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Bakker XXXVI: The Horror of Threads to Come


Madness

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Now I just need to figure out which series I'm going to start with...

Just remember Glen Cook has multiple series, if you want something like Bakker you should go with his Dread Empire series as opposed to his more famous Black Company. The Black Company is quite good but the world of the Dread Empire is much more reminiscent of the second apocalypse.

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Some recent artwork! From Somnambulist, Fane the First Cishaurim: http://spiralhorizon.deviantart.com/art/64-365-518281134

From Quinthane, Bashrag: http://quintvc.deviantart.com/art/Bashragtime2-533471948

The most recent art added to second-apocalypse.com: http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=1040.msg21278#msg21278

Love the Cishaurim, the Bashrag looks... too well put-together, but the art is good.

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If I ever hit the lotto I want to commission Somnambulist to make an illuminated text version of the series with tons of color plates. Will probably also have the volumes bound in human skin.

I forget who, but someone over at Second Apocalypse is doing custom leather covers for their books. I believe their having the Kunuric text put on them. Really interested on how it turns out.

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I think that's not true - it's just what Akka thinks at that moment when he talked with Nautzera because he practically hates the guy. Nautzera was probably baffled at all the previous info he was given by Achamian and that shit takes time to process. Also, we pretty much don't know anything about any sorcerer of the Mandate besides Akka(who left them) or the curicullum they have for their studies, so, unfortunately, we can't really know how much of philosophy is involved.

Fair enough. But let's say there's lots of philosophy involved, that every Mandati is like a PhD in philosophy. This only makes the Gnosis stranger, because we know there are mathematicians and philosophers who aren't engaging in sorcery. What makes the Gnosis so hard to understand if the aspects that fuel its potency can be understood without being one of the Few?

I've always kind of thought of it (probably jacked from earlier threads) as

Gnosis: metaphysics explained through math - "I want everything in front of me, 45 degrees to either side, to be destroyed by planar waves of energy that will vaporize anything, starting from the level of my feet and going up to head height, every 4 inches, so that it'll be like running the army in front of me through a meat slicer"

Analogies: a description of the what you want to happen, without being able to actually say it "I want it to be like, if there was a dragon here, just blasting everything with fire."

The utterals and inutterals are just there to preserve and hone meaning. Maybe there's a small element of passion in there too (constantly describing the sorceror's 'song'.) Especially if Titirga is actually a proto-Cish.

Psukhe: Imposing your will on the world around you by sheer faith and utter belief. This would be like a musician with no formal training that is just nasty by ear. Where as if you were a gnostic sorceror, it'd be more like being classically trained.

So for American composers, The Mandate is Gershwin, The Scarlet Spires are the Eagles, Kellhus is Mingus, and Fane is Hendrix.

Perhaps less Hawking and more Pascal?

meaning it's the combination of metaphysics and mathematics, not the isolation of one or the other, that is crucial?

I think what's odd about this is the supposed purity of the mathematical-seeming Gnosis is not free of the Mark while the Psukhe's holism is. Reality - in the Bakkerverse at least - seems to outrun the abstractions/theoria of math & philosophy. The Mark, as Kellhus understands it anyway, is the difference between wholeness of the God and the ability of the magi to grasp that wholeness in their sorcery. (There's also the fact the products of mechanistic assumption (Skin Spies) can't grasp paradox.)

I guess one way to look at it is the Gnosis improves on the Agonosis but is still far removed from the Psukhe, at least when the metric is proximity to the way God exerts Its will upon the universe? That said, if the Agonosis is akin to poetry shouldn't the Mark of the SS be less deep than that of the Mandati? I mean poetry at least accepts there is an ineffable quality to reality that cannot be grasped whereas mathematical modeling (arguably) by its nature assumes what is left out of the explanation is unnecessary or even illusory...

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Fair enough. But let's say there's lots of philosophy involved, that every Mandati is like a PhD in philosophy. This only makes the Gnosis stranger, because we know there are mathematicians and philosophers who aren't engaging in sorcery. What makes the Gnosis so hard to understand if the aspects that fuel its potency can be understood without being one of the Few?

I think what's odd about this is the supposed purity of the mathematical-seeming Gnosis is not free of the Mark while the Psukhe's holism is. Reality - in the Bakkerverse at least - seems to outrun the abstractions/theoria of math & philosophy. The Mark, as Kellhus understands it anyway, is the difference between wholeness of the God and the ability of the magi to grasp that wholeness in their sorcery. (There's also the fact the products of mechanistic assumption (Skin Spies) can't grasp paradox.)

I guess one way to look at it is the Gnosis improves on the Agonosis but is still far removed from the Psukhe, at least when the metric is proximity to the way God exerts Its will upon the universe? That said, if the Agonosis is akin to poetry shouldn't the Mark of the SS be less deep than that of the Mandati? I mean poetry at least accepts there is an ineffable quality to reality that cannot be grasped whereas mathematical modeling (arguably) by its nature assumes what is left out of the explanation is unnecessary or even illusory...

My take: the Gnosis is applied theory, i.e. like applied science, which requires a lot of background knowledge to get right but also requires the skill to be able to put that knowledge into practice.

Perhaps the Gnosis wounds the onta because of its abstractive nature, i.e. it wounds through simplifying, by making the geometry of the world into straight lines when it is in fact far more tangled up and messy.

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Question. Has there been any mention of Kellhus having the Mark? Just from memory, I can't remember anyone mentioning it, like they do other sorcerers.

I don't know that we've had a POV from a sorcerer in proximity to Kell other than Achamian at the end of TTT. :dunno:

That being said, he does salt when in the presence of a chorae.

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I wonder if chorae removes the Mark from the Onta. Imagine legions of chorae wielding street cleaners scrubbing away the Mark after a sorcerous battle (under the direction of a supervisor that is one of the Few).

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I wonder if chorae removes the Mark from the Onta. Imagine legions of chorae wielding street cleaners scrubbing away the Mark after a sorcerous battle (under the direction of a supervisor that is one of the Few).

This is certainly how I imagine it to work (Chorae operate as openings to the God/the objective and restores the onta to its created state, removing the Mark in the process). And a very amusing image to follow.

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I also recommend Bakker's Light, Time, Gravity. Some of the neuroscience ramblings are a bit long winded but I otherwise thought it was a great story.

Still suspect the Inchoroi aren't 'aliens' at all - they are a breed of humans that went elsewhere, went into an echo chamber + self modification vicious cycle and ended up on the wrong side of whatever you might think Earwa is.

They is us, comin' home...

This is my view, Bakker's always trying to shame us with who we really are, I could see it turning out the Inchoroi are us and sooner than we might think. The Inverse Fire is a planetarium running a scene in hell from a movie and everyone on Earwa freaks out because they don't know what it is.

It's a goad.

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I wonder if chorae removes the Mark from the Onta. Imagine legions of chorae wielding street cleaners scrubbing away the Mark after a sorcerous battle (under the direction of a supervisor that is one of the Few).

I've always liked this idea, but when it was speculated upon before it was rather viciously shot down/disproven. I don't remember the reasoning behind the disproving though.
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This was a final Jeopardy answer the other day:






The N in the I.N.R.I on the Christian cross refers to this place


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What is the Nansurium?

Good guess, but it was Nilnamesh.

It was one of those ones where no one got it and Trebek seemed so disappointed.

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