mad. I could be wrong, but I feel that the biggest surprise of TUC is going to be what Kellhus is actually after. And the IF has to be part of it, IMHO.

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Damnation has always comes across as silly if people know they are damned for working sorcery.

Most sorcerers are very young when they are first recruited into the Schools - children. A combination of fascination and excitement at the prospect of wielding a power that they can actually see and will affect their lives immediately will understandably overshadow whatever they've been told about the possibility of damnation after death. Which in the end is only a possibility, unless you've seen the Inverse Fire.

he'd known immediately he was one of the Few, known with a child's stubborn certainty. "Atyersus!" he could remember crying, feeling the vertigo of a life no longer to be determined by his caste, by his father, or by the past.
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Iyokus, for example, strikes me as someone who would run not walk away from sorcery in general let alone the Daimos.

Speaking of the Daimos, (another quote from the Three Seas forum)

The Daimos is a subcategory of the Anagogis, and though the Gnostic Schools have flirted with summoning various 'Agencies' (to use the Nonman term for gods and demons), the Daimos is largely monopolized by the Scarlet Spires. It's a powerful weapon indeed.

We know Kellhus learned all about the Daimos from Iyokus, but I'm thinking he might summon a God in the next book with the Daimos' Gnostic equivalent.

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1. Great question, and I have nothing to offer.

2.I believe he has at some point, maybe on the circumfix, when he went mad. I could be wrong, but I feel that the biggest surprise of TUC is going to be what Kellhus is actually after. And the IF has to be part of it, IMHO.

I wonder if individuals are the "thoughts" of Earwa, just as the Legion in every human is the thoughts that arise from TDTCB. (Riffing off Holistic Panpsychism here) This would sort of make sense given that Kellhus suggests space is illusory and we have reason to suspect time is wonky as well. Looking at philosophy, there's an interesting line in McGinn's Consciousness & Space:

"Recent philosophy has become accustomed to the idea of mental causation, but this is actually much more mysterious than is generally appreciated, once the non-spatial character of consciousness is acknowledged. To put it differently, we understand mental causation only if we deny the intuition of non-spatiality. The standard analogy with physical unobservables simply dodges these hard questions, lulling us into a false sense of intelligibility."

In the Bakkerverse it seems like all things might be the dream of God, which means mental causation (driven by meaning & representation) trumps physical causation. We already know time is wonky, but we've assumed that Bakker has to be saying that Time is an Eternal Moment. Yet if Mind precedes space and time, perhaps it's more complicated than that.

If this Mind is the World, what would it want? Does it care about the Hundred - perhaps to the world Yatwer is a parasitical entity? Would the world be happier if the cycle of souls wasn't poached by the Hundred?

Or maybe the World makes up its "mind" when a particular fleshy "thought" dominates its attention? Perhaps that's what the actual power of the JE is? To be the focal point of the God-that's-Everything and rewrite reality?

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Or maybe the World makes up its "mind" when a particular fleshy "thought" dominates its attention? Perhaps that's what the actual power of the JE is? To be the focal point of the God-that's-Everything and rewrite reality?

This more than anything is where I think bakker is going with the story. I think you've hit the nail on the head. I think these "thoughts" that dominate the God's attention, is what the people of Earwa call the Hundred.

Eta: to clarify, we have war, luck, birth, and so on and son and all are part of the hundred. That's what I would mean by the Gods-that's-Everythings "thoughts". Because the people make up the world and these are their thoughts.

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This more than anything is where I think bakker is going with the story. I think you've hit the nail on the head. I think these "thoughts" that dominate the God's attention, is what the people of Earwa call the Hundred.

Eta: to clarify, we have war, luck, birth, and so on and son and all are part of the hundred. That's what I would mean by the Gods-that's-Everythings "thoughts". Because the people make up the world and these are their thoughts.

Good call on the Outside & the Hundred. It is interesting that the Outside, like the inside of a person's mind, are chaotic & warring according to Kellhus. This implies the Inward, meaning the physical universe, is a gossamer veil between the madness within a person's soul (itself the Outside coming Inward) and the subjective realities of gods & demons that encompasses the physical reality. So what we tend to think of as the Ground of our narrative, the world and its onta, is potentially much less stable than Kellhus' skepticism initially leads us to believe.

Where I'd differ from you is I think all creatures - or at least all sentient ones - are thoughts of God as well. It's interesting that just as Dunyain seek to yoke the Legion inside themselves, Kellhus has yoked much of the world to his designs. Perhaps the awakening of the God coincides with the rise of Kellhus?

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Some more noteworthy quotes from Bakker to keep in mind,

I'm personally reluctant to clarify the metaphysics too much, since for some reason it feels more realistic to have it all be fuzzy (real world supernatural metaphysical schemes are certainly replete with contradictions and ambiguities) and it seems - to me, anyway - that it detracts from the ambience I'm trying to conjure. It's almost as though the 'out there' needs to remain mysterious for the profundity the here and now to ring true.

I'm reluctant to clarify the metaphysics of the world, because as I've said, metaphysical indeterminacy is a feature of the real world, which means that the metaphysical indeterminacy of Earwa is one of the things that makes it realistic.

since metaphysical systems in the real world are open, vague, and apparently inconsistent, I think I would actually do damage to the world by laying out a comprehensive, canonical metaphysics. It's like the old horror film trope: sometimes what you don't see can be the most vivid thing of all.

Regarding the No-God's true nature - I doubt I'll ever be able to answer that question!

I think those who are waiting for Bakker to provide mathematical equations for how the No-God or the 'Damnation Machine' work need to reconsider their assumptions a bit.

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Some more noteworthy quotes from Bakker to keep in mind,

I think those who are waiting for Bakker to provide mathematical equations for how the No-God or the 'Damnation Machine' work need to reconsider their assumptions a bit.

Yea, we probably never will. But the conclusion @Sci came to make perfect sense with what we do know about Earwa. It fits together nicely.

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I wasn't referring to the posts above [on the last page]. I've seen people go way overboard in some theories in the past, in particular with regards to the 'damnation machine'. Whereas Bakker might end up employing the horror film trope that he mentioned in the one of those quotes.

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